i heart snowdays

i am home and things seem to be returning to a new normal for me. take the gorilla dog, for instance. she and leonardo the talking valentine cat spent the entire morning eying up the squirrels at the bird feeders from the warmth of the kitchen door (see above photo). well, gorilla does this every single day of the fall/winter/spring season. squirrel season. she spends approximately six or seven hours a day scheming at the sliding door. occassionally we let her out, and she runs like mad after either squirrel number one or number two, sometimes trying (and always failing) to chase them both. today was leonardo's first day of squirrel hunting. i do not think he is taking to it; he doesn't seem to want to move. today was a big day for gorilla, though. at one point we let her outside and she chased the nice fat squirrel that had been hogging the birdseed. said squirrel jumped into a nearby tree and, since this is usually the end of the story, i returned my attention to the cake i was trying to make for mom's birthday, which is today, by the way. so, i was in cake mode, trying to figure out if the mixer weighed more than ten pounds or not (i'm guessing not, so i lifted it myself) and suddenly mom tells me gorilla's got a squirrel, oh no. oh no! a squirrel has met its demise in our backyard? we have always wondered what would happen if this took place. well, gorilla took the squirrel, which must have tried a ballsy move and fell out of the tree, and buried it in a small hole and pile of snow in the corner of our house. as though she's been planning this all along. i think she felt a need to prove her stuff because she was watching the dog show with us last night, and her breed, the fox hounds, didn't fare so well. so, that's it, one squirrel down. she is wondering when the other one will return, she wants to play.

in other news, i am healing quite nicely, although i think my small air leak is still intact because there is still a small amount of crepitus on the right side of my chest. when you press on it it sounds like rice crispies. mmmm, rice crispie treats. i hate having the chest tube in, it is not at all comfortable and really limits the movements i can make, especially when sleeping, which is when i most like to roll all over the place. i manage best on my back, my least favorite, but can eek out a couple of hours of sleeping on my left side if i hug a couple of pillows to keep my back bent at an angle that keeps the tube from rubbing the inside of my scapula. ouchie. thank goodness for narcotics. and big fat ibuprofens. other than that i feel pretty good, i can't take deep breaths anymore, and i haven't quite figured out yawning, and once in a while i get the hiccups and oh goodness does that smart. yesterday the visiting nurse, well, visited, and she changed the dressing on my tube. mom got a little overzealous with the tape following my shower on monday evening and it was a painful process getting it off, but i now have a much smaller dressing so i am hoping the next changing won't be such a disaster.

as you can imagine, i am looking forward to a nap and some lunch, probably in the reverse order, and then of course dinner. i would like to go for a walk but i am a bit wary of the icy conditions outside; slipping seems rather disastrous when there is a chance the chest tube could become just a tube and my chest would just have a hole in it, eh?

so much fun i just don't know what to do. thank goodness i am home. it is so much better here.