It’s 5:15 am. Willie the cat is sitting on me as I huddle under the blankets and try to ignore him.

Willie: Hey. You. Get up. I’m hungry.

Me: Ugh, Willie. Go back to sleep. It’s early.

Willie: You have to get up. I heard you shifting. I know you’re awake.

Me: Willie, the alarm won’t even go off for 15 more minutes. Get off me.

Willie: You said I don’t cuddle enough. I’m cuddling.

Me: You’re not cuddling, you’re pestering. Cuddling happens when I’m awake and feel like petting you. This is not cuddling.

Willie: Feed me.

Me: Listen, you’re a nice cat. I never thought I’d like a cat as much as I like you. You’ve really grown on me in the past couple of months. But seriously, it’s a quarter after five in the morning. Go away.

Willie: If you don’t feed me, I won’t pose for any more pictures.

Me: I don’t care, I’ve already got half a dozen pictures of you for sale on Getty Images. I don’t need more. What I need is sleep. Please?

Willie: I’m bored. I think I’ll chase this random bit of plastic around under your bed for a while. Don’t you love that skittering noise? Oh, and don’t bother getting up to take it away from me, because I have twenty more pieces just like it stashed all over the house.

Me: Speaking of stashed, could you please stop stealing the kids’ stuffed animals? You get them all slobbery and full of dog hair when you carry them around the house.

Willie: It’s not my fault your dog is a giant shedding hair ball.

Me: Willie, please? Go play with the boys, I’m sure they’d love to be woken up by your adorableness.

Willie: It’s more fun aggravating you.

Me: Clearly. So listen, since I’m up anyway, can we talk about the Christmas tree? I’ve survived three kids’ worth of toddler years and I’ve never yet had a Christmas tree come down. And yet, I’m thinking we may have a problem this year.

Willie: What kind of problem? Lucas is old enough to know not to touch the tree.

Me: Um, yeah. It’s not Lucas, it’s you I’m worried about.

Willie: Me?

Me: Yeah. Like how you like to knock things over? And how you chase shiny things? And steal stuff? And climb things? And chew through cardboard?

Willie: I’m not getting you.

Me: Willie, we are seriously afraid to put up the Christmas tree this year. You’re a menace without a giant tree full of breakables in the middle of the living room.

Willie: You keep your breakable ornaments on a shelf.

Me: Yeah, but I was hoping this would be the year I get to actually put them on the tree, yanno?

Willie: You’ve got three rambunctious boys and you think the cat is going to be the one who brings down the tree?

Me: Okay, you can have that one. But even as toddlers, the boys didn’t climb up on the shelves and purposefully knock things off of them — something you have been known to do.

Willie: See, it doesn’t really matter where you put them. So I can perch in the tree, right?

Me: Oy. I’m going back to sleep…

Willie: Good luck with that. Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here and bat books off the shelf and onto the bed until you get up and feed me.

Me: *whimper*

Edited to add: Ha! From Vanessa’s comment below – yeah, this:

Related posts (automatically generated):

1. In which Buttercup becomes Willie. For now.
2. In which she uses neutering the cat as a cautionary tail
3. Project 365: (the other) Willie and Kate

I‘m at work, and calling Beloved to arrange for a ride home because I’m pretty much stranded. I’ve just dropped the car off for servicing and to have the winter tires installed and am still feeling crusty about the fact that apparently my dealership will drop you off in a courtesy shuttle but not pick you up. But, they don’t bother to mention this fact until you’re actually in the shuttle. Or at least, that’s how it played out for me. So I’m calling Beloved to see if he can rearrange his afternoon and pick me up downtown, drop me off at the dealer at the south end of Bank, then hustle on over to Manotick to pick up the boys from school. Not happy.

He mentions he’s feeling dizzy, and says Tristan complained of the same. “And you mentioned you’d been feeling dizzy last night,” he says. I kind of shrug, but my mind skims back another day and I think, “Hmmm, I turned on the furnace on Tuesday before bed. And yesterday I was feeling a bit dizzy. And today, they’re feeling dizzy.” I don’t much like all those coincidences, but I am still smarting from the embarrassment of having the fire department show up one fine morning almost a year ago to help us replace the batteries in our CO detector.

More to appease Beloved than out of any sense of urgency, I agree to call Enbridge. And I suggest that he turn off the furnace. It’s cool, but not freezing outside. Better safe than sorry, right? So I find the the Enbridge site and a toll free number. The first option in the voice mail tree asks me if this is an emergency or not. I’m about to confirm “not” when they mention something about carbon dioxide. I waffle for a second, then press the zero to be put into the emergency queue, cringing. The operator comes on and already I’m hedging, explaining that it’s not really an emergency but since I have you on the line, I have a question… and I try to schedule an appointment for maybe this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow?

The operator will have none of that. She needs to dispatch someone immediately if they take my call. Ugh. Beloved is half way to Gatineau by now on his way to a meeting, and I’m friggin’ stranded downtown. I tell her I’ll call back. And I immediately dial my sweet, wonderful, reliable parents. Of course they’re willing to help, and within 30 minutes my dad is at the house, waiting on the porch. When I call Enbridge back, they dispatch someone right away and tell me all the occupants of the house should see a doctor right away. I cringe again. I am almost positive this will be another false alarm. I am both relieved and mortified that my father will bear the brunt of this encounter.

Time passes. I wonder if Enbridge has a false alarm blacklist, and if they’ll stop taking my calls after this. I wonder if I’ll be charged for this second call within a year. I cringe some more. I call Beloved to let him in on my frenzy of organizing and dispatching, and he mentions he’s still feeling a little dizzy and I cringe some more. If he’s out in the fresh air and feeling off, clearly we’ve misread the situation.

Time passes. My dad finally calls. There were two gas leaks.

I close my eyes and lose track of what he is saying for a minute. Two? Gas? Leaks? At my house? Where my babies were sleeping? Where I had a fire in the fireplace the day before I turned on the furnace? What if I’d gotten around to having one yesterday? What if I’d used the oven or stove instead of calling for pizza yesterday? What if, what if, what if… and I realize I have to pay attention because what my dad is trying to tell me is Very Important Information, but all I can hear are the sounds of sirens that did not wail.

I’ve learned enough so far this morning that my brain has stopped accepting new information. In no particular order, I’ve learned:

• it really is better safe than sorry.
• always make sure you have a ride home booked BEFORE you leave your car at the dealership.
• parents are a gift from God.
• it’s possible to age 10 years in a three-minute conversation.
• twenty-year-old furnaces are not to be relied upon.
• parents are a gift from God. I know I mentioned that one already. It bears repeating.

I’m left to wonder why our CO detector didn’t go off. Clearly, we need to invest and upgrade here.

And finally, this is my message to you. If you’re ever worried about something like this, make the call. And if it’s a false alarm and happens the next day, make the call again.

I think I need to go sit under my desk for a while.

