woah! i just took a year off of updating this thing. i think i'll make this post just so ya know that things are cool.
last note seemed sad and bleak, and things aren't that bad lately. seizures haven't stopped, but they're not escalating. every two weeks he has a little blip into epilepsy land, then we're back to normal. could be worse, so i just keep it front and center that its important to maximize and enjoy time with the dogs. he's sort of becoming a real big baby, very emotional (he complains a lot, grumbling and making some pretty weird noises) and ALWAYS is down to wear some dog clothes. he still doesn't really have a lot of hair (it all fell out when his immune system imploded) and i think he just loves the warmth of dog snuggies and stuff. i'm in the process of buying him some pajamas so he can chill at night in 20 degree weather without looking so pathetic. but here he is, on his birthday!



the lil homie made it to 5 years old in november!


i made him a tuxedo lined with red satin for the occasion, and then we had a fiesta. he got to wear a poncho and stare at all the food while friends snacked and hung out.


he actually passed out at the table after a while, snoring real loud. lots of 'aye carumba' jokes were made and folks piled their empty cans around him. obvs wasted, durrr.

been working on some new tricks, like balancing things on his head. its working out, somehow.


basically he just lives a total life of leisure, where he's doted on and hugged pretty much all the time. its probably pretty great!

he's always happy to help in the craft stuff i do, he's all over my etsy page and website still. he happily modelled the headdress i made for c. lantz's bachelorette event.


we've actually been able to have a dog friend, rachel adopted a ridiculous little chihuhua/dachshund mix named juanita and she visits pretty much every single weekend. the BTs usually gang up on other dogs, but i think they must've picked up on juanitas past rough life and she's basically a part of our lil household. its awesome. keepin on keepin on in 2014, happy dogwalks ahead.

Right after Thanksgiving Egon celebrated his 4th birthday. We had a big day, picked up special dog treats, took him shopping for a new fleece pullover (since quite a bit of his hair fell out with his immune disease) and had cake.


Two days later he went into static seizures(back to back, non stop seizures), by the time we got to the Emergency Vet he was almost twenty deep and his body temperature was way too high. Thankfully, the vet was able to stop the seizures without putting him into a medically induced coma and he had no brain damage from the temperature spike. Shoutout to Chad, who was at dinner with Andrew when the seizures started at home. He had to come with us to the ER, since there was no time to drive him home after they got home to me frantically trying to get medication into Egon. He got to see the worst of it, the struggle. I guess its fitting that we call him "Uncle Chad" regarding our dogs.

New Years Day at 6am he had a second bout of seizures, again nonstop and back to back. We had a game plan (we had to figure one out after the first set) and were out the door and in the car en route to the E Vet in about ten minutes, made it there in good time. Seizures stopped on their own (and possibly from the medication we give during seizures?) and he stayed there for a day to be watched. Seizure watch at the Emergency Vet means your lil buddy wears a jingle bell collar, so every move alerts the ears.


Here's the deal. With each seizure episode, the propensity to have more is greater. So one seizures paves the way to the next, one type of seizure paves the way to more of that same type. Not that they will all be this way, but the likelihood of him going into static state is now greater than it was. When they have back to back seizures, their body temp quickly rises. If you are not at the ER for injectibles within thirty to forty five minutes, the brain starts to die. Permanent brain damage ranging to death, all dependent on how fast you get your dog to meds.


His seizures follow no pattern and have no triggers. In the year of "egon's seizure diary" that i've dutifully kept, I can find no consistency EXCEPT for the fact that they tend to happen between 8pm and 6am. That just basically means that we have becomoe dog hermits, trading off dog watch when one of us wants to socialize. There is no more going to dinner past 7pm together unless we have a dog babysitter. Its been a weird shift, but honestly, I don't mind spending my time with him. I'd like to get as much in as possible, I feel like any work day we could come home on our lunch break to great sadness.


Not to be morbid or depressing, the situation is just really sad. I will say that over the last couple months, the last bit of the Bromide he was getting has gone from his system and his snappy attitude is back. He's less tolerant of Dottie pushing him around, and is happy to use his refined skills and muscle to hold her down and boss her about. It has been great to see.


