5 Budgies!!!

Tomorrow I may be getting my budgies!  I'm so nervous!  I've cleaned the bird cages a thousand times and still I feel like they don't look right.  I'm agonizing over every little dumb thing.  I just don't want her to show up and for some reason, not find me a suitable parront.  =) I'm supposed to go to the shelter tomorrow.  We're having a busy adoption day, two guinea pigs, two goats and I swear there was something else getting adopted... maybe it was the rat.  Anyway, since I don't know what time she wants to do this tomorrow, I don't know when or if I'll be able to make it up there.  The first couple of days, I'm just going to let them relax and get used to being around us before I start training.  Training isn't fun for the bird or the trainer.  I have many a bloody fingers from today while training my cockatiel.  It's worth it in the end though, for both the bird and the owner. 

I only got about two hours of sleep last night.  I'm surprised I lasted the whole day without taking a nap.  Thankfully, there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done today.  Friday's are always busy days.  Lots of animal food to go buy every Friday.  And I had to clean out the budgie cages.  They were covered in dust.  I haven't had a budgie in years and had neglected the cages in that time. 

Silly Senegal

I think I must have the most neurotic senegal parrot out there.  Everyday she finds a new way to make me go, now what are you doing?  First, she would sleep upside down.  Yes, I mean, hanging from the top of her cage, completely upside down and asleep.  Then she started playing with her toys.  Sounds normal enough, right?  Yeah, not with this bird.  She lays in her food dish on her back and then plays with her toys with her feet.  Ok, so she's just lazy you say?  The other day, she began to go to the bottom of her cage.  I try to discourage this because of the icky's that she leaves during the day.  Well, she has started to scratch on the side of her cage with one of her feet.  She grabs the bars with her beak and holds on with one foot while she scratches... over and over and over again.  Makes you want to rip her little feathers out.  There's really not a good way to discipline a bird, so you just have to wait them out, and wait and then wait some more.  Owning a bird can be quite frustrating so I hope people will think a little harder before they buy one. 

Snowing, snowing, snowing

We've gotten a ton of snow in the last 24 hours.  It's up past my knees as of a few hours ago, although it has continued to snow quite steadily since then.  Of course, I was the one who went out and shoveled in the freezing cold and snow.  I want to strap little shovels to all my dogs and let them run around the front yard.  Wouldn't that be a sight?  haha  There definitely wouldn't be any straight lines that's for sure!

I'm getting more and more annoyed everyday with certain people.  Do you ever feel like someone is mad at you but they don't actually have the nerve to tell you?  Maybe if those people actually told you what was wrong and what you did, you could explain yourself or fix it in someway.  Although, in this instance, I don't think I'm the person in the wrong, I see nothing that I could've done.  If anything I should be mad at said person and not the other way around.  My mom always tells me, you can never really know a person and it takes a long time to really get to know someone.  I understand that, you put on a facade for people when you first meet them, hoping they'll like you but that doesn't mean you should change your whole persona.  Deep down, you should still be you because, in the end, we may not like the real you and you've just wasted both of our time.  And then again, we may have liked you the way you were, if you had just been yourself from the beginning.  All and all, I'd rather waste my time with someone who actually deserves it and not with the person who lies to my face and then gossips about me the minute I leave the room.

Almost done... sigh

Well, we've almost finished moving around this room.  Things like this always take longer than you want them to that's for sure.  The cats seem to like it better this way and so do the dogs.  Everyone is sprawled out on the floor and in their kitty houses.  If only they knew how long it takes to pick up everything they scratch or chew up.  That's me though, here to tend to their every whim, even when it's destroying everything within reach.

Ellie bird has been working on her singing lately.  She's doing her whistles very good.  I had her in her day cage yesterday and she started scratching on the floor of it like a cat.  The bottom of that cage doesn't have a grate on it so she can actually sit on the floor of her cage.  She's succeeded in tearing up the newspaper on the floor of it.  I don't know what brought that on.  She's been trying to do the same in her bedroom cage but there's a grate on that one.  haha That's one tricksy human.  (yeah, I'm a LOTR freak) Well, I've got the usual chores left to do still today and then some.  Kitty litter, bird cages, bunny cages... *sigh*

Stupid Girl

I won't be writing much tonight.  I made up for it all last night I guess.  I'm a stupid girl and it's my own fault that I won't be writing a lot.  I'm anemic and have to take 65mg of iron everyday and the last few days I've skipped my pills and now I'm paying for it.  If you've never been anemic, I basically feel very disoriented, dizzy and just downright crappy.  Feels like my brain is kind of swimming around up there and getting sea sick but there's nothing I can do to stop it.  I just have to wait till my pills start to kick in again. 

