@Robert Gentel,
WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT??? It's actually her!
No it's not.
I'm still not over the ebrown thing though.
@sozobe,
Get that girl a job with the UN. "The Palestinians have already agreed to ..."
@Thomas,
Is it possible that US passports now have some kind of rfid tucked in there, somewhere, and the green card doesn't? Don't know why the same couldn't be done for both, but a possibility.
Still, I doubt I would appreciate being fingerprinted for visiting abroad.
I've surgically sterilized about 65 pet animals in the past three days. One rabbit, the rest cats and dogs. Some animals looking for homes, some for people who legitimately can't afford* to pay for the surgery through normal channels, some for people looking for a bargain and finding it through a service that offers subsidized surgery without screening to veryify actual financial need.
It's strange. Most of the folks involved seem to view this as a minor event for their animal -- to induce general anesthesia, to open an abdomen and remove organs not essential for life. Death is always a possibility, though usually a very remote one. It's an odd way to make a living.
The compensation is enough to live on -- though, as someone who lived beyond his means for many years, I'd be living below the "poverty line" (again, a distinction that is meaningful in America but would be the lap of luxury for most people living in the world today or at any other time in history) without the wife's quite substantial income in her peculiar line of work. So, 65 or so times in the past three days, I've taken an animal's life in my hands with the sole aim of rendering it incapable of reproduction (and, much less significantly, of going through the horror of mammary or prostate tumor or pyometra). I do it, I think (I hope), with a fairly high degree of proficiency and efficiency.
I could make considerably more -- twice as much or considerably more in certain markets -- working in better conditions for people who show greater concern for their animals' welfare. Not sure I'd find it more rewarding. Still, the 1.5% annual increase for a year in which I logged probably 1,500 surgeries is somewhat irksome, especially as people above me in the food chain routinely call it a day after 7 hours of work that consisted largely of taking hourly cigarette breaks, but it is what it is. I've certainly done my share of goldbricking, though I've always tried to ameliorate laziness with competence.
Random thoughts for the random thought thread. There was a cogent thought at the start of this, but it eludes me now. It's been a long couple of days and I've had a bit to drink.
Sheesh, not even observations. Navel gazing. Ah, well...
* "Can't afford" in the American sense of "can't afford," which is to say, can't afford without forgoing a couple of months of cable TV, or cutting back to half a pack instead of a pack of smokes a day, or going without some non-essential necessity of modern life that is viewed practically as an inalienable right in one of the most materially consumptive nations in the world.
@ossobuco,
Was cutting with/mentoring an older colleague the other day when that Talking Heads song ("how did I get here? oh god, what have I done") song came on the radio and I mentioned I've never quite been able to follow the lyrics in 20 odd years of listening to it. She said, "It makes a lot more sense when you're 40."
But I'm getting there, and I know how I got here, and I know what I've done. Mebbe some people don't pay attention along the way, I guess...
And not really a pickle, either. It just is.
@patiodog,
I saw a short plea from a vet that made me think of you the other day, it brought home the heart-wrenching ignorance you must occasionally run into doing what you do.
Quote:If you have a pet, or plan on having one, you'll inevitably end up in this situation, please look at this just so you know: it might be hard on you, but they're the ones dying, stay with them.
Quote:As a vet tech I can tell you that I am always baffled when people have their pets put down and then leave without staying with the animal. This animal loves you and you can't be there to comfort it in its last moments?
Some of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life is hold down animals while they are being euthanized. Most of the time I agree with the decision, but it still does not make it any easier.
There have been a few times where I had to leave work and sit in my car and cry just because of that.
Made me cry thinking of pets abandoned at their last moment like that by their owners.
@Robert Gentel,
Oh goddess...how true!!!!
I am ALWAYS with my animals, and still feel devastated about the one I could not be with because the goddam vet convinced me to let them monitor the cat, when I felt she was dying and I should not have permitted a separation. She died when I was at work.
A thing I have great trouble forgiving my mother for is that she ran from staying with our beloved old dog when she had to be put down. I was old enough that I would have insisted on staying myself, but my mother didn't give me the chance, as she did not tell me what she was doing.
Lots of vets make you fight to do it, though...they really try to get you to leave.
Oscar's was the best euthanasia job I have ever seen. Usually it breaks my heart because the animal cries out when the needle goes in...this vet did it so well he didn't feel it.
I loved that the vet and the nurse had tears in their eyes as well. Mine of course weren't in my eyes, they were all over me.
@patiodog,
It must be strange.
I find myself thinking of "Herriot's gland" (have you read the Herriot books?) , which was a bizarre and unknown to science THING that appeared in his early days of practice in spaying, and which caused immense confusion for him, but has never been seen by any other vet.
@dlowan,
Harriot's gland? I remember him for discovering the Duct of Harriot. I think it has been confirmed since. He was in a time when very few pets were sterilized, and small animal clinics mostly unheard of.
@roger,
James Herriot.
Coulda been a duct.
In the books, it is just part of the humour about the awful trials of being a new vet.
The author' name wasn't really Herriot.
@dlowan,
I've just been robbed of my childhood, and you ask if I'm, well, whatever?
@dlowan,
Thanks for the research in my behalf. Not sure I really want to know.
Next thing you know, Doctor Suess wasnt' a doctor.
@roger,
Lol!!
Seems the stories were pretty real.
@patiodog,
patiodog wrote:
And not really a pickle, either. It just is.
That's in the next song "And She Was".
Is it fair to be annoyed that I wasn't invited to something I probably wouldn't have gone to? No, right. Still annoyed.
