it's not time yet, go lie down

One morning back in June, the day I started writing this post, I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating peanut butter toast and working on a killer sudoku, enjoying the cool summer breeze wafting in through the screened patio door, listening to the birdsong outside, trying not to cry.

 

The novelty of having the patio door open in June was not lost on me on this not-exactly-tropical island where summer usually only deigns to occur on the occasional weekday in July. Plus I haven't had a patio screen door in about 15 years. 

The problem with having rampaging labs is that they are really hard on screens, especially if one of those labs is in fact a 100-pound Newfoundland and Labrador with ginormous paws who is not afraid to use them, and when you are taking too long to find the pause button on the remote so you can go let him inside.

Hearts ©2016 no plot

If you were able to resist that sweet face (I certainly couldn't), you would not be able to resist the power of that tremendous paw, shredding metal screens like they were tissue paper or simply demanding the pats that you were legally obligated to provide him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Hearts amendment, 2007).*

Pwning this couch since 2007.** ©2020 no plot

Hearts came into our lives by stealth.  We would never have taken on a dog of his size at that point in time*** given that we were in canine recovery, having endured an entire year of crazy in the form of Shadow, the lab-husky mix who made us understand why some people abandon their children on doorsteps. 

Shadow contemplates his prey, an evil gleam in his eye. The shoe was never seen again.
©2005 Mike who probably didn't know what he was getting us into.**** 

Shadow was approximately four months old when we got him, having spent most of that time living on the parish up in Natuashish. One day, he decided to run into Mike's house and used his powers of cuteness to enthrall Mike who in turn convinced us that all this adorable pup needed was a good home (to trash) and some unsuspecting people to love (traumatize).  He was a sweet dog but he had no off-switch, which was problematic in a family that is constantly misplacing its on-switch. He tore a terrible path of mastication through our lives, shredding dog toys, child's toys, slippers, shoes, boots, window screens, screen doors, coffee tables, etc. He dug under every fence, slipped every backyard tie. He was a very difficult dog to live with until one day, he got very, very sick, very, very fast, and then he up and died. We were devastated (but also relieved).

It was a while before we could muster up any enthusiasm for getting another dog. But after 5 months of not knowing when he was well off, Her Father started visiting the SPCA websites again, convinced that if he avoided puppies, he could find an older dog whose personality and behaviour would be more readily apparent, easier to assess; a calm dog who would fit into our lives with less disruption and decidedly less carnage.

Which is why we decided to adopt Sylvie, a stray who had been found wandering the streets of Mount Pearl.

Sylvie, aka the Trojan Horse. ©2007ish no plot

She was quiet, she was calm, she was approximately one year old. She was everything we were looking for.

She was also not spayed but they didn't think she was pregnant...

.... ©2007 no plot

HF came back from the vet's in early May to announce that Sylvie was about to become an unwed mother at any minute - any minute turned out to be 9 p.m. that night. I desperately googled birth plans for dogs and was horrified to see that it involved a lot more than hot water and towels.

I looked at Sylvie and wondered how dogs managed to give birth before they could read about it on the internet. I decided to let her get on with it, since she probably knew more about it than I did, but I left the webpage open just in case. She gave birth in this very room not five feet away from the computer. I expect she checked it once or twice when we weren't looking.

The first pup to arrive was named Special by SWDNO who, at 5-almost-6 years old, was given leave to stay up past her bedtime to see the puppies being born. She named the second pup Hearts.  We have no idea if the first two pups were in fact the ones who ended up with those names because it was at least two weeks before we were able to tell them apart. They were all ninja black, or so it appeared at first.

The third puppy arrived after we had convinced SWDNO to go to bed, informing her that Sylvie was done having babies when clearly she wasn't. Four and five arrived sometime in the night after HF used the same ruse on me.

The next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. and jumped out of bed like it was Christmas morning and Santa had finally brought me exactly what I wanted.  Up to this point, I hadn't really felt that connected to Sylvie, particularly since she made it clear from the start that HF was her one true love, but we finally proceeded to bond over our joint love of adorable puppies; all was finally forgiven regarding the birthday lamb chop stolen off my plate one month before.*****

My mother was amazed that I was willing to take on the hassle of caring for puppies, but it wasn't really any more surprising than my willingness to care for SWDNO. It was a bit overwhelming at times but at least Sylvie was more helpful in cleaning up poop than certain other co-parents I could name, even if her method was unexpected and rather disturbing.******

Even though we couldn't tell them apart or even determine their sex (we checked - it seriously could have gone either way), we decided on names for the other three pups; I called one Third of Five. HF named one Jasper and Drama Queen named one Princess.

Puppy pinwheel, ©2007 no plot

As the days passed, it became clear that a) they were all boys but Hearts, Special, and Princess were totally man enough to deal, and b) the pup who we were constantly finding several feet from the puppy pen in the dining room had brown leggings. We decided that this was Third of Five. 

Then one morning we came down to discover The Great Escape in progress.

Great escaping is exhausting, ©2007 no plot.

It then became clear that Third of Five was in reality the reincarnation of Steve McQueen, tasked with reconnoitring the mysterious world outside the prison camp puppy pen to prepare the way for his brothers' ill-fated escape attempt.

Eventually, we noticed that two pups had white toes on their hind feet. They became Hearts and Special. You could only tell them apart by picking them up because Special had two white hearts on his chest and Hearts had only one.*******

The SPCA said they would help us find homes for the pups when they were old enough - they would have taken the whole family back if we wanted but I just laughed in their faces, or I would have if I had been speaking to them, because MY PUPPIES!

