Kara DuLac-Shields

I got a haircut Monday, and it’s very short, even by my standards.  So when I was getting dressed for work, I decided to dig out some of the cool earrings I’ve collected over the years, and indulge in pretty danglies which could be shown off by my military-style hair cut.

I wear a nostril screw in the sidewall of my right nostril; my left ear is pierced four times in the lobe and partially up the rim, and my right ear is pierced once. My OCD demands that all the jewelry I wear in these holes in my head match, so if I deviate from white metal earrings, I must change my nostril screw as well. I confess, I’m lazy, and tend to wear the same set of earrings and leave the nostril screw in indefinitely. So even though I have many different and beautiful earrings, I tend to settle on one set and take them out at night and put them back in in the morning.

Yeah, it’s lame that this is less effort and therefore desirable to me. I get it.

Anyway, digging through my jewelry chest yesterday I found some of the beautiful earrings I’d collected made by designer Laurel Burch. Since I’m lazy and have been on a white metal kick since about 2001, I hadn’t worn them for quite a while, but I still love them dearly. Since they’re 14-karat electroplated, I had to change my nose stud to the gold one, and dig out the little gold hoops for the top holes in my left ear. Quite the change from the everyday little silver balls, eh?

Later in the afternoon, a lady comes through my cashier’s lane at Target and recognizes my earrings.

“Are those Laurel Burch earrings?” She was pleased to have recognized them, and I was pleased to have made this unlikely connection with a total stranger. I said yes, and how I loved all her designs, and was wearing them to ‘celebrate’ my fresh haircut.

She said that she was a friend of Laurel Burch’s and had visited her at her home in Novato, California, just a few months before she died. She mentioned what an amazing person Ms. Burch was, as well as being a prolific and eloquent artist.

I was struck, first by the unlikely connection of a stranger recognizing the design of one of my favorite artists, and then by the news that the artist had died.

I hadn’t followed Laurel Burch very closely, but I did really enjoy her whimsy and love of colour at the time when I was still buying jewelry. Since I’ve not been shopping for art or jewelry in a great while, I hadn’t thought about it or her for a long time.

It was such a bittersweet moment, to establish a connection with a complete stranger who appreciates the same precious thing that you do, and then to learn that the creator of that precious thing has died. Turns out that Laurel Burch died back in 2007. Although I never knew her, I’m just mourning her passing today.

I’ve always been a fainter, but only realized that just recently. ‘Fainting’ kind of has a wussy ring to it, an unsavory ‘bodice-tied-too-tightly’ whiff that just doesn’t go with my own carefully cultivated self-image.

Just in case you’re curious, my own self-image has notes of Kate Jackson, Chuck Norris, Dixie Carter and Margaret Thatcher, all very self-sufficient, sensible, dependable people. Oh, and Buttercup of The Power Puff Girls. Probably more than a little bit of her. So tight bodices and fainting doesn’t really go along with that composite image.

But if you’re gonna faint, you’re gonna faint, and only through lots of training and self-discipline can you avert that–IF you can avert it. Fainting, or syncope, or a vasovagal episode, is an involuntary bodily reaction most-commonly caused by a drop in blood pressure and heart rate, and the resulting drop in blood flow to the brain. You get pale, you get weak, and everything fades out for a little while. People can experience syncope that’s triggered by extreme emotional distress, or from an injury or blood loss, from dehydration, from an abrupt change in posture (like standing up too quickly), and it often needs no further examination, unless it’s caused by one of several medical conditions requiring treatment.

If you faint and you’re out for a long time, like days, that’s called a coma and that DOES require further medical treatment. That’s my helpful PSA for today: “If you’re unconscious for more than a few minutes, seek medical help right away.”

There are methods by which you can practise keeping your blood pressure and your heart rate jacked up in order to avoid vasovagal syncope events, but I’ve never been prepared enough to put any of these methods into use in my moments of need. “But wait–” you ask, stunned, “How often does one lose consciousness in order to pre-plan ahead for moments of need?”

The other day I was thinking about how many times I’ve passed out, and was shocked and dismayed to tally them all up. To be fair, I’ve had some pretty good reasons to faint. Well, SOME of them are good reasons, anyway. But now that I’ve written them down, it’s kind of alarming how many times I’ve lost consciousness. And they go back pretty far into my childhood.

My very first ‘eyeballs-to-heaven’ moment was when I hit my head on a cupboard door. I might have been five or six years old (I think). The cupboards in my mother’s kitchen went right to the ceiling, and for us younger (shorter) kids, it was difficult to reach anything above the first shelf without some assistance.

We were TOLD to use a stepstool. Very often we didn’t waste time getting the stepstool from across the 15-foot-wide kitchen, we just boosted ourselves up onto the counter top so we could kneel or stand to reach what we were after. Little trout-mouthed heathens, we were.

Come to find out, our parents had a valid reason for forbidding us to jump up on the counters. They didn’t want us to fall or hit our heads when we were jumping up, just like I did.

I remember it distinctly: I was after the ice cream bowls. My Uncle Wally was visiting, and we were having ice cream. I was wearing footie pajamas, which made the jumping-on-the-counter move somewhat hazardous in a full-standing position, because the plastic foots were terribly slippery on the glossy countertop (white with a gold foil accent) so I was being pretty careful, even though I was excited about the ice cream.

I placed my palms flat on the counter top and jumped to get my knees up there, too–but THUNK–I got stopped in mid-boost and gravity pulled me back to the floor.

::::starsbrightnessOUCHwhathappened::::

The cupboard door above me had swung halfway open, and I had launched myself full-force into the bottom of it, whacking my skull right along my middle hair part. Not good, and not conducive to ice-cream-happiness, either.

I got thoroughly scolded for hurting myself (actually, I was probably scolded for disobeying Mom and Dad’s rule, but since I was still pretty buzzy from the head impact, I didn’t mind too much) and was set on Uncle Wally’s lap in the living room while Mom & Dad examined the cupboard door for damage (I’m joking). Sat there for a bit, watching the colours get brighter and darker for a few minutes.

