Heading Out

A snowstorm hit Nova Scotia last night. Our little micro-climate here in the Valley ended up with only the very lightest sprinkling of snow, but we will be driving into The City; which was one of the hardest-hit areas, tonight.

It's time for a road trip!

We're meeting Kristie and Tanya (sisters and close family friends of mine) tonight in the city and heading out of the province tomorrow morning. My sister is getting married on Saturday so all of her far-flung family members and friends are converging on the town of Kingston, Ontario to witness the spectacle.

In anticipation of the trip, my dad called me last night wanting to know how to put new addresses in his GPS. As Mark went out the door to band practice I walked him through it, and I'm pretty sure he actually understands the process now. He's not of a generation that is comfortable with technology, but he wants to learn and he's not afraid of most of it.

For my part, even though we're carpooling in Tanya's car and she has a GPS, I've added our hotels and my sister's house to my own GPS. Then, if she is unprepared (unlikely), we'll still have a backup system.

Or we could use an old-fashioned paper map. Bleh.

Those are so twentieth-century.

awaiting Earth Hour

Our social lives have been going in high gear lately, and that's not about to stop. Early next week we hit the road with two friends on a road trip to Ontario to attend my sister's wedding. She's not Bridezilla and it seems like it's going to be one of those 'fun' weddings as opposed to one of those 'obligatory' weddings where nobody is comfortable but everyone has to go through the motions. I think I will time her ceremony to see if it beats mine for length - I'll have to check again but I'm pretty sure our Vegas wedding lasted almost exactly five minutes.

As I type, Mark is running around the house making Arlo the dog bark and growl. Earth Hour is quickly approaching so I'll have to get this posted sooner rather than later so I can turn the computer off.

Earth Hour really should have happened on Thursday, for our own personal convenience. Around 2:30 in the afternoon on Thursday we suddenly lost our power. The sky was blue and there was no wind blowing, so we really couldn't guess why it was gone. Mark made a quick call to his work to let them know that he was going to be out of commission for a bit, and we got on with our day sans electricity.

One hour passed, then two, then four. Still no power.

Later in the evening, as the sky grew dark, we broke out the flashlights. Just as the last glimmer of sunlight left the horizon, the power finally returned. The next evening we were at a friend's house and the power failure was briefly the topic of conversation. It was out in a large area - possibly our entire county - and we all joked that someone had unplugged the one and only extension cord that ran to Halifax and supplied power to the western part of the province. We are small town folk now, but we are not afraid to admit it!

Well, Earth Hour approaches. I think we'll go take the dogs for a walk.

E.T. Broke Stove

You know that scene from the movie E.T. where the scary government dudes who are all dressed up in haz-mat suits put a bunch of fabric and tubes on E.T.'s house? Some guy came and put a little bit of stuff like that up on our house.


It was for a Home Energy Evaluation. The government says that if we get this evaluation done, we can get a small reimbursement on all the new windows that we have ordered. I hate government hassles, but the chance to save some money makes it seem worth a try.

I'll let you know if the inevitable red tape starts to drive me crazy.

There's an update on Mark's musical status. It turns out he's in the band! They've actually been waiting for a good guitar player to come along. The guy that currently plays guitar writes the songs and sings, but is not so stuck on the idea of playing complicated stuff on the guitar - he'd rather concentrate on writing and singing, and it seems that he'll play the basic guitar parts now and Mark will do the elaborate stuff.

A few nights ago Mark was waiting for the band guys to come pick him up to carpool to practice, and we were both hanging out in the living room when a loud, irritating noise suddenly issued forth from the kitchen. We both looked at each other, aghast. We knew what it was.

When we moved into this house a few months ago, we innocently turned on the timer on the oven while cooking something. The "timing" part of it worked, and it buzzed when the time was up, but then we found that we could not get the buzzer to turn off. We twisted the dial every which way, broke two pieces off it, and eventually had to go get pliers and force the dial until the annoying buzz stopped.

EEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! --That's what it sounded like. It was really annoying. We've left it alone since then.

So imagine our surprise the other day when the buzzer apparently finished counting down about three months' worth of time and started buzzing.

We went to the kitchen and tried to make it stop.

Then something in the dial broke, and it started turning freely in our hands. The buzzing continued. Mark looked out the window in the hopes that his ride had arrived - no luck.

We ended up hauling the oven out from the wall and unplugging it. In the sweet silence that followed, we took apart the back of the oven and yanked some wires out, permanently disabling the buzzer.

