Does anyone else here read other people's blogs from the beginning? I do. If I discover your blog and like your recent posts, I will go aaaaaallllll the way back and read it from the very beginning, just so I'm not lost while reading your recent stuff. This keeps me entertained at night when I'm at home by myself while Charles is working. :) I got a lot of awesome training ideas by doing this with Stacey's blog and Eventing-a-Gogo. If you haven't read Stacey's posts from when she was in Hawaii, you totally should! LOVE the way she conditioned Klein!
I will quote Funder, as I completely agree with her:
"I don't believe things can make a person happy. Other people can't make a person happy. Happiness comes from inside oneself. I'm sure you know somebody who "has it all" who's totally miserable, and you know someone with "nothing" who is just genuinely happy to be alive. I strive to be the latter."
Well said!
So here are 10 things I enjoy about my life:
1. Charles - I'm living the life I'm living right now thanks to him and one of the most enormous leaps of faith I've ever taken. We knew each other as kids. One of my aunts, Lucy, was a kindergarden teacher, and Charles was in her very first class. He was a HELLION of a child. His mom says my aunt tamed him, and they became lifelong friends as a result-they are close friends to this day, some 30 years later! I couldn't STAND him. He was that annoying little kid who would come and poke your shoulder repeatedly, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey..." Yup. That kid. Our families would hang out a lot when we were little and then as we got older, and we were all teenagers doing Very Important Things, we all kind of drifted apart for a little while. I stayed good friends with Charles's younger brother James, and even invited James to my junior prom. He was just easy to be around, and he was a good friend. Charles was the older super cool brother, who had an attitude that he was too good for us at the time, so we kind of ignored him. Flash-forward a couple of years to the summer of 1997. I was 17, and I'd been working as camp counselor at my mom and aunt's art camp, plus working extra shifts as counselor at my barn's riding camp too. It had been a very long day, and I was taking a ride home with my aunt Lucy, but she had to stop by James's mom's house to pick up some papers for her master's degree (they did their masters together). I was exhausted, but I perked up thinking I'd be able to hang out with James. As it turns out, James wasn't home, but Charles was home from college. I had not seen him in a few years, and had even forgotten he existed. His hair was long and he only wore contacts at the time, and I looked up into his hazel-blue eyes and it was like the world stopped.
I was never really the same again, and neither was he. Years later when I asked him about that moment, he said that at that instant everything in the world had gone silent-it was just him and me, in that second.
He was in a group of Sea Scouts, and I joined, not only because it would be awesome finally getting to camp out around the island, but also because it would be a chance to get to know him better. One of our best adventures was Mona Island, a small island off the west coast of PR used exclusively for research. It's called the Galapagos of the Caribbean for a reason-not a soul lives on that island, other than Dominican and Haitian refugees, and there were stories of pirates too. There's a small research station on the opposite side of the island from where we camped. It was one of the wildest places I've ever stayed at, and on top of that we got trapped on that island for 4 days due to some major storms that rolled in. All of the tents flooded except Charles's and mine-we were the only ones who had set up our tents properly. Since the 25 of us didn't fit in 2 tents, we moved to a run-down shelter by the one dock. Our food ran out, and our last 2 nights on the island, we slept on the sand on the beach. But we had an absolute BLAST, exploring the internal cavern system of the island, and trying to swim all to the way to the sunken ship off the beach. Yes, a sunken ship. We were eventually rescued by the Coast Guard. Everyone was anxious to return home, but Charles and I would've been happy to just stay on that island forever! We made some lifelong friends on that adventure, and being the ringleader of the group with Charles made me decide that I wouldn't mind hanging out with this guy forever.
For the next year, I waited to see if he'd come around. He showed signs of liking me a lot, but our relationship was limited to the Sea Scouts. I loved talking to him-we never ran out of subjects, and he could be so incredibly annoying at times. We'd get into these verbal skirmishes where we would try to one-up one another. I was the only one in our group who could beat him at this. The look on his face when he couldn't come up with a retort was worth a million bucks. It was never boring being around Charles.
And then I went to college-I was accepted into the Natural Sciences program of the University of PR, the same department he was in. One day, in utter frustration, I gave him a really long letter where I basically told him I adored him, and wtf? Did he like me or not? Just stuck it in his hand when dropping him off at our department's parking lot, and left him with it. The next day I asked him if he'd read it. He said yes. He admitted he liked me a lot, but he was not ready for a serious relationship at the time, and he didn't want to lead me on. He explained he was doing a lot of things that I would probably never agree with, and our relationship would be doomed before it even started. I appreciated his honesty, but I was devastated. As it turns out, he was absolutely right: he was active in the Puertorrican rave scene when it was at its strongest. He was correct-at the time, I would've been horrified.
