Thursday, November 23, 2006

thanksgiving

new girl, new car, new job... all within five days.

craziness continues.

As opposed to my earlier post, I'm now the proud owner of an E28 (1983 BMW 533i) -- that's right, my mom finally gave me Q. And I met a real nice girl.

And the university hired me to be an overpaid secretary at the cancer center... nice folks, gorgeous architecture, killer benefits.

So I get to go back to grad school. And Tim's getting better every day.

Things aren't really that bad; they'll be even better once I start getting paychecks.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

2:18 am wednesday

I'm not sure if I'm the sort of person I think I am - I mean, just tonight I've finally articulated the following:

Truth - I drive an old baby-poo-colored automatic-transmission volvo 240 sedan that's in desperate need of an oil change.
Self-concept - I like classic european "enthusiast" cars - BMW 2002 tii, Porsche 356B, Audi coupe, MGB...

Truth - I'm running Linux on an old dell laptop, and haven't bothered to track down a wireless card that will work.
Self-concept - I'm a "geek" who keeps up with the latest in technological arcana.

Truth - My cellphone is vintage 2004, and the hingey-part is tenuous, at best. And no, it doesn't have a camera. Or even a headset.
Self-concept - I'm "wired".

Truth - I do have an iPod, but it's just a shuffle, and I'm not entirely sure where it's located at present. Also, I currently have no way of updating it without resorting to my roommate's computer. (see above re: Linux)
Self-concept - I'm hip and with-it in the world of audio entertainment... and while I listen to unusual music, it's because I'm unique (not because I can't update my music collection).

Truth - Yes, I have a road bike, but it's new and shiny, and not the beat-up single-speed cross / messenger one I wish it were, and I haven't ridden it in months.
Self-concept - I'm athletic and urban-edgy.

Truth - I have a monstrosity of a thoroughbred on stall rest and a midget appaloosa I can't seem to get over a jump. It's been over 10 years since I rode in any sort of horse trial.
Self-concept - I ride three-day event horses.

Truth - I got all ridiculous when Coffee Girl asked me my name this morning... and she's the only girl in Utah who's winked at me.
Self-concept - I'm hot and chicks dig me. Oh wait, that's the self concept I *should* have. the one I actually have goes more like "I'm strangely shaped, and I have unpleasant features, and I don't look the way i think I should look so of course no girl would want to date me - why on earth would anyone worthwhile consider me dateable?" Shit, man.

Truth - My diet today consisted of one bowl of grapenuts with soymilk and a banana, a cup of coffee from aforementioned Coffee Girl, a Super Big Gulp (tm) of iced tea with vanilla flavor, two baked potatoes (one with blue cheese dressing on it, the other with barbecue sauce), a cup of hot cocoa, and a cup of hot Ronalds (tm) tea mix. And a pomegranate.
Self-concept - I'm a vegetarian who eats healthy, balanced meals.




well, that's suitably depressing.

Monday, October 23, 2006

fall

It's a beautiful clear-cold day. The kitchen table is now useful as such, so I'm sitting at it sipping my coffee and writing as the sun comes in across the cat.

The vet will be out at 2:30 for tim's tendon. I really hope it's just a strain and not bowed, and I hope the vet will bill me instead of requiring payment today, and i hope bute is still cheap.

I'm still wearing my footy pajamas and a bathrobe even through it's a quarter after 10; the little joys of unemployment.

I'm running out of jobs to apply for, the state is taking 10 days to deposit my unemployment into my account, my phone won't hold a charge for more than 4 hours, and my dogs are going stir crazy.

I think i'll move my books upstairs and try to un-crowd my bedroom a little. Maybe that'll be my project this afternoon post-vet.

I'm at that stage of unemployment where I'm antsy and making up schedules so I'll have something to do.

grrrr.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

i want to do what the common people do

so i have the foxy new haircut -- i'm back to looking like my old self. Now I just need the job to go with it - this whole po' thing is old.

I keep getting that william shatner song stuck in my head - y'know, the common people one, with the line about "you think poor is cool" - it's strangely catchy.

Tim pulled a tendon yesterday - so i had to move both him and hazel into stalls - it's nice to not have to slog through the mud, but so much for his eventing career in the spring. poor guy.

i think i do too much stuff to successfully find anyone to date - unless I happen to find a clone of myself, they're probably not going to be interested in my horses and dogs to the extent i am.

sigh.

Friday, October 13, 2006

October 13th

A year ago today, this little sleeping monkey on my lap was nearly disemboweled. Another dog living with us got into some sort of altercation with him, and my roommate called me at work to tell me I needed to come home NOW.

