Yiip Yiip

I asked Mark to help me make a new custom masthead for the top of this page. This is what he did:

...

... um, not what I was envisioning. But nice try.

Oliver finally got beat up by one of the new foster cats. I knew it was coming. Lately he's taken to running at them full speed and then bouncing back and forth about a foot from them (please take note that they rarely run away when this happens) growling his head off and generally being annoying.

He did it to Neville this evening and then he was suddenly screaming and crying like a sissy. Neville finally used the claws! He's whacked him a few times before now but didn't bother to put his claws out. I kind of think that's almost an insult to Oliver.

So this time he left him with a teensy scratch and Oliver came jumping into our laps, harrumphing and sighing and generally feeling sorry for himself.

Right about now I can hear some of you saying 'That'll teach him!'

Except that, unfortunately, NO IT WON'T.

Scheming For Spring

So it turns out that nobody in the string of small towns near us feels the need to have an actual address. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only because I'm irritated. We're supposed to be going to a meeting tonight (if it doesn't snow too hard) at the Municipal Building in the neighbouring village, and I can't find out exactly where it is. I'm sure we can find it once we go looking but I'd like to know in advance where it is, thank you very much. That's just the way I am.

We are starting to get restless for warm weather. There are so many outdoors projects and activities we want to do. New siding and windows are getting put on the house this spring and of course we need to start a garden as soon as possible. I've picked the spot and I'm going to cover it with a tarp right before the snow melts to stop grass from growing.

Then there's the fencing of the yard, endless hikes with the dogs, visits to forests and beaches, yard sales, sitting out on the deck, and all the other stuff that doesn't happen in the dead of winter.

for now we are stuck in the house most of the time, with three cats and two dogs. As for a possible dog number three? It will likely be at least a couple of weeks before I have any news about him. Yes, we have submitted an application and I had a long talk with the person who runs the rescue group that he is affiliated with. This dog has had one big endless string of bad luck throughout his young life, and it hasn't stopped yet. He's not the greatest fit in his foster home and was only taken in there as a favour. The foster human is stressed due to a bunch of bad things that are happening in her life, and having the deaf dog on top of everything makes her more stressed, and he is certainly picking up on it which in turn stresses him out. A few days ago he suffered a bad reaction to some medication and is now too sick to be adopted out. We are waiting for news regarding his convalescence, and if he makes a full recovery we will be able to meet him at last. Please wish him luck.

Wow, that sounds really doom-and-gloom-y. Without giving you details of medications or maladies, let me just say that I think he will fully recover and that he doesn't have a long-term disease or anything.

Betty, the brown tabby foster cat, got spayed yesterday. Ever since we brought her back home she's been a happy purring furball. I would have thought that her surgery wounds would, you know, maybe hurt a little but apparently not. She's as happy as a clam!

I thought I'd post an updated picture of Neville, the black male cat. The sink picture in my last post, while showing his personality, didn't really show his face, so here ya go:

Yes he is wearing a string of pink plastic beads around his neck. That's his "don't bully me" campaign necklace.

It's started to snow as I've been sitting here typing and our meeting has been cancelled - we'll have to wait until next week to find the building without an address. Instead, I think we will stay inside where it's warm and eat pizza.

meet the new cats

So moving right along on this week's 'animal' theme, we received three cats from the local rescue group! These cats are here to live with us until someone adopts them, so I expect to have them for quite a while.

Introductions:


This girl above is Mrs. O'Hara. She's the scaredy-cat of the bunch and has pretty much stayed in their room since her arrival. She is affectionate but reserved. Check out those whiskers! Yowzah!


The above clown is Neville, the only male. Strangely, he's also top cat out of the three. He is incredibly forward and incredibly friendly. He's also in the way wherever you go and whatever you do. Want to sit down? He's in the seat. Want to walk somewhere? He's under your feet. Want to brush your teeth? See above picture. Trivia: Neville is polydactyl. I'll post a pic of this when I get a good one.


This last girl is Betty. She is a petite little heart-breaker. She's not as "in the way" as Neville, but is very friendly and people-oriented all the same.

