POISON IVY SUCKS!!!

Hello all,  this is Ryan and this is my first blog on here that I wrote completely.  I have helped Shauna with a couple of the previous ones but didn't finish them.  So I would like to tell you a story that happened a long time ago before I tell you the current story.  

Back when I was a teenager I was visiting family up in Oregon.  I decided that I was going to learn how to ride my cousins motorcycle, granted I had never really been all that interested before.  Upon going back and forth, up and down the street, I was on my way back to the house and was approaching the last turn before I headed down the driveway to park it, and be done for the next umpteen years, I... for some reason... decided to accelerate right after I downshifted.  As you can probably guess right now the rest is going to be funny for you, not so funny for me.  So basically what happened at this point was, picture if you must, me on a motorcycle, going straight instead of turning, busting through a fence, crashing into a tree and scratching the heck out of my arm, and then to top it all off... fell over into a patch of POISON OAK.  Go ahead... laugh it up!  So after the crash I had such a bad reaction to the poison oak that my forearm was rock solid.  Mind you not because I am built like a Superhero, but because my arm was so swollen and full of puss you could knock on my arm and it sounded like knocking on wood.  So after a few emergency visits to the hospital and a month or so later, the doctor tells me I shouldn't worry about poison oak anymore and that I am now immune to it.

So on to the current situation...  Was weed wacking some ivy in order to remove it from a wall next to our house and apparently we have frickin POISON IVY mixed in with the non stinging, non painful, regular ivy.  A few days later, low and behold I have spots all over my arms and on the back of my neck where all the shredded ivy had landed from the weed wacker.  I am now in a lot of pain, just like the poison oak from oregon.  Only this time the pain is worse.  I now have craters on my arms and neck that keep oozing puss and spreading even more all over my skin.  This sucks!!!  A person should only have to go through something like this once in there lives.  I am now on my second.  It has gotten to the point now that I can't even go to work because I can't use my arms.  Try lifting 30 ceiling fans using nothing but your hand strength and what little back muscle you have left.  So after attempting to work for a couple days like this and a really bad kink in the back later, I have had to call in.  This sucks because I just got written up for being late to work when dealing with the rodent problem Shauna wrote about already.  My work blows.  They have no consideration for anything or anyone.  Anyhoo...  poison ivy sucks and I wanted to make sure you all know.  I will post some pictures later of my sores for the not so week stomached people.

13 Weeks...

Here is a picture of my belly. I'm 13 weeks. Nothing fits. I'm at that stage where my clothes are uncomfortably tight but I'm not quite big enough for maternity wear. It's annoying. I walk around work with my pants unbuttoned/rubber banded. Heh! It's usually not so bad in the mornings but by late afternoon I feel fat. Not to mention, MY BOOBS...32F????? ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? WILL IT EVER END? I look forward to the days I'll be able to fit back into a C. *Sigh*  (P.S. Please excuse the hair. My hair gets poofy at night.)

Critters in our chimney

So what does one do when you have critters living in one's chimney? It never occurred to me that I'd ever wonder that. Wednesday night, I, of course, having gone to bed at 7 pm and Ryan going to work at 9 pm, this little thought came upon me. Ryan on his way to work had heard noises coming from our fireplace. I awoke to him imitating those noises (like something that had come from the movie, The Ring). He wanted me to come down to hear the noises. In the state of my exhaustion, dragged myself out of bed to hear these freakish noises. I told him that he would not be going to work tonight until he got whatever was in our chimney out. Bring up the computer, search for animal control, calling parents, friends, anyone has any ideas? We block the kitchen entrances and build a barrier between our living room and the rec room. Ryan ties the dog leash to the fireplace handle. I open the door, camera in hand and tell him to go. He struggles the door open...there's NOTHING in there. We look a bit closer and the flue was closed. The noise was above the fireplace. Close the doors, open the flue, here some stuff fall into the fireplace and do the whole scene over again to no avail. So, Ryan goes off to work and I go to bed. Next day, we try again and no luck. FRIDAY comes along I get a text at work, of a picture of 2 raccoons...

Ryan says he's going to wait until I get home. 

NOPE. He decides to chase them out and this is the story that he told me. He made a path that led to the front door. Opened up the screen and the first raccoon ran out, no problem. Second one...directionally challenged I guess because it climbed up over the barrier and down into the rec room, back up to the corner of the living room, down to the rec room, behind the couch, up to the living room BEHIND the front door and tried to get out through crack between the jamb and the door. So Ryan put a box and scared it into the box and then made sure it only ran out the front door. It took about 20 minutes to get the second one out. 

Cockroaches and bunny droppings...oh my...

First off, I want to say that Maya is strange. We have rabbits. The come from our neighbor's property (the one that owns the 10 acres behind us). We get about 3 or 4 of them a night in our yard. No big deal. We were out back working on her training. We had treats in our hand but she kept running down to the back of the property. Her nose is straight into the ground and she is viciously eating, at first what looked like grass. Pulled her away and it's rabbit droppings. We couldn't get her to stop eating the stuff. Blah. That and not to mention the dead baby opossum.

SO, my main reason for this posting is to describe the events that occurred 3 hours ago. I (Shauna)  am currently home sick from work today. Ryan and I were sitting on the couch watching "Be Kind, Rewind" (I was not impressed). A cockroach runs and sits on the arm of the couch. Ryan just about flips. I tell him to hurry up and knock it OFF the couch. He grabs a stinking water bottle and it runs between the couch cushions. We tear the couch apart looking for it before we decide to just sit down and finish the movie. Not more than 20 minutes later, I hear Ryan scream in a very high pitch tone. Ryan kicks his feet off the coffee table and I see a cockroach do a 360 in midair. He's grabbing his feet. I am laughing...half hysterically. Again, we rip the couch apart for the second time in a half hour. We search high and low for this bug. Finally it crawls out under the fooseball table. Ryan sprays it to death, literally. I spend the entire day reminiscing of this memory. Heh. It's a great day.

New things!

Hello All!!!

This is our first official Blog.  Thought we would give you all an update on how things are going down here in the South!!!

There has and will be a couple new additions to our family... the first being our puppy Maya.  We had gone to the pet store with intentions of getting a hamster for Shauna but instead ended up going home with a dog.  We saw her and had no choice but to adopt her.  Unfortunately for us we didn't know she would be sooooo expensive

 so quickly.  Poor Maya had Hookworm anemia meaning that she had hookworm long enough that she had no blood left in her itty bitty body.  We ended 

up having to take her to the animal emergency hospital where they gave her a blood transfusion using Pit bull blood and were going to keep her 24 hrs.  Needless to say 5 hours later they gave us a call to come pick he

r up because she wouldn't quit yapping. She was happy to be home with us. Now she is the most rambunctious, lovable puppy ever. She is going through some puppy classes right now, it is quite entertaining. 

Next on the headlines, Shauna is prego... again. But this time it's sticking. Yay! Today, she is 11.5 weeks and counting. Sickness hits at night which isn't so good when you have to be at work at 6am the next morning. Sundays (for some reason) are the worst and the drugs don't work that night??? She usually pukes until 5:30am Monday mornings, heads off to work. Few people know and that's how it's going to be for a little while until after Sarah's wedding in August.