LivingSmall

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,
doing deep prajna paramita,
Clearly saw emptiness of all five skandhas,
Ray! What are you doing? Get over here!
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain.
O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form;
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.
Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness,
Are likewise like this.
Whoa! What are you doing? You’re not allowed […]

So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh.
Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was fine, […]

A big weekend of gardening — I dug the crabgrass and feral mint (I love my mint, but it was taking over everything) from the perennial beds. It was hard. There was digging, and pulling, and tugging, and sprays of dirt. I have an entire trash receptacle full of roots out there on the parkway […]

We got up early this morning and drove over to Billings to see the orthopedic vet. He said it looks like the tendon is healing up quite nicely, which was an enormous relief. Then he knocked my poor Owie out and re-adjusted the pins so that he’s putting a little bit of weight on the […]

Well, the dogs are on the mend — Ray’s stitches come out on Friday and I took Owen  off to have his dressings changed today. I wish I’d had my camera with me — that external fixature is quite something. My little FrankenPuppy. His Fenatyl patch is also off, which is making him a little […]

This better work, because while my boy was really happy to see me when I picked him up this afternoon, he’s not a happy camper. That big square thing on his leg is the external fixature — pins sunk into his bones, and connected to rods to immobilize the whole lower leg joint. Here’s a […]

Yesterday I took poor Gimpy Dog over to Billings to the veterinary orthopedist. Even typing that makes me feel slightly ashamed of myself — we live in a nation in which an enormous percentage of our population doesn’t even have human health care, and I’m spending how much money on orthopedic surgery for my dog? […]

Here’s my Raymond with all his stitches. He had to spend the night at the vet because he was still snoozing yesterday at five when they closed. He’s fine. All cleaned up and they said I did a nice job with the butterfly bandages over the weekend — poor guy really took a gouge […]

It’s been quite a weekend here at LivingSmall. First, the gimpy dog has not recovered very well — turns out that his achilles tendon is falling apart, and his “good” leg isn’t really good enough to support his weight — it’s full of arthritis in the hock. So I think he’s having more surgery on […]

It was a gorgeous weekend here — blue skies, yellow leaves falling off trees, sunshine, snow on the peaks. It was so gorgeous that even though we’d done a nice hike early in the day, I couldn’t stay home yesterday afternoon so I took Raymond for a little bike ride.
It’s our newest trick — I […]