My Thanksgiving Post

This post is dedicated to my friend, Tammy Brocker. She always encourages me to write, especially when I don’t want too!

I’ve had a lot of great Thanksgivings in my life…and a few not so great. With the holiday coming up very soon, I was chatting with my friend about the perfect Thanksgiving, who would you invite? Fictional characters, movie stars, dead family members? The sky’s the limit…After putting some thought into this idea of the perfect Thanksgiving table, I think I would repeat a Thanksgiving of my childhood. One that seems so long ago, it feels like a dream…

I wasn’t even in school yet and my family had recently acquired a small 200 acre farm in southern Missouri. My parents decided to have both sides of the family over to our quaint little farm for Thanksgiving.

This being my fantasy Thanksgiving, what was so great about it? Well, as I’ve grown older, my huge family (I have 19 first cousins and 6 aunts and uncles on my mom’s side alone) has grown apart and, as it is with time, relatives, grandmothers, grandpas, have died. Also, there is something wonderful about childhood that you only have once, something wild and free. That Thanksgiving I had more fun playing with my cousins and running through the woods and old barn than I had eating.

In reality, I will never have that Thanksgiving back. But I think I need to appreciate the family I have now, the one that has evolved and branched off from that huge trunk that my grandparents started so long ago. The same family that was in it’s golden age that Thanksgiving at our little farm in Missouri. It’s humbling really when you think about it. How, in a matter of less than twenty years, a family that started in the same place, can change so much.

My Daisy Dog

A lot of people have told me they don’t understand the relationship some people have with their pets; including mine.  “Why do you have a picture of your dog/horse/duck on your desk?”  ”You act like your dog etc. is part of your family.”  For people that have never been around animals, like I have, this is a difficult question to answer.  From the second I was brought home from the hospital, I was surrounded by animals.  I had a large male black lab as a baby-sitter when I was an infant, and a pack of labrador pups for playmates when I was a toddler and thru elementary school.  Later in life, I hatched a couple of mallard ducks and started my own little flock that waddled after me and even swam with me in my grandparent’s creek. 

I have never told this story to anyone.  I’m wiriting it in hopes that others will understand the strong bonds that form between dogs and humans.  From the time early hominids ate meat, dogs have been by their sides as companions.  Dogs are the only creatures (other than humans) that will experience mental abnormalcy without routine interactions with humans.  Admittendly, my life would not be the same without the influence of all the different animals I’ve known in my lifetime, I owe my life, the shaping of my personailty as I know it, to dogs.  This story is just one example of why that is.   

I was 14 when my parents bought me Daisy from a reputable breeder in St. Louis. She was a fawn Great Dane, with a little white patch on her chest. When I was 16, my family and I moved to Reno, NV. I was torn from my high school and all my friends and the familiar place I knew as home. When I moved to Nevada, I was home schooled, I had no friends. Not only was Daisy my best friend, she was my only friend. I was a lonely 16 year -old, but I would have been lonelier still, if it weren’t for Daisy. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like those first few years in Nevada without her. When I started working part-time, I had become so introverted I wished and even imagined Daisy was at work with me, walking by my side like she did at home.

I still lose sleep over how she died. I still blame myself for it. Daisy died of mesenteric torsion. She had a gastric torsion a few months before and her stomach was tacked up, but she bloated again.  Even the vet said he had never seen anything like it. The morning she died, it was July 5^th, 2005, she was whining to go outside. I figured because she had to go potty. It was around 5 am. I told her to go back to sleep…I wasn’t going to let her out at 5 in the morning, I was 19 years-old and practically comatose at that time in the a.m. I feel like, if I had listened to her then, instead of telling her to go back to bed, I would have saved her life.   She didn’t have to go potty, she was telling me that her mesentery was twisting. I think about that moment constantly.  In fact, almost 3 and a half years later, I still hear the phone ring in my memory, hear the vet’s voice on the other end telling me there’s nothing he can do for Daisy. I see myself shoving the phone in my mom’s face and running to my room where Daisy’s bed was, where she was sleeping then whimpering, just hours before. I clutch her favorite toy and sob, and still feels warm to me. I run through that memory over and over and over…like a broken record.  In fact, that same toy sits on my desk in my living room below her picture.