HF said we should find homes for all the pups but he was clearly delusional, because MY PUPPIES! I knew we couldn't keep them all, especially when we noticed the size of their paws and realized they were going to be Big Boys!, but giving all of them up was unthinkable. I ended up having to bribe HF by finally agreeing to buy a gas-guzzling SUV, global warming be damned, so we could transport twice as many dogs as we had originally intended.********

I thought choosing which one to keep was going to be hard, but in the end I didn't have to make the choice.  Hearts and SWDNO made the choice for me.

Every time SWDNO entered the puppy pen, she would sit down on a low stool and there would be a mad puppy rush towards her. She would then pick up the one who got to her first; nine times out of ten, that puppy was Hearts. 

Then SWDNO told us we were keeping Hearts so we just agreed.

It broke my heart to give up the others but I have never regretted our choice.

Having two labs seemed to have saved us no end of trouble with inappropriate chewing. Steve McQueen's adoptive mother regaled me with a long list of the things he destroyed, including a cell phone, but Hearts and Sylvie were mostly happy to chew on each other, only occasionally doing the naughty by chewing pencils, pens, tissues, but not much else.

Little girls make excellent chew toys, ©2007 no plot

Also we had to keep the kitchen doors closed or Hearts, aka Jean Valjean, would steal some bread from the-not-so-safe-after-all furthest corner of the counter or raid the garbage can. Then he would sneakily hide around the corner by the patio door to snack on his booty out of sight of the casual passerby. He would never steal anything off the table or counter while you were watching but if you were foolish enough to leave him alone, all bets were off.

Hearts was also a chocoholic, starting with his first Christmas when he found and demolished an entire bag of Laura Secord chocolate balls that had been buried in a bag of Christmas presents. Then there was the time he found the Easy Bake Oven cake mixes that had been stashed in a bedroom closet and he decided to test them out. And the two children I still owe new hoodies after he gnawed a hole in their pockets to get at the tasty sweets inside.  If chocolate had been a controlled substance, Hearts would have had a great career as a sniffer dog at the airport.

For the first year or so, the dogs would stalk us in the mornings, waiting for the first sign of life to start pestering us to give them breakfast. Hearts would stick his big, old nose in your face if you merely cracked an eyelid at him. Because we are expert dog trainers, we eventually cured them of that habit with the simple command "It's not time yet, go lie down!" (patent pending). Rolling over became permissable once more until a more reasonable hour, but once your feet hit the floor, it was "no time to pee, give me my Dentastix!"

We had to walk them every day or there would be wrassling, wrassling that would rearrange the furniture.  Sylvie revealed that she was not exactly as calm as we thought, turning into a psycho-killer every time we ran into another dog when we had her on leash.  All other dogs must die! she'd snarl, also, pickups, vans, and SUVs (irony) because she's a committed environmentalist.

Hearts, on the other hand, loved every dog he ever met. So much so that several times he pulled me off my feet in his eagerness to get to them. He was always so disappointed whenever the other dog refused to be BFFs.  Although why anyone would get nervous about 100 lbs of muscle heading straight for them dragging a middle-aged woman in his wake, I'll never know. 

Once we switched to a Gentle Leader, a leash which went around his nose instead of his thickly impervious neck, I was able to walk him without incurring further road rash.

It was also highly inadvisable to let him know that you had any notion of taking him for a Chinese cooking pot (wok) or an opposite of cow (woc), or make any sudden moves towards the stairs or breathe in his general direction after supper, or it was Hammer Time. Navigating down the multitudinous stairs in a split-level is no easy chore with a wooly mammoth dancing at your heels like he's trying out for Soul Train.

When Hearts felt joy, the very ground trembled.

Fortunately for us, if it wasn't breakfast or walk time, Hearts was the chillest dog I have ever met.  He loved to just hang with the fam; weekend mornings usually found the no plot family gathered in the living room, both dogs sprawled on the floor, Hearts soaking up all the available rays.

A furry sundial, ©2020 no plot

His favourite position was horizontal but this did not mean he would not bestir himself to demand the attention that was his due. Sylvie might lie idly by, waiting for someone to notice her, but Hearts would accost you for love as you lay hove off on the love seat, obediently sitting beside you and smiting you with his mighty paw until you complied. But before too long he would slump to the floor, all the while expecting you to contort yourself to continue with the pats (op cit. Charter of Rights and Freedom).

I'm not sure when SWDNO got the brilliant idea that Hearts would make a good Therapy Dog with St. John Ambulance but when she did, I agreed wholeheartedly. A little halfheartedly, when I realized she was too young to do it and I would have to be his handler. I was all for her working on her social anxiety by talking to absolute strangers but not quite as keen on working on my own.

I like people a whole lot better when I don't have to rack my brains for words and...sentences and...stuff... Whatever. The point is, Hearts was always up for meeting other dogs and being worshipped by humans. In fact he insisted on it.

I decided that since I was always willing to talk to anyone who was willing to admire my dog, I could somehow manage. 

Hearts passed the Therapy Dog test with flying colours. He had no problem with walking into a roomful of dogs and letting them live (unlike Sylvie). He accepted that he couldn't be their BFF, for now, and allowed me to keep him from sniffing their butts (but secretly plotted to do so at his first opportunity). 

Tremendous bangs and crashes from dropped metal objects fazed him not a bit. When the examiner put a blanket over his head and made weird noises at him to simulate unexpected behaviour a dog might encounter, Hearts just stuck his head under the blanket and licked him on the nose.

