Daydream Believer

On Saturday, Grant and I went to the local pet shelter and adopted a couple new family members. Meet Olive and Morgana:

They’re still a little skittish, so grabbing a good picture of them was hard. And, as a footnote, Olive doesn’t have red eyes - it’s just a reflection/distortion.

We originally went “just to look” but I think we both knew that actually bringing some home was a distinct possibility. After holding them both, and another piggie that was adoptable, we settled on these two. They’re not sisters, but they do look a lot alike, obviously. But Morgana is chubbier and has a white foot, and Olive is slimmer (younger) and has a browner tint to her dark hair.

So far, they’re getting more used to each other and us. There are battles for who gets to hang out in the Pigloo, but they cooperate very nicely when they feel like knocking the hay feeder off the cage wall. Olive doesn’t mind being picked up very much, but it really freaks Morgana out. On the other hand, Morgana is perfectly willing to eat out of our hands, but Olive would rather do her own thing.

Their cage has a shelf on one side with a ramp up. We can’t tell if they actually know how to get up there. Morgana probably can/does climb the ramp, because she was on the shelf when we woke up this morning. However, she does not use the ramp to get down; she just jumps. Olive, on the other hand, uses the ramp to go down, but I’ve never seen her go up. Hmm.

So far, they’re a pretty manageable pair. They only mess in one side of the cage, which is pretty convenient, so we’ll see if that keeps up. Morgana tends to poop all the time, even when she’s in your lap (which is standard guinea behavior) so we need some towels to use for lap time; I think we’ll use a few of my old t-shirts.

Anyway, the four of us are doing quite well; I think we’ll all get along just fine.

Enough has been said and written about McCain’s pick of Gov. Palin, and I have ranted about it long enough in conversations over the last 24 hours. So, I won’t discuss all my complaints. But my two main objectives lie in two issues closest to my heart.

The first is the environment. McCain isn’t the Earth’s best friend, by a long shot, but Palin can almost unequivocally be considered its enemy. She doesn’t believe humans have caused climate change, and is even suing the federal government for putting the polar bear on the endangered species list because it would interfere with drilling. (She also wants creationism to be taught in schools, but that’s another rant for another time.)

But my second complaint is one which we hashed out greatly last night over dinner - the fact that the main reason McCain picked Palin was to steal Hilary supporters from the Democratic party. It seems like the McCain camp thinks female voters care more about ovaries than their political views. Considering Palin’s appalling record and public stances when it comes to “women’s causes” (see Rich’s blog for more) I disagree. But I am also insulted, as a woman, that his group thinks that this tactic would really work, or at least when it comes to educated women. Someone yesterday likened it to dangling a carrot in front of the female population, and it disgusts me. I was even more angered this afternoon to find out that McCain had only met Palin once back in February before choosing her to run with him. To me, this is just further evidence that McCain chose Palin chiefly because of a niche she fit (gender) and not at all due to political or personal compatibility. From this methodology, it’s clear that McCain never had an interest in actually choosing the best VP he could have; rather he planned to just pick a VP that filled a niche to reign in stray voters. And that’s not what this should be about.

I really love Mint.com for putting my entire financial picture in one place for easy, comprehensive access.

I really hate Mint.com for telling me my net worth is -$XX,XXX.  It’s depressing to actually know the figure. 

Google Reader has released a set of new feeds you can subscribe to and follow the news that newspeople are following.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/08/read-what-they-read.html

At the web site above, you can subscribe to the feeds of Barack Obama and John McCain, but also political journalists like Arianna Huffington and others.  The idea is that by reading what they’re reading, the general public can get a better idea of what is newsworthy in the current political climate.  But what I found most interesting, however, are the sites that the candidates have on their feeds.  Obama keeps up on the Daily Show, and McCain checks out JibJab.  Hilarious.  My jadedness of the political machine, however, makes me pretty darn certain that some low-level staffer compiled the feeds for the candidates, and that Obama and McCain probably have little to no idea that it’s out there.  I also doubt that McCain even knows what RSS is, but that’s another story for another post.

I had my first doctor’s appointment for the egg donation process on Friday. It was really quick, actually. They drew blood, just as if it were any other medical exam, and then I had an ultrasound. I gotta say, I have no idea how those nurses and technicians know what they are looking at - I tried sneaking peeks, but all I saw was black, grey and white static. The nurse apparently saw something though, because at one point, she says to me, “OK, uterus looks good - and you have really pretty ovaries.”

Thanks?

I told her that that was a strange compliment to receive, and she laughed and pointed out that when you work in reproductive health, you often have to deliver bad news, or point out areas of difficulty to patients. She says that because of that, she likes to deliver positive feedback whenever she can. I thought that was a great attitude to have, and I can see it being important to her, personally, to be able to celebrate the good stuff while helping people work around the bad. So, it was an unorthodox compliment, but its context was quite touching.

