Did they think so, too?

Do you ever think the world is spinning too fast? We have too many new fangled gadgets that are supposed to make our life easier?

Those are the thoughts that came to me this morning. Followed immediately by thoughts of Maria(h) (Ellis) Birdsell, my great, great grandmother who was born around 1833 in Ohio.

What a life she lived. She married my great, great grandfather around 1857 in Iowa where they had six children before moving to Kansas in 1872.

Around the age of 41 she moved from Iowa to Kansas with six children and her husband. I know they brought one team with them. I'm assuming it was a team of horses. When they arrived they had $200.00 and their team. This is from an blip in the then local newspaper from 1887.

They filed a homestead claim on 160 acres in Brown's Creek Township, Jewell County, Kansas when they arrived. In 1887 their farm was worth $2,500.00.

Maria(h) lost her first son, Daniel Liberty Birdsell, in November 1893 from complications from falling off a wagon.

Then in 1899 she lost her husband, William Birdsell.

In the summer of 1906 she received word that her son, Marion Birdsell, who had relocated to Washington state has died.

Did Maria(h) think at that time that the world was spinning too fast? Did she hate wagons after Daniel fell from one? Did she think the horseless carriages were noisy? Or did she want one for herself?

I don't know how she personally felt progress. All I can do is look at the part of her history that I do know and look at her descendants that I knew.

She was willing to relocate, not an easy feat during the time frame when they left Ohio for Iowa and then later leaving Iowa for Kansas. Was the motivation due to an adventurous spirit, or a desire to own a chunk of land and provide for her family? Or a little bit of both? We'll never know for sure. Or I'll probably never know for sure.

Some of her children remained in the area and others moved away, to Washington state and even to California. Did they do it to get away from home and possible conflicts or did they have an adventurous spirit or a desire to go where they had a chance to get land of their own?  Or a combination of all of the above?

As Maria(h)'s children scattered over the country, did she wish for the days when they were all together? Or did she secretly sigh and enjoy having more space in her house and on her homestead?

Why did Maria(h) do the things in life that she did? I really don't know. Basing it on her descendants that I know, she did them out of a sense of adventure, but mostly she did it for her family.

The world stopped for Maria(h) in 1912 at the age of 79 years and some months. One hundred years ago. I wish the stories about her had been passed down to the rest of us. I wish I had known enough to ask questions when there were still people around her had known her.

How many times, if any, did she think the world was moving too fast? Or is it a new idea since we spend less time providing for our own basic needs than what Maria(h) had to spend on  her own needs? Have our modern gadgets really made life easier for us or more complicated?

No, I'm not ready to get rid of electricity. Or flush toilets.

Lately though, I've given thought to what I really don't need or want. Downsizing our stuff. Doing more for ourselves and depending less and less on ready made things.

I can't get the world to slow down, but I can get my own spot in the world closer to the pace I want. Maybe that was Maria(h)'s secret.

More change of pace

After my last post regarding the Lonesome Dove series I found this article.

The way I see it, Larry McMurtry was pissed because the readers of Lonesome Dove and viewers of the movie saw it as a great Western story instead of the great anti-Western which he perceived himself as having written. So to teach his readers and viewers of the movie a lesson he showed no respect for people who spent their hard earned money and changed the history of the characters to suit his own agenda. Mr. McMurtry where is your respect for your readers? These people who loved your story, at the very least, deserve your gratitude since your perceived great anti-Western made you very rich.

Instead of pissing on the people who spent money to read and watch the story of Gus and Woodrow, why didn't you just calmly give away that money to a charity since it upset you so much? Don't you think that act would have done more to get your real point of view across than writing three more books in an attempt to show what you really meant? Oh, wait, didn't you also make plenty of money off those three books, plus the movie rights, too? And did you keep that money for yourself? Of course you kept it. Which is perfectly fine. But pissing on the readers and viewers isn't really fine from my perspective.

Enough of Larry McMurtry. I've spent my last penny on his novels and movies.

While I'm on the subject of writers who frustrate me...I'll move on to Diana Gabaldon. I love her Outlander series. At one time I was a little put out with her when it came to the fifth book, but I read the series again this past summer/fall. It wasn't as rambling as I felt it was the first time around.

My beef with Diana is her lack of knowledge about the making of soap. Sigh. Sweetie, it's very simple, all soap is made with lye. If you are using true soap, it's lye soap. You can't have soap without lye. No matter what anyone tries to tell you, you just can't have soap without using lye. No lie. Or as soapmakers like to say: No lye, no soap. Period. It's a great chemical fact.

