the students are back, the students are back!

Today was the 2nd day of school, but the first day back for all my students (all 70 students had 2 courses today), and the first day for many of the instructors.

Only a few minor glitches, but I was so happy to have my returning students back and the new students really here.

I'm just so goo goo over all of them. Perhaps it is not appropriate to be so happy, but the students are really the best part of my job. I do need to be careful, because I've noticed that being on retreat with the 1st year students makes me a little more open with them than I normally would be with an entering class. I find that usually I start out warm, but tight with the 1st years and slowly open up and loosen boundaries as they progress through the program. We'll see how it goes. Tomorrow is a long, long day for me...we have our Internship Kickoff meeting with the 3rd year students tomorrow, and so I'll be at work until at least 9pm.

And my paulie is out of town for a week...I'm not sure what I'll do! I also realized today that I really need to go out dancing...

meandering happiness.

Back from Retreat

I got back from our 3-day Opening Retreat today around 2pm. What an amazing weekend, and an amazing group of students we have coming in. I went into the weekend with an attitude of trying to not get attached, but it totally backfired, and I'm already in love with this new class...I already can't wait for them to hurry up and graduate so I can hang out with them. This is really one of the biggest challenges of my job...I meet the most wonderful, amazing people, and I can't really get too close to them until they graduate, and then they usually move away. Ah, professional boundaries.

And the first day of school is tomorrow. There are very few Monday classes, so it should be a relatively light day, though I'll be spending a bunch of time getting syllabi and sourcebooks together. Tuesday is going to be the big one...all three cohorts have multiple classes on Tuesday. I'm really, really excited for the start of school even when it means that I'm busier than a one legged man in an ass kickin' contest.(thanks to BJS for that one!)

happiness is...

Happiness is...waiting up until midnight for your alpacas to come home.

We'd send one of our female alpacas (and her baby) to California to meet up with an old boyfriend and get pregnant. It seems crazy to send them from Colorado to California, but the last time she had a baby with this stud, the baby won all kinds of championships at shows...and we're hoping for a repeat! We also got a really good price on the breeding fee, and the cost of round trip transport plus the breeding fee was less than we paid to breed her to a similar quality local boy last year.

And right before midnight, the trailer pulled up, and I got to welcome home Maya and Brinca!

The next few days are going to be pretty intense for me, so I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to blog again until next week. Tonight is the annual department party (for which I manage a very small crew for all the set-up before and clean-up afterwards), so I'll be "working" until nearly 10pm tonight. Tomorrow is our big faculty meeting from 10am-1pm followed by an "inner circle" faculty meeting from 1-3pm. So I'm hoping to be done with work by 4 tomorrow. Friday morning I leave at 8:30 and drive to Shambhala Mountain Center and I'll be up there all weekend for our "Opening Retreat". And school starts next week! :) It is busy and crazy, but I love it.

Yesterday, when I got to work, I actually had to SEARCH for a parking space. And I thought "Happiness is....a full parking lot"

orientation day!

Today was the first day of Orientation. It was simultaneously exciting and bizarre. I love beginning with a new group of students...they have so much enthusiasm...and I do a lot of stuff to keep them excited, but I also have to be the rule monger and tell them all the things they can't do to get kicked out.

So, at least the bad rule lady has finished rearing her ugly head for now...and only good, supportive lady will be the face forward for a few weeks :)

And I finally got a hold of my neighbor who took on the newborn kittens last week. Here's the update from my saint of a neighbor:

"My babies are awesome. I feed them every two hours (yes all night too), then 1/2 hour after each feeding, I have to stimulate them to go potty or they wouldn't survive. Mama cat does that so, I use a wet, warm cotton ball and it gets things going. Then, I refill their hot water bottle. They have learned to purr at me. Their ears picked up on day two, so then they could hear and know my voice as "mom cat." They should open their eyes soon. This happens at one week of age."

So I'm in a much better space than I was yesterday...good news and a good day of welcoming in the new students.

follow up: smell found :(

WARNING: THE BELOW WILL HAVE SOME GRAPHIC DETAIL OF PRETTY SAD AND GROSS STUFF

I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier in the day, but the way to find the source of something stinky is to locate the largest mass of flies.

At least Michael was home when I located source of the smell...a dead cat. Given the state of decomposition, and my queasiness, I didn't flip it over to find out if this was my missing mama cat (the one that abandoned the newborn kittens a few days ago).

