Feelin' · lucky? · ♣

I have always said that women should be able to walk down the street naked, and not have to worry about being harassed for sex, or worse, raped. My views on that have changed somewhat over the past year. No, I don't believe a woman in sexy stockings or a short skirt deserves to be raped, certainly not. However, most women aren't wearing these things to fade into the background.. they're wearing them because they want to be noticed, plain and simple. And, there's nothing wrong with that. The issue that I have is when women go out of their way to appear enticing to others, and then profess how much they hate the attention they receive. You can't go to a bar with half your ass hanging out and not expect people to take notice. If you dress provocatively, expect to be stared at, smiled at, hit on, etc. You don't walk into a lion's den with a half rack of ribs attached to your chest, and this is the same thing. I get very tired of hearing women complain that men are 'all over' them everywhere they go, and then you see their MySpace photo or the clothes they wear out, and wonder where the rest of their dress is.. ladies, you want the attention, you want to play the game or you wouldn't dress the part. It's that simple.

These are the same women who will talk to seventeen different guys a night for enough time to get a drink out of each of them. Don't get me wrong, it's their life and their choice, and hey, more power to them, but don't act like you don't know that you're paying for that drink with your tits. It's a subtle, acceptable form of pornography. And then, that seventeenth guy gets to take you home tanked, maybe let you puke all over the side of his car, has probably the worst sex of his and your life because you are both too inebriated to know the difference, and in the morning it's 'how dare he take advantage of me like that!' It's the same thing.. these whiny, insecure women who want, no strike that, need the attention to feel good about themselves because they lack any unsolicited self-confidence, and then act like every guy in the world is a jerk when they make a pass at them. Get real. They're like car salesman. It's the classic 'bait and switch'.. 'oh, look at all these features, leather, lots of trunk space, don't you want to take 'er for a test drive? well, sorry, that one's not for sale, but over here we have this lovely Pinto...'

Fuck. It seems that Neko may have kennel cough. It started lastnight, and at first it seemed like maybe he was running or barking in his sleep. Today, it seems to have gotten a bit worse and he is doing it while awake. It's a raspy, honking, gagging sort of cough. It's not severe yet, but he just started showing symptoms so we'll see how that goes. Obviously, a call to the vet is in order, and if it is kennel cough, he'll pass it on to our other dog as well. In most cases, it's similar to a cold in humans and goes away in about a week on it's own. They're both vaccinated for it, but the vaccination for kennel cough is sort of like a flu shot in humans.. sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, antibiotics are necessary. We'll follow the instructions of the vet, and if that doesn't do the trick, we're going to get a product called KC Defense from this website. We take a lot of naturopathic remedies for pain and they work well, so why not for pets, too?

I'm worried about my boys.. I've never dealt with kennel cough before, but I have dealt with severe allergies and shock, as well as hip surgery with my dogs, so this should be a piece of cake. Right? :(

**RING** I look up from my dinner. Who would call the Border Breeder From Hell at suppertime? I check the caller id. It's a local call. No mercy. Had they called from different time zone, I might have considered commuting their sentence...

"Yes." Hello is too good for this loser. ( This should be the first hint...Collapse )

BEST.. THING.. EVER!!!

We took Neko to get vaccinations today ~ he got his rabies, distemper/parvo, bordetella (kennel cough), and de-wormer. We usually take all our dogs to Good Neighbor Vet, which is a weekend low-cost vaccination clinic. Our vet is great, but she charges $40 just for us to walk in the door, and if I can help it I'd rather spend that money on premium food, doggy day-camp and other fun stuff for them than on shots that are the same either way. Plus, Gizmo has another eye infection. Last time, we took him in and paid $157 for them to do an eye stain (to make sure it wasn't scratched) and they gave us anti-bacterial/steroidal eye drops and internal antibiotics. This time, I did some of my own research and called the vet, telling them I believed it was canine pink eye (it's common in short-nosed breeds), and asked if they could just give us some drops. They wouldn't give us the steroid ones, and said that they didn't think the regular antibacterial ones would help. They said, if it was, in fact,  pink eye that they would work, but they still wanted me to bring him in because they didn't think that's what it was.. well, it's been 2 days on the plain old antibacterial drops and his eye is almost all better, so guess what, Mom was right. I think they underestimate how obsessive I am about my dogs. I usually know what's wrong before they do.

Anyway, so we waited an hour in the parking lot for the clinic, which was supposed to start at 10:30am, and go until noon. We waited over an hour, and left around 11:30pm since they still weren't there and I didn't want to spend my last day of my last weekend before winter term sitting around in a parking lot. Later on, we went to another one in the area that opened at 1pm, and it literally took 5 minutes. I was so proud of Neko.. he didn't whimper or anything when they did the shots or the nasal vaccine. He was so good! They saw his size and said they might have to muzzle him if he didn't cooperate.. I told them he's a big teddy bear, and he proved me right. Such a good boy. Next comes the neuter. Sshhh.. don't tell him.

