Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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My other life

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I don’t know how many of my readers realize that I have an alter life – well maybe you might call it an alter lifestyle choice? I’m a massive pet lover or rather animal lover but unfortunately, as I mentioned in a recent post I’m allergic to dogs, cats, birds, horses and other types of farm animals. I guess anything with hair and dander really. My allergies actually ended up altering my education plans because, since I was a little girl, I had always wanted to become a veterinarian. Being a nurse is not quite the same, but I suppose that satisfies the nurturer in me.

Anyway- my alter life. Some of you know that I am a reptile lover. Yeah yeah, I know most of you aren’t, but I am and it’s not just because of my allergies. I’ve always been fascinated by reptiles and amphibians.

I was lucky as a child, we had a beautiful cottage on old family land. It had a creek close by where I could find dozens of frogs, salamanders, snakes and turtles. Even better, there was also an old rock quarry close to our cottage area too, and I’d visit that area regularly in June to see the turtles laying their eggs in the sandy ground, or to try to find the babies marching steadily towards the water.

I wasn’t given permission to have any type of pet at home when I was growing up, so as soon as I moved to Toronto and got my own apartment I got my first turtles. I was happy with the turtles for many years but I was starting to develop a strong interest in lizards. I spent several months doing research on what type of lizard would be best for me and I ended up- with my husband by that time- getting two Chinese Water Dragons.

At the time it was difficult to gather much information of true value on the internet and most of the books were outdated. This was 1995 By the way. I realized that with all of my research I had more information gathered in my notebooks and in various emails that I’d kept than was on any website on the internet. So I decided to start my own website and a mailing list for water dragon owners in December 1995.

Over the years I’ve become quite well known for my gigantic website on not just water dragon care, but the care of over 100 commonly kept reptiles. I even wrote an article in an annual reptile magazine this year. Even veterinarians contact me for my pet care information regarding iguanas and water dragons in particular.

I’ve cared for 6 Chinese water dragons, 4 geckos, 3 box turtles, two red eared sliders, two painted turtles, and 1 very large male iguana in the time that I’ve owned reptiles as pets. Right now I only have my adopted box turtles.

Most of the pets that I’ve kept were previously owned and had health problems, and due to my nursing knowledge I was able to develop my skills in special needs pet care. One of my dragons had leukemia, and another had fallen and had paralyzed her bowel function, and believe it or not I helped her pass waste, hydrated her with subcutaneous injections and kept her alive and happy for three years after her accident.

Our iguana came to us as a very sickly animal. He was the size of a one year old iguana but he was three or four years old- stunted, under weight, rock hard dry skin, both ear drums pierced, scabs on his body and dry gangrene in his toes and the end of his tail and he had these tiny little bugs crawling all over them. The pet store that gave him to us though they were fleas at first and tried to sell us flea medications, but flea medications would have killed him. They were just red mites. Some good soaks in the bath and constant cleaning of his very bare initial cage rid him of the mites quickly. Unfortunately it took us at least 6 months of caring for him two or three hours a day to get him healthy and tame.

Our iguanas name was Napoleon. He died in July 2004 and he took a piece of my heart with him. You might not think of a reptile being cuddly or friendly, but he was the sweetest friendliest animal I think I’ve ever met and he adored me as much as I loved him.

He’d follow me around the house when we’d let him, come over and climb into my lap when invited, and literally hug you back when you picked him up in your arms. He was 13 years old when he died and as sad as I am that he’s gone, I know he lived much longer than he would have if we’d never rescued him. Actually even after we rescued him we only hoped he’d live for three or four years – he was so abused. His bones were curved and bent out of shape too. Such a sad case.

So that’s what I do when I’m not blogging or working as a nurse. I write articles on reptile care for my site, herpetological societies, and magazines, and I help thousands of people every year through my site, email and my mailing lists.

Next time you go into a pet store that happens to sell reptiles- ask the clerk in the reptile area if they’ve been to Tricia’s page and I bet they’ll say yes.