During this process, we discovered a big fluorescent light built into the top part of the oven, hidden along with the fuses under a metal cover. Who puts a metal cover over a light? It's irrelevant; we can't use it because as you can see in the below picture, the empty socket probably used to be the switch to turn it on:


Empty!!

They were ripped out long before we came to possess this stove. Now we have ripped out most of the timer dial and some wiring. The appliance is slowly becoming a shell, and when it dies for good I am getting one of those fancy ovens with the flat glass tops! Alright!

The Biker

We had a pretty crazy weekend but I can't tell you about it because it's not our story; it's someone else's. Instead, I will tell you about a crazy thing that happened to us once when we lived in Victoria.


It was spring and Mark and I had taken the week off from work. Our grand plan was to laze around home for most of the week and visit all of our favourite places in the city whenever we felt like it.

On the first day of our vacation we woke up reasonably early and prepared to have a fun morning downtown, planning to sit at a good cafe for a while and then hit a few shops afterward. When we left our apartment the bright sun and fresh spring air greeted us. We walked up the front walkway to the street, turned toward downtown, and immediately heard the scream of tires skidding on pavement behind us, followed by a sickening THUNK and the tinkle of broken glass.

Aw crap.

We turned in time to see a woman land on her side in the middle of the road, ten or fifteen feet away from a twisted bicycle. Also in the middle of the road was a large black SUV with a dent in the hood and a smashed windshield.

I ran down the road towards the still figure. As I ran I saw out of the corner of my eye that people in the nearby houses were peeping out their doors at the commotion. I screamed at them to call 911 and they immediately retreated back into their homes.

Two nice men we were acquainted with who lived down the road from us were gingerly approaching the woman. As I ran I screamed at them not to move her. They watched my approach and must have assumed that I knew something about something, which I don't really. I had some training as a Field Medic in the Militia, but not much more than someone might learn on a civilian first-aid course, and it had been a long time ago.

As I reached her, the still figure started to feebly move. Her bicycle helmet was in pieces and her face was already swollen and coloured with angry new bruises from the impact.

I told her not to move but she seemed confused, not to mention hurt and scared. I held her head and hip in place against the pavement with my hands as I scanned her body for blood. She was wearing jeans and a jean jacket, which is actually a great material to wrap your body up with if you're going to get hit by a truck. I felt around the parts of her that I couldn't see well to make sure that there were no open wounds that I was missing.

Here I was, the first day of our vacation, groping a half-dead stranger in the middle of the road.

Her eyes were half closed and she slurred her words as she asked me where she was bleeding. I told her there was no blood and she seemed surprised to hear it. She told me her arm was broken, but in my mind that was not as important as her head and spine. I did all I knew how to do, which was to hold her still and keep her talking. As we spoke I discovered that she only lived a couple of houses away. I told some of the onlookers to go to the address and see if anyone was home, and a gentleman broke away from the growing crowd to do so. He returned a moment later with a lanky, unshaven man following. As the man reached us, he took a look at the woman on the ground and a sudden panic shone in his eyes.

"OH NO TRACY, OH GOD, OH MY GOD!!"

Tracy tensed under my hands and tried to move. A helpful neighbour took the idiotic man, who was still screaming and freaking out, and led him away. She would receive no comfort from him.

The black SUV had been moved to the side of the road by this time, and the man who had been driving it was standing in the crowd watching the action. He had repeated a few times in a quavering voice that she'd veered right out in front of him; he'd tried not to hit her but it had been impossible.

After he'd said this a couple of times, one of our nice neighbours that we were acquainted with told him quietly, "nobody's concerned about that right now, buddy."

The man from the SUV stood silently after that, a part of the crowd but separated from them by recent events. His eyes were wide and his face was pale.

The wail of police sirens broke the air, and from my position I could see the police car approaching from down the road. He was zooming along with all his lights flashing, and as he approached it started to seem like he would not stop in time. The people near me retreated a few steps, but at the last moment the car screeched to a halt in front of us.

After a brief look at Tracy, they started asking questions of us all, trying to get a handle on what had occurred. Shortly after their arrival the ambulance pulled up and the paramedics hurried over to us.

"Please step back" was the curt command. I and the people around me started to move, but they pointed at me and said "- not you. Stay there and hold her still."

Tracy had been moaning in pain and constantly trying to move, but she did it so slowly and gently that I had no trouble holding her still with one hand. By this time I was holding her hand with my free hand. The paramedics worked around me, asking her questions as they did their magic.

When they asked her if she was on any medication, she said she was taking Methodone. This prompted them to start muttering special codes into their radios - I can only assume that an injured drug addict is trickier to treat than a healthy person.

