Bed Hog

So this actualy happened on the weekend of the fourth of July.

My family always goes to South Padre Island to do some fishing,bbqing, and floundering around on the beach. This year was no different, except Egypt came with us. Last year I didn't go because I had just came home with her and the week after was really full of traveling, because my Grandpa had passed away. At Gdb they recommend staying home as much as you can for the first few weeks so your dog can establish your home as their home. I think Egypt did this in about 5 minutes, but I just wanted to be cautious to make sure she was happy. 

Anyway, We took off to S.P.I. the whole group that went was both of my sisters, my brother in-law,  my parents, and Nat, Egypt, and myself. The condo we stayed at could only accommidate 6 people, so naturally that meant I got the floor. We had just bought this awesome new travel crate for Egypt so we could secure it in the car for traveling, and use if for a bed for her, sadly it was to big for the car by about and inch. So Nat an I decided to return the crate when we would get back home, and this meant we couldn't get the bed that came with it all furry. So Egypt didn't have a place to really call her own. Or so I thought. The first day we got there, I aired up an air mattress that Was packed for the floor dweller. After it was properly inflated I layed down on it and invited Egypt to lay with me. Big mistake. The moment she set paw on it she practically laid claim to it. Any time we were looking for Egypt all we had to do was look on the other side of the couch and there she was sleeping on my bed. Luckily she didn't puncture it, or we would have both been sleeping on the millimeter thick sandpaper carpet. I thought it was funny when ever we would walk in the room and there she was curled on the air mattress, but when it came time to go to sleep, that was a different story. I always let Egypt sleep with me for a while on my bed, she usually uses my legs as a bed liner and props her head up on my shin while the rest of her is curled up. Well she did this those nights to, and it wasn't bad because she does it all the time. Later on in the night i thought she would get up and stretch and come back to a different place and take up ALL of the space on the bed. So I had an extremely limited range of movement because she would lay in the middle of the bed and block off any rememing room for my legs. I just dealt with it for a while, but one time I couldn't take it. She had taken all of the blankets, and the air conditioner was set to blizzard. So I was pretty miserable, and I woke up and asked her to move. After I got the blanket I called her back and thought. Extra body heat. A few nights later, my cousin and her boyfriend came to stay with us,because traffic was insane. So the boyfriend slept next to my air matress, and in the middle of the night had a sleeping buddy. For some reason Egypt had been kind of taken with him. So one of the times she got up, she went to go lay with him and actually put her arm on him. I think he liked it lol. She is pretty spoiled though. In my bedroom, she has her crate, which has an extremely poofy bed in it and she goes there all the time. Her crate also doubles as my night stand so she is usually always in petting distance. Then about 7 feet away, she has a memory foam bed that she can lay on to, she uses it some times mostly to prop her head on when she lays on the carpet. THEN she has our bed. She has never gotten on any furniture with out my permission, but she does a great job of begging to get up with me. She will rest her head on the edge of the bed and do a deep sigh kind of thing. So naturally She gets my attention. If I ignore her, she'll move her head around and sigh more. It's really pretty funny. Most times I'll give in because I already wanted to  give her attention, but other times I'll tell her " Go to your room" and she'll go to her crate. If she is sleeping with me on the bed, I usually let her stay till she is ready to leave, but other times if she is cutting of circulation to my leg to the point of it threatening to fall off , I'll wake her up and ask her in a whisper "Do you wanna go to your room?" and she'll get up and go. Hopefully some day my kids, will listen  like that. I can only hope though.

A Millennium later

Bleep blorp bleep, O sorry, I thought that was the language of the day, guess it's still english. good thing is I can still write it.
Well I know I have been totally sucking at posting, but boy have I got some news to tell ya'll. Well today was really exciting for me. Natalie found Egypt's puppy raisers a while back, but didn't realize what she had done. Today C contacted Nat and told her who she was. Nat told me and I couldn't believe it. I lost their contact info shortly after coming home from GDB, and didn't know how to get a hold of them so they could see how Egypt was doing. It is amazing how small of a world this is. 

Well this summer has been slow, due to all the heat, and me not being as busy as I should be. Egypt is still being her good self. Our routine hasn't really deviated to much this summer, but hopefully with new semester we'll have things to do. 

On the wedding frontier however, we have set a date and started getting all the details of it going. We are having our wedding in Jamaica in january of 2012. We are going to do a week long cruise and will get married on the 19th. That day is special because that is the day we started dating in 2008, and also the day we got engaged in 2010.  Good thing is I won't be able to forget the day, If I do, I wouldn't blame Nat for killing me. 

Just recently we got a new vehicle to. It's awesome. We finally have enough room for both dogs, us and some day kids. It's pretty weird thinking I'll have kids, but My dad is the one who brought it up and I couldn't argue with his points. My favorite feature about the car is that it has air conditioning in the back for Egypt and bob. No more little fan that did absolutely nothing to keep them cool. 

The other new thing that has been going on for a while is I have picked up a new hobby/ potential job thing.

I have been learning how to craft things with leather. yeah I know I'm making it sound all impressive, but as of now I have made a few leashes and collars. I also made a dock for my iphone 4 (which I recommend to any blind person) , and wrapped it in leather too.  I am also learning to make front pocket wallets,, standard wallets, and purses. If you would like one of these such items send me a message or an email.

Well, I think that is really all the big news summed up for you lately. Sorry for the 4 month gap, but hopefully now, there will be more to write about since I'll be doing stuff again. 

Remember me???

