Project 365

It’s been an interesting past few… days? Weeks? However long it’s been. A while. Too long. Many things have come to pass, including a kick ass camping trip. We camped out at Elk River, ID which is a pretty neat little town where everybody rides their quads instead of driving their cars. On Fri night we shot bottles with the shotgun and drank beer around a campfire. We even made s’mores! The best part of the entire trip was the night sky with millions of stars twinkling, including the Milky Way. It was absolutely stunning.

Saturday we played ultimate Frisbee, which I had never played but now love. After shooting the BB gun and shotgun some more we went into town for some ice cream before heading up to Elk River Falls for a hike. For a 1 mile hike that was pretty intense. My butt and thighs still hurt, which probably says more about me than the trail. A whole herd of trail riders on horses passed us, making me insanely jealous. We ended up seeing a lot of wildlife during the whole trip: moose, brown bear, deer, elk. It made me stand humbled in the awesomeness of God’s creation.

Today I’m sore. I walk like a bowlegged old man and can’t bend over. Not to mention that I twisted my ankle playing Frisbee and it still bothers me. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into anything serious. I got Wally back from his Auntie Sarah and he’s a changed ferret. Not only is he shockingly larger, he’s also more independent and learned how to entertain himself. I’m pretty sure Sarah just left him loose in Brynne’s room the whole 4 days. He also become a whole lot more fun to play with and learned how to jump onto things. We’re still working on the nipping thing, but he’s slowly going to catch on. I hope. I’m trying to teach him to cuddle, which may be a lost cause.

Relationships are hard. Romantic, friendships, family…all of them. They all take an enormous amount of effort and all of them have the potential to leave you broken. As terrible as it sounds, sometimes I can see the appeal of becoming a hermit and living on a wooded mountain top with my ferret. Over the past couple weeks, things with the man in my life went from bad to worst. Fortunately we had an illuminating and heated discussion where we came to a mutual decision to fix this. But I’m still scared and a little angry. I hate that I feel like I had to beg him to fix our problems. I don’t feel like I should have to do that. I’m scared that he doesn’t really want to try, that I’m going to invest myself more heavily into a relationship that he is selling stock in.

The biggest problem is that I don’t seem to have a good relationship with myself anymore. I’m my own worst critic and nothing I do is ever right. I berate myself for being a terrible friend and girlfriend. I’ve lost touch with my passions and dreams. I feel stuck. But maybe I’m also my own worst enabler. I wallow in my own self-doubt, pushing away things that would reinforce the good in me. The things I’ve done well have a temporary effect, but I refuse to let them build the me I want to be. Why? I’ve got to stop this. I have to go back to being me. I need to sing and be silly and laugh and be joyful. My birthday wish was to feel serenity. For some reason I expect these feelings to just come to me, like a box in the mail. I’ll open it up and suddenly be joyous and serene and happy. I need to take some responsibility for myself.

I need to take a moment to stop thinking so much and breathe. Life has gotten overwhelming. Sometimes I’m not sure I can handle it, but I reluctantly acknowledge that I have to before putting my shoulder down and pushing back again. Somehow everything has become too much, too huge, too demanding. It’s like I have no peace in my life, just this unrest. I’m tired of it. I’m too young for this, or at least I think I am.

I’m not even sure how this happened, or when I decided there was something wrong with me. I don’t even know if there is something wrong with me, but it sure feels like it. I don’t sleep well anymore, often having thoroughly unpleasant dreams. I don’t seem to have any passions anymore, and my personality has disappeared. I’ve become this shadow of the person I once was [I'm pretty sure that's a lyric]. I suppose the point is that it has happened, and what am I going to do about it?

I’ve let my passions become wistful thoughts and my dreams become lists of weekly goals. Where did my dreams go? What are they? Have they changed? What can I do to revive my passions, even if they can’t be fulfilled in the most straightforward way?

How can I be me again?

Some days I just want to be alone in the world. All of the “things” in my life, those intangible pressures that weigh heavily on my shoulders, become a huge burden. Today was one of those days, at least for the first half. I wanted nothing more than to stay at home, alone, locked into my own world where I didn’t have to deal with anything I didn’t want to. It’s easy to hide and push those pressures away, but it’s not right. Somewhere between statistics and checking my Facebook I realized that I had to face the most pressing problem of all. So I called him. We discussed our frustrations and fears, released some pent up emotions that were holding us back from tomorrow. And it was good. Then we went to the circus.

