I'm back!

[seagoatdeb]

The whole thing started as a short time-out due to a new member complaining about my usual terse style

I had let the whole matter die and had moved on but after reading that comment which was totally uncalled for as there was not need for it even to be mentioned again.
I'm am very disappointed and saddened but I will no longer be participating in any future threads or current discussions.
Theres a difference between rude and terse !!
To say I feel alienated and singled out would be an understatement
So on that note would the moderator kindly deactivate my account and remove my details from the forum

Your skin must be tissue thin.
I am on the forum to learn, to give feedback for what little I know and to read stories about my neighbors beautiful kids.
Example: if you have a neighbor with a bunch of healthy and happy kids would you take offence if she told you that you are tying his shoe strings wrong or that you should not feed him junk food?
Maybe so but that is no reason to stop speaking to her. Instead take into consideration what she said and get the damn chip of your shoulder.
I think I am the oldest in the forum and have had birds for about 40 years. Just because I had them does not mean I was doing right by them. I have learned so much here. I have been told "stop", "don't do that", "you are getting it all wrong" and the big one "there is something going wrong in your flock and you need to fix it".
There have been a few times that my feelings were hurt and felt like I was knocked down. I am here for the benefit of my birdie babies. I will absorb any knowledge given to me no matter how it is given.
To me this feels like a neighborhood of quirky humans. I use the info from the neighbor that flings it at me as well as the soft spoken loveable guy at the end of the block.
I hate that I felt I had to get in this. It takes away from the purpose of the birds.
WHEN SOMEONE GETS THEIR FEELINGS HURT IN THIS FORUM THEY SHOULD PM THE ONE WHO CAUSED IT AND KEEP THE TOUCHY FEELY SHIT OUT OF THE GENERAL FORUM.

Togsy please dont leave. Pajarita did stay away, and now everything is a new. We can all get along when we talk about it, and treat each other with respect. She may be making an analogy as if she is talking high school, when people are used to kindergarten but we dont have to agree with her perception, or her talking "down" to others. Rude answers are not acepted on any forum, or in any good group anywhere, no one shoud be knocked down. I welcome Pajaritas knowledge and I am glad shes back. She has lots of experience and has researched a lot so she has a lot to contribute.

[seagoatdeb]

It is so good to have you back.

I lost 3 of my furry babies this year. My old Fancy cat made it to 18 and was still finding some joy in life. I intended to keep her until she was not happy any more. When she grew a tumor in her mouth she was s till able to eat but as it grew she would suffer. At the vets on the table she was alert but I realized how frail she had gotten. Like they say in the zombie movies " I gave her mercy". I know I did right but I really miss her.

My dog Bruce also made it to 18. He was deaf and blind but still played with the girls. I feel we put it off too long with him. His last 3 days all he did was bark.

Hali the boxer was about 9 and had a gray muzzle. She had surgery to remove a malignant tumor.
Within a month it was back. I had to let her go.

Well that was depressing but after I made that big an effort to type I will post it anyway.

Three is a lot to lose in one year, so sorry to hear that Liz. They are family and we do grieve them.

[seagoatdeb]

First of all, I apologize for staying away for so long but, as the poet said: the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. will try to catch up but, if there is a thread in particular that you want me to check out, please pm me and I will. And special thanks to the members that contacted me via email and pm worried about my absence. I really appreciate your concern and kindness! Like Liz often says, this website is like a neighborhood and the members are the friends and neighbors.

The whole thing started as a short time-out due to a new member complaining about my usual terse style and it was deemed by the powers that be that it would be best if I stayed away for a short while. No biggie and no hard feelings. It happens. People are more used to the kindergarten style of most birdsites and are, sometimes, shocked by my high school manner - and before anybody takes offense to this, is not a comment on anybody's maturity or level of knowledge but of approach. In kindergarten, everybody gets a gold star even if they color outside the lines, the same way that everybody gets a 'you are a good parront'' in birdsites regardless of their husbandry while, in high school, you get a: 'A) is wrong, the right answer is B) and you need to study more' which is what I tend to do . Not very tactful, I agree. Wolf is much better than me at 'niceness'. I do try but, sometimes, I forget to make the effort. To me, any argument is a debate, nothing personal about it, just opposite positions but I do realize that this is not the way some people regard been contradicted and, often, they feel offended and personally attacked when somebody tells them or implies they are wrong. Different folks, different strokes. I tend to treat people the way I want people to treat me and, when it comes to my animals care, I would much rather somebody told me straight off that I am doing something wrong than not say anything just not to hurt my feelings. And this goes for people that might not even be right, mind you! Because things change so much and so fast when it comes to parrot husbandry that I would rather explore every single lead, even the dead-end ones, than risk continue doing something I thought was right and it's now found to be wrong. So, feel free to argue with me and don't worry about the style or language because I won't take offense.

