I’m sick to my stomach. My healthy labrador died suddenly on Saturday. He was fine Friday afternoon, got nauseous Friday night, and I was waiting for the vet to open at 8am Saturday to get him in there. He got unresponsive and barely breathing around 6am and I rushed him to the vet ER, and he didn’t make it. The vet said he had a “torsioned spleen” or something like that.
I’ve got an absolutely soul crushing amount of guilt that I didn’t get him to the ER on Friday night. My dog trusted me to protect him and take care of him, and I completely betrayed that trust. I’m in such a place of deep sorrow that it’s impossible to explain with words. Every time I start to fall asleep, I’m suddenly wide awake trying to figure out why I decided not to act sooner.
Not sure why I’m sharing this, I guess I just had to get it off my chest.
I'm so sorry for your loss and what you're going through 🫂
It might not be possible right now but please give yourself some grace. You were attentive to his condition and when it worsened you acted immediately. I can't imagine a better kind of human to place trust in, and I can't imagine him not knowing how hard you tried, how much you cared, or that he would ever blame you.
Hey thanks, I appreciate you. What you’re saying is all probably true, but I can’t shake this horrible feeling that I failed him. I like my dog more than I like most people I meet, and he was with me all day every day. I hope this feeling lessens with time.
I'll tell you that it does - or at least, the remembering becomes slightly less painful as time goes on. The lessons really stick, but it becomes easier to remember all the good stuff, and those are the things you should hold on to the hardest during those difficult times.
And I'm glad you shared with us, if for no other reason than helping you process your grief. I'm sure we're all sending our love, hoping to lighten the load in some small way.
Hey just came across this and I hope you’re doing alright today. Losing a pet is never easy. It’s easy to second-guess yourself after the fact but there’s no way you could’ve known what was happening. What you saw was pretty standard “my dog got into something they probably shouldn’t have“ territory and any vet worth their salt would’ve probably told you “just wait to bring them in tomorrow unless you see lots of blood.”
I did talk to my dog’s usual vet and he basically said the same thing - there probably wasn’t anything I could have done. There wasn’t any blood and he wasn’t crying at all, he just laid there. I’m doing better than I was when I posted, but its still painful. He was only 6 and acted like a big puppy up til the last 12 hours he was with us.
Choked up just thinking of how you are feeling. Losing a pet, and so suddenly is the worst.
Please be gentle with yourself. Hesitant to suggest much, as you sound so vulnerable just now.
What kind of things do you think might be distracting or soothing when you notice your mind has drifted into the self-blame stuff? Are there any friends who live nearby that you could visit?
Think I might be in early stages of a hypomanic episode, but not sure.
Need to chill somehow. Running with assumptions, though. Might just be a bad few days; just haven't had them this suddenly in a while.
Might end up making this comment and by the time next week's thread is started in a day or two, I'll be feeling fine(-ish) again. Wouldn't be the first time.
Could really do with something interesting like the Olympics right now, but that's still almost a month away.
I don't even enjoy most sports, but it's a nice distraction. If I'm being honest, all I'm really interested in is the women's football portion, although there's at least more Euro 2025 qualifiers and a handful of friendlies in a couple of weeks to hold me over until then.
I saw someone get dog piled on the other day for saying it was misogynist to call someone a pussy then when I tried to show support I got shit on too. That was unfortunate and an unusually high level showing of right wing folks on a thread.
Teamwork counts for a lot especially with Beehaw; but this endeavour was really all GW. Their hardworking and efforts handling this has been tremendous. Way more work than should have been required.
That damn bastard making me look bad. /s gonna b& them.
Going pretty well so far! A friend reached out this morning to see if I would be interested in receiving some plants from her (yes) so in the near future I'll get to go hang out with an amazing person, and will get to grow some new plants with which I have no experience.
And I'm giving an introductory talk about biochar at my town library this evening, which will hopefully be a bunch of fun for everyone. I couldn't come up with as many biochar puns as I did for my compost presentation, so I'm leaning on memeing for levity:https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/acf7290e-980e-4ead-95ca-7cd3797ebee4.webp
I have no idea how attendees will react to these, as most of them are retirees.
Our solo duckling is still solo, which is concerning at this stage. That said, there has been a lot of co-nesting and additional shuffling of eggs between hens which likely impacted incubation. I'll keep my eyes peeled for more chances to shove pictures of ducklings in y'all's feeds
If you haven't encountered it yet: bad eggs really do explode. I haven't seen them explode any distance nor into tiny pieces, but we did have a nest with an egg that was turning color and I didn't think to remove it. A day or so later, I heard a muffled POP and looked to see the mama with a look of stiff panic as she sat incredibly erect on her nest. I shooed her off and found a horrible , stinky mess. Mama got a bath, we put the whole next in tripled garbage bags, and wrote off the clutch as potentially infected. Mama was not happy.
Yup, been there. I've been getting bitten this week while removing the suspect eggs. Sometimes the girls will get off of them for enough time for me to inspect but sometimes they come back quickly and angry
I've been sick. My guess is covid, but a home test was negative ... but it was also 2 years expired, so I don't know if that was a valid test or if I did it right. Anyway, I've been exceptionally stupid and reactive between bouts of coughing and napping. Feeling a wee bit better now, though.
