I’ve decided I really need to do something about my weight. Cause you know, I’m fat. A few weeks ago, I had to buy new outfits one size bigger than the largest size I have. It’s the biggest size I’ve ever bought. I pretty much let myself go a few years back and told myself that I’d rather eat everything I want and be happy about it than trying to look good at 40+ years of age. But the fact is, I have to at least keep my weight at status quo because I can’t afford to spend more money on buying new set of clothes one size bigger periodically. Yeah, it’s all about money. Who cares if I look good or not?
I know everything there is to know about how to lose weight and to keep it off the right way, having read books after books and worked with personal trainers and nutritionist as a long time card-carrying member of gyms when I cared about how I looked. In theory, that is. The problem I have now, and I think it’s a problem a lot of people face, is that in reality, the life really gets in the way, and a lot of times, it’s not just a poor excuse.
Not being able to really do what I need to do to eat healthy, get enough exercise, change life style, etc, I have to make do with what I CAN do. And I decided that I needed to just start with what I can as soon as possible, and not wait until I come up with a complete satisfactory plan.
So I started a partially official diet… or something similar to it where I have a salad bar lunch at the cafeteria every weekday. I am being careful not to overdo the dressing or cheese or croutons. I add a few chicken strips as well because I don’t feel full at all without it. Although I don’t really know if it’s low enough calorie, but I figure it’s better than what I usually eat at the cafeteria. We’ll see what happens.
Dinner is a little bit tricky because I don’t have the time or energy to cook something. I don’t even want to deal with cleaning vegetables or anything like that. I’ve tried it before many times, but I just end up wasting the ingredients. So for now I’m going to be eating Lean Cuisine, Smart Ones and Healthy Choice even if I have to eat two of them.
I haven’t decided on breakfast or “snacks” yet. I usually don’t have the time to eat in the morning since I keep waking up at night, which makes me toss and turn until I absolutely have to get out of bed. I know I HAVE to eat breakfast though if I’m to lose weight… Well, I’ll think of something later.
I designated Saturday as eat-what-I-want day, and had a steak lunch and dinner. Yeah, I didn’t need to have the steak twice one day, but I had to cook both since they were packaged together, frozen and thawed together. I had Lean Cuisine stuff today, and Sunday meals would probably consist of those.
Now, the other part of losing weight – exercise. I’ll try to exercise on weekends, the emphasis on “try”. Couldn’t peel my ass off the couch or bed today or yesterday.
Something happened on plurk that rattled the community. It’s about somebody calling herself LillyAnn, who is supposedly suffering from lupus. One day her supposed 17 year old daughter Gabi posts using LillyAnn’s account saying LillyAnn has been taken to a hospital, can’t pay for dialysis, claims they need money to save her, sets up Chipin site, as well as gets “donations” through PayPal.
When I was first introduced to this plurk thread created by LillyAnn‘s supposed daughter Gabi, I couldn’t believe what I was reading, which at the time consisted of a few hundred replies already, all of which in support of Gabi and LillyAnn, trying to help Gabi raise money and some even already sending them money through PayPal. I didn’t know how I should react, feeling like a bad person because, for me at least, the whole thing screamed scam and fraud, but at the same time I knew I was a little prejudiced. The prejudice I had was that from the very first time I looked at LillyAnn‘s profile, I decided she was phony. The picture looked phony and her plurks read phony. I don’t know why, I took instant dislike for this person and never befriended her in spite of her name popping up on my other friends’ plurks. I know that some people would say it’s not right to judge people in this fashion without trying to get to know the person. But honestly? My gut feelings about people have seldom been wrong and with LillyAnn‘s plurk profile, it was just too strong a feeling to ignore.
Now as horrified as I was to read all the innocent people trying to help, sending money, putting Chipin site widget on their sites, and so on, it was just too unbelievable for me that nobody bothered to check even a shred of evidence that this person was indeed sick and in need of help, I thought maybe they already know this person in real life or have known this person long enough. Being new to this kind of social media, and seeing all these people with established online presence who have been members of numerous social media sites, a part of me said they must certainly know what they were doing. Until somebody started to point out the discrepancies in the story and asked for verifiable information.
