What if? (10)

What if I knew what to write about? I would probably have a really interesting, thought-provoking blog, but I just don't know what to "What if?". I know the topic is open to anything and everything, but finding something to talk about is difficult. I mean I could say "What if I were president?", but I think that is too generic and boring. I could say "What if I won a million dollars?" or "what if I won the lottery?", but come on people, where is the creativity? If you've written blogs like these, I'm sure they are interesting, but I just don't want to do the same thing. =P. "What if I didn't have to work?" Well the answer to that would be that I would be lazy and broke. That's all I could come up with. I mean I would have more time for school work, but that's not exactly three hundred words. This is a difficult process. "What if I could go straight into the job I want without school?" Well, I doubt anyone would want to be treated by me. Without schooling, I wouldn't know anything about how to work on a human body or treat a human body, so I wouldn't want me working on me! All this time and I still don't know what to write about. I need something that shows creativity. Something that inspires thoughtful remarks. "What if the sky fell?" (inspired by Chicken Little) Well what is exactly in the sky to fall? It seems like just a big giant blue nothingness. I couldn't come up with enough to support a logical thought process. "What if there were no cops?" Would there still be crime? I kind of like that one. I may write something on that! Throwing ideas around has lead me to a decent idea! Maybe thinking inspires creativity?

What if? (9)

In the picture above, the red part hanging from his lip is his skin. He got in a fight with something and that is what happened. Also the blotch is from the fight to. Crazy dog.


What if Bruno wasn't so mischievous? My dog gets into everything. He is so curious about things that he shouldn't even try to mess with, like wasps. He chases them everywhere. Then he'll come in drooling because one stung him in the mouth. Then we have to dope him up on Benadryl. Then the swelling goes down, and he is back to normal. One Sunday I came home to a dog who was gushing blood from his nose and mouth. We jump in the car to get him to the emergency vet. On the way there, my mom is frantically driving while I sat in the back trying to control my dog. Blood is pouring everywhere. It is all over me, my back seat, my window. It just wasn't clotting. I didn't know what was going on. We get to the Emergency vet off Summer Ave, and they take him right back. We sit there for 2 and a half hours, the whole time I am covered in blood thinking that my dog is about to die. They call us back. As we walk back, the doctor says, "would you like to see what came out of your dog?" I'm thinking OH MY GOODNESS! So he takes us back to this kennel that has a huge pile of intestines and bile laying in it. Now I'm thinking, "Where the Heck is my Dog!?" In the kennel next to that, there is Bruno, standing there, SO excited to see us. So now the question is, WHAT is that? Well Bruno ate the insides of something on our land. In the process he cut open his nose and he got a big gash in his jowl from the rib cage. All the blood was partially his blood and partially the blood of the animal that he was trying to regurgitate. SOOOO gross! There are many other stories that I could tell, but the moral of the story is we frequently visit the Vet. I have to take a visit to see him Monday because Bruno got in a fight with something and the picture above shows what happened. He has cuts all in his mouth and the ones on the outside of his mouth. If Bruno was less mischievous, I wouldn't be so broke, but that wouldn't be Bruno. We love him just the way he is. He's now in the "Terrible Two" phase. Crap! =P

What if? (8)

What if everyone was colorblind? Well not necessarily color blind, but what if we didn't see colors, or never knew things were different colors? Many things are influenced by color. Things as simple as a stop light depend on color. Everyone knows the colors red for stop, yellow caution or yield, and green for go. What if we couldn't see the difference? Clearly there would have to be another system set into place. Road signs are also in colors. Red always signals stop; the red stop sign or a red flag in racing means to stop. Yellow always means caution; watch out for workers ahead or yield to oncomers. Green is always go. The blue and white lights of a cop car always signal us to stop, and the red and white lights of the ambulance always tell us to get out of the way. So clearly without colors our roads would be screwed up. At my work we have two agents and we use red and blue to tell the difference between the two. We have a red marker for Mark and a blue marker for Paul. People use yellow highlighters to mark if something is important, and teachers generally grade in red ink so it stands out on the page. Colors are a big part of our world, even with things that aren't really threatening like road conditions are. Things like buying a car, color is a big part of someones decision. When people try to match clothes, color is important. People match nail polish or accessories to the color of their outfit. These things are small, but it is a part of color. We even use color to characterize someones mood; blue being sad, red being mad, and yellow is generally used for happy. What would the world be like without color? It's a good question, but I can only imagine it being like the movie Pleasantville. They had no color. It didn't matter, but once they discovered it, color became everything. Color is a vital part of our everyday life. Without it, who knows how we would do things.

Outside Event #3: Molly Crosby

On April 1st, I attended a reading at Burkes Bookstore. Molly Crosby read from her book Asleep which is about a pandemic from the 1920s and 30s called encephalitis lethargica, the disease that makes you sleepy. She read the prologue from the book which was a story about her grandmother who suffered from this disease. Molly's grandmother spent about 180 of her life asleep. She was sixteen at the time. After she awoke, she stayed pretty weak for a few years, but she later married and had four children. She went on to live a fairly normal life, but other victims did not.

The disease varied in all cases. Some were asleep for a few days, some for a few months or years, and some were never to awake again. Some of the cases even suffered insanity. Mrs. Crosby described some of the cases while everyone sat kind of in a trance listening to her. Everyone seemed enlightened by what she was talking about. It was an intriguing story to hear of her grandmother who suffered from the disease. She talked a lot about her research and then she asked if anyone had questions.

Many people had questions. One question was "How hard was your research?" and she said it was difficult because at the time not many people had written about the story and there weren't many journals that she could get her hands on. She had to get a research grant because of HIPAA laws to be able to look at the Medical Journals. Once she got her research grant she began reading all these files on patients who suffered from this disease. Cases that started from what appeared to be Parkinson's that turned into people sleeping for days upon days. Crosby was inspired by Oliver Sacks and some of his research with the disease and she even spoke about his book The Awakenings. Since his book, there has been a movie made about his encounters with this disease. Molly Crosby's book reading was really interesting to see how science writing and research is difficult. It was really nice to see how everyone interacted with her and questioned what she encountered during her research and her to able to have an answer for every question thrown at her. The questions varied from something little to something more complex, and she could answer it. It was my favorite book reading thus far.