Some small things

We've been getting a lot of snow here in good 'ole Michigan. I had three snow days at work last week so you would think that I would have posted more, but that just didn't happen. There are a few small things I wanted to update about so here they are.

Ronnie and I made a snow bear the other day.  It was supposed to be a snow Mickey, but the ears got smashed down a little too much and we were too wore out to fix it.  Making a snow man is a lot harder than I remember!


I loved this blog post by the New York Public Library.  Do you judge a book by it's cover?  I'm admittedly very bad about this so I think this is a fun activity.

I finished the Jessica Darling series this month.  I think the last book was even better than the first.  If you have a Kindle, you can get all 5 books for $9.99 here.  It's still 56 bucks for the Nook.  :(

Where are all the pictures of my piggies?  I moved them to tumblr so that you guys won't have to scroll through them all the time.  I can't promise I won't still talk about them, but you won't have to be assaulted by their cute faces all the time.  You can see their pictures here at ziggiepiggies.

So in love with this

"I want to be a guinea pig too." via 0xo

Plymouth Ice Festival

Well, my first class of the semester is finally over.  I think I mentioned it before, but just incase I haven't, it was a class about how to take online classes. It didn't matter that one of my credits I transferred was from an online class,  I still had to take the class anyway and let me tell you, it was kind of a pain in the butt.  To get you used to what taking a full course load was like we were given a LOT of work to do.  I had 2 or 3 papers to write a week.  My next 2 courses start on the 17th of next month so I have some down time to catch up on my knitting and all of my posts here about the few things I did manage to finish knitting.

I meant to post these pictures earlier, but all of my papers about time management got in the way.  So without further ado, here are a few pictures from the Plymouth Ice Festival that I went to with my mom, my pops and Kevin.

Cold Penguins.

Reindeer.  I think?

ICE DINOS.  OH YES!!!

CHAINSAW BEAR.  BEING CHANSAWED IN FRONT OF MY VERY EYES!

As you can see it was cold, but very awesome.  After walking around and freezing our butts off, we went to have pizza.  Kevin and I got an all cheese one, but my mom and dad got some weird sausage and ham one.  Kevin and I rated the cheese pizza a 7 out of 10, but Kevin said that our parents pizza tasted like 'the meat was from Kroger.' 

And because it's not a post if I don't post a picture of my always hungry piggies :D :

Chomp Chomp Chomp

Kirk goes to the Vet Part 2

Thursday was Kirk's follow up appointment with the vet. I noticed that he was doing much better, but I was anxious to see what the vet would say. He didn't have to have any needle pricks this time, but he did have to be subjected to the stethoscope which he wasn't too pleased about. He was talking away while Dr. Cook patiently waited for him to stop. After I gave him a few pets he stopped the chattering and his lungs and his little paws (because they use them to wipe their nose) passed the pneumonia inspection! The vet said that pneumonia never really leaves their systems, so there is a chance that he might get it back someday but that for now he is doing much, much better! He also said he was gaining weight which is a good thing:


Here he is sitting in his food bowl eating a treat. Ronnie sent this to me while I was at work with the caption "Only a pig sits in food to eat food." :D

In other guinea pig news, we had to throw out the crinkle tube that we got from the pet store because someone made a big mess inside of it. I was rinsing it out and putting it back in the cage after it dried, but the tube was not going to make a come back after this particular mess. I decided to order some new homemade cage accessories so that I could put them in the washer instead of throwing them out. Here is what we got:

New crinkle tube and a crinkle sac from TheCozyFerret.

Cuddle Cup from ellencho.

I tried to find them some space themed bedding/toys, but c'mon, dinosaurs! I'm looking forward for everything to get here to see how they will react. Right now we just have their little huts, their food and hay in there so it should be interesting!

Kirk and Spocks New Home

About a week ago, Ronnie ordered the piggies a new C&C cage. I've been stalking the mailman and the FedEx lady everyday and today it made it! It took us (or I should say Ronnie) about 20 minutes to get it all built and ready to go. As you can see, we also decided to go with fleece bedding. I think in the long run it will be less expensive and easier to keep clean. I ordered 2 so that we could have a fresh one ready while the other one was in the washer. We ordered ours from piggybedspreads.com.

This cage has a LOT more room than the one we got for them at the pet store and they were thrilled about the space. I think they ran laps for about an hour. Here is a cute video of Spock popcorning like crazy. Now you know why he is the wild one!

Kirk Update

Buy awesome this 'What Guinea Pigs think' print right here by cazzam.