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1. Duck and cover
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It’s quarter past six in the morning, and nobody else is awake yet, so I feel just a wee bit less guilty stealing onto the computer to say hello. I can’t believe it’s still dark out! Sigh. Summer is almost over.

Even though school doesn’t start for another week, the big boys are in circus camp (!) all next week and Lucas starts with a new caregiver, so it will be pretty close to our fall routine. And of course I’m still adjusting to the new and improved commute — soon to be in the dark, from the looks of things.

Can anyone tell me why I have a bazillion ideas for blog posts when I’m running around like my hair is on fire and can’t find two seconds to string together, and when the house is quiet and sleeping on a Sunday morning, I can’t recall a single darn one of them?

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and let you know that I’m thinking of my bloggy peeps, even if my crusty old brain can’t come up with a more compelling post than this.

Are you sad that summer is almost over, or are you twitchy for the back-to-school madness to begin?

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1. Summertime feature series: Friday Family Fun!
2. Time changes suck
3. Lucas’s most excellent day

In the dark, cold days of January, I wrote this ridiculously optimistic list of things that I couldn’t wait to do this summer, and at the top of that list was a garden. I’d imagined tilling up a meter or two of grass (we can certainly spare it) to put in a little kitchen garden. As winter melted into spring, I watched the light travel across the yard, carefully selecting the spot that would get the most sun exposure. By this time of year, I’d speculated back in the deep cold of January, we’d be heading out to the yard before dinner to pluck our own carrots, harvest juicy tomatoes, and slice fresh-from-the-vine cucumbers into our evening salad. My mouth still waters when I think about it.

The idea of the tilled square of garden fell by the wayside early in May when I realized that the vast majority of my spare spring hours were to be spent taming the rampant growth of the lawn. As the torrential spring rains gave way to a warm, dry summer, I adjusted my expectations accordingly. I’d clear space in the existing beds for some tomatoes and cukes, and maybe next year I’d have more time to cultivate the verdant kitchen garden of my dreams.

With expectations appropriately tempered, so far this year I have planted:

• two cherry tomato plants
• one beefsteak tomato plant
• three cucumber plants
• one green pepper plant
• one jalapeno plant
• two packages of sunflower seeds
• one package of pink coneflower seeds
• two potted pink coneflower plants
• one potted black-eyed susan

As of today, we have harvested exactly one jalapeno pepper. There is one malformed yellowish cucumber the size of a pickle trying to turn itself into a doughnut shape. The sunflower seeds, including one seedling we sprouted in the house in a pot, never made it beyond two inches tall. The coneflower seeds were absorbed by mother earth never to be seen again. Not one but TWO potted coneflower plants turned black and shrivelled up for no reason I could see except that I completely forgot to water them. And I accidentally snapped the stalks of the poor black-eyed susans as I was planting them. I guess now they’re black-and-blue-eyed susans. And the tomato plants are still the exact same size they were when I planted them in May. They have neither died nor grown, but exist in a perpetually frozen flowering state.

I mean seriously, who can’t grow sunflowers and tomatoes? Now when I go to the garden centre, I can see the plants leaning back, scurrying into corners, trying to hide from my sight. “Please, lady, don’t choose us! We want to LIVE!” Hell, even the produce in the grocery store trembles on my approach, so far-reaching is my reputation for plant-based cruelty.

Did I mention I also failed to sustain the potted basil plant I bought in mid-summer when I discovered tomato-basil-bocconcini salad? We had two great salads within the first week, then the plant withered up and died — and I even remembered to water that one!

Clearly, my entire allotment of nurturing has been expended in the effort of sustaining three boys, two pets and a Beloved. It’s a good thing they’re almost old enough to be self-sustaining!

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1. Vine- or window-ripened?
2. In the garden of benign neglect
3. Will Work for Food Project: The Ottawa Art Gallery Community Art Garden

More than 20 years ago when I adopted my first cat from the humane society, getting her declawed was a no-brainer. Everyone I knew who owned a cat had it done. When Beloved arrived in my life in 1995 with his two cats, they too were already declawed (the cats, that is – not Beloved.)

Now that we’re about to take Willlie in for the big snip, we have to decide whether we’re going to get him declawed at the same time. I’m having a hard time convincing myself it’s the right thing to do this time around.

Maybe it’s because I’ve read too much about how declawing actually involves chopping off not just the claws but the whole first part of the toe? Maybe it’s because I was so vehemently opposed to circumcising the boys that I can’t justify any sort of non-essential removal of parts? Regardless, I’m feeling a little squeamish about the whole thing.

On the other side of the equation, just this morning I’ve watched Willie climb two different window screens and the clothes in Beloved’s closet. I’ve already paid to repair one patio door and upgrade it to a high-end pet-proof screen, and will have to do the other by the end of the summer. I haven’t yet noticed any damage on the furniture from him scratching, but I’ve caught him doing it many times. He’s going to be an indoor cat, so he will never really need those claws.

What do you think? Did you / would you declaw your cats? Why or why not?

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1. Tristan’s fashion sense
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It went something like this…

*ring ring*

Hello?

Hey Universe, it’s DaniGirl calling.

DaniGirl! Good to hear from you! I’ve been peeking in on you lately, I’m surprised you found the time to pick up the phone.

No kidding! Each time I think I reach a new high in busyness, and think that things can’t possibly get any more crazy, they do.

It’s nice to see that your photography business has taken off. That must feel pretty good.

It feel amazing! It’s been an incredibly busy but validating month with five family portrait shoots just in the last ten days. And the clients have seemed to really love the results – one family bought a print of every single proof in the gallery.

Great stuff, DaniGirl. No wonder you’re feeling so busy. And I hear you had a blast at Social Capital this weekend.

Oh my goodness, it was amazing! So many interesting people, so many great connections. I learned a lot, met a lot of amazing people, and really enjoyed having a captive audience for a while, even if I was a little scattered in my presentation.

Mouth getting a little ahead of your brain, eh? Yeah, that happens to me, too. It’s been a busy vacation for you this year, no wonder you’re feeling a little discombobulated.

Ha, and that’s hardly the tip of the iceberg. I seem to be caught up in a whirlwind of change right now. Did you see that we finally found a new daycare provider for Lucas?

I did see that. She seems like a warm, lovely lady.

I think so, too. I really like the fact that some of the older kids who come for after-school care have been with her for nine or ten years. That kind of endorsement speaks for itself. And she’s literally right around the corner. We start with her at the end of the summer, right around the time I hope to be starting my new job. Cuz, yanno, if you’re going to change one thing, you might as well change everything.

New job, right. I noticed you were working on that. What’s up with that?

Well, remember back in 2007, you were up to your usual antics. The very month that the Canada Revenue Agency created that special social media manager position especially for me, I found out I was pregnant with Lucas. I managed to work in the position for about six months before I went on maternity leave, but then when I left they hired a friend of mine to replace me.

