Salamander
Fire Walking

Part 1: Glass Camp

My lampwork instructor from last spring ran a “Glass Camp” last weekend. I had wanted to go, but simply could not justify the expense. She asked me several times if I’d planned to go, and I kept putting her off but finally told her the truth. She offered me a deal: if I’d help her with set-up, registration, and general go-ferring, and if I’d bring my own equipment, then she’d let me take whatever courses I wanted for free. That was too good a deal to ignore, so I spent last Thursday morning helping her set up at Camp Happy Trails about half a mile from my house. We had a multi-room crafts studio for lampwork, glass fusing and blowing glass ornaments.

While most of the participants stayed in the camp cabins overnight for the duration of the program, I went home each night. That made it easier to take care of Satan’s Little Fart Cloud and to keep up on my own medications. Besides, I have to admit that the appeal of sleeping in bunk beds was left behind somewhere in my childhood. I made several dozen beads, got to play with some types of glass I’d never used before, and had a chance to show off some of my nicer stuff. I get frustrated some times because my skills aren’t progressing as quickly as I’d like, but getting a chance to compare my stuff with some of the participants who were my classmates last spring reassured me that I’ve actually come a long way.

The outing was not without some excitement, though I wasn’t there to witness it. Saturday night our group booked the Lounge in the main office for a social gathering. There was wine, s’mores made in the microwave (something I never knew you could do) and general merriment. Apparently a father-daughter group at the camp had independently decided they wanted to use the lounge for a movie night and showed up at 9:00 claiming they’d gotten prior permission to use the Lounge and tried to kick the glass crew out. Due to some rude manners on the part of the dads and some wine on the part of our group things erupted into a shouting match with the F-word flying about. The girls, who were somewhere around nine years old, looked either mortified or thrilled, according to one of my friends who witnessed the entire thing. Our Fearless Leader immediately texted the camp director after the dads left and confirmed that our group did indeed have the room for the night.

Ain’t it grand how a night in the woods brings people together in peace and harmony?

Part 2: Ringworm, The Musical

Satan’s Little Fart Cloud has yet to show any signs of improvement under her new medication. It’s only been a week, so realistically I know I haven’t given the Sporanox enough time to kick in, but I didn’t expect her to look as bad as she’s gotten. All her old lesions are now active, and she’s got new lesions on the inside and the back of her hind legs. Her shoulder, lower back and tail lesions have all grown so large that they are now coalescing into one massive denuded area. Without her hair she looks small and frail.

I’ve moved her to the new diet that the specialist wanted to try with her. She eats it, but she no longer acts like mealtime is the highpoint of her life. This could be a side-effect of the medication, and I’ll need to keep a close eye on this. I clean the quarantine room each morning by dry mopping and then wet mopping, and the amount of hair I pick up each day seems to be getting worse. She’s been incarcerated for nearly four months now; if left untreated ringworm is supposed to resolve in about three months. At this point I begin to doubt that I’ll get her out of there by Thanksgiving. I’m playing the coulda-woulda-shoulda game at the moment. Coulda cured this earlier if I only Woulda just ignored everyone and had her shaved down and Shoulda used Sporanox right off instead of cheaping out with generic itraconazole and the Fluconazole.

Tomorrow and Friday I’ve reserved to finish stripping the carpet out of the basement so I can move SLFC down to the dungeons at night. She begins her I’m-lonely-and-can’t-sleep-so-nobody-else-gets-to-sleep- serenade earlier and earlier each morning. This morning was an all-time record, with the musical interlude of Wagner’s Ringworm Cycle beginning at 4:00 in the freaking a.m..

