Hot Mess Minimalist

So I've been in China for about a month and a half. I've had a rather interesting experience, that is somewhat out of the norm. So I ended up contracted through one of those agencies that they warn you about, because I was stupid and trusted the non-profit organization that I went with. So the way that I got here is I went though a non-profit organization in the states, who contracted with a company in Jinan, Shandong China. The people who work at this company are kind, but clueless. The visas everyone came in on were student visas, with 90 days on them. The state department specifically advises against teaching with any type of visa, other than a work visa. So we spent about a week in a hotel in Jinan and were slowly sent out to schools through out the country. So long story (filled with headaches, and most of the other teachers leaving the country) short, I was taken the other day to get my health certificate in order to get the proper visa. This was a trial to begin ...

So a lot of things have changed with me lately. Part of the reason I have stopped posting about veterinary care (other than being lazy) is because I quit that job in November. I have been just substitute teaching since then. However I am going to be teaching in China in February for a year. I am looking forward to it, but don't have a contract yet. So we will see. In addition to all of the career stuff that has been going on I got engaged. Twice! I am a non-traditional person and so is my fiance. At some point back in 2007 we had a conversation about what happens if I have a proposal plan, would that be a problem? He said no, and we talked about it more, and both agreed that we should both continue our own plans regardless of who asked first. So back in 2004 on election night we had an informal party to watch the results come in. The entire night my fiance sat on the arm of the chair I was in. He had been flirtatious before (he got the nickname fraternizer in college, and...

It's amazing that someone can come from my neighborhood and get the support of millions of people across the nation (which I would not expect coming from a "freak state") and around the world. That even today with all the information we - the American people - constantly have coming at us, with all the different opinions about what needs to be done to make things better; if you can get the message through to people, that you will fight for them because you know who they are and what they are going through, they will work with you to achieve your goals. They will help you to push through you're obstacles, in hopes that in the end you will improve everyone's situation, and make everyone's lives a little bit easier. Before this election I thought this type of grassroots idealism was next to impossible to accomplish in national politics. This inauguration proves that it isn't; it has been proven by a politician who played fair, who has fought to have his i...

Dear Pitbull with lipstick, hockey mom, Governor Sarah Palin, I admire you quite a bit as a person, it is very impressive that you have made your way into the political arena from the PTA, to become Mayor of Wasilla, then to become governor of the unique state of Alaska. All while having five children, and supporting your husband. You seem like a very interesting woman, and have a very different perspective. However, your speech tonight frustrated the heck out of me on a number of levels. Admitted I am not exactly your intended audience, being from the other freak state, and having voted for Linda Lingle because of her greater emphasis on eduction, realizing that because of the nature of our government she wouldn't have complete control on our state. I think it is absurd of you and your running mate to continue this argument on "experience". Admitted John McCain is one of the senators who has held his seat in congress for a very long time, and Obama and Biden have som...

I recently finished an excellent book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal Vegetable Miracle . I really enjoyed this book, and found it to be a great motivation to attempt to change my lifestyle. The biggest step I am going to try to take is cutting beef (of unknown origin) out of my diet. This is going to take a while, as I'm accustomed to going to Burger King when I don't feel like cooking, and really enjoying beef jerky. It was a very fun book for me to read though, especially being a city dweller, and really made me appreciate farms even more than I already did. I am impressed by her family's dedication, but then again to me canning your own food is a foreign and even dangerous concept. One of the chapters in this book was on "harvest time" which was when the family harvested their roosters and turkeys for the year. In other words it was when they took the animals they planned to eat out of the flock, killed and cleaned them. I don't have any problem...

I dislike bugs. I like some of them and I understand that they are necessary, and very useful, but I dislike it when one gets into my house. My cats on the other had love them. Flies are the best. I just had two get into the house somehow, and they think they are the best to chase to play with and finally to eat. Zinc is the kitty in the photo. I actually cheated to get this photo. Harry had already eaten the fly, so I used one of their other toys to get Zinc's attention.

I haven't written in quite some time, and though I probably should write something about the goings on at work... with the nutty clients, and fractious cats, and nice adoptable pit mixes, or perhaps something about my new job (substitute teaching) or even my complete failing to get the jobs that really matter to me, I have an idea sort of stuck in my head. A few weeks ago a friend of mine came down to celebrate her 25th birthday with us. 25 isn't really that big a deal, I mean you get to drive a rental car (and if you are willing to pay more you were able to do that a few years ago), but that's about it. I did mention to my friends the one thing that I think does change when you start hitting those higher numbers. It becomes less and less sad to strangers when you die. I've thought about this a bit before. News Media and the like will make a sad story of a person's death if say they were under 20, but as soon as you are older than that, it no longer seems to be ...

