The official Scrabble dictionary defines the word “EVITE” as “to avoid”.

So when we ignore any evites that come our way, we’re just obeying the dictates of the English language.

Lavender Grosso.
The bush stands 3 1/2 feet high and in full bloom spreads about 4 1/2 feet wide. Every single time I walk past there are *at least* 20 bees bumbling about in that bush.
You can smell lavender from 20 or so feet away. And it’s been in full bloom since mid-July.

Would you octipodious little idiots kindly get it through your hydraulic little heads that I am not edible?

I appreciate that you like the dark, cool environs of my garage, but really now!
The bugs are MUCH better, much bigger, sweeter, and far more prolific say…. OUTSIDE IN THE GARDEN than they are in the garage. If you insist upon it, there are plenty of dark cool spaces out there too.

And I’m getting damn tired of walking into your webs when I walk through the garage door into the house, when I try to get into my car, and when I try to do anything anywhere else in the garage.
I appreciate your zeal. I thoroughly appreciate your insectivorous nature when it is applied to, well, insects. I, on the other hand, am H. sapiens and, thusly, NOT ON YOUR MENU.

There are plenty of insects out in the garden, believe me. You’ll be far happier OUT THERE!!

Sincerely,

Don’t make me goosh you!

Okay, to the point.

See the reason I asked about rubber band castration is that in this economic climate the veterinary community is seeing an upsurge in this type of procedure performed by bozos who are interested in having their male pets neutered, but who aren’t willing to pay more than the cost of a rubber band for it.
Yeah, I showed my hand there. For the record I think it’s a BAD idea for many, MANY reasons not the least of which is that I can still hear many of you screeching “YES!!!! THAT WOULD HURT A LOT!!!”. What a surprise.

BUT in a lot of cases that sort of thing can’t be prosecuted. In most areas it’s not illegal to practice medicine on your own animals so long as you aren’t doing anything that can be constituted as cruel. And cruelty statutes are based on the public’s perception of what is cruel. Unfortunately elastrator band castration was practiced on farm animals (lambs mostly) until about 20 years ago when it was abandoned because:
a. the lambs are more comfortable, more willing to eat and be normal lambs with conventional castration techniques
b. cutting off the blood supply to a body part is not an efficient means of complete castration in many cases and
c. cutting off the blood supply to a body part and hoping that it’ll fall off without attracting all sorts of nasty infectious bacteria is a fool’s game.

So if it’s not the norm in farm animals anymore, why can’t it be prosecuted as cruel when it happens in pets?
That’s where the “reasonable people” clause comes in. Trying to change the public’s — at least that portion of the public who are willing to try it — perception of something that USED to be the norm is like pushing a rope. Especially when there are websites explaining how to perform elastrator band castration that announce in bold face type that the only reason that veterinarians tell you that it’s cruel, inefficient and dangerous to try to neuter your dog with a rubber band is because we’re out to make a buck…..
Well, it’s an uphill battle.

I have a number of VIN buddies (or invisible friends as some people refer to them) who have dealt with this exact situation in the last few months. I’ve not seen a case myself since I was working in Olympia but I did see one there.
Let’s try for public outcry eh?

This is for everyone, but I will especially be interested in the opinions of the XY readers of Uncle Andrew.

Would you expect that a rubber band wrapped tightly enough around a scrotum and testicles to cut off the blood supply to be painless?
Is it reasonable to expect that a patient so treated, with castration as the eventual goal, would not suffer in the process?

It’s okay guys, I’ll wait until you stop crossing your legs and whimpering.

The only regret I have is that I’ve wanted to replace those shakes with a metal roof so I can spell things out on the roof in giant refrigerator magnets so people in passing airplanes can read my roof. We couldn’t afford a metal roof so I’ll just have to make do with 50 year composite shingles and console myself with the fact that I’ll *never* (at least not in my lifetime and barring weather, earthquake, or other acts of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) have to replace the roof again.

See, despite what you may think, anyone can declare just about any animal a “service animal” and because of the way the regulations are stated in the Americans with Disabilities Act, just about no one can question it.
The critter doesn’t have to have any special training, it doesn’t have to have any training at all. Someone with letters behind their name just has to state that that particular critter is, in some way, helpful to the physical, mental, or emotional health of the person in question and you’re in. My massage therapist could write me a letter stating that carrying Flitter around on my shoulder was important to my well being because she provides a constant source of heat and vibration to treat the muscle spasms in my neck.
Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be that formal. You can purchase all sorts of “Service Animal” paraphernalia online and take your precious BooBoo anywhere you like.
Sure you and your animal can be asked to leave a business if your animal is rowdy or disruptive, but because there are so many people out there who are willing to make a big screeching stink about their god given rights to take their poorly socialized landshark anywhere they please because a podiatrist told them it was good for their toenails, very few businesses will take the risk of being labeled as “unfriendly” to service animals. And there have been enough cases of people creating a legal stink that pretty much no business is willing to take the risk of a discrimination lawsuit. Remember the woman some years back whose pot bellied pig created havoc in the first class compartment of an airplane?

