Irritants

Here is the exact quote from Environment Canada regarding tomorrow's weather: "Flurries ending near noon then cloudy with 40 percent chance of flurries."

Uh, okay guys. Snow, then maybe some snow. It's a bit redundant, but we get it. It's really too bad that the weather is cooling off again because we had a thaw today and half of the ice in our driveway has melted. When the temperature drops tomorrow, those puddles will simply re-freeze into a sheet of ice much like the sheet of ice we had on the driveway yesterday, except that the new sheet of ice will be much newer and smoother and more slippery. There's not much to be done about it except being extra careful. So if you come visit us, that's fine, but watch your step!

We have a mantle in our living room. There is no fireplace there, but the beautiful woodwork of the original mantle remains. The place where the fireplace part used to be has been plastered over and wallpapered, and Mark is becoming obsessed with "doing something" with that flat square that covers the spot were a fire used to go.


He wants to put some sort of picture there. I'm not morally opposed to the idea, but I'm pretty sure that there's a 99.9% chance that it will look TACKY.

He went looking for pictures online the other day and every one of them made me cringe. I mean, it's just blank now. It's relatively benign and you can focus on the beautiful carved wood if you want to look over there. Putting a picture in the middle kind of reminds me of that gross artsy wallpaper from the 80s - you know the kind I'm talking about. It's a forest scene, or maybe a beach, and it's wallpaper, and it takes up one entire wall in a room.

AND IT'S TACKY.

I don't know. If he could find a picture that I could imagine putting in that spot without gritting my teeth, I'd do it. It's not that I particularly don't want to do it. I just can't imagine what would possibly look good there.

Okay, since we've just covered one of my recent pet peeves in this post, I thought I'd share one of Mark's with you as well.

Now, I have to say that Mark is a master of ambivalence. If he had a super power, his name would be Ambivalent Man. His favourite gesture is a shrug, and he never gets angry, and I mean never. I used to think that he was repressing everything, but over the years I slowly learned that he just doesn't mind things. That's just Mark.

That all changed recently when the world was introduced to Nadya Suleman. She's that lady in California who gave birth to a litter of eight babies (via in vitro fertilization), but oops, she already has six young children at home (also via in vitro fertilization), and oops, she's a single mom and oops, she couldn't even afford to feed the kids that she had before this latest little incident occurred.

She makes Mark angry. The fact that she was so incredibly selfish, crazy, and irresponsible makes him angry. The fact that she is getting international attention also makes him angry. Every day or so I'll find a new news story about her and tell him about it, just to see his reaction. Today Ms. Suleman launched her very own website to ask for donations from the public. I told Mark and he immediately started spouting a long series of vitriolic statements about what a stupid woman she is. I completely agree, but I'm surprised and amused by this display of emotion from him. I'm sure he'll comment on this post to say how stupid that woman is.

And he'd be right.

A Sunny Snowy Hike

I feel better today than yesterday. We will always remember Dexter - he was almost a part of our family. I am sad we couldn't help him, but we will try all the harder to help other animals in need in the future.


The weather was beautiful here today. The sun was shining, the near constant snowfall we've had for about a week stopped yesterday, and the temperature was slightly above freezing today.

We went for a hike on the trail behind our house and the dogs are now exhausted. The trail is also used by snowmobiles so we had to take the dogs off to the side a few times to let the skidoos go by. I waved at every one of them as they drove past us - there must have been about eight in total - and every single one of them waved back at me. That made me happy.


As we were coming back home, we noticed an elderly man with a cane plodding along the path. I immediately felt like a giant wimp. The deep snow is not packed down on the trail - all the snowmobiles churn it up and send it flying, so it was kind of like walking on really loose uneven sand. Our feet sank and slipped with every step. I was a bit tired; we'd been walking on it for an hour and I was carrying Oliver because he'd finally wimped out after snow got into the tops of his little boots.

We approached the man and I noticed he was wearing rubber boots. He also looked to be in his late eighties at least. He stopped to pet Arlo and we chatted about the weather for a moment before continuing on our way. I was sweating and my jacket was unzipped. Every step sank deeply into the messy snow and I was looking forward to getting back to town. I thought about the old man. Would he still be alive if he didn't go pounding about through the snow all winter?