When I got to the house, I saw Bill holding a bleeding shocky dog on the counter wrapped in a towel. I scooped the dog up and we drove five blocks to the most incredible vet in the world who met us at the front door and ran him into surgery. I had just made it back to the house when she called and said I needed to get back to the clinic - his lung had collapsed while he was on the table and he needed to go to the doggy ER. I spun the car around, raced back to the clinic, and was met at the door by her surgery tech. We turned the front seat of the volvo into a makeshift dog ambulance complete with oxygen tank and heart monitor, so by the time the doc had stapled his side shut and run back with him to the front, the car was turned around and running. We loaded the dog in, and I drove to the emergency clinic (running all the red lights) with one hand on Connor, saying "hang on little man, hang on, buddy, just a few more blocks, you'll be okay, you can do it..."

At the emergency vet, he went back in to surgery and I was sent home. I hadn't even made it three blocks away when I got the phone call that he was trying to die whenever he would roll onto his side. He had to be kept upright for his heart to keep beating. As soon as I left the clinic, his heart had stopped.

I had to pull the car over.

The nice, calm woman on the phone told me that i should go home, get some rest, and come back in a few hours. She assured me that at this point they were doing everything they could and it would be up to him to decide if he wanted to stay or go. The surgeon was working on stabilizing his rib fractures, they were trying to keep the swelling down on his brain, but they would call when I could come back and see him and we could talk about more options.

All I remember from that afternoon is crying. Gut-wrenching sobs, hyserical stupid.

I went back to the vet that evening, and he was on the treatment table propped up with towels. His side was torn open from his ear down his back, around his foreleg, and all the way to his sternum. He had two broken ribs, a collapsed lung, massive crushing head trauma, his ear was almost ripped completely off, and there was a huge hole in his neck; deep enough to see his trachea and jugular vein. His left front leg was shredded, he had puncture wounds all over his abdomen, and he was bleeding from his nose. His head was so swollen that he couldn't open his one good eye, and his tongue was paper-white.

I put my hands on either side of him, kissed the thumbprint cookie-head, and told him that he'd done a very good job and could go if he wanted to. He was still in a coma, but as soon as I touched him his blood pressure came up and his heart rate stabilized. He was trying to stay.

The vets never asked me to leave, so I stayed that way with him until the next morning - during the night he had a hard time breathing so we had to intubate him, and he needed stronger meds to keep the swelling down on his brain. they put in a jugular catheter at about 3 in the morning to help with the meds, and I held his oxygen mask and kept him from slipping sideways until the sun came up. At that point he had been pretty stable for about 12 hours, so they told me I could go home and get some sleep, and they'd call me if anything changed.

As soon as I left, his blood pressure dropped again and his body temperature went down. I got a phone call at about seven that he needed a blood transfusion, and was going into the oxygen tank. They managed to keep his swelling down and his blood pressure up, but he was nowhere near out of the woods when the money ran out and I had to take him home the next day.

We set him up in his crate with pillows for positioning, his IV bag with antibiotics and pain meds hanging from the lamp, and the heating pad under him to keep him warm. I stayed on the floor in the living room with him, and I didn't take my hands off of him for the next four days. What little sleep i got was with my head and shoulders in his crate, making sure he was still breathing.

We finally moved him into my bed and started his medication regimen on day three - pain meds injected every three hours, more pain meds orally every six hours, antibiotics by mouth every six hours (two hours after the pain meds cause they interact), syringe feeding every hour (a baby food and liver smoothie), and bandage changes every three hours after the pain meds have time to kick in. Also, i had to carry him outside to go potty each hour after he eats, and hold him up since he can't stand. With his IV bag balanced on my shoulder.

Over the next three months, he got progressively better. We were at the vet every three days for cultures and resuturing and checkups, and he developed some nasty systemic infections that required absurdly expensive antibiotics to treat, but overall he's been recovering steadily ever since. We had some minor setbacks with abscesses blowing out all over and stinky draining pus from staph infections in his bloodstream, but once we found the correct cocktail of drugs, the abscesses quit blowing and his nasty gash in his armpit started to heal.

So today, a year later, his ear looks almost normal, the scars on his legs are barely noticeable, the giant hole in his neck is gone entirely, and his ribs don't crunch when you hug him. He has quite a bit of scar tissue on his left side, and a couple strange 'bridges' of tissue where there's still some drainage right by his armpit. His left back leg (where all the nasty abscesses were) has some larger scars on it, but is just as functional as it was before (it's the one that's held together with pins from the SUV incident when he was a puppy). He moves a little slower than he used to, and he gets grumpy a little easier, and he doesn't seem as able to tolerate extremes of heat and cold. He's a bit more cuddly than he was, and he's certainly more demanding of my time. He has lost a lot of his range of motion in that left leg, but he still runs around pretty well - he won his class at the lure coursing event in August.

