mousme | Entries tagged with dogs

1-State of the Phnee

Okay, I missed a few days, there. I blame the sleep deprivation, because I just forgot about posting for three days and only remembered a few minutes ago. Oops? I’m going to give myself a bit of grace, there, because the last few days of night shifts were rough AF, as the kids are saying these days.

There’s actually not much to report since I last posted, at least. The State of Society worship sharing went well, even though I had some moments of frustration beforehand. The current set of Friends who are “in charge” of things are really bad at communicating with me. It could just be that my very neurodivergent brain is not picking up on all the neurotypical subtext that’s happening, but they act as if I should somehow read their mind and know when they are going to deviate from the standard operating procedure, which I cannot do. My ESP has never been as well developed as other people would like.

The same Friend who has been bitching about hybrid meetings suggested, less than half an hour before the worship sharing, that we should postpone it, because there was a clothing swap happening at the same time which had been “on the calendar for a really long time!” I had to forcefully remind myself that the Peace Testimony is an important part of being a Quaker, and that it would be very un-Quakerly indeed of me to reach through the computer screen and strangle her. Luckily another member of M&C who was there in person gave her a very firm “no,” because we have very tight deadlines for the SoS report. When the Friend pushed back, the M&C member gently but firmly told her, “If you would like to come to the worship sharing late, that is a choice you are welcome to make, but we will be starting on time.” Shockingly, she did not come late.

I tried to attend the Continuing Meeting of M&C in the afternoon, but the Zoom link didn’t work for me, and since it was right in the time that I needed to be preparing for work, I decided after 15 minutes of trying that I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I had already been up for 26 hours by then and did not have the wherewithal to fight with emails and Zoom and what have you. I will try again next month.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but KK gave me an Oodie for my birthday, which for those of you who are not immersed in American apparel companies, is basically an oversized hoodie made out of fleece that is extremely cozy. Mine is teal coloured and has lily pads, tadpoles, and frogs in various normal-to-weird poses on it. It is VERY cozy. Knowing that I was exhausted after not sleeping since the previous day’s threshing session on Israel and Palestine and the Apartheid-free communities pledge, I anticipated that I was going to get very cold at work. I am generally a person who runs hot unless I’m very tired or getting sick. So, I decided to bring it to work with me, which was both a genius idea and a terrible idea. It was genius in that I was very, very warm and cozy. It was a terrible idea in that I was so warm and cozy that I kept nodding off at my desk because the shift wasn’t very busy and so I didn’t have anything to work on to keep me awake. My shift partner was very understanding about it, luckily.

We had a mandatory Town Hall meeting on Monday, where our execs blue smoke up our asses and then pissed on us and told us it was raining. Okay, I am exaggerating ever so slightly, but it was 45 minutes of them patting themselves on the back for all their cost saving measures, and oh, by the way, we did sort of kind of lie a little bit when we said we wouldn’t be cutting jobs and your managers will be in touch with you over the next few days to tell you if you’ve been affected. Oh, but WE EMPATHIZE WITH YOU and we want to make sure you know WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER except that, of course, we execs are keeping our jobs, and it just sucks to be you, sorry not sorry. Blech.

Yesterday I got to sleep in a bit, then puttered around the house, then had a therapy appointment, and then I went for a walk with my friend Jan and her dog Lightfoot as well as Peggy and Pixie. It was a very nice walk, but poor Peggy was having a “clacky hip day” (she has hip dysplasia) and was struggling a bit by the end. We let them romp around in a field at the end of the walk, and Lightfoot and Pixie had a blast chasing each other through the snow, but Peggy was tired and sore and didn’t want to run, so she got quite cold standing still, and we called it pretty soon so that she could go inside and warm up. Next time I will bring the Brittanies’ winter coats with me to help keep them warm for longer. They’re usually okay in the winter, but I think we pushed Peggy a little too hard.

Today was a very quiet day too. I did some shoveling, took the recycling away from the curb because they changed the schedule on me over the holidays and so I’ve been putting the wrong recyclables out and my cardboard boxes were blowing all over the countryside. I spent most of the day hanging out quietly with the dogs, took some time to refill the quail’s food and water, and did some dishes. Nothing to write home about.

KK has bought herself a walker with wheels (purple, naturally) and is looking into acquiring a motorized scooter as well, for getting around outside the house. We’re not sure if our insurance will pay for both or only one, so she’s holding off making a claim until she gets the scooter and will go from there. Hopefully that will improve her pain levels while outside the house, because that’s been an increasing problem for her for the past few months. She got x-rays taken a few weeks ago, and the arthritis has progressed to her hips and her back, which is not good news. I’m hoping she and her doctor can discuss better pain management than what she’s been getting so far (which basically boils down to a lot of NSAIDs and Tylenol Arthritis). I don’t know at all what the future holds there.

2-State of the Smallholding

Apart from shoveling and quail, there’s nothing major on the home front. Given KK’s deteriorating health and pain levels, I am seriously considering talking to our local handyman about what it would cost to install a ramp in front of the house. Apart from KK my friend Amy is also a wheelchair user, and my mother’s mobility is getting steadily worse as well, so it would make a certain amount of sense to make the house more accessible. That being said, cost is going to be an issue, because I am not made of money, and while there are theoretically grants available for making your dwelling more accessible, I am above the income threshold where that would be available to me. The threshold is very low, meaning I would basically have to be unemployed or making minimum wage to qualify, which is luckily not the case. It’s one of those situations where I don’t have enough money to afford the thing, but I have too much income on paper to qualify for any kind of assistance in affording the thing. Oh well. So, yes, I will be taking to AJ (the aforementioned local handyman) and asking for an estimate and we will go from there.

3-State of the news

The entire internet is creaming its pants about Mark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday, and all I can do is roll my eyes at all the people who apparently cannot see beyond the surface level of his words. The speech was a very pretty one, and definitely an understated “fuck you, we’re not playing with you anymore!” to the USA, so naturally Trump has his panties in a twist over it. However, anyone who knows even a little bit about Canada’s history, its current political state, and the current state of the world, would have to side-eye that speech quite a lot. It was a speech that was designed to comfort the comfortable, and all those comfortable people at Davos gave it a standing ovation. There have been a few very well written critiques already, and I may post or link them in future entries for future reference (because the internet is only forever for things you never want to see again).

*sigh*

I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep and get a bunch of stuff done tomorrow. I would like to get in a workout, do some tidying around the house, and I need to do a bunch of work on the State of Society Report and finish up my D&D character’s history to send to my DM. So much to do, so little time!

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

1-State of the Phnee

You know, the Almanac swore that we were going to have an especially dry winter, which had me all sorts of worried about drought next summer, but it sure doesn’t *feel* like a dry winter. I think we very slightly exceeded the average for December and we’ve had several inches (I don’t know exactly how many) since last night with no sign of the snow stopping until tomorrow. Now, maybe the “dry winter” means we won’t have much snow from here on out, so I will reserve judgment for the moment, but I have been shoveling way more snow than I was led to believe I would.

Yesterday was a day of even less sleep than Wednesday. It was slow going to get home because of the snowstorm, and I had a bunch of things to do. As I’m pretty sure I mentioned in my previous post, I decided it would be a good idea to run some errands before going home because I needed to get gas anyway. I did that, then wandered around Canadian Tire and picked up some not-quite-essentials: a small plunger, a small drain snake, two more water storage containers (more on that later), and a few impulse buys in the shape of some wrist weights, new scrubby brushes for the dishes (one of ours broke and the other is on its last legs after many years of loyal service), and an apple corer/slicer that was on sale that will hopefully make my life a lot easier next year when I’m processing the apples I harvest from the local trees.

Then, probably in a fit of madness, I decided to stop by Ritchie’s Feed & Seed on the way home. In fairness I am down to my last 5-gallon bucket of quail feed, and because of my work schedule it would mean a deliberate 2-hour round trip to Ottawa just to get a bag sometime in the next two weeks. This way I at least got to save time and gas, even if it meant getting home even later than I’d planned. As I mentioned, we got a bunch of snow dumped on us today, and driving home was a much slower go. I arrived close to 11:00 and did a bunch of shoveling, because otherwise getting into the house was going to be a challenge.