Anyway, the time-out started out great! I found out that my husband had nothing scheduled for an entire week, something I don't even remember when it happened last because he works in media which means no holidays, birthdays, weekends, etc and, because he works for ESPN in Connecticut and we live in NJ, he usually stays overnight so it's rare the week that we have two entire days together, much less an entire week! Actually, it ended up not been the entire week because they called him to work on Sunday and, as he is one of the lucky ones that due to his versatility has a clause that states that if he works more than the number of shows stated on his annual contract, he gets paid all the extra ones in a lump sum at the end of the year -and with the mortgages for the house here and the one back home and the 'super-size me' human and animal family we have, extra money is always welcome!- so he went. But we still had days and days to do projects around the house and, because one of our sons confirmed the following day that he had bought the tickets for a visit in March for his entire family, there were plenty of those! You all know how we, housewives, like to redecorate and do improvements and I am no exception!

Some projects were done, some were started but not finished and some were put in the back burner because my old dog, Mikey, took a turn for the worse. It started with him not sitting up to eat his dinner one night. He used to skip a meal or two in the past and, although he had not done it in a while, I did not think too much about it. But, the following day, he would not sit up again, not even to drink water, and I did not like the way he was breathing or acting (I think he might have had a mild stroke). I fed him in his mouth stuff I knew he could not resist (ham, meatballs, hamburgers, roasted chicken, etc) and he ate some but not enough of it; and I was giving him water and his medicines with a syringe in his mouth. And he was barking too often... Ever since he became incontinent and bed-ridden, he would bark whenever he 'messed' himself up so I would come, clean him up and change his bedding but now he was barking for company. He simply did not want to be alone so the last two nights I had to get up 4 and 5 times during the night to move him to another position, talk to him and pet him until he fell asleep again... and he was, obviously, not getting better so, on the third day, I made an appointment to put him down the following day. I called my husband who was back to work by then and he drove in the middle of the night so he could be here in the am to help me with him -Mikey weighted a bit over 90 lbs at the time of his death from the 115 lb he was in his prime so there was no way I could've managed him on my own. Early in the am, I gave him his usual sponge bath as well as a double dosage of pain killer and an oral tranquilizer to make things easier on him and, when it was time, we carried him out the back door (my husband drove the SUV into the backyard) in a large sling made out of two quilts. The people at the clinic had been advised to wait for us with a stretcher so they unloaded him out of the back (I rode with him there), placed him on exam table along with his quilts so he was quite comfortable. He got an intramuscular strong tranquilizer first, then a large dose of propofol through a catheter in his leg and, once he was completely asleep, the drug that would stop his heart.

His death was not, in any way, unexpected because life expectancy for a dog his size is 8 to 10 years and he was almost 18 but just because I had time to get used to it emotionally, it doesn't mean that it was not hard on me to put him down or that I did not grieve for him. 17 + years is a long time - sheesh, most marriages don't last that long!- and he was not only my alpha male and a GREAT dog, he was also one of the very few dogs we have adopted as a pup (he was 6 months old) plus, his care in the last two years took so much time and effort that to find myself not having to do it kind of threw me off... But my mind and body have a way of dealing with grief on their own way and the way it works is that I am a regular biatch while it's happening (I am never depressed or in a bad mood and, even when I am angry, I am never mean - except at these times when I get mean, mean, mean -thankfully, my husband knows how it goes and doesn't take it personally), then, the first 24 hours are pretty much passed in a daze. My brain seems to stop working and things I do all the time take twice as much time, I can't remember things, I don't understand the plot of the movie, I have to read the same paragraph three times before it registers - that kind of thing. Then my body starts to ache - and I do mean my entire body! It takes me about three days to be back in a functioning mode and then I have to catch up with all the stuff I left undone... And that's why I took so long to come back.

But now I am here and I have a couple of subjects I have been thinking about to share with you, guys, so everything is back to normal.

Again, thank you for your concern! It helps a lot to know there is people who care...

