I take great care in making lasagna for my husband. I like lasagna too so that doesn't hurt.
Making lasagna is a big ordeal. You have to boil noodles, brown hamburger, mix ricotta and then layer it all together. So I decided to use oven ready noodles this time. First problem is that there isn't enough noodles in the box and the second problem is that because they are hard they slide all over the pan. The bright side is that they don't burn your hands when layering everything.
My lasagna is in the oven right now and we'll see how it tastes once it comes out.
Anyway, lasagna is not one of those things I make because my mom made it for me when I was a kid. In fact with few exceptions, none of the dinner things I make are made because my mom did. My mom is not a fantastic cook.
Lasagna is however one of the things that remind me of my Grandma Pope. Grandma Pope died when I was in seventh or eighth grade. What I remember about it was that a lot of time after school and when my dad came by after work to pick us up, we'd eat lasagna left over from lunch. It was good. My lasagna (whose recipe comes from the back of the noodle box) isn't nearly that good. The biggest difference I notice is the crunchy brown layer of cheese. Yum. I can't get it right even under the broiler.
Anyway, lasagna (and massive amounts of Christmas cookies which I refuse to make since I get bored too quickly) always reminds me of my Grandma Pope.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Rough Time
Yesterday was a rough day for me. I was off which you would think would make it an awesome day. However days off just make me sad. I have too much and not enough all at once to occupy my time. I'm constantly at odds with myself about needing to do this or that and really just wanting to lay around the house and do nothing at all.
I went to Hermitage to return some Christmas presents and buy pants. A combination of hating to spend money on myself, an ill proportioned body and poor self image makes shopping rather difficult. I keep thinking 'well, if you could hold off on buying clothes you can reward yourself for your weight loss with new clothes that are much nicer/more trendy than the ones you'll buy being fat' then I remember that while I have all the intentions in the world of losing weight that I haven't even began to do so. (See previous post-30 In 30).
Shirts I'm reasonably okay with. Shoes I'm great with. It's pants that are my big issue. I've wrote in this before. Who knew that picking out a pair of pants would be so much more difficult than picking out your wedding dress? Finally, I settled on one pair (instead of the desired two) of trouser pants that don't have excess crotch material but are Lee's with the comfort no gap waist band. Yep, I'm wearing mom pants. Oh well.
So after that minor breakdown, I went to the craft store to peruse possible craft projects for work and to look for things for my birthday. Then I went to the grocery store. I was pretty bummed out by now.
I hung out on the couch, napped with Mary and Sadie before popping out to see the ponies. Then I made dinner and probably had a fight with Joe. (It's hard to tell. We're fighting a lot currently.) Then I watched a movie with the dogs and ate ice cream. I didn't get any cleaning done. I hate days off.
The only productive thing I did was to get three inches cut off of my hair. Joe didn't notice but how could he since I keep my hair up 24-7. And that's the point. I plan on getting it all cut off in February. I did not call the student loan people not did I make a doctors appointment. I did at least find Joe some names of doctors.
Now to feel better about myself I have to bust my hump to clean before another weekend on call. But I won't because I'll be something then it's just a shame spiral.
So today my long awaited secret birthday present came. The box sort of gave its contents away. I was not impressed nor could I fake gratefulness which is something I am sorry for. Joe blew my reaction out of proportion and in short is furious with me. I'm just not sure how he thinks that I would like this present. Should I reveal what it was? Sure but beyond hat I have already stated, I'll let you make the call on how much I would like such a gift on my THIRTIETH birthday.
My birthday present.
Anyway, I love my husband even if his gift giving skills leave something to be desired.
I went to Hermitage to return some Christmas presents and buy pants. A combination of hating to spend money on myself, an ill proportioned body and poor self image makes shopping rather difficult. I keep thinking 'well, if you could hold off on buying clothes you can reward yourself for your weight loss with new clothes that are much nicer/more trendy than the ones you'll buy being fat' then I remember that while I have all the intentions in the world of losing weight that I haven't even began to do so. (See previous post-30 In 30).
