Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on January 3, 2008, at 9:20 pm |
 I went to the Humane Society thinking about two brown tabby kittens. Or maybe one delicate little cat for now with the possibility of adding a kitten to the mix later on. Instead, I came THIS close to adopting this lion.
He is, without question, the most magnificent creature at the Humane Society. His name is Fraser, but if I adopt him I will change it to something more reflective of his magnificence.
I got in the adoption lineup three times, but never clinched the deal. Each time I ended up thinking I needed more time to think it through. I blame this in part on my indecisive Libra nature, and in part on the fact that this is an awful lot of cat. Maybe he’s too much cat for me.
He’s a cat of considerable substance. He weighs almost 25 pounds (10.5 kg). He completely fills up my lap. He’s got long hair. He’s six years old. He’s recovering from dental surgery. He doesn’t like other cats at ALL.
But he likes people and children and he seems to like me. And I do like him.
The third time in the lineup I was planning to put down a $20 deposit on him. But then the adoption counselor asked me if I was aware of his grooming needs. I had specifically asked the attendant about this, and she had said once or twice a week he would need to be combed and brushed. The adoption counselor said no, it would be once every day or two for fifteen or twenty minutes (possibly longer if he’d doesn’t like being groomed).
I don’t know if I can commit to a cat whose hair needs more care than my own.
I thought about this on the way home.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to make such a monumental commitment,” I said.
“You raised a child,” I replied.
“Yes,” I acknowledged, “but he wasn’t an especially well-groomed child.”
“True,” I conceded, “but he was a well-loved child.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I did raise a well-loved scruffy little urchin. Maybe I can raise a lion.
What do you think? Should I get this guy? Or should I wait for a smaller, less hairy, less substantial, lower-maintenance cat?
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Posted by zoom! on January 1, 2008, at 5:15 pm |
My new neighbourhood does not have cats. It has crows. Highly gregarious social crows. Big flocks. They seem more like gangs or swarms than flocks. In fact, a flock of crows is referred to as a murder of crows, and this seems right.
I like crows. I like their beady eyes and shrewd sense of humour. I like their pragmatic ways and raucous voices. I like that they’re smart and practical and they waste no time getting to the point. As the crow flies: direct.
I used to walk through what I believe is a Crows’ Roost as at the Experimental Farm each morning at dawn. Since the snows came though, the Farm is just for cars and crows. There are no sidewalks along the busy road, and the bike paths aren’t plowed.
Splinter groups of crows come over to my neighbourhood and scavenge for food. It can’t be easy finding enough to eat when everything’s covered in snow. There are many hundreds – possibly thousands – of crows in the roost, and each adult needs about 11 ounces of food each day. I don’t know how they do it.
The other day I was about to toss a stale piece of bread in the garbage, when I remembered the crows. Maybe if I left it in the back yard, one of them might find it. I tore it into several pieces and tossed it out there.
My arch enemy, the squirrel, got to it first. I didn’t mind though: he’s not my arch enemy in the winter time, he’s just a hungry animal doing the best he can.
Within moments, the crows arrived. I watched from the window as they took positions according to their pecking order. I only have a tiny back yard, so only one crow would go in at a time. He’d pick up a chunk of bread and fly away with it. Then the crow on the gate would take his turn, while the other crows re-positioned themselves along the fence and telephone wires. The next one up would move to the gate. The gate was pre-feeding station. Occasionally two crows would have a bit of a scrap over who got to sit on the gate.
This morning the snow was falling and the crows were roaming the neighbourhood looking for breakfast. I cooked a turkey the day before yesterday and refrigerated the giblets until garbage day. I decided to give them the giblets and neck. After all, they do eat road kill when they get the chance. They’d probably consider turkey organs a rare delicacy.
I tossed all the giblets and the neck into the snow in the back yard. Sure enough, within seconds, the crows started jockeying for position. The first few crows made off with the liver and heart and kidneys. The neck lasted for hours, as they took turns ripping bits of flesh from it.