I have a unique perspective.
I have dealt with honest to goodness service animals ranging from the traditional guide dogs for the blind, to a dog who could sense sudden changes in her brittle diabetic owner’s blood glucose levels and notify the owner before she even knew her levels were changing, to a dog that helped the social skills of the young son of a client who was profoundly autistic and a real nightmare to be around when his dog was absent. These were all trained, well mannered, well cared for, and a pleasure to deal with.
And then there was the woman with the service chihuahua who “helped me deal with reality” and “helped me remember to take my medications” (and did neither very well so far as I could tell, the woman was crazy as a bedbug). And the woman with the service pug who did nothing so far as I could tell besides widdle all over the landscape, bark at other dogs, and try to bite me and whoever else was interacting with it. And the couple that I fortunately haven’t seen in a LONG time whose service cattle dog won’t let the stewards on the cruise ships on which they travel into their cabin to clean because he’s so possessive/protective. They can’t take him out of the cabin either because he bites passersby, but he’s GOT to travel with them. I think that the service he provides is, as stated, that he keeps the male owner from being seasick. And the most recent abuse I’ve seen is the woman with the chihoodle who was important to his owner’s well being because she’d had a tendon injury in her foot and her doctor told her she had to carry something to counterbalance her weight (um…. a three pound dog can counterbalance a 180ish woman?). This one said flat out that she pretty much only got the dog designated as a service animal because she and her family were taking a cross country trip and while the other pets were staying at home she couldn’t bear to be separated from this one and she didn’t want to have to *gasp* pay to take the dog on an airplane.
Every single veterinarian I know has stories like this.
And every single person that I have known that has has a legitimate service animal is NUTS because these self entitled assholes are going around with their untrained, poorly mannered, poorly socialized idiots just because they can.

There’s a hole in the Americans with Disabilities Act. You don’t have to prove any real need to be able to have your pet declared a service animal. And, as I’ve said, your animal doesn’t have to be trained in any special way or in any way at all. The designation of “service animal” is so broad that abuse is rampant. There’s got to be something that we can do about that.

I don’t usually do much more than skim Wonkette; not because it isn’t funny and clever and quite to the point, but because it tends to be a bit too aggressive for my taste. Or rather, Wonkette on top of my regular early weekday morning wake-up of Stephanie Miller is a bit too aggressive for my taste. One or the other is fine, but both stacked on top of each other is a bit too much snark for that time of the morning. And since I started listening to Stephanie Miller first, she gets grandmothered in.

However, I just became aware of Wonkette’s ongoing comic strip entitled Ayn Rand’s Adventures in Wonderland, by artist, blogger and Wonkette contributor Benjamin Frisch, and I suggest that everyone go and take a look at it. It is a delicious, bile-fortified, snark-frosted scone of satire, fit for any breakfast buffet.

Horrifying.

And horrifying on several levels.
First on a linguistic level — a five year old hasn’t heard the word “potato” enough to be able to parse “tater” from that?
And second, and more disturbing, a five year old living in modern America is sufficiently unfamiliar with whole vegetables that they are unable to identify a potato when it’s shown to them?
Yikes!

I know for a fact that when I was that age I could have told you which vegetable a tater tot came from. Probably couldn’t have told you what a tater tot WAS, but I could have parsed out “tater” from “potato” and made an educated guess.

And anticipating Andrew’s scorn at what is for me a personal point of pride, that is, that I’ve never eaten a Hostess Twinkie, I will admit that the food I grew up eating was far, FAR different than that which my peers were eating. I’ve never had a slice of Wonder bread either.
So I grew up eating weird stuff… whole wheat bread, raw vegetables, fruit that wasn’t FROOT, oatmeal that didn’t come in a package, cereal that didn’t turn colors when you added milk, and milk that wasn’t chocolate.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I wanted desperately to be eating the same stuff that the other kids were eating, but I do appreciate it now. The fact that I grew up eating real food instead of synthetic has doubtless made a lasting impact on my development and my health as an adult.
And it’s a shame that in many (in most?) circles what I ate as a child would be considered “weird”. Absolutely outside the norm, yes, but what about a green pepper is more strange than, say, those horrid little “Froot Gushers”, those weird little clots of bright primary colored paste that squirt globs of tooth rotting goo when you bite them?
Why was my peanut butter on whole wheat, carrot sticks, and apple lunch “weird” when the baloney on paste board with a package of Twinkies was “normal”? And why is it now something of note when I eat hummus and flat bread with fresh vegetables for lunch and whole fruit for a snack? My fast food, Lean Cuisine (ergh! Nuked plastic!), Goldfish cracker and M & M snarfing co-workers are always astonished by my lunches. As I am, in my own way, of theirs.

Which brings me to the title of the post.

What do you buy at the store?
Andrew and I have had an ongoing discussion for several years now, the duration of the conversation being so long only because we only seem to have it when we’re shopping for food, about our grocery purchases versus those of the people around us. And we have decided that what we purchase to fuel our bodies isn’t food, it’s ingredients. The vast majority of what goes into our shopping carts is something that is going to be a part of something else, not a meal in and of itself. That, I think, is the problem. Too many people have too many opportunities to purchase STUFF that they can just shovel into their mouths to satisfy a hunger that they probably don’t even have.

Cooking takes time and those of us that work full time, to say nothing of those who are holding down jobs and raising kids, have little of it to start with. But I’m proud of the fact that we purchase ingredients. And if turning those ingredients into something that is pleasant to eat takes up my free time, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. I just wish I wasn’t preaching to the choir. Wanna come over and cook with me some day?

