The Story of My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Rotten News

Hmph. I knew this was coming. I've put it off as long as possible but now that it is officially August I can go no longer without informing you all of my shame. I have received the letter I have been waiting for and, well... it definitely left something to be desired.


It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: it was a major blow. BLOW. I had turned in my application early! I had all the prerequisites finished! And (not to sound terribly snotty, but) I went to UCLA for crap's sake!!! What is wrong with you Foothill people?! In all of the program's literature it's stated that they accept applicants on a first come, first served basis. And when the director of the program came to speak to my class in May he reiterated that it was a first come, first served system and that he thought there were still slots available. Since I'd already sent my application in, I believed I was good to go. Now, I really did try to refrain from assuming I was already in the program. I knew that there was a slight chance things wouldn't go my way and that as soon as I started thinking it was in the bag something would bite me in the ass. But, let's face it - the larger part of my brain was chanting "You're a super cool applicant! You're in!" And that part was hard to ignore. Stupid brain.

Anyway, I got my letter and I was bumfuzzled. Not only was I in shock over reading that I was not, in fact, "awesome" OR "in" but I was distressed to see that it didn't even look like I was on the wait list. In fact, it didn't look like Foothill thought all of my prereqs were done, either. Look at this:


Do those look like bullets or empty check boxes? They looked like empty check boxes to me, which meant that Foothill believed neither of those statements to be true. Which completely freaked me out. So, I immediately called the designated contact person and left her a very nice message saying that while I knew there were probably lots of angry students calling her right about now, I just needed some help understanding just what the big blank boxes were trying to say to me. And I sent her an e-mail, too. (I really was nice in my messages, I swear. Having been the go-to person for angry calls and e-mails, I was as self-deprecating as could be.) This was on a Friday. I spent the rest of the weekend on the couch in the fetal position, crippled by depression.


Robert kept trying to cheer me up by pointing out that my rejection was not due to any personal failing. The letter said that, in light of the fact that Foothill received 80+ applications for 55 slots, they did away with the first come, first served system and went straight to a lottery. A lottery?! Ugh. What a hideous way to decide a person's future! The logical part of my brain understood that Robert was right, a lottery is a lottery and you just have no control over whether your number is drawn or not. The other part of my brain felt like the world's hugest failure for being a person with a BA rejected by a community college. And, just like before, that part of the brain is easier to listen to.

Then, on the following Sunday afternoon, I got a very lengthy voice mail from the woman I'd called on Friday. She apologized for the letter being confusing but said the school had gone through several drafts and it had been hard to keep up with which version went where. She also said that both statements were, in fact, true for me - I did have all my prereqs done (I knew it!) and I was indeed on the waiting list. She then went on to tell me how wonderful my application was, how I had done everything right, how great it was that I had all my science courses taken already and that she had put my application in the 'accepted' pile before the lottery business came up. Apparently, the instructors were unhappy with the lottery system turning away qualified candidates so starting next year the program is implementing a competitive points system where applicants will be ranked according to their academic preparation. She added that if I apply next year, I will definitely be accepted, no question. She ended the message by pointing out that several people had provisional acceptances and should any of them not be able to enter the program, or should anyone else who was accepted decline their spot, I could potentially still be admitted for this year. She was really very nice and I appreciated her taking the time (on a weekend, no less) to call me and clarify things.

Unfortunately, now the hard 'NO' has turned into a soft 'no.' And while I'm hoping against hope that something happens and I do get accepted this year (I'm not hoping anyone gets hit and maimed by a car, mind you. I'm thinking more of a "My hangnail got so infected that I won't be able to write for months and won't be able to attend classes. But in the long run, my health will be fine!" kind of thing), I hate the uncertainty of waiting. And because the program has positions open up as late as the week before school starts, I have many, many, many more weeks of waiting.

The teensy, tiny sliver of hope is already wreaking havoc on my mind. Every day when I go to the mailbox, I can tell I'm anticipating opening it up and finding a packet telling me I'm in.


Only to be bitterly disappointed when said packet is nowhere to be found.