It made me happy to see the crows in the snow, tearing into the turkey on New Years Day.
Posted by zoom! on December 31, 2007, at 10:19 pm |
I’ve never been much of a New Year’s reveler.
I was going to go out tonight and take pictures of other people celebrating New Years Eve. For example, there were a few hundred people signed up for the Resolution Run along the Canal this evening, and I thought maybe I would go take pictures. And then maybe I’d walk around downtown and take some more pictures.
But I forgot. I simply forgot to do it.
And then I thought maybe I’d just stay home and think about – not resolutions exactly, but goals for 2008. But ho hum, I can’t seem to focus on it and it seems kind of contrived to make yourself think about things like that just because it’s New Year’s Eve if your mind keeps wandering.
So instead I poured a glass of wine and ran a bath and took my book and my wine into the tub with me and tried to read. But dammit, it seems I cannot read anymore unless I have my drugstore glasses on and they were in the bedroom and I was in the bathtub and I wasn’t about to go get them. So that didn’t happen.
Which is just as well, because I’ve never liked reading in the tub and there’s no good reason to think that might have changed. I want to like reading in the tub, but I don’t. It’s just not comfortable. Still, every few years I give it another chance.
The book is called The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing. It’s due back at the library next week and I haven’t started it yet. I want to write a story in 2008. That’s my New Years Resolution.
Anyway, here it is, quarter to nine on New Year’s Eve and I’m in my pyjamas. I had homemade turkey soup for dinner.
Even though I forgot to go downtown and didn’t feel like thinking about 2008, and didn’t read in the bathtub, I’m still a little more on the New Year’s Eve ball than my friend Gus, who called me this afternoon to see if I did anything interesting last night.
“Did you do anything interesting last night?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said, “Did you?”
“No,” he said, “I was pretty tired so I didn’t feel like going out. I just stayed in by myself and opened a bottle of wine and had a little toast to the new year.”
“Today is New Year’s Eve, Gus.”
“Today is New Year’s Day, isn’t it?”
“No. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day.”
“Tonight is New Year’s Eve?”
“Yup.”
“Oh,” he said, “Well I’m tired and I don’t feel like going out tonight. Maybe I’ll just stay in by myself and open a bottle of wine and have a little toast to the new year. Again.”
Anyway, Happy New Years to all my friends, both online and off. I hope 2008 will be one of the better years for all of us, especially for those who had more than their fair share of misfortune and heartache in 2007.
Cheers!
Posted by zoom! on December 30, 2007, at 10:09 pm |
I need a cat. Or a kitten. Or two kittens.
Taz, the stray kitten-cat up in Edelweiss, has been reunited with her lost family, so I won’t be adopting her. But I still have this overwhelming desire to live with a cat.
I haven’t had a cat since Flea died back in 2003 at the ripe old age of 19. He had lots of extra toes. I like extra-toed cats. (Did you know that Ernest Hemingway left his estate in Florida to extra-toed cats?)
When my son was born, I had five cats. They were all brown tabbies. Their names were Mr. Jones, Catastrophe, Mean Joe, Screamer and Beethoven. The old-fashioned pediatrician convinced me that I should get rid of them, for the baby’s sake. I really liked the baby, so I did. Five different friends each adopted one of my cats.
When my son was five he wanted a dog, but we weren’t in a position to adopt a dog then. I got him a cat instead. He named him Lassie. And later we got a wonderful brown tabby with a magnificent belly, and we named him Bud. A few years later Bud vanished, and during my frequent trips to the Humane Society to look for him, I met Flea.
There was a hand-written sign on Flea’s cage. The first day the sign said “Nice cat.” The second day the sign said “Nice cat. Very affectionate.” The third day the sign said “Nice cat. Very affectionate. Gives hugs.” I brought him home.
