The Bat and Rabies Saga

So. Saturday before last I woke up to a bat in my kitchen. Just hanging on the wall, sleeping. img_20180908_115122550 After I screamed like an idiot, I retreated to my bedroom to consider my position and to wish heartily and deeply that the damn bat would just disappear.

It didn’t. So after a bit of googling and asking tumblr for advice, I decided I would block off the kitchen with a sheet over the doorway and open the window. The bat would then go out the window and all my problems would be gone.

So I set up by bat escape plan and made lots of noise doing it and the bat never moved. The cats and I spent the day locked in the bedroom and I checked on the bat periodically and it continue to not move. Eventually it got dark and I went in to check on it and it was gone. HOWEVER, the sheet had fallen partially down. So, there was no way to be sure it left. I checked all over the apartment, but couldn’t find him. And finally decided, it left. I mean there was an escape into nature right there. Why would it head into the apartment instead?

It was at this point that my brain began to connect some dots. When I woke up Saturday Morning, the kitten had two tiny scratches of blood on his nose. I had blamed her Calico Highness and gave her a stern lecture on being gentle with delicate kittens. But. Then I realized that while I was asleep that bat was flying about the house and a bratty grey kitten had seen it and thought it was a magnificent play thing. And been bitten for his trouble.

I had then taken the kitten into the bedroom to wait out the bat escape plan. And as kittens are wont to do, it played with me. And scratched and bit me. Not so unusual. Nothing I would even have given a second thought. But. It turns out that in this area bats are the most likely carriers of rabies. How nice.

Now the kitten had an updated vaccine, but I didn’t know if that was only to keep it safe but would it stop the virus from just jumping over to me? Sigh. I should have caught the bat instead of setting up it’s escape.

So I spent Sunday in an ever increasing level of anxiety over my potential death by rabies. And because it was Sunday, I couldn’t call the doctor or the vet or the public health officials.

But then Sunday Night, there was a crash and I open the bedroom door – Bat is flying around the damn apartment. I ran to open the window – my first instinct was to rid my life of the bat. But then I remembered – I’m supposed to catch the bat. So I instead I caught the bat. It landed on the ground and I just put a tupperware on it and slid a place mat under it. And I caught a bat.

I took him the to SPCA on Monday Morning, and left a message for the doctor and the vet. The SPCA was not very informative about how I would find out if the bat had rabies. “I don’t know what happens to them after we ship them out.” Great.

The vet told me the kitten would be fine. The doctor told me I had to get a rabies shot. And that the only place to get a rabies shot is at the ER. So I had to leave work and go the ER. That was 6 hours of unenjoyable life. Most of it just waiting.

If you are interested in how rabies vaccine works, let me tell you. First they give immunoglobulin, in and around the place you were bitten. In my case that was many places on my forearm. So they had two large syringes and two nurses and both of them gave me dozens and dozens of injections in my arm. I was bleeding from them. Then they sent in another nurse who gave me 4 more injections. One in each shoulder and one in each hip.

AND THEN. There are 3 follow up shots, I had the 2nd one today. But having said all of that, it’s actually not as bad as it sounds. It really wasn’t overly painful. Even the ones in my forearm. The ER was mostly annoying for the long wait. The follow ups happen in a pharmacology clinic and the parking is more annoying than the shot. And all the people have been super nice and kind.

And what is most annoying is that the chances that I could have gotten rabies are so very tiny. But if you get rabies and don’t get the vaccine before the symptoms – 100% death rate. And to be honest, getting the vaccines curbed a rampaging anxiety that was consuming me over that weekend. Particularly since no matter how many different people at the hospital I told this unlikely story to, all of them were – Yeah you need to get the vaccine.

Oh, also my cat got quarantined by Cincinnati Public Heath Dept. keep-out-quarantine-caution-sign-s-6379 It sounds worse than it is. He’s just not allowed out and no one is allowed in. And since that is the normal situation here, it’s not really a thing. Tomorrow an official from the Public Heath Department is visiting me to see if my cat is still alive. If he is, I guess they release him from quarantine. And nothing will change.

So. By next Monday I will be fully immune to Rabies. So that’s nice.

I’m not fond of bats.

Trying new systems.

I’m always trying to make my life work better. Which is often an internal struggle against the stillness that my depression prefers.

So now I’m trying To Do apps on my phone. The one I’m currently using is called Todoist.

I like to do lists. I find writing out a list of things I have to do makes them less daunting.

