That there ought to be a time that we can set aside to show just how much we love you!

January 21, 2012




January 21.


Emily's 18th birthday. 

So, so, so hard for me to believe that my baby, my youngest, is actually 18 years old.

Makes me wonder where the time goes.

Which leads to philosophical meanderings regarding the meaning of time.

How, for example, when you're waiting for your car to be repaired, time seems like it is so slow it's almost stopped.

So how come, when you're children are growing up, time feels like it's on fast forward???? 

That one day they're like this:

And you literally turn around and she's like this:

With a side of a fantastic sense of humour:

You relish the moments when your children are together.

Having fun.

Rather than tattling on one another.

Trying to force them to the bottom of the family hierarchy.

When you look at your child and they take your breath away:

As the youngest child in our family, Emily has been pampered, spoiled. 

She's cute. 

She's adorable.

She's stubborn and challenging and difficult.

Once she decides she is not doing something, convincing her to do so is a sisyphean endeavour.

(In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.) 

Her unwavering sense of right and wrong have caused many an interesting discussion.

Injustice? That's been the theme of this term and Em has spent each morning dealing with a teacher infested with a Napoleon complex, who is so rigid that removing the stick would only mean another would grow in it's place. 

And she has railed against this person.

How unfair he is.

A tendency towards the dramatic, I initially wondered if this intense dislike I have only witnessed in her one other time, in middle school, was something that, with time would improve.

And then I met her teacher.

Her impression of him, feelings toward him were completely justified. 

Em has great difficulty with injustice, unfairness. 

Balanced with an equally intense love.

If Emily loves you, she LOVES you.

Her commitment to Reilley, who is also 18, is wondrous.

I don't see couples who are as committed to one another as Em and Reilley.

From the moment they first met, when they were both 2 years old, they have been inseparable.

After 18 years of love, observation, experience, I can say with clear certainty that I adore Emily.

She is a wonderful, kind, caring person.

Stubborn, intense, brooding sometimes.

She is human, after all.

When she came into my life, everything was upside down, topsy turvy.

She centered me. 

Focused me.

Kept me grounded at a time when I was feeling the least safe in my entire life.

She is still keeping me grounded.

A lot of responsibility for one child.

Now she is getting ready to embark on new adventures.

University this September (if she wants).

Driving in February.

I am the one having the most difficulty with that one, let me tell you.

Whatever I did to deserve to have such an incredible person in my life, I am glad I did.

Really glad.

So Happy Birthday Emily!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are a beautiful young woman.

You will do great things.

I love you, deeply, surely, intensely and forever. 

Title Lyric: Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder

I want you to love me like my dog does.

January 19, 2012


I want Sheldon to give me a tiara.

Patience isn't one of my stronger points.


When I make a decision I tend to want to move forward, now. 


Regardless of what others may think is the best course of action. 


So when we decided that Frankie needed a companion my instinct was to just go get him one.


Thankfully, Annette the best dog trainer in the world is a force in and of herself and was able to  stymie my lack of patience.


Good thing.


Because my patience was rewarded.


His name is Fynnigan.


Fynn for short.


He and Frankie met for the first time yesterday, at the farm, amid blustering, blisteringly cold winds. 


Em tagged along, tired of being confined to the house.


She's been home for a week, struggling to rid herself of the infectious malady that has infiltrated our home front.


She's going back to school today.


There we were.


The five of us.


Stephen, Em, me, Frankie and Fynn.


Frankie and Fynn get along just fine.


Fynn's so easy going, it seems it would take an awful lot to rile him up.


And if anyone was going to do that, Frankie would be the prime candidate.






Now, I have been somewhat spoiled by Frankie and Tikka.


Meaning we could go to the farm, release them from the confines of the car, off they would go, but never too far away from us.


Silly me.


I thought Fynn would just stay there because I wanted him to.


Um. No.


At first he was more than willing to hang out with Frankie.


The two of them smelling each others' special places.


And then, just like that, Fynn just turned around and walked in the opposite direction.


Em behind him.


Fynn speeding up.


Em speeding up.

Fynn running.


Em. . . .sort of running.


Stephen running behind both of them.


Me holding Frankie, who was not running anywhere regardless of how he felt about it.


Fynn, after being at the SPCA for some time, decided if he was going to get a chance to make a break for it, he'd be a fool to pass it up.


Unfortunately for Fynn, his desire to run wasn't anywhere near Em's desire to find a dog who would sleep in her room.


One for her to hug and cuddle and love.


(Mice and Men, anyone?)


And she and Stephen eventually corralled the wild Fynn, who returned quite happy to be back in the fold.


He is that easy going.


Once we had completed the initial meet and greet, we returned to the car.


Fynn had come in Em's car.


Frankie in our car.


When Stephen opened the back of the Focus, complete with dog gate, Fynn just jumped in like he'd been doing it for his entire life.


Frankie looked at me, looked at Fynn, and then got in the back with him.


I guess everything was fine.


Back to the SPCA.


Paid the $150.00 donation.


Brought Fynn home.


And all has been well.






He slept in Em's room last night. 


Good thing, because Goblet wasn't looking all that excited about sharing her room with a new dog.

Reilley's and Dibley's response: meh. There's a new dog in the house.


Whoopie.


Jaspzilla, king of the tampons, has been less than welcoming.


Sitting at the top of the basement stairs, puffing up to 10 times his normal size every time Fynn came near him.


He'll recover.


He's young.


Nosy.


And unwilling to miss out on a single thing. 


Must have been his initial socialization with Mer. 






So, welcome Fynn to the Loonie Bin.


