Doggie Xanax

The thought brings up images of tiny little poochies with painted toenails, bows on their ears and silly little doggie outfits. If I were a dog and treated like a doll/child I know I would be stressed about it, I would want a Xanax. My dogs however are actually dogs. They’re big, both between 80-90lbs, black and furry. One of them more so than the other and he HATES the groomer. It’s rather comical actually, me trying to force him from the car through the groomer’s door is an exercise in patience, strength and stubbornness. But I digress, this is supposed to be about why my dogs need Xanax.

To start with, I live in Utah, beautiful country if you’ve never been here, pretty blue mountains up north, red rock desert down south, gorgeous. There are some drawbacks though, most recently the new legislation allowing fireworks through the entire month of July. It used to be that fireworks were allowed the week of the 4^th and the week of the 24^th (pioneer day), that was hard enough on the poor doggies. Now though, it’s gotten rather ridiculous. My dogs used to like to sleep outside in the summer, they don’t like it now, in fact one could argue that they don’t appear to like sleep at all now.

It’s the 22^nd and there have been fireworks of some sort or another pretty much every day. My poor dogs must think the world is coming to an end. They now stay closed in the bedroom with us, we have to keep them in the room because if we don’t Dozer wanders all over the house peeing, that’s not normal behavior for him, it’s caused by stress as are the red irritated hairless spots on his legs where he has licked his skin raw. I don’t know if any of you have experienced being shut in a room with two stressed out dogs, but let me tell ya, dog stress smells bad and makes the whole room stifling. Generally, my nights are spent turning back and forth listening to the frantic panting and pacing with an occasional whimper thrown in for variety. I have no idea if this behavior will end with July since even on the rare occasions when there are no fireworks, they seem to stress in anticipation.

Please, I need some good sleep, as I'm sure do they. I think I'll call the vet.

Ah, the innocence of youth...

Or should I say ignorance really? I've been reading about a recently released study http://stats.org/stories/2011/debt_self_esteem_jun13_11.html that claims debt promotes self esteem in college age adults. I have to admit, looking back, it makes sense.
During my 20s having things made me happy. We had a house, we had cars, we had cool electronic gadgets, we had way more cool stuff than we actually needed. My husband and I used to pat ourselves on the back because we had almost everything on our 'list'. We both felt pretty smug about the whole situation, to us those things meant we had succeeded and done it so early in life. That meant we were ahead - Yay us!!! In our 30s reality hit.
What we truly had was an obscene (and still growing) amount of debt. We still had the stuff, or most of it anyway, but also we began to glimpse the truth. It's a heartbreaking realization when you discover that after a hard month's work the money is already gone with little, if any left over for fun. I guess, if nothing else, this study has us as 'normal'. My hope is that our children won't be.
They've witnessed, and sacrificed along with us as we struggle to make it to the top of this pile. I'm crossing my fingers that they will learn from it and avoid the cool stuff= status & success illusion.

Taxes *shudder* Ooooo say it again.

As a nation we’ve cut the satellite TV, ditched the cell phones, replaced the flashy sports car with a sensible economy model and started using the cheap crappy shampoo. Must we really subsist only on ramen noodles, have the power shut off and have our home foreclosed on before we come to the realization that if we’re going to make it we are going to have to get a second job?

Tax. Don’t you just hate that word? I really hate that word. Know what’s worse? The inevitable collapse of our government if we can’t come to some sort of agreement on it.

I’m not saying just tax the rich, tax everyone. I’m willing to pay my share, meager as it may be. I agree government is too big and has been ridiculously wasteful, absolutely we need to fix it, but we also quite simply just need more money.

I don’t understand why you can compromise a health bill to death, okay, to the point where it’s death would have been preferable, but you can’t budge on this issue. Oh wait, I do understand. It’s about being greedy bastards. The insurance companies are poised to make more money than ever before because of this mutated monstrosity of a well-intended health care plan. Those monies will then move along to lobbyists and re-election campaigns, oh and I almost forgot, the favorite ‘charitable’ foundations of our elected officials.

For them it’s all about the dollars folks, they want to make as much of it as they can, and hold onto as much of it as they can. I can’t really blame them for that, as I’ve said before, I am a capitalist, but this is capitalism at the expense of everything else. This is plain and simple greed.

I may have to vote liberal next election.

A lesson from history?

My sister-in-law recommended a movie some time ago and I added it to my Netflix cue. It was only available on disc, not for instant streaming so when it finally made it to the top of my list and my mailbox, I had almost forgotten about it entirely.

Thank you Katie for recommending Iron Jawed Angels, it was truly outstanding. I knew about women’s suffrage in the US of course, but I didn’t KNOW about it. I was aware that in most cases, women just weren’t thought of as on the same level with men. It wasn’t always a situation where men thought themselves better, often times they were just viewed as different minded. It was widely believed that women didn’t have the capacity or the concern for such matters. The astonishing part is that it’s been less than 100 years since such beliefs were so common and that we as a society were so unenlightened. I’ve seen references to old magazines and advertisements, and I love classic literature where the themes are all present, clues are everywhere, but it’s never struck me so blatantly. It’s definitely a thinking movie, and as such it got me thinking.

Where my thoughts lead me may be somewhat unexpected to some. The movie chronicled a time when the leaders of the NAWSA (National American Women Suffrage Association) had been focusing on a state-by-state approach, thinking the nation as a whole to be too overwhelming a target. They were wrong. In the end it was a national campaign to amend the US constitution that was successful. I think the same approach is warranted with another civil rights issue.

I am a wife, a mother, and a proud American citizen. I have never heard a good argument as to why other American citizens because of their sexual orientation are denied the ability to legally marry.

I applaud New York, the most recent of our states to allow same-sex marriage, but they are still a minority. I think taking each state on individually will ultimately take more time and be more costly then taking the fight straight to Washington, DC. I am inspired by the news I heard today, Mitt Romney one of the frontrunners for the GOP Presidential nomination, refused to sign a conservative Christian group's pledge outlining, amongst other dehumanizing points, the denouncement of same-sex marriage. That was a step even Obama wouldn't take, when pressed, he stated he was against gay marriage. Bravo Mitt! I may end up voting conservative next election.