This is the 5th animal burial on the property in 2 years, (the 3rd dead critter that I've found) and the first time I ever came close to throwing up.

Michael dug the hole and I picked up the body and carried it to the grave...in mid-route I made the mistake of looking down and noticing the very large gaping hole on the cat's back that was oozing a surprising large and dense stream of maggots...at least that is what I think those little tan creepy crawly worms were. There was also a lot of clear-ish fluid coming out of the wound.

I think it was the maggots that put me over the top. I wasn't doing too badly just carrying the cat, but the sight of maggots (probably combined with the smell since I was now in very close proximity to the source) triggered my gag reflex...and it takes a lot for me to puke.

Hopefully a happier blog next time.

haircut, irrigation, and what IS that smell?

OK peeps, I did it! I cut off the hair. The plan began several years ago to fulfil my childhood dream of having my hair super long like the country singer Crystal Gayle...well, I didn't want floor-length hair, but I did want it to my waist. So after several years, I got there a few months ago! I'd only come close once before when I was in grad school, and when I was about a year away, I heard about donating long hair to make wigs for children who suffer from long-term medical hair loss (Locks of Love). So I cut it off back then, and kept it about shoulder-length for a year or two, then decided to start growing it again. So starting sometime in either 2002 or 2003 I made the decision not to cut. This time, I got about 16 inches taken off...a pretty big cut! I've got a few pics up in my photos area now.

Today is also irrigation day...hopefully there will be no flooding of the neighbors today! (See June 13, 2006 and June 15, 2006 for details on irrigation and the Great Barn Flood of 2006 respectively). Michael is gone the bulk of the day today playing soccer, so I'm in charge of the water during the daytime, and he'll once again be in charge at night. This is a good arrangement since tomorrow begins Orientation Week at my work. I'm really excited to have the new students arrive this week and the returning students show up next week...working with the students is what makes my job fun. I'm really not the administrator that wants to sit in silence behind a computer all day...I live for the interaction. Anyway, back to our story...

Today's other "surprise" is playing the game called "what IS that smell?!" There is a pretty strong, weird odor in our enclosed patio that wasn't there yesterday (or any other day, for that matter). Sometimes, I think that I have a sensitive nose, because Michael usually doesn't notice odors that I do, so I didn't mention it to him. When he brought it to my attention, I knew it was real and it was a problem. We've only just started to do some picking up out there...we typically use the space as a mud room--a place for dirty shoes to live so we don't track mud and alpaca poo in the house, and for a lot of storage of miscelaneous stuff (the little greenhouse for starting seeds, the alpaca store, all our bags of fiber, extra folding chairs, etc). So there is a lot of clutter that could be an easy hiding place for something weird to start smelling. My guess is there is a dead mouse someplace, but if that is the case, it could be in the baseboard heaters along the wall in that room. So, in between checking on the water, my job is to try to solve the mystery of "what IS that smell?". Can you see why I'm writing a big, long blog?!

ok, ok, time to check the water.

you know you're a single farmer when...

So, it really does seem to be that whenever Michael leaves town some farm drama happens.

I discovered yesterday that the chickens had made a nest and laid eggs under the hay rack we have near the house. Michael and I built the thing out of two large pallets and some other scrap wood, so it is pretty big and heavy. This thing holds up to 4 hay bales next to each other, and keeps them elevated above the ground to provide airflow under them and keep them from rotting if they get wet. Yesterday when I was feeding the chickens, one of them jumped straight up at my face, and startled and she got out of the hen house. She ran straight for the hay rack and went under (there is only about 4 inches of clearance between ground and the bottom of the rack), this is how I discovered the nest.

Today I planned to stay home in the morning to do some farm work. The timing worked out pretty well, because there was just enough hay left on the rack to feed this morning, so with all the hay off the top, I was able to move the thing and get tothe nest underneath. There was a second nest under there and I recovered 7 eggs total. I have no idea how long these eggs have been there, so I've got to go toss them in the back of the pasture and hope they don't stink too bad. This is annoying, but I don't consider this to be drama.

In the midst of this project my hunky vet arrived to do an ultrasound on Angel--she is pregnant! (this is good news, and is not the drama).

After he left, I went to the hay barn with the intent to retrieve a few bales to restock the rack (we do this because it is much easier to have a few bales near the house than to go to the hay barn twice a day).