So, no packet yet. It's still (sort of) early and I'm not even going to pretend that I'm not desperately clinging to the tiny thread of possibility I might start the program this fall. I know it's a long shot but I really, really, really, REALLY don't want to wait another year to start school full-time. I hate when my carefully considered plans get knocked out of whack! I don't deal well with change or disappointment!!! But, what can I do? For now, I've signed up for those classes I can take outside the program and I'm just waiting to see. If I don't wind up starting the program in September, I'll just go ahead and take whatever classes I can (about 2 each quarter) and then probably wind up finding some sort of part-time job. Not exactly what I had in mind and certainly not what I'd prefer to do this next year but it's the best I can do.

Just keep your fingers crossed someone gets a hangnail, okay?


UPDATE: Someone did!!

My Poor Poopaloop

Sometime in mid-June or so, Robert and I noticed a little bump on Garfunkel's lip. He's been prone to get acne on his chin so at first we weren't really all that concerned. But we kept an eye on it and noticed that, bit by bit, it kept getting bigger. Not really wider but... longer. Kinda gross. But, as you will recall, taking the Funk to the vet is not an enjoyable experience (for anyone involved!) so it's sort of viewed as a last resort. The bump was going to have to start oozing or talking or something for us to want to take Garfunkel in to see Dr. Rue. Well, that bump didn't wind up oozing or speaking but one day, when Funk and I were playing, I flipped his lip (to make him have a scary face... no comments, please) and I saw a huuuuuuge wart on the inside of his lip.



Okay, so maybe it wasn't so huuuuuuge but any wart is nasty and I was mainly just startled to see it when I wasn't expecting to. At all. Anyway, it was at this point that we were pretty sure a trip to the vet was inevitable.

I did not share with you the events that took place on our most recent vet visit and that is because they led to a wicked shame spiral that Robert and I barely pulled ourselves out of in time to take Funk back to the vet. Let me just say that the visit started with the vet refusing to see Garfunkel and sending us out the door with a bottle of sedatives and a pamphlet for Bark Busters. (We did wind up going back, with Garfunkel sedated, a few days later to have things taken care of.) Robert and I are pretty sure there's a photo of Garfunkel in the vet's office somewhere, warning employees of the Least Wanted Patient in America.


I say we were "pretty sure" we had to go to the vet (as opposed to "absolutely sure") because after I saw Garfunkel's hideous mouth barnacle I remembered reading something about oral warts on Pawcurious just a couple weeks prior. That post had a link to this page which described (with photos!) canine viral papillomas - and, to me, that's exactly what it looked like the Funk had. Should you not be as interested in CVPs as I was, let me summarize: They are basically just what I described, oral warts that develop in younger (up to 2 years) dogs, most commonly on the lips and/or muzzle. Dogs can develop any number of papillomas and the reason they are most common in younger dogs is because once a dog's immune system is exposed to the virus, it typically prevents recurrence. The papillomas can only be passed from dog to dog and usually go away on their own, once the dog's immune system builds up a resistance to the virus. Unfortunately, it can take 1-2 months for the papillomas to self-treat, as it were, so that's a definite bummer. The Pawcurious puppy picked the virus up from doggy daycare; Garfunkel most likely contracted it from the dog park.

Since I was pretty convinced Garfunkel had CVP and that it would go away of its own accord (eventually), I was still a little reluctant to drag him to the vet. So, I thought I'd give'em a call and see what they recommended. I don't know why I wasted my time - I know they can't diagnose over the phone. I think I thought that they'd want to avoid seeing Funk as much as we wanted to avoided bringing him in so they'd say "Yeah! Great diagnosis! We'll set aside a pack of XXX to help with the healing! You can pick it up anytime!" Alas, that is not was transpired and I ended up making Garfunkel an appointment. Sigh.

Cutting to the chase, because I knew that, even sedated, Funk wouldn't let anybody NEAR his mouth (and that he'd most likely have to wear a muzzle, anyway) I took and printed out some photos of the growths. It was much appreciated. :o) The vet said that while the growth inside Funk's mouth would most likely go away by itself, the one outside his mouth most likely would not. As such, he was going to have to freeze off the outside tumor. And since he was going to have to anesthetize Funk for that, he may as well burn off the other tumor while he was at it. And clip Funk's nails. And clean his teeth. I pointed out another little bump Garfunkel had on his back so they said they'd take care of that, too. Luckily, I hadn't fed Funk that morning (just in case something like this came up) so they were able to take him right then. I held Garfunkel while he got the first shot to knock him out and man was it FAST!!! Within 30 seconds the Funk was down for the count. It's a good thing Robert didn't take him because he would have been just beside himself seeing Garfunkel unable to walk, fall down and then not be able to get his tongue back in his mouth. I definitely felt bad, don't get me wrong, but there was a teensy part of me that was kind of fascinated by the whole process...

