Back to Work for Real

I have now completed a week back at work full time and once again, I can't believe how little pain I'm having!  Wednesday night my foot was tired and achy, but nothing even resembling the pain before surgery.  Work itself has been crazy, trying to catch up on all of the changes while I was away.  An entire new computer animal records system was launched and I missed all of the tutorials and discussion.  It took me several days last week to even get my sign-in and figure out how to log on to the system.  Our computer person ended up emailing me a copy of the reports from the time I was gone and it was over 600 pages long!  I read it all, but I missed a couple of crucial items that were so old-hand to my relief keepers, no one bothered to tell me because they assumed I already knew.  I finally am capable of entering basic notes about my animals and just need to tweak my abilities so I can make notes about groups of animals together.  All of the frustration and confusion has been greatly outweighed by how happy I am just to be back at work!  I'm still extremely doubtful that I will retire from zoo keeping, but I'm becoming more optimistic that I will be able to do it a while longer.

I came home Tuesday night to a sad, wet dog, fresh from a bath (given by Gene).  The kids had been playing outside and Scout was tearing along the muddy fenceline with the neighbor dog.  The kids (along with the neighbor kids) like to go outside and scream and be very loud.  This makes the dogs crazy and they run the fenceline, barking non-stop.  I told them that while it's muddy, they need to lock Scout in the house because he's so low to the ground and has such long fur on his legs, neck and tail, that he is completely matted with mud, rather than just having muddy paws.  They didn't listen...

Wednesday night I came home in pain and wanted to shower and then sit and rest for a few minutes before I had to be somewhere at 6:30pm.  I pulled up to the mailbox and could hear the kids SCREAMING in the back yard.  I barely cracked the door to come inside and Kaylin ran inside and stated "Scout's completely covered with mud again.  I locked him in the garage and I'm going to Kira's."  I was shocked and furious that after my instruction she not only allowed the dog to get muddy again, but COMPLETELY ASSUMED that "I" would take care of the mess while she dashed off to a friend's house.  Not happening, Pumpkin!  I sent Kira home and put Kaylin to work.  I didn't want poor Scout to have another bath- it's not good for his skin, so I tried to have Kaylin brush him out.  His fur is too long and fine.  He HAD to have another bath.  And the kitchen floor needed to be scrubbed of muddy paw prints.  And mud needed to be cleaned from the living room chairs.  And I didn't get my rest time and was very late to my evening obligation.  But...  Guess who was NOT outside and covered with mud when I came home Thursday?  Hopefully, a lesson was learned.

Well, my past two weeks have been mostly about returning to work.  I've been crazy-busy, but don't have a lot to write about.  I think I'll take it easy this weekend and rest my feet and try to figure out the new work computer system.  Logan wants to look for owls tonight, so we'll probably do that.