Thursday, May 28, 2009

Sunday Style - Thursday Edition

I read "How to be a Canadian", by Will Ferguson and Ian Ferguson, on the train on my way to visit family in Edmonton. I immediately wished that I was reading it alone because it took a lot of effort not to belly-laugh my way across BC's interior. That said, it was such an entertaining read that I chose to make due with the curious stares.




An excerpt:

"Population:

There are 30,000,000 people in Canada - all of whom have, at some point, frozen their tongues to the side of a chainlink fence or flagpole. Even though their mothers told them not to. Indeed, at any given time of the year, it is winter somewhere in Canada and someone, somewhere, is stuck to a flagpole. "Hap me, hap me. Tumbuddy, pwease hap me."

Average I.Q.

See above."

Friday, May 22, 2009

Late Night Homecoming

Opening night for "Self - Help" came and went with extraordinary ease. We had no major catastrophes and though it was a small crowd, people seemed to really enjoy themselves. Tonight I get to do it all again and I hope to improve personally on last night's performance. I'm a star now, you see, and I have a reputation to live up to. *Sigh,* the obligations of fame..

When I got home from the show I was informed that for the bazillionth time Zoe had slipped through our grasp. It was getting close to 11:00pm and it was dark. Finding her in the dark has been an unsuccesful venture in previous experience, so we all went to bed, hoping to get a call from someone who would perhaps find her in their yard in the morning.

When we got up this morning Zoe was snuggling with a pillow in the spare room. For a few minutes Dave thought that she had been home the whole time had been hiding under the bed or something - until Anthony and Margaret got up and let us in on what happened.

Apparently at about 3:30am Margaret could hear Zoe barking. She and Anthony debated for a short time about whether it was actually her, and then Anthony ran out into the street and looked around. There in the dark he could see Zoe running from door to door on our street barking at each house, terrorizing all of my neighbours in the wee hours of the morning. By the way, IF YOU'RE READING THIS I'M SO SORRY!!

The nice thing about it was that Zoe was trying to find her home!! Anthony called to her and she charged at him and nearly knocked him over by attempting to leap into his arms. Anthony said it was the happiest he had ever seen her! (Perhaps she got lucky??)

Mystery SOLVED.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

As if my life wasn't chaotic enough already..

Allow me to set the stage:

For the last two weeks we have had three couchsurfers staying in our trailer and garage while they look for work and other accomodation in Terrace. Two brothers from Ireland and one girlfriend, from Arkansas. They are absolutely lovely and though they were originally only going to stay for a few days, we have extended our home to them for as long as they would like, primarily because of their fabulous cooking, dog walking, and pub stories.

Yesterday was the dress rehearsal for the show I'm performing in with the Terrace Little Theatre, which I have written about here and here. My life is now fully and entirely dictated by the needs of the theatre as we set to embark on the first of 9, (yes NINE), shows tomorrow night.

Zoe is in heat and has escaped about five times (we've lost count), most recently this morning, and continues to evade our attempts to keep her in the house and yard with her wily female tricks.

So, with all this, as if my life wasn't already balancing on the fringe of utter disorder, OUR PLUMBING IS ON THE FRITZ.

Two days ago, I noticed that the bathroom sink wasn't draining as quickly as normal, and when the tap was on there were gurgling noises coming from the other drains. I immediately let Dave know that we should call the plumber, to which he responded, "no it's fine, there's nothing wrong. Besides, the plumber will cost too much."

Feeling strongly that it was a problem we should pay attention to, I pressed the matter several times throughout the day, until he finally told me that it was alright to call.

I left work at 5:30, in a hurry to make it to dress rehearsal which began at 6, and came home to discover that the bathtub was lined with a quarter-inch of black sludge. I immediately assumed that the plumber had come by and had left this disgusting mess in my bathroom (which I had spent an hour cleaning the day before). Thankfully I was able to keep the contents of my stomach inside my body at the sight of this and I managed to clean it up. This left me with 3 minutes to get to rehearsal so I had to run out the door, after giving the plumber's emergency number to one of the Irishmen, just in case.

Dress rehearsal came and went, and afterwards I got a phone call from Dave explaining that the plumber had made things worse and now the tub wasn't draining and they couldn't use the water. I was shocked, thinking that the problem had been fixed, but I was distracted by a second phone call coming in from a person saying they had found Zoe. Who we DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WAS MISSING.

Sigh.

This morning, when I called the plumber, all geared up to ream them out for the mess they left and for not fixing our problem, when they informed me that had not come by yet.

Gasp!

My tub backed up on its own! EEEWWW!

All morning my coworkers have been regaling me with horror stories about roots digging through pipe, entire yards being dug up, thousands of dollars gone!!! (So comforting, the people I work with).

Anyway, the plumber has promised to go by today, and have also promised not to let my dog out, and hopefully are going to solve all my problems, preferably without taking any of our limbs or firstborn children!!!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Sunday Style

Back when I went to prison Christian School, the only redeeming feature was this game. The student body was 99% Dutch and introduced it to me (shocked that my young Italian self hadn’t heard of it before!) and it was loads of fun.

I forgot about it for years and then Dave was introduced to it when he was in Winnipeg recently. We’ve been playing it all the time and it’s been a blast. Also adorable.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The ZOE

When David and I moved to Terrace, one of the local vets had just died of cancer. Very sad, yes, but for us it meant specifically that we couldn't get a vet for our little love child, Sierra. The two other practices in town immediately stopped taking new patients after getting overwhelmed with the overflow.

So what do we do? We adopt an unspayed pitbull that has no known medical history. Sounds like the perfect solution right?

Shortly after we added our new bundle of joy to the family, Zoe started exhibiting some odd behaviour. Like being extremely hormonal, and having giant, udder-like nipples that get in the way of everything. And running away constantly. We've picked her up at the pound, the post office, an ice cream shop, a neighbors kitchen, "Harlem" (read about that here), and one time she came home on her own with icicles frozen to her lips.

So of course, Dave and I discussed what to do. Should we have her spayed? Well, probably, but we can't get into a vet. Should we try to find her another home? Well, sure but no one wants a lactating, boy-crazy pitbull.

Sigh.

Nearly a year later, I started calling vets again and found that one was taking new patients and I promptly made an appointment for the both of them. The vet seemed concerned about Zoe's abnormally large mammaries and strongly suggested that she get spayed as soon as possible, and of course I agreed. He went on to say that it would cost somewhere between $450 and $650 and possibly on up to infinite to get the procedure done because apparently she has a ginormous uterus and could suffer complications.

I managed to stop my stomach from climbing into my mouth when I heard this number. I immediately began to calculate...tuition, mortgage, food-on-the-table...perhaps we could trade our firstborn...if only we had a firstborn...what to do....

I booked the appointment - then started looking for a second opinion. The other vet in town still has a one-year waiting list to get an appointment so I called the vet in Prince Rupert who I found to be very accomodating and quoted me $250 all in. YAAY! We'll book the day off and spend the day in Rupert and eat sushi ALL DAY LONG. It will be wonderful. Maybe not for Zoe, but for us it'll be nice.