Secrets

I was just reading Sister Mary Lisa's latest postand it brought to mind this latest email from my friend Debbi. It was pretty cute and I wanted to share. Plus I haven't had anything interesting happen to me lately to really talk about.

"Lord, I have a problem."

God asks, "What's the problem, Eve?"

"I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals as well as that hilarious, comedic snake, but I'm just not happy."

God replies, "And why is that, Eve?"

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."

"Man? What is that, Lord?"

"Man is a flawed creature with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat and be vain; all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster and will like to hunt and kill things.

I'll create him in such a way that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless and will revel in childish things like fighting and kicking a ball about. He won't be as smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great," says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, "but what's the catch, Lord?"

"Well" says God, "you can have him on one condition."

"And what's that, Lord?"

"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant and self absorbed, so you'll have to let him believe that I made him first. And it will have to be our little secret. . . . . . .

. . . . . . you know, woman to woman.”

Dog Food for Thought

Yes, Yes. I'm still around. I've just taken a break from the net for a few days to gather my thoughts and try to get my head straight. I AM ok. Really. It's a bit better now that I quit my job on Tuesday. It just wasn't going anywhere and it's a long story and doesn't bear repeating.


Anywho, I'd wanted to do something to gross a few people out. LOL just kidding. Actually, I'd been thinking of topics and the one that keeps rolling around in my head is about Tiger. He's keeping me sane right now. I love him so much, even though it's only been 5 1/2 weeks. A lot of people make a big to-do over feeding their dogs. I know I did when living "back home" in America...Lexington, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana to be exact. I had German shepherds that really had a lot of allergies and stuff, AND I wanted them to be healthy, a healthy dog from the inside out...which means good food. I started off with what's called a "natural diet"; raw meat, veggies, lots of vitamins and minerals, etc. It wasn't so expensive at the time until meat prices went way up. Then I found Nutro, which was "ok" for my dogs, but not great, as Tasha started having gum problems. THey had plenty of raw meaty beef bones to chew, and nothing but brushing her teeth with chlorhexidine ( a chemical used for gum disease treatment in humans - and dogs) worked. Then I found Natural Balance, and when I was in the States a 15 kg bag (35lbs roughly) cost $35. Great stuff! It had everything I'd been feeding in the natural diet and cheaper, too.


Here in Australia a Dr. Billinghurst came up with the BARF Diet sounds nasty huh? It stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods. It comes in pre-formed patties or bulk that you can weigh on your own. I do the pre-formed, just easier that way. It comes frozen and when thawed can tend to smell a bit, ESPECIALLY if it's roo. Yes 'roo as in kangaroo! Aussies are the only country in the world that eats its national symbol LMAO! Kangaroos are seen as pests and can be ; with the drought at disastrous proportions the poor devils don't have enough to eat, so the herds are culled for human and animal consumption. When you think about it, it makes sense. There is no need to farm them like cows, there are too many for the land to support so we are actually preventing starvation of the wonderful creatures.Anyway, the patties also come in lamb, chicken, pork, beef, and combination; it includes veggies, vitamins, minerals, and so forth. 1 patty for each 12 kgs and it's recommended to feed with "kibble" or dry dog food. Now here's the shocker. Natural Balance is not so readily available here, we order it shipping is only like $7 or something like that, it's not even as good as the Natural Balance back home and it costs....wait for it.....$69.00 per 15 kg bag. uh huh. Now those of you who have dogs in America, I'm sure you've seen the Science Diet in large bags at the vet...they cost what? About 40 bucks or so? Here they are over $100. Talk about unbelievable prices!

Tiger weighs about 34kgs or 74.8 lbs. So, he gets 2 patties per day, I feed him twice a day, plus about 1/2 cup or so of kibble, depends on his activity level. He is all lean muscle, greyhounds have very little fat on their bodies and retired greys tend to weigh a bit more when they get off the track since they start to put on a bit more weight, but it's really fat. They are supposed to look skinny, ok? Believe it or not, greyhounds don't do much. They are called the 45 mph couch potato for a reason. They have their little "zoomies" around the yard lasting just a few minutes per day (Tiger only does his about 3x per week), and then they sleep. That's pretty much all they do. I think I read somewhere that the avg. grey sleeps about 22 hours per day. Not much going on when you compare that to any other dog is it?

