Wisdom from a Mutt

It is Thursday. I am tired of coughing. I wander around all day seeing dogs, preparing lectures, catching up records and wondering about crazy people, then I get home at night and decide to go to sleep, and that is the magic thought that stimulates coughing so hard that I see white lights. The night slime. I think that I have been watching LOTR too much because the best comparison I can come up with for the amount of slime I have been dealing with is an orc being born.

Classes start next week. It’s a little bit thrilling to be teaching parasitology. Parasite pictures have always brightened my life.  I sent some to that fireman in cowboy boots and he stopped texting back. Go figure. Some people really just need to lighten up and appreciate parasites. Seriously folks, the NM dating scene is not good. If you don’t live here your odds of finding normal guys to date are probably pretty good because in my experiences thus far the odd ones come here.  Just so we are all clear that I am normal, I always ask before sending people pictures of parasites. So there.

What else… a urolith dog came in yesterday with some ultra-satisfying radiographic uroliths. It would have been cool to take them out myself, but having only done it on a pig and having no extra hands in surgery it is best to send it down the road this time. Feeling them and finding them was a thrill, and the client was a very fun person to deal with in a week of client madness. For the record, “your mother is a bum” is a major Navajo insult. While the insult continues to crack me up given that I’ve never heard such an insult before and it confuses me when no one here has met my mom… I do feel bad for the animal that was whisked away for home treatment when that option really was not appropriate.  There were some other odd events this week, but I think that one won the cake.

I went to another pharmacist potluck last night and met more of that community including the local optometrists and dentists. They are all such unique and interesting people. In one evening I am more amazed by life stories than I am in 2 months elsewhere. Families coming here from the Ivory Coast, holding their marriages together through war zones and immigration chaos, sticking together through entire degree programs and job situations while living in opposite ends of the United States or of the world… now that’s what I call a relationship. These folks should tour the United States telling their inspiring stories. Perhaps people would start to discern little problems from big problems and the universe would not be so saturated with kids in broken homes.  Sure, some problems are unresolvable, but others… people just need to grow up, stop being asinine, and quit running from their problems. Is your partner a priority or not? Then make each other happy. Take the Muttley pup for example. Last night, out of the blue, he brings me a partial spinal column that he found outside and lays it at my feet. An unexpected present of extreme value to him. Was I elated? Totally. Beat that big heart of a woof.

Tea time with tired Dr. Funk is now over, treasure her pearls of coughing wisdom, lol. In this blog you are just going to have to insert your own exclamation points because I am tired.

P.S. I just called my dogs in from their lunch run. I kid you not, Muttley brought me the rest of the spinal column. My heart is melted.

2012 on the roll

Tuesday has come to a working end and I have an hour to sit here before I go and explore a Young Life meeting in Crownpoint. A potential place to be useful during the week. Routine life is in swing after many holiday adventures, all of which should be blogged for posterity. Highlights should include the realization that it has just been silly of me to stay home for Christmas for the last 10 years when my sister has had four adorable children to shop for and mingle with on Christmas morning the entire time. Dude! How awesome are kids on Christmas morning! I want some! It was a lovely Florida adventure that started with a long drive with my three furry children in the back of the car on Dec. 22. We drove through the white area of the US weather map, braving snow all the way to Pueblo where a spinning SUV in front of me had me white knuckling for a while. I am a pretty good snow driver, it is all the other freaks out there who really frighten me. Slow down! Don’t stop in the middle of the freeway with your hazards on. Seriously. But we made it to CO Springs despite annoying windshield wiper fluid malfunctions, and I did soccer-mom stop number one to leave the Muttley pup with my friend Samantha for a few days. Then onward to Old Chicago’s (AWESOME) and home sweet home around 1 AM. Friday was sit around at home day/watch as many Bing Crosby Christmas movies as possible day until visiting my favorite dentist man in CO. He has my loyalty because he has not tried to kill me or judged me (openly) for acting like a 5 year old at the dentist. I have a couple of issues, this is one of them. But anyway, I left that night on the red eye for FL, and FL was just one awesome thing after another. The kids are all a foot taller, my sibs are more awesome than everyone else’s, and boogie-boarding is WA-HOO fun. And fish dip is the bomb. We shopped, we ate fish dip, I made snow pudding (a secret concoction that a holiday addiction to makes you a Funk, either by birth or adoption), I was again amazed at how dirty kid’s feet get, I tried hockey skates again, I watched War Horse, I did not really want to leave….

