MySpace-December 27, 2010-A Pennsylvania Christmas

Joe and I celebrated our first Christmas together as an engaged couple. It was also our first Christmas (even if I’m constantly calling it Thanksgiving-a side effect I suppose of not being here on Thanksgiving) in Pennsylvania.

Sometime in early December, Joe and I decorated for the holiday. Lights on our house, my little plastic tree getting put in the yard. Inside, I busily tried to find ways to use my existing decorations in new ways. And rapidly realizing that I bought too much last year and vowed not to buy anything this year. (I actually already have bought the lights for the outside and two sets of electric candles.)

As each package containing gifts from Missouri arrived, I grew more and more excited! The mound of wrapped presents grew in the corner because our tree is a little tiny thing and there most certainly wasn’t room because some of the presents were rather large.

Also adding to my excitement was the threat of snow. Initially, it was to be on Christmas day but then was pushed to Sunday and then into Sunday night. But it never came. For better or for worse.

Joe and I also discussed what we would eat on Christmas. Roast chicken? Turkey? Ham? No, none of these. Joe wanted a goose. So began the goose chase so to speak. A told everyone at work and everyone told me how greasy goose was. Lisa, whose mother is English, declared, ‘What does he think this is? Charles Dickens?!’ Joe and I would eventually find that a frozen goose from Giant was $60. Really? Joe still really wanted one despite the greasiness, despite the fact that he had never cooked a goose. When I went back the grocery store the Tuesday before Christmas they were out. I asked and Joe reserved one to be picked up the next day.  The goose also required a roasting pan to be purchased-twice because I picked out the wrong one. Damn Paula Dean!

We had big plans for our Christmas meal. The roast goose of course and then the sides-butternut squash, cranberry sauce (from scratch), Brussel sprouts with almonds and maple syrup, and crescent rolls. Then desert was pumpkin cheesecake-also from scratch.  All  of this went off without a hitch. The goose was fantastic. Currently, I am boiling the goose carcass for soup because after all, even though most of the meat has been picked clean, it was a $60 goose.

Of course, before Christmas, is Christmas Eve and more importantly, Joe’s birthday. Joe had a bad day when the dogs got into a dog fight at the dog park. We got some take out Chinese per custom and had a great time. I was on call for the whole weekend  and had taken care of an emergency right after close, it was a quiet night.

Christmas morning, I woke up later than intended and started some coffee and put in cinnamon rolls which no one ate. Mostly because I was full of German chocolate cake from Joe’s birthday. Of course, I couldn’t actually find German chocolate cake mix at the grocery store. Giant must still be under the impression that the Second World War is going on. Maybe I should have been looking for liberty chocolate cake!

We then sat in the dining room thoroughly confusing the dogs and opened presents. We had just finished up when I got a call for a large animal emergency-a down cow. I convinced Joe to come with me as he had promised to. The cow was quickly taken care of and Joe came back to cook after I finished making the cheesecakes. CheesecakeS because there was lots of filling from the recipe.

All of the presents were very nice. Joe got me a coffee maker-one of those Keurigs, a suitcase, a scarf and a Nook, which I’m really excited for. There were other great gifts too. A puffy but not too puffy vest, a pink purse, a new road atlas and several other things. Joe thoroughly enjoyed his painting of Mary and other gifts. I’m really excited about using our grill too. I’m thinking some New Year’s Eve steaks!

In the middle of Joe’s cooking, I got another call but they decided to go to the emergency clinic. We ate and ate! The goose was so fantastic! As we finished dinner, I got another phone call about a dog that had been hit by a car. We went to the clinic with the promise that Joe wouldn’t have to do the dishes if he came with me. The dog ended up having a hernia and being in shock. I hospitalized him for the night and then in the morning, I thought he was stable enough to get his hernia repaired. Hasco told me that I could easily do it but once in there when intestine were jumping up at me, I panicked as I am so very prone to do. He came in and together we found that the little dog’s hernia was very severe. I spoke with the owners and they elected to euthanize on the table. No sooner than that was done, then I got a call up at the Carlisle clinic for a very nasty constipated dog. I hospitalized him too and I don’t know how he’s doing but I left him with instructions and in the very capable hands of April, Letha and Dr. Sands (my personal hero in addition to Dr. Hasco, who rocks!). I can only hope that sometime during the night that the dog crapped and it will get sent home this afternoon.

I was pretty comfortable with not doing anything for the rest of the evening when I got a call about a calving. It was a former client calling for his parents who were not clients. I’m not supposed to go out to non-clients but what was I to do? Expect payment in full at the time of service. I convinced Joe to come so I wouldn’t be raped. I was on the way out the door when they called and said that the cow had delivered her calves and I offered some advice and sat back down on the couch to do nothing. This morning after returning the truck, I drove past the farm and it was quite the shady operation. Whew, glad that I didn’t go out there.

