A Tale (End) of Two Monkeys
Once, my sister had told me, "maybe you just don't understand death." It was her way to trying to oversimplify why I didn't make it to a relative's funeral. I never really got into it with her, but she was wrong, as she usually is. That had nothing to do with it.
In reality, I am more comfortable with it than most people, but it is not even that. I know all about death, from a biological perspective. I know how much time it takes for each stage of cell death to occur, what is happening inside the body, how long until rigor mortis sets in. I have held hundreds for their certain death, and some died in my arms before we could expect it, or plan for it. I know how quickly I need to tag 'em and bag 'em before the smell starts to penetrate the air. I have sat with a stethescope while a literal wall of dead dogs were piling up before me, verifying death before each body was taken to the cooler. I have walked an old horse over snowy fields with her side cut open, trying to make it to the kill area before she keeled over. I have killed many, many times myself, dogs and cats and a few other species.
I know animals are not exactly like people. I know there is something different. The biology is the same, but our emotional attachment is different. We see humans as intrinsically more valuable than animals, even with our own pets. I know a lot of my vet tech friends consider their pets to be like their children...however, I also know that most of them are like me, in that for their human children, there would be no bounds to saving a life or finding a cure for a terminal disease, but our pets come with a financial limit, and in the end, we would all consider euthanasia as a viable alternative to prolonging their suffering, or reducing the impact on our finances.
These days, I am not going over the bereavement process and asking clients to decide on body care, or pick the urn that best represents the way they want to remember their pet. My patients don't have names, they have numbers. Part of the reason we don't name them is to reduce the emotional attachment to them. I always have to tell myself I love them collectively, not individually. I tell myself that not to make myself feel better about their inevitable deaths, but to feel better about the fact that most of the time, their deaths don't affect me emotionally. It is a reminder that I still care, that I am not so blase about death that it no longer bothers me.
Most days, I shake off their deaths like a pair of dirty scrubs at the end of a workday. Death is a part of the job. For a moment, I did the same thing when I was told the news about a couple of animals I had been working closely with. I received the news with the same shrug of my shoulders and little frown of sadness. I saw with my own eyes that their injuries were catastrophic, and accepted rationally that euthanasia was the only alternative.
Later, I began to engage emotionally with their death, and in this, I realized that some part of death is still a mystery to me. Human death we can convince ourselves to accept through our faith. What I mean is the question of where the soul goes. It is unfathomable to believe that the spirit of a person is simply just gone when the body stills, so we attach cultural or spiritual beliefs to its final destination. We tell ourselves that spirit is now in Heaven, or watching over us, or waiting to be reborn in another body, another lifetime.
Many people who work with animals believe that animals have no souls. I don't believe this myself, but we don't do much thinking on what happens to their souls after death. In my mind, there is a beautiful grassy meadow somewhere on the other side, with dogs chasing elusive squirrels in bodies free of pain. This maybe only a personal myth I created to help me deal with constant death around me, some sort of prevention against what they term "compassion fatigue", a real syndrome among my industry.
What do we define as the soul of a person? Their personality, the "inner core', their psychological attributes? If that is so, how can we look at animals and think they have no souls? To me, animals always have personality. There are different ways of approaching animals with different personalities. Based on their responses towards, say, a human approaching them, you could classify them on their personalities and treat them in accordance. A dog who is predominately fearful is handled in a different physical manner than one who is aggressive.
And I knew the personalities of the ones involved. Twelve animals that I had known for two years were placed in the same room, with the same set of controls. Two were put together, and two were put down. I knew the personalities of everyone in that room.
And yet I didn't ask for an ID number. It's like I didn't want to know, wanted to stumble upon it for next documentation and try to put the pieces on it. I was familiar with each one, how they responded to things. I had classified their personalities. I didn't need to know their number to know how things might have gone down.
And now I wondered where it went, where did it go when that needle hit home. Did the patient just die, and that's all she wrote? Is there a heaven for monkeys up there?
Do monkeys have soul? Do they ascend in any meaningful way? Is there a great reward for them up there, for spending their life in a cage, waiting for their turn to die for mankind?
I hope so. And I do love them. Sometimes I think God is working through me, or allowing me to work for them, as directed by him. Is it all part of some grand design?
The problem is, what happened was something everyone thought I would try, at some point down the road. Maybe, but I was years away from it, I felt. It was a wild risk. Yet, it was performed by...not me. I would not have attempted that, but now that someone has, I feel the eyes upon me.
Lord. Lead, guide, and direct me.

FOURTH FESTIVITIES

I spent my Fourth of July with my best friend and our kids. We checked out the festivities planned in The Woodlands and spent all day swimming, going to parks, and watching fireworks with the kids. The night before, we had gone out to a bar together. Of all the great fun we had during the sixteen hours or so we spent together, the best part, the part I will always remember, was at the end of the Saturday night. Both of the little ones had nodded off, and the bigger kids were outside with my husband and the neighbors, and she and I were just having some girl time. We were standing outside my back porch and she asked me a question about how something I had planned on Thursday worked out for me. We got a good laugh out of the fact that in all that time we had spent together, we had never got past talking about the events of Friday and Saturday. Then, I told her this story, which had us laughing so hard, at my expense, that we were doubled over with our legs crossed trying not to laugh so hard we peed ourselves.
I can't duplicate the story the way I told it. There is something about the written word that is different from true storytelling in person. I'll try to recreate it, though.
Thursday, I had been asked to do a presentation at another company for an audience of people that were much more highly educated than myself on my particular field of expertise. The presentation had actually been moved up a week, so I was kind of thrown off mentally by that, and also by the presence of my boss and her friend, who is the "boss" of the program I was presenting to. In the past four months, I had been asked to give a similar presentation to people within our company, but we are low-tech here and so all the new-fangled presentation devices were kind of throwing me off. On the podium were the microphones and the computer screen with my presentation on it, which was projected on to a big screen with a teleprompter up front on the floor.
There were three presenters that day, and the first one was the "big boss", who runs the entire department and has lots of letters behind her name. She gave a presentation on anatomy and physiology that had me feeling intimidated. Then my boss spoke, also with many letters behind her name, but not as many, and then there was me, with at least half as much education as anyone else and a "fluffy" topic. All these things combined had me a little nervous when I got up to talk. I'm blaming what happened next on all that.
When I got up to the podium and started my presentation, for some reason I walked AWAY from the podium and went up to the floor level, reading my presentation from the teleprompter a' la karoake style. What the hell was I doing? I realized my mistake after the first slide, and headed back to the podium and the mics. However, I was so flustered that the rest of it came out of my mouth like a robot talking. I was trying so hard to not make more mistakes that I was wooden and stiff up there. Also, I was dismayed that all this video footage I had gotten to make my presentation "come alive" would not play correctly.
At the end of the presentation, I sat down in my seat, beating myself up over not being able to "shine" with a stellar speaking performance, when the "boss lady" leaned over at me. I was taken aback with what she said.
"Hey, listen, " she says, "I run this other program at another college, too, and I would like to have you come do this same presentation for those students. Are you interested in doing that?"
Bahahahaha! J and I died over that one. Not what I was expecting her to say at ALL after that!

BRAGGADOCIO

I'm not usually one to brag, but....

I won a really cool award at work!

It came with a glass trophy and fabulous cash prizes.

Every time people ask me what I got the award for, I am tempted to be a smartass and say "because I am just that cool!"

Truthfully, it was for an idea I implemented last year that inspired the staff at my facility to take extra special care of their animals. Around Christmastime last year, I visited another facility to learn from what they were doing, but they were so excited about my idea that we spent a good deal of time talking about that instead. They took my idea and ran with it, creating the same kind of program at their site, and then another facility took an interest as well. Later in the year, there were presentations on my idea, giving the credit to me.

Not long after, there was a call for nominations for yearly awards, and I received six nominations. In the presentation that the corporate suits gave in front of our staff, they said it was the first time in fifteen years that someone had been nominated for awards from people outside their own facility.

