Clocks

Horing Around

It’s official–I am a hor. And no, that’s not a spelling error, and no, I didn’t hit my 60th birthday and decide to use my feminine wiles on an unsuspecting and soon-to-be appalled clientele–no, ‘hor’ is short for horologist. And what is a horologist? I hear you ask. Has Mydangblog suddenly earned a certification in the art of telling people that a random constellation assigned to their birth defines their character, and that I’ve started providing daily reports about very specific things that will happen to them–and the millions of other people also born in that month? Of course not–that would be insane. But I AM crazy–crazy for clocks. And if you know anything about me at all, you know that I’m obsessed with clocks. I have OCD, and I find great comfort in being surrounded by clocks, not sure why, because all the explanations on the interweb don’t seem to apply to me–I don’t have a fear of time passing, I don’t obsessively check the time, and I don’t compulsively count things. (I DO have what’s known as ‘magical thinking’ about clocks, but it only applies to the digital number 3:33, because at 3:33, the clock in our bedroom, which projects onto the ceiling, looks like 3 spaceships having a battle, and if I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s usually around 3:30, so I wait until 3:33 to see the space battle, whisper Pew Pew! to myself, and it puts me back to sleep.)

At any rate, at last count, I have over 56 clocks scattered around the house, and only about a tenth of them actually keep time. But lately, I’ve had a run of luck.

First, if you recall, there was the antique mantel clock that I retrofitted with a battery pack–it runs like a dream and is currently sitting in pride of place in my bathroom. Then, 3 weeks ago, I came across a beautiful gingerbread clock at Value Village for only twenty dollars. It didn’t work, so I was planning on selling it in my antiques booth as ‘clock decor’. It was taking up room on the kitchen island so I brought it into the dining room. It stayed on the dining room table, dormant as a bear in winter, until I needed to clear the table. I put it at the back of the sideboard. A little while later, I could hear a faint sound, a sound that was both exhilarating and soothing at the same time. I approached carefully–the gingerbread clock was RUNNING!

Me: Ken!! Ken!! The clock is working!
Ken: What clock?
Me: Don’t come any closer! Tiptoe!

Of course, Ken completely disregarded my instructions and clunked his way into the dining room, but it was fine–the clock didn’t even seem to notice, and kept right on ticking. A few minutes later, it began to chime.

Ken: Is it really 8 o’clock already? It doesn’t seem that dark out…
Me: Shhh. Just give it some…time, hehe.

Despite my best efforts, the gingerbread clock loses about 20 minutes an hour, and chimes out random numbers, but that’s just fine because I GOT IT TO WORK.

And then, a few days ago, I was at the Mennonite Thrift Store (Mennonites dress like the American Amish, but they have cars and cellphones), and right by the till, there was an antique Sessions clock, just sitting there, as though it was waiting for me. It was very cheap, and there was a sign on it that said, “Pendulum package and key inside.” So I bought it, because who doesn’t need another clock, especially one that’s almost 150 years old?

I got it home and set it on the counter. It seemed to be a little overwound, so I took the back off and manually started the pendulum. I did this several times. Suddenly, the pendulum continued to sway back and forth, and the next thing I knew, the clock was chiming–and not only was it chiming, it was keeping THE CORRECT TIME. I kept it on the counter for two days, where it continued to keep perfect time. Then, Ken and I went out grocery shopping, and when we came back, IT HAD STOPPED. I almost cried. But I was never one to give up–I moved it to the dining room, the scene of my last success, and kept manually trying to restart it. Finally, I sprayed the innards with WD40–EUREKA. And now it sits on the dining room table, and we all tiptoe around it, and I’m scared to move it in case it stops again. Temperamental little b*tch. But it keeps perfect time.

And you’re probably now thinking, Isn’t this supposed to be a humour blog? This isn’t that funny, her going on about some stupid clock. But it IS funny. Because I’m a hor. A hor for clocks.

