Kody Therapy

Kody is 13 now and although his brain, blood, organs & spirit are all still pretty young; his body is not.

almost 2 months ago, Kody collapsed on his daily walk.  I watched his back feet start to curl under, his legs buckle and his back end go down.  I am not good in bad situations so i just stared at him, not knowing what to do.  I walked in front of him thinking that'll make him get up; nothing.  i walked back to him to love him then walked away again.  he tried...bless his beautiful, obnoxious, funny, charming, perfect heart, he tried; nothing. 

Then i started to cry.  How am i going to get a hundred pound dog back to my house?  i started to knock on the neighbors doors and either no one was home or they looked out the window and thought it best not to answer the door to the crazy crying pink-haired woman in pajamas.  (hahah...i just got a serious image of that)  My favorite neighbor was out of town and he would have stopped part of his world to help me because he is so great.  He has two hunting spaniels - one is on his way out and the other is a year old so we have shared many, many stories about our dogs together.

finally, the other crazy lady in the neighborhood came out and said she would wait with him while i ran to get my car.  i think she scared Kody becuase he struggled and struggled and struggled til he was able to rise.  We made it home but the next day i made Kody's first acupuncture appointment.

Since then, he's had 4.  Last week i took kody to the vet for a leaky man unit and got on the subject of Kody's acupuncture and she was surprised the acu did not take xrays.  So.  I ordered xrays on the spot.  When Dr. True looked at them she said "his hips are remarkable!  they look like hips of a 6 year old!" and his spine and neck weren't much worse.  Goddamn dog makes everything hard.  even his leaky peepee showed no signs of an easy-curable urinary tract infection!  

But now i'm kinda pissed.  He's had 3 acu treatments and she's been treating the wrong area!  at a pretty penny too..i don't mind spending the money as long as it's money well spent.

yesterday he had his 4th acu appt and the dr. that's been seeing him is gone.  Dr. Beebe is the one who's going to be seeing kody and i half undermybreath mention that i'm upset we've been treating the wrong area and, of course, she defended the dr. (very nicely, of course) I did tell her, kody did do really well after the first treatment but then...i noticed no difference after the next two.

After 10 minutes of chatting, she made Kody get up so she could watch him walk and within 20 seconds she rattled off a myriad of issues she saw in him and verified those issues when she looked at the xrays.  Then, no longer under my breath, because now i AM pissed, i said "you look at him for SECONDS, identify all his problems and i've been coming here for over a month with the last lady and it looks like she had no idea what she was doing... i am pissed!"

so we picked out the treatment Kody should be on (read: time for a 2nd job) and she finished our visit out with acupuncture to deal directly with his painful spine & neck & elbows & floating knee & leaky peepee & surprise (everytime) bowels & didn't charge me a dime.

Kody starts his treatment Friday and she squeezed him in becuase she won't be able to see him the following christmas week so i'm going to bring her lunch from the co-op (she's a hippy right?  eastern medicine?  yeah...i think i'm right) and my credit card....I'm a gonna need it....


(good sign that the model on the research i was doing is Kody's twin!)

work

I was having a lot of problems at work that started August 2nd. Sparing myself from reliving that, I’ll just say it was horrible. I felt crazy and completely unsupported by management. I would have thought it was all my fault had I not had the support of the infrastructure unit and the manager that fought like hell to get me over in their group.

Very validating.

On the day I like to refer to as Black Friday, I emailed said Infrastructure manager and asked him if I should file a hostile work environment. Now, this is the guy that supported me for MONTHS during this dreadful time. His response was “do you really want to be known as the one who files a hostile work environment? Do you want to be known as Angry Tanya or Frustrated Tanya or no one wants to work with you because you might get upset?!” I just stared at the instant message dumbfounded. Really? REALLY?? I’ve worked for the state for 20 years! Do you know how many hostile work environments I’ve filed?? ZERO! That’s how many. I left the building to take in some fresh air and my walk was in a cloud. I felt fuzzy. I had 3 months of this shit and now it’s seeping in to the ‘good guys’.

When I got back, the CIO called me in to his office and his first statement was “I really don’t have time for all this drama.” Dumbfounded. Again. I wondered if I was Jack the Ripper and just didn’t see it? After about 10 minutes of talking he told me ‘effective immediately I’m putting you under Mary Smith* in Project Management’. And that’s when I just put my head down and cried. Project Management? You might as well just make me a secretary! I was pissed that I was the one being removed from a job that I loved and stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be because management would not address the real asshole. And she was never held accountable for her actions. I was the one being punished. I emailed the CIO half hour later and told him I was going home because I just could NOT stop crying.

One month later, I am dumbfounded yet again. I adore my new boss. She is smart, articulate, calm, appreciative and she is doing her best to make sure I’m happy in this job. I told her when I was assigned to her that I was sorry. Sorry that she had no choice in taking the ‘problem child’ on to her team and that I would really try to make sure she didn’t regret that. She asked me to send her a list of my strengths and weaknesses. I decided I was not going to be phony and tell her exactly what my strengths and weaknesses were:

Strengths:

Resourceful

Hard working

Able to work with all types of personalities (well, not all)

Have a fair amount of common sense

Intuitive & Insightful

Able to work & maintain multiple projects

Always open to any assignment; I never say ‘no’ (in this case, eventually)

Weaknesses:

Have too high expectations of those around me and of myself

Don’t like working in a cube

Impatient & Impulsive

Long story, medium she thanked me for that and said she would try to accommodate me. And she has. I am now the trainer for my department which will involve traveling and meeting new people constantly. And since I am brilliant with superficial relationships, I will shine.

She gave me an assignment that involved creating a newsletter announcing our new password policy. I worked on it last weekend and submitted it yesterday. The CIO left a copy of it on my desk with a note that said “Best thing I’ve seen in a long time”. That’s the same CIO that told me he didn’t have time for this drama. The same CIO that put me in a group I thought I would hate. But that CIO knew more than I did. He knew I would fit in to this team and he knew I would love my new boss. He knew so much that he told me if, after 3 months, I’m still unhappy he will GIVE me a hundred bucks.

I am high right now. I am appreciated, supported and encouraged. I like my job. I don’t feel compelled to call in sick and I would never do anything behind Mary’s back, like sneaking out early : ). She lets me be me and she makes no attempt to ‘reel me in’. To have a great manager like that is exactly what I needed.


Jamie. You can keep your hundred bucks.