Category: Life, the Universe and Everything

A very long ramble about about the time the coffee maker died and she lost an entire Sunday to the quest for a new one

On a Sunday morning already off to a rocky start by virtue of it starting at 5:15 am, and further compromised by the need to stand barefoot outside on the frozen patio bricks in nothing but a nightgown trying to encourage a suddenly willfull puppy to pee on the outside instead of the inside of the house, you can imagine my elevated level of dismay when I poured fresh water in to the coffee maker only to have it promptly pour back out of the coffee maker and all over the countertop and the floor.

Assuming it was some sort of fluke or gravitational flux or that perhaps I had just missed the reservoir entirely, I doggedly went through the motions of trying to force water into the coffee maker three more times before giving up. Water was definitely egressing from the coffee maker from parts that never previously leaked. And that’s how I ended up at the Manotick Tim’s drive-through before six on a Sunday morning, wearing boots but no socks and mismatched flannel pants with my nightgown under my coat. Don’t judge me, I needed BOTH of the XLs I ordered.

63:365 Please play again

In the way that only the highest magnitudes of crises can do, all potential plans for Sunday were scrapped in favour of acquiring a new coffee maker. While waiting the necessary aeons for the big box stores in Barrhaven to open, I surfed the web to read reviews, compare prices and hunt for sales. Did you know the highest-end coffee maker at Best Buy retails for a stunning $2100? That’s more than I paid for my camera. Seriously, that is stupid-expensive – for that much, it better come with a Barista named Cody who serves my daily coffee in his ripped jeans and a white t-shirt. […]

What? Oh sorry, are you still here? Got distracted by something for a minute there… ahem.

Anyway, long story shorter (but sadly for both of us, not by much) I started out at Bed, Bath and Beyond because I had a coupon. In my life, it’s always about the coupon. But they had only a few models, one or two bargain basement cheapies and several more progressing from $100 up to “are you kidding me?” They had one higher-end one I liked, and I knew my mom had picked up the same one. I was nervous, though, about the re-usable filter. We’re on a septic system and I am absurdly paranoid about coffee grounds going down the drain and somehow blocking up the holes in the pipes in the septic drainage bed. (Reason #297 you should never read the Internet – septic system paranoia.) Standing in Bed Bath and Beyond trying to google whether I could use paper filters, I found out they had the same model at Costco for about $50 less. AND that I could use paper filters for it.

Hmmm. $50 savings versus Costco on a Sunday morning. At what price sanity? Ah, what the hell, Beloved has the kids, I can just nip in and out. (Are you laughing? Yeah. My ability to delude myself astonishes me.) So I get to Costco and it’s a madhouse. Like Christmas-bananas. And when I finally give up searching for this elusive deal and find a clerk to help me (no small feat in itself) I hear those dreaded words: web-only deal. So I go back to the two or three models they actually have and start googling them and realize that the one they have in stock sells for $130 at Canadian Tire but is on sale here for $70 AND I have my annual rebate cheque thingee and I’m in Scottish-Dutch heaven with the good dealiness of it all. Totally worth my sanity and the hour of my time it takes to buy one coffee maker and a container of guacamole. (I never go to Costco without buying guacamole. It’s why I have a membership. I’m not one of those people who spends $400 every time I go, but I never leave without buying my guac.)

So I’m driving home and thinking that I’m going to unpack it right away because by now it’s lunch time and I’ve been up for seven hours and had only two XL cups of coffee and that’s clearly not going to get me through the rest of the day and I really need another cup of coffee now so let’s take this baby for a test drive. And I plunk it down on the counter, slide it against the wall and grab the cord – which only reaches half way to the socket. I pull and jiggle and tug and still have only about 30 cm of cord. WTF? So I check the instructions, which helpfully tell me that my machine is equipped with a short safety cord, and is not recommended for use with an extension cord. Seriously? That’s a feature?

And so it went back in the box and I went back in the car and drove to Canadian Tire, where I stood scowling and muttering at the row of coffee makers, now willfully refusing to pay full price after having been denied my most excellent deal. I refuse to consider the higher-end machines, but after a lifetime of coffee machine buying, I know the $20 model will probably only last a year and I do not want to be spending any more time in the coffee maker aisle in the foreseeable future. I briefly consider the Black and Decker that is on sale, but when I read the reviews I remember our last two B&D carafes which poured more coffee on to the counter than in to the mugs. I pace agitatedly up and down the aisle a few more times, thinking of the 20% off coupon I still have in my pocket for Bed, Bath and Beyond across the street, and finally give up and end up back where I started three and a half hours before.

