(Wordless Wednesday) Manuel, recuerdo de Mijas

Turtle’s Latest List

My impression of multi-tasking.
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Hi friends!

Is it just me, or are Laundry Days moving closer together?

Anyway, today’s Laundry List is the new page at the top of my blog, “Posts of the Turtle”. I mentioned it on the weekend. There’s maybe better ways I coulda done it, but at least I done it.

I’m sure there’s more I could say about it too, but it’s now ten to three and I haven’t yet read any of your blog entries today!

One thing I will say, though, is that this morning I awoke with enough room in my crowded little brain to remember that we’re going to Paris — is it only next week?! — and feel like I could look forward to it. As the French say, Youppi!

And now it’s time to visit vous. Put the kettle on.

Much Better, Thank You

Turtle out walking with 11-week-old Cai, Dec 2006

Jane came over just after 6 yesterday evening, to pick up her keys and drop off a bit of pocket money and a lovely little souvenir from Mijas, Spain, which I’ll use for this week’s Wordless Wednesday photo. I’m afraid I was rather rude; while E.g. kept the conversation going, my eyes unfocussed and drifted away from Jane and towards the movie Jack was watching. After Jane left, I had a bite of supper. At five to eight I announced I was going to bed. I read the first page, if that, of a novel before drifting off; I heard the rest of the family coming in from a potty break at 8:30, but hadn’t heard them going out.

Fergus woke up about one-ish, and E.g. went down to him. When Cuca started tapping me on a hand at five to six, I went downstairs with him while E.g. slept in.

Since today is Victoria Day, Jack doesn’t have school. And since it’s another cold and rainy day, E.g. looked up indoorish activities suitable for all ages. She found some kind of circus goings-on down at the Harbourfront, but I just couldn’t get up any interest.

“What would you like to do, then?” she asked.

“I’d like to take Cai to the big park.”

“Okay. You go give him a good play, and when you get back, I’ll take Jack to the circus.”

Deal! Cai and I left at 9, and returned home at 10 to 11, just as E.g. and Jack were on their way to the parking garage. And a good thing we crossed paths, because I noticed that E.g. had forgotten to take her camera. I’m looking forward to seeing the photos.

Turtle, 11-month-old Cai, and Jack on the Bruce Peninsula, August 2007.

Cai makes me feel good. This morning he trotted along beside me, good as gold, even trying to hold himself back once we got to the big park. I rewarded him by removing his leash at the top of the off-leash area. “Top” should be taken literally: the dogpark is at the bottom of a bowl. The steep side has been a favourite place for tobogganing for over a century.

So yeah, I unclipped him, and tossed a ball down the hill. Away he went on his specially-designed hill-running Cardigan legs, while I followed. We perambulated the edges, fetching and tossing, ignoring the other dogs. This was our time.

After an hour, Cai was pretty much wiped. I had forgotten to bring a water bottle. Cai drank out of a puddle on the baseball diamond a few times, but kept regurgitating his water from all the running, so we walked one more time around, and back up the hill to the top. Cai was tuckered out, and I was refreshed. The grey coolness was full of birds, the tiny front yards full of flowers.

Like I said, we met E.g. and Jack in the hallway. They reported that Fergus had just had a 45-minute potty and play. “Work on getting your sanity back!” were E.g.’s parting words, but after a full night’s sleep and a walk with my dog, much of that work had already been done. Cai and I entered the apartment, Cai lay down for a snooze, and I — this will tell you! — I did the dishes.

 

Turtle and 18-month-old Cai, Inglis Falls, March 2008.

Shellshock of the Turtle

The blanket flops over a sleepy Cai…

This is just going to be a grumbledy gripe and a bit of administrative blether, so if you’re a regular, feel free to stop reading now and leave a sympathetic comment, and if you’re a casual passerby, head on for the next blog on your roll.

Today is Day 15 of my latest catsitting stint for Jane and Robert, and Day 9 of Fergus the Wonder Pisher. Jack stays with us three days a week, and I work at the pet store for a different two days.

Catsitting — at least the way I do it for my friends — involves staying with the cats for a couple of hours in the morning, and coming back at suppertime to close blinds and set down supper kibble. Mornings are peaceful enough, with plenty of exercise as I walk from the dining room table to the back door to let the kitties out. And in. And out. And in. And out. And in. I take my laptop, and get my blogreading done. I bring in the mail, and lock up.

Then home I head to let the dogs out for the third time of the day. Cai pees, Fergus follows suit, and then I hold Fergus’s leash while throwing a ball for Cai. After twenty minutes or so, we come in and the boys play tooth hockey while I set up the laptop again. The dogplay lasts about half an hour, or until Fergus pees under the piano bench, whichever comes first. Then I try to write something while they’re snoozing.

