Decided to be lazy and copy the first post I made on this blog since it pretty much explains why I have decided to join the world of blogging, then I added a bit more at the end. If you’d like, you can email me here.
A handful of my very good buds have humored me and joined me in creating a private blog where we can keep up with each other’s lives. Nothing like friends who humor you, eh? I’ve enjoyed the individual blogs they’ve begun so figured I’d do the same myself. Really have no clue where I’ll go with this blog, but being the Pisces gal that I am one thing is for sure–it will be ALL OVER THE PLACE!
I tend to write the way I speak, so don’t expect Little Miss Grammar, okay? I’m definitely opinionated but
really do enjoy looking at things from various perspectives. Life is far too short to not step into the shoes of others and try a bit of empathy…if needed. Of course after trying to plop my feet into some of those shoes I’d just as soon slap some of the folks upside their collective heads. Yes, I’m open-minded, but also dreadfully frustrated with ignorant people such as racists, homophobes, sexists, elitists, and so on. I truly don’t get them but would like to assume there IS a good person hiding in there somewhere. Yes, somewhere. Deep inside. Well, REALLY deep down inside for some.
And as for the header picture on my former theme, yup…that was me circa 1963. Quite the hot little one-year-old, wouldn’t you say? Wait. On second thought, I don’t think I’d want you thinking any one-year-old is hot. 
How about adorable? Yeah, that’s better. Was taken when we lived in Quito, Ecuador, and being the tow-headed kiddo that I was (now I have to pay $$$ for that! ;)) the look was enough to land those pictures in the window of a local photographer’s studio. Of course that was back in the day when you didn’t have to think twice about posting your child’s picture in public. How the times have changed. But that’s a bit of a rant for another day.
As for now I live in Southern California (hence the twist on the online name), but have lived in Washington (state), Hawaii, and parts of South America…wouldn’t change any of it. 
Been around the block a few times, and am finally settling back into my desire to be a teacher. As the Beatles might sing, it HAS been a long and winding road, but hopefully it will lead me to the door of my own classroom. Poochies (click here to check them out), friends, family…muy importante! This past April 11th marked 16 years of being a vegetarian…woo-hoo! Can’t stand the current George W. Bush administration and I don’t envy the next person to step into the role of having to repair our badly mangled reputation with the rest of the world. There’s always hope, though, right? (Okay, little did I know when writing that last sentence back in 2006 that there really WAS hope on the horizon…in the form of Barack Obama! Thank goodness we can now get our country back on the right track.) And to bring it back to music (which IS a passion of mine), with all the things that can (and do) go wrong (especially GWB! Ugh!), I just pop on a little Bob Marley and sit back and realize that indeed “Every little thing, gonna be alright.” 🙂
Thanks for stopping by. Would enjoy hearing from you, so hope you’ll take the time to either send me an email, or share your thoughts in the comment section of individual posts.
Seems the Bob Marley “Three Little Birds” video was pulled, so here’s a great rendition by Tracy Chapman.
SoCal Muchacha 
3 comments
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March 29, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Paulina Hunter
Muchacha, thank you for putting me on your blogroll. I’ve sent a ping to technorati with your url. (I sure wish I knew what it meant)
Thank you!
April 13, 2007 at 7:00 am
PauLa Parvathi Doty Katz
Feel like I just ran into another soul sister from my pod girl. I don’t understanding blogging… my kid does and set me up with one when he was home, but I can’t even find out how to get back on it. LOL I found your “rants” when trying to research what the heck happened to my dog, Angel Lady … had replaced all of the cat and dog food for the third time after infamous “recalls” on what I just bought… and I gave up and started cooking up the organic chicken I’d filled my freezer with a month earlier, not having a clue as to why I had the compulsion to do so. Thank you G’d for that one. The chicken was running low, and the organic no filler pet food I had ordered (after seeing a blerb of ad on the recall page that came up) had not arrived on Thurs nor Friday… So I printed out the Alpo Prime Cuts recal info and carefully compaired my can codes and finally decided to give my dog the ones I’d tripple checked to make sure they were NOT on the recalled list. The lamb and rice two cans were okay but the first beef can I opened for her Sat. evening before Easter, she ate half then looked at me and whined and refused the rest. I jerked her bowl off the floor and put the rest in a Glad Tupper type thing, put that in a double zip lock and put it in the fridge for testing somehow if needed.
