What She Did This Summer

A few years ago, I mentioned that DD2 was working at a nearby State Park for the summer, and that her stories of things experienced there in three short months could fill a book.  Last summer, she did a six-week study abroad in Peru, then returned to finish out the summer working at the same State Park where her new experiences good and bad (a boating accident resulting in a drowning death that she happened to be the first park staff on the scene for. . .) continued.  This summer, yep, she again worked at that State Park--need I say she really loves that job?--but only part time as she also secured an internship at a wildlife rehab center about a half-hour from home.  The internship was 30 hours a week, unpaid, but as her field is wildlife ecology and management, the opportunity will hopefully go far in helping her obtain a good full time job after she graduates from college next May.

She worked her rear end off between the internship and the job at the park, but she loved every minute of time spent at either place.  The State Park story collection grew. The cool things she got to do at the wildlife rehab were relayed to DH and I nearly every evening when she arrived home.  The number and kinds of wild animals she got to care for, even though this particular rehab only accepts small animals (and a few fawns that go on to a different rehab center once they are past the bottle feeding stage) surprised me.

One particular animal brought in soon after she began her internship was a baby mink.  Now, we've seen a few mink in our rural neighborhood at this little place here, but overall they are few and far between.  We've never seen one closer than about 10 yards while sitting it a tree stand deer hunting, or about 5 yards while driving down the road in a car. We've never seen a baby mink.  To be able to not just see this very young mink, but also to hold it and bottle feed it really was a high point of DD2's summer.

Mink  have a reputation for being vicious, and they truly are.  Except, apparently, in the instance of orphaned or injured young mink who wind up in wildlife rehab centers and occasionally bond with a particular human caretaker.  Can you guess who this little mink decided was it's new mother?

If you said DD2, you're correct.  As it grew, it rejected (and bit) all the other workers at the wildlife rehab.  But when DD2 was on duty, not only could she feed it and clean it's cage (and then when it needed more space to run and play it's own little room) without getting bitten, it would try to engage her in play much like a puppy or kitten.

The summer went on, the mink developed into a healthy juvenile mink that learned to eat mice and fish for it's own supper (minnows in a wading pool), and DD2's internship drew to an end.  Right about the time for her to be done, the mink was matured to the point of being ready for release back into the wild.

The wildlife director decided that DD2 should definitely be present for the big release day.  So plans were made to release the mink on DD2's next to last day of her internship.  Travel about an hour away to a good safe habitat for the mink would be required, but first all the other animals at the rehab would have to be fed and cared for.  DD2 invited me to go along and help out with 'breakfast' for the animals that day so that hopefully things would go faster (also because she needed to be to work at the State Park that afternoon and would be driving separately from the wildlife director).

So, I got to cut up fruit for cedar waxwings, foxes, and baby skunks!  I also got a tour of the wildlife rehab center while helping DD2 to deliver food to each type of bird and mammal there.  I took lots of pictures and even got to pet squirrels, foxes, skunks, fawns, and that mink (who apparently doesn't bite people if DD2 is holding him at the time).  It was very cool.

Would you pet these babies?

Hungry little skunks.

"I'm hungry too!" 

Grey fox kit not waiting her turn.

"Got some food for me?"

Red squirrel.

"Just leave ours in the corner and go."

Juvenile red foxes did not want people in their space.

Mink looking for fish.

"Did somebody say breakfast?"

"I'm hungry!"

Once everyone was finally fed, and the other intern had been left with instructions for those animals ad birds that would need feeding again in the next hour or so, the director, DD2, the mink and I hit the road to the mink's new home. 

I think I'd like to live here, how about you?

Releasing the mink into the wild is something I will never forget (nor will DD2, I'm sure!). We stayed quite a while watching as he ventured out exploring and then returned to DD2 to check in and see if it was safe. 

Not quite ready to let go.

What is this strange new place?

Found a big rock.

Still looking to DD2 for security.

Each time the mink went out a little further and further from DD2, until finally we slipped away while he was distracted cavorting in some weeds at the edge of the river that ran through his new home.

Wild mink

Live free

Be happy

Technology, Go Away (Otherwise Known As: Unplug My Life)

Technology is nice.  I do, after all, have a blog.  And to wash my clothes, all I have to do is throw them in the washing machine, add some soap and push a few buttons.  Pretty effortless compared to the few times that I have washed clothes, by hand, in a bathtub. (Washing this way is not so bad. Wringing the excess water from the clothes, however, is the pits).  Having a freezer to keep a year's worth of venison and chicken in is pretty nice too.  And when my dishwasher takes care of the majority of the dirty dishes for me, day after day, I really appreciate that.

So I'm not totally anti-technology.  I am, however, getting rather fed up with how technology lets things intrude on our personal lives.

DH's employer issued him a smart phone a handful of years ago.  The idea was, for their employees who are required to be out of the office frequently on work-related travel (in DH's case, development and testing trips for future model cars), a smart phone would make work easier.  From pretty much anywhere on the road, they can communicate with everyone back in the 'office' that they need to be in touch with on a daily basis in order to keep the program rolling in a timely fashion.  They can get texts, they can read and send emails, they can send documents back and forth without having to be seated at a desk in a permanent location. They can get test data without actually having to be present for 100% of the tests.  And with the hands-free feature in the cars, they can even 'attend' meetings that are happening hundreds of miles and a few time zones away all while they are driving, testing, developing on work related trips.  Efficient. Cost-effective.