Do you remember the trick that we used to play on each other in grade school, the one in which you’d simulate ‘cracking an egg’ on someone’s head and running your fingers across their hair to make it seem as though egg white was dripping down their head? That’s what it felt like when my scalp finally started bleeding from the laceration, about five minutes after I’d bashed it on the cupboard door.

At that point I didn’t know it was blood running over my hair, but I didn’t think Uncle Wally KNEW the ‘cracking an egg’ trick, and it certainly felt odd–and then suddenly I was flying through the air, but that was just Uncle Wally grabbing me under the arms and rushing toward the bathroom…and I don’t remember anything after that.

I must have been about 10 or 11 years old when I got my ears pierced, and I fainted then, too. I was very excited about getting my ears pierced like the big girls! The very nice woman who pierced them did it with a gun at Swan’s Jewelers in Rogers City, and she was very careful about marking my lobes so that my earrings would be even, although my ears certainly aren’t. She did the first piercing and even though it didn’t hurt at all, I went out like a cheap light bulb in the rain. Woke up laying on my back, looking up and arguing that I MUST have my other ear pierced because I’d be lopsided otherwise. I promised that I wouldn’t pass out with the second ear lobe, and I didn’t.

Another location in which I lost consciousness was St. Ignatius Catholic Church, on the morning of my graduating class’ commencement mass (go, RCHS Class of ’86!). It was a beautiful June morning, sunny and bright, and the church was warm. We were all very excited about commencement that evening and let’s just say that I had been paying more attention to celebrating that weekend than I had to sleeping or eating. At one point we were kneeling and the next I was out in the side parking lot between the school and the church. Thank goodness I’d keeled over while I was as close to the ground as possible.

The next time I lost consciousness was during a pre-surgery blood draw. I think I was 20 or 21, and the lab tech drawing my blood was a cutie named Tim. We were chatting and laughing and he was setting up all the tubes and vials necessary for the tests. I think at that point Tim’s impression of me was still favorable.

Then he began to draw blood, and I noted how dark and rich-looking the blood coming from my vein was. I had enough time to tell Tim that I felt odd, and I woke up laying on the floor with someone’s fingers laced behind my head, and several people peering down at me.

Tim said mournfully “That was my last clean lab coat for this week, and it’s only Tuesday.” Right then I knew he would never ask me out. So from that point on, I made certain to alert all phlebotomists of this little quirk of mine, whether or not they were potential dating material.

The weirdest aspect of my vasovagal syncope is that it’s only my OWN blood that makes me go all vasovagal and stuff. YOU can be pumping blood from an arterial laceration, and I’ll just run and get the materials for a pressure bandage and dial 911 if I can do it while keeping my phone clean, but if I am wounded, I must NOT look or you’ll be talking to yourself for a few seconds.

This occasion during which I lost consciousness was from a slip-and-fall resulting in a blow to the head, so it really doesn’t count as a plain old faint, but I’ll include it anyway because I’m tiresome like that. In 1998 we had just gotten our lab-mix Belle, and since she was an eight-week-old puppy we were in the process of house training her.

I’d just woken up and put on some driving moccasins to take her out to potty in the yard, and slipped on the deck outside. It felt like what happened every time Lucy snatched the ball away right when Charlie Brown tried to kick it–my feet went out from under me and I landed flat on my back, hitting the back of my head on the top step. (Rick says he wishes he could have seen it. Har har.)

I was out for exactly 15 minutes that time–it was 0832 hrs when I walked out the door, and it was 0847 hrs when I stumbled back in. Scared the daylights out of poor little Belly, too. The next-door-neighbor girl who was walking to the school bus, saw me laying on the front steps, but she didn’t stop because she thought I was taking a nap. Outside. On the sidewalk. At the beginning of March. With a screaming puppy in my senseless arms. IN MICHIGAN. *sigh*

At the house in Highland, I also passed out in the bathroom early one morning for some unknown reason. Maybe I really did just wake up too early to function, as I jokingly explained the incident away. I dropped like a BIG sack of potatoes and landed on my face. I had some of those really fancy eyeglass frames at that time, the ones that look more like jewelry than glasses frames, and bent those up pretty good during this incident.

By the way, that’s how you know someone really did pass out–they land on their face. If you just wipe out, or if you’re pretending to faint, you try NOT to land on your face or head.

Alarmingly enough, my wonderful hubby slept through the incredible din that I made when I fell, similar to someone dropping 180-pounds-worth of dead weight TEN FEET AWAY from the bed, but then again, he also sleeps through a ringing telephone. He’s a very sound sleeper.

I fainted once at our house in Saline, too. A week before November, we were getting out of bed and doing the morning routine. I was letting Belle and Kacey out to potty, and poor blind little Kacey looked like she was headed off the deep end of the steps, so I reached out to guide her back to the middle of the steps so she wouldn’t fall.

Clad in my standard PJs of t-shirt and panties, holding the storm door open with my right hand, I was bending over guiding Kacey with my left when a gust of wind caught the storm door like a sail on a sailboat. Unlike a sailboat, I didn’t glide gracefully. Off balance, I flew like a flying squirrel out the door and bounced down the cement stairs on my hands, knees, and stomach. Ice, cement and small rocks can do an enormous amount of damage to bare hands, knees and shins.

Rick was in the bathroom at that point, and since he was awake he heard me call out and came to my rescue. He said “It wasn’t a scream, it was more like a Tarzan yell, so I came running out to see what happened, and I find Kara laying on her belly on the patio.”

Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crappity CRAP that hurt. Rick helped me back inside and I lay down in the big fluffy recliner chair, panting and making some guttural noise that I didn’t know I could make until that moment. I told him I didn’t feel right and he told me to just stay there while he brought unguent and bandages. While he was rummaging in the bathroom, I passed out in the recliner. Vasovagal episode number umpty-umpth, in full recline. At least I couldn’t fall again.

