Not much of a post today, I’m afraid. I’ve spent the last week trundling my youngest back and forth to Urgent Cares, doctor’s offices, and emergency rooms (twice in one day! hooray!) as we dealt with an ever-snowballing cascade of viruses, secondary infections, and tertiary allergic reactions to the medications sent to treat the secondary infections. It was a mess.
My husband ended up with pneumonia, on the eve of another overseas business trip.
And I fought it off as long as I could, until yesterday, when I woke up feeling like a hungover mess who fell down in the middle of the street, got run over five times, and eventually parked on by a large garbage truck. I spent all of yesterday alternating between consciousness and miserable sleep, glued to the sheets with that sheen of feverish sweat as my body gave a half hearted attempt to fight for my survival.
Today, I can sit up. That is a good thing. But this is the most I can manage to type.
But I’ll share some good news, that I can type quickly: I’m going back to Africa! I’m going on a trip with World Vets in June to help out the donkeys of the Maasai tribe in Arusha, Tanzania. So this is good, I will get all this garbage out of my system now so I’ll be good to go then.
You all know Caroline Golon, right? She runs the amazing rescue site Romeo the Cat and the wonderful cat resource site The Happy Litterbox and the pet PR site HighPaw and she was one of the co-founder of BlogPaws and she’s a great mom to her adorable kiddos and a bunch of other things that, taken in total, make me realize how inadequate my contributions to society have been.
Anyway, I make it a goal to surround myself with incredible people like her because I always learn a ton from them- some may call it ‘parasitism’, but I prefer to think of it as ‘commensalism’. See, that biology degree comes in handy on occasion. And Caroline was kind enough to allow me to be her commensal organism while we were at Global Pet Expo.
Now, when you look at the technical definition of commensalism, it is this: commensalism is a class of relationship between two organisms where one organism benefits but the other is neutral (there is no harm or benefit). I am sure this is what she had in mind when we were making our plans- sure, I’ll let the vet chick hang out with me, what harm could come of it?
Then I started talking to her about a video. A simple concept, really. It would be the two of us, checking out some of the newest pet products at Global. She works in PR, this is right up her alley, I said.
Then we started tossing around ideas about how to make it, how shall I put it, “unique”…. and I waited for her to scrape me off her agenda like a dolphin might scrape off a wayward barnacle. But God bless her, she rolled with it and made it even better. I’m not sure if that counts as commensalism, humoring me, or just hoping maybe it dies a quick death on the blog, but I put it on YouTube, so now it will live in perpetuity.
What choice did I have? I do, after all, dearly love pet products. And you all know how far I’m willing to go to ensure a product lives up to my expectations.
So thank you, dear Caroline, for doing this bit with me. If nothing else, we gave a good number of vendors at Global a welcome respite from the boredom of their late afternoon with our camera and our slapstick. And say what you will, that bed was awfully comfy.
I am sure Brody has a sense of humor. I can sense it in the twinkle in his eye, the way he waits until his chew toys are nice and soggy before dumping them in my lap. When I’m in a deep sleep, sometimes he rests his chin on the side of the mattress and stares at me silently, breathing doggy breath two inches from my face before I wake with a scream.
He’s full of ‘em.
Last night, with my husband far away, I flicked on the TiVO and watched the latest episode of the Walking Dead. Now, I keep telling people it’s not really about zombies as much as it is about people, but don’t get me wrong- there are a TON of zombies in the show. Scary, well made up zombies, shuffling, moaning, and slovenly, bloodily, violent.
Now I should know better than to watch it when my husband’s out of town, but I really wanted to know what happened in this episode, and I figured, it won’t be that bad.
Well, it was pretty bad. It’s one of those shows that lulls you into a false sense of complacency during a long monologue before a walker bursts through a broken pane of glass and grabs for someone’s throat. In this episode one of the characters was trapped on a schoolbus while the zombies screamed for his blood; we’re talking Nightmare on Elm Street bad, this episode. So now it’s the dead of night, and I’m curled up on the couch rueing my decision to watch this right before I needed to go to bed.
