Confessions of a Facebook Failure

I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I am just no good at Facebook. It brings out the Sarcastic Hag in me, it really does. 

I don't play Candy Crush, I don't have the urge to breed dragons, I have no interest in Slotomania, and I'm terrible at giving rampant, unbridled praise at the slightest provocation. 

What? You just made a really good pot of tea and you're drinking it right now? HIGH FIVE! 

You made a Middle Eastern stew with the new tagine pot you found at Value Village for ten cents and the family all love it? HOW THRILLING! I BET IT TASTES AMAZING! 

You called your miserable sourpuss of a husband to tell him that he's awesome, because you believe in miracles? YOU'RE EVEN MORE AWESOME! 

You made pancakes with bacon and it was so delicious you're making them again tomorrow? I WISH I WERE THERE EATING THEM WITH YOU!

See what I mean? I have to fight the urge to say things like "I'm drinking a glass of Scotch - with no ice! - and it's only 11am. I'm sure I'll be drunk by noon!" Or "I like swearing!" Or "The cat just puked in Max's runners! If I clean them now he'll never know!" Sometimes I even want to post updates on how many times I've said F*CK so far that day: F*ck, the kids pissed me off! F*ck, that driver took my parking spot! F*ck, my library fines are building up!

But I don't. Instead I grit my teeth and hit the LIKE button every now and then, just so they know I'm listening. And reading. 

F*ck. Where is the Facebook for Sarcastic Hags?

Yes on 522

I don't live in Washington State, nor am I an American, but I want to help publicize this upcoming vote.

(and yes, I also happen to love the Dr Bronner people)

If you live in Washington State - vote! If you know someone who lives there - tell them to vote!

Don't let other people be messing with your food.

Post Hallowed Evening

 FDPG and I found this so wildly funny yesterday that we looked at it over and over again. You may think us shallow, but each time we found it equally hysterical.

I guess we're essentially Cat People when it comes to the category of General Pet Jokes.








It was a perfect day in the neighbourhood for trick or treating. Rain was threatening, and a few times there were brief sprinkles, but we were still able to put out our life-sized paper skeleton and Mr Pumpkin Head, which made the yard much more atmospheric. Nothing says BE SCARED! like a large smiling skeleton, glowing in the dark, right?
Fall has been superlative this year: we've had about 17ml of rain this month, compared to the usual average of 84ml, leaving the leaves in piles of golds and yellows and reds. The rain is due any minute, sadly, so I'm memorizing the colour in this photo for when all those lovely leaves are soggy, brown, and very very slimy.
The Little Chief has been working overtime on the deck, given the perfect dry conditions. The same deck that has been holding court with a baited rat trap.

Yes, Gentle Reader, there are many advantages of having chickens... okay, maybe only one real advantage, but it's mostly definitely NOT the sudden surge in visits from members of the rodent and avian populations. You won't need bird feeders any more because the chickens have a giant one - in their coop - just waiting to be plundered. Rats and birds alike will also love how unconcerned the chickens are around such creatures. They could care less if Ole Ratty or a village of sparrows nip in several times a day for a snack. Mice they will go for, but the others? They don't even LOOK at them. Thanks to our newly acquired rat traps, I now know that rats look JUST LIKE the rat in Ratatouille. Big, gray, and long-bodied, they are. Spread fast, they do. Get into lots of mischief digging holes and tunnels, they can. Not welcome in yard, they are. Sigh.

 FDPG is getting older, and with age comes self-consciousness. This year was all about the Tasteful Kitty. Not a Wild Crazy Out There Kitty, as she might once have insisted upon. Distressingly, it was all I could do to get more than 6 whiskers and tiny black nose on her. I begged to do a little Cirque de Soleil-ish facepainting, to appease my inner Liberace, but in the end I was forced to subterfuge: I whined told a friend, a friend that she likes a lot because he is very tall, very funny, and very generous and kind to her. He told us both that we needed to MAKE THAT FACE UP STAT.