Theobromine is the main reason that people know dogs can't always eat food that people can eat. Theobromine is from several plants but the main think that it's in is cacao. It's one of those wonderful ingredients that makes chocolate yummy. Now many people know that chocolate kills dogs, but really it takes about* 100mg/kg to cause toxicity in a dog. We get calls all the time regarding dogs that ate Valentines or Halloween candy. We always advise the owners to either make the DOG vomit (give them about 2 tbsp give them about 10 minutes, repeat (only up to 6 or so tablespoons, and only if the dog is more than 10 lbs) if needed. NEVER INDUCE VOMITING IN A CAT! (They tend to continue to vomit, and eventually get ulcers because of the vomiting.) Honestly when we use H2O2 it is more labor intensive. I tend the either run around with the dog, or shake their tummy around so that it is quicker (and easier) for them to vomit. If it is already in the dog's system, an...

These days you can find everything on the internet. You can find an old friend on myspace, or facebook, or any other number of websites. You can find businesses in your area, you can find recipes from your favorite chefs... anything you want is within reach a long as you have a keyboard and an internet connection. The other thing that you will find with the vast majority of these things is criticism. Whether it is your favorite teacher or professor being slammed by a student who got a bad grade, or your favorite restaurant given a poor review because of one wilted salad, it can sometimes be aggravating to see these harsh critiques from someone who likely only had one poor experience. Where I work, we have had it emphasized that we need to give 100% to all of our clients. In other words one bad review, whether the client never says a word to any of us, or calls our office manager the next day, or writes a scathing review on the internet gets rather blown out of proportion. I unde...

Sorry it's rather late... but here are my other two stories. Two dogs came in having eaten some blood pressure medication of the owners. Again the task was to make them vomit. This wasn't too difficult. I put them back inside after they had, and put on gloves to poke through what they had eaten. One (a little labrador, and the suspected culprit) had appeared to have vomited newspaper, the other (an older cocker) vomited some bizarre plastic shreds and something orange. The doctor went and spoke to the owners and explained what we had found, and they insisted that the pills were purple. So we kept the dogs for monitoring, and fed them activated charcoal just in case. Before we left for the day I gave them a bowl of water. The little lab drank the whole bowl, and then vomited all of the charcoal I had fed her. Darn. The next day we have a client come in with a dog who was vomiting daily, pretty much in the mornings. The dog had recently come in for a urinary tract infec...

I've been told my blog is amusing. I am going to try to post more frequently regarding work antics. I don't know how successful I will be. But here are three stories (to make up for my lack of blogging) involving oops' and animals. Two dogs came into the clinic and were boarding with us, and happened to have tapeworms. The doctor handed me three and a half pills of de-wormer, two for the larger dog and one and a half for the smaller dog. I took the pills and hid them in some tasty soft food. I got up to the cage, and normally I just sort of hand both the dogs their treats, but this time they both looked rather eager (and I don't like being bit by an overly excited dog) so I dropped both treats right in the front of the cage. In a flash the larger dog had tipped his head toward where the other dog's treat had fallen. I didn't see him eat it but both treats were gone in under half a second. Crap. So I go let my doctor know that I'm dumb. She tells me that I sh...

Today I was working in reception and one of the male kennel staff came up and took an animal back. A bit later as I was checking a client in I herd him yell " Aaaargh !" This guy doesn't say a word if he's stabbed by a needle or scratched so I turned. I was trying to continue helping the client because I figured someone else was helping my friend. Then I hear this scurrying up the hallway towards me, I turned and saw something that looked like a squirrel coming toward the waiting room (and me). There were a number of dogs in the waiting room, and I just acted on instinct and bent down and got a hand on the little critter. It was a kitty. The owner had told us that this cat and it's companion were outdoor kitties, but she didn't say they were feral. She scratched my hand and tried to bite my other hand when I brought it near to pick the little one up. I had my hand in just the right place though on her back that she didn't seem to mind, or mayb...

Something happened at work just now and rather than waiting, and eventually not even posting I decided that I would go home and post what I was thinking immediately. I learned to intubate today. Animals, not people of course. Although I am sure that I learned in a very different way than my medical school friend did. I came in and one of the dogs was not doing well, he was having very labored breathing and seemed to be in a lot of pain, he had liquid stool that smelled very distinctly (and horribly.) I called the doctor on call, then left the room to take care of another animal. When I came back one of the other staff mentioned to me that the dog wasn't moving. I ran the dog to surgery to put it on oxygen, and after standing there for a bit I thought it would be a good idea to push on the dog's chest to get air flowing through his lungs. I knew the dog wasn't breathing, and wasn't sure if I felt a heartbeat. When the doctor got there they said it was dead alread...