They removed her jacket and I saw her injured arm for the first time. The skin was purple and swollen under a series of taut blood blisters. Tracy's earlier statement that it was broken seemed like a pretty sure bet.

They finally got her onto the gurney and packed her into the back of the ambulance. I stood where I had been and watched as they closed the door and pulled away. I noted that the lanky idiotic man from her apartment was not in the back with her - just as well.

I asked the police if I could go. After finding out that I had not witnessed the impact, he waved me on my way. For the first time I noticed Mark, standing off to the side with our neighbours. I wandered over to them and we all stood there staring at each other. One of the other guys muttered "yay, team" in a quiet attempt at humour. We spoke with them in hushed tones for a few moments and then went on our way.

Mark and I wandered back up the hill towards the downtown area. After walking about thirty feet, panic welled up in me in a giant wave, and I suddenly felt the adrenaline that had likely been coursing through my body the entire time. I gasped for air and tears sprang to my eyes. At least I had stayed calm when it counted! Mark put his arm around me as we continued to walk.

We did go downtown, but I simply cannot remember a single other detail about the rest of the day.

Branches, Bands, & Balmy Weather

Today it was GORGEOUS out. The sun shone all afternoon and it reached 11° Celsius. I spent all afternoon and a good chunk of the evening outside messing with the yard. Some of our smaller trees were in desperate need of pruning so I got that done. Then I spent like an hour picking up dead branches that had fallen on the front lawn from the three gigantic old Oak trees during winter storms. I like these trees quite a bit. I hope I don't develop a love/hate relationship with them - I'd rather just love them.

We'll see.

The excellent news of the day is that the contractor installed our new front door! Now it opens AND closes AND locks. Imagine that.


Mark is supposed to finish off the last framing bits, so I'll post an "after" picture once he's done that.


Other excellent news: the two big white Husky dogs (that both look just like Arlo) who we've been walking for CAPS have been adopted. I don't think I told you guys about that - these two dogs have been a while waiting for adoption. They're big and there's two of them, and they have a sled-dog past so walking them on a leash is not always fun because they were taught to PULL PULL PULL. So they're not exactly the most adoptable dogs out there.


Mark and I started walking them a few weeks back in order to start teaching them not to pull. It's been going really well and they're extremely sweet dogs, so I'm happy that they have a new home. They're on a 'trial' with the new family until the end of the week - I hope it works out.

Mark has been sick for the past couple of days. That's not so great, but he's fairly cheerful because he might be in a band. We're not sure. He's been to one practice; there has been no official "join the band" invitation, but I think he's supposed to go to the next practice.


So is he in?

An Evening Out

Saturday evening we went to an auction for charity at the local pub. We made bids on a few silent auction items, got bored, and realized we were trapped there because we were winning on a few things. Everyone at the pub knew each other, and there was a 10 year old child wandering around selling 50-50 tickets. In the pub. At night. Getting drunk. Well, no, not that last part. But still.


The next day was when the really fun stuff happened.

We were at a dinner party Sunday evening when the host's phone rang. She disappeared to answer it and came back into the room a moment later, phone to her ear and eyes fixed on Chani, the girl sitting to my right. On the other end of the phone was Chani's neigbour from down the road in the tiny community where the dinner party was being held.

Emmylou was on the prowl.

Upon hearing this news Chani's husband and another man at the table sprang into action; throwing their shoes on, jumping into a car, and disappearing down the road in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

Emmylou, Chani's precious yet precocious pet, had wandered into a neighbour's yard. It was up to the boys to get her back to her own home, but were they up to the challenge?

It's no small feat to wrangle a 600 pound pig.

The party continued, and as dusk turned to darkness the boys finally returned. They were tired and smeared with mud, but Emmylou Hairless was home again.

They had pushed, prodded, baited, and begged. Emmylou had had little interest in going home - half the community had showed up to watch the efforts, and she was enjoying her moment in the spotlight. A local journalist was present and the flash of his camera puncuated the boys' efforts at cajoling the stubborn swine away from the neighbour's squash patch. Frustrated, they discussed tying a rope around her middle to drag her back. Emmylou heard this and promptly laid down.

They offered marshmallows. She ignored them and instead made amourous advances at a guy named Jimmy. Finally, with much effort in front of their growing audience, the boys got Emmylou home and returned to their abandoned plates of food at the party.

The potluck dinner - which happened to be completely vegetarian - was a smashing success, and the story of the wayward pig added much excitement to the event.

Also: new friends, woohoo!

Winter Strikes Back

It was beautiful and warm enough outside to melt ice earlier this week, and suddenly it's like -20° Celsius today. At least the sun's still shining.