When things I must do are just swimming in and out of my mind, they tend to get into log jams and I become stressed about how MUCH THERE IS TO DO! 😣

Usually when I sit down and make the list, it’s not as much as I felt it was. And it all suddenly becomes manageable. And I don’t have that feeling of did I forget to do something?

I like checklists for that reason to. I am very good at forgetting to do a thing even though it’s a thing I do all the time. At work, I need to have checklists or I will often forget a step.

But back to my new app. I’ve decided I want the app to have an alarm. Because I don’t pay enough attention to my phone to notice when I have notifications. I can literally go for days without looking at it. People get cranky with me. But if there was a noise to tell me to get me off my butt and do the thing it might help.

In this case I just put in my daily chore around the house. I don’t usually just CLEAN the house. I do one bigger chore a day. It never looks pristine, but it’s usually quite pleasant.

Or it used to be before Rebel Tim showed up. He’s a walking chaos machine. I can put away his toys, but by that evening all 10 balls he owns are out of the basket and strewn about the apartment like he held some kind of ball related rave while I was at work. Plus, he is slowly destroying the box spring. It has a thin layer of stuffing lining it. He pulls out the stuffing. So I have stuffing all over the damn apartment. I no longer give him stuffed toys for that reason.

Again, I wandered off topic. Sorry. Anyway, if the app had an alarm at say 9:30 am, I think it would work better for me. I like almost everything else about ToDoist. I’m considering seriously committing and buying the premium. If you want an app to last you have to support the people who make it. I can always set up alarms separately in my phone, I guess. The system is starting to feel complicated at that point. Honestly, the phone app is more cumbersome than just a paper and pen. But then you have to figure out where to put the paper to remind you…

grrrr.

If only you spoke Hovitos.

It’s the classic Indiana Jones Evil Villain Wins line.

But it’s also shorthand for: if only you knew the terrain and the culture better. ie – if only you studied a bit harder. It’s a brutal own.

It’s also real. If you know more, you can leverage it better. It’s the same strategy that gets Jones out of Egypt when the Nazis are chasing him. He knows more. He has more connections.

But it’s real in life too. Most of us just know whatever is necessary for us to cope with our job. We don’t try to know more. We don’t want to know what other people in our company do. We don’t want to know what happens before and after us in the work flow. We don’t question why we have to do things the way we do.

But the way I have done well in jobs is to know more. To work hard and understand how what I do matters. To understand the bigger context. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes that gets perceived as a judgement by the people I’m asking. But if you ask outside of problem situations or ask people not responsible for the problem, mostly people want to talk about what they do and what they know. Asking them is just easy. Listening and Learning and recognizing the pattern in the knowledge is what is helpful.

The next time you wonder why things aren’t going well at work. Ask yourself – Do you speak Hovitos?

Admittedly, it requires patience. Don’t be afraid to ask – even if you don’t know the knowledge holder. It also requires effort at proving you are somebody worthy of respect. If they think you slack all day they will not be as forthcoming with anything but gripes. Which also have value but don’t teach as much. You have to earn respect by working. Doing small extra things that make another person’s job easier, is also helpful at making them want to share knowledge when asked.

But once you speak Hovitos, it helps in so many ways. And the absolutely PRIMARY one is that it makes the job feel more meaningful. It makes what you do matter more. I used to get satisfaction from feeling like I was helping people with a fundamental need in their life, financial security.

Now I work for a transportation company. It feels far less important. At first I wondered how I would feel that was meaningful beyond keeping me from being homeless. But it turns out, it’s almost easier.

A) Travel is a direct impact experience. How well I do my job directly affects how well someone’s day is going to be. And if you’ve ever missed a plane, you know exactly how meaningful that impact is.

B) How I do my job affects other people at the company. And I think we don’t emphasize that enough. Skipping a thing you think is small and unimportant can cause a great deal of undue frustration to someone downstream in the workflow. Doing your job well makes a huge difference to someone else’s job / day going well. Often the things that seem oddly silly and useless are designed to make someone’s job downstream far easier. Both of those things have direct impacts on the lives of people. Doing them right is important. Those things make my job meaningful.

But I only am aware of that because I speak Hovitos. ie. I took the time to think and ask about it.

It matters. Speak Hovitos. Not just because your career will be better. MOSTLY because how you feel about your job and therefore your life will improve by magnitudes. SPEAK HOVITOS.