Then that summer I tried to donate blood. I say “tried” because I don’t think I had a successful donation in any of three attempts. The first time I tried to donate, I was in a hurry to get out of the house before a showing (we were trying to sell the house, so I’d spent about an hour and a half rushing around cleaning like a maniac), then I threw the two dogs in the car and poured myself a travel mug full of orange juice and grabbed a slice of banana bread. I choked down my breakfast in the car on the way to the Red Cross office. Then, when I got there, the woman who was getting me set up couldn’t catch my vein in my left arm, not even after three tries.

She fetched another lady, who got it in my right arm in one, and I proceeded to squeeze real hard on the towel in my fist, and filled up that bag in 18 minutes. I guess it’s supposed to take much longer. Anyway, I started to feel odd again, and found out the good people at the Red Cross use paper toweling soaked in ice water to revive fainters. They were very concerned, even after I explained that I’d disregarded every single suggestion for a successful donation and that I wasn’t surprised at all that I’d gone to another dimension. Full bag of blood that they couldn’t use due to my case of the vapors.

A month to the day later, I tried it again. I ate breakfast AND lunch, stayed calm, and…it happened again. By now I’m disappointed with myself, and the ladies at the Red Cross are VERY concerned. “I don’t understand what’s going on, I donated blood while I was in high school and I didn’t pass out then, not even when I was grossed out by the feeling of the hot blood going through the tubing taped to my arm! I don’t know what the problem is!” I vented my frustration at one of the kind volunteers.

“Maybe you’re just feeling a lot of pressure right now,” she answered me soothingly. Then she made a note on my chart to put cotton between the tube and my arm during future donation attempts. “Don’t be too hard on yourself–lots of people don’t even make it through our door.”

So I tried again, one month later. I didn’t squeeze the towel too fast or too hard, I ate well, got enough sleep the night before, played happy, soothing music on the way there…and felt odd AGAIN. Woke again to the brightloudness and lots of ladies draping wet and freezing paper towels over my wrists, forehead and neck. Shoot.

Had a paper bag to breathe in this time, too. Started taking yoga breaths to calm down, and one of the ladies who had a blood pressure cuff on me said “What are you DOING? Just take deep breaths, slowly.” I said “That’s what I’m doing–it’s a yoga technique for relaxation.”

She replied “Well, it’s making your blood pressure and heart rate drop significantly. So DON’T DO THAT.”

The nice people at the Red Cross asked me not to try to donate blood again. Ever. I was sad. But I felt bad, too, at how worried they all were when I’d do my fainting goat impression, so I said “okay” and slunk back home.

There have been more incidents, maybe even a few which I don’t recall (and some of those most certainly for foolish reasons). There have been reasonable spells and not-quite-s0-reasonable spells, and after tallying up the ones I can recall, I’m afraid that I’m not the hardass I made myself out to be. I’m not even as cute as a fainting goat, just a delicate flower of womanhood, like Judy Tenuta, and don’t you be mean to me or I’ll pass out and you’ll be in trouble because you didn’t catch me before I split my lip open on the table.

Friends, it’s time again for another holiday at which gift-giving seems to be required. Bunnies and chicks appear to be the mascots for Easter, but please remember that these are ANIMALS, not toys.

Many well-meaning parents and grandparents (and aunts and uncles and neighbors and friends) give  children “Easter” rabbits and chicks, not realizing that these animals are complex and intelligent beings. Rabbits can have a 10-year lifespan if properly cared for, and chicks grow up to be egg-producing chickens–or ROOSTERS, which can have their own special qualities. I’m guessing that having a crowing rooster in your suburban or urban yard will likely inspire lots of animosity from your neighbors.

Rabbits can make amazing pets. They’re litter-trainable, clicker- and postitive-reinforcement trainable, and need to live in bonded pairs. They’re intelligent and funny, and they can eat all your houseplants in a flash. They can chew through a lamp cord in SECONDS and they’re afraid of falling or being dropped because their physiology includes a weak spinal cord.  If you hold a rabbit incorrectly, and they start to kick because they’re feeling insecure and frightened, they can actually break their own backs. And if they’re feeling insecure they can also bite really effectively (think of those big buck teeth) and they can kick the living daylights out of you, too.

Both rabbits and chickens need to be properly cared for, nourished and vetted–it’s our duty as their caretakers to give them what they need.  And our responsibility to these creatures extends well beyond the point at which the children lose interest in them. Even after the kids are bored with squeezing the stuffing out of the bunny and chasing the chick half-to-death, these animals still require our attention.

So please do not buy a living being as a holiday gift, and then end up “setting the bunny free” or letting the chicks run around loose and unsupervised in the backyard. These animals are domesticated breeds which are ill-equipped to survive on their own and they’re especially vulnerable to predators.

Sadly enough the phenomenon of gifting theme animals at holidays (black cats at Halloween, puppies and kittens at Christmas, rabbits and chicks at Easter) is surprisingly common. Working in dog rescue, I dread the applicants who say they want to “get a puppy as a Christmas gift for the kids” or “get a dog as a birthday gift.” First of all, do the recipients even want an animal? Secondly, people need to be aware of the length of commitment that they’re making to these beings–that dog/rabbit/cat/chicken will be around long after the novelty fades. Are they willing to properly continue to keep that animal as it deserves to be kept? And then there’s the fact that Christmas/Easter/birthdays are chaotic enough without the addition of a new, unfamiliar critter to the household: We need to consider the animal’s comfort and adjustment to its new home, too. Holidays are a singularly poor time to bring a new family member home.

Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that rabbits and dogs and cats (and sheep and chickens and horses and cattle and pigs) are all BEINGS. They’re not possessions, like a car or a purse, they’re living animals with needs and urges like companionship and clean water and food and shelter and warmth and exercise. Should we belittle them by treating them as prizes or inanimate things?