Not the best. Have some kind of recurring fungal infection that I've just been slapping with OTC cream, but it keeps popping back up in random places. Had two yeast infections this month. I don't think I'm particularly unhygienic so I don't know what's going on, but I've racked up enough medical bills and my savings are gone due to moving expenses.
Speaking of moving... no progress. My friend who owns a van forgot they were going to help me on my day off 🙁 I think I'm getting depressed being stuck in my current place surrounded by boxes.
I'm also lonely. I lied and told my long-distance friends that I'm taking a screen break to focus on moving, but actually I needed time away from them. I have moral scrupulosity OCD and they know it but keep doing things that aggravate it, like reading these really intense moral stances into things I say and self-flagellating for not conforming to what they think my opinion is. One of them told me outright that he bases his morals on me. (I'm a mean, paranoid dropout with no background in ethics, social sciences, or philosophy, so this is a baffling choice.)
I know my mental health is my responsibility and it's not their fault I have OCD, but my mind tortures me when I'm around them. I feel like a cult leader. Like I'm going to break them, or lead them into trouble. On top of that, they can't stand the rituals I developed before talking to them. So in this case I think taking responsibility for my mental health actually means fucking off. I'm focusing on befriending my coworkers and keeping it extremely casual. I never want anyone to be that invested in me again.
I hope next week I can post about how I'm happy in a new place and my coworkers liked getting sushi.
Congrats on taking control of your mental health and distancing yourself from people who make that hard to do. I hope you're able to have some fun times with your coworkers!
Thank you ❤️ it makes me sad though, because I know my friends act the way they do because they have trouble controlling their anxiety. Now that I've thought about it, I don't hold it against them because that's exactly what my disorder is.
It just sucks because I don't want to let this shit control my relationships, and I doubt they do either. They're all really funny, creative, passionate people, and they deserve safe friendships as much as I do.
Yay! I love and want beehaw to continue, and those funds are an important part of that! I appreciate the time and effort y'all have put into keeping the dream alive ❤
Welp, did helped run my last conference with my current employer. This is my 18th annual event and like...Idk, 25th altogether? It was successful enough with no major issues. Nothing that attendees saw, anyway.
I'll probably never go back to Miami. At least not in the summer. Summers in the Midwest are already hot and humid and disgusting, yet somehow Florida in the summer is like 10x worse. Though I will say the food in Miami is to die for.
Either way, that was my very last one, hopefully forever. Though I said the same in 2019 and then ended up going back to the that company in 2021, so...never say never?
Relatedly, finally gave my new employer a start date. Hopefully they agree, as it's a couple month out still. But I need the time. I also gave my apartment property manager my move out notice.
Now to find a new apartment in the new city. Hopefully I can get that squared away this week.
Oh you know, existential dread, filing out visa and residency paperwork for different countries, applying for jobs in said places to make such a leap easier; the usual start to a dystopian week.
I am waiting to take my custom e-mail server from one company to another. My robust filtering based on aliases broke a while ago due to the provider, and I just... never dealt with it.
So some 19,000 e-mails or so later, I'm over 90% completely sorted/deleted everything to be ready for a transfer out.
The past two weeks were amazing, and I'm an Orff Level 3 certified teacher now! Also last night I finally made it back to that little karaoke spot I found about a month ago. The owner is such a cool lady and there's this wonderful feeling of community I've felt totally welcomed into. It will be another month before I'm able to go back since I'm about to do some traveling, but I definitely anticipate it being a regular haunt for me.
Our system only allows 2 options. Any '3rd' option is a vote against your best interests. So is not voting. That said, yeah, I'd vote for a replacement.
I just heard Steve Bannon doing that fascist thing where -- when confronted with the fact that he said on his radio show that he wanted to see particular heads on spikes -- Bannon acted like that was just rhetoric. He didn't really mean it. Except he knows his followers DO mean it. And he's still calling for dismantling the government and remaking it into a permanent dictatorship.
So if that is what it means to vote Republican this election, then I'm gonna be a yellow dog democrat about it.
That can work with ranked choice voting, but we don't have that. Technically, we CAN vote for anyone over 35 and born in the U.S., but practically, this just splits the vote. This worked for Republicans when George Wallace split the Democratic vote such that Nixon won with 43%, and it worked for democrats when Ross Perot split the Republican vote such that Clinton also won with 43%.
Having just 2 main candidates is like having 1 candidate because there are some things they both decide to do the same. More candidates are necessary for a democracy. Some countries also implement 2 step elections that take 2 or more most voted candidates to another election. Though it's much more ExPeNsIvE to run such an election so the US won't do it.
I don't think Biden did that bad. Sure he slipped up once or twice but he answered every question with a relevant policy that he implemented as well as bringing up what they were trying to do next. He was able to speak clearly and reasonably.
Trumps response to questions was to dodge and lie. I don't know how anyone can walk away thinking both sides were equal or worse that trump "won".
When I see posts saying Biden was a bumbling idiot in the debate I wonder if the person even watched the debate.
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