Clocked Again

The story this week begins and ends with a clock. Oh no! I hear you say. Did Mydangblog buy ANOTHER CLOCK?! Indeed, I did, and stop judging me. It wasn’t my fault, and the saga is complex and convoluted to say the least…

On Friday, Ken and I went to the antique market to stock my booth. I wanted to look around a bit, and Ken was tired from being awake, so he went to nap in the SUV while I had a browse. I was just about to leave when one of my former co-workers said, “Oh hey—Buddy on third has a clock he wants to show you.” I knew Ken was waiting in a hot car without water or treats, but it was a CLOCK. I booted it up to the third floor, where ‘Buddy’ (not his real name, obvs.), who also works there, was wandering around. When he saw me, his eyes lit up like a drug dealer when his favourite meth head comes around the corner. “Good to see you. I have something I want to show you,” he said, mysteriously, not realizing that I’d been given the “meth heads” up.

Me: Is it a clock?
Buddy: Yeah. It’s really nice. Look.
Me: Ooh, that IS nice. But if I bring another clock home, Ken will kill me.
Buddy: I’m only asking ten bucks.
Me: Sold.

Fortunately, the current clock in my bathroom had just stopped working, so when I crept out to the parking lot, carefully opened the door and slid the clock in the back, I had a ready excuse for Ken once we got home. “It’s nice,” he said. “But couldn’t you use one of your other, several many clocks instead of buying this one?”

“Very few of my 64 clocks work,” I reminded him.

So I put it on the shelf in my bathroom. It had a battery in it already and seemed to be keeping good time. On Saturday morning, I was getting ready for work and I looked up at the clock. “9:05,” I said to myself. “It’s keeping perfect time.” Then I squinted. And tilted my head. Then put on my reading glasses. What had at first seemed to be an abstract floral background turned out to be an English garden with a Romanesque folly…And then I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken (he was out walking the dog). “When you get back, come upstairs—I want to show you something funny. A few minutes later:

Ken: What is it?
Me: You know that clock I bought yesterday?
Ken: Yeah, it looks good up there on the shelf. The time looks right…
Me: Take a closer look. What’s wrong with it?
Ken (also squints): Uh, is it sideways?
Me: Yep.

Instead of it being 9:05, it was twenty after twelve. The clock was a quarter turn sideways. But even at a quarter turn sideways, it LOOKED like the right time. I guess Buddy looked at it, decided not to worry about it being completely sideways, set the time and figured “Meh—for ten bucks, no one’s gonna notice.” And he was almost right.

Ken: Huh. Do you want me to rotate it?
Me: Sure.

So he popped the clock face out of the case and put it to rights. I left for work. I got home a few hours later, and went up to my bathroom to retrieve a part-bottle of wine that I’d hidden there on Friday night (that’s another story), and I looked at the clock. It now said 6:05. Which would have been fine, except it was 4:05. I took it down off the shelf—the hour hand was now loosey-goosey, having fallen off the stem when Ken took the face out. And the whole thing was encased in plastic. There was no conceivable way to fix it, despite my best efforts, which involved looking at it questioningly and shaking it. Then I had a brainstorm—I had recently purchased an antique mantel clock that someone had converted into a battery-operated one, but the battery pack was broken. If I could only get the hands out of THIS clock, I could put the whole contraption in the antique one. But how? I would need a hammer. But if you know anything about me at all, you know that I keep a hammer in almost every room of the house. So I got out my bathroom hammer and broke the plastic casing—carefully of course, because I needed the hands intact.

And after some fiddling, I managed to recreate the entire assemblage in my antique mantel clock, so I am officially a clockematician, or whatever you call someone who cleverly combines two clocks into one, like a ticking Venn diagram, and I can say that with confidence because I am a clockematician. When I fixed my mantel clock on Saturday afternoon, which also involved finding a new second hand, which was red and I had to colour it black with a Sharpie to match, it was 4:30. I’ve been writing this post for a little over 40 minutes, so my mantel clock should say 5:12. Only time will tell…

P.S. It says 5:11. Close enough.

Beet It!

Here are two truths and a lie about me: a) I’m bad at math b) I do not have an inordinate amount of clocks and c) I really like to cook. Can you guess which one is the lie? And all three tie into a crazy dream I had last week where I started doing math, looked at the clock, saw that I’d been trying to solve a stupid math problem for over 10 minutes, gave up and made Cornish hens in red wine sauce instead. It was bizarre, but it reinforced one important thing–I love cooking. Some people don’t get this, mostly the people who don’t love cooking, but to me, there’s nothing more relaxing than picking out a recipe, getting the ingredients, and spending a couple of hours making something delicious. When Ken and I were first married, my culinary range consisted of Pillsbury frozen mini-pizzas, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, and ground beef with prepackaged noodles and sauce. Since then, I’ve had many adventures and misadventures (baking SODA rather than baking powder in the raspberry pie I made for the first time I hosted a family Thanksgiving is the most memorable, and probably the most disgusting), but I’ve steadily improved my abilities over the last 25 years.

