Blazing Trails

The midpoint of the summer camp season is now a memory. Three of the four weeks of Trailblazers camp have passed. Each week has its own character, with the first week (the only week without Leaders In Training counselors) probably being the most challenging (relatively speaking)since there were a couple of kids in my group who were pretty helpless when it came to doing anything for themselves (perhaps they have parents who do everything for them). The second week, there were a couple of kids who stood out in a good way, with one boy constantly picking up trash whenever he came across it while we were out and about, and another kid who boiled over with enthusiasm for being outside and exploring nature (he even took home a dead Pine Sawyer beetle that we found in the pool filter - the big one in the picture below).

Last week, I had an unusual group for two reasons: all 14 of my kids were girls, and it was perhaps the quietest group I've ever led. They had a good time, but it was sometimes hard to tell. Most of them were very intelligent too, which is always nice. One girl managed to pick up a rather disgusting piece of trash though. I found her holding a piece of poopy toilet paper that someone had left near a trail. This illustrates perfectly why we have a "leave no trace" rule when it comes to never leaving anything behind in the woods (especially something that has already been used to wipe a behind).

The little Chorus frogs were all over the reeds near the pond, affording kids with opportunities to quietly sit and spot them. The longer one observes, the more one sees.

In the hole near the field, we saw rattlesnakes mating. This is only the second time I've observed this in the wild. The next day, I overheard the kids telling the bus driver about it, so I guess they were impressed.

Other than the usual rattlesnakes, we haven't seen to many others this summer. I haven't seen a single Garter snake up by the reservoir (perhaps because of the presence of Herons and Egrets, which eat snakes). On Friday, we did stumble across a small Garter snake sunning itself in a dry wash in the forest though. It looked like it had shed recently.

Speaking of Friday, I've been having the campers create nature mandalas at the end of the short Friday solo hike (which functions as a way to have them reflect on the week and think about the future, which is Friday's theme). Here is what my groups have created at the end of the last two weeks:

In the middle of the week, instead of sleeping over for the first Trailblazers overnight (the first two weeks didn't have one scheduled), I played hooky and took Willow and Sophie (along with a couple of their friends) to see Five Seconds of Summer at Shoreline Amphitheater. The girls had a great time, and I had one too, if only because they were having one. I can't say that I'm a fan of the band, although they were good at what they did.

Tomorrow, we start the fourth and final week of Trailblazers for the summer. After that, I'll be working the last two weeks of regular summer camp, followed by three weeks off. The summer is blazing by in a flurry of dust and sun.

Finally, by way of reply to a comment received on a post (yes, that one) but not published. I never mention the name of the camp that employs me on this blog because this is a personal journal and I don't necessarily want or need our customers (parents and/or kids) finding it reading it, so if a comment mentions the name of my employer, it doesn't get published. Sure, my blog is on the internet for everybody to read (and anybody who digs deeply enough will probably find it), but I like to keep it as unsearchable as possible because... well, because I like to keep a boundary between my private and my professional life, I guess. Plus, I don't really want to continue talking about the event mentioned in the post that was commented upon. Let it suffice to say that the writer of the news stories about the incident, while mostly keeping things factual, is very clever when it comes to injecting opinion and fanning flames. Over the years of my existence on this planet, every newsworthy event that I have been peripherally involved in has been misreported in some way, whether through the asking of inflammatory questions, or being vague with facts, or countless other journalistic tricks. This is done to sell the stories and keep people reading and yes, it has a negative impact on innocent people as well as the guilty ones.

A Chicken Party, Plus Trailblazers

Here are some photos from Penelope's 7th birthday party. We initially thought of making party hats for the chickens, but figured they would just fall off. The bibs stayed on better, although the chickens were somewhat confused. I've since come to the conclusion that the only thing harder than putting a bib on a chicken is removing it afterward.

