(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.

…
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.

The Cardigan Nestling

E.g. wanted a new baby for Mother’s Day. No problem, I said, it’s the perfect weekend to go dogsnesting. The puppies are just the right age about now, and it’s a lovely day for a drive in the country. Why don’t we take Jack and his mum along, too?

 

So we scouted the trees…

…while E.g. kept her eyes on the road.

Local landowner Doug answers Jack’s enquiry. “We had a West Highland Terrier rookery last year, but so far nothing this Spring.”

Finally, our faithful nestlinghound Cai finds a tree! Jack acts as spotter while Lavenderbay starts up the rescue rope.

E.g. approves of the new nestling.

Safe in the arms of Mama.

Buckled in for the ride home.

Fergus’s new nest…

… complete with foliage-patterned blankie.

E.g. after a full two hours’ sleep! Ain’t motherhood grand!

Llama on the Lam

Field with friendly llama. No, wait…

Some years ago, my brother Keith and his family were living on a hobby farm, trying their hand, after work and on weekends, at raising some roasts and wings. Their agricultural methods were gleaned from several sources: tales Dad told of his teen-year summers working on a farm, advice from the rural neighbours, and books and magazines.

This last resource encouraged Keith and his wife to order exotica like Texas longhorn cattle or frizzled cochin chickens. The year they were considering a few sheep, they read of the benefits of owning a llama. The llama would cry out in warning if it saw a coyote, and if the coyote were foolish enough to get any closer, the llama would kick it. Here was an eco-friendly solution to a common predator, and scoring high on the exotica scale to boot.

And so, my brother kept a llama on his farm for a while. A short while. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. As soon as it was let out into the field, this llama decided that the grass was greener over the next fence — and over the next one, and the next, and the next.

At first, my brother ran after the beast, but when it wouldn’t stop, Keith trotted back for the pick-up truck. He pursued the llama for miles, impressed with its stamina, but finally lost sight of it. Damn. Keith went home and printed up ads to post on telephone poles. He phoned all the neighbours he knew, asking them to keep a lookout for the stupid so-and-so – he had paid a pretty penny for it, and it wasn’t exactly wearing a collar and licence.

After no word for days, finally someone called the house. There was a llama in his back field, he reported. With mixed feelings of exultation and vengeance, my brother hopped in his pick-up and drove the five miles to the caller’s home.

The other fellow came out, greeted Keith, and walked him around back. The two men looked on in companionable silence a moment, each deep in his own thoughts of rural life. Then Keith spoke. “That’s not my llama.”

Good Stress

Ember, Fergus, Reba, Chief, Flicker, and Sparky.

[Happy laundry day! I've developed a habit of posting lists of some sort or other on Tuesdays. Today it's a list of names, those of the puppies in the latest Yasashiikuma litter, seen above outdoors on a recent sunny afternoon. Beats me who all those hominids are, but the human puppy sure has a sweet face.

Below is the post I wrote yesterday. My cold rendered it a bit blasé in tone, and I'm not so sure I can improve it by much today -- isn't it naptime anyway? Also, I'm much less nervous and anxious than the first time around. That reminds me of a humorous, comforting book I read a quarter-century ago, while I was pregnant. It was written by a pediatrician and father of grown children, and had a title like How to Treat Your First Child as Though it Were Your Second. Anyway, here's yesterday's news today.]

My blogfriend Goodbear had a crappy start to her weekend, a whole pile of things beyond her control, most of them handleable if dealt with one by one, but not when they all come flying at her together like Shreddies out of a cereal box. She also said something about being crazy. I worried about that last remark, coming as it did out of left field (Goodbear is an eminently sane creature). I suggested that maybe she was just stressed, not crazy: stressed by good things (plans for a new puppy) as well as bad (large creepy spiders, creepy large spyers…).

Goodbear, by the way, is the first blogfriend (well okay, besides Shelley) to know E.g. and my good-stress secret. I’ve made her wait for further news because until yesterday we didn’t know which furball we’d be getting. Have I let the secret out yet?

Shelley is very careful to match her puppies with the most suitable families. She asks prospective owners lots of questions about their lifestyle and their reasons for getting a dog, observes her puppies carefully, and has temperament testing done when they’re seven weeks old. Last night, Shelley called us with her decision: It’s a boy! We’re getting Fergus.

E.g. and I, who have been tuning in since before they were born, have always thought Fergus the handsomest of this litter. If you go here, you can see his head with its perfect centre line through the brown, looking to me like a great-Gatsby-era gent with oiled hair. The markings look a little different now that he’s bigger, but he still has a neat-and-tidy look about him.

Shelley chose Fergus for us because he seems pretty laid back, and won’t dominate Cai, who is already somewhat submissive. Apparently it was a tough decision, however. Shelley had a hard time deciding whether or not Fergus would be a show dog! She even told E.g. that if we’d like, she could show Fergus to get his puppy points before we have him neutered. I’m undecided about that, since I know nothing about dog shows… but since I’ve always flown the flag of dilletantism, it might be interesting to learn something about it. We’ll see.

Anyway, getting back to the current time, we’ll be going up on Saturday to pick up Fergus. We’ll get to know him for two weeks or so, and then return him to Shelley to be boarded while we’re on vacation in Paris. We know he’ll be in good hands!

E.g. hasn’t yet decided whether we’ll change his puppy name (Cai’s puppy name was Jasper). She had thought of “Robin” if we got a boy, but she likes the name Fergus, so we may keep it. I’m sure the decision will be made by the end of the week.