There’s just something about the fragment “OMPH” that I find amusing.

Second order of business:
(said in a Wicked Witch of The West voice….)
POPPIES!



This is the center bed in the front garden. This spring Susan and I turned it, filled it with compost and chicken poo and then planted it to what I thought was going to be a somewhat more varied seed mix, but as it turns out I don’t care how varied the seed mix is. Isn’t that gorgeous? I mean, I’ve been growing, usually inadvertently, the regular California poppies for better than 10 years. With this mix I’m getting ruffles, I’m getting bicolors, I’m getting doubles, doubles with ruffles, double bicolors with ruffles….. The only problem is that I don’t remember what it was I ordered from Territorial in February so I haven’t the faintest idea what to order again. When these go to seed I’ll be collecting seeds like a madwoman.

The garden is FINALLY all planted. The weather has been so cold and damp that even my fourth attempt at starting beans isn’t going very well. The first three times I started beans it was too cold for them to sprout so they got too wet and rotted. Potatoes and onions are big and burly in that order, although I waited too long on some of the onions so the starts either got too dry or got too wet and rotted…. sigh. My poor little tomatoes though! I had ripe tomatoes at this time two years ago and at this point I’ve only got ONE tomato on the vines and it’s green and hard as a rock. On the other hand I’ve got cabbages that are looking good and more squash and volunteer pumpkins than I can count. I guess we’ll just see whether or not it ever gets warm enough for them to bloom and set fruit.

Third order of business:
KABOOM!
With the help of the fire pit that kept us warm and incinerated meat for us we had a lovely party on the 4th. It rained on and off all day so I didn’t have to worry about spray sparks setting the garden on fire (which was nice), and it was cool enough that sitting and baking by the fire while sucking on a beer and talking was quite pleasant indeed. When it wasn’t raining the back yard was a very appealing place to be.
And we had our traditional barrage that lasted -oh- five hours or so? I swear we are going to be solely responsible for the city of Normandy Park banning fireworks one of these years. In addition to the earth shattering kabooms we had plenty of little parachute guys to try and blast out of the air with roman candles. And aside from a few little mishaps like the fireball that hit me in the thigh and the one that bounced and ended up in Andrew’s car (okay, new rule for next year, NO aiming roman candles at the ground) it was a great lot of fun. Curt added a new dimension to the “blasting things out of the air with roman candles” selection by bringing along a small remote controlled helicopter which was apparently a lot harder to hit than even the parachute guys.
Witness….


(you’ll see the helicopter as a wee little yellow spot in about the center of the photo)

I think someone actually did manage to knock the thing out of the air (thus the aiming of the roman candles at the ground), but so far as I could tell it wasn’t even singed. We had a great time.

And thus to the fourth order of business:
THE NEW ROOF!
I started out with a moderate dislike of the cedar shakes on our roof. Over the last 10 years that has progressed to active hatred. They warp. They curl. They’re more than a little flammable. They grow moss and slime, they shed bits of themselves into the gutters….
Currently we are (or the driveway is) playing host to a large truck and a pair of roof monkeys who are thumping fit to shake the floor and scaring the bejeezus out of the cats. At this point all they’re doing is delivering the new shingles and the rest of the roofing materials, but the theory is that they’re going to start pulling the old stuff off tomorrow.
I intend to keep the cats stoned out of their gourds for the next three days or so and, my dislike of thumping, banging, and remodeling projects in general rearing its head again, I may actually join them.
Or perhaps I’ll just go take a shower and go to work.

Three words I picked up on a recent troll through a half stack of the Journal of The American Veterinary Medical Association.
(Note, please, that, like a stack, a half stack is a metaphysical measurement of things that you know you gotta, but don’t necessarily wanna, read. The actual number that comprises a stack or a half stack varies depending on how many of the item there actually are and how much, or little, you actually want to read them.)

I’ll give you the first because there is no way on earth that y’all will be able to work backwards through the etymology of it and come up with any sort of answer.

GOSSYPIBOMA
A gossypiboma is a sterile, benign, inflammatory mass that forms within an abdominal cavity around a retained surgical sponge.
Isn’t that a great word though? Isn’t it just like the medical establishment to have come up with an actual word for something like that? I’m the first to admit that mistakes happen, but it sounds so much more official and so much less “Oops! THAT wasn’t supposed to happen!” when you have a cool word for it.

The next two are related and you are going to have to work through the etymology of them to come up with a definition.
OMPHALOCOELE
and
OMPHALOPHLEBITIS

Major word nerd cred attaches to those who can come up with definitions without resorting to a dictionary, a thesaurus, or Wikipedia. Parents might, and I emphasize the might, just have a little edge over those who aren’t parents.

Early Tuesday morning, a medium-sized dump truck backed up our driveway and delivered a cord of mixed hardwood. We don’t typically heat with wood—though if we have another verdammt middle-of-the-winter power outage we may change our minds about that—but we do have a spanking new fire-cum-barbecue pit in the back yard, which we intend to use as a replacement for our venerable “two army-issue broiler pans filled with charcoal sitting on cinderblocks” arrangement at our various and sundry holiday grillvaganzas.

