yawning already

and it's only just gone 8pm. Had a lovely, lazy, dude-filled day. I fed babies when I woke up, then napped in the bath for ages, and had only just emerged when the dude arrived. He is doing lots of work on his new project, but I really didn't feel like doing any studying myself, so just sat close to him, reading and talking and cuddling. In between feeding birdies of course, of which an enormous number seem to be in residence. Actually, I am developing a sneaky suspicion that the neighbourhood pigeons are dropping their less-gifted offspring off here as well. I came home yesterday to find a large juvenile standing in the road, and when I went out to check on him, he just stood there looking beguilingly up at me. Oh well...one more doesn't make much difference!

- some pics for you, of a nest of young genets that have been raised at the centre. All five were being offered for sale at the roadside, obviously pillaged from the nest, and only about 10 days old. They are all now healthy and wilding up a bit in an enclosure, although still very fond of milkies for dinner.


pics by A-M. C.

glorious thursday

a nightmare day yesterday. All the insecurities and anguish roosting. Started by seeing my sister and family on Tues night, and getting this visceral smack that reminds me that I will never ever have that for myself. Never hold my child, or swell with pride at their achievements. And sometimes that really hurts.

That was followed by a morning at work, having to be on form and participate, and really getting into it. The downside, as I know from the past, is that after 3 hours on stage for an award-winning performance, I leave, and deflate, and there is nothing left of the bright and shiny character. Was holding on, because next event was the dude. Didn't happen, no message or call for 3 hours, and then it was just a cancellation. I'd screwed up all the rest of the day, just to get home for him, and he couldn't even send a message. Plummet. Freefall. Collapse of all the good bits, and into the pit. Not a good night, and subsequently not a good morning.

And then he is here, and I breathe him in, and the world shifts back into place, and there is a future. He apologised for yesterday, I bitched at him nicely. And then it was just awesome again - went to get a couple of books, lunch, talking non-stop and dreaming and sharing, magnificent sex....

Jodi Picoult's latest paperback is about ghosts, and the living, and how sometimes it can seem as if you are just missing the chance to be with your other half. And then all that is really left is to get out of this life, in the hope that you will both time it better in the next one. I told the dude today that in my next life I am hoping to meet him decades before we can love each other, but that when we meet, I will be with him for the rest of that life, completely. I will, I really believe that we will have a whole and complete life together. Just, I guess, not this time around...

red headed finch

this is the male, grownup version of the minute thing in my avatar. The female doesn't have the red head. They are the same size as pet caged finches - tiny! The sweet thing about them (apart from the very large attitude) is that the inside of their mouth has black spots on a white background, which must make it a lot easier for mom to work out where to shove the food into.

We quite often get a whole nestful in at the centre, so there will be 3 - 5 little heads and mouths. They make a very loud sort of rasping, continuous hum until they are fed, so the clinic rule is normally that whoever wakes them up (by accident or otherwise) has to feed them all until they shut up again!

Photo credit to www.birdinfo.co.za

pigeons, eggs and babies

- for the person asking whether it's true that pigeons always lay two eggs, one of each sex:

Almost true. The figures are based on feral pigeon research, but other species are nearly as accurate. They always lay two eggs, one day apart. In about 90% of nests, there will be one of each sex. What is really awesome though, is that in 78% of nests, the male will be the firstborn. No other species of bird comes even close to this percentage.

Apparently, the reason is that for the first 5 days or so, the male chick is stronger than the female. The eggs hatch 18 days after they are laid. It's always possible that in between the laying and the hatching, the weather or food supply might have changed significantly, and if it is only possible to raise one of the chicks, then the male is more likely to survive difficult circumstances. By 5 days though, the chicks are equal in size and strength.

This is the origin of referring to children where one is male and one is female as a 'pigeon pair'

chautauqua

..using the term in the same way as Robert M. Pirsig did, a journey where one is hoping to learn from the travelling....

- at the time of the dude split, I offered to do any deliveries or collections that the rehab centre needed, no matter how far away. In the past, when I have been confused about things, I used to go driving, so that I could think while I did it. Sometimes I'd drive 3 or 4 hundred kilometres, then turn around and go back home. It didn't always give any clarity, but occasionally it produced some enlightenment. I haven't done that for ages, but when rehab boss-lady sent an email asking for assistance with long trips, I figured that maybe it would help.

- then the dude-split kind of unhappened, although I certainly still need some serious thinking to be done about all of it, but the need for long trips was still there. Mostly, it's been a question of waiting for permits to be issued at state level - for us to send things to other areas, for them to recieve them, for us to fetch things and the current carers to give them up. Eventually, all of the bits came together, and I could schedule a trip. It worked out that I'd do a big loop. Five hundred and sixty km's south-west, to deliver three meerkats to another centre that is building a tribe, as well as to drop off five region-specific tortoises close to there. Another five hundred odd in an east-south-east direction to fetch four baby black-backed jackals needing to be raised and released, and then about five hundred and eighty northerly to get them to the rehab centre, and me to my home.

