Atlas

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like…?

We’re officially into the festive season now, and maybe it’s just me, but everywhere I go, things seem to have taken a dark turn. First, there is the incredible abundance of giant inflatable figures that always seem to be either drunk or on the verge of dying. From the Santa on his back on the neighbour’s front lawn, to the Snowman who’s half in the bag, to the Vixen that looks like it’s trying to hump Rudolph, the town’s decorations have decidedly gone over to the dark side–or to OnlyFans. And it’s no better online. After perusing Facebook marketplace for some cool deals, I discovered that even there, people are having a bleak midwinter. Case in point:

Why would ANYONE hang something like this on a tree?! Talk about Silent Night, Hole-y Night. But then there are the wings, which are so pretty and delicate, like someone STAPLED DEAD BUTTERFLIES to these creatures…I guess there are some goth families who’d love to decorate like The Nightmare Before Christmas, but me? I prefer vintage blown glass to a bony ass.

And of course, why dress up as Santa Claus and bring joy to the children when you can put on a Skibidi Toilet costume?

I read the description and yes, it seems to be in English but I’m unfamiliar with many of the terms so I had to look them up. “Skibidi” can mean either “good, cool, bad, or evil” according to the interweb. I’m going to let you decide which one it is in this context but you can probably imagine what I’M leaning towards. “Rizz” is apparently “charisma”, and I’m not sure how charismatic you can actually be with a toilet on your head. And please, I’m begging you–don’t look up Dom Dom. I did, and both Atlas and I are scarred for life. Finally, I think the person selling this isn’t very confident that people will understand it’s a costume and not HIM because the ad uses the word “inflatable” or a variation thereof, FOUR times in one short ad. Yes, we get that it’s INFLATABLE. And either child-sized or one size fits most…

And finally, here’s the most terrifying thing of all. When you think of the choir eternal, does this ever cross your mind?

Whatever happened to winged cherubs, or lovely children in choral robes? No, this is what we’ve come to–a choir of robot babies who all look like they’re about to feast on your flesh instead of the fruit cake you’ve been diligently soaking with rum for days. Why the hell does ANYONE have this many baby CPR dolls and WHAT ARE THEY SINGING?! It’s most likely a cacophony of screams from one of the circles of hell instead of O Hole-y Night.

And speaking of the bowels of hell…

Last week, as if it wasn’t enough that I was interviewed on the CBC (Canada’s national network), I had the honour and privilege of doing an interview and reading on Reader’s Delight, a local radio show. And while the show is terrific, the radio station is in the bowels of a derelict factory building that is most assuredly haunted. Here are some pictures of the halls.

Just around the corner though, is a clothing store and I can’t even imagine who shops there. But if you want to hear me read from my new work-in-progress, Murder Most Novel (the one I got the grant to write), you can listen to it here!

Kit and Ka-glue-dle

Right now, I’m covered in white glue and seething with anger. Why, you ask? Because—and I should have known better—I bought another miniature kit from Amazon, and this one is a veritable nightmare. It looked so adorable on the website—a 2 story apartment with a four poster bed, a grand piano, vintage accessories INCLUDING a desk made from a cast iron sewing machine base, and best of all—an UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER. And then the kit came. And once again, the instructions were incomprehensible, having been reverse engineered into English from Chinese.

But the worst part was that EVERYTHING had to be built from scratch. Therein lies the problem. I have never been known for my manual dexterity. I have very large hands and enough arthritis that they just don’t work very well. In order to build this kit, I have to manipulate pieces of balsa wood so thin and tiny that I’ve already broken several parts. LUCKILY…there is white glue to put it all back together. Oh, not the glue that came with the kit—that was dried solid—but good old Lepage’s white glue. I gave up early on trying to be accurate with my glue spurting, and now I just layer it on everywhere. It dries clear, which is the only good thing about it, aside from the fact that it eventually sticks things together. So I glue a bunch of stair treads, hold them in my fingers until they’re fairly stable, and then try to pry my hands off without pulling apart the stuff I’ve just glued. And I’m not always successful, so then it’s back to SQUARE F*CKING ONE. Pardon my language, but the typewriter? The one I was so jazzed about? It’s literally half an inch wide and it took TWENTY-TWO pieces of miniscule balsa wood to construct! You heard me—TWENTY-TWO. And don’t get me even started on the stupid grand piano. I would have given up days ago (and it’s been days…many, many days) but if you know me at all, you know I’m no quitter. I will complete this monstrosity, right down to the ridiculous lamp that requires me to glue 8 pieces of plastic and two pieces of metal together, or my name isn’t Player One. The only thing I refuse to do is the insane wireframed eyeglasses that are supposed to sit on the paper feather that I had to carefully cut out (and then locate once it landed on the kitchen floor, and that was eighteen minutes of my life I’m NEVER getting back), because I can’t even see it with my OWN glasses. I hate it. I hate it so much. But I will glue-fully triumph…and then I will throw it onto our firepit and watch it burn like the hellspawn it is.

