Birthday Milestones, Incontinence, and Hairloss

I know I haven't blogged much recently, and some friends and family have asked me why, but to be honest the real reason is that...nothing has been going on.  Absolutely nothing.  We holed up for the winter (yeah...we don't really get out when it's -30) and mostly did a whole lot of nothing.  Peter was on furlough for about three months which wasn't much fun, lemme tell ya!  He was very happy when he got back to work two weeks ago, and the Forest Service promptly sent him off for about two weeks.  He was off in some little no-name town in southwestern Colorado supervising a tree planting, and then the next week he went off to Denver for his advanced cruising course which has something to do with setting up timber sales.  Why they call it "cruising" I have no idea but I keep picturing Peter driving around the woods with the windows rolled down with Bob Marley (or someone else equally chill) playing on the stereo.  I know this isn't what he actually does...he's really uh...doing something scientificy...that involves trees.  I really can't explain it well, you'd have to ask him.  Any ways, now that spring has sprung (not that you could tell because it's SNOWING) I hope to have fun outdoorsy adventures to blog about.

In other news, Peter turned the big 30 this week!  He got to spend his birthday riding around on ATVs and getting paid to do it.  Sometimes his job is pretty awesome...when he's actually working.  Speaking of his job, now that he has career status he's been busy looking for a new job.  Hopefully we'll be moving towards the end of the year.  I feel like we're both stagnating here in Gunnison, and it's definitely time to move on, though I will really miss some of the friends I have made here.

Because Peter is now an old man, you may think he is the one suffering from incontinence and hair loss...but no, it's not him.  That would be our dog.  Natasha has recently developed urinary incontinence which is really not fun.  Not fun at all.  She can hold her bladder like normal...unless she gets really excited, but when she gets tired she has a harder time controlling her little sphincter muscles and she starts to dribble which makes her lick herself clean and then she gets bladder infections.  It's all because of a hormone deficiency because she's spayed and isn't producing enough estrogen.  This type of incontinence usually happens to female dogs between the ages of 3 and 5.  Natasha will be 4 this year.  So, to treat it she has to be put on a hormone treatment.  Right now Peter and I are just trying to decide if we want to medicate her on a daily basis or twice a week.  There are pros and cons to both, but I won't bore you with it all.

As for the hair loss...it's spring and Natasha is blowing her winter coat.  I've been waiting for this to happen for the last few weeks as the weather started getting warmer.  I've read about it, but I've never dealt with it...and now that I have...I can tell you that it's pretty epic.  I was absentmindedly petting Natasha this evening when clumps of her hair started coming out.  So I pulled out our Furminator brush (by the way...I highly recommend it for anyone who has a dog that sheds) and after a short brushing session this is what we pulled out of her coat.

It's pretty much a small dog...and this is one reason why huskies are not for everyone.  For me, I find it amusing, and thankfully this only happens once a year (she does shed more noticeably in the fall too, but not quite as much).  So, Natasha's just one big ball of fun right now.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all the fur.

Maybe I should take up knitting.

It's Cold in Gunnison...But We're Still Alive!

I rely on Facebook and blogs to keep tabs on friends and family, because I'm not much of a phone conversationalist (to be honest, I have a hard time understanding people over the phone).  Though, recently I haven't been very good at updating my own blog.  I guess I just don't have a lot to talk about right now...and I'm sure people are tired of hearing about my dog (I can't help it!  She's just so cute!).

So, to catch up...not a lot is different.  It's been four months since I last blogged.  I'm still working as a receptionist for Natasha's veterinarian...and Peter is, well...he's actually not working because he's on furlough, but he should start working again sometime in March.  We're gettin' by for now, though it's certainly tough without our main source of income.  Christmas was a lot of fun, but I wish we could have spent more time with family and friends.  Natasha was a little nervous, but she did really well considering she met a lot of new people including three really little ones.

I don't even remember what we did for New Years...I think I made dinner and we watched a movie...yup...we're officially boring.

So, let's see what else have we done...well, I went cross country skiing for the first time.  We drove up to Saratoga, WY and met some friends of ours there.  We stayed at a Forest Service cabin one night and soaked in some hot springs the next day.  It snowed the entire time we were at the cabin and it was so picturesque and beautiful.  Natasha had a BLAST!  I think next time I will get her a sled and a harness so that she can pull all my stuff in, that way I don't have to.  Here are a few pictures of our trip.


I love how the road signs are nearly buried because the snow is so deep.



Natasha hates her backpack, but she looks so cute in it!

We met Nick and Kelly the summer of 2009 when we were all working for the Evanston district of the Forest Service.  Nick and Kelly started dating that summer and it was fun to watch their relationship grow.  Now they're getting married this summer, and we couldn't be happier or more excited for them.  I'm so glad we still keep in touch and get together for fun adventures even though we live in different states.

