Violet, Diarrhea, and a Treadmill.

So I got up today after the first great nights sleep I’d had in over a week and decided that today was going to be great. I had a plan and I was sticking to it.
I was going to eat some great breakfast, get my math homework done (fun I know), study for my test on Monday in my Human Sexuality class (yes this is a class) and get my bathroom cleaned up. It all started great. Breakfast was good, the bathroom was off to a great start and the math homework was getting done slowly but surely.
And then… there was Violet.
For those of you who do not know my dog Violet let me give you the run down. I acquired her from one of the girls I used to work with at the AEHNT. Some fine specimen of a dog owner brought her in at 4 weeks of age and wanted to euthanize her because she was anemic. Never mind that she was anemic from the huge burden of hookworms in her belly. He had 12 more at home just like her and he wasn’t going to let this one slow him down from making his millions off of breeding and selling sub-par Pit Bulls to unsuspecting people.
I digress.
She went to live with my coworker for 4 weeks and then when she realized she could no longer keep her, I decided to take her. I had been looking for a new dog for my new house.
From the moment I brought her home and put her down she became, and continues to be, a destroyer of my peace. She is wild, hyper and crazy. Her number one favorite thing to do is run up and down my backyard fence and psychotically bark at all of the squirrels and cats in the neighborhood (which drives me right to the brink of insanity) Her second favorite thing to do is eat all of the feces she can find in the backyard (her belching and flatulence, as well as her own poop smell fantastic, I am here to tell you) Now after I have had enough(I am developing a twitch) of hearing her insanely bark and run up and down the fence I come to her third favorite thing to do which is to walk around and get into things in the house and /or vomit up all of the wonderful goodies she has found in the yard. So as a defense I purchased a treadmill for her to run on since I don’t think there is a human on this earth that has enough energy to exercise this crazy dog until she is tired. Most of the time when she is done running 5 mph with the incline all the way up for over an hour or so she will finally at least lay down for, oh I don’t know, 1 minute at a time. Sometimes if I am resting (not likely with my insane schedule) she will lie in the dog bed and sleep for a good 2 hours and then she is right back at it.
I digress again.
My day is progressing nicely, the bathroom is coming clean, my math homework is almost done and I am ahead of schedule, I decide that the fish tank could use a cleaning as well today. I head out of my office and round the corner into the kitchen and my nose is instantly assaulted by a foul smell. I look at Miss Violet who is of course on the treadmill and what do I see. Violet running on the treadmill through… what else?...Diarrhea. Let me just take a moment to recreate this scene for you folks at home.
There is a treadmill belt (moving at a pretty good clip), dog running on said moving treadmill belt, and diarrhea all over; said treadmill belt, dog and floor behind the treadmill.
Talk about a destroyer of my peace. Every other project came to a screeching halt as I carried Miss Violet outside (diarrhea of course covering her feet) and commence the cleaning of the diarrhea off of the treadmill and floor.
Now this may sound easy enough and I don’t really care to relive it at this moment but I will sum it up for you and give you the cliff notes. It took 3 towels, a roll of toilet paper, almost an entire bottle of spray cleaner, one entire hour (most of you know that I have few precious of those) as well as all of my patience for the day. And to top off this glorious event guess what Miss Violet went right back to as soon as I put her back outside….
YOU GUESSED IT!!!
Running up and down the fence insanely barking at the cats and squirrels. The great part is she was doing this as I was cleaning her disgusting diarrhea off of the treadmill.
She is now reflecting on her evil deeds in her kennel. She came closer to death today than any other day in her life including the day she was brought in for euthanasia. I just want to say thanks to Dr. N! for refusing to euthanize her and Eraine for saving her precious little life. (Can you see the sarcasm dripping off of those words?) Does anyone want a great dog? Free to a good home.