Mrs. Charles:

Henrietta:

Penelope:

After receiving her bib, Dot promptly vanished into the coop. Dash lived up to her name, rushing about as usual. Once birthday snacks were offered, the chickens converged for a feast of mealworms, raisins, and other tasty morsels.

My work week was fun and fast, our enjoyment aided and abetted by much cooler temperatures (including a few drops of rain on Thursday). This was the first of four weeks of our Trailblazers program. The program is a bit more structured than regular summer camp, and focuses more on science and natural history. For the most part, the campers range in age between 8 and 10 years old. We have the same four staff members as last year, which allowed us to quickly slip back into groove. We even had a few of the same campers.

Early in the week, Turkey Vultures were hanging out around camp. That's somewhat unusual.

The rattlesnake that I thought had abandoned the hole on the lower field after shedding was back with a couple of friends. I think I have inadvertently selected the local population for intelligence, removing all of the easily trapped snakes to distant locations so that the only ones remaining nearby are the individuals too wily to be caught. Now, from the looks of it, they're fixing to breed.

As an added bonus, here's a picture of me looking like a lunatic. Honey Badger, one of the mentor counselors for Trailblazers, has been capturing candid pictures of the staff for the last few weeks.

Also, here's an improv session at the pool, featuring drone flute and two staff radios (played by Meerkat and Sniffles) set to "error" mode. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), no recording exists. Summer camp is full of strange little moments like this.

Trailblazers weeks always end with contemplative solo hikes and a chance to reflect. This week, one of the kids, a camper named Jaguar, asked if I'd seen the movie "Inside Out". I replied that I had, and he responded by telling the group that this week helped form a core memory (which won't necessarily make sense to any readers who haven't seen the movie, but since I've seen it, I recognized it as a rather profound compliment). The kids in my group were great, although as always, there were a couple of them who always seemed to be doing the opposite of what they should have been doing. The most vivid example of this was the kid who, when warned about some overhanging poison oak, promptly reached up and grasped it. Actually, two different kids did this on separate days. Sigh.

This coming week, we add LIT (Leaders In Training) to the mix. These are 13-year-olds who will be acting as counselors for Trailblazers while under the tutelage of mentor counselors. Willow will be at camp as a regular summer camper. Next year she'll be an LIT. She's really growing up. This evening, she'll be going to see her favorite band, One Direction, with a friend. I'm happy for her, but I'm glad that someone else is taking her.

A Plague of Frogs, Movies on the Beach, Dancing Planets, and Excessive Heat

The sun seared much of California with renewed ferocity this week, and the humidity made being outside even less comfortable. Despite this, the wheels of summer camp kept turning, grinding out five days of fun and festivity.

I started the week tired due to a weekend full of live music, including Mayhem Fest at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Then, because free movies play on the beach during the summer, went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on Wednesday. We saw The Breakfast Club, which I last saw so long ago that I barely remembered it. I think I liked it better this time through. It helped that a full, yellow moon slowly rose above the fog bank behind us to our left. It was quite beautiful. At one point, the seagulls started freaking out above us, and we looked up to see a hovering drone with red and green lights invading seagull airspace. It eventually turned and disappeared in the direction of the pier, and the seagulls calmed down.

This was the view to our right:

To the west, Venus and Jupiter did their static dance in the darkening sky. I pointed them out to the kids on the night hike the following night.

What else? A camper found a box turtle carapace in the pond yesterday. Not only aren't box turtles native to California, but they aren't aquatic. I envisioned some clueless weekend-warrior turtle owner deciding to free the box turtle by throwing it in the pond. Nobody knows for sure though, so it's a mystery.

The other noteworthy camp-related event this week was the abundance of tiny tree frogs (or Pacific Chorus Frogs, as they are now usually known) around camp at night. There were a bunch of them in the hallway, leaping across the floor and scaling the glass doors. There was one in the kitchen while I was making coffee this morning, and there was one in the Hub last night, which was spotted by a little homesick girl. I told her that she had saved the frog's life because when she spotted it, it was stuck in a spider web near the floor. That brought a smile to her face. Also in the Hub was a boy with a migraine (who ended up going home) and a counselor with a fever (who couldn't get hold of her parents, so didn't). It was kind of a busy night, as summer camp nights go.

