Camping Part 2

It was around 3pm when the pugs finally calmed down and Justin was able to start cooking lunch. I was feeling a lot better about camping by this point. I think it may have had to do with the beer, music and snacks.

By this point, we were in a little bay all alone, just the two of us and 3 barking pugs. We put the pugs in the tent trailer, set them up on the beds so they can watch us, and went down to the lake. We were able to swim alone for a couple of hours. It was very peaceful and relaxing. THIS is what camping is all about. I get it now. After our swim and a bit more relaxing, Justin started getting the fire ready and the BBQ started. I nearly had my mind made up about camping, I loved it.

Then this happened....

Before we went in the lake, I had put sunscreen on but did not realize that it was expired. 2 years ago it still wouldn't have been safe for use. So I had basically put almost nothing on my pale, white skin. For 2 hours in the sun. Awesome. After 35 years, you'd think I would be keenly aware of making sure that I was slathered in working sunscreen. You'd think that, wouldn't you? 

After our fun times in the lake, I started to not feel so good. I think the sunburn started to make me feel a little queasy. Queasy enough that I wanted to go lay down. After a few minutes my tummy started to talk to me, telling me that I am going to need to find a toilet. I gritted my teeth and told my stomach that there was no way in hell I am going to use the pump toilet that Justin brought. I reminded my stomach that we had made a deal to hold it until the next day when we got back home. Apparently, my stomach did not sign that agreement so all bets were off at that point. Mental note: get all agreements with body parts in writing, signed by a public notary with a binding contract to submit to arbitration should either one of us not keep our part of the bargain.

You guys, I had no choice but to use the pump toilet that Justin brought. I had to use it in the tent trailer...next to our beds and in the kitchen. Though, the alternative would have been much worse, I guess. I know I'm sounding like a whiny baby and there are so many other people who do this on a daily basis or just plain go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground. I get it. But let me refer you the section of yesterday's post where I say that I prefer my comfort zone. Bottom line (no pun intended) I had to go to the bathroom in the toilet. #2. Ugh!!! It was not as bad as I thought, but then again at the end of the trip, I was not the one who had to empty out the tank.

Once I started feeling a bit better, the pugs and I relaxed a little in the tent trailer. I had all three pugs on my bed. Then I think one of the pugs thought they were the in that nursery rhyme, 10 in a Bed, because before I knew it, there was one two on my bed. PugZilla fell out of the tent trailer. He came back around to the front door of the tent trailer singing:

"There were ten in a bed and the little one said 

"Roll over, roll over" 
So they all rolled over and one fell out ."

I think Olive was jealous that PugZilla was the one to sing the song because not more than 10 minutes later on the opposite bed, she fell out. She knocked over the beer that I had and spilled it all over herself.  She smelled like a booze-hound the rest of the camping trip. Both pugs are fine but I think that solidified their thinking that camping was not meant for them. If they could talk, they would tell Justin and I to, "Go have a good weekend by yourselves...really, we are ok at home alone. No, we won't throw big parties with our friends. We will even do the dishes for you if you don't take us with you."

As the evening wore on we sat by the fire. I thought for a fleeting moment to bring a sweatshirt but decided that it was way to warm out. You'd think that after 35 years of living on the earth, I would grab that damned sweatshirt in certain anticipation of being cold. I certainly needed one by this point. But I shivered through while roasting marshmallows, which was awesome. I didn't think that such small sugary puffs of deliciousness could change my mind about camping, but really, it totally did.

The lake paired with the beer, snacks, relaxing, marshmallows and Justin will get me to camp again. I have 4 more times to see if I like it. Right now, I'm split right down the middle and  unsure if all of the preparation is worth it or not.

Camping Part 1

Justin and I have a tent trailer. We bought this tent trailer for $50 about 6 years ago. Justin made that happen. There was a guy on Craigslist that needed a laptop. We had just been given a laptop through a friend because the screen did not work. Justin was able to have it fixed for $50. So he traded the laptop for the tent trailer. It's a decent tent trailer. It is from the 1970s and it shows. But the guy who traded it to us had reupholstered the inside. So all in all, it's not terrible.

