Lycan...Sigh...

How can I be mad at this face?

Well, Lycan (really a sweet and wonderful dog...I have to keep reminding myself) has been such a PUNK lately. I am going to attribute it to adolescence, and hope that it is just a stage he is going through, but my goodness, he's been obnoxious the past couple days. Granted, he has not gotten much exercise, but neither have the other two and they have been perfect gentlemen. This morning, he woke me up at 8AM by just randomly whining, which he had been doing for at least 30 mins (I'm not sure because I started to tune him
out). At first I thought that something was wrong, maybe he
was in pain or something, but no, turns out he just wanted me to wake up so I could pet him and scratch his belly. Last night again we had bouts of fidgety anxiety (read: whining, licking my face, climbing into my lap), which turned out to be that he thought I should get up and feed him RIGHT NOW!. Anyways, any way that I can assert my dominance, I jump on, so I waited until he lay down on his bed and stopped bothering me before I fed him. Then, after he had been fed and was resting, when I wanted to pet him, he refused to come over to me for attention. What a jerk! On Tuesday we had his second Therapy dog visit, and while he was fairly good once I took him outside and let him relieve himself, he was just antsy, screamed when I barely put pressure on his foot, and lay down in the middle of the room and flopped around like a fish. He LOVED the interactions with the residents, but got a little preoccupied with all the other dogs around. Next time, I have to remind myself to make sure he gets to run around for a while before taking him in on a visit, and also remember a tired dog is a good dog. I love him dearly, but this must be what having children feels like!

Therapy dog extrordanaire

Today was Lycan's first therapy dog visit. According to the rules of the Delta Society, the group he is registered with, he needs to be bathed no earlier than 24 hours before the visit. So, last night I got him in the tub, cleaned him all up, dried him, brushed him brushed his teeth and trimmed his nails. This morning I brushed him some more, took him to the facility and let him wander around and relieve himself, drink some water, and of course, get his legs all muddy again. After he met the other therapy dog, a lovely chocolate lab named Sequoia, we went into the facility (Timber Ridge assisted living facility), where he met lots of sweet people who were so excited to see him. Now, I have to admit I was NERVOUS! I thought for sure he would do something rotten, like pee on someone's walker, jump on some poor old person, or maybe lick them so much they wouldn't like him. He was such a good boy. We spent about 45 mins letting the residents visit with him, pet him, talk to him etc. He was a little concerned about getting too close to the people, because he had to scootch around walkers and wheelchairs, but all in all, I was very proud. I think in the future he would do better meeting more people instead of seeing the same people over again, and he would do better with no longer than the time we spent, because I noticed him start shedding and licking my face right before we left. That is his signal for being stressed out. So, we need to be mentored one last time and then we are a full Rx: pets visiting team. YAY!

Uh oh, I'm in the wrong field!

I just took a quiz online, and apparently I'm in the wrong field!

When you were young, you wanted to be a Astronaut when you grew up, but in reality, you're gonna end up as a Truck Driver

Are you crazy? Staring off into space all the time does not an astronaut make. Do you really think you're up for that much physics? It's ok, though. Soon enough, you realise that not only is math hard, but that there are other ways of being a space traveler.

So after a few years of heavy drug use, your desire to 'get away from it all' still hasn't been killed off. But that's ok, there's still plenty of work out there for a person like you, and there's plenty of stars to see when you're barreling down the highway in BFE, Kansas at 3 in the morning.

What you want to be when you grow up: The fantasy...and the cold hard truth., created by Ptocheia

Pizza...

Pizza and I have had a long and elaborate history together, most of the time ending badly. Tonight, we battled yet again, and I am sad and humbled to say, I lost. I'll let you, dear reader, in on a little of our past. When I was in the high school marching band, we performed at all the half-times of the home games. Our boosters had a food booth, and when we were done performing, we would all head over there, where we chowed down discount slices of pizza. About 30 minutes later, I would be struck ill. Rushing to the bathroom, I was sick, again and again and again. I slowly poisoned myself because the pizza was just so good. It took me several years (I'm dumb sometimes...) until I learned that I am lactose intolerant and the pizza's cheese did not get along with innards. After I wizened up, I took a break from pizza, until I started working at the kennel. One night when I was house sitting for the people who lived in the kennel house, I decided to heat up a slice of pizza for a snack. I thought I had put it in the microwave for one minute, but instead put it in for 11 by accident. When I went to get my pizza, smoke was pouring out of the microwave, smoke detectors were blaring and I had to run around opening windows and dog kennels, hoping the dogs didn't get sick from smoke inhalation. That was when I decided to take yet another brake from pizza. Tonight, I decided to try again. On my way home I picked up a cheese pizza from Papa Murphey's, thoroughly excited to bake it and dig in. I preheated the oven to 425, and just as I slid the pizza on the rack, half of the cheese poured off onto the extremely hot oven floor. Needless to say, the cheese melted, and started to burn. Smoke poured out of the oven, smoke detectors started going off and I was left with a spatula trying to scrape the mess off before my entire house was filled with pizza smoke. Finally, it all cooked down and I shut the oven, set the timer and went to watch House. About fifteen minutes in, I decided to check my progress. Apparently, what I didn't know, cheese seared on to the bottom of the stove raises the temperature to 550. I barely caught my pizza before it turned into a charred mess, but after all that, I could hardly enjoy my dinner. Pizza 3 Lucy 0

