It's a new year and time for some changes. I've been sort of stuck since I left the zoo 3 years ago. It took a long time to mourn the loss of my career. I had 7 weeks of paid time off and then went immediately back to the veterinary hospital working as a vet assistant. It's the kind of job where I take nothing home with me and barely think about when I'm not at work. That was amazing and therapeutic for a while, but after several months it just became boring. After a while I got so bored I dropped my hours to part time. The job means next to nothing to me and I need a different job that will actually challenge and fulfill me.
Meanwhile, I did get to spend lots of time with the kids. Kaylin refuses to drive and was in several clubs that required rides home most nights of the week. Logan was very into baseball and I got to easily pick him up from practices and attend all the games. Now Kaylin is in college and Logan is driving. They don't need my time as much.
I had knee replacement surgery and started menu planning and cooking. I've organized and decluttered and figured out how to keep up with everything. It's been a good, relaxing experience but I need more. I had my first job interview and it went well. I don't have much experience in the field so probably won't get the job but the interview was a good experience. I'll keep looking at the job websites and applying for things that catch my eye. It's also time to eat better and exercise more. Change is good!
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
My Symbol of Winter
I have no recollection of exactly when in December the snow started falling, I just know that once it came, it never went away. During the usual Peoria winter even the heaviest snow is around for a week, two tops, before it melts completely. It's pretty rare to even have back-to-back snow storms that add accumulation. This winter we had three full months where the snow never went away. Working outside a good part of my day, I became accustomed to the extreme cold. I can't count the days the temperature never rose above the single digits, and it got to the point that if it was above 15F, I was too warm in my coat. The never ending snow and cold brought everyone all kinds of frustrations, but I think the thing that will always symbolize this winter for me is takin poop.
Takin are giant sheep-goats. Scientists keep going back and forth over their classification and whether they are sheep or goats. I don't care much either way, but based on behavior and intelligence only, I would have to guess goats. Anyway, takin eat lots of hay and grain and poop lots of little balls about the size of shooter marbles. They are very cold and snow tolerant and went outside into their large yard at least a portion of every day this winter.
A good zoo keeper prides herself on keeping clean exhibits. Animal enclosures and yards are cleaned 365 days a year. Poop is not left in yards. Ever. Non-keepers would probably be shocked at the lengths I go to remove every little ball of takin poop every day. Well, this entire winter was exceptional. I'm not sure how and why this happened, but the bottom third of the takin yard turned into a thick, THICK layer of ice. As the snow fell and melted, the ice layer became thicker. The takin are agile mountain sheep-goats and this didn't bother them one bit. However, the bottom third of the yard is their favorite place to poop. I don't know what a takin's natural body temperature is, but from the way their poop melted into the ice, I'd have to guess about 150F. That's a joke, but seriously, the poop melted into the ice so that by the time I went to clean it the next day, it was at least partially encased. This wasn't loose, wet ice that I could break up with a shovel, it was solid as a rock. Day after day, month after month, layer after layer. Sometimes the ice was crystal clear and I could only look longingly at what I wished I could remove.
Since the thaw (finally) started in the past couple of weeks, it's been interesting. Each day a little more ice melts and another layer of poop emerges. The first days it was really warm, I filled the entire John Deere Gator bed with takin poop. If that means nothing to you, it is a LOT of poop. Yesterday afternoon was absolutely beautiful and a lot more takin ice melted throughout the day. I knew it was supposed to freeze overnight and possibly even snow. I saw all of that thawed poop and couldn't wait to remove it. I decided to spend the last 15 minutes of my day shoveling as much poop as I could get. The mud covered my shoes, but it was worth it to get the poop before it froze again. I was racing against time and knew I couldn't make another dump run, so I chose to put the poop into a barrel in the back of the Gator. I joyfully raked poop off the remaining ice and was thrilled with my accomplishment. I pulled the Gator out of the yard, got everything locked up and then decided to leave the barrel at the takin area since I park the Gator in a heated building. I dropped the tailgate and pulled the heavy barrel toward me. As I was lowering it to the ground I somehow lost grip, dropped the barrel the final foot and wet poop splashed all over my face, neck, hair and sweatshirt. Yummy.
I had planned to stop and vote in the primary election on my way home from work, but I kind of needed to get to the shower. If I ever run for public office and they try to smear my name because I didn't vote in the primary election of 2014, this is my excuse- takin poop.
The takin yard is down to maybe 10-15% ice cover, and the ice is getting thin. I imagine within the next week or so I will have the winter poop cleaned up and can look forward to Spring and rain and mud to my shins. But at least I won't have to look at the ice-encased takin poop!
Takin are giant sheep-goats. Scientists keep going back and forth over their classification and whether they are sheep or goats. I don't care much either way, but based on behavior and intelligence only, I would have to guess goats. Anyway, takin eat lots of hay and grain and poop lots of little balls about the size of shooter marbles. They are very cold and snow tolerant and went outside into their large yard at least a portion of every day this winter.
A good zoo keeper prides herself on keeping clean exhibits. Animal enclosures and yards are cleaned 365 days a year. Poop is not left in yards. Ever. Non-keepers would probably be shocked at the lengths I go to remove every little ball of takin poop every day. Well, this entire winter was exceptional. I'm not sure how and why this happened, but the bottom third of the takin yard turned into a thick, THICK layer of ice. As the snow fell and melted, the ice layer became thicker. The takin are agile mountain sheep-goats and this didn't bother them one bit. However, the bottom third of the yard is their favorite place to poop. I don't know what a takin's natural body temperature is, but from the way their poop melted into the ice, I'd have to guess about 150F. That's a joke, but seriously, the poop melted into the ice so that by the time I went to clean it the next day, it was at least partially encased. This wasn't loose, wet ice that I could break up with a shovel, it was solid as a rock. Day after day, month after month, layer after layer. Sometimes the ice was crystal clear and I could only look longingly at what I wished I could remove.
Since the thaw (finally) started in the past couple of weeks, it's been interesting. Each day a little more ice melts and another layer of poop emerges. The first days it was really warm, I filled the entire John Deere Gator bed with takin poop. If that means nothing to you, it is a LOT of poop. Yesterday afternoon was absolutely beautiful and a lot more takin ice melted throughout the day. I knew it was supposed to freeze overnight and possibly even snow. I saw all of that thawed poop and couldn't wait to remove it. I decided to spend the last 15 minutes of my day shoveling as much poop as I could get. The mud covered my shoes, but it was worth it to get the poop before it froze again. I was racing against time and knew I couldn't make another dump run, so I chose to put the poop into a barrel in the back of the Gator. I joyfully raked poop off the remaining ice and was thrilled with my accomplishment. I pulled the Gator out of the yard, got everything locked up and then decided to leave the barrel at the takin area since I park the Gator in a heated building. I dropped the tailgate and pulled the heavy barrel toward me. As I was lowering it to the ground I somehow lost grip, dropped the barrel the final foot and wet poop splashed all over my face, neck, hair and sweatshirt. Yummy.
I had planned to stop and vote in the primary election on my way home from work, but I kind of needed to get to the shower. If I ever run for public office and they try to smear my name because I didn't vote in the primary election of 2014, this is my excuse- takin poop.
The takin yard is down to maybe 10-15% ice cover, and the ice is getting thin. I imagine within the next week or so I will have the winter poop cleaned up and can look forward to Spring and rain and mud to my shins. But at least I won't have to look at the ice-encased takin poop!
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The Longest Shortest Month
This winter can end anytime. I pretty much always hate February and find it the longest, most disagreeable month, but February 2014 wins for worst ever. I actually got used to the bitter cold. It was amazing how the first day of sub-zero temps literally took my breath away and forced me to wear many layers and toe warmers. By the 20th day I was only wearing gloves if I was driving the Gator a long distance or shoveling snow. Ah, shoveling snow... It seemed like nearly every day I was shoveling out barn doors and gates, shoveling walking paths to buildings and water spigots, shoveling clean eating areas for animals and even shoveling pee paths for my dogs at home. Ah, water spigots... I can't even count all of the times my water was frozen in certain areas and I had to tote dozens of 5 gallon buckets from other areas. How many days I was unable to hose a particular barn because the water line was frozen, how many days the wallabies had to stay inside due to snow that would either cover them or go up to their necks. It's just been a long and frustrating time for everyone as well as for most of the zoo animals.
One good thing about February is that I usually have time I have to take off work. We get time-and-a-half "E-time" rather than paid overtime. We also have to work 365 days a year, so unless I specifically ask for Christmas or Labor Day off, I work. I am still given X number of paid holidays off each year, but I work most of them. That time also transitions to E-time so I end up with a lot of extra time off. By union contract, we have to have our E-time down to 80 hours by a certain date or they have to pay us, so the keepers end up with tons of time off during February and March. My February time off was requested well in advance, but it couldn't possibly have been better timing. I was getting so stir crazy and cabin fever-y that I'm sure I was awful to be around.
The weekend of Valentine's Day, I was supposed to take Kaylin and her friend Kira to St. Louis for my cousin's baby's birthday party (as well as a weekend of fun), but the predicted 1-2 inches of snow turned into a blizzard that canceled our trip. The girls were extremely disappointed and angry with me, but they couldn't possibly have understood how much I needed that time as well. We will reschedule sometime soon, but it won't be the same. Another weather-related annoyance is that all of my regular birding areas are closed due to deep snow nobody is bothering to plow. Even simple places like the park at the end of my street where Logan and I go owling and the marina across from the park are inaccessible due to deep snow. My feet just aren't good enough to go hiking in deep snow (I can't wear boots, or if I do absolutely have to wear them, I have to save that short time for work when I have no choice) so I have been staying home. The snow is getting so old and boring that even the kids don't play in it anymore. Even the young neighbor boys are opting to stay inside playing video games. I am not made for staying home! I'm going crazy!
I finally did get a little adventure. I took off last Wednesday through this Tuesday to burn some E-time. Logan and I have been wanting to go back to Duluth, MN, ever since our trip 2 years ago. Two years ago was that weird non-winter where the temps around here seemed to hover around 45F and we got almost no snow. I knew Duluth was a big gamble this year, but I had been watching extended forecasts and was optimistic we'd be able to pull it off. It was going to be COLD, but we were used to that and there was hardly any snow in the forecast. We decided to leave Wednesday after school to avoid Thursday's predicted thunderstorms in Illinois. I checked the Duluth forecast right before we left home at 3pm. It said 1-2 inches of snow for Thursday. Pffff, that's probably not even a light dusting for Duluth! By the time we arrive that will be gone and there was no more snow predicted through Sunday. By the time we stopped for the night at a hotel near Wisconsin Dells, the Duluth forecast had changed to 9 inches of snow Thursday, with gusty winds Friday. Hmmm, the places we were planning to go were very rural and not likely to be well-plowed, if plowed at all. I drive a tiny Toyota, not a four wheel drive monster truck. I told Logan we'd wait and see what the forecast was in the morning, but we would probably need to come up with a Plan B. By morning, the Duluth forecast had changed to 15-18 inches. Uhhh... I looked at weather.com on Friday or Saturday and Superior, Wisconsin, which is on the other side of a bridge from Duluth, was listed as number 1 for most snowfall from that storm at 18 inches. It was definitely good that we didn't go!
The Wisconsin Dells area was predicted to have freezing rain in the morning followed by regular rain the rest of the day and maybe an inch of snow at night. I figured we'd stick around the area Thursday and Thursday night and come up with a Plan B of maybe heading toward Lake Michigan in search of snowy owls. I checked Expedia for good hotel rates for Wis Dells and found one of the major waterpark resorts for only $99. I booked it, but check-in time wasn't until 4pm and it was only 8am. Even Logan's favorite arcade/amusement center didn't open until 11am. We decided to see how the roads were and if they were good enough, head up to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. The roads turned out to be dry and fine. There were so many local school closings and delays I had been worried, but even the extremely rural back roads to the NWR were no problem. I didn't even have ice on my car windows! We hiked around the visitor center at Necedah and then went inside to watch the bird feeders for a while. We were the only visitors on this cold Thursday morning, and the ladies working the desk were very attentive to our needs. I told them we had been headed to Duluth to go birding, but were stopped by the blizzard and were looking for somewhere to find snowy owls instead. One of them got very excited and told me about a prairie chicken conservation area about 45 miles away that was also a straight shot back to the Dells. She said she had seen a snowy owl there last weekend and that we had a good chance of finding prairie chickens. Whoa! Cool! She assured us there would be tons of other birders in the area and all we'd have to do is stop when we saw cars. Huh huh. I guess she wasn't thinking that it wasn't the weekend. We passed exactly one other car the entire 2-3 hours we were there and I think it was a resident rather than a birder.
Anyway, this place turned out to be miles and miles of grassy snow-covered fields. We slowly drove and drove and drove, scanning the fields for prairie chickens and snowy owls. We found lots of snow buntings and even a dead sheep on the side of the road, but no chickens or owls. I was about to give up in boredom, when suddenly Logan spotted an owl on the ground out in the middle of a field. I have no idea how he saw it, but the kid IS amazing at spotting owls! We stopped and got out and watched it for a long time. We eventually got back in the car and drove on, only to find a second, much closer owl about 50 yards up the street. It was sooooooooo cool! Fueled by our excitement, we did another hour of field scanning, but found no more owls and no chickens. We did see two northern shrikes, so that was exciting, too. We were finally so hungry we had to head back to civilization. Oh, and it never rained one drop until ~3pm when it rained lightly for a while.
I had no idea where to find our resort, but the route we took from the grasslands to the Dells conveniently took us straight there. It was a happy surprise! They allowed us to check in an hour early and rather than swimming or going to the arcade immediately, Logan just wanted me to upload the snowy owl pics to facebook. Friday turned out to be extremely windy. Extreme wind usually equals poor birding, so we opted to spend the day in the Dells having fun. Plus, we already found our owls so there was no pressing need to go to (ugh) Milwaukee to possibly find more. We stayed at the resort and played at the waterpark until around 2pm. I don't think I mentioned before, but we stayed at Chula Vista and it was very nice. I'd like to go back in the summer when everything is open. The indoor waterpark had some great fun slides, as well as a water coaster, a lazy river, several kiddie areas and a huge hot tub. I'm usually not the biggest fan of swimming, but this place was fun! They had a tube slide with a "toilet bowl" spinner that was so much fun I actually went on it 4 times. I also tried the water coaster, mat slide and body slide and spent a fair amount of time in the hot tub where I found a jet that perfectly hit my bad calf/ankle. We moved on to Knuckleheads, Logan's favorite indoor arcade/amusement center and played lots of games and won some crappy ticket redemption prizes. I also won two balls from a skill crane. Oh, yeah! We stopped at the Cheese Store on our way out of town and then had to decide what we were going to do the rest of our trip.
I thought maybe Logan would want to head on home and make his flag football game on Saturday. He did not. It was super windy and driving on the highway was a bit scary. We ended up driving a little past Rockford and staying in Rochelle, Illinois. Saturday morning we headed to Starved Rock. We checked out the dam visitor's center across from the park, but the water was open so there weren't too many eagles.The water was really high and there was lots of mud, so we didn't go hiking. We took the long way home and drove the Illinois River Scenic Byway on the west side of the river, stopping where we might see birds. The bridge in Henry was our best stop, with eagles soaring right over our heads and geese flocking in from all directions. We had a fun trip, but as always, it was good to get home to Gene and Kaylin and the pets. I spent Sunday and Monday both taking care of business and relaxing. I took the girls to the giant flea market on Sunday where we bought nothing, but had a good time. Today I have a lunch meeting with the woman who used to do the Audubon newsletter. I am a bit frightened to learn how much work the newsletter will involve. I'm pretty sure it's a lot. I'm heading back to work tomorrow just in time for negative temperatures once again, but at least I only have a 2 day work week. This long, long shortest month is almost over!