Although Ken and I have different tastes (and taste buds, apparently), he loves food and he’s usually pretty good about eating whatever I make—mostly because if he complains, he knows the response will be “Fine. Make your own damn dinner then.” And Ken is one of those people who DOESN’T like cooking, so even though he’s really super-picky, he will tolerate whatever is on his plate and just eat around the stuff he doesn’t like, kind of like a toddler. Or, like a toddler, he gets a little whiny. Case in point—last summer, I was doing home-made corn tortilla fajitas with the awesome tortilla press that I bought online. But Ken was all like, “I don’t want corn tortillas! I want regular wheat tortillas! Just because you and Kate can’t eat gluten doesn’t mean the rest of us should suffer! Wah wah!” and he was adamant enough that he actually went out and bought some wheat tortilla shells right before dinner so he could have things his own way. I mocked him a little, of course, but then later I felt bad about it, because if he wants gluey, ‘stick to your intestines’ wheatiness, then who am I to judge? So the next night, I promised him I would cook him beets. While this may not sound like a big deal, the thing you need to know is that Ken LOVES beets. He’s always mooning about how amazing beets are, and threatening to buy some so he can “boil them, slice them, and eat them with salt and butter.” Even saying it makes me feel slightly nauseated. But I had found a recipe for “roasted root vegetables” and figured that if I put the beets in with enough carrots and potatoes, it just might be edible.

So on the way home from the antique market, we stopped at a Mennonite fruit and vegetable stand (Mennonites are the Canadian equivalent of the Amish, if you don’t know). There was no one around for a couple of minutes and we were just about to give up, when a little girl about six years old flew out of the farmhouse about 300 feet away and came running down the lane in her bare feet. We told her what we wanted to buy—3 cobs of corn, a pint of raspberries and a bunch of beets—and asked how much we owed her. She just stared at us with big eyes. She was adorable but apparently, she didn’t speak English, and couldn’t do math, which made her the perfect salesperson for a small business in Mennonite World. But I shouldn’t be critical. I was as flummoxed by the math as she was, having bought 3 cobs of corn at the price of $4 for a dozen. Luckily, Ken is a whiz at math, and he figured out the total cost with some complex algorithm involving fractions and long division and we were on our way. But I was concerned about the whole strange situation:

Me: What was she, like 6? Is that even safe?
Ken: What do you mean? God, these raspberries are amazing. Can you make cheesecake for dessert?
Me: Well, what if we were in a van? Would they have still sent her out? We could have been kidnappers.
Ken: I’m sure someone was watching from the window. Oh my god, these raspberries! Do you have the stuff you need to make cheesecake?
Me: How could they see from over 300 feet away? By the time someone noticed that she was being snatched, they would be gone! Maybe they have different aged children they send out depending on the vehicle. If it’s a single guy in a van, they send out the 15-year-old with the huge muscles from working in the fields. We’re a couple in a small car, so we get the adorable 6 year old?
Ken: These raspberries will be awesome on cheesecake! I can’t wait!
Me: Sigh. If you keep eating them, there won’t be any LEFT for cheesecake. That’s it. Two more raspberries then the bag goes away. I mean it.
Ken: Aw….

That afternoon, I started getting everything ready—husking the corn, making the cheesecake, marinating the steak—until finally, it was time to tackle the beets. I peeled and chopped the potatoes and carrots first, avoiding the inevitable. Then I pulled the beets out of the bag. They smelled disgusting, like an open grave. I washed and peeled them, and it didn’t help. Kate was sitting at the counter, and I said, “God, these things smell and taste like dirt!” She said that was because they came from the ground. I reminded her that the same was true of carrots and potatoes but they smelled like they were meant to be eaten, not buried in a tomb. Then I held a peeled beet up to her nose, and she was like “God, they DO smell like dirt! I’m not eating any of that!” At this point, I realized that my hands were now dyed an alarming shade of pink, as was my cutting board, and as I mixed the chopped beets into the roasting pan, the carrots and potatoes started to turn pink as well. “Holy sh*t, the beets are spreading their poison to the rest of the food!” I exclaimed. “What if this is how the zombie apocalypse starts?!”

