Back in the saddle

Two months ago, I last blogged here. That was around the time volunteers moved my computer … the end of the Windows Speech Recognition for a while. No one knows what happened. Countless people have looked at it; I spent hours researching solutions. Finally Don was able to figure it out after “something occurred to him.” Only the front ports work anymore. I’ve been typing a lot during this time, but there is so much communication necessary in my life and my muscles are so weak that 45 minutes a day of typing does me in. As a matter of fact, a ganglion cyst appeared within hours of a particularly long typing session. I’ve missed being able to chat with the board about every idea that pops into my head, but I think I’ve learned a lesson about how much to say (or rather how much people want to hear). In “The Time Trap,” Alec Mackenzie points out is that the things that wind up at the bottom of our to do list probably don’t need to be done after all. Most of the ideas I want to propose to the board are of low urgency and therefore at the bottom. However, blogging is near the top of my to do list. “Will it matter in a year from now?” Alec Mckenzie tells you to ask yourself, and “Is it urgent?” Yes and yes I have to answer. Blogging helps me keep depression under control and helps me sort out my thoughts. At one time, I had considered closing down The Rat Retreat. All of the support we have had over the last two months has banished that thought from my mind, however. The number of virtual volunteers and increase in donations has astounded me. But I definitely will reduce the number of rats that I take care of here. I’m realizing more and more my physical limitations and can’t keep risking my body to clean cages. The fact that I’m not immortal has reared its ugly head. I had a diabetes scare and a nurse actually used the phrase “5 to 15 years” to describe how long it would be until I’m on insulin. That definitive phrase was a horrible wakeup call. I also considered that it’s terribly unfair to homeless rats to take them in knowing that I may suddenly be unable to properly care for them. I dropped an empty cage recently and wrenched my shoulder badly enough to remember how easily I could become incapacitated. We do not have enough local interest in running The Rat Retreat to provide help in case that happens. At the same time I came to these sad realizations though, a thought about growing the scope of what The Rat Retreat can do had been brewing in my mind. I believe we can go national. I know we can develop a transport system because we have some dedicated volunteers hard at work on it right now. This system will be something like Boise, Idaho’s “Dog Is My Co-pilot,” which transports dogs from one shelter to another, only we will transport rats from one shelter to another across the nation. That way the adopter who can’t find a rescue rat to adopt in Mississippi will now be able to get a rescue rat from Idaho, for example, which will be particularly helpful in a hoarding situation. We could also build up a network of foster homes...an untapped potential around here. The other thing I’d like to see The Rat Retreat do, the possibility of which we will have to check into, is to help other rat rescues around the nation. Most of the other rat rescues do not have 501C3 status, due to the amount of paperwork and money that it takes to obtain. I’m hoping we will be able to figure out a way that we can take donations here for everyone and disperse them fairly to rescues all over the nation. (Sidenote: fairly being the operative word here… I’ve been reading “Why Good People Do Bad Things,” by James Hollis. Having that much power will be intimidating for me.) The most recent incident I need to write to the board about (which I’m doing here) is my dealing with Dun & Bradstreet. I owe three board members a big apology. I was in a panic about an “urgent” request from D&B and requested overnight board applications. Three board members complied, one of them with an arm injury. Knowing they went through that made me even more bitterly disappointed and disillusioned about “the system “after my conversation with D&B the next day. “Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) provides a D-U-N-S Number, a unique nine digit identification number, for each physical location of your business,” according to http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform. “D-U-N-S Number assignment is FREE for all businesses required to register with the US Federal government for contracts or grants.” In order to apply for grants, even with nongovernment entities though, one has to register the DUNS number with The Central Contractor Registration (CCR) system “a highly secure, single repository of vendor data used governmentwide.” I obtained the duns number years ago, but the process of registering the number with the CCR was so convoluted I gave up. I have a total of eight years of college maintaining a GPA of 3.56, but readily understanding any instructions coming from the government is far beyond my capabilities. But I gritted my teeth and pushed my way through the process, going to the CCR website, which sent me some place called Sam, which sent me to Iupdate, which would not allow me to change our former address. One phone call and another form later, I received an alarming e-mail from D&B denying my update until I had a phone interview. I expected that D&B would need all of our business information including addresses of board members, which is why I wrote to them in a panic. They certainly did need business information. They sent me a form to fill out before the interview requesting the expected information. What shocked me though was that they did not go over this information during the phone interview. Instead they told me I could not have a “complete report” on file until we shelled out $279. When I protested that this would nearly wipe out our bank account, the amount was reduced to $229. Basically the urgent need was for them to collect money from us. Big old Dun &Bradstreet needs money from a little animal sanctuary residing in a double wide trailer in a slummy neighborhood, in order for us to keep rescuing the community’s rats. I hope the irony isn’t wasted on you. I learned the terms “the system” or “the man” as I went through my wanna-be-hippie days in the early seventies. Somewhere between then and now, though, I became naive, believing everyone had the best of intentions including our government and Wall Street. I did not want to believe anything negative about anyone or any entity, for that matter. All naiveté has disappeared, since starting The Rat Retreat, and I miss it. I tried to bury my head in the sand for a while by ignoring any dealings with anything bigger than the local humane society, but with a little push from our chairwoman I have been making my way through the processes I had been ignoring. Then attracting a donor who wanted to make regular donations by payroll deduction burst another bubble of mine. I find out that the IRS did not have us listed in their exempt charities, though we received our nonprofit status four years ago. I have never had an issue with the IRS. I shelled out hundreds of dollars paying taxes on having employees the first year, without protest. Each year I shell out another $200 for tax software so I can let them know that our expenses still exceed our income that indeed, yes, we are still a nonprofit. (This after spending even more getting an accounting firm and H&R Block to screw things up for us, requiring countless hours and dollars on our end). Yes I’m going to keep running The Rat Retreat. I need it, I believe the world needs to do it and certainly the rats need it. But I’m hoping to attract some volunteers to take some of these nasty dealings off of my shoulders and let me keep what innocence I have left.