whoohoo! we were closer to (safely) camping in the trees a few weeks ago, but travel and vacations delayed our first camping adventure.
it’s a perfect night for reading “the lightning thief” and camping in the trees.
update: turns out, at the last minute we checked the weather and there was a chance of thunderstorms in the early morning. we didn’t want to be scrambling down the ladder in a storm so decided to go inside and camp tomorrow night!
we’re lucky enough to have a drive-in theater nearby in richland center wisconsin and decided to take odin and pushkin to see turbo because, sadly, the theater might be closing soon.
at the end of 2013 films are no longer being distributed, well, on film. and it costs about $70,000 per screen to convert to digital projectors. the starlight website says they are going to start a fundraising campaign soon, but it seems a bit late in the game. next weekend is their last showing for the season and if they don’t raise the money they won’t open next year.
i hope they raise the money and we’ll certainly kick in some to help because it’s a whole lot of fun to lay on the ground on a blanket and catch a movie!
i thought the movie was funny and cute, but odin said he’s seen better 🙂
08.28.13 update: we got results back from his blood panel and it’s not good news. his blood platelet count is disastrously low and his white blood count is very high. our vets opinion is that he has fairly advanced cancer and we should put him down sooner rather than later. one of the possible cancers could lead to his slowly bleeding to death which is certainly not something we want to have happen. sad news. i guess we’ll have to put him down within days.
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odin and pushkin have been best buddies since we brough pushkin home from the animal shelter and into our lives 7 years ago. there have been many “a boy and his dog” stories and moments over the years, some of which have been told, most of which haven’t. when odin wakes up in the morning pushkin is at the foot of his bed and when odin goes to bed pushkin is at the foot of his bed. they are inseperable companions.
pushkin came from the shelter with severe lyme disease and has had bouts of anaplasmosis over the years. every year or two he gets lethargic and doesn’t want to eat so we take him to the vet to get the lyme test and, sure enough, his bacterial loads are high so he gets a round of antibiotics and is all better until next time. in fact, the Dog Food Burrito Incident occurred the last time he had a flare-up. it’s been a familiar ( and annoying ) pattern cycle of lethargy, lack of interest in food, lyme and treatment.
around odin’s birthday, pushkin started puking everything he ate and stopped eating entirely. it felt a little different than the lyme cycle. he dropped 15 pounds. fast. we took him to the vet and his liver enzymes were high which could be from an infection ( or lots of other even less fun causes ) and he tested positive for anaplasmosis so we started him on a treatment of antibiotics with prednisone to help increase his appetite.
the treatment has sort-of worked. he’s been able to eat and keep most of it down. but he’s still lethargic and definitely not the old pushkin. but it’s been hard to know how much of that has been due to side effects from prednisone and recovering from anaplasmosis. this week we finally weaned him off the prednisone and were all really, really hoping to see our dear friend bounding about happy and healthy.
instead, he started puking up everything he ate and then stopped eating entirely.
having had dogs for most of my life, dealing with the decision to put a dog down is familiar and never easy ( over a decade ago i told the story of the day harper went to the vet and didn’t come back ). but when a dog isn’t eating, it’s probably close to time. i believe it’s infinitely more humane to decide to do it quickly because in the end whatever is causing the problem – most likely cancer – is not going to get fixed. if we had thousands of dollars laying around i’d give hundreds of kids access of clean water over giving a dog a few more months to live.
we came close to going to the vet and putting him down but couldn’t do it. not yet. there’s a small chance he’s not cleared of the infection, so we decided to do another blood panel and put him back on prednisone and wait for the results. the good news is that he’s eating and keeping food down.
we’ll enjoy each day with pushkin not knowing how many we have left. hopefully there are many.
i can play a long game, but finally getting to being able to work on the galaxie with odin is one of the longest i’ve played. when he was barely a year old, i wondered about the day when he’d help me finish one of those projects that i’ve been always meaning to start.
when we were taking a ride for the first time with his cousins we all noticed that the passenger side window was getting hard to roll down.
aha! the perfect opportunity to clean up and grease the window regulator before it wears out and breaks. i know this because when i first got the car i ignored how hard it was to roll up and down the driver’s side door and stripped the teeth on the regulator ( you can see the window handle is off in this picture because i was trying to figure out how to get it to roll down ). i learned then that it’s much, much easier to clean and grease a regulator rather than try to track down a used one and replace it.
so, i showed odin how to take off the door panel and he was very excited to help out by using steel wool to scrape the ancient, hardened grease out of the “scissor arm” rails that roll the window up and down.
after he cleaned out the rails i showed him where to spray a little white lithium grease on the rails around the rollers. then he rolled the window up and down the distribute the grease evenly.
his eyes got big and he smiled a big smile when he saw,lo and behold, the window rolled up and down just like it would right off the factory floor!
we high-fived each other and odin said, “poppi, i really love working on the galaxie.”
“so do i, odin, so do i.”
i think we’re going to have a whole lot of fun working together on the galaxie and someday down the road i know he’ll be proud of all the work we’ve done when i give him the keys.
after riding with his cousins in the galaxie 500 for the first time ( after patiently waiting for 8 years ), i know what odin’s answer is going to be when i ask him if he wants to ride around and eventually end up at a napa store to look for a replacement antenna.
“of course!”
when i see him in the front seat, i can still see him 8 years ago.
my uncle owns napa stores in calais and machias in maine and i have memories of running to get parts for customers when i was about odin’s age behind the parts counter of grandfather’s
buick dealership in machias so i have fond memories of parts places in general and napa stores in particular. it would seem odin has inherited the love of talking shop with the nice folks behind the counter.
we looked at a bunch of antennas and scratched our chins and picked out a couple we thought might work and tried to make them work so we could pick up an even wider range of AM stations on the factory original radio. but alas, none of the “universal” antennas fit a 50 year old ford so we’ll have to call around to specialty parts places sell replacement parts for ’65 galaxies.
now that i’m getting right with the galaxie and it’s all operational and street legal, odin got his very first chance to ride in the car after 9 years with his cousins when i took them to see percy jackson and the sea monsters.
Drove Odin and his cousins in the galaxie to see Percy Jackson movie. Fun! (@ Celebration! Cinema – @celebrationcnma) http://t.co/U3Qjx1Eetf
— Eric C. Snowdeal III (@snowdeal) August 16, 2013
he’s been patiently waiting for this day for about 9 years. he’s been asking since not long after taking this picture of him in the front seat when he wasn’t even a year old.
“oooooh, someday.”
well, that someday was today.
we took the backroads to the theater. they all loved every minute of it and unanimously proclaimed it “the best car in the world!” 🙂
and, wow, do you ever get a lot of “thumbs up” and smiles from folks while driving down the road in a ’65 ford with kids hanging their heads out the window.
“poppi, people sure like the galaxie.”
it has been a little over a month since we thought we were (close to) camping in the trees and now we’re pretty much at a place where we can do it safely and not worry about anyone falling off the deck 🙂
the decking is all screwed down, the ends of the deck boards are trimmed, the guard rail posts are in place and bolted down with two beefy carriage bolts, the provisional guard rails are up ( i say provisional because eventually i’m going to wrap the posts in black locust and build better looking guard rails ) and a few temporary hand rails are in place ( a process that taught me a lot about how freakishly dense black locust lumber is )!
being able to safely hang out on a 14×16 foot deck up in the trees is a big milestone two years after odin first asked if we could build The World’s Most Awesome Treehouse(s)!
i think we definitely need a table to go with the chairs.
on the ground you can see my other crazy construction project – the sauna ( built in 2009 ) and the chicken coop ( built in 2010 ) which were both great treehouse training projects.