From The Heart

Okay, so apparently, my last entry was cryptic and kinda misleading. I went back and re-read it, and it really is.

We had a good vacation.

We had a lot of fun with our friends from Victoria, who were kind enough to put us up in their houses and feed us DELICIOUS food.

I just, I just... I didn't want to make a big shopping list of all our activities, but I didn't know what else to write about it without going too far into detail about the personal lives of our friends. You guys hear personal details about my life here, because I choose to write and publish them. My friends didn't make that choice, and thusly deserve a measure of privacy, which is why I started using fake names when writing about our new friends here in Bridgetown. I still don't write very personal things about our friends here - for instance, if one of them had a set of "magic wishing nipples", would I blog about it? Well, apparently I might mention it, but you still don't know details and don't know who it is. We see or talk to our friends here almost every single day, but I'd say you guys have heard about less than ten percent of the interesting things that happen with them. In fact, there are a few people who we socialize with quite often who've never even been mentioned here. They didn't choose to have their lives published on the internet, so I try to keep a big privacy barrier there. There have been some pretty controversial things that have happened with our friends and family, but it wouldn't be nice for me to go writing about all the sensitive things going on in other peoples' lives here, so I don't.


I guess I screwed this thing up concerning our trip though. It was such a strange mix of emotions, going back to visit a place that we had loved living in, because we'd decided with a good deal of finality and surety that we didn't want to live there any more. This vacation was kind of handed to us by Mark's work, and before we knew it someone else had made the decision that we would be visiting Victoria again for the first time since we'd moved away.

When Mark told me that his work wanted to fly us out there, I was instantly stressed out. (You guys know how I get.) We didn't have a lot of notice, and there were contractors working on our house, racing the clock to get siding on before the weather turned too wintery. How would we deal with that if we were not here? As it was, we had to hand someone else an envelope with thousands of dollars in cash in it, and ask them to please inspect the new siding and give the money to the contractors when they were done (thank you Nay and Jay). Also, the sheer number of cats and dogs that now inhabit the house makes travelling more difficult. Minerva the kitten is finally weaned and big enough to manage by herself most of the time, but she's not big enough to be unsupervised in the house for nine days. Chani was kind enough to babysit her for us. Then there's the weather around these parts. As you already know, we ended up leaving for our trip by driving to the airport in a snow storm.

I am happy that Mark's work paid for us to go out to the west coast. It was nice of them to do and we had a lot of fun, but by dictating our travel details they took some of the control away from us, and that made travelling just a bit weird. I'm not used to 'business trips'.

Thus, it was a lot harder for me to write about than I thought it would be. When we were in Tofino, I just blathered on about the beaches and the weather and such. I went to write about the days we spent in Victoria with our friends and I. Couldn't. Do. It.


Victoria, we broke up with you. You're a nice city - it wasn't your fault. It was strange going out with you again last week. Yes, Nova Scotia treats us well. We're sorry you got custody of our friends, Victoria. Now, when we want to see them, there you are too, and it's a bit awkward. We miss them, Victoria. Be good to them.


So thank you Megan. You took time out of your hectic life to host us, and you don't have a spare bedroom so you gave up your living room so we could camp out at your house. You put up with me getting sick and being a zombie, and didn't even make fun of me too much for it. We like your new boyfriend and hope that all the huge plans you have for the next couple of years work out for you. You deserve it.


Thank you Kristina. You went with me to my favourite sushi dive, and mourned with me when I found out that the sunomono lady was no longer working there. You even became a spy and told me where she works now. You drove around downtown with me, and you hate driving as much as I do. You are cool.


Thank you Jeff. (Where's my magic trick??!) You are Mark's secret non-biological twin. You two think all the same insanely obscure thoughts, and like all the same insanely strange jokes. The one thing I hate about not living in Victoria is that we don't get to see you so often any more, and we've been apart so long that you think it might be possible that we don't have fun when we're with you.

We did.

I should have said so even if I didn't know how to say it. We hope you had fun too!

Not My Style (of dog!)

Well we had a great time in Tofino and headed down to Victoria for another few days of vacation before flying back to Halifax.

