Do boy dogs have urinary problems later in life? I hope I'm not asking something insensitive, I've just never had a male pet...ETA unless you count the mister. :P

Glad JOT made it through safely, HF. :)

i know i still brain burp all the time. and you know the years just before are not all that remembered either. mine they say has much to do with oxygen, would that be his too? even though he is breathing on his own now. of course if two of us can't keep track? maybe we can lose weight faster? forget to eat?

Jen I assume no different than the big non hairy dogs? lol that is not rorries problem though. i finally found on a bichon site, that they are notorias for that. I guess it is ok now. i have time and just enough energy to make and clean belly bands, he thinks they are cool and loves not getting in trouble. life is good. goal is to have one to match all sweaters and jackets or his neck warmers.

HF, I am happy to hear that JOT is doing well.

LOL. I can't imagine forgetting to eat!

How soon should he be back at home?

Jennifer, I have only ever had male dogs and I am not sure if they are more susceptible than females to urinary problems. :(

Molly is the first dog I've ever had, though I've had cats (females), rats (female), mice (females), and hamsters (females) plus a few gender non-determined reptiles. Oh and a dwarf bunny (female). My brother's cats - which he left at my parents house when he went into the air force and they remained there the rest of their lives (never got quite all the way over the fact that those two cats made it to 20 and 16 years old and my first cat got sick and had to be put down at age 10.) were also females. I think maybe somewhere along the line it was said that females are easier to manage and have better temperaments? Not sure. When dogs and cats are concerned they've always come to us spayed or the procedure was done shortly after they first came home - it's supposed to be better for their health, combined with the push to keep them indoors to reduce the population that ends up in shelters unwanted.

i have never found that fixing them really made a difference. had a dog fixed as infant, mounted most everything. had a dog never fixed, never mounted anything. I had a female, fixed, if she were around someone in heat, she would mount males and females. wow jennifer you do believe in keeping it in the sex, no? lol I have had both of everything all females fixed. it is too troublesome not to do so. they seem to really suffer. males are both ways. rorrie was not fixed, probably will do now. we had so many really great dogs that we fixed and did not have a baby. but we are too decripit to have any babies. now fixing can risk male cats getting urinary track problems.

I find that a lot of those things about health are a wee bit over done.

oh and roxsy, they are hoping for 4 days, depends how well he can function, i can't do very much to help him.

...Has anyone ever asked in a design dilemma...Why must I have a backsplash, and are there no kitchens who look great WITHOUT one?!

My current kitchen counters are like....4x4 or 6x6 square tiles with none behind the stove (there's a space left open for that and the fridge so they're not built ins nor is the dishwasher but that has counter above it due to the way dishwashers are usually designed and kitchens are built to accommodate) and there's a single row of tile where the counter surface meets the 'breakfast bar' and walls....

Reading design dilemmas you'd think that nobody ever built a kitchen or bought a house without a darn backsplash, or that the backsplash was the most important part of a kitchen, not the cabinets or the appliances or the countertop even. :P

Right now my mom and I are debating how many different 'white' paint colors there are. :P

there was a discussion and i brought it up, turns out over 50% of us still do not have back splashes. i have never had one. 2 " from the counter max. it seems that we suffer a great deal of home shaming!

Another thing I want to know is...What exactly are people doing in their kitchens, to need a backsplash going all the way up the walls to protect them from splash damage?! It's a sink not the bathtub! If you can't control your pot filler better maybe it shouldn't be operational until you can avoid spraying down the entire kitchen wall and surrounding area with it! :P

....teehehe.... the pot filler.... what an innocent....lol

I don't get the pot filler thing either - how much water do they need to boil, are they fulltime historical reenactors and spending their days and nights delivering babies? Perhaps they have a family of 54 who come for pasta every night 7 days a week/52 weeks a year?

HF - do I even want to ask what sort of things might require a kitchen with a backsplash to the ceiling on all walls? ;)

In addition to the pot fillers the next convenience over the top kitchen upgrade should be the quick-drain feature which requires a special pot that senses when the contents are done and flips the bottom into the drain mode.

well yes, you could ask, but i ain't telling!

just heard from jot, he called me on his own, still out of it, but we have not spoken till now.

have you all tried this way for your pasta? jot saw it and tried. boil water in a frying pan, cook pasta in there. cooks much faster uses less water and electric. true it does not allow for the pasta water usage normally but i never found that marrying worked for me anyway.

HF - You just wait, I'll bide my time for the right moment and pull those super secret possibilities out of the air on what people get up to in the kitchen with walls-o-backsplash, subway glass tiles on every inch not cabinet, appliance, or counter. :P

Never tried the frying pan method, easier to use one of my smaller sauce pans instead. Took me a little trial-and-error to figure out just how much dry pasta I'd need to make if not trying to feed the neighborhood. At the start it was "I'll try two fistfuls each broken in half so it fits in the pot" and I quickly realized that's a helluva lot of pasta :P

well for jot it means less pots, he loves that and it almost cuts the pasta time in half, he loves that too. and of course you never have to break the pasta.

HF, you must have been so happy to hear from JOT...and he called you on his own is a good sign! He'll be home before you know it. I hope YOU are feeling better.

On the subject of backsplashes, I have always had a tiled one but never thought about it actually being a back SPLASH....I just thought of it being decorative. Saying that, we put a small wet bar in our basement a few years ago and did not put a back splash but I did paint the wall a spiffy blue and I think it looks fine.

LOL, and there is my kitchen back splash!

but how often do we really get stuff on them? and since we wipe up right away, does it need to be tile?

Love that pot, but how do you keep the pasta in? and who is the cute guy next to it? and is that a dark blue pitcher? yes, it is true, never invite me in, i got a million questions!