You'll fit in just fine.

Title Lyric: Like My Dog by Billy Currington

. . . .pulling like a rubber band. . . .

January 18, 2012




Emily is sitting beside me right now.


At this minute.


Her question: are you blogging about me and how I'm going to be 18?


No.


Not yet.


Give me a couple more days of enjoying her before she becomes an "official", "legal" adult.


At least she isn't old enough to buy liquor. 


In New Brunswick, anyway.


And she'd better not think that driving to Quebec is an option.






The bathroom is Jasper's wonderland.


Working in the early morning hours, yesterday, I hear all sorts of commotion and calamity in the bathroom.


Em wanders outside of the confines of her room for her early morning ablutions.


So I send her in to do recon.


Jasper has learned how to open the bathroom cupboards.


The repository of such wonders as creams and lotions, soaps and scents, rubbing alcohol and melatonin, shampoos and conditioners. . . .


Personal lady products.


Apparently, ob tampons are the favoured plaything of kittens and cats alike.


Em cleaned everything up.


Removed Jasper from the bathroom.


But like a dog with a bone, or a kid with candy, Jasper was not to be deterred by such amateur methods like shutting the door.


Unusually patient for a kitten, he just waits for someone, Stephen or Keith in states of sleepiness, unaware of the menace biding his time until he can return to his playland.


And he did.


Because neither Stephen or Keith was remotely concerned about the state of my plp's enough to shut the bathroom door.


They probably didn't even wonder how come the door was shut in the first place.


Hence, Jasper returned to the bathroom.


Me at work.


Everyone else who lives in this house sound asleep snug in their beds. 


And Jasper with full fledged, unfettered, licence to do whatever he wanted to do in the bathroom.


Which he did.


Em wakes up first.


Finds a bathroom floor littered with detritus of the bathroom cupboard.


Tampons perched in waiting, ready to leap off the bathroom countertop.


Resting quietly on the floor, hidden in corners, afraid to come out in case of the return of Jaspzilla.


She prepares herself to settle onto the toilet seat to do her thing when she looks into the bowl and sees the not-so-fortunate members of the tampon troupe.


Three floating face down in the cold, frigid waters of the Fredericton toilet bowl.


How Jasper managed to get three tampons in the toilet is beyond me.


Especially as Emily put them inside the bathroom mirror, above the sink.


I'm thinking hidden cameras in the bathroom may reveal the mysterious methods of Jaspzilla.


Or maybe I just don't want to know.






Sharing these events with Stephen, he resolved the situation by looping elastics around the knobs on the cupboard.


Same method I used on the kids when they were little to keep them out of the poisonous products lurking the back corners of the cupboards.


Because they were my children, the upper cupboards were just as much of an enticement.


Ask Keith about his experience with an eyefull of cayenne pepper.


At the hands of Mer.


Elastics.


Good for kittens and kids. 






Title Lyric: Elastic Love by Christina Aguilera

He ate a slice of Wonder bread. . . .

January 17, 2012




Tikka's passing has really thrown me for a loop.


Still.


Walking by her picture on our family wall of shame causes immediate tears. 


Her collar remains in my coat pocket. 


And will continue to stay there until I am ready to put it somewhere else. 


More realistically, I am now engaged in a clearly futile attempt to "catch up" on all the reading I was supposed to have done over the holidays. 


The last several days have seen me hunched over journal articles, books, in an effort to be as prepared for my classes as possible. 


Especially my once-a-week-three-hour-seminar-class, Ethnography and Crime.


A fourth year course, this seminar is an opportunity to examine how ethnography takes us to places theoretically and empirically that are virtually unattainable using more traditional, objective research methods.


Which is a fancy shmancy way of saying it's a shit load of reading and because there are only 9 people in the course not being prepared would be painfully obvious.


So there has been less writing more reading and note taking over the past several days.


As I attempt to recapture time.


Imagine the possibilities if I was successful in THAT endeavour.






Dibley has to be declawed.


This was not an easy decision to come to.


I know what declawing means.


I do.


But, this weekend saw the second Dibley-scratched-Reilley infection.


Em mentions that Reilley has bump at the top of his tail, would I look at it.


And in the process of looking at it, the cut-caused-by-Dibs drained.


All over my hand.


The stench. . .imagine 1000 dogs farting at the same time and times it by a million.


I have a strong stomach.


I really don't have much of a choice living here.


But the putrid, fetid stench from the drainage almost made me sick.


Not to mention Reilley wasn't very happy either.


Which leaves us with the unwilling recognition that our Dibs is a bully.


Most probably a survival strategy, as he is deaf and managed to live outside, alone for several months.


Now however, he is not alone.


Or outside.


And survival constitutes walking downstairs to eat.


So his aggressive, bullying tactics need to come to an end.


Or at the very least level the playing field.


Goblet, another target of Dibs machinations, and Reilley are both declawed.


An unfortunate event that occurred before we fully understood the meaning of "declawed."


Reilley is also 18.


At the very least, he deserves to live out his golden years without fearing imminent attack by the schoolyard bully.


It's either declaw Dibs or find a home for him where he is the only cat.


And none of us want that.


Bully or not, we are rather attached to the little demon.


Sort of how we feel about Mer. 






A priest is taking my Introduction to Research Methods class.


Some people find this rather amusing.


I don't see why.


Although it will mean my discussion of red wine and Wonder bread as means of understanding the theoretical foundations of symbolic interactionism make take on new meaning this term.


And I won't be performing any more in-class baptisms. 






Title Lyric: Samson by Regina Spektor