At home, one of our Bold Jumping Spiders became a mom and a corpse in a short span of time. I found her little carcass at the bottom of her jar, and her young congregating on the sides. We're going to let them go in the front yard, because if we free them in the backyard, the chickens will eat them.

It's Definitely Summer

Last night, while leading the second night hike of the summer camp season, I spotted a scorpion in a tree. I've been using an ultraviolet flashlight to spot scorpions and Yellow-spotted millipedes for years now, but this is the first time I've found a scorpion in a tree. By the end of the hike, we had found 17 scorpions, a glow worm, and witnessed a meteor scratching an arc across the sky above and spitting sparks as it died. It was visible long enough that when I saw it, I told the kids to look up and they actually all had time to see it too.

The heat was one of the reasons that there were so many scorpions out and about. Thursday was the hottest day of the summer so far, I think. Today, it doesn't seem so bad yet.

Oh yeah, Sophie and Nathan were both up at camp this week as Wild Things counselors. Nathan now has not only a driver's license, but a car. Sophie took part in the counselor skit last night, stepping into the role that Alex made his own during previous summers. She has grown enough that a lot of people have to do a double take before recognizing her. The same could be said for all of the kids though. Time is forever slipping away.

Challenge Completed

Slightly over three years ago, I started a walking challenge on Dailymile. I've mentioned it here before - the challenge was to simply walk the 1,779 miles that the hobbits walked in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (no, I don't know how the hell that number was arrived at, or who did the math).

Yesterday, somewhere above the creek at work, in the company of 21 kids and 4 counselors, I completed the challenge. I didn't have a ring that I cared to part with, so nothing was flung into the crack of doom, but I felt a sense of accomplishment. Jeanine even managed to find me a proper shirt to wear for the occasion - a shirt that referenced walking to Mordor - which I found draped over my laptop when I got home from work on Monday. She's thoughtful like that.

For most of the challenge, I've been using Dailymile to keep track of my mileage, and in the last few months, I've added a Fitbit to my arsenal because Jeanine, being Jeanine, managed to get a couple of free Fitbits through an online trading group. I've found mine quite addictive. It definitely inspires me to move more.

Today, a scorpion crawled under it. Scorpions do that.

Here's a picture of one of the shoes that helped me finish the challenge. I tend to wear out my shoes quickly, or wear them wrong, like I'm doing in this instance. Photo by Honey Badger.

Finally, here's a picture of a mandala I helped a group of campers and counselors assemble in the forest this afternoon. I think that some of the boys were more excited at the prospect of destroying it afterward. Leave no trace.

Less pleasant is the fact that one of my coworkers was suddenly fired today. I'm not sure why. My coworkers are more like family than anything else, and we pretty much all feel that way, so there was a shocked silence when the news hit. We've been told that it's not related to our other recent troubles. Still, it was strange and sudden.

Happy Solstice

Once again, we mark that point in our journey around the sun when days are stretched to their breaking point and nights are compressed into the smallest possible temporal space. Now, the trend can reverse itself for six months. To my mind, this is one of the few holidays that actually means something, at least when one considers the big picture.

Usually, the Summer Solstice falls on or near the first day of summer camp. This year, we've already had a whole week of camp at this point. Given recent events, there have been some changes in our protocols and procedures. Basically, it just means more sign-in and sign-out sheets attached to clipboards, and parents now have to line up to affix their signatures to said sheets. There has been a small amount of grumbling about this, since the process is essentially a speed bump in the dropping off/picking up process. People are busy! They've got places to be! That person with a clipboard is slowing them down! Fortunately, during the week, many parents knowingly rolled their eyes and accepted the changes with good humor.