While dinner was cooking, Ken came down and was using my laptop to research more beet recipes.

Ken: Hey, check this out. This website says that people “are very passionate about beets. They either love them or hate them”…
Me: Accurate assessment.
Ken: “A lot of people think they taste like dirt”!
Me: That’s because they do. I told you that about half an hour ago.
Ken: You already read this website! You’re plagiarizing Martha Stewart!
Me: I’m NOT plagiarizing Martha Stewart. Do you think she’s the only one who knows that beets taste like death? EVERYONE knows it. Martha Stewart is plagiarizing ME.

Then I served dinner, making sure that Ken got pretty well ALL of the beets. I had about three chunks, which only served to confirm that I am definitely one of the people who hates beets. But Ken was beside himself with joy, and I felt like I had made up a little for mocking him about the tortillas, especially because the cheesecake and fresh raspberries (what was left of them) were pretty amazing. Then the next day, I was in the bathroom, and I came out and said to Ken, “I think I need to call the doctor. The water in the toilet—“
“That’s just the beets,” he laughed. “Nothing to worry about.”
And I’m not worried about it, because I’m never touching one of those zombie death-bombs ever again.

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

First, I’m happy to say that several many of you guessed that the thing missing from my tiny room was indeed a clock! Well done, and now you will all be murdered in nefarious ways in my new comedy book Murder Most Novel about a young woman/aspiring author who becomes embroiled in an Agatha Christie style murder scenario. If you have a particular preference for your murder (poison, machete, bashed with a clock), let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate. You were all very clever, but I have to say that Anonymole’s poem/riddle/guess really took the day:

Dueling portraits invite conversation,
while the bird tweets its irritation.

Below, the blood bright Persian,
offsets the walls’ psilocybin excursions.

A Tiffany, a punch bowl, a violin,
speak of parties, a present left to atone for prior sins.

Yet the room exists in silence,
it enjoys no ticks, no tocks,

For nowhere amongst its fine refinements,
do we see a cherry clock.

So thank you, my friends. You all rose to the challenge and proved that you really do know me so well!

In other news, I’ve been very busy because it’s one of my favourite times of year—the quince is finally ripe. Many years ago, we had a pear tree on our property which started to die. But as it did, another plant sprouted from its base, and that plant was a quince bush. Apparently, quince have hardier roots than some pear species so they’re often grafted onto quince. And while I missed the pear, I soon realized the (labour-intensive) joy that is the quince fruit. They are rock hard and can’t be eaten as is, but if you cook them first, they turn a delightful pink colour and taste amazing. Every year, I become super-home-maker-y and produce several batches of jam as well as some wonderful quince crumble. Of course, I always have more quince than I need so I can sell off the rest to quince lovers in the area and make some money to fund my miniature obsession.

In other other news, I also completed a miniature outdoor courtyard. I think it’s very cute but I’m at the point where I don’t quite know what to do with all these miniatures—maybe I can throw them in with the quince, like “Buy some quince, get a miniature room for free”. It’s a vicious/delicious circle.

Tiny Me

It’s been another crafty week at the mydangblog household. First, you may remember the peel and stick wallpaper that Ken and I used to create the illusion of a bookcase door which leads to our secret library? Well, it’s not much of an illusion when it starts to fall off the panel attached to the door (as if the illusion wasn’t already problematic based on the size, and worse, the bizarre titles of the books on the peel and stick bookcase—Dawn Fly Stuff is still my favourite and you can read about all the rest in a previous post called Lost In Translation). But my tremendous disappointment at the less than sticky stickers was relieved when Ken said, “I have a great idea—I’ll get some trim and moulding and tack it all down with actual wood that looks like a bookshelf.” And that’s what he did. It looks even better than it did before the books all started to fall off, especially since the giant fake candle sconces in the middle are now hidden. But of course, the trim had to all be painted the same colour. Which I volunteered to do before I realized that I would have to use painter’s tape to protect the books in EVERY SINGLE SQUARE. It took me 3 minutes to paint the trim. It took me OVER AN HOUR to tape it all up. Still, at the end of the whole process, I think it looks even more realistic than it did before, and the stickers so far are staying stuck.