At this point in the year, we've only got about 10-12 bales left in the barn, so it is pretty empty. As soon as I opened the door, I hear a weird noise and saw a little dark shape on the floor near the hay at the back of the barn. So, here's what you've been waiting for...Today's drama: abandoned newborn kittens in the hay barn. there were two tiny, tiny little kittens curled up together, crying and not moving much. They were pretty clearly less than a day old...their eyes weren't yet open and both of them together would fit in the palm of my hand (anyone that knows me, knows that I have freakishly small hands).

So my next step was to go inside and call my neighbor who runs a llama resuce (and has quite the menagerie of critters other than llamas that she's rescued). She told me to check back on them in an hour to see if mama cat would come back...and hour later, no mama and kittens were looking slightly more lethargic. She came over, and has taken them to go get kitten milk replacer and start feeding them. One of the kittens is looking pretty bad, and I'll be surprised if it survives. The other one was slightly more alert and active, but my neighbor doesn't have a lot of hope.

So, there's this morning's episode of Farm Life.

I've got to go shower and get to work.

being stereotyped sucks

Warning: this is going to be a rant, possibly with foul language. If you don't want to know, don't read it!

So there have been a few situations in the last week in which I've gotten really triggered.

On Friday, Michael and I went on a hot air balloon ride. There were at total of 8 passengers (including us). The balloon people (all guys) were short staffed, and asked Michael if he'd be willing to help do a few things. He was happy to help, and he was clearly the one person among all the passengers who would be most likely to be able to assist (6' in his 30s, and not obviously physically challenged or injured). The rest of the group consisted us plus of a family of 4 (the adults were in their late 40s, and the kids were a 14 year old girl and an 11 year old boy), and a grandma in her 60s and her 8 year old grandson.

At one point they needed more than just Michael, so they then turned to this very middle-aged, big-bellied, clearly out of shape man and the 11 year old boy to assist. I was slightly insulted that an 11 year old boy would be asked to help before me, but let it roll off.

At the end of the ride, we landed in the middle of a field, and they again needed help rolling up the balloon and putting it back in the stuff sack. The first person they turned to was Michael...this makes sense...but then they clearly needed more help than just him. I was standing right there, and I offered. The guy responded by saying that maybe I could help later on when there was less balloon and it was lighter. That was the trigger, and I got pissed, but not too aggressive. I then starting working to convince the guy that I was stronger than I looked, told him that I lived on a farm, told him about lifting hay bales, that I wasn't concerned that it would be too heavy etc. etc. After a lot of verbal back and forth, he finally agreed to let me help...turns out it wasn't that heavy, and we took turns lifting the load while Michael and the other guy pulled the basket. By the end, he was huffing and puffing quite a lot more than I was, and we were lifting equal amounts of weight (yay for me!)

So the trigger for me here was taking me back to my days as a graduate student engineer when I was told by research faculty that I wouldn't be a good fit for their lab because they had a lot of heavy equipment and their labs were loud, and that they only ever had 1 girl in the lab before. Fuck that. I never heard of any boys being told that maybe they shouldn't consider asking to work in a lab because the lab was loud and contained heavy equipment.

And then today I was at this group that I belong to that I really like. It is a group of business owners that gets together once a month and people talk about their businesses and we help each other brainstorm ways of doing things better. Typically 10-15 people come to the meetings, and I am one of 3 women participants. Today I was the only woman, and it was my turn to present my business along with one of the other men. Maybe it was because I've been thinking a lot about being the balloon and grad school episodes a lot the last few days, but it was really noticeable to me the dynamic in the room, and how actively I was working to not fall into one of my two survival tactics from grad school (either be one of the guys, or fall silent). I'm not sure I succeeded when the other person was presenting, but I think I did OK when it was my turn to talk about SanchoPaca.

fuck...why does it have to be so hard.

I made a choice to leave science...and now I wonder if I could ever go back. It is so much easier being a very competent administrator...most people in administrative jobs are women, after all. When I think about going back into science, I think about how hard I had to work all the time, just to be taken seriously.

sigh...time for some BVTS therapy. I've been watching a lot of Buffy lately (I got season 2 as a birthday gift from Michael)...that Buffy girl seriously kicks ass.

pain in my neck and the lashes

so I have a pain in my neck from being at a desk on a computer most of the day today. After dinner, I got on the computer at home to put together a talk I'm doing tomorrow night for a small business owners group I belong to. Now I'm bloggin...after this, I'll try to do something away from the computer.