Today, my house is still in shambles. Presents and empty present bags are strewn everywhere. Stuffing from a dog toy sits like clumpy snow. I started my day later than intended. After a couple of errands and a call from work, I drank one cup of coffee from my whole pot and a piece of cheesecake. (I should have eaten cinnamon rolls.) I popped some popcorn and am having a movie marathon. Not really. And am boiling that goose down in a too small of a pot. I’m not sure what I can gleam from this goose carcass. I’m going to add chicken to it since I have some pieces frozen. Or maybe I’ll add goose. Whatever.

Merry Christmas!
[EDIT-originally published to Blogger-12/24/11]

MySpace-December 20, 2010-Really Lazy But Looks Like It Took Hours Soup

Want something that looks like it took hours to make but is really fast and simple? Try this soup!

Beef Vegetable Noodle Soup

Ingredients-

One pound ground beef
One small onion, diced
One can beef broth
One can tomato sauce
One can mixed vegetables, strained and rinsed in cool water
One packet of ramen noodles
Assorted spices

Directions-
In a pot, brown the ground beef with the onion and drain the fat. To the pot add the broth and tomato sauce. Stir and bring to a boil. Add the mixed vegetables. Break up the ramen noodles and add to the pot. Season with salt, pepper and other spices to taste. Eat!

[EDIT-originally published to Blogger-12/24/11]

MySpace-December 19, 2010-Blogs I Meant To Write Sooner

So a long time ago, I wrote out in long hand two stories I meant to later type out and post. I’m to lazy to do this now and so here’s the gist of the two blogs.

Being Lucy

·         Essentially, I was tricked into buying $200 worth of steaks by door to door meat salesmen. Joe didn’t get mad but I saw it as something very I Love Lucy like.

Four Very Long Days

·         At the end of August, I was on call for four days in a row. I’m surprised I didn’t perf an ulcer or something.

o   Thursday

§  Phone call about a cat in heat

§  Went into the clinic to assist with a foreign body surgery that ended up being euthanized on the table.

o   Friday

§  During the day, I was asked to examine a tooth to see if I could determine what animal it came from and to at least rule out human origin. What possesses people to think that the local vet is capable of doing this? I know it wasn’t human, thinking pig.

§  Got two calls within five minutes of turning on the answering machine

·         One because bloodwork results hadn’t been called back about

·         The other regarding a goat kid with her head stuck between a pipe and a feed bunk

o   During the unsticking of the goat kid, I got another phone call regarding unreturned calls from another vet. Apparently they were very busy at the other clinic!

o   Using lots of lube and turning the goat upside down we got her out.

·         There were several back and forth calls regarding medications of a dog whose owners I spoke with during the goat episode

o   Saturday

§  I was the large animal vet for the day and was rather busy in the end.

·         First an ADR cow and then a cow with nervous ketosis at another farm. At this farm, I cracked my skull on a water line that didn’t help the nausea I was trying desperately  to fight off.

·         Then a dystocia at which I found a very small Holstein heifer trying to deliver a breech calf in the mud. I fought to try to get the calf corrected and then fought to get the cow standing but was not successful in either. Obviously this calf wasn’t coming out. This became more evident as I noted calf sized intestines coming out from how hard the cow was straining. I was going to do a fetotomy but after calling Dr. Hasco for like the fourth time that day decided that he was right and if my arm barely fit into the cow, how on earth was I to get the fetatome in? So euthanasia was elected and in speaking to my boss yet again, he told me to shoot it and asked if I had ever done it before. I answered yes but then quickly realized he meant with a gun. Then he declared that I shouldn’t do it because I’d shoot my foot off. The farmer wanted the cow euthanized with Euthasol but that created a $200 environmental problem. Begrudgingly, the farmer understood the whole situation and was willing to shoot the cow himself.

·         Then I returned to the poor little goat kid from the night before and gave a vitamin cocktail to fight off whatever she had started to get.

·         Luckily, that was all for Saturday

o   Sunday

§  I was woken up at 7am for a rare derm emergency and when I finally got to the clinic at 8:30 I was glad that I saw them. I’m pretty sure the dog had gotten into something it shouldn’t have and sent them out with an ecollar and some meds. I now remember that the husband was a dairy farmer and had sent with his wife a post it note containing the word  ‘dexamethasone’ because he had it in case we wanted to use it.

§  Then I had a horse with a cut leg which at the time went very well but later didn’t

§  Then another horse with a large cut on its shoulder. This one went okay but later became a terrible mess and would get me lectured about large versus small animal wounds. (A lesson I’m not sure I fully have come to understand yet.)