In other news, Ilana, my favourite cat, is back living with us while the kids are home. And she continues to be completely adorable, as you can tell from the picture below, and is slowly getting over her fear of Atlas, who loves her SO much that he wants to be near her all the time. Sadly, she does not reciprocate his affection. Still, it’s such a joy every morning when she comes running to see me (and my bag of kitty treats) and lets me pet her to my heart’s content…with my glue-y hands.

It’s A Mystery

Recently, I’ve been binge-watching an old British TV series called Midsomer Murders. The show focuses on a detective named Barnaby who lives in this vast English territory called Midsomer (not to be confused with Midsommar, which is quite possibly the most INSANE and awful movie I’ve ever seen, nor is it a time of year like Midsummer, which in Canada, happens in October). Each episode is an hour and a half long and there are TWENTY-THREE seasons with between 4 and 8 episodes a season. It’s been on since 1997 and they’re still making new episodes. Right now, I’m in about Season 9, I think—it’s easy to lose track, but at this point, I think I’m qualified to make a few observations about this show.

1) How are there any people left in Midsomer? Because in each episode there are at least 4 murders, sometimes more. Midsomer is rivalling several entire countries as well as numerous American States to be crowned the murder capital of the world. You think Murder, She Wrote was a little over the top? Try living in Midsomer, where your life is in your hands every day because you own a relish factory.

2) How big exactly is Midsomer? In the first couple of seasons it seemed like it was a fairly small county consisting of two or three villages. But when all those people were murdered, they started adding on with places like Midsomer Parma, Midsomer Wellow, Badger’s Drift, Midsomer Worthy (not to be confused with Midsomer LITTLE Worthy, Midsomer Barrow—in fact, if you look online, there are SIXTY-TWO different towns and places where these murders all take place. It’s like Midsomer has its own continent. But I guess when you’ve been killing off your population for 27 years, you need to expand your victim pool.

3) Every single person who lives in Midsomer has a deep, dark secret. From the local barman to the local baron, they’re all hiding something. That’s why in every episode, there are so many red herrings. I mean, you can’t stretch a murder investigation into an hour and a half unless you have twenty different suspects who have a shady past/married their stepson/made someone drink hallucinogenic tea/had a secret lovechild fathered by the local Anglican minister/turned someone into a blood eagle/once shot a guy during a foxhound and claimed they were aiming for the fox/burned someone alive/urinated on a sacred tree (some of these happened in the TV show Midsomer Murders and some happened in the movie Midsommar and some happened in BOTH. Guess which is which?)

4) The same actor played Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby for the first 13 seasons and when he retired, his ‘cousin’, Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby takes over, and the best thing is that the actor playing John Barnaby, whose name is Neil Dudgeon was in one of the earlier episodes called Garden of Death. The IMDB synopsis of this episode is: “When an arrogant aristocratic family’s decision to develop a memorial garden into a commercial tea shop has the villagers up in arms, murders past and present rear their heads.” People got MURDERED over a tea shop. And the guy who becomes the new Barnaby was the sexy memorial gardener. Also, in researching this, I discovered Neil Dudgeon has been a bit actor in every single BBC mystery series, so I guess he has a lot of experience at detective-ing.

5) The synopses get increasingly more random and bizarre as the years go on. Here are some of my favourites:

The bodies of former criminals are found in a cornfield. The cause of their deaths and the strange position in which they lay is rather bizarre. Rumours quickly circulate in the village that it could be the work of some extra-terrestrial force. However, Barnaby is far from convinced.