So we've been adjusting to cats in the house this weekend, when we are not busy researching deaf dogs online. We have not made a 100% decision about adopting the deaf dog, but I think we will be sending in an application and meeting him. We've talked to some trainers in our area and I plan on asking advice from our dog trainer we had in Victoria, to see if she thinks we can do right by this guy. According to all the comments I got in the last post, it seems you guys generally think we should get him. We'll see...

Our current dogs would have had their first agility lesson since we left BC today, except that it snowed, bah. We've rescheduled for Tuesday - should be fun!

should we get him?

So life moves along in Bridgetown. Lately our focus has shifted to animals in a few different ways.

First of all, I stupidly looked on Petfinder just to see what rescue groups there are here in Nova Scotia, and sorta fell a little bit in love with a particular dog. He's a difficult dog - he's young and was surrendered to the rescue group by a frustrated owner who was not intelligent enough to notice that the dog is completely deaf. The little guy learned to BITE to get attention while under the care of this owner. He has since been adopted out and returned, so it's clear he's not an easy dog. PERFECT for us.


I'm not saying we're adopting him, but I'm saying we're thinking about it. There's something about him that really draws me to him... Mark, on the other hand, is nervous of becoming a "small dog person". I really don't think either of us is a small dog person in particular, but if ya get enough small dogs, it kind of looks like that. My sister thinks Mark is discriminating against this little guy.

What do you guys think? Should we try to adopt him, or run at full speed in the opposite direction?

Next on the animal agenda is the fostering of cats for a local group. We've been in contact with them and any day now we're expecting to get at least one and possibly two or three cats. The animal rescue group in these parts does not have a shelter facility, so dogs and cats awaiting homes are farmed out to volunteers who keep them in their own houses until an adoptive home comes along. I'm pretty excited - it's been almost a year since we had our last foster animal, so it will be nice to be doing it again.

Our April road trip is evolving as well. Kristie's sister and her husband have decided they're going too*, and want to come along with the three of us. The car we were planning on renting has now turned into a minivan. It will hold five adults, three dogs (our two plus Tanya's cute Shih Tzu puppy Maya), everyone's luggage, everyone's wedding clothes, and some dog kennels. It really is gonna be fun times on the Trans Canada!

And for those of you who think ahead, no we will NOT take three of our own dogs on the road if we own that many in April. There are lots of options, but we'll figure that out when/if we need to.


* It turns out everyone was actually invited.

The Great White North

Last night the temperature rose to around 0° Celsius for the first time in a long time. We went clumping out into the softening snow wearing boots but no jackets - it just didn't feel cold enough for a jacket.

After days of temperatures in the -20°C range the warmth was something to revel in, and it has stayed with us overnight.

We woke this morning to find it raining. All the snow has been washed off our back deck but the driveway has turned into a sheet of very smooth ice with about two inches of rainwater on top of it. Impossible to walk on! The roads are the same as the driveway, and therefore this warm weather has caused school to be cancelled for all the kids in town.


The forecast says that we'll be back into sub-freezing temperatures tomorrow which is too bad. One more warm day might have melted the ice sheets on our driveway and the roads, but we'll have to keep them instead. Our best hope is that it snows over the ice and traction increases.

The warm snap makes me think about winter in Victoria, where the weather hovers around 8°C almost all winter but the damp chill never leaves your bones and the rainclouds never leave the skies. Why did that feel so much colder than this? My guess is that the lack of sunlight for weeks on end sapped my will to live just a little. The strange thing is, everyone from Victoria brags about Victorian winters to the rest of Canada. They say things like "oh, it almost never gets down to freezing here!", or "yes, it's February now and the Cherry trees are in bloom". But honestly, is it really worth it when you're facing six solid months of grey skies and rain? A couple of winters ago in Victoria we had THIRTY-NINE straight days of rain in a row. I blame Mark's secret dream of building an arc on the time we spent living on Vancouver Island.

Road Trip!

Both of my siblings have blonde hair. I'm not talking about "blonde-ish brown" either; they have hair that's in the Pamela Anderson range, only theirs is natural.

This mystifies me. My mother's hair is brown, and my dad's can best be described as... reddish? I too share in the oh-so-common brown hair. But my siblings, with their blue and green eyes, are both the pale blonde of starlets and Swedes. I won't mention Children of the Corn or else they might hurt me with their powers.


Anyway this post is about one of those individuals because she's causing us to take a road trip! It won't be months long, like this other road trip that we took was, but we're taking one anyway.

