Or, how to get lost in strip mall hell…

“Do you know where we are?”

“No.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“No.”

“OK then.”

“As long as we’re not heading south or east, we’re fine.”

Insert five minutes of staring into the dark landscape.

“That’s Bloomingdale.”

“Yup.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’re going east?”

“And south.”

“Turn left.  No, right!  Right?  That’s the gas station we stopped at once and did that weird turn.”

Insert five minutes of staring into the dark landscape.

“Wait.  This looks wrong.  We’re definitely going the wrong way.”

“Yup.”

Insert U-turn and fifteen minutes of staring into the dark landscape.

“Wait.  This looks wrong.  NOW we’re definitely going the wrong way.”

“Do we have a map?”

“Yes!  Let’s see…Gainesville… Wisconsin…Hillsborough County!”

“Let me see.”

“Wait.”

“Let me see!”

“It’s no good.  We’re here.”  Insert jab to thigh, three inches left and two inches down from where map ends.  “But I definitely think this is the wrong way.  Positive.  Let’s just turn around.”

“Let me see the map of Wisconsin.”

So…guinea pig dies.  A day later, after the first social thing I’ve done all year so far (dinner with the girls), I get the stomach flu.  I was barely able to crawl from room to room for roughly two days and only started drinking coffee again yesterday.

My grandfather went into the hospital for his heart.  (He’s out now, with nothing really to report.  I thought that I was blase about medical conditions but evidently you get to be 87 and you take it to a whole new level.)

Zulu (cat) appears to have something wrong with her eye which could be anything from scratch to cancer.  I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow, my only free time in the week, and earn even more fear from her than the flea medicine and accidently stepping on her (I SAID accidently) combined.

I have no money.  We will have to make drastic life changes if the condo doesn’t sell in the next two months.

I dislike my job.  I’m distracted from my studies by all this “real world” shit.  I haven’t been to the gym in over a week between illness and chores.  I could not tell you when I washed my hair last.  We have fleas.  Many, many, fleas.

Please someone find humor in this.  Find humor in the fact that ST spent Valentine’s day watching me puke in a bucket.  Because I think I am ready to crack and I would really like someone to get something out of it.

I had driven to the condo by myself to change a lightbulb.  ST wasn’t feeling well and stayed home.

I had just finished up at Target (needed a bulb in order to change one), and saw I had two missed called, both from him.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What’s up?” I quipped.  To be honest, I was a little worried he had thought of something else he needed and I would have to brave the shoppers once again.

“It’s Cocoa.”  (Our guinea pig)

“He’s dead.”  I don’t believe I’ve ever said those words as a question.  You hear it in someone’s voice and you know.

“Not yet, but he’s close.”

We discussed one or two things, then I suggest just wrapping him in a towel and snuggling in bed with him.

“He’ll like that.”

I got home to say goodbye.  Celeste, the little black cat who had taken to climbing in his pen with him, came and gave a farewell sniff as well.

The lump he has always had on his left hind flank was now a mushy ball.  Something had triggered the cancer.  He was between six and seven years old.  A good age for a guinea pig.

We discussed getting a vet friend over to give him a shot, but nature took her course quickly and seemingly without pain.

This is the on the heels of losing a lionness at the sanctuary to cancer on Thursday.  I’ve been trying to give myself time to write eloquently about it, but now I don’t think I will.

Hug your loved ones, bipeds and otherwise.

When I set out on this new career path, I mentioned looking for quality over quantity.

I smacked against that this week with a very hard decision to drop one of my classes.

I had already dropped one before the semester even started.  I needed more day time to schedule a potential job.

Then that potential became a reality.  And thank goodness.  I’m still depleting my savings account for the big stuff (condo, new car), but at least now my finances do not resemble a black hole which you could peer three years down the road into and see me dancing a jig for nickels or shots of Jack.

But scheduling has been a nightmare.  Not just school and work and the sanctuary.  We’ve been bumping into problems of no time to cook dinner, no time to go to the gym we just signed up for (more on that later this week), no time to scrub the cat vomit from the hallway.

OK.  Maybe we have time for the last one and we’re just lazy.  Both of us have admitted to the I’ll-Just-Tiptoe-Around-It-So-He/She-Will-Find-It method of cleaning animal byproducts.

The real kicker was that on the first day of comparative vertebrate anatomy, we were told we’d need to make time on 3 Fridays of the semester for lab practicals.  And that as we started disecctions, we’d need to attend multiple lab sessions and office hours to complete the work.

Already, I was eating lunch on disecction breaks.  I would be able to make an extra hour of lab time on Wednesdays if I didn’t plan on dinner and one office hour if I didn’t eat lunch.

Um.  Yeah.

Frustratingly, it’s an awesome class.  All of my classes are awesome this semester.  So I tried to stick it out.  But it really hit home this past weekend, on top of receiving subpar* grades on two other tests that I should have studied more for but didn’t have time.

*Subpar to me means high B.  Because I am an anal nerd.  But seriously, I missed entire concepts that I just didn’t have time to drill into my head.  I can’t remember ever going into a test before and thinking, “I’ve never seen that before ever.”  Blech.

So, I’m giving up on comparative vertebrate anatomy.  I’ll admit, it feels like defeat.  I should be able to make this work.  And I feel I’m slowing down this whole process of moving on. 

But, let’s be be more positive about it.  I’m putting it aside until I have adequate time to devote to it.  I’ve thought about every variable in the equation, and it’s the only one I can remove to ensure a sane and focused me.

And that’s what we all want, right?  Right?

I’ll just be in the corner, dancing a jig.  

I am now a high-level volunteer.  Again.
 
My first time round volunteering, this was my goal.  There is no level higher, barring appointment to committee or staff.
 
My first time round, I applied as soon as it was humanly possible, and was denied.
 
It hurt.  I even thought about quitting.
 
But I also couldn’t fault their reasoning.  Rather than focusing on the goal, the criteria, the requirements, I started to focus more on just helping the animals, the staff, the other volunteers.
 
I never re-applied.  The high level status was given to me as a surprise one volunteer meeting.  There was even cake and tears.
 
But being a high-level volunteer meant more responsibility.  Living on property meant more responsibility.  My job began to have more responsibility.  My body needed a break and I wasn’t giving it one and it started to break down.
 
Coming back, the memory of that was very fresh in my mind.  It haunts me.  How ineffective I became at everything because I couldn’t concentrate on anything.  It is a horrible blow to your ego to feel like you haven’t gotten one thing right all day.
 
I couldn’t tell you what is different this time.  More accurately, I couldn’t tell you which thing that is different is making the difference.  But for some reason, I’m able to hang on more.  Prioritize better.  Say no every once and a great while.

 
Therefore, I couldn’t say no to this.
 
Ever since the winter break, I’ve been doing some high-level jobs around the sanctuary without the title.  (That was the cause of the awkwardness – feeling like I was overstepping my bounds even though it was specifically asked of me.)  It was made clear that it would be a big help if I asked to be promoted.  So I did.
 
I felt a bit like a fake, receiving my new shirt.  I had told several people that I wasn’t interested in getting promoted up the ranks again.  And that was true.  But what is truer is that I’m there to help the animals, the staff, the volunteers.  And six years experience was being wasted if I didn’t.
 
In case you’re wondering, being a high-level* volunteer means that I can lead a feeding route, hand out medications, and work with the leopards, tigers, and lions.  I also will have more responsibility in training the low and middle-level volunteers.
 
*That’s not what we call it, but we have a distinct “low, middle, high” structure that makes it easy for me to write about in those terms.  And yes; I’m pretty sure that is improper hyphen use.  Thanks for asking.