When Life Gives You Lemons (or $600 in extra meal plan money)

This past year was my third year of college and after eating virtually all my meals in the dining hall my freshman year and most dinners there my sophomore year, I had had enough. I do live on campus, though, and there is a Subway in one of the classroom buildings in which I have several classes, so I decided to sign up for a meal plan that was exclusively dining dollars. These credits spend like cash at any of the restaurants and food courts on campus. I found out that I could get a 400 dining dollar plan for $350. I called my parents and they agreed it was a good idea, so I signed up.

I bought Subway for lunch a couple times a week and occasionally bought food from other venders. Toward the end of the school year, I started noticing that the receipts I received when I used my dining dollars showed I had quite a bit of money on my card, even more than the $400 I had originally signed up for. Assuming it was an error, I continued to ignore the ridiculously high numbers until about two weeks before school ended when I finally made my way into the ID card services office to find out what the deal was.

To my surprise, it turned out that the $600+ credit still on my account was not an error. I had thought I was signing up for $400 for the year, but actually the plan was $400 per semester. Could I cancel the credit from the spring semester and just use up the leftover from the fall? Nope! I left the office pretty upset about the money I was wasting because of my mistake.

Soon after, I had an idea. While most of the venders who accept dining dollars are on campus, Papa John's pizza also accepts the credit. So, the Tuesday of finals week, just days before my huge credit was to expire, I went onto the Papa John's website and ordered 33 extra large pizzas. I was called shortly after by an overwhelmed pizza maker to inform me that my order would take longer than the promised fifteen minutes. I assured him that was just fine.

I showed up at the restaurant about an hour later to pick up my pizzas. When they were all loaded up, my trunk was pretty full...

…and so was my back seat!

About fifteen minutes later, while following my phone GPS, I found myself in an area of town I had not frequented. I pulled into the parking lot of the soup kitchen and unlocked the car doors and trunk to allow the pizzas to be carried into the kitchen. Several hundred hungry people, many of them homeless, ate Papa John's the next day for lunch. Extra dining dollars well spent!

Declined!

Image via us.123rf.com

Construction workers were busy on the roof of our neighbor's house across the street and our dog Scout was going nuts. He barked and ran around the house and then barked some more. We tried to calm him but he remained quite upset.

My mom and I soon realized what the problem was. You see, Scout operates a permit service for those wishing to visit our neighborhood. Applicants must submit a request and pay their fee, then wait for Scout to make a decision. Those construction workers had failed to apply for a permit!

Oh, and does the Scouty Permit Service actually approve anyone? Nope! Scout spends his days in the office with a big DECLINED stamp, pounding it on application after application. We humans think we are in charge, but the dogs know who really runs the neighborhood!

Mali is… Everywhere?

As you may know if you have read some of my previous posts, my family's beloved dog, Mali, died just over a month ago on March 26. She was a beagle/springer mix that we were given in a random coincidence when she was 10 months old in 2000.

Because my dog was a mix and not a purebred, I really have never seen a dog that looks just like her. But that all changed today, thanks to Google! Just for fun, I searched "beagle springer". Wow, Mali may have passed away, but I now know that Mali has a whole army of mini-me's running around. Check it out!

Here are some shots of Mali for reference:

And here are the Mali mini-me's:

Cinco
photo via www.dogsindepth.com

Bailey
photo via www.flickr.com

Ricky
photo via www.flickr.com

Pepper
photo via www.adoptpetrescue.org

Buster

Buster and a sibling
this photo and previous via www.pethavendogs.blogspot.com

Michael
photo via www.recycler.com

So fun! Which "mini-me" do you think looks most like Mali?

It's Really Not That Radical

Nearly a third of individuals in this demographic have tried it. In fact, people in this demographic are two to six times more likely to try it than the general population. It is estimated that more than 1500 individuals from this demographic die from it every year, making it the leading cause of death for this demographic.

The fact is that nearly half of gay teens will attempt suicide and it's not that hard to figure out why. 90% of them have been harassed at school and they are bullied 2-3 times more than straight teens. Gay teens may come out to their parents only to be kicked out of the house, abused, or made to go through processes designed to rid them of their gayness. Being excommunicated from their religious group and/or told they are destined for hell doesn't help, either.