When one of the world’s rarest orchids is smuggled illegally into Midsomer Malham, it triggers a catalogue of passion, jealousy and death.

The unveiling of a newly-discovered novel by deceased Midsomer crime-writer George Summersbee at the Luxton Deeping Crime Festival is jeopardised when the manuscript is stolen and a woman is fatally electrocuted by a booby-trapped roulette wheel. Can new dad Barnaby untangle a web of jealousy and obsession to find the killer?

The annual harvest fair and the daredevil riders of the Wall of Death come to Midsomer village Whitcombe Mallet. When the owner of an equestrian centre is trampled by his horse DCI Barnaby and DS Nelson have to unravel a complex feud from the past, where nothing is what it seems.

Alien abductions, illegal orchids, booby-trapped rouletted wheels, walls of death—what more could anyone ask for?

But recently, all of my mystery watching came in handy when we had a murder in our OWN house:

Me: I have discovered the body of a mouse in the guest room. This crime shall not go unpunished. Now let me see. (*carefully appraises group of suspects and then points with a dramatic flourish*) Atlas!! Was it you?!
Atlas: What? No! I have an alibi. I was outside at the time, barking at the squirrels.
Me: Hmmm. (*points with another dramatic flourish*) Then it must have been Ken!!
Ken: Why would I—what are we doing here exactly? I don’t remember this scenario ever happening…
Me: Don’t break the fourth wall, KEN. All right, let me see…there’s only one other suspect—ILANA!! It was YOU!!
Ilana: I didn’t do it, copper! I swear!
Me: Then why did the mouse write ‘Twuz A Kat in its own blood on the floor? Explain THAT!!
Ilana: Fine. It was me. But it was supposed to be a present.
Me: Mystery solved.

DCI Barnaby would be proud.

Taking The Fall

First the good news: After the shuttering of Potters’ Grove Press and their decision to unpublish all their titles, I was left with 2 short story collections that were no longer available. I’m happy to announce that my first short story collection, Feasting Upon The Bones, has been republished by Baxter House Editions and I even had the chance to correct a couple of minor typos that had always bothered me. So if you’d like a copy of the new and improved Feasting Upon The Bones, you can buy it here!

http://a-fwd.com/asin=B0D3YBHJ5R

And in other news…

As I write this, much of my body is aching thanks to an incident earlier in the week, which was terrible at the time but which, because you know me and you know I can laugh at just about anything, seems funny in retrospect:

I woke up early on Thursday morning because I had an online meeting. OK, the meeting started at 9 am but I’m retired and I spent the majority of my career getting up at 5:45 so 9 am IS EARLY AND I WILL NOT BE JUDGED. I got ready, but because it was an online meeting, I did what any normal person would do and I put on a nice sweater and also some pajama pants and my old woolly slippers because my bottom half wouldn’t be visible. The other person logged on right at 9 and we began to chat. Then she wanted to share something on her screen. At the same moment, my phone, which I’d left upstairs, began to ring. It was taking her a minute to get the file up and I was worried about the phone because Ken had gone out with Atlas and I’d heard sirens just a little while before the phone started ringing and again, if you know me at all, you know that I’m the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios. So I said to the other person, “While you’re getting that ready, I’m just going to grab my phone” and then I ran upstairs.

I was in a bit of a panic, thinking that someone was calling to tell me that poor Ken had been hit by a car chasing after Atlas, who had broken his collar AGAIN, or more ludicrously that he had been attacked by an angry swarm of bees and I was picturing Atlas snapping at them all and praying he didn’t get stung (which has happened in the past and I’ve tried to soothe him while simultaneously trying not to laugh at his chubby cheeks), when I hit the third step from the top.

That was when my slippers, being old and woolly and having no tread, went completely out from under me and I landed hard, left-side down, on the stairs. But that wasn’t the end of it. Thanks to my super-comfy yet non-grippy pajama pants and sweater, I began sliding DOWN THE STAIRS AT BREAKNECK SPEED. It sound like this: Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunk and I could go on for another 7 thunks but I think you get the point. About halfway down, I screamed at the top of my lungs—why, I don’t know, because there was nothing and no one who could save me, and I wondered if it was true that if a woman who’s falling down the stairs screams and there’s no one there to hear her, does she make a sound? And the answer is yes. Yes, she does. A very loud and terrifying sound. I hit the bottom of the stairs and lay there for a second, trying to figure out if I had broken anything, and then I suddenly remembered that I was IN A MEETING. So I had to limp over to my office chair and sit down very carefully.