One good thing about February is that I usually have time I have to take off work. We get time-and-a-half "E-time" rather than paid overtime. We also have to work 365 days a year, so unless I specifically ask for Christmas or Labor Day off, I work. I am still given X number of paid holidays off each year, but I work most of them. That time also transitions to E-time so I end up with a lot of extra time off. By union contract, we have to have our E-time down to 80 hours by a certain date or they have to pay us, so the keepers end up with tons of time off during February and March. My February time off was requested well in advance, but it couldn't possibly have been better timing. I was getting so stir crazy and cabin fever-y that I'm sure I was awful to be around.
The weekend of Valentine's Day, I was supposed to take Kaylin and her friend Kira to St. Louis for my cousin's baby's birthday party (as well as a weekend of fun), but the predicted 1-2 inches of snow turned into a blizzard that canceled our trip. The girls were extremely disappointed and angry with me, but they couldn't possibly have understood how much I needed that time as well. We will reschedule sometime soon, but it won't be the same. Another weather-related annoyance is that all of my regular birding areas are closed due to deep snow nobody is bothering to plow. Even simple places like the park at the end of my street where Logan and I go owling and the marina across from the park are inaccessible due to deep snow. My feet just aren't good enough to go hiking in deep snow (I can't wear boots, or if I do absolutely have to wear them, I have to save that short time for work when I have no choice) so I have been staying home. The snow is getting so old and boring that even the kids don't play in it anymore. Even the young neighbor boys are opting to stay inside playing video games. I am not made for staying home! I'm going crazy!
I finally did get a little adventure. I took off last Wednesday through this Tuesday to burn some E-time. Logan and I have been wanting to go back to Duluth, MN, ever since our trip 2 years ago. Two years ago was that weird non-winter where the temps around here seemed to hover around 45F and we got almost no snow. I knew Duluth was a big gamble this year, but I had been watching extended forecasts and was optimistic we'd be able to pull it off. It was going to be COLD, but we were used to that and there was hardly any snow in the forecast. We decided to leave Wednesday after school to avoid Thursday's predicted thunderstorms in Illinois. I checked the Duluth forecast right before we left home at 3pm. It said 1-2 inches of snow for Thursday. Pffff, that's probably not even a light dusting for Duluth! By the time we arrive that will be gone and there was no more snow predicted through Sunday. By the time we stopped for the night at a hotel near Wisconsin Dells, the Duluth forecast had changed to 9 inches of snow Thursday, with gusty winds Friday. Hmmm, the places we were planning to go were very rural and not likely to be well-plowed, if plowed at all. I drive a tiny Toyota, not a four wheel drive monster truck. I told Logan we'd wait and see what the forecast was in the morning, but we would probably need to come up with a Plan B. By morning, the Duluth forecast had changed to 15-18 inches. Uhhh... I looked at weather.com on Friday or Saturday and Superior, Wisconsin, which is on the other side of a bridge from Duluth, was listed as number 1 for most snowfall from that storm at 18 inches. It was definitely good that we didn't go!
The Wisconsin Dells area was predicted to have freezing rain in the morning followed by regular rain the rest of the day and maybe an inch of snow at night. I figured we'd stick around the area Thursday and Thursday night and come up with a Plan B of maybe heading toward Lake Michigan in search of snowy owls. I checked Expedia for good hotel rates for Wis Dells and found one of the major waterpark resorts for only $99. I booked it, but check-in time wasn't until 4pm and it was only 8am. Even Logan's favorite arcade/amusement center didn't open until 11am. We decided to see how the roads were and if they were good enough, head up to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. The roads turned out to be dry and fine. There were so many local school closings and delays I had been worried, but even the extremely rural back roads to the NWR were no problem. I didn't even have ice on my car windows! We hiked around the visitor center at Necedah and then went inside to watch the bird feeders for a while. We were the only visitors on this cold Thursday morning, and the ladies working the desk were very attentive to our needs. I told them we had been headed to Duluth to go birding, but were stopped by the blizzard and were looking for somewhere to find snowy owls instead. One of them got very excited and told me about a prairie chicken conservation area about 45 miles away that was also a straight shot back to the Dells. She said she had seen a snowy owl there last weekend and that we had a good chance of finding prairie chickens. Whoa! Cool! She assured us there would be tons of other birders in the area and all we'd have to do is stop when we saw cars. Huh huh. I guess she wasn't thinking that it wasn't the weekend. We passed exactly one other car the entire 2-3 hours we were there and I think it was a resident rather than a birder.
Anyway, this place turned out to be miles and miles of grassy snow-covered fields. We slowly drove and drove and drove, scanning the fields for prairie chickens and snowy owls. We found lots of snow buntings and even a dead sheep on the side of the road, but no chickens or owls. I was about to give up in boredom, when suddenly Logan spotted an owl on the ground out in the middle of a field. I have no idea how he saw it, but the kid IS amazing at spotting owls! We stopped and got out and watched it for a long time. We eventually got back in the car and drove on, only to find a second, much closer owl about 50 yards up the street. It was sooooooooo cool! Fueled by our excitement, we did another hour of field scanning, but found no more owls and no chickens. We did see two northern shrikes, so that was exciting, too. We were finally so hungry we had to head back to civilization. Oh, and it never rained one drop until ~3pm when it rained lightly for a while.
I had no idea where to find our resort, but the route we took from the grasslands to the Dells conveniently took us straight there. It was a happy surprise! They allowed us to check in an hour early and rather than swimming or going to the arcade immediately, Logan just wanted me to upload the snowy owl pics to facebook. Friday turned out to be extremely windy. Extreme wind usually equals poor birding, so we opted to spend the day in the Dells having fun. Plus, we already found our owls so there was no pressing need to go to (ugh) Milwaukee to possibly find more. We stayed at the resort and played at the waterpark until around 2pm. I don't think I mentioned before, but we stayed at Chula Vista and it was very nice. I'd like to go back in the summer when everything is open. The indoor waterpark had some great fun slides, as well as a water coaster, a lazy river, several kiddie areas and a huge hot tub. I'm usually not the biggest fan of swimming, but this place was fun! They had a tube slide with a "toilet bowl" spinner that was so much fun I actually went on it 4 times. I also tried the water coaster, mat slide and body slide and spent a fair amount of time in the hot tub where I found a jet that perfectly hit my bad calf/ankle. We moved on to Knuckleheads, Logan's favorite indoor arcade/amusement center and played lots of games and won some crappy ticket redemption prizes. I also won two balls from a skill crane. Oh, yeah! We stopped at the Cheese Store on our way out of town and then had to decide what we were going to do the rest of our trip.
I thought maybe Logan would want to head on home and make his flag football game on Saturday. He did not. It was super windy and driving on the highway was a bit scary. We ended up driving a little past Rockford and staying in Rochelle, Illinois. Saturday morning we headed to Starved Rock. We checked out the dam visitor's center across from the park, but the water was open so there weren't too many eagles.The water was really high and there was lots of mud, so we didn't go hiking. We took the long way home and drove the Illinois River Scenic Byway on the west side of the river, stopping where we might see birds. The bridge in Henry was our best stop, with eagles soaring right over our heads and geese flocking in from all directions. We had a fun trip, but as always, it was good to get home to Gene and Kaylin and the pets. I spent Sunday and Monday both taking care of business and relaxing. I took the girls to the giant flea market on Sunday where we bought nothing, but had a good time. Today I have a lunch meeting with the woman who used to do the Audubon newsletter. I am a bit frightened to learn how much work the newsletter will involve. I'm pretty sure it's a lot. I'm heading back to work tomorrow just in time for negative temperatures once again, but at least I only have a 2 day work week. This long, long shortest month is almost over!
Friday, January 31, 2014
Victory!
I accomplished a major personal goal this week and as silly as it is, I'm incredibly proud and happy about it. Accomplished? I don't know if that is actually the right word. Maybe completed? Finished? Survived? I'm not sure...
Six months ago I tore a tendon in my foot and missed six weeks of work. This was my third major injury to my left foot in four years. I was completely devastated because I was convinced I'd have to quit the job I love. I did tons of research looking into other careers and even took a few seminars at Illinois Central College about changing careers, writing resumes and cover letters and an hours-long aptitude test. I talked to countless people and got countless ideas, but the bottom line was that I wanted to remain a zoo keeper. I find my job to be incredibly fulfilling and meaningful and I can't imagine anything else being as personally satisfying. I not only love the animals, but I also love the work itself and especially finding solutions to the constant challenges that arise in working with the unpredictable and always changing animals and situations. I love working outside and am usually not bothered by the weather (though this winter of extreme cold and never ending snow is getting on my last nerve.) Anyway, I eventually decided that I will work as a zoo keeper until I absolutely can't do it anymore. I don't know if that will be 2 weeks or 20 years, but I'm going to make the most of whatever time I have left and more importantly, enjoy it. I will constantly keep my eyes and ears open for my Plan B, but I'm not going to actively seek another job until I have to.
My first major goal was to make it to my anniversary date of January 30th. This was an important goal if only because this was the year my retirement became fully vested. It was also a big deal because I was out of sick time and low on vacation time so I couldn't miss more work. Over time, this deadline somehow became more and more important. I had a scary setback in late October and November when an entrapped nerve in the same foot required me to have a series of weekly alcohol injections that became increasingly painful to the point I was terrible to be around. Not only was I in agony, I was also terrified I wasn't going to make my goal. I finished the injections and the pain slowly subsided. By late November, I was doing a daily countdown. I knew exactly the day I could make it to my anniversary date with full pay if I had to miss work again. I mentally crossed off every day, rejoiced when January finally came and then groaned as it dragged on and on.
I guess it seems kind of dumb and not like much of an actual accomplishment, but my happiness at the arrival of January 30th was comparable to it finally being the day of a major event. I'm not usually much of a celebratory person- I couldn't care less about making a big deal of my birthday- but I actually took treats to work. Almost no one knew what they were for and no one but me could have understood how significant the day was, but I was so happy and relieved. I made it!
Six months ago I tore a tendon in my foot and missed six weeks of work. This was my third major injury to my left foot in four years. I was completely devastated because I was convinced I'd have to quit the job I love. I did tons of research looking into other careers and even took a few seminars at Illinois Central College about changing careers, writing resumes and cover letters and an hours-long aptitude test. I talked to countless people and got countless ideas, but the bottom line was that I wanted to remain a zoo keeper. I find my job to be incredibly fulfilling and meaningful and I can't imagine anything else being as personally satisfying. I not only love the animals, but I also love the work itself and especially finding solutions to the constant challenges that arise in working with the unpredictable and always changing animals and situations. I love working outside and am usually not bothered by the weather (though this winter of extreme cold and never ending snow is getting on my last nerve.) Anyway, I eventually decided that I will work as a zoo keeper until I absolutely can't do it anymore. I don't know if that will be 2 weeks or 20 years, but I'm going to make the most of whatever time I have left and more importantly, enjoy it. I will constantly keep my eyes and ears open for my Plan B, but I'm not going to actively seek another job until I have to.
My first major goal was to make it to my anniversary date of January 30th. This was an important goal if only because this was the year my retirement became fully vested. It was also a big deal because I was out of sick time and low on vacation time so I couldn't miss more work. Over time, this deadline somehow became more and more important. I had a scary setback in late October and November when an entrapped nerve in the same foot required me to have a series of weekly alcohol injections that became increasingly painful to the point I was terrible to be around. Not only was I in agony, I was also terrified I wasn't going to make my goal. I finished the injections and the pain slowly subsided. By late November, I was doing a daily countdown. I knew exactly the day I could make it to my anniversary date with full pay if I had to miss work again. I mentally crossed off every day, rejoiced when January finally came and then groaned as it dragged on and on.
I guess it seems kind of dumb and not like much of an actual accomplishment, but my happiness at the arrival of January 30th was comparable to it finally being the day of a major event. I'm not usually much of a celebratory person- I couldn't care less about making a big deal of my birthday- but I actually took treats to work. Almost no one knew what they were for and no one but me could have understood how significant the day was, but I was so happy and relieved. I made it!
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Gender Indentity?
We live in a weird, weird world! I just finished reading a long thread on a forum about gender identity in children. I learned that according to psychologists I am gender variant. This term is very new to me, but its discovery did not give me an "aha" moment with peace, relief and clarity. It just made me feel labeled and like there is something wrong with me. To this I say "Bullshit!" I am who I am and I like who I am and do not label me as defective because I am different from the perceived norm!
As a child I liked to play outside. I liked to have adventures and get dirty and play with animals and tromp through the creek. I owned a little case with one fake Barbie and a bunch of clothes. I played with her when I was forced to play with some girl who lived around the corner from my grandma or one of my female cousins. I was never embarrassed that my Barbie was fake or gave it any thought because I didn't care about it at all. I hated dressing up because dress clothes were itchy and uncomfortable and wearing a dress meant I couldn't get dirty or play like I wanted. I never cared about "looking pretty" because for whatever reason it just didn't interest me. Maybe you don't care at all about the stock market or football or knitting. That is how I have always felt about clothes, makeup and jewelry. I have zero interest. I almost never think about these things unless I am forced. I really don't think I have ever suffered low self-esteem or anything similar due to my appearance because it almost never occurs to me to think about it.
As I grew into a preschooler, I started to realize that wearing a dress meant I was expected to act "ladylike" and sit quietly and not crawl around on the floor playing kitty or vrooming cars. I noticed the boys wore pants and it was completely acceptable for them to act wild and get dirty. Dresses equaled boring torture, pants equaled fun. Girls equaled sitting quietly and sewing and sipping tea. Boys equaled having fun and playing outside and getting dirty. As a person with no interest in appearances, I identified with the boys. I questioned the women and when I got "because you're a girl" as a response, I couldn't accept such a shallow answer and I rebelled. I began to equate dresses with not getting to be who I was. Dresses were evil. I still hate them.
In junior high I went through a short phase where I was peer-pressured enough to slightly care about my clothes. Actually, I didn't care at all about the clothes, just the brands. As long as my clothes were certain brands, they were acceptable and I could get away with wearing t-shirts or polos and jeans with my Reebok high tops. I still never wore makeup or cared a hoot about my hair or appearance. I remember being absolutely shocked to find out that nearly all of my female friends tried out for cheerleading. That was something that never even entered my mind and I was completely confused when girls who were so obviously not meant to be cheerleaders were extremely disappointed about not making the team. To me, being a cheerleader meant caring deeply about all of the things I had no interest in. I wasn't jealous or envious because it meant nothing to me.
In high school I had a tight group of friends. We were all misfits and most of us were completely okay with that. I remember a few people trying to bully me for being different, but it confused me far more than hurt me and I guess I didn't give the proper reaction because it never lasted more than a couple of verbal insults and never led to anything physical. Again, I never felt hugely different or out of place because I rarely thought about it. As I entered adulthood, I still remained who I always was. I still don't think about appearance and don't wear makeup and have had the same hair style for nearly 30 years. It usually takes something like getting something in my eye and flipping down the car visor mirror in the bright sun for me to notice whoa! I have a lot of gray and should probably color my hair soon. Even then, I don't dwell on it and might forget for another month. At age 41 I remain uninterested in clothes, jewelry and makeup. I think I have plenty of good friends, a great husband of 20 years, two wonderful children, a job and hobbies I love and enjoy. My life is pretty good and fulfilling without being stereotypically feminine.
Back to childhood gender roles... I was a tomboy for sure, but it was more out of wanting to do what I wanted to do and be who I was and then practically being forced to rebel against stereotypic gender roles to prove my point. I have never been any more interested in boy fashion than girl fashion. As a young child I possibly wished I was a boy, but only because it was so unfair that it was completely acceptable for boys to be doing what I wanted to do. I never identified as a boy or wished I had a penis or grew up feeling I was in the wrong body. Any discomfort I've ever had as a female resulted from not matching outside expectations of who I should be. And it never lasted long because that is not something I ever think about or dwell on. Despite the fact that I don't pretty myself up like a "normal" woman, I have done the most stereotypically female things- I got pregnant, grew two babies inside my uterus, gave birth twice and then breastfed each child for nearly a year. I love that my body is capable of doing these things! I don't want to be a man.
