The Day from Hell and Infant Experiments

So this morning, Stella and I went to the Children's Research Lab at UT so that they could conduct an "experiment" on her. It was fun! Stella enjoyed having all that attention lavished on her and of course I did too. She got a brush, a t-shirt and a bib, as well as lots of cute pictures in this silly hat thing that measures brain waves. Basically, they showed her pictures of women's faces and registered her brain activity. They are trying to judge if infants find the same faces attractive that adults do, or if they just react to all of them as a "face". Do they recognize more attractive faces as a face more easily? But apparently Stella did extremely well. Not only was she very cooperative and smiley, she looked at the faces for 7 and a half minutes before losing interest. Apparently most babies only go 3 and a half, and even adults only go 8. So I guess she has a better attention span than her parents! But it was really fun, I hope they ask Stella to do it again.

Then the crappy part of the day began. I was supposed to pick up boots and some gloves for Le for Zombie. I called Ashley and Anna, the holders of said boots, after the experiment and they were unfortunately not home. So we headed home, Stella sweetly sleeping in the backseat, and I put her down for a nap when we got home. No cigar, she wasn't going to sleep. And then I let the dogs out and noticed that Roxie left a trail of blood all the way down the stairs and out the back door. Nice. She had this problem in May, on our anniversary. Bloody diarrhea. And they never figured out what was wrong with her, even after we spent $700 on her. Although they were kind enough to point out her teeth were rotting out of her skull and charge us over $300 to fix that in a separate visit. So it's back. And we don't really have $700 lying around to fix it again. Especially since we just spent $650 on plane tickets to visit Tim's family in Michigan. And we have a house full of people coming this weekend for Stella's Baptism Sunday. Roxie has really impeccable timing. So instead of helping Ian out with Zombie, I spent the afternoon at the vet's office. They couldn't get us in until 2, and they ran the tests for $244, and once again they showed nothing, all her blood work was perfectamundo. The doctor thought it could be a bunch of stuff, and basically filled Roxie full of fluids, sent us home with a bunch of expensive medicines and food, and told us that if it didn't work, we'd probably have to bring her back and have her hospitalized again. And that we should probably have a $200 test to test her steroid levels to see if she has Addison's disease. We got these results after we'd been there 2.5 hours. Stella was such a trooper, I can't believe she made it. As soon as we got in the car to come home, she was out like a light. Of course, once again, this didn't translate into a nap when she got home. I was starving and ate "lunch" at a quarter to five. Ah, fun, fun, fun. And I still need to go to the run-through tonight. Not that I want Roxie to die, but why can't she be like most dogs and just live a long, healthy life until she peacefully dies in her sleep? Why does she have to need annual $300 teeth-cleanings and quarterly $700 hospital stays?

Wow, Stella is really cracked out. Her eyes are so pink, she looks like she has pink eye. Of course, she was ina really good mood until about 30 seconds ago, so I'm not complaining. Guess I better switch into "entertaining fussy baby mode". I may have to pull out the big guns again: the Rent soundtrack. Shudder!