Fly AWAY

Ok, I'm having a little bit of a crazy insane lady moment.  Please won't someone tell me how in the hell I get rid of these little annoying, nasty fruit flies?????  Please, I'm going out of my mind here.  Oh but there's a catch.  I have two birds in said room where said stupid flying rodents are and birds are extremely sensitive so it has to be something bird safe.  I hate these bugs.  I can deal with regular flies, they have a tendency to sit on my monitor and are very easily murdered.  I dislike killing these very much but bugs such as flies (ANY kind of fly), mosquitos, ticks and anyother nasty little blood sucking, vomiting, and just plain annoying insects.  I do not however kill spiders.  I pick them up, yes in my hands and yes I am a girly girl but spiders don't bother me, and then I place them outside, IF it's warm enough, if not I just put them in someone else's part of the house.  *Big Grin* Hope mom's not reading this right now.  she's deathly afraid of spiders and acts like the smallest house spider is actually a black widow in disguise.  Ok, not gonna write anymore tonight, I promise.  Ok, so I have a tendency to break my promises.  Tough.

I know, I know

Yes, I'm aware that I just wrote like two minutes ago but I just had to write about something that happened within said two minutes.  I'm just sitting here, doing the journal thing, got the tv on in the background, quietly of course so I don't wake up DH.  All of the sudden the tv is much louder than it was before and I swear the sound was coming from inside my computer desk!  Ahhhh, is it a ghost?  Some strange electrical mishap that caused my tv to come through my speakers? (don't laugh, my mother-in-law has constant radio music coming from her speakers even if you turn them off and you're not connected to the internet, very weird) Ok, ok, I'll tell you what it really was, geez, so impatient.  My dog (a beautiful blue merle Austrailian Shepherd, no matter what everyone else says... ok they call her the ugliest dog in the world) just happens to be sitting under my feet, sleeping peacefully.  Now up here in these parts (using my best hick accent) we lose power more times then not (ok enough with the accent, I know you can't hear it but I hear it in my head and it's driving me nuts) so years and years ago when we could afford to waste money (ah the good ole days) we invested in a little 5 inch battery powered tv.  The dog decided to stretch and turned the volume up and the tv on.  Just as I realize where the noise is coming from, she stretches again and turns the tv off.  You know that feeling when something scares the hell out of you, only to leave you embarrassed a minute later because you feel like an idiot?  You laugh at yourself and hope no one was watching?  Yeah that's how I'm feeling right now.

Love aol? WHAT is wrong with me???

Have I mentioned how much I love this whole journal thing?  I've met so many great people through this little box in front of me and read so many great journals!  I just recently discovered the journals message board, (ok so I was just lazy and actually just now got around to looking at it) and have been finding more and more great journals!  It's so much fun to read about everyone else's lives.  At least this way, you read their thoughts before you have to decide whether or not you want to talk to them. *Grin* And to think, when most of us were born, the word interent and www were foreign words to all of us and a computer was something only NASA owned.

Against a Hard place and a Wall

I haven't been sleeping well in a long time.  Last night I tossed and turned all night long.  Finally at 8am, I decided to go lie on the couch in the living room, bam, in five minutes I was asleep.  I spent half of today wondering why I can fall asleep on a couch but not in my nice comfy bed.  I figure, it must be due to the backing on the couch, I lean my face against it.  DH is not thrilled with my discovery.  I decided that the bed in our room now needs to be pushed up against the wall on my side of the bed... that means rearranging the entire room.  Not the easiest of tasks.  I've been cleaning part of the day, getting ready to move everything.  Until it's all moved, I think I'm just gonna sleep on the couch.  The cats are loving this though.  It's like they don't realize this is the same room when things get moved.  They got nuts.  The birds on the other hand are looking at me like please just leave things the way they should be.  Birds aren't fans of change.  I hope I'm right and that moving everything is going to help... otherwise I'm going to be very annoyed that I had to move everything in the first place.  The dogs are going to be completely confused when they come upstairs to go to bed once this is all said and done.  Oh well, this room needs a change anyways.  It's been the same way for almost a year.  I like to constantly change around the rooms in the house.  It gives a nice variety.  I think I get it from my grandpa.  Everytime I go over to their house, things are in a different place.  I just realized, I'm going to have to learn how to walk in the dark in here all over again.  It took me damn near the whole year to learn how to navigate this room in the dark and not break my neck, or an animals. 