Ah, Internet

Here I am sitting at my computer, yet again. I am supposed to be working on my 20-25 page paper, due in 11 days, but instead I am getting caught up in the hypertext of internet web pages. The next thing I know, I'm drooling, my back is asleep and five hours have passed, and somehow I find myself looking at an article entitled "Five types of underwater nematodes and their effect on mankind" or some equally ridiculous title that has absolutely nothing to do with my original search (something like, early Victorian women, or Sense and Sensibility.) Alas, I think I am doomed to spend my life waisting time and getting off track...now, back to learning about how to trim the hoof of a zebra, or whatever other track my computer leads me down...

The Tofu Princess

The Tofu Princess

The Tofu princess, with tears in her eyes, Looked in the mirror, then started to cry.

White gobs of mushy, gelatinous goo, She looked like something that belonged in the zoo.

"I'm ugly!" She shouted, her lumps all shaking, "The only thing tofu is good for, is . baking."

One day in the park, her face made a little girl cry, The princess ran home, she wanted to die.

She stood in the bathroom, knife pressed to her vein, But tofu doesn't bleed, tofu doesn't feel pain.

Our princess knew life couldn't' get any worse, So she went back to school, to be a pediatric nurse.

Being around children left her hollow inside, Every night the princess went home and she cried and she cried.

She decided that she wanted children of her own, So she found a tofu husband, and they bought a nice home.

The tofu princess had finally gotten over her dark spell, And she lived with her tofu husband, a dog and five tofu children as well.

Los Angeles, I'm yours

I've been thinking a lot about my life lately, and while I'm generally happy, something is missing. I can feel it in my core--an ache that I have to push to the back of my mind or else it would bring me to tears. I have never thought of Humboldt as home. Southern California has such an undeniable pull on me I can hardly stand being away. I miss driving through LA at nighttime, it always made me feel so mournful. Me sitting peacefully in my car, surrounded by the bustle of uncertainty. Was the girl in the car next to me an aspiring actress? A writer? An editor? A porn star? Maybe just a student, like me, struggling with her future? When I lived in Ventura whenever I felt like this I would just drive to the Rincon, just as the sun had set and the lights of the oil rigs were coming on. It was so lonely and beautiful, and everything got put in perspective. Although there are many places up here I can go to figure things out, none are as comfortable or familiar to me as the other two places are. It seems to me that here in Humboldt county, everyone cares about what I'm doing, whether I am drinking from plastic water bottles or metal, if I'm destroying the environment with my gigantic truck, or whatever else they see wrong with my lifestyle. While this all may be true, and So Cal people are not as conscienctious about surroundings, they butt out of my life, for the most part, and when they do put their nose where it doesn't belong, it is from a place of ridiculous ignorance, I don't even listen. My problem is, what are these people doing about what they preach? Just by rubbing patcholi oil behind your ears, not washing your hair and smoking pot, you aren't really doing anything! Where is the money you are giving to help wipe AIDS out from Africa? Are you joining the peace corps to irrigate Latin America? Have you ever donated a goat to a starving woman and her family in Zimbabwe? No. Neither have I, but I'm not fussing about what container you drink from. I do not smoke pot, and therefore I do not fit in with this culture. Although you are beautiful, Humboldt County, you are not where I belong. And then, more pain. When I leave here, how will I be able to leave all my friends and my job behind? Will I one day be sitting in my house in Ventura county or wherever I end up, longing to be back, sitting under a redwood tree, smelling the skunky aroma of marijuana and watching the rain fall all around me. I don't know.