Anyhoodle, 5 hours and hundreds of dollars later, I brought home a bump-free Funk with super short claws and sparkling teeth. (I was forced to walk to the rear of the office and retrieve Funk from the kennel, as no one on staff was willing to risk the potential loss of arm or face epidermis. Funk was just sitting there quietly, waiting for me to get him. No whining. No barking. No thrashing. Success!) I have to mention that the teeth were, I kid you not, half of the entire bill. Nuts!!!!! He'll most likely never get a professional teeth cleaning again so I'm not sorry we did it but yowza. It hurt the pocketbook for sure. The following day the vet called with the biopsy results and the two mouth growths were indeed viral papillomas. (The back bump turned out to be a cyst and wasn't biopsied.)

This is how Garfunkel looked for the first two hours after I brought him home. See how his nails are yellow? That's all the styptic powder from the vet tech 'quicking' his nails. They were SHORT. But nice.

Later, Garfunkel decided to wander out and hang with me in the living room. He spent the entire afternoon lying on me in one formation or another. Poor guy.

And he did the same to Robert when he got home.

Here's a good shot of the staples in Funk's back where the cyst was removed.


And here are the before and after shots, just for comparison.



Here's his back after he got the staples removed two weeks post-procedure. He only got play dates with Quigley while the staples were in and Garfunkel definitely went through dog park withdrawal. When Robert finally took Funk back to the park last week or so, he made sure he told everyone about the virus when they asked about Funk's scar. The vet said Funk most likely came in contact with the virus not so much from dog-on-dog contact but from the shared water source at the park. Blech.

Check out those pearly whites! I'm almost blind here!

It's now been almost a month since the surgeries and Funk is looking better than ever. We all survived the multiple vet visits with nary a scrape nor scratch. (Well, except for Funk, of course, but you know what I mean.) I just really, really, really hope what they say is true and Garfunkel doesn't develop any papillomas again. Exhausting!

Waiting for Robert

The overabundance of togetherness my being currently unemployed has afforded me and Garfunkel is, in a word, trying. As you know, I just love the Funk to bits but being at home with him so much over the past couple months has made me realize one thing: I enjoy 'me' time way too much to have kids! I can barely survive a pet. Or maybe just this pet. Garfunkel has always been a sensitive soul, very attached to those he loves. I do my best to entertain him during the day but the dog is just so darn clingy! I try to play with him and (hopefully) wear him out but it's no good. For some reason, in the Funk's mind, my being at home means he has to be a despondent soul unwilling to play or do much of anything for more than 5 minutes. He pretty much spends all his time following me around... everywhere... and then proceeds to plop onto the floor with a big sigh, staring into space. If I get him out of the house he's better - he's better on a walk with me and will usually play with me more at my parents' house. But I can't spend all day on a walk so back we traipse to the house, only to continue the mope-a-thon until Robert gets home. Once both of his people are in the house, Garfunkel comes alive. It's magic!

(Can you hear the heavy breathing @ the 8 second mark? Mr. Melodrama.)

Our First Anniversary!!!

Imagine: Me, sitting at on the couch, thinking "Hey! I think I'll make a cute little slideshow of wedding photos to post on the blog for our anniversary!"

Cut to: Me, sitting at my desk for 3 hours, pulling my hair out because my software is not cooperating.

I was definitely having more fun this time last year... :o)

Mel Gibson: Tom Cruise's New BFF

Much as I'm sure Tiger Woods was relieved when news of Jesse James' marital scandal(s) broke, Tom Cruise must be thanking his lucky stars that, once again, Mel Gibson has taken up the mantle as Craziest Celebrity on Earth. Seriously. I have been woefully out of the entertainment loop for some time now (I hung my head in shame when my dad expected me to know more about the cast departures on CSI:NY and I had nothing to offer) but even I haven't escaped the wall-to-wall coverage of Mel's whackadoo tapes. If you somehow have, however, catch yourself up on the crazy right here:

The man is seriously disturbed. Like, a lot. A lot a lot.