Cold, Cold, Cold

It is getting a wee bit chilly outside right now.  The wind chill right now is -5.  The wind chills for the rest of the day are supposed to be between -10 and -20.  I'd say that's pretty chilly.  I have one outdoor cat that I brought in for the day.  He's become more of an indoor cat this winter than an outdoor though.  When it gets really cold out, we tend to force him to come inside and this winter it's been more than really cold at times.  We've got the heat lamps going in the barn and the horses locked up in their stalls.  I told my brother that he could stay home from school today if he wanted to because the snow is starting to drift pretty badly.  I think he's going to go anyways though.  At his age, I would've killed to be given permission to skip school.  He'd rather see his girlfriend than stay home I guess.  He actually needs to use the phone so I'm gonna write back a little later.  Hope you're warm.

Updating

Recently added pictures to past entries!  Feel free to browse the archives!  Pictures of fosters, etc. that own me.  This took me like 3 hours to do and probably an hour of it was just figuring everything out.  I've never had to use the aol pictures thing until tonight.  Comments encouraged!  Come on I know you're out there!  =) 

It's snowing here!  It's never going to stop snowing ever.  Everyone in lower Michigan and Northern Indiana are going to be completely snowed in, we'll starve to death and millions will die!!!  Ok, so I'm being a little melodramatic, but only a little.  We have gotten quite a bit of snow over night though and it's supposed to continue snowing throughout the rest of the week.  Damned lake effect snow storms. 

A Job? For me?

I was scanning the classifieds today, which I haven't done in a few weeks, and I saw what I've been searching for for over a year!!!  There's an ad for a vet assistant/receptionist!!!!!  I really want this job.  I'm so perfect for it!!!!  Now of course, I'm going through the doubts in my head, What should I wear, do I need to look dressy, or would it look better if I appeared a little relaxed? How would it be best to answer this question or that question? Should I call them after I put in my application or will that just be annoying or will it seem like I'm really interested in the job and should be given an interview?  How can something that seems so good, make you feel so sick?!?!?!  Ugh, I need a nap!  LOL

5 Budgie's, 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, etc.

I've been searching for some budgie's (parakeets and yes they're the same thing) that need to be re-homed.  I strongly believe that my cockatiel needs some kind of friend, even if the cages are just next to eachother.  I was looking  for two if possibly, well it looks like I'm getting  five.  DH isn't real thrilled but tough.  He knew I was animal crazy when he got with me, now he has to deal with it.  If the budgie's don't please Mr.Charlie cockatiel, then I guess I'll try another tiel.  It doesn't matter to me.  I love birds, the more the merrier.  I think DH is getting a little worried though.  Since the beginning of this month, my flock has grown by 6.  =)  My days are a constantly devoted to animals, either my own or rescue's.  Feed and water everyone in the morning, open the bird cages, get fresh veggies cut for birds, let dogs out to potty, clean up all possible animal "accidents," take senegal parrot out for a bit, let dogs out again, night feeding and watering, give birds more veggies, let dogs out again,  and finally (usually) clean out all litter boxes! (there's four litter boxes) I'll give you a quick rundown of how many animals I personally care for at my home.  We have 5 dogs, two of which are my own, 10 cats, two of which are fosters, 2 spoiled mini rex rabbits, 1 cockatiel, and a senegal parrot(soon five budgies!).  These are the animals that I do not directly care for, 3 horses (2 arab/mustang and a morgan), 1 pygmy goat, 3 more cats, a pigeon, and a dwarf rabbit.  Shew!!!

Ever searching

A few months back, my mom adopted a pigeon from our rescue.  Now we're concerned that he may need a mate in order to be happy.  I never really took an interest into where this bird came from.  He was found in the wild but was banded.  My feelings were, if his previous owner didn't care enough to keep him safe then why should I look for him in the first place.  Now though, I need to know what kind of pigeon he is so I can find him a "friend."  Cats and dogs are really so much easier than birds.  I can look at a dog or cat and tell you immediately what breed it is or what kind of "mutt" it may be.  A pigeon on the other hand looks just like any other pigeon to me.  Wish me luck.

Sometimes, I really don't know if I'm cut out to be in animal rescue.  I love what I do.  I love the animals but I think it's the politics of the whole thing that I have a problem with.  I watch all these animal shows on the animal planet and it seems like some of these rescues immediately turn to "humanely euthanizing" anything that so much as has a cold when it comes into them.  I have a real problem with that.  I strongely believe that every living animal has the right to a fair chance.  I do not believe that I should try any harder to save the 1 year old dog than the 10 year old.  I hate these "kill" shelters.  I will never ever work at a kill shelter.  You couldn't pay me enough.  To me there's not enough money in the world to pay me to literally murder an animal that would otherwise be completely healthy had we not supposedly "saved" it from where ever it was before hand.  Our shelter gets more animals in that were going to be killed from one of these so called shelters than from people relinquishing their animal.  What does that tell you?  I think I'm just having a bad day.  I need some major animal rescue therapy. 

