Spent a day out at Chandler’s, painting and glazing the rest of our pottery pieces.
Went to the International Puppet Festival in Almonte, which features the shortest and best parade ever.
Went to the Garlic Festival in Carp, which proves you can have a festival about anything.
Went to a toy-making workshop for parrots and made six toys.
We were invited to TWO parties this weekend! We marked them on our calendar and we looked forward to them for weeks, but we didn’t make it to either one…by the time party time rolled around each evening, we were too sleepy to go. (Then, in the mornings we’d look at the party pictures on facebook and see what we’d missed and wish we’d somehow mustered up the energy…)
Next thing we knew, the weekend was over. Weekends go faster than weekdays even when you’re unemployed.
I have to watch what I read, for two reasons. The first is that I tend to adopt the writing style of whoever I’m reading. It’s just like “You are what you eat,” only it’s “You write what you read.”
My mother first brought this to my attention when I was about twelve and she found one of my half-written stories lying about.
“You’re writing a Harlequin Romance!” she said, horrified. I didn’t believe it, until she produced the first and only Harlequin Romance I’d ever read, and outlined the similarities. Even then I wasn’t convinced until she pointed out that my protagonist and the Harlequin’s protagonist shared the same first name.
The other reason I try to read good books is because I force myself to finish books I’ve started, even if I don’t like them. I rarely abandon a book. I think this might be Mrs. Stevenson’s fault. She was the librarian at Fitzroy Centennial Public School, where I went from the middle of grade five till the end of grade eight. The library wasn’t an actual room – it was a bunch of book carts that were stored in a locked room and wheeled out into the hallway once a week.
Mrs. Stevenson was hostile toward children, and mistrusted their motives. She was also stingy with books. I took out the maximum number of allowed books each week. I think it was four. Mrs. Stevenson challenged me, accusing me of taking out more than I needed, more than I would actually read. I wasn’t sure what she was insinuating, maybe that I was being greedy.
But she was right, I didn’t necessarily read all the books I took out of the library. I wanted extras in case I didn’t like them all. I wanted to make sure I had something good to read. But she made me feel guilty about it, so I started forcing myself to finish all the books.
This morning I finished reading a book I hated. Notes of a Dirty Old Man, by Charles Bukowski. It’s a compilation of columns he wrote for an underground newspaper in the 60s. They gave him license to write whatever he wanted. I’d read some of Bukowski’s short stories when I was much younger, and I remembered him being raw and raunchy and disturbing, but also fascinating and occasionally poignant (in a raunchy and disturbing way, of course).
Notes of a Dirty Old Man, though, was just disturbing and gross and depressing. Bukowski’s a vulgar misogynist. He hated everybody, including himself, but he hated women most of all. Reading this book felt like poking at a maggot-infested corpse.
Now I need to take a very long shower and read something uplifting. Any suggestions?
Remember when you were a little kid, and a new family would move onto your street? You’d stand there watching the moving truck being unloaded, looking for clues about the children, how old they were, and what sex, hoping they’d have one just like you, someone with the potential to be your new best friend.
The house next door to me has a lot of turnover. Most of the tenants have been large groups of hardcore party animals. There was also the 23-year-old couple with five six children.
The house was vacant for a couple of months, and we liked it that way. When the moving truck pulled up, we weren’t excited. We weren’t looking for new best friends. Â We just hoped the new people would be quiet.
It’s a group of young, newly arrived Israelis. Â Their gatherings involve more conversation than music. They appear to drink socially, not competitively. They’re practically perfect, as neighbours go.
Except for one thing: They can’t seem to master the complexities of Ottawa’s garbage system.
First there was a growing pile of garbage out back, in our shared parking lot.  Animals were ransacking it. Garbage day came and went, and the chaotic pile remained. The next day, Eli knocked on our  door. He asked why the garbage collectors hadn’t taken his garbage. We explained that he needed to move the garbage to the front curb for pickup.
“Aha!” said Eli. We then discussed the various recycling bins and what went in them, and the pick-up schedules and so on. Admittedly, it was a lot of information, and we weren’t surprised he didn’t remember it all.
The following garbage day, Eli’s green bin was passed over. GC went and took a look inside it.
It seems Eli was using the green bin as a regular garbage pail, instead of for organic waste. But the garbage collectors had left a flyer explaining the green bin, and we were hopeful next garbage day would be better.
The other day GC went to throw our organic waste into our green bin, which we keep on the front porch. It was full of plastic bags of garbage! Upon further inspection, we determined it was Eli’s garbage, since it included the flyer.