I love a man in uniform, ©2018 no plot

We started off visiting a nursing home but I quickly learned that parallel parking an enormous canine next to a hospital bed was not easy to do, especially when the dog in question was more keen to give into the lure of gravity when the pats were light and tentative. We started visiting a dementia ward because the women there were ambulatory and more likely to pat hard enough to keep him happy. Even those who weren't interested in patting him would smile delightedly and ask questions, usually the same ones, over and over.

SWDNO's high school and university were a little more to his liking, teenagers and young adults being more likely to worship him on their knees, sometimes 5 and 6 at a time. There was plenty of dog to go around. 

No matter where we ended up, Hearts always got excited when he saw me wearing the St. John's Ambulance t-shirt that meant we were about to go get some pats.

But even when the pats were not up to scratch, I think he still liked to go and just be with people. He had a knack for showing up when I needed him, in any case. Whenever I begrudgingly got around to doing the melon-farming dishes, he was usually there lying on the kitchen floor behind me, giving me moral support.

Helping with dishes and mopping the floor with his tongue which was too big for his mouth anyway, ©2018 no plot

When Hearts turned 13 back in May and Sylvie probably turned 14, I worried he wouldn't be with us much longer. Thirteen has been an unlucky age for too many of my dogs, Jason, Mugsy, Becky, probably Snuffy.

Birthday boy and girl in hand crafted hats by SWDNO. ©2020 no plot

It still didn't make it easier when HF came home from the vet's with the news. Hearts had started to slow down on our walks again - we thought his arthritis was paining him but it was cancer. There wasn't anything to be done that wouldn't put him through needless pain that wasn't likely to do much good anyway.

We hoped for more time but less than a week later, I was standing with him at the end of the driveway, waiting for the mobile vet to come. I had shown him his leash each day since we got the diagnosis; he got excited every time, but each day our walk was a little bit shorter. Today, the driveway was as far as he would go.

Two little blonde girls from two doors over were riding their bikes past us, as they had done many times before, but suddenly, one of them stopped in front of us and hopped off her bike.

"Can I pat your dog?" she asked for the first time ever.

He lay down at my feet and soon there were two blonde heads leaning over him, giving him pats. I don't know why they felt the urge to pat him that day and not any other day they had seen us walking him. It may have been because they had lost their own dog not long before.

Whatever it was, it was some kind of therapy for me to stand there in the warm sun, watching him do the job he was born for one last time. It made us all feel a little better.

He must have pats. All the pats. © no plot, HF, SWDNO

*To tell the truth, the old screen door was shredded by Shadow, the dog we owned before Hearts came into our lives. But since Hearts's favourite way of summoning his staff was to whack the window or door he saw you through with enough force that you feared the glass would shatter, it didn't seem prudent to install the new screen when we got a new patio door

**Note the paws which are almost as big as the head

***absolute lie, see sweet face op cit., photos above, also we are idiots

****or did he? Hmmmmmmmm

*****since she never repeated the offence, she was able to plead her belly and the charges were dropped

******mama dogs eat puppy poop, gross but also extremely efficient

*******Princess had a white "V" on his chest and Jasper was completely black. Since Hearts had two hearts (one inside, one out), that makes him a Time Lord

********Three-times as much dog as it turned out since Hearts fully grown was almost twice as heavy as Sylvie. The vet thought the pups were part Newf, confirmed by a DNA test later on. Sylvie is mostly Labrador; Hearts was a genuine Newfoundland and Labrador.

i'd rather eat johnson, sir

If you live in St. John's, you may have noticed there is a bit of snow around. If you live anywhere in the world you may have just discovered there is a place called St. John's, or rather used to be because it's currently buried under enough snow to prompt Ozymandias to send us a message from beyond saying "welcome to the club."

The irony that Snowmageddon occurred only two weeks into my retirement is not lost on me. I could have had six whole days of fully paid leave without using a single vacation day and without once having to set the alarm just in case, my pyjamas on inside out and backwards, an ice cube flushed down the toilet, spoon under my pillow. If the university ever opens up again, I think I'll put in for the time. 

It's the least they could do - I minds a time when they used to make us show up for work even when classes were cancelled, stay open just long enough for the snowstorm to get itself really organized, and then send us out into the blasting wind without benefit of dogsled or a clear view of the other buildings on campus.

But that was back in the days when blizzards were less motivated; there were plenty of days they'd give up after a few hours, content with giving us a measly hour or two to shovel out before it turned to rain and the snow got too jeezly heavy so forget about that nice little lie in you had banked on the night before, the three worse words to hear the morning after a snowstorm being "update at 11."

A whole week off without once having to play Snowstorm Roulette. Luxury!

Of course this type of snowcation comes at a cost.

It took us three hours, two cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, and one tank of oxygen just to get the snowblower out of the garage...

It took us two days and one case of carbon monoxide poisoning to determine that we couldn't just clear the front tires and drive my car out of this...

Then the snowblower and two shovels broke, leaving us with three hobbit-sized shovels and a snow scoop that was only useful for pushing the snow from one side of the driveway to the other.

Clearly it was time to draw straws to see who we would eat first.

And then it snowed again because God hates us.

We snowblew* and shovelled again, i.e. Her Father fixed the snowblower and then snowblew* and SWDNO shovelled while I, a veritable Sisyphus in snowpants, flailed despairingly at the towering peaks about me as half of each teaspoon of snow I managed to get onto Frodo's spade came sliding back down the precipitous slopes.

The army showed up and dug out an elderly couple who lived across the street.  I somehow restrained myself from mentioning I was recently retired and my arms were tired.