I finished the appointment and went on my way.  The results of the bloodwork came back with an all-clear, so on Monday I start birth control pills, as does the recipient mother.  By the end of the month, we’ll be on the same cycle, at which point, then I start the hormone treatment.

Links on the side are updated.  Woo!!

Here’s a game for you.

Answer each of these twelve questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to do when you grow up?
10. Who/ what do you love most in life?
11. Choose one word that describes you?
12. What is your Flickr name?

For each question, enter the answer into the Flickr search bar. Choose one image from the first page of results and enter it into the Mosaic creator. Voila - your own mosaic!

Thanks to Mark for the link - I like how it turned out!

A lot of times when I finish a dolphin show, people approach me and ask how they can become a dolphin trainer, because they think it’s the best job in the world.  Sometimes, though, they tell me that I have the best job in the world.  I tell them, I couldn’t agree more.

I try to not take any day at the zoo for granted, even on days when it would be really easy to write the whole thing off.  I am able to write, engage my inner science-geek and even ham it up a bit.  I remember thinking that my best career expectation would be finding something that met one, hopefully two, of those criteria.  Sometimes I find it really shocking and serendipitous that I am where I am; I can remember being in Sea World with my family when I was in junior high and watching the Shamu presentation.  My sister was fascinated, and proclaimed how cool she thought it would be to work as a marine trainer when she grew up.  Of course I agreed, but some part of me was much more focused on the show’s narrator.

My senior year of high school, I had finally decided I didn’t want to be an astronaut (math and physics had started to seriously kick my ass) but I briefly entertained the notion of Zoology, even doing a shadow-day with a wildlife rehabilitation facility.  Towards the end of the year, I switched to acting as a prospective major. I wound up studying journalism.  Life’s ironies are kind of funny; sometimes things really come full-circle.

In a week and a half of so, I go to the doctor to get blood work and an ultrasound done, after which I will start the egg donation process. It’s going to take several weeks and daily hormone shots. Many of us remember that my emotions are pretty vulnerable when it comes to extra estrogen - part of the reason I switched from the pill to the ring - but I think this is definitely worth it. Plus, during this period, I won’t be in grad school, and that will dramatically reduce my emotional stress, I should think.

Most everyone found out about this decision at me and Grant’s housewarming party, and I think I should clarify why I decided to make this choice. And I’m going to try to chronicle this experience here on the blog for my own sake, and for any potential donors that might be googling and needing more information on the process.

I first became interested in donation because grad school and a certain Toyota Prius set me back financially quite a bit, and while working two jobs during grad school and during the last year has helped, I could use a boost. Egg donation through the organization I chose is $7k, so it was an attractive scenario. I decided to make an appointment with the nurse to find out what goes into the process. Fascinating stuff - its too long to go into here, and you could probably Wikipedia it or something, but the science really intrigued me.

What really made me decide I want to do this, though, is when the nurse talked about how, for the recipents of the donated eggs, this is the last chance. They’ve tried IVF, they’ve tried getting pregnant the natural way, and nothing has worked. They are desperate to start their family, and need a guardian angel to give them that gift. I’m not a religious person, but the idea of that guardianship really struck me. Not to be flip, but I’m sure not using those eggs (the way a woman’s cycle works, the eggs that will be harvested are actually eggs your body would have naturally reabsorbed into itself - dud eggs that the hormone treatment kind of bulks up). Anyway, if someone else can use them, needs them, why shouldn’t I give them? I can’t imagine the sorrow, the disappointment, of failed IVF cycles. As a woman, even if you don’t want kids at the moment, you understand how it would feel to want them - and not be able to have them.

Throughout my consideration of donating, though, I thought most about my grandmother. As many people know, my mom, aunt and uncle are all adopted. My grandma could not have children, so she and my grandpa adopted. More than once, we have been at family gatherings, and I have caught a glance of my grandma looking around at her family. Her expression is one of complete gratitude. I know having a family was so important to her, and were it not for the adoption system, it wouldn’t have been possible. I know that the mothers who gave up my mom, aunt and uncle were likely simply unable to raise them, and so giving them up was probably at least partially selfish. But I like to think that also, it was a gift to an unknown stranger (and a gift to my mom aunt and uncle). Because of someone else (three someone else’s) my grandma got something precious that she really treasures.

It was with those thoughts that I signed the donor contract, and I’m really happy that I did. I found out that my recipient couple has tried IVF 4 times, and now they’ve turned to donor eggs to try again. They’re so hopeful and yet so scared, they asked the nurse to call me once more to make sure I was one hundred percent committed to the process. And I am. I feel some pressure, hoping my fertility levels are good, my eggs viable, because I really want this to work for them. I will never meet them and never know their names, but I already feel bound to them.

So, I will do my best to describe the process here, but it won’t be all eggs all the time. So keep reading - if nothing else, it will probably be interesting!

Photos from Ren Faire are UP.  Check them out, some fun shots.