And, try as I might, I haven't been able to expand on that sentence all week.


You guys want a synopsis of our vacation? We went to BLANK restaurants, the weather was BLANK, and we saw all our old friends BLANK, BLANK and BLANK.


Y'know? As much fun as all that stuff was (and it really was), I think it makes for boring reading.


So...

We came back to this little pile of rags.


He's the latest foster dog, Remi.

He arrived a few days before we were set to leave on our trip. A new group we are fostering for, Tiny Paws, asked if we could take a ten-week-old Shih Tzu / Lhasa Apso cross in. Those of you who know me well know that this is not my favourite kinda dog. Little wussy puppies? With buggly eyes and smooshy noses? And prissy little haircuts with bows on top of their heads? Uhh, no. I HAVE met Shih Tzus I like before. Precisely three, and two were owned by the same people (must have been how they were raised).

So very smugly, I told the rescue group "oh we'd LOVE to help you out, but you see, we're leaving town for nine days, otherwise we could do it, but oh well" and I thought that was the end of the story. Didn't the sneaky people ask Nay and Jay if they would babysit the puppy for us while we were gone! And they AGREED!

So we're stuck with a puppy who jumps on Oliver's head and makes him growl, and pees on the carpet, and runs directly at your feet while you're walking so you either fall down or step on the dog and break it's spine. To add insult to injury, EVERYONE ELSE LOVES HIM. We go out walking and all our neighbours coo and go on. The contractors who are working on our siding all smile when we walk past with him, and say "he's some cute!"

I just don't get it. Yeah, he's a puppy, and some people go in for puppies, but he's just so bleh.

The good news is, he has an adoption pending. His new family can't adopt him for another week or so, but they are coming to meet him tomorrow. We will smile politely when they say how cute his brown-streaked tear-stained face is.

Tofino to Victoria

We spent a few beautiful days in Tofino. The weather was as nice as I've ever seen it there, which means it only hailed once for five minutes, and it only rained a leetle teensy bit each day.


I spent the time quietly, wandering the beaches and going to bed early. Mark? Mark got drunk off Tequila with his co-workers and spent the final full day with "self-inflicted flu".


The rest of the time I think he had as much fun as I did.




After the first night, we had all moved to a quiet lodge on the Middle Beach Resort property. There was a beautiful staircase leading from the deck of the lodge directly to the tidal pools below.


That staircase was one of my favourite parts of the area - the thought of it was just so comforting to me; I don't know why.

This was the view from our room at the lodge:


We left Tofino this morning and had a leisurely drive back to Victoria, where we met up with Megan and promptly went out for sushi. I have to make myself sick of sushi before we leave so that I don't crave it for a while when we get back to Nova Scotia.

I'm going to go to work with Megan tomorrow and walk dogs - should be fun.

Chillin' at Middle Beach

The nerd conference is ramping up into high gear. We spent the first day here in Tofino helping Mark’s boss prepare everything, and now every employee and a number of selected clients have arrived and we have taken up residence in a secluded lodge at the Middle Beach Resort.

It’s a strange mix of computer talk, real estate talk, poker, and drinking. There’s lots of free time to lounge around or walk on the beach though, so apart from some internet connectivity problems it’s all very pleasant here.


Mark's co-worker's 16 year old daughter Haley has set up her room as a refuge from nerd talk. There's an open invitation to all the non-nerd girls to crash there when we have to get away - she even made a sign. It says "Princess Room - Girls only. Males will be shot if caught entering room."


The weather has been surprisingly pleasant and we've had a few long and relaxing walks on the beaches already. We discovered some great tidal pools so I'll have to take my camera down there later.


For now, though, it's time to call our friends who are taking care of our dogs, and then go laze around somewhere.

Montreal to Tofino

We've arrived in Tofino at last!


So we finally got out of Montreal on a plane that was about two thirds empty. Despite the plethora of empty seats, the airline in it's wisdom seated Mark and I four seats apart from each other.

I moved.

We hadn't sat next to each other on the earlier flight either, and it turned out that the next flight, out of Toronto, had us sitting half a plane apart too. I guess Air Canada really wanted to make sure we didn't have any fun at all for the whole day.