When Justin brought home the tent trailer we had many discussions of how I do not think I would like camping. I don't like being dirty. I don't like the idea of going to the bathroom anywhere other than a bathroom with a toilet that flushes. I voiced all of my concerns and in an effort to step out of my comfort zone, I told Justin that I would go camping a total of 5 times. I wanted enough time camping to be able to make a decision.

I went on my first real camping trip this past weekend. Justin, I and our three pugs went to Pyramid Lake, about a 45 minute drive from Fernley.

I did not realize how much work camping is. I understand now the reason why people go camping for more than one night. One night of camping was probably not the best idea I've ever had. I just wasn't able to commit to a longer period of time because I didn't want to go to the bathroom in a non-bathroom environment. I figured if it was just one night I could probably hold it until I got home.

I woke up at 7am on Saturday morning to start packing and preparing the food. We kept it simple but it still took a while to bag up what we needed. PugZilla got out of bed with me and stood in the kitchen while I chopped up fruit. He is a fruit whore. He loves it so much. He can tell when we pull out a piece of fruit from the refrigerator. He has a 7th sense for it. That and ice cubes. It's his "fruit and ice cube" sense. All pugs have that, right?

It took PugZilla and I an hour or so to get everything ready. By that time, Justin was up and started getting other things ready that we would need, like toilet paper. He did not know that I wasn't planning on going to the bathroom until I got back home, so I let him pack it...you know, just in case.

It took 2 hours of packing and getting things ready before we could leave. And another 2 hours to drive to the lake and pick out a camp site. And another hour and a half to get the tent trailer opened and unpacked and bedding ready, etc, etc, etc. The working part of it seemed to never stop. 

Finally, during a particularly stressful few minutes during the set up I asked Justin for us to take a break and take the pugs down to the lake. We parked about 100 yards from the shore up on a little hill. We started walking down the hill and all three pugs started to follow. Once we were about half way down the hill, Martini (aka Miss Priss) decided that it was too much for her, she climbed back up the hill and under a set of rocks. Justin had to go back up and carry her down to the lake. After we put the dogs into the water for a little bit and cooled them off it was time to go back to the trailer and start cooking lunch. Olive and Martini decided that they wouldn't walk back up, so we had to carry them. We decided at that point that they are not camping  pugs. As Justin's Mom said, they are house-pugs.

Pugzilla Update

Pugzilla is doing MUCH better. He is acting like his old self again, minus one eye and having stitches still. I took him to work with me for a couple of days, which he really liked. He has an area that is oozing a bit, which is normal and we are still giving him pain pills. We don't have his cone on his head since he has left his eye alone. The awesome news is that he is eating and playing normally (kind of normally, we aren't letting him get too aggressive with the other pugs right now).

Mom, Carol, Rish, Mags, Neely - thank you for all of your emotional support. If there was ever a time I needed it, it was through this ordeal.

I can't wait until those stitches are out and he heals up - I bet he can't wait for it either. I'll post pictures of him when the stitches are out and he looks a bit better. And maybe when we get him an eye patch. Or an can of spinach and a pipe.

Our Poor Baby

We had Pugzilla's eye removed yesterday. He looks terrible. He has to sleep with a cone around his head. He is still doped up on morphine. He just wants to lay in my lap. And I want him to. I want to stay home from work just to baby him. He is our baby.

I feel so bad for him. I feel like a horrible doggie mom. I'm so sad right now. It's just breaking my heart that I can't make his pain go away. And I know he doesn't understand what he did to deserve this.

You did nothing Pugzilla - this is just the way life works out sometimes. And we are so sorry about it. But I promise you, you will feel better. And in 9 days, when the stitches come out and you are able to run around and play again, you will feel so much happier. You won't have any pain in your eye.