We stayed friends, however. That letter I gave him? He kept it for years after. I moved on and had other relationships, but I was always looking for another Charles, and of course, there was no other quite like him. Charles left the island and moved to Orlando to get an A.S. in film, and we stayed in touch via an occassional e-mail every few months. It was bizarre when we reached a point where we were giving each other relationship advice. I still loved this guy, but I was in a serious relationship at the time.
And then, one Christmas Charles came to visit his family. And he wanted to see me. He had been back to visit before, but this was the first time he'd wanted to hang out with me, ever. I don't remember what movie we went to watch-I was just hyper-aware of him in the seat next to me. We said good-bye that night, but for the first time I KNEW that he felt exactly the same way about me as I did about him. I saw it.
After that, we stayed in touch by phone. We'd call each other once a week, like clockwork. And then my grandfather died, and a part of my world as I knew it ended. I decided that you just can't sit around waiting for things to happen-sometimes you have to make them happen. James was getting married, and Charles was coming for the wedding. He'd asked me to be his date.
Well, I was his date and a whole lot more, and that was that. Before the visit was over, he'd asked me to move to Tampa with him.
And I kind of said yes. I spent 6 months travelling back and forth, first because I wanted to make sure I liked Tampa and had a chance of doing something productive with my life over there, and also because I wanted Charles to be sure that this was what he wanted. He was a bad boy and still had to grow up a bit before we could actually live together. At this point in his life, he had no problem growing up-he changed, on his own, without me ever having to ask, because he wanted me there. I won't deny that throughout those 6 months I was terrified he'd one day wake up and say, "F- this, I want to stay single!" I felt like I was jumping from a cliff with my decision to move in with him, hoping that somehow I'd be able to fly. But he never once showed any kind of doubt or hesitation in his commitment to me. He was in, 100%.
In December of 2004, I shipped all of my books and clothes to Tampa and flew in with my cat, Shakti, and my laptop. Nothing else. And that was it-that was the beginning. I jumped, and I flew after all. Life with Charles is definetely an adventure, every day. I love him more than anything, and he is truly my best friend.
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| Summer of 1998 (And in case you're wondering, his T-shirt had a drawing of a plane with Santa and all his reindeer smashed on the plane's nose...This photo was taken at an art summer camp that we worked together as counselors...with kids....that's typical Charles for you) |
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| Now |
2. My mom - I'm probably weird for this, but my mom and I are really close. We've been through some tough times, but we survived. She is also my best friend, and we have pretty much talked on the phone every day since I left the island. It makes the distance seem nonexistent. She is the best cook on the planet, and everyone says she should run her own catering business-I have met few people who love to cook as much as she does. I inherited her ability to make something out of nothing with food, without needing to follow a recipe, and have it taste really good, but I don't enjoy cooking anywhere near as much as she does. I wish I did, but most of the time nowadays, I just don't have the time. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and have Mom's home-cooked food! She raised my brother and me with my aunts' and grandparents' help, dedicating her life to us. She walked me down the aisle on my wedding day. I couldn't have asked for a better mom.
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| My mom and me, at Charles' and my wedding |
3. Lily - she's our kid, basically-she requires the same amount of time and money, for sure! Charles actually refers to her that way, and his coworkers ask about her as if she really was his daughter. She's my therapy, my workout, and my escape, all rolled into one. Some days she still drives me nuts, but for the most part she's the sweetest little mare I've ever met. And that's not just me saying it-everyone who meets her says the same thing. It's pretty cool to see how far we've come this past year!
