Feaky noises, Libby, and horrible winter storms - Oh My!

I'm house-sitting for the H's tonight (my grandparents neighbors), and I'm completely freaking out. I've been out here two or three previous times, with no real mishaps, no horrific scary noises. However. Tonight is different. The minute I get out of my car, I hear these horrible screeching/squealing sounds. At first I was like, "OMG, who's there?!" Because the sounds almost resembled a squeaky belt on a car combined with squeaking wheels or something. Yeah, I realize my description suck, but you're just going to have to deal with it. Then I start thinking that perhaps it's just a screech owl. Another thought was something is dying. My scariest thought was that I was going to die some horrible Jurassic Park death from horrible monster-beast that was going to come crashing through the guest house. For a little while, this horrible sound was right by the side door into the guest house, which my bed sits right next to. It has stopped since I began writing.

But I'm still creeped out.

Now, I have a Libby update! I've been meaning to update y'all sooner, but I've been busy and had other posts that suddenly took precedent. If you're new here and have no idea who Libby is, please click here.

On, January 6th, Dr. J went back to re-fix Libby's knee. He put in a stronger suture around the knee-cap, which she broke the original, and also the suture to help realign her poor little leg. She stayed at the clinic for about a week or 10 days, with a cone on her head to keep her from getting at her stitches. It took a few days before she started setting her leg down, but she eventually did. I finally took her home to my house and begged Dr. J to let me take her on the road with me to visit her real parents while I delivered the publication. He agreed, so Libby got to go home for one night. Last Wednesday, Dr. R removed the stitches and had me put the dog back on the Tramadol (a bitter pain medicine) since she's still not using the leg. That worked for about two days. Saturday morning I took her to Town for Dr. R to watch her walk and get his opinion since Dr. J was out of town.

Dr. R and I had a nice discussion - he thinks we should just do surgery on the other leg. She's not really using either hind leg at this point, one because there's no support, and the other because it's possibly still painful. Oddly enough, if it was painful, she wouldn't let me stretch her leg out and rub the muscles. I did make a point of reminding him that after the first knee surgery, that Libby was in fact using that leg. I spoke to Dr. J today at work and told him the conversation I had with Dr. R, and he told me he's had similar thoughts. He also is worried that Libby is now just plain used to walking on her front legs (she's become an acrobat), and trying to fix that could become the next problem.

In the meantime, I had Libby until this past weekend, where I went back to Redding again, this time for a dentist appointment. I got Dr. R's permission to let Libby go home, and he thought we should try the Metacam instead of the Tramadol because that is so hard to get down her. Metacam is an anti-inflammatory/pain med and it's given via a syringe orally like a many antibiotics - which is much easier to get down her.

So, for now, our traveling acrobat, Libby, is at her real home with her real parents and my cat and I are happy to be back to normal. Until Sunday. My parents and Libby will invade to celebrate my birthday early, since I have to work on my birthday. They will also visit with Dr. J and maybe Dr. R to see what the options are at this point and to see what they would like to do.

So, here's a bit of what Libby and I did for a week together:

 Libby's first time at Lake Almanor

 Libby and I watching Princess Diaries. Don't remember which one . . . 

 Libby helping me at work.

We also had some very nice weather recently. The word "nice" is dripping with sarcasm. We finally got some good old fashioned winter storms. A week ago today (Wednesday), we had massive wind storms blowing snow off the mountain. It was not easy to feed that morning. I don't usually feed on Wednesdays because I have to be at work at the Sticksville clinic at 8am. However, K had to be on the road that day, so I covered for her. Needless to say, the wind nearly blew me and Papa D over a few times. I had to pull off whole bales at a time off the truck so the wind wouldn't blow all the hay away from the hungry cows.

 I know it may not look blustery, but believe me - it sucked. I had to take my work clothes with me and my hair dryer because I wound up being a sweatball under my hat. Miserable.

My pass was okay on Saturday morning - I headed out for work early because I figured it would be icy or still covered with a layer of snow or something. I was right. It tried snowing off and on all day in Town. It would cover the ground and melt away an hour or so later. And repeat all day. Until it was time to go home. Naturally.

As I started climbing the mountain more snow kept piling on road. I took a quick picture before it got really ugly.

 You can see by this picture that the road is completely covered and I was not so fortunate as to be able to follow in anyone's tracks. Well, not on my side of the road. About a mile ahead of this, visibility reached about 20 feet, and there had to be at least two to three inches of snow on the road. I only knew where the cliff was (directly to my right at all times), and where the mountain was (directly to my left at all times). What did not help matters once I started the real climb was that I had 200lbs of cattle mineral in my trunk for my grandparents. My car is front wheel drive only. Yeah. I'm really wishing now that I could have afforded the All Wheel Drive version of my car. Smalls got me home safe, although I was white-knuckling it the entire way.

The next day, Sunday, I caught a break in the storms and drove to Redding for my dentist appointment and to take Libby home. My pass was still splotchy, but way better than Saturday. The next two passes were clear, although it did start snowing over my third pass, Big Valley Summit. The snow got heavier and heavier as I made my way to Burney. My parents had texted me saying that Hatchet (my fourth and final pass) was clear. I got about half-way up the mountain and I thought, "um. this isn't clear".  Evidently, the CalTrans picture they were looking at was at least two hours old. As I reached the summit a snow plow pulled out and I gladly followed him a little more than half-way down the mountain.

 By the time I got to Redding, it was pouring down rain. But Monday was all sunny again.

Go figure.