Not everything is about me. In fact, almost everything in this world is not about me. Sometimes my own unintended self-centeredness dumbfounds me, causing me to question my own blindness to the underlying spirit of this world. Sure, it sounds bogus and weird and new-agey. But it’s there, this energy that connects everything on this planet. Why? Well, I’d say it’s because we all originated from one creator, but that wouldn’t be very PC would it? I don’t say that as a religious person, I say that as a person. I believe in evolution, but I also believe in creation. This world is calling out to us, begging us to stop and admire it’s beauty. Why don’t we? When did pausing to reflect on the simple elegant beauty of a tree become too much? Sometimes we just need to look up.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about getting a second axolotl, but the only place I knew of that sells them was in Puyallup (which is roughly 5 hours away). It was fortunate, then, that I discovered a local pet shop selling them! I now have baby Vince, a 2″ albino axolotl named after da Vinci. I don’t actually know if he’s a boy or girl, but I’m hoping for boy since I already have a female (Ruby). I’d like some little axie babies of my own! Some people disagree with me, but I think he’s positively adorable. They live in separate tanks until he gets too big for her mouth.

While at another local pet store I got to check out their ball pythons and hold one. I’m smitten. I want one. I told myself I need a more regular job first, so I’m working on that. But ZOMG they are so gorgeous and cute! Of course the one I wanted, the one with the more red tones, was the snappiest of the three. I always seem to go for the most difficult pets, and it’s not on purpose. They just attract me. Maybe I just like a challenge?

There’s something about a new animal that always gets me unreasonably excited. My roomie, Belle, and I have been talking about all the different animals we’d like to get, sometimes getting a little out of hand for our situation. A pair of Bantam chickens or a Fennec Fox? Not so reasonable. The chickens are too loud and the fox costs too much. Belle likes anything that is either pretty or weird looking, so a lovebird and a yellow-bellied cooter get the same reaction of “oooh! Oooh! I want THIS!”

I’ve already owned a large variety of pets, and last year I had 9 animals at one point. I suddenly realized, then, that I couldn’t possibly give them all the attention they deserved. It was then that I made a rule for myself: I can’t get an animal unless I reaaaaaaaally want it and I plan to spend time with it almost daily (depending on the pet). That should go without saying, but sometimes you forget about the time involved with each pet. It’s hard to be a student, work, and give 9 animals attention. Especially when two of them were my attention ho cats.

The list of animals that Belle and I went through was pretty thorough: small dog (no), cat (no), rabbit (probably not), ferret (probably not), chickens (no), a million kinds of reptiles and amphibians (no), a python (yes), finches (yes), rodents (no), other birds (no), muntjac deer (no), kinkajou (no), sugar glider (probably not). In the end I realized that Belle wants me to get the pets, not her. She wants to have them around, but she doesn’t want to be responsible for them. Knowing that makes it so much easier to say “no.” I won’t be responsible for evil hookbills, boring frogs, or noisy chickens.

After doing a good deal of research, I’ve decided to get a ball python. Since this was a fairly recent decision I’m going to sit on it for a couple weeks just to make sure I really do want a python and it’s not just a flare up desire. I’m also considering getting finches again, but they’re even lower priority than the python. I should probably wait until I move in July and see how much space we actually have before I add a handful of birds to the family…

Anyways, I’m pretty proud of my own self-discipline when it comes to animals nowadays. Sure, sometimes I get weak. I almost took on a 130lb Mastiff cross. But I didn’t. Go me!

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I finally decided to do something about my axolotl, Ruby’s, tank. Right now she lives in a 20L with black sand, an AquaClear 30 filter, a weak air pump with airstone, two anubias plants, and lots of algae. The algae didn’t get out of hand until a few months ago when I ordered new plants online. The damned things were spotless and perfect when I got them, but apparently harbored all kinds of nastiness. I wasted a chunk of money on those, not to mention the damage they did to my tank.