It took me about five hours to move and stack the wood along the east side of the house, setting a leisurely pace so as not to cause my spine to explode, sending me shrieking across the sky on a contrail of suddenly-liberated synovial fluid. Later on, I thought to look at the stills from our driveway surveillance camera, and what I saw there gave me a hum-dinger of an idea.

So here, for your amusement, is a time-lapse of my log-haulin’ Tuesday, set to the musical stylings of Yello’s Tied Up! It’s a toe-tapper, and safe for work, so turn those multimedia speakers up!

Click here to view the embedded video.

So The Saga of The Elbow continues. Plain ol’ tendon pain has progressed, despite truly epic amounts of ibuprofen, to little zingy pains along the dorsum of my left forearm that extend to the tips of my center two fingers. Sometimes when The Elbow is in a real snit I get cramps in my left forearm and a line of twangy pain along the line of the triceps. And DON’T talk about touching my elbow itself, to say nothing of bonking it. Do you know how many times a day your elbow bonks against things?
LOTS that’s how many.

And I grant, I’ve not been good about “resting”. But how can I rest one half of what my job requires all day every day? I could take time off of work, but with only eighty hours of paid vacation time (thirty hours down for the year), another forty hours of sick time (ten hours down for the year) and nonrefundable tickets to Hawaii in December taking up all of the rest of those available hours….
Yeah. Unless I decide to activate my disability insurance and take myself off of the payroll for however many weeks (and I AM considering it) a lot of time off of work ain’t gonna happen.
A year when the business contracted from three doctors to two, a year where we’re only JUST getting our heads above the water in which we found ourselves at the end of last year is NOT a good time to have half of the income generating capacity for the business down an arm.
And the spring and early summer, smack in the middle of prime garden time (not that there’s been a lot of good garden weather) is NOT a good time to expect me to sit around the house. Everywhere I look there’s stuff that needs to get done. AIGH!

I can’t walk because swinging my arm makes my elbow hurt and walking any distance with my arm in a sling makes my right shoulder and my neck hurt. To say nothing of chafing. Yikes!
I can at least ride the recumbent bicycle which we’ve recently installed in the family room. Even that will make my arm hurt some though because the arm rests (the “handlebars”) are far enough down that I have to have my arm in full extension to be able to reach and that, yep, makes my arm hurt.

So I snork down ibuprofen, and add ice and a cat when I can and I bitch a lot. Sorry about that, but I’m not, as I’ve mentioned before, a patient patient and forced immobility makes me cranky.

I have, however, started with acupuncture which at least made The Elbow more comfortable. Whether or not it’ll be any long term use remains to be seen, I’ve only been for one session, but it’s a place to start.

Anyone want an elbow? Only slightly used.

A woman called him, rather out of the blue, she wasn’t a client but he is one of the few people in his area that does house calls.
Him: “Hello?”
Her: “Um, hi. Is this Dr. X?”
Him: “Yes.”
Her: “Oh good, listen, I was hoping you could come out to my place and dart my beaver.”

What’s better, of course, was that she was serious.

I’ve got the garden mostly planted, tennis elbow bedamned, the only bits that are left are some onions that I’m hoping to get in this week and the black beans which won’t go in until the weather heats up a bit. Say when hell freezes over the way things have been recently.
I’ve even got flowers in bloom in the flower bed out front. Very exciting since I don’t really know what I planted there and I’m enchanted to see the changes day by day.
Some day when I empty the photos off of the current memory card I’ll go out and take photos of the garden.

I had a lovely birthday, thanks. On The Day I was off work, got tomatoes planted, got a massage, and then Andrew and I took the Link (we’ve started to refer to it as “The Yay! Train!”) downtown to have dinner at Ruth’s Chris (mmmmm, big hunk of COW) then we wandered up a few blocks to see a taping of Wait…Wait! Don’t Tell Me! to which we are thoroughly addicted. It’s great to watch live and we came out with the most popular current schwag, a Wait Wait reusable grocery tote. It’ll go great with my Car Talk reusable grocery tote and it was a very convenient way to carry my cow leftovers. Dude taking tickets at the door to the Paramount had the…gall? Nerve? Chutzpah? Hope? to tell us that we couldn’t walk in with the leftovers. Um…. Thought we just did. I think he was maybe hoping that if he told us we’d have to toss them that we’d hand them over in an attempt not to waste food. And since none, not ONE, of the dozen or so other Paramount employees with whom we interacted that evening mentioned anything about us carrying a little discrete plastic bag with “Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse” on it, the more I think on it, the more I think I’m probably right about the ticket dude scamming for leftovers. Tough titty ticket dude. That was a spectacular chunk of cow and even though the “sauteed wild mushrooms” were actually sauteed Agaricus spp. (Andrew says they were criminis) there wasn’t any way he was getting the leftovers away from me.
Anyway, Wait Wait schwag. Right.
It was funny, too, to see the streams of people leaving the theater, all of us identified by the identical blue and white grocery totes. The only other people that were on our train with a Wait Wait bag got off at the Mount Baker station.

Friday I didn’t work either so I spent the entire damn day in the garden. Finished the rototilling, planted volunteer potatoes, planted onions, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, melons…. Pulled radishes, pruned, weeded. A remarkably , wonderfully calming way to spend a day, especially since it didn’t rain on me while I was running the tiller.

