What Now

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Wow, bible school made me tired. I'm not kidding! All I did was work the sound system and take pictures, but just being around those children was exhausting. I would go home at noon with full intentions of doing something productive and wind up falling asleep. Kids are tiny energy vampires, that's the only explanation I have. :) I feel kind of bad about this, but I believe that some people I go to church with think I actually hate children, which is completely untrue. I like kids fine, but I'm not patient with them. I'm also not a great teacher or babysitter because of the patience thing (I've tried), and I don't want kids of my own, so I think people pull that together and believe I can't stand them. Hopefully I dispelled a bit of that this week. I even held a baby, which everyone knows terrifies me. Babies are so...squishy and floppy and I'm so clumsy and gooey stuff shoots out of them and they scream and cry when I try to hold them. They can smell fear. I wouldn't have agreed to hold this one, but I decided that if I didn't go ahead and do it, the mother of this child would ask me every week until I broke down and held it. He didn't scream, but I didn't hold him long.

Actually, it all wound up being kind of fun. I got to know some of the youth kids better, which is nice. One of them called me "ma'am" though, so he is automatically dead to me. I know that technically I am old enough to be a ma'am, but it is still jarring to be reminded of that fact! Some of them thought I wouldn't know the music they liked and disapprove of the places they shopped, which threw me. One of them said that they liked Hot Topic, and then said "You probably think that is some kind of devil store or something." Hello? Why would I think that? How old do they actually think I am? I mean, these kids and their rock and roll and their high top sneakers...geez.

2) The student pastor lent me his fancy DSLR camera and now I want one. I don't need one and it certainly isn't a convenient camera for me since I didn't know what most of the little knobs and switches do, but still. I took some pretty good photos with it for not knowing how much of it worked! I will not buy one. I will not buy one. I will not buy one. I do not need one. I will not buy one.

Maybe.

3) Two Saturdays ago Butler and Bear got into another one of their "Lets see how many pieces we can bite off of each other" fights outside. It was really, really nasty this time though. We heard a huge "WHAM!" against the back of the house and I had no idea what it was. I thought something outside had exploded, because it shook the house. I don't know how they did it, but it was the dogs fighting and they somehow hit our windows. I guess you won't understand why that is difficult to believe unless you know what are windows are like, but suffice it to say, they had to be airborne to do it. Steve ran outside to separate them, but he couldn't do it alone. Anthony happened to be over, so he and I ran out to help. I grabbed the water bucket and poured it over them, because that usually works, but it didn't this time. That scared me, and so I did the only thing I could think of and I whapped them with the bucket. That also didn't do a thing (except crack the bucket down one side.) It took all 3 of us to pull them apart, and it wasn't easy. By the time we had them separated, they were wet, bloody and edgy. It was scary. We brought them inside so we could assess the damage. Butler was covered in blood, but none of it seemed to be actually coming from him. He had a few bites on his ears and one on his front leg, but otherwise seemed OK. Bear had bites on his front legs (Butler's first attack zone) but they didn't seem to be very bad. We had managed to pull them apart fairly quickly, although it all seemed longer than it really was, so they didn't have much time to do a lot of damage. After feeding them and putting them to bed, we knew we'd have to keep a watch on them to make sure they weren't hurt worse than we thought. The next day we kept them inside in their kennels for most of the day, just to make sure. They seemed OK, except for the bites. During the following week, we noticed that Bear seemed to be fine, but Butler seemed to be acting strangely. He wasn't limping or bleeding, but he seemed...depressed or something. I know how dumb that sounds, but it was a noticeable change in his demeanor. We got worried that something might had gotten hurt internally, so we took him to the vet on Friday afternoon to make sure he was OK.

Now, our vet irritates me to no end. She's competent, but she's condescending as hell. I don't even think she realizes that she talks to us as if she was addressing a couple of mentally challenged 3 year olds, but she does. Every. Stinking. Time. We. Are. There. We waited in the lobby while they took him back (and of course by this time he seemed perfectly OK, so we seemed dumb when we said he'd been apathetic all week.) After a few minutes she came out to talk to us, or at us, rather. She said she couldn't find anything wrong except for the few bites he had and that he seemed fine to her. We tried explaining that he had been acting weird and she just kind of looked at us like she was thinking "Awww, isn't that cute. They didn't go to vet school and yet they think something is wrong wiff their widdle doggy." I'm sure she wasn't thinking that, but that was what her expression said. It made me want to punch her in the neck. Anyways, she said "Well, we can run a bunch of tests if you want, but he still seems fine to me. Let me take another look at him before we send him home, just to make sure." She went back to check him out and came back about three minutes later saying "I found out what is wrong with him!" Apparently during the fight, one of Butler's top canine teeth had been pulled out BY THE ROOT.

Gross.

Steve and I were kind of shocked, but it made sense. There was so much blood and we couldn't figure out where it had all come from. The reason he had been acting so strangely was that he was probably in a lot of pain! Poor Butler! A dog's canine teeth are deeply embedded in their gum with a very large root, so having one pulled out is kind of horrible. She said it didn't even seem to be broken off, simply pulled out. She said otherwise he seemed fine, so she gave us some antibiotics just as a preventative measure and we took him home.

I'm not going to lie. I really hate that Butler got hurt, I mean I really, really hate that. I also hate that he was probably in pain for most of a week and we didn't know it. However, there is an evil part of me that is glad the smarmy vet actually found something wrong with him which wiped that look off of her face.

Of course, now Butler is missing a lower left canine (product of breaking it while biting a rock) and an upper right canine (product of pulling it out while biting Bear.) He is now a full fledged hillbilly mutt! :)