Miscellaneous photos

Allow me to present Miss Booger, on the couch, in a sunbeam, happily chewing a rawhide. That's about as good as it gets!


Smiling as she cleans her fangs!


The ladies seem to take couch appreciation to a whole new level:


Starbuckeroo loves it so much that even though she now has figured out the stairs and will sleep upstairs with us sometimes, she still prefers the couch:


This is the hugest carrot I've seen in a long time:

Straight from the Mat Su Valley! And still far shy of the all-time Palmer State Fair record, set in 1998: an 18.985-pound bruiser grown by one John Evans of Palmer (of course!)

There are some real bruisers on that list! A 42.75-pound beet! A 64.8-pound cantaloupe! A 63.3-pound celery!! (eek!) A 71.75-pound chard and an 84-pound collard! A 105.9-pound kale! And of course a 138.25-pound cabbage! Some of them are actually scary! What in the hell even is a 96.95-pound kohlrabi? Is that even a vegetable any more, or just a giant green bulb? And the 82.9-pound rutabaga! However, I'd happily tuck into a 4.5-pound tomato or a 168.6-pound watermelon! Pass it right here, please!

Here is the ice arch:

The civil engineering students build one every year, and I think this year's is particularly lovely.

Miscellaneous couchal photos

Starbuckeroo loooooves the couch. So much so that even now that she has figured out the stairs and likes to sleep with us, she'll often get up in the middle of the night and relocate to her couch:


Here is Booger looking adorable with her feeties:


And Autumn napping with her rawhide so her sisters won't steal it while she sleeps:


She had a small tumor removed last week. It was cancerous, but pretty well-defined. Dr. F was concerned about anesthetizing her to remove it because of her heart troubles, but he said that the tumor would kill her pretty quickly if we left it alone, so I figured it was worth the risk. If she died in surgery, we'd only lose a month or so of life until the cancer got her. But if she survived the anesthesia, the surgery itself was so trivial that we knew she'd recover quickly and well, and possibly live for another year! So we did it, and she survived, and is healing super quickly! The suture site is super clean:

and after a week, she's back up to taking walks with us, which for her is more important than anything! She's become more crotchety about her cone though, which she never was before. She often deliberately whacks it against things, just to express her annoyance!

Here is Starbuckeroo snuggling:


"Do you love me, pawpaw? Rrrrrrroooooooooo?"

Happy Year of the Monkey!

On Saturday, we went to watch the Yukon Quest start. It was low-key, with people milling around on the river as the mushers took off. Here are three random teams:


(This team is very photogenic, no?)



A blur!


That night, I hosted a Chinese New Year party. I made jiao-zi filling and had guests help wrap! I also roasted a chicken and solicited guests to bring noodles, fish, veggies, and nian-gao, to round out the traditional New Year fare. I forgot to take any photos, but here is one of me wrapping the extra to have on actual New Year's Day, which was Monday:



How cute is Booger??


All three ladies on the couch!

Autumn can bounce!

Who knew that a little old lady dog could have a four-pound tumor removed from her liver, have a heart valve fail, and then just... come back... with everything under control using drugs!

A week ago, Autumn was given the go-ahead to go for some short, off-leash walks. Last weekend, we let her go a bit farther, to the top of the ridgeline behind our house and back, for a total of about three miles. She wanted to go farther, but we turned back.

Heading out! Starbuck and Linden are much more confident with their matriarch along. They run farther ahead and fall farther behind and run back and forth and explore.






The sun is rising higher now. It turns bright yellow/white again, even before noon!


Starbuckeroo does her face-smearing-in-the-snow thing:


Autumn sez, "I'm the queen of my domain, and I can walk to the top of our ridge if I want to."


It takes a lot of pills, and although we've been reducing the dosages, we're still popping pills three times a day--after breakfast, after dinner, and before bedtime--to control the heart, the fluid retention, and the blood pressure. If engineering doesn't work out for me, I'm probably qualified to work for a nursing home!



After supper, they each get a glucosamine and a biscuit. Autumn gets her additional pills, some wrapped in cheese. Starbuck is on antibiotics for just a week, since she tried to be overly friendly with an aggressive dog, who bit her, and it got infected!

But she comes to work with me so she doesn't have to wear her cone so much:

"Mmmm, carrots! I love carrots! Got any more carrots?"

In other news, Booger iz cute:




And Starbuckeroo is roo-ful:


Ooooohhhh, Rooooooo!