Considering Avicide

I love my cockatiels... but there are days when I could happily dunk them in a pot of boiling water, pluck them bald and have them for lunch. Thought formation doesn't come easily when accompanied by and endless litany of EEEEP EEEEP EEEEPing!

Way back 12 years ago when I decided to get a cockatiel, I found countless places on the web with people raving about what great little apartment birds they were and how quiet and sweet they could be. Uh huh. Well they're sweet, no doubt about it, and they are very quiet indeed... at night when they're asleep! But what all those well meaning friends of cockatiels failed to mention is that while they may be quiet compared to say, a Macaw, a cockatiel call is at just the right wavelength to set every nerve of a human being on edge, and while other birds mostly vocalize at dawn and dusk, they go all day long at the top of their joyous little lungs! And who can be enough of a curmudgeon to fault an adorable little bird for expressing it's joy for life? Landlords and neighbors, for one. I can now also site countless posts on bird chats from people trying to rehome their tiels because they are being threatened with eviction for the noise. Sigh... Thankfully we live far out in the country and nobody is disturbed except us. I love my birds, I understand they are birds and this is what birds do, and I intend to have them all their little lives. That does NOT, however, mean they don't make me absolutely APE SHIT sometimes!!!

Whew! Now I have that out of my system I can get on with the day's tasks; more on my term paper for Social Psych and/or the dissertation proposal due in two weeks. I am so tired of schoolwork... a tiredness that goes down into my bones and my soul. Comps will consist of four questions only, three vignettes and a philosophical/theoretical question. We are to write until we've answered the questions, whatever that takes us according to our particular styles. It's probably half as long as what the year behind us will get, since they will have had a year's notice instead of 5 weeks. We have one month from the time we pick it up to return it. I'm thinking I'll get mine the last day of class and get it over with, but I'm not sure. I may still have to take care of my mom, though it looks like my dad's surgery will be less invasive than we expected, so perhaps I should hold off until I know for sure. I hate having shit hanging over my head, and if I don't get it when I leave, I wonder how long I'll let it dangle?

I have made up a weekly schedule for internship prep and doing my lit review over the summer. I'm adding another practicum, so probably I'll do two days a week at each site. Calling this 'summer break' as some of the students and faculty are doing, is a cruel joke. There are no breaks in grad school, only shifts in focus for the work. My new practicum site is a really beautiful, friendly one though (did a masters practicum there), and my supervisor is one of my most favorite people in the world. Surely all that just HAS to make a difference in my outlook! I sure hope so. I've asked this same supervisor to be the chair of my dissertation committee, too, so I look forward to lots of interesting conversations with him. A I think I'll get a custom T-shirt made that has the word ANXIETY on the front with a circle and a line through it, and NEGATIVITY on the back in the same style.