“I’m back. Are you ready to get started?” I asked between clenched teeth. And the meeting continued like nothing had happened, except that I was in agony.

But the best part is that, even though I didn’t break anything, I have some huge bruises, and while that might not seem like an upside, it’s certainly getting me lots of sympathy and maybe even a nice get well present KEN (hint hint—I like wine). Speaking of wine, the only other time I’ve fallen down a set of stairs was when I fell down our attic stairs almost 20 years ago. I was at the bottom trying not to cry and Kate, who was about 8 at the time, immediately ran and got me a glass of wine. Because she’s the best daughter, aren’t you KATE? (hint hint—I like wine).

Worst slip and slide EVER

Zoology 101

It’s been a zoo around here this past week. I’m serious—a veritable zoo. First, I’ve been having issues with a squirrel in my attic, and that’s not a euphemism for how my brain works, like literally ALL the time. No, there’s an actual squirrel who took up residence in our attic over a week ago by chewing a hole in our fascia. I noticed one day when I was putting laundry away that it sounded like a herd of elephants cavorting around the heating vent in the ceiling above me, and that’s when we discovered the hole. Ken got out the really long extension ladder (because our house is very old—the main floor is 14 feet high and the second floor is 8 feet high, plus the attic space, carry the 1, divide by the nominator, and draw a Venn diagram where I’m in the middle, terrified that he’s going to fall OFF the ladder—in fact, I came up with a very cunning Worst Case Scenario plan whereby if the ladder tipped over, he was to grab the eavestrough and then swing to the window ledge, leap towards the largest branch of the nearest spruce tree, and then fall into the springy bushes underneath. Ken’s reaction to this, while he was swaying back and forth on the ladder, was “Don’t be ridiculous—I’m not going to fall off.” Thankfully, he did not, but I was PREPARED.) Where was I? Oh, right. So we waited until the next morning when it seemed like the squirrel had gone out for the day, and then Ken repaired the hole. But later that night, it still sounded like there was something in the attic, so we got out the live trap. Ken baited it with peanut butter, and the following became the conversation for the next four mornings:

Day One

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Two

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Three

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Four

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

So now, not only do we still have a squirrel in our attic, he’s the most well-fed and happy squirrel on the block.

And then, I woke up on Wednesday morning, and there was a notification on my phone that our outdoor camera had detected motion around 3 am. What now? Had that bug decided to go on a walkabout? But no—I checked the feed and it was a GIANT RACCOON!! It galumphed from our side porch over to one of our outbuildings like it was having the time of its life and I was so excited, because the other day I saw a video clip about a man who had raised a raccoon and it followed him everywhere like a puppy. Atlas rarely follows me ANYWHERE unless I have food, so a raccoon would be awesome. I decided I would put out a big bowl of food and see if I could gradually tame it to hang out with me, but then Ken reminded me that raccoons are nocturnal so I’d have to be awake in the middle of the night to ‘hang out with it’, and that was kind of a dealbreaker for someone like me who’s asleep by 10 o’clock. Still, I really want more raccoon films so I’ll keep you posted on the results of my labours.

Finally, the strangest thing happened this week as Ken and I were travelling up North so I could do writing presentations to a high school in Cochrane. We went through this small town just as school had finished and we got stuck behind a school bus. It stopped, lights flashing, so we waited patiently while it unloaded. Then it drove off. But there was no child on the sidewalk—there was only a CROW. Just standing there like it was waiting to cross the street. And then from the other side of the street, another crow came hopping along very quickly, like it was coming to meet the first crow who had gotten off the school bus. And I’ve been thinking about that for days.

And finally finally, on a non-animal-related note—my Leacock Longlist stickers came on Friday! If you order my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do (which you can do by clicking here), it comes with the image of the sticker on the front cover, but the copies I ordered for myself are getting plastered with those bad boys!

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never given a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.

We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:

At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.