§  Of course, while in the middle of sewing up this horse, my phone rings and I’m left with a nasty message regarding a cow with milk fever. I follow some poorly given directions and find a red and white Holstein that goes down as soon as I walked into the barn. I thought I heard a ping and decided that I really needed the cow to stand. In the middle of putting on her halter, she leapt to her feet and charged me only to crumple and fall just short of sending me up a gate. I ended up giving her everything I had for cows in these situations-i.e. calcium, dextrose, B vitamins and steroids. I was pretty sure I was going to kill this cow with the calcium but somehow as I walked back into the barn after dawdling cleaning up my stuff she leapt back to her feet. Then the farmer tells me that she’s a mean cow. Thanks.

·         Needless to say, it was a very, very long weekend. A nice emergency bonus from Sunday though! 


[EDIT-originally published to Blogger-12/21/11]

MySpace-December 19, 2010-A Cautionary Tale

Once there was a young vet that moved very far away from home to Pennsylvania. There she lived in a little duplex in a quiet neighborhood with her wonderful fiancé, three dogs, cat and rabbit. She worked hard and had a good life.

One Sunday after staying up to late the night before and sleeping in to long that morning, she made a deal with the wonderful fiancé that if he would take the dogs to the dog park, she would stay behind and clean up the kitchen which was a huge mess from the afternoon before when lots of soup was made. To sweeten the deal, she also offered the use of her car which was bigger than his car and could more easily haul the three dogs. The wonderful fiancé agreed and set off for Mechanicsburg where the dogs could romp in the cold at the dog park.

So the young vet planned out her afternoon alone of not only cleaning up the kitchen but surprising the fiancé by cleaning the other rooms and finishing her laundry as well as going on poop patrol in the front yard. Shortly after her fiancé left, the young vet played some FarmTown and then went outside to pick up dog poo.

Filling three (THREE!) wal-mart sacks, she decided that she needed some more. When trying to go inside, she realized that the front door was not only shut to keep in the heat but it was locked! ‘Oh no!’, thought the young vet. She went to the back door and it was locked too! ‘Oh no! I knew this would happen eventually!’, she thought again. Alas, the two windows into the dog room were locked. For a minute, she contemplated climbing up onto the roof and trying the windows into the wonderful fiancé’s room but didn’t want to be stuck up there if those windows too were locked.

She had no cell phone. No way to call the fiancé, no way to call the landlord. The neighbors across the way were gone. Well, she figured that she would walk down to the gas station where she knew there was a pay phone that only shortly before she laughed at and wondered who would still need to use a pay phone?

Once there, the pay phone wasn’t working. Where now? So she went across the street to the laundromat because in her experience, the laundromat always had a pay phone. And she was right. So she called her mom collect to have her mom call the wonderful fiancé. However, she had this nagging thought in the back of her mind that her mom might not have the phone number of the fiancé. But that would be all sorted out later. One collect call reached a busy signal because obviously her mom was on the internet in the stone age. So the young vet went back across the street with her thirty seven cents and walked around the antique store before returning back to the laundromat.  She called her mom collect and was greeted with a mom that did have the phone number to the fiancé and then would call him. She did and called the young vet back. The wonderful fiancé would come home from the dog park and rescue the young vet.

The young vet walked home and waited on the wonderful fiancé. He arrived and laughed at her but not too much.

[EDIT-originally published to Blogger-12/21/11]

MySpace-December 12, 2010-On Royalty

Prince William of England is engaged. To a commoner none the less. I guess that means that I won’t be royalty anytime soon. But Prince William as he nears thirty (he’s 28) remains handsome but balding.

Anyhow, I have been thinking for quite a long time (years) and intending to write a blog about the royals.

Once, I saw this TV show that was on the various royals around the world-about young, hot royals. And as I watched this show, I realized that not all royals are hot but they have something that I don’t have. Well, lots of things that I don’t have but the root of them is money. They have money for fancy cars and houses. They have money to have expensive hobbies like polo, stadium jumping and yachting. They have money for expensive exclusive schools. They have money for people to make them look glamorous-personal trainers to keep them fit, stylists to tell them how to do their hair, their make-up and what to wear and then fashion designers to make clothes just for them. As recently pointed out with Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton, you always are on and that’s the down side. You always have to present the best face of the royal family. Of course, there are always royals behaving badly.

There were some of these royals (mostly I’ve been referring to the female ones) that really aren’t all that attractive. They do look more attractive because of all of the money that buys them all of the nice things and all of the nice services. I could look more attractive if I had someone motivating me to work out and then someone to cook me good healthy foods. I could look more attractive if someone did my make-up and taught me how to dress in something other than jeans and t-shirts. I’m not saying they’re dogs but centuries of royal inbreeding has left them pretty much normal looking. You’d still get maybe some whistles walking down the street but you’re not laying out nude in Playboy anytime soon.  I’m also implying that I might be hotter than some of these people. I can’t name names because like I said before it’s been years since I watched this TV show but in general, I could be hotter than them.

[EDIT-Originally published to Blogger on 12/12/11]