If you truly need to get a special little someone an ‘Easter chick or bunny’ do the responsible thing and go to Build-A-Bear in the mall for an inanimate object that doesn’t depend on you for its life. Even better yet, why not sponsor a rescued rabbit in your special little ones’ names? Check out Great Lakes Rabbit Sanctuary’s activities, and maybe instead of contributing to the problem of unwanted, neglected animals, you can spark an interest in responsible consciousness. Here’s a list of ways you can help GLRS: How to Help. Maybe your little friend will get even more enjoyment out of volunteering to help a bunch of bunnies, than they would out of having their own. In the process, you’ll be able to reinforce the importance of our stewardship over our domesticated animals. Now that’s a sweet idea!

Happy Easter!

So a couple days ago I was in Big Lots, just kind of toodling through the store, finding lots more stuff than what I actually came in for (stick to your list, Kara!). I was wearing one of Rick’s Volunteer orange polo shirts, the one with the name of the home health care company he works for stitched on the upper left breast, and faded jeans, and sneakers.

And then a gentleman asked me where the pump sprayers would be displayed. I said I didn’t know, because I DON’T WORK HERE. Nothing on me said “this woman will know the answers to your questions, and if not, she has the authority to find out.” He mumbled something about how it looked like I was putting stuff on the shelves (yeah, my PURSE sitting in my shopping cart really contributed to that image).

In the past when Cocker Companions Rescue has been out and about as an official group, and we all had our “Cocker Companions Rescue Volunteer” name badges on, I’ve been mistook for an official of whichever store we were at: AgriFeed or Mast General Store, or any other establishment I’ve worn the name badge into. Doesn’t seem to matter that the name badge doesn’t say “AgriFeed” or “Mast General Store”, and people don’t seem to pay attention to that anyway. While appearing in CCR capacity, I’ve just given up trying to explain that I’m not a store employee, and try to point the customer in the correct direction anyway. In AgriFeed, I’m getting pretty good at it because I’ve spent a lot of time there.

But in Big Lots, I wasn’t wearing a name tag of any kind and Big Lots doesn’t seem to have a particular uniform that I’d inadvertently matched, as some other stores do. For example, if you’re just meandering into Target, you do not want to be wearing a red shirt and khakis. In Best Buy, don’t wear your royal blue polo shirt if you don’t wish to be pressed into service, and you get the idea from there.

But at Big Lots, I wasn’t stocking shelves or running a register, had no name tag of any sort…so what would make people think I worked there?  Maybe it’s behavioral. When I came in to the store, I stopped to look at some sweatshirts piled in a cart at the front of the store, and instead of rooting about through them like a pig through oak leaves in search of truffles, I neatly folded the shirts I had looked at. I have no idea if that’s what the gentleman wanting the pump sprayers had cued in on, and by that time I had been in the store for about 15 or 20 minutes when he approached me so I’m not sure that’s what he saw me doing, but I’m grasping at straws.

In Kroger a couple weeks ago, I was again lacking any sort of name badge or ID associating me with the store in an official capacity, when a lady approached me in the dairy department. She asked me why there were no ham steaks, only packages of cubed pieces of country ham on the display. I had to tell her I didn’t know, earning a filthy look in return, and then I pointed out an actual employee stocking eggs on the other side of the aisle. “Maybe he could tell you, ma’am.”

How often does this happen to you, Gentle Reader? With me, this is a pretty regular occurrence, sometimes as often as every week-and-a-half or so. I can’t imagine that I just look helpful and approachable enough that I draw people in need.

Eh. Then again, I definitely draw DOGS in need to me, so maybe that strange magnetism draws people as well.

The strangeness at Big Lots didn’t end there, either. While waiting in line at the register, I was minding my own business and texting my niece, Bethany. I don’t text very well. Typing with my thumbs is time-consuming and therefore annoying. I can hit 80 wpm + on a standard sized keyboard. So why would I want to piddle around making typos with my freaking arthritic thumbs on a cellphone keypad? I recognize that it’s a common and handy method of communication for the younger set however, so I will use it when appropriate. But keep in mind it is a sloooooow process for me, and I have to concentrate.

The line was moving very slowly at the register, so when a lady in back of me asked me to keep her place while she checked the price of something in one of the nearby aisles, I agreed. I didn’t really do anything, just kept texting and waiting for the line to advance. I finished and sent the text, which should give you an idea of the length of the delay in the line.

The lady returned to her cart, disappointed that the item was no longer on sale, and somehow this started a conversation. She leaned over to peer at the upper left breast of my polo shirt and said “Oh, you work in healthcare? What do you think about the healthcare bill?”

If she knew me, she wouldn’t have opened that can of worms. She would have looked into my black heart and realized that there’s NOTHING ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH THAT I WANTED TO DISCUSS LESS THAN THE HEALTHCARE BILL. And then she would have run off, screaming in fear.

I murmured that it was out of my hands and that I had no opinion, hoping to end this gambit where it stood. But no, she wanted to share her views. She commented that the bill would make insurance too expensive for everyone and that it would bring about the financial ruin of the country. I commented that the trillions of dollars worth of debt from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan probably wouldn’t contribute to the financial ruin of the country, and decisively turned away from her to end the conversation.

WHY do people do that? I am not an approachable person!  Or at least, I don’t want to be approachable. I want to appear as a confident, unremarkable person, to whom you’d apologise if you ran over their foot with your grocery cart, but otherwise ignore.

I guess until I find my ideal job working by myself from home or from a desert island somewhere, I’ll continue to be helpful and polite in the meantime.

So the darling Baby Lady Grrl, Gigi, killed a rabbit early Sunday morning and ate a good part of it before party-pooper Momma came outside and took it away. Ick.

Hard to believe, too, if you’ve ever met my darling Gee.  But then again she does have a healthy appetite and is always on the lookout for food, or for things which can substitute for food, like the cardboard box the frozen garlic bread came in. She filched that from the paper recycling bag and ate a sizeable square. It looked like guinea pigs had ate at it, but Gigi doesn’t digest cardboard as well as guinea pigs.  We had several episodes of chucking up the undigestable remnants, identifiable because they were the same colour as the garlic bread package remnants.  Anyway, here she is, Lady Godiva in all her skinny-legged glory:

Yup. That's a savage killer, right there. If you're a rabbit or an olive, that is.

