Hernie and Other Stuff

Jesse (who I now call "Hernie") survived his surgery last Monday and is recovering pretty well. He has a good 4 1/2" slice, so it will be a while before he will be able to fully bend or do all the things he used to do. All in all though, I think things went as smoothly as they possibly could. The post-surgery, druggie Jesse is much more social than the regular Jesse. He had me laughing a lot in his little recovery area, though I felt kind of bad for doing so. He was chatting up the nurse, the anesthesiologist, pretty much anyone who came by, recounting the story of his Nicaraguan EKG, asking for some rum with his post-surgery Coke, and just generally being a social butterfly. Because of his meds, he hasn't been allowed to drive. I think he was starting to feel a lot of cabin fever, so we went out yesterday to grab a bite to eat and do a bit of shopping. We are hoping he is totally med-free by Monday and will be able to go out and about to prevent the stir-crazy. We still don't know if worker's comp is approving it or not, so we don't know when he will go back to work. It's all very complicated with the union and worker's comp stuff. If they (worker's comp) don't approve it, he can't go back to work for 6 weeks, because he has to have full release from the surgeon to perform all parts of his job, and the surgeon of course won't release him to lift anything over 20 lbs for at least 6 weeks. But, if they do approve it, then he can go back to work right away, under the "light duty" label, and work upstairs at the ticker counter. So, right now we are in limbo, waiting to hear the outcome of all that.

Otherwise, I have 14 days of school left and I'm feeling pretty happy about that! It will be a busy couple weeks, finishing up papers and taking finals, but it will be so nice to be done! I still haven't heard about the grad school decision, but we have pretty much decided I would say no anyway. I am really liking my new job and don't want to give it up. Plus, I guess they are moving part of the program or expanding or something, because they called me last week to ask if I would be willing to do one semester at SFSU and then move to New Jersey to do the practicum. Nothing against Jersey, but it's not high on my list of places I'd like to move. In fact, it's right near the bottom, just above Kentucky and Tennessee. So, grad school is pretty much out of the equation at this point. Which means, now that we know I'm not moving across the country, we can look at putting new windows in the house, planning vacation, and fun stuff like that!

In any case, I'm off to the dog shelter soon to fall in love with more pups, wonder why in the world no one wants to take them home, and then wish so badly that I could. We have some real gems in the shelter right now. Anyway, I should wrap up the blogging, but I will leave you with some shelter trivia.

(I follow Wayne Pacelle's blog, which is where I get all these facts from. He is the main man of the Humane Society.)

30 years ago, 15-20 million dogs and cats were euthanized annually. Today, that number is down to about 4 million, which is super happy, amazing progress, but still also sad because it's totally preventable. Bob Barker said it best: "Please have your pet spayed or neutered."

Currently, only about 20% of dogs (in homes) come from shelters and rescue groups. If that number increased to just 35%, the issue of euthanasia and homeless dogs would be nearly solved. And that is huge, not just for animal welfare, but think about the number of tax dollars that get funneled into this issue - imagine all the other places we could use that revenue.

And though I love a good mutt (Horton and Monkey!), there are a number of pure bred pups (Abe and Riley!) in shelters and rescues groups - at least a quarter of them are pure bred.

So, yeah for shelters and doggies! Saturday is our biggest adoption day, so here's hoping I get some good news this afternoon...