Well I know it has been about half a millenia since I've written, but I'm back again lol. So the new things that have happened around her is 1. Natalie finally got her pup. I'm sure the majority of ya'll read her blog, but on the off chance you don't his name is Bob. He is a crazy yellow lab/ stork mix. Not really he just has extremely long legs. Thats about all the new stuff that has happened haha just kidding. Egypt is doing great still, she had a slight soft tissue injury in her shoulder, but she is all recovered now. The doc said it was probably from playing and running so much, considering she hadn't done much of that till Bob came around.

Well Nat and I have more or less decided that we are going to have our wedding on a cruise off to some where in the Caribbean. So lately I've been turning over every rock on the net to find packages rooms and cruises that sound good, and reasonable for family to join us as well. (if they want) So far I've only found one cruise line that does the weddings while the ship is sailing, all the others perform the weddings at the dock before the ship sets sail.  Thats really everything thats been going on lately, but I'll keep ya'll posted, sorry I suck at posting every other day lol. 

Cedar!!!

I absolutely hate it. I first found out the I was allergic to cedar during my first winter here in San Antonio. I used to live here when I was very young but who can remember that far. So it was roughly around January when I started getting extremely congested and itchy eyed. I really didn't know what to think of it because I've never really had to deal with allergies before. So I let time go by and just dealt with it, till I could wait no more. I called Dr. mom and asked her what medicine I should take. She told me that my dad would get really bad allergies around this time when we lived in S.A. and now where he comes to visit. I asked her what this obnoxious allergen was, and she told me it was the cedar trees. She passed the phone to my dad so I could ask him what he recommends to take to help ease the symptoms. He told me to use some nasal spray and some over the counter allergy medicine. So I do this and everything seems to get better. Well not for long. We had gone up to Kerrville to visit with Natalie's family and I felt like I was going to suffocate. I had no idea when the s*** hit the fan, but it did. So remembering what my mom had said about cedar trees I asked Kevin (Nat's dad) what trees were in the area. He told me that we were SURROUNDED by cedar trees. So as you can imagine I was in shock, not anaphylactic  shock… yet. But I knew it was going to be a long week. Some how I managed to survive without epi pens and just a health dose of nasal spray.

So now we are in 2010… January… My symptoms are back. As I knew they would be. I was ready for them this time. I had my nasal spray and some Ny-quil ready on my night stand for the first sign of symptoms. Well I had the wrong nasal spray. It had menthol in it. So instead of helping to calm my sneezing it drastically increased it. I would have about 3 sneeze attacks every minutes or so consisting of about 6-7 sneezes. My handkerchief didn't stand a chance, nor did the other 5. haha. So finally I deduced that my spray was the cause of my misery and I got a new plain bottle. So for the most part I am doing relatively well. Till this weekend.

Natalie and I went out of town to celebrate our engagement. There is a little bed and breakfast owned by a fellow puppy raiser from GDTx. We heard great things about them from staff member and we thought we would try it out. So we head over there and I had already looked at the street name so I could put it into my gps… Well the street was called…CEDAR HillS… The name didn't really click and we were on our way. I knew I was still going to be suffering my allergies so we packed medicine and other supplies to help keep them at bay.  Well I wish I would have had my own E.R. team on call for me. We got to the place, but right before we turned on the street, the gps called out "turn left on cedar hills." The nightmare began. I realized this wasn't a name they picked out of a hat and stuck it on a street it was actually hills with nothing but cedar on them. So We get into the room and I'm already getting congested so I take some medicine and just try to live with it. So night time comes and I'm doing decently, and I go ahead and take a tylenol pm. It might as well have been a placebo. I woke up the next morning with a nose that felt like it had been sealed up with wax, and an eye that felt like it had just been introduce to Muhammed Ali's fist. It was horrible. This is kind of mean, but I thought it was funny when I found out Natalie was allergic to cedar too. It was another thing we had in common. Her symptoms were nothing compared to mine though. So I take some more of the placebo, and some nasal spray and prepare myself for a lousy day. So after I had done that it was time to feed Egypt and take her out to do her business. She took her time finding the perfect place to go, and while she was I was wondering if they put colostomy bags on dogs, haha. So after she is done and I'm starting to seize up, the inn-keeper comes to give us the best breakfast I've ever had. So I stay out to talk to her a little bit and I told her I was allergic to cedar, and she delivered the same dreadful words Kevin told me a year back. We were surrounded by cedar, and most of the furniture in the place were were staying in was made of cedar. Feeling thoroughly depressed I asked her what she recommends for a remedy. She had mentioned to me that she was allergic to cedar too, and that she practically lived off of Benedryl. I had heard good things about Benedryl, like it was a good goodnight juice and it helps when you babysit, but I never knew there was one for allergies. Since I had already taken some medicine I didn't want to o.d. on over the counter medication so I decided to wait till later to go buy and take some of this miracle medicine. Later on after all of our shopping Nat and I went to wal-mart to get some medicine, and some movies. We got back to the room and I took a Benedryl, and before i knew it the sandman had thrown a mud rock at me. I was out cold, I felt pretty bad because I was in the middle of watching a movie with Nat. Morning came and the first thing I said to Natalie was… "I love…. Benedryl" hahaha. I always tell her good Morning for the record. But I haven't been able to breath at all this month till this morning. It was great. So now I'm not going to take Ny-quil allergy or that lousy Tylenol allergy… maybe Day-quil, but when its night time I'm going for Benedryl. If it wasn't considered arson, I would go and douse some cedar trees in gasoline and light a match. Of course I would plant some kind of tree, but it would probably die. I'm terrible at keeping plants and fish alive. huh. If there is ever a fire in a cedar forest, it wasn't me.