Right, I think you cursed me out for quite a few months on the timing of that one.

Um, yeah. Of course I was delighted to be pregnant because we had been trying for months, but I was truly heartbroken to lose that job. And when I came back from maternity leave, even though I was disappointed, I could completely understand why they didn’t want to just bump the person who had been doing the job for a year. So I took a position in another part of the public affairs branch.

And then you started managing the Army Web site and all the social media channels there shortly after that, right?

Yeah, that’s when I joked I was quitting the CRA after 20 years to run off and join the Army.

Thanks for the history lesson, but what does that have to do with your current situation?

Well, the person who took over for me in 2007 is now moving on to other opportunities and she called me up to see if I’d be interested in coming back.

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Easy-peasy, right?

Ha, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’re such a joker, you know you pulled the rug out from under me again on this one.

Hey, you passed the hiring committee with flying colours. It’s not my fault you forgot to check to see whether your French levels were up to date.

Sigh, you’re right. It’s just painful that they were ready to issue a letter of offer, and now I have to pass my reading and writing exam before we can move ahead. I tell you, the last thing I expected to be doing on my summer vacation is spend an hour or two each day snuggled up with Schaum’s French Grammar and a stack of practice tests.

There’s a plan B though, right?

Actually, I’m calling it Plan E. There’s a chance they can move me to an English Essential position in another directorate and transfer me over. But I’d rather just pass the French test, because I’m not sure how solid that option is. Think you could help me out on that one, maybe make my rusty old brain a little more fluid for the next week or so?

Sorry DaniGirl, I’m just the omniscient overseer. I may be omnipotent, but it would be bad mojo if I rigged the outcome of your French test.

Okay, I suppose that’s fair. And besides, the reason I called wasn’t really about that anyway.

Oh really? Why did you call then?

Well, first to once again commend you for your sense of humour. You’ve got me going literally in circles again, back where I started four years ago if this works out.

It’s not like you haven’t enjoyed the intervening loop, though, right?

Fair enough. And that’s the other thing. I wanted to say thanks. My life may be so busy right now I’m breathless with the pace of it, but it’s all really quite good.

I’m glad you’re happy, DaniGirl.

I am, Universe. I know sometimes I call you up to bitch and complain when things are going poorly, so I thought it would be nice to drop you a line and let you know that aside from being a little dizzy at the pace of it all, I am really and truly happy right now. And I’m proud of myself, too. I think I’m on the right track right now, and I’m trying to acknowledge that out loud, if for nothing else than it will serve as a good reminder when I do something dumb to derail myself again!

Great idea, DaniGirl. It’s important to be grateful for the good things in our lives, the things that make us happy. Keep me posted on the job situation.

I will, Universe. Take care…

Related posts (automatically generated):

1. In which the Universe demonstrates a sense of humour
2. A courtesy call from the Universe
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I have so many blog posts backed up in my head that I’m quite sure my brains are about to start leaking out my ears any minute now. My life is in one of those whirling dervish phases, and it’s all I can do to hang on – there’s just no room for blogging!

Here’s but a sampling of the blog posts I’ve been dying to write but haven’t yet been able (not to mention a few that I’m dying to write and probably won’t ever be able to!):

• Child care. Ugh. Still looking for care for Lucas for next month. I thought we had a lock on a spot in a daycare centre, but it turns out that we were lower down on the waiting list than they had vacancies. I’m still interviewing, with increasing desperation. Last night I was so sick of it all I cried it out for a little bit, then shook it off and lined up three more interviews for this week. Cross your fingers for us?
• Blog Out Loud Ottawa! OMG, did BOLO ever rock the house down this year or WHAT? The readers were this amazing mix of raw, gut-wrenching honesty and side-splitting funny and jaw-dropping insightful that it was just a roller-coaster of entertainment. I had an amazing time, despite the fact that I was starting on what would turn out to be a four-day doozy of a migraine. If you get the chance, though, you should head on over to the BOLO site and click through to some of the readers for the night. Man, we are blessed with some amazing writers here in our community!

• Social Capital Ottawa: The SoCapOtt social media conference is coming up fast! Do you have your tickets yet? I’ll be doing a co-presentation with Lara and Vivian on how to choose the best social media tools for your business, whether you’re a sole proprietor, a not-for-profit or a government department. Come on out and check us out!
• Critters: There are many, many benefits to living out here a semi-rural community. There’s more birds, more trees, more space, more bugs, and more critters. While Willie didn’t turn out to be much of a mouser, what he didn’t take care of a trap did — let’s hope there’s no more of those! But my real concern lately is a GIANT raccoon that keeps tipping over our garbage can and green bin. One of these days I’ll get around to blogging about the time Beloved chased him away from our garbage at 3 am one morning using the swiffer. But in the interim, HELP! I am so sick of picking up picked-through garbage — what can I do to keep this bear-cub-sized raccoon from tipping over the bins? The worst part is that I’m actually thinking of not using the green bin anymore, it’s just too much work cleaning up the food bits from the curb every single week, and now he’s started tipping it over at the back of the house, too. Ideas?

There’s more, oh so much more, and I’m hoping my life slows down enough in the next week or two for me to get back around to blogging it all in real time. Really, I think I’ve forgotten how to live the life unblogged!

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Who knew naming a cat could be so difficult? Yeesh!

At the shelter, his name was Nero. That was definitely not a keeper of a name, although Simon did call him that for the first 30 hours or so while we tried on other monikers. I was an early fan of Percy, and Henry, and Jasper. Aren’t those great names? And Bruce. The first kitten I fell in love with on the shelter website was named Bruce, and I thought that was a wonderful name for a cat.

The family did not agree.

Then we came up with Butterscotch, which shortens to Scott and Scottie quite nicely, and I liked that too. But the boys had a hard time getting their mouths around Butterscotch, and once someone slipped and said Buttercup instead, and it stuck. (It’s kind of cute, actually, because that’s also one of the pet names I use for the boys. Maybe that’s the reason they liked it so much?)

I have wanted a Buttercup for quite some time. In fact, when I was pregnant with the Player to Be Named Later, who became Lucas, for the first 18 weeks of the pregnancy I was desperate for him to be a girl for many reasons, not least of which so I could call our little baby bump “Princess Buttercup.” Buttercup is an endearing and adorable name — for a female.

So we tried Buttercup for a few days, and while there’s no denying the cute factor, he’s begun to exhibit a wide mischievous streak. Try scolding something using the name Buttercup and keeping a straight face!

Beloved called me this morning and said he’d had an epiphany. We’d call the cat Streaky, after some cartoon they’d all watched this morning. And I immediately vetoed that one. Nope, not gonna work. But he did send me off on a hunt for the perfect orange tabby name.

Some of the contenders included Huckleberry, (Orange) Julius, Cheeto, (Orange) Pekoe, Oliver, Seamus, and Gizmo. I was particularly enamoured of Oliver, aka Ollie. And I read one online suggestion for Loki, the Norse god of mischief, which seemed exceptionally appropriate.

