So does anybody? I think I average about 3-5 comments out of the couple hundred who are on my friends list…meh.

Have you ever woken up and been disappointed that you hadn’t died in your sleep sometime overnight? Yeah, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately…I guess it’s the asshole attitude getting to me. Not because I’m an asshole, surprisingly, but because I don’t understand why so many people choose not to think logically. Okay, your significant other walks all over you…you’re essentially left with two choices. Put up with it even though it drives you crazy…or do something about it. I opt not to put up with that shit…and in turn, I’m labeled an asshole because I’m not willing to compromise…but the thing is, compromise has been attempted and it won’t work unless you’re doing what your significant other wants to do. But seriously…think logically for a moment…which should you do if you want to live a happy life? Um, duh. I know, I’m bringing a few people into this…totally at random. Don’t feel like I’m calling any of you out…just read it and ignore it or consider it. If I wanted to call you out, I would have done it already. I’m an asshole, remember?

A lot of people seem to have this attitude that I’m anti-relationships…anti-girlfriends…a woman hater…yada yada yada. No, no, no, NO! That is absolutely not true!

First…I was pushing for a friend of mine to dump his girlfriend of nearly two years, because she was playing mind games with him, didn’t realize how bad she was hurting him even when called out on it, and I advised him to end it and move on before she ripped the rest of his heart out. In turn, I’m an asshole and I’m wrong. And then about a month later she dumps him. Granted they got back together…and if they’re reading this…I wasn’t against their relationship…I was against the mind games and her lack of realization that she was playing with his head the whole time she was trying to figure things out.

Another friend’s husband called her on her birthday and instead of wishing her a happy birthday…he told her he was moving out and wanted a divorce. This wasn’t the first time he’s decided to leave her either. He then proceeds to call me an asshole even though he’s only met me once so I decide to give her my opinions and when she basically tells me it’s not my business (sorry, but your husband brought me into it…so now it’s become my business) so I tell her that I’m willing to bet my life on it that he leaves her…again…and she blocks me. That’s alright. I really hope I run into that fucker on the street…after the message he sent me, I’ll gladly take the assault charges.

Fuck, I don’t even realize what the hell I’m even writing anymore….I do that a lot…apparently I just needed to ramble and let off some steam.

I guess I’m just depressed lately because not only am I alone…but nobody even gives me the time of day anymore, nobody values my opinions even when they ask me for them…and more and more people feel like I really am a complete asshole and that my recommendations are only to be taken if they want to come off as a complete asshole too. But while I will proudly refer to myself as an asshole…I really am not. I just think logically and refuse to let anyone control me. Of course, don’t get me wrong…I’m also not a control freak. My friends and girlfriends can be whoever they want to be and I won’t try to change that…if I don’t like something about them, I weigh the options. Is it something I can deal with? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and say, “I made a mistake. This ain’t gonna work.”

I dunno anymore…I’m sick of the loneliness and I’ve realized I’ve begun to drink both at home and at the bar more…and quite honestly, I think crawling into a bottle is about the only way I’m able to retain what little sanity I have left.

And on that note…I’m passing out. Goodnight.

First off, the title of this blog is actually a bit misleading, but I figured it’d make a few people click on it who otherwise wouldn’t have been interested.

The reason for this blog is a bit different than my normal blogs. Yesterday a friend of mine who I’ve known since elementary school came out of the closet as being bisexual. In doing so, he expected to lose some friends. Because I’ve admitted that I’m a Christian and I do base many of my opinions upon my religious beliefs, he expected me to be one of those friends that he’d end up losing and was quite surprised when I told him it really didn’t bother me and would not jeopardize our friendship. Now I will admit, I can be a little uncomfortable around gays (I’m going to lump those who are bisexual and homosexual in the same category…I realize there’s a huge difference, but I’m too lazy to type homosexual/bisexual or gay/bi each time). Mainly because I’m not gay and it would kinda creep me out if a gay friend ended up having a crush on me.

I am also against gay marriage. At this point, some of you are now calling me many things which I’m not going to type because I’m going to try to keep this fairly appropriate and non-offensive to those who don’t appreciate my usual sailor language. But let me explain myself before you lynch me…or call me an opinionated son of a…yeah. I am not against gays receiving the same legal benefits as a married couple currently receives here in the US. If a gay couple wants to receive legal benefits, by all means…let them have them! I don’t even blame gays for the whole marriage thing… the problem I have is not with gays, it’s with the government.