There is a teaching in Judaism that to save just one life is as if you have saved the entire world. Stopping these suicides will not take any radical changes in your beliefs. You don't need to support a hook-up culture; you can maintain your current value of saving intimacy for commitment, but just extend that value to include people of all orientations. You can continue to support strong, two-parent families, but just allow your picture of a perfect family to be headed by any two individuals who are in love and have committed their lives to each other, whether they are a man and a woman, two women, or two men.

If people were choosing to be gay to cause an uprising, I can see how people would be upset and unsupportive. But they're not. Honestly, why would anyone choose to be gay? Because they think being bullied and denied rights sounds like fun? More and more scientific research is showing a correlation between biology and sexual orientation. God made everyone a little bit differently, and some people happen to be gay. Let's move our culture toward being more accepting off these people who are so much more similar to us than different.



Statistics from speakforthem.org and nyaamerica.org

Cheater

I'm sitting in the back of the classroom, staring at one problem minute after minute. Nothing. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I panic. It's the last test of the semester before the final and I need to do well. I look up. Most of the forty or so heads in the room are bent over a test in concentration. The professor is at the front of the room, sitting. She looks up occasionally but is mostly occupied with catching up on grading.

I notice a guy a few seats ahead of me on the right. He's hunched over like everyone else and from the professor's viewpoint so far away, he looks like every other test taker in the room. But from where I sit, I can see that he's not. Yes, he is focused on something on his desk, but it's not always the test. He looks at the test for a moment, then spends some time scrolling through his smart phone before going back to working on his test. Maybe he's just using it as a calculator, which would be alright except that calculators of any kind are prohibited during tests in this class. Is he Googling formulas? The professor handed out a formula sheet, and information not on the sheet is expected to be in our heads. Maybe he's logged on to a tutoring website and is working through the problems with an unsuspecting teacher. Maybe he's texting someone for answers. I don't know what he's doing. All I know is the only thing I see on anyone else's desk is a test, but this guy has his smart phone.

image via www.varsitycollegeprep.com

I look back at my test. I know how to do most of the problems but I'm stuck on just a few. My smart phone is in my backpack, powered off. I could pull it out and she wouldn't even notice, I start to think. I could do a quick Google search and put it back. It wouldn't even be that big of a deal. Yes it would, my conscience counters. You're not a cheater. But it's not fair, I whine to myself. Because I didn't study quite enough, I can't ace this test. That guy may have studied even less than I did, but he's probably going to do pretty well.

I replay in my head what I've been told for years: It'll catch up to him eventually. Oh ya, when exactly? When he keeps a scholarship and I don't because my GPA falls just below the cut-off? When he gets hired and I don't because he had an A-average and I had a B?

I turn back to my test and finish what I know how to do, which is most of the questions. I then look back over the few I am stuck on. If only I could just look this up real quick…nope, not going to happen. I sigh and get up to turn in my not-quite-completed test. Having a conscience sure is inconvenient sometimes.

Eight Thousand Every Day

Nearly one month ago, Mali, our family's 13-year-old beagle/springer mix, was euthanized. Mali was part of our family for nearly twelve and a half years and had been diagnosed with Cushing's disease a little over a year before. At the time of her death, she was quite senile and for about a month had spent most of her days lying on the tile in the kitchen. When I picked her up and put her on the table in the exam room at the vet's office, my mom started scratching her cheeks and talking to her and before she was even injected, Mali was quite relaxed and potentially even asleep. She didn't move from her relaxed, sleepy position at all except to twitch her leg slightly at the moment the needle entered her. She didn't squirm or fight; she was exhausted after a long, happy life, and was ready to move on.

Somewhere in the U.S. that day, a similar scene was unfolding, but actually that scene was much more gruesome. A young dog, maybe one year old, maybe five, was also in an exam room. He was not elderly and sick like Mali, but rather happy, lively, and energetic. He excitedly sniffed around the room and wagged his tail as he waited for the vet. When he was placed on the exam table, he definitely did not fall asleep. In fact, he didn't even lie still. He fought the sturdy hands charged with holding him in place as the vet sighed and injected the dog's vein. Within seconds, the struggle was over and he was dead.

