For your consideration…

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Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. Every non-profit on the planet is out there scrambling for your charitable dollars today. I present the following list of those I choose to support for Giving Tuesday, and throughout the year. As always, it’s a list that focuses on helping animals, because people are awful and it’s so often the animals, both wild and domestic, that pay the price for that. I’d ask that you consider them when putting together your giving plan for today and the future.

Clean Futures Fund – The CCF facilitates The Dogs of Chernobyl program. These dogs are the descendants of those left behind during the evacuation of Pripyat in April 1986. Despite an initial attempt by Soviet authorities to kill the abandoned dogs, breeding was out of control. Since their involvement beginning in 2017, no cats or dogs in the exclusion zone have been culled. They conduct sterilization clinics to reduce the population, provide vaccinations and medical care to strays, and provide food to the Dogs of Chernobyl. 

Humane Animal Partners (formerly the Delaware SPCA) – The mission of the Humane Animal Partners is to prevent cruelty to animals. They bring their mission to life through programs that provide shelter and adoption for unwanted and homeless pets, reduce pet overpopulation through affordable spay/neuter, and enable pet retention by providing low-cost veterinary services.

Cecil County Animal Services – CCAS serves as the County’s Animal Control Authority and provides quality care to animals in the community through the management of an open-admission shelter.  Additional programs and services provided through this Division include the Pet Pantry Program, Adoption and Foster Services, Behavioral Helpline, Pet Loss Support, Humane Education, Project Safe Haven, “Seniors for Seniors,” Pet Visitation Program, Volunteer Initiatives, and Pet Re-homing Intervention.

Ducks Unlimited – Ducks Unlimited is now the world’s largest and most effective private waterfowl and wetlands conservation organization. DU is able to multilaterally deliver its work through a series of partnerships with private individuals, landowners, agencies, scientific communities and other entities.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation – Serving as a watchdog, we fight for effective, science-based solutions to the pollution degrading the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams. Our motto, “Save the Bay,” is a regional rallying cry for pollution reduction throughout the Chesapeake’s six-state, 64,000-square-mile watershed, which is home to more than 18 million people and 3,000 species of plants and animals.

World Wildlife Fund – WWF works to help local communities conserve the natural resources they depend upon; transform markets and policies toward sustainability; and protect and restore species and their habitats. Our efforts ensure that the value of nature is reflected in decision-making from a local to a global scale.

Once bitten…

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For the last few of months, Jorah and I have been walking the neighborhood a couple of times a week. A few houses down one of the resident dogs has always been loud and barky when he happened to be in the yard. That isn’t particularly unusual. Every other house we walk past usually has a barking dog. I didn’t do much more than note it until yesterday, when this particular dog managed to squeeze his oversized melon through their fence and charge us. 

I managed to get Jorah mostly behind me before he crossed the open ground on a collision course towards us on the sidewalk. He got in one good lunge before I managed to plant a respectable kick to the stomach. He lunged twice more and I kicked him squarely in the head the third time he got in range. That rattled him enough to let me open some distance. By that point – maybe 90 seconds total – the dog’s owners were racing out their front door and starting to wrangle their beast back towards the house.

A large man standing on the sidewalk in front of your home in a quiet neighborhood screaming every curse word he’s ever heard and then inventing some new ones on the spot after he quickly exhausted those while simultaneously trying to punt your dog into the next county will apparently get your attention.

Annoyingly, the other dog’s owner admitted that they knew he was able to squeeze through their fence posts, but they hadn’t figured out how to prevent it. I gave Jorah a once over on the spot and found no obvious signs of damage. I thought perhaps we’d reacted fast enough and was willing to let it go as a close-run thing. 

It wasn’t until we got home that I found the small puncture wound midway down his thigh – a clear indication to me that my sweet, shy boy was clearly trying to get away from his attacker. It’s a minor wound considering how much damage a dog bite can do. I’ve got it cleaned and treated as best I can, so I’ll be over here hoping it doesn’t go infected.

Jorah doesn’t seem to be in any pain or to be overly bothered by the wound for the time being. He’s always been timid of other dogs. I expect after this, I we’ll have lost whatever progress we’ve made. As for our walks, those are suspended indefinitely – at least until I see some evidence that the neighbors in question have decided to take some personal responsibility for containing their dog. I’m not holding my breath.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The U.S. House of Representatives. I was really counting on the House of Representatives to completely shit the bed and shut the government down at the end of this week. I mean I don’t want them to close up shop forever, but a week or two furlough over the Thanksgiving holiday would have been some much appreciated time off for which I’d have ended up getting paid for eventually anyway. Alas, the House managed to drop back and punt… and do it without waiting until the last possible moment. It’s not that kind of performance I should find impressive, but given all their recent fuckery, it’s honestly surprising.