The government has said since the beginning that there will be separation between church and state…however, the government has contradicted itself time and time again by tying the two together (marriage in general should NOT be placed in the hands of the government!). In my opinion, the term MARRIAGE defines a man and a woman being united as one in the eyes of God. So I think gay MARRIAGE is not acceptable since the bible clearly states that MARRIAGE is reserved for a man and a woman. I am also against atheists being MARRIED. Now I may be completely misinformed about where the term MARRIAGE originated…but that’s my opinion.

So what do I believe?

I believe the term MARRIAGE should be removed from the government’s policies altogether…if you want legal benefits, you and your spouse should have to purchase a “unity license” which LEGALLY unites you as husband and wife, husband and husband, wife and wife, husband and dog (okay, just kidding on that one…). This basically states that you are legally a couple, you receive legal benefits, and now if things don’t work out, you are stuck going through the divorce process. From there, if you want to be MARRIED in the eyes of God….Christian couples can go to their preacher and church of choice and have a traditional wedding. Gay couples can go to their church if they have a church that is open to gay marriage, non-christians don’t have to do anything…or they can have a ceremony where anybody of their own liking can “marry” them. Regardless…now church and state have been separated almost entirely. Yes, I realize gay couples may still claim to be “married” even if no pastor was willing to do so…non-Christian couples may do the same…or other stuff may go on that I haven’t even thought about, but now it’s no longer the government stepping on someone’s religious beliefs…or supporting someone else’s religious beliefs while screwing over the gay couple, and so on. If you have a problem, now you have to protest the church…or the couple…and the government can no longer be blamed.

Of course, this will never happen…but it would really solve a lot of problems on both ends of the spectrum. I hope you all see where I’m coming from on this…the last time I explained this opinion, a lot of gay rights supporters felt like it was a good solution for everyone and even a lot of Christians said that it seemed pretty fair. Now if only we could get the government to open their eyes…but right now, I guess they’re too busy trying to FORCE us all to purchase healthcare…

I don’t use this blog much…so I think I’m going to use it to do sort of a mini-series on what’s currently going on with my job right now. I’m going to keep this short because I have to be up in 5 hours for work. Gotta love it! Tomorrow’s my birthday and chances are good I will be working from 6am – 9pm or so. And this will continue on all week.

So what is it that I’m blogging about?

Bottle Raising Deer Fawns

On June 5th, one of our good does had two fawns. She always produces very healthy fawns, but being she’s an older doe, it’s extremely hard on her raising the fawns through the summer. She ends up dangerously skinny before she’s weaned her fawns off. So this year, we decided to go ahead and breed her anyway, except there was a catch.

This year, after the fawns were born, we would pull them from their mother within 48 hours and begin to bottle feed them. While I’ve tried bottle feeding sick fawns in the past, this is my first time trying to bottle feed fawns that should make it provided they don’t suddenly become sick.

This morning, I begun my little adventure. I apologize, I do not have any photos of the two does I’m bottle feeding, but I promise I’ll get some soon.

So around 9am this morning, I went out in the field in search of the two fawns. 108 and 109 Red (red ear tags). After just a few short minutes I found them, captured them and put them in a travel carrier for the ride back across the field. Their mom was not very happy at all and followed me most of the way back to the barn grunting at me the whole way.

The previous night I had cleaned and disinfected an indoor stall in the barn as well as all the outside stalls attached to it leading to a small grass-filled pen. I placed them in the indoor stall, gave them a dish of fresh water and put in a dish of deer feed which i don’t expect them to nibble on for probably a month at minimum. For now, they only have access to the indoor stall…just until I get them to bond with me and start taking their bottles properly.