So when your characters try to differentiate between French soap and lye soap, it shows that you didn't do enough research on the subject of soapmaking. Since there's this HUGE industry out there of soapmakers it might be worthwhile to actually use Google.

It's a real stretch of my imagination to believe that Clair didn't know this. After all, Clair learned how to make ether. She learned how to make penicillin. She learned which herbs to use for medicinal purposes. She's a cleanliness freak because she knows all about bacteria, so she knows how important soap is. When she goes back to Jamie after she finds out he didn't die at Culloden, she learned all these things to take back with her.

Being in the medical field myself, I can't believe she didn't spend time at the library learning all she could about soapmaking since she knew for a fact that it's the first line of defense against so many infections. Had she done so, she would have never, ever confused French soap with lye soap.

What she would have known was that the soap they made in North Carolina was lye heavy soap. That's understandable since they used potassium hydroxide and they had no way of knowing how pure their potassium hydroxide was when they used it. Plus they used a variety of animal fats, which each one has a different saponification rate. So the reality of having some lye heavy soap was very possible. However, had she done that teeny tiny bit of research on how to make soap while she was in the 20th century, she would also have learned it's possible to "rebatch" the lye heavy soap and use up the excess lye to where it didn't feel like it was removing the skin.

I find it very hard to believe a surgeon and an engineer (Brianna) were both too stupid to know these things about a craft that isn't all that hard to learn.

Research is a wonderful thing. For every career your character has, for every skill they have, there are others who will read your works when you write fiction who have the same career or skill and they'll know when your research is falling very short. If you're going to make a big deal about something like homemade soap, make sure you have your facts right. We will catch you. If you're going to write about medicine, law, automotive problems, farming, etc., there are people who do these things every day of their lives and they read and will know when you've failed with your research. It yanks us out of the story.

For all the writers out there, be careful with your facts. For all the non-writers out there, writing fiction is hard work. I know from experience. You can't just make it up as you go. Well, you can, but then that means you'll forever be an unpublished writer.

A change of pace

Consistency is a good thing. Especially if you're writing a novel and it's one of a series. Some of us don't read each novel of a series when they come out. Sometimes we don't learn about the series until after several or all of them have been published. 

In my case, I tend to read them in order and I don't stop until I've finished with the last book that's available.

That's also one way to catch writers who are inconsistent with their story and/or their characters. 

My latest series is the Lonesome Dove series. I realize they weren't written in order. 

However if you start with Dead Man's Walk which is the one when Gus and Woodrow were younger it could be considered the first of the series. However the copyright date of that installment was in 2000. The one that is next according to the age of Gus and Woodrow is Comanche Moon with a copyright date of 1997. Then we come to the one that really started the series, but is the third one of what is now the series, Lonesome Dove. The copyright date for Lonesome Dove is 1985. And to end the series we have Streets of Laredo. The copyright date is 1993. 

I've read that Streets of Laredo was in response to the movie Return to Lonesome Dove. It was said that Larry McMurtry not only didn't have anything to do with it, but disliked the way the story was continued so he wrote his own version of what happened after Lonesome Dove. The movie Lonesome Dove came out in 1989. Return to Lonesome Dove came out in 1993. 

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that both Return to Lonesome Dove (the television version)and Streets of Laredo (in book form) arrived about the same time. Again, this is speculation and this is purely on my part, but I suspect that during that period of time their was a major pissing contest going on with the movie version of what happened next and Larry McMurtry's version. 

I can respect that. I really can. Since I spent many years writing, I know how protective a writer can get of their characters. They really are our children. 

What I can't respect is the fact that Mr. McMurtry doesn't appear to respect his readers. If he did respect his readers he would have done a much better job of being consistant with Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon and Streets of Laredo making sure the events were consistant with events in his previous works of the series. 

I realize he probably didn't plan on writing a series when he wrote Lonesome Dove. In my opinion when things were referred to in Streets of Laredo they should have been consistant with the way they were in Lonesome Dove. After all, Lonesome Dove was already a hit. Many people had read the book and/or seen the mini-series. Keep the damned events that are mentioned in the next book consistant.

Next came Comanche Moon. And after that, Dead Man's Walk. 

It's very disappointing to read the works of someone who is praised for being one of the best and find so many pull you out of the story because the backstory between Call and Maggie, Jake and Maggie, Jake and Clara change from book to book. 

