Is this the "dog days"?

Saturday afternoon after cleaning the house, I wanted to reward myself by going outside and enjoying some sun. I was in the middle of a sentence while talking to JP when he says "is that a dog vomiting?" and I go running into the laundry room to find Maxx 'in progress' shall we say. Oh yuck, oh yuck. When he's done, I send him outside and I begin to clean and disinfect the area. Thank god for surgical gloves I tell ya, there is no way I can clean up dog messes without gloves. I then wash the dog bed as well. Maxx was fine, it's just with his 'condition' he doesn't know when to stop drinking- usually I tell him to stop or he will continue to drink and drink and then... well you get the picture.

So while the washer is running I finally get a chance to head outside again. And I'm in my lawn chair for no more than 10 minutes when there is a bee on the ground. You know how there is a time when they are dying and can no longer fly? Well that's what was happening and Jazz was playing with it. Normally she's caught wasps in her mouth, she spits them out and rolls them with her foot to kill them and doesn't get hurt. But somehow with the bee, she got stung in her 'thumb'. So in the house I go with a dog limping on 3 legs. She never made a sound and if I hadn't seen it, I would have very confused about what had happened. JP's on the computer and so I ask him to look it the medical advice. He gives me some brief info but I don't feel good about it. I ask him again, and then I get more details. I took a pair of tweezers and looked for the stinger, he even helped which is a big deal because he doesn't like my dogs. I searched her paw for 20 minutes and couldn't find anything in her fur. Perhaps all the scraping I did to move her fur was enough to remove the bee stinger. I wash her foot down with a mixture of baking soda and water and give her 1 teaspoon of Children's Benedryl. There was no swelling, so I didn't bother with an ice pack. 10 minutes later, she vomits. Now I need to wash the second dog bed. I clean her all up and clean up the room, start the washing machine again and by now it's dinner time and the sun is gone in the sitting area. So much for that! Now that's a dog day of summer!

However, I did manage to get some good time outside on Sunday - with headphones, as two neighbours decided to battle music and one of the neighbours is still shingling the roof of his shed. They get the prize for the slowest workers on the planet. JP says they are the Labatt's Roofing Crew and I think he is correct.

I did manage to complete a 12 row repeat on my lace shawl on Saturday night and I did get some time in on my cross stitch.

My swap partner has not replied to anyone, although she has logged onto the site as recently as yesterday afternoon - which is disappointing. I have no idea if she's flaked on me, or if she's sent anything to me, or if she's received anything from me. I will leave the rest up to the swap organizer, I guess. It is possible that mail to Belgium takes a bit of time. Since I couldn't track the package I have no idea if it's being returned or if it got lost, who knows. Big Girl Feet had one swap package to Australia (I believe) that took 3 months to arrive! It's only been a week. I think everyone else in the swap has already received because they were mailing within the USA.

Happy BC Day today! I have no idea how I will spend it. Perhaps I'll try some cross stitch in the garden again.

UPDATE: augh! it's cloudy! And not that warm, so I probably won't be sitting outside to cross stitch. But it's quiet out there, oh yeah - no roofing on a crappy cloudy day... Thanks neighbours.