However, after all that, I think we have a winner. None of the above, though.

Meet William. William of Orange, in fact.

Willie for short.

(At least, that’s his name for today….)

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In 2005, I wrote a post about organ donation, and I wrote one in 2006, and in 2007, too. (You’ll see why organ donation is dear to my heart later in this post.) Yesterday, I heard that Ontario has finally set up an online organ donation registry: beadonor.ca

According to Ontario’s health minister, more than 1,500 people are currently on waiting lists for such transplants. More than 80 per cent of Canadians say they would like to donate their organs, but less than 20 per cent of those eligible have registered to do so.

Did you know that a single organ donor can save up to eight lives?

Here’s the story of one life that was saved through organ donation: my father’s. This is the first blog post I wrote about organ donation, back in 2005:

In late October of 2001, I was just about five months pregnant with our first son. I had been over at the grocery store buying Halloween candy for us — er, I mean, the neighbourhood kids. When I came in the door, before I could even get my coat off, Beloved approached me with tears in his eyes. “Your mom called,” he said, and the world stopped turning for the briefest instant. Thankfully, it was not what I was expecting, what I had been gradually bracing myself for through the long and awful course of my father’s illness.

“They got the call. Your dad is getting his liver transplant.”

My dad got Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion in the early 1980s. We didn’t find out he was sick until much later. Aside from becoming increasingly weak and frail, one of the most disturbing and debilitating results of my dad’s cirrhosis was how it affected his cognitive processes. The gist of it is that the liver filters toxins like ammonia out of your blood, and when it isn’t working properly, the toxins can build up, leading to serious cognitive impairment. It really messes with your memory, your moods, and your mental stamina, among other things. In a lot of ways, it is similar to Alzheimer’s disease. It made me so very sad to see him struggling, because my father is one of the smartest people I know, and I aspired as a child to be as funny, as charming and as quick of wit as him.

We have been blessed. After the transplant, it wasn’t long before I had my ‘old’ dad back. Every time I see him interact with Tristan and Simon (ed: and now Lucas!), my heart soars. Simon especially has a thing for his “Papa Lou” and even as I type this, I am grinning as I imagine how his face lights up when my dad catches his eye.

I don’t have the words to express how the pain of some family’s loss can be so intimately bound to our family’s joy. I wish I could let them know what a difference their donation has made in our lives.

Within about 18 months of receiving his transplant, my parents moved across the province to live in the same city as us. Some days, when my dad is out and about, he calls me and offers me a ride home from work. They live just a few blocks from us, and when I was home on maternity leave, he would sometimes wander over in midafternoon while taking the dog for an extended walk.

It’s these tiny moments that are the gift we’ve received from an organ donation. How do you say thank you for the joy of a happy life with someone you love? How do you thank someone for the look in a baby’s eyes as his face lights up with excited recognition?

If it weren’t for an organ donor, this would never have happened:

What are you waiting for? With one click, you could save eight lives. It may be the most important thing you do today. beadonor.ca

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That’s what Beloved called me last week when I returned from errands with yet another car-load of other people’s junk, rescued from the curbside. “I’m going to start calling you ‘crazy garbage-picking wife,’” he said, while helping me pull the old, probably antique desk out of the car and carry it down to Simon’s room. I shrugged and said that was fine with me, I’ve been called crazy over worse things.

Last weekend was the spring giveaway weekend in Ottawa (I’m only mildly perturbed that they’ve repurposed my “Ottawa’s hidden treasures” phrase) and treasures is exactly what we found. The aforementioned desk, for example. It’s a kid-sized version of an old secretary’s desk, with two wooden drawers and a pull-out typewriter table. You can tell by the dove-tail joints and lack of particle board that it’s a vintage item, probably older than me at minimum. It also happens to have itty-bitty tole flowers painted on it, but it’s nothing that some sandpaper and a good coat of clean paint won’t cover. And Simon loves it, flowers and all.

We also got a couple of nice green reclining patio chairs complete with pads, one of which is rocker, and a matching umbrella. The green and white in the umbrella and pads bring the pieces together nicely with the white extendable patio table complete with removable leaf I also filched from the end of someone’s driveway a couple of weeks ago as I walked the boys home from school. (I was glad to have Tristan around to help me carry it home, and I’m sure we only looked a little strange walking down the street carrying it.) And just yesterday, I found a set of four green stacking patio chairs to complete the ensemble. All free!

And that’s not even the best deal I got in free outdoor furniture this season. One day I noticed a gorgeous wicker settee, chair and table at the curb and immediately pulled over. There was an elderly gentleman in the open garage as I stepped out to inspect them, and I asked how much he wanted, sure he’d say $50 or even $100 for this lovely, sturdy set absolutely oozing with character and in near-perfect condition. “Help yourself,” he told me with a smile, and laughed at my whoop of joy. When they wouldn’t all fit in my car, he even pulled the table and chair back away from the curb so I could make a second run and come back for the rest of the set. It’s like they were made for my porch, don’t you think?

Beloved thinks it’s a little bit redneck of me to stop and collect other people’s junk with such unbridled glee, but I can’t help myself. Other than completely tricking out my porch and back patio this year, I’ve also scored a basketball and on a separate occasion, a Little Tykes basketball net, and a set of a dozen or so hockey sticks of various sizes. (Sadly, the snow plow crushed our hockey net — also a curbside treasure! — this winter, but maybe I’ll be able to find another one!) I’ve also found an adorable kid-sized wicker chair that is just crying out to be a photo prop. Through the years, I’ve also collected bookcases and shelving units (I simply cannot leave those behind, one can ALWAYS use more shelves in life), fireplace tools, flower pots, books, and outdoor toys.

Right now, four driveways down, there’s a really quirky metal CD stand in the shape of fishbones that I am trying hard to resist. At least, I think it’s a CD stand. Either that, or a really weird sculpture. What is it about found treasures that make them so appealing? I would never look twice at this thing if I saw it in a store. Regardless, I’m having a hard time not putting on my shoes and going to see if it’s still there.

And to tell the truth? It’s not just on giveaway day that I’ll stop to check out the discards. I have been known to peruse the curb on the morning of garbage day, scanning for treasures.

So, I’m okay if Beloved thinks I’m crazy. Erm, crazier. Crazy like a fox, I say. A garbage-picking, thrifty fox. When you see me on that TV show about compulsive hoarders, you can say you saw it here first.

Are you a crazy garbage picker too? What’s the best thing you’ve ever collected from the curb?

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No, not a stoplight. No, those are the colours of the three crayons that were in the pocket of his winter coat. When I washed it. And dried it. Along with his only pair of ski pants, and both of his brothers’ only winter coats. And ski pants.

I can tell you now with the voice of experience: three crayons? Can make one hell of an unholy mess.