We made it to Victoria, BC just after 11pm. We had been awake for 22 hours and travelling for 20 at that point. We DID get our rental car as Mark the optimist had predicted we would, and drove straight to our hotel and crashed in the comfy bed for a few hours.

When we arose early the next (that same?) morning, we found that someone had crashed into a couple of cars in the hotel parking lot. Really hammered 'em. Thankfully, our rental car was unscathed. We wandered to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast only to hear the continuous wail of police sirens. I thought it was a bit of an extreme response for a hit-and-run, but then our waitress noticed flashes of light in the building next door. There were reports of an explosion, and a million old people started streaming out of the building. We all watched the action as we ate our breakfast. It was bizarre. The lack of sleep and jet lag made it seem even more fun.

We set out on the final leg of our trip to Tofino in the rental car. Of course, the weather remained uncooperative. We drove through Victoria in a torrential downpour and started up the Malahat Mountain where the rain abruptly turned into a thick, slushy snow.

Yes, more snow.

Thankfully, the famously treacherous and unpredictable Alberni Pass on the way to Tofino was clear, and the winding drive through the mountain range was as beautiful as I've ever seen it.

We're in Tofino now. The sun is shining and I can hear the crash of the waves as I type. We are being put up in an amazing resort and treated to high-end Tofino dining, and Mark's work is footing the tab for, well, absolutely everything.

Tofino is spectacularly gorgeous as always - here's our room:


and here's the view from our balcony:


I'm starting to feel better about being here, but I do still miss my dogs. Thankfully, we've been invited to our friend Megan's house once we get back to Victoria, so I'll be able to cuddle with the world's best Pit Bull and other assorted dogs, since I can't cuddle with my own guys yet.

It's time to go walking on the beach now. Later y'all.

En Route

We're in Montreal.

Stuck.


Wouldn’t you know it; we took a flight out of Halifax to go (ultimately) to Tofino, and drove into a snowstorm on our way to the airport. My mom called my cell phone in a panic when we were ten minutes from the airport but even with the snow flying the roads were pretty good. So… no need for panic, mom.


We got to the airport and the flights were a huge mess though. I’m pretty sure our flight was one of the first ones out since the snow had started early that morning, and we didn’t leave until about 1pm – an hour after our scheduled departure time.

Now, it’s not always fun to get from one end of this country to the other. We missed our next connecting flight out of Montreal, so they put us on a later flight.

Five hours later. Here we are still.


We’ve wandered from one end of the building to the other, drooled at overpriced sushi kiosks, argued with Air Canada agents over meal vouchers (verdict: they are jerks), tried to find free internet (verdict: $10 price tag means no internet for us), and tried to re-work our rental car reservation on the other end (verdict: Mark thinks we’ll be able to get a car and I think they will be closed by the time we get there).

I’m sitting now, waiting for the time to pass and listening to Montreal business people talk about boring things on their cell phones. Soon it will be time to buy a muffin.

After this, it’s off to Toronto where we wait for another ridiculous amount of time before boarding yet another flight that finally takes us to Victoria, where we may or may not find our rental car waiting for us in the dead of the night.

The thing is, I don’t really want to go any more. I’d kinda like to see Tofino again and walk on the quiet sandy beaches surrounded by lush rainforest trees, and I want to see all our Victoria friends, but this day is no fun and will be very long before it’s over, and I’m sure I’ll get Swine Flu on one of these flights. My bag has already been sneezed on.

I miss my dogs.

The Facelift Begins

This can't be happening.


Can it?

Are we ACTUALLY going to have a respectable-looking house soon?

Three energetic men showed up pretty much at first light this morning and started ripping the old weather-worn clapboard with the chipped paint from the side of our house. Then they started putting up new, environmentally friendly, state-of-the-art concrete fibreboard siding that will last for, like, forever, y'all. And it doesn't need painting.

New stuff next to the old stuff:


Ah, so satisfying. It almost makes up for the fact that a puppy pooped on my hand at work today.

Speaking of puppies, our new little one sometimes sticks her tongue out while she's sleeping.