Except that it means work is now done, at times, at 9:00 or 10:00 or even 11:00 p.m. on my living room couch or dining room table.  A time that used to be private, family time.  Work (in the form of conference calls to far away countries) is now done at 6:30 in the morning, while eating breakfast. Work is now done on Sunday morning, sitting in a pew, just before church starts.  Work is now done from a tent, on a family camping trip that the rest of us have been waiting months for DH to be available for.  And now I too can work for this company (might I say unofficially and for no pay) by reading important texts and emails to DH while he drives us to a 'relaxing' destination on one of his 'vacation' days. Funny, I thought if you were using one of your vacation days allotted to you by your employer, you did no work for your employer that day!

Do I sound a little bitter?

I am!  It's ironic that back when we were engaged, when DH was entering his senior year of college and we were researching companies that he might wish to make a career with, I commented that I did not want to be a "corporate wife".  I didn't want to schmooze with his co-workers and higher ups in social situations.  I didn't want my lifestyle, or my time, to be controlled by a company.  I wanted his work to be a separate thing from our family life:  something he put specific hours into five days a week, but that never came home with him, never infringed on our time with our children or each other, never dictated when I could do things.  He agreed whole-heartedly.  Work was something you did, then left at the office.  It had no reason to come to our house, to take his mind away from his family during those off duty hours he was at home.  It especially had no need to affect me in any way other than being  a regular deposit into our joint bank account.

HA!  I can't count the missed birthdays and anniversaries because he was required to be out of town on a business trip.  I can't count the times in recent years that I have been pretty much forced to attended corporate meetings for a company I don't work for, because I couldn't not hear what was on speaker phone, or hands free in the car, just feet away from me.   I really don't care to overhear a discussion about the fuel regulations imposed by foreign governments an ocean away for upcoming vehicle models while I'm eating my bacon and eggs, thank you. Seriously, if I wanted to work in that kind of environment, attending meetings at all hours of the day, night, and sometimes on weekends, I wouldn't have, decades ago, decided to forego college and its professional degrees.

Now that technology has made it so easy to work from where-ever DH is, my objections to being controlled by a company aren't met by whole hearted agreement.  They are met by either denial ("go somewhere else if you don't want to overhear my meeting"), or acquiescence ("that's the way it is anymore, deal with it").  Sometimes I just want to thrown that darn phone (and company issued laptop, too,) into the nearest water hole. Or run it over repeatedly with the tractor. That, however, isn't an acceptable (to the company) way of dealing with it.  To me, being driven away from an entire floor of my home, or away from a long ride in our private vehicle or vacations with my husband, isn't acceptable either, and is not how I should have to "deal with it".

Corporate issued technology, go away!  Leave me alone!  I don't want you in my life.  You have no right to take up my time.  I never signed a contract giving you the power to dictate my schedule.

And if you want my husband after 8 hours or on weekends or 'vacation days', at least pay him overtime.  Because I can't do my household and homestead chores plus keep up with the ones he's too busy/unavailable to do, and his (based on 40-hours a week and hasn't paid overtime in nearly 20 years) salary surely doesn't allow us to pay for a landscaper or a maintenance guy. We won't even go into the strain it puts on family relationships since there is no money in the world that can fix that.

Yarn Along: September

I am joining Ginny today for this month's installment of the Yarn Along.

The past month was very busy with harvesting and canning the garden goodness, but looking back on what I've also knit and read in that time frame, well, I'm amazed!  I do think the earlier darkness in the evenings as well as the horrible spells of heat and humidity (after a point, I refused to do any canning if the indoor temperature was going to be hitting the upper 80s due to the high humidity and relentless sunshine outside and lack of air conditioning inside) played a large part in all the knitting and reading.

I was able finish my Polka Dot Party socks near the end of August.  I still don't like the heels, and the socks came out a little bit less stretchy than I find comfortable, but overall I do like them. They were a good first attempt at fair isle/color work in a sock, and I learned a lot.  I will definitely make another pair sometime in the future, but go up a needle size and substitute in a different heel next time. I guess I just prefer a gusset heel.

I have to confess that I took a short break from the polka dot socks just before working the heel on sock #2. . . that dreaded heel ;0).  I whipped up another UP dish cloth to send back to college with DD2 before settling in to tackle the sock's heel.  The dish cloth was a quick project that gave me some instant gratification.

UP dish cloth

And then, as soon as the second sock of the polka dot socks was off the needles, I began my next sock project: a pair of UP socks (pattern, as well as the dish cloth pattern, found in the Knit The UP! book I bought at Sew Irresistible in Houghton this past April).  The main color is the limited edition Knit Picks Sock Lab from this Spring, which just so happened to be in Michigan Tech's colors, and I used an off white for the contrast (as the UP is snow covered almost the majority of the year.)

This pattern is super easy.  I whipped off the first sock in less than a week!  I love it, and I know DD2 will love it.  

hot off the needles, unblocked

What I didn't expect was that DS2 would stop in over the holiday weekend and see the sock in progress.  Apparently I should have ordered two skeins of the Sock Lab yarn, as it is now unavailable in that exact color combo.  From the look on his face, it was quite obvious that DS2 would like a pair of socks in honor of his alma mater as well.  

Would any readers happen to have purchased that yarn and be willing to sell me a skein in the black/gold colorway???

Meanwhile, with all that knitting and canning going on, I still managed to read several books.  All of which I enjoyed and would highly recommend, especially The Sea Keepers Daughters.  That one was not one I though I'd actually finish as I worked my way through the first couple of chapters and wasn't really 'feeling' the story.  Yet, it soon picked up and ended up being one of those can't-put-it-down kinds of books for me.