Another thing that has been occasionally (or maybe often and I have been oblivious) assumed about me based on my appearance is that I am a lesbian. This is not something I have ever found offensive or taken as an insult, so again, anyone who was trying to tease me was probably disappointed and backed off quickly. In fact, I have never been attracted to women, only men. Dressing or acting like a boy, playing with boy toys, etc. did not make me a lesbian. I most certainly do not think similar activities will make my children or any other children gay. I will always remember and laugh at toddler Logan playing with his ~4-yr-old sister and the same-aged neighbor girls. My neighbor had an in-home daycare with three little girls. Kaylin played with them constantly and Logan started tagging along as he got old enough. Their big thing was playing princess and dressing up. Logan wanted to join in the fun and would often allow them to put him in a dress. I thought it was hilarious and adorable, but the neighbor absolutely freaked out that it would make him gay. She also thought Gene would probably leave me if he found out. Seriously? I have an absolutely adorable picture of Logan wearing a dress and sitting on the lawn tractor. Attitudes like this make me sad. C'mon people, clothes and toys do not make children gay. I could be the poster child for this.
I always enjoyed watching my kids and observing their gender roles when they were little (and even now.) Both kids loved Thomas trains with wooden tracks. Kaylin liked building different track formations that went to different fantasy lands. She played with the trains as characters. Logan liked building different functional tracks and played with the trains as vehicles. Both kids liked sorting their toy collections (Kaylin's ponies, Logan's cars) and would spend countless hours lining them up in various ways. Kaylin kept a running commentary, Logan would just make vrooming noises, but both were continuously thinking and plotting what they were doing. Sometimes Kaylin played with cars and Logan played with ponies. Overall, both of my kids have been more interested in things more stereotypically linked to their sex. One of the comments on the gender identity thread was from a woman with no children and accused another woman of a little girl of "forcing" princess toys on her child and that's why she loved them. Ha! Really? I'm pretty sure my little girl NEVER had a princess toy forced on her by her mother!
I have completely strayed from the original point of this entry, but I guess what I want to get across is that I don't feel like or think I have a disorder. If "gender variant" only means that I do not fit stereotypical female gender roles, I will happily admit that is true. If it means there is something psychologically wrong with me because I don't care about dresses and jewelry, I don't think so. I think my issue is primarily disinterest in the subject. It is more obvious to others than my other disinterests, but is it really "worse"? I mean, basically no one cares that I never think about the perfect lawn application for the greenest grass or different qualities of yarn or the new tax laws for 2014. Why should I care deeply for something just because the majority of the female population does? I can think for myself, thank you very much!
As a child I liked to play outside. I liked to have adventures and get dirty and play with animals and tromp through the creek. I owned a little case with one fake Barbie and a bunch of clothes. I played with her when I was forced to play with some girl who lived around the corner from my grandma or one of my female cousins. I was never embarrassed that my Barbie was fake or gave it any thought because I didn't care about it at all. I hated dressing up because dress clothes were itchy and uncomfortable and wearing a dress meant I couldn't get dirty or play like I wanted. I never cared about "looking pretty" because for whatever reason it just didn't interest me. Maybe you don't care at all about the stock market or football or knitting. That is how I have always felt about clothes, makeup and jewelry. I have zero interest. I almost never think about these things unless I am forced. I really don't think I have ever suffered low self-esteem or anything similar due to my appearance because it almost never occurs to me to think about it.
As I grew into a preschooler, I started to realize that wearing a dress meant I was expected to act "ladylike" and sit quietly and not crawl around on the floor playing kitty or vrooming cars. I noticed the boys wore pants and it was completely acceptable for them to act wild and get dirty. Dresses equaled boring torture, pants equaled fun. Girls equaled sitting quietly and sewing and sipping tea. Boys equaled having fun and playing outside and getting dirty. As a person with no interest in appearances, I identified with the boys. I questioned the women and when I got "because you're a girl" as a response, I couldn't accept such a shallow answer and I rebelled. I began to equate dresses with not getting to be who I was. Dresses were evil. I still hate them.
In junior high I went through a short phase where I was peer-pressured enough to slightly care about my clothes. Actually, I didn't care at all about the clothes, just the brands. As long as my clothes were certain brands, they were acceptable and I could get away with wearing t-shirts or polos and jeans with my Reebok high tops. I still never wore makeup or cared a hoot about my hair or appearance. I remember being absolutely shocked to find out that nearly all of my female friends tried out for cheerleading. That was something that never even entered my mind and I was completely confused when girls who were so obviously not meant to be cheerleaders were extremely disappointed about not making the team. To me, being a cheerleader meant caring deeply about all of the things I had no interest in. I wasn't jealous or envious because it meant nothing to me.
In high school I had a tight group of friends. We were all misfits and most of us were completely okay with that. I remember a few people trying to bully me for being different, but it confused me far more than hurt me and I guess I didn't give the proper reaction because it never lasted more than a couple of verbal insults and never led to anything physical. Again, I never felt hugely different or out of place because I rarely thought about it. As I entered adulthood, I still remained who I always was. I still don't think about appearance and don't wear makeup and have had the same hair style for nearly 30 years. It usually takes something like getting something in my eye and flipping down the car visor mirror in the bright sun for me to notice whoa! I have a lot of gray and should probably color my hair soon. Even then, I don't dwell on it and might forget for another month. At age 41 I remain uninterested in clothes, jewelry and makeup. I think I have plenty of good friends, a great husband of 20 years, two wonderful children, a job and hobbies I love and enjoy. My life is pretty good and fulfilling without being stereotypically feminine.
Back to childhood gender roles... I was a tomboy for sure, but it was more out of wanting to do what I wanted to do and be who I was and then practically being forced to rebel against stereotypic gender roles to prove my point. I have never been any more interested in boy fashion than girl fashion. As a young child I possibly wished I was a boy, but only because it was so unfair that it was completely acceptable for boys to be doing what I wanted to do. I never identified as a boy or wished I had a penis or grew up feeling I was in the wrong body. Any discomfort I've ever had as a female resulted from not matching outside expectations of who I should be. And it never lasted long because that is not something I ever think about or dwell on. Despite the fact that I don't pretty myself up like a "normal" woman, I have done the most stereotypically female things- I got pregnant, grew two babies inside my uterus, gave birth twice and then breastfed each child for nearly a year. I love that my body is capable of doing these things! I don't want to be a man.
Another thing that has been occasionally (or maybe often and I have been oblivious) assumed about me based on my appearance is that I am a lesbian. This is not something I have ever found offensive or taken as an insult, so again, anyone who was trying to tease me was probably disappointed and backed off quickly. In fact, I have never been attracted to women, only men. Dressing or acting like a boy, playing with boy toys, etc. did not make me a lesbian. I most certainly do not think similar activities will make my children or any other children gay. I will always remember and laugh at toddler Logan playing with his ~4-yr-old sister and the same-aged neighbor girls. My neighbor had an in-home daycare with three little girls. Kaylin played with them constantly and Logan started tagging along as he got old enough. Their big thing was playing princess and dressing up. Logan wanted to join in the fun and would often allow them to put him in a dress. I thought it was hilarious and adorable, but the neighbor absolutely freaked out that it would make him gay. She also thought Gene would probably leave me if he found out. Seriously? I have an absolutely adorable picture of Logan wearing a dress and sitting on the lawn tractor. Attitudes like this make me sad. C'mon people, clothes and toys do not make children gay. I could be the poster child for this.
I always enjoyed watching my kids and observing their gender roles when they were little (and even now.) Both kids loved Thomas trains with wooden tracks. Kaylin liked building different track formations that went to different fantasy lands. She played with the trains as characters. Logan liked building different functional tracks and played with the trains as vehicles. Both kids liked sorting their toy collections (Kaylin's ponies, Logan's cars) and would spend countless hours lining them up in various ways. Kaylin kept a running commentary, Logan would just make vrooming noises, but both were continuously thinking and plotting what they were doing. Sometimes Kaylin played with cars and Logan played with ponies. Overall, both of my kids have been more interested in things more stereotypically linked to their sex. One of the comments on the gender identity thread was from a woman with no children and accused another woman of a little girl of "forcing" princess toys on her child and that's why she loved them. Ha! Really? I'm pretty sure my little girl NEVER had a princess toy forced on her by her mother!
I have completely strayed from the original point of this entry, but I guess what I want to get across is that I don't feel like or think I have a disorder. If "gender variant" only means that I do not fit stereotypical female gender roles, I will happily admit that is true. If it means there is something psychologically wrong with me because I don't care about dresses and jewelry, I don't think so. I think my issue is primarily disinterest in the subject. It is more obvious to others than my other disinterests, but is it really "worse"? I mean, basically no one cares that I never think about the perfect lawn application for the greenest grass or different qualities of yarn or the new tax laws for 2014. Why should I care deeply for something just because the majority of the female population does? I can think for myself, thank you very much!
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Happy New Year!
I haven't posted in forever because I really felt I was changing from a mommy blog to a whining about my foot blog. The change from a mommy blog is kind of natural since the kids are getting older, friends are becoming a bigger part of their lives and privacy is becoming far more important. I don't really care if the kids' friends find my blog and read about Logan swallowing pool water until he puked at nearly every swimming lesson when he was a preschooler, but I don't want to write anything that would embarrass him now. Kaylin is a teenager and at the age when friends are the biggest part of her life. Seemingly EVERYTHING she does involves friends and while I have written about them in the past, I have never felt comfortable doing it, even when things are kept pretty anonymous. Again, if her friends found my blog, they would absolutely know who I was writing about whether I used real names or not. Out of respect for my kids I am officially going to stop mommy blogging as of today. I don't mean I'll never write about the kids, but no more day to day silly stuff that might come back to embarrass them.
So, then, what is the point of this blog? I'm not really sure and maybe it doesn't have one. After all the years I've put into it, I'm not quite ready to scrap it. I imagine this year I will either find another use for it or else it will fade into oblivion. I'm still writing quite a bit for work and for personal pleasure. I'm also now a board member in charge of the newsletter for the local Audubon Society. My term starts in January so I still have no clue what that entails. I'll probably find out soon. I'm also working on some stuff for AAZK (zoo keeper group) that could potentially take a lot of my free time. I guess right now I will plan to update the old blog about once a month. It will probably be more often if exciting things are happening and less often if everything is same old, same old.
Moving on to my whining about my foot blog... Since my last update in November, I learned that I have a new and different entrapped nerve in my foot. I assumed my nerve issues were left over from my surgery last year, but that seems unlikely because of the different location of the pain/sensations. This news hit me kind of hard because it meant that I had yet another issue with my foot. I got 4 or 5 weekly alcohol injections that got progressively worse to the point I went from basically losing every weekend to pain to spending the entire week- shot to shot- in excruciating pain. Work was horrible. The doc wanted to put me on a prescription for nerve pain and tried to get me to go back on prescription pain meds. (Meaning arthritis meds, not Vicodin.) No. I have terrible side effects from that stuff. I'm going to stick with my vitamins and all natural anti-inflammatories. I have no side effects and they work at least as well as the scripts. I decided to quit the shots and just see what happens. I still have some pain, but the nerve issue seems to be slowly improving. I'm just going to wait and see what happens.
My giant fear when I missed a bunch of work due to a torn tendon back in July was that I was going to reinjure myself and have no more paid time off. Well, I'm coming around to my anniversary date on January 30 and at that time will get 6 more weeks of sick time. I have enough E-time saved up that as long as I can make it through next week without major injury, I can make it to my anniversary date with paid time off. Not that I have any real thought that I will have another injury, it's just very comforting to know that I won't be BOOM, out of work and out of pay.
Over the past several months I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide what to do about work. Zoo keeping is what I love and what I am passionate about. I find my work fulfilling and meaningful and I think I'm pretty good at it. Some of my friends have left/are planning to leave the field claiming they want to do something to "make a difference". Good for them, but I don't feel that way. I think I have and am making a difference doing what I'm doing. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve and a few more things I'd like to accomplish before I move on. If I had the opportunity, I'd move into zoo management in a heartbeat, but it's highly unlikely.
My new plan is to put my all into my projects (that will mostly be unpaid things I accomplish on my own time but are important and fulfilling to me) and try to accomplish as much as possible before my time is up. As of this moment, my plan is to continue working at the very least until I have another major foot injury. If/when that happens, I will re-evaluate. I am doing what I want to do and will fight to do it until the bitter end.
Otherwise, things are going pretty well. We all have this week off of work/school and Gene and I spent the past two days tearing out the living room carpet and prepping the floor to put in that fake wood. Our house just isn't worth huge expense and we have too many pets to have carpeting. The kids are playing with friends and staying up ridiculously late and sleeping in ridiculously late. We're not going anywhere and we're all happy to stay home. Oh, Logan and I did go to Chicago for the day on Saturday in search of snowy owls. We spent most of the day searching along the lakefront, but I think it was too warm and too crowded with people. We saw lots of gulls and mergansers, but no owls. Logan took his metal detector, but his treasure hunting didn't last long with all the disgusting stuff found on the big city beaches. It wasn't the best birding ever, but we had a good time. At least it was a beautiful day!
Happy New Year!
So, then, what is the point of this blog? I'm not really sure and maybe it doesn't have one. After all the years I've put into it, I'm not quite ready to scrap it. I imagine this year I will either find another use for it or else it will fade into oblivion. I'm still writing quite a bit for work and for personal pleasure. I'm also now a board member in charge of the newsletter for the local Audubon Society. My term starts in January so I still have no clue what that entails. I'll probably find out soon. I'm also working on some stuff for AAZK (zoo keeper group) that could potentially take a lot of my free time. I guess right now I will plan to update the old blog about once a month. It will probably be more often if exciting things are happening and less often if everything is same old, same old.
Moving on to my whining about my foot blog... Since my last update in November, I learned that I have a new and different entrapped nerve in my foot. I assumed my nerve issues were left over from my surgery last year, but that seems unlikely because of the different location of the pain/sensations. This news hit me kind of hard because it meant that I had yet another issue with my foot. I got 4 or 5 weekly alcohol injections that got progressively worse to the point I went from basically losing every weekend to pain to spending the entire week- shot to shot- in excruciating pain. Work was horrible. The doc wanted to put me on a prescription for nerve pain and tried to get me to go back on prescription pain meds. (Meaning arthritis meds, not Vicodin.) No. I have terrible side effects from that stuff. I'm going to stick with my vitamins and all natural anti-inflammatories. I have no side effects and they work at least as well as the scripts. I decided to quit the shots and just see what happens. I still have some pain, but the nerve issue seems to be slowly improving. I'm just going to wait and see what happens.
My giant fear when I missed a bunch of work due to a torn tendon back in July was that I was going to reinjure myself and have no more paid time off. Well, I'm coming around to my anniversary date on January 30 and at that time will get 6 more weeks of sick time. I have enough E-time saved up that as long as I can make it through next week without major injury, I can make it to my anniversary date with paid time off. Not that I have any real thought that I will have another injury, it's just very comforting to know that I won't be BOOM, out of work and out of pay.
Over the past several months I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide what to do about work. Zoo keeping is what I love and what I am passionate about. I find my work fulfilling and meaningful and I think I'm pretty good at it. Some of my friends have left/are planning to leave the field claiming they want to do something to "make a difference". Good for them, but I don't feel that way. I think I have and am making a difference doing what I'm doing. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve and a few more things I'd like to accomplish before I move on. If I had the opportunity, I'd move into zoo management in a heartbeat, but it's highly unlikely.