I had originally planned to take a nap for an hour or two before my appointment with the bariatric clinic, but since that appointment was at 11:30, that did not happen. Instead, I finished shoveling, let the dogs out, and logged on a few minutes early. I thought I was supposed to meet with the nurse practitioner, but it turned out to be with the nutritionist instead. Not a big deal, really. I asked about my blood test results and she said she’d spoken with the nurse practitioner and that they are not worried about my values as a certain amount of fluctuation is to be expected in the first 3-6 month post-surgery especially.

I finally got to sleep around 1:00pm, but Rika (KK’s chihuahua) decided that I was not allowed to keep sleeping. She started scratching at my face a couple of hours after until I got up and let the dogs out to pee, so I put her in KK’s bedroom in the hopes that she would settle on the bed and nap. No such luck. She barked and squeaked and shrieked and threw herself bodily at the door at intervals until I finally gave it all up as a bad job and just got up. So, in short, I am quite sleep deprived. I’m hoping to get a decent amount of sleep today since this weekend will involve next to no sleep due to all my [censored] Quaker commitments.

Work has been quite busy tonight. I may have to cut this post short so that I have time to finish and post it before the end of my shift.

I’ve taken a break after finishing the last Expanse novel and listened to Where Are the Children by Mary Higgins Clark, which was a slightly jarring change of pace. It was a fun thriller, but a lot of it felt a little dated, and I couldn’t tell if the rampant misogyny was intentional on the part of the author or just simply a product of an author writing in 1970s America. I’ve only ever read one or two of her books, but they are quick and easy reads, so I may continue with some more if I can find them.

2-State of the smallholding

I feel very lucky to have a generous neighbour who comes and clears our driveway with his tractor whenever it snows. He has saved me so much work already this winter! I don’t want to take it for granted, however, so I will have to whip up a baked good or something as a thank you soon.

Something has gone wrong with one of the quail waterers, because I’ve noticed it gets emptied within hours compared to the other two which take anywhere from 2-3 days to be emptied (for a comparable number of quail using them). It doesn’t have a leak, so maybe the quail are flinging the water around or maybe causing it to leak as they use it somehow.

Today’s plan after I get some sleep is to head to the Martintown Market for more produce and maybe stop by Alexandria for a few other essentials I can’t get at the market. I don’t know if I’ll make it or just opt for more sleep. We’ll see how much willpower I have to drag my sorry carcass out of bed later. The market only opens at 4pm on Fridays, so it’s not like I can go before then anyway.

3-State of the news

I’ve been a bit under a rock today due to all the errands and appointments and aborted attempts at sleep.

Iran’s complete internet blackout is in its second week. European military personnel have started arriving in Greenland in response to the US’s threats, which does not bode well. Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis and has apparently declared that the US “shouldn’t even have an election,” surprising exactly no one who has been paying attention to his regime. Maria Corina Machado gave her fucking Novel Peace Prize to Trump, presumably trying to play nice so he’ll “allow” her to actually run the country that fucking well elected her. It’s so gross. And Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in their continuing efforts to annex the country.

That’s it for now, I think.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

Holy shitsnacks, it has been a day! First off, I turned 47, which is no mean feat. Somehow, 47 feels a lot closer to 50 than 46 did. I don’t know why, it just does. Brains are weird.

1- State of the Phnee

a. I spent the morning of my birthday trying out a “foot mask” for the first time in my life. I’m not usually a beauty products kind of gal beyond using moisturizer and lip balm, but the soles of my feet got really dry this year and it’s actually not nice from a sensory standpoint when I sleep and the sheets catch on the dry skin. It’s not the worst problem to have, but I figured it was one I might be able to solve without too much difficulty. Apparently, it takes about 4-5 days to really start doing its thing after application, so we shall see.

b. The rest of the morning falls under the heading ISN’T HAVING PETS GREAT. The cats left a present for me in the form of a dead mole in the basement. The reason I discovered this is that I had to bring down emergency laundry after Peggy barfed prodigiously all over her crate and therefore her bedding (she has a cozy blankie to lie on). So, this morning was a glorious symphony of vomit and mole carcasses. Delightful.

c. Since it’s my birthday I brought doughnuts and Timbits to work for everyone. I’m working evenings again this week, so the crowd is a little smaller than the day shift, but whatever, it’s fine. The night shift will get some too, and tomorrow’s day shift might even get the leftovers. It’s usually the day shift who get first pick of that sort of thing, so it’s okay that other shifts get to have the slightly fresher stuff for once.

d. I chatted very briefly with my parents who sent me very nice birthday emails and tried to reply to everyone who sent me nice messages on various messaging platforms. I get overwhelmed by emails and messages a lot more easily lately, which is not something I enjoy. I’ve always struggled a little to respond on time, but now it’s gotten a lot worse, and I don’t like it.

e. In Quaker news, one of the Meeting Members has asked to bring a concern to our next M&C meeting, and I will confess to being apprehensive about it. She hasn’t said what her concern is, and this lady and I don’t see eye to eye on a few very important matters. Notably she is anti-vax, which I learned about her long before the pandemic. She’s also very anti-tech in the Meeting, which means she wants to do away with our hybrid system (partially online and partially in-person) because she finds the tech disruptive. I disagree with this pretty fundamentally, because the people who attend online are the most vulnerable Members and Attenders: people who are disabled, immunocompromised, frail, elderly, or who live far and don’t have access to good transportation. And all these people would be more likely to come to Meeting in person if people already there were to mask consistently, but of course they don’t, and while she and I have never discussed it, I get the feeling this Member and I probably don’t see eye to eye on masking, either. Hopefully things will go smoothly at the Meeting. I can manage my feelings of anxiety and apprehension, and maybe it’s not a concern related to anything I think it could be. I will find out on Friday, I guess!

2- State of the smallholding

a. No more quail casualties, at least for now. I added more pine shavings and straw to all the enclosures. I’m sort of doing a half-assed version of the deep litter method of bedding for the winter, because it allows the old bedding to compost and generate a bit of heat. I don’t know how well it’s working, however, because the quail enclosures are considerably smaller than your average chicken coop, so I think the “compost” might be freezing or at least cold rather than generating heat. The straw does serve as insulation, however, and they seem to like the pine shavings, so I’m going to stick with that for now.

b. I should be thinking about starting seeds, probably in late February, and that means digging out my seeds from whatever box I packed them in before we moved (oops). I also don’t remember what I did with my asparagus crowns, which is super annoying because those were expensive as fuck. Hopefully I can find them and also hopefully they haven’t died. They’re hardy little fuckers, though, so fingers crossed that they survived. If not, I guess I will have to bite the bullet and get more. *sigh*

3- State of the news

a. Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry: I got a notice by email of a special meeting for zoning amendments in the area on January 26^th. If it’s like the last meeting I went to then it will start half an hour before the usual town council meeting and consist of “Welp, so-and-so would like to convert this from Agricultural to Agricultural Special Exemption and here are the fifteen reasons why this is a good idea.” And then it will pass unanimously and we’ll all move on with our lives. It’s administrative and rather dry, but I find it interesting to get a glimpse into the workings of the area. I may find myself in the position of requiring either permits and/ore exemptions in the coming years, especially if I decide to replace the septic system down the line. I don’t currently have the $40,000+ required to redo my septic system, alas, so we’re coping with what has turned out to be a rather limited holding tank, but eventually I’d like to get it whipped into more manageable shape.

b. We’ve been having a colder and snowier winter than usual this past month in the Ottawa region, which honestly isn’t a bad thing. More snow means hopefully less drought next year, although I am a little concerned about the melt in the spring causing some flooding, especially in my backyard. Cow Shit Creek, as we have affectionately nicknamed the little rivulet that runs through the property (it has a real name but I’ve forgotten it) overflowed its banks thoroughly last spring and filled the back acre right up to the big retaining wall that I assume was built exactly for that purpose. By the end of the summer it was bone dry, not even so much as a patch of mud, so there are some pretty interesting extremes happening there.

c. OC Transpo has increased its rates, which a lot of people are disgruntled about, given that the quality of the services has declined pretty steadily over the years. I myself am hoping that the extension of the LRT eastward will be finished soon (it was meant to be this spring, but it appears to be delayed). I’d love to be able to drive to a Park ‘n’ Ride and take the train in the rest of the way to work. Transport Canada is right on top of a LRT station, and if I get the new job I applied for, it’s also within walking distance of a LRT station (albeit one with significantly less parking, which could be an issue).

