A bit of a rant

During school, we have a mentor group which is basically to help with our final 2 years in school. Basically, my group is very bad with sleep but that's off topic. Today we had mentoring and we were speaking about our sleep schedule and as per usual many of us only got 4-5 hours of sleep ( which is good, for us anyway) and we were talking about managing our time with assignment and study schedule. Now I work best at night, not during the afternoon which is when I do all the birds. We were also talking about like "me" time and now all of you get me when I say that when you have parrots there is not much me time to your self, I'm not complaining at all about that I love my parrots to death and I would not swap them for anything in the world. But yet what they do not understand that they don't get having birds is that they actually have to come out of their cage and have time with them. "Just feed them," They say, it does get me very cranky. But yeah lol just a little rant from me.

Yikes, I feel ya. At every opportunity I get, I try to weasel in how high maintenance parrots are, saying things like:

"If you don't give a parrot one-on-one attention for at least an hour, it'll start screaming and plucking. And he's damn smart - he picked up stacking cups in 15 minutes, matching shapes in less than a day, wave and shake within 10 minutes, etc."

"It's like having a toddler. When we go out with friends, they have a baby bag for their 1yo and we have a baby bag for our bird. He actually learns things a lot faster than their kid - he understands context and can tell us when he is getting pissed off at us, plus he can figure out puzzles and break into things."

"Parrots needs so much attention to prevent them from screaming and plucking - I can understand why his previous family gave him up when they had a kid."

I work it into a lot of conversations - both to deter people from buying birds and to let people know he is a significant part of my life. You want time with me? You have to understand Cairo is either coming along (so we better be going to a bird-friendly place) or I'm having to make serious adjustments on my side to make sure his needs are taken care of (like waking up early to take him flying since he expects that on the weekends). You want to visit? I'm probably going to have to adjust his sleep schedule and/or eating times, so you better warn me at least 24 hours in advance.

Sleep is a terribly unappreciated commodity! So many carry a perpetual sleep deficit, not greatly diminished by the occasional weekends "sleeping in." The health and personal/industrial safety repercussions are subject for another thread!!

Unfortunately, our fids are often along for the sleeplessness. Covering cages may be helpful, but noise is another factor.

That's something I love about these forums. Non-bird people just don't understand all the wonderful and difficult things that our fids bring to our lives.

My fids dont play a role in my deprivation of sleep they will usually be in bed by 7 and asleep by 8, i just have a really hard time falling asleep