It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:

Boob Job; I Love My Dog

This week, I had to do something that I’d been dreading for a while—get a mammogram. My original appointment had been in July, then I had to change it and the earliest I could get was December. But then, in a surprising turn of good luck, we were going to be away on a cruise in December and I had to change the appointment once again. The earliest new date I could get was in July—again. It seemed like a good thing but then I started thinking—is it? What if there was something wrong with one of the “girls” and I wouldn’t even know until next summer, by which time it might be too late? But there was nothing, seemingly, that I could do, given that the clinic where my requisition was sent was notorious for never having any appointments. Then two weeks ago, I was getting an ultrasound on my shoulder at a new place in the same building as my physiotherapist and they had a big sign that said they’d just become partners in the government screening program. I enquired—they could give me an appointment almost right away. I would have rejoiced but if you’ve ever had one of these done, you’ll know it’s nothing to get excited about. And for those of you who’ve never had the pleasure—imagine taking a rubber ball and compressing it in a machine like this:

You get the idea? And guys, we all know if the test for testicular cancer involved smashing your scrotum in this torture device, some science dude would have figured out a different method YEARS ago, involving no contact, soothing music, and ice cream at the end. Not to say that men don’t go through very painful and invasive routine medical tests…cough cough. At any rate, I approached the day with a sense of doom and found myself subconsciously crossing my arms over my chest at random moments. Then the morning of the mammogram (sounds like a horror movie doesn’t it—The Morning of the Mammogram From Hell) arrived and I drove to the clinic, heart pounding. See the last time I’d had one of these done, it was two years ago, and you may remember I wrote about it then, more specifically how the technician told me, after I was securely and excruciatingly clamped, “Make sure you don’t pass out.” I mean, what the hell does THAT mean? How exactly am I to prevent myself from passing out? And then the nightmarish thought—What if I DID? Would I just dangle there from my boob until…it didn’t even bear thinking about.

So with much trepidation, I entered the clinic and was called in almost right away by the same woman who had done an X-ray for me not too long ago, which didn’t bode well. But then we started chatting:

Me: Hey, I remember you from that X-ray a while back.
Tech: Yes, I do X-rays too but mammograms are really my specialty. I’m a jack-of-all-trades, I guess.
Me: And master of all of them, right?
Tech: *laughs* Don’t worry. Did your last one hurt?
Me: A little.
Tech: Well, we’ll make sure it doesn’t this time.

And true to her word, it was easy peasy and relatively painless. I even let her do a couple of extra shots “just to be on the safe side”. So fingers crossed that the “girls” are all right, and I don’t have to do this again for two more years.

In other news, Atlas is coming up on 4 years old now, and I have to say that he’s become the BEST dog. He was a holy terror as a puppy, as a 1 year-old and a 2 year-old, but over the last year, he’s just really settled into his role as a good boi. He has such an endearing personality, and you always know what he’s thinking about, which is mostly food. In fact, that’s when he’s most human—when it’s time for a meal. A while back, I started giving him a teaspoon of soft food with his kibble at every meal—we call it his “special”—and he goes nuts for it, jumping into the air like a baby goat when he sees me get the spoon, which I like to hold aloft like a beacon as I proclaim “The special spoon!!” It’s become such a thing that the last time we went away, my parents took care of him and my mom called, concerned:

Me: Hey, what’s up?
Mom: Atlas won’t eat. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.
Me: He won’t eat?
Mom: He’s just standing in front of the refrigerator. He keeps looking at it, and then looking at me. Very pointedly.
Me (laughing): That’s because his special is in there. He wants a dollop on his kibble.

A while later, she messaged to say that he gobbled everything up just like a good boi would. I love him so much.

And I’m glad I have him because he’s a real comfort when things are sh*tty, like last week when I got an email telling me that the company who published both my short story collections was dissolving. And not only are they not publishing anything new, they’re “unpublishing” all their other books, as in they will no longer exist in the public realm, and it was like a gut punch, or worse than a mammogram in terms of pain. So if you know anyone who publishes reprints of well-reviewed spooky stories that did as well financially as one could hope, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here, hugging my chest and cuddling my dog.