I spent the first 15 minutes frantically googling “crayon melted in dryer.” A lot of the sites, including the official Crayola stain-removal site, advocated the use of WD-40. Seriously? Oil? In my not-yet-six-month-old dryer? Um, no.

I spent the rest of the first hour hanging half way out of the dryer, scrubbing the snot (well, wax) out of the interior drum with one of those plastic pot scrubber jobbies and then wiping it clean with an old towel. Run on hot for 10 minutes to get everything melty, and repeat. Oh and by the way? When it’s hot enough to melt the wax, the dryer is not so much a comfortable place to hang out.

The next hour I spent trying to get the baked-on wax off of the lint trap. Seeing the effectiveness of heat in the wax-removal process, I briefly debated nuking the lint trap to loosen up the worst of the wax, but I couldn’t be sure that the screen was not either metal or meltable. And having just finished lunch I wasn’t particularly hungry for sautéed lint trap anyway.

In a flash of brilliance, I boiled a kettle and poured the boiling water in small doses onto the lint trap to loosen the wax. This worked really well except for the part where the lint trap is porous and I poroused boiling water all over my hand, resulting in the first (but not last) official burn of the day.

About ninety minutes into the project, I had stopped envisioning ways to exact revenge on both the boy who thinks winter-coat-pockets are an ideal place to store crayons and the boy who played in the mud in his ski pants and inspired me to wash everyone’s snow suits in the first place. In fact, I’d hit a zen kind of headspace where the mindlessness of the work — pick at crayon embedded in crease with fingernail, run under hot water, pick again, scrub with corner of old facecloth, repeat, repeat, repeat — allowed me to write some really excellent blog posts in my head. Oh, but this blog post is not one of them. Nope, I forgot all of those clever, witty and endearing ones when a squirrel ran past the window.

(Joke: How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb? LET’S GO RIDE OUR BIKES!!! Bwhahaha, it’s funny cuz it’s ME!)

Interestingly, apparently our lint trap is the only one in existence with 375 sides. I say this because that’s exactly how many times I sighed in satisfaction at finally liberating the lint trap from its waxy pox, only to turn it over and find a fresh patch of baked-on crayon scat.

Two kettles of water later, the lint trap was now the cleanest ever known to man and I was intimately familiar with each crack and crevice. Why they make lint traps with so many wax-friendly crevices is beyond me, by the way. When I’m Queen of the Universe the very first thing I’m going to do is de-crevice all the lint traps, so help me god.

Now more than two hours into Operation I-Hate-Crayola, I set up the ironing board and proceeded to iron an entire roll of paper towels. I can now assure you we have the crispest, flattest paper towels in town. Because nothing says “productive use of a precious Sunday afternoon” like ironing paper towels. In fact, all the time spent ironing those paper towels gave me plenty of time to think about the things that I could be achieving, like cleaning the house. Or reading a book. Or earning a graduate degree in quantum physics. Or having a root canal. I’d've been happy doing just about anything, in fact, defined as several hours of not ironing paper towels.

Oh yeah, and the iron? Second official burn of the day.

Now, to give credit where credit is due, I was tickled at how effective the ironing-the-paper-towel trick turned out to be. Melted crayon magically disengages from snowsuit and adheres to paper towel when you press a hot iron to it. Well, yellow crayon completely disengages itself from snowsuit fabric. Green comes most of the way out. And red? Well, red doesn’t really seem to bond with the paper towel at all. In fact, they seem kind of adversarial. I’m thinking maybe red crayon and paper towel used to go out, and then when paper towel started wanting different things, red crayon took the breakup really hard and left all sorts of drunken, late-night messages on paper towel’s answering machine, because really? They didn’t hang out together at all.

And yes, you bet your ass I did in fact go through all the crayon boxes in the house (yes, we have a few) and picked out all the red crayons and threw them in the trash as a preemptive strike. Cuz you know there’s going to be a next time.

Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending. After one hour of scrubbing the dryer drum, one hour of dewaxing the lint trap, two hours ironing paper towels and snow-suits and one 75 minute sanitary wash, all three snowsuits are virtually crayon-free. Close enough for end-of-season, anyway.

My fingernails, on the other hand, are a green, yellow and red write-off…

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When I pulled up in front of my parents’ house with a carload of kids, she was standing more or less in the middle of the intersection, shifting back and forth in the middle of the road as I pulled the car to the curb and parked the car.

She was dressed in a dark overcoat that hung to her knees, and boots that looked more like rubber galoshes than winter boots. The day was on the mild side for late winter, but still near freezing, and I noticed right away that she had neither hat nor gloves. The wind played with her thinning hair, and I guessed her age to be somewhere on the far side of 65. From first sight of her, I had an inkling that something was Not Quite Right.

My sister-in-law came out of the house just as the boys tumbled in, I think to get something from her car, although I never did ask why she was in the driveway, too. By the time I got Lucas unbuckled and out of the car, the lady had approached Nat and unleashed a stream of language that was completely unintelligible to us.

If a strange old lady approached me at the Rideau Centre and unleashed a torrent of unknown language at me, I’d probably just smile and shrug apologetically and give her a wide berth. Out in the suburbs, though, with nobody else around, I felt like we couldn’t avoid engaging her. Immediately, I started digging in my purse for my phone, wondering who to call for help.

Nat and I spoke to her in English, and she replied in whatever language she was speaking. She was quite obviously lost. She gestured at the two streets in front of us, tracing paths with her hands as she elaborated in incomprehensible detail again and again. Her manner was calm enough, but her impatience with us was palpable. I could almost read on her face her annoyance that these two (dare I say young?) women were not getting her verbose and carefully spoken message illustrated with the same hand gestures again and again.

Based on the guttural quality and the hard consonants, I guessed her language was something Slavic or eastern European. My father was born in Germany and raised in Holland, so I asked his assistance, hoping his middling German or Dutch might be of assistance, but neither one of those seemed to help.

Eventually, Nat managed to figure out her name was Magalene or something similar and somehow together with a neighbour who speaks Romanian, we figured out she was speaking Bulgarian. And after that, we were stuck. What do you do when you find an obviously lost Bulgarian senior citizen wandering in your neighbourhood while the dinner your mother slaved over all afternoon is overcooking in the oven?

She had drawn the number 146 in the snow, so we ambled toward that number on a house a few doors down, but she shook her head with an emphatic “Neh” when we pointed it out to her.

At a loss, I finally called the non-emergency number for Ottawa police services from the phone I’d been holding all along. The switchboard operator was terrific, ascertaining that no, she was no violent but yes, she was definitely lost and perhaps not altogether in full mental capacity. She searched her records for missing persons and known wanderers and then tracked down an officer who spoke Bulgarian. She put me through to him, and I explained the situation. I asked him if he could try to speak to the woman, even as I wondered if she’d even know what to do with my iPhone if I handed it to her. Sure, he said, and I held out my phone to her with a big smile and encouraging nod.

