No Water but Many Dogs

There's so much going on! Where to start?

Hmm... well, Minerva the kitten is still doing well in her quirky, anti-statistical way. She's still waaaay too small, but is developing and flourishing otherwise.


She's starting to get bored with the bottle, but hasn't got the hang of solid food yet. That's probably because she REFUSES to even LOOK at any solid food that is not hard, dry kibble. No rice gruel (even with kitten milk in it), no wet kitten food, and not even any dry kibbles that have been soaked in water OR milk. So she only wants to try and eat the hard, dry kibbles, but she's not very good at chewing. Or swallowing.

Sigh.

A local news reporter showed up at work today to take pictures of Minerva and interview me about her. I guess we'll be in the news next week.


In slightly older news, I drove home from work on Friday to find a geyser in our road. Then they closed our road, and then our house lost running water. Uh-oh! Unfortunately and tragically, we discovered we had no water when we were trying to refill the kitten's hot water bottle that keeps her warm. They had the pipes fixed in under five hours, but still, I mean, c'mon, we got kittens here.


Then, on the weekend, we helped out with a big fundraiser for CAPS. It was a dog walkathon that Nay organizes every year. This year we had 37 dogs (and many more people) all go on a walk through our town at the same time, and Nay managed to raise almost $2,700 for the animals with this event, mostly through individual sponsorships.



It was totally fun times, but it turned out to be on the only cold day we've had so far in September. Our little Oliver got cold and had to be put in my jacket, and Nay's new dog Chili, a rescue Chihuahua, had to be put in hers. I had to show her. She's new at little dogs.

A Parade and a Party

Sometimes, you just have to see something to believe it.


Who thought this was a good idea? Really, who? I think I'm going to have nightmares about the balloon on lady legs.

Anyway.

It was Ciderfest in our little corner of the Annapolis Valley this past weekend and we caught the parade by accident when we were out walking the dogs. Arlo LOVED the cows and the fire trucks.



On Saturday night we went to a party. It was hosted by one of our friend's relatives, and seems to have been a tribute party on the anniversary of someone who was killed... during a drug deal? Or something? And a bunch of metal heads, drug dealers, and bikers all got together? And there was live music, a giant party tent, and a lit up picture of the deceased? And, for some reason, we went too. Oh, and we took a three-week old kitten with us just to make the situation more bizarre. It's hard to explain to a drunk lady why you are in her friend's kitchen during some sort of death-metal murder tribute party, warming a miniature baby bottle under the tap.

They were actually all very nice people, but it seriously was a rough crowd.


As the night wore on, we sat around a fire on the fringes of the crowd, listening to surprisingly well-equipped bands of varying degrees of talent play loud music.

To amuse ourselves during the bad music, we made faces at each other and tried to sing along.


Would you like to hear some of the less talented musicians that performed? Here ya go:



Anyway, it was a pretty entertaining evening.



Back on the home front, we are eagerly anticipating fencing supplies. All of our posts were planted by Thursday - I kind of enjoyed all the digging and measuring and throwing around of dirt and rocks.


The wire fencing will hopefully arrive some time during the coming week, and then up it goes! I'm excited!

Holes and Posts

A long weekend!

And we thought we'd actually relax or something. HA HA, no.


We woke up and had a pleasant morning on Saturday, taking our time to do a few small chores and errands. One of Mark's chores was to call Willie the Farmer and try to set up a time to get him out to our house to dig holes for a fence. Willie the Farmer has an excavator and had mentioned that he'd be happy to come out and give us a hand some time.

Getting contractors out to do work is a tricky thing though. We've been waiting on our other contractor for months now to get new siding put on the house. We call and pester sometimes, but no luck yet.

So Mark called Willie the Farmer about digging the holes for our fence, and Willie said "how about right now?"

Aaaahh!

We rushed to the hardware store to buy fence posts, sonnet tubes, and concrete. As soon as we'd agreed on what to get, I left Mark to load the truck and started to walk home in case Willie the Farmer beat us there. Good thing - as soon as I left the hardware store, Willie drove by. I ran home (it's only like three blocks) and chit-chatted with Willie while he unloaded his excavator from his trailor. That took all of two minutes, then he looked at me and asked me what I wanted him to do.

I panicked.

Mark was nowhere to be seen, and I really didn't want to direct the guy to start digging holes in the ground all by my lonesome. I sucked it up though, pointed to the ground, and said "start there".

He did. Thankfully, our friends Chani and Captain D. showed up for moral support shortly after the digging started. Fifteen minutes later, Mark arrived with a big truckload of supplies, and I ran away so that he'd have to direct the digging of the holes.


Nay and Jay eventually came over too, and it turned into an impromptu Labour Party (on Labour Day weekend, no less) and all the guys got going on sinking the corner posts, which needed to be cemented in. Chani and I got started on dinner for everyone. Okay, Chani actually made food in my kitchen and I helped by buying groceries and cleaning things up. We all had a pretty good time - Willie the Farmer dug 33 holes, the guys got 5 posts cemented in, and everyone had a great dinner/party afterward.


Mark and I have gotten 16 more posts in the ground in the past two days. There are 12 to go, then a bunch of T-posts in the treed area where we aren't putting wood posts, then actual fencing. Sounds like a lot, but we already did the hardest part. ACTUALLY STARTING.

In other news, Minerva the kitten is finally putting weight on. She'll be three weeks old tomorrow, and although she's still very small for her age, she's doing great.