We like her very much. My mom came down for a visit this past weekend to meet her, and we went for a hike with our friends to Valley View Park, and proceeded to view the valley. Zelda spent her time slowly making friends with everyone, by sometimes letting them pet her but then sometimes growling and freaking out.


Fall is in full swing so walking in the park was very pretty. It's pretty everywhere - there are brilliant red bushes in the graveyard behind our house and they're so very noticeable from our window that I had to go down and take pictures of them.

The Legend of Zelda

Sucktober's not over yet, but something good has happened.

Remember Dexter, the little deaf 'difficult' dog we tried to adopt a while back? That attempt ended horribly. I'm not placing blame - the rescue group did all they could; we just entered the situation too late to save the dog.

Although I don't blame the rescue group, it was awful. But, we never really 100% stopped our search for a new dog. I've been trying to find a little rescue dog about Oliver's size - I want him to have a buddy. Mark, meanwhile, has been shrieking that we are not small dog people, and then smiling at every picture of every Chihuahua in need that I show him. We recently tried to find a new dog through some breed-specific small dog rescue groups. One of the groups was bad. Very bad. Extremely bad. They strung us along for more than a month and did some sneaky and hateful things to us. It ended with me sending them some nasty emails (not so effective) and then the Atlantic Regional Co-ordinator of that rescue group resigned her position in protest over how we were treated (a bit more effective).

The good thing was, I made some great local contacts in the small dog rescue community, and they've been throwing leads at me right and left.

The day before yesterday I received a short email from Lavender, a woman here in Nova Scotia who is deeply involved with small dog rescue. She said there was a Dachshund in need, and would we be interested in fostering? Now, I think Dachshunds are freakin' cool dogs. Mark also loves the breed, and Oliver the Min Pin has taken a shining to any Dachshund we've ever met on walks. They're normally about 25 pounds, which was bigger than I was looking for, but I absolutely couldn't resist.

I sent her an email, gushing about how cool Dachshunds are. I said we could definitely foster, and depending on what the dog was like, we'd be interested in adopting.

A rush of back-and-forth emails ensued, and it turned out that the dog was not yet in the care of any official rescue group, but was being cared for by a kind-hearted man named Angel, who had had her literally dumped on his doorstep after being told that the dog's family never wanted to see her again. There were also some veiled hints that if he didn't take her, she would be euthanized.

He didn't even know the dog's owners! It turns out they knew from seeing him out walking that Angel already had two Dachshunds, so apparently they reasoned that he wouldn't really notice if there was one extra.

The owner left, and our friend Angel reached for the little dog. She bit him and then ran and hid under a chair and stayed there until about 1:30 in the morning. Meanwhile, Angel had set up camp in the next room. He was dozing on his sofa but heard her start to move around in the dead of night. He walked into the sunroom where she had been hiding, sat down on the floor without turning any of the lights on, and stayed there.

After a while, he felt a wet nose bump into his arm. The dog retreated, returned, and bumped his arm again. He didn't move. A moment later she crept into his lap, put her front paws up on his chest, and gently licked his face.

That was three weeks ago. Since that time, Angel has become quite close to the scared little Dachshund. He knew he could not keep her himself though, and started to spread the word that he was looking for a good home for the damaged little girl with the rough past.

He spoke to a friend of Lavender, who emailed Lavender, who emailed us. She knew that we wanted to give an imperfect dog a second chance. I phoned Angel and we hit it off immediately. He lives five hours away from us on Prince Edward Island, and after a long phone conversation we had a plan set up to meet halfway. I was ecstatic - it turned out that the dog was a Miniature Dachshund, so she actually was very close to Oliver in size. Also, female, which we had a slight preference for, and young but not too young (puppies really don't thrill me).

So yesterday morning I threw Chani in the car with me and Oliver and we drove to the designated meeting spot three hours away. I was SURE something would go wrong. Angel wouldn't show. The dog would be unsuitable for our house in some way. Angel would decide he didn't like me.

No, no, and no.