Having been a member of several online message boards, a few of them being animal rescue/welfare forums, I have seen numerous pleas and sob stories and sad cases people post to get monetary help. If it’s a legitimate cry for help, the one who makes the plea usually is very forthcoming with verifiable information. Some people are new to asking for help and do not provide detailed information, but after others ask for proof, they are more than happy to provide any info that would get them the help they need. For instance, for a dog they just rescued whose leg needs to be amputated to save his life, people ask for the vet’s info, address and telephone number to verify the story, which is duly provided instantly unless one is trying to scam some money off others. In LillyAnn‘s case, none was forthcoming even after people asked for it repeatedly.
When the plurk response count on this thread reached several hundred without any real answers, people had done all kinds of research to find out that LillyAnn‘s extensive web presence itself was phony, most of her articles plagiarized, and the character “LillyAnn” also made up. When the response count climbed over a thousand, most people were convinced, presented with overwhelming evidences, that they had been taken for a ride by a fraud who elaborately built his/her web presence over the years mostly by plagiarism, and making online friends on numerous social media sites. However, something made me utterly discombobulated; there were still people insisting that they still support LillyAnn and they “will not judge”, “postpone judgment”, “choose to believe in goodness in people”, “choose to see the good”, and so forth, et cetera, et cetera!!!! And they are intelligent people, too. Of course there are some who hope against hope because they truly can’t take it, but in most part the way I took them is quite different; “will not admit I was wrong”, “I can’t be totally wrong”, “choose to not admit I was wrong”, “choose to ignore all the evidence provided just because I don’t like being wrong and won’t admit it.”
My friends and I can’t stop being amazed by people who still support Bush, not to mention the wars, the ones who would not concede that this country is in deep shit. We often wondered what kind of people are these people? How can they not see? What are their reasoning processes? Well, now we know. They just don’t want to admit it. They choose to look the other way because otherwise they just have to say “I was wrong”.
As for me? A natural born skeptic and cynic? I will continue to make decisions on who I want to be friends with or not mostly based on my gut feeling, thank you very much.
I’m in a whiny mood because a friend of mine called me today, who I haven’t had the chance to talk to for a couple of months, and he asked me how I’ve been doing. What a huge mistake is what he must be thinking now. I snatched up the opportunity to whine and complain and vent and rant for over an hour. Maybe that’s why I’m having so much trouble getting enough sleep at night. I can’t stop worrying.
As I blogged about it a few months ago here, I’ve been having financial trouble. Now after pondering and calculating and studying what the fuck is going on, it has become clear to me that I will not be able to overcome this unless something extraordinary happens, for which I’m very hopeful.
In 2005, the year I bought this house, the gas price was a little over two dollars per gallon. Yeah, it’s only 3 years ago! Now? I paid $4.29 per gallon today. And do you know how much I have to drive? Ninety miles a day. Do you know how much mileage per gallon I get out of a Jeep Wrangler? 15 to 17 miles depending on the traffic.
In 2005, I remember shaking my head when they filled up my near empty 250 gallon oil tank and gave me a bill for about $560. Last month, they gave me a bill for $805.35 for 150 gallons of oil. I honestly started shaking and felt faint when I saw that bill. The next day, I told my co-worker about it.
Eight hundred and five fucking dollars and thirty five cents!!!! I do NOT have that money!
How much are you short?
Eight hundred and five fucking dollars. I think I can scrape thirty five cents off of somewhere.
As with the rising gas price, the price of food and other essential grocery jumped in ridiculous proportions to that in 2005. I’ll give you the example of the food items for my dogs because I’m in the habit of watching the prices of these very closely so that I can buy them when it’s dirt cheap. But it’s representative of how much the living expenses have skyrocketed.
- turkey drumsticks were $0.79/lb and now are $1.29/lb
- chicken leg quarters were $0.59/lb and now are $0.89/lb
- pork neck bones were $0.99/lb and now are $1.19/lb
- lamb bones were $0.99/lb and now are $1.69/lb
- veal bones were $0.99/lb and now are $1.29/lb
- ground beef with organs (made for pets) was $1.00/lb and now is $1.50/lb
So there you go. I’m struggling. And I’m tired. So very tired of thinking about the impending doom. But as you might have noticed above, I’m also hopeful. Hopeful for something extraordinary, which I’ll blog about in a slightly less whiny post some day. Hey, what can you do, you know? Gotta take it one day at a time.
The following is a rough summary of the progress she made in a year after I got her (June 2003 – May 2004), and it was written in May 2004. I’m putting this following Georgia’s gotcha day story because it seems like the best place to stick this in. Georgia is much much better now than is described here of course.