We were mystified. Why would Eli take his garbage out of his green bin, walk over to our place, climb our front steps, and put it in our green bin? He’s a nice young man, so we assume there was no ill intent, but we can’t think of any plausible explanation.
Today is garbage day. Eli did not put any garbage out. A corner of his back yard has become his designated garbage area. His green bin, black bin and blue bin are all out there, filled with plastic bags of regular garbage.
“He’s just confused, that’s all,” said GC. “It’s all new to him.”
Last night I was at a meeting, and Natalia, CCOC’s Green Facilitator, gave me a helpful garbage-and-recycling information package for Eli. It’s the one they give their tenants, and it’s crystal clear.
GC passed it on to Eli this morning, but Eli didn’t seem interested. We’re afraid he has given up.
One day last week, while we were making pottery, Chandler mentioned the turtles. Apparently they have turtles in Blakeney, Ontario, and a lot of them get killed crossing the road. So Chandler and her husband make a point of helping turtles across the road whenever they see them inching along.
Then she told us about the other kind of people – the ones who deliberately hit the turtles with their trucks and cars. She’s seen people swerving to hit the turtles. She’s seen crushed turtles on the shoulder of the road. It’s apparently a sport of sorts among a certain element of the area’s youth.
Why would anyone DO that? Why would anyone enjoy killing other creatures, especially something so benign as a turtle? I’m a pretty understanding person, but I don’t have even the slightest glimmer of understanding of that behaviour or the motivation behind it.
Coincidentally, GC and I were poking around on our computers that very evening, and GC said “Did you see David Reevely’s blog post today?”
I hadn’t. It was called Who swerves to run over an animal? It contained a link to a video created by Mark Rober, whose day job is actually spaceship engineer for NASA. Â He conducted an experiment in which he put a fake turtle (and, alternatively, a snake, a tarantula and a leaf) on the side of the road and then hid and documented what happened with the next 1,000 cars.
You should watch the video because it’s interesting and – surprisingly – funny. Basically 94% of the drivers ignored the animal, while an appalling 6% deliberately hit it. (It bears repeating that these animals were placed on the shoulder of the road, so the drivers had to go out of their way to hit them.) Occasionally some kind soul stopped to help the animals to safety, but he doesn’t say how many.
Of the 6% who killed the animals, 89% of them drove pickup trucks or SUVs, which probably doesn’t surprise anybody.
Incidentally, I’m not sure where the video was made, and this is no doubt a critical piece of information. But Rober repeated the experiment on a road leading to a gun club near his house, and almost double the number of drivers deliberately hit the animals.
GC and I spent last week at Chandler Swain’s pottery camp, on the banks of the Mississippi River in Blakeney, Ontario. There were nine of us at camp, including Chandler and her dog, William.
Chandler is my favourite potter, and I’ve collected a variety of her pieces over the years. I have teapots, plates, pitchers, bowls and mugs. Her designs incorporate a number of my favourite things, like crows and rabbits, and they tend towards the whimsical, without being overly cute.
Every summer she offers two week-long summer camps for adults. Some people go back every year, while some people, like us, have never done any pottery since making those clay ashtrays for our parents in kindergarten.
Chandler’s an excellent teacher. She intuitively adapts her teaching style to each  individual. Right from the start we were making things. There was no pressure to excel, but there was ample opportunity to learn, practice and improve. I love that kind of learning environment. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet: sample everything, go back for seconds of whatever you like best.
She started each day with a demonstration of something, and then encouraged us to either try that or work on our own projects. On Wednesday I had a headache and I spent the whole day making a series of nesting pinch-pot bowls while everybody else made teapots.
As the clay softened and transformed into various shapes, chipmunks darted about, birds sang, the river ambled by, conversation  flowed, and seven bowls later my headache was gone.
By the end of the week, I’d made a coffee mug, a pitcher, seven bowls, two cruets, a casserole dish and  a couple of tiles. Most of it still needs to be painted, glazed and fired, which will all take place on a separate day in August. But we did paint and glaze a couple of pieces each. Here’s my mug and my pitcher. As you can see, I’ve retained the essence of kindergarten ashtray style, with much lumpiness and patching.
One of my favourite parts of the whole experience was seeing Chandler’s studio. Here are a few photos I took inside and outside. Isn’t she amazing?
We took a whirlwind trip this weekend to Orangeville to meet my newest great-niece, Sienna, and visit with my sister’s family. Is that a cute baby or what? She’s happy and good-natured, too, probably because she’s always surrounded by people who are head-over-heels in love with her. All babies should be so lucky.
