Change is Hard

It's been longer than usual since I've updated - sorry y'all. We've been busy.


In the past week, we have:

• installed 14 new windows in our house
• gone out of town visiting relatives
  
• made gourmet pizzas with new Bridgetown friends
• called 911
• brought a brand-new foster dog into our house

... and lots of other stuff too.

We hung out at Mark's mom Deb's house this past weekend and played cards with Mark's Gran. Our little dog Oliver was chilling out in Gran's arms, which put a big smile on her face. She loves all living creatures - the animal obsession is obviously in Mark's blood.

Halfway through the card game, though, Gran frowned, closed her eyes, and put her hand to her forehead. She's 88 so we got a bit concerned. Mark took the dog from her arms and suddenly Gran's eyes rolled sideways and then up, and she slumped slowly back in her chair. Her body shook and her eyes closed completely. Mark and his mom jumped to her side to keep her from sliding completely out of her chair, and we all called her name.

There was no response. Her eyes remained closed; her mouth slack.


Mark called 911 as I grabbed the three barking dogs and hauled them off to another room. Gran did regain consciousness and the ambulances came, stayed for a while, and then left. She would not go with them.

Like so many families, Deb and her mother have been having an ongoing debate about Gran's level of independence. She lives alone, does not have enough short-term memory left to remember whether she's eaten anything at all on any given day, is supposed to take a mountain of pretty hard-core pills each day (but often forgets to) and is highly resistant to moving into a care facility.

Change is hard.

Gran is quite miffed that we all "caught her" fainting, but her daughter is horrified at the thought that she may pass out again when she is alone in her home. She could break a bone or hit her head, Deb tells her. Gran doesn't really care, and says as much. She just wants to stay in her own home, and refuses to have care workers into her house.

Change is hard.

A few months ago they toured a high-end assisted living facility together, and Gran admitted to liking it. She refused to move into it back then and Deb relented, but it seems that the time has come. We'll see what happens.


We left them after extracting promises of constant updates on Gran's situation, and on Deb's new dog Robbie, who completely fell to the sidelines in this post with all the drama going on around him. He's perfect - that's all you need to know right now.

We also got a new foster dog this weekend, who is not so perfect. He's a Beagle, which is not so great to start off with. It's not that Beagles are inherently bad; it's just that they're not our style of dog at all. They tend to be high-energy dogs who prefer not to use their brains. That describes our Oland perfectly, but really he has a very sweet personality.


His greatest failings are not his fault. He's young - the head of our rescue group said he was probably two, but I think he is younger than that. He has no house manners and jumps on counters, tables, windows, people, and other dogs. That's not his fault. Nobody bothered to show him how to behave politely. He pulls mightily on his leash when he's walked. That's not his fault. Again, nobody bothered. He acts like a puppy but is a lanky, full grown dog. We'll work with him and I think he will respond well.

It will take time, though.

Change is hard.

spring cleaning

We got to bed late last night, then I woke up this morning and sliced my finger open on a can of cat food.

I felt exhausted all day - I think our recent travels around the country last week and around Nova Scotia this past weekend have belatedly caught up with me. Then Mark told me that he'd brewed decaf coffee instead of real stuff, and that was what I drank this morning.

That didn't help.

So I've felt a bit unproductive all day.

BUT... we did a little bit of work on the inside of the house, so that's something. Also, late last week I started some major yard cleaning - I got an entire garbage bag full of litter from the treed part of our property. That's good, except that I only made it through about a quarter of the trees. By my estimate, that means there are three more entire garbage bags worth of chip bags, styrofoam cups, grocery bags, and candy wrappers rotting out in my yard right now. The density of the trash in my woods is absolutely amazing. I would have gone out again to get more but lately we've had snow, rain, freezing rain, and generally cold miserable weather.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be back to spring again, which means that maybe, just maybe, our new windows will be put in. If it stays warm, I can also get the rest of the litter out of the woods and start digging out our vegetable garden.

I feel too tired to really think about that in detail right now though, so I'm off to bed.

There & Back Again

Living in a small town is nice most of the time, but all-you-can-eat sushi becomes a magical, mythical event when you live in an area that does not offer sushi, period. No sushi restaurants. No little plastic containers of take-away California Rolls sold anywhere. And if we want to make our own, do you think my local grocery store sells nori, or rice vinegar? My local grocery store doesn't even sell refried beans.