It is the first time I have earned a trophy as a grownup. My parents "brag" cabinet is littered with trophies the four of us earned as children - mine include swim team, softball, writing awards, horse show trophies- but I haven't gotten any since...high school, I suppose.

It felt really good. The thing about trophies, and being recognized, is it makes you feel like you might be really good at something.

If I could choose to be really good at something, then this would be exactly it - to win an award for "the person who embodies the spirit of compassionate care" for animals.

After all, I have devoted my life to serving them. I certainly hope I would be good at it by now!

COMMUNICATION
It's a two-way street....
Communication can be a tricky thing. What you say is not always what the other person hears. What you think you meant is filtered through your experience and perception. What a person hears is filtered through their perception and experience, and also through the intention they have for the information given them.
I was very frustrated yesterday with a communication breakdown at work. In order to one task of mine, I have to wait for other people to finish their tasks. Usually these tasks are all finished before lunch. About an hour before lunchtime, I was ready to do my task, but the other person (N) wasn't finished yet. It looked like it wouldn't be long, so I went and did some other things, came back, still not done, went to do other things, came back, still not done, etc etc until lunchtime. I had to leave my work sitting out during lunch and come back later.
About a half hour after lunch was finished, I was again waiting, and somebody came up (P) and asked me for something. I would have to go to an entire building altogether to get what he wanted, but luckily I had some close by, and I told him where it was. About five minutes later, it looks like the person I am waiting on is almost done. Meanwhile, another person comes up (J)and asks me for the same thing P asked for, for the same task. I am irritated, and tell him I will get it for him when I finish what I am waiting to do. He starts whining and demanding I go right away to get it for him, when really what I told P to get should have been enough.
I am curt with him. I tell him I have been waiting for two hours to complete MY task, and I am going to do it first before leaving my work to go get something for him. He starts telling me some story about why this work has been taking longer than it should have. I didn't really understand his intention in telling me this until later.
Later on, J tells N I was mad at him for taking so long. N comes to talk to me about it, angry that I told J this. I explain that I wasn't angry with N, but with J for making demands on me. Later, I talk to P about it, because I was concerned N might whine to my boss about me. He does this frequently. P tells me that J was just using me as a way to tell N he was mad at him for taking so long. He tells me N spent two hours on the phone this morning instead of doing his work, and that the guys were mad at him, but couldn't just tell him that, so he used my irritation as a way to make a point.
When I finally gave J what he wanted, he said he didn't need it, that what P had given him was enough to get his job done after all.
I left work very frustrated.
All I can say is, "Thank God It's Friday".

There's a Story in Every Moment...

The trick is in the telling....

About every three days or so, my fingers begin to twitch with impatience. They want the keyboard, to feel the pressure of the keys pressed down, to feel the words flow out. They want to tell all the stories that lie within my heart.

Last week, I had to ignore the twitches. At work, every moment was busy with preparing for a presentation that meant a lot to me. I could go into the latest in the square dance between me, the behaviorist, the fat cats, and the corporate suits, but I am not really sure who won this round and things have changed a little. One of the fat cats is gone, and this time there were more corporate suits, but I feel like I didn't really get to hear their impressions and one of them could have access to this little bloggy, so I will just stop here. It was really just more of the same - that I need to do more, but am limited by fat cat management and lack of a staff, and that my data must absolutely go to press and we are working on it. The corporate suits this time seemed genuinely behind promoting my work and were discussing the best platform for me to present seminars on my data subject matter for conferences next year after my paper gets published. I am happy about that because I feel like at least they take me seriously, as opposed to the fat cats that block me at every turn. I do think my data has the opportunity to make the world a better place for animals, so I would love the chance to get it out into the world.

At home, the twinges were dampened by a little boy who is having an Elmo freakout. Any time he saw me near the computer, he wanted to sit on my lap and watch Elmo videos. We watched the "Elmo Potty Time" video on Youtube soooo many times in the past week and he never stops laughing at it. He also figured out how to crawl out of his crib and our nights are interrupted by constant chasing and putting back in place of renegade toddler, who then cries "ELMO! ELMO!" from the confines of his crib.

Meanwhile, back at the "farm", I am having a Mason-Pearson meltdown. I am showing the dog this weekend for the first time in at least half a year, and somehow during that time managed to lose my fancy-schmancy dog brush that I absolutely must have to whip his coat into shape with my fancy-schmancy doggy blow dryer. I have just a few days to find the brush and all the assorted show things and mentally prepare for the weekend.

I am taking a girlfriend with me out of town to the dog show, for some serious girl talk and creative endeavours. I am hoping our time will involve some hiking, some geocaching, and some nature exploration, as well as some writing. What I foresee is a hike in Tyler State Park to a beautiful location where we can sit down with our journals and just free our minds and relax....

But not too much relaxing. I have come to realize that my dog shows better when I am nervous, so I am going to try to keep the nerves intact in order to energize him in the ring.

Visualize purple ribbons for me...please!

*SOME CONDITIONS APPLY
Some of you who read this regularly might be curious, then, about the job interview I was going to Washington for. I am still not really sure if the interview was an excuse to visit the in-laws or visiting the in-laws was an excuse to go on a job interview. At any rate, it was the motivating factor behind planning the Best Western Adventures.
I feel like I should briefly explain some background. I moved down to Texas from Oregon when my husband was on military deployment. The idea was always to move back to Oregon. We've been talking about this for so long that our friends just don't believe us anymore. We were supposed to stay six months, we've been here six years.
Meanwhile, he was deployed again while in Texas. He has spent three of the nine years we've been married in a desert on the opposite side of the world. All conditions being the same, he will leave again next summer for another year and a half deployment in Iraq.
He hates Texas, and is expecially miserable in Houston. The heat, humidity, hurricanes, and bugs just really get to him. He would be happier near the mountains, and so would I.
So this has always been there, and then I saw this job opening, and I just went for it. It's not Oregon, but it is close enough and has what we were looking for. We had never been to that town, nor did I know much about the company, but there was an opening for a job I am qualified for, though at a higher level and pay grade than I am now. I sent them my resume, figuring it would sit on someone's desk for a while and maybe they'd call, but they called within two hours. They were pressing to do a face to face interview.
We researched the town, and checked out the surrounding areas in Google Earth, and it just felt right. We were pretty convinced this was it.
Being up there in that part of the world, we were sold. We loved it there and Seattle felt right to us. The mountains were very appealing. So was the fact that if we move, there will be no Iraq deployment, at least as long as Washington or Oregon's guardsmen don't get called.
I had certain conditions for this job offer that I had decided would be the determining factor in whether I accepted it or not. I wanted 20% higher wage to make up for cost of living differences, and I wanted my relocation paid for.
Looking back, it seems kind of unrealistic. The job title I have is not one that would typically offer paid relocation. The wage I was asking is what I was told would be the salary range for the position I was interviewing for, but it also requiring a skill set that I could get to quickly, but wasn't quite at yet. Also, it would mean turning my back on the part of my job that I love the most, and in fact what I really spend the most time doing in my current job, and what I really want to do with my life. And then there is the issue with my paper I am trying to publish on my data, data that I won't have rights to if I leave, but which could make my name in my field.
So as we were traversing through the territory I described in the last two Best Western Adventures, I was on the phone negotiating with this company.
In the end, what they offered was very generous, but didn't fit my stipulations. We did not have the same needs. I needed time or money to move, and they didn't offer paid relocation and wanted me there in 45 days. They offered me a position in their company doing what it is I love, and I feel like they created that position for me, and they offered me a wage higher than the top end of the pay bracket for that type of position and a generous sign on bonus, but it wasn't enough for me to jump on.
In the end, I think I learned many things from going on that interview. I saw what was really important to me right now and in my career direction, and committed to what I wanted and understood more what I didn't want. It was a hard lesson for us, in that we very much wanted to move there, but saw that we just weren't ready. The cost of the vacation, including the price of four airplane tickets, the rental car, gas, food, etc, was a harsh wakeup call that we were just not financially prepared for that kind of move.
Now our plan is to GET READY, so that next time that offer is made, I can jump on it.
As long as they offer me 20% higher salary. :)

SILLY RABBIT
The past three nights, I've been having these dreams about an exboyfriend. The emotional context has been wrapped around a place, a city, a house, something that was his and then was mine and then becoming his again. I was afraid, worried, wanted to call the place mine but knowing it was his, wondering what he would think of me when he found the little sippy cup stains on the carpet or dust behind the couch.