I am glad you are back. I am so sorry to hear about your loss

[Wolf]

This was taken care of and we are given a chance to begin anew without making the mistakes that created the last incident. No one has to agree with anyone's perspective, but we don't have to be offended by the slightest little thing that we see either. We can be so much better than this. So I am asking everyone to please let this petty bickering go, ignore it, give it no energy to feed on or it will raise its ugly little head up and devour us. It does not need to be this way. I am asking you all to think about this as just one member to another and not as moderator. No little digs, barbs or jabs, let all of this junk go and limit ourselves to talking about our birds, not about each other. This is about the birds, only about the birds.

[JessiMuse]

I agree, wolf. It really doesn't need to carry on any more than it has.

Welcome back Pajarita. Im glad you're doing better now. Wolf told me that you were taking a break, but that was about it, regarding your whereabouts.

Regardless, it's good to see you again.

[Pajarita]

Thank you, again, for all the welcome backs and the sympathies, guys!

[Greg]

I am gong to have my 2 cents here. Pajarita, nice you are back and many of your fans are happy about that. Many of the people that are not in your fan club have left now. I dont think you people really want a club of old members only, you are always talking about how you want to help new members.

Pajarita, with your thick skin, I hope you can hear this. Members were so upset by your comments to them they had to complain about you. I have seen many posts where you are very helpfull and many where you were condescending, critical, and rude. an yes your fan club has learned to accept it and you dont often treat them with rudeness. When you made your come back post, why on earth would you bring up the past trouble? Did you have sour grapes and wanted to swipe back? Toggsy felt comfortable posting with you gone. Doesnt that tell you something? How can the new members be expected to put up with your rude behavior when it happens, they havent been around enough to see your good qualities. they just get trampled.

Liz, you are a nice person, I can see that from your other posts. But you are a card carrying member of the Pajarita fan club. Your treatment of Toggsy was reprehensible. His feelings of feeling alienated and singled out are what he feels. You had no right to make light of his feelings or be insulting. Just because he will not put up with the amount of knocking down that you do does not make him or his feelings less correct than yours. If you keep training Pajarita to be rude with your easy acceptance you are all training her.

Parrots for life, you are just as bad.

You treatment of Toggsy was not right. The ridiculing of his feelings, is one of the definitions of bullying. Google it you will see that. Turn in your card people if it leads to this kind of treatment with new members.
The moderator made a mild comment, and he is so worried about censoring he has allowed bullying, ridiculing. Come on man get some!


DEFINE: CYBERBULLYING
Cyber bullying is the use of digital technologies with an intent to offend, humiliate, threaten, harass or abuse somebody.

TELLING SOMEONE THEIR EMOTIONS ARE PAPER THIN ON A FORUM IS HUMILIATING THEM!

[Navre]

Oh good Lord. This country used to be full of people who would storm French beaches into the teeth of German machine guns. Now we have people who get offended and hurt by every damn thing. They are words, spoken by a woman in the Internet. Nobody is hurting anyone here. Get over it.

You're misusing the term cyber bullying. She isn't chasing anyone around on every social media outlet, tweeting at them, tagging them on Facebook, starting pages and groups to mock a person. As is so common, you're taking a real, bad thing, and applying it to a minor inconvenience.

I'm glad some people got upset. If you, or anyone else, gets this upset over your interpretation of someone's tone on an Internet post, then you really need to examine what you let get to you. You can't determine and control what everyone in the world says. You can, however, control how you react to things. Take some responsibility for your own reactions and overreactions.

Someday you may need to face your own German machine guns. If you've curled yourself into a ball over the words of a woman on a single Internet site, you're going to be no good to anyone, including yourself and your birds. Take what you want and ignore the rest. Nobody is chasing anyone down. Nobody is bullying anyone.

[Wolf]

Greg

This is over and done with. you are not speaking with any actual knowledge of what went on and all you are doing is trying to create discord. Let it go!
The only reason for my reply is as the moderator otherwise I would not give this post of yours the courtesy of a reply as it is not worth it.

Navre

Thank you for your response and I am sorry that I could not get her to address this before you had to speak out. Please don't give this any more energy.

[Greg]

Greg

This is over and done with. you are not speaking with any actual knowledge of what went on and all you are doing is trying to create discord. Let it go!
The only reason for my reply is as the moderator otherwise I would not give this post of yours the courtesy of a reply as it is not worth it.

Navre

Thank you for your response and I am sorry that I could not get her to address this before you had to speak out. Please don't give this any more energy.

I work as an abuse counselor, and help victims of bullying, so I do know the defintion, but I realize that is not welcome here, I have agreed not to coment about it, and I did not want to cause discord, my life has been dedicated to helping people. So you dont need to worry about me again.