I'm not sure if anyone else has been on the edge of their seats wondering about Kirk, but I know I've certainly been going crazy. I'm very happy to report that he is doing excellent today. Aside from a few sneezes this afternoon it's almost as if he was never sick. Giving him his medication has been a bit of a trial, but it's obviously working. He hasn't bit off any of my fingers yet despite the fact that I'm giving him 2 nose drops every 8 hours and 2 oral medications every 12. He's a trooper! The vet called me today to make sure he was doing okay and to ask if I had any questions. I was pretty impressed with that. I would highly recommend the Southgate Animal Hospital to anyone in the downriver area, they were really good to us.

I know some people think that guinea pigs are a disposable pet, but I have gotten quite attached to my 2 little boys already and even though I got the 2 piggies to be pair, I'm pretty sure Kirk and I are the bonded pair. Because Kirk is more docile he's easier to pick up and love on. We lay on the couch and watch TV together (or rather I watch TV and Kirk snoozes while getting petted) and he greets me every time I go to their cage. Spock is my wild boy, and Kirk is my little lover.

Today I got them to eat a little bit of leafy greens. Before today, I tried carrots (baby AND shredded), cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, a small piece of orange and an orange peel and they weren't going for any of it. I picked up some cucumbers, green beans and parsely at the grocery store today. I tried the cucumbers first because I was going to try to inject Kirk's oral meds into some pieces but he wasn't feeling it at all. Same with the green beans. They weren't too keen on the parsley either until I mixed a small amount of hay on top of it. I'm going to try to get a video of them sucking it down tomorrow because it's absolutely hilarious to watch. I've read that guineas from pet stores are more reluctant to try veggies because they don't get them in the store so I'm hoping that they will branch out soon. I'm going to keep bothering them with new stuff until they start eating their veggies.


Hopefully all of my posts in the near future won't be all piggy related. Kirk has been my number one priority lately and school has been second. My first class is about how to take online classes. It has a pretty insane amount of assignments for what I thought would be a piece of cake class. For example, I had to make a spread sheet last week with all 24 hours of my day filled in with what I would be doing for a 3 week period. This was example of time management I guess. It might not sound that bad, but it was a pain in the ass. That's on top of participating in mandatory discussions every day.

Kirk goes to the vet.

Last night when I got home from work, I noticed Kirk was looking a little down. He was hiding in his little hut and breathing pretty hard so I started to get worried. Since it was almost midnight when I got home, I had to wait until this morning to take him into the vet. I called the as soon as I woke up and they told me to bring him in immediately. I changed quickly and dashed out the door. When I got in, they checked to make sure he was stable while I filled out the paperwork. Once we got our room and the doctor came in, he checked his lungs, his eyes, his nose and his little paws to find out what was wrong.

Kirk has pneumonia. :( I'm not sure how he caught it, the vet said he thinks it was the stress of being moved from the pet store to our place. I asked if Kirk will make it because I read that it can kill guinea pigs and he sounded pretty optimistic. Kirk squealed like crazy when the vet gave him his 2 shots which he said is a good sign and he is still eating like there is no tomorrow so I'm hopeful. For now we have 2 oral medications and 1 medication for his nostrils that he takes every 8 hours. Keep your fingers crossed for him!

I did ask about Spock. I was concerned about keeping them in the same cage, but the vet said that if Kirk has it then Spock has already been in contact with it. He's been his normal Spock-ey self so I'm hoping that he won't catch it too.

The guinea pig post.

It's been a few days since I've posted, because I've been very busy being a guinea pig mom! Ronnie and I went out on the 1st of the year and picked up our first joint pet, Kirk. We brought him home and put together his house and I started doing a bunch of research about being a guinea pig owner. One of the things I read, was that guinea pigs are very social and it's good to keep them in pairs so we went BACK to the pet store and got another one, which we naturally named Spock. :) When we went back to Petsmart, the lady who was getting the pigs out of their cage said "Another one?!" when she saw me. Yes, I'm the crazy guinea pig lady.

Kirk. Oh sorry, wrong one.

Kirk.

Spock. His crazy hair matches his crazy personality.

After today I think I'm going to take a short break from reading all of the tips online, because I have been going a little crazy. If I told everyone the amount of things we've purchased since getting the piggies you would all think I'm a little nuts! We did order them a large open top cage today and I think I'm going to focus all of my energy on that for a while.

Did someone say fleece bedding? Good God, I don't need another thing to obsess over! (image source