At 2pm I attempted to feed them for the first time. I’m trying a new diet…one I read about on a deer forum. It’s called the red cap formula and it just consists of feeding the fawns as much red cap vitamin D whole milk from the grocery store  as they can consume (within reason) 3x a day for 10 weeks, 2x a day for 1 week, and 1x a day for 1 week before they’re fully weaned. So I filled two bottles with milk, warmed it up, and tried to get the fawns to eat. No dice. While I spent some time with them throughout the day petting them and trying to get them used to me, they were still scared and had no desire to suck on the bottle even after I put the nipple in their mouths. That’s okay though…it’s said they may not take to it right away. One began licking me and sucking on my hand a couple times so I figured they’d get the hang of it soon enough.

Sure enough, at 9pm, I warmed up the bottles and once again, sat them in my lap one at a time (they wouldn’t stay put if I tried to feed them standing up), and both of them took right to the bottles. Awesome!

Each one consumed approximately 3 oz of milk…hopefully that amount increases tomorrow!

They also appear to be adjusting to me…they aren’t trying to run as much except when picked up. We’ll see how the progress continues tomorrow! Once I’ve got them eating well, I’ll get some photos…and hopefully try to get some photos of them feeding as well.

For now, here’s a photo of  their half-brothers…

Imagine for a moment, you were awoken early this morning. About as early as you would get up for a typical highschool school day. Except, this morning is Easter morning and you don’t have school today. And today, when your light is flipped on, you aren’t given 5 more minutes to sleep before your dad comes down to holler at you to hurry up and get out of bed. Instead it’s your grandparents and they’re saying, “Get up! Your parents are at the hospital…the ambulance came and picked your mom up around 4am and your dad says we need to hurry!”

So even though you were at a friend’s party until nearly 3am and you’re angry that you were woken up after just a few hours of sleep, you fling yourself out of bed and get dressed as quickly as possible. The visits to the hospital aren’t anything new, but you know something is wrong…there was never any urgency before. You go upstairs to find nobody else is ready yet…so you tell them you’re driving yourself even though your license had been revoked months ago and you grab your keys and start to head out the door. Of course, you are stopped by your grandpa who refuses to let you drive because your grandma doesn’t need anything else to worry about…so you oblige and you wait an extra 10 minutes before everyone is ready to go.

You all pile into one vehicle and make your way over to the hospital where you rush up to find your parents. When you find the room your parents are in, you walk in to find a very upsetting scene. Your dad is sitting there holding your mom’s hand and she’s laying there on the hospital bed with an oxygen mask on pumping 100% oxygen at maximum capacity, and your mom is still unable to breathe.  It is then that you realize, your mom isn’t coming home from this trip, you break down crying, and run over to hug your mom and tell her how much you love her. Everyone else does the same.

The doctor comes in and explains to you all that there are two options. There’s a procedure he can do where he coats the lungs with a chemical that will essentially scar the lungs and seal them, but it would only be a temporary fix and would probably only give your mom another week at best and her condition would remain about the same.

The other option was no better. They would start giving her high doses of morphine to help make her comfortable. She would lose consciousness pretty quickly and then every hour they would come in and increase the dosage until her heart would finally just stop beating. You do not feel comfortable making this decision alone, nor does anyone else in the family so you ask your mom what she wants to do and she says it’s time. She tells you not to worry, she’s not in any pain. The doctor gives you and your family a few minutes to say your final goodbyes. As you’re telling her goodbye, she gasps something in your ear about some letters she’d written. You barely understand it, but you nod your head and tell her you’ll find them.

The doctor comes in and begins to set her up with the morphine pump. The nurse fixes a “Do Not Resuscitate ” band onto her wrist and they walk out. Around noon, your mom loses consciousness for the last time. All that is left to do is wait and cry. Today is the day your entire life was just thrown a curve ball. Around 3pm, your grandpa drives you home to take care of the pets–let the dog out, feed the parrots, etc. He drives back to the hospital while you’re doing that. You know you’re not going to miss anything exciting. Your mom is never going to wake up and the most you’re going to miss is her taking her last breath, which isn’t exactly a memory you want embedded in your mind.

A couple hours later, you hear a door close, and your dad,  is standing at the bottom of the stairs. Your dad is the toughest person you’ve ever known. He’s never cried in front of you, not even after he learned his grandma died. And he breaks down bawling and says, “She’s gone!” and grabs you in a hug. All you can do is sit there and cry together, knowing the family you once had has just been ripped apart. An emptiness lays within the house. Everybody returns from the hospital and all anybody does is sit down and mope around the house. There is no Easter dinner and nobody is smiling and laughing and enjoying the fact that today, you are all together as one big happy family. Today has officially become the worst day of your life.