A couple of years later, a puppy followed me home, more or less. That’s not how it happened at all. I encountered a puppy on my way to work, and he had no street smarts whatsoever. I had to bring him home for his own safety. I named him Pavlov. Either he was untrainable or I was a very poor trainer. I had him for three months and he never learned anything. He did not come when he was called. He only went to the bathroom indoors. He never learned not to chase the cat, even though the cat dealt out swift and severe punishment with remarkable consistency. He was a very cute puppy though. He died of Parvo, even though he’d had his first set of shots and was only a week late getting his second set. Parvo’s an awful way to die.
A year or so later we adopted Sam from the Humane Society. Sam was a year old at the time. My son picked him out. He didn’t need to see any other dogs once he’d locked eyes with Sam. “This is him,” he said, “This is my dog.”
After Sam died last March at the age of almost-fifteen, I decided not to look for a new animal friend. I would just wait until the right one found me and moved into my house. We would have a tacit understanding, this animal and me.
But this mystical karmic thing hasn’t happened yet and I don’t want to wait anymore. I think I’m going to have to take the initiative and go find a new animal to live with.
I think what I think I want is two brown tabby kittens. But maybe I want a multi-toed brown tabby sad-historied momma cat like this one.
It’s weird though. I worry about ending up with the wrong one. What if I go adopt a cat or two from the Humane Society and then suddenly the mystical karmic cat shows up on my doorstep? What then? My son, who has three cats, told me there isn’t much difference between two and three cats, so if that happened I could still let the mystical karmic one in.
I told him that’s how people become crazy cat people. It starts off with “there’s not much difference between two cats and three cats,” and escalates from there. In the end, there really isn’t any difference between 35 and 36 cats. (Ask Coyote: he’s always got room for one more.)
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Posted by zoom! on December 30, 2007, at 12:35 am |
 Several people have asked me lately about my art-collecting intentions. Specifically, they’ve wanted to know if I hope to make money collecting art. The simple answer is no: making money is not part of what I’m trying to do. If it happens, it will be a lucky accident.
My intention is simply to have artwork I love hanging on my walls. The only requirements are that it be original and affordable and preferably created by local artists.
‘Affordable’ is a pretty relative term, isn’t it? Years ago, when money was really tight for me, I was drawn to magazines with tantalizingly titled articles like “Decorate your home on a shoestring budget,” and “Get the look you love for next to nothing.”
But I was inevitably disappointed, because of the relativity of money. I couldn’t afford the magazine, let alone the look I loved. Their idea of a ‘shoestring budget’ was my idea of wealth and decadence. Eventually I learned not to look at magazines. (Which reminds me: I read somewhere that women get depressed when we read women’s magazines.)
Fortunately my circumstances have changed and my personal concept of ‘affordable’ has expanded sufficiently over the years that I can now consider buying art, providing it doesn’t cost very much.
I’m reading a book right now called Art for All: How to Buy Fine art for Under $300. The book was written in 1994, so maybe an upper limit of $400 might be a more realistic threshold for affordable art now.
I’ve decided to designate my spare change as my art acquisition budget. I throw it in jars now. At the end of each year I’ll roll it up and bank it and earmark it for art purchases.
In the meantime, I’m looking at lots of art and trying to figure out the difference between what I like and what I love, because I’m only going to buy art I love. This is an interesting exercise: I’m discovering I like a lot of art, but I truly love very little art. This surprises me.
I’m looking forward to finding that irresistible and affordable piece of art which will launch my collection.
Posted by zoom! on December 28, 2007, at 7:50 pm |
I love being on holidays. It’s giving me time to get around to all kinds of things that most of you probably do all the time: grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, researching hot water options.
My house is gas heated. My water, however, comes from a rented electric hot water tank. I used to rent it from Ozz but I didn’t know that until I got a letter from a company called Reliance saying they bought Ozz. I thought I rented it from Ottawa Hydro, since that’s who bills me for it, but apparently not.