It seems pretty transparent, the meaning behind the dreams. I have these kind of dreams now and then about him, a dream like I am living in his town, and I am worried he might find my house, and then he is moving in, and the shutters are falling off or the lawn needs mowing.

It is fairly close to the way it was with us, the way I think about him now, so the meaning doesn't bear a mystery for me. The reasoning is more of the mystery - why now, why so often?

Yesterday a sudden strong desire came over me to write to my favorite professor, the one whose job I wanted to have one day, the one who wrote letters of recommendation for graduate schools that turned me down, one after another. I wanted to have the same degree he has, have the same kind of influence, the same kind of life. It was my plan for my life, until my plan got derailed, and I've been reluctant to contact him since then.

I really wanted his opinion, though, so I sent him an email, told him what I was doing and if he could meet with me or carry on a conversation over the email about some questions I had.

He sent me a delighted response, and in his email, he stated that he remembered me, having dinner with me and Temple Grandin. He had invited me to his house to eat and talk with him and Temple, who is the "Numero Uno big dog" in the field I wanted to pursue, and who happened to teach graduate studies in Colorado. She and I outlined a plan for a PhD dissertation project, talking about funding, and then....I never applied to her school.

My reasons were complicated. Later down the road, I tried to get back on that horse, but instead of trying to go through her, or through my professor, I tried four other schools where no one knew me. Turns out that was a bit of a problem. Apparently you have to know someone on the inside.

Today, I was thinking about what he said in his email, that he remembered feeling sad at the time that I wasn't choosing to pursue graduate studies there with him.

When I had read that line, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. He had believed in me, he had wanted me to be his student. I remember talking with him one day, towards the end of my final year, and he gave me kind of a sideways glance over his glasses as he mumbled something about an open position with his department, a job for someone who would be interested in going to horse auctions (I mean, yippee! That is my favorite kind of place!), and I knew it was his way of inviting me to stay on, and I knew he also knew I was leaving. I wanted to go to Colorado so bad, I couldn't see the forest for the mountains.

Later, I cursed myself for not taking his offer. Oh sure, I already had a horsemanship position secured in Colorado. Sure, it would have taken some rearranging to do it. I had already given up my apartment, made moving plans. My boyfriend, the one I have been dreaming about, was all for it. It was perfect, he said, I could move in with him, and then surely the job would turn into a graduate student position, and I could get my PhD, and we could get married, and....

Hold on right there. That's right. I know without a doubt that if I had stayed on, I would have made my dreams for my life come true. I know my boyfriend wouldn't have let it happen any other way. He would have been there urging me on and pushing me ahead and holding my hand through every bit of it. I also know that he would have become my husband and that thought really scares me....

I had a dream about him once, when I lived in Oregon, that seemed rather poignant. In it, he brought a rabbit into the veterinarian's office where I worked. We had worked on his rabbit, some kind of back surgery, and then his estranged brother brought the rabbit back in, because now it couldn't hop. The rabbit wasn't perfect before, but now it was nonfunctional. It couldn't even move. I went to tell my doctor about it and she just looked at me like I was stupid and said, "Of course. That's the side effect of the surgery." I didn't get it. This phrase kept repeating in my mind, and still I think of it:

Why was the cure worse than the disease?

Hearing my professor voice his emotions, though, made me realize something. I made him sad. I did that to him, and in any effort to apologize, I should explain it wasn't an affront to him. He probably wonders what the heck happened to me, and sometimes in the course of the years when I have contacted him, I've glossed over a brief explanation, "I was raising my family and put my academic aspirations on hold for the meantime", but I know that my flimsy excuses don't hold water. They are probably as transparent as the dreams, although the reasoning probably warrants a mystery.

I don't want to tell him the real truth, the real truth on why College Station makes me nervous, why I never asked him if he could just let me in his program after all this time and wanting the things that never happened for me. I don't want to tell him because it makes me look really crazy to say something like look I constantly felt my parents never loved me, I felt rejected by them, not good enough, which caused me not to believe in myself, although I covered it up with a thick line of bravado, you see, so that no one would ever guess how really pathetic and worthless I felt, and I couldn't apply to your school or her school or any school that might offer me a chance of success and satisfaction, because I never thought I deserved it, so I just kept running away from what I really wanted, but several counseling sessions later, I am a much better person and no longer intentionally sabotage personal relationships that offer a chance of happiness and no longer choose escape patterns but face these inadequacies directly, which is why I am here now.

I know it is, in part, this background I have that makes me good at what I do. I am empathic to animals because their true wishes and desires are hard for them to express to humans. I want to be their champion and stand up for them, be the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves. I want to wrap my arms around them and tell them it's okay, that somebody loves them, that someone is going to look out for them. I want to make them as comfortable as possible and treat them with kindness. I want to treat them the way I want to be treated.

My true talent with animals is in calming the anxious animal, because I see in them parts of myself. I know what it is like to live with anxiety and fear, to want to run away and be unable to. This is why I chose my horse, as he was an outcast and headed for a rough ending. I sensed that underneath his explosive interior, he was a bundle full of nerves. We spoke the same language.

We had a fear-aggressive Newfoundland dog where I used to work who was frequently boarded and needed his ears cleaned often. He had severe chronic ear problems that gave him great pain, and previously, he was dealt with by a combination of being drugged and held down with force by several technicians. I didn't want that for him, so it became my goal to be able to work on him unsedated, solo, without any stress. It took some work to get him to trust me and allow me to touch the painful places, but we did it, laying in our quiet corner of the clinic. These are the things I am good at that no one ever sees. Give me a growling Rottweiler and I'll make it golden, give me a frightened monkey and I'll get it eating out of my hand.

This is where I get confused on my own issues, because I know my worth, and I know I have value. I know I have skills in this way, and that these skills are a result of my education, my background, my perceptiveness, and my intelligence. I know the understanding of animal behavior that I possess is worth something, if not a PhD, than at least more money or acknowledgement. So what am I still afraid of?

At one point a few years back, I thought that maybe I needed closure with this old boyfriend. I thought talking to him again would stop the dreams from happening, and dissolve that heavy knot of tension I had every time I went through College Station. I was driving through the town often around this time and I wanted to not experience the anxiety that the possibility of running into him caused. We opened up a dialogue, but he shut it down a few long emails into it, saying that it brought back old feelings for him. He's married now and he didn't think he should maintain a friendship with me because he couldn't help revisiting the emotions that a remembrance of our relationship caused. I kind of understand, but it makes me angry sometimes, too. Why can't he compartmentalize like I do? I tried to shut him off at that pass by downplaying our connection and focus on the friendship we had, but I think that hurt his feelings. This dialogue did nothing for the dreams and the anxiety, though.

When I think about the possibility of meeting up with my old professor to further discuss some of these ideas I am asking him about, and consider applying for his program at this point in my life, I think about College Station, driving to College Station, and suddenly I am a rabbit looking for a hole. I'm scared.

It makes no sense to me. Is it that I know I am good enough, but I worry they will think I am not? Or is it that I worry I am not good enough, but they know I always was?

I can't get away from the fact, though, that sometimes my escape maneuvers hurt people, leave them disappointed in me, maybe because they saw so much more potential than I was allowing, or that they wanted me to be happy and successful. Although it is unintentional, collateral damage, I know it is not right to hurt people, and I shouldn't do that.