What a Great Day!

It was. Natalie and I had just gotten engaged and it was about an hour later and we were at home. She was chatting away with her sister and I was relaxing waiting to go out to eat with Nat. So I was sitting on the bed and listening to music on my laptop. It's such a great laptop. So I was scrolling through the music waiting till I found a song I liked when all of a sudden a song from Kings of leon came on, so I listened to that. After that song another song from the kings came on and I thought to myself "what luck". Then  ANOTHER song from them came on. I wasn't suspicious yet but took it all in stride. Then a cover version of Metallica's Unforgiven came on. It is done by a string tribute band. It sounds awesome, it is a bunch of violins and a chelo playing all aspects of the song (except the drums. So I thought to myself "man! this is a good day I get engaged and my laptop is playing all my favorite songs." So I let the music keep rolling and eventually I get curious why it's playing good music it never does this… Not even my ipod does that. So about 30 minutes roll by and still good songs. So I finally investigate. Well it turns out that while I was scrolling through my songs, I must have switched the playlist to "25 most played songs"  on my Itunes window. So I felt pretty dim after that.  I decided to tell Nat about it later on, fully knowing I would be made fun of. Can you blame her? If it was her I would make fun of her all day and ask if she could D.J. the wedding lol… So for the past few days thats the playlist I've been listening to. Every once in a while I'll run into a chapter from my Harry Potter audiobook, I didn't realize I listened to it that much. Its got the highest play count out of every song at like 14. I'm surprised it beat any Metallica song considering they are my favorite band lol.

You shouldn't keep secrets!

Good Advice! This past month has been one of the most deceitful and stressful months of my life. It all started on christmas. My mom was driving me back to my apartment after we had done the Xmas with the family, and I figured this was the best time to bring up the convo. We had been talking a little bit about Nat and I, so I thought I'd ask my mom what she thought if we got married. She said she though it would be great, and started asking me questions of how I would take care of Natalie and what told me I was ready for that  commitment. Now she wasn't asking me about the readiness because she didn't want me to, she was just making sure that I was being fair to Natalie and not just doing it on a whim. So after I gave her my reasons and my thoughts of everything she told me that I had the right mind set for a marriage. she didn't say that word for word but that was the gist of it. So with that down It was time for me to talk to my dad. I had told Nat that I had talked to my mom to show her I was serious about our relationship, but I told her that I wouldn't tell her when I would talk to my dad or her parents. (apparently she wasn't paying attention to this bit of information, you'll find out later) So I had went to Alice (I wouldn't be surprised if no one knew where this was at), but this is where I'm from. So new years rolls around and we were getting ready for a new years party and I decided this would be the best time to talk to my dad before we all got trashed. When I approached him I told him that I needed to talk to him about something, and asked if my mom had told him what we had spoken about on christmas. He told me yes, so it saved me a lot of time and breath loll. I asked him what he thought and his serious tone came in. He only does this for meetings and times when he is trying to show off, haha kJ. So he told me that he thought Natalie was a very great woman and that she takes very good care of me and she has relieved a ton of stress from him and my mom. He said that he was very happy with our relationship, and that we had his blessing for a marriage. I would have done it even if he said no haha.

So two down and two to go. My time with Nat's parents was limited because of the day I wanted to ask her and the fact that they live about 4 hours away and it would be a long walk for me if I wanted to see them. So luckily they had come for a week to a town close by to spend the new years and relax for a bit. Sadly Nat's mom went up to waco for a few days to see her mom so that cut my time a little… It's not your fault lol. And on top of that we find out on Tuesday that Nat's uncle is getting married the coming saturday, talk about short notice haha..  So it is saturday (wedding day) everyone is together so I finally have my chance. so I discretely disappear with Nat's dad to ask him if we can go for a drive, but he has to ask nat's mom to come because I had to talk to them. He agreed so we reappear and he asks her if we can go for a drive. Well Natalie decides to impersonate a bad cases of hemorrhoids and  lingers around me so it is kinda hard to shake her off. So I tell her we are going to go get something to drink and ask her if she wants me to pick anything up for her. Well Ms. nosey asks why her mom is going, I tell her I dunno her dad just asked her to come. So we are about to take off on our drive, and they almost forget me! Lucky I realized this or it would have been a loss haha.We take off and I told her parents that no family outside of my own has been so accepting of me and loving towards me (at least I think they do) and I asked them if I would be able to join theirs and marry Natalie. There was no answer but I could tell her dad was excited. He turned back and asked mama(nat's mom from now on)  what she thought. She didn't answer, but then I realized she was crying. (I didn't know she hated me that much) lol. She said that she would be happy if I did. So I was thrilled and her dad said ok and shook my hand. So to give the eyes a little time to not be so puffy we got some gas. When we got back Ms. nosey asked why I didn't get anything. I hadn't realized I was empty handed so I told her that I was looking for a fairly rare soda, and that they didn't have it. She said ok and I was secretly thinking to myself "fool!" lol. Now that the easy part was down… (wish I was making that up) It was time to find a ring.