Just Thinking

I received an email today from one of my rescue groups.  There's a man who is calling himself a reverend.  He told one of the people on our group, who happens to support the ban against slaughtering horses in the US for human consumption, that she was going to hell because this bill is depriving people in third world countries of food and depriving US ranchers of money.  Um, tough.  Damned idiots. 

We got a cat into the rescue shortly before we were told we needed to get "rid" of all our animals.  I'm a relatively up to date cat owner but this one puzzled me and now I'm a little pissed at myself.  I don't know all the details yet.  I looked the cat over and knew he was in a lot of pain and he didn't want to walk.  His neck was swollen but I couldn't find anything outwardly physical wrong with the cat so I assumed nerve damaged or possible brain damage.  The cat was taken to the vet after I saw him.  He had punctures on both sides of his neck (I'm soooooo mad at myself for not seeing those marks) and he was frost bitten on his legs, feet and tail.  He was dehydrated and emanciated, both of which were obvious, even to the untrained eye.  I constantly need to remind myself that I'm not a mircle worker, I'm not a vet and that I'm not perfect.  I just so desperately would like to be all of those things.  I would love to have the resources to save all the homeless needy animals out there but I can't and for me that's the hardest thing possible for me to deal with.  Animal rescue is definitely not for everyone and not for the faint of heart.  You have to have balls of steal to do this job day in and day out.  Sometimes I'm not sure that I do.

Love to Cry

Have you ever loved someone so much it made you cry?  I have a "foster" cat here that does that to me.  He knows just the right things to do at the right time.  If I'm feeling sad he licks my nose until I start laughing and if I don't start laughing, he bites my nose and then of course I start laughing.  I'm so glad he found me.  He's a wonderful friend.  That's him above.  My little Lueka.  Lueka means to shine. 

I let alllllll of the cats out to play throughout the house today.  Let me tell you, it was chaos!  There were cats everywhere!  I personally own seven cats and have three fosters.  They had a blast!!!!  It was so much fun to watch them meet eachother and run up and down the stairs.  One of my personal cats was being a little antisocial, poor guy, hid behind the guest bed the whole time.  I say "guest" bed but I never have any guests.  They know ahead of time that if they stay here, they stay in the cat room so they usually make other arrangements.  *grin* I'll someday be known as the crazy old lady down the road with all the cats.  I'll sit on my front porch with my cane and shake it at little children as they walk past my front door.  I'll talk to my cats, even when they're not around.  And I'll probably be the happiest crazy old cat lady around.

I'm going to give you all something to do for me today: Act like a child, even if it's only for one minute.  Be silly.  Dance in the rain.  Sing in the snow.  Most of all, laugh.  A little laughter can do a world of good.

Bird On My Back

I've currently got Ellie on my shoulder.  I'm trying to make up with her for not spending as much time with her as I should be lately.  She's spent the last hour throughly scolding me for being a bad animal slave.  She received two bathes today due to her molting.  She hates bathes.  She got one with the spray bottle and one in the sink.  She's being rather sneaky right now.  She continues to walk back and forth across my neck so that it's almost impossible for me to catch her by myself.

I finally got around to doing something in the cat room today.  It's been in desperate need of a good cleaning for a good six months now.  It's just one of those things you put off till the next day and then the next.  Everyday I looked at that room and told myself 'today I'm going to do something in that room' and everyday I managed to put it off until it was too late to do anything at all.  It started off with doing the usual litter box cleaning and then I suddenly decided I really was going to get something done today.  I cleaned out everyone's cage and moved some cages around.  Let everyone out for play time while I cleaned.  I swept, which made a major difference.  It's not totally to where I want it just yet but hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, it will be.  There's a lot of stuff that needs to go back to the shelter, something else I've been putting off.  There's a cage that needs to be cleaned before it goes back and a few carriers as well.  The cats will be happy though, they get lots of play time while I'm cleaning.  I can't leave them out all the time though.  I have a dog here that would like more than anything to eat herself a small kitty.  I only let the cats out when the dogs are outside and I'm there to supervise them.  I have no idea how long these two fosters will be with me.  I hate having them in that cage.  I just wish someone would come along that would love them as much as they deserve and won't mind taking two black cats.  It's hard enough to get one adopted out at a time, let alone two going to the same home. 