We had a small to do here on Saturday. Andrew made me my traditional birthday dinner of shoyu chicken, amongst other meaty edibles, and we had a truly remarkable chocolate mousse cake from Alki Bakery. After the comestibles had been comested we all sat down for a screening of Gamers II: Dorkness Rising. This is NOT a slick Hollywood production, it is NOT well acted, and the effects are done by Magic Marker. However if you have ever participated in, lived in a home with someone who is participating in, or have friends who have participated in, a D & D campaign, it’s DAMN FUNNY. The first time I saw the movie Andrew had to stop it about halfway through because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Every so often I still get the giggles out of nowhere.
The coolest gift of the day: My brother comes through again.
Last year Matt and Shannon got me a signed copy of Keith Knight’s “I Left My Arse In San Francisco” (with personalized original artwork too! I’m SUCH a fanboy).
This year, despite the scary, scary Disney Princess gift bag (with glitter!), the coolest thing again came from my loving brother. Matt & Shannon got me a towel. A BIG towel. A big towel with stripes. I’ll let you know if the the towel is soaked in nutrients and the stripes are different flavors.

Both kittens (okay, yes, they’re past two, but they’re still kittens dammit) are still wearing flexible e-collars. Flitter’s arm is healing. SLOWLY, but it is healing.
The scratch on Pogo’s belly which he has been licking at would heal if the little idiot would stop finding a way around his e-collar to lick at it. Obsessive compulsive little idjit.

We had the dude out last week to look at the roof and give us a quote on replacing the old, highly flammable shakes that I’ve hated since the day we moved in here. If all goes right we’ll have a (shudder) new roof this summer. Let me tell you how MUCH I’m looking forward to having construction monkeys crawling all over my house pounding and thumping for three days. Every so often I’ll go back and re-read the posts I wrote during our sewer/interior remodel/landscaping ordeal in 2008. And every time I read them I am so profoundly grateful that IT’S OVER! If I wasn’t certain that the bloody damned roof was going to catch fire on July 4th, start leaking this fall, or blow off completely next winter I wouldn’t even contemplate it.
When we were facing moving to the third house in three years back when my Dad moved us from New York to Federal Way and then from Federal Way to Bellevue, my mother told him that if he decided to move again anytime within the following 20 years or so that she was going to fly to Hawaii and he could just call her when it was all done. I’m much of the same mind when contemplating another major remodeling bout. Except that if I buggered off out of the house and hid at my parents’ place until the roof was done I’d have to take the cats with me and Dad is allergic to cats.

And, thank GOD, my review class is over with. This class was one of three review modules offered by my online veterinary addiction (VIN) which are designed to prepare me to take the ABVP test. I don’t HAVE to take the courses to sit the test, but the courses are a good basic review of stuff that may pop up on the test. Study guides, as it were. But time consuming, annoying (people that are excellent medical practitioners aren’t necessarily excellent lecturers), and a REALLY big commitment during the spring and summer when my life is going in thirty different directions at once. I’m not taking the second module (July through September) but I may pick back up for the third module in October. Or I might just go crazy and save myself the time.

But now it’s dinner time, I’ve been sitting at my computer for an hour, and I still need to get my lunch ready for tomorrow, drop down to the grocery for some milk and bananas, and figure out how to attach tongue depressors to the cats’ e-collars so they can’t lick around them, all before bedtime at 8:30.
No, not at all busy right now. You?

So I’m in the exam room with Megatron and I hear, with half an ear, the front door open and my next appointment walk in.

Spike *is* the biggest dog in the world.
At least according to him he is.

Door opens.
“Yaryaryaryayayayayayayayaryar!”
Door closes.
“Yaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryar!!!”

Mumbled voices with a continued background of “yaryaryaryaryaryaryaryar!”

I finish up with Megatron and head back to my hidey hole in the back, separated by two doors, to get Megatron invoiced.

“Yaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryaryar…YARK!”
Just enough barking from Spike to cover the amount of time it took for Megatron to walk from the exam room door into the lobby.
Just enough barking time for Spike, all seven pounds and six inches of him, to see the moving wall of dog flesh that was coming his way.

I was struck by the mental image of Megatron walking through the door into the lobby and seeing this hyperactive popcorn kernel on a leash bouncing around and, in the manner of a kitten playing with a bug, reaching out with a forefoot and squashing it flat.
My boss, who was sitting next to me and who is also familiar with Megatron and his placid ways, had much the same theme running through her mind, only her image played out as Megatron walking up to Spike and licking him in a nice friendly manner only realizing after he swallowed that Spike had gotten wrapped up in his tongue. Rather like a frog with a bug.

As I said, I could wish that every short man syndrome moment ended like that.
Andrew’s dude with the 9 mil on his hip? He steps out of the door of the pet store and gets smeared out of existence by an elephant stampede.
The jackass in the overpowered flash car that zips in and out of traffic? He meets a Sherman tank at high speed.
Kim Jong Il? Ah, for him something small and humble. Plague maybe. It would be fitting for an overwhelming narcissist to be taken out by something transmitted by a lowly flea.
The idiot frat boy in the 4WD pickup truck that passed us going west down Snoqualmie Pass at 50 odd MPH in a driving snowstorm? Well, I still think that the Great Hamster in the sky reached down and flicked that kid on the nose. SOMEone had enough of a sense of humor to leave the frat boy, backwards baseball cap, shorts, and all, completely intact and uninjured while his pickup was upside down in a ditch facing backwards UP the pass.

