Happy 4th of July. Are you celebrating? We will be chilling at home comforting a medicated Miko from the stress of fireworks while watching the Stranger Things finale. We did celebrate last night with a family party and got home before the neighborhood fireworks.
Miko had an echocardiogram/heart check up last week with a new specialist vet after our not so great visit in March. This cardiologist confirmed Miko’s heart failure is an very advanced stages which is not a surprise, still not easy to hear, but expected since he has been slowing down and coughing more the last couple of weeks. His medications have been adjusted and he has another follow up visit next week to check his kidney levels after taking the increased doses. We’re just doing everything we can to keep him comfortable and enjoying life and hoping for more time.
We have also been dealing with an interesting challenge in our garden – mice and rats eating all the tomatoes and destroying the tomato vines! This is new for this year, we did not have this issue last year but I read the drought and climate shift has increased rodent activity in this area. Great. When I started noticing many half eaten green tomatoes on the vines, I set up a Ring camera and caught a lot of mice and rat activity during the night.
Then we picked up a humane trap using half eaten tomatoes as the bait catching two mice and releasing them in open, unused farm land in the boonies. But the rats are too smart for the trap even with tempting greasy and salty potato chips for the bait. Caught one below sniffing the chips from the side of the trap, but deciding not to go for them. And a rat pushing the camera off the side of the garden bed another night, yikes! So I will be looking into other humane options.
Luckily they have not been eating anything else in the garden yet and I sill have plenty of summer squash and cucumbers for salads and stir fries.
And I scored another great Haven’s Kitchen sauce deal at Grocery Outlet to jazz up zucchini and soy curls.
Friday we stepped out to a local pizza place we have not been to since Covid-19, it was great grabbing a simple veggie-loaded pizza with no cheese and beer.
There has also been a kicky green curry paste soy curl and potato sauté that made great leftovers for multiple meals and plenty of chilled watermelon shared with Miko.
For our early family 4th celebration last night, it was a loaded Impossible Burger with salad and oven fries with hard kombucha and perfect weather for sitting outside in the 70s here when it’s normally triple digit heat this time of year.
Miko also enjoyed spending time with family and getting extra attention. Boo on going back to work, but it’s a short 3-day week for me and another 3-day weekend since I need to use vacation time, looking forward to that. Hope you have a smooth week ahead starting with the list.
- Vegan products at Costco worth getting a membership for.
- The perfect vegan grill cheese.
- Is vegan cheese healthy? I love it anyway, but in moderation.
- Benefits of going vegan.
- Summer vegan drinks.
- Best vegan wines for summer.
- Trader Joe’s has a new vegan sour cream.
- Best vegan makeup brands.
- Vegan food combinations for complete protein.
- Beyond Meat vegan steak coming soon?
Tough holiday to celebrate given everything going on in this country as of late, but I’m somewhat grateful that seemed to dampen the illegal fireworks too. Luka hates it, and there’s not much sleep to be had. I’m happy to keep moving forward and getting back to work.
Very true this year. Poor Miko did not take the fireworks well, thankful for medication and his chill pad from the freezer helped him a lot.