Michele Lee

I’m updating the site, moving some things around and organizing things a bit better. I’m playing around with some widgets too, so if something vanishes, I’ll try to fix it as soon as I can.

The big change so far is that I’ve re-entered the Smashwords forum and published my books there. So far only the Deepdale Acres romance book are live, but the others are coming soon.

So, I have a confession to make. You all know how dog #4 went terribly bad for us last year. But on the second day of 2015 we got a call from a neighborhood friend. They have an outdoor German Shepherd and someone threw a tiny puppy into his enclosure, we think, hoping either tossing her over a six foot privacy fence or the dog himself would finish her off. But that’s not what happened. She ended up with us, and well…I swear there are dogs we’ll say no to.

Anyway, here is Ursa.

So this has me working on my dog records. You all do keep your dogs records right? I keep two copies, one in a folder just in case something happens at home and a little booklet for each dog that I bought at Petsmart which goes in our BOB/emergency bag, so if we have to get out of dodge we still have all this info. Having this info on hand is VERY important in case of an emergency from being able to prove our dogs are vaccinated if we have to cross state lines to if a neighbor anonymously reports to Animal control that you leave your dogs outside all hours of the day and night with no food, water or shelter.

Can you tell that latter happened to us last year? I was at work, but Jason was home and was able to show rabies vacc dates and city registration for three of the four dogs, and explained that the fourth was a foster. He was also able to show records of heartworm treatment and vet visits for Butch, who was limping because of his back hip issues at the time. (He was also able to show her four friendly, happy, well fed dogs, a 5 gallon bucket of water a dog house big enough for all four dogs to fit into not to mention the holes the dogs dug under shrubs to lay in. Even the Animal Control person asked which of our neighbors we pissed off because the charges were ludicrous.

Keeping records is especially important when you own large dogs, or breeds people tend to be scared of. Rottweilers, pitt bull types, Akitas, Huskies, Dobermans, German Shepherds, Dogo Argentino, Cana Corso….if you own a dog of these breeds or that LOOKS like any of these breeds it’s very important to keep those records and be able to show someone on the spot (it could mean the difference between your dogs being taken or not.

You should absolutely keep hard copies, just in case. But I’ve been toying around with some Apps too.

Pet First Aid by The American Red Cross

This one costs a token fee and isn’t really for pet management, but is totally useful especially if you don’t know when is time to hit an emergency vet and when it can wait until morning. I don’t know what things are like in your area, but here the most reasonable emergency vet starts at $600 a visit, before they even start doing things.

This app also includes disaster management and preparedness tips for pet owners, though this and the first aid tips are limited to dogs and cats.

ASPCA by 3 Sided Cube

This one offers emergency tips even without a connection to the internet, as well as file storage, help making lost posters and (with internet access) access to lost/found pet listings. It’s really nice to be able to put all your pet information (including vacc records and medicines they are taking) in one app with the preparedness info.

FirstAid+Pets

Wow… I got the free version of this one and I’m glad I did. It’s very basic advice, no customization, and not written primarily for English speaking users. Plus, ads run constantly at the top, which means it slowed my tablet down. The pro version might be better, but it also costs.

Petparent

It’s pretty much Facebook for pet owners, only you also have to log in with your facebook account and be online to use it. The only stellar feature I found (that is for my needs/tastes) is it can use your location to tell you where pet friendly locations and events are around you. But not real useful for me because I’m not using a smart phone that’s on a network all the time.

Dogs a-z

This is pretty much a giant list of dog breeds, most with pictures and the breeds link to Wikipedia info pages. My kids are into guessing the breeds of dogs we pass, so they like this one.

APCC by ASPCA

This is a new free app from the ASPCA that allows you to instantly access information about foods and meds that are poisonous to your pets. You can also call directly to the ASPCA’s pet poison help line for advice on how to treat your pet.

Finally, there are a lot of pet apps that help you track your pet’s records and/or set up reminders for when shots or treatments are due. Of the ones I’ve tried my favorites are Pet Health Book Lite because it allows you to track symptoms and sicknesses in addition to weights, vaccinations and such. And Dog Health, which has all the same bells and whistles, plus an impressive interface.

Do you have any apps I should try out?

So, last day of the year…good fuckin’ riddance.

2014 was a shit year for my family. It started out not all bad. I did get my dream job and start training as a vet tech at a clinic that is pretty darn awesome. I’m out of the corporate world, in a small business that mostly appreciates my work (no one is perfect, you know.) And I saw an uptick in my etsy sales, as well as managing to sell a few paintings as well.