So of course, Brody gets ideas. He strolls, or stalks is maybe a better word, over to the back door. Now, we have no blinds or curtains along the back wall since it doesn’t look onto anyone else’s property, so at night it’s a pitch black wall of window that looks onto whatever emptiness or terrible things might be lurking out there, me inside bathed in a wash of light like vittles on display in the grocery store of the undead. Outside there could be nothing. A stray cat, perhaps. Or perhaps a walker, jonesing for my blood.
Brody stares out into oblivion, and slowly, hair by hair, his hackles raise. And he growls, one of those low, drawn-out growls reserved for “something bad but I don’t know what.”
I look at him. “Brody, stop.”
He swings his head to look at me, stares back outside, and continues to growl.
I say it again, a bit more pleadingly. “Brody, stop. You’re freaking me out.”
He drops his head and presses his nose to the window, continuing his scary growl. Koa goes into the pantry. I contemplate joining her.
“Brody,” I say, backing into the kitchen. “No way am I opening that door. That door is all that stands between us and-” well, whatever it is that is freaking him out, which by now I have imagined is a flood of shambling grey animated corpses dropping over the low wall separating us from the neighbors and slowly, inexorably making their way to the back door.
He keeps this up for a good two minutes, during which I am powerless to do anything except wait. In my mind’s eye, the palm frond brushing the windowsill in the nighttime wind looks strangely like a skeletal finger, an image I can’t erase as my overactive imagination starts wondering just how much it hurts to get devoured.
And then, just like that, he drops it, then comes over wagging and leans into me for a pat like nothing’s wrong. “Good one, huh?” his body language says. I never did figure out what it was that was bugging him, because I immediately went upstairs and set the house alarm.
Normally I take the weekends as a time to unwind, refresh my brain, and get ready for the next week. Usually this is a doable thing. But, sometimes things get kind of nutty, and in those times there’s not much to be done except deal with it and let all the other things you’re supposed to do- like blog- fall by the wayside.
My husband left on Friday for a weeklong business trip overseas. It happens, that’s part of his job description. But it certainly provides for certain, shall we say, logistical difficulties when that weekend happens to be the same weekend as the annual Father-Daughter dance at school. Fortunately we have grandfathers who are happy to step in, and all is well.
I thought that would be the biggest challenge of the weekend, until I woke up yesterday to my son- who has been sick for close to a week with a nasty cold- holding his ears and screaming in pain. Being the typical health care provider that I am, I had to resist my normal inclination to say “If nothing’s falling off, you’re fine, here’s some Motrin” and actually consider that maybe he was really sick. Being without an otoscope at home, I had to suck it up and try to figure out where the nearest Urgent Care facility was and just how I was going to juggle that trip in to the day.
Which was fine, until same sick child looked up from his tear filled fingers to point at the water dripping from the ceiling, which unfortunately was not from anyone’s tears, but from what appears to be leak number 8,465 we’ve had in this horrid house. And I just did NOT have time for it, so I shoved a bucket under the faucet that is likely the source and crossed my fingers, and left the house. (more…)
I had this whole long serious post about the topic of owner relinquishments and why they were always a nightmare to deal with, but I got sidetracked from my mission when every single media outlet I could find that was talking about the case in question used, in some form or another, the word “euthanization.”
I’ve been seeing it in headlines in print and on the web with increasing frequency the last couple of years and it always makes my irises spasm with pain. Euthanasia, to euthanize: those two phrases pretty much cover all the uses of the word one might need. “Euthanization” is an unnecessary addition of letters that makes it sound like a horribly named indie alternative band. I want to find the person who first started using this word and banish them to the same desert island where the guy who coined the word “spaded” was sent in the late 1970′s.