Finally after much labour (them), some labour and needless sooking (me), the driveway was clear to the one cut in the road. Our cars were finally free to not go anywhere at all because the State of Emergency was still on and there was nowhere to go.

Our world shrank down to our house and our neighbourhood. The day after we shovelled out, we walked the dogs around the block in the late afternoon, all the snowblowers and shovellers having retreated inside for the day. The quiet embraced us, no distant traffic sounds, no sirens, no planes overhead. We were where we were. We needed to be nowhere else.

The sun shone in through our front windows, gently warming us but not fooling us into venturing outside where the wind would cut you in two. We read books in the living room, glancing up from time to time to watch the dogs basking in the heat, moving as the patches of window-shaped light crept across the floor. We read more books, we binge watched Netflix, we played boardgames and I trounced all comers because I am the Queen of Sorry, bitches!

This is not really all that different from a normal day in the no plot home, really, except we all got to do it all day, everyday, and not just the retiree. It was like a week of Sundays but before Sundays became like every other day in the week.

It's kind of strange (and just a bit guilt inducing) to keep hearing about a State of Emergency when the power is on, your income doesn't rely on hours logged, the cable and internet work, there's peanut butter in the cupboard, and stacks of unread books as far as the eye can see. It was more like a State of No Plot Nirvana.

But all good things must come to an end, including the world, so before the next storm hits, I'll be stocking up on dragonglass, Valyrian steel, and storm chips.




*that's probably a dirty word but I'm afraid to look it up in the Urban Dictionary. Speaking of dirty words, the title of this post is from Monty Python and I didn't realize it was so dirty until I put it up there all on its own. So thanks to Terry Jones (RIP) et al, here's another post I can't tell my mother about.

bimonthly?

Can someone tell me where March went?

I actually had a post percolating in my head all last month but somehow it never found the way to the great egress.

But at least I can say I posted in April.

And just so I can say there was actual content in this post, here's a quick story:

She Who Does Not Obey was telling me about a nightmare she had the other night. We were at a funeral for three women (?) and suddenly everyone started turning into Evil Lobsters!

Even Her Father and me.

I started to smile despite myself, because Evil Lobsters! How cool is that?

She started to smile too. I didn't want her to think I didn't get that her dream was still scary despite the presence of diabolical crustaceans, pointing out that laughing at a scary dream was the best way to deal with it.

"If you have the dream again, you could throw hot water at them," I suggested.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Mom, they were already cooked."

Oh.

wmd

A while back, She Who Does Not Obey got a snow day but I did not. The school board gets very trigger-happy sometimes, closing the schools at the least suggestion of bad weather. My work is less easily panicked, unfortunately.

I usually go with taking her to my work's daycare which is open as long as work's open, but this time I decided to see what her two friends down the street were up to. To SWDNO's delight, friends' mom was more than willing to take her on as there was already one other girl from up the street coming by and even numbers are always better in those situation.

Normally getting SWDNO out of the house on such a day is like trying to pry a lid off a reluctant pickle jar, but this was the perfect carrot. She is always ready to run down the street whenever the chance arises.

After I told her the good news, we were both hurrying to get ready for a change when the phone rang and friend's mom spoke to Her Father, asking if we might have a bit of peanut butter we could spare. It seems they had gotten themselves an unwanted boarder and needed to serve an eviction notice.

SWDNO was overjoyed with the notion of a mouse in the house and tickled at the idea of peanut butter being a mouse's favourite food.

Until it suddenly occurred to her that the peanut butter was going to be used lure the mouse to his doom. It was ammunition for a weapon of mouse destruction!

All of sudden, her moral campass kicked in and she became a conscientious objector - a conscientious objector who decided to hide in her bed and refused to put any more clothes on.

I did my best to rationalize the mouse's death sentence with tales of mouse poop and general untidiness, but could make no headway, all while the clock ticked away inexorably toward 9 a.m. Why couldn't they just trap the mouse? she asked and I could think of no other reason than that people usually went for the cheapest and easiest method of mouse disposal, a philosophical position that she would hardly find defensible in her current state of mind.

Fortunately for me, she hit upon a scheme which many had tried before her - she would just have to build a better mousetrap. She hunted around (clock still ticking!) until she found a shoe box and after some consideration, she demonstrated some methods by which she would lie in wait for the mouse with peanut butter on the lid, and then quickly slam the box down, trapping him as easy as can be.

I quickly agreed that this was an excellent plan -what with mice being so slow and easily fooled -and hustled her out the door.

As it happened, all the trouble was for naught - friends' mom was going to use a humane trap after all. Mickey would be caught and released into the wild to continue his unsanitary marauding somewhere else (or make his way back to their hospitable home once again).

I should have known friend's mom would have planned to use such a trap. One time, she made a foolhardy comment about actually liking our unruly dogs and being quite willing to adopt them should the need ever arise. Lucky for her, Her Father wasn't there to immediately take her up on such a unwise offer.

As for the mouse, he managed to elude capture on that day, despite the ingenious deployment of shoe boxes and other trapping devices. His fate is still a mystery to me.

But if he ever makes his way up to this end of the street, I have a feeling we will soon be the proud owners a yet another pesky pet.

i can haz blog post

When I started this blog I had visions of posting several times a week, encouraged by my favourite blogs which I checked every day - even when I knew the blogger was more sporadic than that.

These plans were quickly downsized to dreams of a weekly post, followed by bi-weekly plans and then monthly.

That was clearly an unreachable goal as well (see December posts, lack thereof).