Upon arrival, Georgia found a corner of my living room and decided to stay there. So I set up her food and water station and wee-wee pads close by where she can have easy access, and littered the corner with various chew toys and squeaky toys. She learned to use wee-wee pads in her fosters because she was terrified of going outside. She still is. According to the rescue, the owners told them that once Georgia’s dad (Shepherd) found out something was wrong with her, he would bring her in his mouth and leave her outside in the rain. Georgia’s mom, on the other hand, would come out of the shelter and bring Georgia back in, but the dad would bring her back out again, and the mom would not come out to get Georgia the second time. So the rescue thinks that Georgia is terrified of going outside because she’s scared she would be left out there.
Another thing I found out later by the way, was that Georgia was not born with a deformed leg as told by the original owners, but cut by something like a lawnmower or something when she was very young and the owners didn’t treat her properly.
The next day when I came back from work, she was inside a cat carrier. Who would have thought a Lab/Shep mix would fit into one! To get her out of there, I needed to disassemble the carrier. She eventually got out of there and went into her crate. And she wouldn’t come out of it. She’d pee and poop inside the crate refusing to eat. I noticed she would come out to drink water if I seemed to be asleep. So when she got out, I quickly closed the crate door so that she couldn’t go back inside. Then she went back to her favorite corner of the living room where I set up the doggie bed for her.
For days, she would just sit or lie there. I could see her trying so very hard not to fall asleep with her bloodshot eyes. She would eventually doze off, but after 5 seconds or so, she would wake up and frantically look around. The only thing I wished for her for the first week I had her was for her to get a good sleep because it was so painful to see. She would not eat while I was in the same room, so I used to go into my bedroom and close the door for a couple of hours so that she could come out of her corner and eat, drink, and use the wee-wee pads.
I consulted a behaviorist who recommended me to do basically what I had been doing, which was to let her come out of her shell in her own time. Nothing was to be forced and just work on her to be comfortable in her environment first. Once she got comfortable without me in it, then I was to work on her getting comfortable with me. She was put on Prozac.
Day by day, I would find some evidence that Georgia was getting comfortable; by the rearrangement of things in the living room. And one day, I came into my bedroom, closed the door, and I heard a squeak followed by one bark! Oh how sweet the sound! I got out to the living room, and of course Georgia was back on her bed looking very scared, but one of the squeaky toy was tossed smack dab in the middle of a puddle of her pee on the wee-wee pads. I told that incident to the rescue, and we all cried. Nobody knew up until then if Georgia was mute or not because she had never made a sound before then. From then on, I would hear squeaks and toys being tossed around everywhere, and Georgia running around.
Georgia was getting more comfortable with me as well, so she approached her food while I was still in the living room. She lowered her head to reach for the food, but her eyes were moving in all directions. She took a mouthful, looked around frantically, ran back to her bed and started eating off the bed. This process would continue until the bowl was empty. Oh how painful to see that! Every single moment of her life, she was afraid for her life. She was afraid to eat, drink, sleep, pee or do anything. I don’t know how many times I layed next to her (who was trying to avoid looking at me) and talked to her, crying my heart out, “how can I make you understand it’s safe here and I won’t do anything to hurt you?”
But she was getting better. Slowly but surely. As she was getting more comfortable, I had to deal with more of scrubbing the carpet because now, instead of staying on the bed and pooping, she would run around letting her poop out. The thing was that when she poops out of fear, the poop isn’t solid at all and Georgia running back and forth didn’t help either. Her poop would be smeared all over and sometimes kicked onto sofas and things. Everything scared her, people talking outside, noise from upstairs, cars, everything… For a couple of months, I had to spend at least 3 hours a day scrubbing the floor. Sometimes it was a bit overwhelming with my chronic back pain, and I broke down and cried a couple of times. But on the other hand, her poop was getting more solid, not as much, and she’started wagging her tail when I came back from work. She wouldn’t approach me, and she would still let some poop out, but she was happy to see me while being scared at the same time. Then one day she started to do this bucking horse impression – she was jumping from joy, but having only left front leg, she looked like a horse bucking in a circle.