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Blame ourselves for years later… I’d like to think a part of me died when Daisy died, or at least a big part of me changed. I felt like I had played god by getting her from a breeder. I’m not a religious person in the Christian sense, but I knew Daisy had changed my life and I wanted it to be for the better. I love animals more than anything in the world and every day I find they affect our lives more dramatically than most humans. Daisy made me think differently about dog breeding and now I get all my dogs from rescues. I still feel guilty for Daisy’s death and that if I had gotten her to the emergency vet a couple hours earlier she might be sitting with me right now as I type this, but at the same time if she had survived, how many more surgeries would she have to live through in order for her to live just a few more years, all to make me happy? And I might have gotten another dog from a breeder, another dog bred with the genetic disposition to torsions. Daisy taught me that dogs should not be bred for looks, but for health, for welfare, in order to live a happy life with humans, not to make humans’ lives happy. Daisy taught me, like all animals I’ve ever known, to look for the meaning behind the relationship and time that we had together. Animals have taught me more than any human.

Daisy is a huge part of my life.  And I think in some aspects she has impacted me more so than any human.  Perhaps people that don’t see dogs or other companion animals the same way I do, have, unfortunately, never seen how an animal can touch your life.

I Can’t Complain

I’m sitting on my balcony, looking at the full moon hanging over the mountains.  It’s a beautiful summer evening.  The breeze is blowing, the mountains look majestic; just as described in our country’s patriotic songs they are shroud in purple and pinks as the day has come to an end.  So I sit on my balcony in the desert breeze, listening to my dog calmly breath in and out at my feet, and I think how lucky I am.

I complain a lot.  I complain about my job, my boss, my co-workers, about the amount of money (or lack there of) I have in my bank account, about how stressed out I am all the time, about my grades, my car, about stupid, stupid men and dating in general, and basically how crappy my life is.  But the truth is, I’m one lucky woman. 

I’m in my early 20’s and I live alone with my dog, in a one bedroom apartment, in a nice neighborhood with a private balcony.  I have a good job that pays well while I’m in school and it’s in the research field, something I want to do for the rest of my life.  I just got back from Mexico and didn’t contract a G.I. bug!  I have a beautiful horse, an animal that some people never have the oppurtunity to be near their entire lives.  I am able to travel regularly (maybe not as regularly as I’d like too…).  I have a wonderful family and friends. 

So, I may be tight with money sometimes and be late on a few payments here and there or have to go without food in my fridge for a week or two (believe me it’s happened).  Or even have to put up with arrogant co-workers, or a micro-manager in an office (ugh!), but at least I’m not living in a crowded house with a bunch of irresponsible stoners by night and taking people’s lunch orders at McDonald’s by day, right? 

 

Pretty Girls and Wildflowers go Together

“I like to see you pickin’ wildflowers, pretty girls and wildflowers go together.”  It was a typical hot and humid southern missouri day.  The air was heavy, it practically sat on your shoulders and sweet too: the smell of honeysuckle drifted up from the creek.  I had just got back from the east pasture after picking wildflowers to put on Grandmother’s grave.  I had a handful of black-eyed susans, purple cornflower, and yellow yarrow.  My grandpa kissed me on the cheek and I gave him a hug.  I don’t think he realized I was headed to the airport, headed back to Reno after I visted Grandmother’s grave which was south of town. 

But anyway, today, I sit here, almost 2,000 miles away, at a small kitchen table in Reno, NV, reminecsing about my grandpa’s ramblings.  Here, the dry wind causes the skin on my face to dry and crack and grandpa’s ramblings seem as distant as a dream.  

I remember one hot summer day, after my grandmother died, I think, my grandpa and I sat in the little farm house together and talked.  There was no air conditioning, but it was late afternoon, and a thunderstorm was on the horizon.  The ceiling fan rattled away in the kitchen as it did its best to circulate the otherwise stagnant air.  Grandpa, a farmer almost all his life talked to me about his mules: Jack and John.  They were 18 hands high and so wide they couldn’t plow a field side by side.   

Half the time I talked to grandpa, I couldn’t understand what he was saying through his thick Arkansas accent.  When I was a little girl, about 5 or 6 I would catch a few phrases like, “Marse, I do believe she’s as purty as speckled pup.”  Marse being my mother. 

It’s these endearing phrases that I keep close to my  heart and will always remember.  These phrases that bring me back to my roots, to those days on the farm with my grandpa.  And I will tell them to my children, if I ever have any, keeping my grandpa’s memory alive.    

Of Monkeys and Astronauts

As a child he always had an interest in outer-space.  Like all little boys he dreamt of space travel and walking on the moon.  In high school he talked about dark matter and time travel through black holes…but as he grew older, by the time he had to chose a major in college, he never thought he had the intelligence, let alone the discipline, to pursue his interest.