If it’s a work day, I take them out for another potty break, bring them in, set Fergus in his pen, give Cai a bickie, realize I don’t have the full two minutes it takes to use my electric toothbrush, and dash out the door. Two hours later I dash back, mop the pee in Fergus’s pen, take the boys out for a potty break, bring them back in, and dash off to work. At 7 pm or so, having finished up at the store, I head over to throw kibble at the cats and then come home.

Since I’m still dressed for outside anyway, I might as well take the boys out for a potty break. Gillian has already done so once, and is assembling the take-out chicken and pre-washed salad she picked up on the way home. We chow down as we catch up on our reading and the boys play until Fergus goes and poops on the only throw rug we have on this floor.

I leave the dirty dishes for yet one more night, and run away to bed just before 9. At one in the morning I come down to show a whimpering Fergus that no, he’s not abandoned. He doesn’t have a door on his crate, which is inside his pen, and so he just pops out when he needs to relieve himself; he only whines because nobody’s in the papasan any longer.

I tell him everything is cool, and I curl up in the papasan for half an hour. During this time, Cai comes downstairs, and when I wake from my doze, I set him in the lifeguard chair and head back to bed.

At five the cat wakes me up.

Okay, it’s not this bad every day, and sometimes it’s been E.g., not me, who’s gotten up in the middle of the night or arisen with the Cuca alarm. But I’m tired anyway. Waah. Snivel.

… and Cai flops over, a sleepy guy.

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Administrative stuff: I’ve decided to add a new page to my blog, containing groupings of my entries. The tales will be together, the nonsense under another heading, the photo essays in another list, and the day-to-day blibbity-blabbity in loose subject areas, like “Our Pets” and “Nature” and “Games and Contests”, that kinda thing. I’m hoping it will benefit three kinds of people: 1) newcomers who want more of one genre or another of my stuff; 2) regulars who want to go back to one post or another for whatever reason; 3) me. Already I can’t remember what some of the pieces are about; “Little Things”, for example, will win no prizes as an elucidatory title.

Okay! I’m back from my final visit with the cats; it’s Sunday of a long weekend (Queen Victoria’s Birthday, known fondly to many Canadians as the “May 2-4 Weekend” — a 2-4 being a case of beer); it’s noon; it’s pouring rain; the pupster is just settling down for a nap, having considerately peed under the piano bench while E.g. was mopping his tarp; and I’m going upstairs to collapse for an hour or so with a P.D. James novel. I hope you all are having a great Sunday.

Oh, wait! I leave you with this inspirational poem I just made up:

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  • Somewhere there’s a place for you and me,
  • Somewhere where there ain’t no puppy pee.
  • Somewhere there’s a place for me and you,
  • Somewhere where there ain’t no kitty poo.

 

Hermeneutically Sealed (Saturday Funnies)

Foulksrath Castle Hostel, Ireland. The one place where the Tilley quick-dry guarantee fails.

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I got some pretty strange looks from customers at the pet store this week. I like to think of myself as occasionally witty, but with this week’s lack of sleep, I more closely resembled a half-wit. I briefly wondered how close to the cash register I could hang my two bachelor’s degrees, the graduate diploma, the PSW certificate, my ORCA basic Flatwater badge, and the happy grades for courses ranging from First Aid to Watercolour Painting to Editing, but I was too tired to stay miffed for more than a sentence at a time. I floated through the two days, a vacant smile on my face, keeping the counter firmly in place with my elbows. I didn’t even attempt to spin the can labels.

So this morning, before running off to feed Robert and Jane’s cats, I thought I would put some half-assessed effort into compiling a lexicon of completely unrelated terms. Some of these come from recent exchanges with other bloggers, some have been part of my cranial spaghetti for a long time, and one or more of them, if we’re both lucky, might make you smile. Happy weekend!

 

aplomb: [← Fr panache, ← white I rock, ← masc You the man, ← Helen Reddy I am strong! I am invincible! , ← Gk aplomb.]

breathe: Thoft, thoothing wind.

elytra (sing. elytron) :  Hard, shiny wing casing on beetles. Usage: Comm, deterrent to lingering customers: “Say, did you know you have spots on your inner elytra?”

few roos loose in the top paddock, a: Kangaroos culpable of stealing sandwiches from picnic baskets.

hermeneutically sealed: Hunting in this area restricted to theologians.