The other big change is having an actual security guard on site during the sleepover on Thursday night. It's the same guy who kept me company for the final month of science camp this year, which is good because he's a nice guy. While he sits awake in the hub all night, the five staff members on duty sleep on the field with the kids. This year, we have new cots, which are both more comfortable for us and more visible to kids. Oh yeah, having five people instead of four is a change as well. The fifth person has the unenviable job of being the one who gets awakened by kids who need to use the bathroom. This week it was Algae, and she reported only being awakened once, so I guess it's not too bad.

I had Group Two this week (out of 8 groups, with Group One being the youngest), and it was a pretty good group, with only a couple of boys who always seemed to be doing the opposite of what they were supposed to be doing.

There is a rattlesnake back in the hole on the edge of the lower field, but since it basks just inside the lip of the hole, I haven't yet managed to relocate it. Maybe during the coming week sometime...

Apparently, the park rangers now don't want kids splashing around in the pond. It figures - they make it look all nice and then deny access. Typical paper pusher mentality. We had a good hour of fun before the ranger drove by though.

I led a couple of critter hunts, and although we didn't find anything spectacular, the usual suspects were out and about.

There was a small Alligator Lizard under the board where I expected to find an Arboreal Salamander (the salamander was back the next day).

There was a little Garter Snake in the transition zone between chaparral and forest, just where I told the kids there was likely to be one. I like it when the wildlife cooperates like that.

One of the kids found a big, fat Forest Scorpion under a piece of wood. During the week, we found several more, including at least five on them on the night hike. It's a good thing they're not dangerous.

Here's my favorite dead Douglas Fir tree, with its crown of Poison Oak.

I'm not the only one taking pictures. In fact, there are quite a few staff members and volunteers who are excellent photographers. Here's a picture of me, taken by Honey Badger.

Despite recent events, our happy island in the stream of grim reality has survived, and continues to thrive. Out in the stream, species are disappearing while the masses prefer to wallow in fetid pools of ignorance.

Here's an account of my recent trip to Baltimore, published on my music blog because it's basically a review of a music festival.

Currently listening to: In Gowan Ring "Visions of Shadows That Shine" Perfect music for the Solstice. Perfect music for anytime.

Transitioning

The second week of June is usually a week of transitions, this June was no exception. At work, this week is referred to as "summer camp set-up week", and we were all hard at work putting away the science camp things and wiping the dust and cobwebs from the summer camp things. There were an alarming number of mice nesting in corners of sheds and storage rooms. One was molding at the bottom of a bucket, and another was mummified in a trap. The week, of course, had meetings and updates of various sorts, including a meeting addressing changes in our routines brought about as a result of the topic I addressed a couple of posts ago. This year, there will be a security guard on duty during our Thursday camp-out, and the Rule of 3 (no staff members or counselor volunteers are ever allowed to be alone with campers) is now in place as a policy. We also have a new bus stop, which is over at the local high school rather than at the elementary school we've been using up until this summer. This is good news, because the additional space in the parking lot and the general layout of the area we'll be using means we can spend less (or no) time directing traffic and reminding parents that no, they're not entitled to run over traffic cones or send their children running into traffic. In short, summer is looking good.

The other transitions that happened this week were the middle school graduations of both of my stepdaughters. Eva's graduation happened on Wednesday afternoon, and it actually rained for the duration of the ceremony, meaning that we were soaked to the skin by the time it was over. Many parents at the ceremony displayed the class and refinement of the kind of people usually encountered at Walmart (this is based videos I've seen online, since I've never shopped at Walmart and never will). Their lack of situational awareness was such that we couldn't see the stage due to umbrellas and people crowding to the front in the aisles. I can understand people wanting to take pictures of their kids, but at least a couple of women simply stood up in the aisles and recorded the entire ceremony while the people behind them stared at their backs. Despite getting soaked, it was great that we got some rain.

The next evening, it was Sophie's turn to graduate, this time under the hot sun. Finally, I thought, I won't be stuck behind a bunch of umbrellas! Wrong. There were a number of people who brought umbrellas to keep the sun from their patrician countenances. Thankfully, before the ceremony began, they were told to put them away.