Rankled that I now seem doomed to spend $100 (minus 20%) on a coffee maker, far more than I have ever previously spend on one, I narrow down my selections to three choices, now rating models first based on cord length and second on price and throwing pretty much every other feature to the fates. I do one last set of googling and find the reviews on the one I am about to buy are terrible, with more than half the reviewers giving the model one star and the main complaint being leakage. Um, isn’t that how I ended up here in the first place? The Krups model beside it gets moderately good reviews and I find out that Future Shop next door is selling it for $85 instead of $100. I haul it up to the cashier and am pleasantly surprised when she says yes, they will pricematch if I can show them the online price. Thrilled that my $100 coffee maker will only cost me $68, which still seems pricey but perhaps necessary for a life-giving source of coffee, I triumphantly whip out my 20% off coupon and am crushed when she looks at it and says “Oh no, sorry, we can give you the price match or the coupon, not both.” Too tired and weak from the hunt to put up a fuss, I hand over my debit card. Whatever. Take whatever you need, just please let me be done shopping for coffee makers now.

By the time I get home (again) it is midafternoon. I am a little too excited when I am able to plug in the machine, and run a quick cycle of water through before actually brewing a pot. Finally, nine hours (and four stores and three coffee makers) later, I have a pot of coffee.

Some things are worth waiting for!

So tell me, do you read online reviews when you’re shopping? There are some products (like coffee makers!) where I give them lots of credence, but for movies and camera equipment, I find the reviews annoy me more than they help. How much credence do you give online reviews in your decision-making process?

Ciao Bella!

Say hello to Bella, the newest member of our family:

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Lookit that face! OMG I am dying from the cuteness!

Bella is an 11 week old shepherd mix pup. She came home to live with us late Wednesday evening, and has managed to both turn our lives upside down and completely endear herself to the family. (Quelle surprise with a face like that, right?)

I found Bella online. She and her sister and brother came from a litter of eight pups. Her dam is a (I think) purebred German Shepherd who got knocked up on her first heat, before her owner could get her spayed. We’re not sure of the breed of the sire – apparently there were four possible contenders, including another shep and a bull mastiff. (What a little tart Bella’s mother is, eh?)

When I heard her story, and saw the photos of her and her littermates, I had to fight hard against love at first sight. I wanted to try my best to evaluate her temperament objectively, but just from her story alone I was hooked. Her provenance is remarkably similar to Katie’s – Katie’s sire was a purebred Golden Retriever who slipped out of the house one day and paid a visit to the shep mix bitch at the next farm at just the wrong (right?) time. Bella was one of two female pups available for adoption, and after spending a little time with both I decided to go with the slightly less dominant dog. Born on Christmas day, her family had named her Vixen, and while I have to say the reindeer theme definitely spoke to me, we found the name didn’t easily come out of our mouths. (We are reading Harry Potter with the big boys, and she was very nearly Luna. I think Bella will stick – but don’t hold me to it!)

Poor Bella had a rough start with us. She hated the car and was sick in the carrier on the drive from Kanata to Manotick. It was after 9 pm by the time I got her home, but the boys were all still waiting up for her. Despite being sick and freshly removed from her family and probably terrified, she showed instant affection for every member of the family – including Willie.

There's a new girl in town!

Willie has been funny. He watches her every moment with a wide-eyed look somewhere between caution and being utterly dumbfounded, but only hisses if she shows too much exuberance. I think he’s trying to figure out what we did to Katie to make her so small and energetic!

Another thing that I really liked when communicating with Bella’s first family was that they’ve been crate training the puppies, so she was already quite used to the idea. Still, the first night was long, with Bella crying in the crate at the foot of my bed. I can’t say I blamed her – she had a traumatic transition right before bed time and suddenly found herself without anyone to sleep with! We cooed and comforted her when she cried, though, and although it was a long night, we got through it. Last night, by contrast, was amazing. I went to bed a little early, and Beloved stayed up with her for a while. He put her out around 11 pm and then tucked her in to the crate. I didn’t hear a peep from her until my alarm went off at 5:20. She made it the entire night and only did a wee submissive dribble when I went to open the crate in the morning.

(Also? It is really hard to housetrain a dog when the temperature has capriciously dipped to mid-winter levels. She shivered miserably every time I took her out yesterday – not that I blame her. Dear spring, please come back!)

Even though Katie was the same age when we brought her home, fourteen years seems to have erased from my mind exactly how much work it is to raise a puppy. The first time I brought her out to pee, I was taken aback by the fact that she doesn’t know how to walk with a leash. Of course she doesn’t, she’s 11 weeks old. Oy, we have a long road ahead of us — but I think it will be more than worth the effort.