Invention is the necessity of motherhood: ≈ Hard times call for desperate measures; usu re int furnishgs or dom cuisine. [Attr. Lavender Bay, 1980s.]

latté: Breakfast drink discouraging workplace punctuality.

pictureskew: Panoramic, scenic. [*Br sp picturesque.]

tooth hockey: [regionalism] Stick-handling motions, during fake fights, of open jaws of two dogs. = jawing.

unawares: Garments laundered in hostel sinks and hung on bunk bed rails to dry overnight.

 

 

Dog Eat Dog

It has now been a full week since Fergus came home. At first, Cai was a bit snippy about the little intruder. Then he started to see the light: Fergus isn’t (only) a usurper — he’s a DOG!!!!

Two days ago, Cai started playing tooth hockey with Fergus. This morning, E.g. took a few photos of the two of them merrily scuffling over a pink sponge kitty ball. I have to run off to work now, but I’ll leave you with three of the photos. Enjoy!

Big brothers are FUN!

Down for the count.

Tuckered out at last.

Vizsla Vibes and Corgi Cups

Someone’s well-loved Pembroke Welsh Corgi mug.

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I had a “comment awaiting moderation” yesterday. The commenter turned out to be someone I’ve been reading for a while now, but only  when he comments on the entries of pet blog writers. It was James Viscosi, an author.

I clicked on his name and brought up his site about writing. Hmmm… Podcasts? Writer’s software? You mean, like, touch-typing tutorials? My partner would probably understand what he’s talking about, but not me. She likes that kind of stuff; her eyes glisten as she details her Mac laptop’s capabilities or her Canon camera’s… umm… I forget, but they have lots of numbers. Me, I just call her lenses Stella, Mac, Lucy, and Frida.

Anyway, at the top of James’s left-hand sidebar is a question: “Looking for Dennis?” Oh right, I thought, Dennis the Vizsla! James’s comments are often written in Dennis’s voice. Dennis is friendly, enthusiastic, and must have gone to the same high school as Checkers, since his spelling is on a par with Checkers’s arithmetic.

So over I went to “Dennis’s Diary of Destruction”. Dennis came to the Viscosi household as an adolescent, polkadotted with mange. He and his siblings had been found in a canyon. Gradually he settled into the pet-friendly residence, which currently counts three dogs (including Dennis) and a cat.

All right, this is stuff I understand! I watched videos of Tucker learning to track, and learned about the Viscosis’ dedication to ballroom dancing, and then watched a commenter’s proffered video of an Olivia Newton John look-alike strutting with her Golden Retriever to “You’re the One That I Want” (ooh! ooh! ooh… ) .

Yeah, I could visit this one, for sure! Then I noticed something. I was already blogrolled. In triplicate. James has his blogroll divided in subject headings, and there was “Lavender Bay” in the list of “Cats”, “Dennis’s Friends”, and “Dogs”. Guess he’s been reading my stuff. I remembered the scene from “St Elmo’s Fire” where she finds her platonic friend’s cookie tin stuffed full of photos of her.

Luckily I wasn’t in any kind of creepy head space, so I returned the compliment, abeit only in monolicate. You can now find “Dennis’s Diary of Destruction” on my blogroll. Welcome, James and Dennis!

Around 5 pm, after taking Cai and Fergus out for a potty break, I set Fergus in his pen and took Cai over for my afternoon cat-sitting stint, which basically consists of tossing kibble in their dishes and vamoosing.

Cai has been learning to heel, with the help of a two-hundred-dollar training course and a two-dollar package of training treats (note to dogparents: opt for the treats). Yesterday he was doing a splendid job. We had just left the cats’ home when a gold minivan slowed down beside us. I thought the driver was simply being careful on the narrow street, but a voice called out, “Excuse me!”

I looked into the faces of a miniature poodle and — strangely enough — a Vizsla. They were sitting in the passenger seat, and there were four other dogs in the rest of the van, all clamouring like school children.

The man driving asked me, “Would you like a Corgi coffee cup? Is that a Pembroke?”

“No, he’s actually a Cardigan.”

“Well, would you like it anyway? I’m a dog-walker –” that would explain the passengers “– and I found this cup at a yard sale, hoping I would find someone to give it to.”

“Oh — well, sure! Thank you!” And I was handed a photo-printed coffee cup from 1994. There’s a new kid in town, a little Pemmie puppy named Andie; I think I’ll see if her daddy would like a pencil mug. There’s generosity in the air, may as well keep it going.

(Wordless Wednesday) Cardigan offensive: collateral damage

Plus Ca Change

This rocking chair, in my mum’s house, had different upholstery when I was a kid.

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What day is it, boys and girls?

It’s Laundry Day!