This evening, when I went out to feed the animals, there was a runaway cow in my pasture. My next-door neighbors were haltering it up to take it back home. I had to put the alpacas and llamas away because the cow was scared of them...this gigantic cow was scared of my tiny (by comparison) animals. Not the sort of thing you expect to see walking by right after eating meat for the first time in a long, long while. OK, universe, I GET IT! I'm not going back to meat. Poor cow.

And I'm completely obsessed with The Lashes. Their CD "Get It" is all I've been listening to for days and days. The song on my main myspace page "Sometimes the Sun" is like my theme song for the summer...particularly given my frequent home alone status. Here's the lyrics:

"It's been so long since I've seen your face except inside of my head

Counting down the days 'til you're home hoping then we'll share a bed

Sometimes we fight about the little things, but now they seem like such little things

I woke up from so many dreams with visions of buying diamond rings

Sometimes the sun goes down, sometimes it comes back up

I'm wondering which one you are watching now

It's been so long since I've heard your voice except inside of my head

Waiting for your phone call to ring replaying things that you said

Sometimes we fight about the little things, but now they seem like such little things

I woke up from so many dreams with visions of buying diamond rings

Sometimes the sun goes down, sometimes it comes back up

I'm wondering which one you are watching now

Sometimes the sun goes down, sometimes it comes back up

I'm wondering which one you are watching now

Are you feeling just like me, feeling down, down, down

Wishing you were beside me nightly, down, down, down

I keep my eyes glued to the ground, down, down, down

I'll be there for your airplane touchdown, down, down, down

Sometimes the sun goes down, sometimes it comes back up

I'm wondering which one you are watching now "

see, totally a song for me for the summer. And I'm still waiting tonight for Michael to call...

7 eggs today.

insomnia

It is 1:30am, and I am awake. why am I an insomniac tonight? a few reasons:

-a 2-hour nap this afternoon

-michael is out of town (once again), and I usually have trouble sleeping when he's gone

-I was up until 1:30am yesterday, and didn't wake up until 8:30am, so my sleep cycle is off

-michael may have a job opportunity outside of Colorado, and there is a chance that he may apply and that we may leave and I am having a bit of a freakout about this.

5 eggs today.

anniversary

hooray for a hot air balloon ride on our anniversary! it was a pretty sweet ride, but we had to wake up at 5am to be at the balloon at 6, got done with ballooning at 11, came back to the house to change and eat a snack, then went to work from 12-6pm...long, long day. there are some balloon pics up in my photo pages now. michael leaves in the morning for San Diego. time to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

oh, yes, 6 eggs today.

transgendered chicken

well, long time no blogging, eh?

My sister, Lindsey, was in town from the 30th to the 7th, and I'm still catching up on some things. It was a fun visit and we got to do some fun things (and well, some boring things too, but that is part of life). some of the fun highlights: a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park for a day of hiking, a tour of Coors Stadium, getting stuck in my dead truck at Chataqua park, playing the game Life, baking cookies, and watching some good movies.

On monday night, Michael and I realized it was the first time we were both home at the same time without a house guest since my birthday (that's three and a half weeks for the mathematically challenged). We have a few days this week, and he leaves for another trip on Saturday morning. By the time he comes back from this trip, from June 18 to August 18, we'll have had 14 days together in 2 months! good grief!

And the farm news...the adolescent chicks are all laying eggs. Today our Arucana named Baby laid her first egg (it's a green one, Paulie!). In the last week it has become apparent that one of our chicks, Bunny, is probably not a girl chicken. Bunny is probably a rooster (a boy). I was pretty devestated when I started to figure this out a few days ago...lots of crying, as my sister can verify. The problem is that we don't want a rooster, and we don't really have enough girls to keep a rooster busy, and roosters are pretty mean. We selected chicks that were supposed to be sexed and sorted, and all this time we thought Bunny was a girl. In the last week and a half, she's gotten a lot taller, her tail has started to grow in with long shiny feathers, and she has started to jump on the other girls in the way that roosters jump on hens. I was hoping she was a lesbian hen, but her physical traits and her behaviors are starting to be pretty rooster-like. Our choices are not good: try to find a rooster rescue (pretty unlikely) or kill our transgendered Bunny (ok, ok, she's not a transgendered chicken, he's a rooster).

...horrible realization just now. The only animals we've given animal names to were doomed to die: Chicken and Duck were brutally murdered by a skunk, Pig (the chicken) was found in the hen house with a broken neck, and now Bunny is a rooster. too much crying at the moment...must go.