Tonight I was getting a few olives for a snack, green ones stuffed with pimiento, and I dropped one. Gee the Carnivorous was on it in a flash. She wasn’t certain she wanted it, though. She took it away and rolled it around in her mouth, setting it down on the carpet several times (of course).

She finally finished it and must have decided it was good, because a few minutes later she showed up, sniffing around the end table on which I had my dish of olives and glass of Kool Aid (yes, I have the sophisticated palate of a 12-year-old) and it was necessary to remind her that her food dishes are NEVER served to her on the end tables in the livingroom.

Now I’m wondering if she’s getting enough food. What dog would be nutso enough to eat an olive, for Pete’s sake? It’s not even a black olive, or a Kalamata. This was one of those hard-core little green olives, wasn’t even stuffed with blue cheese or anything lovely like that! So she’s gotta be seriously hungry.

She and her brother, Skipper, get 1/3 of a cup of California Natural Lamb & Rice kibble twice a day, with 1/2 cup of applesauce and a fish oil capsule. They and their other brother and sister share apples and bananas and carrots with me during the day, as well as enjoying an occasional Wellness bar as a treat. None of the dogs are malnourished–in fact, they’re all pretty much at the perfect weight, so I hate to mess around with the amount of kibble they’re getting.  Gee has approached porkdom in the past, and I don’t want her weight to seesaw up and down like her momma’s does.

I’ll have to start supplementing their kibble, applesauce, and fish oil caplets with something more substantial, like green beans and steamed carrots again, to give them a little more of a full-tummy feeling.

Recently the tragic death of SeaWorld’s killer whale trainer Dawn Brancheau flooded the news outlets. Many people commented that Tilikum, the whale, should be euthanised.

It’s very sad that Brancheau died while working with Tilikum, but what we all need to keep in mind is that no matter how well-trained he is, Tilikum is still a wild creature. He is a KILLER WHALE, and that’s what he does–or that’s what he would do, if he weren’t artificially confined in a space less than 1/25th the size of comfortable stomping grounds in the ocean.

I think Brancheau knew this, and accepted those risks as part of her career as a trainer.
From comments in the media about her dedication to her job, it seemed she loved working with the orcas to show spectators the majesty and capability of these creatures.

But no matter how many tricks Tilikum knows, no matter how much affection he seems to display to his human keepers, he remains a predatory creature with different motivations, language and desires from humans. Even though the trainers know this, and work together very closely to avoid mishaps, the potential still exists for tragic accidents.

This doesn’t apply just to killer whales or lions or elephants.  We need to be mindful that our own domesticated animals are still animals, too. They’re not little furry people running around on four legs with poor language skills–they’re ANIMALS, no matter how radically humans have changed their behavior from their cousins still living in the wild.

I got a vivid reminder of that this weekend.

Early Sunday morning, right around 4 a.m., I was getting ready to join the Wonderful Pumpkin in our cozy bed, so I let Gigi and Riley out to potty one last time.  Skipper was NOT going outside because it was a bit chilly, and Belle had been sleeping for hours and hours and wouldn’t wake up to go out for quite a while.

Riley went down and pottied, and came back up promptly.  I let him in and gave Gee a couple more minutes, but when she didn’t come in a short while later, I tried calling her.

You must understand that our children are essentially four sporting dogs.  Belle is a Labrador mix, Riley is an English springer spaniel fieldy, and Skipper and Gigi are American cocker spaniels. Even though they’re supposed to have specialities specific to their breeds, they don’t all exhibit the same zest for the hunt, and neither Rick nor I mind that.  We’re not hunters and we don’t expect our dogs to ‘earn their keep’ with a specific skill.

Belle likes to chase birds and rabbits, and she and her long-departed cocker sister Kacey Marie managed to bring down a baby possum in the backyard of our Highland Township home in Michigan. She’s quick, and true to the nature of most dogs, anything ‘moving’ in her yard offends her, and she will give fervent chase, but I don’t think she’s as dedicated to it as some dogs would be.

Riley is our handsome, darling boy, but for all his beauty he’s a little brainless when it comes to prey and how to deal with it. This is probably the reason he was deserted by a fishing hole up near Lawrenceburg, KY–handsome dog with promising bone structure and beautiful markings has no natural instinct regarding birds, i.e. “dog won’t hunt” and so “dog is history.”

Skipper-Dee-Doo-Dah (or “Poos” for short) is so completely a momma’s boy that he can’t stand to be outside for the time it would take to hunt something down and kill it and eat it. Now if Momma came out to help, that might be a different story.

And then there’s Lady Godiva, aka Gigi, aka ‘The Baby Lady.” Gigi, a chocolate cocker, is my darling. She’s my unabashed favorite grrl, endearing herself to me with her extreme shyness and timidity when she first came to us as a heartworm-positive foster back in September of 2008. (There–I SAID it. I have a ‘favorite’ dog. I feel like a parent confessing to favoring one child over the rest.) As she got to know and trust us more at home, she’s grown to become a funny, happy grrl who’s earned the nickname “Waterbug” because when she’s really excited she’ll jump around in full 360′s.

Gigi went from being so shy that she would just freeze when you reached down to pet her, to wrestling with Riley and jumping up to stand on your chest and smile down at you while you’re sitting on the sofa. And even though she’s no longer terrified and helpless around us, I still feel particularly protective and affectionate toward her.

And ironically, even though we see Gigi as our darling cuddly baby grrl who’s cuter than any danged button in the world, she’s our sportswoman.  She is fast and smart, an unapologetic hunter who doesn’t mind rain and cold and sparks the rest of the dogs into giving chase and really acting like dogs.