I am a bad vet tech. I just ate a burger, and my cat was bugging me so I threw the wrapper. He's what I call an invincible animal though. If you don't know what I mean, or If you just want to hear an interesting story here is one. The Prologue is the story. Yesterday wasn't bad. Actually lately most days haven't been bad, I suppose I have just been building up my story repitore. I've been reading friends blogs about learning to intubate (people) and other cool things people are doing. I figured I would give everyone a little piece of my life lately. At the end of the day yesterday we had a lot come in. One case that I helped with was a cat. This poor cat was not doing well, he actually was brought in inside a recycling bin. The cat had a history of being bad, and biting even people he was familiar with, so I put on the cat gloves and took her out of her box. She was so sick even though she meowed she didn't even try to fight. The cat had begun to bec...

Yesterday was kinda insane in part because of this... http://www.menufoods.com/recall/ If you have a pet you may have already seen this. But there are so many foods on this list that it is worth another look. We have seen a handful of cases since the recall announcement, andunfortunately we still don't know exactly what is in the food or how it got there. The food affected has been sold beginning in December, so even if you haven't bought food recently please check these lists. We have several suspected cases earlier in the year, that we are now thinking may be connected to whatever went wrong with the food. Look for your pets behaving differently, being lethargic, not eating, vomiting, drinking and peeing a lot. This whole thing brought up a lot of interesting hypothetical questions for me. Like what would happen if this did affect almost all pets, and in fact killed all animals being fed produced pet food. Would I be out of the job? Would all of the strayssuddenly find homes...

At some point in the last few days I heard someone say these words. I don't know what is is lately but we have been getting a lot of life or death type emergergencies. At one point we had one two animals in the back being worked on by doctors, then another animal brought in dead, another three in isolation for monitoring, and this can happen occasionally but in this situation every single one of these animals was not just something normal like vomiting. Every one was a traumatic situation. The most interesting of all of these is an animal who's nose won't stop bleeding. There were a few things that could have contributed to it, like a fight, or maybe having a run in with some of the construction near the animal's home, or some dental trauma. But several days later we are still having trouble with it. Very strange.

I was looking forward to applying to graduate school for a Masters in Teaching Physics offered at the local University. When I read that description of the degree on their website it seemed to me that I could apply for the program. Their prerequisites include the normal things, like a high enough GPA, a bachelors degree, and decent GRE's. It also says that an undergraduate degree in physics is not necessary to be accepted. It also says: Undergraduate prerequisites for the program are: 1. Introductory Physics (three semesters). 2. Introductory Chemistry (one year). It goes on to say on the application page (which also refers to students applying for a Masters or PhD in Physics) that they recommend taking the subject GRE. So because I had already been thinking of calling to ask if I should take a semester of Chemistry before applying, I went ahead to and called to ask about the GRE also. I was somewhat convinced that just studying on my own I could somehow study enough to pa...

I was watching "A Christmas Carol" the one with Patrick Stewart at like 5am the other day. I started to think about the role Tiny Tim has in the movie. How he pulls at the heartstrings of the viewer/reader with his crutch, and impending death (without Scrooge's influence of course.) I think most people know many of the lines in Charles Dickens' story, but the ones that I found that I was the most familiar with were those involving Tiny Tim. His character is a perfect icon for the Christmas spirit. He is so young and innocent and opens his heart to anyone who asks. I think most Christmas movies have this character in them. I actually like Tiny Tim. He is so genuine. He loves unconditionally. I think this is why although I really hate the concept of him dying it almost has to happen. I'd hate to say it but I think that it is truly inevitable that as a person grows up they stop trusting other people. I like the idea of remaining as open hearted as Tiny Tim is, but I ...

I haven't written in quite a while, and I have two ideas. I'll save one for tomorrow. With the holiday I've noticed religion a lot more recently, specifically Christianity. It seemed a little odd to me to see wreaths at work and in other offices after coming from a college where secular humanist approach was taken to... well just about everything. At our Christmas party the owner of the clinic made a speech , and in it he said something to the point of "at the clinic we all must remember and believe that this time of year is about Christ." I suppose I should have known it was coming , but it was still surprising to me. In the midst of all of my personal frustration with the rather evangelical nature of Christmas, driving yesterday I heard this story . Last week's show called "Shouting Across the Divide." I was appalled and really disappointed by the Serry and Chloe's stories. Even though this country has good ideas about freedom and what every ...

I think if you met me in October you would think that I hate Christmas. I hate that Christmas decorations start showing up before Halloween, especially in stores such as Wallmart . But today is December first, so I turned all the Christmas music in iTunes one, and am now starting to lighten up to the other decorations around. I really do like Christmas time, and especially like Christmas music, I just don't like it coming any earlier than it has to.