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March, 2010

  1. Fantastic Mr.

    March 12, 2010 by Louise

    The dogs’ new (well, for a couple of months now) favourite spot is the back of the couch. Doozer sleeps up there. They are hiding little dog toys back there (this morning I pulled four chewy bones and a sock out from behind the cushion). One of their favourite things is to get up there while I’m sitting on the couch and lick my neck (or, if I’m not wearing my wig, my bald head). I’m not very fond of that. Their VERY favourite, however, is to sit up there and look out the window, since the couch backs up against the picture window. Our livingroom window just looks out onto the backyard, and a field, and, eventually, the ocean, but they can sit for hours staring at all that stuff.

    This morning I was enjoying having Doozer laying there with his head on my shoulder (he’s incredibly sweet) when suddenly they both sort of jumped up and were at full alert, barking into the backyard. It was still a little dark, so at first I couldn’t see anything out there and just said to them “Hey! Settle down you fools!” but as my eyes adjusted, I realized what they were barking at – there was a fox in the backyard. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but they haven’t ever witnessed old Foxy on the run back there. Today they did – and for the full 10 minutes it was out there, they were squishing themselves up against the window, wagging their tails and looking at me like “LADY WHY DON’T YOU TAKE US OUTSIDE NOW TO PLAY WITH OUR FRIEND!”

    The fox has gone off on his (her?) merry way now (there’s a den in the field behind us), and Doozer has turned his back on me, while Sprocket keeps shooting me disgruntled looks.

    I’m such a mean dog mom.

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  2. I hope this isn’t an indication of how my day will be

    March 10, 2010 by Louise

    I don’t know about you but I don’t like flushing the toilet right before I take a shower. In our probably 70 year old house (okay, at the very least 40), it messes with the water temperature and I run the risk of either being scalded or frozen when I do get in the shower. So.
    This morning I peed (are you impressed?) and then noticed that someone had left our MacLean’s magazine on the side of the tub (yeah, we’re bathroom readers. I take a bath, I bring reading material. Other bathroom activities also engender literacy). I moved it to the back of the toilet, since I was about to get in the shower.

    At one point during my shower, I heard the rustling of pages. You see where this is going. When I got out of the shower, there was the magazine, sticking out of the bowl, absorbing things. I grabbed it up, and threw it in the garbage. And then got back in the shower for sanitation.

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  3. sucks to your ass-mar

    March 8, 2010 by Louise

    So this morning I woke up, came downstairs, smelled some bleach that had gotten spilled yesterday, and suddenly was in the throes of a full-fledged asthma attack. I looked around, and couldn’t find my inhaler. The dogs were doing their peepee dance around my legs, and I figured my inhaler might be out in the car, so I took them out. My inhaler wasn’t in the car. The dogs still needed to go so I let them drag me around the block. By the end of it I was coughing so hard that I was gagging (aren’t you happy that you started reading this blog post?) while the dogs peed on some Ferrari parts that this one neighbour of ours has had out on the side of the road for the past four months (does he want people to take them? Is he selling them? Is he hoping that the trash collectors will take them? No one knows. Oh the joys of living in the semi-ghetto).

    When I got back in the house, I woke up Rob. He looked for my puffer. No dice. I used my peak flow meter and it was pretty low for me. It was at this point that Rob decided for me that I would be calling in. I did, then rushed off to work to get a lesson plan together. It was only 6:30 so there was no one there but one of the janitors who was like “YOU SHOULD GO TO THE HOSPITAL!”. Luckily for me I do keep a couple of extra inhalers at work in my desk. I took it, six times, then came home and laid on the couch. By about 11:30 my breathing was better. I am in major pain, still, because my muscles tend to bunch up during this kind of thing. And I feel terrible for taking a day for this stuff, but then I feel terrible every time I take a day.

    On the bright side, my dogs and I got to watch an insane number of infomercials (Mr. T is selling some kind of oven thing, and even though I’m bald and could never use it, I’m slightly enamoured of the EZ Combs commercial). And next week is March Break!

    PS – my inhaler was on top of the mirror frame in our front hallway. Where I leave it 5 times out of six. No, not stunned at all. Goes to show that a lack of oxygen will mess with your brain function.

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  4. We’re such DINKs.

    March 6, 2010 by Louise

    I mean, it’s pretty much against our will, but we are. DINKs, that is. If you don’t count our dogs as “kids”. Which I sort of do. I know, I know, annoying people who treat their pets as children.