Bella

How could you NOT love that face?

In which she discusses puppies with the Universe

It went something like this…

**ring ring**

Hello?

Hey DaniGirl, it’s the Universe calling.

Hey! Whoa, haven’t heard from you a in a while. What’s up, old friend?

Oh, not much. Guiding a pretty little comet your way for later this year. You should like that.

I heard about that! Can’t wait to see it.

It should be good. Listen, I called because I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Katie.

Oh. Yeah, that was rough.

She was a good dog, and you guys loved her a lot.

We did. She really was a once in a lifetime sort of dog. It was way, way harder to cope with letting her go than I ever imagined. I keep seeing her out of the corner of my eye when she’s not there, and keep looking to the spaces where she’s supposed to be and being startled all over again that she’s missing. I can’t believe I’m still crying over her, still looking for her, and how much it still aches.

Well, it’s only been a couple of days, you know. You have to give yourself some time to grieve.

Yeah, I’m not so good with the grieving. I just want my dog back.

You know that’s not going to happen, right?

Yeah, I know. And the ache from missing her is all mixed up with guilt for looking at ads for puppies on the Internet.

Yes, I did notice you perusing those. Thinking about a German Shepherd, are you?

Well, I’ve had half a dozen shepherd mix dogs in my life, and I’ve always been fond of the breed. Katie had a good dose of shepherd in her. I found a couple of breeders nearby with litters pending, and a couple of older puppies that we could bring home right away.

Why were you thinking about purebreds, though? You don’t want a show dog, do you? I think you might have enough hobbies to keep you out of mischief.

Ha, no, definitely not a show dog. I dunno, I want a big dog, not from a puppy mill, smart. I looked at a hundred dog rescue ads and some of them were charging up to $450 or $500 for an adoption, and it’s not a huge amount more than that for a dog from a breeder. There’s something about the German Shepherds, I can’t quite explain it, but when I look into their faces in the photos, they’re the only dogs that speak right to my heart. Maybe it’s the Katie connection? I don’t know, but I’ve looked at probably a hundred dog pictures over the past week, and it’s always the shepherds that speak to me.

Are you sure you want a puppy? Have you forgotten how much work Katie was? I seem to remember eavesdropping on a tearful call to your mother when you wondered aloud how you’d ever manage to raise children if you couldn’t train that willful dog.

I have never forgotten that conversation. She was definitely a handful, our Katie was, when she was a pup. And yes, a puppy is WAY more work than a young dog. But puppies are more adaptable, and with Willie already in the house, that seems like a good idea. Plus, I really believe you get what you put in to a dog, and training them from puppyhood is a way to make sure they fit into your life.

Okay, I can see that. But you are in a heck of a different place in your life than you were 14 years ago when you could focus all of your energies on training Katie. You may even be, ahem, a little bit older now than you were then.

Ah, that’s true. I do have one thing now that I didn’t have back then, though.

What’s that?

Minions! The boys are of an age now where they can actually walk the dog, and they can certainly absorb some of the puppy energy that was so relentlessly focused on us with Katie.

Ha, minions. Yes, there is just something about puppies and boys that seems to go together, isn’t there. Do you think Willie will mind?

Well, I don’t think he’ll be thrilled at first, but he’s pretty young himself, and he clearly misses Katie. Maybe a new dog will even let Willie snuggle with him, something Katie never tolerated.

So you’re sure? Is it time for a new dog already?

Ugh, I wouldn’t say I’m sure. I know we’ll have a dog back in our lives soon enough – that’s not a question at all. And I can’t help think, if we’re going to get one later, why not get one sooner? Tristan and I both feel the same way – in his own words, he said there’s a hole in the family that needs to be filled. Simon and Beloved are more cautious.

Your Beloved hasn’t put the brakes on your search for a new dog?

To my surprise, no. I keep telling him that left to my own devices, we’ll have a new dog in the house within days and that he’d better speak up if he feels he’s not ready. He likes to look at the puppy pictures over my shoulder, so I know he’s on board. We’ve talked it out a lot over the past few days.

So have you found a breeder you like?

We’ve found a few, actually. And just last night, we found another possibility that may work out even better. I’m just waiting to hear some more details, but there may be a puppy visit in my near future.

That sounds promising!

Promising? I’d say more like terrifying, heart-rendering, anxiety-invoking… and exciting! I don’t want to say more. I’ll give you a call in a couple of days and let you know how it works out.

That sounds good, DaniGirl. Don’t forget to listen to your heart and your head. They both have insight to offer, if you just listen. And I really was sorry to hear about Katie. She was a helluva dog and a good friend to you.