No matter how big and how powerful you are, there’s always something, even if its only your own hubris, that is going to take you out.

I should preface anything that follows with the statement that I am, in general, pro gun rights. I think that, in a democratic society, stronger limits on legal gun possession tend to restrict the possession of firearms by those least likely to misuse them. (Which is not to say that I wouldn’t support tougher rules regarding the training that one must undergo in order to legally own a firearm.) I also suspect that there’s a really good chance the drafters of the Second Amendment intended that citizens have the means at their disposal to violently overthrow their own government if ever it became necessary in the name of protecting our freedom. Problem is, that’s not the way the passage actually reads, and I tend to believe in divining the intent of the Founders through their legally-binding documents, not tea leaves, goat entrails or other forms of constitutional augury. Also, given the size and lethal sophistication of Federal military forces these days, to insure true parity by a citizen militia would require the legalization of civilian-owned armaments to horrendously destructive as to make the existence of any form of local law enforcement—from beat cop to National Guard—an act of suicide on the part of its members. So it seems obvious that a certain amount of restriction must be exercised when choosing who may own what sorts of weapons.

But handguns, shotguns, rifles, even so-called “assault rifles” that are made illegal simply because they look more badass than their big-game-hunting counterparts (an act tantamount to classifying a Hummer H2 as a “tank” because it’s encrusted with sorta-kinda-militaryish-looking plastic carbuncles)….I think that the right to keep such weapons should, by and large, be preserved. The “and bear” part takes a little more convincing. I don’t necessarily want to restrict the right of a citizen, lawfully licensed to own a handgun, from being able to carry it on his or her belt in public. That being said, I also don’t want to restrict the constitutionally-protected right of a citizen to, say, write fiction extolling the virtues of rape, incest and child molestation. In either case, I’d simply prefer that the individual in question choose not to.

Whenever some unexpected tragedy of mass murder occurs here in these United States, we are bound to hear from both sides of the aisle in the endless debate over gun ownership in America. The anti-gun folks will staunchly pretend that anyone who wants a gun can’t in all likelihood go out and find one with little or no trouble, legal or otherwise, no matter what kinds of laws are passed; and the pro-gun side will act as though a college/church/Safeway full of individuals armed to the teeth would somehow, against all understanding of human nature, be statistically safer than one without. The actual answer is a lot more nuanced, and a whole holy crapload harder to legislate. A level-headed, well-trained, emotionally-healthy citizen with a firearm might very well be a godsend in such a situation. And if there were any way to instantly and accurately distinguish the level-headed, well-trained, emotionally-healthy people brandishing guns from the paranoid, whacked-out testosterone-poisoned wingnuts, then this would not be the hot-button issue that it currently is.

Personally, I don’t feel like I should have to exercise such intense and potentially life-changing deliberation concerning the mental, emotional and moral stability of my fellow Man every time I enter a public place. Particularly if the only real way to be sure I was protecting my own safety in the face of such ambiguity would be to either a) never leave my home or b) start packin’ heat myself every time I run out for a quart of milk or a can of mice.

To be honest, there’s something a little unnerving about a person who wants to walk down the street with a singular killing device like a Glock strapped to his side. In fact, one has the distinct impression that “unnerving”—or, to put it another way, “intimidation”—is exactly what this guy was hoping to achieve in doing so. It’s a form of pre-one-upmanship, a way of taking all advantage away from the other guy, whoever and under whatever circumstances that may be. “I am prepared to blow a generously-sized hole in you if you make me feel sufficiently threatened, and I have the tool to accomplish this objective not four inches from my dominant hand, so you’d best watch everything you do and say in my presence.” It feels….well, like a form of cheating, I guess. This guy has decided to end the conflict before it starts, by so totally overbalancing the situation in his favor. It’s like deciding to wear a suit covered with millions of spines dipped in shellfish toxin out in public; nobody will have any problem so long as they keep their distance. It’s not your fault if they happen to accidentally brush against you.

I think I chose my reaction to this spectacle quite well; I elected to ignore him. But at the same time—and please don’t imagine for one moment that I am anything but ashamed of this—I have to admit that the more alligatory bits of my brain entertained another possible course of action. Namely, to slip in behind him and shove the knife clipped inside my pocket into the base of his neck, thereby proving the singular futility of attempting to hold back life-altering tragedy through the ostentatious display of lethal force.

But even setting aside the legal, moral and basic human decency questions, all told it was probably better that I didn’t. No doubt his wife would have pulled a Walther from her purse and blown me away.

Dear Margaret L. Hammond

The Health and Recovery Services Administration has received and reviewed your Medicaid Provider application.
We have decided not to enter into a Core Provider Agreement with you at this time. Washington Administrative Code 388-502-0030 (6) reads: “Nothing in this chapter obligates the department to enroll all eligible providers who request enrollment.”

If you have any questions, you can call me at……. etc.

Panic.
Immediate panic.
Insurance fraud, Medicaid fraud, identity theft. My blood pressure shot up so fast I was dizzy.