It’s awesome to watch them all charge out into the yard late at night (or early in the morning) with Gigi leading the vocally-silent assault on the unfortunate critter who happens into our yard. A rabbit chase is punctuated by the sounds of the dogs’ feet first thundering down the steps to the deck, and then back and forth in the yard below.  Most of the time, the chase ends with the rattle of the chain link fence signaling the just-in-time departure of the critter.

Occasionally it doesn’t end so well for the critter.  I can tell you that rabbits scream when they’re captured, a heartrending exclamation of horror that seizes my heart. Most often, it’s Gigi who’s quick and dexterous enough to have caught the prey, but I didn’t think she knew what to do with it.  Rick says he’s seen her staring at a bunny she’s pinned to the ground with her front paws, as if she’s amazed she caught it, while the other dogs milled around behind her.

Apparently she finally figured out what to do with the bunny once she caught it.

After Rye came in I gave Gigi a few more minutes, and then I went out on the deck and called her to come in.  She ignored me, which means she was hunting something.  I got the flashlight and tried to find her in the yard. Usually she circles the small utility shed toward the back of the yard, under which many small critters have tried to make their homes. No circles, and I couldn’t see her at all, but I did hear an odd ripping sound and suspected that she was tearing at the plywood that Rick used to barricade the underside of the shed.

If Geej is after something under the shed, she will NOT come in on her own–If I don’t want to wait for an hour or so, I’ll have to go out there and get her. Slipped on my shoes and grabbed the flashlight, and when I was down in the yard on my way out to the shed, I finally saw her–by the fence.  She was concentrating on something at her feet, and as I got closer, the flashlight illuminated the body of a young rabbit, which Gee had caught and partially eaten.

Aw, jeez.

It could have been lots worse–last summer, we were babysitting Karen’s five kids, and her golden retriever, Gretta, actually caught a baby rabbit in the backyard.  I was at work, so Rick had to deal with a mangled baby bunny who was tragically still alive.  He was on his way to the University of Tennessee with the baby when it died in the truck with him.  Heartbreaking.

Bear in mind that Rick and I are not only dog lovers. We love all animals, including rabbits and other wild and domesticated fuzzies, so it’s heartbreaking for us to see an animal become prey.

Most of the time, our kids enjoy the thrill of the hunt without ever ‘finishing’ it. But we have to remember that they are animals, and even though we feed them nutritionally-balanced meals on a regular basis, that there’s still a gene-level memory in them of when they had to feed themselves.

I couldn’t be angry with Gigi.  She’s doing what she was genetically programmed to do, which is to hunt and feed herself. I felt so sad for the rabbit, but I think it died quickly. Well, I hope that’s what happened, anyway. I picked Gigi up to carry her inside, because she really wasn’t ready to leave her prize yet.

Came back out and picked up the dead bunny with a couple of plastic grocery bags and put it in the trash can out front. Its eyes were just beginning to cloud over, but its body was still very warm. Went back inside and checked my darling little grrl for wounds and blood, and discovered that her ears and paws were very bloody and took her into the bathroom for a quick front-end bath. Mud and blood ran down the tub’s drain, and I kept up a very calm and loving patter while I soaped Geej’s ears and front paws and muzzle.  Ew, but this is what happens when a dog (even a darling, fuzzy dog!) kills another animal and commences to eat it.

Kept an eye on her on Sunday to make sure she didn’t suffer any ill effects from her hunt, but frankly I think the rabbit and I got the worst end of that deal. Obviously the rabbit is the overall loser in this story, but again, I can’t blame Gigi or scold her for this.

We need to remember this about all our companion animals, too, not just dogs. Many people who have sporting dogs like beagles and bird dogs have discovered that the prey instinct is very strong in their beloved pets, so strong that it’s not safe for the household to have a bird or rodent as another pet.

And as much as we love our companion animals and train them to live under our roofs with us, they’re still animals and are capable of acting out against us and expressing their fear, frustration or anger in animalistic ways. Your Mr. Poofy Pants Kitty might be pretty tolerant, but he’s still got sharp teeth and may hiss, growl, or even try to bite you if you’re doing something he doesn’t like. My Baby Lady might be adorably fuzzy and shy and funny, but she’s still capable of killing a small animal to feed. Let’s just keep that in mind.

Here's the Baby Lady. Doesn't look like a bloodthirsty killer, do she?

Arrgh. Red alert. My favorite radio station here in Knoxville is changing its format, and I don’t know how they could improve it.

I’m worried.

One of the things I like about 105.3 WFIV is that they play a little bit of lots of stuff. In one day, in one place, you can hear Colbie Caillat, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, Lucinda Williams, John Mayer, Toad the Wet Sprocket, U2, Fiona Apple, CCR, Talking Heads, Dave Matthews, and Jamie Cullum. Jamie Cullum! I don’t want to lose that music roster!

Stay tuned. I may be having a crisis. I’ll let you know when I’m certain.

I have an attachment to fountain pens. I love the smoothness of the ink and the responsiveness of the nibs. My writing isn’t particularly pretty, but it just feels better when I use a fountain pen. Even cooler is that when you use one particular fountain pen for a while, the nib ‘learns’ your writing style and it’s almost as if it’s tailor-made for your hand. *sigh*

My mother, Norma, never understood this. She was fond of telling me that in her time, they were excited and pleased to be able to use a ballpoint pen and throw out their old fountain pens. “They were so messy and you never knew when they’d decide to leak in your pocket or all over your books. I can’t believe that you don’t get tired of having ink all over your fingers,” she’d grouse, shaking her head in perplexity. “We sure did.”

I’m a weirdo.  I admit that. I’ve used many different types of fountain pens, but my favorite is my Waterman, which I’ve had since about 1997. At that time I thought I wanted a Mountblanc Meisterstück, and worked toward accumulating usage points on my cell phone in order to ‘earn’ one (yes, that was so long ago that my cell phone carrier had to encourage its customers to use their cell phones by offering points). Oh joy, oh wonderful day that my cell phone statement finally reflected 20,000 points! I could finally send in for my certificate entitling me to a “free” Mountblanc Meisterstück!