I won't get into the muzzling issue very far, except to say this, sometimes it IS for their own safety...this is one reason why: greys have very thin skin, it tears easily, doesn't heal very fast, and they can play very rough with each other. It's not unusual for grey owners to come home to what looks like a bloodbath in their home just because some happy dog wagged his tail and kept banging it against the walls til it bleeds (imagine a wagging tail spraying blood everywhere). Not that it happens often really, bit it can and does.

Greyhounds extremely loving creatures, they can look fierce because they do something really unusual for dogs, they grin. It's really funny looking, too. I found a pick of someone else's hound just to show you.

This is a pic of Cody, ain't that just a darlin' grin? Cutest thing I ever saw.

So here’s what I was trying to get around to showing you. The BARF in the bowl mixed with kibble. Looks kinda gross, but Tiges luuuuurrves it. This is the lamb, not that you can tell the difference when it's all just mush anyway.

Oh yeah and my freezer, too. It’s the size of a bar fridge but only the top shelf has food for us in it.

Suffering

This past week I've been suffering from depression, for me it's been fairly severe. I guess one could tell from my posts the last couple of weeks. Yesterday it kind of came to a head, I got upset, cried for a few hours and went to bed early.


I am still not "over" this feeling. I won't be for some time and I know it. It WILL get better, I know that, too. I've been here before. The question is, how long will it be til it is better. That's a question I cannot answer. I'm functional. I can still laugh, just not much, often, or loudly. Depression. It runs in my family just like it does in many others. I've witnessed it from mild to severe and it's not pretty, but it is manageable. For me, it makes me introspective and sometimes dangerously so. I become overly self-critical and it ends up paralysing me. The good thing is this: I won't wallow in it, I won't allow it to make me non-functional because I have others that depend on me. I have my husband and my dog and that is all I need to keep me going. When I was alone with just two dogs and it hit me, they were enough to see me through. A dog is like a balm for my soul. They fill a void inside me that no other person can ever fill. To someone that has never loved an animal like that, then you won't understand, but many will.


Right now, I feel abandoned. I feel completely and utterly alone. I can count on one hand how many times my mothe has called me in the last year and a half that I've been here in Australia. My father has called exactly once, and that was only at my great-grandmother's request that he specifically call me to tell me she was in the emergency room (Granny Sox turned 100 last October). She is my oldest living relative and I was informed by my great-aunt just before I moved here that I am Granny's favorite...this is something that I never, ever knew. Never even considered....ever, that I might be someone's favorite ANYTHING. I know this rambles a bit, sorry. I do miss my family, no matter what they have done to me, or put me through...they are my family and always will be. Yes, I function better when I'm farther away from them, but it still hurts when they expect ME to be the one that always calls or writes. Neither of my sisters have ever called me here. The first 6 months I received a few emails from my youngest sister, but that's it. Her excuse is that she and her husband have "other priorities" for their money. What she doesn't realise is that I know how much money they make, and my husband and I make less than half that, yet I still find a couple of dollars for a phone call on a birthday or a card on a holiday.


I expected many friends not to keep up. Apparently, friends are the first to fall by the wayside for expats. I did not expect my own family to treat me as if I do not exist. It hurts a great deal to know that I make the time to keep up with their schedules, to see when my family will all be together, so I can make 1 phone call to say hello to everyone, and they can't return the favour. I feel like I need to be grateful for the little bit of attention they DO give me. Why should I be? I guess it's because we (me and my sisters) were always told how ungrateful we were as kids, and even grown-ups. I'll never forget the time middle sis finally exploded at being told that a few years ago and she let loose a tirade that finally shut the parents up once and for all about the ungrateful garbage...because it isn't true...we always were grateful for what we had, which wasn't much, but we did have what we needed.


I was one of those kids that didn't know my family was poor until I was about 13, and it came crashing down on me in a hard way. I overheard some "friends" talking about how my family lived in a mobile home...excuse me, trailer. But, see, I knew how my parents had sold their really nice house in the suburbs (but a really bad school district) to buy an over-priced bit of farmland with a mobile home on it just so their kids could grow up in a decent town and get a good public school education. My parents did finally build their home on that land, but a couple of years after I moved out. My parents sacrificed, my mom quit working to stay home with us. She endured quite a few miscarriages because she and dad always wanted a boy. Well, they got me and two other girls instead. A fact that helped me in some ways and hurt in many. I grew up being an over achiever. I could do anything boys could do, and I was better at it to boot. I learned to drive a tractor at 9. Yeah, smooth move on my part, cuz I had to cut 5 acres of grass every damn Saturday til I moved out. I learned to drive a stick shift at 12, in the snow (one of our few) and it was just after my youngest sister Jen was born. I'm the oldest, Erin is 7 yrs younger, then Jen is 12 (just a few months shy of 13) years younger.