2. Timing. The six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years are, in my experience, pretty much dead space. Sure, technically there are a fair number of work days in there, but the universal consensus is that the vast number of bureaucrats are focused on other things. Just now, the week before I launch into my five day Thanksgiving weekend, I’m feeling the siren’s call of a near total lack of motivation. Yes, of course I’ll keep plugging away at whatever crosses my desk, but it’s undeniable that my annual holiday lack of motivation has arrived early this year… and it’s only annoying because some of my distinguished colleagues haven’t arrived there yet themselves. I question their timing.

3. Cold. For most of my adult life I’ve been thermally protected by the extra weight I’ve carried around. With the recent arrival of cold weather combined with some appreciable weight loss, I find that for the first time in memory, I’m constantly cold instead of running just a little bit warm. It’s a predictable side effect, but I’m finding it more unpleasant than I expected.

Fleet management…

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I’m trying to mentally nudge myself in the direction of accepting that I’m going to need to buy a new vehicle in the not terribly distant future. With both the Tundra and the Wrangler approaching a point where they should be let go, I’m starting to poke around the margins at what might replace them. 

And that, of course, is where it gets complicated. 

Is the right answer a 1:1 trade of old Tundra for new Tundra? The price point of doing a straight up replacement of my current truck runs me somewhere north of $65,000… and that feels like an absurd price to pay for a pickup truck. 

Maybe I should be looking to bundle my trade and let both the Jeep and the Tundra go to bring home… something. The math gets more involved when I remember that the Jeep is where all my trade in value is. A 12-year-old tundra, wrecked once, with 145,000 miles on the clock it is always going to have a limited audience even when it looks remarkably clean and has otherwise been well maintained. 

There’s the question of whether I need another truck at all. I’ve had a truck in the fleet for 15 years, but the bed stays empty aside from running the trash to the dump once a month, bringing in canned gas for the lawnmower once or twice a summer, and periodically hauling flat packed bookcases home from IKEA. It would certainly be less convenient, but is it more cost effective just to rent a truck when I really need one or plus up my budget for big item delivery?

If the right answer for the next vehicle isn’t a truck, what is right? A SUV? Something low slung? Certainly not a sedan. 

I haven’t quite convinced myself that I wouldn’t terribly miss having a truck, even if I don’t strictly need one. That said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little attracted to having a fully enclosed vehicle… and perhaps on that had a less temperamental top… and windows that didn’t scratch if you brush against them… and maybe something that behaved with just a bit more polish on the highway.

Cutting the fleet by 50% would create obvious operations and maintenance savings – costs that are bound to increase the longer I hang on to a 12-year-old pickup and a 6-year-old Jeep. Is that cost savings enough to convince me any reasonable person can get by with just one vehicle? Hard to say.

As it is, interest rates are probably too high to consider anything seriously… but the ideas are definitely percolating. I’ll either get a wild hare and pull the trigger on something or I won’t. I honestly have no idea which way I’ll break or when it might happen.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Heartburn. You know what you should definitely throw at a guy who’s trying very hard to get his cardiac health improved? A sudden onset burst of god awful heartburn, that’s what. Because there’s no chance at all that would trigger 17 bloody flavors of panic and hundreds if not thousands of dollars in fun new medical tests and their corresponding bills. This week proudly continues 2023’s ongoing effort to be marked out as the worst of my 45 years… so far.

2. Samples. Well, the do it yourself stool sample package they sent me home with in hopes of ruling out a stomach ulcer and more or less confirming acid reflux has definitely unlocked a new level of disgust. It also reminded me that modern medical science is apparently not nearly as far away from reading entrails, casting bones, and balancing the humors as they like to think they are.

3. Fall yard work. It’s not so much that it’s a lot to do as it is that fall yard work is just bloody continuous. In the summer, I cut the grass once a week and trim every second week unless it’s growing unusually fast. In the fall, however, the minute I’ve finished mulching up leaves and blowing what can’t be mulched, the yard is every bit as covered as it was before I started. Yes, I know this was a self inflicted wound when I decided to live in the woods, but still it’s just a little bit maddening.

Around the eyes…

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I went for my annual eye exam on Friday. Wilmer was well organized, prompt, thorough, and personal. It was not cheap, but I was pleased with the Hopkins approach to eye care. I supposed that’ll just be where I go from now on.

I got a good report of no eye disease present… which is a nice change from the rest of this year’s medical appointments. I have, however, earned a bump up of my magnification that will hopefully make the evening reading a bit easier.