Let’s don’t talk about how I probably paid five times more in cell phone bills than if I’d just gone out and BOUGHT a Meisterstück. I know it was foolish, but at the time it seemed like a good deal.

I still remember standing at the display counter in the store, fogging up the glass in front of the Montblanc pens. (I don’t recall which store it was, but it might have been a Service Merchandise. C’mon, that was quite a while ago!) I got the attention of the salesdude, who opened the display case and produced first a little padded (purple velvet) palette like one you’d use for examining a piece of jewelry, and on that he placed the beautiful black resin and gold pen of my dreams.

I just looked at it for a few seconds, admiring the plain, clean lines of the pen, and the 18-karat nib inlaid with rhodium, and the friendly, rounded little starburst at the top of the cap representing the snow-capped peak of Mont Blanc.  Then I wiped my sweaty paws on my jeans, picked it up, and…

…it was disappointingly light in my hand. It felt insubstantial, inconsequential, somehow. I told the salesdude and he agreed that it felt very light. He pulled a Waterman fountain pen from the case, and handed it to me, saying that if I liked something heavier that this might suit me better.  I was in love. Substantial and elegant and perfectly balanced, and the nib was so smooth it almost felt like writing with a sable paint brush loaded with oil paint–except much more accurate.

Kept that pen with me for a few years, until I lost it somewhere in 2001.  I thought it might have fallen out of my purse, or maybe I had left it somewhere. I was petrified that it had dropped between the seat and the console of one of the cars we had long-since traded in. I tore all the cars apart, dumped all my purses out, and repeatedly searched the same places it might have been. Finally, after making several big messes and finding nothing, I gave up. I was very sad, but hoped someone who appreciated the Waterman was using it and enjoying its feel.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2006. Rick was living in an apartment in Oak Ridge, TN near his new job, and I was trying to sell our house in Saline, MI. He had come home for the weekend, and we were packing up the truck with lots of housekeeping stuff:  Tables and lamps, laundry hampers and baskets, lots of things that took up a lot of room. I had moved the electric passenger-side seat all the way forward to jam something else into the back seat of the truck (which is probably the first time that seat had ever been that far forward in the entire time we’d owned that truck), and just happened to spy black and gold and “Waterman” in the seat rail on the floor.

I was overwhelmed with joy. Rick thought I’d struck gold, and was disappointed when he saw it was just a pen. I took it in the house and dismantled it, discarded the long-dried cartridge and soaked the nib in warm water and dish soap. Being a packrat, I still had the cartridges and inductor from the pen, even though I’d thought the damned thing was lost long ago. Dried everything off and carefully reassembled it, and experienced utter writing bliss. Almost better than a lottery ticket. I’ve been using it ever since.

Just recently I’ve been going through boxes of ‘stuff’ that I’ve kept.  Some of the ‘stuff’ is from as far back as high school. I found three more fountain pens, two Scheaffer and one Parker, none very expensive, but all loaded with sentimentality. I also found their cartridges, so I carried them all upstairs, consolidated my cartridge supply of all three types of fountain pens into one box in my desk, and set them all up. Now I had broad-nib Shaffers with which to write in peacock blue and lavender and grey inks, my sleek (plastic) Parker with which to write in black, and my lovely Waterman for blue-black ink. :::grinning::: I have the most elegant grocery lists in town!

The Waterman is my most-frequently-used pen, and just this morning it wasn’t working well with the inductor, which was filled incidentally with blue-black Montblanc ink. I wondered yet again whether the brand of ink not matching the brand of pen had anything to do with the pen’s poor performance.  I removed the inductor, emptied and rinsed it and decided to use a pre-loaded, disposable Waterman cartridge instead.

I grabbed one from the communal box in my desk drawer, noting that there were three others like it, and tried to install it. Hmph. Not fitting. What’s going on? Seems like it’s too tight to go all the way into the nib…tried dropping the cartridge into the barrel of the pen and screwing the nib in on top of it. After a little bit of effort, it finally clicked into place, but it still felt tight and wrong.

Began writing and was disappointed to see the ink looked washed out and…wrong.  More grey than blue-black. Finally opened the pen and actually LOOKED at the cartridge I’d installed–which was a black Parker fountain pen cartridge. They’re very similar in size and shape to the Waterman cartridges, just a little longer and a little more tapered from front to back. No wonder it didn’t fit into the Waterman well. Went back to the communal cartridge box and found one more Waterman cartridge. I’ll need to buy more.

I’m a moron. Luckily I didn’t break anything by forcing the Parker cartridge into the Waterman pen, which would have been bitterly disappointing. If I’d just been paying attention, it would never have happened. Must be more careful…

I obsess about pet peeves that could be called achingly trivial. Then I obsess about finding a solution to those peeves. And I have  lot of peeves. All that energy wasted on stupid stuff that doesn’t really matter…oi vey.

But it finally worked!  I came up with a solution to something that’s bothered me for such a long time, and it’s a good solution!

In a bottle of lotion (or shampoo, or shower gel, or what-have-you) that comes equipped with a pump, there’s a lot of product left at the bottom when the pump begins to fail. Because the bottle has a PUMP it’s almost impossible to set the bottle upside down to let gravity help. And then you have to unscrew the pump to get at whatever’s left over, and you end up dumping the rest all over your hand and wasting it anyway.

My temporary solution was to vow to buy only flip-top snappy-type containers, which could be inverted and used efficiently without wrestling with a stupid pump. Hooray! Problem solved!

But when you’re standing in front of the lotions with a calculator in your hand, and you realize that the larger pump bottle is less-expensive per ounce, it’s difficult to stick to that vow.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Kara!” you’re thinking to yourself right now. “Just throw the whole mess away and get yourself another bottle of store brand lotion and MOVE ON. It’s only an ounce or so!”

Ah, Gentle Reader, there’s the rub (pun definitely intended). If I waste an ounce of lotion, that nullifies the savings I earned when buying the larger bottle, which cost less per ounce. And at that point, this whole soul-rending struggle becomes “a matter of principle.”