We watched a BBC special on wolves today.. it's just fucking criminal what humans do to animals. Man nearly wiped the wolf population from America before laws were enacted placing them on the endangered species list to protect them. Still, cattle ranchers and the like complain that the laws are 'flawed' because wolves have been known to kill livestock.. of course they do, you fucking morons.. they're wolves. They were here on this planet long before you. Really, who do we think we are as humans to claim this planet as our own, divide it amongst ourselves into neat little property lines and zoning codes and exterminate the wildlife that interferes with our plans? And the hypocrisy in these views is enough to choke a proverbial horse.. it's ok for us as humans to kill chickens and cows and make them into nice little flame-broiled 'happy meals', but god forbid a wolf (who is doing it to survive, the only way he knows how, and the way he's been doing it for centuries) do the same.

When I was a child, I 'adopted' a wolf. Not in the physical sense, like in my home, but I sponsored a wolf in a rescue environment. I don't even remember how old I was, but they have always struck me as such majestic, beautiful creatures. Maybe that's why I love Huskies and Malamutes.. they remind me so much of wolves.

I decided it was time I did something to help, and I did what most of us do when we need to locate specific details about a subject from random bits of information.. I took to the internet. This is what I found.. I never knew there was a wolf sanctuary less than two hours away. Needless to say, we'll be going later this month. I am very excited!

We got another fur-kid about a week ago. He's a Siberian Husky. His name is Neko Zephyr-Zen ('Neko' for short). He's almost a year and a half. He's a rescue dog and the most mellow, affectionate dog I've ever had. LOTS more pictures below the cut ~

( Not dial-up friendly!Collapse )

I intentionally left some details out of the situation described, because I wanted reactions based on the 'bare bones' of it all, without intimate knowledge of the parties involved. So, now I'm going to share some of that with you, and my thoughts..

'Bettie' is, for lack of a better term, a raging alcoholic who claims to have been raped not once, not twice, but three times in the past five years. This is not to say that she is at fault for what happened to her, if in fact it was rape. However, in the case described, she was offered drugs and alcohol, and accepted. She was not forced to take them, nor were they slipped into her drink. She wasn't coerced into drinking - it was (at that point) literally a part of her every day life. Had she been manipulated into a situation where she couldn't refuse (or would be less likely to protest) I would consider that to be rape.. but, in a case where she willfully consumed too much of a judgment-altering substance, and 'John' did the same, it seems to me to be more a case of 'I should never have slept with him', and not 'I was raped'. I also have a hard time when substances are involved, because there are times when a person cannot remember what they said or did while under the influence. In these cases, certainly some are rape, and some are not. I feel that when a person knowingly consumes enough alcohol to impair their judgment, they are taking a very big risk, and they do things they might not normally do when sober. For this reason, it can become very tricky when guilt and regret for a bad decision turns into a feeling of violation. It's important to make that distinction when accusing another person of something as serious as rape.

Someone mentioned a previous experience with sexual violence. I have had my own as well, so I do understand where lines can be blurred and that the law often is little to no help for a rape victim. In my case, I was raped by an older neighbor boy (he was over 18 and I was a freshman in high school) but since I had already had consensual sex with my long-time boyfriend at that point, it seemed to be looked at more as 'well, it's not like you were a virgin' than 'you were raped'. The police were involved, and to 'spare' me from having to testify in court, he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge (endangering the welfare of a minor) and was sentenced to probation. Because of my age, my parents made this decision on my behalf - I had no say. Had I been given a choice, I would have chosen to testify.

That said, this is a touchy subject and one that everyone generally has a very passionate opinion about, so I am not saying anyone is wrong or even that what this individual claimed didn't actually happen. Multiple instances of sexual violence are common, so it is not out of the realm of possibility, but in this particular case, I have to wonder if this is a genuine case of rape, or simply a case of regret for bad choices.

There comes a time when all good things must come to an end. I suppose this is one of those times. I feel like I am always moving forward in my life, pursuing new interests, and yes, making mistakes.. but at least they're new mistakes. I am not recycling previous bad decisions in some fucked-up pipe dream, trying to see if they'll turn out different the 16th time around.

I understand second chances.. I know that things happen - but there is a point where you just can't feel any more sympathy for a destructive person. The well has run dry. I've had some bad situations in my life.. I was raped as a teenager. I was abused as a child. I've lost loved ones, either through death or damaged relationships. I've been through divorce, major surgeries, a third-world disease.. and yet, I don't feel like my life has fallen apart. Life sucks sometimes, and mine is no exception. Yet, somehow I have managed to go through these things and come out ok, when others have not. I think this is because it's always been just me.. no alcohol, no drugs, no escape hatch or rabbit hole to dive down. I've dealt with everything head-on, and it's not that I'm better than anyone else. I simply don't know how to do it any other way. I'm a control-freak, and those things make you lose control, so they hold no fascination for me. I believe that tackling my problems instead of hiding from them has made me a stronger, happier person, because although it was painful, it was only painful for a finite amount of time. I don't have to keep reliving it every time I don't have a bottle in my hand ~ I battle it out while it's happening, and while I may walk away dripping with blood, those wounds become scars that have toughened me, making me that much more capable of dealing with painful situations in the future.

I know that not everyone can or chooses to do this. I also know that it can be comfortable to stay in a certain behavior pattern, no matter how destructive it is. For some people, devastation is the 'norm', and while some are made more resilient by these experiences, others get caught in a holding pattern of despair that they can't (or won't) escape. I am not judging. What I am doing is what I always do - what I need to do for my own mental or physical health - and sometimes that means cutting ties with people who ride this roller-coaster of disintegration. When people make a choice to remain 'damaged', you have to step away, because if you don't, they'll find some way to assign you the blame.