But for now, we baby him and love him and hope that love can help with some of the pain and bewilderment his is probably feeling right now.

Nose, Star and Pugzilla

I've been busy recovering, going to work, having a set back then going back to work. I haven't had much time to update my blog. Or the inclination, really.

Surgery update status: I had my stints removed from my nose. Those suckers were a bit longer than my middle finger and about as wide as my middle and pointer fingers together. How they fit those pieces of plastic up my nose, I'll never know. But no wonder I was so uncomfortable and having trouble sleeping.

Now that the stints are out, I'm doing much better. Although I found out that I've pushed myself a little much and had a small setback as far as taking care of myself goes. I had to stay home from work on Monday (after going back to work last Thursday and Friday). My body was not ready for such a thing and it protested. So I listened.

I'm doing much better now. Feeling better, not great, but better. Getting my energy back is a good thing. As far as my breathing goes, I can breathe better out of my right nostril now than I could with both before the surgery. My left nostril (where most of the work was done) is still swollen and blocked a bit, so breathing from that side will take about a month to fully heal and get its effect.

Thank you all for your care and concern. I do appreciate it.

Onto other things...

We have a 4th pug at our house.

Her name is Star. She is adorable. Justin's parents are going to give her a home with them. I know that if they decided not to take her, I would have a hard time finding her another home. She is just that darned cute! And she fits in with the rest of our pugs just perfectly, which makes for a good times when we visit Justin's parents, the pugs will have a honorary cousin in San Jose.

Speaking of Pugs. We have some bad news about Pugzilla.

He has cataracts in both eyes and glaucoma in his left eye. Unfortunately, glaucoma hits a critical point in dogs within 12-24 hours. He can't see out of his left eye and he won't be able to get his vision back. We have decided that he needs to have his eye removed. This way he won't be in pain (he can still feel his eye) and he doesn't know to close it when he plays with the other pugs. Right now he is not in much pain, still eating, etc. We will have his eye removed fairly soon. We are very, very saddened by this. We even took him to a doggie ophthalmologist to see what could be done and if there was a way we could have prevented this. There wasn't. And because he has it in one eye it is likely that this may develop in the other and he might loose his sight altogether. We are just focusing on the eye removal first and getting treatment for his other eye.

Puppy and Paris

I'm up at 5:00 in the morning thanks to us taking home our new puppy last night. And it IS everything I remembered it was. Up every 3-4 hours, whining when not ready to go back to sleep...she has been whining in her crate for about 20 minutes now because she isn't tired...I gave her water and formula milk mixed together (she doesn't like plain water yet), I took her to go potty and both those time she just thought it was playtime. No way. We are starting her off with no bending the rules...we've learned from the first 2 pugs that bending the rules does not work out in the end for the two biggest pugs in the house (me and Justin).

She is really cute though. And it is nice having a tiny, tiny, tiny little puppy again who has no coordination and who tries to take on Olive and does a fine job at it. Pugzilla is reacting the same way he reacted with Olive...he can't look at the new puppy. Can't even look at her. But at least this time he can't look at her and he is more dismissive than holding such contempt, as he did with Olive. In a week or two that will change and all three will be playing.

We are still looking for a name. I still like Bunny (Pugsbunny would be her real name). Justin likes Martini. Or Puperoni...and the reason why he likes that is because his nickname for Pugzilla is Sausage. Then we have Olive...and then Puperoni. Funny, yes. But we don't call Pugzilla "Sausage' all of the time, which is why I don't want to call her Puperoni.

Onto Paris. That is where Justin's parents are right now. I'm so excited for them. They are staying in Paris for about 4 days, then they are heading to Spain and getting on a cruise that will take them to Italy, Greece, Turkey. They will end their trip back in Paris for a couple of days. they are having a wonderful time, Justin heard from them yesterday. I hope they take lots of pictures...lots of pictures.