Cosmetic Nurse specialists performing proceedures

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I was just browsing through my saved links from my days as a Cosmetic surgery nurse and I visited the Albany Plastic Surgery site and I was reading that, in their satellite facility in Saratoga Springs, they have Cosmetic Nurse specialists performing some of the minimally invasive facial rejuvenation procedures such as Botox injections, Restylane, Radiesse, physician strength facial peels, laser treatments and skin rejuvenation programs.

All of the treatments that I’ve listed above were ones that the Plastic surgeon, whom I used to work for, was going to teach me.

He had even gone so far as to partner with a female doctor that did laser hair removal and laser skin treatments to handle some of his business while the clinic was still in it’s early days, and he was going to eventually get laser equipment in his facility and I would have learned how to operate it.

I keep looking back and wondering at all of the great experience I would have gained if I’d worked there just for a little while longer. *sigh*

The land of the pretty people

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A long long time ago – no I’m not about to sing the song that, that line is making me thing of (hey name the song if you can)- when Chris and I lived in our apartment, we lived in a very trendy area of Toronto. It was the Yonge and Davisville area commonly known as Yuppyville when I first moved into the apartment, also very close to Yonge and Eglinton aka Yonge and beautiful.

It was a sad day- in a way- when we moved from the area. I was going to miss the hustle and the bustle, the antique stores, great restaurants, the little shops that resell designer clothes. I loved just walking down Mount Pleasant and popping into all the different stores. Chris and I would go to one of the restaurants at least once every two weeks or so. Even though we live in a very Greek area now I still say that one of the best Greek food restaurants in the city is on Mount Pleasant.

I do love my house and the area, but it’s a lot more relaxed than our former hot neighborhood, and in a lot of ways that is appreciated. I did think one thing that was kind of nasty though, when we moved from Yonge and Beautiful / Yuppyville – I turned to Chris when I found out the former owners of our house had accepted our offer and said “We’re moving from the land of the pretty people.”

You see, the area we used to live in was an area where you didn’t go out if you didn’t have make up on and you wore really nice clothes if you could. You wouldn’t be caught dead going to the store in sweats. Uhuh, and everyone just always seemed to be thin, well muscled and more often than not very attractive – probably because of all that makeup of course. LOL Now in this area- as I said it’s more relaxed. People stop and say hello, people are more real and there are still great stores, entertainment and restaurants within easy walking distance. But I do miss my Yuppyville.

Do any of you live or have you lived in area like the one I lived in? Fun, but very pretentious? Fake? I really do love where I live now, but I do miss the land of the pretty people every so often.

I think I found some uniforms

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Earlier I was talking about getting some new nursing uniforms for when I go back to work. Think positive think positive that I’ll be feeling good enough to go back in December.

I was looking at Scrubs Gallery and I think I found a style of nursing pants that I like. Their flare leg elastic waist band pants. Yeah the elastic waist band doesn’t sound as cool as the flare leg style does, does it? But most nursing uniforms have elastic waistband for comfort and probably because they’re easier to make that way too. I’d maybe match those red pants with this Christmassy scrub top too.

I often end up working with small children so something cheery and playful would be great. yeah, I think I might get those. What do you think?

In those unfortunate times that you’ve had to be hospitalized or even spend a bit of time in the ER did you like the nurses uniforms when they were wearing bright colors or cheery prints?

Going over old bookmarks

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Thinking about what could have been …

I keep thinking about the plastic surgeon that I worked for a few years ago. I helped him start his clinic and he’d offered me part of the profits once the clinic was on it’s feet. What would I be making now if I was still working there? I wonder about that sometime. Oh well I left for the job that I thought was better for me and that’s the way it is.

When I was preparing to take that job I was checking out all kinds of websites on the internet about plastic surgery, Plastic surgery nurses, I even joined the Association of plastic surgery nurses when I started my job. The doctor that I was working for paid for it as he wanted me to join and get as much info as possible to help both me and his clinic.

I still have my list of bookmarks of sites I viewed or even studied! One of them was Facial Plastic Surgery in Austin. It’s packed full of information about the different types of surgeries that are commonly performed. If you are a nurse as I am, or even if you are someone thinking about getting some cosmetic surgery done you might want to visit the site and do some reading.

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