The ceremonies were similar, although Eva's was perhaps a bit more rushed due to the rain, and shorter due to the smaller number of graduates. Heartfelt speeches were given by students and administrators, and people were generally in celebratory moods. One chapter has ended, and another has begun. In two years, it will be Willow's turn.

At work yesterday, I discovered that the hole at the edge of our lower field is once again home to at least one rattlesnake. I didn't move it because it was inside the hole, and thus harder to catch, but I plan to try to relocate it on Monday. Just as I was leaving though, I was told that there was a rattlesnake in the garden, eating a mouse. By the time I got down there, it had gotten nervous, abandoned its meal, and vanished under one of the rock borders separating pathway from plants. The counselors who had been working in the garden showed me where it had gone, and in short order I had captured it. I left it in a bucket with its meal, in the care of one of my coworkers, with the hope that it might resume eating. I'm betting that it didn't, but I figured it was worth a try.

Later, at home, Jeanine found a Black Widow in the process of making a web in the kitchen, between the dishwasher and the cabinets, right at ankle level. We now have a pet Black Widow. We're calling her Agnes. Later, I realized that California has two dangerously venomous native species, and yesterday, I had to catch one of each. What are the odds of that? With me, actually pretty good, apparently.

Today, at the closing ceremony for Willow's softball league, Willow was presented with a "Sportsman of the Year Award" plaque for her age division. I'm a proud father. She definitely earned it too. Afterward, I took her to a birthday party at nearby Vasona park, and while she partied, I walked to nearby Lexington reservoir, which is about 4 miles away.

Where the trail starts to ascend the back side of the dam, I found this little critter.

Like I did the last time I picked up a Gopher snake on the trail (hiking up Mission Peak with Willow), I stepped into naturalist mode and did a quick presentation for a nearby family, and then released it off the trail so it would be less likely to get run over by one of the many cyclists who fly down the path.

The reservoir itself actually has a decent amount of water in it.

The trail itself was hot and dusty.

When I got back to Vasona, Willow was out on a peddle boat, working on her sunburn.

Also of recent note, Willow's oldest brother, Alex, just graduated from high school. When I started this blog, he was a little six year old boy who preferred to be known as "Lexy". This makes me feel old. He also has had his first car accident, which gave the two middle kids, Sophie and Nathan, mild concussions, and did some pretty serious damage to his car.

Betrayed

Today is the last day of science camp for the 2014/2015 school year. On Monday, we start setting up for nine weeks of summer camp. I will be working five weeks of day camp, and four weeks of our newish Trailblazers program. The forest is menacingly dry, and we'll have to be careful on windy days.

There is a reason for the long space between this post and the previous one. Something happened at camp that I've been hesitant to write about. Around a month ago, while at one of Willow's softball games, I got a call from my boss to inform me that one of my coworkers had been arrested for child pornography. Of course, I was floored. Just moments before the call, I had been talking with Sophie about how much we liked this person. After the call, and the person we thought we liked was proven not to exist. We had liked a fiction, a disguise. Since the arrest, he has also been accused of molestation, and there has been word that he was not only trading pictures online (which is what got him caught), but manufacturing them. I'm not sure how much is actually true, but at the very least, he had child pornography on his laptop and phone, so he belongs in jail and permanently away from children even if the other allegations turn out to be false.

At a subsequent work meeting, one of my other coworkers stated that it was like somebody had died. There has indeed been a grieving process, with all of the usual steps: disbelief, anger, determination to move on, and everything in between. For me, the feeling of betrayal is the one that has stuck. The media, being the sensationalist monster that it is, has inflamed things with article after article on the subject. The result has been general outrage amongst a vociferous minority of parents and other people tangentially associated with our program. Not that I blame them (the parents that is - don't get me started on the media), because I'm a parent too, and Willow herself has been under the care of this individual while at camp. You see, he was the only other employee to have my job description. He was the night supervisor at our second site. Willow went there as a camper last year. Of course, there are parents who seem to lack perspective. Maybe they've fallen prey to the media fear mongering, or maybe they're just easily upset. Willow mentioned that one of moms of a softball teammate won't even let her daughter go to sleepovers anymore (which has nothing to do with our camp at all) due to this news.