Shirts I'm reasonably okay with. Shoes I'm great with. It's pants that are my big issue. I've wrote in this before. Who knew that picking out a pair of pants would be so much more difficult than picking out your wedding dress? Finally, I settled on one pair (instead of the desired two) of trouser pants that don't have excess crotch material but are Lee's with the comfort no gap waist band. Yep, I'm wearing mom pants. Oh well.
So after that minor breakdown, I went to the craft store to peruse possible craft projects for work and to look for things for my birthday. Then I went to the grocery store. I was pretty bummed out by now.
I hung out on the couch, napped with Mary and Sadie before popping out to see the ponies. Then I made dinner and probably had a fight with Joe. (It's hard to tell. We're fighting a lot currently.) Then I watched a movie with the dogs and ate ice cream. I didn't get any cleaning done. I hate days off.
The only productive thing I did was to get three inches cut off of my hair. Joe didn't notice but how could he since I keep my hair up 24-7. And that's the point. I plan on getting it all cut off in February. I did not call the student loan people not did I make a doctors appointment. I did at least find Joe some names of doctors.
Now to feel better about myself I have to bust my hump to clean before another weekend on call. But I won't because I'll be something then it's just a shame spiral.
So today my long awaited secret birthday present came. The box sort of gave its contents away. I was not impressed nor could I fake gratefulness which is something I am sorry for. Joe blew my reaction out of proportion and in short is furious with me. I'm just not sure how he thinks that I would like this present. Should I reveal what it was? Sure but beyond hat I have already stated, I'll let you make the call on how much I would like such a gift on my THIRTIETH birthday.
My birthday present.
Anyway, I love my husband even if his gift giving skills leave something to be desired.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
30 in 30
Its January 12th. Its already time for those New Year's resolutions to be slipping away from us. Mine have. They haven't even really been started.
I had lots of goals for 2013. I'm going to stick with saying that I HAVE lots of goals for this year.
Most of them involve myself and making myself a better person. The biggest one reflects the blog title: I want to lose 30 pounds. (The other 30 is that I turn 30 this year. Gulp.) Thirty pounds sounds like a lot. Thirty pounds though should put me in the correct range for my height. Or still a little heavy. I mean lets face it: I gained nearly 40+ pounds during vet school.
Part of losing this weight is tied into the fact that I want to run a 5K this year. I plan on using couch to 5K method with a goal of running a race this spring, late spring. I haven't even started running. I still don't own a pair of tennis shoes!
I just feel uncomfortable in my clothes. Not only is it the fact that I continue to gain weight, (I love fast food and sadly, very rarely can say no. Even if I somehow have this weird thing that when I think about fast food or even just eating out, I feel this weird tingling in my body like its the fat cells expanding.) its also that I never buy clothes for myself. My clothes are wearing out and don't fit. If I lose weight, one of the grand things is that I can buy new clothes. Like new bras. I want to wear nicer bras. And be able to determine the days that I shouldn't wear nice bras because my arm is going to be on the inside of a cow.
As part of making myself a better person and doing things for myself, I want to take more time for myself. I had been doing pretty good pre-couch. I plan on trying to start doing it again. Sewing, reading, crafting, etc...spending some time doing these things will make me a much more sane person.
I'm also getting my hair cut really short with highlights. Something new, something different that will be a new start.
The biggest goal of 2013 is to get pregnant. I'm turning 30. Joe and I need to start our family. Monday, I plan on trying to locate a doctor. When I can get into the doctor...that's a different story. My time off is so hard to predict.
I want to also save more money. This is something that Joe and I need to work on together. Tighten the purse strings so that I can get a house. I'm working on my mom to take the ponies back to Missouri. I honestly don't have time for them and they are really a drain on my finances. Other methods of saving money include eliminating DVDs from Netflix and looking for a new insurance quote.
In terms of things that Joe and I need to work on together, keeping a cleaner house is one of them. Our house is dirty. It always is. I'll break out the vacuum later this weekend.