That's pretty much all for us.  We're trying to get through the rest of winter, and I think we're pretty much past the coldest bits.  I have survived the winter in Gunnison, but it hasn't been easy.  Poor Natasha went weeks without getting walked because there was a serious risk of frostbite if we went outside for extended periods of time...-30 will do that to you.  Temperatures have been in the upper 20s and 30s this week and it has been an immense relief, but even though it's been one of the coldest winters I have ever experienced, I have seen the sun more often here than I ever did during the winter in Utah because we don't get the icky inversion that they do.  That has actually been pretty fantastic.

I hope you all are doing well and surviving the winter.  Hopefully the groundhog's prediction was correct and we'll have an early spring.  I sure hope we do!  I'm itching to get outside!

Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good company and excellent food. Mine was very quiet, but I enjoyed it. It was just me and Peter this year since we didn't have time to make the drive back home. I thought it would be fun to do something different for the holiday this year other than the traditional turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, etc., but Peter didn't really like my idea, so I ended up making all of the usual suspects for a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Almost everything turned out pretty good considering I had normally made only one of these items at a time before to contribute to the Thanksgiving table; I'd never made them all at once. It was a good lesson in time management for me. The only thing that really didn't turn out was the stuffing. I did the "in bird" style, and the recipe I used asked for chicken or turkey stock for the stuffing, but even though I cooked the turkey fully, the stuffing turned to goo. There must have been too much moisture. Next time, I will omit the poultry stock. One of the best things about Thanksgiving this year was that I got to use my wedding china which rarely sees the late of day considering I don't entertain all that often.

All in all, I think I did a really good job, and I'm pretty proud of myself. Dinner was great and Peter and I enjoyed a nice quiet holiday together, though I did miss my family. I'll get to see them all for Christmas, though. The only downside, if you could call it a downside, is that we've been swimming in leftovers for days. I'm kind of getting sick of turkey sandwiches...so tonight I'm making turkey chili to use up the last of it.

As I mentioned in my last post I have a bunch of fall photos of the Gunnison area. Peter took most of them which is a change since most of the time I'm the one taking photos. Fall certainly didn't last long around here, but it was beautiful while it lasted.  They're mostly pictures of aspen because that's what we have in abundance around here, other than conifers, but they don't change colors...unless they're dying which is kind of depressing.  So please enjoy the sunny, golden colors.

Blog Neglect

So...yeah...November.  Where has the time gone?  I swear it was May last week and I just moved here.  Now summer is over...fall is practically over...but at least Peter's job isn't.  He finished his project up on Sergeant's Mesa about a month ago and I was looking forward to having him around a little more often, but the Montrose district was really struggling to finish their big project, so Gunnison shipped him off to help them out.  I'm really getting sick of the whole back and forth thing.  Peter and I have spent more time apart than we have together since we moved here, and when he is gone we have absolutely no communication whatsoever.  I feel like a single woman living on her own, most of the time.  Although we have done this kind of thing before, it hasn't been for this long.  It really sucks.  Hopefully he has only one more week of field work left and then he will be working out of the office for the rest of the winter (if we're lucky).  Thank goodness I have Natasha to keep me company.

When Peter is home, I try to cook nicer dinners than normal.  Mostly because I've missed him, but partly because when he's gone we both don't eat very well.  Most of Peter's meals are simple fair that he can pack around with him in the woods and heat up in his Jetboil, and I hate cooking for just myself, so I eat a lot of cereal and sandwiches.  By the time the weekend rolls around we're both craving better food and elaborate meals have kind of become my new thing.  Peter jokes that when he cooks he uses only two or three dishes, but when I cook, I use every appliance in the kitchen.  It's kind of true.  The kitchen is usually a mess by the time I'm done with it, but I've been learning how to make some fun things.  One morning I made pumpkin french toast stuffed with blackberry-caramel mascarpone, and last night I made one of my favorite Indian dishes, chicken saag.  Natasha likes to hang out with me in the kitchen while I'm cooking (I think she's hoping that I will drop something), and one night as I was making French onion soup for dinner, she discovered my kitchen timer.  I had purchased a new one because my old one had stopped working and apparently she doesn't like the beeping of the new one.  She will whine and howl until you turn it off.  She does the same thing when our alarms go off in the morning, too.  We got some video of her reaction, but I have been struggling to upload it anywhere.  I guess my camera's video is in a format that doesn't play well with others.

All of my cooking will be put to the test this Thanksgiving.  It's the first time in my life that I won't be spending the holiday with family, and though I've helped make a turkey dinner before, I've never made everything myself.  I've debated whether I should cook a whole turkey or just cook a couple of Cornish hens.  I'm thinking of making other non-traditional Thanksgiving food or "variations on a theme", to use a musical term.  I better figure it out fast, though, since Thanksgiving is only a couple of weeks away.

