How does our garden grow?

It grows weedy and overgrown, for the most part. But it's our yard, and I know you all want to see it.

Finally, I've got the yard pictures done. I'm not sure that they're in completely the right order but they're all annotated, I think. So here you go - there's a lot of them so they're after the jump.

Conference

I'm still working on the yard/garden post but I was at a conference this weekend and didn't do any work on it. I figured you'd want to know about the conference so I'm updating you on that right now.

This conference was held by the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network, which is a volunteer-led organization dedicated to people with metastatic breast cancer. This year's conference was held in Chapel Hill, NC so I was there for the weekend.

The conference runs for two days and although I'd planned to go to both days, I didn't make it. I had rented a car and locked my keys in the trunk of the car. I called the rental car company and they sent someone out to unlock the car but it turns out that they still make cars that have no internal trunk release and we couldn't get the trunk open. By the time we figured all that out, the conference was over so I ended up going to the airport early. It was a very long, very boring day.

Fortunately, Saturday's sessions were interesting. There was a talk on molecular genetics that I really enjoyed. It wasn't very detailed but it gave a good overview of the current science and research trends.

The most unforgettable session was the one on pain and sexuality. I expected this to be a session about how to adapt sexuality to the pain but it wasn't that at all. It turns out the speaker is a leading researcher in the area and so the talk was more of how she got the knowledge she did. In all that meandering, I learned a few things:

• When men have sexual problems, it's often considered to be a physical problem but when women do, it's often considered psychological.
• Before addressing sexual pain, the cause of the pain - nerves, skin, or muscle - must be determined.
• Neuropathy can occur in the genital area in the same way as it does in the hands and feet because the nerves are the same size. THIS BLEW MY MIND.
• Any treatment that can affect the mouth can affect the genitals in the same way because the tissues are structured the same way and are both mucous membranes (she had pictures to emphasize this point). 
• If the area isn't used, the muscles can atrophy and cause pain, just like they would anywhere else.
• Dilators don't help all that much; a better solution is apparently a modified Hodge pessary kept in at night.
• If the skin has a rash or is very delicate use Crisco shortening(!!) to protect it. Crisco can also be used with the pessary and in place of Replens. It works because it doesn't contain harsh chemicals and it doesn't come off easily.

The session ended up being quite funny and informative. I'm happy that I went just for that because it really was informative. 

Bit of this and that

I'm still working on the pictures of our yard but I've been lazy and haven't finished annotating them all. There are over 150 of them, after all, which is more than even red carpet posts used to have.

I was out weeding in the yard today. I spent about three hours out there and I pulled up around 100 big dandelions and 50 or so baby-sized ones in a 250 sq ft area. There's at least double that area to go but those areas don't have quite so many of these dandelions. I knew the lawn was full of weeds but I didn't realize just how bad it is. I'm trying to get them pulled so that I can rake the lawn to get the growing bittercress and veronica out before reseeding the yard.

Gozer hasn't been feeling terribly well lately. She was on antibiotics for a hotspot which made her vomit. After she went off them, she was constipated for a few days and then yesterday she started having diarrhea. Poor girl. She had diarrhea again today and we're hoping that her system will settle down. We're hesitant to take her to the vet because we don't want them to give her pills and we figure that we can help her with diet. She's already getting half squash for food and if she still has problems tomorrow, we'l give her rice instead of kibbles for the other half.

Well, Ian will give her rice for food; I'm heading to Chapel Hill, North Carolina this weekend for a conference. I'm nervous about going because I don't think many of my friends are going and because Chapel Hill is near Raleigh and that area holds some memories for me. I'm hoping that it'll be a fun weekend and if it turns out to be lame, well, I won't be there that long.

Gozer in the yard

I took a bunch of pictures of our yard and the plants in it yesterday. It was a lovely sunny day so I got some good pictures for you. However, it's going to take another day or so to get the pictures in the right order and commented and stuff so in the meantime, I thought I'd show you some pictures of Gozer, aka Miss Flufflybutt.

Hi mom!

Something smells good over here.

What could have been in this spot?

That smells really, really good...

...it'll make me smell good, too!!

I am look good, I smell good, and I'm feeling fine. Off I go!