And then, because I was in A MOOD, I decided to tackle my new miniature room, and for the record, let me just clarify that it’s a miniature room, NOT A DOLL HOUSE because that’s a road that, as much as I’d love to go down, is also a rabbit hole that I may never emerge from. But last week, before we went to that awards banquet, I made Ken stop at an antique market up north because I had seen a Facebook post from one of their vendors who specializes in miniatures. Not only him, as it turns out—this place is the MECCA for tiny things and I was super-excited by what I bought, I mean, I got a cute little HARP among other things. I’d been thinking about it all for several days and rearranging things on the counter and looking for ephemera and whatnot, so after our secret library door success, Ken built me a box and I started the room. It turned out even better than I’d hoped and I’m so happy with it. Ken took a look when I was finished though:

Me: What do you think?
Ken (silently calculating): There are 3 clocks in this room.
Me: Of course there are 3 clocks. How else will Tiny Me know what time it is?
Ken: None of the clocks work.
Me: Tiny Me is aware, KEN. Time is a construct.
Ken: That…doesn’t make any sense.
Me: It’s my room—Tiny Me can have as many clocks as she wants!
Ken: Okay, Susab.

In case you’re confused, ‘Susab’ was the name on my place card at the awards banquet we went to. So to recap—they spelled my last name wrong on the press release, they had ‘Susan’ on the seating chart, and then ‘Susab’ on the place card. No wonder I didn’t win—they didn’t even know who I was! I should have just told them to use Tiny Me.

Making A List

No, I’m not making a list, like a grocery list, or a checklist of tiny furniture I need to buy at the Miniatures Fair I’m going to later, or an excel spreadsheet of all my clocks—the list I’m talking about is a very prestigious longlist. The longlist for a humour competition I recently wrote about where my entry was number 69 on THAT list, which I found hilarious but everyone else was too mature to snicker at. Yes, to my absolute shock and delight, my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do was selected for the Leacock Memorial Medal For Humour longlist! That book, based on this little blog, was found worthy of being long-listed beside well-known Canadian funny people like Rick Mercer! (If you’re not Canadian, you might not know who that is, but trust me, he’s hilarious).

I knew that the longlist was being announced last Tuesday, and I hadn’t heard anything at all. I wasn’t sure if they let people know ahead of time, so I messaged a friend who had been longlisted twice in the past and he assured me that people only found out when the announcement was made. I don’t know if that was REALLY an assurance because then I was like, great, another week before I find out I didn’t make the cut. Then on Tuesday morning, I was getting ready to go shopping, and my email alert went off. The subject line said “2024 Leacock Medal Long List Announced”. I reluctantly opened it, wondering which big names in Canadian humour had gotten this accolade, and I squinted at it because I couldn’t find the several many pairs of reading glasses that I have scattered around the house but can never seem to find in a pinch. Then my squinty eyes widened as I saw what looked like my name. And I say, “looked like my name” because it WAS my name but it was spelled incorrectly—instead of Craig-Whytock, it said “Craig-Whytack”. But the name of my book was alongside it, and with sudden jawdropping surprise, I realized that I was actually ON the longlist. I felt faint. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Me: Oh my god oh my god!
Ken: What? Are you okay? What happened?!
Me: I made the longlist for the Leacock!!
Ken: What?! That’s amazing!
Me: I think I’m going to cry!

But it was real. And then my daughter sent me a CBC article where my name was mentioned (spelled correctly, thanks, national broadcaster) and it started to sink in. And when it did, I was faced with another horrifying realization: people were going to read my book, and what if no one else thought it was funny, and everybody was like “Why the hell did they pick this piece of crap?” and “Wow, this lady is superweird” and “She has way too many clocks” and “She used the word f*ck 39 times in one book!” As Yoda would say, “The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.”

But the best part of all this is that I got an email from their director of communications yesterday (and yes, my name was still spelled incorrectly even though I’d told them, and even though they’d apologized, but I said ‘Don’t worry, it’s just an honour to be on the longlist’) offering me STICKERS to put on my book covers. GOLD STICKERS (well, they call them bronze but they look gold to me). Is there anything better than stickers? Even the word is the best: sticker sticker sticker sticker. The finalists, who are announced on May 21, get even nicer stickers and while I know I won’t make the finals, it would be cool if I did because the grand prize is $25 000 and the two runners-up get five grand each, and you can only imagine what I would spend some of that money on (hint: tick tock).