That's why this was so amazing:


We ate, and ate, and ate some more and finally all the sushi disappeared.


One time when I was in one of the famous Las Vegas buffets, I went to the washroom. There were two other girls in there too, and one of them said to the other one: "I ate so much! Can you hold my hair back so I can puke?"

... three cheers for Bulimia. (We ate so much we felt sick, which reminded me of the Vegas Bulimia Girls, but unlike them we did not puke. Just in case you're wondering.)

Have I mentioned that Kingston, Ontario, is a really cool little city? It has very pretty old buildings everywhere and is a big enough city to have a million cool stores downtown, but at the same time it's small enough that everything's in walking distance.

We left town after my sister's wedding and started the long drive east again. We kicked around in Montreal and Quebec City to go shopping for things that are either scarce, expensive, or non-existent in stores in Nova Scotia, and when we got back to Nova Scotia we all decided to stay the night at Kristie and Tanya's parents' place. We played Wii all evening and then the next morning Kristie fed me Triscuits and peanut butter for breakfast because they had cereal, but no milk, and peanut butter, but no bread.

We are finally home. We grabbed Arlo from the boarding kennel that our friends own and found out that he'd had a blast the entire time we were gone. The cats are fine, my plants are thriving, the house did not implode in our absence, and it's just nice to be in our own space again.

a family wedding

So my sister's wedding on Saturday was nice. They held it in an art gallery in downtown Kingston and the ceremony was less than ten minutes long. I thought the Justice of the Peace that deejayed/oversaw/whatever did a good job, but I found out later that Dr. Justin had to ask her to take a hard candy out of her mouth as the ceremony was beginning.

As far as I know, though, that was the biggest disaster of the day, so at least there was that. There were no drunk relatives acting up in public, no lost cameras, no fights, and nothing got broken. I'm pretty sure Dr. Justin had a much bigger case of nerves that day than my sister, though. He had no reason to worry - the day was a success. He looked nice, Kim looked beautiful, and everyone seemed to have fun. The guests danced the night away in the gallery and cupcakes were had by all.


We showed up at the art gallery the next day to help clean up. We ended up hanging out with the gallery owner for a bit, and when she started dismantling a $4,500 piece of art, we HAD to get in on it.


Mark and Kristie helped her take the art apart while I documented the event for posterity. My brother and his girlfriend looked on.


All was well with the world.

On Vacation!

We spent Wednesday night at a hotel in Northern New Brunswick. I can't believe the amount of snow that parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick still have! It's April, and the snow banks are over my head.


Tanya and Kristie wanted to go to Walmart the night we were in New Brunswick so I went along with them for something to do. They each bought a couple of things. At the check-out, Kristie went first and the lady started ringing her things through and put the first one in a plastic bag.

"I don't need a bag", Kristie said politely. We're all about saving the planet, people.

The lady looked at her, gave her a tight-lipped smile, put the second item in the bag and said "you can just use this until you get to your car then."

Um, what? Ah, NO.

Kristie looked her in the eyes and said again, "I don't need a bag." The lady's smile faded and she informed us that the greeter at the door would give us a hard time if our things were not in plastic bags.

"That's fine; I'll hold my receipt in my hand", Kristie said in a calm but determined tone of voice. She paid, picked up her purchases, and turned her back to the crabby cashier while her sister paid for her things.

"...I don't need a bag", Tanya said with a little smirk.

The cashier grasped a new tactic, and asked Tanya if she'd like to buy a re-usable bag. Tanya declined, stating that she already had some but had left them in the car.

The lady would not drop it. "We have policies, you know..." she said weakly.

Tanya told her it should be a customer's choice whether they needed a bag or not but the cashier snarked at us until we walked away - bag free, by the way.

The greeter at the door didn't pay the slightest attention to us.

We woke up the next morning to find that it had snowed again overnight. In April. The roads were still okay so we got going and drove west. Soon we were in Quebec - and as we all know, the French are amazing at making cheese, so we HAD to stop for fresh Cheese curds.

Mmm, squeaky.


Since we'd all done the Trans-Canada drive before we decided not to stop for any touristy things (besides the cheese) so we kept driving and got to Kingston, Ontario on day two.

The wedding is on Saturday. We are hoping it doesn't pour rain. Should be fun either way, though!

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!