So needless to say, I should get off this couch and run. Its like 60 degrees today. Maybe I'll run when I have some tennis shoes.
I had lots of goals for 2013. I'm going to stick with saying that I HAVE lots of goals for this year.
Most of them involve myself and making myself a better person. The biggest one reflects the blog title: I want to lose 30 pounds. (The other 30 is that I turn 30 this year. Gulp.) Thirty pounds sounds like a lot. Thirty pounds though should put me in the correct range for my height. Or still a little heavy. I mean lets face it: I gained nearly 40+ pounds during vet school.
Part of losing this weight is tied into the fact that I want to run a 5K this year. I plan on using couch to 5K method with a goal of running a race this spring, late spring. I haven't even started running. I still don't own a pair of tennis shoes!
I just feel uncomfortable in my clothes. Not only is it the fact that I continue to gain weight, (I love fast food and sadly, very rarely can say no. Even if I somehow have this weird thing that when I think about fast food or even just eating out, I feel this weird tingling in my body like its the fat cells expanding.) its also that I never buy clothes for myself. My clothes are wearing out and don't fit. If I lose weight, one of the grand things is that I can buy new clothes. Like new bras. I want to wear nicer bras. And be able to determine the days that I shouldn't wear nice bras because my arm is going to be on the inside of a cow.
As part of making myself a better person and doing things for myself, I want to take more time for myself. I had been doing pretty good pre-couch. I plan on trying to start doing it again. Sewing, reading, crafting, etc...spending some time doing these things will make me a much more sane person.
I'm also getting my hair cut really short with highlights. Something new, something different that will be a new start.
The biggest goal of 2013 is to get pregnant. I'm turning 30. Joe and I need to start our family. Monday, I plan on trying to locate a doctor. When I can get into the doctor...that's a different story. My time off is so hard to predict.
I want to also save more money. This is something that Joe and I need to work on together. Tighten the purse strings so that I can get a house. I'm working on my mom to take the ponies back to Missouri. I honestly don't have time for them and they are really a drain on my finances. Other methods of saving money include eliminating DVDs from Netflix and looking for a new insurance quote.
In terms of things that Joe and I need to work on together, keeping a cleaner house is one of them. Our house is dirty. It always is. I'll break out the vacuum later this weekend.
So needless to say, I should get off this couch and run. Its like 60 degrees today. Maybe I'll run when I have some tennis shoes.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Seriously Bad Weekend
I just got done with a seriously bad weekend on call.
Friday, I went into work a little early because the office called and told me that a dog was coming in from the emergency clinic as a transfer. The receptionist said they could schedule them as the first appointment of the day but I said to come right in because I assumed that there would be a catheter, etc. There wasn't. Apparently, they declined all diagnostics and thus treatment. When I saw the dog, the biggest thing I noticed were her terribly engorged mammary glands. I ran some bloodwork and concluded that the dog probably had really, really bad mastitis. I sent her home with some meds.
After the dog, I went out to do a herd health check because DE wasn't working. By the time I was dong with that, I had three messages for other farm calls on my phone. Now I was scheduled to do small animal appointments in the afternoon and these other farm calls weren't going to get done but CB decided she would prefer to do the appointments rather than go look at sick cows.
SO then I got gas, stopped at Tractor Supply, realized I didn't have my wallet (or driver's license) so purchasing a new spray nozzle for Margie (the name of my vet truck) wasn't going to happen, went a saw a down cow-conclusion-suspected broken leg but not positive, ran back to the office, grabbed a piece of pizza, complained about pizza being ordered without me being there, openned a teat on a cow that I had done several times in previous weeks and ran down to New Wilmington where I had a cow at an Amish farm waiting for me.