I shall blame Her Father and his insistance that we trek into the wilds of New Brunswick last week to visit his family instead of staying home and lying idly around on soft cushions, hove off like oriental potentates and stuffing ourselves with Hershey's Kisses. I still have two unopened bags of the things - by this time in the Christmas season, Her Father and I are usually scrounging under sofa cushions for any strays that might have eluded our cavernous maws.

I did start a blog post in a hotel room in Halifax, but sadly there was no time to lollygag around and finish the damn thing. There was breakfast to be bought and the hotel dog to pat. BTW, if you're ever in Halifax and missing your favourite pooch, I would recommend the Best Western Chocolate Lake as a reasonably priced way to assuage your craving for dog-petting. That's Coco the Chocolate Lab in the masthead and she was a real sweetie.

She Who Does Not Obey gives it four stars.

I do love going to Halifax where I also got to see my sister TR and her husband where we can also revel in wild cat abandon as well. My sister is a Cat Person and has just upgraded once again to a three-cat family with the arrival of two cute little fuzzballs named Sonny and Ben. I would enthrall you with Cute Kitteh Photos at this point if I hadn't misplaced my digital camera the day before our trip and not realized this fact until two minutes before the arrival of our ride to the airport.

There were 27 photos on the disposible camera I bought at Shoppers the first day of our arrival. I believe that SWDNO and a few other humans may have managed to get into some of them, but I doubt that they were ever without feline companionship. I'm sure the photos will all turn out something like this, with which you can amuse yourself until I get around to bringing the camera in to be processed.

New Brunswick was nice too, but I could have done without the snow covered drive back to almost-Halifax, watching vans doing pirouettes in the lanes ahead. We intended to go all the way back to Halifax that day but bailed at the airport hotels.

It was probably the most restful part of the whole trip and involved a lot of sitting around and reading an entire newspaper from end to end - which I haven't done in about 8.5 years - while occasionally looking out the window at a storm that I was extremely glad I was no longer in the midst of.

So now I am back home and actually finding the time to post while patting a slightly different shade of lab.

I shall endeavor not to turn it an annual event.

down on the labrador

Looking back at it now, I would say that Her Father married me under false pretenses.

When I met him 14 years ago, one of the things that convinced me that he was a nice guy was the fact that he had a dog, a beautiful blonde collie-cross named Becky.

Becky was one of the nicest dogs I have ever met. She had the sweetest disposition, gentle and calm, and to top it off was incredibly obedient. You could let her off-leash on any trail and she always came running with her tail wagging when you called her back. She was welcome at all of our friend's houses at any time because she could always be counted on to behave.

She absolutely adored Her Father, to the point that she would follow him to the bathroom when we were visiting anywhere and whine outside the door.

Since she was such an outstanding canine, I guess I took it for granted that Her Father had great judgment and taste when it came to choosing dogs, not to mention some mad training skillz.

I really should have considered the implications of how she came into his life a little more closely, however.

Her Father had gone to the SPCA to pick out a dog, still unsure whether he really wanted to take on the responsibility. After looking at all the dogs, he decided on a black dog but still couldn't commit so he went away to have a coffee and think about it some more.

When he got back, having decided to go for it, the black dog had already been adopted so he chose Becky instead. It was an incredible stroke of luck that we all appreciated for the next 13 years.

When Becky was 14, she died. We spent far too much on an operation that gave her only six extra weeks, but although it gave us some time to prepare She Who Does Not Obey for the inevitable, we were all devastated when it happened.

It wasn't long before Her Father started thinking about getting another dog, but instead of looking at blondes, he returned to his original plans of getting a black dog.

Two months later, he received an email from a friend in Labrador offering him a black labrador-cross puppy, by name of Shadow. Her Father had been to Labrador for work during that time and had coveted many stray puppies he'd seen down there*, so we decided it was a sign that Shadow was meant for us.

Shadow was a sweet dog and a pretty dog too. But he was what they call in the dog training trade "batshit crazy."

He was all go all the time, ready to play with whatever came to mouth, chewing every toy he could find including many of those belonging to She Who Does Not Obey, who was only 4-years old at the time. Many tears were shed, hers over favourite playthings, mine in frustration at trying to explain yet another senseless stuffed toy death.

We tried to keep him in dog toys, but he destroyed every one, pieces of rubber balls and chewtoys decorating the poop we picked up after him. The only toy he couldn't manage to decimate was a Kong.

He also had a great fondness for footwear, especially Her Father's slippers which had to be replaced every other week. He chewed great chunks out of my winter boots and ate the entire leather upper of my walking sandals, leaving behind only the rubber sole. We had to hide our shoes behind a folding door which he was quite capable of opening with a nudge of his nose. We were constantly thinking up new ways to wedge the door shut as he figured out how to get around all our defenses.

We were forced to buy him a kennel for him to sleep in at night and stay in while we were gone because he could get bored at any time or the day or night and something had to pay for that.

When he wasn't laying waste to our footwear and toys, he was trying to hoist his 70 pounds into Her Father's lap trying to get him to play with him. If he came to me, he would nudge me for attention but if I made the mistake of patting him, he would be all over me demanding I play with him as well. He didn't have an off switch.

Walks were more like drags, with him pulling us around the block. One winter's day, he pulled extra hard while I was on a patch of ice on a hill and I fell backwards, smacking my head on the pavement.

Unfortunately we were low energy owners with a high energy dog and we were tearing our hair out trying to deal with him. Our dog trainer looked at us with disdain for our lack of enthusiasm for what was required to give our dog the time and attention he needed/demanded if we wished to keep any of the consumer goods we dared to bring into the house.