An Exciting Foray into Cake Pops

I think I've posted about the site Bakerella before but I'm not 100% positive. It seems like I would have and I believe Maria mentioned she found Bakerella through me but maybe it's because I'm a Bakerella fan on Facebook... (None of this matters to any of you so why am I wasting time babbling about it?! Yeesh. Moving on.) Anyway, the point is that I like Bakerella and Maria likes Bakerella and that's where the story begins.

The lynch pin of Bakerella's stable of sweets is the cake ball. The cake ball then morphed into the cake pop and that - or, rather, more specifically the starter chocolate cupcake pop - is what Maria decided she wanted to make for her friend's birthday party. While I was at the McCauleys' on Father's Day she started chatting with me about making the cake pops and I told her I'd be very interested to see how they turned out. I answered a couple of questions Maria had about melting chocolate and then didn't think much else about it. But later that same week Maria gave me a call and asked if I would be willing to help her out with her baking and, of course, I said yes. The cake pops really have long intrigued me... but BOY did they look like more work than I ever wanted to do for a dessert! Doing it with a partner was the perfect opportunity so we set it up for that Friday night and here's how it all turned out.

We were under a time constraint so, unfortunately for us, we had to start from the very beginning (i.e. baking the cake) at 7:30 PM. This made for a looooooong night; all told, it took us about 6 hours from mixing the cake to putting the ribbons on the finished pops. Needless to say, we were all a bit exhausted at the end of it all! It's not even that anything in the process was particularly hard - just time consuming. You have to wait for the cake to bake. You have to wait for the cake to cool. You have to freeze the pops after each step. You have to cool the pops before packaging them. It all just takes a lot of time. Still, we persevered and I think the end product was darn fine! You should refer to the earlier link to see a much more detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make the cake pops. My photos are a little more choppy. But I still think they're a good representation of how we worked.

First, after baking, cooling and crumbling the chocolate cake, Maria stirred the cake crumbs into our homemade cream cheese frosting.


Then we had scoop and mold the mixture into 1-inch balls. (See photo after the one below.) After freezing the balls, they get rolled into logs. This is a photo of the poo log. Had me cracking UP! I was tired.


The logs then got pressed half into a little flower-shaped cookie cutter to make the cupcake shape. On the right and left you can see the molded cupcake shapes; the pre-poo log cake balls are in the center of the tray.


After we froze the cupcake shapes, we dipped the bottom halves in bittersweet chocolate. More setting and then we were ready to dip the top halves in white chocolate and put on the final decorative touches.


Somewhere after the poo logs but before the final white chocolate dip Biji stopped by for a bit (he left the following Sunday so we were trying to squeeze in as much Biji time as possible). We put him and Robert to work, fashioning stands for us to put the pops in while they cooled and making room in the fridge. Here is Biji completing Operation: Transfer Pops.


And here they are! What do you think?


The pops had to set up in the fridge before we could package them and since we were bone tired at that point, we enlisted Robert and Biji's help in finishing up the project. Had we more time (or patience) we would've let the pops set just a wee bit more, as a few that got too warm slid right off their sticks and were sampled by the assemblers. (They were quite tasty! But even with four of us we couldn't eat all the rejects - as you can imagine, they're pretty rich. So some just got to go home to Bob.) Robert transferred all the pops to and from the fridge, Maria bagged'em, Biji held'em and I beribboned'em. We were a well-oiled machine, I tell ya. Biji's Army training really came in handy.


Bagged and ready to chill out overnight.

From what I heard from Maria, the cake pops were a big hit at the party. As they should have been! I think we were all very impressed with our first attempt at cake pop making... and I'm not sure Maria or I will attempt to make another batch anytime too soon.

A Couple Dorky - but Funny! - Dog Posts. (No, Not My Dog.)

I hate to be incommunicado for a week and then bore you all with another dog post but, well, I guess I don't really hate it that much 'cause that's what I'm gonna do! Sorry, guys. But I read this post from Hyperbole and a Half and it made me giggle out loud. (The previous post 'This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult' is also fabulous.) I don't know much of anything about the author but I do enjoy her writing style and drawings. Hers is what I would like my blog to be!

Dog

A lingering fear of mine was confirmed last night: My dog might be slightly retarded.

I've wondered about her intelligence ever since I adopted her and subsequently discovered that she was unable to figure out how stairs worked.