Now New Wilmington is 25 miles away but it takes about 45 minutes to get there. When I got close, I got lost as usual. (Roads in PA aren't well marked.) When I found the driveway for the appropriate mailbox, the first house didn't appear to have cows, across from that was a road that looked impassable, down the road and across a covered bridge was a road that there was no way passable and finally, a house that was certainly not Amish. So back to the first house because it at least had a barn. No one came out. So I went up the seemingly impassable road which was surprisingly passable only to be met by an Amish woman that said no, the no way passable road was the way to the sick cow and I had come up her farm road. She suggested that maybe because I had four wheel drive I would be able to go up it. I told her I probably wouldn't try because I didn't like getting stuck. She then pointed to her driveway. Oh, well, I guess I'll go up the driveway because I'm not sure I can make the turn from the farm road back to the main driveway for the other farm. I get about half way up the driveway and get stuck in a snowdrift. Like seriously stuck. So she comes out and helps me dig out around the truck. I used my funnel. I get my floormats under the front tires and the Amishwoman tries to push me out and I do manage to go about 20 foot backwards before getting stuck again. Now her daughter comes out and helps us. This time I get all the way down the driveway. I ended up going down the farm road.
So now I realize that there is no way I am going to even attempt to go up the driveway to the other farm. I park at the bottom and gather everything I can think of that I might need. Luckily, there is a young Amish boy there to help me carry all of my stuff. It was a really, really long driveway through up to 12" snow drifts. I was huffing and puffing and carrying on. I'm really out of shape. Eventually, I would get to the barn, check out the cow, be thankful she didn't have a twist because that was the only stuff that I didn't bring up, treated the cow and then hoofed it back down to the truck. I gave the kid some candy that I didn't like and went back to the office.
Once I got back to the office, I had about 15 minutes to pee before I had a dog with some bad wounds come in. I sewed her up finding more and more wounds as she was now sedated and not shaking terribly. I then saw a dog with a swollen face. Then my mastitis dog came back in. She was vomiting uncontrollably and now her mammary gland was turning black. We hospitalized her for septic mastitis. (The ER vet hadn't noticed anything wrong with her. I told the clients that I was going to treat her like I would a cow.) Somewhere in there, I ate all the remaining pieces of pizza.
THEN shit really hit the fan. Just before 10, as we finished with the 'boobie dog', we get a phone call for a calving at the far east end of our practice range. Because it was only 10 pm, I loaded up to go. Apparently, these people had called everyone under the sun for this cow and no one but us would come out. When I got there, there was a good sized dairy heifer tied up with two front hooves sticking out. The head was back and I could just feel the lower jaw. I tried to get it around with my crayhook but it didn't work. So out came my fetatome. No luck in getting my wire around the calf's head so I took off a leg for more room. Unfortunately, the cow was closing her uterus down around this calf leaving me little room to work. I tried and tried and nothing was working. I offered a c-section (which wasn't a great idea) and another suggestion. The farmer kept us trying. My phone rang. And rang again. I would eventually stop and take the phone call because it was from one of our techs. It was now 2am. My tech's dog had been attacked by something out in her yard. I told her that I was way out on a calving and didn't know when I was going to be back into Greenville. So she was going to call another one of our doctors. Now the farmer decides to that he wants a c-section. So I prep for a c-section, try for about half an hour and there is no way that this calf is coming out. End of story. The cow needs to be shot.
I leave the farm at 3:15. I am exhausted. I get home, shower, take a benedryl because I'm allergic to everything involved with calving and get back up at 8am. I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep. I worked about 20 hours straight including all my driving time.
Saturday, I was busy all day with various sick dogs and cats. I euthanize two cats and a dog. TG and I go out to see a horse which was kind of fun. We eat McDonalds and then see a dog with a bleeding mass on its side. Its a young pitbull mix. I'm sitting in front of him, petting him and I check out his mouth. Then without warning, he lunges at my face! It was a good thing his teeth didn't line up because if they had, I wouldn't have a nose. I felt his teeth graze my nose and chin as he snapped. So we muzzled him and I squeezed out/opened an abscess. I'm seeing him again later this week. Yea. Another emergency and then I go home for a little while. I catch about an hour long nap before going back in for an emergency. I managed to x-ray and run bloodwork by myself. (I did mess up the machine first and had to call TG.) Then I went to Ohio for a down horse. On my way to Ohio, I got a call from MCHS about a kitten to euthanize. Luckily, CB is awesome and she went and saw it for me. I did get lost going into Ohio but then I ended up at the farm in a round about way. Unfortunately, I found the horse down in the stall and he had bashed his head around. It seems like his backleg was broken. It was a dangerous situation because occasionally this horse would thrash around and paw. The horse went peacefully. And this woman had some giant pony sized goats.