This went on for a year until one November day, suddenly, Shadow got sick. He wouldn't eat, he could hardly stand. We rushed him to the vet and found out he had low hemoglobin. Steroids and a transfusion provided no help, so we were forced to make a terrible decision.

We stood by his side, Her Father and I, as he breathed his last. It broke our hearts all over again. As much as we despaired of ever turning him into a well-behaved dog, it turned out we loved the troublemaking mutt.

We decided to take a break at that point, no more dogs until after our long-planned spring trip to Disney World.

But had Her Father learned his lesson about the dangers of brunettes (BTW guess what colour my hair is)? The answer to that question will have to wait for another post.

*In Newfoundland, you go "down north" to Labrador, hence the expression "down on the labrador" meaning to be there.

whistling past the graveyard

Her Father was not very impressed with my decision to allow our daughter to watch the dreaded Michael Jackson video, dismissing my argument that she had chosen to watch even though she had been warned against it. He was especially not impressed two weeks ago when She Who Does Not Obey requested that we take a different route to soccer.

Unfortunately, the most direct route goes right past a graveyard.

The zombies had been beaten back, but were regrouping and making yet another assault.

We recommended that she close her eyes until we were past and afterwards attempted a rerouting but found it impractical. This became particularly clear when we drove down to our cabin the following weekend and she discovered two cemeteries on our route, one of which is right at the beginning of the dirt road leading to the cabin itself.

I had long ceased to see these cemeteries, but they lunged right out at her at every turn.

I tried to think of things she could do to make her feel safe again so I thought back to my own first defenses.

My first memorable childhood monsters were formed through an act of willfulness as well. We were at a screening of The Jungle Book and my big sister warned me not to watch the trailers at the beginning. I ignored her of course, my curiosity piqued beyond any sense of self preservation.

I have no idea what the movies were called, but one was about man with no face, or more acurately a man with the shape of a face but no eyes or orifices to speak of. I can still see scenes from it in my mind to this day.

The other movie was about trees that for some inexplicable reason turned into monsters as soon as it got dark.

There was no possible way to avoid trees no matter how circuitous a route I planned, so I remember many times going home in the dark, walking a tightrope at the farthest edge of the sidewalk, trying to stay out of the reach of the saplings on the neighbourhood lawns. If our neighbours had sprung for more imposing trees, who knows how I would have ever gotten home.

But at night in bed, I built my defenses based on what I had seen in the trailer. A man had been badly hurt by the trees and I noticed that he was bleeding out of the right side of his mouth, a large white bandage wrapped around his stomach.

Therefore as long as I slept on my stomach with the right side of my face touching my pillow, I would obviously be safe.

I also pulled the blanket tight up under my chin to protect against the vampires I noted in a coming attraction poster in the theatre lobby on the way out (didn't I mention already that I am a wuss?). The faceless men, monster trees, and vampires could never get past my defenses, perhaps meeting each other below my window and warning latecomers off with a defeated shake of the head.

How I thought these things would keep me safe, I don't know, but I believed in them so strongly that I was able to go to sleep at night despite all the monsters lying in wait for me. I believed in them because I needed to believe in them.

It occurs to me now that most of the defenses against the dark arts are just as ridiculous. Were my little rituals really any different from garlic, crosses, holy water? Circles in the sand. Salt at the door.

The common thread with all these protections is belief. If we can convince ourselves that a blanket tucked under the chin will keep us safe, then we are safe.

For every imaginary monster that preys on our minds, we create the corresponding silver bullet.
But since the only way to defeat zombies in the movies involves a lot of head bashing and decapitation, I found myself at a loss to find a talisman that would work for She Who Does Not Obey. She is not very handy with a baseball bat, she can't always be on the 2nd or 3rd floor, and there will always be another graveyard to pass.

So I have tried to arm her now with the most powerful weapon I could find - a true story.

But the truth is a slow acting agent when dealing with creatures of imagination; we need practice to make it strong enough to fight the monsters on their own ground.

The other day as we drove to the cabin I told SWDNO about how I had fought off a terrible fear of my own and how I did it with a simple little chant, "Planes like turbulence." It was a comforting tidbit I had found on a fear of flying website and I latched on to it like a cricket bat at a zombie banquet. The fear didn't vanish overnight (more like over several years), but every time we hit turbulence, I'd close my eyes and repeat those words to myself until I finally started to believe them.

Maybe it would work for her too. All she had to do was say these words to herself as we passed the cemetery, "There's no such thing as zombies. There's no such thing as zombies."

I wasn't sure if she had tried it when we passed the first one, but by the time we got to the second one, she cried out, "It's working already!"

She is obviously a much quicker study than her mother.

So now we can drive past graveyards again, but the zombie alert status is still in flux. At least it hasn't returned to critical levels. For now, we will keep surrounding ourselves with circles made of words that will someday be true.

zombies on the brain

I have never been a fan of horror movies because basically I am a big wimp.

The horrific images stay with me far too long, lurking in dark corners, creeping down shadowy halls with quiet creaks that almost sound like footsteps, as I try to steel my way to bed at night.

But ever since I saw An American Werewolf in London over 20 years ago, I have made an exception for those horror movies that also make me laugh.

The movie is about a young man backpacking through Europe who gets attacked by a werewolf. I saw it when I was a young woman backpacking through Europe while staying at a youth hostel in Switzerland, the audience all young people backpacking through Europe. We laughed at the references that hit home for us, visiting strange taverns, speaking with odd locals. We laughed as the hostel staff rewound the video tape and added their own Moondance to the sounds of Van Morrison (this movie has a kickass moon soundtrack).