I'm amazed and grateful that he's made it here, and I'm not sure if there's an appropriate way to thank all the people who helped him through his (and my) time of need. To start, the litany:

Thank you Bill Doctorman for your Eagle Scout first aid skills, and your crisis management skills, and for keeping as much of his blood in as possible.
Thank you Djai for financial help even though you didn't understand, and for the ebay supplies that kept his guts in.
Thank you Dr. Daroowalla for dropping everything that day and seeing me through the next six months.
Thank you Southern Arizona Veterinary Specialty for letting me hold him sternal to keep him breathing those first 48 hours, and for the oxygen tank, and the blood transfusions, and the heart-restarting, and the dedication and commitment of your staff.
Thank you Senna for your banana-nut muffin and your kindness.
Thank you Egan and the Summit Hut for letting me bring him to work even when he was incontinent and infected, and for understanding our many many vet appointments.
Thank you Genevieve for helping with the caregiver burnout, and for providing the space for Connor's first outing even though he tried to eat your cats.
Thank you Casey for listening to me babble hysterically and for the energy and the candles and the magic - and for tending to the others while I was consumed with the little man.
Thank you to all the Beverly Drive kids - Anna and Tree and Thom and Logan and Bill (again) and Chris - for your patience with my crazy dog and my crazy self. I can't think of a better group of housemates to hold the place together when i have to sleep on the floor in the living room to keep my dog breathing. You guys are the best. No-one else would put up with bloody terrier bandages on the bathroom counter every four hours.
Thank you mom for giving me permission to keep going, and the ability and wherewithal to see it through.
Thank you Chaz for being a responsible sort of guy and picking up your end of the SAVS bill.

I'm not very good at this sort of effusive gratitude, but I need to be, because every morning i wake up with him tucked into the back of my knee, and I'm astounded that he's still alive.

Until a year ago today, i didn't know I could love anything this much or this deeply, or this unconditionally. Now I can't stop.


he's snoring, and I'm happy.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

ridiculous things we already knew about me

Advanced Global Personality Test Results
Extraversion |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Stability |||||||||||||||||||| 86%
Orderliness |||||||||| 40%
Accommodation |||||||||||||| 56%
Interdependence |||||||||||||| 56%
Intellectual |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Mystical |||||| 30%
Artistic || 10%
Religious || 10%
Hedonism |||||||||| 36%
Materialism |||||| 30%
Narcissism |||||||||| 36%
Adventurousness |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Work ethic |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Self absorbed |||||| 30%
Conflict seeking |||||||||| 36%
Need to dominate |||||||||||||||| 63%
Romantic |||||| 30%
Avoidant |||||| 30%
Anti-authority |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Wealth |||| 16%
Dependency |||| 16%
Change averse |||| 16%
Cautiousness |||||| 23%
Individuality |||||||||||| 43%
Sexuality |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Peter pan complex || 10%
Physical security |||||||||||||| 56%
Physical Fitness |||||||||||||||| 64%
Histrionic |||||||||| 36%
Paranoia || 10%
Vanity |||||| 23%
Hypersensitivity |||||| 30%
Female cliche || 10%
Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

craziness

items of note:
linux rocks
bran mash in your hair is actually kind of funny
girls are absurdly frustrating
i may have a job interview on monday
my roommate is moving out, which is rather sad
new roommates are moving in
i have to go get furniture, and dishes, and panic snaps
i remembered how to do an eye splice today, and a whipping.

my head sorta hurts

i don't actually know if I'm dating material

maybe the dumb boy was right - I have no love to give.

Monday, October 02, 2006

and then, an hour later,

I got fired.

phooey on that.

now everyone and their mom gets a copy of my resume.

Friday, September 29, 2006

awwww

usually i wander over to the clinic side around lunchtime, because the drug reps buy us lunch nearly every day. being the only vegetarian on the floor, I've become quite good at subsisting on side dishes or crackers and water. today, the clinic manager bought lunch for everyone - huge long subway sandwiches full of dead animals.

