Current mood:

reflective

Rat Brains and my inner Alice
 So, last night I hung out with Josh Megan my sister and her hubby Greg for our first real game night since they got married. See, we've all been pretty busy with me and Josh starting school, Megan starting school again (teaching) and Greg... well just trying to organize and adjust to having Megan's chaotic self living with him. So, we ended up debating religion as we usually do - it's an interesting debate - all of us are pretty spiritual in our own way... Josh with his catholic upbringing and above average biblical knowledge which he doesn't really allow to come out quite as blatantly ever as he does when we're with Megan and Greg, me with my weird range of eastern religions and humanistic philosophies and much more knowledge of religious books that began in china/india/asia, Greg with his jesus-centered ideology almost buddhist weird liberal but devout and still evangelical christianity, and megan with a her interpretations of biblical theology a little less racy and more strict to what I would say more canonized beliefs of assembly of God church. It's an interesting combination of people, with me being the least religious but just a theologically minded as the rest we ended up debating on the sanctity of life and where it begins and ends, and souls, and some other things. It was pretty tough for me personally since my beliefs are a lot less structured, and more personal decision I think then the rest of them. In a lot of ways it is similar, objectively speaking, since it is very emotion based, like christianity at it's roots. Anyway, dissecting our dynamic was not the point of relaying this.


The point is: We talked about life, and I have a very different way of looking at the sanctity of life then they do even though I think in general we all agree respecting life is important. Anyway, I was feeling guilty while we were talking about it because I have been slacking in my efforts at avoiding meat lately. Because of a combination of trying to eat healthier food and living with Josh I really have been eating more though I still limit it, I just don't limit it to the level I want to. So I am already feeling crappy about my own inability to live out a less aggressive and harmful life.



And then the rat surgery.
See, here's the thing. I think that, when concessions are going to be made - it is more important to life to do animal research then to eat animals. So, I feel like, it's more important to limit my animal protein intake to as little as I can without going to extremes... I am not going to turn down turkey my mom buys at thanksgiving, or starve if the only food I have the resources to get involves meat, but I try to take a non-meat option when there is one.

The rat surgerys are definitely part of some important research and in general I don't feel too bad about them, because labs really do treat them really well.

Did I mention I was excited about this, partially because I used to always play with Sarah and Nate's rats? I think they're really neat creatures. I don't feel bad about the concept of rat surgery in general. I have been desensitized to it.

Today in the lab I watched Liz do a non-survival rat implantation, which was really cool. She then decapped the rat and did some other stuff, froze the brain so she could section it out and blah blah blah slides and looking at it. Really, the whole thing was very humane and quite fine. I noticed afterwords, that the cage was a596's cage... who I "named" I joked after I numbered them. He was the first rat I noticed as being pretty friendly. I was pretty ready for this and not too concerned. I'm not very squeamish in general, though I was feeling a little weird just because of the combo of the conversations about life we had last night and this being one of the rats I had sort of developed some weird relationship in my head with which is silly because I just met the rat yesterday.

But the thing is, if Sarah would have seen what I saw this morning she would have been bawling. IT sort of makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry. Because I got this job and was all "these rats will make me think of the good old days of playing with the rats at Sarah and Nates" and blah blah blah. I chattered on in the lab about playing with rats at my friend's house (at the interview, a few days before Sarah flew away from us).

So, it's interesting what we're finding out, and maybe I can adopt some of the rats that would be destroyed otherwise when they're done with poking their brains (some of the studies are survivable) or maybe I can't - depending on what that entails. But I don't know maybe my brain is just looking for things to connect with Sarah in life.

It's just you know, I'm just imagining her coming to check up on me and see how I was doing, making sure I was not worrying or too sad about her and then coming in on me watching someone drilling holes through a rat skull... well.

The thing is, I get excited about stuff like this. It's so interesting. It's so amazing watching and learning as someone tells you like it's nothing about how they are trying to get around a major artery in the brain to a very small little center so that we can research the way a certain chemical works in it. It's amazing. It's so cool how much I learn in the lab, and how instantly rewarding it is to know you are learning APPLICABLE things.

But It's just not good to think about in combination with other things. The lab is an indulgence of this aspect of myself that the part of me that Sarah knew best sort of finds distatsteful and a bit insensitive and banal in some ways. So, having these two parts of myself in the forefront of my brain at the same time is....

uncomfortable, to say the least.

Oh well. I think I am gonna take off of work today and work on a paper. My mom said Amanda was trying to work on cell stuff for her anatomy class which is my favorite favorite thing, so maybe I'll see if she needs some help and hang with her because I miss her cute ass, and think it's funny seeing her just hanging out doing homework. She's so incredibly smart and so good at anything she tries to do, I know she's gonna be a better student then me now that she's decided to do it. It almost makes me want to go to dental school just so we can work together... which is insane, and an impulse I'm not going to indulge in.

Thanks for reading my weird incomplete ramblings... I'm sorry if I've offended or bugged anyone with any of my outlooks or inconsistency in philosophy and action, I am trying to reconcile them, but it's a learning process and it's better then pretending everything I believe is completely consistent when it's not.

love to all.

Heather