{"id":81,"date":"2008-11-02T11:02:54","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T15:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogshevik.com\/garneredimages\/?p=81"},"modified":"2008-11-02T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T15:02:54","slug":"balancing-vs-teetering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"Balancing Vs. Teetering"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.”
\n(Ralph Waldo Emerson)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked, I can readily name the three things I love best in this world.\u00a0 In alphabetical order they are:\u00a0 photography, squirrels, and writing.\u00a0 (My love for the humans in my life occupies its own, singular space.)\u00a0 The three combine into\u00a0one of the\u00a0most satisfying uses of my time; to share the stories of the furballs in my life, illustrated with photographs, is more or less how both my writing and my photography came to fruition.\u00a0 It’s how I found my own little niche, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Most days, it’s an easy, comfortable balance.\u00a0 I feed the wilds and my educational animals, I sit quietly and observe while wielding a camera, process the photographs, and then sit down and let the experiences flow out\u00a0in words.\u00a0 But come “baby season”,\u00a0once in spring and again in middle-to-late summer, I find that balance goes askew and there are far too many days when it’s all I can do to get everyone fed and work the long hours of my day job, let alone even feed my own Self.<\/p>\n

It’s been\u00a0a whirlwind\u00a0since Labor Day weekend when\u00a0we\u00a0took in\u00a03\u00a0grown\u00a0squirrels with closed-head injuries, and in the following 2 weeks took in\u00a06 individually-orphaned babies.\u00a0 I also\u00a0squirrelnapped two teeny-tiny “mini foxers” when my subpermittee\u00a0left them here to go on a long-planned vacation, and then took in one of our yearling yard pals who showed up gravely ill with a horrible, deep-seated\u00a0facial abscess.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I’m not working 60-80 hours a week, I can handle\u00a0far more than this\u00a0with one hand tied behind my back, even though each one is a unique case and more than one required critical care.\u00a0 Now, when at last\u00a0everyone is relatively stable, it occurs to me that while my cameras have accumulated photographs, there has been\u00a0little to no\u00a0time to process them.\u00a0 Not to mention that it is high time to finish the\u00a02009 calendar for A Squirrel’s Tale; one of the ways my photography helps raise funds for my non-profit wildlife rehabilitation organization.<\/p>\n

Ouch.<\/p>\n

Writing, however, has not been so neglected.\u00a0 With our state wildlife rehabilitation organization’s conference looming and the recent\u00a0finding of a deer with Chronic Wasting Disease in Michigan, my fingers have been busy preparing presentations and writing proposals; this particular always-fatal deer disease such an extremely serious matter that as president of our state wildlife rehabilitation organization it\u00a0has taken up\u00a0dozens of\u00a0my own hours\u00a0spent in\u00a0conversations, even arguments, and trips to meetings and symposiums in order to gain the greatest understanding of all the issues that surround it in order to help our\u00a0DNR meet this threat with all due reasonableness where the both the public and the wildlife rehabilitation community\u00a0is concerned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being one who marks such things by the natural cycle, Friday night’s haunting\u00a0realization that it is now another new year\u00a0adds a sneaky, small portion of crankiness to a disposition whose patience has already been stretched to the breaking point by even more than\u00a0those things\u00a0already mentioned.\u00a0 And so I carve out the small sliver of space and time in which to write this piece.\u00a0 Though certainly nothing that will ever earn a Pulitzer prize in literature, at the same time it does win me back some semblance of my Self.\u00a0 \u00a0For, like my little friend here, one must sometimes just hang on and remain observant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) \u00a0 When asked, I can readily name the three things I love best in this world.\u00a0 In alphabetical order they are:\u00a0 photography, squirrels, and writing.\u00a0 (My love for the humans in my life occupies its own, singular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}