Anyway, I was taught to change the oil and tyres on a car, and do pretty much anything a boy could do. Grandaddy took me fishing, even daddy took me hunting until the time I saved a wounded dove and wouldn't let the boys wring it's neck. I grew up in the country, but with the benefit of a decent education that I am continually grateful for. Except now, being here in Australia, that doesn't seem to be enough. I have failed two tests. Tests that I SHOULD have been able to pass. Heck I graduated at the top of my class in high school, as well as, college...I hink perhps maybe they teach things differently here. I still haven't figured it out...except to say that the information I was given to be able to study for those tests was woefully incomplete. That too weighs on me and makes me feel terribly inferior, not to mention, being an american on foreign soil where everything is so....foreign, so VERY different from America.


Honestly, the differences I've learned to live with and actually enjoy. It's a bit slower in terms of lifestyle...kind of like New Orleans was. But even down to the difference in cheese (it's yellow, not orange), the closest I can get to an American meal other than what I make at home is McDonald's. Even what I make at home tastes different because the ingredients have subtle taste differences. Again, those kinds of differences are the easiest to get over.


I am the owner of a yahoo group for Americans living here, and a few of the members have started getting a bit snarky because I (and the moderator) haven't allowed them to question the rules in the public forum. Even in a place where there is supposed to be support for each other, they insist on tearing each other, but mostly me, apart for the simple rules. Since when did the internet become a frickin democracy? That aside, I just ound out that my new job, or rather my new boss thinks that because he does things differently from any other dentist I've ever worked for, that I am far less qualified than he originlly thought. WTF? He does things differently. His assistants have never worked for any other dentist, well except for me, so he really has no way of knowing what other dentists do or what other assistants know, now does he? Honestly, he's a great guy, but he likes to make things terribly complex. For instance one of his procedures will have over a hundred separate steps (all written out in procedure sheets), when in reality all it takes is maybe 20 steps. I cannot fault his work for he is exceedingly thorough. He just makes things more difficult than need be. He doesn't understand that I learn by doing and learn from the mistakes; however, when I'm micromanaged, I get flustered and can't learn a damn thing. I don't mind him being a perfectionist...I'M ONE TOO! But don't screw with my learning curve and make me feel like a damn 12 year old that doesn't know my ass from a hole in the ground for fucks sake.


Sorry, this has been one long farkin whinge, hasn't it? Well, I feel a bit better for having gotten it out. I shall be back to my normal snarky smart-arsed self in no time. As I keep telling hubs, don't worry, I'm not to the wrist-slitting stage yet and never will be. 1) I have too great a will to live and, B) I'm too much of a coward to off myself. Said tongue-in-cheek so no one needs to call the men in little white coats on me, k?


Now, pardon my back whilst I go hug my dog and kiss my loving and extremely patient hubs.

How I feel

Right now, this is how I feel about work tomorrow.

*image borrowed from Mooselet*

My Blogs

I have, for the moment, decided to post everything HERE on blogger first and may or may not copy over to the wordpress blog to reflect what is here. If I make any changes, I will post it here first. Obviously there are a few pictures posted on the other blog that aren't over here, but that's cuz I was playing around trying to get some settings right...which still aren't to my liking, but wth. Slick sent me an email asking which blog to read, and quite rightly so lol. Read whichever suits your fancy, as I said, at the mo I'll be double posting.

Also, I THINK I have the links all done, but if I've linked to you here and not there it's most likely an oversight due to the fact that I was working on it kinda late and getting rushed to finish what I was doing by C~. So Imma blame HIM!


* for those of you that read the title BEFORE I fixed it, so sorry. See what happens before I can type properly? Which is most days before ...oh say noon. LOL

I did good for a Sunday morn

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The Prioress You scored 26% Cardinal, 51% Monk, 52% Lady, and 40% Knight!

You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a belief in the goodness of mankind you will likely be christened a saint after your life is over. You scored high as both the Lady and the Monk. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the lady, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Cardinal You scored higher than 99% on Monk You scored higher than 99% on Lady You scored higher than 99% on Knight