Speaking of Willow, one of my first thoughts upon hearing about the arrest was how to break the news to her. Sophie had been standing right next to me when I took the call, and I couldn't tell her what had happened. She knew something bad had happened, but all I could manage to do was reassure her that nobody had died or been injured. In the end, it turned out that I didn't have to break the news to any of the children in my life. The news was all over all of the schools by the next day. There is more than one way a child predator can rip away innocence. This is the indirect way.

All of our employees go through the standard background checking procedure. Even our volunteers are fingerprinted (with the exception of the ones who aren't adults yet). This obviously isn't foolproof. In the interim weeks, the Office of Education (which oversees our program) has been doing its own investigation into our past safety procedures, our director (my boss) has been forced into a leave of absence while the investigation is happening, and a security company has been hired to provide extra staffing for each site at night. So, for the past few weeks, I've been sharing my space with an elderly security guard whose main conversational gambit has been about how things are cheaper in India. He is a nice guy, although we don't have much in common, and his presence cuts into my alone time. Being an introvert, I seriously value my alone time, but we do what we must. This morning, it being the end of the school year, I shook hands with him and we parted ways. I don't imagine we'll continue having actual security guards on site, but I'll always have some sort of company during my shift from now on. The policy of having only one person awake at night at each site is permanently at an end. The vacant position at our second site is currently a rotating one, with staff members filling in as they can. Other changes are in the offing as well. Our reliance on low-risk offenders to do janitorial work is at an end, as the whole weekend work program has been canceled (this despite the fact that it's pretty common practice for educational institutions to take advantage of this program - Eva's school does, for example). Time will tell what the permanent changes will be. It's a work in progress, and what all of the consequences will be, we don't yet know.

I refuse to link to the news stories here, but they can be found with a few clicks and the relevant search words. I could write more, but I think I've gotten this off my chest now, so I'll end here.

More Photos

I'm falling behind on here again, so I thought I'd at least post a few photos from the last couple of weeks. The first few are from a hike that Willow and I did up to Mission Peak the weekend before the most recent one. The amazing thing is that she is the one who suggested the hike, which is a bit unusual for her, especially when one considers it involves a 2000 foot elevation change. The view from the top is spectacular though, and the day was beautiful.

On the way down, we saw a coyote running along the ridge line. It crossed the trail ahead of us and lounged in the grass awhile.

Near the peak, Willow almost stepped on a little Gopher snake. She did one of those little "avoid crushing the reptile" dances for a moment. I picked it up and the lady in front of us came back so she could take pictures of it. I switched to naturalist mode for a minute or two, then took my own pictures and let it go.

This is a picture showing the trail leading away from the peak. Yeah, it was kind of a pain in the butt to walk up it. Completely worth it though.

We never did get too close to the coyote, but it didn't seem to concerned by the nearby crowds.

There were lots of corvids riding the thermals, but not too many hawks or vultures.

It's a popular destination. The trail we took begins at Ohlone college, and most of the hikers seemed to be college students.

Willow, being a child of the 21st century, took lots of pictures with her iPod.

Of course, there are the obligatory "standing on top of the spire" photos, the taking of which usually entails waiting in line.

This was one of the last photos I took on the way down. It provides a nice contrast between the hills and the valley, and illustrates why I'd rather be in the hills.

At camp, there is a Gray fox who has incorporated visits to our compost buckets into its nightly routine. I set up the trail cam right outside my window one night, and got these photos.

