• In the midst of married life and school we have been working on our house. Spring of 2010 we redid the siding, windows, and the roof on our house. We won’t get into how crazy and stressed that made me. But Cody was working in North Carolina for most of that time, and I was left to go to school and make major house decisions, and deal with contractors and hiring people to come do dry wall. To help you imagine how this felt for me, you should also know that I was staying at the house alone with no blinds or curtains while strange men came and worked on my house while I was not home. …Yay..
Cody built me a bookshelf, and I love it.
• We went to Disney World with my family last summer.
• For our first anniversary we went to Memphis to see Wicked and took a carriage ride downtown afterwards. If you haven’t seen Wicked, I HIGHLY recommend it. I can’t wait to go see it again. The next day we went to the Memphis Zoo, which is hands down the best zoo I have ever been to. I would show you plenty of pictures, but when we made it back home, someone stole our camera out of our truck.
• On Dec 6 2010 we took a one night trip to Vegas for $0.12.
• I graduated College!
• Now to present day, I FINALLY graduated college May 7, 2011. Cody’s work asked him to go to North Carolina to work for over a month. He told them as long as I could go with him. I had no intentions on going with him to sit in a hotel room for 6 weeks so in the little time I had, I researched possible places to volunteer. About 5 places showed up in my search results. Only two were close enough for me to drive to, even though they were an hour away as it was. I called a place called Carolina Tiger Rescue. When I finally reached Scott, the man who approves volunteers, I told him that I would be there close to two months. I said that I would be more than happy to come out 5 days a week. He told me that they don’t waste their time on people unless they will be there 6 months. That a volunteer comes out once a week for 6 months. ?? So it didn’t matter that I was willing to come out 5 days a week for 6 weeks. I told him that I was days away from graduating with a degree in Zoology. He said, “I hope you don’t think having a degree makes you special, everyone that volunteers here has a degree.” The way he said it was extremely hurtful. I felt defeated after that because the other place didn’t really have the type of animals I wanted to work with. I cried the whole way home thinking that I would have nothing to do in NC, and that I really needed to volunteer some place to help me get a job. When I got home I decided I would look one more time. In this search a place called Conservators’ Center came up. I emailed them, and called them when we got to NC. They were happy to talk to me, and more than happy to have me come out and volunteer.
• Conservators’ Center: On my first day, I was certain I was driving into deliverance. Once I got into the driveway and into the gate to the main house, there were about 8 lions on the other side of the fence. You don’t really know how big they are until you up next to one. No exaggeration, the males are as tall as me. They have 20 lions and 10 tigers along with 2 leopards, servals, jungle cats, chausies, an ocelot, a caracal, 3 geoffroy’s cats, 2 ringtailed lemurs, 4 wolves, and 6 singing dogs. My favorites were the lions, tigers, and singing dogs. My days consisted of sorting dead farmers’ chickens, checking their butts to see if they were rotten or good. Once they were sorted, we chopped the feet and wings off the good chickens. After we prepared 35 chickens we sorted a bin full of store meat. This included ground beef, store chickens, turkey, and pork chops. Once the meat was ready, we headed over to the large compound with the tigers, lions, and leopards. Once we got the cats into their shift cages, we went into the large cages and scooped poop, cleaned their water troughs and pools, sprayed their toys with perfume and spices, and made sure all the feathers and chicken bones were picked up. Once everyone was fed, we would go eat lunch and then do some sort of manual labor. While I was there we built a new cage for Benji, a singing dog there for breeding. We worked on their new office building. Right now everything happens out of the owners’ home. You can imagine the mess and stress that must have caused them over all these years. When I left we were working on sorting a brush pile into smaller piles to be burned. It truly makes no sense, but I loved being there. All I did was handle raw meat, sometimes rotten meat, scoop poop, and work in the heat. But I loved it. I didn’t have any real interaction with the animals, except talking to them through the fence. But I was heartbroken to leave them, and I miss them now. It has been an interesting start to the summer. I can’t wait to see what this year has in store for us. Please pray I find a job soon. And hopefully I can do a better job with keeping this blog up to date.