FPDG, ever the rationalist, pointed out that this same person - a teacher - wears a costume to work every year, that he dresses as a Giant Pink Bunny in front of his students, so he was hardly the sort of person she'd listen to in terms of Tasteful Halloween Costume Advice, but she acquiesced in the end. We used a faint smear of white base, a teeny tiny bit of eye liner, and the barest hint of gold glitter stripes. I even think she was surprised how low-key it ended up looking. You can hardly tell, right? (feel free to point this out in the comments section)
Dominic, who is still captivated by the Rabelasian aspect of Halloween, recycled a former costume from his brother: Dr. Arthur O. Pod, field entomologist for the National Geographic Society.
Here he is in the bathroom, looking for errant insects, spiders, or crustaceans. I won't tell you if he found any though.












And now we're dragging somewhat through the morning, watching the rain headed our way.

Creeping In On Little Cat Feet

The fog, that is. We've been sitting in the middle of a large bank of it all week.

It amplifies the rustley noises in the trees, which causes me to jump a lot when I'm in the garden, listening to all those rustley noises.

It also hides the hawks until they are just overhead, which is causing the chickens to spend a lot of time hiding in the coop.







Given that they look like this right now, I think I'd be hiding too, but I'm superficial that way. For those of you on the fence as to whether you want chickens or not, this is a photo of a moulting chicken. They do this once a year. This moulting chicken has her quills growing in: before those quills come in they look like an inflatable chicken that had its plug pulled. It's three parts gross, two parts weird and fascinating, and five parts creepy.

The first time the chickens moulted we thought they were dying. Some of us might have panicked a bit as to whether this might be a form of bird flu. After consulting a chicken book I discovered that this is an annual event, which was kind of comforting because none of my friends who kept chickens knew what I was talking about - turns out they get rid of their chickens after a year, so they never got to this stage in the relationship before.

Brings up all sorts of very shallow issues for me, I must confess. It's definitely the low point in MY relationship with the chickens, that's for sure. They feel the same way: they spend more time in the coop than ever and always look rather embarrassed when I take their photo. This particular shot took me 22 takes, because Fern went and hid in the layer box, Pip shoved in there with her, and Prunella (who is a bird of very little brain) was left trying to squeeze her way through the wire. Which she can't do, even with fewer feathers than usual.


Here's the greenhouse getting ready for winter. I'm trying something new in terms of keeping the warmth for the citrus: a ceramic heater. I usually use those old-fashioned Christmas lights, but they really light up the back yard, and given that I am rather intolerant of don't particularly like our neighbour's penchant for leaving their outside lights on all the bloody time, I thought it might be rather, err, hypocritical of me to leave two sets on this year, as opposed to one (the lemon arbor). Wait for it - I bet no one but me will notice the lack of outside light on this year. Sigh.

Here is something I'm rather excited by: I've fixed up a heat mat under my bench, and covered it with a few pieces of guttering. The gutters have some pea sprouts in them, which I think might come in handy in a few weeks, once they've sprouted and formed nice long salad-y tendrils.

I even buried the electrical cord under the gravel. I'm getting neat and tidy in my dotage.

With winter coming the statuary have to come in. In the old days they covered them with burlap and left them out, where they would weather the weather in grand, if somewhat muffled, style. These days everything is made of pulpy crap so we have to bring them in or they melt in the rain. Not as stalwart as their forebears, obviously.

I bought this last year at Costco. It was labelled as a Calamondin Orange. Beware O' Innocent Gardener: I saw that label and thought "Oooh! an orange tree! Just what I need!"

Ha.

I got it home and googled it. Turns out my orange tree is a fussy, miniature orange-like tree that needs care, attention, space, and attention. Did I already say attention?

So I sulked for a year, wishing that I'd googled it before I bought it. I mean, I've always wanted a kumquat, but a miniature orange-like object? Who wants one of those?

Then it fruited. I decided I liked it after all. So it doesn't have oblong fruit? Round is just as nice.

And look at all the fruit to come. I feel somewhat abashed admitting this, but giving a citrus plant care, attention, space - and more attention - works out in the end.

Fragrant heliotrope blooms at long last.

















So does the Braveheart mallow.