d. Ontario politics have been quiet of late. The big headline is Doug Ford threatening to pull Crown Royal from LCBO shelves in response to the company shuttering its bottling plant in Amherst, ON and moving those jobs to the US. Ol’ Douglas is using the move to capitalize on the anti-American sentiment that’s swelled since the trade/tariff war began. Kind of cheap, but given his general antics I am not surprised.

e. I am pleased to not be alone in being displeased with Canada’s weak response to the kidnapping of Maduro and the blatant attempt at colonizing Venezuela. One commentator remarked of Carney that it looked like he was trying to carry a Fabergé egg across the ice, referring to the delicately phrased statement that was clearly designed to not upset Donald Trump. Meh. I still think it’s pretty spineless as a response and we should be doing better. Pierre Poilievre of course lurched forward to lick Trump’s boots with his response, but at least Don Davies (interim leader of the NDP) came out with an unequivocal statement about it.

f. In a move that I will confess I don’t understand, Chrystia Freeland will be stepping down as MP and taking an uncompensated (?) role as an economic advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I am kind of baffled as to why he would pick her when there are approximately a gajillion more qualified Europeans, but I guess politics move in mysterious ways.

g. In the Continuing Adventures of the Dumpster Fire to the South: Stephen Miller has essentially come right out and said that the US is more than willing to take Greenland by force. Here’s a snippet of an interview between him and Jake Tapper of CNN:

“TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?

MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATO

T: So force is on the table?

M: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland.”

*beats head on table* I’m sure this is fine. FML.

Now, I don’t think that Canada is in immediate military peril the way some other people appear to. However, it is pretty anxiety-inducing to have a fascist regime next door with a leader rapidly succumbing to some form of dementia or other cognitive degeneration who has repeatedly talked about making our country the 51^st state. I’m more concerned that the US will use its considerable economic leverage to try to control us rather than risk incurring the wrath of NATO and fighting a war on multiple fronts. Either way, it won’t be pretty.

Oof. Okay. Time to get back to work.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: chipper

I got caught at work this morning by a series of bomb threats leveled at six Class A airports across the country. I'm allowed to talk about it a bit because it hit the news pretty early on today. Luckily it was all false alarms, but I ended up staying an hour past the end of my shift. To say things were busy would be putting it mildly: the phone was ringing off the hook with calls from airports, from various internal departments, from our Director General, basically everyone and their cousin. It was a rather intense hour of overtime, I must say.

I had originally planned to stop by the vet to pick up more flea and tick medication for the dogs, and I also needed to pick up a couple of things from a local store, and I didn't want to put any of it off longer than I had to, especially the flea and tick meds. We live in the country now, and KK already found a stray tick in the house (not on any of the pets, luckily, and it didn't look like it had fed before it got terminated with extreme prejudice), so I want to make sure all the beasties are as well protected as I can manage.

So, long story short, by the time I got home it was 10:30, and I only got to sleep by about 11:30. Then I forced myself to get up at 16:00 so KK (with a bit of assistance from yours truly) could finish up the Murphy bed build. And finish we did! We put the doors on the desk/shelving part of the unit, and it is DONE. I didn't get a chance to set up my computer, so that is a problem for tomorrow!me, but I did manage to zip out to the slightly larger town for groceries. We live closer to a smaller town, but there is no grocery store there, which kind of defeats the purpose of going there to get groceries.

As a result, I am running on relatively little sleep, and I just realized that tomorrow morning at 9:00 I have a Ministry & Counsel meeting, so there won't be much sleep then either. At least I'll be able to "sleep in" during the evening if I want, until 8:00 or 9:00 pm even, if it's really necessary. Since I'm working 12 hour shifts all weekend, I will probably do that. Now that the bedroom is "ready" for sleep, I'll be able to cuddle up with the dogs to sleep, too, which is pretty great. The Brittanies are champion cuddlers, and as long as they are with me they are pretty happy to sleep quietly until I'm ready to get up. They may be hooligans, but they are also very sweet. To quote the internet of old: "They're good dogs, Brent."

In political news, it looks like the USA has voted to drastically cut its already pretty terrible medical system (Medicare and Medicaid) in favour of tax cuts, supposedly in the name of reducing fraud or waste, but in reality it's just... I don't know. It's definitely tax cuts for the wealthy, but I think there's a side order of "the cruelty is the point" and probably a lot of eugenics in there as well. The most vulnerable people use Medicare/Medicaid: the elderly, the very young, and the chronically disabled. So I assume the plan is to have a bunch of vulnerable people just... die, I guess. *sigh*

Current Mood: tired

I don't have a long post in me today. The home visit with American Brittany Rescue went really well, and if Odin gets along well with the other dogs I will have the green light to bring him home, which is great.

That was the only good part of the day, because I received a notice in the mail that H&R Block made a mistake (?) with my taxes, to the tune of nearly $13,000 (I owe about $3.5K to H&R Block because they advanced me my supposed tax refund, and $9.5k to CRA). I don't know where I am supposed to find any of this money. I have never in my life owed this much money on taxes, and I am honestly at a loss as to how this happened. I need to dig out my tax paperwork and have someone at H&R Block walk me through step by step how this happened, and why the fuck their mistake is now suddenly my problem.

I honestly feels like, because I got a house and this is a nice thing, the universe has felt the need to balance this out by doing nothing but shit on me for the past two months or so. Like, can I get a fucking break, please? My parents were hospitalized, I got Covid, I had to work extra hours, there were problems with the mortgage and the closing and the insurance for the new place, KK got sick the day of the move and we had to postpone (which means I had to spend money on the cancellation, another month's rent and utilities mostly at my own expense because KK has no spare money), both cats needed $3k worth of dental surgery, I need to buy a CPAP next week (more money) my car needs repairs that are getting done this weekend (more money), and now this (the epitome of more fucking money).

Honestly, it's enough to make me want to throw myself off the closest high bridge. At least my life insurance might pay off some of the debt.

Current Mood: depressed

I lined up all my dominoes yesterday to guarantee an early bedtime. I wrote my posts early, fed the dogs and brushed their teeth early, put the quail to bed early, and had myself in bed winding down before 8pm. My plan was foolproof, or so I thought. I was about to turn out the lights and go to bed when my phone rang. I almost didn't answer because the call was from a Montreal number I didn't recognize. I only ever get calls from either my parents or my friend Lu, and all other calls originating from Montreal are usually wrong numbers trying to reach someone with my number but a different area code.

Then I figured, since it was likely a wrong number, I'd answer and just let them know, and then I could go to bed. NOPE. It was a volunteer from American Brittany Rescue calling to schedule my home visit. Oops. So she and I had a very nice chat and scheduled said home visit for ridiculously early this Saturday, and the very nice lady just. kept. talking. for over an hour. I still got to bed earlier than usual, but it was still 9:30pm, an hour and a half after I was ready to turn in. I am deeply frustrated and not a little cranky about the whole business. I'm going to try for an early night again tonight and hope it works better than last night.

*kicks rocks petulantly*

I am unreasonably annoyed by this specific loss of sleep, probably because A) I am bad at adapting to last-minute changes in my plans, and B) I had lined up everything perfectly in order to get to bed at the time I wanted, and if I just hadn't answered my phone, I could have done just that. Of course, if I'd done that I wouldn't have been able to set up the home visit or talk to the volunteer, so there's that, but I am still unreasonably annoyed.

I am tired of constantly being either in a bad mood, or a hair's breadth away from being in a bad mood after even the tiniest setback. Hopefully my attempts at getting more sleep will pay off in that regard. I don't have the luxury of taking time off work (not more than a day here or there, anyway), and psychiatric medication doesn't seem to be terribly effective for me (although I am being nice and compliant about taking my pills). So I'm going to have to trust that focusing on getting more and hopefully better sleep will have a salutary effect. Maybe not living surrounded by precariously teetering boxes and whatever trash KK has left around for me to pick up will help with my (perceived) stress levels as well. We shall see in a few weeks, I guess.