A new pug face around our place

Justin has been wanting, no needing to have a 3rd pug. After 2 years of not agreeing and questioning whether we should get a 3rd AND FINAL pug (yes, I have it in writing from Justin that his "pack of pugs" ends at number 3) we came across a SMOKIN' deal...a 2 week old female for...get this $100. What more of a sign did I need? Especially since pugs are between $500-$650. So we saw her for the first time last night.





We are looking for a name. I still like "Pugsbunny", which is what we were going to name Olive but because we have Pugzilla - the names sound too much alike. But right now we like "Martini" as a name because, hello...Olive and Martini...how cute is that? But we want other names to consider...so take a look at the pictures and if you would be so kind, email me as many names that you can think of.


We will be able to pick up the new little pug in Mid September. :)

My Father-In-Law is funny

Justin's parent spent the weekend with us here in Fernley and what a great time we had. We all played our newly acquired Wii and had a blast. Then we showed them the "Dick in a Box" video on YouTube that we love so much. They thought it was very funny too. That was Saturday.

Then Sunday evening before they started getting ready to leave, Pugzilla (our 5 year old Pug) was sitting on Justin's lap. Pugzilla heard a noise and jumped down, using Justin's eh..hem, "man junk" as a spring board. (This behavior is typical of both Pugzilla and Justin.) Justin made his grunt of displeasure noise, as almost any man would having a 40 pound anything use your balls as a springboard. Justin's Dad looks at him, which great fatherly concern and says, "You should have put your junk in a box."

Bastard Pugs

These sweet, sweet bastard pugs decided at 3:00 am this morning that is was their wake up time, as if it was 10:00 am (thats right, the pugs get to sleep in 4 more hours than I do each morning). The kept jumping up and down from the bed, playing, going in and out of the doggie door, coming back from outside cold and wanting under my covers. These sweet, sweet pugs, kept me up. Then Olive, who is obsessed with a rawhide bone we gave her a week ago, decided that chewing on the bone was way more important than her beauty sleep, and my beauty sleep.

If kids are worse than having pugs that wake you up at 3:00 am and keep you up for hours, I think I'll pass.

Pugzilla

We do not have kids for many reasons. One is the expense. Just having dogs is expensive. For example, poor Pugzilla had a growth on the bottom of his back paw, smack dab in the middle of his paw pads. We guess his has been bothering him for about a month (hindsight is always 20/20) and it was pretty big, about the size of his other paw pads. So we took him to the vet yesterday in Reno. They had to put him under anesthesia, take the growth off and send it off to a lab to see what it was. All for $420.00. Nice. Thank goodness we bought all of our Christmas presents for everyone already - or else there would not have been a Christmas.

But it is not only the cost, it is the sleeplessness. I didn't sleep much last night because I was up with an uncomfortable and very needy Pugzilla. Granted, I can count the sleepless nights on two hands, not a bad percentage considering Pugzilla has been alive for approximately 1650 days already. My percentage would be WAY higher with kids.

I feel bad for Pugzilla - he has a bandage around his paw and is very needy. I feel bad for Justin because he is home today with the dogs, experiencing first hand the neediness of Pugzilla.

And Justin wants another pug...hahaha. So not going to happen!

All in all, Justin and I are SOOOOO glad that Pugzilla is okay and recovering well. We just need to find out the results of the biopsy and hopefully that will come back clear.

Fun with Pugs

So we are now knee deep in Halloween stuff. We have been setting up the Haunted House - all of the decorations are in our living room and slowly creeping outward. It is a mess! In the midst of all of this chaos, Justin came up with a great idea...

Have you seen the Halloween candy bowls (that have been out for years) that have a hand sticking up in the middle of the bowl so when you go to grab for a piece of candy it says "Happy Halloween" and the hand moves down into the bowl to touch your hand? Well imagine that with Dog Treats in it and it placed on the floor for the Pugs to get their treats from. Justin and I were cracking up; the dogs were barking but kept trying to get their "cookies" because Justin and I were egging them on...hehe.

And on a side note...I love having the house to ourselves! It is FANTASTIC!