We went out in the yard like a couple of twits this afternoon and laid a big tarp down over some of the snow-covered lawn, and then weighted it down at the corners with big rocks. Then we went back inside after a job well done.

Makes no sense, right? Here's out theory: we want to plant a vegetable garden this spring, and we don't feel like having to dig up lots and lots of fresh healthy grass growth to do it. We are guessing that the tarp will keep the growth of new grass to a minimum, and therefore keep our digging efforts to a minimum as well.

We are also going to start some of our seeds indoors this weekend. Have I mentioned that it was like minus 20° Celsius today? Optimism. Yup.

Now that we've moved into this house, for the very first time ever, we receive weekly sales flyers at our door. When we lived in Toronto the only door to our second-floor apartment over the jewelry store owned by the Mafia exited to the back alley where the crack heads hung out, so no flyers there. Ever since then we've mostly lived in crappy basement apartments with shameful, hidden doors that nobody would have known to deliver flyers to. There was one exception when we lived in an actual house near the ocean in Victoria, but the house was actually surrounded on all sides by a parking lot and on commercial property, so we couldn't even put garbage out on collection day. Seriously.

Where was I? Oh, the flyers. All the sales start on Fridays and go 'til the following Thursday. We rarely get the flyers on Friday. Usually they're delivered on Saturday or Monday. (Even if he's late, he won't do it on Sunday. Jerk.)

When the flyers are late, Mark turns into a crotchety old man and peers out the window every hour, hissing "where are my weekly sales flyers!" until they finally appear. I don't consider us big consumers; I have no idea why the lateness of the flyers bothers him so much.

One small note: we changed the site around a little. I hope you enjoy it. I did it just for you.

Mr. Contractor for the win

If anybody sees this guy, tell him I'm looking for information on how his soap-making adventure went.

Now then.

Is it weird to want to eat a Cheez Wiz and avocado sandwich?

Now then.

You will all be pleased (okay, so some of you are indifferent) to hear that Betty the foster cat is feeling much, much better now that she is home from the vet and on medication. Hopefully we will not have any more sick cats for a while.

We've been keeping busy and the weather is getting warmer, finally! It was so nice yesterday, and the forecast was so good, that I gritted my teeth and decided to start bugging the contractor. Remember him? I called him in January and he said he'd be in touch 'when we get some good weather'. Our grand plan for spring/summer is to get new windows put in, install concrete fibreboard siding, and finish installing the new front door that thwarted Mark and my dad so long ago. Our 106 year old door, the one that I need Mark's help to close (and yet it doesn't lock) is still sitting there, in the wall, mocking me.



So I picked up the phone and called the contractor's house.

No answer.

I left a carefully constructed message for him. Chipper and friendly was I, but not pushy. I reminded him he'd been here for like ten seconds to look at our house two months ago, and had said he'd come back.

I hung up the phone and decided to wash some dishes. As soon as I had the sink full of hot water there was a knock at the door. I went into the mudroom and saw the contractor, standing casually right outside the door! The dude doesn't even live in the same town as us.

It turns out he was on his way even before I phoned him. So I happily invited him in and he started measuring windows as Arlo the dog and Neville the cat followed him from room to room. When he was done, he went to the first window and measured everything again, just to be sure. Am I impressed? Yes indeed.

Our windows are now ordered and the new door will be installed early next week, according to nice Mr. Contractor whom I trust because he's currently in my good books.

Things are happening!

Poor Boop

I feel like the worst foster mom ever.

The cats all had colds, and all got put on medication. Neville, original bringer of the communal cold, is doing great now and running around the house trying to beat everyone else up and generally getting into trouble.

Mrs. O'Hara, who got her cold from Neville, has fully recovered and has decided that she will be an exclusively upstairs cat. That's her domain, and she's perfectly content to stay up there. (She doesn't like the dogs.)

Betty. Poor little Betty. She's been sort of "off" for almost a week now, but it was not really anything that we could put our finger on. She didn't fully recover from the cat cold and kept getting a bit of a goopy eye, but we had put her through her round of medication and were hoping it would just go away. It didn't really, and then we started to notice that she was just not herself.

We kept an eye on her as she wandered through the house, walking more and more slowly each day. Then she stopped wandering around and just stayed in the cat room. Occasionally she would pick up a foot as though it was hurting her, but she did it with different feet, so we didn't know what to make of that. I squeezed and manipulated all her legs and she didn't seem to care that much, so I didn't think it was a twisted ankle or anything like that.