Weird Thoughts and Whatnot

On Friday night, I couldn’t sleep so I started composing this week’s blog post in my head. As you may recall, I’ve been seeing this acupuncturist/chiropractor type guy for my chronic shoulder pain, and I’d given up on the acupuncture on the grounds that lying on my stomach with needles in my back for an indeterminate amount of time was stressful. So a few weeks ago, I went and asked to resume shock wave therapy (which is NOT electroshock therapy, just to be clear—it’s a type of air-compressor driven jackhammer that’s theoretically supposed to break up the calcium in your tendons), and his response was “No problem, kid.” And let me just remind you that the acupuncturist/chiropractor type guy is probably in his early thirties if that, and I am a woman who is quite beyond middle age and in no way, shape, or form, a kid. (Slight tangent: as I was composing this in my head, I was calculating how old I would have to be if 58 was middle-aged and realized that there was NO WAY I would get to see 116 years old unless there was some kind of modern medical miracle that occurred during the next few years, and then I started calculating how much time I had left and the answer to that was BEST CASE SCENARIO 25-30 YEARS and then I freaked myself out at how short a time that seemed and then I had to wander the house in an existential panic until I could go back to bed. Second slight tangent: I have a very dear aunt who has always called me “kiddo” ever since I can remember, and that’s fine because she’s older than me and she’s family and also she reads my blog and I don’t want her to think I don’t like it when SHE calls me kiddo).

At any rate, I’ve become increasingly—I don’t know, it’s like a simultaneous combination of amused and annoyed—by his constant sobriquets and Peleton style encouragement:

“You did amazing today, kid!”
“You’re a trooper—great job!”
“Fantastic work today, milady!”

And so on. And it would be awesome and cool if I actually DID anything aside from lying on my stomach and counting to 600 very slowly until he comes back to take the needles out; otherwise it just seems like hollow praise. But then last week, I arrived just as he was coming out of his treatment room and he greeted me thusly: “Uh oh, here comes trouble!”

I looked behind me to see who he was talking to, but it became quickly apparent that IT WAS ME. Me? Trouble?! Does he not know me at all? As we all know, I don’t have a single real bad-ass bone in my body! But then, at this point in the mental composition of this blog post in my bed, I started to fall asleep, and dreamed that I was writing about a couple who made cute pet videos and in one of them, a cat got mad at a dog for sniffing her, and the caption in the video read, “Stop touching my genitalia with your nose!” and then it occurred to me both in the dream and as I began to wake up again that the word “genitalia” doesn’t sound anything at all like what it is; in fact, it sounds like an old-fashioned word for something very festive, like if you said that “the whole regiment was decked out in their best genitalia” or “the halls were festooned with merry genitalia” or whatnot. And the whole thing was so funny when I pictured it that I laughed out loud, and Ken rolled over and muttered, “What?” and I said, “You’re snoring again” and he went back to sleep while I kept silently giggling just like a little kid and maybe my acupuncturist/chiropractor guy is right about me being trouble.

Did you say trouble?

Playing Possum

Things are relatively back to normal around here. Ken recovered, having a very mild case of the ‘vid and I never did get it, mostly because I’m convinced that I had covid already at the end of January 2020—right before everything started to get shut down. I was incredibly sick back then and lost my sense of taste, so I’m convinced that I had OG covid, which has made me immune to all these new strains, plus I’ve had all my boosters. Plus plus, Ken has the immune system of a big baby:

Me: I didn’t get covid from you because I have a kick-ass immune system.
Ken: You didn’t get covid because you weren’t in the direct line of fire of that woman at the art auction who sounded like she was dying.
Me: I was sitting next to you! AND I LIVE WITH YOU!

And then I felt really bad because I had MADE Ken go to the art auction on the cruise ship on the grounds that ‘it would be fun and also there is free champagne’. So we went, neither of us having any intention of buying overpriced art. Just like I went to all the jewelry events even though I had no intention of buying any overpriced jewelry. But again, there was FREE CHAMPAGNE. And yes, Ken and I both had beverage packages so we didn’t have to pay for any alcohol, but isn’t there something about ‘free champagne’ that just draws you in every time? The art auction was hilarious because it wasn’t really an auction at all. I’m used to antique auctions where the auctioneer is one of those guys with the incredible patter and it’s worth going just for the excitement. But the cruise ship auctioneer was very obviously not schooled in auction patter and the auction went like this:

Art Lady: This painting by this guy who did a lot of trees is valued at $111 000. Do I hear $50 000? No? All right Marco, put it back in the gallery. Now it’s time for the mystery painting! It is also trees, but it’s by a different guy and THAT’S the mystery!

