Ah, the weekend

Phew! I made it through the dreaded "just back from vacation" week at work. It was actually a pretty good week. Leo, our skittish rhino, FINALLY started really interacting with the keepers. On Sunday, I was still barely able to touch his horn. By Thursday, he was allowing me to groom every part of his body I could reach. Why the 180 attitude adjustment? No idea, but it is awesome! His progress has been so quick. On Tuesday he'd still only allow me to touch him, but by Thursday he was climbing into the tamer (a large confinement "cage") and allowing everyone including the vet to rub on him. SO WEIRD!

Kaylin's teacher sent home all her makeup work before the trip and then allowed her to make up everything else at school. Logan's teacher sent home a huge stack of worksheets Monday night. It was sooooo overwhelming for him to come home to stacks of homework every night. He did manage to finish everything by Thursday night to take back this morning, but he was NOT happy about it!

While I certainly have no regrets about pulling the kids out of school for two weeks for what was our best family vacation ever, I can't imagine that we'll do it again. Kaylin rolled with the changes, but Logan had a tough time going back to school and an even tougher time making up the missed work. I imagine it'll take him a couple more weeks to get completely back into the flow of things. The boy NEEDS his schedule.

Before our vacation, Logan failed his hearing test at school. He also failed his hearing test at preschool last year so I was concerned enough to make him an appointment with the district's audiologist. Logan's appointment was Wednesday afternoon and it involved several "more advanced" tests. His hearing is within the normal range, but he does have higher than normal pressure behind both eardrums, which probably contributed to failing the school test. The audiologist didn't act too concerned, but did schedule him another appointment in October.

The morning of the appointment I told my coworker Roz that I wanted to avoid cleaning rhinos until after I got back. Then one thing led to another and I spent a good two hours in the rhino barn that morning. I was reeking of rhino :) I caught the audiologist looking at my zoo sweatshirt and could tell he wanted to know what was stinking up his office so on our way out I said "I hope the rhino stink doesn't linger too long." He laughed and admitted he was very curious to know what the smell was but wasn't going to ask. He then said in all his years this was the first time his office stunk like rhinos. (I had noticed a huge can of Oust on his filing cabinet so I was pretty sure I wasn't the first person ever to stink up his office! Yuck.)

On a related note, the other morning before work I came in from running and washed my hair. I noticed that after the previous night's shower and then washing my hair again, I could still smell rhino. I walked into the bedroom and said "Gene, I can take the truth. Do I ALWAYS smell like rhino?" His answer? "Yes."