We put in some new beds in the lower garden last weekend. I say WE but I really mean Richard. He watched me struggle rather wimpily then went and got his saw and made me some stakes and planks. He even put them in for me. I added the stepping stones and tidied up the beds. I'm rubbish with a saw but I'm very good with stepping stones.

Remind me to show you what this bed used to look like. Once upon a time it was a grassy hillside. Then it was an awkwardly placed garden, with higgeldy piggeldy beds.

Now it's a navigable space. I no longer see myself falling over. Tripping. Tipping. Tumbling.

It gives one the illusion of level ground.

Bright lights chard.

Brighter lights chard.

Spider webs through the breaking fog.

The last of the raspberries.













































Then, just when I'd finished this post and thought "Gosh, the fog is so beautiful!" it completely disappeared and the sun broke through.

And it looked like this.

How I Spent My Sunday

Driving up the island to the site of so much summer fun.

Taking out water pumps, draining water lines, filling toilets with antifreeze (so they won't crack in the winter), raking leaves, listening to the kids run around in the back yard exclaiming at the cold, looking at the beach from a fall perspective instead of a hot summer sun perspective.

 Watching the boats go up and down the coastline. Tugs. Sailboats. Ferries.

Seabirds scattering at the approach of a few intrepid kayakers.

People hauling seaweed for their gardens.

Lunch on the beach. 

Then back in the car and home again, home again. 

Jiggedy jig.

Dear Target Canada

When I first heard you were coming to Canada, I was probably the only person I knew in a radius of 500 miles who wasn't wildly excited. That's because I knew what "coming to Canada" would mean. It wouldn't mean American Target prices. It wouldn't mean American Target clearance deals at the end of every aisle. It wouldn't mean American Target stock, either.

I wanted to love you, I really did. Your commercials were a hit: the patch-eyed dog riding shotgun on the motorbike was irresistibly cute (being a non-dog person, this was an odd place to find myself), the poppy tune was catchy, and the charm of all those Canadian landmarks had us by the heartstrings. FDPG was agog by the clever juxtapositioning of the Target symbol alongside a solid red heart and a maple leaf. "LOOK! Target loves Canada!" she would shriek delightedly every time we drove by. All the pre-teen and teen girls I know were in a palpable tizzy, plotting their pre-dawn raids at the two store openings. Even more telling, the local retail competitors: London Drugs, Shoppers Drug Mart, Save On Foods, even Walmart, were slashing prices left right and centre as they quaked ever so slightly in their boots. Slashing prices is SO not the Canadian way, which is how I know they were quaking. We do things quietly.

So it was hard to remain both silent AND in a state of anticipatory gloom, but for the most part I managed. I AM Canadian, after all.

When you finally opened, Dominic, FDPG, and I waited until the second day before we went on a tour of inspection. We'd been warned that this particular store had had a "soft opening" (read: wasn't fully stocked), but even I was taken aback. There were entire aisles of empty shelves, plastered with tiny signs saying things like "We're in the process of stocking up. Thanks for being patient!"and distressingly large spaces of...nothing at all. Even worse, the store takes up two giant floors, with the children's section on the lower floor and the change rooms on the top floor. I don't know about you, but I LOVE having to navigate several sets of busy escalators while my kids sit half-naked in a change room, waiting for me to get 6 more pairs of jeans, dresses, or tops for them to try on (there is a 6 item limit in the change room).

FDPG's mission was to wheedle the cost of an ice shaving machine out of my wallet, so we went to inspect them. They were $10 more here. I know this because I was in Bellingham three weeks before that and I'd taken careful note of the prices. I also noticed that there were 5 varieties. Target Canada had 1. I am not one for reading the stock market pages in the newspaper, but even I know that the exchange rate is better than that.

So we trundled over to the cosmetic section. If the aisles had had any stock in them they would have been impressive, but again, the emptiness was a bit disconcerting. The prices were also higher than most places I shopped at. I asked a stock girl if she knew anything about Target bringing in any items in the Boots line, because if there is one line cosmetics that thrills me, it's the Boots line, but she knew nothing of this. "The what line?" she said uncertainly, "don't think so." "Can you check?" I asked. "No, sorry," she responded. And yes, that WAS how we left it: me wondering why she couldn't check and her wondering why I wanted so much effort of her.