My new plan is to put my all into my projects (that will mostly be unpaid things I accomplish on my own time but are important and fulfilling to me) and try to accomplish as much as possible before my time is up. As of this moment, my plan is to continue working at the very least until I have another major foot injury. If/when that happens, I will re-evaluate. I am doing what I want to do and will fight to do it until the bitter end.
Otherwise, things are going pretty well. We all have this week off of work/school and Gene and I spent the past two days tearing out the living room carpet and prepping the floor to put in that fake wood. Our house just isn't worth huge expense and we have too many pets to have carpeting. The kids are playing with friends and staying up ridiculously late and sleeping in ridiculously late. We're not going anywhere and we're all happy to stay home. Oh, Logan and I did go to Chicago for the day on Saturday in search of snowy owls. We spent most of the day searching along the lakefront, but I think it was too warm and too crowded with people. We saw lots of gulls and mergansers, but no owls. Logan took his metal detector, but his treasure hunting didn't last long with all the disgusting stuff found on the big city beaches. It wasn't the best birding ever, but we had a good time. At least it was a beautiful day!
Happy New Year!
Friday, November 29, 2013
Black Friday
I had a terrible week at work with stupid foot pain. For some reason, it hurt if I had anything touching my foot, so wearing a sock and shoe was miserable. I wasn't sleeping much at night and the pain was the non-stop, annoying kind that made me incredibly irritable and impatient. Fortunately, Thursday was Thanksgiving Day and a short day where 5 keepers go in and do 3 hours worth of feeding, watering, medicating and basic cleaning. We were in at 6:45am and I was home by 10am. The great thing about working holidays is that I am wide awake and ready to take on the entire day, but suddenly get to go home and have the rest of the day off still early in the morning.
My bad week took a sudden turn for the much better. I would probably never buy a turkey, but I get a free one from work. Usually I donate the bird, but this year I decided to make the whole Thanksgiving feast for my family. I've made a few turkeys before, but this was the first time I actually remembered to remove both the neck and the giblets before cooking. This was also the first time I basted the bird rather than using one of those plastic bags and I must say that it turned out fantastic. The white meat is tender and juicy and the legs were falling off the bird when it was finished. I also made real mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie (made by Kaylin.) We also had Stove Top Stuffing because the kids won't touch it anyway and jarred gravy because the one time I made real gravy from drippings it made me gag and I couldn't eat it. (Everybody else liked it, so it tasted fine, it was the gross process that got to me... I love that I scoop poop for a living but can't handle making gravy. Such is life.) Anyway, it turned out to be a really relaxing day hanging out with Gene and the kids. It was exactly what I needed. Everyone enjoyed the feast and Kaylin's pie was excellent.
Today we're hanging out together at home. Everyone got to sleep in and I even slept almost 8 full hours in my bed. That feels like a record. I then hung out all early morning watching TV in my recliner while both dogs and both cats took turns sleeping with me. At one point both dogs had Princess sandwiched between them and we dozed like that for a good half hour until Scout couldn't take it anymore and chased Princess off. I escaped their altercation with no injuries, but they've been having a standoff with much barking and hissing for the past several hours. Gage plunks down like a bag of sand and sleeps through everyone stepping on him or trying to shove him off. Tiger is bigger than the other pets so he just stands his ground like a brick wall and everyone eventually leaves him alone. They keep the peace by their indifference :)
Gene and Logan might go to the driving range later, but I think I'll just hang out and rest. I'm definitely not going shopping anywhere except maybe Kroger. I think we'll have a day of leftovers and pets and video games and relaxation. I'm going to try to keep off my feet and keep calm. I can't believe it's almost December and almost the end of the year. This year is just flying by!
My bad week took a sudden turn for the much better. I would probably never buy a turkey, but I get a free one from work. Usually I donate the bird, but this year I decided to make the whole Thanksgiving feast for my family. I've made a few turkeys before, but this was the first time I actually remembered to remove both the neck and the giblets before cooking. This was also the first time I basted the bird rather than using one of those plastic bags and I must say that it turned out fantastic. The white meat is tender and juicy and the legs were falling off the bird when it was finished. I also made real mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie (made by Kaylin.) We also had Stove Top Stuffing because the kids won't touch it anyway and jarred gravy because the one time I made real gravy from drippings it made me gag and I couldn't eat it. (Everybody else liked it, so it tasted fine, it was the gross process that got to me... I love that I scoop poop for a living but can't handle making gravy. Such is life.) Anyway, it turned out to be a really relaxing day hanging out with Gene and the kids. It was exactly what I needed. Everyone enjoyed the feast and Kaylin's pie was excellent.
Today we're hanging out together at home. Everyone got to sleep in and I even slept almost 8 full hours in my bed. That feels like a record. I then hung out all early morning watching TV in my recliner while both dogs and both cats took turns sleeping with me. At one point both dogs had Princess sandwiched between them and we dozed like that for a good half hour until Scout couldn't take it anymore and chased Princess off. I escaped their altercation with no injuries, but they've been having a standoff with much barking and hissing for the past several hours. Gage plunks down like a bag of sand and sleeps through everyone stepping on him or trying to shove him off. Tiger is bigger than the other pets so he just stands his ground like a brick wall and everyone eventually leaves him alone. They keep the peace by their indifference :)
Gene and Logan might go to the driving range later, but I think I'll just hang out and rest. I'm definitely not going shopping anywhere except maybe Kroger. I think we'll have a day of leftovers and pets and video games and relaxation. I'm going to try to keep off my feet and keep calm. I can't believe it's almost December and almost the end of the year. This year is just flying by!
Thursday, November 14, 2013
November Update
Again, time is flying and I have so many other things to do I completely forgot about the old blog. Since my last entry, the kids went trick-or-treating on a rainy Halloween night and scored ridiculous amounts of candy that I am still munching on almost daily. Both kids decided they were too old to go out and then at the last minute decided they needed to go. I had already worked in the rain all day, so Gene was kind enough to take them. I had my 41st birthday and was not using a walker or any other old people device. 40 pretty much sucked, so I'm glad to have it behind me. Logan celebrated his 11th birthday with everything Minecraft. I am so sick of this stupid game that both kids play endlessly and has no beginning, end or point.
Logan received a metal detector as his birthday present from my parents. His new thing is treasure hunting. We've been out three times and he hasn't found anything of value, not even a penny, but he loves everything he does find. Fish hooks, sinkers, random pieces of metal large and small... He is accumulating a large collection of useless junk. I bird and look for rocks and stuff while he digs up his latest piece of rusty barge. It's pretty fun and gets us out of the house and into the great outdoors.
My foot. I don't even know what to say about it. Every time I feel confident that it's getting better, it flares and puts me in my place. I'm currently going through a series of alcohol injections that are supposed to help or even completely end the nerve pain from my surgery last year. I usually just have some tingling and numbness below my pinky toe, but for some reason the pain started flaring again a few weeks ago. The shots themselves are no big deal, but for hours afterward it feels like what your mouth feels like on Novocain. Then I have several days of pressure pain that is pretty bad the two days after the injection and slowly gets better over the week until my next injection. Actually, I'm awake right now because the weird pain and itching from yesterday's injection is keeping me from sleep. I hopefully only have one more injection, but may have up to four more. Ugh. Stupid foot.
I've got a bunch of other stuff I'm working on and will probably not post again anytime soon. It's a busy time of year, I guess.
Logan received a metal detector as his birthday present from my parents. His new thing is treasure hunting. We've been out three times and he hasn't found anything of value, not even a penny, but he loves everything he does find. Fish hooks, sinkers, random pieces of metal large and small... He is accumulating a large collection of useless junk. I bird and look for rocks and stuff while he digs up his latest piece of rusty barge. It's pretty fun and gets us out of the house and into the great outdoors.
My foot. I don't even know what to say about it. Every time I feel confident that it's getting better, it flares and puts me in my place. I'm currently going through a series of alcohol injections that are supposed to help or even completely end the nerve pain from my surgery last year. I usually just have some tingling and numbness below my pinky toe, but for some reason the pain started flaring again a few weeks ago. The shots themselves are no big deal, but for hours afterward it feels like what your mouth feels like on Novocain. Then I have several days of pressure pain that is pretty bad the two days after the injection and slowly gets better over the week until my next injection. Actually, I'm awake right now because the weird pain and itching from yesterday's injection is keeping me from sleep. I hopefully only have one more injection, but may have up to four more. Ugh. Stupid foot.
I've got a bunch of other stuff I'm working on and will probably not post again anytime soon. It's a busy time of year, I guess.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Another round...
Once again, it's my favorite time of year- parent-teacher conferences!!! The kids' school offers conferences on Thursday evening and Friday morning. Friday is my day off so I have always gone Friday morning. Well, this year with two kids and 10 different teachers, I made Gene come with me Thursday. The school has two gyms (the smaller one is used as a cafeteria) so 5th and 6th grade teachers are in one gym and 7th and 8th in the other. The teachers sit at a table with 2 chairs in front and you line up and wait. And for the chatty teachers, you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and it takes all of your self-control to not just walk out and go get ice cream instead. It's an awful system, but it works.
Thursday morning as we were driving into the school parking lot for drop-off, Logan told me I'd probably be disappointed with his grades. I was teasing him and asked if he'd been playing too much Minecraft and not studying enough? He completely flipped out and yelled "STUDY! I DO NOT STUDY!" Then he muttered a bunch of stuff about how ridiculous I was being to think that he would study and then it was his turn to get out of the car. I drove to work, part laughing, part stunned and part a little scared of seeing his report card. We never have had a follow up conversation about studying, but I'm going to have to guess that my general definition of "study" that was encompassing all aspects of homework is NOT Logan's definition. His report card was excellent other than his science grade and that was due to one late assignment and few grades overall.
For meet the teacher night in early September, Gene went to Kaylin's classes and I went to Logan's. We switched for conferences. Gene said that all of Logan's teachers said he was great to have in class. He participates and isn't disruptive and does a good job. (Haha, they will never know that he absolutely does not study!) Kaylin's teachers said the same things I've been hearing since 3rd grade. She's very quiet in class, very smart and understands all the material. If she doesn't have an A in the class it is ALWAYS because she failed to turn in assignments. She does the assignments, she just can't seem to locate them when she needs to.
My biggest annoyance of the night was when I got home and showed Kaylin her report card. Her first comment was "An A in gym? I wear Crocs every day and sit on the bleachers with my friends. I guess I'll keep doing what I'm doing." Obviously, that's a terrible attitude, but how can I argue? Seriously, if they are going to give her an A when she doesn't participate at all but she's not disruptive, she might as well keep doing what she's doing. The gym teachers probably don't even know her name. Whatever. Another thing to add to my list of why I don't believe report card grades mean anything.
I'm glad conferences are over for a few more months. I had no surprises about the kids and no teachers physically touched me in any way beyond a handshake. Success!
Thursday morning as we were driving into the school parking lot for drop-off, Logan told me I'd probably be disappointed with his grades. I was teasing him and asked if he'd been playing too much Minecraft and not studying enough? He completely flipped out and yelled "STUDY! I DO NOT STUDY!" Then he muttered a bunch of stuff about how ridiculous I was being to think that he would study and then it was his turn to get out of the car. I drove to work, part laughing, part stunned and part a little scared of seeing his report card. We never have had a follow up conversation about studying, but I'm going to have to guess that my general definition of "study" that was encompassing all aspects of homework is NOT Logan's definition. His report card was excellent other than his science grade and that was due to one late assignment and few grades overall.
For meet the teacher night in early September, Gene went to Kaylin's classes and I went to Logan's. We switched for conferences. Gene said that all of Logan's teachers said he was great to have in class. He participates and isn't disruptive and does a good job. (Haha, they will never know that he absolutely does not study!) Kaylin's teachers said the same things I've been hearing since 3rd grade. She's very quiet in class, very smart and understands all the material. If she doesn't have an A in the class it is ALWAYS because she failed to turn in assignments. She does the assignments, she just can't seem to locate them when she needs to.
My biggest annoyance of the night was when I got home and showed Kaylin her report card. Her first comment was "An A in gym? I wear Crocs every day and sit on the bleachers with my friends. I guess I'll keep doing what I'm doing." Obviously, that's a terrible attitude, but how can I argue? Seriously, if they are going to give her an A when she doesn't participate at all but she's not disruptive, she might as well keep doing what she's doing. The gym teachers probably don't even know her name. Whatever. Another thing to add to my list of why I don't believe report card grades mean anything.
I'm glad conferences are over for a few more months. I had no surprises about the kids and no teachers physically touched me in any way beyond a handshake. Success!
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Slow down, October!
Wow, once again I have fallen way, way behind on blogging! The rest of my zoo keeper conference was fantastic. They turned up the temperature in our main conference hall and it was cool but comfortable the rest of the week. We spent one entire day at the North Carolina Zoo which was huge. Most of the animal enclosures (at least for the hoofstock) were enormous, which is great for the animals, but the layout of the zoo was such that you walked and walked and walked between exhibits. I compared it to if Peoria Zoo kept our same number of animals but increased the size of the grounds by about 10 times. I would say about 80% of the time you were walking through the wooded grounds with no animal enclosures in sight. I probably would have loved the zoo if not for my bad foot. I mean, I DID love the zoo, but I didn't love walking the zoo. Someone said it was 5 miles from one end to the other, but I have no idea if that is true. It felt like 5 miles!
I missed the kids and Gene was planning to take them to a White Sox game in Chicago for the weekend, so I drove home in 15 hours on Friday. It was a loooooooong drive all at once, but I was glad to be home all day on Saturday. The White Sox plans went all wonky and Kaylin ended up staying home but spending the night with my parents and Logan and Gene went to the game but only on Sunday. The boys had a great time at the Sox game where they got free tickets and $10 parking. Their Sox game ended up being cheaper than a Chiefs game!
I returned to work on Sunday, September 30th. I hadn't worn my boot cast since the last day I worked a week and a half before, but my doctor told me I should probably put it back on when I went back to work. I did and it was a big mistake. By lunch my calf was so cramped I could hardly walk. I took off the boot for the rest of the day, but spent the rest of the week stretching and massaging the knots out of my calf. I've now completed two weeks of work without the boot and while my foot is far from perfect, I can make it through the work day without icing. It seems like my tendon tear pain is completely healed and gone, but my foot is still weak overall and the nerve pain by my pinkie toe is still flaring. It's not ideal, but I've worked with much worse pain and it seems to get slightly better over time.
Work's been a bit crazy with preparing everything for the cold season and the zoo preparing for Howl-Zoo-Ween. I had to round up the budgies in the aviary to bring them inside for the winter. After a week of preparation, feeding the birds mostly inside, adjusting doors and waiting for cool night time temperatures, the majority of the ~200 birds were locked inside last Saturday night. My boss worked late at a special event and snuck down after dark and shut the door. It was a surprisingly good catch! I only had ~50 more birds to round up outside. On Sunday, I hung sheets across half of the aviary and several coworkers came down and we netted birds until there were only 8 remaining outside. I then set a food "trap" in one of the double-doored vestibules the zoo visitors use to enter the aviary. It was basically like putting all their food into a closet. I came in early Monday morning and all of the birds were happily eating. I shut the door and then just had to net them in the small area. It was sort of fun and definitely gave a sense of accomplishment when complete.
Kaylin and I worked at Howl-Zoo-Ween last night. Our zoo keeper group was selling glow necklaces as a fundraiser and Kaylin came along to help. I bought 450 necklaces online and felt it was a major financial risk. Thursday night was for zoo members only and only 50 necklaces were sold. I about panicked wondering how much money we would lose because of MY purchase. I need not have worried. The event was PACKED last night and the six of us working sold ~325 of the remaining necklaces, with ~25 defective and unsellable. I'm sure they will have no problem selling 50 necklaces tonight! Even if it pours rain and no one shows up, we will still make a good profit! It was fun to see all of the costumed kids and Kaylin and I even had time to walk the trick-or-treat trail for candy.