‘Excellence in Canadian humour’–find it here, folks. Sticker sticker sticker sticker…

The Times, They Are A’Changing; November 31st

Have you ever felt like an idiot of your own making? Because I felt that way last Sunday. I woke up, looked at my phone, and the time said 9:00 am. It was a little later than I normally wake up, but I’d been up past midnight and deserved a sleep-in. Then I went downstairs, where all the clocks (and I have A LOT) said the same thing. Ken was out, and I sat down to read other people’s blogs. It occurred to me that the clocks were supposed to be changing on Sunday night, so I looked it up. Sure enough, the time change was going to happen on Sunday at 2 am. Then I read Positively Alyssa’s blog Fight MS Daily where she bemoaned daylight savings time, and I actually posted this comment: “Our clocks don’t change until after midnight tonight–I didn’t know other places did it earlier!”

Then, this Friday morning, something even more amazing than time and space relativity happened. I was contacted by Cecilia Kennedy of Fixing Leaks and Leeks, a fantastic writer in her own right and author of The Places We Haunt among many other things, to tell me that she’d written a feature called “Women Writers Shaping The Future Of Horror” for Horror Tree, and I was one of the writers she listed in the article, which you can read here: https://horrortree.com/wihm-2023-women-writers-shaping-the-future-of-horror/

I was so excited that I ran outside in the pouring rain in my housecoat and slippers to tell Ken about it. Slippers and housecoat, you ask? Well, it was only 9 am. Or maybe it was 10, who knows? Time is a construct.

Finally, there’s this. Every year, my friend over at Evil Squirrel’s Nest hosts The Tenth Annual Contest Of Whatever. This year’s prompt is ‘November 31st’ and I highly recommend you participate in this fun contest–you can scurry over to the Squirrel’s site for more details. I don’t normally write to prompts but this one was too good to resist, so here’s my effort:

No Argument Here

Carol and her sister Martha never really got along. They were always at odds with each other from the time they were children, causing their parents to describe each of them as capable of starting a fight in an empty room. As adults, they maintained a distant but moderately amicable relationship, at least until Carol got married at the age of 52. Martha, who had remained single and had resigned herself to spinsterhood, felt shut out, and the drunken toast she gave at the wedding was hurtful, especially her insistence that Carol’s new husband had made the wrong choice. After a few years of cold silence between the two sisters, Martha decided it was time to turn over a new leaf and repair the familial bond, the only one she had left. She resolved that she would reach out to Carol, who was happily settled with her husband and their three miniature poodles, and no matter what Carol said to her, she would take it in stride, and prove to her sister that their relationship could begin to finally flourish. No arguing, she promised herself—no matter what. Martha drove to Carol’s house on a gloomy November day and stood on the stoop for a moment before taking a deep breath and ringing the bell.

Carol opened the door. She was momentarily speechless then her face hardened. “Well?”

“It’s been too long, Carol. Can we put the past behind us? Maybe go out for a coffee?” Martha waited for a response.

Carol’s eyebrows arched. “Let me check my calendar.” She remained in the doorway, unmoving. “I’m free on November 31st.”

Martha gritted her teeth and smiled grimly. “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

I hope you participate–I had a lot of fun with this one! And finally, let me apologize to any of my followers who’ve been experiencing frustration because your comments have been disappearing. I had no idea until my good friend Bear Humphreys, who writes a fantastic photography blog called Bear Humphreys Photo, emailed me privately to tell me that one of his comments had disappeared. I checked my spam—it was the usual nonsense, which is to say, a few random porn sites sandwiched between interminable comments about ‘Amazingness’, ‘Sensationalness’, and ‘Phenomenalness’ all posted by people purporting to represent trailers, RVs, campers, sprint vans, conversion vans, van windows/doors/trim repairs, and every possible thing that could relate to RVing or camping, as if I’d ever do ANY of that. Then I checked my TRASH folder and discovered A LOT of comments from legitimate followers that had somehow ended up there. I think I restored all of them, but I can’t be sure, because the majority of the RV-obsessed comments, aside from the ones that somehow got into my spam folder, are in the trash. And these sites are posting literally every five minutes—there were over 5 pages of trashed comments just for Thursday alone to work through! But I think what happened is that I was forced to switch from the WordPress app to something called Jetpack, and that seems to be when the comments started to get screwy. So I’m keeping my eye on things, and I’ll be checking regularly to make sure my friends don’t end up with the trailer trash. (And please please don’t use the words RV, camper, trailer, van etc. in your comments or they might end up in spam!)