Starting with myself.

Best Western Adventures

Series 1

No Room at the Inn

Everett, WA

Late night arrival

Long wait for bags and car

Call the hotel to say

We are on our way

"What's that you say?

You gave away our room?

No more rooms left?"

As a matter of fact

All the rooms in Seattle and Everett are gone

A fact we learn from stopping at one, two, three, four, five hotels "You'll have to go to the Casino. They still have rooms."

Twelve miles up ahead
Stuck in odd midnight traffic jam

Roadwork under the light of the moon
Take the last room at the last hotel

Sometime after midnight

Late night Kid Fest

Can't get no rest

Early to rise

Early to interview

Then the wait makes me late

Long interview
Tired

Taco Time tacos three times the cost!

In this town, everything is
Oregon, here we come

Leaving Everett in the rear view

West Palm Beach Adventures
I just returned from a five and a half day trip to Florida. I was there to attend a conference for work, but I had some time to go geocaching and to the beach as well.
What can I say about West Palm? Rain, rain, and more rain. As soon as I arrived, the storm clouds began rolling in. I realized early on that I was going to have to adapt and lower my expectations about how much I was going to be able to fit in.
The first half day, I had time to find two microcaches and hunted for two other caches that appear to be missing. I had noticed while researched nearby caches that many in the area I was staying in were poorly maintained, so I had concerns. About half the caches I had bookmarked had at least one, and some several, DNF (Did-Not-Find) logs on them. That would include the one in the location above, which was disabled while I was there (owner of the hide officially marking it inactive until it can be checked on). It was a great place to check out the beach, though, and take pictures of travel bugs.
After this, I was famished and looking for a place to eat, and I found Testas, which I found to be vaguely overpriced. I was quite full after, but I think $25 for a salad, soup, and soda was a but unreasonable. The bread served tableside is awesome, and the service was okay.
At this point in the evening, it was a lull between storms and I managed to make it out about five miles west to a regular sized geocache down a nature trail, where I was able to drop off two of the fifteen travel bugs I brought with me. Then it started raining again and I relaxed the rest of the evening in the hotel and attached bar.
The next day, first whole day in the location, I got out in the morning to head down south to some of the beach areas on Highway A1A. I was so focused on the afternoon hiking I was going to do that I was dressed completely inappropriately to be walking down the beach, and had forgotten the rule about "when in Rome". I should have brought my bathing suit. I was really kicking myself for that but I was on a roll with geocaches and didn't want to drive all the way back to the hotel. I kept looking for a surf shop but the only one I saw wasn't open yet.
The highlight of the adventure was the second of the three caches I found, and a DNF. At the second cache, an older gentleman gave me a nice seashell as he came up the boardwalk. He told me he walks down every morning and gets the seashells, so he has no need ot this one. "It's my therapy," he grinned at me, and I thought hey, pretty cheap therapy! After he left, I was looking on one side of a boardwalk for the ammo can and spied a large black snake making its way into the foliage on the other side. Then I realized the cache was right there, near where the snake had originated. I left two more of my travel bugs at this spot.

Very soon after this, I went after a cache in a very nice park in the Boynton Beach area with a lovely marina and cool shady benches. I really enjoyed the park itself, but I didn't find the cache. I was having my Indiana Jones moments looking for it, back in the wet tropical forest in the rear of the park. The plants were huge and
wet, and everywhere I went I was hypervigilant of snakes. Like Indiana himself, I hate snakes.

After this little adventure, I really wanted to go change my clothes and I was a bit overheated, and I had a strong desire to sit in a cool restaurant and try some local cuisine. On the way through Lake Worth, I found South Shores Tavern and soup and a burger there. It was decent food but I only ate half.

I started back to the hotel, and struggled with a couple more caches. I bet over the time I was there I only found half the caches I actually looked for, like this one near the fountain in the heart of Lake Worth's city center. I looked for another one in the Lake Worth area and didn't find it, but did stumble upon this benchmark.

The storm clouds were rolling in by now and the air had cooled, so I decided I should make the most of the time I had left and headed to Okeeheelee County Park, where there was a cluster of caches. I grabbed one cache as the storm rolled in, with booming thunder and high wind. It started raining as I got into the park, and I decided to wait it out in the park's Nature Center. I bought some items for the children and checked out the displays, and finally the rain calmed down, enough for me to make it down one of the trails, despite the concerns of the employees about lightning (I have had advanced lightning training in my years on scouts, and what I saw wasn't worrying me). I dropped off another coin and made it back to my rental car just as another downpour came.

I managed to find a quick park and grab micro in the park, but the heavy rain didn't appear to be letting up. I went to a nearby Applebees to wait it out, but when it was still coming down hard after I ate, I just went back to my hotel to prepare for the evening's festivities.

I thought I would have some opportunities to still get a couple close caches once my conference started, but once again I adapted, this time to spending all my time at or near the conference center, talking and learning. Right across from the conference center was the City Place, a shopping area with restaurants. I ate lunch there at a place called Brewzii's with a group of people I met from a local foundation, who happened to have an open position at their company and who encouraged me to speak to their boss. I did eventually, but never mentioned the job vacancy, as my agenda with her regarding something else.

Although my conference was geared to a specific audience, there was a wide spectrum in interests within this audience that ranged basically from field to lab work. The presentations involved current research within this wide range. During one lecture on field conditions and species in Madagascar, I found myself missing a very close friend. I suddenly saw her through the impressions I had when we first met, of us together at an ethology talk and being enthused on the same level, of her interest in conservation biology and traveling to exotic places. It made me sad in a way because of how we drift, as people, further from who we were in the past. I want to cling to my idea that people don't change, but it has been so long since I have seen my friend at my side in these types of talks. I had forgotten that part of her, but finding the ghost of that memory here made me nostalgic.

Although I haven't achieved the academic aspirations I had during that time, I have never left this field. In some ways I have continued to be a student of animal welfare my whole career, in varying capacities. At this conference, I was surrounded by the big names in this little field, and the people who I met right off the bat where the folks writing the papers that I in turn plan to reference in my paper, those PhDs and DVMs who work in the little field of behavioral research that is highly applicable to my job. These are the movers and the shakers in my world.

I found them to be highly accessible and enthusiastically helpful. They all pushed me on different levels to get my data out into the world and hoped I would do a talk on my subject next year. I got promises to sent me references, methodology, and offers to edit my paper or assist in some way. In that respect, I was serving my personal agenda.

At the same time, weighing on the back of my mind was the ticking clock of the promise of a great new job that came my way. I have been in what I would characterize "enthusiastic talks" with another company that is offering a higher position and higher pay, in the area of the world we want to live in.
Most of you know my husband's great desire to move to the Pacific Northwest, and a company is up there with an open position for a great job within my skill set. The nagging problem is the fact that the job would not be focusing on the area of behavioral research that I find so fascinating. On one hand, it would be a way in so that when the ideal position opened up, I would be at a close angle, or could use the job as a stepping stone to the national centers nearby.

On the other hand, once I leave, I give up the rights to my data. Right now I have stumbled upon some success in solving a problem that hasn't been successfully solved. Putting my data out in the world could help me achieve some of my academic goals. Suddenly, it becomes very pressing to get my work out, and at the same time use it to serve my career in the best way. I asked a lot of questions about publication turn around times at this conference. I confirmed my decision while here that I still wanted my place in behavior research, and that I really need to slow my stroll with the new job.
On the second night of the conference, I went to dinner at Brewzii's with a small group that included my colleague from the Reno site, the woman from Bastrop who had told me she wanted me to work for her, and her friend who did a very interesting talk that afternoon.

Over drinks and dinner, we were talking about a book. Eat Pray Love.