Otherwise, almost everything is pretty normal. The kids are doing their school thing and the pets are doing their pet things. Gene had a lay-off week from work last week and will have at least one more before the end of the year. I'm still keeping my eyes and ears open for other career opportunities, but am very much hoping to be able to remain a zoo keeper for a while longer. I suppose only time will tell. I was somewhat encouraged this week because while I was scrolling through some online want ads, just seeing what is available, I was interested in 3 different jobs I would currently qualify for and another job I had never thought of that I would probably only need a few classes to qualify. I know competition is probably fierce and just because I'm interested doesn't mean I would actually get the jobs, but it is an incredible feeling to know there is something out there.
I missed the kids and Gene was planning to take them to a White Sox game in Chicago for the weekend, so I drove home in 15 hours on Friday. It was a loooooooong drive all at once, but I was glad to be home all day on Saturday. The White Sox plans went all wonky and Kaylin ended up staying home but spending the night with my parents and Logan and Gene went to the game but only on Sunday. The boys had a great time at the Sox game where they got free tickets and $10 parking. Their Sox game ended up being cheaper than a Chiefs game!
I returned to work on Sunday, September 30th. I hadn't worn my boot cast since the last day I worked a week and a half before, but my doctor told me I should probably put it back on when I went back to work. I did and it was a big mistake. By lunch my calf was so cramped I could hardly walk. I took off the boot for the rest of the day, but spent the rest of the week stretching and massaging the knots out of my calf. I've now completed two weeks of work without the boot and while my foot is far from perfect, I can make it through the work day without icing. It seems like my tendon tear pain is completely healed and gone, but my foot is still weak overall and the nerve pain by my pinkie toe is still flaring. It's not ideal, but I've worked with much worse pain and it seems to get slightly better over time.
Work's been a bit crazy with preparing everything for the cold season and the zoo preparing for Howl-Zoo-Ween. I had to round up the budgies in the aviary to bring them inside for the winter. After a week of preparation, feeding the birds mostly inside, adjusting doors and waiting for cool night time temperatures, the majority of the ~200 birds were locked inside last Saturday night. My boss worked late at a special event and snuck down after dark and shut the door. It was a surprisingly good catch! I only had ~50 more birds to round up outside. On Sunday, I hung sheets across half of the aviary and several coworkers came down and we netted birds until there were only 8 remaining outside. I then set a food "trap" in one of the double-doored vestibules the zoo visitors use to enter the aviary. It was basically like putting all their food into a closet. I came in early Monday morning and all of the birds were happily eating. I shut the door and then just had to net them in the small area. It was sort of fun and definitely gave a sense of accomplishment when complete.
Kaylin and I worked at Howl-Zoo-Ween last night. Our zoo keeper group was selling glow necklaces as a fundraiser and Kaylin came along to help. I bought 450 necklaces online and felt it was a major financial risk. Thursday night was for zoo members only and only 50 necklaces were sold. I about panicked wondering how much money we would lose because of MY purchase. I need not have worried. The event was PACKED last night and the six of us working sold ~325 of the remaining necklaces, with ~25 defective and unsellable. I'm sure they will have no problem selling 50 necklaces tonight! Even if it pours rain and no one shows up, we will still make a good profit! It was fun to see all of the costumed kids and Kaylin and I even had time to walk the trick-or-treat trail for candy.
Otherwise, almost everything is pretty normal. The kids are doing their school thing and the pets are doing their pet things. Gene had a lay-off week from work last week and will have at least one more before the end of the year. I'm still keeping my eyes and ears open for other career opportunities, but am very much hoping to be able to remain a zoo keeper for a while longer. I suppose only time will tell. I was somewhat encouraged this week because while I was scrolling through some online want ads, just seeing what is available, I was interested in 3 different jobs I would currently qualify for and another job I had never thought of that I would probably only need a few classes to qualify. I know competition is probably fierce and just because I'm interested doesn't mean I would actually get the jobs, but it is an incredible feeling to know there is something out there.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Lemurs!
I just spent nearly 10 hours in the most freezing cold conference hall imaginable. I did have a 30 minute lunch, but was still cold when I got back. I would have like to have stayed for the 5:30-6:30 presentation, but was so miserable I decided to come back to the room to warm up before the 7-8:30pm presentation. I can look out my window and see countless restaurants, along with a huge shopping mall with a food court just across the parking lot, but I'm so cold I'm eating crackers and peanut butter because I can't stand the thought of going out into the cold hallway. I really need to ice my foot but that is just not going to happen. I think I have my Carhartt winter work coat in the trunk of my car and I may have to go get item. I wonder if JC Penney sells footie pajamas and big fuzzy slippers because that's what I want to wear under my coat. I think my bibs are in my work locker or I'd wear them too.
Okay, I'm done complaining about the cold. Otherwise, the conference is great! Today lots of the topics covered animal welfare issues. For those not in the profession, animal welfare is the scientific approach to animal care covering everything from proper diet to proper housing to emotional state. This is opposed to animal rights which is the philosophical viewpoint that animals deserve the same rights as humans. Anyway, I learned some great stuff I'd never considered, along with lots of differing ideas. I also attended the meeting for chapter leaders and I best be going over our chapter's constitution and bylaws ASAP. We also had speakers from Lewa, the International Rhino Foundation and the cheetah organization that Bowling for Rhinos helps fund. It's been a long day and I'd probably be exhausted if not for all the coffee I drank trying to keep warm.
Yesterday's trip to Duke Lemur Center and the Durham Science Center was fantastic! The lemur center had acres and acres of wooded areas where troops of lemurs roamed free. We got to go in 3 of them. One had a group of sifakas along with some other lemurs I can't even remember because being inches away from multiple "free-roaming" sifakas was so cool. The next yard was full of a large family of ring-tailed lemurs. There were many babies of different ages and all would run right over your feet. The dominant male went right up to everyone. We then saw several pairs of breeding lemurs who were in enclosures rather than huge free yards. Finally, we got to go into the nocturnal building which housed aye-ayes, pygmy lorises and gray mouse lemurs. Before I saw my first aye-aye at Omaha Zoo, I thought they were tiny. They are actually the largest nocturnal primate and one of the largest (maybe the largest, I can't remember) lemur. Anyway, they are crazy-looking and super, super cool. They have to have tons and tons of enrichment and can only have fleece cloth because they pull apart everything. They also can make a small hole in an orange or a nut and perfectly clean out the fruit, leaving the shell/skin intact. I don't think I've ever seen gray mouse lemurs before, or if I have, I didn't get a good look. There are adorable! They are probably the cutest primates I've ever seen.
The Durham Science Center was also way better than I thought it would be. They had a really nice butterfly and insect house. We got a behind the scenes tour of the black bears and a keeper did a demonstration with one of the bears in the squeeze cage. Meanwhile, two of the other bears came right up to the fence and we were an inch away from them. We also got to see the wolves and farm animals up close. Last night was the conference ice breaker at the Greensboro Science Center. The Greensboro Science Center is also an AZA accredited zoo and aquarium with a large ray touch tank. The food was a fat girl's dream with a mac and cheese bar (yes bar) and a huge selection of dips with home made chips. There was also a table with vegetables and cheeses. Delicious food followed by a ray tank with no children. Pretty awesome!
Ugh. I have 10 minutes to make it back to the meeting room and I'm still freezing. I guess I'll come back and take a hot shower.
Okay, I'm done complaining about the cold. Otherwise, the conference is great! Today lots of the topics covered animal welfare issues. For those not in the profession, animal welfare is the scientific approach to animal care covering everything from proper diet to proper housing to emotional state. This is opposed to animal rights which is the philosophical viewpoint that animals deserve the same rights as humans. Anyway, I learned some great stuff I'd never considered, along with lots of differing ideas. I also attended the meeting for chapter leaders and I best be going over our chapter's constitution and bylaws ASAP. We also had speakers from Lewa, the International Rhino Foundation and the cheetah organization that Bowling for Rhinos helps fund. It's been a long day and I'd probably be exhausted if not for all the coffee I drank trying to keep warm.
Yesterday's trip to Duke Lemur Center and the Durham Science Center was fantastic! The lemur center had acres and acres of wooded areas where troops of lemurs roamed free. We got to go in 3 of them. One had a group of sifakas along with some other lemurs I can't even remember because being inches away from multiple "free-roaming" sifakas was so cool. The next yard was full of a large family of ring-tailed lemurs. There were many babies of different ages and all would run right over your feet. The dominant male went right up to everyone. We then saw several pairs of breeding lemurs who were in enclosures rather than huge free yards. Finally, we got to go into the nocturnal building which housed aye-ayes, pygmy lorises and gray mouse lemurs. Before I saw my first aye-aye at Omaha Zoo, I thought they were tiny. They are actually the largest nocturnal primate and one of the largest (maybe the largest, I can't remember) lemur. Anyway, they are crazy-looking and super, super cool. They have to have tons and tons of enrichment and can only have fleece cloth because they pull apart everything. They also can make a small hole in an orange or a nut and perfectly clean out the fruit, leaving the shell/skin intact. I don't think I've ever seen gray mouse lemurs before, or if I have, I didn't get a good look. There are adorable! They are probably the cutest primates I've ever seen.
The Durham Science Center was also way better than I thought it would be. They had a really nice butterfly and insect house. We got a behind the scenes tour of the black bears and a keeper did a demonstration with one of the bears in the squeeze cage. Meanwhile, two of the other bears came right up to the fence and we were an inch away from them. We also got to see the wolves and farm animals up close. Last night was the conference ice breaker at the Greensboro Science Center. The Greensboro Science Center is also an AZA accredited zoo and aquarium with a large ray touch tank. The food was a fat girl's dream with a mac and cheese bar (yes bar) and a huge selection of dips with home made chips. There was also a table with vegetables and cheeses. Delicious food followed by a ray tank with no children. Pretty awesome!
Ugh. I have 10 minutes to make it back to the meeting room and I'm still freezing. I guess I'll come back and take a hot shower.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
North Carolina
I'm in North Carolina for the next week for a zoo keeper conference. I'm excited for countless reasons, but the main ones are that I love road trips, I've never been to a national level conference before and my doctor said I don't have to wear my boot as long as I'm not doing anything strenuous. I've been wearing the boot for the past 7 weeks, including all week at work last week. I'm sick of it! Back to work went really well. My first day back I was in so much pain when I got home I thought maybe I made a mistake. I iced my foot and then used my heat wrap and was a lot better in the morning. I then started icing my foot during my morning break and lunch and the difference at the end of the day was huge. By Thursday (my Friday) I was much better than I was on Sunday. My foot still hurts, but it's not the unbearable pain that kept me out of work. I went off all my pain meds ~6 weeks ago and switched to all natural options. I'm taking a specially formulated joint pain vitamin pack along with an herbal anti-inflammatory. I would normally assume the holistic approach is a bunch of hooey, but it seems to be working at least as well as the prescription that was giving me all kinds of nasty symptoms.
Back to North Carolina... I left Friday morning after I dropped the kids off at school. I took my time and drove without any real goal in mind. I stopped at interesting rest areas and landmarks. I found a really cool Audubon center near Dayton that had a great sitting room overlooking a large bird feeder area with a water feature. I enjoyed the scenery and pulled into Charleston just as it was getting dark. I would have liked to drive another hour or two, but I decided that I wanted to be able to see my surroundings. It was a wise decision because the drive through West Virginia and Virginia was one of the prettiest I remember. The never ending foothills covered with green trees that were just starting to change. West Virginia's slogan is "Wild and Wonderful" and it certainly was. I was meandering through North Carolina, sort of sad my drive was almost over when I saw an exit sign for Mt. Pilot. Wait, what? Mt. Pilot? Like from Andy Griffith? There really is such a place? Indeed there is! And there is even a restaurant called Aunt Bea's. I've been there. I also stopped at Pilot Mountain state park and drove to the summit. Today was foggy, windy and drizzly, but this is the time of year for hawk migration and it turns out Pilot Mountain is one of the counting points. If next Friday is a little nicer, I will be going back to count hawks!
The convention center/hotel in Greensboro looks like it was built in the 50s. It has one large tower and two small ones. There are more than 1000 hotel rooms and countless conference rooms. My room looks like it has been recently updated. It's nice, but the bathroom is weird. Specifically, the shower is weird. There is no tub, just an enormous shower stall with only a half sheet of glass floor to ceiling and no door. The shower head is mounted to the ceiling and rains down over the drain. I have to step completely out of the water to adjust the faucet. There is no towel bar convenient and no curtain rod or side of the tub or other place to hang a towel. The toilet is right on the other side of the shower glass so the only place for a towel (other than the rack all the way across the large room or the bar behind the toilet) is the floor in front of the toilet. GROSS! The way the shower is set up with a huge area out of the water, there is no floor mat. I had to lay a towel on the floor in front of the toilet to set my clean towel on. Weird.
Tomorrow I'm going on a pre-conference trip to the Duke Lemur Center. It's a place I've always wanted to visit and now I get to go AND go behind the scenes. Tomorrow night is the conference ice breaker at the Greensboro Science Center that is also a zoo and aquarium. Monday through Thursday are conference days with a trip to the North Carolina Zoo thrown in at some point. I've got a few extras planned for the evenings. It should be a fun week!
Back to North Carolina... I left Friday morning after I dropped the kids off at school. I took my time and drove without any real goal in mind. I stopped at interesting rest areas and landmarks. I found a really cool Audubon center near Dayton that had a great sitting room overlooking a large bird feeder area with a water feature. I enjoyed the scenery and pulled into Charleston just as it was getting dark. I would have liked to drive another hour or two, but I decided that I wanted to be able to see my surroundings. It was a wise decision because the drive through West Virginia and Virginia was one of the prettiest I remember. The never ending foothills covered with green trees that were just starting to change. West Virginia's slogan is "Wild and Wonderful" and it certainly was. I was meandering through North Carolina, sort of sad my drive was almost over when I saw an exit sign for Mt. Pilot. Wait, what? Mt. Pilot? Like from Andy Griffith? There really is such a place? Indeed there is! And there is even a restaurant called Aunt Bea's. I've been there. I also stopped at Pilot Mountain state park and drove to the summit. Today was foggy, windy and drizzly, but this is the time of year for hawk migration and it turns out Pilot Mountain is one of the counting points. If next Friday is a little nicer, I will be going back to count hawks!
The convention center/hotel in Greensboro looks like it was built in the 50s. It has one large tower and two small ones. There are more than 1000 hotel rooms and countless conference rooms. My room looks like it has been recently updated. It's nice, but the bathroom is weird. Specifically, the shower is weird. There is no tub, just an enormous shower stall with only a half sheet of glass floor to ceiling and no door. The shower head is mounted to the ceiling and rains down over the drain. I have to step completely out of the water to adjust the faucet. There is no towel bar convenient and no curtain rod or side of the tub or other place to hang a towel. The toilet is right on the other side of the shower glass so the only place for a towel (other than the rack all the way across the large room or the bar behind the toilet) is the floor in front of the toilet. GROSS! The way the shower is set up with a huge area out of the water, there is no floor mat. I had to lay a towel on the floor in front of the toilet to set my clean towel on. Weird.
Tomorrow I'm going on a pre-conference trip to the Duke Lemur Center. It's a place I've always wanted to visit and now I get to go AND go behind the scenes. Tomorrow night is the conference ice breaker at the Greensboro Science Center that is also a zoo and aquarium. Monday through Thursday are conference days with a trip to the North Carolina Zoo thrown in at some point. I've got a few extras planned for the evenings. It should be a fun week!