Going back to Natasha (I know, I know...I talk about her a lot), her training is coming along very nicely. I think we've gotten past the basics and are moving on into the more advanced obedience training. I've been working extensively with her off-leash training and she's been doing very well. If she gets too far away from me on a trail, I tell her to "wait" and she promptly sits her little butt on the ground and waits for me to catch up to her. When I tell her to "come", she turns around and comes running back to me. She will sit and stay in one spot for a pretty fair amount of time, too, even if there are other people and dogs around.  She has her rebelious moments, but it's teaching me a lot about patience.  In addition to her training, she has also lost ten pounds and is quickly getting back on track to being sleek and trim.  She can still stand to lose five pounds or more (I'd really like to get her close to 50 lbs.), but I'm pretty proud of the progress she has made.

I know this post is mostly just me rambling, but I hope to put some pictures up here soon.  Peter took a ton of photos of the woods and mountains in the fall and I need to wade through them all and find the best ones to post.  I also hope to post some video of Natasha up here when I figure out how to convert the format.

Enjoy the last tid bits of fall as it seems winter is banging on the door!

September Already?

I haven't had anymore wheels go flying off my Jeep, so I haven't really had anything very exciting to blog about.  Life keeps moving along and I can't believe that fall is upon us.  It's weird not being back in Logan this time of year.

Natasha is coming along and has made great strides in the 2.5 months we've had her.  She's lost seven pounds and is about five pounds shy of her ideal weight.  She's very talkative and makes all kinds of funny noises.  She doesn't just bark or whine like dogs do; she has a whole vocabulary.  It's really quite hilarious.  She does this thing we call "the silent woof" where she just makes this very quiet "hooah" sound.  She typically does it when she wants our attention, but we're really closeby so she doesn't feel the need to do a full on bark.  One of these days when I come home from work, I need to have my video camera out because she'll follow me around and "talk" to me for several minutes like she's telling me all about her day.  Again, it's not barking; she makes noises that sound like, "Roo roo roo" and "wah wah wah wah".  It's hard to describe, which is why I need to record it, but it's very funny.

Natasha's training is coming along as well.  She will now sit and lay down on command without bribes or hand signals, and she's starting to understand the concept of stay.  When I take her for walks and I tell her to "wait", she will stop, look back at me, and then sit down.  We're also working on the recall command, and that too is only starting to sink in.  Peter and I love having her around, even though she's a lot of work.  She keeps us very entertained, and she does these silly little random things that we can't help but find incredibly endearing.

Natasha usually hangs out under my chair...

...or under Peter's.

I love these two

Natasha loves nomming on a good stick

My sweet girl after a long day of hiking

My job is going well, but some days I feel overwhelmed.  Working in a doctor's office is not easy.  Things get busy and I'm trying to check in patients and answer questions or concerns while every phone line is ringing off the hook.  It's days like those where I just have to take a deep calming breath and take it one step at a time.  It is rather fun to work with animals, though.  Even though most of the time they're coming in because they're sick.

Peter's job is winding down a little.  He's lost most of his crew to school, but I think he kind of enjoys working alone.  He's still gone all of the time, and I'll be glad when he's back at home again.  We've been told that he'll have work through most of winter which is good.  I like being able to pay rent and eat food.

We have had some fun little excursions this summer, like a trip to Moab with some friends of ours.  We kayaked a stretch of the Colorado River and we also went to Arches National Park, which is something I will never do again in the middle of the summer.  It was way too hot.

Peter and Nick

Kelly and Me

The four of us at Delicate Arch

Ute indian rock painting

Me, Nick, and Kelly at Landscape Arch

Last weekend for Labor Day, my parents came to visit and we had a lot of fun showing them around Gunnison and Crested Butte.  One of the things we tried to do was take a picnic on "Gunnison Beach" out on Blue Mesa Reservoir, but it was so windy that day that we were being pelted by sand.  Even Natasha, who is always excited to go outside, was content to stick nearby and use us as shields from the wind.

In other news, we had an opportunity present itself to us this last week that could change a lot of things around here (and no, I am not pregnant).  I can't quite talk about it yet, but some big changes could be happening soon...or not.  It's all up in the air at this point, and merely speculation.  I know that's terribly cryptic, but I'll post more about it when I know more as well.  That's pretty much it from us.  I hope you all enjoyed the summer because it's going to be cold and snowy before we know it!

That Didn't Just Happen, Did It?

My little brother, Jacob, decided to visit us this week, and so of course we had to make the experience as epic as possible.  Somehow, I doubt he will ever forget his time spent in Gunnison, CO.