I really hadn’t planned on my blog becoming all medical all the time, but that feels like it’s been my theme for the last four months. Maybe eventually I’ll get back to bitching and complaining about normal day to day stuff, but it feels like today isn’t that day… and tomorrow isn’t looking so good either.

Easing towards the baseline…

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It wasn’t a great summer for reading. Honestly, it wasn’t a great summer for anything. From July through September, I had no attention span to speak of. “Long form” TiKToks pressed my abilities to focus. Anything I was trying to get done had to be taken down in extraordinarily short chunks. For someone who normally had the ability to sit down and lose three hours reading a book, it was not an ideal arrangement. Books that would have normally gone back on the shelf inside a week lingered on the nightstand for a month or more.

I’m happy to report that October, even though the 10 days of the great plague, has shown decided signs of the situation improving. I’m nowhere near back to form, but I’m at least finding it possible to sit down for an hour at a clip and really get into something. 

I knew I was off my stride, but I’m just now beginning to realize just how far off I was feeling. I don’t mind telling you that I spent a lot of the summer in full bore worry mode – concerned about my health, wondering when or if I’d stop feeling like hot trash, scared that it was just going to be what post 45th birthday life was going to be. 

None of my issues have really gone away – or even yet been properly diagnosed – but I find that initial fear of the unknown is increasingly giving way to annoyance. I can only assume that’s a positive sign since annoyed is practically my universal default setting. Maybe I’m starting to ease back towards the baseline. 

I’m doing everything the medicos have told me to do, so aside from “wait and see” and showing up for more follow-on testing when it’s called for, it’s well past time to start dragging myself up off the mat… even if my head is stuck firmly on playing out all the possible “what if” scenarios. 

The second week of COVID…

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It’s the second week of COVID. The good news is that I seem to have avoided hospitalization or death. That’s absolutely a win.

The bad news is that I still largely feel like chewed dick. Yes, it’s absolutely a better grade of crud than I was enjoying at this time last week, but I’m still hacking, wheezing, sneezing, and generally sounding like a plague carrier. I’m not the kind of company you’d want to come take a seat at your dinner table. 

It’s a busy week at the office and I tried to be a good remote trooper today, but by noon all I could think about was closing my eyes and having a good rest. I hung in a while longer, but don’t expect I did myself or anyone else much good after that point.

I usually manage to power through these sicknesses. There’s no time for a man cold when there’s animals that need tending and a household to run. My brush with the Great Plague though, has been a pointed reminder that sometimes you’re going to slow down whether the spirit is willing or not. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Meds. One of the fun parts of being on the new blood pressure meds is that it puts most common decongestants on the embargoed list. If there was ever a motivation to get my weight down and off the prescription medication, it’s 100% so I can take a goddamned Sudafed and a shot of NyQuil instead of just raw dogging cold and flu season with hot beverages and an occasional spoonful of honey.

2. Covid. There’s been a time or two I’ve felt worse, but my week with Covid is definitely ranked. From the raging sore throat, to rivers of sinus drainage, to sleep no longer being a thing I do in any appreciable block of time, it’s just unpleasant. Add in the 36 hour saga of trying to get some antiviral meds and this third week of October is going in the books as a shit week of what has already been a shit year.

3. Protestant guilt. I’ve hoarded sick leave since the day I started working for our wealthy uncle. Last time I looked I’m sure I had something like 1800 or more hours of it on the books. So far this week I’ve taken 23 hours from that total. So why the good old fashioned Protestant guilt? Despite having more than enough in the bank, I know that my being out this week means there’s mostly been one guy doing what three of us were doing a month ago. I hate knowing he’s getting dicked over because I finally walked into the viral buzz saw. Admittedly, even if I were there I wouldn’t be capable of doing more than warming a seat while trying not to hack up my left lung. I hate that when I get my feet back under me there’s going to be a hellacious backlog of whatever came pouring into my mailbox this week. I feel badly about all of it… but I’m keeping in mind that sick leave is one of the more valuable components of my total compensation package and I’d feel even worse for not using it.

Positive…

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After almost three years and every available vaccination and booster, it looks like the Great Plague has finally caught up with me.

Yay. I’m thrilled. 

I don’t have anything particularly witty to add here. I’m currently feeling like I’ve got a something between a mild to moderate head cold. My throat is sore and my nose is running more or less non-stop. I can sleep as long as I don’t mind doing it while sitting more or less upright. 

I dialed in to a video appointment with Hopkins “virtual care” team and got my marching orders. 

The plan for now is that I’ll be holed up here at the house for at least the next five days… in hopes that years of boosters will, in fact, be effective at “preventing the most severe outcomes from a COVID-19 infection” as or friends at the CDC so casually put it.

Fingers crossed.