The hardest part is, you can’t really correct someone when they have it wrong because then you’re the jerk who’s correcting someone who is talking about euthanasia- so all I can do is try a pre-emptive strike while everyone is in a quiet contemplative mood, and just insert it into your subconscious to please never say it around me.
So here, for 2012, is the new and updated list of things that hit my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard:
* spaded: Spayed. One syllable.
* vetranarian: veterinarian. Six syllables.
* payment plan: Six syllables: Plans to pay, for first month.
* spider bite: Could be staph, might be a laceration, very rarely an actual spider bite.
* Just noticed it yesterday: Just started bleeding yesterday.
New for 2012!
* euthanization: A nation I do not want to visit.
Don’t get me wrong, if I were to hear any of these in an exam room I would politely nod and go about my business, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But on the inside, there is a bespectacled little neuron sitting morosely at a desk in my frontal lobe, quietly weeping.
I know you all have interesting jobs with their own strange quirks- anything in particular that drives you to distraction when you hear it?
I haven’t been whale watching since I was a kid. It seems counter-intuitive, seeing as how I live right along the path of the gray while migration, and I have a marine biology background, but I guess it’s one of those things I keep meaning to do but never get around to. Just like people who live in Las Vegas never go to the strip, or those in LA stay away from Universal Studios, you tend to avoid the touristy stuff in the area in which you live.
So when a friend of mine asked if anyone was interested in joining her family on a whale watching trip on Monday, I said, “Oh! We totally need to do that!” The kids were excited, I was excited, we were good to go.
It was a gorgeous day in San Diego, albeit choppy as heck on the water. While we boated out of the harbor, a volunteer naturalist from the Birch Aquarium told us all about the annual gray whale migration. (more…)
I like spending time with my family. We do crafty things, because they’re fun and everyone enjoys them. One of our traditions, started back when my daughter was in kindergarten, is to make little Valentine’s Day trinket boxes to send to school on Valentine’s Day- a craft I found on the Martha Stewart website and immediately fell in love with. It’s a cute craft- you take empty matchboxes, cover them with scrapbook paper and ribbons, and fill them with conversation hearts. It’s simple, sweet, and it’s always gone over well.
Until this year.
Last Friday, as I was at home recovering from the jetlag of my Westminster trip, I was interrupted in my reverie by a phone call from the school principal, who called to let me know that she had received “multiple complaints” about my little craft. My immediate thought was, oh no, the kids forgot to remove the matches from some of the boxes, but that wasn’t it. Some parents were just mortified that I used matchboxes for a craft. The principal patiently explained, in the same tone one might explain to a kindergartner why gargling with Drano is a bad idea, about the dangers of sulfur residue. Then she said the part that really killed me: “You need to think about the message you are sending here.”
The message I had sent, or so I thought, was, “I care enough about your kids to spend a day running around gathering supplies to make a cute and time consuming re-purposing project.” But people being the contrary types who like to assume the worst read something else into it, what, I don’t know exactly. “Hey kids, pyromania is fun!” “Crack is cool!” Empty matchboxes are the gateway craft, y’all. (more…)
Veterinary work is an emotionally charged field. Rarely are people in an ambivalent, steady state sort of mind the way they are, say, at the gas station, or buying bananas at the grocery store. They are either happy because they have a cute young pet getting routine care, or stressed because their pet is ill/expensive/having surgery/waiting too long in the exam room. You get the picture.
So I’m used to dealing with stressed and angry people. You have to be. There are ways to defuse situations, and ways to escalate them.
Now I know that I am, personally, sometimes but not always, a bit of a hothead. Shocking, I know. I’ve never yelled at clients, never gotten loud, never thrown things or berated coworkers or any of that. Not because I’ve never felt the urge, but because that’s not what you do. Being pleasant and polite in the face of stress is what professionals are paid to do, so you do it. That aside, getting into it with clients or customers never serves any purpose, right? Help them solve their problem and move on.