FDPG thought we could salvage the situation by checking out the food aisles and doing some cost comparisons, but again, the prices weren't great and the products we loved most in the American Targets just weren't there. In most cases we noticed that Walmart is cheaper, too, by about 10%.

Nice one, Target. I mean, we're glad to have you, but we're not that stupid. We won't willingly pay more just because you're you. It's almost insulting, to be honest. If you're going to do well here you have to do your research on what it is that Canadians like about Target. It's not what you think it is.

And fill those shelves while you're at it.

Going To See Ron Sexsmith

One of the things about getting older is how birthday present expectations change. I don't seem to get as excited, nor do I get as worked up about presents.

Boring of me, I realize, but there it is.

Anyhow, my birthday is not for another couple of months, but when I saw the ad in the newspaper announcing the (wildly joyful) fact that Ron Sexsmith was going to be in town, I decided that I wanted Ron tickets for my birthday. So I told Richard, who was hugely relieved at having A Great Birthday Idea, particularly since I'd already squashed his other Great Idea by buying a copy of Howl's Moving Castle after getting paid for a garden lecture I gave to a local club.

I really did - and if you don't believe me, click on this link. My MIL wrote that blurb, which is kind of nice given our - ahem - fractured relationship. I sound like a sensible holistic back-to-the-lander, don't I?

I won't ruin that image for you.

Tickets. Right.

So Richard buys the tickets. They arrive in the mail and I take great pains to remember where I put them (unlike the LEGO tickets I tacked to the pinboard and promptly forgot about). Last night we get ready, even though we're in the middle of a Severe Wind Warning that has all ferries to the mainland COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN and has already knocked down two garden arbors. We weren't completely irresponsible: we made sure the kids had working flashlights and gave them strict instructions not to fly their kites while we're gone. Then we drive through a deluge to the university. It is such a deluge that the gutters in the roofs are all overflowing, so hard and fast is the rain falling. Richard is a little puzzled when I demand to be dropped off near some form of overhang but he goes with it, because it is ostensibly My Birthday Event and he likes to humour me. We run through the rain to the university centre, me stealing one of the concert promotion posters along the way, and dash into the hallway with all the other sodden concert goers. There is no power outage, and really, truth be told, the wind has pretty much died down. Even so, I call the kids using the Courtesy Phone, mostly because I am excited to a) use a free phone, and b) call the kids and remind them that I am going to see RON SEXSMITH! (they humour me too and all take turns shrieking witticisms into the phone)

Then we sit in our seats and I take a couple of photos with my iPad mini, despite the arched eyebrows of my seat mate two seats over (who spent the first 10 minutes checking her stupid phone messages until I gave her some arched eyebrow action of my own). Jenn Grant, his backup act, comes out and sings. The sound in the hall is, for lack of a better word, sublime. It's clear and gorgeous and hauntingly beautiful and we all sit captivated. She sings with her husband, who has his head hanging so low I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering why. She tells some funny stories about emailing her songs to Ron and asking him to sing on one. At the intermission I go out and buy a CD from her. I ask her which one my 12 year old daughter will like. She puts her arm around me and we both laugh into each other's eyes. Then she signs it with a big heart. She's so friendly that I'm mildly regretful that we couldn't be friends in some alternate universe somewhere. We file back in, I take another photo. Then Ron and band mates come out. He is SO good and SO musical and SO mournfully sweet there is a collective shiver of pleasure from the audience.

And so we all sit for the next 90 minutes, with pauses for some extremely loud applause. I shriek YES! very loudly when he asks if his piano playing is okay, the audience all laugh and he hangs his head, sheepishly pleased that we like him so much. I wonder, not for the first time, why he isn't way more famous than he is. He reminds us that a certain song wasn't actually written by Feist, even if she HAS made it more famous than he did. After the concert, I buy his latest CD because I worry a bit for his pension plan.

Then it's home to the kids, the flashlights, the ruined garden, and the rain. What a spectacular birthday present.

(Although if you're reading this Richard, the Pacific Rim DVD is being released in, ahem, October...)