So I made up a story that I had to go home to see a doctor for some therapy I do. And Natalie bought that story too. So it was a few days after I talked to her parents and I was home. It was actually 2 weeks from today that I went. I had the perfect jeweler in mind so I utilized my great guide dog and walked to his shop. Well he was out of town. haha. But lucky for me a woman that worked there called him and told him what I was looking for so he went to the place where he gets his diamonds from and he hand picked a few for me. The next day he came into town and luckily he was at an office right next door to where I was and he gave me a ride to his shop. That is the greatest customer service I have ever had. Hand picked diamonds and a ride to the shop? Did I mention he is practically family? haha. So we arrive at his shop and Natalie starts texting me. So to cover up and assure that she wouldn't call I told her I was talking to a cousin that I hadn't talked to in a long time and that she likes to talk. So I got the ring and diamond picked out. It was a Marquise diamond on a cathedral setting with a white gold band. So I had to wait for a few days to have the ring built and prepared. It was done and my parents picked it up for me because I was in San Antonio by this time. So then the next challenge was to figure out how to get the ring in right under Nat's nose. Well with the help of my great (awesome not old) grand parents the ring arrived in S.a. Luckily Natalie had a class where she was going to been gone for at least an hour so my grandma could bring me the ring.So Natalie left the apartment and in less then a minute I was on the phone with my grandma asking her if she would be so kind and bring the ring over. She did and I was like a 5 year old waiting for christmas. Then finally it arrives. I told my grandma thank you very much and hurried back inside to check it out and hide it. My hiding place was second to none. Under Egypt's crate. haha. It has an area kind of like the bottom of a dresser but the front was covered up. I slid it over just a bit so I could stash the box underneath, making sure that when I slid the crate back it lined up perfectly with the impressions on the carpet.

Natalie comes home shortly after and we just hung out for a while. Then some how we got into the engagement conversation and she asked me if I had talked to her parents. I told her no because I hadn't had a chance to talk to them. She argued with this lie by saying that I had a perfect chance to talk to them around the time of the wedding. Little did she know. Then she asked me if I had talked to my dad and I told her I hadn't again she told me I could have talked to him when I went for new years.  Then I told her that I forgot about both times and she was right that I could have talked to them. If she had been paying attention to me on christmas she probably wouldn't have been so upset. haha. She got her feelings  hurt because I had "forgotten" and I felt bad because little did she know she was standing literally feet from her ring. So after a while I went out and started beating around the bush and asked her what she liked for a ring, partly to cheer her up but also to make her think I hadn't started. Yes guys can play mind games too. So we start looking online for some ring ideas and she tells me she kind of liked the princess cut diamonds. I could have shot myself ha. So we did that for a while and then I told her I would start researching things.

So mission accomplished Then saturday rolls around. My oldest sister came into town and she was staying at my brothers house. it was going to be an all sibling night over there. So I was very excited because this meant I could show them the ring so they wouldn't be left out. they already knew I was planning on proposing by the way. So I asked Natalie if I could spend the night there, but forgot in all the excitement we had a date that night for our anniversary. Could you blame me it was like a minute that all this happened and world war three almost started. So Natalie got extremely upset, and so was I because It was our anniversary dinner. When I was trying to explain to her all I could do was lie, yes that sounds bad but I couldn't tell her. OH! I want to go so I can show my brother and sisters your engagement ring! that would just ruin everything. So I get yelled at for a while, and retreat. I tell Natalie's sister what had happened so she wouldn't be mad at me because I thought Nat had told her what had happened, and I also wanted some advice on how to apologize because there was nothing I could say to fix it, and I sure wasn't going to tell her the truth. So while I was talking with Erin, Natalie was getting more upset because I went and talked to Erin "behind her back" as Natalie thought. The war just started… Poor erin. So after Erin and I get yelled at, I try and make things better. I have no idea how I did it but I made Natalie feel better and not be mad. Natalie said all I had to do was apologize and mean it. If I didn't it would have been a really awkward dinner.

So now we pass some excruciatingly slow days to tuesday our 2 year anniversary. I told Natalie I wanted to take her to the San Antonio botanical garden so we went. I had my whole speech planned out to lead me up to the proposal. So we were going around the gardens and Natalie was going crazy on her camera taking pictures of dead plants haha. Then I told her I wanted to get to a swing we had seen close to the entrance of the park. I told her this because it would give me some time to build up some courage to start my speech. Well there was a flaw in the plan… I was standing about 10 feet away from a bench so she told me "Why don't we sit at this bench?". I wish I had a bat so I could have broken it so we wouldn't have had to sit there. To bad I didn't. So we sit and I start my speech on how I can compare a relationship to a garden. I thought it was a good speech but Natalie told me later that her and Erin thought it was corny. She's lucky she got a speech and not a ring box thrown at her while I run away screaming the question instead. So after my clever comparison I told her I had to ask her a question, while I was saying this I got up and was beginning to kneel down. I had pulled out her ring box from Egypt's treat bag. That was the only Place I could hide it. I cleaned out the treats that morning. Poor Egypt she did good work that day too, but I made up for it.  So throughout the day I was walking with a ring in my dogs treat bag, and one time natalie got to close to it so I moved it to the other side of my waist. I was paranoid. So After my proposal she told me " Ah no you didn't, no you didn't" I told her I did lol, and then she told me yes. So after that we called mine and her parents to tell them. Her mom put her on hold, my mom didn't answer her dad didn't answer, but my dad did. He never gets calls so I'm sure when he heard the ring he leapt across the room to get his phone haha just kidding dad. So later on we are driving back home and she confessed to me that she was looking at my pants pockets to see if I had any bulges that should be there. I'm not stupid enough to leave something like that out for her to see. Later we went to this awesome restaurant called the melting pot. It's amazing. They gave us a toast to the engagement and free wine glasses. I told Nat we could use the glasses at the wedding, but she had to burst my bubble and tell me the glasses said The Melting Pot on the side of them haha. O well. So that was the worst/best month of my life. It was hard lying to her and making her cry, but I told her I would make it up to her. I promised that. Hopefully it was enough haha.