Hell Week 2009

So I wanted to share what will hopefully go down as being the worst week of 2009. So last week when I was at school on Monday, I had my first class cancelled so I decided it was a great oppurtunity to go see the advisor for the Radiologic Technology program at the college. I go to her office and sit down and start talking with her about what I need to accomplish before I apply to the program. (Keep in mind that I am thinking that I will be able to start this program in June of this year) And as you may have read in a previous blog this is not the case it is going to take alot longer than I expected. So...whatever, I have to go to more school and get straight A's if I expect to operate a CT or MRI on people. Well after this fabulous news I head off to my Biology lecture and the test I thought we were going to take the next week was on Monday. I didn't study for it at all....I wrote 2 papers and read 3 chapters out of my Psych books. So needless to say I got a D on my test in the class that I really need to get an A in to get into the program that I want.And then the end all be all... my house got broken into on Thursday. A bunch of stuff got stolen including the frozen meat in my freezer, the flat of eggs in my fridge (who does this?) along with my liquor and my beer. But me and the dogs are fine, my insurance will cover all of the stuff. From now on my alarm (yes I have an alarm and no it wasn't on) will be set and Daddy and Lily will be patroling the house. So if someone comes in here agian they will set off my alarm and have 2 big pit bulls in thier face. I have even thought about getting a 12 gauge shotgun. This is Texas afterall. I have asked everyone and they decided this possibly makes me a Texan but definately not a republican.Thanks to all for your love and support so far. I know I can count on everybody to give me support.

School Blues

So I have recently decided to change my academic plan to include getting my RT (Radiation technology). I went to see an advisor for the program on Monday and she tells me that 1. I have to have all of the non RT prerequsites done and 2. I need to have pretty much all A'a in those prerequsites to even be considered for the program they had 233 applicants last year and only 33 got in. I was feeling a little defeated and it made me tired to think about a whole year addtional before I can even apply to the program. But now I have spent the last 4 days feeling tired and depressed. I am trying to pull myself out of my funk.(It is slow going) I am trying to remain positive and formulate a plan of action. Here is what I have left to take before the spring semester next year in addition to all of the classes I have already taken and the classes I am taking this semester. I will have to take Anatomy and Physiology I and II a computer science course, Math 350, Medical terminology, and pathophysiology. So the plan is to take A&P I and medical terminology an the second summer session(I know you are thinking I am crazy to take A&P in a summer session but what chioce do I have really?) And then in the Fall of 09' I will have to take A&P II, computer science, math 350, and pathophysiology. Then I have to wait through a whole semester before I can apply to the program in March of 10'. I am already planning what classes I will need as the core for my BS degree. I guess I will take those in the fall. Anyway just wanted to keep you guys up to date on my school life. I briefly thought about giving up and just doing the RVT thing but I think that's a negative ghost rider.

Kinsey

I had to write this paper for my Human Sexuality class in the spring semester of 09'. It is a reactionary paper to the movie Kinsey starring Liam Neeson, and Laura Linney among many other well known stars including Tim Curry, Chris O' Donnell, Peter Sarsgard, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt and Timothy Hutton to name a few. It was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Bill Condon. The movie is really great and I highly recommend it.