Sunday morning I ran into the clinic to get the 'boobie dog' ready to go home. Her boobies had ruptured and were pretty nasty looking but she was happy and eating without throwing up. I didn't get any calls all day which was super awesome. I slept on the couch most of the day. I ended up getting a call about a sick dog. I went in to see it and the poor dog was pretty much DOA. It ended up dying which was sad. I suspect parvo.
Luckily, I got home in time for Downton Abbey. However, the end of the bad weekend wasn't quite over. I parked Margie in the garage and then heard a giant crash! The garage door broken. Even if I had got more calls, I couldn't go out anyway. Joe would fix the garage door this morning. Joe told me too that his car's heater and passenger window was broken. Great.
Now I'm just trying to get caught up on sleep. It was a long, sad weekend. :(
Friday, I went into work a little early because the office called and told me that a dog was coming in from the emergency clinic as a transfer. The receptionist said they could schedule them as the first appointment of the day but I said to come right in because I assumed that there would be a catheter, etc. There wasn't. Apparently, they declined all diagnostics and thus treatment. When I saw the dog, the biggest thing I noticed were her terribly engorged mammary glands. I ran some bloodwork and concluded that the dog probably had really, really bad mastitis. I sent her home with some meds.
After the dog, I went out to do a herd health check because DE wasn't working. By the time I was dong with that, I had three messages for other farm calls on my phone. Now I was scheduled to do small animal appointments in the afternoon and these other farm calls weren't going to get done but CB decided she would prefer to do the appointments rather than go look at sick cows.
SO then I got gas, stopped at Tractor Supply, realized I didn't have my wallet (or driver's license) so purchasing a new spray nozzle for Margie (the name of my vet truck) wasn't going to happen, went a saw a down cow-conclusion-suspected broken leg but not positive, ran back to the office, grabbed a piece of pizza, complained about pizza being ordered without me being there, openned a teat on a cow that I had done several times in previous weeks and ran down to New Wilmington where I had a cow at an Amish farm waiting for me.
Now New Wilmington is 25 miles away but it takes about 45 minutes to get there. When I got close, I got lost as usual. (Roads in PA aren't well marked.) When I found the driveway for the appropriate mailbox, the first house didn't appear to have cows, across from that was a road that looked impassable, down the road and across a covered bridge was a road that there was no way passable and finally, a house that was certainly not Amish. So back to the first house because it at least had a barn. No one came out. So I went up the seemingly impassable road which was surprisingly passable only to be met by an Amish woman that said no, the no way passable road was the way to the sick cow and I had come up her farm road. She suggested that maybe because I had four wheel drive I would be able to go up it. I told her I probably wouldn't try because I didn't like getting stuck. She then pointed to her driveway. Oh, well, I guess I'll go up the driveway because I'm not sure I can make the turn from the farm road back to the main driveway for the other farm. I get about half way up the driveway and get stuck in a snowdrift. Like seriously stuck. So she comes out and helps me dig out around the truck. I used my funnel. I get my floormats under the front tires and the Amishwoman tries to push me out and I do manage to go about 20 foot backwards before getting stuck again. Now her daughter comes out and helps us. This time I get all the way down the driveway. I ended up going down the farm road.
So now I realize that there is no way I am going to even attempt to go up the driveway to the other farm. I park at the bottom and gather everything I can think of that I might need. Luckily, there is a young Amish boy there to help me carry all of my stuff. It was a really, really long driveway through up to 12" snow drifts. I was huffing and puffing and carrying on. I'm really out of shape. Eventually, I would get to the barn, check out the cow, be thankful she didn't have a twist because that was the only stuff that I didn't bring up, treated the cow and then hoofed it back down to the truck. I gave the kid some candy that I didn't like and went back to the office.