Your friend knocks on the door about an hour later and asks if you want to hang out. You tell him the news about your mom and he sits there in shock before saying, “I’m sorry…I’ll leave you alone tonight,” but you tell him it’s cool, you need to get away from things and suggest going for a drive. So you jump into his car and do what you do best when you’re bored with a full tank of gas…you drive until you have no clue where you’re at…and then try to figure out how to get back home. Not many words are spoken on this drive, mainly just reminiscing about the past, but it helps you tremendously in dealing with the immediate pain of your mom’s death.

For you, this was just an imagination…for those of you who are close to your families, probably a painful imagination. For me, this wasn’t an imagination. This was Easter Sunday of 2003. This was real.

Happy Easter.

P.S.

After ransacking the computer room looking for the letters my mom mentioned to me while saying our final goodbyes, I found them saved in a folder hidden away on her computer.

Edit: I just realized I never posted a link to my mom’s site. She actually kept an online journal on her website of everything she went through from her diagnosis until she died. If you would like to read her website, you can find it at http://www.cagmom.com/cancer/cancer.html

If you have some free time, I encourage you to read it. I can honestly say I have never had a complaint from anybody who’s read her website…and most people have emailed me thanking me for keeping it online because it’s given them hope.

The other day, I was at 5/3 Bank depositing my paycheck and a flier for cancer awareness caught my eye above one of the tellers’ windows. Normally it wouldn’t have meant much to me…but recently I learned that an old acquaintance of mine, Gary Russa, passed away at a fairly young age of cancer. He used to have a booth at the Piqua Flea Market when Rhett had his place in there so we used to talk fairly often. The story I was told was that he’d been sick for a couple weeks, went to the doctor to see what was wrong, and the doctor basically said, “Hey dude…you’ve got cancer!”

So they started him on chemotherapy and the next day he died. Yeah, that quick. No joke.

So back to this flier… it basically just gave a quick statistic regarding the incidence of cancer in men and women. It said that 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with at least some form of cancer in their lifetime and that 1 in 2 men will be the same way.

So essentially…I have a 50% chance of being diagnosed with cancer. Keep in mind that my grandma on my dad’s side died of cancer, my dad is a cancer survior, and my mom died of cancer. God knows how many other family members died of cancer, but quite a few on my dad’s side have/have had it. Okay, so unless a miracle occurs, chances are good that I’m not gonna be the lucky one who isn’t diagnosed.

But the thing of it is… I’m not sure I want to be diagnosed. Let me clarify…obviously NOBODY wants to be diagnosed with cancer. But even if I already have cancer…I don’t know if I want to ever find out. Gary passed away at a young age…but he didn’t go through the hell that many cancer patients go through. I watched my mom die of cancer and it was an agonizing year for us. Once she went on the chemo, her health fell apart so quickly. Gary on the other hand…he lived a decent life until the cancer finally took it.  I’m sure it was hard as hell on his family…but for a cancer patient, I bet he had one of the most pain-free deaths out of all the cancer patients out there who fought a long and hard battle only to lose. Sure, it would have been nice for him to have lived a full-life, but we can’t play God…not everybody is destined to die of old age.

I’ll just come right out and say it… I’m terrified of hospitals and needles and the only way most people can ever get me in there or get a needle in me is for me to be unconscious when it happens. I truly would choose death over being put in the hospital and stuck full of needles, IVs, and everything else.

I guess what I’m saying is… chances are I’m going to end up with some form of cancer. Chances are it will be at a young age. And chances are I am going to die from it. Unless it’s found during a mandatory physical or something along those lines, I will never go to a doctor to be tested for it and I’m not quite sure I will accept any kind of treatment for it if it’s going to involve a lot of chemo or something painful and agonizing. To be completely honest, if I’m going to die of cancer, I would like it to happen just like it did with Gary…even if it means I’m going to die 20 or 30 years before I “should” be dying.

For those of you reading this calling me a self-absorbed, greedy bastard who thinks of nobody but myself…you’re wrong! It’s greedy to expect to live forever. I’m just thinking realistically.