But there are also horribly bloody scenes and scares and frights that are (mostly) leavened with a dark sense of humour that made them bearable to me. Making this the first horror movie I actually enjoyed.

However, I'm sure none of us in the audience that night were too keen to go exploring the moors on foggy nights any time soon.

Since that night, I have found myself venturing off the main road and onto the foggy moors of horror movies, looking for the ones that provided that loopy mix of comedy and horror. But those kind of movies are few and far between.

I found one last night in Shaun of the Dead.

I have stayed away from zombie movies even when I knew they had a sense of humour. The Evil Dead movies in particular have attracted but repelled me as well. The scenes of zombies pounding at windows, trapping their would-be victims in the false safety of their homes, falling on the unlucky ones and the gore that follows. Too intense for me, too unrelenting and hopeless for the desperate souls trying to survive their night of terror.

But I made an exception for Shaun of the Dead because I heard it was so funny. And it is.

Shaun and his friends are leading a zombie existence even before the terror descends, and it is hard to figure out at first when the real zombies have actually shown up. The movie shows us that the drudgery of every day life often causes people to move through their lives with the same sort of lost zombie shuffle, but at least with less bloody show.

The crisis forces Shaun to shake off his inaction and turns him into a cricketbat-wielding action hero, albeit one who chooses rather inopportune moments to finally address the factors that are holding him back from a fuller life, e.g. it is inadvisable to confront your boyhood pal about his juvenile ways while dozens of zombies are advancing upon you. The zombies may be slow, but they have no patience and will not wait for you to obtain closure.

Ironically, what makes the movie so funny is that it can also be very scary. Its climactic moments have just the kind of scenes that I find so hard to put out of my mind, but with a delicious black-humoured spin that makes me laugh and breaks my heart all at once.

Like all zombie movies, too many people you care about fall along the way, often because they are too busy arguing about the stuff that they are normally too afraid to confront, e.g. it is inadvisable to defend your prior questionable behaviour while standing in front of window being pressed upon by relentless zombies.

Zombies eat that stuff up.

Afterwards, even though the crisis ends with some survivors and the movie ends on a laugh, I found myself with a sense of unease. Her Father turned to me and told me it was time for bed, yet I did not feel like I wanted to go to bed.

I thought of staying downstairs and watching tv for a while afterwards but then looked suspiciously at the basement windows, one cracked, the other with the exterior pane broken out by rampaging black labs - how long could they withstand a zombie attack?

I went to bed instead, trying to read the zombies out of my head, but they wouldn't go. Too fond of brains.

So instead I told Her Father that we needed to press forward in our plans to beef up our zombie defenses, er, I mean, replace our old windows and siding.

And maybe purchase some cricket bats.

rabbit

When I was a child, my family had a tradition.

On the first day of every month, we each had to say the word "rabbit" as soon as we awoke and realized the date.

"Rabbit!" mommy no plot would call out and five little no plots eagerly sang out "Rabbit" in reply.

To me, it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but as I got out into the world and learned its many ways and customs, I found that the no plots were the only family I could find who indulged in this behaviour.

And everyone I told about it thought it a little on the strange side. No one had ever heard of such a thing.

I began to think my father had invented this tradition, along with tales of the Headless Axeman of Middle Three Island Pond and various other stories of questionable provenance.

In time, I learned to live with the family eccentricity and even embraced the tradition. I felt that more people should celebrate all things Leporidae on a monthly basis.

I cried "Rabbit!" to all my friends as each first day came and they replied in kind, but only when I insisted.

The Rabbit Revolution made little headway. It failed to spread with the alacrity I had envisioned.

Then one day, I met with resistance. My friend who didn't know... refused to say the R-word or any of its many synonyms, despite my repeated attempts to recruit her into the movement. As time passed and my frustration with her position grew, I stooped to trickery, asking leading questions whose answers naturally led down a rabbit hole and posting bunny display pictures on my msn to pry that word past her lips.

To my knowledge, she has not let the rabbit out of the hat on the first day of any month for the past 20 years.

Some years ago, I read an item in a university newspaper in which a folklore professor spoke of the practice as a means of bringing luck, but it had become very obscure.

Then I discovered one first day that one of my favourite bloggers, jonny b of private secret diary fame, was a fellow Leperidoptrist. But I could not be sure he was passing this tradition on to his child or if he would have enough children to ensure its survival (sadly the Toddler (aka Servalan) is an only child.)

In desperation, I fixed on a new plan - I myself would have to marry and produce offspring so that Leperidoptry would not die with me. New generations would keep this tradition alive.

Fortunately, my husband has been true to his wedding vows and can always be counted on to give the correct response to my cry.

But lately, She Who Does Not Obey has been forming her own resistance movement. My rabbity cries are more often met with silence and rebellion.

This morning, I said "Rabbit." She needed a bit of prompting but finally said "Ra-" raising my hopes skyward.

Then she smirked and followed with a "-bish" of defiance.

Rabish.

Alas, I am too old to produce more obedient children so I fear this tradition is doomed to extinction.

father knows best

Eight years ago yesterday, She Who Does Not Obey came into this world, refusing to use the usual exit I might add. She was a breech baby and, having determined early on which way was up, wasn't about to change her position on the matter.

I was three weeks from my due date and when my doctor heard the result of my latest ultrasound, she sent me off to hospital to spend my last few weeks within arms reach of medical attention in case She Who Does Not Obey decided to send an exploratory limb out into the world first.