The only thing that provided any faint hope that I wasn’t permanently screwed was that my boss had gotten the same letter at the same time.
I was on the phone with the DSHS so fast my telephone smoked.
With really quite remarkable brevity for a governmental organization, to say nothing of a government phone tree, I was actually on the phone with a living human being to whom I could explain my dilemma before my 1:00 appointment showed up.
The DSHS guy to whom I spoke was bright and responsive. And very much seemed to understand my concern that SOMEone had tried to sign me up as a Washington State Medicaid Core Provider. An odd thing for a veterinarian to want, no?
The DSHS guy listened to my concern, agreed that it was more than a little weird and possibly a little ominous, then went to go ask someone whom I should talk to next.
DSHS guy came back to the phone and explained that he had spoken with his supervisor. These letters had gone out to the holders of all DEA numbers in Washington State that the DSHS had decided that they *didn’t* want as Medicaid Core Providers. The DEA numbers had been tagged in a database as early a 1995 as being “undesirable” as Medicaid Core Providers. The letters were getting sent out now because the computer system was being changed over and all of us with “undesirable” DEA numbers got flagged and brought up to the surface of the database again.
So no one tried to sign me up as a Medicaid Core Provider, my DEA number was still secure, all was copacetic.

We laughed at the nonsensical single mindedness of computer systems and I rang off to reassure my boss that her name, reputation, and DEA number were also secure.

Now keep in mind that each and every practicing veterinarian in Washington state that holds a federal DEA number got that letter. As well as a number of researchers, and other scientists with DEA numbers. Thousands of people across the state all calling the DSHS in Olympia in a panicked snit to find out who had been trying to use their name to sign up to receive Medicaid payments.
I felt sorry for the poor phone monkeys at the DSHS.

My sympathy for their computer system, however, failed rapidly when I got a second copy of the exact same letter ten minutes later. The first had come standard post. Outsized, the postage on the original was $0.65.
The second copy came special delivery, Certified Mail, signature required. For $5.30.
So because of what was essentially a computer glitch, the state spent $6.00 times who knows how many thousands of holders of “undesirable” DEA numbers across the state.

To steal a line from Bill Cosby, I told you that story to tell you this one.

A week or so ago I got a letter at home.
A big plastic window across the front shows my name, address, and the following:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican Voters in Washington’s 9th Congressional District. This is not a U.S. Government Document.

Um.
Wow.
I have?
Really?!
Opened the contents reveal themselves to be exactly what you’d suspect. It’s a questionnaire and fundraising campaign sponsored by the RNC. All sorts of conservative bloviating about President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the “liberal agenda”.
I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll send it back and make them pay the postage on their postage paid envelope (to say nothing of making someone read my nauseating liberal opinions on their desperately important questions), or if I’ll shred it and feed it into the worm bin thus getting at least *some* good out of the RNC.

But I have to wonder where, WHERE did they get my name? Does the RNC just carpet bomb with junk mail or did they get my name and address off of some mailing list that got purchased by someone who purchased it from someone who purchased it from someone?
And if so, WHO?!
The Funny Times? The dozens of organic gardening catalogues I receive? The mailing lists of my hippy feminist sports/activewear catalogues? I have absolutely no idea where they could have gotten my contact information.

Unless someone was listening to me rant about waste, fraud, and abuse when I realized that Washington State’s DSHS had spent $6.00 times several thousand to tell those of us with “undesirable” DEA numbers that we weren’t going to be Medicare Core Providers when we hadn’t been interested in doing so in the first place.

AGAIN?!?!

So when I went to see the hand specialist in October he said that this sort of thing usually will flare up on and off for a year or more before it calms down completely. He also said that the cortisone injection he gave me at that point would only last about six weeks and granted, I got about six months out of it, but come ON!

I went to see my regular MD on Friday because I could see her and get some sort of relief then instead of waiting to see the hand specialist two weeks from now.
My MD poked, prodded, and twisted and told me that, indeed, I was having a flare up. She wasn’t going to repeat the cortisone injection because really you can only get about three injections in that site before the tendon fails completely and you end up needing surgery.
So on Friday my MD sentenced me to the following: Rest, ibuprofen, ice, ice, rest, rest, ibuprofen, ice, and rest.
Told me I should take a few days off of work and that I should only go back when my arm wasn’t sore.
Listed a bunch of things that I shouldn’t do.
No typing.
No sewing.
Absolutely no knitting.
I can go walking but I’ve either got to let my arm hang or wear a sling (FAIL!).
I can read so long as I balance the book on a pillow on my lap.

I interrupted her at that point and said “So I guess that means I shouldn’t run the rototiller this weekend?”
To her credit, my MD has a sense of humor.

And yes, I’m breaking the “no typing” rule, but my shoulder, my elbow, and my wrist are currently supported in entirely neutral positions and none hurt. And being that the support is a pillow and Pogo, the support is a little lumpy and probably more mobile than is entirely recommended, but I’m comfortable and nothing twinges so we’re all good.
It was freakin’ murder to ignore a gorgeous, perfectly open Saturday and not plant, weed, or rototill.
And it is difficult, although not impossible if you’re conspiring with a pair of overachieving Martha Stewarts, to throw a baby shower with only one arm. The shower, at least, was a marked success.
So I’m going to spend today reading material that needs to be read for this week’s class, playing Scrabble and probably napping.
It’s hard to take time off if you’re feeling well and can’t do what you want or need to get done.
I never have been very good at Zen.