Then she decided that she only wanted to be under the bed in the cat room, so she didn't come out. She didn't feel like being petted, and didn't show any interest in us or in the other cats - this was not Betty-like behaviour.

Feeling like an idiot, I called the vet yesterday morning and told them that Betty seemed unhappy and uncomfortable. What else could I say? We brought her in and the vet examined her, and then asked us to leave her there for x-rays. When I called back later in the day they told me that they had hooked her up to an I.V. and were going to keep her overnight. They suspected that she had Pneumonia. The x-rays came back clear though, which means she just has a bad cold. Can you call it the flu if a cat has it?

Poor little Betty Boop! We're hoping she bounces back from this quickly now that she's on beefed up medication.

Also, I have recently been expecting spring but what has been provided instead is bitterly cold weather.

At least the weekend's almost here.

The Auction

Mark and I sent the dogs to the boarding kennel for the day on Saturday and headed out of town to go to an auction we'd heard about. We were hoping to score a good deal on a lawn mower, as the auction was advertising home and garden-type stuff.


We stopped on the way to pick up our friends Tanya and Josh, who were coming with us. As I knocked on the door to their house I saw a figure in the window waving us in. We entered and saw Josh at the top of the stairs with his puppy Maya beside him. Without greeting us or even looking our way, he said in a very determined tone of voice:

"Don't look at 'er! Do not talk to 'er! She is being bad! No, Maya, stay!"

His Quebecois French accent was much thicker than usual, and I think the battle with the puppy had something to do with it. I was happy to see him being so firm with her - she was a first dog for him and an awfully cute little thing. Sometimes a dog has the ability to take control away from an otherwise intelligent person and start making their own rules. Not in this case though!

Mark and I stood in the entryway and concentrated on ignoring the little fluffball. Josh quickly won the battle of wills and in another moment we were all out the door and off to the auction.

When we entered the firehall where the auction was to take place, I was immediately surprised at the sheer number of people milling around. Everyone was packed in like sardines, squirming past each other to get a look at the lots before the auction started.

There was a lot of stuff - one half of the hall was devoted to tools and hardware, and the other half had household things like blenders, microwaves, rugs, and such.

Josh tracked down two lawn mowers that looked pretty decent, so we knew we would be making some bids. I bought a listing of all the items up for auction and saw that there were a number of blenders available. We don't have a blender yet, and I immediately showed Mark.

"We have an extra one. Don't buy a blender here", said our friend Tanya.

Cool!

Mark asked me if there were any push-mowers on the list, and we got into a discussion (for probably the twentieth time) about whether a push mower would be practical for our large-ish lawn. I say no, but Mark says yes.

"Don't buy one of those. I have one but don't like it. You can have it." said Josh.

Score! Again!

The same thing happened with the electric weed-wackers that were on the auction block - Josh didn't like the electric kind and had bought a gas replacement, so we had claimed yet another useful cast-off.

The auction began promptly at 10am. Item #1 was an electric drill or something boring like that.

"DOIHAVEFORTYDOLLARSFORTYDOLLARSFORTYDOLLARS, DOIHEAR THIRTYDOLLARSTHIRTYDOLLARSWEHAVE THIRTY ISTHERETHRITYFIVE, THIRTY-THIRTYFIVE, THIRTY-THIRTYFIVE WEHAVE THIRTYFIVE FORTY FORTY FORTYFIVE DOIHEARFIFTYFORTYFIVEFIFTY--"

Tanya and I looked at each other, mortified at the utter cacaphony issuing from the speakers. At one point I swear the guy started yodelling.

Mark made a bid on and won a big sturdy-looking wrecking bar. We all looked at the list of items after that and decided we weren't interested in anything that was coming up soon. We escaped to a nearby cafe for some peace and quiet, and that set the tempo for the rest of the day.

We went back for a bit, and then hit the local building supply store where Mark bought some power tools.

Then we went back to the auction for a bit, bid on a few things that none of us won, and then went out for lunch.

Then we went back to the auction and won a lawn mower, which was the main goal of the day for us.

Then we escaped again and went grocery shopping together. It was now about 3pm, and the auctioneer was on lot #400 of over 600 items. I couldn't believe he was still standing upright - all he did was scream out numbers about ten times faster than the average human at a non-stop pace, and he had been doing it for five hours now.

We could hardly stand to be in the same room as him for more than five minutes.

We eventually said goodbye to our friends and went home with our prizes. The dogs had had a wonderful day at the kennel, and stinkin' Oliver seems to have charmed the owners. He gave them some final timid kisses as we left the building - manipulative little shrimp.