The context of the story a woman rediscovering who she is, reclaming her individuality after divorce. I mentioned how my friend's mother who works at our church has always counseled us about maintaining our individuality, and warned about friends of hers who got divorces once the kids were raised, because the women had forgotten who they were without children. Without that individuality, she warned, you will be left in the lurch at some point down the road. I commented that I thought that happened to these women because most were stay at home wives with working husbands who just grew apart over the years.

The woman from Bastrop says "it's interesting that you see it that way," which I think was quite a tactful way of saying "I disagree with you." She believes it is the common experience of women to sacrifice their individuality in relationships to men. She and her friend agree that as women, they always plan their lives around the men in it and have difficulty in making individual plans. In my life I have the opposite problem in that I strongly retain my individualism at the cost of intimacy in the relationship.

We all decided this was probably adaptation to spending three of the nine years of marriage with him away with the military. It was a survival technique to absorb myself in hobbies and social groups while he was gone, and naturally there would be a struggle when he got back with how much he was willing and able to be a part of this life I created for myself.

The third day of the conference ended early, and my Reno cohort and I went to explore the beaches. I put sunscreen on all day but still ended up with a nasty sunburn. I ended up taking us to two of the beaches I had discovered while geocaching.

I have always said that my idea of bliss was riding on a horse bareback, cantering, and letting go of the reins to reach up to the sky in connection with the universal and divine creator. Today I remembered another kind of bliss - to float spread eagled in the ocean water, eyes closed, warm sun radiating along your body, to rock in unison with the waves and in connection to the universal and divine creator. I was "at one with the universe" during our hours at the beach.

We had lunch at an Asian fusion place, Thiakyo (I think, funny that I am unclear on that now), that blended Japanese, Thai, and Chinese in the same location. The food was good, though. I had the shrimp pad thai. After this we went to another beach, and talked all afternoon. I was so relaxed when we got back to the hotel, but I had sand in all kinds of places and painful pink skin. We prepped for the banquet and met downstairs to head out to the venue, the Palm Spring Zoo.

They put on quite a party. Zookeepers were on hand to bring out animals to show off. We were served cocktails and hors-doeuvres within the zoo near some exhibits, then taken over to the Tropics Cafe for food, dancing, and more wine. It was a great chance for people to put their hair down. Dawn and I started out singing along to Violent Femmes, and ended up on the dance floor busting moves, along with all the other mad scientists. I had a great time making more friends and talking to friends I had made earlier, but then we left about midway through, tired from a long day. Dawn needed to get up early to catch her flight and I didn't want to drink anymore.

The next day was my last day there. I returned in the morning to the Okeeheelee Park to go after the caches I wasn't able to get in the rain. They were all decent hikes of at least 0.2 miles, and I grabbed five in two hours of hiking. I dropped off all my remaining travel bugs. I left fifteen on the trip and came back with two.

Before checkout time, I got back to the hotel to grab a shower and pack. I am so glad I took a shower then because it left a nice cool, clean residue for the rest of the day. I grabbed a quick cache in downtown and headed out for Apoxee Park, where I was going to do some more big hiking. Turns out Apoxee Park was closed, which was fine because it started storming right then anyway. I was looking for a place for lunch and some more caches, and ended up at the Riviera Beach Marina, looking for Captain Joe.

Captain Joe runs a boat taxi that will take you over to Peanut Island, a man-made island paradise recreation area. He almost didn't take me due to the weather. He asked me what I would do there, and when I told him "hiking" he seemed okay with it, and by the time two other people got on board, it turned sunny after all and it was quite a nice walk. It was 1.3 miles around the island, and I found one cache and took pictures. This brought my trip total to 16 geocache finds, and I dropped all fifteen travel bugs.

By the time I got back to the mainland, I was about a half hour behind schedule to get to the airport, but it turned out to be all right. It was starting to storm as I pulled up to the airport, and as I sat at the bar, the locals and tourists aliked joked about the relentless rain.

In the end, it was one moment during this trip that seemed most memorable. At the closing banquet, as we walked into the rustic porch area of the lodge, another storm was rising. Lightning lit up the dark blue background as hundreds of white birds, egrets, flew swiftly in circular patterns over the lake, or landed in nearby trees. The DJ booth was playing a song from Lion King, the song in the beginning scene, and it seemed to blend perfectly, and I could feel the energy of the birds in the air. All around me were gathering researchers and scholars, world class primatologists. It reminded me of a part in a letter I wrote a former boss recently, about how at this job I have now, I had learned to fly. At this moment, I was. I haven't lost me. I know exactly who I am.

Who I am Is

A bird soaring

A body floating

A person dancing

A woman smiling

A student learning

And I am

Still Here.

PATHOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS

In the past few months at my job, I've watched the behavior of my boss degenerate. I suspected some kind of mental issues beforehand, but of a kind of benign nature. However, with the added stress of a percieved threat, her mild bipolarism of before has lapsed into some kind of paranoid desperateness. I would say it is odd to watch this happen before me, but some of you who read this recognize that situation as a kind of dejavu. Oh, I really don't think this time it will go as far as the last situation did - my boss doesn't own this company, so if she freaks out, she is not going to run it into the ground - but worst case scenario is it could cost someone their job and professional reputation. My goal is to stay out of the crossfire, but I find myself caught sometimes in the middle, sometimes simply due to the nature of my position and sometimes out of a desire to protect the innocent party.
Meanwhile, I continue my work, which is to look for pathological behavior in my patients. Every day, I am observing, identifying abnormal behaviors, trying to ascertain the stimulus, determine the stressor, so I can remove it and hopefully cause the patient to revert to a normal behavior pattern. I put my "behaviorist" hat on and watch carefully with a tuned mind, clipboard in hand, while my patients merge around me, and make notes. This is normal, this one is not normal, what is going on here, what's wrong here, making observations, thinking about plausible connections.

Sometimes I forget to take off my "hat" and I see things around me in a different way. Sometimes I see my boss as a person in charge, and sometimes I see her as a victim of her own pathology.

Like most of us, I am beginning to suspect. I remember one time a friend asked me if I have ever wondered why I seem to always end up with insane bosses. I am not convinced it is something about me that draws me to these people, although my own pathology could lead me to stay in situations other people might not put up with.

My own pathology is also abnormal, and sometimes I see that as a direct result of my upbringing. There is probably some genetic interplay in there as well. Both of my grandmothers had some kind of mental pathology as well, maybe an undiagnosed anxiety or depression problem. My father and sister have both been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and maybe that is a part of my abnormality as well, but my psychiatrists never get past the bipolar or anxiety/depression labels with me.

I am not convinced I have a true problem, because I function fine without medications. Sure, there's been the occasional panic attack or overwhelming sadness, but it has always happened when I have been emotionally worked up about something, and I still think it all ties into to my mother, who constantly rejects me.

This is part of her pathology, and like I said, plays a large role in mine. I brought my friend over to her house the other day, and I finally had a witness to it. My mother will get this look on her face, and I know it is coming; then she lays it down, some kind of heavy-handed criticism. Constant rejection, constant doubt of my ability to do anything. The past years, it has been mostly related to my parenting skills. This is the latest thing for her, but this kind of behavior has been going on with her for years. She gathers my sisters around her like allies and encourages them to gang up on me. She finds something in me to knock around every time I see her.

I no longer believe the things my mother says about me. It only took me about thirty years and a lot of therapy to get her negative feedback loop to stop playing in my mind. I decided at some point that even if my mother didn't believe in my worthiness, I did, and that is all that matters. Lately, I put on my hat and look for the triggers. I gaze at it with observer-neutral eyes.The trigger for her lately seems to be protection of my children, which I see as unjustified. I take care of these children just fine.