Emergency Room Convos

I haven’t been motivated to do much this week, because I’m still struggling with the same health issue as last week; in fact, I was at the hospital again on Friday, I’m exhausted, and I still haven’t seen the object of my disaffection. The only bright spot in the whole ordeal happened after I had seen the doctor. I was getting dressed and overheard this conversation with another patient. Apparently, half the population is having kidney issues as well, judging by this, and the two other women in the waiting room who were also there with suspected kidney stones:

Doctor: So what brings you in today?
Patient: A few days ago, I peed in a snowbank and the pee looked really dark.
Doctor: And…
Patient: I got worried so yesterday I peed in the snowbank again. This time it was red.
Doctor (completed unfazed): What shade of red? Dark red, bright red…?
Patient: Pretty dark. At least it looked pretty dark against the white snow.
Doctor: OK, I think we’ll need a sample.

I just hope the guy wasn’t freaked out by having to go in a cup instead of on his favourite snowbank.

At A Certain Angle

I was very excited this week, well, for a little bit anyway. My publisher had arranged for me to do a virtual author event at a very big conference. There haven’t been many opportunities to do ANY kind of promotions thanks to stupid COVID and the never-ending lockdown, so I was pretty pumped, and had what I thought was a great time slot. Then, yesterday morning, I was scrolling through Facebook and found an article about a TV show based on a book that had just been cancelled due to some major controversy about the show’s director. But the name of the author who had written the book in question seemed familiar…and sure enough, it was the writer who was doing a virtual session in the SAME TIME SLOT AS ME and no one will be coming to my event now if they have to choose between a well-known writer embroiled in controversy and a little-known writer who just says F*ck a lot. My heart sank faster than—well, I was going to say the Titanic but people died when that ship sank and I’m just sad—so let’s just say ‘faster than a really heavy rock’. But the rock was VERY heavy and I was VERY sad, so I did what any normal person would do—I bought a clock. And if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know I love clocks and that I have, currently, 45 clocks of which 16 actually work.  I didn’t actually NEED another clock, but this one was so pretty and such a good price that I couldn’t resist. I’ll resell it as soon as the antique market where Ken and I have a booth reopens (it’s also currently shut down thanks to stupid COVID and the never-ending lockdown), but for now, I have it by my desk where I can admire it.

A Crisis Or Two

It’s been one hell of a week, I have to say. On Tuesday around dinner time, I was getting the meal prepared and I realized that Atlas was just lying on the kitchen floor, looking really sleepy, instead of jumping around and begging for pieces of whatever I was making. But he’d had a long walk earlier, and as I said to Ken, “Maybe he’s finally over his growth spurt”, because right now, at 6 months old, he weighs 63 pounds. Ken agreed, but after dinner he was still pretty dopey (Atlas, not Ken), and at 9 o’clock when I had to WAKE him for his before-bed snack, he barely reacted. He finally got up and went downstairs with Ken, but when they came back up, there was a problem:

Ken: He seems a little wobbly.
Me: He’s weaving back and forth. What’s up, buddy?
Atlas: I don’t feel so good, Ma. I—

With that, he started to fall over sideways. We immediately called our vet clinic and got connected to the on-call vet, who said we needed to bring him in right away. The vet clinic is half an hour from our house, and we flew there, only stopping once when he suddenly threw up, all over the back seat, all over himself, and all over me. Luckily, we carry around copious amounts of wet wipes, thanks to covid, and we got cleaned up as best we could. Dr. Hunter, one of the many wonderful vets at our clinic, determined right away that it was some kind of neurotoxin and started filling him full of charcoal to absorb anything he hadn’t already puked up, then ran some blood tests, which came back normal. But he was still out of it, glassy-eyed and could barely stand, so she said, “I want to keep him here overnight. Don’t worry—I’ll sleep in a cot next to his crate and make sure he doesn’t start having seizures. I’ll call you if he gets worse; otherwise, I’ll contact you in the morning to let you know how he is.”

As much as I wanted to bundle him up and take him home, I knew it was for the best, so we left him there whimpering a little, telling him that everything was going to be OK.

