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.