Stories from GDB

So now I have Egypt, and wow what a dog she is. I have never met a dog that is so calm, obedient, and not stupid in my life. From minute one I knew we were a good match. So the first few hours we got to bond, and we had a few lectures on how to keep up with their hygiene and other tide bits about care. Then after a day or so we were issued our harness and essential equipment for work. Then we went to downtown San Rafael to learn basics and the feel of our dogs. Egypt blew me away the first minute I told her forward, she took me down the hall and to the exit doors to await the bus. We got outside she showed me the stairs and took me straight to the bus' doors. It was a slow ride simply because the anticipation of the new adventure was too great. But eventually we got there. When it came my turn to make my voyage I was nervous, but I knew I'd be alright because I had Egypt, and an instructor to keep me from getting lost. And we were off!!! Honestly if you were watching from the side you would probably get bored, we don't walk fast huh. It was thrilling for me though, so many new doors were opened for me, I know all i was doing was walking to the curb, but if I was somewhere else with a different destination it would be the best thing ever.

Egypt's work was amazing she showed me every curb, could care less about other people cooing at her, and kept a close eye on me. we walked a few city blocks and then went back to the downtown campus.

The next few days are pretty similar to this so we could get more accustomed to our dogs and signals they give us. It was still fun though.

My all-time favorite training scenario was the chase scenario.

Our instructor gets into the donated hybrid vehicle and try to run us over. Just kidding, but the urge to dive out of the way was always in the back of my head. So what they do is they will have the guide team walk across a driveway type entrance on a sidewalk, and the instructor will be waiting in that driveway for us to pass. Then they back up and pretend they were a driver backing up and they don't see us. Now of course they aren't going to run us over (they'd lose their driver's license), but the dogs don't know this. So here is where Egypt comes in. She notices that car coming and she rockets out of the way. This caught me and my instructor by surprise because we have never seen her move that fast. So I was still holding the handle by some miracle and she tugged me to what she felt was a safe distance. I though it was kinda funny that she almost ripped my arm out of the socket, but it was comforting to know if that should ever happen she'll drag me out of harms way.

Also during that bit of training they would have us start crossing the street and pull up in front of us to see how much distance the dogs would give us between the cars and ourselves. The dogs could back up if they wanted to or just stop and wait for the car to stop moving and for our cue to resume walking. Egypt and I had the furthest buffer. We had roughly 12 feet in between us and the cars, and everyone else averaged 6 feet.

It is great knowing that I have a dog the watches out for me, yeah right she just doesn't want to get run over.

I just wanted to say I am going to put a paws (spelled p a w s) on my guide dog school stories for right now. I have a friend heading to GDB next month and I don't want to spoil any surprises for her. Sorry friend I know you want to hear more stories, but I promise I'll put more stuff up when you're at the school so we can compare notes huh.

She's smarter than me!!!

Egypt that is.  So the story starts back in August when I was still learning the school. It first started with me hanging onto Natalie and having Egypt heal at my side.. (she has special powers) So anyway we went through the school a few times and I would have never guessed Egypt paid any attention to what we were doing. Evidently she did. So lets flash to today. Amazingly I went to school on a saturday for study gorup. I did absolutely nothing, but I offered help. Then thankfully that ended and it was time to go home. So Egypt, Natalie and I were walking through UTSA and Egypt seemed like she was on the ball. Except when she sniffed an invisible something on the ground. So time went on and i told her to make a right turn next to a building. Little did I know I didn't know where i was. So Natalie told me it was a stair case that I hated to use. It was the one we used back in August. So we got to the bottom of the stairs and the only direction I could remember was to tell Egypt to go left. Then I told Natalie "Crap I don't remember where to go now." Then Egypt started taking some initiative and started walking the way we would use back in August and Natalie told me that it looked  like Egypt knew where she was. She knew more than that. So remember, the only command I gave her was to turn left at the bottom of the stairs. So she started walking the route and she was making the turns and everything flawlessly. Then she adapted that route that was never used to the route that we use everyday to get back to my jeep. So we were walking down the side walk and she turned onto a down ramp to get on the striped line for the handicap parking lane. Natalie said that she even appeared to looked to the left down the street for traffic. So it was clear and we set off again for the Jeep. While we were walking there was a handicap sign that had been hit so it was all bent and in the walk way. So Egypt slowed down quite a bit and made sure that i got past it safely without hitting my face on it. Then we continued to walk and she stopped and was looking at me for direction. I figured she recognized the car so I encouraged her to continue walking and as I did that Natalie unlocked the car and I was shocked that egypt found it on top of everything else she did. I was speechless. So when she jumped up in the car she was wagging her tail because she knew she did a good job so I gave her a jackpot *(which is a lot of treats to let them know they did an awesome job). She was so proud of herself . I can tell that because she looses all composure when I give her praise, even if she's working. It was so amazing I guess I kind of got a taste of when a parent is proud of their kids.. She is going to get a little bit of peanut butter with her dinner tonight.

Because I know everyone!

I received an award! For being the nicest person on blogger. Just kidding its for being fat on thanksgiving.Check it out here it is
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So honestly in the 2 minutes it took me to copy and paste it... I forgot what it was for. But what I do remember is that we award it to five people.




So my number 1 is...... drumroll please.... Natalie . If it wasn't for her i can almost gaurentee I wouldn't ahve a guide dog or alot of the other good stuff I have in my life...Including my Mac.

My number 2 is my family. And the reason they are all number 2 is because there is tomany of them haha, but they have all supported me in the good times and bad

Number 3's are Nat's parents I'll call them N&K  They have always been good to me and We have some good laughs even if it is at my expense

Number 4 is Erin . Nat's twin. Who would I watch T.v. with and she makes some awesome cookies.
And my number five...  Is my mac. I'll call him Alex simply because of the fact that is the name of the voice it uses to read to me. How in the world would I post blogs without you.