    Anyway. We’ve been discussing birthday gifts. Rob wants to get me some more laptop memory or even a new laptop for mine. I’m torn. I kind of feel like this laptop is fine, but at the same time maybe something with a bit more storage or a bit faster would be good. Plus, that way we could give this laptop to his parents, and they could actually be online instead of calling us up and asking us to look up websites for them (the way Rob’s mom does it is funny – “Please go to h…t…t…p, colon, forward slash, forward slash, double-you, double-you, double-you, period…”) and having to do all their facebook stuff on their cellphones.

    At the same time I kind of want/need a new camera. Our camera is okay but it’s starting to get rickety. I have a hard time getting the battery part open and closed. When I take pictures, there’s a mysterious shadow in the upper left-hand corner. The zoom isn’t quite as zoomy as I’d like.

    Eh. My birthday is over 3 months away. We have the time to figure that out.

    (meanwhile, for Rob’s birthday? I am not sure yet at all).

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  5. I have been watching too much TLC these past two days.

    March 5, 2010 by Louise

    If you haven’t, go at least watch the video on my last post. You won’t be sorry. Or maybe you will. Probably not though.
    So, school is closed today for the second day. Third day this week. I went in on Tuesday and yesterday, but I’m not, today. Because holy crap, it is still very windy and the visibility is at about minus three hundred. Thus, Rob is not at work either. I told him that he could go (he gets a drive in in the morning with a coworker), but that I wouldn’t be coming in to pick him up. Luckily his job doesn’t penalize you for missing due to weather because there was no way he was going in. I have a bunch of schoolwork here that I’m going to plow through this afternoon, and we are putting up new curtains in the livingroom (ones that actually cover the entire windows). Big day!
    When I was out walking the dogs this morning I was walking along and in front of me all I could see was this glowy red thing about 20 feet ahead. As I got closer I realized it was a guy shoveling his driveway with a cigarette in his mouth. Of course the dogs wanted to meet him and he was like “OH WHAT A FINE SET OF DOGS YOU HAVE THERE!” so we stopped to talk for a bit. I told him I was surprised that his cigarette was staying lit in all this wind and snow and he told me it was an electronic cigarette. Basically, he’s trying to quit smoking but still needs the feeling of smoking. Kind of makes me glad I never took up smoking, but maybe I will check them out and see if my sister would consider using one. She’s been saying she wants to quit smoking for quite awhile now.

    I just looked out the window and seriously, you can’t see ANYTHING. They’ve said that it might start to get better later on today; I hope so because we have dog haircuts scheduled for this evening (haircut for Doozer, just a bath for Sprocket). For now? I just might take a nap.

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  6. It’s times like these when I wish there was a documentary crew following us.

    March 4, 2010 by Louise

    The kids at my school think that if you sleep with your pajamas inside out and put a spoon under your pillow, the predicted snowstorm will come to fruition.
    They must ALL have been doing it last night, because when I woke up this morning, there was a one-hour delay on. I took the dogs out for their walk, and it was freezing drizzle a little bit (not quite as bad as Tuesday, when we had another storm day) so we slid around. I got ready for my day, and then waited. At 7:45 they announced that schools across the Island were closed. It didn’t seem TERRIBLE out, but they were saying that things would be getting worse, mid-morning.

    Once Rob left for work I had breakfast, then headed in to town. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible yet. I stayed at work for a few hours, until I looked out my classroom window and saw a little car sliding by sideways. Then I grabbed up my work and came home. At 3:30, I took the dogs out again. This time, things were terrible. They had their sweaters on, I had on Rob’s big winter coat, plus my hat and a headscarf over that, and a ski mask over all that. Boots, gloves. The snow was blowing so hard that I could barely see. We got all turned around at one point and were headed exactly in the opposite direction from where we needed to be going. But, each dog did his business and we did finally get home. The wind, though! I’m a giant lady, and at one point I had to lean forward at a more-than-45-degree angle just to stay upright. We got into the house at 3:50. Rob phoned to chat while he was on his break. He’s usually done work at 6 pm, but I told him that I didn’t want to drive in this after dark, and that I was leaving right away. I got to his work at 5. We got back to town near 6 pm.
    (as I’m typing this, the electricity just went out. I hope it comes back on! It will be cold here otherwise!)

    When we got to town, we realized that we didn’t really have much in the house in the way of food. We decided on a quick stop at the grocery store. When we got out of the car in the parking lot, Rob went all… well.
    As he was opening my door for me, he said “Louise, do you know what I love?” “What’s that?” “SPRING!”
    I gave him a look. “It’s not spring. It’s a frickin blizzard. What are you talking about?”
    And then, THIS happened (audio version recreated in Rob’s office, but fairly authentic).

    So picture my husband, in his “shorts”, with his pants legs pulled up to his knees, doing a kind of weird little jig while talking about the Wild Bologna of Springtime in the middle of the Sobeys parking lot.

    God I love him.

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