My sister, tall blonde healer of bodies and maker of fake arms and legs, is gettin' hitched to her doctor boyfriend. They got engaged on Christmas day. Let's all say it together:

AAAAWWW.

Okay, that's enough. They're getting married in April in Ontario, and since we left the dogs behind for that last big trip, we're going to rent a car and drive to Ontario, so we can take them with us this time. We'll be taking our friend Kristie along with us too, so it'll totally turn into fun times on the Trans-Canada. Or that's the plan. Kristie invited herself to my quickie Vegas wedding, and I don't know what happened here but it appears she's going to my sister's too. I wonder if she got invited or just informed them she'd be present.

My sister THOUGHT she'd avoid drama and frustration by only giving us three months' notice and planning a small ceremony. It won't work. Trust me: you need to give four weeks' notice or less, become unreachable by being on the road and homeless, and then hold a minuscule ceremony in Las Vegas. Even then there will be a few shadows of attempts at family crap.

Anyway, dogs, friends, road trip, wedding. Since we'll be venturing into populated provinces, we can stop at essential places like Ikea. It will be fabulous.

One last unrelated thing: I won a free book online! From the author and everything! Life is good.


This post's picture courtesy of Kristie.

Old & New (Cans & Doors)

Mon Dieu, but you people are ravenous for toilet pictures.

So here's a pic of the dismantled old, broken toilet. Note immense size of water tank:


Here is the new toilet, all installed and shiny.


Note the plaster wall behind the tank, where the old toilet used to be bolted to the wall. That plaster hole gives you an idea of the size difference between the two tanks, on top of the fact that the new tank is also lined with a thick coating of styrofoam. Less water, lest waste! (Oh yeah, and why is a silver coating bad? I have no idea.) I think I'll get on fixing the plaster next week.

My parents came to visit this week and while they were here the project of the week was to install a new front door. After the guys had ripped apart the door frame we discovered that our door is indeed the original one that was put on this house, 106 years ago. That's a long time to be a front door.

You can probably guess that in 106 years the door has become a bit inefficient and drafty. Okay, a LOT drafty. Also, it's hard to open and once you open it it's almost impossible to close, hence our desire to install a new front door. We bought a pre-hung one and like I said, the guys ripped apart all the framing so that the new door could be put in.


the mission was aborted after three or four hours, though. They discovered that the wall the door is in is a bit slanty and weird. Also, there is apparently some strange bevelling going on in the wood under the bottom plate of the door frame. Also, there is no framing in the door hole that a new pre-hung door could be attached to. The wall goes thusly: lathe, plaster, more plaster, hole. How does one attach a new door to nothing but 106-year-old plaster? The answer is, one does not. One calls a carpenter and asks them to make a frame in the slanty bevelly plaster wall.

So they put the framing back on around the door, but everything's all beat up now and it looks sad. The carpenter is going to come "when we get a nice day" so that could be... tomorrow? July 1st? Care to leave a guess?


Until then, this here funky little guy will still be our door key. One day, he will retire and become a decoration, kept around to remind us of the door that stood in our house for 106 years.

the new toilet

The phone rang early this morning. It was the plumber, asking if we would be home today. As the broken toilet seriously adds to Mark's commute to work by forcing him to go downstairs to the other bathroom, we were excited that the plumber was going to show up about three days earlier than we had expected him to.

An hour or so later he did show up and I took him to the bathroom. He looked at the toilet and made a joke about how old it was. Then he kept looking. A frown appeared on his face. He started muttering under his breath and made a beeline for the pipe that was the water supply to the tank.

uh-oh.

His assistant, who had been lugging the new toilet parts into the house, popped into the bathroom. The plumber started discussing options with his lanky helper - it turns out that the old pipes used on our ancient toilet are a different size than what is used here in the modern age. We had two options: Mr. Plumber and his lanky assistant could rip up a bit of our floor and see if they could find out where the normal piping started and work from there, or Mr. Plumber could drive back to his shop for special tools, leaving my floor intact but also leaving the strange old piping to potentially cause future problems. Also, the clock was already ticking and contractors are expensive.