4. My cats - Shakti lost a long battle with cancer last week. I had her for 12 years-not old for cancer, but it's not the first time I've seen this happen. She chose me at the shelter; she was a funny-looking gray kitten with white paws, stripes, spots and orange patches-she was every color at once. She MEOWED and MEOWED when she saw me walk in the room, and just about had a fit in her little cage trying to get to me. All the other cats ignored me, so I figured I might as well take the only one that wanted to be with me! She was my first cat, and she taught me so much about them-I am a better tech because of her; not every tech or ever doctor "gets" cats, but I do, especially the difficult ones. She was the only pet I brought with me from PR (I had another cat, 2 dogs and Lucero over there), and she rode with me in the car from Tampa to South FL, sitting loose on the back seat, happy as a clam. Unlike your typical cat, she was an adventurer, and always took our moves in stride; she was also part of the original trio: it was Charles, Shakti and me. She left a big hole behind her; I miss her every day-this will be our first move without her. Shakti means "cosmic energy" and is also the Hindu goddess of creation. Hey, cats think they're gods. Just ask them-in their world, they rule! We started a theme with her. My other two, Astarte (Phoenician warrior goddess. Aphrodite was her equivalent in Greek mythology) and Dio (for Dionysius, the Greek god of food and wine, and yes-he is the most food-motivated cat I have ever met!) are certainly also little gods, with very individual personalities. Astarte was my brother's cat, and she is also a Puertorrican shorthair-my brother moved to Ohio and couldn't take her with him, so my mom brought her to me during one of her visits to after we had moved to South FL. She is a calico, THE coolest cat on the planet, almost doglike in her adoration of people, and is eerily smart and expressive. One time Charles and I were arguing and she actually jumped in my lap, yelled "GAUUU!" and covered my mouth with one of her paws! Needless to say, Charles and I completely forgot what we were arguing about, and burst out laughing! Dio is a boy, and we adopted him from the Broward Humane Society. He chose us. He's a tuxedo Manx mix, and has the cutest bunny tail and the pinkest nose. I used to call him the Bunny Cat. Now he's just the Girly Man. He talks A LOT-he is permanently banished from bedrooms because he will start talking to himself in the middle of the night. He has a very high-pitched voice for a boy. He will fetch, and he will get into cabinets and hidden garbage cans in search of anything edible he can get his little fuzzy paws on. He's a bit ditzy at times, but he's a goofy sweatheart and we love him. These little ones are the salt and pepper of our lives.
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| Dio & Shakti |
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| Astarte |
I was boarding Cloud, my Quarter Horse gelding (go to My Equestrian Journey to read what happened to him), at the boarding facility/horse rescue that I'd adopted him from. It was a weird place-rickety and kind of falling apart, except they did have a nice arena. The barn manager was pretty cuckoo and definetely chemically imbalanced (I finally really understood what "manic" meant after meeting her...) I was kinda sorta friends with this whackadoo simply because it was wiser than being her enemy. It was rather lonely at that barn, however, until Diana arrived.
Diana was hugely pregnant and she had this big Percheron cross mare who had the biggest poops in the entire barn, and yet she still insisted on doing her stall herself. She said taking care of Bali kept her sane and got her out of the house. We all tried to help her, but she would insist on grabbing her 2-wheeler wheelbarrow and pitchfork and mucking her stall herself. I don't know what it was about her, but I just adored her right off the bat and wanted to be her friend. It was like I'd met a long-lost sister. When she first arrived at the barn, she had Bali in my same row of stalls, but further down at the end. Her stall flooded from beneath with the first rains, and she had to move Bali. I encouraged her to come over to my end-the stall next to Cloud's was empty, and we could share a tackroom. The barn manager was surprised about my offer, as I had always enjoyed having my own private tackroom for all my horsey stuff, plus I ordered a month's supply of 3-wire timothy at a time, which took up a lot of room. But I was willing to compromise just to share a tackroom with Diana. We were like college roommates when she first moved her stuff in, getting all of our stuff sorted so it made sense (all our hay and feed on one half of the room, and all of our tack and supplies mixed together on some shelving units I had on the other half) and we called each other "Roomie" for the longest time. She took 2 weeks off from the barn when she had her baby, and I took care of Bali for her, making sure she got plenty of turnout, cleaning her stall, setting up her feed. Bali and Cloud became friends too-she had a huge crush on him, and he would play with her, running around in the paddock next to her. He didn't do this with any other horse-he'd always been somewhat of a loner. When Cloud was taken from me, Diana kept an eye on him, and made sure he always got fed and had fresh water, and would give him kisses for me. She helped make sure he got adopted into a good home. She was my heart horse's guardian angel.
And now she boards her horse next to mine, our mares are friends, we share the tack hook rack in front of Bali's stall for our mess of halters, fly masks and lead ropes, and share the same wall of our tack stall. She'll do my stall if I'm having a sucky day at work, and I'll do hers when I know she's had a long day. I'm not a big sharer, either, but I'll share the whole universe with this woman. She talked me out of one of my biggest funks since I left PR when Lucero died, and more than once has given me better advice than the vet himself when I've had issues with my horses. I will miss her terribly when we move.