She was the best, Universe. Thanks for your call. I’ll be in touch!

This is a transitional blog post

I‘m looking for a way to put a buffer between the blog post about the dog and the blog post I’m going to write in a few days for Tristan’s birthday. They don’t seem like they should be juxtaposed, although that really is a metaphor for how life works, isn’t it? The joy and the grief all tangled up in an ugly and lovely mess.

Except for the life of me I can’t think of anything to write about. We’ve come a long way from the days when I’d put up a fresh post every single day and an placeholder of an apology on the rare days when I couldn’t. Now it feels awkward and forced to write something just to take up some space. There are issues about work-life balance and a photographer’s copyright that I’ve been following and would have commented on in other circumstances – but I just can’t muster the heart to throw into it. I’ve even got a new camera a few days before Katie died and I can’t bring myself to show it off quite yet. It just doesn’t seem right.

Life seems to be settling back into its routine, with a giant doggy-shaped gap in the middle of it. I imagine over time the edges of the gap will be less jagged, and I’ll stop gazing mournfully at the spot where she’d sleep each night. It’s funny, not really funny at all, how her absence asserts itself. She wasn’t there begging for the discarded bits of the peppers I cut up for dinner, and she’s not there taking up space on the carpet when Beloved and I watch TV after the kids have gone to bed, and she’s not there at the top of the stairs waiting for us when we open the front door.

So apparently this post is about Katie after all, although I suppose I have hit a few notes of transition, so I won’t change the title. I have been caught off guard by the depth and breadth of my grief, of our loss. With that comes a host of conflicting emotions: I don’t like to be sad, but I don’t want to dishonour her memory by being happy too soon. I want to restore what was lost, but no dog can ever be Katie. I want to get past the hurting but not forget the feel of her ruff in my fingers. I don’t want to wallow in this miasma of loss, but can’t quite find my way out of it just yet.

Has it only been a couple of days? Oh Katie, I miss you so much.

And I know that this too, shall pass…

A love letter to Katie, 1999 to 2013

My darling Miss Katie,

You arrived in our lives when our lives were just coming together. Before we were married, before three noisy boys, before we owned a house, before it all came lovely Miss Katie, our first baby. When a friend of a friend had a litter of pups in need of a home, we went out expecting to take home one of the litter with your mother’s black and tan shepherd markings. But you, you joyfully yellow little pup, stole our hearts.

Katie, 1999 to 2013

You came home to live in our new home just a few days after our honeymoon, and promptly turned our lives upside down. Rambunctious and clever, you failed puppy kindergarten not once but twice. You ate shoes, eyeglasses and, memorably, a can of coffee, among many other things in your puppyhood. One night I called my mother in tears, wondering how I would ever raise children if I couldn’t train this insane bundle of energy wrapped in yellow fur. And then, finally, we brought you to proper obedience class, and you became the dog you were destined to be – the perfect companion, save a few bad choices over the years. The unfortunate eating of the meringue from a lemon meringue pie comes to mind.

Poor Katie

Once upon a time, when we thought we would never have children, I cried into your patient fur and imagined myself pushing you in a pram at the mall, a pink frilled bonnet on your head. I knew you wouldn’t mind.

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Then, miraculously, there was a baby, and you welcomed him with spirited curiosity. I still remember our first night home with Tristan, how you held vigil over the mewling thing in the cradle, and how you drew my attention urgently to him with every move and sound he made. “Did you see?” you seemed to ask. “Look, it’s moving. What is it? What should we do with it?”

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And then came two more babies, and you welcomed them too. Toddler Tristan howled with glee from his exersaucer as you raced silly doggy loops around the house. Curious babies pried open your lips to examine your teeth, lifted your ears and pulled your feet and tail, even used you as a step to climb onto the sofa, and you simply looked at me with your patient doggy face: “I get extra treats for this, right?” When they went too far, you opened your giant toothy jaw and used your head to shove them carefully away without even so much as a snarl.

25:365 One for you and one for me

We lost two cats and many years later found another, and you welcomed Willie with the same patience you welcomed the boys. He hissed and spat, and you sniffed curiously, and when he wanted to wrestle you rolled him across the floor like a beanbag with your careful paw. To our ongoing surprise, you never tolerated him cuddling you, though. Only people were allowed that privilege.

Willie for the blog

I miss you deeply, Katie. I miss you so much I can’t really even get my head around it yet. There’s a giant gaping hole in our lives where you’ve been for the past 14 years. Even knowing you could not, would not last forever doesn’t seem to ease the grief. Neither does knowing that in the end, you did not suffer. We think maybe you had a stroke, because yesterday morning you were more or less fine, and then you were not. And the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was to bring you to that end, and hold you until it was done. And then walk away without you.