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Boo-freakin-hoo
Well, I'm pretty sure I'm in my final week of being off work for my foot. I have been doing so little for the past 6 weeks that pretty much the only thing I could have written about would have been my woes about not being at work. When I look back to what I have accomplished during my time off, it seems like I should have done a whole lot, but I really did next to nothing. Of course, I've been trying to keep off my foot and allow it to heal, but that's probably no excuse for my son's bedroom being a complete pigsty and the rest of the house having 1/4 inch of dust everywhere.
I went to lunch with my dad and aunt Sharon last week. I hadn't seen Sharon for a while and was filling her in on my foot. Dad told Sharon that I'm looking into changing careers to something less physical. He then went on to state that I'm "taking it very well." Uhhhh... I don't think that is true at all! The truth is that I am completely devastated! I love being a zoo keeper. I love working at a physical job outside. I absolutely love working with the animals! There are certainly things I don't love about my job, but most of those things involve something going wrong with the animals (illness, injury, old age, death) which is extremely stressful sometimes, but ultimately makes the job more meaningful and special.
I have needed most of my time off to just process the thought of leaving the zoo. I've had very productive days where I've made phone calls and gone to appointments and worked hard on my resume. They are usually followed by days curled in my chair, doing only what I'm absolutely forced to do. I'm not very good at showing emotion or letting people know how I really feel. I hate drama and really don't cry or rant or anything. My plan as of this second is to go back to work next Sunday and work until at least January 30th- my work anniversary date when my retirement vests. If my foot is perfectly fine, I will continue at the zoo for a while and give myself more time to research (and hopefully find) other jobs. If my foot is bad, I will probably quit soon after my anniversary date. I'm certainly no closer to finding another job than I was 6 weeks ago, but I'm in a lot less denial and have a lot more ideas. I'm not there yet, but I'm slowly coming into acceptance. I know I'll eventually be okay. Seriously, scooping poop is not the only thing I can do.
I went to lunch with my dad and aunt Sharon last week. I hadn't seen Sharon for a while and was filling her in on my foot. Dad told Sharon that I'm looking into changing careers to something less physical. He then went on to state that I'm "taking it very well." Uhhhh... I don't think that is true at all! The truth is that I am completely devastated! I love being a zoo keeper. I love working at a physical job outside. I absolutely love working with the animals! There are certainly things I don't love about my job, but most of those things involve something going wrong with the animals (illness, injury, old age, death) which is extremely stressful sometimes, but ultimately makes the job more meaningful and special.
I have needed most of my time off to just process the thought of leaving the zoo. I've had very productive days where I've made phone calls and gone to appointments and worked hard on my resume. They are usually followed by days curled in my chair, doing only what I'm absolutely forced to do. I'm not very good at showing emotion or letting people know how I really feel. I hate drama and really don't cry or rant or anything. My plan as of this second is to go back to work next Sunday and work until at least January 30th- my work anniversary date when my retirement vests. If my foot is perfectly fine, I will continue at the zoo for a while and give myself more time to research (and hopefully find) other jobs. If my foot is bad, I will probably quit soon after my anniversary date. I'm certainly no closer to finding another job than I was 6 weeks ago, but I'm in a lot less denial and have a lot more ideas. I'm not there yet, but I'm slowly coming into acceptance. I know I'll eventually be okay. Seriously, scooping poop is not the only thing I can do.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Stupid Foot, Part 94
I had an MRI on my foot a week ago Monday and found out that I tore a tendon. Again. And this time I have absolutely no clue about a specific incident that would have caused this fairly major injury. It is extremely upsetting and frustrating to not understand how and why I am injuring myself. Back in mid-July I had what felt like very tight calves and ankles in both legs/feet. The right leg improved to completely better in a few days. The left calf improved, but my entire left foot started to hurt more and more each day. Several different tendons were inflamed and painful. At one point I had a large lump on the bottom of my foot but it went away. After about a week and a half the pain became unbearable and there was swelling on the outer side of my foot that prevented me from putting on a shoe. That was July 30th. I haven't been back to work since.
I have spent my month off trying to come to terms with the fact that it is time to start looking for another, less physically demanding career. I've talked to my doctor, my bosses, friends, family and people in the career centers at ICC and ISU. I have a call in to some lady at an employment agency. I've revised my resume and am signed up for a career change class. I'm signed up at several job posting sites and will add my resume soon. I'm constantly googling different jobs and ideas. It totally sucks. I don't want to leave the zoo.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation. I'm enjoying my extra time with the kids and the pets. This weekend we learned that Gage is a water dog. We took him down to the river for the millionth time, but for some reason this time he LOVED playing in the water. It was beyond cute to see him leaping along the edge, barking at the waves. Then he played swim fetch for sticks over and over until we had to leave. I wish I could take him more often, but the river is pretty disgusting and he will need a bath every time he goes in.
The kids started school and are glad to be back with friends. Logan isn't much of a school lover in general, but he's enjoying having a locker and switching classes. Since he isn't in band or other music, he has to take French. He's not impressed, but I think it's great. Kaylin is thrilled because she got into algebra. She took a test at the end of last school year and the teacher said she did great, but she didn't know for sure if she was one of the "lucky ones" to place into the class until the first day this year.
I have a doctor appointment on Thursday and will find out whether I get to go back to work Sunday. At this point it could go either way. If I do go back it will almost certainly be in the boot and with restrictions. My foot still hurts, but it's much better than it was...
I have spent my month off trying to come to terms with the fact that it is time to start looking for another, less physically demanding career. I've talked to my doctor, my bosses, friends, family and people in the career centers at ICC and ISU. I have a call in to some lady at an employment agency. I've revised my resume and am signed up for a career change class. I'm signed up at several job posting sites and will add my resume soon. I'm constantly googling different jobs and ideas. It totally sucks. I don't want to leave the zoo.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation. I'm enjoying my extra time with the kids and the pets. This weekend we learned that Gage is a water dog. We took him down to the river for the millionth time, but for some reason this time he LOVED playing in the water. It was beyond cute to see him leaping along the edge, barking at the waves. Then he played swim fetch for sticks over and over until we had to leave. I wish I could take him more often, but the river is pretty disgusting and he will need a bath every time he goes in.
The kids started school and are glad to be back with friends. Logan isn't much of a school lover in general, but he's enjoying having a locker and switching classes. Since he isn't in band or other music, he has to take French. He's not impressed, but I think it's great. Kaylin is thrilled because she got into algebra. She took a test at the end of last school year and the teacher said she did great, but she didn't know for sure if she was one of the "lucky ones" to place into the class until the first day this year.
I have a doctor appointment on Thursday and will find out whether I get to go back to work Sunday. At this point it could go either way. If I do go back it will almost certainly be in the boot and with restrictions. My foot still hurts, but it's much better than it was...
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Wisconsin Dells
I've had another major setback with my feet, have been off work for more than 2 weeks and still don't know exactly what's going on. I know I have tendonitis in several different tendons in my left foot and I'm in a lot of pain that's not improving much with rest and time. I have an MRI scheduled Monday that will hopefully help figure out if something else is going on. I've had cortisone shots, wraps, different meds and am back in the boot cast. I'm making some tough decisions about work while getting a dose of reality about the current job market. I'm having a rough month and haven't felt like writing about it. I still don't.
The kids finished their final week of Camp Zone and I was surprised at how fine both were with summer being basically over. They both loved camp, but are ready to go back to school. They enjoyed their final week out of school by mostly staying inside. Logan played video games with the neighbor boys and Kaylin hung out with Kira. I couldn't get Columbus Day off work for our annual trip to Tanner's Orchard and the small town of Bradford, so we went ahead and did it this week. We added the nearby town of Wyoming to our trip and the kids enjoyed the town's park so much we will probably have to go back. On Columbus Day, the playground at Tanner's costs $10 to enter. My kids are too big for the pony and barrel train rides so we haven't been to the playground for a couple of years. Tuesday it was free and they actually had a good, nostalgic time playing on the old tractor tires and hay bales. They were too big for most of the play structures and felt awkward trying to dodge the little kids, but it was fun. I also got a photo of them on the same teeter-totter as when they were 1 and 3. I will have to scan the old photo so I can do a side-by-side 10 years apart. It's pretty cute.
We're currently in Wisconsin Dells. We have stayed at Great Wolf Lodge many times over the years and decided to try Kalahari this time. We stayed here once before when the kids were really little, but it has expanded a LOT in that time. Kaylin doesn't like the crazy, scary water slides Kalahari is famous for and both kids prefer Great Wolf's huge wave pool. Kalahari has an indoor theme park with go karts, mini golf, a ropes course, climbing wall, multiple rides and tons of other stuff including a huge arcade. Great Wolf has a huge arcade. However, there is an even bigger indoor theme park practically in their parking lot called Knuckleheads. Everyone prefers Knuckleheads. Kalahari has a more fun atmosphere with themed shops and restaurants, fountains and better looking décor. Great Wolf is dated and worn-looking. Kalahari has photo ops with baby tigers and coatis. Well, that's sort of a deal breaker for me! I can't tell you how much I hate this practice because these baby animals- no matter how endangered- are poorly bred FOR the photo ops, taken from their mother to be bottle fed- again for the photo ops, and then sent to spend the rest of their lives either breeding more babies for photo ops, stuck in a rescue facility or in questionable traveling shows that do ridiculous and reprehensible things such as breeding ligers. It's a bad, bad practice I can't support. I was sure everyone would be crazy for Kalahari and we'd come back over and over, but we probably won't. We all want to try out the Wilderness Resort next time. Kalahari is fun, but we can do better.
Thursday, we went to the International Crane Foundation for the first time as a family. I absolutely love the place and have been there many times, but usually go alone. Gene and Kaylin weren't too excited about the visit, but they ended up loving it. How can you not love a zoo that is nothing but cranes? Friday, we checked out the Timbavati Wildlife Park for the first time. It took over an old Dells park (I think it was called Storybook Land) and is responsible for breeding the photo op tiger cubs. The place is a giant craphole and I hope it fails. I could write pages about how horrible this place is, but I'll stick to what I hated the most. Number One would be the bird exhibits. There was no barrier between the birds and humans other than the wire mesh covering the cages. The cages weren't small, but they weren't very tall and birds that would normally be perched were on the ground without adequate cover for hiding. There was a crow that completely enjoyed all the human interaction, but there were two eagles and a falcon that were obviously stressed. The falcon was on the ground panting, but it was only 65F and it was in covered shade. HORRIBLE! The second thing I hated was the zebra/ostrich exhibit. They had a huge yard, but were fed along the public fence line. I was petting the zebras who were so used to it they didn't react and I even touched an ostrich. This is just stupid and begging for a lawsuit when someone's kid gets bitten. I then discovered that other than the big cat area and the primate/small carnivore area, most of the animals had no extra barriers to prevent the humans from touching them through the fence. This can lead to transmission of disease both ways, unwanted bites, I could go on and on about why this whole zoo is a bad idea... I will give them one praise- Their giraffe/camel feeding area was amazing and super fun. You could buy a large Dixie cup full of carrot sticks for $4 and the 3 giraffes and 3 camels (separate yards, same feeding platform) were right there eating like piggies. Even having worked with and having regularly hand-fed both giraffes and camels, I have to admit that was really fun.
I forgot to mention that the Timbavati tickets were included with our stay at Kalahari. Also included were tickets to the Tommy Bartlett waterski show. This show is something I would NEVER have considered doing without free tickets. The general admission tickets for our family would have cost around $90. And a waterski show sounds kind of stupid! I have to admit that we all really liked it. They did some amazing things and it was fun to watch. Then, the second half of the show was jugglers and circus-type performers and was equally enjoyable. I don't think I'd pay full price to go back, but if we got free tickets I'd probably go again.
This morning we're planning on swimming at the water park one last time, maybe hitting the indoor theme park again and then the kids REALLY want to go to the Deer Park. I'm not normally much of a hot tub lover, but the heat and jets have helped my foot more than anything else I've tried, so I'm going back for more! I don't know if we'll really go to the Deer Park, but it is something we all love.
The kids finished their final week of Camp Zone and I was surprised at how fine both were with summer being basically over. They both loved camp, but are ready to go back to school. They enjoyed their final week out of school by mostly staying inside. Logan played video games with the neighbor boys and Kaylin hung out with Kira. I couldn't get Columbus Day off work for our annual trip to Tanner's Orchard and the small town of Bradford, so we went ahead and did it this week. We added the nearby town of Wyoming to our trip and the kids enjoyed the town's park so much we will probably have to go back. On Columbus Day, the playground at Tanner's costs $10 to enter. My kids are too big for the pony and barrel train rides so we haven't been to the playground for a couple of years. Tuesday it was free and they actually had a good, nostalgic time playing on the old tractor tires and hay bales. They were too big for most of the play structures and felt awkward trying to dodge the little kids, but it was fun. I also got a photo of them on the same teeter-totter as when they were 1 and 3. I will have to scan the old photo so I can do a side-by-side 10 years apart. It's pretty cute.
We're currently in Wisconsin Dells. We have stayed at Great Wolf Lodge many times over the years and decided to try Kalahari this time. We stayed here once before when the kids were really little, but it has expanded a LOT in that time. Kaylin doesn't like the crazy, scary water slides Kalahari is famous for and both kids prefer Great Wolf's huge wave pool. Kalahari has an indoor theme park with go karts, mini golf, a ropes course, climbing wall, multiple rides and tons of other stuff including a huge arcade. Great Wolf has a huge arcade. However, there is an even bigger indoor theme park practically in their parking lot called Knuckleheads. Everyone prefers Knuckleheads. Kalahari has a more fun atmosphere with themed shops and restaurants, fountains and better looking décor. Great Wolf is dated and worn-looking. Kalahari has photo ops with baby tigers and coatis. Well, that's sort of a deal breaker for me! I can't tell you how much I hate this practice because these baby animals- no matter how endangered- are poorly bred FOR the photo ops, taken from their mother to be bottle fed- again for the photo ops, and then sent to spend the rest of their lives either breeding more babies for photo ops, stuck in a rescue facility or in questionable traveling shows that do ridiculous and reprehensible things such as breeding ligers. It's a bad, bad practice I can't support. I was sure everyone would be crazy for Kalahari and we'd come back over and over, but we probably won't. We all want to try out the Wilderness Resort next time. Kalahari is fun, but we can do better.
Thursday, we went to the International Crane Foundation for the first time as a family. I absolutely love the place and have been there many times, but usually go alone. Gene and Kaylin weren't too excited about the visit, but they ended up loving it. How can you not love a zoo that is nothing but cranes? Friday, we checked out the Timbavati Wildlife Park for the first time. It took over an old Dells park (I think it was called Storybook Land) and is responsible for breeding the photo op tiger cubs. The place is a giant craphole and I hope it fails. I could write pages about how horrible this place is, but I'll stick to what I hated the most. Number One would be the bird exhibits. There was no barrier between the birds and humans other than the wire mesh covering the cages. The cages weren't small, but they weren't very tall and birds that would normally be perched were on the ground without adequate cover for hiding. There was a crow that completely enjoyed all the human interaction, but there were two eagles and a falcon that were obviously stressed. The falcon was on the ground panting, but it was only 65F and it was in covered shade. HORRIBLE! The second thing I hated was the zebra/ostrich exhibit. They had a huge yard, but were fed along the public fence line. I was petting the zebras who were so used to it they didn't react and I even touched an ostrich. This is just stupid and begging for a lawsuit when someone's kid gets bitten. I then discovered that other than the big cat area and the primate/small carnivore area, most of the animals had no extra barriers to prevent the humans from touching them through the fence. This can lead to transmission of disease both ways, unwanted bites, I could go on and on about why this whole zoo is a bad idea... I will give them one praise- Their giraffe/camel feeding area was amazing and super fun. You could buy a large Dixie cup full of carrot sticks for $4 and the 3 giraffes and 3 camels (separate yards, same feeding platform) were right there eating like piggies. Even having worked with and having regularly hand-fed both giraffes and camels, I have to admit that was really fun.