Since her skin is so fragile (she’s an amphibian, more or less) I can’t just throw chemicals in there to kill everything because it would kill everything. After talking to a the local petstore owner, I have a way to disinfect the driftwood with a diluted bleach solution. However, the two anubias’ are goners and the sand is probably well past it’s expiration date. Not to mention that sand is a PITA when you’re cleaning. I haven’t decided if I want to try sand again or if I want to go with river rock. I doubt it would really make a difference to her, so I guess I’ll have to price it and see what I think. I do like the look of sand…

Anyways, this whole thing was on the backburner until this afternoon when I purchased a Magnum H.O.T canister filter. I’d been planning to get her a 40G breeder tank, but I realized that I’d be wasting my money. I could put another couple axies in the 20L and they’d all be fine, so one axie would be lost in a 40G. I decided to overfiltrate my tank. This was the spark that finally put this all into motion. Once the filter arrives I’ll completely strip her tank and disinfect what I can, tossing what I can’t. She’ll be living in an empty tank for a while, but I doubt she’ll mind. Next will come new substrate, some fake plants, some rock, and finally a batch of live anarchis. I love that stuff, and she’ll like the cover it provides.

All in all I’m happy with this new turn of events. Now I just need the patience to realize that I have all summer to get this whole thing set up. In fact, I probably won’t add the substrate until I move in July. I hate waiting.

He holds my hand until our fingers can no longer cling to one another, and blows me kisses as he walks away. We’ll be in the middle of a busy bar and he’ll lean over to nibble on my neck. For no reason-or any reason-he’ll stoop just a little to kiss my forehead or cheek. We can’t walk without holding hands, and if I get to far ahead while he lights one up he stops and insists that I come back and hold his hand. And he was truly disappointed when I told him I have to work on his birthday.

It’s not all fairy dust and precious moments though. It’s really, really hard. We both have trust issues and have been royally screwed over by past relationships. Sometimes we argue about absolutely nothing; in all honesty I don’t always know what we’re even arguing about. He’s extremely cautious about exposing his heart and opening it up to the possibility of being crushed. I’m the same way, but I’ve reached the point where I’m willing to risk the potential pain if it could instead end in supreme happiness. I’m becoming more certain that he was placed in my life for the divine reason of teaching me patience. It’s going to take a lot of patience to get over this hurdle of distrust. I’ll also have to be the “bigger” person more than I’d like, at least for a while.

The strangest part, at least to me, is that he’s worth it. Never before have I thought that a man was worth potential heartbreak. Never. After the first love lost I threw up unscalable walls. After the second lost love I added razor wire to those walls. All of a sudden the walls are developing weak spots and the razor wire is being cut away. I don’t even know why or how he’s worth it in a tangible, explainable way. I have no idea. But somehow, somehow, I just know that he is. It must be intuition or divine guidance or just complete blind stupidity. Whatever it is, it’s driving me to withstand all the bullshit because the good far outweighs the bad. And, whatever it is, I hope it’s right.

If you had to choose between Superman or Batman, which would you choose? I’m speaking from a woman’s perspective, not so much on the merits they display as a superhero. Personally, I’ve always had a preferance for the Black Knight. The pointy ears, tight black suit, and bad-boy aura just get me. Superman has the whole American pie, good boy thing going on. He’s so naive and sweet, but ultimately can’t handle a girl like Catwoman.

I had to watch a film with the above title for my ecology class. It was produced by National Geographic and addresses the global and regional changes that are predicted to occur with each degree increase in the average global temperature. I’ll admit that I’d never really thought about global warming beyond Al Gore and hybrid car commercials on tv. Not that I didn’t care, I just didn’t know enough to know who to believe. I’m the kind of person who has to see evidence and research to support your claim before I’ll give it any credibility, and Al Gore doesn’t strike me as a very thorough or reliable person.

Needless to say, that movie really opened my mind to global warming and its consequences. It also addressed my main argument with the entire concept. Global warming and cooling is a natural event that occurs regularly (albeit over a long period of time). I wanted to know that the fuss wasn’t just the fact that global warming is occurring, because that’s normal. What isn’t normal, and what the fuss is all about, is the rate of global warming. Sure, global temperature changes are normal - over thousands of years. The problem is that we’re experiencing major temperature changes in just decades. That’s dangerous.

After watching the movie and seeing what our world could disintegrate into, I’ve come a lot closer to joing the “green” movement. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t try to preserve our world, and going “green” is more than just a political statement. It’s taking a step towards reversing the destruction that the human race has wreaked upon the planet. We’re the only species that has the power to save our world, so why not?