Today, it is partially cloudy and there is a cool breeze. Our internet was out earlier, and had been since Saturday. This is a relatively common problem. Spring is definitely here though. The garden is full of green, and our artichoke plant could feed an army, if only because we fenced it off from the chickens.

Wild Visitors

Last year, toward the end of the summer, work began on updating our nature lab. The job is finally finished, and the new space looks great. While I went back to working nights this week, one of my coworkers was busy moving the animals back in. There is still some decorating work to be done, as well as some searching for new, more professional looking, display cages. Here are some photos of the empty space, in all of its Spartan glory:

There is a bold little gray fox hanging out at camp now. Early in the week, I heard that it had been spotted in the garden, so I set up my trail cam and sure enough, I got a couple of shots. In the first photo, I can almost imagine that the fox looks surprised at the presence of a camera, and in the second photo, there is just the gray blur of a hasty retreat.

On the way back up to camp from setting up the camera, I checked by the garden gate and found the usual kind of reptile.It was probably the most nervous rattlesnake I've come across. It spent a good portion of the night rattling, and my morning meeting with the cabin leaders was accompanied by its agitated buzzing sound. It eventually calmed down, and now it resides farther away from camp.

The fox came back on Thursday night, filling the niche once occupied by the local raccoons (I had seen a raccoon on Monday night - in fact, it didn't notice me at first and reacted to my sudden presence with a startled jump, but these days, there are rarely raccoons around camp at night) by rooting around in the compost buckets. This was my best chance yet to observe one of these foxes in action, and I was impressed all over again by how catlike they are. It reacted to my presence by moving off into the distance, eventually vanishing into the forest at the edge of camp.

As for the kids this week, they were well-behaved sixth graders from four different private schools. I had to dispense enough medicine that I felt like some sort of pharmacist. Some kids are definitely over-medicated, but this week, we definitely had our fair share of kids with serious medical conditions. There was a boy with diabetes, a girl with epilepsy, and a girl with cystic fibrosis. I'm reminded of a brief moment when Willow was barely a year old, when her mom and I were told that she might have cystic fibrosis. It was scary, and thankfully, a false alarm. My heart goes out to children struggling with chronic conditions, especially this one.

Diurnal

I ended up being completely diurnal this week due to a two day Diastat training session I attended. What is Diastat? It's a rectal gel. Why would I need to be trained in the usage of something as unappetizing sounding as rectal gel? Well, apparently there are some cases when the proper application of this gel might save a life. If a person is having a seizure, Diastat can stop it. If the seizure is outside of the norm (in duration), or if it's the first time a person has had a seizure and it doesn't appear to be stopping in a reasonable amount of time, I now have the training needed to get out a little plunger and stick some medicine up where the sun doesn't shine. I sincerely hope I never have to do this.

We got to practice this on dolls. It occurred to me that it might be more realistic if we used Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls, since they wiggle around. I even wrote this on the "suggestions for improvement" section of the feedback form we were all handed.

I was reminded of the time when Willow was barely more than a toddler, and had a febrile seizure, and how scared we were. I'm glad that was a one-time thing. It must be hard to be the parent of a kid with epilepsy.

Most of our staff got to miss this training, but the health aides and night supervisors attended. Squirrel, who is our permanent hub host at our second site, showed up for a little bit of it too. We discovered a little burrito place around the corner during our lunch break as well, which made enduring the sadly out of date videos slightly more bearable. In one video, All of the talking heads were wearing glasses big enough to allow their cheeks to see better. It was distracting. They were all digitized, but the schedule indicated that they were from the VHS era. I could almost imagine them being shown in Super 8.

On Thursday, I covered a field class for my friend, Big Brown Bat. The kids were great and the day was warm. I took the group up to Lake Ranch Reservoir, paying attention to my FitBit as we hiked. It seems that the hike I thought was around 5 miles long is actually over 6. We caught a couple of toads and a Garter snake, all first spotted by the kids. The Killdeer were out and about too, and a handful of kids got to see the heron that lives by the reservoir. It was a good day.