The title of this section promised you a musical. I’ve introduced you to the Diva of our performance. Now let me tell you about the rest of our cast. Ringworm has broken out at the shelter. Selfishly, my first concern was that I’d somehow contaminated one of the shelter cats and it spread, but to my relief I learned that our index case was a cat I’d never had direct contact with. Because we encourage socialization at our shelter by giving the cats plenty of time to interact with each other, the ringworm has spread rapidly. Approximately half the cats we had at the stores have had to be pulled because of confirmed or suspicious lesions. All other cats at the stores are being monitored closely, and no new cats are being introduced to the stores at this time. We’ve run out of room at the veterinary hospital that helps us out, and as of this morning (when I authorized pulling two more kittens out of a store) we have run out of foster homes willing to take confirmed or suspect cats. Adding to my worries is the fact that we've now gotten two calls about cats we’ve placed who broke with ringworm after they went home with their new families. Fortunately both families are understanding and have bonded with their new cats, so our group doesn’t have to worry about what to do with returns. We’ve done a lot of adoptions in the past month though, and ringworm takes up to four weeks to incubate. More calls may be coming.

We’re an all volunteer group, and many of the volunteers are concerned because of the zoonotic potential of ringworm. I can’t say I blame them, since I myself am now suspicously eyeing up a couple of rashy spots that have appeared on my hands in the last few days. The work load on the volunteers has gone up even though the number of cats at the stores has decreased due to decontamination protocols I’ve had to put in place. There are at least two volunteers who verge on phobic when it comes to ringworm, and I worry that we may end up losing them over this.

Financially, this is going to be a huge hit on our little organization. We’ve had good luck with bake sales (to my everlasting surprise), and were able to rake in thousands of dollars last year by selling cookies and cupcakes. We’re running a bake sale this weekend which was originally intended to raise money for a cat with bladder stones that may require an operation; the proceeds from this sale are probably going to be diverted to lime sulfur baths and Miconazole salve instead. I usually stay as far away from bake sales as I can, but I’ll be making something for this one (though I have no idea what). I thought I’d run off a few of my paw print beads and wrap up the cookies (or whatever I make) with a ribbon with a bead on it. Not sure I’ll have time for that though, since getting the carpet ripped out of the basement is a priority. As I said in my opening paragraph, sometimes all hell breaks loose.

Part 3: The Ten Year Plan
Subtitled: Those Who Can’t Do

Some time back I noticed that I tend to live my life in roughly ten-year segments. I spent ten years as a college student/lost soul/paralegal student, twelve years as a paralegal, eight years as a post-bacc student/vet student/vet looking for work and ten years as a vet in industry. Smushed into that were ten years that I played soprano recorder with a group of social tooters, and ten years of good marriage/nine years of failing marriage. I lived with The Prof for nine years before we married.

Now I find myself thirteen years from official retirement, looking for another ten year plan.

While I suppose this looks sudden to most people reading my journal, this is actually something I’ve been kicking around for several years. It’s another shoulda-woulda-coulda: I shoulda just done this three years ago when the thought first occurred to me and then I woulda been out of that hell-job before I got laid off and I coulda had all this over with already.

“Coulda had all what over with already?” you ask. I’m getting my teaching certificate. I’m going to take an accelerated certification program at a college near where I live starting the beginning of next year, and with luck by this time next year I’ll be teaching biology at high school level. I can also qualify for teaching chemistry and mathematics. Don’t know about the chemistry – the high school level chemistry stuff is fun, but I’m not sure I trust high schoolers around stuff that burns and goes “boom”. Math might be more fun, at least everything up to Pre-Calculus. I have no reservations about biology though.

There are a few things I need to pull together in the next two months though. I want to talk to some local high school principals to get a feel for how much demand there is for biology teachers. That will help me make up my mind if I really want to certify in Bio first, or if I’d do better to consider one of my other options. It will also get me known in the area school districts, which in turn will help me get an internship for the practical part of my teaching certification. I need to find out what grants and loans are available, and how to apply. And I need to start reviewing for the Praxis exams; my animal biology is probably up to snuff, but I need to remember the difference between xylem and phloem, and I have no idea if the Triassic came before or after the Jurassic period.

Epilogue

So that’s the catch-up, in a rather over-sized nutshell. I’ll post bead and SLFC pictures eventually. I probably won’t get back to posting until after the basement carpet is ripped out and I get the stupid water heater replaced.

“Water heater?” you ask. Sorry. That’s going to have to wait for another update.