Yes, that's right. In the midst of the worst economic pseudo-depression in recent memory, I just quit my damn job. Clearly I am very in touch with reality, etc. etc. If one more person reminds me that, hey, people are actually having trouble finding jobs right now, I'm going to commit ritual suicide. I'm going to grab Neutrino, hold him under cold running water, and then affix him to my head.

The thing is, I feel that the staffing level at the nursing home I was working at was unsafe, and I'm afraid that when I'm rushing around trying to barely keep a lid on things, one of the residents might get hurt. It happens all the time. People lean over and fall out of their chairs before you even notice that another tabs alarm has started going off. People fall out of lifts, break legs, suffer severe head trauma (remember that many, if not most, of these elderly patients have some level of bone density loss or osteoporosis), and die. It happened in Portland just last year. That CNA went to jail and lost her license. She will never get to go to nursing school, so that she may someday have the opportunity to accidentally kill someone in a more interesting and educated way. With narcotics, or blood pressure medicine, or inappropriately labled saline drips.

The point is that generally, understaffing is just obnoxious and stressful. But in certain situations (when, for example, the facility refuses to use agency CNAs and nurses because it would cut into their profit margin, and so when people call in for shifts the remaining staff is just left to tough it out as best they can), understaffing can be truly dangerous. Also, the pay was only $8.75/hour. Petsmart offered me a cashier position for $8.50/hour, with virtually zero chance of contracting hepatitis. WHY OH WHY DIDN'T I TAKE THE JOB AT PETSMART!?!

Well, there were reasons. Mainly, that I was concerned that they wouldn't work with me on my school schedule. But oh well, opportunities under the bridge and all that. Water, whatever. You get the picture.

So wish me luck! I'm back to scouting around for jobs!

In other news, Neurtrino loves us again. We decided that the bi-weekly baths were too damaging to our quality of life, and too ineffectual, really, to continue. So now he's back to hanging out with us and not biting very much at all. Yay! Bizarrely, his skin seems to be improving in step with his mood. If it turns out that all the scabbiness was just stress, I'm going to give up on veterinary science completely. Bah.

Jim the contractor has disappeared from our lives. His final act as Homewrecker-In-Chief was to lay the front porch swing on the floor of our garage and attempt to spray paint it in a high wind. Needless to say, the results were a bit spotty, and spread liberally all over the garage. Then he hung the thing up crooked, about 6 inches from the porch floor. Awesome. Also, I think he may have stolen our hammer.

My current project is convincing W to let me have chickens in the back yard. My feeling is, I will probably never have a yard like this again in my life. We're planning to move back to the Northwest in a few years (Olympia, Oakland, and Seattle are the top three choices right now...we decided that Pittsburgh would be too cold, and also probably wouldn't have enough California transplants to make us feel at home). We're going to live in apartments, with the dream of someday maybe settling down in a three-bedroom townhome or condo in-or-very-near a kickass urban area. It would be great if we could find a place with a yard, but I'm not holding my breath. It'll be years before I have the opportunity to claim a patch of yard again, if ever. So if I want to play with chickens, now's probably the time. When we move I'm going to eat them...actually, I'm probably going to move their setup to my mom's house and take off at high speed, while she shouts at me from the driveway to come back here and get my damn chickens out of her yard. It's going to be awesome!

You're never going to believe this, but Operation Chicken is actually going quite well! I have some ideas for chicken coops (mainly A-frame designs) that I found online, and today we looked at chicks. Here are some of my favorites.

This is the buff colored pullet Brahma chicken. I will call her Eloise. Or possibly Sandy, after all of W's dad's girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. They've always been very nice to me.

This is a Delaware pullet. The breed was developed in Delaware in the 1940s, and they're very rare. Supposed to be excellent eggers, and docile personalities besides. Most places sell them for $3 or more per chick! She shall be called Mertle. It's a good American name.

And this, this is a partridge Cochin pullet. Partridge refers to her coloring--they also come in buff, white, and black, with various shadings in between. These aren't particularly good eggers (2-3 medium eggs per week), but they're supposed to be very sweet. She will be called Margot--a classy name for a classy chick.

It remains to be seen whether my husband has in fact finally lost his mind and will actually allow me to purchase the above chickens and to construct a home for them. The timeline will depend on my ability to find a job and feed the zoo that we already have. I'll keep ya'll updated.