This post needs no words, really. My Christmas shopping expedition today started off at animal control (because, of course, that’s totally normal), and I felt like taking cheesy Christmas pictures with the result of the outing.
She wore out pretty quickly. Too much excitement for one day, and the lights and stocking were just too warm and comfy. She’s still konked out with the Santa hat, by the way.
Details to follow; tonight, I just want to giggle at her cuteness.
I had my college placement test Tuesday morning, a fact that I somehow managed to forget until, oh, Saturday afternoon and which resulted in some pro-level cramming over the weekend (a fact that probably doesn’t bode well for my future as a student). The English part didn’t concern me too much, as I’ve always had a serious love affair with verbiage, but the math had me up in the night puking. My formal education stopped at third grade, and my homeschooled version of it bit the dirt at fifth. While I did go on to get a GED, college-level algebra, geometry and trig were not subjects covered in GED test prep.
So. Tuesday morning. After a few minutes of campus exploration, I found the students’ accounts offices, paid for the test and returned to the testing classroom, dutifully coughing up the receipt and my driver’s license upon request. Taking a seat, I watched the other students file in, ranging from a few years younger than I to a man in his mid-thirties and a woman in her forties. All shuffled somewhat hesitantly toward the desk, prompting several unconvincing assurances from the severe-looking woman behind it that she didn’t bite, while the man beside her, who was one of those “everybody’s grandpa” types, just smiled and ushered the next in line toward his place.
Visible through the windows behind the desk, a tall, forbidding-looking man who made me wonder which celebrity’s bodyguard was missing paced the empty testing room. Dressed in grey slacks, with a tight black mock turtleneck stretched across his broad chest and a gold chain dangling around his neck, he seemed the type who was both allergic to smiling and more than capable of snapping your neck with his pinky finger.
At his summons, I rose obediently and took my place in the herd of people being gathered as the first half of the group. He began rattling off instructions, a string of spit caught between his upper and lower lips distracting me far more than it should have (true story, if a little on the TMI side). In my nervousness, I was struck with disproportionate amusement at the thought that he would have been a perfect stand-in for Cobra Bubbles on Lilo and Stitch:
“If you’re taking all three parts of the test, expect to spend anywhere from 2-3 hours here today. When you have completed the test, there will be a blue screen instructing you to stop, at which point you will exit and take a seat in the lobby while your results are generated,” he finished.
Taking my place at my assigned terminal, I took a moment to reassure my reeling brain that the jumbled words on the screen were really in English and that I was going to be fine.
Reading and writing flew by with minimal stress, while math proved another story entirely. I didn’t understand any of it. At all. The best I could do was try to break down the equations by what part was being divided, multiplied, etc. by what part and find an answer that seemed as close to keeping with that process as possible. Still, by the third question, my stomach was churning ominously with humiliation. After only forty-five minutes of the test and my sixth math question, the computer flashed it’s blue screen and kindly requested I return to the lobby. Crap.
Certain that I’d bombed so badly I’d just been dismissed, I stood and trudged toward the doorway. “All the way out,” Cobra mouthed solemnly as I passed him. I nodded, looked down and filed out of the room, face burning with shame and dejection.
He stuck his head out of the room long enough to hand my results to the woman at the desk. She looked at it for a moment, eye brows raised but expression indecipherable.
“Wow, holy…Can I see you a moment in the next room, please?” She glanced up from my results long enough to gesture vaguely in my direction. I nodded resignedly and followed.
“You did very, very well,” she began.
“Really?” The words kind of fell out of my mouth.
“Yeah – look at this, this is brilliant. You were a 99 in both parts of the English – that’s amazing! We never see that here, not that high and never on both parts.”
I just stood there, stunned, and then laughed as my eyes landed on my math score at the bottom. “That’s more what I was expecting,” I said, pointing out the abysmal number.
33. Ha ha ha. I’ll be ramming my head into the wall now…
“But look, you were only four points away from college level,” she encouraged.
Again, shock. “What?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she continued. “The minimum is 37, you were really close! You’ll just be placed in the more advanced learning support class and you’ll make it up in no time. It’s not bad at all. And the English, that really is amazing. You should seriously think about majoring in it; you’d be exceptional.”
She gave me instructions for registering for the orientation and sent me out the door, dazed but rapidly approaching cloud nine.
It’s been three days, and the high has yet to wear off…even just walking the campus felt so right, and I can’t wait to get started. Dude, I’m bordering on giddy.
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My last day of work was yesterday. Sweet! I am now free to concentrate entirely on unnecessarily complicating my life instead of simply trying to fit it in around an ever-changing work schedule.
On a more somber note, Rorschach is not doing well. At all.
Even heavy doses of clomipramine and Xanax don’t put a dent in his panic at being left alone. I can’t leave him in the house, crated or otherwise, without absolute hysteria ultimately resulting in self-injury (well, we have that in common, at least).