Sorry, but I feel very cheated by the sequel and the two prequels. Extremely cheated.

If you love your pet...

We took little Burt, our new puppy to the vet today. All is well with him. That was a good thing. A very good thing.

The downside of today: we received Thor's remains. That little urn was so final.

We didn't have to lose Thor. That's what this post is about. Had we known more. Had we not been so overwhelmed with things during the whole process, we would have remembered more symptoms.

Let me back up a few years ago. Thor had congestive heart disease. For the most part with proper medication and care congestive heart failure can be controlled for many years. And it was with Thor.

Dachshunds are known for being little gluttons. Most of them love their food. So when Thor wanted more and more food, we thought he was being a glutton. Even when we restricted his food and cut back on his food and he still wouldn't lose weight we attributed it to age and him being somewhat lazy. Okay, pretty lazy.

Nothing we did would get the weight off, but it's not unusual for that breed to weigh more than they should.

Then he started retaining more water. We increased his medications for the congestive heart failure. It worked, but only for a few days.

Then he started drinking excessive amounts of water, retaining even more fluid.

I made a comment to a group of my email buddies. One of them asked if we'd had Thor checked for Cushings Disease. No, we hadn't. We hadn't had much more than the basic exams done.

Roger called the vet, I was gone at the time working, and asked him about Cushings. Our vet said he had decided it would be wise to draw some blood the next time he came in. He took him in that very day. They ran a chemistry panel that checked his kidney function and liver function, plus a few other things found in the chemistry panel. When Roger scanned and emailed the results to me, I knew we were in serious trouble.

My job is running those same tests on humans. I'm a clinical laboratory scientist. I saw those results and my heart broke.

The next step was to start him on medications for Cushings. The first attempt was not a success. Thor had no appetite and he couldn't keep anything in him. In the world of veterinary medicine their theory is: if they don't eat, don't treat. We did treat though. We treated trying to get his appetite back. This was under the care of our vet.

When my assignment finally ended and I was able to come home, Thor was eating, but not very much. Nothing like he used to eat. Ever. He had the bottomless pit. But he was eating a tiny bit. We were hopeful.

The day after I arrived home, he stopped eating and drinking. He was listless. We took him to the vet. We expected that it was all over. Because after his adverse reaction to the medications for Cushings even though he was swollen with so much fluid, we could see his muscles had wasted away. His muscle mass was less than half of what it used to be before the first round of medications.

Our vet, bless him, still had hope. We left him so he could give him fluids in an attempt to bring the excessive calcium levels down. The next day Thor had a tough time breathing, so they took an x-ray. He was full of fluids. They drained some of the fluids off. We went to see him on Saturday. We brought him his favorite snuggle blanket (actually my robe) and his favorite toy. With all the fluid gone, our Thor looked great. Both Roger and I had more hope for him than we'd had in a long, long time.

We left that Saturday knowing we'd get to bring him home on the following Monday.

Early the next morning, we received the phone call. Thor died during the night. He'd had an heart attack.

If we'd found the Cushings Disease earlier, we could have saved him.

Typically, especially if Cushings is caused by a slow growing tumor in the parathyroid, it's a slow acting disease. It can cause congestive heart failure among a list of other problems.

The excess steroids in the system cause an increase in appetite, which explains why we were always battling Thor's waistline, or lack of a waistline. It's not a painful disease because the little guy was overdosing on steroids. Which is why it's hard to think your pet may have a serious condition when he doesn't appear to hurt and has a healthy appetite.

I suspect Thor had Cushings long before he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. We controlled that condition for over three years.

But after reviewing everything, I believe Cushings was the cause of the CHF and not in addition to it.

It's very easy to overlook this disease because so many of the symptoms can be attributed to an aging dog.

So, please, if you love your pet, when they start slowing down and getting what we consider aging dog symptoms, ask your vet to include some routine lab tests in their yearly exam. You want to get a baseline of their kidney and liver function. Then have those tests run at least yearly and more often if there's any new signs or symptoms that are extreme for your pet.

In our case, when Thor was acting hungry even immediately after eating, we should have asked for lab tests. Had we done so this last summer when his appetite was even extreme for him, we would have had a diagnosis in time to correct the problem when he was strong enough to endure the treatments available.

We do not blame ourselves, nor our vet for any of this. All of us did everything we could to save Thor.

