its been a smooth start to the new year for me, for which i am very grateful. despite the full car headlight meltdown, which was easy fixed. december was kind of a nightmare for my work life but it seems like things are settling down and starting to go nicely again. i have officially been freed from the role of head nurse! my contract ends in early feb and i'm free to just go back to normal and stop worrying about dumb shit i don't care enough about. new staff is in the works so we can function to full capacity again. i cannot wait. we have had some crazy stuff coming into the clinic recently too, i think we had three consecutive emergencies back to back one random day last week. hectic! i'm really looking forward to my contract ending because this means they'll be hiring a new head nurse instead, who actually has that experience which means i will finally have someone to ask my questions to, rather than just having to figure stuff out on my own.

i did get to do a bunch of cool stuff this month already - took my dad to our local theme parks for the first time, i got to visit the university jellyfish research labs, got to visit a native wildlife conservation park and see loads of cool little critters. i have been enjoying sprucing up and maintaining my new fish tank which is also doubling as a hydroponics setup for pothos at the moment.

in other semi-related news, i had to take hopscotch to the vet a week ago for an issue he's got with his left arm. it seems to be uncomfortable for him; he'd been holding it a bit funny and seemed reluctant to extend it all the way out. it comes and goes, sometimes he will wake up and won't move it, and then suddenly an hour later, he's up and clambering all over the tank like nothing happened. i took him into my local exotics vet and had a consult that only really ended in some NSAIDs dispensed for him, as even if it was broken, there's not much you can do about it. can't splint a frog leg! the meds have brought down the swelling in his leg, but it does still randomly seem to bother him from time to time. there is a high chance that this will just be a lifelong thing, possibly an injury or issue during his juvenile development stages. hard to say! he is still mobile and it doesn't hinder his movement or climbing when it goes into that 'locked' state, so the vet isn't too worried about it in the long run. i learned a lot from my vet trip though, it is truly humbling to be a client for unfamiliar species, and he is a super cool and knowledgable man.

other stuff i've been up to; i'm trying very hard to get back into reading again, as it's been sooo so long since i enjoyed a book properly. winding down in the evening with 30min minimum of reading has meant i'm absolutely tearing through books i thought i'd never finish. my friend had dragged me into an admittedly really good tiktok based musical about the oddysey, of all things (EPIC: THE MUSICAL, you can watch a whole playlist of the songs and animatics right over here!) and i actually really, really love the oddysey, so. i'm re-reading my fagles translation, and i went and bought a new translation i've never read before that i'm going to read next.