However, her pathology does affect me in this area. My biggest fear is that I will end up with a child who feels about me the way I feel about my mother. I want my children to feel loved. However, there are times when showing that love is difficult for me. Sometimes I am angry with the children, or tense, or short on patience, particularly in the morning, and particularly with my oldest son. His (currently unmedicated) ADD issues make it really taxing when we have to get out the door by six thirty, and the toddler is frequently cranky. My youngest son is a lot of work at this age. He wakes up crying sometimes and the only way he stops is if I hold him. This goes on sometimes in the afternoon as well, so I end up holding him a lot, or having to watch him attentively as he wobbles along in the house, trying to stick everything in his mouth or a socket. Meanwhile, my older son flits around and only sometimes and painfully follows directions. Everything is a struggle, and sometimes I am not the nice mommy, but the freakout mommy. I feel angry.

My worry is that this struggle I describe will someday become part of my older son's pathology. Will I be judged, as he enters manhood, for the good I did as a mother, or my failures? Will he suffer self esteem issues as a result of pushing and prodding, the frustration when he can't sit down to finish his homework assignment, the irritation when instead of following directions, he gets distracted in his bedroom looking for a toy to sneak into school?

I worry about the pathological footprints I am leaving on his psyche. My mother passed the baton, and every day I make conscious decisions to not be the kind of parent she was. Every night my children are hugged, kissed, and told they are loved. I try to make sure I tell my son what I love about him, what the good is in him. Sometimes it is hard, though, sometimes it takes searching, and I loathe that about this part of life.

The other day, there was an odd situation with my dog Scout. The youngest and most exuberant of the dogs, he had gotten excited with I was playing and laughing with the toddler. Scout was running around throwing a mitten up in the air and attacking it as it came back down, but sometimes when he runs around like that, he doesn't pay attention to the baby and knocks him down. I commanded him to calm down, and he quit running, but he came up to us and began barking. I asked him to lay down, and he backed off a few feet, but then he began barking a series of sharp barks - woof! woof! woof! I gave him the command to quiet, and when he continued to bark I tried to get his attention and realized I could not reach him. His eyes were glassed over and his body was quivering, and his woof was a steady even stattaco.

I stepped out of my role as his owner-mistress and put my behavior hat on. This was aberrant behavior, and something about his body position struck me as symptomatic of "rage syndrome", usually seen only in Springer Spaniels. I actually became concerned that in this state he was in, he might behave aggressively. I was concerned about the potential impact that his pathology held, and considered the consequences. I understood the trigger for the incident, which was a frustrated play drive, but the way he handled it was abnormal. It could be something that gets worse, or continues, a symptom of something darker, some untapped aggression, only time will tell. I will have to wait and see if this manifests into a true pathological condition, as opposed to an incident. Wait and see.

Likewise,with my boss, with my patients, with my son. Sometimes it is not clear what the ramifications are until what is becomes what has past. It seems unfair sometimes that it is so easy with the patients. I can rearrange their situation to decrease the stress, the pathological behavior. It is like a puzzle I can fit together different ways. With my mother, with my son, with my boss, I don't have that luxury. I can't simply rearange their environment and increase positive interactions. There are no easy solutions, although from the outside, it might appear so. Or maybe solutions never came easy for me.

It makes me think of the Serenity prayer, which I remember seeing stitched in a framed piece of cloth at my grandmother's house during my childhood.

God,
Grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Christmas Presents From Heaven

In the latest move in the square dance between the Fat Cats, The Corporate Suits, the Behaviorist, and Me, I ended up being the one doing the victory dance. The Behaviorist was here doing a review of my program that I have pretty much developed from scratch in less than a year after starting work here. I gave a presentation to him, the Fat Cats and The Corporate Suits, and then I took him around and showed him what I had been doing, and then he gave a presentation to the Fat Cats, the Corporate Suits, and me.
In his presentation, he made some pretty incredible statements. He told them that the level of work that I was doing was equal to that of the best in the business, which was remarkable because they had been doing this for years and I had only just begun. He also was impressed with the results of my work and first said I could publish my data, and then changed his "could" to a "should." The Fat Cats started getting nervous, saying that they would have to talk to their legal department first, but he stopped them right then and made a comment to the effect of "I know you don't want to broadcast that you have this problem, but the fact is that everyone has this problem and no one has been able to successfully treat it before, but she has, and for the sake of our patients, I think the scientific community needs to see this information."
He talked to me privately at some point during the day and told me that publishing my data would be the golden key to unlock a door that had been closed to me. I had been trying to get somewhere academically but those doors kept getting shut in my face because nobody knew who I was. "I promise you," he told me, "you publish this paper, and they will know your name."
So it is settled (well, the Fat Cats haven't told me what the legal department said, but I am not waiting for them, I know how they roll), I am writing the paper.
However, before I could get started analyzing my data, I wanted to go back and validate and quantify it first. It was a rather tedious task and I kept asking myself if I really needed to do this, or if I was just doing this to avoid working on the paper because it was making me so anxious. I decided that I was not avoiding the paper by doing this, because it was an important step that I couldn't leave out.
As an example of why I think this is important, let me give you this scenario: Let's say you have a headache and your friend is recommending a medicine. Would you be more inclined to have faith in the medicine if they said they "kinda had a headache", or if they said "I had a pretty decent headache", or if they said "I had the worst migraine ever" and they took the medicine and it went away? In order to prove that my treatment is effective, I had to show that it worked in not only the mild cases that may or may not have resolved with no treatment, but also in the severe ones where treatment was a dubious proposition.
It took me about two weeks to get over that step, and I wrote a rough outline of my paper and was staring at the data trying to think of where to go next. I had two issues now: I had to translate my writing from layman's terms to scientific jargon, and I needed some more references. I was finding other work to do and pretty much decided that it would be best to put the paper on the backburner until June, when I am going to spend four days at a conference listening to presentations and reviewing the current data in the same field. By the end of that time, I should be able to write my paper much more easily.
I wasn't comfortable with that decision, though. I started to question again if I was just deciding that because I was trying to put off the anxiety of writing it. On the way home yesterday, I realized what part of my issue was. I needed to get my hands on some actual journals and just read them for a while to get a hang of the flow and style. I longed to find a campus library like the one we had at A&M, the Medical Library I think it was called, where there were rows and rows of scientific journals. I used to go there and read the journals all the time, which is why I thought writing this paper would be easy for me. That was ten years ago, though, and I am a little rusty in the pattern of scientific writing.
This morning when I got to work, there was a package waiting for me in my box.
This is strange, I thought. My box primarily sits empty. I opened the manilla envelope that was busting at the seams, and right there in my hands were three current scientific journals in my field.
It is like a Christmas present from Heaven. I wonder if God is watching over me right now, pushing me from behind, blowing in my ear. Write the paper, I feel he is saying, I have more work for you to do in this world. Go, now, and save my animals.

Can I help you?

This afternoon, I had this amusing interaction with my supervisor.

She was telling me about something she was going to do, and inviting me to join her. She says to me, "I don't know what you're doing right now, but..."

I really wanted to quip, "That's funny, neither do I!"

Which is amusing on so many levels to me.

I could leave it at that, but then you, my reader, would have no idea what that meant or why it was so hilarious to me. So I will elaborate...just a little.

First of all, I had absolutely no plans for the day. In fact, most of my day was filled with making plans for tomorrow. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants this afternoon when she caught me and I really had not made any immediate plans except to continue planning for tomorrow. Part of this is because I am still out of sorts with this restructuring of my program I am doing, still trying to figure out the best way to get it all done.

Secondly, as most everyone reading this little blog already knows, I really am very new to this particular area of this field. I have been working with this species less than a year. What cracks me up is that it is not that difficult for me to extend my background to allow me to inherently understand what I am doing. Last week, I overheard the new doctor talking about me to the office girl. She was marveling that I had only been working with these guys for eight months, I guess because I came off knowledgable to her. "I guess she's just a natural," she said.

The thing about that is, though, is that if someone has a firm grounding in animal behavior, it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch for them to be able to understand most animals. All animals communicate mostly through body language and some kind of vocalizations, and it is just a matter of determining the dialect, I guess. Initially, I remember trying to figure out what these guys were saying to me, but at this point, I translate without even thinking about it.

