The next time you fret about your job, say, working outside in zero-degree wind chills or breaking up fights involving Woonsocket moms, realize that it could be worse.

If you've followed the news over the past week and let your imagination wander into space, the following thoughts might have crossed your mind: I could have chosen to be an astronaut, and I could have -- until recently at least -- found myself sharing a space ship with Lisa Marie Nowak. Or I could have chosen to work with animals, gotten a job at a zoo and been assigned to impregnate a 4-ton elephant.

In one relatively short trip from Houston to Florida, Nowak dethroned Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the moon, as the country's most famous astronaut.

AP Photo/ NASA, Orange County Sheriff

NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is shown at left in a March 2005 photo provided by NASA, and at right in a Feb. 2007 photo provided by the Orange County, Fla. Sheriff's Department.

In a move you might expect from a Woonsocket mom but not from a high-flying graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Nowak, a mother of three, allegedly armed herself with a BB gun, mallet, knife and pepper spray, then drove 900 miles to confront and kill the perceived object of another astronaut's affection.

Thanks to Nowak, all astronauts have lost a little of the shine from their helmets, not necessarily because she allegedly tried to kill somebody (Hey, everyone does crazy things for love.), but because just about everyone on this planet now knows that astronauts wear diapers.

Yes, among the more interesting details of Nowak's trip from Houston to Florida was that she wore diapers so she wouldn't have to stop for bathroom breaks. (Are the lines outside women's bathrooms rooms really that long?) And, in an apparent effort to make sense of Nowak's bizarre behavior, news reports explained that astronauts wear diapers on launch and reentry.

It just doesn't seem Right Stuff macho to imagine John Glenn or Chuck Yeager in a pair of diapers. You'd think if anyone could hold it for a long trip, it would be an astronaut.

And it's science-fiction scary to contemplate that if there is alien life out there, Nowak, in her diapers, is the type of human being they are likely to first encounter. At least she was until last week's trip into infamy.

We've all probably shared office space or a job site with somebody who was difficult, somebody who might have even made us a little nervous, but imagine being on a tiny space ship with Nowak and, somewhere near the moon, realizing that Nowak suspects you of competing with her for the attention of another fly boy.

Are astronauts checked for weapons before boarding like the rest of us air travelers? Can you dial 911 from outer space?

Or worse, what if you discovered you were the object of her affection somewhere in the upper atmosphere? She strikes me as the controlling type, the kind of woman who'd be uncomfortable if you left her sight for, say, a bathroom break.

Nowak: "Where do you think you're going?"

Dashing Fly Boy: "I was just slipping over to the other side of the capsule to use the potty."

Nowak: "You've got a diaper. Use that."

Still, Nowak's company in a capsule could be preferable to that of an elephant you're charged with impregnating. In another popular recent story, it was reported that the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence was trying to artificially inseminate a 4-ton African elephant.

Humans apparently have to step in because the species is endangered, and it's actually easier and cheaper to retrieve a semen sample from a bull elephant at a zoo in another part of the country, fly the sample to Boston, drive it to Providence and then deliver it to the female elephant.

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Dennis Schmitt, center, a veterinary reproductive specialist from Missouri State University guides an endoscopic camera inside the reproductive tract of Alice the African elephant.

Zoo keepers don't like the idea of letting the boy and girl elephant meet, have a date or two and see if they hit it off, because they're afraid they'll go to the trouble of transporting one of the big animals half-way across the country and make an introduction only to find that the guy's more interested in the elephant equivalent of watching sports or drinking beer with his buddies.

The story reported how a team of six in Providence had to race against time to deliver the elephant semen to Alice, the would-be mom. The task involved yards of flexible tubing, syringes, a catheter, popcorn, pineapple chunks and Cheerios.

Thankfully, the story didn't report in great detail how zookeepers on the other end of the equation, at a zoo in Pittsburgh, went about obtaining the semen sample from a large and, we can assume, excited bull elephant.

Given the choice, I think I'd rather take my chances with Lisa Nowak or even a Woonsocket mom than try my hand at that.