- that was a lot of driving/thinking time in two days. Didn't seem to have accomplished much in the thinking way, other than to miss having the dude there to share what I was seeing, but at least all the critters got to their new homes. And I also saw some awesome scenery, lots of really special raptors, and tired myself out completely.

- arrived home to find that the dogs had mislaid their brains again, which is a regular occurence. Read them a few paragraphs from 'Marley & Me' by John Grogan where he talks about the definition of good dogs or bad dogs. My collie has mellowed as he has aged, although he still dreams of eating the cats. The Labbie and the rescue mutt are both showing signs of being bad dogs till they drop, in the same kind of way as Marley....drive you insane at the time, but hell, love them just the way they are in spite of that!

- oh yeah, and in spite of having found new batteries for the camera, and taking it all over the country, I didn't remember to actually use it at all. So no pics to share...bummer!

springtime

makes me want to start rearranging the words to that old classic song 'summertime',
except for this it would be :
'springtime
and the birdies are breeding
trees are high,
and the nests they are full
babies jumping
and flying and falling.....'

or something like that. Plus a verse about the cats are a-catching and the dogs are a-chewing. And it wouldn't even come close to describing the seasonal madness. I am gaining little pigeons faster than I can fling them out, especially seeing as the current lot in the aviary have no desire at all to leave. They can tell somehow when I go in intent on releasing the biggest and healthiest. The fastest ones make a beeline for cover, behind or under the kennel where I can't extract them without risking others being flattened. The rest fly in circles. Over the weekend I thought I'd done well, by turfing about 10 out. Until I realised that as I grabbed a flying one and expelled him, the previous evictee was running back in down at ground level where I wasn't watching, and joining the kennel-campers.

I suspect I actually increased the aviary residents by about 3 or 4 who took the gap and came in too.....

don't know how to do this anymore

so if I try to evaluate the last 7 weeks or so, about all I can come up with is :

- the dude is married, and he's not leaving home. I do admire him for that, even if I think his reason's kinda suck. He is unhappy, he screws around, he lies. A huge chunk of what is meaningful to him happens elsewhere and she is so completely dumb that it's a tossup as to whether she even knows it or not.

- I love him completely, and no matter how many times I ask him to please go away, when he says things like 'if that is what you want....', I fold. No, babe, it is so NOT what I fucking want. I want to be with you forever, fulltime, openly. I don't want you to ever go away. But I am trying so hard to stop this because it just hurts too much.

- he is using me at the moment, financially. Stuff that is easy to me is impossible for him , and I'm trying to pull back on the support a bit, but when he cannot keep his head out of water monetarily....I can't stand back and watch him drown. I just can't do that.

- I have been lost for the last weeks, and I feel more and more that the only way out of this is by being dead. All I want is to be with him, all I do at the moment is see him when I can, and cry myself ugly in between. All I've proved in the last two months is that I cannot get myself out of this relationship unless he will walk away, and he just won't do that

- I cry for most of every day, and drink huge amounts most nights. And every morning I leap out of bed and do stuff - feed birds, work, study. Until I know whether I'll see him or not, and then the day disintegrates. I can't even screw around anymore. Some sweet-sounding guy found me via the dating site that I put a profile on way back when the dude did, and has been mailing me now and again since then. Got as far as online chat over the weekend, he wanted to meet for coffee and see how things progressed from there. Yeah, it's a pick-up site, nothing with potential, but he still seemed comparatively nice. I mailed him back yesterday to say not yet, I just can't do it. I can't even look at having coffee - never mind shagging him silly. He's not the dude, and I just can't even pretend that it would be enjoyable.

Never mind don't know how.... don't even want to do this anymore either

very little

to say.

I am working, erratically. Frustrated as all hell, because the best thing that my company has ever done for employees seems to have been arbitrarily cancelled. Apparently, one of the other teams found 'team building' to be not so pleasant. Call it cultural divide - smart, trainee, woman, two degrees and can speak 5 languages including English. And very, very (trust me on this one) narrow-minded pair of team leaders who both come from a small company-town background where even English is considered waaay too liberal, because of take-overs and outsourcing, now working for multi-national corporate. Which still has a senior layer from the same background. Winner? The cultural throwback Neanderthals. I am too pissed off to even bother complaining.

Bird baby-season in full swing. Lots of screaming mouths, regular transfers to the centre, still not quite keeping up.

And the dude. Not quite over. Some of the parameters have changed, but not by much. I said to him on Weds that one of the things that I am obviously not very good at yet is not seeing him. As I gave him back his keys to my house.....

This is worse than giving up smoking cocaine. I managed that easily, and quickly, and although sometimes I still think back to how completely good it made me feel, in more than 7 years I have never considered even looking for a Nigerian.

Then again, crack never sent me a text message to say that it was thinking of me, but would respect my decision not to see it. He does. And an arbitrary message to say have a good day, or something similar.

And more than anything, there has never been any person, place or distraction that has made me breath deeply when I encounter it and then, with my entire body, heart and soul feel that this is it. I am home, at last...here is where I belong.

Above anything, above everything, that defines the dude....