I forgot to mention that the Timbavati tickets were included with our stay at Kalahari. Also included were tickets to the Tommy Bartlett waterski show. This show is something I would NEVER have considered doing without free tickets. The general admission tickets for our family would have cost around $90. And a waterski show sounds kind of stupid! I have to admit that we all really liked it. They did some amazing things and it was fun to watch. Then, the second half of the show was jugglers and circus-type performers and was equally enjoyable. I don't think I'd pay full price to go back, but if we got free tickets I'd probably go again.
This morning we're planning on swimming at the water park one last time, maybe hitting the indoor theme park again and then the kids REALLY want to go to the Deer Park. I'm not normally much of a hot tub lover, but the heat and jets have helped my foot more than anything else I've tried, so I'm going back for more! I don't know if we'll really go to the Deer Park, but it is something we all love.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Kaylin's Birthday Party
It's August and I've been such a blog slacker that I never wrote about Kaylin's birthday party! Kaylin's group of friends at day camp call themselves the Gooseberries. She wanted a party with the Gooseberries and we discussed all kinds of options such as go karts at Kartville or painting ceramics at Fired Up. I'm normally willing to shell out extra money to NOT have to host guests at my house, but these ideas were becoming incredibly expensive and the party length was nowhere near as long as Kaylin wanted. I wasn't too thrilled with the thought of both an expensive activity and time at home. We studied our options over and over and finally came up with the idea of having a "messy" theme party.
I will admit that the messy theme started out as a joke. We were discussing different things the girls could do at our house and Kaylin said that Dad would freak over the mess. I laughed and said that we might as well just go ahead and make the theme of the party "messy" and Dad would have to deal. We then started coming up with all kinds of messy games to drive Daddy crazy and the joke started to sound really fun. We moved our ideas from centered around Gene's chair and TV to outside and the perfect party was born.
Kaylin wanted a long party, but not a sleepover. That seemed like a good tradeoff to me, but how do you keep 6 girls entertained for 5 hours? Lots and lots of messy activities. We had squirt guns, water balloons, sidewalk chalk, cans of shaving cream, bubbles, markers and a white plastic table cloth, pudding, whipped cream and 4 pounds of cooked spaghetti for the spaghetti fight. I'm usually very against wasting food like that, but a spaghetti fight sounded too fun. For dinner, we decided to roast hot dogs and marshmallows over our portable fire pit. I was pretty surprised to find that out of all the messy activities, the gooey marshmallows were by far the worst. Kaylin originally wanted to have a flour fight, but I was having terrible visions of furious moms cursing me for their daughters' heads full of flour-pasty hair. I had to nix the flour fight.
We moved the kitchen table and chairs to the back patio and while Gene thought I was nuts, that was probably the best decision of the party. The girls showed up and I was shocked at how long they sat at that table, talking and drawing with markers on the white plastic table cloth. While they were all together and relatively quiet, I told them I didn't care how much of a mess they made, but there was one rule- Keep the spaghetti in the front yard so the dogs can't eat it! I can only imagine how sick our two stupid dogs would be from eating 4 pounds of spaghetti! They would probably die.
Speaking of dogs, Gage absolutely loved the party. He loved the action and attention and allowed the girls to spray him in the face with the hose and decorate him with wrapping paper and bows. Gage wanted to be where the girls were and had a blast. Scout and the cats kept an eye on the party, but tried to stay out of the action.
Once the messy activities started, the rest of the party was nonstop crazy. The spaghetti fight lasted all of about 2 minutes. It was worth it, though. The girls then tore around the front yard with water guns and a slip and slide and plenty of shaving cream. Gene left and went to Walmart, so I was able to get the majority of the spaghetti mess cleaned up before he got home. I used a rake and scoop shovel and cleaned it up zoo keeper style. After a while the girls were all STARVING, so we let them roast hot dogs over the fire. I was a little nervous about 6 crazy girls, 1 crazy boy and FIRE, but they were all great about it. We had S'mores for dessert and I'm sure everyone ate plenty of marshmallows because marshmallow residue was all over EVERYTHING.
Before we knew it, the party was over and everyone was heading home. I think everyone had a great time. I was even glad to have hosted. We spent about an hour cleaning up and moving the table and chairs back inside. The spaghetti left in the yard sort of dissipated over the next week or so and the rain took care of the rest of the mess. It turned out to be a perfect party for Messy Kaylin's 13th birthday.
I will admit that the messy theme started out as a joke. We were discussing different things the girls could do at our house and Kaylin said that Dad would freak over the mess. I laughed and said that we might as well just go ahead and make the theme of the party "messy" and Dad would have to deal. We then started coming up with all kinds of messy games to drive Daddy crazy and the joke started to sound really fun. We moved our ideas from centered around Gene's chair and TV to outside and the perfect party was born.
Kaylin wanted a long party, but not a sleepover. That seemed like a good tradeoff to me, but how do you keep 6 girls entertained for 5 hours? Lots and lots of messy activities. We had squirt guns, water balloons, sidewalk chalk, cans of shaving cream, bubbles, markers and a white plastic table cloth, pudding, whipped cream and 4 pounds of cooked spaghetti for the spaghetti fight. I'm usually very against wasting food like that, but a spaghetti fight sounded too fun. For dinner, we decided to roast hot dogs and marshmallows over our portable fire pit. I was pretty surprised to find that out of all the messy activities, the gooey marshmallows were by far the worst. Kaylin originally wanted to have a flour fight, but I was having terrible visions of furious moms cursing me for their daughters' heads full of flour-pasty hair. I had to nix the flour fight.
We moved the kitchen table and chairs to the back patio and while Gene thought I was nuts, that was probably the best decision of the party. The girls showed up and I was shocked at how long they sat at that table, talking and drawing with markers on the white plastic table cloth. While they were all together and relatively quiet, I told them I didn't care how much of a mess they made, but there was one rule- Keep the spaghetti in the front yard so the dogs can't eat it! I can only imagine how sick our two stupid dogs would be from eating 4 pounds of spaghetti! They would probably die.
Speaking of dogs, Gage absolutely loved the party. He loved the action and attention and allowed the girls to spray him in the face with the hose and decorate him with wrapping paper and bows. Gage wanted to be where the girls were and had a blast. Scout and the cats kept an eye on the party, but tried to stay out of the action.
Once the messy activities started, the rest of the party was nonstop crazy. The spaghetti fight lasted all of about 2 minutes. It was worth it, though. The girls then tore around the front yard with water guns and a slip and slide and plenty of shaving cream. Gene left and went to Walmart, so I was able to get the majority of the spaghetti mess cleaned up before he got home. I used a rake and scoop shovel and cleaned it up zoo keeper style. After a while the girls were all STARVING, so we let them roast hot dogs over the fire. I was a little nervous about 6 crazy girls, 1 crazy boy and FIRE, but they were all great about it. We had S'mores for dessert and I'm sure everyone ate plenty of marshmallows because marshmallow residue was all over EVERYTHING.
Before we knew it, the party was over and everyone was heading home. I think everyone had a great time. I was even glad to have hosted. We spent about an hour cleaning up and moving the table and chairs back inside. The spaghetti left in the yard sort of dissipated over the next week or so and the rain took care of the rest of the mess. It turned out to be a perfect party for Messy Kaylin's 13th birthday.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Cranes
Once again, I haven't posted in forever. I thought that once baseball was over I'd have lots more free time, but then I had other obligations and then other writing obligations for work and I'm just now getting around to updating the old blog. I've also had foot issues for the past couple of weeks and haven't felt like writing about them.
I had been feeling trapped in a rut of the usual and bummed about my foot, so last weekend Logan and I drove up to Wisconsin to bird. My doc told me I could go as long as I limited my walking and didn't overdo it. Our first stop was the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo. I've been there several times and even have a family membership, but it's something I do by myself while Gene and the kids are at their favorite Wisconsin Dells amusement park, Knuckleheads. I wasn't sure whether Logan would love it or be bored, but it's a pretty small place so I wasn't too concerned. ICF is the only place in the world that displays all 15 crane species and we saw them all. Some of the cranes are very territorial and run right up to the visitor pathway and call. Logan loved it! He was very interested in the differences between the cranes and spent longer than I would have imagined checking them out. I bought a "Cranes of the World" t-shirt at their gift shop a couple of years ago and then proceeded to accidentally bleach it. The bleach spots turned to bleach holes and I was hoping to replace the shirt. Well, the shirts were on clearance and between the clearance discount and my membership discount, I was able to get two shirts originally marked $30 apiece for $20 total. Score! A great start to our little trip!
We then headed north to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. It was really hot and really windy, so not really the best day to see birds. We drove the long drive from the visitor center to the pools where I normally see dozens of sandhill cranes and have twice seen whooping cranes, but they were completely deserted. It was so windy, even the swallows and sparrows weren't out. We decided to check out the observation tower area before we left the park and we finally found some birds. There were TWO PAIRS of whooping cranes and at least 100 sandhills. We got our fill of cranes and then decided that since the weather was supposed to be the same the next day, we'd head out of Necedah and spend the night in Wisconsin Dells. On the drive, Logan was reading about whooping cranes in my Sibley's bird guide. He was beyond thrilled when he read that there are only ~200 whooping cranes in the wild and we just saw 4 of them! (Seriously, I can't begin to tell you how proud and happy it makes me that he gets this.)
We pulled into Wisconsin Dells around 5pm and realized we had made a terrible mistake. Every hotel parking lot was packed with cars. We checked several hotels before we found an AmericInn that had one room with ONE bed that they were willing to give us for $180. Uh, NO!!! We decided to leave Wisconsin Dells for a hotel room, but at that point we were still hoping to return the next day. Before we left town, we spent some quality time at Knuckleheads riding go-carts and playing arcade games and then stopped at the Disney Store for some fairy stuff for Kaylin. We drove south and drove some more and finally came to a little town with two large chain hotels. Both were completely sold out. Crap! Our only option was to keep driving on to Madison. We found a Super 8 right away and crashed. The next morning, I researched where to bird in Madison and found a nice park on a lake. It was hot and windy, but the woods kept the wind from being an issue. They also contained millions of mosquitos. We sprayed ourselves with repellant, and were equally excited about the cloud of mosquitos avoiding us as we were about the birds. We stopped at the Fuddruckers in Janesville for lunch and then headed home. We had been toying with the idea of stopping at Starved Rock, but decided to just head home instead. It wasn't the best, most fun trip ever, but we had a good time and were glad we went. The whole family had been trying to decide where to go for a 3 day end of summer getaway. Logan and I were bummed about missing out on the Dells and decided we wanted to go back. Gene and Kaylin were more than happy to go along with that idea, so I have Kalahari booked for two nights in a few weeks. What can I say, Wisconsin Dells is always fun!
About my foot- I have a couple of different tendons that are inflamed and painful. I don't know what I did to cause the injury, but it scares me because I tore a different tendon in this same foot and missed nearly 2 months of work. My doc put me on a large dosage of an anti-inflammatory arthritis meds and it made me feel incredibly sick at work all week. Yesterday he ordered me a topical cream from the compounding pharmacy (yeah!) and told me to try wearing compression hose at work. Well, that's just super-duper.
Other little tidbits- Newt Gingrich was at the zoo yesterday. I didn't meet him (and didn't particularly care that I didn't) but I checked out his entourage and he was kind enough to sign a rhino poster for our Bowling for Rhinos raffle. I was playing neverending fetch with Gage and not paying attention to where I tossed the ball. I accidentally threw it onto the couch where Princess the cat was resting. Gage went for his ball and there was a nasty little scuffle. I later pulled a long cat claw out of his head. The claw broke off cleanly because Princess was fine and there was no blood. School starts in less than a month and there are only 2 weeks of Camp Zone left. Bowling for Rhinos is a week from tomorrow. I should probably get up and do something useful.
I had been feeling trapped in a rut of the usual and bummed about my foot, so last weekend Logan and I drove up to Wisconsin to bird. My doc told me I could go as long as I limited my walking and didn't overdo it. Our first stop was the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo. I've been there several times and even have a family membership, but it's something I do by myself while Gene and the kids are at their favorite Wisconsin Dells amusement park, Knuckleheads. I wasn't sure whether Logan would love it or be bored, but it's a pretty small place so I wasn't too concerned. ICF is the only place in the world that displays all 15 crane species and we saw them all. Some of the cranes are very territorial and run right up to the visitor pathway and call. Logan loved it! He was very interested in the differences between the cranes and spent longer than I would have imagined checking them out. I bought a "Cranes of the World" t-shirt at their gift shop a couple of years ago and then proceeded to accidentally bleach it. The bleach spots turned to bleach holes and I was hoping to replace the shirt. Well, the shirts were on clearance and between the clearance discount and my membership discount, I was able to get two shirts originally marked $30 apiece for $20 total. Score! A great start to our little trip!
We then headed north to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. It was really hot and really windy, so not really the best day to see birds. We drove the long drive from the visitor center to the pools where I normally see dozens of sandhill cranes and have twice seen whooping cranes, but they were completely deserted. It was so windy, even the swallows and sparrows weren't out. We decided to check out the observation tower area before we left the park and we finally found some birds. There were TWO PAIRS of whooping cranes and at least 100 sandhills. We got our fill of cranes and then decided that since the weather was supposed to be the same the next day, we'd head out of Necedah and spend the night in Wisconsin Dells. On the drive, Logan was reading about whooping cranes in my Sibley's bird guide. He was beyond thrilled when he read that there are only ~200 whooping cranes in the wild and we just saw 4 of them! (Seriously, I can't begin to tell you how proud and happy it makes me that he gets this.)
We pulled into Wisconsin Dells around 5pm and realized we had made a terrible mistake. Every hotel parking lot was packed with cars. We checked several hotels before we found an AmericInn that had one room with ONE bed that they were willing to give us for $180. Uh, NO!!! We decided to leave Wisconsin Dells for a hotel room, but at that point we were still hoping to return the next day. Before we left town, we spent some quality time at Knuckleheads riding go-carts and playing arcade games and then stopped at the Disney Store for some fairy stuff for Kaylin. We drove south and drove some more and finally came to a little town with two large chain hotels. Both were completely sold out. Crap! Our only option was to keep driving on to Madison. We found a Super 8 right away and crashed. The next morning, I researched where to bird in Madison and found a nice park on a lake. It was hot and windy, but the woods kept the wind from being an issue. They also contained millions of mosquitos. We sprayed ourselves with repellant, and were equally excited about the cloud of mosquitos avoiding us as we were about the birds. We stopped at the Fuddruckers in Janesville for lunch and then headed home. We had been toying with the idea of stopping at Starved Rock, but decided to just head home instead. It wasn't the best, most fun trip ever, but we had a good time and were glad we went. The whole family had been trying to decide where to go for a 3 day end of summer getaway. Logan and I were bummed about missing out on the Dells and decided we wanted to go back. Gene and Kaylin were more than happy to go along with that idea, so I have Kalahari booked for two nights in a few weeks. What can I say, Wisconsin Dells is always fun!
About my foot- I have a couple of different tendons that are inflamed and painful. I don't know what I did to cause the injury, but it scares me because I tore a different tendon in this same foot and missed nearly 2 months of work. My doc put me on a large dosage of an anti-inflammatory arthritis meds and it made me feel incredibly sick at work all week. Yesterday he ordered me a topical cream from the compounding pharmacy (yeah!) and told me to try wearing compression hose at work. Well, that's just super-duper.