The letter from Reliance basically said Hi, welcome to Reliance, we’re raising your rates, our privacy policy allows us to share all your personal information with anybody we want, and if you want to stop being our customer it’ll cost you $165.
Anyway. I want to switch to a gas water heater because it’s more energy efficient. But then I was talking to a friend who told me about tankless gas water heaters. These things are supposedly very energy-efficient. They heat water instantly as you need it, rather than creating and storing a tankful of heated water and keeping it hot all the time.
I think this is what I want.
But I was just looking on Reliance’s website and they don’t seem to have this option for residential customers. As a matter of fact, they kind of denigrate the whole idea of tankless heaters:
“Tankless water heaters were designed to service hot water needs in a designated area, supplying only one main hot water source (e.g. kitchen). So if your home is fairly large and must accommodate several people, a tankless water heater won’t necessarily service your needs adequately. A tankless water heater provides hot water at a rate of 2-4 gallons per minute–this will not service hot water to more than one area at a time and you may need several units to meet your needs. These tanks have been used in Europe where energy costs are much higher and water usage is generally much lower. “
So. I guess what I’m wondering is, do any of you have a tankless gas water heater, and if so, are you happy with it? If you rent it, who do you rent it from? Any information or advice about water heaters generally would be greatly appreciated. (Everything I know about hot water heaters, I learned today.)
Posted by zoom! on December 28, 2007, at 1:47 pm |
Last week I resurrected the Antique Photo of the Week feature, with a series of photos of children and their toys. Today I’m finishing that theme off and maybe next week we’ll ring in the new year with some post mortems or something.
This little Montreal girl does not look at all pleased to be getting her picture taken with her tea set and her dog. (As always, click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the image.)
This little girl (or maybe it’s a little boy – sometimes very young boys were dressed as girls in Victorian times) is holding what appears to be a bat. Using a loupe to view the cap, I see that it says HMS Nelson on it, after Horatio. There’s probably an long-lost interesting story here. The photo was taken in Hamilton, Ontario, by W. Farmer.
Just a girl and a doll, taken at the Gilbert Studio in Philadelphia.
This is one of the few identified photos in my collection. Her name is Fedora Pottle, daughter of Ellen and Allen Pottle. Great name. Fedora Pottle. If I get a cat I might name it Fedora Pottle. Fedora Pottle’s photo was taken in Oakland, California, by F.O. Haussler, Fotografer.
Here’s a close-up of Fedora Pottle’s doll.
I love how the children are holding hands in this photograph. Very sweet. But what’s most interesting about this photo is the object beside the little girl. I think it’s a toy of some sort, and I believe it’s got a picture of Queen Victoria on it. My grandfather, who grew up in Germany, told me that on the first day of kindergarten children were given these horn-shaped things that were filled with sweets. I wonder if it’s something like that?
I think it must be a toy or something because I can’t imagine parents asking that their children be photographed with a rolled up photo of Queen Victoria.
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Posted by zoom! on December 26, 2007, at 6:30 pm |
Christmas actually wasn’t all that dysfunctional this year. We had one gathering in Edelweiss on Christmas Eve, and another up at the lake near Wakefield on Christmas Day. The Edelweiss gathering was in this amazing house that Kerry and Maurice rented for two weeks, and which used to be the Joompla Restaurant, and which I believe my ex and I considered buying in 1996. (We didn’t buy it because he was afraid his children would drown in the waterfall in the back yard.)
 On Christmas Eve my sister Kerry was explaining how, as a witch, all her power is concentrated in her left hand, and when she dies she wants the bones in her left hand to be given to her four children. However, there are laws against bequeathing your body parts. Her plan, therefore, is to amputate her own left hand when death is both inevitable and imminent. I believe the rest of us are to take care of the gorier details such as the deboning. (Don’t worry, the children were not present during this conversation: they were visiting their other parent. It’ll still be a surprise when the time comes.)