Thaddeus

"My" major issue.  At the shelter we have a border collie, who just happens to be a little on the crazy side.  I'm worried that he'll end up being put down because no one else besides myself can handle him.  Everyone that goes to the shelter is scared of him except for the few of us that have spent time with him.  He's apparently escaped from his cage once and scared one of our volunteers half to death.  He's just got some mental problems is all.  Once he's out of the cage, he's actually a pretty sweet dog.  Unfortunately, I live with my mother and she has never seen the sweet side of Thad, only the crazy snarling nutcase that he can occasionally be.  In other words, she doesn't want him in her house.  Now I too was scared to death of him once I first started working at the shelter but after a month he was sweet as pie with me.  And at that time I was only going there once a week, so it only took four days and he knew who I was.  I just don't know what to do.  He's not exactly the type of dog you can bring home and hide for a month before revealing the animal that's been living in the house.  He's a border collie and has tons of energy and needs to run and jump and play.  He will not stand for being locked up in a house all day long. 

This shelter thing is really getting to me.  I just want to yell, scream and hit someone.  I'm already totally stressed out because of everything that my grandpa is going through.  I spent the entire day in bed today.  I just didn't feel like dealing with anything so I said forget it, I don't care what people think or if they worry, I'm staying in bed and vegging out.  I don't know if it made me feel better or worse at this point though.  I almost think it made me feel worse.  I think I'm going to go to the shelter tomorrow.  I can't stand sitting around here, not knowing what is going on over there.  I feel like I need to be doing something. 

Fading out

The rescue is a rescue no more.  We're all very sad at the turn of events.  The animals are no longer able to stay where we had the shelter.  In a way they're being evicted.  We've found a temporary place for some of the cats and some barn animals.  It's a mad house over there right now.  Trying to scramble and find the animals some place to go rather than euthanizing them.  My two fosters will stay here with me until they're either adopted out or I find somewhere for them to go.  See, we're still adopting out animals, we just don't have a shelter anymore I guess.  I have no good things to say about the person(s) that have caused these animals to become once again homeless.  I get so sad when I look at my kitty fosters because right now, they're literally homeless.  They just have a temporary place to stay.  There's no where else for them to go except where they are.  They deserve so much better.  I obviously can't allow myself to become attached to them or they'll never leave.  I've already kept one of my fosters and now I have seven cats.  I can't keep anymore.  The girls are kept in a 4x4x4 foot cage.  It's much larger than what they would have in an actual shelter but it's still no way for them to live.  I will move onto another shelter, at least until we find a new place for our own.  I'm not doing any animals any good by quitting rescue all together so once everything is finished up at the shelter, I'll start putting in applications at other shelters and vet's offices.  I can't write about it anymore tonight.  There's a major issue I'll get into another day but for now I can't possibly deal with it any longer.  I'm going to feed everyone and then sleep.

Bird brain

My new bird and I are adapting to eachother very well.  It's taking a bit longer than I had expected but at least I'm seeing some progress.  I'm still getting bit nine times out of ten but they're not quite as bad as the bites I was recieving when I first brought her home.  She is eight inches of pure nastiness at times and then other times she can be as sweet as a newborn kitten.  More often than not though I think she has PMS.  And don't dare wake her up in the middle of the night because you'll surely pay for it when you least expect it!

Apparently I haven't been eating well lately.  I had no idea until I was made to think about it.  My mom asked me what I'd had to eat today and I realized I'd had a cookie and some m&m's.  I haven't felt hungry so I guess I just didn't think about it.  I'm going to have to set little alarms around the house to remind me to eat.  Anyone else have that problem?  I know it sounds absurd but I really do forget to eat sometimes.  I've had stomach problems for years now and my stomach doesn't growl or make any hint of being hungry.  It's ironic, when I was younger and in school, I hated when my stomach would growl.  It would always happen when the entire class was silent and I was absolutely sure everyone could hear it.  Now whenever my stomach growls I alert everyone within hearing distance.  Did you hear that?  That was MY stomach!  It made noise!! 

I believe there's problems at the rescue.  I won't actually know until tomorrow though.  I could tell by the tone in BDB's voice that we need to talk.  I just hope it's nothing too horrible.  I can only deal with so many problems at once.  When it rains, it pours.  I must go now.  I'm being called by little Mia, who is not so little anymore.  Mom, mom I have to go outside NOW!  Yes, that should be fun for those of us who DON'T have a built in fur coat.  It's only 10 degrees out right now.  That should take me, what?, about 2 hours to thaw?