Everyday since then was just like seeing a puppy grow up. When she made her teeth marks on my remote control rendering it useless, I was jumping up and down with happiness! When she started to take treats directly out of my hand, I said ‘YES’ so loud I scared her… oops. When she finally decided to come up to my bed and make herself comfortable, I shed tears of joy. When she started to pull my socks out of somewhere, I’d laugh and cry. When she play bit my big behind for the first time while I was cleaning up the wee-wee pads, I was as happy as a clam. When she finally decided that she wanted to sit next to me on the chair, that was heaven for me. When she play-attacked me when I was sitting down and watching TV, that was like playing fetch with her. When I was bitten by a dog on my hand, she sat down and licked my hand endlessly.
When my friend visited a few weeks ago, instead of hopping into the bathtub as she usually did when a friend came over, she decided she’d be right next to me! I don’t know if anybody coule imagine the happiness I felt!!!
Georgia is still nervous when I get up and walk around; she tries very hard not to be in front of me, but she does try to play-bite my butt! Well, who can blame her my butt is so big it’s so bitable! And yes, she still uses wee-wee pads and still poops if my friends visit, but she tries very hard to get to the wee-wee pads! How sweet is that? She comes to me if I’m sitting, to get a good scratch around her neck. She comes to me with her tail wagging when I eat French fries. She plays with her toys, and yes destroyed a number of them. And she’s off Prozac.
The founder of the rescue I got her from once told me that people were trying to convince her to put Georgia to sleep claiming that it’s the most humane thing to do in Georgia’s case because she didn’t want to live. She sent them video clips I took of Georgia playing with her toys attacking, tossing, and shaking them around. Did somebody say that Georgia didn’t want to live? — May 2004
As I said in the previous post, I forgot about Georgia’s gotcha day as well. I got her “physically” the day after Grizzley’s birthday even though I signed the adoption papers a few weeks earlier. I think I’ll post Georgia’s arrival story my friends already know because I think this is an appropriate place to post it. So here it goes.
At the end of March 2003, I was looking through special needs dogs on Petfinder, and saw the following description of a Lab/Shep mix called Faith:
Disability description: 1.6.03 to PRESENT…
A few days before Christmas, I was contacted by the Clayton Co. Humane Society in Atlanta, GA. They had received a call about a woman who could not afford to feed her animals anymore and wanted to surrender them to the shelter. Since three of the dogs on the property were labs, I was asked to go out and see if there was something I could do to help the labs as well as get an overall picture of the situation.
When I arrived at the house, I walked to the backyard and saw an old rusted car, trash, and a filthy, unkempt yard. There was feces everywhere in the back and the smell was horrible. There were 2 adults (the mother and father of Faith – female black lab and male German Shepherd) 2 nine month olds (Faith and her brother) and 2 puppies about 6-8 weeks old. They told me the pups were from the black female getting pregnant again – they said that they had given away all the pups but the two they had.
I had originally gone for the black female but once in the backyard I was taken by a poor chocolate lab mix who was known as only “baby girl”. She could not stand totally up due to a deformed front leg. The owner said that she had been born that way and was pretty much treated as an outcast by the rest of the pack. The other dogs did not let her eat any food and she was not allowed into the “house” that the husband had built for the dogs for protection from the weather, the “house” consisted of three pieces of scrap wood and a tarp stretched across the top.
When I tried to approach Faith, she ran – she was scared to death. The husband went to the kitchen and tossed some dog food on the cement stairs (he said they preferred to eat off the steps since it was long and acted like a feeding trough so everyone could get some.) Needless to say, the dogs did not let Faith get near the food. The husband then explained he would throw food on the ground for her because the others would be busy eating their food from the stairs.
I couldn’t stand it, if I didn’t help this girl, she would never make it at a shelter and so I went back the next day with tranquilizers to catch her since sedation was the only way I would be able to get close to her.
After catching her (even though sedated she was still very difficult to catch) we brought her straight to the vet. The first thing was to evaluate the leg, get her shots and a heartworm test. My vet told me her leg would need to be amputated since the bone had begun to grow and had no where to go. She would never be able to stand up straight unless her limb was removed. This poor lab had lived a life of neglect, feeding off the ground and never experiencing human touch. I decided to do whatever it took to help her. The amputation was done and we began trying to work with her.
Unfortunately, the kennel at the vet’s made her even more frightened with all the dogs barking and being caged. Faith does not do well on a leash so she would need to be carried in and out of the kennel to go outside. After coming from a life of living in underbrush in her backyard, the environment she was now in was only putting her further back into her shell.