554:1000 Miss Katie

Katie, I’m not sure I know how to say goodbye to you. Everyone who met you knows what an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime sort of dog you were. Even as I type this, I’m still listening for the sound of your endlessly growing claws on the hardwood, and picking your ubiquitous fur out of the weave of my sweater. Waking up this morning and knowing you were not on your blanket at the foot of the bed was heartbreaking all over again. I wish you were still here, that I could turn back time and that we could go for a walk together in the woods, like we did when you were a pup and had so much extra energy to burn.

468:1000 Doggy love

Katie, you were truly an amazing dog. You taught me so much about love, and you were such an extraordinary gift in our lives. Thank you, my sweet friend. Sleep well. You are deeply and dearly loved.

Remember that time we didn’t go dogsledding?

Dogsledding is something I’ve wanted to try for ages. When my brother and his family were visiting last March Break, I did a lot of googling trying to find an excursion that would be accessible and reasonably affordable. (This is apparently another one of those times when having a larger family comes back to bite me on the arse.) Long story short, I couldn’t find anything back then and gave wistfully up on the idea.

You can imagine my delight, then, when I heard through Twitter that Calabogie Highlands Golf Resort was having a family fun with the dogs day on January 5. Look!

Fun, eh? Except we have company coming that weekend, so I got in touch with Calabogie Highlands and it turns out they have dogs pretty much every weekend, as long as there is enough snow. I was SO! EXCITED! that I booked us for the very next day. Beloved was mildly entertained by my enthusiasm – enough to agree to yet another one of my harebrained schemes.

Several factors conspired to slow us down, but neither a lingering migraine nor a sudden flare of sciatica nor a forecast of windchill in the neighbourhood of -20C were enough to deter us. We gathered snow pants and boots and balaclavas and snacks and trundled into the car for the 90 minute drive… except the car door wouldn’t close. I thought at first it was just ice – my Madza freezes up rather regularly – but nothing we did could force the mechanism to catch. After considerable angst and debate, we first decided not to go and called Calabogie Highlands to cancel, and then decided that the main roads would probably be clear and dry enough for the balding tired on Beloved’s aging station wagon (for which we have not yet been able to rationalize the purchase of snow tires, given that we will likely be replacing it within the the year.) We called Calabogie Highlands back to say we were on our way again and set out.

We were making pretty good time and had plans to stop for a quick lunch in Arnprior when we turned on to the 417 from the 416. The day was brilliantly clear and the roads seemed wet but clear. I’d felt the car waver a few times, but put it down to the gusting wind, but as we passed Kanata and then Carp, my knuckles were getting whiter and whiter on the steering wheel. We went from losing our traction occasionally to regaining traction occasionally, and by the time we were to the exit for Almonte I didn’t feel we could safely go any faster than 60 km/h on what was clearly a road paved by black ice.

I decided it simply wasn’t worth the risk. We pulled off westbound 417, looped around, apologized to the boys, called Calabogie Highlands to cancel yet again, and hopped back on the 417. It was less than a kilometer after that, headed back toward Ottawa, that we passed the SUV flipped over on its side. That chilled me more than the icy wind could ever manage, and we crawled the rest of the way home somewhere between 40 and 50 km/h. What really surprised me was the line of cars carefully following behind me at the same crawl, not one of them moving in to the open left lane to pass.

We finally pulled off the Queensway at Stittsville and placated the boys with a McDonalds lunch – and a still-shaking mom with a very large coffee. In nearly 30 (!) years of driving, and many many winter storms on the 401, I have never been so unnerved by road conditions. Tomorrow, two cars go in to the shop – one for a door-latch fix, and one for some premium snow tires.

Alas, the winter stretches long ahead of us, and there will be other weekends to pursue our dogsledding adventure. And in the interim, we do have a pretty fun yard for winter play.

Front yard sledding-2

Front yard sledding

It strikes me that I’ve had more vehicular misadventures this Christmas break than I’ve had in the last several years. Thanks, Universe, for keeping us safe and sound. And we can always try again in mid-January for that dogsledding adventure, right? With latching doors AND snow tires this time!

The one where Santa rescues her from a ditch in a red tractor on Christmas Day (true story!!)

I swear on everything dear to me that every word in this story is true and absolutely without embellishment. This is exactly and honestly how it happened.