I blamed her ineptitude on the fact that she'd spent most of her life confined to a small kennel because her previous owners couldn't control her. I figured that maybe she just hadn't been exposed to stairs yet. Accepting the noble responsibility of educating this poor, underprivileged creature, I spent hours tenderly guiding her up and down the staircase - placing biscuits on each step to lure her and celebrating any sign of progress. When she still couldn't successfully navigate the stairs at the end of her first week with me, I blamed it on her extreme lack of motor control. This dog is uncoordinated in a way that would suggest her canine lineage is tainted with traces of a species with a different number of legs - like maybe a starfish or some sort of primitive snake.

The next clue came when I started trying to train her. I am no stranger to training dogs - much of my childhood was spent working with various canines because I lacked the social skills to interact successfully with people. With so many years of experience behind me, I was sure that training this new dog would be a very simple task.

I was wrong. Not only is training my dog outlandishly difficult, it is also heartbreaking. She wants so badly to please me. Every fiber of her being quivers with the desire to do a good job.

She tries really hard.

But when turning her head at an extreme angle fails to produce a life-altering epiphany, she usually just short-circuits and rolls on her back.

Over the past two months, she's made some progress, but it's been painfully slow and is easily forgotten. Still, I was living under the assumption that maybe my dog just had a hidden capacity for intelligence - that all I had to do was work hard enough and maybe she'd wake up one day and be smart and capable like a normal dog. Until last night.

Last night I was sitting on my couch mindlessly surfing the internet when I looked up and noticed my dog licking the floor. Just licking and licking. At first I though maybe I'd spilled something there, but her licking did not seem to be localized to one spot. Rather, she was walking around the room licking seemingly at random. She lay down on her side and kept licking out of the side of her mouth while staring directly at me.

At that moment I realized that I needed to know for sure whether my dog was retarded or not.

I Googled "how to tell if your dog is retarded" and after a bit of research, I found a dog IQ test that looked fairly legitimate. It involved testing your dog's ability to solve a few very basic problems, like figuring out how to get out from underneath a blanket.

I gathered the necessary supplies and began testing.

The first test asked me to call my dog using a variety of words that were not her name to gauge whether she could tell the difference. I called out "refrigerator!" and was pleased to see that my dog did not respond. She also failed to respond to "movie," "dishwasher" and "banana." I was beginning to feel very proud of her. Then came the crucial step: I called her name. Nothing. I called it a few more times to be sure. Still nothing.

The words hung like a neon sign broadcasting my dog's failure. "It's okay," I thought. "She'll do better on the next one."

In the second test, I had to put a blanket over my dog and time her to see how long it took her to get out. I threw the blanket over her and started my stopwatch. She made some cursory attempts at freeing herself, but as the seconds ticked by, it became clear that she was not going to pass.

Still, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that she just enjoyed being under there and could get out if she wanted to. I added an extra couple points to her tally for faith's sake.

After flagrantly failing three more tests, it came down to the final trial. If she could score five out of five possible points on this section of the test, she could bump herself out of the bottom category into "below average."

First, I had to make her sit, which was a test in and of itself. Then I was supposed to show her a biscuit, let her sniff it, then - after making sure she was watching - place the biscuit on the ground and put a plastic cup over it. If she knocked over the cup to get the biscuit within a certain amount of time, she'd pass the test.

I put the biscuit under the cup and started the timer.

My dog ran over to the cup and sniffed it. She walked around it once and then looked up at me like I was some sort of wizard. I pointed to the cup. I knew it was cheating, but I wanted to help my dog pass her test.

She didn't understand, but she knew she was supposed to do something, so she just started frantically doing things because maybe - just maybe - one of those things would be the right thing and the magical wizard cup would let her know where the treat went.

After five minutes of watching my dog aimlessly tear around the house, I finally accepted that she was not going to pass any part of the test and yes, she was most likely mentally challenged. But damn it, I was not going to let my poor, retarded dog feel like she failed.

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I also enjoyed this video from Pawcurious. I give Dr. V credit - I tried to make a video with the same site quite a long while ago but gave up because I was too impatient. I thought this video was hilarious; I hope you do, too, and it's not only funny to sad dog ladies... ! The queso fresco part is the best. ;o) (And yes, this is based on an actual conversation the author had with a client.)