Ironically after bouncing from job to job in his 20’s, scientific research did fall into his career path.  He worked at a research organization for almost 4 years.  Research of any kind requires intelligence, but all fields needs it’s lackeys.  He worked as a technician: cleaning animal cages, collecting blood samples, treating basic injuries, making sure all animals were healthy, were among his main duties.  It was mindless work, repetitive.  Although, it was difficult caring and treating agitated animals that wanted nothing to do with people and dangerous handling hazardous materials; he felt he could do his job half asleep.

So at a young age, when most young people are still dreaming about their future, he threw away his hopes of being an astronaut and settled his fate with the gods in a monkey lab.     

About the same time as when he started his job at the lab, his libido evolved into a liking for both sexes.  His emotions became physically driven and his mind was linked to sex vehemently, more so than most young men his age.   And like his old jobs he couldn’t keep, he went thru girlfriends like they were disposable; always in a relationship, but never making a serious commitment.  This was easy for him, he was in it for the sex mainly anyway. 

It was nice having a warm body to sleep next to every night too, but always being in a relationship with a woman had a second bonus: this way, society could never see his so-called indiscretions because he was always with a woman.  It also kept him busy, kept his mind off exactly what he would be called a freak for indulging in. 

 But, his mind constantly re-ran that image of him, alone with that man in the kitchen.  Like skilled fingers running over piano keys, he could replay every touch and causal sensation.  And every time he replayed it, he wanted to feel those sensations, that same exhilaration of that spring day.  

Until his immoral thirst could be slaked, he would have to be content mucking after monkeys and secretly dreaming of space, repressing his urges.

Drowning in Space

Lacking the willpower to save his own life he lets fatigue set in.  From his shoulders to his biceps to the crook of the elbows to the palm of his hands and all of his ten fingers; his muscle fibers fail to contract. And at that moment he decides his own fate: to be sucked into the infinite vacuum of the cosmos.  

His lifeline had been cut, it seemed like it had been hours ago, and he was clinging to the space station like a primate clings to its careless mother during the first few days of its life.  It was pathetic he thought, as a hot tear ran down his face and his chest grew tight, and clear, slick snot streamed from his blunt nose as all he could do was grope this massive chunk of metal, helplessly. 

His eyes stung from crying and he could feel the crusty, dryness the salt left on his face.  Stuck on a forgotten space station, he felt even more defeated when unable to wipe his helmeted face clean of the nasal discharge caused by his dismal sobbing. 

Suddenly his melancholy thoughts turned to anger.  All of this; this moribund situation he was in, the reason he accepted this suicide mission in the first place, was all because of that one person that left such an indelible impression on him.

 It wasn’t wrong…he kept telling himself…no matter what the others said.  It felt too good to be wrong…He loved me…he loved me…and they deserved to die if they didn’t think he did!  Yeah…ha ha ha…it wasn’t wrong at all…experimentation, what is that?!  People don’t just experiment…

His mind rewound to that auspicious moment, that single moment in time, that everyone has, that will change your life forever depending on what choice you make, he philosophized. 

The memory was distant and vivid at the same time, like looking at the moon through a telescope. He was 17, not a virgin and living contently with little restrictions from authority.  It was warm that day and sunny too, the air smelled fresh, new.  Winter was over and nature was embracing spring.  Robins chirped and Stellar Jays screeched excitedly.

 As the memory of this familiar spring rushed back to him, his body relaxed further, and a foot dangled into the black nothingness.   

He remembers he was in his house, the house he had lived in for years, the house he had grown up in.  He could still see it.  Billions of miles, of light years away, he could feel it, taste it, smell it.  But it wasn’t real, he wasn’t really there…it was just a memory. 

He was in the kitchen that spring day.  Why he wasn’t outside with his friends he couldn’t remember.  But, he was inside where it was dark, where he was protected from the intense light of day, hidden from the curious eyes of his peers.  The indoor air was stuffy and old when compared to the freshness of the sweet spring day.  Yet he stayed in the kitchen.

As is the nature of memories, he doesn’t remember exactly how it happened, he just remembers it happening.  One moment he was in the kitchen enjoying the solitude of the usually raucous house and the next he was willingly embraced in a way he had never been embraced by another man before, and he liked it.             

 He felt exhilarated as the strong, muscular arms took hold of him and aggressively pulled him towards his chest.  The kisses the two shared were like none he had ever had with a woman.  They were more…electric and insistent and filled with so much more emotion.  He remembers running his fingers over his muscular chest, slowly, feeling every point of flexion from his legs seamlessly to his arms, feeling his solid pectorals, caressing the nipples until they stood erect. 