We went to Granny and Papa Lou’s house for a late breakfast visit this morning. My brother and his family were going to stay an extra day, but the pending snow storm spooked them and they left for southern Ontario at noon instead of tomorrow as planned. We were driving back to Manotick shortly after lunch, and chatting about the Christmas Day years ago I drove lazy loops around the Manotick rural roads enjoying my Starbucks coffee while Tristan and Simon snoozed in the back seat. I couldn’t help but laugh when we noticed Lucas fast asleep in his car seat. At four he’s a little old for afternoon naps, but after two days of cousin visits and Christmas, he was pretty wrung out. We stopped by the house long enough to drop off Beloved and the big boys and Lucas and I headed out to drive a few more lazy loops of those rural Manotick roads.

Of course, I had an agenda of my own. We’ve been so busy getting ready for Christmas that I’ve been positively drooling to get out and take some pictures of the thick, pristine snowfall from a few days ago. I was a couple of kilometers from home on Dozois Rd when I noticed how beautifully the sun was hitting the snow in a little forest. I couldn’t resist. I pulled over to the shoulder of the deserted road and reached for my camera — and that’s when I realized it had been in the bag that Beloved brought into the house when I’d dropped him and the boys off.

Mildly disappointed but not completely perturbed, I pulled out my iPhone instead. Lovely, wasn’t it?

Photo 2012-12-25 12 54 46 PM

And then I put down my phone, rolled up the window (I hadn’t even gotten out of the car – call me lazy) and put the car in gear. And my stomach sank as the wheels started to spin. I tried rocking it, twisting the wheel, easing it and flooring it. Nothing came even remotely close to moving the car.

I was completely and righteously stuck in the snow.

All I could hear was Beloved’s voice, see him shaking his head. “Have you learned yet? Picture-taking fool.” We have roadside assistance, but on Christmas Day I feared we’d be at New Year’s Eve before they got around to me. I thought I’d try to get myself out first.

I wasn’t there long when the first Good Samaritan stopped. He and I used our windshield scrapers to try to dig some room behind the (deeply buried) front wheels so we could stick the floor mats under them and get some traction. That plan had just failed utterly and completely when I glanced at in my rearview mirror….

(remember, every single word of this is 100% true)

…. and saw the red sleigh tractor pulling in behind me. I may have giggled a bit in relief as I stepped out of the car, but I swear my jaw dropped open when the tractor driver popped out and I took in the flannel shirt, the long white beard and the (honestly, every word is TRUE!) twinkly blue eyes.

“Having a bad day?” he asked with a smile.

“Not since you showed up!” I grinned back at him. He was already at work attaching a chain to the underside of my rear bumper. I had the presence of mind to grab my iPhone at that point to capture the moment. There is no better blog fodder than an anecdote that makes me look ever so slightly foolish while having a happy ending. With a Christmas twist, I knew it was bloggy gold.

Photo 2012-12-25 1 06 52 PM

He pulled me off the shoulder and back on to the road, and we both got back out of our vehicles. “Can I give you a little something for your troubles?” I asked, thinking of the $20 I have stashed in the dash for Starbucks emergencies.

“‘Course not,” he grinned. “I’d take a hug, though.” Which I gladly gave to him without hesitation.

“You know,” I couldn’t help but add with a shy smile of my own, “you kinda even look like Santa Claus.”

“You think?” he said, with an “aw shucks” sort of tug on his beard. He told me his name is Andrew.

I thanked everybody profusely and climbed back in to my car. Lucas had slept through the entire event, which really only took about 15 minutes from photo to escape. I drove on down the country road smiling to myself and already writing this blog post in my head, but I realized that while it makes a great story, you’d never believe me about the Santa Claus part. So I turned the car around, maybe a kilometer down the road from where I’d been stuck, and headed back the way I’d come, expecting to see him still winding up his rusty chain. I figured I’d impose on his good will one last time and ask if I could take a photo of us together, if he didn’t mind. I crested one hill and then another, and passed the mucked out bit of snow on the shoulder where I’d been stuck and kept on to the intersection with Mitch Owen — but there was absolutely no sign of him or his tractor.

He had disappeared.

Now this makes for an awesome story, but the funny PS is that I am not absolutely convinced that I’ll be able to publish this story on my blog. I tried about 20 times to tweet the photo of the tractor pulling my car out of the ditch in the following tweet: “OMG I just got rescued from a ditch by Santa in a tractor on Christmas day!! #truestory #merrychristmas” and each time, the tweet failed.

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By the time I was home, I even tried to tweet it from my desktop. I kept getting an error message I’d never seen before, in more than 16,000 tweets.

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Clearly, the big guy wanted to keep his good deed a secret. But I just couldn’t help myself, and so I sat down to tell this story. I was just about to press the ‘publish’ button when it hit me: Photoshop! I could enlarge the section of the original photo with the tractor, and you could see for yourself. I promise you that I did nothing to this photo except boost the resolution to 200%. Check it out!