Current Mood: cranky

I feel like today was a bit of a wash. I was the Greeter at Meeting online today, but someone in the Meeting House (the same person who is constantly complaining about the "technology" in the Meeting House) took it upon herself to, as another Friend put it, "cosplay as Ministry & Counsel." I am trying and failing to not be annoyed by it. It honestly doesn't matter who says the things as long as the Meeting unfolds the way it should, and it did, but I have a red trigger button that revolves around people thinking I'm incompetent/can't do my job or telling me how to do my job, and apparently this hit the same button. In conclusion, I am MIFFED.

Otherwise I packed more boxes in the basement, which took more time than I anticipated. What's left in the basement is all stuff that's weirdly shaped or a bit too big to fit in most boxes, and a lot of it is really random shit that belongs to KK that I can't even identify, which makes labelling the boxes a bit of a challenge. Still, I made some headway, which is something.

KK is spending tonight at her friend H's hotel again, and so I have to medicate Rika the Chihuahua and feed Libby (the long-haired tabby) her special kidney food on top of the regular bedtime routine stuff. I'll be doing that in a few minutes, as soon as I've put the quail to bed.

I have also, because I am a special kind of crazy, applied to adopt a senior Brittany from a rescue group. His name is Odin, and he's 10 years old, and he looks like an absolute sweetheart, albeit with the same escape artist and counter surfing tendencies as my current set of hooligans. So, you know, he'll fit right in! Of course, there's no guarantee my application will be accepted. Rescues are notoriously finicky about placing animals, so they may find something wrong with either the new house, the new property, or my general attitude and philosophy with regards to owning dogs and the care and treatment thereof. I don't have a fence yet, although we do definitely plan on building a six-foot fence to keep the current set of hooligans from haring off and terrorizing our neighbour's dairy cows. I don't want to constantly be worried that my dogs are being a nuisance to the neighbours. Anyway, we shall see.

Now, I am off to medicate the dog, feed the cat, take a quick shower, and then lapse into a hopefully at least slightly restorative slumber. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but last week I fell asleep one night before putting on my CPAP mask, and I felt like absolute garbage the next day. So while I hadn't noticed the night-and-day difference in energy levels that other people have said come with using a CPAP, I can report with full confidence that it is, in fact, doing something.

Current Mood: optimistic

Not in the sense of fewer daylight hours, but rather in the sense of "this was a very long day." I'm so flipping tired.

I was up at 5:30 in order to be up and dressed and with everything sorted out so I could go to U-Haul and get the van I reserved to bring garbage to the dump. I had actually reserved a pick-up truck, but it turns out U-Haul doesn't have those in Ottawa anymore. So instead I was given a van, and that actually turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise, since I'm not sure the pick-up truck would have had enough room in the bed for everything I tossed in there.

There was so. much. garbage, friends. I tossed a ton of KK's junk (mostly broken shit from her past two or possibly three cars that she apparently just tossed in the garage rather than throwing out), and a bunch of stuff that had just been sitting in the basement for a remarkably long time, plus two broken office chairs that KK has been hanging onto this entire time. I drove to the local dump, got the van weighed, tossed everything into the container that was there, and was paid up and out of there all inside of about twenty minutes. I was actually really impressed with how efficient it all was.

KK and H surprised me by actually showing up to the house at 10:00. KK had said in a message the night before that they'd aim for 9:00, so I wasn't expecting them until the afternoon, but they showed up a lot earlier than I thought! H was actually pretty great and helped KK pack up about 90% of the books in the cat room as well as breaking down the mini greenhouse full of dead plants KK had in there. They managed to get most of it done while I was cleaning out part of the basement and then dragging stuff to the dump.

I am not entirely sure what bug crawled up KK's butt today, but she was snide and snippy to me both verbally and via Signal messages all day, accusing me of "rushing" to get out of the house, among other things. I don't know if she's feeling self-conscious because her friend is visiting and suddenly thinks I am making her look bad (this has happened to me with friends in the past, where I am acceptable as long as I am not in public view of others), or if she was just having an off day, but if she continues to be like that tomorrow I am going to have to talk to her about it. I am not here to be anyone's verbal punching bag anymore. I've had that in enough relationships, thank you.

We took the dogs and H to the new house in the late afternoon and evening, and the dogs had an absolute blast zooming around the property again while I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I also spotted a black and white cat prowling around the property, and I'm really hoping that it's a barn cat from the farm next door and that the previous owners didn't abandon their cat on the property. If they have we'll take the poor thing in, of course, but I really hope that's not the case.

KK and H drove to Rockin' Rhonda's diner, which is about 15 minutes away. It's a 50s-themed diner that's right across the street from another house on which we made an offer last year, and we were pretty sad that we didn't get that house because the diner has really good food. They have garlic bread that is absolutely to die for, it's so good. Once we were stuffed full of food I loaded up all the dogs in my car again, came home, got them fed and medicated and crated as needed, and now all that's left is to send out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow and prepare to be the online greeter. It's already very late, so I need to get right on that.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: cranky

Today has been A Day, and I still have to go to work in about five hours. *falls over*

I cleaned out all the quail enclosures today, as I had been doing only very basic maintenance since getting Covid, and they were pretty gross. The quails deserve a nice clean environment to live in, after all. I also noticed that the quarantine box in which I was keeping my lone male was disintegrating because of the water spilling out of his water dish. The cardboard had softened without my noticing before, and last night I saw that the box was sagging to one side, and the mesh over the "window" in the front was gaping badly.

So today I cut a hole in a new box, lined it with duct tape and plastic, and cut a new window in it so the poor birb isn't just completely in the dark. I couldn't leave him in the old box while I transferred the mesh over, however, so I decided to stick him in for a couple of minutes with the other quail. How bad could it be? I thought. He'll only be in there long enough for me to attach the mesh to the new box. HAH. No sooner had his feet touched the pine chips on the floor of the enclosure, he immediately sprang onto the nearest female, grabbed a bunch of feathers at the base of her head and swung himself onto her back like a cowboy at a rodeo. He was VERY rough with her, and she bucked him off, so he immediately did the same thing to the next closest female. A third female then flew at him and started pecking at him pretty viciously, so I reached in and pulled him out and put him in a bucket while I worked.

Good Lord and butter!

At least now I know that he is, in fact, the problem bird in the bunch. The other male is very gentle with the ladies: all their feathers are growing back, they're all laying consistently every day, and they all like to hang out and tweedle softly together, whereas the first male has been screaming intermittently for the past couple of days. So once I am done with my night shifts he will be turned into dinner. Only gentleman birbs get to hang out with my ladies! Everyone else gets to be eaten.

I then sent my resume to the recruiter who'd asked for it, and then it was time to gather all the pets to take them to the vet for their annual shots. I want to say it went smoothly, but that would be a lie. First off, Octavia decided to hide in the walls and refused to come out. I was able to get Juno in her carrier, and then the dogs freaked the fuck out, because CAAAAAAAAT! I wrangled all three into KK's car and got them to the vet, figuring I would just reschedule Octavia for another day.

Once at the vet, the dogs got their shots, and KK messaged me to tell me that Octavia had graced the living room with her presence. I asked her to put Octavia in her kennel and arranged to leave Juno at the vet's while I drove the dogs home and picked up my truant cat. When I got back, the vet had some very bad news for me: namely, that Juno had lost a lot of weight and that it was very likely due to her teeth rotting in her head. One canine was so loose they were able to just yank it out then and there with no issue, and her other canine is super loose as well. When the vet examined Octavia, he found a really similar problem. So both cats need dental surgery ASAP, and I booked them in for May 28th, which is TWO DAYS before we're meant to move. But honestly, they are in pain and not eating, and I don't want to wait any longer than I have to, especially since I don't know what the vet care situation is in Maxville. There is a veterinary clinic there (I used to take my pets there when I first moved to Ottawa) but I don't know if they're taking new patients, and immediate dental surgery might be a stretch even for them.

So for now we're switching them to wet food until after the surgery, and then we'll see if they can have kibble after that still or if they'll need to be on soft food for the rest of their lives.

I came home just in time to have a Zoom call with my parents, which I totally forgot about until they called me to ask where I was. OOPS. My parents, as usual, immediately told me I should euthanize the cats rather than spend money on surgery for them. My parents are delightful that way. Then my mother asked me how much this "joke" was going to cost me, and when I asked her what "joke" she meant, she listed the number of pets I have (two cats, two dogs). I understand that they are worried about my finances, but fucking hell, it would be nice if they eased up a little. It's not like I'm not going to deny veterinary care to my pets, and I will only give up my pets as a very last resort.