Well as you can see with the posting of my laptop I don't really have the most friends haha  sad huh?

 P.s. my family has names to. I'll put them with their first initials because I don't know if they want their names up R.C.M.N.J.R.E.

If I break a glass and nobody sees it, did it really happen???

It's very possible. So I think there is a reason I don't clean that much. It's probably because I'm lazy, but also cause I mess everything up. So here goes the tale...

It all started on tuesday. I was actually in the mood to clean (shocker to those who know me I know). So I decided to vacuum up the bedroom and the bathroom. Why the bathroom you say? Well, I thought it would be easier then sweeping. so anyway, I'm vacuuming the bedroom and doing an awesome job in the room till the container on the vacuum is full. So I go outside to clean it out in Egypt's poo-can , and decide to look at the filter. IT WAS FILTHY! Now this is a brand new vacuum that has only been used maybe twice. I really wish that wasn't a lie. So i thump the filter on the floor a bit to get all the grime out. I swear there could have been an ant colony with all the dirt/muck in there. Now I'm pretty disgusted at this point and bummed because i have to go vacuum the room again to make sure i didn't miss anything... I did. I had to go clean out the vacuum again when I was done. So this is where it gets good. I decide that it would be easier to vacuum the bathroom, so I wouldn't have to fiddle around with the broom and dust pan... Good idea, but when it gets put into action its ridiculous. I Get close the one of the rugs and I step on it so it doesn't get sucked up into the vac. Well I wasn't paying attention to the other rug that was one inch away. Literally. So I hear the vacuum gagging on the other rug and i have to shut it off real quick which isn't as easy at it sounds. I am in the middle of panicking and trying to touch the power pedal, but i keep pushing the release so the handle will pivot. But I finally got it and the vacuum was saved. The rug got a little jacked up but nothing a little toss in the washer can't fix.

So now to yesterday! Another story with the vacuum. I decided to vacuum the living room. So I make all the precautions of moving the chairs asking Natalie if she could move the ottoman, and making sure nay loose wires are outta the way. So the whole thing is going without a hitch till I am 99.9% done. I hear a noise that sounds like a piece of paper got sucked up, but no... It was our extra 80 dollar mac charger!!! I shut the vacuum off as soon as I heard Nat say Oh No! So we check the wire and the entire side of it was completely stripped. At the time I was pretty bummed about it, but now its pretty funny. This vacuum has it out for me and/or my possessions. THANK YOU FOR THE VACUUM TASCHE!!!

Now to today. I woke up at about 6:30 this morning. I could have sworn i heard some glass breaking, and also my neighbors stupid dog was outside my window barking. So I was tired of laying in bed, and had nothing to do. So I fed Egypt earlier and had her do all her business for the morning. So then I get on my laptop and start listening to music. And for some reason I decide to clean again...Bad idea. So remember that broken glass??? Well it stayed in my mind the whole time, and thats what makes this story ironic. I remembered the dishes got washed I guess maybe yesterday... Shows how well I remember. So I start to unload them and everything is going well. Then I get to the plates. I hate plates. No matter how quiet you are trying to be... They make it impossible. I touched 2 plates together and you'd swear it sounds like someone just threw a rock through your window. I manage to get all the plates stacked and ready for moving, without waking anyone in the apartment/the dead. And.......... Success!!!! I didn't break the plates. Now its times to load what little dishes are in the sink. A few bowls and silverware, no big deal. Then I find a little vase that I spent about an hour cleaning tuesday. It was very groovy( and I mean it in the details, not the way hippies use it) I thought i would put the vase in the dish washer, but didn't because I heard Natalie wake up and I didn't want her to come out and see what I had done yet. So I go and tell her good morning and that I was cleaning. So after that I go back to the kitchen and... You guessed it. I knocked the vase of the counter and it shatters all over the floor. I couldn't believe it!!! All that work to clean it and get the ancient dust off, just to have it smash all over the floor. So I'm pretty ticked because there went my morning of silent cleaning. And for a blind person thats not exactly the easiest thing to do. Good thing Natalie was awake... She came and swept for me. I didn't want to move because i was bare foot and knowing my lousy luck my first step would have been on the biggest most jagged piece of glass... After that I wasn't much in the mood to finish.

So if this is some kind of hint that I shouldn't clean, I wish I would have taken it. O well I was trying to help Nat out a bit. She's been busy with school and Guide dogs of Texas stuff. And for me cleaning from now on... I RETIRE!!!!! haha Thats a line from scarface. thanks for checking in again everyone, there is more to come.

First Days of Guide Dog school

The first days Of guide dog school were... What's a good way to say... frustrating. Don't get me wrong everything was excellent, but knowing you were going to get your dog in a few days was murder. We did a lot of simulation work called Juno , but I'm not going to go to far into that because I don't know if I'm allowed to. Juno is the general named used with the majority of guide dog schools for their simulation dog. So we did work with juno for three days and then were paired up with our dogs. They do a lot of evaluations, and ask alot of questions to pair you up with the dog that best suits you and your personality. In my case, I wanted a mellow slow paced dog. When I could see I walked very slowly, not because i was cautious, but because I was just slow. (I get it from my dad) So With all the interrogation and evaluations they paired me up with Egypt. That day dragged on like you wouldn't believe. It was like someone kept setting the clock back an hour every hour it was horrible. So finally they called me to introduce me to Egypt. I practically ran down the hall way when i realized i didn't know which room to go to. After They got me into the room I sat . and. sat. and sat. for what seemed like hours. Then. She walked in. No. it wasn't Egypt. I practically had my arms open a smile on my face and was saying come here Egypt. But NO! It was the supervisor. She told me Egypt would be coming in in just a minute. So needless to say I was a little disgruntled. But then My instructor came in with egypt. It was awesome. Egypt came up to me wagging her tail and she licked me and sat down in between my legs. It was one of the best moments of my life. So after that we got to take our dogs back to our dorm room for some bonding. Egypt and I were regulars in the music room. She would lay down at my feet while I played the guitar.Now after this day... The real training started