Santa crop

Not the clearest photo ever, but tell me you can’t clearly see the beard, the grizzled hair, and even the flannel shirt.

Santa rescued me from my photo-taking foibles on Christmas day. Best! Christmas! Story! EVER!!

(and I promise, I swear, I absolutely guarantee — every single word is true!)

Merry Christmas, my bloggy friends! I hope your Christmas is filled with wonder and funny stories. 🙂

Edited to add: how much do I love the Internet? Want a better picture of my hero Santa? Thanks to Laura Jane Photography on Twitter for this much better photo of Santa-Andy. See, he really does look like Santa!! 🙂

In which she decides that maybe she doesn’t like living in the countryside so much after all

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 1

What a gorgeous day to be outside. Yanno, I really don’t mind raking up the leaves. I rarely have an excuse to come out and enjoy the yard this time of year, and it will be a long cold winter. It’s nice to be able to get out and do a bit of raking. I’m sure if I break the task down over a couple of days, it won’t seem like much of a burden. Such a small price to pay for having so many big trees on our property, and great exercise, too! *whistles a happy raking tune*

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 4

Okay, seriously? Where are all the oak leaves coming from? We don’t even have an oak tree!!

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 7

Wow, I’ve already filled seven bags and I’ve barely moved out of this corner of the front yard. Maybe I’d better recruit the boys to give me a hand.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 6

“Boys! Did you just dump that bag so you could jump in the leaf pile?!”

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 10

Man, I am going to write a brilliantly witty blog post as soon as I get my hands on the computer. I’m sure I’ll be able to remember these great ideas later!

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 11

What was that brilliantly witty idea I had again?

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 12

This is exhausting. Maybe I should try the electric leaf-blow/suck thing my parents brought over.

[45 sweaty minutes later, still bag 12]

Never mind.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 14

Note to self: next year, try to cut the lawn at least once in September or October. This is less like raking leaves and more like combing out tangles in places.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 19

Dear Mother Nature, why why oh WHY did you think it was a good idea to make the dead birch leaves look SO MUCH like dog poop? Really, was that necessary?

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 23

I think I’m starting to lose the feeling in my fingers. Also, I think the squirrels are mocking me.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 25

Sweet farking Jebesus, will I never be finished raking these leaves? This is like Sisyphus meets Groundhog Day with leaves…

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 28

YOU! Silver maple in the corner! Drop yer goddam leaves already!! I’m not doing this again next week.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 30

You know what I really love? I love it when the half-full bag collapses just when you’re inserting a gigantic load of leaves and it tips and spills not only what you’ve got on your rake but the leaves that were already in the bag because I’ve got nothing else to do except rake and since I’m raking I would really love to rake the same leaves more than once…

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 31

I’ve now lost all feeling up to my shoulders and can’t get the taste of pine needles out of my mouth. My hands are contorted, perhaps permanently, into rake-shaped claws. And still, I rake. And rake. And rake.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 33

I see you, fancy neighbour with the fancy leaf-sucking tractor. Oh yes, I see you, don’t think I don’t, sitting high on your pretty little tractor with your jaunty little hat and NOT RAKING UP YOUR LEAVES AT ALL.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 36

Stupid trees. Stupid leafs. Stupid semi-rural stupid countryside. That’s it, we’re moving into a condo downtown next week.

Annual leaf rake-up, Bag 39

“What do you mean ‘what am I doing?’ What does it look like I’m doing? I’m duct-taping this flashlight to my rake. It’s getting too dark to see and I’m not done yet. I can’t stop now, there are MORE LEAVES TO RAKE. MUST RAKE LEAVES. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I SHOULD STEP AWAY FROM THE RAKE?!?!?”

Final tallies for 2012:

Number of bags filled: 47
Number of canisters filled (mostly with twigs): 4
Number of rake-hours invested across the family: 17
Number of rake-hours invested by me personally: 12
Number of times I hit myself in the head with a rake: 6
Number of rakes destroyed: 1
Number of blisters and bruises on my hands despite wearing garden gloves: 4
Number of witty blog posts composed in my head while raking: 7
Number of witty blog posts actually written: I’ll leaf it to you to decide

In which she discovers the effect of a roll of toilet paper on a load of laundry

Have you ever wondered what might happen if you throw a roll of toilet paper into a load of laundry? Or moreso, a roll of one-ply paper on a load of dark dress clothes? Well wonder no more, bloggy peeps, because there is NOTHING I will not do in the name of scientific examination and blog fodder.