Anyway, apart from that little unpleasantness, we had a nice, if brief chat. Now it's time for me to go get some dinner, and hopefully have a nap and a shower before work.

*falls over*

Current Mood: sore

I am too old for this little sleep in a night. KK was still awake when I got home, so we ended up chatting for a while before I went to bed, so I only got about three hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready for work again. Blaaaaargh.

The connectivity issue at work is resolved, at least, and the night shift surprised us by Jerry-rigging things together a bit and managing to log a bunch of the calls and emails from yesterday, thus sparing my current shift partner and I having to go through the entire backlog. So, yay for amazing colleagues! I have been mopping up the rest of the issues all morning with the help of my intrepid shift partner, and now we're back to our regular baseline.

I am hoping that the next few hours go by reasonably smoothly. I am very tired and I have very little desire to do a bunch of metaphorical heavy lifting. So far so good, so we shall see how it goes.

I have a few things to do when I get home, like send out Quaker announcements and feed and water the quail, but I plan on swan diving into my bed at the earliest opportunity otherwise. Hopefully I can "catch up" on some sleep that way. I know that technically there is no such thing as catching up on sleep, but I can't think of a better way to to describe it.

I have an appointment to take all four of my pets to the vet on Monday for their shots, so that's going to be a very expensive endeavour, but at least it will be done. We have plans to put all the pets in daycare at PetSmart on moving day so that they don't get traumatized and also so that they don't get underfoot or, in the case of the cats, get unduly traumatized by all of the goings-on. PetSmart won't take any pets that aren't fully up to date on their vaccinations (and rightly so!), so this is an expensive but necessary step.

I have been researching fencing for the new property, and Dylan and Sarah recommended against putting in chain link fence, especially if I want to try doing it myself. Apparently you need a specific piece of equipment to stretch chain link fencing, and it's a pain in the ass to install correctly. They suggested I get rolls of welded wire fencing and t-posts instead, which is much easier for a beginner to install. I looked up the prices, and it looks like I might be able to get it all done for about $1,000, rather than the $3,000 to $9,000 that it would cost to pay someone to put up the roughly 300 feet of fencing I'll be needing. I do need to figure out how to build a gate for that kind of fence, since I'd want at least one or maybe two access points (one at the front, one toward the back so I can easily get to the rest of the property), but I'm sure that can be managed. My main fear is that it will prove to be beyond my ability and then I'll have wasted a bunch of money for nothing, but I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The fence will have to be a weekend project, and in the meantime I will be keeping the dogs contained (I hope) by the expedient means of a clotheline and tie-outs. It seems to work pretty well for Dylan and Sarah, but their dogs are not nearly as prone to escaping as mine. We shall see. They definitely won't be allowed outside unsupervised until such time as I am confident they won't go careening onto the neighbours' property or permanently vanish into the wilderness chasing after the wildlife.

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

I may have overdone it a little today, but in my defense it was (sort of) necessary. See, a couple of weeks ago I got a slightly nasty email from my community garden organiser, telling me I had to clear my stuff out of my old plot so they could till it. I was at the time dealing with my parents' medical emergency, and I knew that afterward I'd be working night shifts, so I told the organiser that I would be there on the morning of April 29th to deal with it, and to please not till my plot because I had a currant bush and a whole bunch of asparagus crowns that I planted there last year (which cost me a pretty penny, let me tell you!) that I wanted to rescue first.

Then of course I got Covid, and it was arguably at its peak on April 29th, so there was no way in hell I was going to be able to get to the community garden while I was running a fever and coughing my brains out and generally being horribly ill. Luckily for me, Dylan and Sarah were absolute heroes and rockstars and agreed to come help me today, a mere five days after I said I'd clear out the plot (my deadline was May 5th, so it's not as bad as it sounds). We first met up at the dog park and they brought their dogs, Frankie and Shadow, to play with Peggy and Pixie, and a good time was had by all.

Dylan and Sarah did most of the work in my plot, because I am about as useful as a wet paper towel these days, and Sarah kept telling me to sit down because I couldn't breathe. It was a humbling experience, not going to lie. We rescued the currant bush and the asparagus, cleared out the paving stones that were my abortive attempt at an herb spiral last year, all the cardboard I put down, a few bags of soil, and my 500 litre water barrel. The rest was all straw mulch and dirt, which we left in place.

We were also visited by a pair of mallards (a drake and a hen) who were not in the least put out by our presence, which was really sweet. They just swam by in a storm drain, doing duck things, totally unbothered.

I gave Dylan and Sarah a dozen quail eggs as a token thank you gesture, and offered to let them keep all the bags of soil, since I'm not going to be using it immediately anyway. I am going to have to figure out how to get soil delivered to the new property, since I definitely can't haul it in the Yaris and even KK's Nissan Rogue wouldn't be up to the task. It's a job for a pickup truck, to be sure. Maybe I can either rent a truck or arrange for delivery. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

I also helped KK carry the air conditioning unit up from the basement. The weather is getting much warmer, and if we want a snowball's chance in hell of not dying of heat prostration while we're trying to pack, then the A/C needs to go in the window in the living room.

So between the dog park, the community garden, and hauling the A/C unit up the stairs, I may have overdone it slightly. All of these things were necessary, because A) the dogs were climbing the walls out of boredom and frustration, B) the community garden was threatening to till my beloved asparagus, and C) the A/C is going to be needed in the coming weeks. But hoo boy, am I very sore and very tired. Hopefully I will sleep reasonably well as a result tonight.

Speaking of sleeping well, I am on Day 20 of using the CPAP, and now that I know that it was Covid causing my throat to be super sore and dry, I can say with confidence that I have no trouble using it at all. I'm a little frustrated about the Covid because it's completely skewing any impressions I might have had about my energy levels and brain fog. I can't tell if I'm improving because I've been as sick as the proverbial dog. ARGH.

Anyway, time will tell. At least I'm not struggling with the CPAP. I switched to the largest size of mask/nose pillow, as the two smaller sizes were causing sores to develop on either side of my nose (super attractive), and that has been working well for me so far. It doesn't keep me from sleeping, and even though I wake up during the night it's not noticeably more than before, and it's mostly just to reposition the hose when I turn over and it does something weird. So, so far so good.

Okay. Time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: exhausted

I’m updating from my phone as an experiment. I’m more of a computer and keyboard person, as a rule, but I figured I’d see what the mobile interface is like. It’s not bad, maybe a little on the small side for a middle-aged woman who needs reading glasses these days.

I’m still tired and short of breath, but improved since yesterday. Tomorrow I have to go to the community garden to rescue my stuff from my old plot before the association tills it and kills all the perennial plants I planted last year. My friends Dylan and Sarah may be coming out to help me, at least. After that we have a reservation at a private dog park, so we’ll take the Brittanies and their coon hound Frankie for a run. If KK is feeling up to it she’ll come as well with Rika, who also loves the park. The poor Brittanies are going stir crazy since we’ve been sick and stuck at home. A good romp in the park will do us all a world of good.

On that note, it’s time for bed. One day I will have the energy for longer posts, but today is not that day.

Current Mood: tired

Pixie was much improved this morning. She was excited to get out of her kennel and was even more excited to have some plain rice to eat as a snack. Said rice and water stayed where they were supposed to, and while she's not back up to 100% demon spawn levels of energy, she was pretty bouncy all day and counter-surfed, tried to climb the cat tree, and resumed her vigil by the basement gate in case I decided to let her downstairs to eat the quail. So I think she's pretty much on the mend, although I intend to stick to plain rice for at least another day to be on the safe side.

I was the Greeter for Quaker Meeting today, and it went well. We've had some ruffled feathers in the Meeting of late, because everyone is very much on edge from, well, everything. *gestures broadly* The constitutional crisis in the US, innocent people getting deported to what is essentially a concentration camp in El Salvador (technically it's a prison, but the pictures from there are horrific, with men packed in like sardines, sometimes 80 to a cell, having to sleep standing up, etc.). This is not to say that I believe guilty people should be sent there either. No one, regardless of their status, should be sent to a place like that. Not even the worst, most horrific offenders, because that place is a horror show and even the worst criminals who have committed the most heinous crimes must be treated with a minimum of dignity, because they are human beings.