Seriously, I have never seen a dog with it this bad. He barks, he whines, he drools and goes to the bathroom on himself, he tries to dig through the crate pan (or the floor, if he’s loose), he flings himself against the sides of the crate (or the door), he bites through the bars of the crate and tries to do the same to the wall…he doesn’t even notice that he’s hurt himself in the process, and he keeps it up for however many hours it takes for someone to return and thus relief the anxiety. Even stepping outside my door to get the mail makes him literally lose his shit.
I’ve dealt with separation anxiety before, but none of the usual tricks are working. I keep departures and returns low-key, give him structure and boundaries, walk him five miles to keep any nervous energy at bay, practice commands to work his mind a bit, leave my dogs around him for company, leave the radios on, pretend to leave throughout the day so he doesn’t panic every time I put my shoes on…nothing. It still takes a major tranquilizer to allow me to leave my house if I’m going somewhere he can’t go.
Even physically exhausted to the point he can hardly hold his head up, he drags himself after me if I so much as leave the room; on the tranquilizers, he still struggles to stumble after me, even as the drug takes affect and he’s falling every other step.
Not that I don’t understand the anxiety. Shuffled from home to home, starved, beaten and who-knows-what-else by the people he tried to love…he has his reasons. But not even the behaviorists are optimistic about his case, and I can tell he’s miserable. Even when he’s with me, he’s still anxious and trying to watch my every move in case I try to leave again, at which point he flings himself in front of me, grabbing my arms and clothing in blind panic to hold me back.
He’s in hell. I’m conflicted. That’s what I get for saying so optimistically, “I think he’ll be okay.” Another example of why I don’t do optimism.
My family asked for my Christmas list a few weeks ago, which I finally provided the other day. I’m not one for making wish lists; I’m “weird” in that I generally don’t give a crap about the gift-getting aspect of the holidays (well, okay, I’m “weird” in plenty of other ways, but we’re tactfully ignoring that fact for now…). But moving on, I finally dredged up a list of shtuff I could happily add to my current possessions and handed it over.
Among other things, I asked for a few books related to psychotherapy, mainly memoirs from “the other side of the couch,” if you will, as I like reading things from the therapists’ points of view. Psychology in general intrigues me, but of course, in a household where mental issues don’t really exist, therapy is seen as a joke.
Naturally, my mother took issue with the request (honestly, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that), and after remarking to my siblings that she “wasn’t quite sure what to think” of my list, she suggested just giving me her old college psych textbook that is currently rotting in the basement, so I can CLEP out of some college classes while I’m at it. But my personal favorite line of the conversation?
“Or maybe I should just get her a book on how to get a life that doesn’t suck.”
Aw, thanks Mom.
Okay, did I just miss this when I was messing around with themes the other day, or is it just my puter? The font size is atrocious!
No, I do not really believe you are all vision-impaired and in need of a ginormous font. I’ll fiddle with it tonight after work, I s’pose. Holy hell.
I called in sick to work yesterday, and while laying in bed trying to motivate myself to get up and actually do something, stomach bug be damned, I decided to veg just long enough to pull up my email on my phone and see what was happenin’.
With the subject line “Hayden,” the first message made my stomach churn a little. I had meant to follow up with his adopter the afternoon before, just to check on his transition. I’m so used to only hearing from adopters when something’s not working the way they wanted, I always feel a little dread when opening up an adopter’s email in the first week or so after an adoption. But…
“Good Morning,
I just wanted to send a quick thank you to your organization. Hayden has been with us for just a few days, today will be day 4 and I couldn’t be happier with him. He loves the kids, doesn’t bother the cats and my sisters dog and him get along great now 
We took into consideration when we got him, he might have a few accidents in the house, chew a couple things etc, since it was a new environment and nothing has happened. He loves his new toys and loves to play with the tennis ball in the backyard.
His house manners and obedience is remarkable. His foster mom did a wonderful job fostering him, and our door is always open to her!
Again thank you!!”
Attached was a picture of Hayden with his new doggie friend.
This is what makes everything worth it – to see a great dog who would have died simply for want of a good home go from a concrete run in the county pound to beautiful home with everything he could have ever wanted.
It made me think about how much progress he’s made since first coming out of the shelter. The dog whom I had to carry into my house because he was so afraid of doorways and hardwood floors, who cowered away from staircases and turned his head away from even the friendliest of strangers. Now a healthy, confident, friendly dog, he wins everyone’s admiration wherever he goes, and is livin’ it up in a home that couldn’t be more perfect if he’d written up the spec’s himself.
He wouldn’t even play with toys at my house – if he’s playing after just a few days there, I don’t need anything more to tell me he’s “home.”