Lost in this physical act of passion, he lost awareness of the outside world, he was one minded and cared or thought only of the magnificent sensation created by his partner’s organ and powerful thrusting combined. 

Suddenly he awoke from his flashback and fell from the space station; he’d have at most a seven and a half hours, maybe eight, of complete solitude to reminisce before he died of suffocation, now.   

 

 ……………to be continued

Sleeplessness and Final Exams

April and May were months filled with presentations, group projects, and final exams.  But I couldn’t be happier these months are over, bringing a close to my fourth year at University.  This also means I only have one more year left as an undergraduate student, and I can start looking towards applying to a myriad of schools around the country that have graduate programs specializing in animal behavior and zoology. 

I have lots of plans for the summer and expect 2008 to be nothing short of amazing, but as usual, much in the way of tribulations were overcome before summer could arrive. 

In the middle of finals week (I had taken two exams and had three more to go) I was at the student union with my friend studying for ”VetMed 475, Diseases in Domestic Animals.”  My first mistake was taking my friend with me to study.  Stephanie is one of my best friends and practically my sisiter; however, most of the time spent at the student union was spent making fun of the whiney sorority girls sitting across from us, eating junk food the Associated Students of the University of Nevada gave away for free, and at one point in the night (after the consumption of some free energy drinks) Steph stole my phone, browsed my conact list and began making crank calls.   So, due to the energy drinks, I was a bit tachacardic, and ended up staying up till about 4am Thursday night because of the lack of work I had got done with Steph at the Sudent Union.  But My exam was at Friday morning at 9:45, so I’d have about five hours to sleep.   Which brings me to my second mistake; not double checking my schedule.  

 So, with a racing heart from the free energy drinks, I forced myself to sleep around 4:00am.  I woke up early, still a bit tachicardic, no big deal, and  I got to class about 9:40 and nobody was there…my heart was about ready to explode out of my chest now.  I looked at my schedule for the second time: apparently, the final was scheduled to start at 7:00am and end at 9:45am (of course everybody finished before then).

My heart throbbing, I swear I could feel it in my head (this couldn’t be normal I thought) I raced down two flights of stairs and ran to the other end of the Fleischman Ag building and (with tears at the ready, if I needed them) begged the Teaching Assistant to let me take the test.  Unclimactically, she calmly handed me the exam and said, “you know it’s funny, I counted everybody this morning and thought somebody was missing!” She let me take the right then in her office, because she is the nicest, most considerate person ever.

I went to work, went home and ran with a heart rate over 65 and while totally exhausted; and thought I only have one more year of this crap.

Nevada: a very rocky start

March 2008 – Reno NV 

I always told myself that I loved Illinois, the corn fields, the smell of livestock every morning before I went to school.  I never wanted to leave.  My grandpa was born, died and even burried in the same town in Southern Illinois.  In fact, my entire family, from cousins my age, to aunts and uncles a couple generations older than me,  is comfortable remaining stagnant, in one place: where they were born and where they will eventually die.

I found myself in this same rut a few years back.  I was comfortable, I knew everybody and everything from the owner of the local pharmacy and grocery store to the quickest route from my house to the movie theater (I even knew the owner of the movie theater and was able to screen new movies for free from time to time).  I had no desire to see new things, to travel, and moving was definitely the farthest concern from my mind.

But alas, recession blind sided the country in 2001 and my father was laid off from his job of 20 years.  I was in high-school, and I tried every excuse I could to stay in Illinois, including bording school, but in 2002, after living over a year without an income, the only job available in my dad’s profession was in Reno, Nevada. 

Suffice to say, after we sold the house that everyone from my grandpa to my dad helped build, I moved with my mom and dad to the vast, unknown West.  I left my sister, my brother-in-law, and two nieces in Illinois along with the rest of my family.   I didn’t know what to expect.  I left crying, looking back on my familiar home the entire way. 

The drive to our new home reminded me of something out of Steinbeck, and I still feel to this day, that we’re lucky we didn’t have to burry anyone on the way. 

It was a four day excursion and along with the majority of our most treasured belongings that we didn’t trust the moving company with, we were hauling six ducks, a rabbit, and a great dane across the country.