Within two days of losing Thor, we took Ernie (Thor's sister from a different litter) in for teeth cleaning and to have baseline labs drawn for her. Those tests will be part of her yearly examine.

Roger and I believe we have one of the best vets around. Unfortunately, he hasn't been their vet forever. He's only been their vet since we returned to Kansas in 2008. If you don't let your vet know that you're willing to pay for the extras they won't do them. There are just as many pet owners who aren't willing to pay the price of those extra tests as there are owners who are only too happy to have that assurance they can catch things much earlier.

The biggest mistake we made in all this was to not let our vet know that we fell in the category of owners who are willing to have those extra tests done.

Please don't make the same mistake that we made. Let your vet know if you're willing to pay the extra for routine lab work and/or x-rays for your fur baby.

Please learn from our mistake so you can keep your baby for the natural length of his/her life.

Changes

Life is full of changes.

Not only are we learning to live life without Thor, we've gotten a puppy. He's not Thor, but he keeps us busy, busy, busy. Ernie, our surviving dog isn't too sure about our new dog, Bert. But in time, she'll adjust to him. I know right now she misses Thor terribly.

But those aren't the only changes in our life. There's the change of me being home now. That's a good change.

We're also giving new things besides a puppy a try.

Our latest is the way we eat. This has been a gradual thing. We do like to grow a garden and eat our harvest from the garden. Then we were able to share in some wonderful grass fed beef for our freezer.

Then I happened to watch this video. It's 17 minutes long, but worth the time. After watching the video, I started thinking...hum, I don't have the problems she had, but seriously, it can't hurt me to adapt closer to what she does. Then the other day I wanted to find some recipes for Paleo eating. If found this website. A ton of recipes. And information all over the place. I know some will think I've lost my mind. Oh well. So be it. It's my choice to decide how I want to do things in my life. That's one of the advantages of being an adult. I do get to make a few decisions about my life at times.

Roger and I have been eating pretty close to Paleo for close to a week now. Can we tell a difference? Of course we can. Not only that, when we went to pick up our new puppy, we stopped at a Hardee's to grab a burger for each of us and Ernie. We only planned to eat the meat, not the bun. The meat was so horrible we could barely eat it and Ernie wouldn't eat her's. Once we got Bert and came back home, we have gone back to eating Paleo.

Let me just say this, the food not only tastes great, it looks great on the plate. All the colors. I'm cooking food that looks good and tastes great.

I will admit, I still would love to finish the day off with something sweet and chocolatey, but for the most part, I've been good and not indulged.

After I get past the sugar cravings, I do want to do this. There are several places that have the 30 day challenge. If any of my friends would like to do this, let me know and we can start it together and give each other support. The 30 day challenge is more restrictive than most Paleo plans. I'm not going to call it a diet, because it's not really a diet. It's a lifestyle choice. It's not for everyone. If it's not, don't worry about it, I'll still be your friend. :-) But if you'd like to try this with us, let me know and we'll pick a start date and have fun with it.

Thor 1999-2012

He came into our life and enriched it in a way that shocked all of us. In fact, it wasn't all that long after we got him that we decided one of him was not enough. We needed another one to go along with him. 

We joked about the 300 pounds of ego in that compact body. The truth was, for every ounce of ego the amount of love in that compact body was double the size of the ego. 

Thor was a wonder dog. He was the dog that let you know when he was happy by purring when you snuggled with him. As a puppy he would drag jack stands across the shop floor trying to get the bigger dogs that walked by. He was always attuned to our feelings. If we were sad he would do everything in his doggy power to make us feel better. When Dad was in his final hours, Thor was there, wanting to be there with him.

He loved chocolate. Yes, we knew it was bad for him. We did limit it and eventually cut him off from it. He could look at you with those eyes and make you jump through hoops trying to find what he thought he wanted or needed. I suspect part of the time it was him watching his humans working so hard to please him and he was probably doing a doggy snicker. 

He flew all over Alaska in his younger days. He got to ride the Al-Can High way. He got to travel to several areas in the United States. He was a well traveled dog, but his favorite place was in the chair with his daddy.

When he had an accident he would look so ashamed of himself. Or he'd go hide, so we couldn't see the guilt written all over his little face.

Thor came into our life and changed it forever. If only we could be half the person he thought we were. 

Last night, Thor passed away. He was an old dog, but even to the end, Thor was our puppy. We shall miss you Thor. We shall always love you. Thank you for 13 wonderful years. Rest in Peace little buddy.