I took my usual side dish and bottle of water, and she said "wait - i got you a special veggie sandwich!"

i have never spoken to this woman before in my life.

she made my whole day.

chewing through the leather straps

... i could hardly get out of bed this morning. I think getting yelled at every night is taking its toll on my ability to rest. Roommate and I had the same conversation last night as we did the night before - nearly verbatim.

him: "you're being so selfish! how do you think I can come up with my half of the rent in 2 days?"
me: "I don't know. we could get a third roommate."
him: "and then I'd have to put up with another fucking person?
me: "yes."
him: "haven't I always been here for you? Don't I always try to help you out?"
me: "yes, even though I don't always want or need your help."
him: "what?!? I've always helped you out! {goes through a litany of ways he's 'helped'}. How come you're so selfish?"
me: "I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that."
him: {stares at the TV for 3 solid minutes drinking cheap whiskey}
me: "is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"
him: {crosses arms and makes a snide face} "er. ohhh. ummm. dammit, you're being a selfish bitch after all I've done for you! Why don't you get rid of the dogs or the horses or something, instead of asking me to pay my 'half' of the rent? You know I never would have moved in here if I had to do that. You told me that you would pay 2/3 and I would pay 1/3. I told you I could help you out with utilities, even though I shouldn't have to. Why are you going back on your word?"
me: "we've had this conversation before, and we're not getting anywhere. i'm going outside now."
him: "get back here! why do you always leave? friends communicate. why won't you talk to me? Fucking bitch."
me: "no. this conversation is over."

geez, man.

then i get to work this morning and get this email from my boss:

"Your first prioity according to our meeting last week was and then to audit . Not to do this flow sheet. I'm concerned about your prioritization and efficiency. I will make time tomorrow to discuss my concerns with you."

dude - it was PART of the audit. I am doing my job here...

why is this so difficult for her to see?

on the plus side, I think my finances are getting in order and I get to go cross country schooling tomorrow.

and there are a few girls I like.

and lori makes me coffee in the mornings.



Thursday, September 28, 2006

i love my mom

because of her, my budget graph for the next three months looks like an EKG, instead of a seismograph.


though I do have a bit of a wandering baseline, it never goes below the Y axis.

things of which I am fond

















- my secretary's habit of making coffee for me in the mornings
- southern culture on the skids
- the heater under my desk
- www.harmonyhorseriding.com
- crystal-clear blue skies and mountains turning red and gold
- tough little Latinas
- oatmeal

back in the land of the tech-identified

what's happened in the 14 months since I last posted?

well, I:

- failed to get knocked up
- broke up with the boy (in a rather spectacular fashion)
- left Tucson in a hurry
- settled remarkably comfortably in the belly of the beast
- got an office with a door and a window
- was adopted by two horses (that's me riding the big one, and my friend holding the little one)

















- began to wear high heels to work every day
- started on the adventure of home ownership
- returned to coprporate america
- elected to postpone grad school
- continued becoming bitter and jaded
- had two birthdays
- posted the following personal ad:

For a short time only, if you possess at least 2/3 of these necessary (though not sufficient) requirements, you can win a date with me. Ready?
1. house (that's not with me)
2. job (that I didn't get for you, and that pays you enough to subsist)
3. car (or bike or skateboard or bus pass... as long as you're mobile without my help)
4. relatively stable mental health (in therapy; you're good.)
5. no illegal addictions (cigarettes are fine)
6. social skills (can I take you to the company christmas party?)
7. personal hygeine (do you shower more than once a month?)
8. an education (or the desire to get one - i'm okay with the school of hard knocks)
9. opinions (of your very own)
10. goals (also of your very own)
11. hobbies (please, no video/computer games. they're not hobbies.)
12. an adequate sex drive (to be determined)
13. a healthy relationship with your family (natural or constructed)

What you get: I'm a 29 year old butch dyke, except when I have to drag it up at work and then I'm a butch dyke in a power suit. I'm 5'8, a size 6 in girl clothes, and relatively attractive (though I have a pretty impressive black eye at the moment). I have a good job, a decent house, a bunch of dogs, a couple of horses, and a token cat. I can drive a stick shift, know which fork to use, speak multiple languages, and won't embarrass you in public. I don't dance or believe in god. I like dark beer and red wine.

If you know what three-day eventing is, you will automatically be my friend. If you have a truck and extra-tall horse trailer, I will follow you around like a border collie.

I don't eat animals, though I'm not offended by people who do. I live under a pop culture rock, and am much more comfortable discussing Aristotle than network TV. Despite that flaw, I can be fun at parties, and I have very good manners. We'll talk about sex later - suffice it to say I'm not shy, and can talk to anyone about anything. I'm also that rarest of breeds - a butch bottom.

Interested? Care to find out if I meet your criteria?

email is good - spelling counts.