Several Months Later

I stopped posting when things got very busy and very routine, and I apologize for that. I didn't start posting again because a lot of rough things started happening and I hate posting about bad news. I'm over that, and have decided to--as best I can--update you on what's happened since November 4th.

Mostly in pictures because it takes less time.

I have almost no pictures from November, and that was awhile ago so I don't remember much of what happened that month. I do know that my dad came to visit for Thanksgiving, and that was wonderful. I had a couple days off of work and got to be a tour guide in the city, which I honestly love doing because I think this place is awesome and has so much to offer. I also had to move at the end of the month, which was chaotic because I didn't find a place until 3 days before the end of the month. What fun! I moved out of my bad neighborhood to a decently safe, suburban neighborhood of mostly homeowners with families.

Then it was my birthday!

This is the cake that I was surprised with! It says "AD Nichole" which stands for "Asian Domain" because over the radios you call to people with their department leading so everyone knows what to listen for.

The people I work with also took me shooting.

For the record, I did pretty well.

I just found some pictures from a little bit earlier in the year.

Painting elephant feet for footprints!

This is Bubba. The best lion in the world.

The month of December was pretty full of activities.

We had the Asian Domain Christmas party.

We had cookie parties, where I taught people some baking fundamentals. We tried making samoas. Never try to make samoas.

One weekend I got to go to a Battle of 1812 reenactment, which was really neat because I think history is cool. Andrew Jackson was there and I hate him so I made a fuss about that.

  They fired their cannons!

January had some rough spots. I had one particularly bad week that took some time to recover from, and which culminated in a popped tire that I had to replace. I made it through alive, though, and most of the issues resolved themselves.

I was invited to a ball, Osiris, and was able to go with girls from work. It was actually a debutante ball, so it was really neat to get to see that kind of thing since it doesn't happen anywhere else ever and I will probably never have another chance at going to one. There was also free food, which I'm always a fan of.

 The debutantes are on the stage with their escorts. All the girls are in wedding dresses. It's a little weird. Very different.

 The girls I work with all dressed up for the ball.

These smaller balls start the Mardi Gras season off, and then the parades start and there are bigger balls that are more like parties and less about courts and debutantes.

I feel like I went to a thousand Mardi Gras parades. It gets to where there are 3 or 4 a day and they last for hours and go by so slowly. I tried to go to as many as possible in case this is my only Mardi Gras and I think I hope that it was because it was so exhausting. 

 Me with a sloth! This doesn't fit in anywhere else in the story, but the sloth is so cute!

 There's a dog parade during Mardi Gras. It's called Barkus. Happiest day of the year.

 My cat, Cypress, asleep while hugging me. I love her.

Remember that half marathon I was about to start training for? Well, I did. And then I ran it. And it was awesome and one of the best--most painful--things I have ever done.

 This is a night heron. He will take food from my hand.

I had my first crawfish boil! It was delicious!

 You tear them in half, suck the juices out of the head, and then peel the tail for the meat. It's a process and it's messy but it's a lot of fun and it's worth the work.

 Sweet little Magnolia sleeping.

I went to a wedding in St. Francisville. It was absolutely beautiful and wonderful. It was Alison's wedding, who is one of the keepers I work with at the zoo.

I have my mouthful of food, which is pretty typical.

 Upside down kitty! There's a gap under the door and the cats can only see under with both eyes if they're upside-down.

This is a crawfish mound. When the crawfish are ready to give birth they dig and push the mud up into these towers and when the underground lair is big enough, they cap it off and close it. You can see them all over the place. I accidentally kicked one over and came back to it later and it had been closed off.

Then I moved out of my terrible house with all of its drama and thought everything was getting better and one morning I went out to go to work and this is what my windshield looked like. Ugh! I'm getting it fixed today, after I go to a tiger surgery at the zoo.


That was my 5-month pictorial recap.

I'll come back soon and go into detail about what happened this month that made everything so extra crazy and hard. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I haven't wanted to post about not happy things, but I've been talking with people and everyone has their own stories of when they were starting out and life sucked and apparently it's a pretty universal misery, so I'll share my story as it happens. Wonderful! I also have some new backup plans I'll share. I hope to come back to this blog now and keep it up again. Maybe not daily like I did on my road trip, but at least frequently enough to not leave everyone in the dark.

Merry reading! Hope y'all liked the pictures!