She took the phone without hesitation and they began to converse. Well, she spoke, in long bursts, repeating the same unintelligible phrases that I’d already begun to recognize and with the same hand gestures pointing down first this street and then that one. By now we were a party of six standing by the side of the road, my sister-in-law and my dad, the neighbours from each side, and Magalene, who told tale upon Bulgarian tale into my iPhone with no signs of ever giving the phone back to me.

Eventually, she did hold the phone out to me, and the constable told us that she was visiting her son and daughter-in-law (or was it daughter and son-in-law) and had gone out for a walk. He had looked up her family by name, but could not find them “in the system.” I kept waiting for him to say something reassuring like, “We’ll be there with a squad car any minute” but instead he said, “Do you think you could drive her around until she recognizes the street?”

I have to admit, that was the only part of the whole exchange that really bothered me. I am more than willing to help out, but I really think the police should have taken over as soon as we identified the woman as lost. She seemed harmless enough standing on the street, but really, who knows what could have happened if she was senile and became panicked?

I told the constable that I could drive her around, yes, but if I did and we still couldn’t find her house, then what? Suburban neighbourhoods have a LOT of streets and I could do that for hours. He said to put her back on the line and he would name some streets in the area and see if any of them were familiar to her, so I handed the phone back to Magalene, who had not taken her eyes from me as I spoke to the officer.

More torrents of Bulgarian, and I could tell when the constable was rhyming off street names as she said, “Neh, neh, neh,” again and again. I was dying of curiousity as to the nature of their conversation as it went on and on and on. While Magalene spoke on the phone, we spoke among ourselves as to what we would do. I could drive her around, I said, and my parents’ neighbour offered to take her inside to await the police. After what seemed like endless conversation, Magalene finally handed the phone back to me and the officer told me her family’s exact address. So pleased was I with this information, and the fact that it was a mere six or seven houses down the road, that I completely forgot to ask how he found out or what the hell they had been discussing for so long.

Magalene and I walked the few dozen steps to 148 (instead of 146) and I pointed at the house, nodding and smiling. “Neh!” said Magalene, looping her arm into mine and pulling me further down the road — and my heart sank. We walked past a few more houses, but I kept pointing back to number 148 and then pointing at my phone, telling her in useless English that the officer was very clear, this was the right address. I had it in my head that maybe we should knock on the door anyway, and eventually Magalene let me pull her toward the house. I’d also re-dialed Ottawa Police Services, thinking I’d have to get back in touch with my Bulgarian translator again.

Suddenly she started nodding and saying, “Da da da da!” and I learned my second Bulgarian word. Neh = no, but Da = yes, that was clear from the huge smile on her face and the way she was suddenly pulling me toward the house. She stopped at the door and gave me a brilliant smile and a tentative hug that turned firm and affectionate when I hugged her back.

I couldn’t quite walk away until I was sure that she had the right house, and as I approached the door I realized that the front door was standing open behind the closed storm door and a young woman was descending the stairs inside. “Um, hi,” I said, holding the screen door open as Magalene stepped back, I think to wave to the small coterie of people still standing and watching from my parents’ driveway. “Um, she was lost, does she belong to you?”

The young woman, maybe 20 years old with dark hair and stunning blue eyes, visibly flashed through surprise to confusion to annoyance and let loose her own torrent of Bulgarian at Magalene as she entered the house. Having bonded with her over our little adventure, my first instinct was to tell this young woman to be kind to my new friend, but really, I just wanted to get home before my mother’s famous roast beef was hopelessly overcooked, so I simply smiled and nodded and patted a quick farewell on Magalene’s arm.

Throughout the reunion scene, the operator at the non-emergency number for the Ottawa police had been on the line, and as soon as I disengaged from him the phone rang again and it was the original operator calling me back to confirm that all had ended well.

This seems a rather long story, and I’m not sure why I wanted to share it, but it seemed important to do so. Aside from the fact that I wished the police had been a little bit more proactive in sending out a car when I’d first contacted them for help, I was truly impressed with how they helped us resolve the situation. Without a Bulgarian translator who happened to have access to the information to trace Magalene’s family, I’m not sure what we would have done — especially since Magalene didn’t even recognize the house the first time we walked past.

It’s been a couple of days, and I keep thinking about her, about how it must have felt for her to be lost and unable to communicate. Now that I know she’s harmless, I’d like to know more about her — is she just visiting? What’s her life like back in Bulgaria? What does she think of our tidy suburban neighbourhood with its identical, cookie-cutter townhouses that really do all look alike as the winter snows recede?

In all, the whole episode probably took up the best part of an hour, and the roast was delicious. I got a long and wordy blog post out of it, and a new friend. I like stories with happy endings, don’t you?

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Did you catch the commercial this week promoting the new season of Survivor? It’s Boston Rob versus Russell! And I guffawed out loud at Jeff Probst’s observation, “I’m gonna need a bigger torch!”

Apparently, there’s a new twist to the game in this 22nd iteration:

On Survivor: Redemption Island, which premieres Feb. 16 on CBS, when a contestant is voted off, he or she won’t leave the game completely but go instead to Redemption Island, where he or she will face off against the next person voted off in a duel. The winner lives on to face the next arrival at Redemption Island until one person left standing has a chance to return to the game.

(Historic moment, peeps — that may be the first time in six years of blogging that I’ve ever quoted from People magazine!)

Boston Rob is on his, what, fourth or fifth season now, but I’m still looking forward to this. I still think Russell was robbed in Survivor Samoa and totally should have won the million bucks.

I’ve also heard that they’ve adapted the rules to give discretionary power to send someone directly home rather than keeping them around for the jury, after NaOnka and Kelly S quit Survivor Nicaragua. They should not have been allowed to stay as jury members, IMHO.

I just wish they’d move Survivor back to Thursday night where it belongs. After 10 years of habit, it’s messing with the flow of my week to have it on Wednesday nights!

Yay, Survivor is (almost) back!

Edited to add: oooh, and this one is also good. It’s from the CBS website, though, and you have to sit through a 20 second commercial (sigh) first.

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You know what’s great about blogging? The network of friends who know me and my bloggy style well enough to send me links to really quirky articles like this one about — are you ready for it? — human cheese.

Yes, you read that right. People are taking human milk, mixing it with goat or cow milk, and turning it into cheese for human consumption.

*pause while you all wince and shift uncomfortably in your chair*

I know, major ick factor, right? Me too. Until you start to think about it. On a biological level, it’s way more weird that we drink the milk of other animals — really, cows are disgusting, slobbery, unpleasant animals, and goats give me the willies — so why do we shudder at the idea of consuming human milk? The Globe and Mail article gets right to the crux of it with a quote from Miriam Simun, who is offering her human milk cheese online. “Many people feel uncomfortable because they don’t know the woman, or what she is eating – but how often do you know the cows of your cheese, and what they are eating?”

