I just have to share this, hope you don’t mind, one of the least common perks I get from working at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Our goal is to keep them wild and get them back out to nature, so opportunities for bonding are few and far between. Only when an animal is deemed appropriate for education after it is decided it cannot be released, do you ever have a chance to get to know a wild animal on a different level.

Currently, we have a non-releasable raccoon that we are training to help place and a brown pelican that did not heal from a broken wing sufficiently enough to be released. This bird is my focus 🙂 He is a diva, would you believe it? He is not friendly where you can walk up and hug him, but he has started sitting on a high perch at one end of the flight and begs for food whenever you go inside. He is capable of getting down to eat on his own and certainly does so, but today I walked in and he looked down at me, stretched his head toward me and emitted a common vocalization for brown pelis – a kind of prehistoric hissing. What do you want, I asked him? He called out to me again. OK, fine, I answered back. I took a single fish from his bowl and held it high up to him between my fingers, and he stretched his neck a little further, then gently took it from me with the very tip of his massively hooked beak. Three more times we did this until I had to take care of another animal.

What amazes me the most is how dainty and gentle they can be. Believe me, this is not a typical behavior – they might beg for food (juveniles especially), but they have no interest in being nice to you when they are truly wilded up – and I have the scars to prove it! However, we have had this bird for quite some time and he came to us shortly after arriving from his travels away from the breeding grounds in the Channel Islands. It is amazing to see one of these birds dive, to sieve the water from their pouches and swallow their catch, to know how determined they are to survive (these birds are incredibly resilient), and then to have one ask you to so gently share with it a basic necessity – it’s a rarity that can really put things in perspective (and kinda makes your day). 🙂

Let us not speak of today’s math midterm. Shhh! Don’t speak. Instead, I hope that you and yours are able to have some special time in some special way, and may it be without having to succumb to the incredible price inflation on all things loving and romantic that miraculously settle back down tomorrow 🙂 I am not against romance, just being forced to pay for it! My youngest son so simply put a small heart sticker on my forehead after giving me a hug and telling me he loved me, and I wore it proudly until it fell off. How simple was that? Honestly, I hope everyone has had a great week and really do get to enjoy yourselves today!

(Also, I just published this and it says 2/15, but I swear it is still the 14th. I doubled checked!)

Blogs offer much more freedom, I think. You can submit your own topics, or spins on topics, and you don’t necessarily expect a response (even though it’s often nice to hear from people since you are posting something in the first place). You are just sharing your thoughts and feelings, even if there are some basic guidelines. Discussion boards are more about staying on a specific task, creating threads that purposefully facilitate discussion with others, and assuming response because of the hope of discussion. Depending on the subject matter, discussion boards can be more intimate because they are confined to specific people, while blogs are generally a public format. I feel I write differently in these blogs than I do in discussion threads, though my general voice is the same. I think blogs also might make one feel like they have to think of more to say to make it a meaningful post. It makes me think of my husband, who tends to be quite colorful and dramatic in his choice of words when writing – and he would be more so while blogging, while reigning that in a bit if he was on a discussion board (although it never really goes away – he can make a grocery list sound like a poem!).

Gah! Seriously? Impossible! Yet another discouraging week, I can hardly believe it. Meetings popping up at work, kids getting sick, one car working… blah, blah, blah! And yet, I need to remind myself to just take a breath and try to get one thing done. Get one more thing done, and then another, and then another. It would be nice to have many more ‘anothers’ crossed off my list by now (!), but I am where I am and can only move forward. I am reminded that, even though my personal situation is stressful enough for me, it could be challenging in other ways:

My friend’s daughter is in London, going to school and planning to stay there permanently. However, she recently came upon certain enlightenments that could cause her to lose her student visa, set her back in school, and ultimately curb her chances of successfully getting back into the field she already has a foot in when she returned. Within 2 days, she had to meet with school officials, gather information, come up with a business plan to submit, and sit and wait… She finds out this week if it will work out, or if she is back in the states next month. She has built a life there while going to school as she has always known she wanted to be where she is, and she has been successful in her studies. I am even waiting impatiently because my friend is SO ANXIOUS to hear what is going to happen!

So, reminder for me is that I could be feeling much more dire than simply frustrated, and that I need to keep trying solutions until I find something that works. It will happen, even in week 5 and beyond 🙂

…an epic fail! Not only was I unable to meet my goal of getting on a particular subject early, but I was unable to even keep the same pace I have been the past 3 weeks! I am utterly behind in every class this week, plus my computer was being snarky and I was unable to get onto the blog site (until now, on another computer). I realize about myself that it is important to be flexible with goals because I tend to over-focus and become obsessed with meeting them and then some, but this is ridiculous. Could be a good thing, except that if I get tripped up somehow, it all comes crashing to a halt. Regardless, I’m really not sure what happened this week. I mean, life got in the way, there is a lot going on of course, but usually I am only behind in the one class I set the goal for! Oh well, movin’ on through and will try again next week!

As hard as I try, it is inevitable that something I write will be misinterpreted. That is one downside to all of the online communication. And I have always been a re-reader of everything (even texts) because I want it to come across as accurately as possible. I recently posted a thread in one of my classes that was dripping with sarcasm (towards an article, not directed at anyone in the class) and also had what was supposed to be my disclaimer paragraph that stated outright what I was really saying. Nope. I was actually surprised that I was taken to be so uneducated and negative towards the topic, considering how much dialogue I’ve had in previous threads.

Lesson to be learned: Try not to be so sarcastic!

OK, so I haven’t lost my enthusiasm completely, but I am having a really, really hard time with my math class! Aaargh! I’m hoping this week’s goal-setting will help me look at it less overwhelmingly. Math and I have just not ever been tight. It’s like West Side Story without the love. My childhood desk had dents in its top from me stabbing it with a pencil out of frustration. This is just review review and it shouldn’t be this hard! I completely feel like my brain shuts down and like I’m in high school again (although I actually don’t recall it being this difficult the first time around…). So, trying to utilize resources and not start what-if-ing my way into frustration. (Tremendous exhale) Happy thoughts and thanks for listening!

I am new to this as well. I’ve read the blogs of others, but never posted any of my own. It feels good to learn some new things and to feel like I’m taking some baby steps toward feeling confident in navigating online learning (Ah!- the purpose of this class!). I feel like I might miss out on some of the visual learning that helps me in classrooms, but videos might be just as helpful. Mostly, I need repetition and I need to write things down so online communication might be just the ticket in this matter. I realize that online learning will indeed take more time to do, but I also feel like I will be actually be working most of the time and that will help me in the sense of repetition. If I have to write something down first to figure it out before I post my answer, then I am at least going through that problem twice. Being at home has absolute benefits since I have a family and a job, but it also offers some extra distractions that I need to learn to deal with and have been trying to fiddle with the past couple of weeks. It is so easy to procrastinate when there are chores to do (even though I could normally let most of them sit until they absolutely had to be done!). I also appreciate feeling less intimidated because of the certain amount of anonymity online learning allows, depending on what instructors expect for their class. At any rate, I’m very happy to have this alternative opportunity to continue towards my degree!