As for the bad, well hell. My mother-in-law died in January, my former place of employment disciplined me and threatened to fire me the day I returned from her funeral, my partner was laid off by his job of 12 years and we’re had a number of adventures at the unemployment and social security offices poorly equip with our Unearned Income of Entitlement (aka the system is unfair and seeks to blatantly punish those who need and ask for help under the guise of “encouraging” people to not continue on social services and make one feel as if the whole world thinks you’d be better off dead than remaining alive), someone dumped a dog with a ton of medical issues in our yard and we couldn’t bear to let him be put down at a shelter so we tried to save him, in the end that dog once he got better showed a dangerous level of aggression, attacked and killed our cat of 9 years and we had to humanely euthanize him (even though we became ridiculously attached to him, and after we’d accumulated a huge vet bill trying to help him), our van broke down (and is still immobile in our driveway, longing for the day when we have money to fix what we hope is a minor hose problem), my partner lost a cousin, the mother of a lifelong friend and one of his high school friends is now battling a serious health issue, he himself has had a few narrow misses with “almost, but not quite” employment, is battling a pretty fierce depression and also just got life changing medical news.

As it stands now I have to get through two checks with reduced holiday hours (because we’ve been closed on Thursdays, which are usually my 10 hour days), still have over $200 in vet bills to pay, will probably slip behind on other bills because of pay and holiday spending, Jason has to wait on more doctor visits before he can be employed, if they even hold the job for him and don’t just fill it with one of the thousands of other people looking for work right now.

It’s been a very rough year, and I hope things turn around, but then I’ve been hoping that all year.

Some of my artist friends and I have taken to choosing a word to represent the year, in lieu of resolutions or goals. Just some element that we want to see happen or work toward. Last year this was my word art:

At the beginning of 2014 I had reached a point where I had stability in my life. I’d had a job for two years, Jason had been at his job for a while, the kids were doing well in school (in fact my daughter had qualified for advanced placement classes) and it looked like it was time to start really working on things in our life.

I wanted to work on repairing and beautifying our home, even though I didn’t have a lot of handywoman experience. Well the bad news is we know our foundation needs some expensive repairs, but I have patched holes, built on my garden, worked a lot on decluttering and organizing, repaired my washer on my own and I got pretty good at making jam this year.

I wanted to grow more positive things my life, literally and in a social/magical sense. That part has been very hard because of all the struggles with depression and the insane amount of negativity we’ve faced this year. But I have been trying to stay positive. I’ve been trying to give when I can, to share what I do have and to help other people. I would very much like to be able to do more of this.

I wanted to work more on writing in 2014 as well, and at that I’ve excelled. I’ve written a novella, am about 20-30k into the Wolf Heart follow up and I released a short story collection that I’ve been planning for two years. I’ve started querying agents again (no luck yet, but I’m putting my work out there again!) and submitting stories to magazines I’d like to see my name in. I’ve also worked on improving my crafts, through rejoining a workshop, and my other craft by starting to play with painting videos and instructions books.

I think its possible that my 2014 year has been a very powerful one because so much has been stripped out of my life right now that there is indeed some room for major progress. I guess it just doesn’t feel much like progress when you’re looking at an empty lot and bill for demolition wondering where you’re going to live while things are rebuilt.

In 2015 my word is:

I thought about it for a long time. At first I was going to make it “Hope” as a way to encourage myself to hold out hope, to keep believing that things happen for a reason, and yes, we are pulling ourselves up by our boot straps a little at a time.

But then I started thinking about how I have been internalizing so much negativity and hopelessness lately. I feel so much like I need to punish myself for not doing enough to support my family, for not being able to just fix all these things going wrong. And then I thought about how ridiculous that is. I can’t fix Jason’s depression. I can’t fix his unemployment.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t fix Butch’s aggression issues, all I could do is make the best decision for him and my family moving forward. And that decision is freedom. I couldn’t rewire his brain, or go back in time and re-raise him to not be fearful and reactive.

I can’t go back in time and re-raise myself to be a confident, secure person who believes she is someone of value. I can’t change the things that happened to make me who I am. But I can try to work toward freeing myself, from insecurity, from fear and from whatever wiring it is that leads me to blame myself for failures entirely outside of my control. I can work toward NOT punishing myself for “not being good enough” and toward freeing myself from the idea that I will never be good enough.

And hopefully with that freedom I’ll find a way to handle the down swings and the up with grace and aplomb, and be able to also model that to my children and the people around me.

So, here’s to 2015, and a kickin’ New Years Eve celebrating that 2014 didn’t manage to kill us.