The first time I viewed this movie last year I was blown away by it. I was amazed that Alfred Kinsey took on such a difficult endeavor with such respect and unbiased attention to detail. I am also a lover of the natural world and so I identified with Alfred Kinsey on an almost personal level. I am thankful for the work he did. The public view of sex in the 40’s was quite prudish and interesting. Sex was not something that was discussed in mixed company. People believed, and taught their children; that sex was a good way to get STD’s, masturbation was a cause of blindness and insanity, and any sexual position other than the missionary position between a man and a woman was the work of the devil. I myself cannot imagine living in a society that scorned one of our most natural human behaviors.
Alfred Kinsey was a biologist at heart. The film goes into some detail about his childhood, his love of nature and how he escaped from his overbearing father to the outside world. He was at home there with the animals and enjoyed watching them for hours on end doing what animals do. He received his PhD in biology at Harvard University and became a professor of zoology at Indiana University much to his fathers’ dismay. I believe that his rebellious nature started there at home.
Dr. Kinsey’s curiosity about the science of sexuality began when he finally married his beloved Clara and their wedding night was less than spectacular. I felt awful and embarrassed for them, they must have built it up in their minds and had to be really disappointed when it was painful and not fun at all. Being a scientist he was insistent that this was just another problem that had to have a solution. I cannot imagine being so uneducated about sex! Had it not been for his background in biology and his scientific mind they might have just suffered silently in a sexless marriage for no reason other than they didn’t know any better. It makes me wonder how many countless couples in those days did suffer for no reason.
The seed for his research was planted in his mind when his zoology students at Indiana University began coming to him with questions about sex. Some of the things the students told him he viewed as ludicrous. He wanted to know where they had gotten such crazy ideas about sex. A good example in the film was the newly married couple that said they would never try oral sex because the young mans brother told him that it caused infertility. Dr. Kinsey assured them that this was not true but they insisted that because there was no study proving this wrong that they were going to be safe and not try it. I can just imagine his frustration at not having concrete answers backed up by evidence for the students. After talking to these students he wondered where they were learning such things and found a book about how to have a good moral marriage, he referred to it as “hooey”.
Being a scientist, he decided to try and get a marriage course added to the curriculum at the University so he could teach the students facts about sexuality and not some weird lessons on morality. His class was full to the brim with students trying to learn the truth about sex. I can just imagine the curiosity of young people in those times. In the film you see all the faces of students asking questions about masturbation and whether or not they are normal. Up until Alfred Kinsey’s marriage class sexuality was taught in a type of health/hygiene class that just reinforced the crazy ideas of the times but did little to help students with their marriage problems or answer their questions about their own blossoming sexuality. I have taken for granted my whole life the things people wouldn’t even talk about back then.
His actual sex study began modestly with just his class as his subjects. He soon realized that 100 people was not representative and started coming up with a plan. He made an assistant out of one of his students and made a questionnaire for his class to answer anonymously. I can just imagine his amazement at the answers he got. He of course wanted to go further and came up with ideas on how to get more people to join the study. He changed his method many times and finally came up with the idea for an encrypted form that would be filled out during an interview. He came up with ways to catch people in lies so that the study would be pure. He was very careful to pick clean cut intelligent, college educated men to conduct the interviews and carefully taught them how to make their subjects feel at ease. He was also very firm about them maintaining a fair and non-judgmental attitude at all times. The training of the interviewers was the most important aspect of the study. They were not allowed to react in anyway to any answers or the subjects might end the interview or not give truthful answers.
I was impressed with the way he conducted his study. He used his study of the gall wasps as a model in some respects. He wanted to have more subjects than anyone else. He seemed to be like a machine when asking questions and coming up with the survey. He treated all of his subjects the same. I was amused with the way he kept referring to sex toys as “replicas of man in his natural state”. He kept insisting that he was just a biologist.
At first the research went well. He was able to acquire funding from the Rockefeller foundation and they traveled all over the country gathering sex histories. It seems to me that all involved were having a blast. They were trading wives, experimenting with homosexuality, and Dr. Kinsey was gathering an impressive amount of information from the public. Kinsey never dreamed that the public as well as his staff were going to rebel at this explosion of sexuality. In his mind he was doing the world a great service. He was educating them about their bodies and their minds, not to mention that they were “normal”. Soon after the release of his second book on the female things started to fall apart, the public didn’t want to hear that their daughters and mothers were masturbating and had homosexual thoughts. His staff started arguing and fighting because they were having marital problems due to the sharing of each others partners. He seemed oblivious to the emotional pain he inflicted on his staff he couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just keep their emotions out of it. He was also blind to the fact that he himself was working too hard.
I think the research that Kinsey did is invaluable. I don’t believe going back to a more innocent time is the answer at all. If we learned one thing from Alfred Kinsey it was that people have been doing the same things in private that they have always done. He made it possible for people to regard their sexuality as a natural part of who we are and not something that we should be ashamed of, feel guilty about, or persecute others for.

The real Dr. Alfred Kinsey