I think I'll try to get onto the trails as much as possible.

Goodbye Dexter

I finally got news about Dexter, the Boston Terrier we've been looking into adopting. Unfortunately he has continued to deteriorate after a bad reaction to some medication.

The medication was an anti-anxiety drug, and although I don't think it was fair or entirely appropriate to put him on it, it was the best option for him in an imperfect world. Dexter is young, high energy, and previously untrained and undisciplined. His foster parent, who took him in because there was nowhere else for him to go, seems not to have had the greatest relationship with him. My interpretation was that she tolerated him (he was not her type of dog) and tried to help train him. She tried her best.

She has two other dogs of her own who both recently experienced pretty major medical issues. She lives alone and works full time. Dexter is in a crate nine hours a day, and when she gets home the foster mum must divide her time between him and her two other needy dogs. She has been, understandably, pretty stressed out and was made more so by Dexter's energy levels. The solution that they tried was to mellow Dexter out by putting him on anti-anxiety drugs. Yes, exercising him would have been better, but like I said the world isn't perfect. Nobody had the time to do this, least of all his overburdened foster mother.

He reacted very badly to the medication. He became anxious, afraid, and aggressive. They stopped the medication but his skitzy behaviour has continued and recently he bit one of his foster family's dogs badly enough that stitches were required.

The rescue group has told me that Dexter is no longer a safe or workable dog. I would argue, but I can't expose my own dogs to harm. I am devastated. I've never met this dog, but here I sit, crying, thinking of what could have been.

The world never gave him a chance.

Slowly Going Crazy

It's been over a week since I've heard from the rescue group about the dog we are trying to adopt. The nice lady sent me LOTS of emails before that and had approved our application. She also said she'd keep us updated on his recovery.

I'm worried! I've sent her two emails this week and she has not responded. The last one was two days ago. Why the lack of communication? All sorts of weird things are going through my head - maybe her computer crashed and she doesn't know how to contact us. Maybe they interpreted something on our application strangely and decided they don't like us after all. Maybe the dog ran away and they don't want to tell us. Maybe he died. Maybe I'm paranoid and crazy.

I'm going to go send another email.

Investment Rant!

My parents, who are both semi-retired, have lost a good chunk of their "low-risk" investments in the current recession that we're having. (Will we hear the word "depression" in a year? I think that's a distinct possibility.) Mark's mother, who is self-employed, has been extremely hard hit. Her investments are her retirement pension.

When we lived in Victoria we were saving money like mad and keeping it in a savings account at our bank where it collected interest for us. We were aware that we could invest it but we knew we'd be using most of it to buy a house within five years, so we left it where it was. Everyone we spoke to who worked in the investment industry tried to pressure us to play financial games with our money but we resisted. If we had done so, we could not have bought our house in cash.

I am therefore not sure what the purpose of a financial consultant is. We pay them to know what to do with our money, but when we lose money by following their recommendations, these people are somehow not penalized. They're all saying "don't worry; the market will go up again", but that doesn't help my parents or Mark's mother. They will never make back what they lost because they are already at the age where they should be retiring. They don't have another decade to let it sit in the hopes that what was lost will come back.

This past week I got around to doing something that I've been procrastinating on. When we started looking for a house last spring, we met with an advisor from a major investment company and set up - among other things - a life insurance policy. Our logic at the time was that we were about to go into debt (didn't happen - you all know the sordid land-buying story). If one of us died, it would leave the other person to shoulder the mortgage alone, so life insurance would have protected us against that sort of financial disaster. Things didn't go as planned and we are not currently in debt so I called to cancel our life insurance policy. We don't need it and we don't want the monthly bill for it. Who cares if we win the jackpot when one of us dies? One of us will still be dead and winning a prize for that just seems kind of sick.

Today our investment advisor from the major firm sent me an email for the first time in months, telling me why it was in my best interest to keep the policy. Why on earth would I believe her advice to be valuable? Six or eight months ago she wanted us to start putting money into investments regularly, and actually told me that my stance on financial risk was too conservative. We were a breath away from a giant economic downturn and she had no idea. Isn't that her job?

Anyway I emailed her back but didn't rip her head off, and we're cancelling the policy. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

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!