I can't tell if that polar bear is the victim of a crash or just plain pooped, but I thought the picture reminds me of me lately.  Ice just got home a while ago from delivering the last of Prissy's puppies.  Now, she is roaming the house, just sure that she will find them under the bed or in the shower.  Poor girl.  She isn't frantic, just looking.  So maybe the transistion won't be too hard on her.  She got a nice long bath last night and is now firmly establishing her territory called "the house" again.  She and Sugar have romped and played like the good ole days today and Buster has even gotten involved in a tussle or two.

I've been cleaning and doing laundry all day, getting ready for Ice's folks that will be coming down this next week.  I haven't felt all that swift lately, so everything has piled up here at the house.  I worked the holiday and will probably be burning the midnight oil for another month.

I had to let my Office Manager go after over a year of frustration.  I haven't mentioned it before on the blog, and only discussed the situation privately with Colo and Daisy on occasion.  See, my office manager is my best friend and I had worked with her for nine years at my previous place of empoyment.  She was sharp as a tack, would tackle anything, could do anything, and would.  She was the perfect assistant.  When I took the Director's job, I eventually hired her again as Office Manager, confident she would once again be my "right arm" and we would be as great a team as we were before. 

But I didn't get the Judi that I knew and worked with three years earlier.  I had not seen that much of her and didn't realize there was a problem that was slowly but surely getting worse.  I didn't notice so much at first, since she was understandably a little overwhelmed at the many tasks the office required.  So I walked her through everything as to help her get a hang of it, which I expected to happen quickly.  Six months later, I was still walking her through most of her job duties and she didn't seem to have the drive she once had.  About that time, I noticed her speech was stilted and she couldn't seem to say what she was thinking.  Long story short, after six more months and doctor after doctor seeing her and saying she was just depressed, the situation got pretty bad and I had dealt with it as long as I could, which was another six months.  At that point, her daughter volunteered to help her, so that I could hopefully do my own job and stop focusing on her every move.  Her daughter couldn't be there enough to make that much of a difference and I was literally spending all of my time fixing things and correcting major mistakes and boo boo's.  Taxes were paid late, or not at all.  Payroll was a mess, and on and on.....

I hated to let her go, but she had become so restless and childlike, that she was actually stalking me around the office, asking if she could go home, or hovering just within my vision.  She would pace the floors, or sleep in her chair.  I was so worried for her and so frustrated with her at the same time, that I was dreading every minute at the office.  She was also making everybody else in the office nervous and frustrated. 

I have literally pushed her family into taking her to different doctors to see what's going on with her.  The closest I can describe it, not being in the medical field, is Early Onset Dimencia.  But the doctors don't seem to get it, so far.  They don't know the change that has come over her and didn't know her before this happened.  It's been so frustrating and I can't bear to watch her continue to deteriorate before my eyes.  In a nutshell.....I WANT JUDI BACK!  

Two days after I had to let Judi go, our Court Advocate (Sandi) collapsed at home and was bounced to three different hospitals, the last one in Dallas, before the cause was discovered.  She had apparently been having small strokes and finally had a much larger one that caused her collapse.  She is back home, but not doing very well and I have my doubts she will be able to return to work, or do her job sufficiently if she does come back. 

The certification team from the state will be here the middle of December, so I've been trying desperately to get us ready, since it has changed since the last certification, which was three years ago.  It's a lot tougher now, so I'm nervous as a cat, especially since I have not been able to really concentrate on my own job since I took it.  It was finally to a point that I had to just let Judi go and just do her job myself, since I know it like the back of my hand and can get it done, do it right, and get it out of the way.  Then I can concentrate on what I need to do for the agency. 