 

(Wordless Wednesday) Chicken Slushies

 

The Speckled Ones

I won’t go into why I wrote this; I’ll simply say that I’m finding the story a comfort just now, so I’ve written a loose paraphrase of it. It’s from the second half of chapter 30 of Genesis.

Jacob had been working hard for years. He had given a lot to his boss and father-in-law, Laban. An awful lot. He had worked twice as hard as any other of Laban’s workers, because he loved Laban’s daughter Rachel. Really, Jacob put up with a lot of sheep manure.

One day, Jacob thought maybe it was time for him and Rachel to leave and settle down on their own bit of turf. Laban said, “Sure! What do I owe you?”

Jacob said, “I don’t want any money. I would just like the rejects from your flocks of sheep and goats. You know, all the speckled ones, the spotted ones, the striped ones, the brown ones. They have so much less market value than the pure white ones.”

“Fair enough,” said Laban. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll go see the herds and you can take all the rejects.”

Unfortunately, Laban wasn’t much of a family member. That evening he went to the flocks and separated out all the speckled ones, the spotted ones, the striped ones, the brown ones. Then he got a few of his underlings to drive the rejects out to a place about three days’ walk away.

The next morning, Laban and Jacob went out to see the flocks. They saw white sheep and white goats. “Wait a minute,” said Jacob. “Where are all the speckled ones, the spotted ones, the striped ones, the brown ones?”

“Oh, those,” Laban answered. “They’ve all wandered off somewhere. Now, what were the terms of our agreement? Lemme get the affidavit out here…”

Jacob sighed. “You know what? I think I’ll work one more year for you — since you’re such an honest employer, and good father-in-law. I owe you that much at least.”

Laban agreed. Over the course of the year, with G*d’s help — obviously, since having white sheep mate in the shadow of a whittled stick doesn’t ordinarily produce un-white babies — Jacob bred lambs and kids. There were speckled ones, spotted ones, striped ones, brown ones. Jacob loved his rejects. At the end of his allotted employment extension, he had the biggest flocks around — way bigger than Laban’s. One day he called his family and his flocks, and off they went with songs of thanksgiving.

Moral: Those who love the spotted ones, the striped ones, the speckled ones, and the brown ones will be blessed.

Good Broken Things

 Maple at the edge of our balcony

I’ve noticed some things being broken over the past few days.

On Thursday, it was a full week that my co-worker had broken her smoking habit. I kept waiting for her to turn tired, grumpy, and impatient — Thursday is stock day — but no, she was cheery and energetic all day, breaking into little snatches of song, my goodness! The change in her from the week before was incredible.

On Friday, E.g. and Jack’s mum and our mutual friend Jane and I all went out to supper. We broke bread — a long, skinny baguette, actually — in the neighbourhood chi-chi French restaurant, and the waiter broke out a bottle of Grenache to go with our dinners. It was Jack’s mum’s birthday, so while Jack was out at his youth club we enjoyed a “girls’ night out”. Our menus were in English — and so was our waiter — so he was a little puzzled when I asked in broken French for the “palourdes rembourrees”, which more or less means upholstered clams.

Yesterday, Jack and Jack’s mum and E.g. and Cai and I broke out of our usual Saturday routines, leaving the city for a drive out in the country. We went to visit half a dozen youngsters somewhere; more about that tomorrow. On the way back, we took a break at Mono Cliffs Conservation Area, hiking in a little ways until we found a nice set of boulders where we could break for lunch.

Our apartment is an end unit, just over the fence from a recreation field lined with maples. The branches of one tree touch our balcony. This morning, I was standing out there in the Spring sunshine when I noticed that the buds are just starting to break, fat and full of promise. Some of them have actually broken right open into tiny, delicate green bobbly things since I took the photo.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TURTLE?

My photo doesn’t do justice to her details and glitter.

We went out today — E.g., Jack, Jack’s mum, Cai, and I. We left at 9 00 and returned just before suppertime. When E.g. and I got to our apartment, we found a zippered burlap bag, originally made to hold 10 pounds of basmati rice, hanging on the doorknob. Eh? Unzip, pull out a crumpled grocery store flyer. Unfold, find the prettiest little purple-and-green sea turtle. I’m pretty sure it’s resin-cast, but it’s very well done, made to look like string carefully glued over a wooden base, and it’s hand-painted and sprinkled with glitter. On its underside is a little picture hook to hang it on a wall. It’s just the same size as Seamus, the WWF sea-turtle stuffy.

There was no note. Who could have left it? E.g. guessed that Robert had come across it on his travels, but he doesn’t read my blog. It obviously wasn’t Jack and his mum, because we had picked them up and dropped them off today. What a delicious little mystery!

Our car lives in the underground parking garage. One of the things we had done today was get groceries, so we were coming up to get the bundle buggy when we found the anonymous gift. On my way back out with the buggy, I saw Coco, the German Shepherd, with her daddy Michael. Hmmm.

Michael and John were two of the judges for the Name-and-genderize-the-baby-sea-turtle contest. They don’t even own a computer, but they’re very fond of us; the other day they had given us a stained-glass rainbow flag. Their nextdoor neighbour is moving out, and they’ve acquired a few pretties from her. Maybe…

I think Michael must have seen me getting the groceries, because I was no sooner inside when the phone rang. It was John, asking if I’d found little Seamus.

“I thought it must be you guys! She’s beautiful! And her name isn’t Seamus; I think it’s Isabella.”

“Bella,” John mused, “that’s a good name.” It was then that I remembered that one of his nicknames for Coco is “Bella.”