Well that was the first three days of guide dog school I'm going to sum up a bit of it so we can get the story going a bit more. there were some intesnse moments there at the school though don't worry I'll put those in for sure.

*****IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER******

I like to tease Natalie a lot in person and in my blog. But she is actually very good to me. She doesn't starve me, and she isn't all that grouchy. Sometimes she can be though haha. But on a serious note, which rarely comes from me, She treats me well and has my safety,health, and sanity in mind.

P.S. If you are interested in the life of a puppy raiser check out Nat's blog.

Should have stayed home

Sorry folks this has been a slow uneventful week. But today was almost thrilling. It all starts when I woke up. I didn't have to go to spanish today because there was a test and i have my test scheduled for next week. So you know what that means... Why of course... Sleep in. Well... It didn't happen... Egypt heard my alarm go off and so she took it upon herself to make sure I was up and serving her breakfast. Now usually she won't pester melike this unless she really has to go to the bathroom or she has some other reason unbeknownst to me. Now here is a glimpse of what she does. She will get up and I'll still be mostly asleep and i feel a nudge with a cold wet nose, or the weight of her head resting on the side of the bed right next to me. If a slight amount of time goes by these actions intensify, and she starts this heavy sigh type of breathing. If I could see i bet i would be looking into the biggest set of puppy eyes I've ever seen. Now from many sources they have told me that Egypt has this look down to an art. She will display these eyes to many people when she is just sitting and I always hear the all to common "OOOOO look at the dog!" Or "Omg It's a dog" Which translates to me as "blah blah blah CAN I PET IT!!!!!!".Soooo. back to My story.. My day of sleeping in was cut extremely short. Even though I do wake up and feed egypt at 830 every morning,I got the guilt trip for about a minute till i got outta bed and fed her and took her outside to relieve. I think she was just bored this morning because she was jumping all around even after she went to the bathroom. This is normal behavior for her, but today it was a little more intense. So I stayed up the rest of the morning and I went to take a shower. Little did I know that people get grouchy when I shower in the morning because i use all the hot water. Now the grouch Waited for a little while to shower too, Even though I told her there was plenty of hot water she went ahead and waited about an hour to shower. So moving along We headed to the dreaded school on friday. I decided to leave my backpack and laptop at home so i wouldn't get distracted with the glories of the internet when I should be paying attention in history class. BIG MISTAKE. When I got into class the professor told us we were having a pop quiz, and when everyone started to complain she explained to us her type of pop quiz. All we had to do was write our name on a sheet of paper and get the names of 10 other people and have it in alphabetical order, then we turn it in. Now this so called quiz would give us 5 extra points on our next test. So I'm there kicking myself for not bringing my backpack and about to leave. But I decided to ask someone for a sheet of paper so I could try and get this done. I found someone right next to me. She didn't understand english all that well though. So she gave me a paper and got my info down for me, I thought she was going to give it to me , but she turned it into the professor for me. With just my name. haha. She was really nice though so I give her props. I wonder if i'm still going to get the points. O yeah i forgot to mention that after we turned in the paper we were free to leave. So i was in class for a total of 5 minutes... Wish i was joking about that. So after that i go and wait outside of Nat's class so We could go home after she got out... What a wonderful day at school.