He pulled into the parking lot and out hopped a beautiful, mottled-brown, long-haired Miniature Dachshund. She and Oliver made friends in almost no time as Angel and I talked. After about forty minutes, it was time to go. Angel handed the little dog's leash to me as he rooted in his truck for her bag of belongings.

When he turned back to me I could see that tears were welling in his eyes. I said "don't worry - we'll give her a really good home".

The little dog jumped against his legs and wagged her tail. He looked down at her and a tear rolled down his cheek. "I know."


Zelda is home now. We're working on gaining her trust and teaching her the household rules gently - she will never be hit in anger again.

It's been a huge week of ups and downs. I'm so happy to have Zelda home, but our friends Nay and Jay lost their dog Fritz today. They came over to be distracted from their sadness this evening, and I felt bad as they were gushing about Zelda. Their dog just died, and I didn't want to seem like I was showing my new dog off - it felt like rubbing salt in their wounds or something.


Sucktober's a rough month.

Any BC people reading this? We're coming to the island in a couple of weeks. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Just, y'know, makin sure that you read to the end of these posts. Heh.

Sucktober

I haven't been posting much lately, and it's because there's just been a lot of negative stuff going on around us. I like to post happy things and not tell you all the tragic things, so keep this in mind: I'm telling you a few crappy things below, but I am leaving out a few sad and disturbing things.

EmmyLou Hairless - beloved pet pig of Chani and Captain D. - died today, due to complications related to an abscess on her leg. We sent Chani out of town and Mark and I went out to be with Captain D. when it all went down. Let me tell you, veterinary practice on large farm animals is veeerrrry different from the cat-and-dog stuff that most of us are used to. It was a pretty intense day but it's over. I left a bouquet of wildflowers on her grave. I will not answer any questions about this on the blog.

On top of that, recent events include:

• Nay and Jay's dog is dying from a rare and aggressive form of cancer at the age of six.
  
• Mark and I caused the implosion of the Atlantic chapter of a nationwide breed-specific dog rescue group.
  
• We thought we had someone to (FINALLY) put our new siding on our house just in time for winter, but they got just as flaky as the last guy and kind of halfway backed out of doing it. It's not done. It will probably not get done this year.
  
• I'm sick.
• Mark's getting sick.
  
• October sucks.

I'm not depressed, so don't worry. It's not been a great month but there ARE nice things happening too - I'll post a happier post soon!

Free Yard Sale Day

Gratuitous horse pictures. I'm done taking care of these three beasts, but it was fun while it lasted.




A week or so ago, our town had "big garbage day" - I've also heard it called "free yard sale day", which I like better.

People slowly started making large piles of random objects at the curb. Sometimes it was bags of garbage or recycling. Sometimes it was broken bits of wood and other assorted materials. Sometimes, though, sometimes it was TREASURE.

We got some good finds this year. Last fall, someone put out an old couch and we quickly snatched the big foam cushion off of it before it had a chance to get ruined in rain and stuffed two big dog beds with it. Score!

This year's first find was a really cool retro tin bread box. It had two stickers on it and was scuffed, but otherwise fine. I took the stickers off and cleaned it, and now it sits on top of the fridge awaiting the day when we are planning on (coincidentally) painting our kitchen with a very complementary colour scheme.


Find #2 was this year's bizarre object. We were walking the dogs past a pile of really interesting-looking free yard sale items when I saw something that really looked a lot like a milk crate, except it was made of metal. It's pretty darned cool and verrrry heavy - I think it's actually iron. I've never seen something like this before. Score!


The third and final item was very timely. We were driving along a secondary highway outside of town when I shouted out that we had to stop and turn around. Mark was a bit confused, but complied. Leaning against a tree by the highway were the components for a baby crib. What I wanted was the barred sides - I'd seen a friend use bits of baby crib as dog gates in their house and figured we could do the same thing.

We lowered the back seats in our car (thank you for being so handy, Kia Rondo), and threw in our new metal gates. It just so happened that we were almost done putting up the fence in our yard, but had not yet installed our gates. Well, these side rails from the crib fit perfectly - I mean, perfectly - into the openings in our deck. They are now makeshift gates while we finish the permanent parts, but since they fit so well one will become a permanent gate as soon as we attach it. Score!