While working... in Diary

I’ve been going crazy lately with the stresses of life, so I thought I’d write an entry. In the past, I’ve found that writing almost always makes me feel better about everything, allowing me to put my errant thoughts in some kind of order. Since I’m working, though, and I’ll have to write the majority of this entry between calls if there’s a break in between, otherwise I’ll try to finish this on my last break.

I won’t say that buying that bird was a mistake (Lucky), but it sure has been a struggle having another super intelligent bird to worry about all day while I’m at work. The feeding and basic care of the birds I’ve got down, seeds and pellets and water, etc. I know (roughly) how much sleep they need, and I know some things that they like, but honestly I don’t know what to do with them.

When I realized that the bird I got from my mom, Grey, was going to be my bird forever, my first thought when I was looking for this job was, “I’ve got to get another bird for him so he has company during the day, so he’s not just sitting there alone in his cage all day. Well, now I have two birds sitting in their cages all day. Who knows if they’re bored or content. I have a camera on them, so I check in on them a couple times a day to see if they’re sleeping or making noise or whatever. They never seem upset, just sleepy or chirpy or a little feisty. I’ve heard Lucky say a couple words here and there (mostly gobbledygook, although I have heard her say Hi and Hello in a man’s voice {maybe mine}).

The main thing that concerns me is leaving those animals in their cages for such a long period of time (10 hours) only allowing for maybe 3 hours for them to be outside of their cages, 1 hour in the morning and 2 hours at night when I get home from work. If I could get them to stay up later, I could give them more time. It’s not like I go to bed early. But Grey, the old bird, is very stubborn about wanting to go to bed at a certain time. Anything past 10:00 pm is pushing it with him. Lucky seems to not need as much sleep, or at least she’s more flexible about when she sleeps, because she never “asks” to go to bed at certain time like Grey does. Both birds seem to have no problem sleeping during the day. And it’s not just time outside of their cages that I’m worried about. I’m mainly wanting their time outside to be fun for them. My solution at the moment is to set my alarm earlier in the morning so eventually they can have a solid 2 hours then, and another 2 hours when I get home, assuming I can get Grey to eventually get used to staying up until 10:30 pm. And I know from watching other, much more experienced bird owners, that it’s the quality of the time outside of their cages that counts, not just the quantity. I’m still working on the quality part of the equation....

More and more, I’ve come to feel that their happiness is very important to me. Of course, I’ve always wanted both of them to be happy…

Anyway, I guess that’s really all I have on my mind at the moment. Work is going okay. I don’t like my job, but it is tolerable, so I’m planning on sticking with it at least 6 months before I even start looking for something else. One thing I’m really wanting is to get an earlier shift, like a shift that starts somewhere between 7 and 8 in the morning. That would solve the scheduling issues. The birds could be let out as soon as I got home from work, and I wouldn’t have to worry about them in the morning.

Sorry for the boring entry. It’s boring to me, at least. I’ll probably start writing here, more. That’s all I have for now. Take care, everybody.