TRUELY a Halloween Nightmare

Hmm... Where to start. At the point of nearly starving to death or almost getting run over by an old lady behind the wheel of a Walmart shopping cart? I'll just start from the beginning of it all. I thought it was going to be a normal day of just sitting around and relaxing, clearly I was wrong. I can never remember what we have to eat here at home so I'll go raid the pantry and sometimes the fridge to find absolutely nothing to eat. So i grabbed a sleeve of ritz crackers that were in the pantry and decided this would be a good snack. Well that good snack ended up practically being my whole ration for the day. So I asked Natalie if we could go to walmart to pick up some groceries so we could eat something besides the dust we breath in. Natalie told me we could go later because she was doing laundry, which I later realized meant she was watching an America's next top model marathon. So I retreated to the bedroom to put myself in a self induced coma to slow my metabolism so I could save my strength for the day. (I really just took a nap and didn't realize it till my phone rang and scared the life outta me) So I finally annoyed Nat enough to get her to take me to walmart. Here is where the real nightmare begins. It all started out well enough, we walked in and nothing is out of the ordinary... Till SHE showed up. Nat and I were looking for nacho cheese because I love nachos and I have been dying for some lately, when an old lady who Nat describes as looking like The Penguin from the batman movies comes down the isle. Now I don't know if none of this lady's senses work but she walked right down the isle and Nat tells me to watch out so I panic and don't know where to go. Natalie kindly moves out of the way so the lady can go around Egypt and I. But NO! the lady strolls right up to me and Egypt, making Egypt move and trip on my foot. She didn't say a word to me or acknowledge that I even existed... I have no clue how she drove herself to Walmart, if she has that same attitude on the road she has got to have one hell of a driving record. .. Anyway. I was really upset at this rudeness, I usually brush everything off, but i guess it was the complete lack of acknowledgement of my existence that got me mad. So I fumed a little bit about the lady for a few minutes just loud enough so Nat could hear me. She was pretty ticked too. When all of a sudden I hear a bark in the store. My first thought was is there a stray here in Walmart??? Then Nat and I thought it might be a crazy kid screaming. So we brush it off. So we go to the check out line for the first time. (I wish I was making that up) When some kid says "OOOO look at the dog!" And he comes and pets Egypt. Now if he was 2 years old I would have been ok with it, but no this kid was like 13 Nat told me. Lucky for him Natalie was the one who caught him petting Egypt and told him not to. So we inched along the counter when we realize that we don't have eggs or a cake pan for the cake Nat wants to make. So we get out of line so we can go get these 2 items. Remember I am about to eat anything that has the misfortune of coming too close to my mouth. So when we go get this cake pan we hear a bark again, sure enough it was real. But it was a fellow service dog. I don't really have much to say about him because he was an assistant for a woman in a wheel chair. But on our way to the eggs... This other woman had a german shepherd in the store... I think the dogs halloween costume was to be a service dog, because the moment it saw Egypt it started to lunge and growl at her. This leaves me silently apologizing to the lady with the wheel chair, it was not her dog after all. I'm not going to lie this dog scared the crap outta me simply because i thought we had solved the mystery of the unknown barking. So the dog scared Egypt as well and I had to calm her down a bit and assure her the dog was gone. Well that dog made me a liar. We were heading over to the check out counter when who do you think we saw... You got it the german shepherd. It lunged again and this time barked a few times confirming my suspicion to his bark. So it scared me again and I gave it a mad look. I don't know if he saw me, haha It was just my reaction to things, I always make a mad face. So I'm all stressed out with that dog and then I'm hoping a manager wasn't going to come and talk to me about my dog being disruptive when she did nothing at all. But it didn't happen. The cashier had my back, without realizing it. She always sees us walking around in walmart and said Egypt was good. This so far has been my worst time ever going out somewhere with Egypt. From old ladies that try to run you down with a shopping cart, to roudy dogs in the store, it was truely a nightmare. The good thing that came out of this whole ordeal is that I found out which cheese I like with my nachos and I'll never by the wrong one again. Thanks for reading and I'll have more to post to catch you up on some of the past with Egypt. Happy Halloween and be safe.

Intros

Hi everyone! My name is Darrell Garza, I am 21 years old and am currently a student in college. I plan on getting my degree in kinesiology and doing something with it, haha. I got a guide dog 5 months ago I sort of had a blog going about it , but i was having a hard time posting. Now I have a Mac book pro... and it's awesome. Well enough about me for now... Now to Egypt. She is... How should I put it??? Perfect? Yeah I'll go with that. She is a yellow lab born on July 11th 07, She has stunning brown eyes from what I hear and a pink heart shape on her nose. She is a very mellow and relaxed girl, she is a lot like me laid back with no worries. She is an excellent worker too. She alerts me to many things sometimes when she doesn't have to and she is very cautious. She takes very good care of me and if I do slip or bump something and she notices it, she gets upset. If I didn't have egypt I don't know what I would do. Yeah thats a bit dramatic but it is the truth. I went blind in Oct. of 06 and for about a year and a half I just bummed rides off of peoples shoulders and that is more or less how I got around. Then I met my girlfriend Natalie. She did the shoulder thing for about a month or so then started asking me to use my cane(which I got in 4th grade). I wasn't to keen on this idea simply for the fact that I was a bit self conscious of myself with the cane. So I didn't use it (wish I did. you'll find out why). Natalie wasn't going to not let me use the cane so she started telling me she was going to run me into stuff on purpose (I thought I'd call her bluff). She wasn't bluffing! Haha. Some of you might be upset at this I know i was, but it was for a good reason, and I'm not bitter anymore. So i started using my cane for my own safety, it also came in handy for tripping Natalie up when she wasn't expecting it. So this went on for several months, as each one passed my frustrations with the cane built up. I had a super tall cane which wasn't bad, but if it got caught up on a tiny pebble or grain of sand it would rocket up and stab me in the arm pit which hurt really bad or it would get me in the chest and I could almost swear there was a jouster around. So one day after threatening my cane to hell haha, Natalie thought she would research guide dogs. So we looked at several schools which all seem great, and I choose the one that sounded like it was just right for me. (It was actually the first one she told me about and I stuck with it but we still looked at the other schools) This was back in August of 08 by the way, I didn't know how long the program was going to take but when I found out i was a little bummed. The program took a month to complete which is about the average with all the other schools. So being that i am a college student it was kind of out of the question unless i wanted to bomb every class and take them again the next semester. So a couple months went by and then I started getting serious about filling out the info I needed for the school to accept me. When I finished the requirements for admissions I impatiently waited for an answer from the admissions office. One day I decided to call the school and see if they had gotten my info and the woman that started the change of my life told me "Have you checked your email? You've been accepted!" And as you can probably tell... I talk a lot. Well this wasn't the case for me at the moment. The lady actually had to say "hello?" because believe it or not i was speechless. This was at the end of March, and my training began on May 25th. So I tried to keep myself busy not counting down the days, which didn't happen but somehow they melted away. Days were ticking away and before I Knew it, it was May 24th and I was nervous as hell because I've never been away from my family for so long. So now I am going to let my fingers, your eyes, and my/your ears relax and I will start telling you about the guide dog school summed up of course and get you up to speed with my and Egypt's everyday life.