Now on the flip side, when I’m out and about living life, I get irked not uncommonly. I try really hard not to, but it happens. And when it’s accompanied by jet lag, lack of sleep, and dehydration it only gets worse.
It was in this state that I arrived back home on Wednesday. I was already mad because I had to gate check my bag, which I HATE doing, and despite my attempts to make the bag handler-proof as it was being whisked away I realized my car keys were still in it. Greeeeeeat.
And because I am lucky when I travel and we had the extra pleasure of a TSA agent at the gate doing a triple level of screening, he took my nervous fidgeting as I watched my car keys being handed off to some stranger on the tarmac as signs of impending terrorism. He pulled me out of line for additional harassment, which consisted of him looking at my drivers license, up at me, back at my license, back at me for a good three minutes while asking me my name and my destination about three times. But he wanted to be thorough, so then he asked my middle name just for funsies, I guess, and, convinced of my benevolent intents, finally let me on the plane. (more…)
Westminster was so much fun. I can’t wait to go home and sort through all the pictures. For my first time there, it was an eventful experience.
One, there was drama. There’s always drama at these shows to begin with, it seems, but this year was extra dramatic. I know lots of you already know about the controversy about Westminster breaking ties with Pedigree, and all I can say for now is that I am going to do all I can to get a better understanding about what happened and report back to you, because I think it’s a worthy topic to discuss.
But there was other drama too. I actually like the Pekingese who won, but there were plenty of disgruntled people muttering around me about how they liked the Irish Setter or the Dalmatian or what have you. I’m not vested in that world so to me, so I just sit back and enjoy seeing the many beautiful dogs. Who won or did not win is not that important to me. I met Maverick, who some of you have already heard about- he went from being a rescue dog on Craigslist to showing at Westminster and Eukanuba. AMAZING story and I can’t wait to share him with you all.
But aside from that, I took a breather to do the one thing I really wanted to see in New York aside from the show itself, and that was the World Trade Center memorial. It was very moving, and jarring and surreal to be there.
It’s late, and I have to be up early to jet back home, so forgive me this abbreviated post. I promise to write lots more later. In the meantime, how was your Valentine’s Day? Anyone have anything fun they did with the pups or something else exciting to share? I’m already in the doghouse for missing this holiday at home so I have to plan something good in the next six hours.
My life is a long series of monotonous daily routines punctuated by brief and terrifying moments of outright insanity.
Take this weekend, for example. On Sunday, I’m running in the Helen Woodward Puppy Love 5K on the inaugural Team Iams with an ace group of dogs and friends. Brody and I are super excited. And by excited, I mean, Brody is excited for a long walk and I’m just now realizing I should have spent more time training and less time sampling Girl Scout cookies.
No matter. I may walk a lot of it, but we’re getting out there, and there’s going to be dogs and awesome people and doga, and it will be great.
Then, I’ve given myself just enough time to run home and shower before running to the airport to catch a flight to New York to see the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time. I could have caught a slightly earlier flight and foregone the post-5K shower, but I figured out of a sense of respect for my fellow travelers this was probably not an optional item.
I still have no idea what I’m going to be doing there- I have no agenda, no scheduled meetings (aside from finally getting to meet Annette from Biscuits by Lambchop!) and nothing that I have to do. What I do have is a list of people I want to meet for drinks, and that is good enough for me.
What I do want to do is get some good photos, and this is always a challenge for me on these solo trips because my husband always takes the pictures. This is both a blessing (when he’s around) and a curse (when he’s not.) I’ve never learned the art because I’ve rarely needed to use it.
After seeing that hysterical and slightly cringeworthy screenshot of me trying to hang with the big guys at the AKC show with my point-and-shoot, I decided to go big or go home and bring my husband’s DSLR with me to New York. I’ve been using it for three years, but by “using it” I mostly mean “I set it to full auto and fix it the best I can with Elements”.
