April 2025 memories

Okay, I am finally sitting down and writing this on May 6, which tells you what April was like. Absolutely freaking insane, and I am so over this month and so glad it is done.

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Week 1

Okay, this was the only calm week.

So, I’m going to keep this week short. I laughed when I finally won and got my seat back from Leezard. Then I got a picture of the wildflowers before the landscapers came in and tore them out. It made me a little sad, but I love what they did.

I FINALLY finished the D’Lorian set from Back to the Future that Batman gave me from one of his army buddies. Isn’t it so cool?

We made spoon Lazarus using bandages and googly eyes, but I forgot to specify size of the google eyes, and we ended up with these huge googly eyes in relation to the spoons, and I had to laugh at just how huge they were.

And that’s what I remember as I’m sitting here writing it this late.

Books read (I suspect some of these were later in the month)

• Captive– an interesting near future sci-fi book, I’ll probably pick it up for Superman, as he likes this author
• Rumpled Gentleman– a vaguely Rumpletstiltskin retelling that was like 100 pages, and was a fun read
• A Lady Most Fitting– another vaguely inspired by the Elves and the Shoemaker and set in the Regency period, and again super short, I got a bunch of free books a month or so ago, and was reading them to see which authors were worth getting more books.
• Awakened Prince– a vaguely Sleeping Beauty inspired retelling, and it was an interesting one that I can see took some inspiration from Disney’s retelling
• Shoeless Prince-Puss in Boots, more or less, which was quite amusing, these were part of this multi-author series that all worked together to write a fairy tale more from the prince’s POV than the princess
• Unlucky Prince– a Frog Prince retelling, which is not very memorable because I’m not remembering much
• Cinder Luna– a modern day Cinderella retelling, which was fun, and cute, and with the name Luna in there, I was half expecting there to be werewolves somehow, but there was not. It was fun.

All of those were like around 100 pages, most of them I seem to remember thinking they could have been a little longer.

Week 2

This is where things started to get crazy

The big picture is from Jeff and I going to see the final part of The Chosen Season 5, it was the only one I remembered to get a picture of.

Okay, that Christmas tree picture. Back in January, Jeff and I decided we would give away our artificial Christmas tree because we weren’t using it, and so clearly we should give it away. Jeff said, “Let’s wait and when Superman is home for Spring Break, I’ll have him help me bring it down.” Well, that didn’t happen. Then it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen. So I decided to bring it down on my own. I shoved the tree down to the landing and it exploded out of the box, and made this giant mess. I carefully got it back up and with an obnoxiously large amount of tape, put that box back together and made sure that box would not come apart again. Then I shoved the tree down the stairs more carefully. I got almost all the way down the stairs and Leezard just stared at me. Like, “What Mom? I’m just going to stand in the middle of the stairs where it’s not a problem for you to stroll down.” It was a problem. But I eventually got the tree down the stairs.

Also, did you know some crazy person thought it would be a great idea to sell a bag of only black jelly beans, what crazy person thought that would be a good idea?

Okay, now comes the stressful part of April. So Leezard quit eating. With Leezard that is a huge warning sign. So I take her into the vet on that Friday, and they give her an x-ray, and she’s got something in her gut. We decide to do surgery. They pull out some chicken bones. It’s all dramatic. She comes home. Has large amounts of pills to take.

Then, Sunday night her wound starts seeping, so Monday I take her back into the vet, and they say, it’s not a big deal, it’s gotten infected. She spends the day at the vet, they give her IV fluids, she gets more pills to take, and a fancy blue bandage, and I get to spend every day of the week coming in for them to change her bandage and give her a special treatment.

It’s a long week. A very stressful long week. She is taking 20 pills a day.

Books read

• Billionaire Benefactor– Cinder Luna reminded me of a book in this series, that I could vaguely remember, and I needed something that was no braincells to read, so I started through this book series I had as a box set and was no brain to read
• Billionaire Baron– honestly, the books are early in this author’s writing career, and you can tell. Now if she were writing them, there would be another 50 or so pages to let the books have more breathing room and the story wouldn’t feel so rushed
• Billionaire’s Masquerade Ball– it was this book, but I hadn’t remembered which book it was until I got to this one, and again, the author was young in her writing, and needed another few scenes for the book to not feel too rushed
• Billionaire’s Secret Heir– this was an odd book, and definitely the weakest in the series for me
• Tis the Gingerbread Season– supposedly a Hansel and Gretel retelling, but it’s a rom-com, and Hansel and Gretel are siblings and there is no evil witch, the closest we have is there is a gingerbread cottage, and this book is ridiculously short, overall, the only reason I don’t feel gipped is I paid like 99 cents
• Meet Me at Midnight– vaguely kind of sort of Cinderella, this is actually book 1 in this series, and I like the concept of the series, but really the author just wants to write a magical town that is vaguely kind of sort of inspired by fairy tales, and has a family you should really beware of making deals with
• The Lucky One– so like this, this is supposedly based on Goldilocks, but it’s not really, I forget what they even claimed was the loose tie to that fairy tale, it’s a fun series, and the books are so freaking short. It’s kind of annoying.
• Once Upon a Rose– supposedly this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. In reality, it’s just a guy who is under a curse, he’s not even cursed so that he’s transformed, he’s just cursed in some vague curse. Again, the author just had a fantasy story she wanted to tell and claimed she wanted to tell a Beauty and the Beast tale. Argh, why?