None of us could sleep. I lay there waiting for the worst and thinking of him crying in his crate, his first night away from us since before he could remember. Finally, at 6:30 am, the phone rang. Dr. Hunter sounded very upbeat and chipper. “He had a good night,” she said. “He fell asleep almost right away, and now he’s up and seems very steady, pretty much back to his usual self. He ate a hearty breakfast and he’s keeping it down. You can come and get him at 9:30. One thing—he won’t pee.”

Which was understandable, because he won’t go anywhere except in our yard. Even when we take him for a walk, he waits until we get home then makes a mad dash for the grass by the back door. So when we got to the vet clinic, he was super-excited to see us, but there was no way I was driving him half an hour home with a full bladder. After being vomited on, I didn’t think I could take a urine shower. So I brought him over to the grass verge.

Me: You have to go pee here.
Atlas: This grass is weird.
Me: We’re not getting in the truck until you pee.
Atlas: Let me sniff around for a sec—oh, there we go. Ahhhh.

He peed for literally two minutes, having had a litre and a half of fluid through an IV overnight. By the time we got him in the truck, he was exhausted, and fell asleep on my lap.

We still have no idea what he got into—being a puppy, albeit a giant one, he still eats things off the ground or in the yard indiscriminately, so we’re watching him like a hawk. Long story short, he seems fine now, but it brought back terrible memories of what had happened to Titus not that long ago, especially since the initial symptoms were so similar. As I write this, he’s mooching around the kitchen, trying to convince Ken that he should have a second breakfast, so crisis averted.

Here’s another crisis that’s a little more like what you normally find on this site:

As I’ve been working remotely, I’ve noticed that a lot of people use virtual backgrounds. I don’t like the way they make you look like you’re on green screen, so I’ve tried to create an aesthetically pleasing REAL background for my desk area, and central to that is a giant, antique clock. I’ve had a lot of comments about it, so here’s the story behind it

One weekend, I saw an ad on a local buy and sell site for a tiny antique clock. It didn’t work, but the price was cheap and the case was pretty. I decided it would make a really great little jewelry cabinet, so I contacted the guy and arranged to pick it up. When I got there, right on time, he was like, “What? I thought you were coming tomorrow. I’m just going out for a ride on my motorcycle and the clock is in the basement.” He said this like it made absolutely logical sense. Then again, the weather WAS charming, and riding a motorcycle is like smoking crack for some people, so I said I’d come by the next day. After a series of confusing messages (at one point, he said, “I’m here” and I thought he meant outside my house, so I spent ten minutes waiting for him to come to the door, but he meant HIS house), I drove to his place to pick up the clock. It was sitting in his garage, and it was WAYYY bigger than the picture made it seem. I had envisioned it as being less than a foot tall, but it was, in fact, over three feet tall, and much too large for a jewelry cabinet, unless you were a member of the Royal Family. Still, it was beautiful, so I put it in the car, and brought it home. It weighed a TON (I discovered later that it still had the original lead weights inside), and I struggled to get it up onto the kitchen counter, where it stayed for a week. Mostly because I had NO IDEA where to put it. Ken said I should sell it for parts, but here’s the issue: it still had the original paper label inside it, and after doing some research, it turned out it was a very rare “Chauncey Boardman” American clock from the early 1800s.

Me: I can’t gut it for parts, Ken. It’s 200 years old! People didn’t even have WATCHES back then.
Ken: Um…I’m going to say that’s incorrect.
Me: Well, fine. But they kept them in their pockets, which is not very convenient.
Ken: What time is it right now?
Me: Not sure. Let me check my phone. Now, where’s my purse?
Ken: Did you know that there were no Canadian clock manufacturers 200 years ago? There would have only been individual watchmakers. I saw this documentary last week about…

I have no idea what happened in the documentary because I tuned out, and started mentally going through rooms to see where I could put the clock. When I tuned back in, Ken was talking about ANOTHER documentary about pygmy goats, or Shakespeare’s skull or something, so I started physically walking around the house to figure out where a 3-foot-high, non-functioning clock could possibly go. After another week, I promised Ken on my honour as a woman that I would find a place for it, and get it off the kitchen counter. And that’s how it ended up as a background prop on the windowsill in my office alcove. Another crisis averted. If only they were all that easy.

His favourite place to lounge in the sun.