It all began Tuesday when we left to visit Peter at work.  His job takes him away from me for four days out of every week, so we thought camping out one night with him would be fun.  It took two hours to drive out to his camp, but it was worth it to see him.  The only disconcerting thing about the trip was that I began to hear a strange noise in my car towards the end of the drive.  I told Peter about it, and he thought it was the bushings going out.  I wasn't sure what this meant so I asked him, "My wheel's not gonna come off or anything, is it?"  He assured me that it wouldn't.

Oh, the irony.

We had a fun evening with Peter and his coworkers, and then got up bright and early the next morning to go home since everyone else would be off working any ways.  We had driven nearly nine miles down the road when my Jeep started to shake violently.  Knowing something was definitely wrong, I began to brake, but at that instant the front of my car pitched forward and I watched in shock as the entire front driver-side wheel went rolling down the hill...away from my vehicle, which had come to a complete stop at that point.  The next few moments are kind of a blur to me, but I clearly remember watching the wheel go bouncing and rolling away and thinking to myself, I can't believe that just happened.  My entire wheel just came off.  How does an entire wheel just come off?!

After I recovered from the shock and made sure both my little brother and my dog were okay, I climbed down the hill to retrieve my runaway wheel.  My brother came down after me and carried the wheel all the way back to my car.  The next step was to see if either one of us had any cell phone service, but of course, we were clear out in the middle of the woods; no signal.  I knew our best option was to hike back to Peter's camp.  So, I grabbed several bottles of Gatorade that we had thankfully brought with us, and we left the Jeep sitting three-legged in the middle of the road.  It took us three and a half hours to hike nearly nine miles back up to Peter's campsite.  We were all tired and hot when we got back.  Unfortunately, no one was there so we had to wait six hours for everyone to return.  Needless to say, Peter was pretty surprised to see me.  I explained everything that happened, and Peter and a coworker left to go survey the damage.  They managed to get a spare tire put on the Jeep by borrowing a lug and bolt from each remaining wheel, but the wheel well was damaged and it was rubbing against the spare, so it wasn't possible to drive far on it, but they did manage to get the Jeep moved off the forest and down to the highway.  Jacob and I ended up staying with Peter that night and then left with him and the rest of his Forest Service crew the next day when they broke camp for the week.

Thankfully I had recently opted to have roadside assistance with my car insurance because my car is getting older and less reliable.  When I got home I called my insurance company and they sent out a tow truck to bring my Jeep back.  Peter then spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon fixing the wheel.  It's now up and running and hopefully safe again.  The whole experience was rather freaky, but I can only be grateful for how everything turned out.  When I lost my wheel I was only going about 25 mph on a dirt road, and despite the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere without any cell phone service, I was still a reasonably close distance from people I knew who could help me.  No one was hurt, and my Jeep wasn't totalled.  My guardian angels must have been working overtime this week.  I was really impressed with how my brother handled the entire thing, too.  He was calm and cheerful the entire time.  He made the nearly nine-mile hike like a champ and hardly complained.  If he hadn't been with me, I probably would have panicked and done something stupid.  I'm sorry he had to waste his vacation time being stuck with me out in the woods, but I'm grateful he was with me.

Peter and Natasha both working hard on the Jeep

In other news, when I got home from my unexpected extended trip to the woods, I had a message on my cell phone.  I had recently interviewed for a receptionist position with a local veterinarian, and she had called to tell me that I had gotten the job! I start work on Monday.  I'm very excited because I really wanted this job, and I had actually applied for it over a month ago.  They had hired another girl instead of me, but it turned out that her school schedule wouldn't work with the job after all, so they called me up.  The very same day I got the call to interview for the receptionist position, I had just gotten back from another interview for a job I really didn't want but would have taken just because I needed something.  Jobs are really hard to find in this little town, so you don't turn down anything you might happen to get, even if it's bagging groceries.  I'm very happy that I got a job I wanted instead of a job I settled for.  In addition to working with animals, which I've always wanted to do, I get discounts on veterinary care for Natasha.  I have much to be grateful for today. :)

Soundtracks of Summer

The first summer I worked for the Forest Service was in 2008.  Peter and I rented an apartment in Evanston and commuted to the forest every day that year.  It was a thirty-minute drive and we didn't get much radio reception, so we listened to a lot of CDs.  That summer we listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin and the Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium.  The next summer we lived on the forest (which was a MUCH better plan) and only commuted into town to get groceries.  The albums that dominated our stereo the summer of '09 were Coldplay's Viva La Vida and Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin.  This summer I don't have a job (which is kind of driving me batty) so I don't commute to work, and Peter and I walk or bike everywhere, so we really never drive much anymore.  I haven't listened to much music recently, except for what's on my iPod when I'm walking Natasha, and the local radio station plays mostly country, which isn't my favorite.  I haven't found an album that seems to encapsulate this summer, and I need to resolve that.  I need something new or an album or a music group I haven't explored yet.  Any suggestions?

Also, what album, song, or musician makes you think of summer?  Feel free to post your responses! :D