Hoping things continue to get better. For now, daily dog pics and life stuff are going here:

less words, simpler things


Staying posi.

as always, busy.

backlogged with custom sewing stuff, no time ever. trying to cram tons of sewing into my two days off a week. eh, its not working out.

andrew had a birthday and the dogs partied hard.

worked a craft fair at lamplighter, and was the only vendor that showed up at the fest of cross swap meet. weird, but okay!

applied to be in the bizarre market. pending.

working with egon and his defective brain disease, but he's so much better. sigh of relief there. dottie is ridiculous (if you ever need to get hot glue gun glue off a dog, rubbing alcohol is safe and easy.) and idle is lazy but has been really stoked on going skateboarding with andrew more.

the neighbors puppies all died (except for the one that went to another home a couple weeks ago), think it was parvo based on what the little girl told me. lame. how many animal control calls does one have to make to get anything to change? i'm gonna strongly enforce a no dogs under the age of two rule about my backyard, that shit is way sketchy. dangerous and horrible. a tall privacy fence won't stop germs. not to close on a bummer note, but that stuff is serious business.

at work, daydreaming about being home. or going somewhere. or buying another old truck (whats wrong with me, haha)

back to work, like always!

If you ever want to see my usually-high productivity rate come to a screeching halt, just wait til theres a problem with my dogs. That'll do it real quick.

The past month has been insane. Egon blew up about three weeks ago and we're still figuring things out. (in the same week that Dottie had a severe bout of colitis and I got food poisoning) An ungodly amount of money and many sleepless nights later, we are finally getting a grip on his condition, sort of.

He had a lung infection, severe skin allergies, and basically became unable to use his legs, all in the course of three panicked weeks. The lung infection has been clearing on its own, antibiotics did not help. The allergies are TBD with an upcoming appointment at a dermatologist. And as of yesterday, his legs are starting to come back to him.

He became weaker and weaker, legwise, until he couldn't walk on his own. One night we came home and he couldn't even support himself standing up. There is nothing that will make me cry faster than having to feed and water your dog by hand while he lays on the floor, unable to get up.

diagnosis at the neurologist was grim, he was asymmetrically disabled, which was a direct link to a problem in the brain, not a medication side effect like we'd initially thought was the problem. options discussed, he was in for an MRI in the blink of an eye. it was the only way to determine the best course of treatment, since both paths to recovery were drastically different. the peace of mind that came with imaging to prove that his brain was tumor free has been priceless. i cannot express the feeling of relief that i've had since i got the voicemail yesterday, letting me know he had a healthy normal brain.

the imaging is amazing, looking at all the "layers" of his face and skull is incredible. the best animation i've seen, zooming layer after layer through my dogs head.

two doses of a medication into a new treatment plan and he's walking. trotting even. its unreal, and i'm so incredibly relieved. i really want to print some of the images from his MRI, they are so comical and ridiculous looking.

Been super busy lately, too busy to keep updated internet stuff. I have to keep stuff updated all day for the salon (tumblr, facebook, pinterest, twitter ugh) so I just find it hard to do anything else on the computer most days.

Best bet if you want to keep up with the stuff I'm into is to follow me on tumblr or find me on instagram.

Bought a web domain,

brave bags dot com and I've been trying to keep things current there, but again at the end of the day, I'm real over the internet. Happy to interact in some real life instances.

Been busy working at the salon during the week (40 plus hours), then coming home and working all weekend (or in the evenings if I have to) on sewing projects.

So much in the works. Stack of sewing projects every weekend, salon projects to be tackled after hours, and planning/organizing an Etsy Craft Party here in RVA. Making a bunch of crafts for people to do while they hangout, revolving around a hometown love theme. Recruiting folks to come from tumblr, etsy itself, and facebook, noone i know will sign up for anything in advance so its been pulling teeth to make the 25 person minimum of registrants for free supplies. I got it though, no worries. Went through every single etsy shop in Richmond and sent messages to the shop owners, extending an invite. Word.

Brain kind of wants to eggsplode with this many things going on, but I'm just gonna keep pressing forward.

Had to take Egon to the dog neurologist, he's having a hard time. Tryin to keep my chin up about all that but its just been such a sad time. Trying to maintain PMA but man. Sometimes its real hard. Just gonna keep on keeping on.

