It's about time, it's about dogs...

Well back in April I undertook the A - Z blog challenge because my blogging was flagging a bit and it seems that rather than give me a kick start (as I intended) it exhausted my creativity and caused me to need nearly a month off blogging!  Never fear - I have returned!

I must confess life has been rather busy of late.  I am working on my masters - not nearly as much as I should be - but I am doing it.  I've finished the first subject, am in progress with two at the moment and I'm about to start my fourth.  Then I will be half way through!  It's very interesting learning about conflict, mediation, and all that other alternative dispute resolution stuff.  Although I must confess that it is a bit difficult doing this when I am not working.  Hanging out in paradise with TLOML and the dogs just doesn't give me all that much food for thought in the conflict department.

Healthwise I think I am doing somewhat better than I was six months ago.  The pain levels are not good at all even though I'm taking much better pain meds and I'm almost constantly maintaining a level of pain medication to knock the worst of it down.  I can feel the pain killer I took this morning has worn off and I'm getting those nasty roving cramps that make everything else hard.  On the upside I have had far less issues with the other things that are a problem --- like vertigo, fatigue, the swallowing problem, weird skin sensations etc etc -- you know all that bonus stuff that we get with fibromyalgia.

TLOML and I seem to go from strength to strength in our relationship.  There is not a moment of any day when I don't feel like the luckiest woman on earth.  Neither of us is perfect but there is something pretty damn close to perfect about our relationship.  If we have a spat we get over it quickly and no one holds a grudge, we enjoy a lot of the same things, I get along well with her friends and her family, basically we have a lovely life.  The nights are chilly at the moment and we get excited that we are going to be able to snuggle and spend the night close to each other.  Almost every day when I pick her up from work we take the dogs to the beach.  I'm slow but I have built up the distance I can walk and we stroll hand in hand talking about our day and enjoying the dogs together.  It really is one of my greatest joys.

Now I have to tell you a bit about the dogs.  TLOML already had a dog when I moved in and she is a fabulous dog!  Her name is Venus and she is mostly fox terrier with a bit of kelpie probably.  She's very obedient, affectionate, lovable and easy to get along with but she is getting on a bit and has grey on her nose and around her eyes.  In the US I had a dog I LOVED called Sergio but I couldn't bring him home to Australia, even if I could have afforded the $3,000 I couldn't have stood him being in quarantine for 6 weeks!  He stayed with my ex who loves him and has a great home for him, but I still miss him.  So I mentioned to TLOML that I would like to think about getting another dog so that Venus can train it before she gets too old to play.  I started looking on the RSPCA site - I really believe in rescuing a dog if you can!  Then I found this young female dog called Misty who was described as a Maltese cross.  She is black and white and fluffy.  That night I showed TLOML Misty online and she agreed that she would be the one she would be most interested in too.  The next day I had a doctors appointment for some xrays on the mainland (free floating bone fragments in my ankle Yippee!) and I popped out to the RSPCA and met Misty.  OMG she was so cute!  Unfortunately the staff informed me that there were two people who had expressed an interest in her ahead of me.  I put my name down as interested and asked them to find out if the others were going to adopt her because if they didn't I was pretty sure we would.  Later that week it was confirmed that the other people couldn't proceed at the moment and if we wanted her we could have her.  So I took TLOML to the RSPCA on Saturday morning and watched her fall in love with the scruffy little bundle too.

Here she is on her first day with us - at the petshop buying her collar and lead before heading home to the island!

Neither TLOML nor I liked the name Misty so we decided to call her Frizby which sounds kind of similar but is cuter and more fun.

Venus (on the left) is teaching Frizby where to wait when we are in the kitchen.

Mostly now we just call her Frizzy or Frizzball or Frizz and she is absolutely wonderful!  At first TLOML was adamant that Frizby would be my responsibility and I would bear all the costs (blah blah blah) which would have been fine with me but I thought it might be nicer if we adopted her together.  It seemed that the idea of knowing which dog belongs to whom kind of presumes that one day we will split up and I don't ever want that to happen!  I mentioned this, with the note that it isn't about the money, and TLOML agreed. So now both dogs are OURS!  It has really been a lovely bonding experience and we both think it was by far the best decision.  We think she might be some sort of Poodle/Shih Tzu/Maltese cross but who knows, she doesn't have a squashed in face like a Shih Tzu and she is bigger than either them or a Maltese...She is like a lamb more than anything else!  So now we are in love not only with each other but also with the dogs.

So there you go... living in bliss is not really the stuff of great blogs I guess... my life is filled with laughter and love and lots of fun too, The Boy is busy in Sydney and I wish we had more contact but other than that, oh yeah and the nagging chronic pain, everything is perfect!