Saturday, October 06, 2007

The Final Countdown,...

Who sings that mullet rock song anyway? That horrible refrain has been going through my head for a few days now. Hubby is coming home from Indonesia in six days! Unbelievable!

And I have to say I am SOOO happy not to be there to assist, I mean, DO the final pack out. Sounds like everything went without a hitch.

HOWEVER

Getting the stupid dog out of that country will be a test of endurance, MacGuyver skills and sheer brute strength. Hubby found a vet. Yes! In a 'we hate dogs province of Indonesia'. He found the vet two months ago, got pet expediters all set up in Singapore and Jakarta and was *relaxing* and patting himself on the back for his saviness and good fortune.

The first sign of trouble was about a month ago when the vet gave stupid dog a million shots and then told him not to bathe stupid dog for about a week to make sure the shots took effect. WHAAA?? Listen to me people, you bathe dogs who run around in potentially bird flu infected soils in 80+
degree temperatures with 200% humidity. You bathe dogs who frolick on the beach and chase crabs. Yes, dear reader, you misread that sentence; I said the dog chases crabs, he doesn't have crabs. That we know of. Yet.

The vet's advice sounded as ominous as my local OB telling me the pills he gave me where for undisclosed 'hormones' to keep everything in place. Yikes. Threw those right out with the spoiled milk. In retrospect, probably should have consumed them and maybe wouldn't have had any problems with the pregnancy on the way out of the country.

Then, the vet lost the shot record for stupid dog. Then denied having lost the shot record. Now, my husband will NOT loose a peice of paper. He may have to put me, his wife's, name in his Microsoft Outlook contacts database, but he will not loose a piece of paper. The man is ORGANIZED. The man reads 'How to Use Outlook to Organize Your Life' books. For fun. He is an engineer and everything has its place. Especially since I, the artsy wife, am not around shoving papers into drawers and pretty little baskets for the aesthetics. Fashion before function I always say!

Anyhoo, then the call comes from the Jakarta expediters that more and entirely different paperwork needs to be filled out because Jakarta has declared itself a 'Rabies free city.' Give me a break,...

THEN, the Jakarta expediters call again and tell him the vet filled out one peice of paperwork correctly stating that the end destination of stupid dog is the U.S. of A., but the other peice says the end destination is Jakarta! And no one seems to be able to change it for fear of jail time!

I'm sorry, tell me again why we are paying these people a couple hundred clams to 'expedite' the dog?

I told hubby not to even TELL me about any problems with the shipment. I wish I had a photo my Father In Law sent when we moved back from the Philippines of cargo tumbling off this freighter in the middle of a storm in the ocean. It's just stuff anyway,...

I'm sure that the party tonight for hubby's going away made up for the stress. Since it is Ramadan, CRS will celebrate Iftar and his leaving all together. The meal that breaks the fast is called 'Iftar' and is consumed when the Imam says so, after blasting an extremely loud airhorn and proclaiming to everyone in the 2 mile radius who can't help but hear him over the blown out loud speakers, which is when the sun sets.

CRS local staff sacrificed a goat in the morning for the feast. Should be really yummy!

Thursday, October 04, 2007

One More Thing to Keep Parents Up At Night

Remember those creepy kids at the back of the bus sniffing aerosol cans in the paper bag when you went to school? Well, kids today seem to be keeping up with technology and have found a new way to mess with themselves. Be aware and remember that it is never to early to talk to your kids about drugs, and how to take care of their bodies! And with obesity rates at the levelsl they are in the US, this includes EVERYTHING they put in their bodies. This is my biggest battle as a parent, I think; making my children understand that their bodies need care and maintenance and they need to respect themselves both inside and out. Being healthy is a whole lot cooler than not.

Off my soapbox, here is an eye opening Email I received and another article that reiterates the danger of this scare:

Latest Drug in Middle School - Dusting

First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for it's crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs. I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't. I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them. They were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them. On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer. On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead. I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM. I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said so. Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU. The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE . It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That 's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why its more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known. It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them. After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house. We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some "professionals" do know about it. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but wonder if I died and went to Hell. This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers. ~ Jeff Williams, East Cleveland police officer