Body language is subtle to humans, because we are not trained to look for it, but if you spend a lot of time with animals, it is something that becomes intrinsic and valuable, not only as a source of information, but also in terms of safety.

When I was a kid, I remember people telling me that a horse's ears will be pinned back when it is angry. That is true, but if you wait until the ears are pinned back, it is probably too late to avoid getting hurt. You have to always be watching for the more subtle signs (tension in the body, shift in weight, the flicker of the ear, turning of the head or eye) and respond to those to keep from even being near a horse when the ears are pinned. There is also appropriate response, which is completely different if the horse is a "bluffer" or is truly aggressive. These are skills that become instinctual the more time you are around horses, and in that respect, it is the same across species. I respond to these guys' body cues now without even thinking about it.

Thirdly, I am just making shit up anyway here. The funniest thing about that is that I invented all this work to do just to keep myself busy, and now people ask for it, depend on it, double check it around here. That cracks me up all the time. I have a whole binder of documentation that could be audited at any time, but it is all stuff I feel like I sort of pulled out of my ass. Oh sure, one of my critical documents was an amended form of something that was left behind by a (big name) doctor that used to work here. Since he left, though, no one was using it to document this stuff, but suddenly now that I am using it, it becomes valuable.

Fourthly, this job is so vastly different than anything I have done before, it doesn't even feel like the same thing. I remember trying to explain this to the HR lady who was here, but she had absolutely no idea what it is like in the real world, so I couldn't frame it for her in a way she understood (probably because she was weird). A large portion of my jobs with the same title in the past involved a lot of client relations. At times I felt like a hostess, a grief counselor, a liasion between the client and the doctor who was trying to mediate middle ground between their contradictory wishes, a translator ("let me explain what the doctor is saying in layman's terms"), a humane educator, a pet and people trainer, a receptionist and "quote maker". A veterinary technician wears many hats during the course of the day.

Here you just take the client out of the equation. The volume and intensity of real work is significantly less. Cleaning, feeding, surgery assistance, patient care; it's all out the window.

Fifth, my supervisor could really care less what I am doing, as long as I am not bugging her. When I first started here, I had no idea what to do with all this rope. Usually doctors keep their techs on a short leash. We are their "right hand men", literally standing right next to them. They don't work on animals without us. The new docs sometimes get anxious when we are not around, because we hold their hands and help them. When they are not working on animals, we are usually scurrying around right near them, within earshot so that if they suddenly decide they need to look at an animal, they can pull our leash and we'll come running.

When I first got here, I was running circles around my boss asking her if I could help her with anything, but she kept sending me away. I got the drift. I never really work with her, we work independently.

She really has no idea what I am doing most of the time. She never asks me to help her, and I stopped asking her a long time ago.

Compartmentalization

I was thinking about my "romantic landscape' the other day, as I am prone to do, and I was making some connections between that and certain duties of my job. I was thinking about how I have this ability to compartmentalize sentiment, which is a trait that I feel is sometimes necessary in the kind of work I do. Often in working in the veterinary field, or with animals in general, you have to put aside emotional feelings in order to accomplish a task. Mostly I am referring to euthanasia. As a person who performs or assists with euthaniasia on a regular basis, you have to be able to put aside your grief or sadness over the loss of animals, or else you are in danger of becoming depressed, burned out, or suffering from compassion fatigue. There are many reasons and situations in which animals get euthanized, and most are very sad: a group of animals gets "culled", like at the facility where I work now for being unsellable, or at an animal shelter due to failure to be adopted and lack of room, an animal is old and sick and needs to be put out of its misery, an animal is hurt beyond the owner's ability to pay or cope, or the owner cannot deal with a physcial or mental problem the animal is having. Sometimes the owners are next to you, weeping at the loss of a family pet, and sometimes no one is weeping and the bodies are piling up on the floor, which is also sad.
I am very good at euthanasia. I am good at "turning it off", not allowing myself to feel unmeasurable pain, and being able to perform the duties asked of me. I also believe, though, in helping the spirit of the animal pass, and in dying with dignity. I hold their paws, I pet them and soothe them, I tell them they have been very good and have been loved so much, and that it is okay to let go. I tell them anything I know about their family or their history, how it showed how wonderful they were. I tell them their owners are letting them go to this wonderful place because they love them so. I tell them something nice about the way they look or act. I let the last words they hear be soothing words of comfort and love, even if they have no owner and nobody loved them. I do this because I love all of them collectively, even if I have never seen them before.
And myself, I put that love in a box. I pack my emotions away in that box in my heart and seal up the edges with strong tape. I refuse to look at it. I pretend it is not there. That love is there, and this is here, and if it is over there and I don't look at it, it doesn't hurt.
Sometimes I get so good at this game, I almost believe it. I sometimes think I put it so far away I become desensitized, and I wonder if I have become heartless. And so sometimes I let myself cry. I go with it, and it makes me feel real again, and reminds me that I care. I let myself grieve once for a Lab that I hardly knew, who belonged to a man I knew well. I knew how much he loved his dog and how he tried so hard to keep her alive, and it reminded me of how much I loved Rascal, and when we were done with her, I sat in a dark exam room, snuggling my friend's poodle and wept for an hour or more, weeping for all the dogs I never cried for.
Thinking about putting the sentiment in a box and forgetting it, putting that aside while I continued to function, reminded me of my love life before getting married, back when I was a serial cheater. Some people might not understand why I was able to be with a man I loved one night, and a man I was also sleeping with another night. When I was with each of them, they were all that existed, and I was having fun and was able to put my emotions for somebody else in a box and let them go.
Some people can't do this. Like my exboyfriend for instance, who says he cannot be friends with me anymore because it brings back old memories and interferes with his relationship with his wife.
I wish he could, because I believe in staying friends with the people I once loved. To me, the friendship is valuable because I still see the good in them and respect them. I keep my old memories in that box, along with the feelings I had for them, and don't look at it when I am with them, so I can just be friends in the here and now. Sometimes I wish everyone had that ability.

Tools
I feel like Daniel-son. The past few days, I have been having my moments with my Mr Miyagi, aka Martinez, who has been suddenly and silently appearing at my side, omnipresent and omniportent, and guiding me to the most elementary of tasks with his halting English. Mostly he gestures to me. Without my realization, he sees me struggling with something and shows up to give me the proper tools to do the job. Today he surprised me with a crescent wrench of my very own. Yesterday it was my own cart, to making the task of sanitizing the monkey toys easier. He gives me the tools to conquer boredom, as Mr Miyagi gave Daniel the tools to conquer evil. It makes me think about, among other things, the tools, both physical and mental, that we bring to the table to complete our missions in this world. Without the right tools, we cannot do what is asked of us.

I thought about this the other day, before the gift of the crescent wrench, when I was trying to unscrew hanging toys from the monkey cages with a huge old cresent wrench that kept slipping. For some reason, it reminded me of an incident when I was just learning how to do jugular sticks on dogs. The girl who was training me, Kelly, had shown me how to find the jugular by sight. I had gotten pretty good at eyeing it, and so she was having me stick everything. We came to a white Standard Poodle. This should have been an easy stick. Standard Poodles have great big veins that pop up easily, and the white fur should have made it even easier. I tried and tried, but could not get a feel on the vein. Kelly kept pushing me to keep trying and not to give up, and I was failing miserably, when the doctor got frustrated and cut into the action. I think he was mad at Kelly for pushing the issue, and when he went to make the stick, he said "Well, no wonder. This dog does not have a palpable vein." He was saying it loudly to make me feel better, and to make Kelly feel bad for forcing failure on me by offering me a challenge I was not up to. However, really what I took away from that, in retrospect, is that she was expecting me to do a job with the wrong tools. She had only given me one tool to try on all cases, when really, when it comes to drawing blood (at least on animals), there are three: sight, feel, and anatomical guess. She had failed to give me all three tools before asking me to be able to complete the more challenging cases. Instead of giving me a lesson in failed perserverance, she could have used it as a learning opportunity, a time to introduce the next tool. I thought about that a lot when working at the Animal EC, on the occasions I drew blood on an animal with veins that I could not see, I could not feel, and I had to use the last tool and "go blind", knowing that it had to be in that area somewhere, and if I used my landmarks correctly, I could find it.