Her Father decided this would be a perfect opportunity for him to kick into action and make the final preparations for SWDNO's arrival. He went home that first night full of plans and schemes.

About 3:30 that morning, I called him up and told him he was out of time. That bit of gas that woke me in the middle of the night turned out to be minor contractions and the doctor was recommending a C-section.

Her Father was dismayed and complained of losing his three weeks, but She Who Does Not Obey is also She Who Will Not Be Denied and just over two hours later - 5:46 a.m. on a Midsummer's Eve - I saw her for the first time in Her Father's arms.

I was still splayed out on the operating table, shivering and puking from the spinal and generally feeling miserable, so she was briefly placed on my chest and then given to Her Father. He got to hold her first while I admired her from afar.

He also hogged her for ages afterwards while I tried to get warm again under the heated blankets. Anaethesia turns me into a popsicle.

It wasn't the first time I had seen him hold a child of ours. Just over a year before, I had seen him hold our son. Our stillborn son. Our son who never had a chance to find out what an incredible father he had.

I can't tell you what it meant to him to be holding our precious daughter after losing our son, but I can tell you how amazing it was to see the two of them together and hear her grunting away in his arms.*

Eight years later, it is still amazing to watch him with her, watch him make her laugh, watch them butt heads, watch her snuggle in to him on a Saturday morning while she watches cartoons and he tries to snooze just a little bit longer.

He packs her school lunch bag every day, he makes her favourite food even when he doesn't particularly feel like it. They carve Halloween pumpkins together and bake muffins and the odd birthday cake. He buys her yet more Webkinz against his better judgment.

He gives her his time, which is the most precious thing anyone can give.

SWDNO's birthday has a way of shagging up Father's Day celebrations and he is not fond of the sloppy sentiment of a Hallmark card, so each year I find myself wondering how I can make this day special for him.

I know I couldn't have gotten this far without him.

I hope this will show him how much I appreciate that he is Her Father.

She is a very lucky girl.

*C-section babies often have fluid in their lungs which is normally ejected during the normal birth process. The fluid causes them to grunt. The cure is pissing them off enough to have a good bawl.

15, er, 5 books i read last

Many people (or perhaps it's just one, I forget) felt a bit intimidated by my 15 books.

Actually it kind of scared me too.

A lot of the books are from my university days and since I did an MA in English, they are not surprisingly Classics with a capital Cluh. But I was forced to read those really, so it hardly does me that much credit.

Before I hit university, I led a sad and wasted youth, reading mystery novels and well, mystery novels. When I suddenly had to read Literature which required me to have a background in Classics written in dead languages or English old enough to be on life support, I was at a loss.

But even with my limited pre-education, I was able to appreciate the books on my list because they were the fun ones. The ones that did not require quite so much erudition, but simply required a sense of humour and a delight in finding that humour in a surprising turn of phrase or a ridiculous character described with masterstrokes.*

After university, you will be relieved to hear that I returned to a life of dissipation, only occasionally raising myself from my indolence to read another classic for the cheap thrills of impressing/depressing my friends.

I herewith give you the last, um, however many books I have read (that I can remember):

1. Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence
(ok, this is scholarly, but really an easy read and it inspired me to actually start my blog already - also interesting tidbits about who inspired Elizabeth Bennett and who was actually like Mr. Darcy, etc.)

2. Hero Worship by Dawn Calvert
(this is a trashy romance I bought sight unseen because the plot reminded me of the miniseries Lost in Austen, until I actually read it - it's not horrible, but it annoyed me after awhile and THERE WAS NO SEX)**

3. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
(funny and trashy although a little hard to warm up to at first)

4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
(obligatory classic which took me ages to read, although there are some hilarious characters - I actually took this to Cuba as a Beach Read because I am a bit tetched)

5. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
(this is a true crime book set in the 1860s about a gifted detective who inspired a lot of writers, including Dickens, to create detectives based on him - inspiring me to read Bleak House for an example)

6. ????? Lord, do you know how long it takes me to read a whole book what with She Who Does Not Obey and my pesky job and my husband who thinks I should turn off the light already and my inability to stay awake for 10 minutes all together? Plus TV isn't going to watch itself after all. Number 6 was last year sometime and my brain seems to have misplaced the cell with that information.

Stupid brain.

*Please note CLARISSA IS NOT ONE OF THE FUN ONES!!!!!! However, if you've never tried Tom Jones, it really is funny and very accessible. That may have been compared to the incomprehensible ones I was trying to plow through in my postmodern course, however. If you like Tom Jones, you should also like The Sotweed Factor which is a postmodern novel in a similar style and also hilarious.
**find some way to watch Lost in Austin instead of reading this book.

another fine moment in parenting

The other morning I was skirmishing in (and uncharacteristically winning) yet another battle in the War to End All Wars, aka getting a 2nd-grader-to-school-on-time.

She Who Does Not Obey had completed all of her morning tasks with hardly a lash applied, when suddenly she noticed a Great Horror - a dastardly mosquito had bitten her on the eyelid!

Neither of us had noticed it up to this point thanks to my clever use of parental neglect to keep her bangs long and her eyes out of sight and out of mind.

But the cursed bangs had chosen this moment to part slightly and reveal this horrible blight upon humanity. There was no way she could go to school like that.

As she lay on the bed prostrate with grief, I watched my precious victory slipping from my grasp. In desperation, I played the only card I could think of.

I told her that her complaint was not legally defensible and that if I should allow her to stay home for that reason, the police would have to come and arrest me.

"Well," she said calmly, "I'll still have Daddy."

My daughter, the philosopher.