Then the unspeakable happened, after 3 weeks of boarding, I received a call from the vet telling me she had escaped and they were looking for her now. After searching for 10 days, she was finally caught thanks to the vet’s office staff looking for her on shifts and posting signs on every block. We believe she slipped through the metal poles of the fence and the gate. After that we knew we had to get her out of that environment. The vet’s office had done all that they could, she would not get better being there and an urgent plea for Faith’s foster care was made.
A wonderful angel answered Faith’s plea and she was moved to a home with a garage hoping to eventually bring her inside; however when she becomes frightened or approached by someone she defecates and could not be brought inside. She had gotten better at one point and we started bringing her inside, which she loved! But as soon as she would get scared she’d poop again and my foster mom’s husband put his foot down and said she had to be moved back into the garage. She is very lonely and wants so bad to come inside but because of her problem and a husband wanting her gone yesterday, she has been moved back outside to the garage.
Faith needs someone who can spend quality time with her, someone that has time to work with
her, and of course, love and patience until she feels secure. Faith is truly a good dog but needs someone who is experienced with feral dogs. Faith does not have any aggression whatsoever, only fear. She will try to bite through a leash and so a leash with a chain is a must.
My foster mom has since asked her husband for a divorce and will be moving within the month. Now Faith has nowhere to go. I have no idea what to do. She cannot be kenneled at my vet’s for fear of her escaping again. It was horrible when she got out the first time.
She has come further than she was from the day I rescued her but still needs so much work. She is good with other dogs and also with cats – I truly believe she is very lonely right now and really wants companionship, she’s just afraid of it right now for lack of understanding. Faith is doing well on her three legs. The problem is her fear of people. She allows me to pet her but when she feels threatened or scared she will poop out of fear. We currently have Faith on anti-anxiety medicine to try and help with her fears, amitryptilline 50mg taken twice a day. I truly believe with someone working with her daily this could change.
After reading this with tears falling down, I couldn’t sleep 3 nights in a row, couldn’t do anything but thinking about the poor girl’s scared face in the picture. I knew I couldn’t do anything at the moment because I was living in an apartment with a no-dog clause. But since my lease was expiring at the end of July, if they could just hold on to her, I could adopt her. I sent an email after 3 sleepless nights to see if there is anything I could do. The rescue replied back telling me that they found another foster mom for her and they did not think Faith would get adopted for some time. So frantic search for a house began for me.
After all, I couldn’t get a house in my price range, so I settled for an apartment that allowed dogs and cats. After I signed the lease, I contacted the rescue again to adopt Faith. The rescue was reluctant to let me adopt her because I had not seen how serious her behavior problem was, so they didn’t want Faith to travel such a long distance putting her under enormous stress and end up being returned to them. So, I agreed to fly down to Georgia to meet with the rescue and Faith.
It turned out that Faith was living in a bathroom in her foster because the foster had gotten a lot of dogs, and they surrounded Faith and attacked her when the foster mom was not paying close attention. When I entered the bathroom, I could see this little dark colored thing shaking uncontrollably inside the bathtub under a cardboard. The foster mom explained that she liked to hide so she had put the cardboard at the corner of the tub so that she could feel safe. When I got close to pet her, she let her poop out still shaking, and in her attempt to avoid my hand, she was literally swimming in her poop. It was so painful to see. She was skin and bones, not because foster mom wasn’t taking care of the dog but because she didn’t eat if she’s under stress. They told me she was in an even worse shape when she was kenneled at the vet.
I told the rescue that I definitely wanted to adopt her, and signed the adoption contract and paid the adoption fee. I flew back without making the decision on how to get Faith up to New York with the least amount of stress on her. After talking over and over about transporting Faith to me, flying her commercially was out of the question because she would be scared to death, transport legs was out because it would be too dangerous – she was known to escape out of fear of people. Then we discovered Skyark. We put a request in, but since they had already made a run in this area a couple of days before, and no pilot was volunteering, I ended up just sitting there and waiting for a week and a half not knowing if it’s going to happen or not. I couldn’t take it, my baby is sitting in a bathtub all by herself lying in her own poop. So I decided that I’d fly down and drive her up myself one weekend.
Fortunately, my co-worker volunteered to help me. So in the early morning of Sunday 6/29/2003, my co-worker and I flew down to Georgia, rented an SUV, picked up my baby and drove up to New York. I renamed her Georgia from the song ‘Georgia on my mind’ suggested by a friend of mine since she had been on my mind every single moment from the day I saw her on petfinder. And she’s the love of my life.
Serious Stuff. Seriously
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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