My Dogs Got High Last Night

 

I've been delving into the world of CBD looking for something to help me deal with this latest round of covid firebombing all the things that are wrong with my nerves and joints.

The first place I tried also had dog treats, and since our doggos are getting older, and the fetch addict (I mean that literally) is getting stiff after her fix these days, I thought, why not?

I gave them their first CBD dog treat last night and OMG. 

When our doggos are high, they are filled with love. 

I got massive snuggles from the chocolate rescue, his tail windmilling faster than I've ever seen it spin. He then ended up splayed, belly up, on the couch. This was unusual as he's usually very guarded. It's taken him years to show us his belly and he is always careful to do it at a side angle so he can get away if he needs to. But not with CBD on board. With CBD, he lolled like he was doing a boudoir photo shoot.

The black doggo, the crazy one, the one who stalks and calculates and manipulates and steals, she just stared at me with all this love in her eyes and then crawled into my lap. Now, she isn't usually a snuggler. She wants to chase balls. 

Her behavior schematic is all about getting us to play fetch with her. Every interaction is an effort to get us to break out the balls to the point where we have to hide them because if she finds one she'll be insufferable until we cave. Fetch is her entire personality. If we didn't throw balls for her, she wouldn't give us the time of day and would happily leave us to die in a fire...that she probably would start out of spite. 

But CBD turned our fetch obsessed sociopath into a loopy love bug. Deep down she doesn't only love balls...

As for me and CBD...I got a menthol CBD cream and meh. I'd rather eat the dog treats lol. Yes, it worked, but not for long. I also seem to have more joint inflammation today--like maybe a rebound effect?-- and it seems to make me tired and groggy now that I'm awake. I feel hungover, which isn't supposed to happen so I'm not sure what's going on.

The dogs though, they are desperate to eat the cream which is a problem. I tested the cream on my foot first, knowing I could use my slippers to keep the dogs away, and that move turned out to be prescient. Once I got my slipper on, they pawed and licked it, trying to get inside. I had to keep telling them off and go to your bed. They were like sharks that had scented blood. I've never seen them like that.

Obv I don't want them licking this off me and it's not going to be safe if they're this intense about it. As a result, I've gone on to order some gummies and we'll see what those are like. 

I did feel like I slept pretty deeply from the cream, which I need. (I'm so sleep deprived from Covid eating me alive. I have a lot of catching up to do.) But again, I don't think the cream is known to make you sleepy, yet I felt a distinct cause and effect along those lines. I'm curious to see what gummies can do. If I can sleep through some of the pain that's been waking me up without a massive hangover, that would be a major improvement.

Meanwhile I'm starting up with the leg lifts and squats again. It's tricky because things are still flared enough that sometimes that hurts more than it helps, but I can only determine what the right choice was in hindsight. Every day is a gamble. Fun.

PS: In teen news...she applied for an advocacy non profit thing and was accepted. She'll do one week of training out of state and then an ongoing project in our local community and then a week in DC working on national advocacy. So we're very excited!

I will say homeschooling during a pandemic when the kid and the parent have health issues has made it tough to create a lot of opportunities for her to practice independence and interact with the world without us. I've had to really look for opportunities that would work for her.

She's been volunteering (and will soon qualify for the presidential service award), she has her little part-time job, and the co-op, which despite a tendency toward bigotry, has been a good social outlet, and while we don't like the bigotry, it's good practice in navigating groups of difficult people. (When I'm not wearing my momma bear pants on top of my extra tight cranky pants, I try to be philosophical about these things.)

When I saw this advocacy program, it seemed perfect. It gets her away from us in a productive way, it will work with her limitations, broaden her horizons, and give her more chances to test her mettle so she learns she can rely on herself--that's really important to learn at this age imo. It'll be a great learning experience. I'm so glad she was accepted.

So yay!

And then her English teacher* sent me a message about how smart and talented my kid is and offering to create a class for anything the teen was interested in. 

And then the co-op director told me my kid is so smart and so kind.

Clearly everyone got a memo. So today was A DAY with all the parenting wins at once lol.

*yup we homeschool but she still has an English teacher. With a PhD. We aren't perfect, far from it, but we do take education very seriously.