How to get along with difficult people: 2009

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
-- Albert Einstein

today i weighed and ear-punched 40 mice. it started with mouse #2 biting my thumb. new glove. in room number 264 sitting on a roll-y chair under a metal hood with lights and ventilation, all i can think about is relationships. it is strange and meditative, although a bit ruminative. i think of my militant vegan friends, my meat-loving sweatheart, my deer and elk hunting brother-in-law and sigh at their inability to see eye to eye. i think of last night's conversation with a bunch of women about the negative effects of soy-based products on the thyroid. how is it with so much information (maybe too much?) out there we are still subject to marketing and advertising? oh how my soy-dependent vegan friends would balk at the news that soy (tofu) can be toxic...crap--i just gave a mouse the wrong ear-punch cause i was writing rather than paying attention to my work. which begs the question: which would i rather be doing? and if the answer is writing, what would i write about if i didn't have mouse ears to punch? can you have one without the other? is it like joy and pain? i have a tendancy to run from painful things--like my new job at providence. i should write about that, not mice. didn't chuck paulonick (sp?) write underneath semi-trucks while on the job? catching mice by the tail is sometimes the hardest part of my job--other than euthanasia at the end of a study, but i ask other people to do that for me. :) man they are cute little bastards! sometimes one jumps to what they think is freedom--making leaps of more than three feet off a table, careening downwards faster and faster. they always bounce when they land and they sure can run, but they certainly can't hide...all for nothing. how defeating is that? my job is slightly sad and not so different from my new job. i will write about that next time. damn, another mouse just tried to bite me! now i need a bandaid for my thumb and forefinger.