My dad, who I'm sure up to this point has been sorely disappointed that we did not either do this project ourselves or else call him to come and help us put in a new toilet, can put his mind at ease. I thought it would be a bit of a gamble trying to install a new toilet ourselves, considering that the old one was so old and weird and had so much potential for strange problems. Add that to the fact that neither of us has tried to fix something like this before, and you have a recipe for disaster. When the plumber frowned, I knew we had made the right choice.

So, we gave Mr. Plumber the go-ahead to (potentially) wreck our bathroom floor and replace the old weird piping, and crossed our fingers.

It turns out that, in addition to being friendly and enthusiastic about his job, he's also a good plumber. The pipe problem got sorted out, the floor was slightly dismantled but you'd never know by looking at it now, and the new toilet is all set up.

There's almost six inches of space between the back of the new toilet and the wall. The tank is also about three inches shorter than the old monster of a tank. Think about it: that three inches of height, added to the six inches of depth, equals a gazillion litres of difference in water usage. I'm pretty sure the new water tank could fit entirely inside the old one, and I'm glad we've upgraded to the tiny modern one. I'm excited about efficiency, y'all.

Also, the new toilet? Is antibacterial. It is the distant future!!

cans and axes

The last event of our holiday schedule was a visit from my sister, her fiancé Justin, and Linus the Greyhound. They are the first overnight visitors we've had since we moved in! We had a real bed for them to sleep in, and a real table to eat at and everything.

Of course you know what's coming. There was a hitch. There is always a hitch. About an hour after they arrived, our toilet decided to give its last hurrah. We had known this might happen before we'd had a chance to replace the toilet; I just didn't think it would happen as soon as guests arrived. I am certain the toilet is at least fifty years old, and it does/did have its share of quirks. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, it flushed for no reason. It seemed to run for longer than it needed to after being flushed, but if you took the lid off to pull on the float to make it stop, you were confronted with something very magical: there is no float. We have no idea what sort of mechanism assisted this toilet in deciding when to stop refilling the tank.

So our company arrived. The toilet was, at some point, put to use. It ran.

It continued to run.

We started to talk about how long it's been running, gee.

Justin jumped up and said "I'll have a look!" and I promptly followed him up the stairs to witness his reaction when he discovered the lack of a float. We stared into the tank for a while. We jiggled all the bits and pieces, and the toilet continued to pour fresh clean water into the town's sewer system.

We finally had to resort to turning off the water supply to the toilet. Although we turned it on a few more times later on and messed around with the toilet, it was determined to run for all it was worth and go out with a bang. The much less conveniently located downstairs toilet became the hero of the week.

So my sister and I walked downtown with the dogs the next morning. I bought a part that had a chance of fixing the toilet at least temporarily, and I also got a list of important names: first, a good plumber, and second, a dude that will install new windows and siding on my house.

When we got home we discovered that the new part did not work, because the part it was to replace had been cemented to the toilet. The toilet has, at long last, permanently crapped out. A gentleman will be arriving within the next few business days to replace our old-fashioned toilet with no float (and with a tank that seems to hold about eight gallons of water) with a modern low-flow toilet.

Progress, folks.

I also called the windows and siding guy and he showed up to take a quick look at our house and to talk about a few details. The scary thing about starting this kind of stuff is that we will no longer be debt free. We spent all our money paying for this house outright, so our savings are tapped. In order to start these somewhat pricey renovations we will have to spend more money than we currently have, which is not an idea we're in love with.

We will do it anyway, for a ton of reasons I will not bore you with. On to the interesting stuff:

Like I said before the toilet story took over, my sister visited!

Justin had brought his guitar with him so he and Mark sat down and started jamming. Kim and I are both able to sing (and I actually think we sound a lot alike) so soon enough everyone was singing and playing and it was a whole lotta fun.


They seemed to really like our house. They are currently renting in Kingston, Ontario but will be moving to Hicksville, Northern Ontario soon and I'm quite interested to see what sort of place they end up buying. Somehow I don't think they'll go through the hassles that we did before we bought this place.

So they stayed with us for a few days before heading back to Ontario, and that is officially the last of our holiday events.


Bring on the January blahs!!

Here's Hopen

New Ikea bed! Alriiiight!!


It's awesome. Ikea furniture always comes with silly names. I like the name of this bed frame - "Hopen". Very optimistic.