What are the tools of your trade? How did you acquire them?

Redemption

Easter Sunday, I was sitting in church, listening to the minister discuss the day's reading. It was the story of the two Marys who went to the tomb of Jesus to attend to his body, and found instead an angel of the Lord, who told them of the resurrection. My thoughts wandered to images of Jesus's mortal body and the physical and emotional torment he endured before dying on the cross, images mostly brought to life from the watching of "The Passion of the Christ", a movie I almost wish I had never seen, except that it awoke in me strains of a greater spiritual nature and compassion for Christ. I was thinking also about the teasing of the Roman soldiers, as they pushed the crown of thorns deeper on Jesus's forehead, mocking him about being "the King of the Jews", and asking him where his God was now. For me, the resurrection was more meaningful in terms of redemption than in Jesus returning to earth, though this might be a subtle difference that comes down to the same idea. It is important to me that after all Jesus suffered at the hands of the soldiers, in the end, he was redeemed. In the end, his God did come and swoop him up, or transform him, or both (although I am very curious about the actual process). He did get was due him, which was the eternal spot at God's right hand, the lasting hereafter, the ability for his death to atone for the sins of those who came after and who believed. Justice was served. And perhaps that is the reason I fall for redemption, because I want to believe in justice. I want to believe in the ability of man to transform, to be lifted up and changed in an ephermal way. I want the underdog to win, to rise up and succeed under oppression. Redemption is the great eqaulizer, the bringer of justice in an unjust world, and without it I believe the eventual state of man would be true hopelessness.

With the help of that Easter sermon, and a lingering boost from a Friday night festivities with my previous co-workers, I saw the way redemption had played out in my own life recently. I had experienced in my professional life some serious disappointments that made me humble. My friends from college saw me as ambitious and driven, and I vowed to never give up on my dreams, but I had become the token underdog and lost some confidence due to having worked some jobs that were beneath my education level and percieved worth. While it was true that some of these experiences changed me in ways that made me stronger, more aware, and more versatile, they had also robbed me of some of my youthful zeal and ambition.

Since moving to the Houston area about five years ago, I had worked at two veterinary practices with similar situations. In both positions, I came into a practice that was much busier than anything I had worked at before, and which required a higher skill level and efficiency. In the first practice, there had been a girl who considered herself the "lead", and resented anyone who matched her talents. She made my first year very uncomfortable, for I do not like confrontations and tensions in the work place and want to just be able to do my job and get along with the team. She had it out for me for reasons I can only speculate on. She continually caused problems with the rest of the staff, but the doctor was reluctant to fire her because she was just so good at what she did, and she used her force of intimidation to keep me down, although I had more education and experience than she did. After that first year, though, the doctor and I had reached a level of comfortability together that gave him the sense of security that he needed to fire her and rely on me to take over her role as the "lead". For the next few years, I continued to rise in authority, responsibilty, and pay level, above another girl who had been there longer and beyond which they were able to compensate me for. When I left that practice, the same doctor who had been reluctant to pay me the initial wage I asked, and gave me his reasons for offering a lower wage, was calling me with the same moony sadness that I had heard in the voice of my old college boyfriend when I dumped him and he was asking me not to, offering to pay me whatever wage would be enough to cover the additional costs of childcare that I had given as my reasons for leaving.

That was some redemption there, seeing how my growth potential had changed the perception of my value, and how I was worth more than what they originally had me pegged for. However, it is the most recent experience that really drove a point home to me. I went from that practice to an Animal ER that prided itself on offering superior service and talents. I worked with a team of incredibly gifted, talented, devoted animal nurses and doctors. These people were amazing, and I know the employer, who had been a friend of mine, had a reputation for paying well, but my initial offer was only fifty cents more an hour than the job I had left. It worked out to be worth more, because I did not have to pay child care costs for my newborn baby, and could be home with him during the weekdays. Initially, anyways, I felt it was a fair offer, because my skill level was not nearly as high as some of the other girls I worked with. They for the most part did not share my education level, but they had been doing this job for so long and worked so hard to be the best at it that in terms of skill level, I truly was worth less than them. Some used this to their advantage, and made deliberate attempts to make me feel worthless. In those early days, there were days I went home crying, and often I wanted to give up. I felt like I was in water above my head and swimming with sharks, and it was difficult to gather the courage to get back up and try again to rise to the level of that playing field.

There was a manager there, Erin, who made most of the pay decisions and who, it was believed, had a good sense of people. I think she was close on, but missed the mark, missed out on the subtleties of human nature. One thing she told me during my 90 day review drove this point home to me. She told me that my former doctor had come to her in help of finding someone to fill my shoes at the practice I had left, and she had let him look through some applications and gave him her perceptions of the potential prospects. She asked him what qualities I possessed that he was looking for in someone to fill my role, and he gave her adjectives such as "bold", "a leader", "strong", "forceful", "aggressive" - the qualities I can bring out in comfortable surroundings. She told me that did not jive with her impression of me, which was "meek and submissive", and basically told me I needed to get some chutzpah and communication skills (ironic memory here of a college lover who told me "what sets you apart is your ability to communicate"), and only gave me a small raise. She gave another girl who came in behind me a much bigger raise (because she had threatened to quit because the sharks were tearing her apart emotionally), but also told her she had "a problem with authority", when in actuality she was a creative thinker who came up with unique solutions for long term problems and had the "chutzpah" to make the changes she saw where needed.

It came to pass that Erin left the practice to work for a head hunter service, and then my employer slowly went mad with paranoia. During the time of crisis at the ER, during the increasing insanity level of our boss, the sharks jumped ship immediately. Our staff went from fifteen to six within a couple of weeks, and during this time, those who were left were looking for a leader and cohesion. I stepped up to the plate, and walked into the role I had filled before, managing this time a nervous wreck of a staff. In the end, I left the practice one of the two most cherised employees, one of the two my crazy boss pleaded with to stay with her, and when I and the other girl walked out, the doors of the clinic closed behind us, leaving the doctor crying in the dark, demanding that someone listen to her, help her fight the demons only she could see.

During the time I was looking for another job, I had gotten an offer that put me in the higher wage bracket for veterinary technicians. The initial offer was comparable to what I think some of the higher ranking sharks had been making. Crazy as it seems, I turned that job down because I was looking for something that would allow me to follow my dream of working in animal behavior management. The story goes that I kept praying for God to send me the perfect job, and then these people would call me back with a higher offer, and I would turn them down, and then I would pray again, and then they would call me back the next day. In the end, they came back to me four times, and the final offer was higher than I had ever heard of a technician making, with free medical benefits and a sign on bonus. Basically, I ended up accepting an offer that was six dollars more an hour than I had been making the previous year, an unheard of jump for this type of job, and with the total package included, had acquired a 33% raise in salary. It turns out, as well, that this job is a lot less physically demanding than most technician positions, offers great perks, and best of all, allows me to spend most of my time in behavior management of the animals, and offers incredible growth potential for me professionally.

So on a Friday night before Easter, I had gone out to meet some of the former EC staff memebers for dinner and drinks. I sat next to Erin, who asked me about my job. When I told her about the final offer, her jaw dropped in astonishment. She, this veterinary headhunter, could not believe how much I was making. None of the other girls who had left the EC had ended up with jobs as good as mine, or that paid as well. "Have you ever thought about why they wanted you so bad?", she asked. She told me she knew at least five other techs who had applied for that job, "so it is not like they were desperate or anything. So why did they want you so bad?" When we talked further, she decided it must have been my college degree and my experience in behavior.

I, however, think it is something more. I think it was redemption.