…but all good things come to an end, and at the end was another late night flight back, another soccer-mom trip to CO Springs for the Mutt, and a waking (too early) morning in Black Forest, CO, to gaze in awe at my wondrous mountains on the way back to the Fort Collins dentist to act like a 5 year old again and then pick up one more dog and go home. Fort Collins is always the same for me – spontaneous meet-ups with all my old buds, and deep, fantastic catch-up conversations with them that make me so happy that I have a stockpile of joy for a couple weeks back on the Rez. The great New Year’s Eve snowshoe trip 2011 was accomplished in the blowing wind and snow that separated the true Coloradoans from the false ones. It was awesome. I suppose it should be mentioned (for posterity) that at about 1 mile in with 3 miles to go I opted for long-term comfort and accomplished the great New Year’s Eve pee-in-the-woods 2011 mission. Not without trials, as the snow was incredibly deep and balance was incredibly challenging. The end result of my bare butt buried in a snowbank was exhilarating and intensely entertaining for all who heard about it. Noone saw it. Don’t judge until you try it. 

So it was an awesome trip… I didn’t have to drive back until Monday, so I was able to visit my church peeps, then more peeps all afternoon and evening. Monday I pretty much lollygagged all the way home, visiting more peeps and stopping at random lakes to ice skate.  In figure skates. Which are way cooler. One can always leap, even if they cannot land on their feet, and one can always spin, even if the price is nausea for the next 6 hours. 

I’m back to work, with 2 visits from my little miracle horse under my belt, a couple of sad Rez cases that more money could have saved, and the awesome cases that have taught me new levels of rubbery cat skin and unanticipated levels of Chihuahua appreciation. At 8 hours old, I do not fear them. In fact, the 8 week old that came it today also wanted to come home in my pocket. No more dogs for Janel, however, as I believe the Muttley pup may be here to stay. He’s just…too… mine. 

The first week back had me eating too many cheese puffs at my desk, missing CO and longing for adventure, so last weekend I zipped off to Santa Fe to explore. NEWS FLASH: I could TOTALLY live there. I thought I had to go all the way to Flagstaff to visit my mountains, but alas they are also in Santa Fe, and I love them.  I had a whirlwind tour from a nice Firefighter in cowboy boots (yeah! A Firefighter in cowboy boots. How cool is that?) and I do believe that the Santa Fe area will make my top 3 list for where I would love to live when I grow up. On Sunday I went back to Mars Hill church with my awesome ABQ friends and then spent the afternoon with my true ABQ love interest – the nutty Paso Fino. I think he has 8 legs. He bounces all over the place, and running flat out for a quarter mile just makes him nuttier :). LOVE.

Okay that has us basically caught up to today. Miracle horse came back today for a wound debridement and sheath cleaning, and my unfortunate Tuesday lesson was to keep one’s mouth closed when vigorously cleaning a very dirty sheath. I’m not sure why people think that is ABSURDLY gross, as many things are gross yet tolerable and interesting in veterinary medicine, and today’s adventure PROBABLY won’t result in an attack of crypto.

I’m off to Young Life, to see what happens there. BTW, last night I dreamed I was an outlaw trying to accomplish Christmas shopping for my family. I bought my dad two goldfish and was carrying them around in a bowl, and one of them died and its eyes fell out. I then sloshed the bowl and accidentally swallowed an eyeball. This has pretty incredible implications. I may have in fact time-travelled and with a little bit of wisdom I could have kept my mouth shut today and not swallowed smegma of horse. The other possibility is that my google-discovery last week that anchovies are FISH with EYES that people put on pizza may just have finally made it out of the horror zone of my brain into the subconscious dream zone.