Week 3

Okay, this is where things got dicey

As I said, I spent the week heading over and taking Leezard to get her bandages changed. Well Thursday night her bandage slipped and the wound was bad. Like it bled through the bandage, and stuff was coming out, so we went to the emergency vet. The emergency vet essentially said our primary vet did a terrible job, and all but committed malpractice, and Leezard was all but on death’s door and needed another expensive surgery, and we needed to decide now. I asked them to give us a minute to pray, and we prayed and I felt peace, and we decided to do this, but this was the last we would try, because we couldn’t afford to do more beyond this.

At this point it is 1 in the morning, we drive to South Austin where the trauma surgeon is, and we get there around 2, leave around 2:30, get home around 3:30.

At 7:00, I get a call from the landscaper, I need to move all the cars because they’re about to cover our driveway in sod and mulch. I stumble out, move the cars, and then attempt to sleep on the couch for 4 hours, then the kids get home for Easter weekend. I wake Jeff up, and we head off for lunch.

That goes well, aside from the call from the trauma vet which makes it sound like Leezard may not survive surgery, so Jeff and I go to talk to our normal vet. She is able to explain all her decisions well, and we have a conference with her, the trauma vet, and us over the phone, and decide to do the surgery that afternoon.

Then around 5:00, we get a sudden call that the vet thinks it is so much worse, and she needs exploratory surgery that will cost another $10,000, and will we authorize this? And we just can’t do that, so then we’re having this back and forth, and the vet is suddenly saying, I guess you should just put her down, or do you want us to wake her up so you can say goodbye before we put her down? So I’m hysterical, and begging them to give me a minute to call my vet. I’m calling our normal vet, and trying to get her to call me back, and the trauma vet keeps calling me demanding an answer, and I’m asking for just a minute longer. I finally talk to my vet and we agree she may not survive and we make the decision to put her down, and then I get the call that the trauma surgeon has decided Leezard has a 50/50 chance, and she decided to close her up and see how she’ll do tomorrow and I’ll probably be picking her up the next day.

So, I went from my dog has a decent chance of surviving surgery, to you better put your dog down because she just has no chance, to 50/50 odds in 20 minutes, and I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t pushed to wait and try to talk to our doctor because they just were pushing for immediate decisions and just wanted us to keep going for more and more.

Meanwhile, we had Easter with my family on Saturday while Leezard was still at the vet. You can see our mostly done landscaping in the backyard. My Mom and sister-in-law decided I did not need to be trying to cook anything so they ordered pizza for us. Which was much appreciated.

Then the kids went off to go watch the Minecraft movie, and we started watching Epic the Musical, when I got the call to go pick up the dog. So, I got to bring my doggo home.

Oh, that picture of her covered in food is from the Wednesday before she had the second surgery. Despite the fact that she had a terrible infection and was not doing well, she thought she was doing great.

I spent Friday night halfway convinced the vet had just said she had a chance so I could come the next day to say goodbye to my dog.

But, when they called to say I could pick her up, they said she body-checked the vet tech in her excitement to get to her food, so I said that sounds like Leezard, and she was trying to eat the trash looking for more food.

Books read

I continued my comfort reading of books I knew:

• Welcome to the Fae Cafe– I love this stupid series
• Sincerely Secretary of Doom
• Wanted a Roommate who isn’t evil
• Fake Dating a Human 101
• Just Stab Me Now– I actually may well have read this next week

Week 4

So, Leezard survived the weekend and was getting better. We were very strict with her. She was either locked in the office with us or on a leash to keep her from jumping up on the couch. I even put the stools on the couch, like in the middle picture, so she wouldn’t jump up on the couch. After over a week, we were a little less worried and allowed her to jump up on the side of the couch that was slightly lower. We were still super careful with how much we let her jump, but slightly less worried.

The bottom left picture is of the fairy house I put in our newly landscaped garden. The Artist made it for me for Christmas, and I love the way it looks in there. When I sent her the picture she said it looks so small, and I said that’s the point, it’s supposed to look so small.

The bottom right picture is a bird I found in the grass as I was walking Leezard one day.

Then the middle picture is from Jeff and I playing Cthulu Death May Die, and the week before we played Conquest of Planet Earth as a family, but I didn’t talk about it, because the crazy of Leezard was going on.

So, that’s what’s going last month.

Last few books read

• Fortified– this is the first of a book in a fantasy series, and I really enjoyed it.
• I’m fairly sure I read others, and some of those books from the last few weeks are probably from this week.

Okay, that’s my month, and I’m going to hit publish, and get going now.