A surprisingly ok day

We had our game night last night. There's three people that come over to play with us and we generally have a good time. I may've mentioned before that roleplay games are like an adult form of pretend. You pretend to be a character that you've made up according to certain rules, your gamemaster (or Game Orginizational Director as my husband likes to think of it *smirk*) thinks up the entire world and other people in it, then manuvers you into whatever interesting situation/adventure that he's made up all according to certain rules. It's playing pretend, creating entire stories together, and doing crazy things that you would never do in real life! Some people think it's silly, childish, and geeky but we enjoy it.

Tired out I drifted off to sleep quickly only to have hubs wake me up about an hour later. He didn't feel well and it was scaring him. By his check his blood pressure was just fine but he was afraid that the machine was off so he asked if I'd take him to have the folks at the little local hospital check it just to be safe. To make a long story short everything was just fine and as a matter of fact the reason he felt so off is his blood pressure was actually trending on the low side. He has a very bad family history of heart problems and quite a few personal risk factors besides so he tends to worry himself a lot about some pains and pressures. We've reduced his risks with quitting smoking (which I'm HUGELY proud of him for because it was particularly hard on him!!), slowly starting to get a little more exercise, and improving our diet some and we'll keep right on improving things a little at a time to lower his risk just as much as possible.

We didn't even get home until about 7 am but the great news is we put our heads together and figured out what the problem has got to be! When he was put on his current blood pressure meds he was smoking which added to the problem. Now that he's quit smoking the meds are making his pressure on the low side giving him uncomfortable symptoms. On top of that add that the 7 ribs all on the left side that he shattered less than a year ago are giving him different twinges, spasms, and pains with his deep seated worries about heart troubles and you get what we've been dealing with! It's such a relief when you finally figure something like this out! You go from feeling yucky, scared and helpless to getting some control over it so you feel less scared and know what your next step is going to be which will make you feel better! And by lucky chance he already had an appointment tomorrow for a checkup with his regular VA doctor. The wonderful nurse at the hospital gave us copies of his lab work and the read outs showing all the various blood pressure readings, heart rate, etc. so his doctor can see in solid numbers exactly what the meds are doing to him. It should be an easy tweak of the meds and my sweetie will be feeling much better!!

Exhausted we, of course, fell right into bed to try and catch up on a little of our missed sleep. He fell asleep very quickly and it didn't take me all that long. Unfortunately the critters, all thrown off by the weird change in our usual schedule, wouldn't let me stay asleep! The cat paced up and down on me, the dog's whined a little once, and the birds decided it was time to have a nice scream session a few times. Finally at 1 pm it was time to drag ourselves up to go get Son #1 from school early. His grades have been so good that he is excused from taking exams and allowed to come home early if he wants and of course he wants!! I felt like I'd been beaten with a bat and had a nasty headache so I decided I'd get done what I really had to get done then take a lazy day off as much as possible. I took a few aspirin, watched a show while I drank my coffee, and to my surprise felt good enough that I thought I should take advantage and do something useful!

I decided since I was just thinking about it yesterday I'd take one of the dogs out for a training session and chose our female heeler, Misty, because she'd likely be the easiest and most fun. She's incredibly smart, high energy, and hugely eager to please which is great for training if you ask me!! Sure enough she did great!! Half way through the session our two chickens, Spunky and Chickie Dee, came running over to see what we were doing. They boldly demanded and outright snatched a few bits of the ham and cheese I was using to reward Misty but also provided a little distraction which can be good sometimes in dog training. You want the dog to be able to overcome distraction in order to focus on what you want and doing it! Afterwards we walked up the driveway to do a little litter check beside the road and before we were done Son #3's bus dropped him off. Seeing a person arrive in front of our home Misty gave a little quiet growl but when I released her and she got close enough to realize who it was she was all happy wiggles. She cavorted around him for a minute then excitedly dashed back to me as if to inform me of who it was.

Misty came into our lives when hubby found her in the WalMart parking lot. He said the poor thing was dashing up to every person she saw in a way that translates from dog to human as "omg please help me I'm lost and scared and I don't know what to do!!!" Being animal people he brought her home to keep her safe while we looked for her owner. It turns out that the next day we just missed her owner at a local vet! We'd gone to the vet seeing if they recognized her so we could find her owner and her owner had just been there seeing if anyone had found his dog. She was in good condition and very people friendly so we knew that she'd been loved and would've been happy to return her. Unfortunately though we kept checking around, left our phone number, and everything else we could think of to contact her owner we just never managed to hook up with him. I'm still rather sad for him, I'd be heartbroken to lose one of mine, but she's a great dog and we're happy to have her with us. She is definitely my husband's dog!! She just loves everyone but you can tell that he holds a special place in her heart and he responds in kind.

When I brought her in I let Misty run upstairs to see her most beloved and tell him what a good girl she was which seemed to please them both a lot. Then he and I went out for a little walk around the horse pasture since it's such a wonderfully warm day! We looked to see how the neighbor was doing on building their home. It looks like they're close to pouring the foundation so they've still got a little ways to go. Both the horses followed us like puppies swearing up and down to hubs that I was a big fat liar and had not fed them like I claimed! Fortunately he tends to believe me over them so they had to be satisfied with some pets and horsey cookies. So in some ways I really expected today to just s-u-u-u-u-u-CK but I'm happy to say that it's actually been a fairly nice day after all!