Makes changes! I hated my old layout. I kept saying I was going to customize the graphics but never got around to it, and the way this thing looked without the graphics I was going to play with just about made my skin crawl. So, voila! For the moment, I like this one better.
Nothing of great import to add to the blogosphere today, other than some puppy progress reports. Hayden, my shepherd, was adopted on Saturday…despite all of my attempts to convince myself that he was a permanent addition, my home just wasn’t working as the right set-up for him and he wasn’t happy. It’s considerably more involved than that, but that’s your Reader’s Digest version, which is all I’m up for at the moment. I miss him and feel like placing him was a cop-out, but I know ultimately, it was the right thing. His adoption was easily the best adoption I’ve had a hand in for a while, and watching him in his new home removed any lingering doubt in my mind that I was making a mistake. He was thrilled, his family was thrilled, and I’ll be thrilled for him too, once the hollow spot in my chest goes away.
Rorschach, meanwhile, seems to be taking advantage of my newly available attention, defying all doggie downer drugs and proving to have quite possibly the worst case of separation anxiety I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Seriously, not cool. So I have a constant companion for the moment, until the new drugs start working (thinking optimistically that they WILL) and I can leave him to his own devices without fearing mass Dane destruction in my absence.
So yup, my last few days in a nutshell. Dog drama, I haz it.
As further proof of my craziness, often more delicately called compassion, today I got up at six AM and made an hour-and-a-half drive out almost to the Alabama state line.
First, though, I stopped over to pick up my friend. We had agreed to leave at 7:30, but when a slew of “fair warning” calls received no answer on my way over, I figured she was still asleep. It happens. Quite frequently.
So yeah. I let myself in the gate, only to realize that I’d left my key to her house at my house (such a big help!). The front door, however wasn’t locked. Trying to ignore that fact, and the silence of the house (no dogs barking? No, that’s not odd at all!), I climbed the stairs and prepared to drag her out of bed.
Admittedly, walking into someone else’s bedroom unannounced while they sleep feels a little weird. As I eased open her bedroom door, I halfway expected to discover that some kind of mishap had taken place on the other side, accounting for the unlocked door and unnatural quiet of the house. Or, at the very least, I figured I’d have the brilliant timing of opening the door right as she was changing clothes, and thus freaking all hell out of her. But no, she seemed to be asleep, along with the pooches.
Except that a moment later, she opened her eyes, tossed off the covers and, in response to my peeved look, exclaimed, “I’m already dressed, I’m ready!” You know, as if me suddenly appearing in her bedroom before the sun was even up was a perfectly normal thing.
Anywho, we drove forever and ever and ever amen, to a tiny podunk animal control shelter in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in response to an email plea about a particular dog there. Ultimately, I said the dreaded three words, preceded by a heavy sigh: “I’ll take him.” And take him I did.
He’s a tad freakish. Clingy and anxious, hand-shy and a little lacking in the manners department (hello, Halti!). But, considering his background, it seems he has good reason for it all…the poor guy’s had it rough. He needs some piecing back together before he’ll be ready to find his home, but overall, I think he’ll be okay.
He’s going to make me nuts with all his “oh-my-god-I-love-you-you-saved-my-life-I-have-to-be-touching-you-at-all-times-please-don‘t-leave-me” franticness (and I thought I had abandonment issues, ha ha), but he means well. And, it is entertaining to have a dog so clownishly tall that he can drink out of my kitchen sink…although it‘s not like my own pups are teeny-tiny themselves.
So this is Rorschach, the inkblot dog.
What do you see?
So the day before Thanksgiving might have been kind of cruddy, as I had to have both a foster dog and the oldest of my rattiekins put to sleep. Totally unrelated, just a freak coincidental collision of timing, but pretty crummy nonetheless. Earlier in the morning, I stopped by my parents’ house briefly and found a note at “my” place at the table:
Rick is going to start on the basement the week after Thanksgiving. (Should be 7-10 days). Love, Mom
So the deal is done. I am officially sacrificing the sanity that I spent the last year acquiring (cough, cough), for the sake of education.
I have an insanely bad feeling about this. Just the thought of going back, even if it’s just to haunt the basement, makes me feel a tad bit cornered (not to mention cliched, but that’s kind of beside the point). It’s a “stand by for another breakdown…” type feeling. (Bonus points if you recognize the lyric.)
While I’m sure putting school at the top spot on my list of priorities is going to prove the wisest decision in the long run, it doesn’t particularly feel like it at the moment. It feels like I just went from being a self-sufficient, independent young adult doing a halfway decent job of keeping up with her responsibilities, to a totally screwed, nauseatingly dependent teenager again (apparently, with the sullen teenage angsty-ness, to boot too!) in…oh I don’t know, 0.4 seconds.
The party starts in approximately two weeks, and oh what fun we’re going to have! Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentleman…it’s going to be a bumpy night.