Once I got back to the office, I had about 15 minutes to pee before I had a dog with some bad wounds come in. I sewed her up finding more and more wounds as she was now sedated and not shaking terribly. I then saw a dog with a swollen face. Then my mastitis dog came back in. She was vomiting uncontrollably and now her mammary gland was turning black. We hospitalized her for septic mastitis. (The ER vet hadn't noticed anything wrong with her. I told the clients that I was going to treat her like I would a cow.) Somewhere in there, I ate all the remaining pieces of pizza.
THEN shit really hit the fan. Just before 10, as we finished with the 'boobie dog', we get a phone call for a calving at the far east end of our practice range. Because it was only 10 pm, I loaded up to go. Apparently, these people had called everyone under the sun for this cow and no one but us would come out. When I got there, there was a good sized dairy heifer tied up with two front hooves sticking out. The head was back and I could just feel the lower jaw. I tried to get it around with my crayhook but it didn't work. So out came my fetatome. No luck in getting my wire around the calf's head so I took off a leg for more room. Unfortunately, the cow was closing her uterus down around this calf leaving me little room to work. I tried and tried and nothing was working. I offered a c-section (which wasn't a great idea) and another suggestion. The farmer kept us trying. My phone rang. And rang again. I would eventually stop and take the phone call because it was from one of our techs. It was now 2am. My tech's dog had been attacked by something out in her yard. I told her that I was way out on a calving and didn't know when I was going to be back into Greenville. So she was going to call another one of our doctors. Now the farmer decides to that he wants a c-section. So I prep for a c-section, try for about half an hour and there is no way that this calf is coming out. End of story. The cow needs to be shot.
I leave the farm at 3:15. I am exhausted. I get home, shower, take a benedryl because I'm allergic to everything involved with calving and get back up at 8am. I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep. I worked about 20 hours straight including all my driving time.
Saturday, I was busy all day with various sick dogs and cats. I euthanize two cats and a dog. TG and I go out to see a horse which was kind of fun. We eat McDonalds and then see a dog with a bleeding mass on its side. Its a young pitbull mix. I'm sitting in front of him, petting him and I check out his mouth. Then without warning, he lunges at my face! It was a good thing his teeth didn't line up because if they had, I wouldn't have a nose. I felt his teeth graze my nose and chin as he snapped. So we muzzled him and I squeezed out/opened an abscess. I'm seeing him again later this week. Yea. Another emergency and then I go home for a little while. I catch about an hour long nap before going back in for an emergency. I managed to x-ray and run bloodwork by myself. (I did mess up the machine first and had to call TG.) Then I went to Ohio for a down horse. On my way to Ohio, I got a call from MCHS about a kitten to euthanize. Luckily, CB is awesome and she went and saw it for me. I did get lost going into Ohio but then I ended up at the farm in a round about way. Unfortunately, I found the horse down in the stall and he had bashed his head around. It seems like his backleg was broken. It was a dangerous situation because occasionally this horse would thrash around and paw. The horse went peacefully. And this woman had some giant pony sized goats.
Sunday morning I ran into the clinic to get the 'boobie dog' ready to go home. Her boobies had ruptured and were pretty nasty looking but she was happy and eating without throwing up. I didn't get any calls all day which was super awesome. I slept on the couch most of the day. I ended up getting a call about a sick dog. I went in to see it and the poor dog was pretty much DOA. It ended up dying which was sad. I suspect parvo.
Luckily, I got home in time for Downton Abbey. However, the end of the bad weekend wasn't quite over. I parked Margie in the garage and then heard a giant crash! The garage door broken. Even if I had got more calls, I couldn't go out anyway. Joe would fix the garage door this morning. Joe told me too that his car's heater and passenger window was broken. Great.
Now I'm just trying to get caught up on sleep. It was a long, sad weekend. :(
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
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