We are also moving our main office this next week, so that's going to be a mess for a while.  One good thing about it is we don't have to move to another building.  Just to another section of the office building we are in.  But it's gonna take some muscle to get all those desks and filing cabinets moved, so I'm recruiting all the volunteers I can get.  Ice will be there for sure, plus my Dad and stepmother, and a few more.  I'm down to two co-workers that work in our main offices, and they're as broken down as I am, bad backs and all.   So this next week may be a disaster.  But once we get it done, we will in a much better space that can be secured, where the present space we occupy cannot.  It will be more private and better arranged, so I'm looking forward to that.

Geez, I didn't mean to write a book here, but I haven't been around the blog much lately and all this is why.  I don't see the situation getting any better for me til after the first of the year and I can get a good Office Manager hired that can finally do what I've been doing for a year and a half, plus trying to do my own job.  I can't wait!

So, please forgive my infrequent visits to the "stream".  Better days will be coming, I'm sure.  But for now, I'm covered up.  In the meantime, and if you are so inclined, please send up a prayer for Judi and Sandi.  I love them both and miss them.  I've learned the hard way not to pray for patience, but I would sure appreciate a few prayers for my own strength to get us through all that's coming up the next six weeks.  Thank you in advance, my friends.  Now, I gotta finish up the laundry and get to bed. 

Love to all!

Pup 

p.s.  For a GREAT read, Click Here!

So here they are, folks!  The latest stars of our little Schnauzer Show!

Now, I gotta get back to work!  Love to all!

Pup

I'VE BEEN BOMBED!

hehe......good one, Marc!  I hope you bomb everybody!

Pup

I've been taking pictures again!  The puppies are five weeks old and will all be sold by next weekend.....sigh....

They're little cuties, for sure!  I have opened up the puppy yard to them today, but so far they're a little leary of taking that first step outside.  Seems with every litter they seem so timid at this age and within a coupla days just blossom and start to romp and play inside and out.  I was hoping they would get their courage up today and play outside in the warm sunshine, but we'll see.  It might take them a day or two. 

I'll be taking them to be groomed sometime this next week and of course, will have to take more pictures, lol.  I'll be sure and post them when I do.  Meanwhile, I have more chores to do, so adios for now!  Love to all!

Pup

p.s.  Ginger got a new Boston Terrier puppy today and emailed these pictures to me.  Is that not the cutest little thing you've ever seen?  Her name is "Bailey".

October 16, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Why Aren’t We Shocked?
By BOB HERBERT
“Who needs a brain when you have these?” (message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women)

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to
separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the
girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed
and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first
recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind
of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection.  And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence
against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape,
murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as
familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the
Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in
Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so
pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to
shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, “When was the last time you got screwed?”

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman’s face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence.  We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the
U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond
the ability of any agency to count. We’re all implicated in this carnage
because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its
core to the wider society’s casual willingness to dehumanize women and
girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and
never, ever as the equals of men.

“Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,” said Taina
Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like “Ravished Bride” and “Rough Sex — Where Whores Get Owned.”

Then, of course, there’s gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”), and on and on.

You’re deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It’s all part
of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches
down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.

I just received this in the agency email and wanted to pass it along.  I'm relieved to know that I'm not the only one that has noticed this growing trend.  But I'd like to go one further....

I am increasingly aware that more and more women are allowing their exploitation, probably for monetary purposes, but I cringe to think that these women are so ignorant or uninformed that they blindly let this happen.

I made myself watch the Howard Stern show once because I wanted to know just what others saw in this hideous excuse for entertainment.  What truly shocked me was not only the expoitation that this idiot subjected women to on his show, but, more so that there were actually women actively subjecting themselves to the ogling, sexual drivel this dirtly old man dishes out and prides himself in.  I wanted to shout at the woman on this particular episode that I didn't appreciate womankind as a whole being represented in this manner.

And the question; "Why is this man still on the air and why aren't women outraged?" still haunts me.  Am I wrong in thinking that we women are partially responsible in the dehumanization of our gender?  

In my mind, those who allow themselves to be publicly exploited are directly responsible.  And those of us that don't speak out are responsible too.  

What do you think?  

Pup (On her soap box)