Angel Lady asked to go out twice that night and finally braved the cold night to run out and pee after much urging from me… the third time she whined to go out, she dashed out and ran past the garage… “ODD” I thought, “Curioser and Curioser” Disney’s Alice in Wonderland voice whispered in my head… I called Angel Lady and no response… so I headed to the kitchen to call her back in thinking she might be eating in the garage, where the Lassies dried dog food with no artificial anything was in her bowl… Seeing the lights left on in the sun room I stepped that way and found a huge, I mean really huge puddle of blood with chunks of alpo in it filling the space between the file cabinet and the table just inside the wide arch doorway. I nearly screamed… and ran through the mud room to call my dog inside, she wasn’t in the garage but looked at me through te door blocked open onto the side deck. She hesitantly came in and walked along side my wheelchair ramp refusing to come back into the house. Acusing eyes looking at me made me cry. G’d she looked bad… whined when I coaxed her to come back into the house and backed off. Nothing I could do enticed her to come back into the place where she had been given poison to eat. I finally gave up when I tried to get hold of her collar to physically drag her back inside, it was 22 degrees out there, and if she was poisoned I wanted to be able to give her something, anything to help save her. She easily dodged me and dashed back out onto the deck… shaking her head every time I called. I was sobbing by then. I went back inside and got the blood up using a wide spatula and getting it into the dust pan I had scrubbed and rinsed five times so I was pretty sure it wouldn’t contaminate the blood that I then put into another Glad storage container inside a double zip lock freezer bag and stuck it in the fridge for Duncan, my veteranarian. I left messages on his home phone, and the manager of his pet hospital’s home phone as well… Tried once more to cajole Angel Lady inside without success. I went and tried to call the emergency animal hospital in Lynchburg, no answer. So I gave up and went back into the bedroom, lit the candels on my alter and began to pray harder than I had when my son was on the road and I had a feeling he was in danger… After hours of fervent prayer a sense of peace poured over me after I was finally able to stop “Telling G’d what I wanted Him/Her to do please, and turned Angel Lady’s life over saying, “You brought her to me in a wondrous and miraculous way and so I praise you Lord and give her back into your keeping and will praise you even if you take her away… just please don’t let her suffer.” I prayed until the sun came up and I was deciding to call Lloyd and Dott and tell them my dog was sick/poisoned and I was not going to Easter Services with them… Holy Spirit told me to get dressed and come and wait on the Lord with them and to worship at their Church.” Not knowing if L & D would find my dog dead in the front yard or not, I got dressed to go. An hour later they came and told me she was fine, wagging her tail and licking them as usual. She came up to me as I rolled into the garage. Eyes full of love and tongue wet as ever, even her nose was wet and cold. I hugged and kissed her and finally let go hugging her neck and told her I would be home after services. I got shook up again after Henry came up to me to say he had overheard me asking one of the women about the dog food left and later the blood covered floor. “I just wanted to tell you, my dog threw up blood a week ago and PauLa you need to be prepared, she was dead two days later.” I asked what food she was eating and it was Alpo Beef_Prime Cuts. I called Lloyd over and told him I had to go home at once. And he agreed to take me, but said she had looked fine… so I said I needed to pray about it for a minute. Again I was told to Worship at the church in response to my prayer about Angel Lady and concern for her. I stayed and in Sundy School the whole class prayed for her and all the other pets that were affected and for their families… again peace flowed over me.