Mark commented that there have been a lot more pictures of Oliver than Arlo lately on this blog. I have a very good explanation for this: Oliver follows us around, wherever we go, all the time, no exceptions. Arlo? Well, Arlo's not concerned with us. He likes to find a comfy spot and stay there. When we lived in Victoria there was a futon near the door to our apartment that was his. When we came home from work, Arlo wouldn't even get off his futon to greet us. There he would lay, tail wagging as we walked through the door, and that was all we got.

Normal people have dogs who at least come to the door to greet them, but oh no, Arlo's apparently too good for that kind of stuff.

Well I got off on a bit of a tangent there. What I wanted to say is that yes, there are a lot of pictures of Oliver, but it's because he happens to be wherever I point the camera. That's why I've put a picture of Arlo here today.

Enjoy.

Christmas Number 2

I don't even know how to start this post. I will start in non-chronological order, because I'm sure you will like this picture the best:


Do you know what that box is? It's brand new carpeting. And so are the two boxes underneath it that you can't see because they are BURIED IN SNOW BECAUSE THE COURIER LEFT THEM OUTSIDE ON OUR PORCH WHILE WE WERE OUT OF TOWN OVER THE HOLIDAYS. Yes, the same courier who didn't even knock on the door last time when he was supposed to be delivering my free vacuum cleaner. He left these boxes on our porch on a Tuesday, and then there was a gigantic blizzard on Wednesday. We arrived home to find them covered in two days worth of snow on Friday. Have I mentioned that I phoned the courier company to tell them I would not be home, and that they said they were leaving a note in my file, and they would hold my packages until January 5th?

THANKS COURIERS.

I would not recommend using UPS or Same Day Right-O-Way.

Luckily the carpet company was not so stupid - in fact, they were smart about how they packaged it. After we shoveled the boxes out of the snow drift and got them into the house, we discovered that the carpet tiles themselves were not wet.

I'm sure the next pressing question is: which carpet did we pick, after all the samples and deliberation? The answer is: none of the above. We chose a carpet that we didn't have samples for. I think we got tired of over-thinking the matter. Mark saw this pattern on the website, remarked how much he liked it, and we just ordered it.

Here it is, in a big heap, with a dog on top.


It was really easy to install.


It looks great, and I don't regret not getting a sample.


So before all the carpet drama occurred, we went out of town to celebrate Christmas number 2. This occasion took place near Truro, where my parents live. My brother flew in from Ontario and my sister and her guy drove with their dog Linus! Do you guys remember Linus? He was one of our many rescue Greyhounds that we fostered, and my sister adopted him. He's awesome.


So we drove to Truro, celebrated a late Christmas with my family, and then grabbed our friend Kristie from Halifax the next day. She came back to Truro with us to hang out for New Years. Before that, we celebrated two birthdays.

The birth of baby Jesus!

No. Well, yes. But not really. I was talking about my dad, whose birthday is Christmas day, and my brother, who has his birthday on the 27th. We've always tried to keep my dad's birthday very separate from Christmas celebrations. There is ALWAYS a cake, and Christmas/birthday presents are rarely combined unless they're extra-big.

Kristie the genius brought her Wii with her, and the Christmas/New Years festivities degenerated into a pile of screaming, jumping, laughing craziness. One insane game that she brought was SUPER MONKEY BALL BANANA BLITZ. That is the real name of the game, and it sets an appropriate tone for the game itself. At one point I took a break and was hanging out with my parents upstairs, and we found ourselves simply sitting around the kitchen table, looking at each other and laughing. We were listening to the fracas in the basement, where four or five people were laughing and shrieking and accusing each other of stealing bananas. It went on for hours.


It was good times. In fact, despite the raging snowstorm which caused my dog to attempt to go on strike from using the bathroom for more than 24 hours, and despite the fact that the other dog chose a different course of action by eating things he shouldn't have and getting diarrhea, and despite the crowd of eight people and four dogs living in close proximity for three days, and despite facing the very real possibility of getting snowed in for much longer than that (we didn't), it was good times.

It was good food, good drink, good presents, a Christmas, a New Year, and two (okay three) birthdays all rolled into one three-day blitz of partying. Oh, and everyone carried Oliver all around the place the whole time.



Then we drove back to Bridgetown and found our new carpets in a pile of snow and you already know the rest.

Happy new year!