There's also the Canadian federal election coming up on April 28th. KK and I went to the advance polls today and cast our ballots. There were very few people there today, but CTV news reported that 2 million Canadians went to vote in advance on Friday, which is apparently a record! This is very encouraging indeed. I went over to the Elections Canada website, and of our population of 38,131,104 people, we have 27,642,171 people eligible to vote (i.e. citizens who are 18 years old or older and not the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada). From what I can see we've had a voter turnout that hovers in the 60% range, give or take, for the past 30 years, so I'd love to see more voter engagement this time around. I think I've missed one election in my adult life, although I don't remember which one it was. I have forbears who died for my right to vote, so I'm not about to squander it.

I just had a quick Skype call with my parents, and my mother immediately ratted out my father who apparently passed out today. He tried to blow it off, but I was not having it. I have extricated a promise from him to go see a doctor about it tomorrow. My father had a stroke nearly three years ago, and even though he was very lucky and came out of it with no ill effects, that still puts him at risk for another one. He said he wasn't feeling sick or dizzy, he just lost consciousness for a few seconds. *beats head against the nearest wall* Both my parents are terrible patients, and they tend to be noncompliant with a lot of the treatments they are prescribed as well. To say I am worried about this would be a fucking understatement. I reminded my mother that she had agreed with me that it would be a good idea to get a Life Alert button (or an equivalent, but honestly my research showed that Life Alert is one of the more comprehensive service providers out there), and she once again agreed with me. I don't think I can count on her to get one because I don't think she has the wherewithal to go through the whole process, and my father is pretty resistant to the idea at all. I don't know if I can convince both of them to go through with it, but I am damned well going to try.

Having aging parents is a LOT, y'all.

Okay. I am going to go do a last check on the quail, and then go to bed. I changed out their bedding today (it was *gross*), and they are super happy. They dug and scratched and floofed their feathers and made little nests in the pine shavings and made happy quail noises. It was absolutely adorable. They also laid two more eggs, which is awesome. I think tomorrow I will finally be making a recipe using the quail eggs, now that I have a full dozen (meaning the equivalent of about four chicken eggs).

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: anxious

I completely forgot that I hadn't made a post today. In my defense, I've been preoccupied. Yesterday KK told me that Pixie had vomited a couple of times, and when I got home there was more puke on the stairs. She ate her dinner seemingly without issue, but all evening she was restless and couldn't quite settle and kept whining intermittently. When I put her to bed in her kennel, she vomited again almost immediately, and then spent the rest of the night puking. So neither she nor I got much sleep. It sucked.

Today she spent the morning trying to drink her weight in water and then throwing it up in a passable imitation of a really malodourous Niagara Falls. We finally had to leash her to prevent her from drinking too much, too fast, and she spent most of the day being the picture of misery. She kept trying to lie down under KK's desk until we figured out that she wanted to sleep on the blanket that KK keeps there. We actually have a bunch of blankets specifically for the dogs, so I pulled one out for her and she immediately curled up on it and went to sleep.

She's shown no interest at all in food all day, so I've made her an appointment at the vet on Monday. Hopefully she'll be better by then, but better safe than sorry. I don't think we're at the point yet where it warrants a trip to the emergency vet, but we'll see how she does tomorrow.

It is long past time for me to go to bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: worried

The day started out quite promising. I was up in time to get out the door for my appointment. KK, however, slept through her alarm and therefore didn't go to the office today, and worked from home instead. Luckily her job doesn't require her to be at the office to perform her duties, and she has come to a tentative truce with her manager about letting her work from home a bit more in order to manage her pain levels better. She had intended to go in today, but the weather change combined with the natural end of the effects of the injections she got in January (it's a special lubricant thing, I think, but I don't know what it's called) have been wreaking havoc on her lately.

The doctor ran 15 minutes late for our appointment, but the appointment itself lasted for maybe five minutes, tops. The doctor confirmed what I already knew, and performed a fairly perfunctory exam of my lungs and throat. Apparently my throat and neck structure are "built for apnea," with an extremely narrow pharyngeal opening, and it seems that still having my tonsils contributes to that, or so I gathered. He wrote me a prescription for a CPAP, and cheerfully told me that about 50% of his patients reported feeling better after CPAP therapy. Not gonna lie, I found that a little disheartening. A 50/50 chance of still feeling like absolute garbage. Boo. I asked if there was perhaps a commonality between the people who did feel better after using a CPAP, and it turns out it works best for people who experience the apnea during REM sleep, which is exactly when I experience it! So I am a little encouraged by that.

Anyway, I called the local CPAP supply place nearest to my house as soon as I left the appointment, and then realized that they were still closed. I called a few more times while I was driving home (using Bluetooth, have no fear), and got no answer. Since it's a literal five minute drive from my home I decided to just go there directly and ask in person, and it worked! I spoke to a nice lady at the counter, and she said they could see me next Tuesday at 1pm. That's not ideal, since I'm working night shifts next week, and an appointment right in the middle of when I would normally be sleeping sounds kind of awful, but I was willing to take it if it was the earliest available one. I pulled out my now tried-and-true "do you have a cancellation list?" card, and she promised she'd let me know, but that their provider was actually only in three days a week since they were "in-between." I had to ask in-between what, since surely there can't be an apnea season, or whatever, and it turns out she meant they're in-between providers, so I guess they just have one person covering multiple locations.

I thanked her, left, got in my car, and hadn't even pulled out of the parking lot when she called me to let me know she could fit me in tomorrow, with an array of time slots, no less! I'm guessing that the provider added a day to the calendar right as I was leaving. So I am getting in tomorrow afternoon at 3pm, which was the latest I could get. I'm working 7 to 3 tomorrow, so I wanted to lose as little work time as possible, given that I had to take nearly two hours off today as well. But the good news is that as of tomorrow afternoon I will likely be coming home with a CPAP to trial for the next three to four weeks! I am VERY excited to get this going. One more (more) sleep!

I was scheduled to work from home the rest of the day, and spent most of that time fighting with Outlook, which has decided it doesn't want to send emails anymore. They just hang out in the inbox and refuse to go anywhere, which is extremely inconvenient. Grr.

Then, right when I was about to get dinner started, all hell broke loose in the house. For some reason, Juno decided to be Very Brave and came downstairs while the Brittanies were loose. The dogs immediately lost their collective shit and took off after her. There was barking and shrieking and growling and hissing, and a million things got knocked around as they proceeded to trash the fuck out of my house. By the time I caught up with them (less than a minute) Pixie had Juno in her mouth and was using her as a chew toy. She let go as I arrived, and she and Peggy took up sentry positions on the stairs, so that they would have easy access to Juno if I tried to carry her up the stairs. Poor Juno was soaked in her own urine, and so all of that got transferred onto me as I picked her up and sent her to the basement for temporary safety. Then a a few minutes later Pixie busted through the baby gate to the basement, and there was another round of me chasing her around. Luckily Juno was well hidden, so at least the only thing to do was chase her back up the stairs.

So then I took a very long, very hot shower. To quote a D&D character of a friend I play with: "Never clean! NEVER CLEAN!" And THEN I made dinner. While I was brushing the dogs' teeth, I noticed that Pixie absolutely reeked of cat pee, so I took her upstairs and gave her a bath, much to her consternation. KK had already mentioned she smelled and had tried to scrub her down with some dog wipes, but they were unequal to the task. Pixie does NOT enjoy the non-consensual wetnesses, specifically she hates being in the rain and also being rinsed, so there was a lot of screaming and carrying on. My poor neighbours must think I routinely torture my dogs, based solely on the sounds that Pixie produces. Jeez.

Anyway, Juno is none the worse for wear after I gave her a more thorough going-over a few minutes ago to check for injuries. Pixie is now clean, and I got absolutely soaked, but I am calling it a win. I have changed the quails' food and water, and they gave me another egg! Luckily I always keep the laundry room door closed, so they were undisturbed by the earlier cat-and-dog antics. I did notice one of the males pecking at the other birds, and I don't like that at all. If he continues to be aggressive he may have to be separated from the others for their well-being. Time will tell, I guess. I will definitely hold off on drastic measures like culling until I get them into larger quarters when we move, since this might just be due to the quail being in slightly too close quarters to each other. But yes, if he keeps it up longer than that he may well end up being dinner one night.

