Luna TailAnxiety, Dogs, and Life

I recently posted a comment on another blog and found out about Disqus, which is a commenting system you can sign up for and then apply a plugin to your wordpress blog.

I think I really like it. It’s like a community of commenters. the only thing I don’t like is that when I reply to comments, the commenter is not emailed directly about my reply unless they are a member of Disqus themselves. If they are not… if they are unverified, it’s called, then they don’t get a reply email.

Hopefully this will change soon. I have this commenting system on this blog, and my other blog, Tip Tail, to try it out.

My Disqus Profile is, I think, viewable by anyone. If you have problems with this commenting system please, please let me know. You don’t have to be registered with Disqus to comment, but if you do register you can claim all your comments and participate. It’s fun!

I am catching back up in sleep and energy after my trip to Colorado… it’s amazing how tiring a 10 hour drive can be. And, I’ve still gained some weight… ugh! So back to the Eat To Live plan I am going. I lost more weight eating like that than anything else. And being healthy means for life insurance no medical exam is needed.. or we can hope!

Just a picture of me and Chase… for those who don’t go over to my other blog, Tip Tail. I thought this was a cute picture from the DOCNA trial today. Chase was tired and didn’t want to pose very well. And Levi and Tatum were already in the car all packed up and ready to go home.

I really need to get jogging again. Dangit… I have been having way too much anxiety about jogging lately. Or else I need to structure it out and follow a plan. But I’m so bad with goals. Hrmph. But the boys and me need to be in better shape!

This will be my last post probably until about Monday. I have all my blogging assignments done, I packed last night, and I’m ready to go.

I’m going to the Clicker Expo in Los Angeles. I’m excited. I’ve been wanting to go to one of these for years, ever since I started reading about clicker training!

I hope there is not too much cool stuff to buy… because I just am low on money! I need a raise. But that’s nothing new. I’ll have my laptop with me but if I blog, it’ll be over on Tip Tail, my dog blog, since this is all about dog training.

Anyway.. talk atcha next week!

Okay I’m definitely sick. *cough cough* I get this way every few months, and I am going to start tracking it on this blog. Usually it comes with the seasonal changes, but it’s still high summer. It could be because of camp and because I’m trying to get some rescue collies here from Houston, and that is really taxing my anxiety. I have to call people on the phone (ack!) and talk to them, and be honest and frank, and coordinate transportation from a distance. But I’m holding up okay, thanks to the Zoloft.

I wake up okay in the mornings, but then as the day goes by I feel worse and worse. Run down, tired, grumpy, and my insides are just mucky. Yeah… mucky. That does fit how I feel. Mucky and Muddy, even. As strange as that may sound. Going to dog camp will help and be a lot of fun. I won’t be staying at a Bed and Breakfast, instead it’s cabins like in Scouts, but it’ll be fun, it was great last time. I am so excited!

I did a tribute page to Kip today on my other blog. I’m so glad I did, he makes me happy, seeing his sweet face. He died over seven years ago. And I still miss him, and I always will.

I hope you’ll go over to Kip’s page if you get a minute, send him some love, and hopefully he’ll feel it wherever he may be now.

He was the only solid thing through a very troubled decade of my life. I’ll always appreciate the unwavering love, loyalty, and devotion he showed me over the years. I still can’t believe he’s gone, even though he’s been gone seven years.

A quote from a book rings so true.. “Death lasts so much longer than life.” Soon he will have been dead many more years than he was alive.. well, after he was alive. As he was not alive for zillions of years before he was born. Either way, that concept is so odd for me, and disturbs me somehow. I don’t know why, but it does.

Okay here it is. I realized the camera was right next to me on the couch so I should just take a pic and load it up.

I absolutely love it! I wanted Levi’s name on it underneath, and he incorporated it into the tattoo itself. I think it’s great. So now I have a tattoo of Levi on my leg. It’s on my left thigh, high enough I can hide it under a skirt for work, low enough it’ll just peek out under shorts so I can show it off.

At the Blackfoot Idaho show, there was a girl with a tattoo of her dog on her thigh, and I thought it was great and I needed one there. So I got this smooth collie image and now I have one too!

I love tattoos. When I retire I’m going to get some more in more obvious places. With color. The tattoo artists said my skin is a tattoo artists dream. LOL. I’m white, not tanned. He told me how many women ruin there skin with too much sun and fake tanning. I’m glad my skin is still good.
I have to leave the plastic on for 8 hours, and then keep it super super clean for a week so it doesn’t get infected.

Time just flies. Especially with Mondays off and having to do a bunch of things with the dogs. Got Sam chipped, and Mac already is chipped. I also decided I’m going to take a break from agility classes for a while. I’m too overloaded. And since Chase is taking a break and we are working on obedience and focus, and Levi is just steady in agility, it’s an okay thing to cut right now. UGH, I hate cutting agility classes, I love agility. But obedience Tuesday is more important. And Flyball on Wed is fun, and we have to learn our box work better still.