Woah. So busy lately. Tons of sewing commissions and in general life happenings.

my good friend catherine is moving back to LA, travelling via motorcycle cross country. www.mybikeignites.tumblr.com

she asked me to make her some saddle bags for her trip....so i met up with her a couple times to brainstorm and take moto measurements.

worked up a plan that made sense to both of us, and i got crackin. took four days to totally finish em, i also had two pairs of out of town visitors and other good distractions.

they came out really well, even though the math and planning involved in making them broke my brain. the bottom is one flush piece for strength, and for some reason making hidden seams on all sides of the bag just seemed so daunting.

first time using high end waterproof material too...terrain xpac is the jam! lightweight and waterproof up to 200psi. driving rain equates to 2 psi.

ride safe friend.

planning an etsy craft party at the end of the month, working on a top secret installation that will have a one night opening on the 5th of august, and preparing to take Egon to the dog neurologist to better diagnose his seizures. theres a lot going on.

oh! and i have a website now too! one more internet thing to keep up with, ugh!

www.bravebags.com

check it out.

i've had a significant amount of time off lately....for the end of june i took time off for birthday stuff, then worked one day, was off two for july fourth, worked one and a half days, then had another normal two day weekend. its allowed me a ton of time to sew, work on stuff in the house, and hangout with the dogs and andrew.

we got some pretty gnarly wind/rain storms lately that knocked out power to lots of folks...our across-the-street neighbors lost it for a really long time...felt bad as we were maxin and relaxin and they were sweating their guts out for five days. stoli came to work with us saturday, huskies and 100+ degree temps with no power are not a match. she's a real sweet dog.

picked up andrews great grandma's singer sewing machine...been meaning to stop working frantically on projects to take the time to get cozy with the singer, start using it instead of my kenmore.

its really nice, a centennial model from 1951.

even came with the little original oil can still clipped in place! so tight.

came in from one of many late night treat runs to find a male and a female stag beetle flying around the porch, tryin to get it on. they're super cool to see...this is the male, females have much smaller pincers.

in other exciting bug news, we've had a rash of HUGE hornets and butterflies creepin on the mulberry tree andrew recently trimmed. i saw a couple large eastern swallowtails hanging upside down, beating their wings, and thought they were tryign to cool off in the shade. but then the hornets came, they hangout near the slices in the tree. i can only assume they're getting water or fluid? weird. theres almost always at least one hornet or butterfly in this exact spot, its a go-to if you're trying to witness some insect activity.

in weird yard news, we seem to have found a portal of some sorts.

over time, rain was washing away dirt in our side yard. a concrete chunk was makign itself visible, and with a little raking/sweeping, a large circle became visible.

weird, right? started digging into it and pulling out trash, bricks, and hunks of concrete.

with a little more digging....

even more digging

so we apparently have a well that used to feed the house. i called the county to see if they had any record of it being "abandoned" or filled, after the late 80s/early 90s they required a permit and a lisenced contractor to perform the work. there was no record. it was not on the survey from the 50s that the county had on record and it was not on the survey that we ordered when we bought the well. so really, its a suprise.

andrew dug out about six feet of it. the first concrete section goes about three feet before it has a gap of a few inches where the pipes come in. then concrete begins again. ususally its just dirt after the first concrete section, so this one seems like it was pretty legitimately dug.

finding all kinds of crap in it. can't wait to see what else comes up. and how deep it is! i guess we'll be calling a contractor for advice soon.

been working on sewing projects as much as i possibly can while getting totally distracted with dogs and boyfriend.

worked up a front rack bag for braden at carytown bikes, will most likely turn into a little run of bags for the shop. little collab, a few design improvements/tweaks on the bags he was kind of bummed on. a little bigger, a map window, different opening direction, y'know...stuff that you want when you ride.

dottie found that the new sewing machine table plus the windowsill makes for a cozy nap spot.

good dog.

it was awesome having so much time off cause i could really hangout with the dogs. they're pretty hilarious. egon slept/snored through a total manicure/pedicure...trimmed and rounded all his nails while he slept. he was out cold! what a lazy dude.

hanging out with bostons is real fun. they're pretty wild, but real sweet too. good snugglers and vicious attackers when a toy gets stuck under the couch.