All right. Time for bed. I need to be up at stupid o'clock tomorrow to be at work on time. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: indescribable

I can't think of anything to write about tonight, which is kind of a problem since I'm trying to maintain an updating streak. The days are sort of blurring together this week, which often happens when I start evening and night shifts.

Ministry & Counsel are driving me a little nuts this week. There has been a flurry of emails about the State of Society Report, which honestly should be finished by now but people from the Meeting keep goddamn nitpicking at it and I am ready to scream. There's also a lot of dithering about whether to extend the contract of the Resident Friend, who has come to the end of his three year contract. Everyone seems to be in favour of extending it, but typically contracts don't extend beyond three years, and the previous Resident Friend actually hired a lawyer to force the Meeting to extend her contract for a number of reasons I won't get into here so as to protect her privacy. It was super messy, and everyone is understandably a bit skittish about having a repeat performance, even though there is absolutely no indication that the current Resident Friend would do the same. It's not even up to Ministry & Counsel whether to extend the contract, we just make a recommendation one way or the other. Bah.

I have decided this year to pay someone to deal with the ocean of poop in my backyard after the winter season. I want to put in a couple of raised beds, but this will work better if the yard isn't covered in dog poop. Two Brittanies produce more poop than you'd imagine over a single winter season. Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of making the backyard look less like a muddy cesspool for the dogs to wallow in. I actually paid someone for the past two years to do a spring clean-up, and that company stopped offering the service in my area (it may be temporary but they can't give me a timeline of when they think they'll have someone in my area again), so I found another service with comparable prices. I'm actually pretty impressed that there are two companies that offer poop removal services in my city. Who knew?

I've ordered groceries for tomorrow, and I must say that ordering groceries has been a blessing. I was always reluctant to take advantage of delivery because it felt like cheating, somehow, but honestly not having to spend two hours a week on grocery shopping has changed my life. Two hours doesn't seem like all that much, but my God it drained all my energy like no one's business, and it would just wreck half a day (prepare the list, drive to the store, shop, drive home, unpack the groceries, collapse from lack of spoons). So, yeah, now I either do pick-ups during weeks when I'm working regular day shifts, or delivery when I'm working evenings, nights, and weekends. I'm trying to view it as an accommodation and not feel too guilty about it. I also make a point of tipping as well as I can (the website has a limit on how much you can tip the delivery person, alas).

Tomorrow I have therapy in the morning, and then my last evening shift starting at 3pm. KK had an appointment with the registered dietician from the bariatric clinic today, and it looks like I'm going to have to work a little harder to get more protein and nutrition into our everyday food. I've been looking at one of the bariatric cookbooks I got when she first told me she was going to get the surgery, and much as I feared, a lot of that food is quite simply stuff she won't eat. So much of it is tomato-based, or involves tofu or mushrooms or beans or coconut. Most of the recipes sound delicious to me, but I will have to make some serious modifications or maybe just take inspiration from them rather than following them exactly. I've had some success in the past from substituting some ingredients in recipes, so hopefully we'll be able to find something that works.

I'm planning to incorporate increasingly bariatric-friendly recipes in our meals, so that KK will have a chance to get used to them and it won't be a huge change all at once, once she's past the point of the liquid food/puréed food part of the post-surgical diet. It will be good for me to get used to it as well, but I'm much more of an omnivore than she is. When I was talking to the dietitian on Tuesday I kind of had to rack my brain when she asked me if there were foods I didn't like at all. There are definitely some: I don't really care for olives, sardines, and liver, among other things. I don't think there's anything I absolutely won't eat. I'm not a huge fan of slimy textures, either, like undercooked eggs (undercooked whites are the wooooorst), but overall I can choke down almost anything out of politeness if I have to, it's just a matter of foods I won't seek out. Feeding KK stuff she will actually eat is going to be a hell of a challenge once I can't smother everything in cheese anymore. ;)

Interestingly, I found out today that KK is not as far along in the process as I thought. I'm supposed to talk to the behaviourist and then do the Pre-Surgery 2 course, and she told me today that she hasn't been to Pre-Surgery 2 either, whereas I thought she had already finished that stage. It's true that she's a lot more complex a case than me both from the standpoint of her physical health and her mental health, and so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she's had to have several extra appointments with the dietitian, psychiatrist, and behaviourist, on top of having to undergo that course of antibiotics to get rid of the h. pylori infection she was rocking last year. She started the process in early-ish 2024, so at the rate we're going I may get ahead of her on "the path" as they like to call it.

The only thing I want to avoid is having both of us in surgical recovery at the same time. It will be bad enough when I go through the surgery, because she won't be able to help me at all (and I am rather concerned about the weight restrictions for lifting/pulling/pushing because she won't be able to help with groceries or anything else), so having her be incapacitated after surgery with me unable to help her in any way is a recipe for disaster. I have to make sure I'm as functional as possible for the most amount of time possible. It's possible that once she starts losing a substantial amount of weight she might be able to do more around the house, but I'm not banking on it. I don't think it's a realistic expectation at this point.

Anyway, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

This weekend I'll be home for the most part, so hopefully I'll have the chance to get stuff done. Seed starting, cleaning, and a bunch of cooking and meal prep for next week.

Current Mood: thoughtful

I'm working the Marine desk at work today and it is BUSY. I've had a vessel on fire, a vessel adrift, a search and rescue, a 600 foot log blocking an inlet, and a girl who jumped into the Toronto Harbour because she wanted to swim to Jerusalem. (She was taken to a local hospital for treatment.) Anyway, because things are super busy tonight I don't know if I'll have time to properly update my journal but I also don't want to leave it for when I get home, because by then it will be late enough that I'll break my streak of posting every day, and I am being weird about keeping that streak going.

I took Peggy to the vet this morning, and we ended up having to wait nearly 45 minutes because they had a medical emergency come in before us. I caught sight of a beautiful long-haired orange kitten named Sunshine who had been brought in by a local rescue, and he was crashing hard with some sort of illness they couldn't identify. His temperature plummeted and he could barely hold his head up, poor thing. He'd also apparently been suffering from some sort of kidney infection and an upper respiratory infection, too. He was an absolutely gorgeous cat, though, and since he's a ginger boy, he will make someone a very happy cat parent if he pulls through. I have a real soft spot for orange kitties and their single brain cells. He was still being nursed with hot water bottles by a vet tech when I left.

Peggy was very good and patient right up until a man brought in his cat in a carrier, and then she lost all of her self-control. She got away from me several times and head-butted the carrier, much to my chagrin. Luckily the cat owner was very forgiving. Peggy whined and barked and generally carried on until we were brought to the back, and the man did make a snide comment about "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," until I sternly pointed out to him that she'd been really patient for nearly 40 minutes while the vet techs dealt with the emergency (the vet techs even commented on how good she was being!) and that we were being seen really late. I don't think he meant it badly, but I was irked.

Speaking of lateness, my tax person was late yesterday for my appointment, which annoyed me more than it probably should have. I was the first appointment of the day at 9:00am, and at 9:00am the office wasn't even open. The receptionist came and unlocked the office at 9:05, and she came from outside before you try to argue that she was probably busy setting things up inside. The accountant meant to be helping me arrived a few minutes later, and I was just left to loiter in the waiting room until 9:20. Like, why bother giving a 9:00 availability if you're not even going to open on time or offer an apology for being late? Ugh.

I also had an appointment with the dietitian from the Bariatric Clinic today, and she was late too, but at least she apologized and explained that it was due to some gnarly computer problems, which I can totally empathize with. We had to rush the appointment a little bit because I had to go to work for my evening shift, but we got 'er done, as they say. The dietitian was super nice, and we covered things like my eating habits and general knowledge and what my expectations were from the program. Nothing earth-shattering, but she was very pleased with my understanding of things and said that she didn't think I'd have to meet with her again before surgery.

Next Wednesday I meet with the behaviourist (directly after my night shift, uuuuugh), where I assume we will talk about all the good habits I don't have and all of the bad habits I've been clinging to. ;) Once that appointment is done I have one more pre-surgery group information session, and then unless they decide I need to have other tests or see someone else (like a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker), it will be time for me to meet with the surgeon to discuss the actual surgery and see if he/she/they will sign off on it for me. I think the main holdup may well be waiting for the results of my sleep test. Hopefully we'll have those by the end of April, but given the current state of healthcare I may be too optimistic on that front. Fingers crossed, I guess!