It’s funny, a couple of years back I blogged about the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar, an art installation in Toronto that welcomed passers-by to consume 3 oz of the breast milk of strangers, and my reaction at the time landed somewhere between distaste and disturbed. Maybe I’ve mellowed over the years, or maybe another year and a half of nursing softened me up, but I think this is a kind of neat idea.

But as much as I’m trying to be open-minded, I have to admit that this bit also made me squirm:

Ms. Sumin mixed the women’s milk with cow’s or goat’s milk, and offers several spirited reviews on her website: “This spreadable deliciousness is a human-goat blend, made from two wonderful milks. A playful Vermont mountain goat herd milk tangos with the milk of a sweet lawyer’s assistant who hails from Wisconsin and is excited to become part of what she considers a ‘more acceptable and personal’ cheese. Her mostly organic diet full of meat is rich in flavor and spices – and boy does it come through in this darling little cheese!”

Too much information, methinks. (Although I did snicker at the fact that the milk supplier was from Wisconsin. They really are cheese people out there, aren’t they?) I think I’d be open to the idea of cheese made from *my* milk, but — and please don’t take this personally — I think I’d pass on yours.

Of course, you know I wrote this whole post just so I could ask you: what do you think? Would you eat human cheese?

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Here in Ottawa, it’s the coldest day of the winter so far, and the mercury has clawed its way up to -24C. But the sun is brilliant, and it’s making me twitchy. Now that the days are starting to get incrementally longer, I can feel summer calling my name. Unfortunately, it’s still a long-distance call!

I’m especially excited about this spring because we’re in the new house. With the giant front porch and a patio that stretches the length of the back of the house and a full half acre of land, the house was made for celebrating the outdoors.

I’ve got big plans for that big patch of land, too. Here’s five things that I can’t wait to do come spring thaw:

1. A clothesline. I am ridiculously excited about the idea of stringing a line from one of our towering trees back to the house for laundry. A small part of my mind wonders if I my enthusiasm for an outdoor line won’t wither up and die after the first time I forget to bring things in before a shower, or the first time I find a bug in my underwear drawer, but for now I am delighted by the idea of having a clothesline.

2. A vegetable garden. There’s so much room, it’s just a matter of where to cut into the lawn to create a little hobby garden. I know myself well enough to restrain my impulse to make a 10m2 plot which will require hours of intensive maintenance and which will undoubtedly be neglected to death by mid-June. But I have been chatting the boys up about a tidy corner spot to grow some tomatoes, and cucumbers, and peppers, and sugar peas. Those are my big four for this year, and we’ll see where the rest takes us.

3. A new BBQ. I think we’re on our fourth or fifth cheapo BBQ in the last dozen years or so, and it’s rusting to pieces. The handle is askance and the element, which I replaced last summer, is looking a little sketchy again. I’ve got my eye (and my sale alert!) on a mid-level one at Crappy Tire. It’s *shiny*. We haven’t BBQ’d anything since we moved in mid-October and I’m going through withdrawal!

4. A patio set. Our old deck wasn’t really big enough to support a full patio set, and Beloved isn’t overly keen about the idea of eating outside. However, now that we have so much more space (do you see a theme here?) I’m looking forward to creating a little outdoor living space. I’m thinking this year we might have to settle for a second-hand or garage-sale special this year, and maybe get a nice one in a couple of years’ time.

5. A fire pit. One of the first pictures I saw of the house and yard, on the real estate website, included a view of the back yard where you could see one of those little backyard firepits, and I’d love to pick one up. I’m not sure if we’re far enough out of downtown to have one legally, but I’ve heard that as long as you put a grill on them and have a pack of hotdogs nearby, you can get away with calling it a cooking fire. I love the idea of a backyard fire pit for summer nights almost as much as I love our fireplace for winter nights! And mmmmm, the marshmallows!

So that’s what’s warming my cockles this cold January day. When you dream of the summer to come, what do you hope to do?

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So here’s the thing. Lately, I’ve been feeling like crap. My head is cob-webby and I’m feeling so dragged out and tired that it’s making me cranky. I’ve been trying to get a little more physical activity in, but I’m also freezing cold all the time lately, which combines with the tiredness to make me reluctant to go outside. And there’s only so much exercise to be had walking from the sofa to the kitchen and back. And did I mention the cranky? The lack of focus is killing me, too. Oh look, something shiny over there….

*crickets*

In an epiphianic moment (can I just turn a noun into an adjective like that?) I decided that my iron is probably in the basement, so I should start taking my supplements again. That will help.

That got me thinking about vitamins again, something I keep meaning to look into and never quite get around to doing. I think someone mentioned to me that B vitamins help smooth out the, um, rough edges in your mood. Um, I kind of need to know more about that. Now! I read a couple of labels in the vitamin aisle of the grocery store, but nothing was particularly helpful. I saw a couple of bottles labelled “stress busting” and thought that seemed like a pretty good idea, too. (Who me, stressed? What, just because of the way I’m clenching my jaws until my ears ache and you can see a little too much of the whites of my eyes you think I’m STRESSED?!? *breathe breathe*)

I have never really taken vitamins. I took folic acid when we were thinking about conceiving, and pre-natal vitamins on and off throughout my pregnancies — but mostly off. I was taking vitamin D for a while, because the whole universe seemed to be telling me it was the Right Thing To Do, and I know I need to top up my iron. What else should a 40-ish woman of relative (*touch wood*) health and stamina be taking for preventative and bolstering measures?

So what say ye, Dr Bloggy Peeps? Do you take vitamins? If so, what and why? Medicate me!

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I was poking through my blog feeds and found a link to this neat iPhone app that lets you create a ring tone from any song or sound clip.

I love this! The ring tone I have now is the old nostalgia ringing phone, which I like well enough. I have never been particularly inspired to get a funky ring tone, although I do love the fact that my brother programmed his phone to play Darth Vader’s Imperial March whenever his wife calls. A friend of mine also has the “yip yip yip, brrrrrrrring” guys from Sesame Street for his iPhone, which is what I planned to get when and if I ever got around to it.

But the idea of using ANY song? Wow, that’s an intimidating amount of choices! (Well, technically it’s any DRM-free song, but for the purposes of speculation, let’s assume we can have the rights to anything we choose.) In fact, it’s so much choice that I’m paralyzed by the possibilities and experiencing a complete creative blue-screen-of-death meltdown.

If you could have any song as a ring tone, what would you choose and why?

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We’ve just put the final bit of shiny wrap and silky ribbon on our first Christmas in our new house. It was, by all accounts, a lovely Christmas.

Now with the insanity of the season more or less behind us, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on the ongoing saga of the house of our dreams. Oh, this house. Like a mischievous child, it finds ways to vex me and endear me in equal measures, so I can never quite give in to adoration or exasperation, and instead vacillate rather constantly between the two.