The most expensive thing I saw get bought was a resin pig. It went for $3000 and everyone in the audience cheered and clapped for the guy, who was super-old and with a very young blonde woman that Ken insisted was his daughter. He assumed that because she called the old guy “Daddy” and I was like “Dude, you’re so naïve.”

At any rate, we sat through the auction next to a woman wearing a mask who kept taking off the mask to cough phlegmatically and blow her nose noisily then either fell asleep or died, but I’m not sure which, because we left right after the resin pig.

And things finally got back to normal and everything was good and covid-free until three nights ago, when Atlas ran in the bedroom and immediately jumped up on the bed and wouldn’t look at me…

Me: Hey bud—OMG WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!! KEN!!!

Yes, he got sprayed by a skunk AGAIN. That’s five times in the last three months. Luckily, Ken has a very good de-skunk concoction and we got Atlas before it had really soaked in. So Ken set up the live trap, and on Saturday morning, he called me outside:

Ken: There’s something in the trap.
Me: Is it the skunk? Please let it be the skunk!
Ken: Nope. But it’s very pissed off.

It was a possum. And it was the most annoyed and embarrassed possum I’ve ever seen, like it couldn’t believe it fell for the old peanut butter and cat food trick. But we like possums and they don’t stink, so we opened the trap and left it alone to make its way back to its possum home. Safe travels, little guy, and if you see the skunk, tell him how good that peanut butter and cat food tasted.

Positively Negative…For Now

Well, we’re back from our trip. The second last day was my favourite, I think, mostly because we toured around Halifax in an ‘amphibious vehicle’, which is to say that our tour bus turned into a boat at a certain point and we literally drove down a ramp into the water and then we were floating and it was supercool. I’ve done that once before, many years ago, but it wasn’t made clear to me that the bus BECAME a boat—I thought we were changing vehicles halfway through, so imagine my terror as we headed straight off the pier into the water. But this time I was ready, and I really enjoyed it. Overall, the cruise was pretty good—at least the food, wine, and destinations were great. It was just the crew that was chaotic, like tiny animated characters in an old-time video game just zipping around without any seeming purpose and bumping into walls and getting stuck and whatnot. The last day was pretty exhausting, having to get up at 7 am, eat a quick breakfast, and then wait to get called for our airport transfer. Once we were off the boat, Norwegian basically washed their hands of us and we had to find the bus to the airport on our own. We eventually did, and then had to battle all the other passengers who were equally desperate to get away from the ship and had NO F*CKING IDEA HOW TO LINE UP, CAUSING INCREDIBLE PANIC AND DISORDER WHEN THE BUSES FINALLY ARRIVED.

At any rate, we arrived home later that day, and Atlas was very pleased to see us; in fact, he stood up, put his paws on my shoulder and then licked my neck and face, something he has never done before, and it was very sweet. And sloppy. We unpacked, I did a little prep for the presentation I was doing the next night at the local library on writing, and then we went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and Ken was already downstairs. When he came up, he looked terrible.

Me: What’s wrong?
Ken: I was up all night with a fever.
Me: Oh f*ck.

So I gave him a covid test and guess what? IT WAS POSITIVE. Which meant I had to cancel my presentation, cancel work on Saturday, and pretty much spent the next few days taking care of him. Fortunately, we’ve both had all our boosters so he’s not as sick as he could have been. I tested negative, and so far, I still am, fingers crossed.

Ken on the left, me on the right

So you were right, ‘Mole, my friend—cruise ships really are a hotbed of bacteria. But the upside to all this (aside from having a readymade blog topic) is that it’s quince season and the quince on the bushes in my backyard are ready to go. It was a bumper crop this year, so I’ve spent the last couple of days making quince jam, quince crumble, quince juice (which is what you get after you poach the quince to get it ready for cooking). Quince is labour-intensive, more so than any other fruit in existence I think, but it’s worth it in the end. I have so much quince that I posted it for sale on Facebook Marketplace which obviously meant fielding stupid questions from people who don’t read ads and want to know where I live (it’s in the ad) and how much the quince is (it’s in the ad) and do I deliver? (no, I am NOT bringing quince to your house—I picked it for you so if you want it, get your ass over here).

So wish me luck—I’m usually a positive person but right now, I really need to stay negative.