When we finally arrived in Nevada, we were greeted by a giant mud-slide that derailed our caravan, breifly.  But what was even more upsetting was that our house was still being lived in by the previous owners.  So, with our six ducks, one rabbit, and great dane, we lived in a hotel for a week, while I suffered from continual nose-bleeds from the dry climate I thought would never go away.

I hated Nevada, it looked like death compared to the lush green of Illinois.  It was dry and brown and there were no trees to provide any reliefe from the sun’s unending abuse.  What was worse, I didn’t have a friend in the world to share my greif with. 

What happened?  As a 17 year-old girl, My 3-year-old great dane, Daisy, literally became my best friend.  I talked to her like she was a real human being, we went on walks together, I would’ve taken her to school and work with me if I could have.  Without Daisy, the year of my life in Nevada would have been even more hellish than I couldv’e imagined.

Although Daisy died freakishly, the vets said they’ve never seen a mesenteric torsion in a Dane (gastric torsions are very common in Great Danes, in fact, Daisy survived this breed-specific malady) the reality is, the move to Nevada forced me out of a shell that Illinois kept me locked in for the better part of my life.

After a year of living in melancholy, my heart aching for the vast, green farmland of my home-state, I lost over thirty pounds.  I started working and actually gained the motivation to learn how to drive.  I’ve traveled the country and gone to Europe.  And of course, I’ve met some wonderful people I know will stay in my life forever.  

I can’t say I owe this change to Nevada.  But evolutionarily, life is not meant to stay stagnant.  Look at the Galapagoes, a string of islands, untouched by human development.  Finches and tortoises have migrated from island to island, and by doing so have changed, adapted to live longer lives.

I look back at my family still stuck in the same rut, living and dying in the same place they were born, living with eyes closed.  I wonder, I hope, that I have started a migration that will better their lives.       

The Big Move

July 2002 – Columbia ILL

 

 My family has made the decision to move; not just somewhere else in Illinois or even St. Louis, but all the way across the country.  I will be ripped out of the most comfortable spot I have ever been in my entire life and thrown into an alien environment, with no friends or relatives, besides by parents, to console me.  All of my older siblings will be left here, in their comfortable niche of Southern Illinois.

My mother and father are going to drag me out west to a town in northern Nevada called Sparks where a job awaits my father.  My father is a toxicologist and has directed tox. studies for Monsanto for twenty long years, until the company merged with another pharmaceutical company called Pharmacia.  This is when Monsanto was forced to let my dad go; thus far, he has had no job offers from any pharmaceutical companies in the St. Louis area.  

 I have lived in Southern Illinois for my entire life, and I don’t know anything else (perhaps the cause of my reluctance to leave).  I was born in Belleville, Illinois and I lived in a town a little south of Belleville called Millstadt for eight years.  When my older brother, Chris, was about to enter high school, we moved to Columbia, fearing that Belleville West Township High School would have a bad influence on my brother. 

To this day, I sit in my beloved house in Columbia, looking out the open windows and seeing the never-ending farm fields and meadows.  I listen to the mocking bird atop my chimney and watch the barn swallows swoop in and out of the cracks in my deck, making a nest they have made every year since my family built this house.  I breathe in the thick, humid air that is tinted with the sweet fragrance of honey suckle, and I realize I’m not ready to leave.

I walk into the house and memories flood my mind.  All of the tough times and good times are sparked in my memory just by looking in the kitchen.  This is the room where my duck, Cheerio, died; where I learned my sister was pregnant; where I learned my mom had cancer; where I learned my mom was in remission.  This is the room where my brother-in-law, sister, niece, brother, mother, father, and I ate supper, sometimes in silence and dismay, and sometimes in laughter and great conversation. 

As I work on homework assignments on the computer in the study, I’m reminded of my school.  Governor French Academy is where I’ve been taught some of the most valuable lessons of my life.  This is the school where so many teachers have impacted my way of thinking as well as my entire life.  I am convinced that teachers at this school are like no other teachers in the world.  No where else has any teacher gone out of their way to help me learn. 

This school is where I have made the most fulfilling, worthwhile friendships.  As I sit and listen to guitar playing at lunch, giggling at break with my friends, or even smirking at lame jokes certain teachers dispense everyday, I realize this is what I’ll miss the most.  I’ll miss the insane comments of the headmaster, going out to lunch with my closest friends, and having an informal sing-along with twenty other kids, all off-key, while one kid plays the guitar.  This is when I realize that this school is one of kind.        