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| Lily and Bali |
6. My career - Being a vet tech is tough. Especially when you work emergency and critical care. When you work general practice, you get to play with puppies and kittens and establish wonderful long-term relationships with your clients, and watch their pets grow up and age. These pets often come to recognize and like you. The bulk of your patients are just coming in for vaccines, skin issues or for the occassional vomiting and diarrhea. When you work ECC, you see the old, the chronic, and very sick animals, and work with distraught, angry and sometimes uncooperative clients. I can't tell you how much I hate walking into a room with the estimate from the doctor to tell a client how much it's going to cost to save their pet's life. Veterinary care is expensive, but then so is human health care if you don't have health insurance... Charles was once charged $1500 just for an EKG when he fainted in the OR during one of his nursing school rotations! People don't realize this. The medicines and the level of care are the same, just in smaller doses and proportions for smaller patients. If you have a puppy or a kitten, get it insured! It's about $15-$20/month average, and it pays for any health complications down the line-it is totally worth it! It will even cover chemotherapy-that's more than can be said for a lot of human health insurance policies!
The hours often suck, and there are days when I wouldn't mind having normal 8 hour 9a-5p shifts like most human beings. 13 hour shifts are brutal on your feet, legs and back sometimes, especially when you're restraining fractious patients or wrestling large dogs on an x-ray table. The pay definetely sucks most of the time-veterinarians and techs are GROSSLY underpaid for the amount of schooling, knowledge, and training we have to have. A human doctor only has to know one species-we have to know all species that can be kept as pets! Their diseases, treatments, husbandry, and the individual way each species must be handled in a hospital setting. Example: a sick bird can die just from the stress of being taken out of a cage; a rabbit can break its back if restrained incorrectly.
BUT I love what I do. I love noticing things the doctor missed, that make a difference in the patient's outcome. I love making friends with the cat that won't allow anyone else to touch it, or getting my face nuzzled by the dog whom I just drew blood from but who instantly forgave me; I love being able to place an IV catheter and having my patient not react at all because I did it smoothly and pain-free; I love reading my patient's body language and expressions to gauge how they feel, and using my knowledge of their vital signs to see if my guess was correct; I love the fact that I've saved a couple of animals simply because I noticed something was off from way across the other side of a room; I love when treatments work and the patients get better and go home cured; I love the rare moment when a client bothers to ask my name and thank me.
Now. Can someone please open up a veterinary hospital where the medicine is good, the doctors respect each other and their techs, the techs work together as a team, the schedule is predictable, and the pay is decent? Is that really too much to ask?
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| With one tiny patient |
7. Electronic music - I used to HATE techno or anything in that realm-I was a soft rock & alternative kind of girl. The whole electronic music genre made me think of video game soundtracks. Until Charles. Mr. Ex-Raver Boy turned me onto a whole new world in terms of music, and I love it. The song that started it all was Above and Beyond's remix of Dido's Sand in My Shoes. Charles played it one morning when we were getting ready for work shortly after I moved in with him in Tampa, and I was gone, gone, gone. The music wrapped itself around me and poured itself into me. This song still does that to me, 8 years later. I asked Charles, "What is that?" Trance. This song is classified as trance. In my search for more trance, I discovered Junkie XL, Tiesto, Sander Kleinenberg, Armin Van Buren, Above and Beyond (of course), and more recently, Kaskade. Moving down to South FL, I became a big fan of house music. The punchy beats can be found on most local radio stations, especially during the evening. I've also been introduced to breakbeats and dubstep. The Ultra Music Festival, the event of all events here in South FL, changed the way I saw people in general. Have you ever hung out with a group of ravers? If you haven't, you should. They are the happiest, most loving people. The last electronic music festival Charles and I went to with our friend Pudge, this totally random guy came up to us, beaming to see us, just to say that he loved us and give us hugs. It was completely innocent, and contagious; he was grinning from ear to ear like a little kid. We hugged him back and told him we loved him too. He wasn't hugging everyone though-we watched him go, and he was picking certain people in the crowd whose energy and vibe he was drawn to. Really cool. These people function on a whole other level that is beautiful, care-free, and completely energy-influenced. Granted, it's a drug-induced state, but it is beautiful nonetheless-the drug brings out this part of people- this part exists in them. It is very, very different from hanging out around a bunch of drunks.