Angel Lady was waiting for me on the front lawn and came inside with me. but she wouldn’t eat much of the home cooked chicken which had been her favorite earlier in the week. Then she started having tremmors again. I wrapped her in a big thick beach towel and hugged her as I tried to reach Duncan or Terry again. A few hours later she had responded again and eaten some chicken. Duncan called and said they would get her in the morning. Terry picked her up early Monday. I’d been up all night with her having intermit tremmors and whimpering… I’d drifted off to sleep once and had a dream about needing to let other people know the contamination was more than the can numbers listed in the on line Alpo recall list. So I got up and started calling stores.. Walmart and Food Lion are 24 hour stores. Teressa at Walmart immediately headed for her dog food section as I was talking to her and pulled every can regardless of having pulled all of the listed numbers earlier. I got on the phone and on the second directory number the operator told me she could only give out two numbers per call, and when I started telling her what had happened and I needed to get the numbers of all the news channels in the state she repeated that she had given me two numbers and I had to call back… The next operator upon hearing that said she didn’t care what the rules were, she had pets and she would stay with me as long as needed.. I had a long long list of numbers from NY City to Atlanta for TV stations, then she asked if I had called Nestle’Purina and I said I’d left an message on their answering maching. She said, lets call and get the number for “Security” and sure enough she was given another phone number for them at the headquarters… she dialed the number and wished me “G’d’s blessings on my quest.” when the had of Security answered. Larry spent two hours on the phone with me, listening about Angel Lady and praying with me for her and all the other pets out there. He left my number with several departments he thought could help, and I hung up to start calling TV stations and leaving messages with them. Then, my body demanded sleep and I went back to bed after letting Lady out for a last pee break as the sun was coming up. A few hours later Duncan called and I told him what had happened. Terry arrived at 7:00 and picked up a reluctant dog. I again went back to bed and got an hours sleep before the phone rang and Channel 13 in Lynchburg called asking if they could come out at 12:00 to interview me. They were here for two hours taking photos of the pile of pet food and treats in the end of my kitchen waiting for Andy the manager of Food Lion to come and pick it all up since I couldn’t get it back to the stores. He said he would pick it all up and refund my money on it since I couldn’t get it back to the stores myself.
Duncan called me back at 4:30 to say he didn’t think it was the dog food but that she had gotten some rat poison at home instead. I told him I use have a heart traps, and didn’t have any rat poison out. I told him to do whatever he had to do to save her. I was so exhausted after calling more stores to get the cans pulled anyway, despite what he said… Then I fell asleep for an hour and woke up thinking I needed to call ABC’s Courtney back and tell her what Duncan had said before she aired the show. She said he had already told them that when they went over there to get shots of my dog. Anyway, they cut the interview to about a minute, didn’t tell about the blood, and turned it into a story about cooking food for your pet might not give them adequate nutrition according to the pet store owner who they then had interviewed and he was smoothing it all over saying most of the food was safe.. of course his store is full of pet food he wants to sell. sigh
I don’t know how to blog, probably couldn’t find you again in a million tries. But thank you for your links and your information. I’d love to hear from you again… just got a phone call from a friend who says she heard two days ago that it was an individual person who had contaminated the wheat gluten, and that it was in human food as well … I was searching this morning and didn’t see anything about that… Did you hear about it. She saw it on TV doesn’t remember which channel news she was watching. OY VEY
Please email me… I too old to get this new stuff and I need to get someone to show me how to do the blogs again. Even lost my blog he helped me set up when he was home, and can’t find his, my sons, blog to get on it either…
Royal, the friend who called is going to call me back so I can send this off to you. Don’t want to loose it talking to her.
Hugs and Cudos to you for your rants!!!!
Maybe you can also tell me how the heck to find your blog again for future connection.
PauLa, Angel Lady, Sita and Geeta (my kitty sisters)
April 20, 2007 at 9:53 am
Karen Fraser
Please read the release on our Petitionz.org site. The title is US Pet Owners Can Sue in Canada-Better Chance of Justice. Ontario law recognizes pets as more than an object that you own. It is a tiny positive in this ongoing crisis.