 After school, I sit in my room relaxing.  I remember playing dress up with my cousin and pretending with my niece; the sleepovers I have had with my friends, and some of the most enlightening conversations ever.  This is when I realize, change happens.  It doesn’t matter where or how you live, sooner or later everything changes.  That change is what life is all about.  Whether or not this change will be for the better or for the worse is for you alone to decide.

       I feel now that my time in Southern Illinois is a mark that will be left here for eternity, the trees and flowers I have helped plant in my yard will all serve as contributions I’ve made.  Perhaps I have done all I have to do here, and it is time for me to move on.  Maybe there is something waiting for me in Nevada, something that needs me more than Illinois.       

 I will be moving to Sparks, Nevada this summer.  I will be picking up my life here and starting anew in the West.  Whether or not this is a bad thing, is up to me to decide.  The worst situation can be turned into the best time of your life if you just look at it from the right perspective.  

The House-Sitter’s Bane

For anyone who knows me well, knows I have a bitter, somewhat, cretinous, history with house-sitting.   It all started about two and half years ago when my supervisor, of all people, called a favor of me.  Now I’m the local “go-to-gal” when it comes to house or pet-sitting.  In fact, I ran into my company’s GM today and he asked to me, “Are you the animal keeper?”  Completely bewildered, I replied, “I’m a scientific assistant.” (which is my job title).  After a couple minutes of fumbling over semantics I realized he wanted to know if I pet-sat. 

Ironically, I’m never really thrilled to get job offers for pet-sitting.  It’s true, I love animals, they’re my passion in life.  And I’m a college student living on my own, so the extra money always helps out.  But there’s something about being in someone else’s house, with someone else’s pets that causes the most stressful situations imaginable. 

Of course, it doesn’t help when you shoot yourself in the foot by pet-sitting two very high-maintenance houses without pay…but that’s another story.

Currently I’m watching over: two dogs, a puppy lab-mix and a geriatric boston terrier (which is incontinent and requires diapering); one 3-legged cat; one very loud, obnoxious, blue and gold macaw; and two very malnourished (although unbeknown-st to the owner) tortoises.  All in a very old house that was built circa 1930.   

Until this morning, I’ve encountered minor stresses: the puppy vomited once and is constantly getting into things (i.e. my underwear, shoes, etc) which is expected from a puppy.  The macaw tried to attack me on several occasions, but all attempts were unsuccessful, also the diapering and un-diapring of the boston terrier is aggravating but, like I said, until today, nothing major.

So, this morning I was woke at 5am, not by barking or whimpering dogs or a meowing cat or even a screaming macaw, but by a sickening smell that simply would not let me remain asleep.  I had an hour and a half before I had to wake up and start taking care of animals and then go take my last exam before spring break, but this odor was incessant and it hung in the air.  So I dragged myself out of bed and followed my nose. 

The smell led to the back room where the two dogs were kept.   In the dark of the early morning, my worst nightmare was realized. The puppy had diarrhea.  It got worse.  This house was built in the early 1900s and has no internal wiring, which means “track lighting” has been installed in rooms that have any lights at all.  Yet, for some reason, when the owner was installing this “track lighting” she decided the back room was fine as it was and left it in the black, so to speak.  So I was forced, this early morning to navigate through a poop covered room in the dark.

I managed to pull the puppy’s crate (which luckily contained most of the dog’s stool) out of the room through the lighted entry way, into the kitchen and outside in the back yard and cleaned up what I could see in the small back room.  Mean while, the house needed to be aired out, I opened the first window I could find and let the fresh air rush in.

It was about 6:30 when I got around to feeding the animals.  With fresh air filtering through the house, I went downstairs, to the basement to feed the cat, prepare the dogs’ food, and feed the macaw.  But where was the cat?  

F*@k!  The windows!  I let a three legged cat outside in the cold, a cat that can barely walk around and defend itself inside. 

Now the macaw was screaming, the dogs were whimpering; all demanding to be fed, and my nerves were split.  Just as I was about ready to kill the bird–the bird and I have a history as well, again, another story–the cat shows up at the back door, whining to come inside from the cold.  Thank Odin!  At least it’s not a stupid three legged cat! 

I kept the dogs locked in the kitchen the rest of the day and suffice to say, I was so worried about the puppy covering another room in the repugnant, custard-like substance that came out of his rear end that I drove back to the little cottage every chance I got.  Swearing up and down, I would never house-sit again. 

I’m here house sitting this menegerie for 2 and half more days and with my history of house-sitting I’m sure I will house-sit again…The house-sitter’s bane: yes most house-sitter’s are poor and the money is good enough to keep coming back for more punishment.