No, but hopefully i will feel better tomorrow. tonight dinner has taken 3 hours, ugh!

HF, it comes with another basket with finer mesh. I hardly ever use that one though. I just boil the pasta without a basket and the lid twists onto the pot, so it doesn't fall off when draining. It has a spout on it.

i do love you and jenny not so much catrina?

That's a pretty nifty pasta pot, @Rox, do you remember where you bought it and what it's called in technical terms? (The thingy as search terms pulls up far too many not-the-right-thingy results.) I want to get a few new useful kitchen gadgets for my future new house and it's kitchen. :P

Jennifer, my daughter gave it to me. I am not sure where she bought it but here it is on Amazon.

i really like it. i think i would get the 6 cup, right? which do you have roxsy?

You can drain the water from a pot of pasta one handed.

I have the 12 cup. The other great thing is that the cup measurement is marked inside.

me too ladma. once got the wonderful multiblade rolling cutter, allowed me to cut multi fingers. I am a great chef, i just bypassed soux somehow. I now want the baseboard duster and the electrical extension scrub brush.

Hahahah you and I have something in common @HF - the tendency to nearly chop off fingers. :P

New kitchen needs new stuff! Thems the rules! ;)

Purging things is only permitted in the month of January, possibly into February but never beyond that! The remainder of the year is for BUYING! Lots and lots of BUYING! ;)

I hate open houses. What I hate even more? People who can't manage to show up when said open house is scheduled but instead come an hour or more afterwards and act shocked that they can't just walk in and do the usual open cabinets/doors/drawers etc but must wait for the door to be answered!

when we first moved from Florida, I spent 6 months in a hotel room with zip to do. well zip official. after the main heat was gone, we started going shopping in charity thrift stores. by the time i moved, the space under the bed was crammed full and the storage facility had added at least another room. Sashi and Flurrie ate a lot mcnuggets that year!

I don't even know why the realtor insisted on doing the open house other than perhaps because all the flyers and effort put into getting the word out everywhere possible, but any offers from people who came yesterday would be "backup offers" though presently I don't think anyone has actually gone to the trouble of preparing and presenting an offer as a result of the open house.

And someone wandered off with the only pen not packed up and in a box with everything else in our portable storage unit/shipping container that is at one of the company's climate controlled facilities. Jerks! :P

ARGH! How many times do I have to tell my mom that I don't care what color the realtor out there thinks I should paint the interior of the new house, that realtor isn't the one who is going to be living with it!

i believe that a definition of not enough to do is when you count martha's errors. volume 2017/#53 "always make sure you get fresh raisins for this"! lol the very definition of not fresh is raisin. and where you buy them? a raisin farmer's market? anyone ever seen that? i haven't. Now i am sure she is just too polite to tell us that every time she knows she will need raisins 3 months in advance -yes, she is just that organized, she goes to the grape orchard, gathers some grapes and spreads them on their silk scarfs to dry in the glass dryers - to protect from bites and random poo, and dry under fresh sunshine to the appropriate depth of brown, being sure to turn them once every 2.75 hours.

hmmm... maybe i should start a blog, think anyone else cares? lol

31 wpm! woo hoo!!

So we made decisions on the floor and carpet, also the walls will be painted Sherwin Williams light french grey and trim will be bright white. :P

@HF

Sounds like you're getting better at these practice tests?

so happy for you on things getting done jen.

practice? what you calling practice? I am done, not to be repeated. I beat it, i shall not attempt again. shaking my head very hard - no way! falling over side ways. lol

The mister is relieved he will not have to paint any more scrap pieces of drywall and move them around the different rooms at different times of the day taking pictures as he goes. And that he won't have to cart around flooring samples and carpet swatches. :P

jot has been home since yesterday. having more problems than he expected. note: not more than i expected, just more than he expected. has now told me more than once that noone should have to have done what i had done. oh according to nurse it was a triple not a single bypass. yeah, don't ask me what the difference is, i am not sure i truly know, i lost more? i was in longer? radiation? eh, as long as he gets better.

Hopefully now that he's home he'll continue to recover and quickly! Can't have them out of commission too long - who will kill the spiders or move that table!? ;)

HF, I'm so happy to hear that JOT is at home.

Martha wouldn't be Martha if she used regular old Sultanas straight out of the bag.

Jennifer, your paint colours sound perfect. It's hard to get a feel for a house until you've lived in it for a while and have seen how light affects different rooms at different times of the year.

This time around I'm going with a darker but firmly in the middle shades of grey carpet, and a bit more plushy than what I have in my present domicile (well it's mine until I hand the keys over!) but not shag or anything. We're doing floors/carpet and paint before the furniture gets there (it's in one of those POD things right now, they've got it in climate controlled facilities and will ship it out when we tell them it's time and will even unpack and reassemble the stuff that had to be disassembled to fit) but the rest - like the counters in the kitchen will wait until we've settled in a bit.

So much done and still more to do with this move...My car is basically sold, my realtor knows someone whose son needs a car when he comes down to the area for college and mine fits the bill. The appraisal is done, the inspector comes next week, then we just have to finish wrapping up things here and we're off on our new home and new state adventure! Thank goodness there won't be any more showings - I was reaching the end of my patience with those and having to leave with the dog in the middle of hot afternoons to sit with the a/c on in my car. :P

There's the radon mitigation system the seller has to put in, apparently radon is a thing that's a problem out in Nebraska. But there is no sign of water leakage or seeping past or present in the basement! Excellent news - that's where the dungeon is going to be! ;)

I think the back side of the house is also where the basement/family room is anyway so where else would they put such a thing? I'll have to call the mister and needle him for the details - we were happy to hear that the seller is doing all the stuff on our fairly short post-inspection list. :P