Now imagine a whoooole park full of people like this. Thousands and thousands of happy, goofy people, all dancing to music they love, talking to one another because they all have this music in common. No one fights, no one says nasty things about another person, everyone just coexists, happy, dancing, free. At moments like this, I truly believe that world peace is possible. |
| Above & Beyond concert back in May. This gives you an idea of what Ultra looks like-this is the same park where it's held at, except this is just the amphitheatre. Ultra will have dozens of stages featuring every kind of electronic music imaginable, filling up the entire park. |
9. My feline patients - they just make my day. Not because they're sick-that's a bummer- but because I can help them feel better. At my previous job, the other techs gave up-I was always assigned any and all hospitalized cats. I'll fawn over them, tell them how pretty they are (even the old and crunchy ones-they're still pretty) and do my best to get them to purr at some time during their hospitalization. My reward? They will let me do almost anything to them without stressing out. The no stressing out part is key in their healing process. Now every once in a while you get a cat that feels sooo crappy that touching them just makes them feel worse. Especially liver disease and pancreatitis cats-any kind of stimulation, be it good or bad, turns their stomach. Just carrying them can really make them feel yucky. So you get an individual that you can tell wants to be nice, but every time you handle them they will hiss, growl or even vomit. It really sucks because most treatments involve touching the patient in some way, so for awhile the stuff you have to do to them to make them feel better, actually make them feel momentarily worse. These guys I will talk to, make sure they are comfortable, and basically leave alone as much as possible until their treatments kick in and they start to feel better.
Cats really do sense when you like them, though. I swear they respond when you tell them how beautiful they are. I'v heard feline behaviorists say the same thing.
I've had feline patients I've never seen before zero in on me from across an exam room, sit up and deliberately make eye contact. Once during morning rounds, a very fractious kitty that had given the overnight staff a hard time, started meowing looking right up at me as I was standing in front of his cage listening to my coworkers. They were saying how absolutely naughty this kitty had been all night. I sat on the floor when he meowed at me, opened the cage door, and he jumped into my lap, purring and rubbing his head against my hands. To say the overnight techs' jaws dropped is an understatement.
Another time, we had this enormous Maine Coon mix named Blackjack who was a gorgeous chocolate color with a white undercoat. Very unusual color. He was very opinionated and none of the techs wanted to handle him because halfway through a treatment he would turn on them. "Okay, that's ENOUGH!" he'd say. I reeeally liked him-his attitude just cracked me up, and the feeling became mutual after the first time I did treatments on him myself. He let me do everything, as long as I was quick and gentle about it, and petted him a lot before and after! By the end of the day, he would howl for me if I walked out of his line of vision!
So yeah-love my kitty cat patients. :)
I wouldn't see snow again until the summer I turned 18, while hiking in the mountains in Yellowstone with my dad. That was pretty awesome.
I love cold weather. In Tampa we at least occassionally had frost in the wintertime-one very chilly morning I woke up at 4:30am, before the sun came up, just to run outside to see the frost. I loved seeing the vapor of my breath in the air, and riding all bundled up at sunrise before work, cantering around the jump field at Brass Ring Equestrian Center and seeing the horse's breath in the air. One evening Charles and I stepped outside to go for a jog at dusk. A cold front had just swept in. We didn't make it around the corner in our exercise clothes-we were too cold! We turned around and ran back home to make hot chocolate instead.
Down here we're lucky if it drops below 60 degrees at night. 3 years ago, the northeast was hit by the coldest winter in the last 20 years, and we received the tail end of it down here. I was working overnights at the hospital, and one of my coworkers was scheduled to finish her shift at 5:00 am. She went outside, then came running back inside: there was a thick layer of frost on her windshield and she didn't know what to do! Really cool. We all rushed outside to see it-I have the photos of my car covered in frost, all sparkly and glittery.
I look forward to those colder days every year. I start obsessing over the weather forecast towards the end of October, anxiously awaiting cooler temperatures. It's kind of pathetic that what we consider cooler here is what a lot of other people consider warm in other parts of this country.
I hope that some day soon we live in a place where it at least gets chilly in the winter. 4 real seasons would be even better. Cold weather definetely makes me happy: bundling up to go outside, deciding how many layers to wear to go riding or exercise, hiding under a warm comforter at night, making chili for dinner (I make a mean chili!) and hot chocolate for dessert.
Yup, can't wait.