Le voila!

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Impressive, eh? And of the irony of sitting on the can just minutes before making this discovery, looking at the empty toilet paper holder and thinking, “That’s funny, I was sure I had an extra roll around here somewhere.”

My black dress pants, which I always wash on delicate and hang to dry. There are not enough lint brushes in the world to deal with this.

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And to complete our scientific journey of exploration, here is what a roll of one-ply tissue (more irony – we use one-ply because it breaks down easily, better for the septic system) looks like after an encounter with a high-efficiency front loader:

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Do you think having a wardrobe that looks like a snowstorm barfed on it is a decent reason to miss work on Monday?

A new bloggy sponsor and a cause worth supporting: Conceivable Dreams

Almost three years ago to the day, I wrote a blog post about the province of Ontario announcement that it would be funding in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. I wrote: “yippee!” Okay, so I wrote a lot more than that, and I’ll re-hash a lot of that in the next little while, because I’ve happily agreed to write a few posts about IVF funding for Conceivable Dreams, our newest bloggy sponsor. Conceivable Dreams is a grass roots patient advocacy organization advocating for better funding for IVF from government and private employers, a cause I support with all my heart.

The blog post I wrote back in 2009 about Ontario’s proposed funding for IVF treatments breaks my heart. Once every couple of months, someone posts a sad comment or sends me a heart-wrenching e-mail begging for information, for an update, for some glimmer of hope — and I have said so many times that I’m so sorry, but I don’t have any information. That announcement back in 2009 has been followed by three years of inaction and silence from the the government. Imagine waiting to start your family for three long years, with the family of your dreams tantalizingly close — but still not attainable.

With the cacophony of three little boys that fill our ears and hearts to bursting, it’s sometimes hard to remember the dark days of our infertility diagnosis and hard to believe that once upon a time, some doctor told us that we had practically no chance to conceive a child on our own. Infertility is so much more than a clinical diagnosis. It means giving up on a dream you felt entitled to your whole life. It is standing on a precipice with a yawing future devoid of the children you already felt were a part of you. It is losing what you never had but always expected.

Our only hope for pregnancy lay down the path of in vitro treatments, at a cost then that started around $7,000 — with no promise of success. Imagine spending that kind of money — on a maybe. I remember sitting in the armchair in the bedroom of the townhouse we rented, just me and Beloved and Katie, and crying my heart out to my mother on the phone. How could we ever afford something like that? We couldn’t even scrape together enough for a downpayment on a house. It may as well have been $70,000 as $7,000. And my wise, sweet mother asked me a question that I never forgot: “What else are you going to spend your money on?”

Indeed, that was the perspective I needed. For us, there was nothing else we wanted – not vacations, not cars, not a fancy house or toys or clothes. We wanted that family, and we had wanted it since we were each children ourselves. Beloved and I were born to be parents, and I believe that to my core to this day. It still seems so wrong to me that what stood between our younger selves and the family we dreamed of was money – the money to pay for a medical treatment.

Beyond the emotional, there are solid medical and financial reasons that the province should get moving on implementing coverage for IVF, and I wrote at length about them back in 2009. One of the driving factors behind funding IVF is controlling the number of multiple births, which are expensive on the health care system with higher incidences of premature births, c-sections, and intensive neo-natal care. Whereas (provincially funded) intrauterine insemination has no control over the number of embryos created, IVF allows for precise control of the number of embryos implanted.

And I still stand behind what I wrote, back in 2009 (really, just go read the blog post, it will be easier, and it’s a good one!):

You know what I would even consider as a reasonable compromise, for those of you who feel that taxpayer dollars should not be funding fertility treatments? Fund unsuccessful treatment cycles. Including two IUIs, a cycle of IVF with ICSI, four years of frozen embryo storage, and the costs to thaw and transfer Frostie, we easily spent $10,000 or $12,000 to overcome our infertility. I think you’ll agree that my darling Tristan is worth every penny times a thousand. We’re lucky that we never had to face the unimaginable agony of an unsuccessful round of IVF treatments compounded by the idea of spending all that money for naught — just try to imagine spending everything you have, financially and emotionally, and coming away empty-handed.

It’s for all these reasons and more that I am proud to support the work of Conceivable Dreams. If you have any doubt in your heart, read the comments at the end of the post I wrote back in 2009 for just a sample of the struggle facing thousands of Ontario families-in-waiting. For more information, you can visit the Conceivable Dreams website, or follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Disclosure: I am a valued member of the Conceivable Dreams blog team, and I have been compensated for this blog post. However, the opinions expressed on this blog are always my own.