I cried and cried as my little Mali was euthanized, but looking back, it was also beautiful. She gave us so much; she deserved to leave this earth with at least some of her dignity still intact and before she suffered the painful effects of old age and Cushing's disease that were starting to overtake her and would surely become much worse in the days and weeks ahead.

In contrast, the young dog's death was nothing short of horrific. In fact, 3 to 4 million dogs and cats in shelters are euthanized every year. That means that the day Mali died, a minimum of 8,219 dogs and cats were needlessly put to sleep. Yes, you read that right: more than eight thousand potentially adoptable dogs and cats are euthanized in the United States every day. Sure, some are sick or old, but the majority are cute, loving, adoptable dogs that shelters just don't have the resources to continue to support.

photo from www.occupyforanimals.org

Despite this horrifying statistic, breeders continue to facilitate the making of new dogs and people continue to purchase dogs from breeders; in fact, over a quarter of dogs and cats owned in the United States were bought from breeders. Many animals are acquired from the litter of a friend or family member's dog. A small percentage of dogs and cats are bought from pet shops, which are known to sell dogs that come from puppy mills. It's a harsh reality, but the fact is that for every animal that is obtained through any of the above methods, another shelter dog who could have been adopted is not.

Euthanasia of sick, hurting animals is a gift; euthanizing healthy animals is disgusting. It would be so simple to drastically reduce the euthanasia rate of healthy dogs and cats in the United States. All we need is more people to be on board. Spay and neuter your animals; the cost of spay or neuter surgery is less than the cost of caring for a litter of puppies or kittens for just one year and many shelters offer low-cost or free spay/neuter surgeries to qualifying pet owners. Regardless of what kind of dog you are looking for, check shelters first. If you are set on a specific breed or just a purebred in general, there are many breed-specific rescue organizations and a whopping 25% of dogs in local shelters are purebred. With the acquiring of any dog, you run the risk of it being wild or aggressive, and shelter dogs are no different. Just like breeder dogs, shelter dogs can be mean, but the majority are loving, trainable, and friendly.

I hope that I can honor the memory of Mali by raising awareness about this important issue. Won't you join me?

Statistics in this post are from www.aspca.org.

My Dog Came Home in An Urn

I asked my mom to go pick up Mali as soon as possible after she informed me that the vet's office had called to say that Mali was ready. I saw on video chat what my mom brought home. It's a pretty little container, but there is no way my little girl is in there. No, she's not there. She left her body the moment her heart stopped beating on March 26. I have to believe that.

What lay lifeless, probably in some sort of box, for four nights was her body.

What was transferred to an animal crematorium was her body.

What was burned to ashes on March 30 was her body.

And what is in the urn is not Mali. It's only the remains of her body.

It hurt me to think of my dog lying alone, not eating, moving, or even breathing. I hated to think of her being set on fire in the crematorium. But really, it wasn't her. She left as peacefully as one can exit the world. The horror that her body went through had no effect on her whatsoever.

My mom explained it like this: You're driving in your car, day after day, year after year. The parts start wearing out, but you keep driving the car anyway. As the years pass, more and more parts break or stop working properly. The car is still running, but barely. Eventually, trying to get the car to work is so difficult that the best option is to get out of the car, so you step out of the car. Whatever happens to the car after that point does not affect you, because you are no longer in the car.

It's hard to think of Mali not in her body because before her death, every time I saw her, she and her body were one. But as she was injected and drifted to sleep, the Mali that we knew and loved stepped out of the car. She had been spending so much energy lately just to turn on the motor and the engine didn't run smoothly like it used to. It was hard for us to see the car that used to go from zero to 60 in three seconds just putter around at 25. We knew the car was no longer useful for Mali, and she knew it, too. When the time came, she willingly got out of the car, off to explore new things. The car was destroyed, but Mali was long gone by then.

What sits on the shelf is not my dog. When I return home from college for the summer, we plan to spread the ashes at a favorite hiking spot. Initially, I was bothered that Mali would sit on a shelf for a month waiting for my return. But then I realized that what we will be spreading is simply the remains of the car. The driver is somewhere else, probably having a wonderful time chasing lizards and napping.

Mali enjoying the sunshine, fall 2009