Anyway… I’ve been working a lot yesterday and today, so not much posting. At lunch today I’m going to arrange all my pay to blog services into a spreadsheet. I keep getting confused as to who I’m working for, who I’m getting paid from, and who I have even registered with. :p

I hope this blog is ready soon for some money making for the collies!

Well, first off, I have a new 120 Gig hard drive in my laptop! Yay! I’m excited. I have a ton of room now to burn my DVDs and things.

And, I got my hair done. Woot. I will post a picture tomorrow on Self Portrait Sunday. I have purple in my blond.
We are going to go see Spiderman III in a bit. But the husband is playing WoW and so we have to wait until his instance is done before we go. I’m very glad we worked out our problems with his games. He is very good at giving me attention even though he loves to play. I played Everquest with him a lot, so I understand games. They can be really fun.

We got Mac today, so we not have both Sammy and Mac. Both are cuties. We sure have a full house with six dogs, two cats, and two humans. I’m glad the aquarium is gone, I just didn’t have time for fish!

I went to see my therapist this morning. I just love her. She is like a bundle of positive energy. She told me that 60% of the people who go to the ER for heart problems, actually find they are having an anxiety/panic attack. Wow, I was floored at that number.

I really, really need to start disputing my thoughts. I have negative though patterns, and I have got to start talking myself out of them. She says that I probably will always have the initial panic moment, I might even be hard wired for it, but I can learn to have my stress period be shortened if I do more writing to dispute my negative thoughts. So I really have to work on doing that. Though it causes me anxiety too!

Now Mac is coming up to me to say hi, that makes me very happy. He is such a sweet boy.

My therapist gave me a chart that perfectly describes my anxiety. I will post a description of it later, or tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a down day for me. I must make down time for myself. It’s hard to, but it’s important to fit it in. Tomorrow is it. I’m going to stay in all day, be a bum, and just relax with the pups.

Oh, and do you see the peas in the picture behind Sammy? My husband planted them. I can’t wait until they are ready to eat!

My crap was I stressed yesterday or what. I totally was. With a collie coming back, being returned, and two collies coming into my house for fostering, I was overwhelmed. I have one of those collies now, the other one I don’t have yet but probably will soon.

I must be polite to people. Well, I try, anyway. I really think it’s good to keep open polite communications with people. I felt bad about the lady giving me Sam, she was crying. And though I don’t like owner surrenders, I really don’t want to be mean to people. For one, I really suck at confrontation. I mean I really suck at it bad.

I don’t know how to control myself. For me, it’s either I flip out and yell and scream and lose control of myself, or I’m nice. One or the other. I don’t know how to be angry in a constructive way. Anger was never acceptable for me.

But that’s okay. I wish Sam could have stayed with his family but I’m not going to be bitchy with them about it. He’s a good boy and he needs a home. I am falling for him already.
I think yesterday I was so stressed because I haven’t been taking my Agnus Castus. I took some this morning. I gotta remember to do that. It really helps the PMS. And these bad feelings are not permanent. No they are not. Even though I tend to believe they are. Hrmph.

So less stress today. I have boarding lined up for Mac if no foster home appears in the next couple of days.

I have way too much anxiety. My anxiety is disproportionate to the situation. Last night I lay in bed and just felt that awful sense of Humiliation that gets to me. It’s like a disease, or a bacteria that worms it’s way into the center of my chest. Or like a cold steel rod in my heart.

Why was I feeling it last night? Well, I always feel it the worst when I’m trying to go to sleep at night. Not sure why. Maybe it gives me time to think and relax and beat myself up for anything I might have done wrong during the day.

Either way, I’m feeling anxiety about collie rescue. It is something I’ve taken on, and it’s pushing me in ways I knew I wouldn’t want, but I do need to learn to deal with them.

I have like five dogs coming in to rescue all of a sudden. Ugh. Three I am helping a friend out, but I will only be able to take one of them, the collie. The mixes will have to go to foster homes. I might even have to put them in another rescue. Then there is a collie in the shelter, but I don’t know if he’s still there or not. I called last week about him and they said his people had picked him up. But he’s still on petfinder.

And then there is an owner surrender who called me. I just called them back, but they are not home. I left a message. Eight years old. How can anyone give up their eight year old dog? I don’t know. That would be like me giving up Lucy. No way, no how.

And I’m way nervous about the smooth that is in a foster home right now, Mac. I really like his foster family and I want to keep good relations with them. So I just always worry… will they hate me, am I doing things wrong, am I being a jerk… not only are they a great foster home, they are very nice people, too.

And so that’s my anxiety for today. Agility doesn’t start until noon, so I won’t leave until about 10. Should give me some time to wash some clothes and call about that collie in the shelter. Ugh.