Up, Down & Fuzzy

I’m having a rough day. There’s no particular reason for it; it’s just part of being bipolar. I have limited energy, but I seem to be manic. Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to make sense, but I have to live with bipolar disorder. Meds help dull the extremes, but they don’t cure bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is always with me. Sometimes just under the surface. Sometimes exploding through the surface. 

Brady, the Australian labradoodle puppy I have, did something remarkable today. She could smell my distress and instinctively leaned up against me – something psychiatric service dogs are trained to do. Of course a couple hours later, she decorated the kitchen floor with poop and pee. It’s not easy being a puppy. Not easy being the puppy’s human, either. 

Good thing Brady didn’t like the doggy wading pool Jim found in the garbage. The pool grew legs the other day. Now, there’s a security camera covering the back of the house.

The sciatica is still hanging around. I’m able to walk farther, but farther is a relative term. It means I can walk out the back door with Brady, so 10 feet to her potty spot, and then come back in the house. I need to exercise. Brady gets separation anxiety whenever I leave the kitchen. She’s not ready yet to have the run of the house so I have to keep her in the kitchen. I’m sure the healing process has stretched out because of how inactive I’ve been.

We seem to be surrounded by randy quail. So far, I’ve counted four batches of day-old baby quail. When I shoot quail, I have to do it through the sliding glass door. As long as the quail aren’t aware of me, they don’t run off. While I would have liked to have my 150-600mm lens on the camera, what was on the camera was my 18-400mm lens. Taking the time to change lenses would have meant missing the shots. I played around with cropping the shot when I was editing. The John Prine fuzz on the baby quail’s head cracks me up. 

The original shot. While this is the quail version of Where’s Waldo, it’s easy to see how tiny day-old quail are.

The first crop. Quail are easier to find, but they look bigger than they are in real life.

The second crop. Almost there. There’s more detail, but the edit didn’t seem right.

The third crop.

My Spoonflower order is now about 40 miles away and I likely won’t get my package until Monday. Sigh. I really want to start making undies although my time in the sewing room is limited to when Jim is home. There are too many places in the sewing room where Brady can get into trouble. I’d go into the sewing room, which is off the kitchen, and close the door, but Brady has severe separation anxiety. I’m trying to help her with that, but I don’t seem to have made much progress.

Brady likes to hide out in the pet carrier in the kitchen. I think it’s because it’s dark inside the carrier and she feels safe in her den. She’s not fond of the crate we have for her. I decided to make the crate more den like. I took a sheet, crudely attached the sheet to the crate, and created a darkened den. I put Brady’s toys in her new den. She refuses to go inside the den.

I’ve been playing around with designs that might make interesting fabric. Here’s the latest:

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My on-line store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com