What this translates to is that I have spent the last 24 hours with the camera in my lap, flipping through “30D for Dummies” learning what all the buttons mean. I’m reminded of my first clinical days in the vet school hospital, when I stood in the exam room with one hand on the dog and the other looking at the chart murmuring, “Eyes….OK, looked at that….teeth….lymph nodes.”
It took me 15 minutes to get through the exam in those days. That will be me trying to take pictures of squirmy dogs with a new camera. “OK….hmmmm, low aperture means narrow depth of field? Or is it the other way around? Wait, where’s the button for adjusting shutter speed….” and then I will say forget it and flip the dial to Auto and just throw a sock over the persistent auto flash just like I do now.
Much like perfecting the art of the spay, I assume this will take a little more time to learn than the one afternoon I allotted to the task. Oh well, such is the life of a procrastinator. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bag I need to think about packing and not do until late Saturday night.
One of the reasons many vets give for choosing their profession is, “I like animals better than people.” It’s not a good reason, mind you, and those with misanthropic tendencies learn to cover it up pretty quickly or else have a rotten career, but I will tell you from experience that well, it’s true.
I’ve been working on it. I actually get along pretty well with people, as far as I can tell. But every once in a while I experience one of those penultimate human experiences that I’m supposed to relish, and all I can do is run away screaming and bury my face in the dog and not want to talk to another person for at least eight hours, possibly ten. I had one of those this week.
In an attempt to raise a good citizen, I enrolled my daughter in Girl Scouts. I did it when I was a kid. I tried to find my picture of me in my Brownies uniform to prove it, but I think it’s in the storage facility somewhere, at least that is my excuse. Anyway, as far as I could recall, it was fun: we made some ribbon barrettes, colored, got to wear those badass brown sashes to school and strut around every Tuesday, and I think one time I sold some Thin Mints. It was low key.
And I look around at the second graders these days dressing like Miley Cyrus and singing all the words to “I’m Sexy and I Know It”, and I realized something with horror: I’m apparently an old school prude. And I’m really not, but compared to what’s out there, I kind of am. And I had two main choices for after school activities for my daughter: Girl Scouts or the local dance studio, and if you saw what the eight year olds were wearing at the last recital you would understand why I went with the scouts.
Because the Scouts are the answer to all the things we bemoan about being a woman today, right? It’s about teamwork and solidarity. It’s about empowerment. Equality. Buoying your fellow woman instead of throwing her under the bus. Girl power and all of that, embrace your brain, etc.
If I seem a little stressed in the next couple of months, I have a good excuse: we are going to try and sell our house. I say “try”, because this is one of those housing markets when upon saying “I’m going to put my house on the market” the universal response is, “Well, good luck with that.”
We’re staying in the area- after seeing all those pictures from Colorado this weekend I think it’s safe to say I am actually quite content here in San Diego, thanks- and the decision is one that has more to do with commutes and schools than anything else. Now, the last time we sold a house was in 2004, and as you probably know, the market was a little different back then. You could put a ramshackle log cabin on the market in 2004 and it would be sold for a ridiculous bucket of money back then. Our place sold in 10 days, to the second person who saw it. Ah, to be back in 2004 again.
Now, buyers are a little pickier. And the prospect of trying to keep a house in showable condition for possibly months, with two messy kids and a really rowdy Golden who would love nothing more than to go nuts each and every time someone comes by, has me in apoplectic fits. Worse than when I was taking the boards, worse than when I was pregnant. I have NO idea how I’m going to do it.
But I have a point here, and my point is: this is how we found ourselves at the mall on Saturday looking at little knick knacks, because my husband decided potential buyers would be impressed by more candles in the house. Now, I am ambivalent about that kind of stuff to begin with, and all I could think while we were wandering through the store was “It won’t matter, there’s no way the house is going to sell and then we’re going to be stuck in this house forever WITH A BUNCH OF EXTRA CANDLES TO HAVE TO STORE” and then I got even more stressed out and couldn’t concentrate. (more…)
