On Tuesday evening, when I arrived home after my monthly book meeting, Dora wasn't acting right. She had been fine before I left, but by that time(5:45 pm), she was hunched over, not moving much or eating. There was no discharge or wounds that I could see, so I had no idea what had happened. She didn't even seem able to lay down in her usual way, but nodded off on her feet, which didn't look comfy.The vets were closed, otherwise I'd have had her checked out. In the morning, fearing the worse, she was acting the same so I called the vet. Her regular one is not in on Wednesday, so I called the alternate, who gave me a late morning appointment. The alternate vet is about a half hour's drive to a yuppie suburb, so he's a bit more expensive, but the only one in when others aren't.
It was a warm spring day, so I didn't worry about her being chilled, but she hates car rides, the motion upsets her. The vet did a test similar to an aquarium ph strip test & it showed traces of blood in her urine. X-rays showed a tiny bladder stone, which wasn't blocking yet, but still causing problems. Since the cost of the surgery for it is astronomical, he wants to try meds to dissolve it first, so he gave me some antibiotics(baytril) and told me to keep refilling her water bottle to encourage her to drink.
Yesterday(Thurs.) she was acting much better eating a lot, especially hay & veggies and being more like her perky self. After giving her the meds orally, I also tried feeding her water via the syringe, with rocky success. Today(Friday), she's not acting as well, though she has been laying down to sleep. She's still eating some, but not as much as yesterday, though I have seen her drinking more.

The vet said to call him in a few days to let him know how she's doing, so I'll try calling tomorrow. The office is open, but I'm not sure if he's in on Saturdays. If not, I'll call again on Monday. With her uneven progress, I don't feel like I have enough info yet to know if she's truly improving. I don't know how to afford the surgery, so there's more than one reason that I'm praying for her to get well without it. It's a very worrying situation, but I'm going to do everything I can & hope & pray for the best.

My birthday was a couple Fridays ago, on March 9th & I suggested an outing with my sister to the Beck Center, a center for the arts in its many mediums, including theater and dance. There was actually 4 visual art exhibits throughout the building, but I was most eager to see the one of August Biehle Jr. featuring landscape paintings he made in southern Ohio and Germany in the early decades of the 20th Century.
The show did not disappoint, it was full of woods, farm fields and small villages set among trees and streams. Some were of the same scene from different vantage points, other were quick sketches to capture a moment. There were a few paintings referencing Biblical stories done when he was part of the Blue Rider school, but most of the work was pastoral scenes done with a limited palette in gauche and ink. A couple resembled stained glass in the way he outlined each segment and one farm scene strongly showed Vincent van Gogh's influence. My favorites were a snowy forest, with pine trees and snowflakes and another of a cabin in the woods, with patches of sunlight on the ground.
Along with his regular mediums, Biehle also did lithographs, which are prints made by drawing on special stones(something I've always wanted to try). The marks look very much like charcoal and the artist showed such mastery in a print of a mill on a light blue paper which made the scene look bathed in moonlight.
One of the other exhibits was of fantasy/surrealist acrylic paintings by Natasha Turovsky, who is quite prolific. Her paintings were mysterious, with dark themes. My sister liked them much better than I did, because they made me uneasy, with their muted colors and dream-like situations. I was surprised at the size of her paintings, there was the expected dining room table sized canvases, but others very very small, the size of a paperback book. It was a nice change of pace and I wondered what I could paint on a small scale like that. I do 5" x7" paintings on paper, but canvas seems different somehow.

Both of these exhibits provided a lot of food for thought and also an entertaining way to forget that I was becoming older. Adding in the seafood pizza for a late dinner, it was a rather nice birthday for a change.

I have no idea what xanga was thinking when they instituted this new theme technique. I have spent hours trying to get it to work and it won't. THIS is why they are losing to Blogspot, WordPress & other sites, because they are easier to use. Xanga is no longer concerned with making their site user friendly, with each change they make, it becomes harder & more frustrating to work.Plus, they've now disabled all of my links & side modules, none of the buttons, graphics or pictures show up. That makes me really angry.
The old "Look & Feel" worked fine. Every season I changed the header picture & now I'm finding it impossible to do so. I'm not sure what to do at this point to get a layout that I'm the least bit content with.
Here I was trying to write more often & now I can't even get the page to look right. Just thinking about trying to do anything on xanga now makes my blood pressure rise. Grrrrrrrrr!
UPDATE: Finally was able to get some semblance of decoration to my page, at least to the point where I won't screech in frustration whenever I visit it. Some of the sections of the Theme edit bar says that more areas will be customizable in the future, so maybe that will help. Until then, I can live with the way it is, though it was so much nicer before....

  Happy St. Patrick's Day!       

May the Luck of the Irish be with you today and through the year....