In the love column, we’ve discovered we’re a quick five minute walk to a lovely river-side park with not one but two outdoor rinks that are very nearly ready for seasonal (and free) skating. A five minute walk the other direction is the public library and a ten minute stroll is most of the rest of Manotick, which I love more every time I venture outside the house.

Also in the love column is the way the light bounces off the snow and into the house, radiating from every window. Truly, the way the light floods in is like a love letter from the house to me, a song sung in the key of my heart.

And truly, how can you argue with a house that allows for a winter afternoon of tobogganing right in your very own front yard?

Oh, how I love this house. At least once each day, I find a reason to love it all over again. The house, the property, the community — it makes me happy.

And yet, it finds ways to vex me. We’ve pulled out the mouldy drywall, and installed more vapour barrier. We have a pretty good understanding of why the old vapour barrier failed, mostly due to problems the previous homeowner caused when he rebuilt the walls. Once we get someone to rebuild the walls properly, and put in new insulation, we can finish installing the carpet, and Tristan’s bedroom will soon be habitable and in fact practically new. That, together with a new dehumidifier (which died last week – a blog post for another time) seems to have taken care of the musty smell in the basement.

The furnace is fixed, and we have a new dual system sump pump with backup and alarm. The electrical eccentricities that some former owner installed have been rewired. We’re well on the way to being back where we started — in fact, better than ever. Beloved has taken to calling it the Six Million Dollar House, not so much for financial reasons but because of the Steve Austin “We can build it — better, faster, stronger” reference.

In fact, I’d be downright content about things — if I hadn’t just been completely unnerved to discover a big square of melting snow exactly overtop of our septic tank. The melt over the tank is in itself not so troubling — were it not for the faint but discernable scent of sewage wafting up. Sigh. I’m afraid to even think about it.

Apparently, this house needs a whole category of its own on the blog, as this is a saga that shows no sign of ending. I’ve been ruminating on it for a while, but haven’t come up with anything clever. Postcards from the Poorhouse, maybe? This Crazy House? See, not so much. What say ye, my clever bloggy peeps?

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A couple of weeks before Beloved and I got married in the summer of 1999, a friend who knew that I was desperate for a dog called me up. “I hear you’re moving from an apartment to a townhouse when you guys get married,” she said. “A friend of mine has a litter of puppies who need homes. Are you interested?”

Was I ever! Katie was the product of a chance encounter between a purebred Golden Retriever who escaped from his yard one day and the German Shepherd-mix mutt who lived at the farm next door. When we set out to see the litter of puppies out near Sharbot Lake one gorgeous June afternoon, I had my heart set on a black and tan pup, but sweet Katie stole my heart from the minute we met her. She was only four weeks old, and my friend agreed to foster her until we returned from our wedding and honeymoon and moved into our new townhouse.

Katie was about 11 weeks old when she came home to us in August of 1999, and our lives haven’t been the same since. She was the oddest combination of submissive and stubborn. To this day, at 100+ pounds, she’ll drop to her belly in submission when a bite-sized dog the size of a Yorkie approaches. And yet she was so stubborn and so mischevious that she failed puppy obedience class the first time, and I clearly remember bawling on the phone to my mother that if I could not tame this wild dog whose antics had me at my wit’s end then there was simply no way I’d ever have the stamina to raise children.

In the darkest days of our infertility, I used to joke in an “it’s not really funny” sort of way that if we didn’t have kids soon, you’d find me at the mall pushing a pram with Katie in it, a bonnet on her lovely yellow head.

In many ways, she has been our first child. As each baby arrived, she adopted him into the family with good grace and patience, never begrudging the need to share her space in our home and our hearts. She has endured boys who lift her lips to examine her teeth and tongue, who yelp and yip and gambol like puppies while tumbling over her, and who have on more than one occasion used her like a step-stool to clamber up onto the sofa. She is part dog, part sister, part babysitter, part mama bear.

She is the world’s worst shedder. I simply cannot fathom how she has any hair left on her body at the end of the day, so much of it is left in tumbleweeds under every piece of furniture in the house despite daily and sometimes twice-daily swiffering. And she is the most prolific pooper you have ever seen, pooping out her own body weight at least thrice weekly.

She has mastered the fine art of Jedi mind tricks, and can induce any of us to feeding her simply by looking at us. I’m sure she averages four meals a day, not including the toddler high-chair buffet.

And now, Katie is old. As she passed her 11th birthday this past May, I tried not to think about it. There is a chart in our vet’s office that shows the lifespan and equivalent age in human years of small, medium and large dogs. The graph for the large-sized dog actually ends just past eight years, but if you follow where the curve leaves off, when you cross 11 years it is equivalent to more than a hundred years of human time.

That’s old, no matter how you slice it. She’s aging with remarkable grace, and has virtually no significant health issues despite a family history of and breed tendency toward hip displasia. That is, until now. At an appointment last week, the vet found a lump near the joint in her back leg. They did an aspiration that came back inconclusive, but his recommendation is surgery to remove what he suspects is a “mass cell tumour.”

Sigh.

Given her current vitality, there’s no reason to believe she doesn’t have two or maybe even more good years. But the surgery is not free, of course. The cost for the surgery alone is in the range of $1,000. How can I possibly put a value on this dog’s life? It’s the ageless dilemma of the pet owner. Will I pay $1,000 to spend more time with her, to try to make sure that she remains healthy and vital and lovely for as long as possible? Of course I will. I simply couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. It’s a pittance compared to the value of what she’s given us over the years.

But even if the surgery successfully removes all of the tumour, at best it buys us just a little bit more time. I’ve seen this day coming for 11 years and have been denying it ever since. This will be the boys’ first face-to-face encounter with mortality, and I don’t think any of us are ready, nor will we ever be.

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So here’s my nickel’s worth of free advice for you.

When your 19 year old (but only two months old to you) furnace starts making odd squeaky noises when it starts up, you should not ignore it. You may wish to ignore it, especially if you are in the midst of a newly identified mould remediation project which will cost you in the neighbourhood of $2,000, and a sump pump replacement that will cost you $1975, and the laying of new carpets which will cost you $1,300, and electrical work that will cost you just shy of a grand, and the ripping out and replacement of the basement shower, to fix the cause of the mould problem, whose cost has not yet been addressed, all of which makes December an incredibly expensive month already. Not to mention the $975 for snow tires. You may try, as we did, to deceive yourself into thinking that “Well, maybe that’s just the noise that a nearly 20 year old furnace makes.”

That would be a mistake. Because when you come home from work on a Friday afternoon to find out that your furnace has died, the labour costs to replace the blower (not, as you were so desperately hoping, the heat exchanger, that was replaced 10 months ago and still under warranty) will be double the rates they would have been if it were not Friday night.

So. That’s water, electricity, air and heat. That just about covers it, don’t ya think? Wait, don’t answer that question. I’m afraid to ask what else there could possibly be.

The good news is, at least I don’t have to lie in bed at night, listening to the nauseating squeak of an obviously ailing furnace and fretting the worst, right?

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