 After dinner and wine we got into the coffee and Bailey’s and set to work building the Gingerbread Crack House. There’s a lot of fine detail and craftsmanship in this house. We had a crackerjack team of architects and builders working on it. From left to right: my son James, my brother-in-law Maurice, my brother Rob, my sister Kerry, and my brother-in-law Scott.
On the box, it said “TELL US ABOUT YOUR SPECIAL GINGERGREAD HOUSE! SEND A PHOTO TOO!” I’ll do that tomorrow.
 The amazing house (the rental, not the crack house) came with a stray cat who was living a sad and lonely life under the steps. Kerry and Maurice of course invited her to stay in the house with them. They’re trying to locate her owners, but if there is no response, I might adopt her. I named her Taz. She’s very small and quite young and she’s a sweetie. I think I need a cat, don’t you?
 I slept in a very short bed that night, which is normally occupied by a very short child. The room was wonderful, with bears and artwork and a sloped ceiling. I liked it a lot. I felt like Goldilocks in the very short bed.
On Christmas morning Maurice made french toast. Afterwards we all went over to my mom’s place on the lake. It looked and smelled wonderfully Christmasy. After the children were collected from their other parents, we opened presents.
Arrow, seven-year-old daughter of the feminist witch, was thrilled that her mother finally caved in and got her a Barbie. The rest of us were amused. Kerry was quick to point out that Barbie has become far more realistically proprotioned than she used to be. She no longer has a 68 inch bust, althought she’s still 8 feet tall with a 16 inch waist. Barbie spent the evening doing gymnastics in the living room. I got to do her voice. Every time Barbie said “OW!” Arrow reminded her that she was only plastic and therefore couldn’t possibly feel pain.
I didn’t take many pictures. This is the only one I got of Sam, who likes me now because I can whistle.
This is Max who likes the new baby but also likes to sometimes get in the baby seat and pretend that HE is the baby.
Dinner was delicious: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, cauliflouer, broccoli, green beans, carrots, yum! (The children didn’t eat much though because a certain aunt bought their Christmas presents at Sugar Mountain.)
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Posted by zoom! on December 24, 2007, at 1:22 pm |
I just wanted to say HO HO HO and Guess What? This is my 500th blog post!
I hope all of you have a merry Christmas. Or, if Christmas isn’t your thing, I hope you at least have a pretty good day.
I’m heading up to Wakefield to celebrate with my family. (This is the family that puts the fun back in dysfunctional, so hopefully I’ll come back with some good blogging material.)
Keep warm, stay safe, and take good care of the internets while I’m gone.
~zoom~
Posted by zoom! on December 23, 2007, at 5:11 pm |
Good news for Ottawa’s crack addicts and those who care whether they live or die: the province has stepped in with funding for our Crack Kit Program.
As you may recall, Ottawa City Council withdrew its share of funding for the program earlier this year. Evidently Council thought the lives of all of our addicts put together were worth less than $7,500, and believed taxpayers would rather pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat HIV and Hep C than a fraction of that to prevent it.
The province is providing $287,000 in funding for the program.
According to Jack McCarthy, director of Ottawa’s Somerset West Community Health Centre, the crack pipe program is an essential part of an integrated drug strategy, along with enforcement, treatment and prevention.
“Ottawa desperately needs a really integrated drug strategy, you can’t just do one without the other parts,” he said.
Ottawa is still sorely lacking at both the prevention and treatment ends of things, which is too bad because those focus on the ways in and out of addiction. All we’ve got is enforcement and harm reduction, which concentrate on active addicts, as if there’s nothing before or after addiction. Still, I think the crack kit program is a critical public health initiative, and I’m very pleased that the Ontario government agrees.
As far as I know, the Mayor has not yet officially responded to the news. He’s celebrating Christmas in Florida after announcing his engagement to a local real estate agent.
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