Rez-world update from the sickie

It is winter. This is as far as I can get in starting my blog off with a quote from the Red Green show. I have recently arisen from a 14 hour sleep fest, as New Mexico has opted to make me feel more welcome here by giving me yet another disease. The mundane 3-day weekend has thus far been interrupted with brief periods of awakeness wherein I take care of dogs and sort through reality and dream world. No, there really isn’t a polish chicken hanging from my ceiling fan. I don’t even have a ceiling fan. There is also not an impending visit from Jessica and Peter, wherein I have been cleaning the spare room and screaming at the discovery of 3 giant leopard geckos under a table. This also would not happen, as that sort of discovery would be awesome and not scream-worthy. Max has not become incontinent and peed all over the house, and I have not been trying to drive backwards down the freeway in a snowstorm. Those are the positives. The negatives of being awake are the pounding headaches, clogged sinuses, and desire to be sleeping. At this precise moment, I am in a lull of symptoms and enjoying it. I strongly desire to leave this trailer and have an adventure! Unfortunately, I attempted to do that yesterday in pursuit of my lost wallet (found at work, in the pocket of the designated cow coat), went to the grand town of Gallup, and despite a very large coffee and desire to explore, I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to visit Radioshack and go home.

It is my 7-month birthday of being in New Mexico and living in a trailer on the Rez. Radioshack is in the Rio West mall in Gallup, and I wandered through it with only a mellow realization that I was one of two white people there. It really is a foreign country, their country, but it doesn’t feel like it as much as Japan did. I think because I can read the signs here J. I can also overhear everyone shopping and they primarily speak English. I would not have to whip out a dictionary to ask someone which kind of rice to buy, and then freak them out because I don’t own a rice cooker. Driving through Gallup, it was nice to see the number of successful businesses in Gallup that are allowing some people to earn a decent living and be able to take their kids down to the mall for fun on the kiddy rides on a Saturday afternoon. They’ll be okay – I think enough people live partially on/off the Rez now that they can see the value of education and good choices. In time I believe they will figure out how to level up their country to be a more prosperous land and still retain their unique cultural aspects. I don’t know how to make that happen other than drop in my two cents of providing education for them, and being one example of someone in a career they love, worked hard for, and can take with them anywhere they choose. Change comes from within. The Navajo know best how to help the Navajo.

I am pausing to realize how awesome it is to breathe through ones nose. Maybe I can have an adventure after all. The adventure should start with washing dishes. I spent last evening collapsed on the couch with my Kleenex box, distracting my inability to sleep with a string of old, chauvinistic musicals. Annie Get Your Gun, Showboat, Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers… they are so exceedingly entertaining and wrong on so many levels. If I were one of those women I would most likely be Annie Oakley. A man never trifles with gals who carry rifles? Lol. I don’t carry rifles, but I will pull an upsidedown legs-back calf out and laugh when she showers me in foul smelling uterine fluid. Hopefully one day someone will find that charming. If not, their loss. I do scrub up nicely.

My head has ceased to pound as well, I believe I will explore my new books. This weekend on the Rez will be divided into “About a Boy” units of time: Wash dishes – 1 unit. Read Watership Down or Sacred Cows – 3 units. Watch a couple of surgery videos and generate a go-to chart for how I want to treat various creatures in various predicaments with fluids– 2 units. Make a portobello mushroom burger and peanutbutter cookies – 2 units. Watch an online service from Mars Hill or Timberline or FlagNaz – 1 unit. Check facebook and see what the healthy people are up to – 1 unit. Sleep – remaining units.

Cases this past week were so-so. I did all I could for a 1-day suspect Parvo pup, and she seems to be doing fine. I worked 3 hours straight keeping a 2-day old hypothermic dyspneic pup alive, and emerged at the end of their financial abilities with a live pup to have them say, "It looks the same way it did when we brought it in," then angrily leave without caring much for my suggestions on how to keep it alive. Another person brought in a cute but wormy little pup owned by a family member to start off puppy shots and deworming, and the owner called later to yell about how she didn't actually want it dewormed, and how was she supposed to know if it had worms because she was not a white person who has time to sit around all day and watch puppies shit. I have no idea how she found out my big secret about what I do all day.

Now that I've had a good laugh I shall start on my units. I just used 2 writing this blog.