Okay, back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

The sleep study went okay. The ADHD struck and I misread the instructions on when to arrive (I saw "twenty" minutes but the email actually said "thirty," oops) but I managed to get there in time anyway. I located a parking spot ($15 for overnight, ouch) and hustled my way to the secondary reception point, since the primary one isn't open on weekends, apparently. I got myself signed in, then went to the cardio-pulmonary ward where a sign directed me to a waiting room where there were clipboards and pens with a form to fill out.

Am I the only one who overthinks medical forms? Or any form, for that matter? Anything that asks me to answer YES or NO immediately sends me into a tizzy of "Well, it DEPENDS. What exactly do you MEAN?" And of course it's a paper form, so it can't provide answers to your clarifying questions. :P One of the questions was: "Please describe the nature of your sleep trouble," or something to that effect, and I just wanted to yell at the paper "I don't KNOW! That is the whole POINT of having a sleep study done! To see if I have trouble!" I tried to ask myself how a neurotypical person might interpret the question, and decided it landed in the category of "Tell me what brings you in today," and went with that.

I had a very lovely technician named Marilyn who got me all strapped in with more wires than I had initially imagined, which is saying something, because I had imagined quite a number of wires. There were also straps and cannulas and extra sensors. Marilyn was joined by another technician named Rita, and drew on my head using a special kind of wax crayon. It was red crayon, and I amused them a lot by asking about the colour and whether they each had a favourite, because apparently no one had ever asked about the crayon colour before. It seemed a natural enough question to ask, but I guess not. They glued a bunch of electrodes to my scalp using a putty that was kind of like wax and would later prove to be rather tricky to wash out, and then it was time for the sleepings in the beddings, as we say to the dogs in our household.

I actually managed to sleep decently, all things considered. I woke up a few times, but not much more than I would if I were at home, and I had weird dreams in which the hospital setting merged with some sort of superhero storyline (it's all a bit of a blur now). At 04:49 a code blue was announced throughout the entire hospital, which was a little jarring, but I went back to sleep relatively easily after that. I felt bad, but it's not like I was in any kind of position to do anything about the poor person in the ER who was having a truly terrible night. I hope they're okay, but of course I will never know.

Marilyn woke me around 5:30. I thought it was closer to 06:00, but I didn't look at my watch until I was back at my car and realized it was only 6:05, so it must have been closer to 5:30. I got unstrapped, we commiserated over night shift work, I thanked her for all her hard work, and then got dressed and was on my way. I was home again by 6:45, had a quick snack, then stood in a hot shower for a very long time trying to clean the goop out of my hair, and took a nap from 8:00 to 9:00 so that I wouldn't be a complete zombie at work today (because I had agreed to swap shifts partially with one of my coworkers who had hockey games scheduled today).

I've been at work since 11:00, and up until not that long ago things were pretty busy. Luckily most of it has been pretty routine, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to be routine for the next couple of hours until it's time to go home.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I have an appointment to get my taxes done, and I am considering going very early to get my blood drawn before that, and then much later in the morning I need to take Peggy to the vet to get her bum squished (one of my favourite euphemisms for anal gland expression). Exciting times, indeed! I know you are all riveted by the minutiae of my daily existence.

Catch you all on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: working

I got up at a reasonable hour two days in a row on the weekend, and I still feel as though everything went by in a total flash. It's been a productive weekend, no doubt, but still, where the hell did all my time go?

I got a load of laundry done for work, and fulfilled my duties as Greeter for Meeting. Then there was just enough time to run upstairs, grab some food, and then KK and I went off on our field trip to visit the cool house that used to be a bank. The house had been staged to highlight its historical past, with cool photographs of the old bank as well as the family who lived there once it was converted to a residence. There was a family bible, and lots of old Royal Canadian Mint coins from various decades set up in various displays.

It was definitely not the right kind of house for us, even if we had been interested. The basement was all but inaccessible thanks to some steep, crooked, and narrow stairs, although it was in good condition once you got down there. Getting down there was an exercise in not dying of a broken neck, however. The stairs going up were also extremely steep and narrow but were at least straight. The upstairs was lovely and bright, with most of the original flooring except for the master bedroom. There was a hole in the floor which was rather alarming, and the whole place needed a lot of cosmetic repair at the very least, which would have to be done in such a way as to preserve the historical nature of the home because I think it's been declared part of Canadian heritage, or something along those lines.

We left after about 15 minutes, and I got cornered in the doorway by a family with three kids (one baby, and two little girls around the age of six or seven, maybe eight at the utmost). They didn't intend to trap me, but small children tend to mill about a fair bit, and these were no exception. Their grandmother (I think?) was trying to get them to remove their shoes, and the littlest one was not at all keen on it because there was so much melting snow. She stood on her tiptoes, then looked me square in the face and asked: "Will you hold my hand?" So I did, and she was able to navigate past the puddles successfully. It was very cute. Luckily we keep hand sanitizer in the car, because even though I love kids, they are walking germ factories at that age, and I was not keep on bringing home more illness than strictly necessary.

I made lasagna when we got home and shoved it in the oven before Skyping with my parents. I just learned today that Skype is being discontinued completely after May 5th, which means I have to teach my 88 year old mother how to use a different video platform after using Skype to talk to each other for the past 11 years. *sobs quietly* Luckily I'm heading over there on Saturday for a visit, since it's her birthday on Tuesday (she will be turning 88 then), so I plan to set her up with a Zoom account and we will go from there. Hopefully it won't be too complicated for her to use. My father already uses Zoom with some of his university colleagues, so he's familiar with the platform.

I don't have any full work from home days this week, which is making things a little difficult with regards to medicating the chihuahua. KK is trying to figure out if she can manage some half days, and I have two half-days working from home but only in the mornings, which doesn't help us much, since meds typically have to be administered in the early afternoon. I'm sure we'll work it out, but it's a bit of a pain. It would be so much easier if Rika wasn't semi-feral and hated everyone except KK. She'll tolerate me giving her meds, but if she tolerated other people a bit more we could put her in daycare and just pay a bit of extra money on the days when KK has to be at work. Unfortunately she's a feral, vicious little beastie who won't let anyone near her, so we're kind of stuck for the moment.

On that note, it's time for bed. Good night, friends!

Current Mood: content

My coworker brought Indian take-out to work last night, and I had a vindaloo that was super delicious but apparently had also gone ever so slightly off, so my plans today were thwarted by luckily mild food poisoning. I had originally been going to spend the day with my friends Dylan and Sarah, but instead I spent the morning with chamomile tea and toast.

Once I was feeling a little better I decided to make the most of a bad situation, and attended to the dogs' much-neglected nails. Pixie's nails are done, and Peggy is next on the list. Before I can do their nails I need to use the clippers on their paws, because their fur tends to grow quite long there and gets caught in the Dremel tool that I use on them, which no one enjoys. I also did a laser therapy session with Peggy for her hips, and did some physiotherapy with her. I've been slacking on that front and need to do better.

KK and I also moved all the furniture from the living room (well, all the stuff that CAN be moved, I should say) in order to run the Roomba, but the Roomba was mysteriously not charged up, so now we're waiting for it to charge on its docking station. Still, we're having a pretty decently productive day in spite of my digestive malaise. I decided to handle the Quaker Announcements a little early today so that I don't have to deal with it later tonight (and can thus go to bed early-ish if I so desire), and I'm taking the opportunity to write this quick update now as well for much the same reasons.

I don't have much to talk about aside from that right now. Politics continue to be a trash fire, and I may have ordered a bunch more seeds for the garden that I haven't started yet. I also ordered more compost worms earlier this week, so now I just have to wait for them to contact me and let me know when I can go pick them up.

So yeah. A very short update from me today. Maybe I'll have more to report tomorrow. Have a great day, friends!

Current Mood: sick

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Page generated Mar. 9th, 2026 07:07 am

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with dogs

January 21st, 2026

January 16th 2026

Happy Birthday to Me!

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Apparently I'm permanently cranky

An uneventful day

I am looking forward to my days getting shorter

What a day, and it hasn't even really begun...

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I overdid it a little

Ah, modern technology

Ups and downs

Oops! Almost missed my update today.

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Where did my weekend go?

Delicious mistakes were made