I’ve tried propping one bottle upside-down over the mouth of another bottle, and that inevitably ends in heartache with lotion spattered all over the mirror and faucet when the top bottle falls. Because it will fall–it always does. Stupid bottle.

Yes, I have seen those little plastic doohickeys that allow you to connect two bottles of different sizes mouth-to-mouth, so that you can allow gravity to transfer the remainder of one bottle into another. I just don’t want to pay someone $10 for their idea. (Yes, I’m petty and jealous that I did not think of it, patent the idea, get a prototype and market such a useful little plastic thingy for myself.) Plus, those little thingamajigs don’t fit every bottle well–I have an image of a couple of unsuccessfully-coupled fallen ketchup bottles, and a kitchen splattered with ketchup.

Anyway. I’ve been noodling on this particular peeve for many moons, and finally came up with a workable and elegant solution. Remove the pump top from the bottle, and place a plastic bag over the mouth of the bottle. Upend this, propping it in the corner of your vanity or wherever it will not be knocked over, and when gravity has done its job, squeeze the rest of the product into the bag.

Squeeze the air out of the bag, and fasten the top closed. Get your receiving bottle ready, and snip a small hole in the bottom corner of the bag. Aim, then squeeze, and you should be able to strip all the leftover product neatly into the new bottle. Et voila!

Think “piping frosting,” except you’re not piping something edible and it’ll be much easier because you’re just trying to squeeze the contents neatly into a bottle, not spell out “Happy Birthday, Pumpkin” in legible icing script on top of a too-hot cake before all the party attendees arrive in four minutes.

Greener members of the audience may say “But Kara, that wastes a plastic bag! You’re using all the product, but you’re needlessly using a piece of plastic–it becomes a wash!” Save it, brothers and sisters. If this matters to you, you can rinse the plastic bag and use it again for a similar operation–just don’t empty the next bottle into the snipped corner of the bag. Also, bonus points if you’re using an already-repurposed plastic bag, because then you can throw it away and not feel bad!

I should patent and trademark this blog entry, shouldn’t I?

All through my life, writing has come naturally to me and it was assumed that I would earn a living as a writer. Mrs. Gregg, my kindergarten teacher, told my mother this, so it must be so.  Although I haven’t taken much formal instruction in writing, the professional advice I’ve been given usually includes keeping a journal.

Never wanted to keep a journal or write in a diary for fear that someone would find it and laugh at all my twisted thoughts and trepidations. Guess you could call it a phobia, it’s that big a fear for me. Doesn’t even matter if the person reading is a complete stranger, or if my journal was discovered years and years after my death. Not even the idea of being long gone by the time strangers read my journal lessens my dread.

The fear isn’t as bad now as when I was a child and teenager.  I’m much more self-assured and recognize that my feelings are valid, and that I don’t need to get validation from other peoples’ approval. So I should be able to relax about baring my soul to a journal, especially now that I’m an adult and don’t have to worry about older siblings questing for it and ruining my life by making its contents public and then tormenting me with it for the rest of my natural life.

So why can’t I commit to keeping a journal? It would only be a help to me. Many writers say their journals are an invaluable tool for their work. They experiment in their journals and refine their writing style, and use journal writing as a warm-up before settling down to work.

And I could use a little help with my writing. It’s been my lifelong goal to earn a living through storytelling, but I have not been successful to this point, very likely because I haven’t established the habit of writing on a regular basis. I THINK about writing on a regular basis. I PLAN to write (or maybe I plan to plan to write, and that might fall into a ‘double-negative’ situation) on a regular basis, I just never actually get to the writing part.

My friend Karen and I have been talking about this lately. We agree that my God-given talent appears to be writing, and combined with my extreme lack of tolerance for members of the general public, it would be imminently suitable for me to work by myself, writing, in the comfort of my own home.

So I’m starting with the most obvious step, that of writing ‘something’ every day. I take this opportunity to air out my mind, to chew over recent events and to refine my thoughts. Lots of my blog entries come about from this process of writing ‘something’. Does a blog count as a journal entry? Or is it really the same thing?

Obviously a published blog isn’t going to be private. Readers do stumble upon it and read, or so my webmistress Jessica tells me. I do understand and consciously accept that people are reading my rants; I use my blog to spread information that I feel would be beneficial to others, like animal rescue, frugality, food and housekeeping.  And I wouldn’t bother with the blog if I didn’t feel it was being read by SOMEONE. But sometimes those blog entries remind me a little bit of a journal or diary, which usually is kept private.

I had a bad experience recently with a former co-worker with whom I thought I was on good terms. Apparently she didn’t like me as much as I liked her, because I found out that all the while she and I were visiting and bonding while working together, she was lying about me to my managers. I felt foolish and gullible and very betrayed, and I wrote about it in minute, gory detail for my blog. But after I read back through the entry, it seemed too raw, too personal for publishing.

I needed to write about that experience in order to resolve my feelings, so I did. It felt good to dump all the anger and hurt into the ‘sausage factory’ of my keyboard and see the ‘sausages’ appear on the screen. But did I need to publish that blog entry in order to finish the job? I guess not. It felt too private to share, or maybe I’m still too hurt to put it out there and risk more wounding by critics who feel I’m overly sensitive.

So…that kinda sounds like a diary entry, doesn’t it?  Writing about an experience to understand it more fully and to cope with it, but then not sharing it with anyone.

And isn’t it funny (both ‘funny-ha-ha’ AND ‘funny-strange’) that I resisted keeping a journal for almost 35 years because I didn’t want to share my private thoughts with anyone inadvertently, but here I am publishing a blog chock FULL of private thoughts on Teh Interwebz in front of potentially millions of readers?

Heh! Millions of readers–who am I kidding? This blog is probably more private and secure than my best childhood hiding spot, which was inside an old game box at the very bottom of my toy box. This was all tucked underneath a precarious pile of junk including the Battleship game boards and stuffed animals, guaranteed to make a huge racket if someone knocked it down while snooping.