And what do we do on Laundry Day?

We make lists!

Today I thought I’d try to find 10 things about me that are different from before I exited my teens. And maybe 10 things that haven’t changed — that way, no matter what I come up with, it can go on one list or the other. The second list is allowed to contain practices from which I at some point deviated — for example, I tried having long hair for a few years — but which never “took”.

Check out these lists for inspiration, and then try it yourself!

Ten Ways I’ve Changed Since Childhood

1. When I was in first grade, I was afraid of being drafted into the Viet Nam war. I had to keep reminding myself that I was neither American, nor a boy. I now have no trouble remembering that I’m Canadian.
2. I used to spread mayonnaise on white bread and eat it. Just like that. No, seriously.
3. I used to despise disco, with its simplistic synthesizer tunes and vapid one-line lyrics (anyone remember “Fly, Robin, Fly”?). Now I enjoy its silly, happy light-heartedness.
4. Blue used to be my favourite colour. Now green is. Or maybe purple. Or a good deep pink. And oatmeal is nice and so’s oxblood, and then there’s gamboge, viridian, cobalt, or how about brindle, blue merle, liver, chestnut?
5. I don’t fall and skin my knees nearly so much.
6. I wasn’t able to play any instrument requiring the independent action of more than two fingers. Now I can play the recorder!
7. In my teens, I enjoyed sweet, creamy poisons like Pink Ladies and Grasshoppers. Now I’m happiest with a pint of ale.
8. In my teens, I had a prejudice against business people. Now I count several of that species among my closest friends.
9. I used to love the Autumn. Now I like every season.
10. I used to dislike parsnips and rutabaga. Now I like them just fine.

Ten Ways I Haven’t Changed Since Childhood

1. I still pick up worms off rainy sidewalks and move them to safety.
2. I still say hello to sparrows, chipmunks, cowslips, toadstools…
3. I still have short hair.
4. I still love to write stories.
5. I still love marshes and woods and other creaturely habitats.
6. When I was little, I preferred singing in church to sitting in Sunday School. Still do.
7. When I was about 5, Mummy gave me a peeled clove of garlic just to sniff. I ran all over the house with it! I still love the aroma.
8. I wasn’t able to even turn the ropes for double-dutch skipping. Still can’t.
9. I always preferred stuffed animals to baby dolls. I still prefer animals to human babies.
10. I still prefer salty and savoury foods to sweet.

I know, this entry has been a thrill a minute. But at least you now know more about me than my “about” page will ever tell you.

Treed

Omit the geese and the kingfisher, and the pond looked something like this.

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Last night was my turn to watch Fergus. I’m not going to go into all the permutations of a two-month-old canine’s skills at eliminating in inappropriate places at the wrong times, like… never mind, I’m not going to go into that.

However, my brains being slightly fried from all the excitement (and a night of sleeping in the papasan), by mid-afternoon today I couldn’t think of anything to write about except An Excremental Journey or A Scat Concert or Bummed Out or Hindsight or… until E.g., answering an e-mail, said Why don’t you write about that time with your first dog… So here it is. Just.

When I was 12, my mother, realizing the shortage of sandwiches developing in my psychic picnic, decided to get me a dog. A woman she knew had some puppies to give away, and one of them came to me. Alfie had some collie in him — Cai reminds me a bit of him.

Alfie and I liked to walk down to the far end of the dirt road and hop the farm fence, braving the possibility of Polled Herefords to get to the pond. It was maybe a foot deep, with cattails and Red-winged Blackbirds and frogs and a cowpath up one side and a little bridge that led, past the cedars, to some summer cabins. I think there must have been another driveway to those cabins, because I never met any other humans at the pond.

There was one meeting, though, that’s etched on my brain. One day, I decided to climb a tree while Alfie was busy snuffling about in and out of the pond. This tree was reached by crossing some marshy, splishy bits. I swung myself up into the crook, and leaned my back against one of the main uprights, closing my eyes to better feel the sun on my face.

I don’t think I was blissed out for long when I heard some emphatic splashing and a hiss, then a scrabble. It was a muskrat. Alfie had scared it, and it was climbing up my tree! I stayed very, very still. So did the muskrat, when it realized I was in its way. Alfie had his forefeet on the tree trunk, quite pleased with himself. What was the poor old ratty to do?

To this day, I’m glad about the choice it made; I’d like to believe that it considered me the lesser of the two evil species. The muskrat continued its climb — right onto my torso, off my right shoulder, and on up the tree.

I climbed down after that, calling my dog, to head home and let the usually non-arboreal creature stop panting and make its way back into the water.