Other little tidbits- Newt Gingrich was at the zoo yesterday. I didn't meet him (and didn't particularly care that I didn't) but I checked out his entourage and he was kind enough to sign a rhino poster for our Bowling for Rhinos raffle. I was playing neverending fetch with Gage and not paying attention to where I tossed the ball. I accidentally threw it onto the couch where Princess the cat was resting. Gage went for his ball and there was a nasty little scuffle. I later pulled a long cat claw out of his head. The claw broke off cleanly because Princess was fine and there was no blood. School starts in less than a month and there are only 2 weeks of Camp Zone left. Bowling for Rhinos is a week from tomorrow. I should probably get up and do something useful.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Still Not Sewing
Whoa! The summer has flown by! Kaylin is now a teenager. Logan's last baseball game of the season is Wednesday night. Sunday at Wal-Mart, the Back to School area was being set up. July 4th is over. It's all going too fast.
My grandma's funeral was last weekend. As we were driving back to the church from the cemetery, I was telling the kids (my two plus my oldest niece) about how much fun my cousins and I had playing at Grandma's house. I told them how we would run across the top of the white horse fence and then jump onto a tree limb and swing to the ground. We climbed the apple tree and pulled apart hundreds of sycamore balls. We played gorilla (or maybe guerilla?) in the dark and hid inside the front bushes. We rummaged around the attic and dared each other to open the cookie tin containing the decades-old top layer of Grandma's wedding cake. (It was totally as disgusting as it sounds.)
Grandpa and Grandma had moved to a condo by the time the kids were old enough to remember visiting. We drove by their old house so I could show the kids and see it for myself. The white fence was collapsing and the apple tree and the bushes were long gone. The sycamore was still there, but what surprised me was how big I remember the yard and how the houses seemed so much farther apart. The wonderland I had described to the kids looked pretty much like a normal house in a normal neighborhood. Uhhhh... At least the kids didn't seem disappointed.
As for my memories of Grandma herself, she was always hard at work on something. I loved helping in the garden and picking apples and plums. I remember sneaking cookie dough and putting honey on my breakfast cereal. Grandma read to me and played with me and tried and failed to teach me to sew. It was probably for my 6th birthday that Grandma got me a cross-stitch? kit and attempted to help me complete it. I don't remember the design other than it had purple flowers. It seemed like we worked on it for years and years and never came close to finishing. Hahaha, I imagine I frustrated her half to death, but I was completely uninterested in sewing. Still am. Oh, well.
Well, time to plan out the second half of the summer. It should be a bit more relaxing without baseball games three times a week. But I sure will miss watching my little slugger!
My grandma's funeral was last weekend. As we were driving back to the church from the cemetery, I was telling the kids (my two plus my oldest niece) about how much fun my cousins and I had playing at Grandma's house. I told them how we would run across the top of the white horse fence and then jump onto a tree limb and swing to the ground. We climbed the apple tree and pulled apart hundreds of sycamore balls. We played gorilla (or maybe guerilla?) in the dark and hid inside the front bushes. We rummaged around the attic and dared each other to open the cookie tin containing the decades-old top layer of Grandma's wedding cake. (It was totally as disgusting as it sounds.)
Grandpa and Grandma had moved to a condo by the time the kids were old enough to remember visiting. We drove by their old house so I could show the kids and see it for myself. The white fence was collapsing and the apple tree and the bushes were long gone. The sycamore was still there, but what surprised me was how big I remember the yard and how the houses seemed so much farther apart. The wonderland I had described to the kids looked pretty much like a normal house in a normal neighborhood. Uhhhh... At least the kids didn't seem disappointed.
As for my memories of Grandma herself, she was always hard at work on something. I loved helping in the garden and picking apples and plums. I remember sneaking cookie dough and putting honey on my breakfast cereal. Grandma read to me and played with me and tried and failed to teach me to sew. It was probably for my 6th birthday that Grandma got me a cross-stitch? kit and attempted to help me complete it. I don't remember the design other than it had purple flowers. It seemed like we worked on it for years and years and never came close to finishing. Hahaha, I imagine I frustrated her half to death, but I was completely uninterested in sewing. Still am. Oh, well.
Well, time to plan out the second half of the summer. It should be a bit more relaxing without baseball games three times a week. But I sure will miss watching my little slugger!
Friday, June 21, 2013
Summer
With vacation over, we're settling into summer. The kids are thrilled to be back at Camp Zone, spending every weekday playing and playing and playing with friends. I'm trying to get used to Monday and Wednesday baseball and not eating dinner until 8 on those nights. It's high season at work which is always crazy and fun. Gene's two main coworkers are both out of work with health concerns, so he is having to pick up some major slack. We've spent the past two weeks adjusting to the craziness that summer brings and now we're settling in to enjoy it.
The kids and I have been watching a red-tailed hawk nest in the golf course for several weeks. A few days ago, Logan ran into the house and yelled at me to get my shoes because there were three hawks on the telephone pole up the street. I quickly went with him and realized that the two hawks sitting together on the pole were juveniles and that it was probably mama hawk repeatedly screaming her objections to our presence from a nearby tree. We watched for a while and I snapped some pictures. We've had daily encounters with our young hawks ever since. It's been amazing to watch them attempting to hunt and failing ridiculously. They are so stinking cute when they awkwardly dive onto prey, miss completely and then hop around confused. The young hawks make an adorable "meep" sound, but you can only hear it if you are close and then mom's screaming drowns it out. I'm sure that in no time our hawks will be expert hunters and on their own. We are definitely cherishing every moment spent with them!
Gage the terrier is settling in nicely with the family. I am head-over-heels in love with this dog and so glad we got him. Gage and Scout are finally starting to become buddies. I still worry about them fighting over food and toys, but we all try to be careful with food and they have different interests in toys (Scout likes plush and squeaky, Gage likes balls and hard chew toys.) Both dogs love tearing around the back yard and barking at the neighbor dogs. Gage isn't nearly as high energy as one would expect from a terrier and the usual backyard running and some in-house fetch are enough exercise.
My serious, rule-following, straight and narrow son is morphing into a silly tween. He's cracking me up with the dumb things he's doing that he never would have considered a year ago. At camp last Friday, Logan held a bunch of Pepsi in his mouth while a friend tried to make him laugh. The goal was to shoot the Pepsi out his nose. What actually happened was he laughed and inhaled the Pepsi. He choked until he puked all over the bus seat (yeah, they were on a bus.) Fortunately, he had a damp beach towel and used it to clean up the vomit. Unfortunately, he then shoved the disgusting towel into his backpack. Mmmmm. Good plan. The towel was old so we left it in a garbage can at the park. I made him clean everything else out of the backpack, but I washed it all. Yuck. Another yuck occurred a few days earlier when on the way to camp Logan was fidgeting and acting worried and I asked what was wrong? "Mom, I did something really gross this morning." What? What did you do?! He kept stalling and not wanting to answer. I went from mild interest to close to freaking out about what on earth he did! Finally, he said "I'll whisper it... I used Dad's toothbrush." Kaylin and I about died laughing. It was a total accident and he didn't realize it until he was done and putting the toothbrush away. That's why I don't keep my toothbrush in the family cup. Blech!
I better get off the computer and on the exercise bike. I'm usually off on Fridays, but I have to work today since I had Sunday off. I am a little excited because I get to work my old Africa string with the lions, zebras and pigs. I haven't worked it since I left it nearly a year and a half ago, so it should be an interesting day! I had a follow-up foot appointment this week and my doctor was happy with my progress, even with the recent setback following my long swamp hike in Crocs. He didn't fully release me from his care, but I don't have another appointment for three months. That's a pretty nice change since around a year ago I was seeing him every week to two weeks!
The kids and I have been watching a red-tailed hawk nest in the golf course for several weeks. A few days ago, Logan ran into the house and yelled at me to get my shoes because there were three hawks on the telephone pole up the street. I quickly went with him and realized that the two hawks sitting together on the pole were juveniles and that it was probably mama hawk repeatedly screaming her objections to our presence from a nearby tree. We watched for a while and I snapped some pictures. We've had daily encounters with our young hawks ever since. It's been amazing to watch them attempting to hunt and failing ridiculously. They are so stinking cute when they awkwardly dive onto prey, miss completely and then hop around confused. The young hawks make an adorable "meep" sound, but you can only hear it if you are close and then mom's screaming drowns it out. I'm sure that in no time our hawks will be expert hunters and on their own. We are definitely cherishing every moment spent with them!
Gage the terrier is settling in nicely with the family. I am head-over-heels in love with this dog and so glad we got him. Gage and Scout are finally starting to become buddies. I still worry about them fighting over food and toys, but we all try to be careful with food and they have different interests in toys (Scout likes plush and squeaky, Gage likes balls and hard chew toys.) Both dogs love tearing around the back yard and barking at the neighbor dogs. Gage isn't nearly as high energy as one would expect from a terrier and the usual backyard running and some in-house fetch are enough exercise.
My serious, rule-following, straight and narrow son is morphing into a silly tween. He's cracking me up with the dumb things he's doing that he never would have considered a year ago. At camp last Friday, Logan held a bunch of Pepsi in his mouth while a friend tried to make him laugh. The goal was to shoot the Pepsi out his nose. What actually happened was he laughed and inhaled the Pepsi. He choked until he puked all over the bus seat (yeah, they were on a bus.) Fortunately, he had a damp beach towel and used it to clean up the vomit. Unfortunately, he then shoved the disgusting towel into his backpack. Mmmmm. Good plan. The towel was old so we left it in a garbage can at the park. I made him clean everything else out of the backpack, but I washed it all. Yuck. Another yuck occurred a few days earlier when on the way to camp Logan was fidgeting and acting worried and I asked what was wrong? "Mom, I did something really gross this morning." What? What did you do?! He kept stalling and not wanting to answer. I went from mild interest to close to freaking out about what on earth he did! Finally, he said "I'll whisper it... I used Dad's toothbrush." Kaylin and I about died laughing. It was a total accident and he didn't realize it until he was done and putting the toothbrush away. That's why I don't keep my toothbrush in the family cup. Blech!
I better get off the computer and on the exercise bike. I'm usually off on Fridays, but I have to work today since I had Sunday off. I am a little excited because I get to work my old Africa string with the lions, zebras and pigs. I haven't worked it since I left it nearly a year and a half ago, so it should be an interesting day! I had a follow-up foot appointment this week and my doctor was happy with my progress, even with the recent setback following my long swamp hike in Crocs. He didn't fully release me from his care, but I don't have another appointment for three months. That's a pretty nice change since around a year ago I was seeing him every week to two weeks!
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Back to the Grind
Blech. I can't believe my long-awaited vacation is over and I'll be heading into work later this morning. I don't have the equivalent of Post-Disney Depression (where the shock of being out of the magical world of Disney and back in the real world gives you a serious case of the blues), but I had such a great week and enjoyed myself so much I'm not ready for it to be over. I want more time off with Gene and the kids.
Thursday and Friday I tried to take it easy and heal my feet as much as possible. I got all of the vacation laundry done and all of the bags and extra trip stuff from both us and the kids put away. I spent a lot of time playing with the dogs and cats. I watched Game of Thrones and spent some time vegging in front of the computer. I took care of some AAZK business I had been putting off and paid some bills. In other words, I did the usual weekend chores, but I didn't overdo it with any of the extras.
We took Scout to PetSmart for his first ever grooming session. He is either a total sweetie-pie or else a complete snippy jerk, so I wasn't sure how he'd behave for grooming. I didn't know if he'd be great or if he'd need a muzzle and I'd need to go pick up sedatives from the vet. According to the groomer he did really well! She shaved all the long hair from his feet and trimmed up the long, feathering hair on his legs, chest and rear. (Kaylin was surprised that he was missing his "butt drapes".) He also got a nail trim and had his teeth brushed. I had no idea what to expect, but he still looks like a long-haired dachshund- just a much neater and more trimmed-up version. All of the mud this year and a very low to the ground, long-haired dog have not combined well. I spent way too much time bathing Scout and brushing mud out of his coat. I should have had him groomed months ago!
Logan finally had his first baseball game yesterday. His first two games were rained out (or maybe the other team forfeited one?) so he was very happy to actually play. He pitched the first three innings and then caught the last two. Logan did great. I was really glad that if he threw a bad pitch he didn't get flustered and then get worse, he composed himself and soldiered on. It was only the first game so I probably shouldn't judge yet, but I think that once again Logan is one of the best players on his team. This isn't a brag, it's a shocking truth. I still don't see how a child with Gene's and my DNA can be good at sports. It doesn't make sense :) I still think many of the other kids will catch up with him in a few years. Logan works hard and he IS good, but what he has over most of the other kids is an incredible awareness of the game. He knows exactly what is going on at all times and if the ball comes to him he's ready to catch it and throw it to the appropriate place. Overall, the kids are getting better, but most of them are still shocked when the ball comes at them and have no idea where to throw it once they have it.
Saturday, Kaylin went to the Moss Avenue sales with Kira and her family, so after the game, Gene, Logan and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. The new Star Trek movies sort of remind me of the "new" Batman movies. Where Batman goes from the old Pow! Bam! silliness to the dead serious Dark Knight, Star Trek goes from the corny original cast movies to a cooler version with more action and danger. Both versions are fun and enjoyable, but the new versions likely appeal to a much wider crowd. I guess they're a little less geeky sci-fi and a lot more action-adventure.
Sigh. I guess I better get off the computer and restart my workout and stretching program. I also have a large load of laundry in the dryer and need to pack a lunch and get to work early to do some AAZK stuff. Back to the grind...
Thursday and Friday I tried to take it easy and heal my feet as much as possible. I got all of the vacation laundry done and all of the bags and extra trip stuff from both us and the kids put away. I spent a lot of time playing with the dogs and cats. I watched Game of Thrones and spent some time vegging in front of the computer. I took care of some AAZK business I had been putting off and paid some bills. In other words, I did the usual weekend chores, but I didn't overdo it with any of the extras.
We took Scout to PetSmart for his first ever grooming session. He is either a total sweetie-pie or else a complete snippy jerk, so I wasn't sure how he'd behave for grooming. I didn't know if he'd be great or if he'd need a muzzle and I'd need to go pick up sedatives from the vet. According to the groomer he did really well! She shaved all the long hair from his feet and trimmed up the long, feathering hair on his legs, chest and rear. (Kaylin was surprised that he was missing his "butt drapes".) He also got a nail trim and had his teeth brushed. I had no idea what to expect, but he still looks like a long-haired dachshund- just a much neater and more trimmed-up version. All of the mud this year and a very low to the ground, long-haired dog have not combined well. I spent way too much time bathing Scout and brushing mud out of his coat. I should have had him groomed months ago!
Logan finally had his first baseball game yesterday. His first two games were rained out (or maybe the other team forfeited one?) so he was very happy to actually play. He pitched the first three innings and then caught the last two. Logan did great. I was really glad that if he threw a bad pitch he didn't get flustered and then get worse, he composed himself and soldiered on. It was only the first game so I probably shouldn't judge yet, but I think that once again Logan is one of the best players on his team. This isn't a brag, it's a shocking truth. I still don't see how a child with Gene's and my DNA can be good at sports. It doesn't make sense :) I still think many of the other kids will catch up with him in a few years. Logan works hard and he IS good, but what he has over most of the other kids is an incredible awareness of the game. He knows exactly what is going on at all times and if the ball comes to him he's ready to catch it and throw it to the appropriate place. Overall, the kids are getting better, but most of them are still shocked when the ball comes at them and have no idea where to throw it once they have it.
Saturday, Kaylin went to the Moss Avenue sales with Kira and her family, so after the game, Gene, Logan and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. The new Star Trek movies sort of remind me of the "new" Batman movies. Where Batman goes from the old Pow! Bam! silliness to the dead serious Dark Knight, Star Trek goes from the corny original cast movies to a cooler version with more action and danger. Both versions are fun and enjoyable, but the new versions likely appeal to a much wider crowd. I guess they're a little less geeky sci-fi and a lot more action-adventure.
Sigh. I guess I better get off the computer and restart my workout and stretching program. I also have a large load of laundry in the dryer and need to pack a lunch and get to work early to do some AAZK stuff. Back to the grind...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