My brother’s on Facebook, my friends are on Facebook, my father is on Facebook. Heck, even my in-laws are on Facebook.

I’m not on Facebook. I miss out on photos of my great nephew because I’m not on Facebook. I miss out on photos of Anastasia dissecting her first frog at school, I miss out on photos of my friend’s new house, I miss out on keeping in touch with friends from high school, I miss out on a lot of stuff.

Why am I not on Facebook?

Welp, this is the first reason.

Question: I am currently doing what?
Answer: Blogging.

Question: Are you blogging on a commercial site?
Answer: No.

I’ve GOT a blog. Okay, technically, I SHARE a blog, but why would I need two?
If something goes hinky with Uncle-Andrew.net I’ve got tech support right here. Instead of trying to make some nameless computer wonk on the other end of the phone understand what the problem is on my end I can have Andrew come, look, and fix.
And believe me, with my unique, um, *talents* as regards making computers go hinky on a regular basis, having in-house tech support is ABSOLUTELY a requirement.
If I need to learn something new to complete a blog post, I’ve got my library, my professor, and my mentor right here. Witness my capability to post photos. I’d NEVER have been able to figure out how to do that on my own (I tried and it was notably unsuccessful) and unless someone was physically in the room to show me how it worked several times over a period of several weeks I wouldn’t have been able to remember how to do it. And that knowledge has been applied in several situations. I can not only post photos to the blog, I can post photos to my online veterinary site, and I can move photos around from various albums to other devices. Extremely helpful when I want to put new photos on the memory card for my digital photo frame.

Here’s the second reason.
I’m not on Facebook because I already have a variety of forums in which I can socialize with those people with whom I wish to socialize.
You’re reading this right? Are we not, in some modern definition of “socialization”, socializing?
I’ve got my subscription veterinary site. VIN is a great community, not only for professional issues, but for personal issues as well whether or not they correlate to our shared profession. I’ve got VIN buddies all over the country and people with whom I communicate in places as far flung as Australia and Israel (and Turkey, and Afghanistan, one in Greece, several in western African nations…) Sounds like a social networking site to me.

And the third, and possibly the most relevant reason I’m not on Facebook was published as a cartoon in May’s Funny Times. It’s a ‘talking heads’ cartoon with a well dressed (suit and tie) man and a more casually dressed woman. I’d post the cartoon, but I can’t seem to figure out why WordPress won’t insert the photo I took of the cartoon and my tech support is currently in Shelton.
The man says to the woman: “I know we’re strangers, but I’d really like you to give me your personal information. A lot of it. And send all your communications through me from now on. I think I could make a fortune from it.”
The woman, angry, replies: “What are you – some *#$%#$/! PSYCHO?!”
“No, I’m a social networking site.”
“Oh, hip. Sign me up.”

But basically the point is this.
I have an unlisted TELEPHONE number. My home number is on the DO NOT CALL list. I have Caller ID (not really by choice, but only because by bundling services I could get my landline service cheaper, but still), one of the reasons I chose my current mobile phone provider is because they DON’T participate in the mobile phone ‘phone book’. Only one of our neighbors knows what I do for a living and she takes her dogs to the veterinary hospital that is two blocks away from us.
The reason I’m so protective of my privacy and personal information?
They get abused.
And not abused by some nebulous corporate entity looking to collect information on my purchasing habits so they can sell me shit, but abused by idiots who think that contacting me at home is a good way to get my “real” professional opinions and abilities when I’m free of the constraint of The Man.
As you will, perhaps, have previously read, people consider veterinarians — most medical professionals really — as public property regardless of whether or not they’re in the office. And veterinarians especially since we “do this because we love animals”. Because we have an interest in both animals AND medicine it means that we love animals so much that no matter where we are and what we’re doing (and whether or not you intend to pay us for our time or services) we’re willing to drop everything to advise, to opine, and to succor. I’ve got colleagues who have been interrupted in church, at children’s birthday parties, heck I even know someone who was pestered for veterinary advice while she was being PREPPED FOR A COLONOSCOPY.
Okay, yes, Facebook profiles can be made private, personal information _can_ be protected, but I don’t want to get sucked into something like this where I’m asked over, and over, and over again about why I’m not willing to be someone’s Facebook friend. Okay, my example is fictional and it may dilute the force of my argument to quote South Park. However Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a point, and since I interact with people professionally every day with whom I do not wish to interact, even on a very superficial level (i.e. “I didn’t accept your ‘friend’ request because my Facebook page is only for my family and friends outside of work”) privately, I think the point is a valid one. I don’t WANT to have to explain to the crazy lady who has called me four times in the space of two days to see if my answer to her request for me to euthanize her dog at home will change, why I also won’t be her Facebook friend. Or why she can’t be mine. And crazy lady isn’t the only one who would call me at the office to ask me questions about things that were bugging her online.
At times being a veterinarian is rather like having a large stable of stalkers.

So accept the fact that I’m not, nor will I ever be, on Facebook or any other public social networking site. And when you’ve got photos or invitations, or news, please do me the favor of e-mailing me directly so I can share them. I’m kind of tired of missing out.