A bunch of us went to the Orangeville Rib Fest on Saturday night. It’s way more of an event than the Ottawa Rib Fest. In addition to ribs, it also has bands, a midway, beer and hundreds of picnic tables. Best of all, it has some of the best people-watching you could ask for, with lots of bad tattoos, wife-beaters, cut-offs, cleavage, thongs and midriffs. And that’s just what the old folks were wearing!
There was an older man at our table wearing a t-shirt that said “Liquor up front, poker in the rear.” In public. Â
I was intrigued by an old lady at the next table, who wore blue eye shadow, blue nail polish and 24 pieces of blue jewelry, including a blue ring on every finger. She pulled a pack of dental floss out of her voluminous purse and started  flossing her teeth. I was reluctant to photograph her, since she was facing me, but here’s a picture of her friend, who was also flossing while eating her ribs. Chomp floss, chomp floss. They passed the roll of dental floss around that table the way other people  pass around a pack of tic-tacs.
“At least they’re not sharing the same piece of dental floss,” said my brother-in-law charitably.
I have to say that the Orangevillians seemed to be enjoying their Rib Fest more than we enjoy ours. They know how to have fun!
After a short but enjoyable visit, we left Orangeville Sunday morning and headed for Toronto, where I had brunch with XUP.
It doesn’t matter where we eat, XUP suffers from notoriously bad restaurant luck. They screw up her order, or burn it, or forget to cook it, or something. One time she asked for a veggie burger and they brought her a big mushroom in a hamburger bun. Then they argued with her about the definition of a veggie burger, until finally they agreed to give her a vegetarian pizza instead, which didn’t arrive until long after the rest of us had finished our meals, and the whole crust was scorched to charcoal.
Her bad restaurant luck has followed her to Toronto. She ordered poached eggs with asparagus and brie and hollandaise sauce. The waiter asked if she would like the eggs poached soft, medium or hard.
“Hard,” she said emphatically.
They arrived soft, of course. She sent them back. To make it up to her, the waiter brought a carousel of desserts for us to choose from. But we didn’t really feel like eating dessert after breakfast, so we passed. (They looked suspiciously old, too.)
Meanwhile, GC and Rosie were visiting GC’s brother a few miles away. He’s a professional dog walker, and he had five dogs over for the day, including another Rosie. Â So our Rosie made some new friends, including a Saint Bernard. (Our Rosie, by the way, proved to be an excellent traveler this weekend, as well as a perfect house guest.)
Meanwhile, Duncan was at GC’s house, being looked after by GC’s son, and the birds were at my house, being looked after by my son. I worried about them, since birds are emotionally complicated creatures, and I’d never left them before.
But everybody was fine. They were happy to see us. We’d only been home a few minutes when Simon spoke his newest word for me: Peekaboo. He said it 56 times, and I said it 56 times back.
Kazoo wasted no time flying somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. I took a picture before taking her down. This is a soup tureen made by our favourite potter, Chandler Swain. GC and I are spending our summer vacation at Chandler’s house, learning how to make pottery. Today’s our first day of Pottery Camp!
I’ve known Oboe since he was a freshly laid egg. He was the third of four eggs in Billie and Lester’s first clutch. We had a webcam on the nest, so everything was broadcast over the internet, from the laying of his egg to its hatching, all the way up through hand-feeding and his first flight. (You can view the archives here and here.)
People often ask me if it’s okay to keep a single lovebird by itself. It is, if you provide it with plenty of daily attention and interaction. Lovebirds need relationships. They need to love and be loved. But they don’t necessarily need to love and be loved by other lovebirds.
Oboe has a relationship with everybody in this house: the people, the other birds, the  dog, and (ahem) the cat.
He loves GC and me so much he does his mating dance and attempts to regurgitate for us (there is no greater gift in a lovebird’s world than the gift of regurgitated food).
We’ve come close to losing Oboe a couple of times. Twice he’s gone AWOL outside, and twice he’s returned home. Â And then there was the time Duncan caught him. I’ll never forget the awful sound of all his air sacs popping, and seeing him struggle to breathe. His wing looked like it was broken, too. I was pretty sure he was going to die that evening.
All things considered, he’s a pretty lucky lovebird to have made it to his second birthday. The close calls have made me realize how much I love him.
What I love most about Oboe is his exuberance. He’s got a big bird personality in a compact little-bird package. He loves life. He puffs out his little chest and flies right into the action. If people come to visit, he studies them for a few minutes and then he moves in for a closer look, and next thing you know he’s sitting on their head and hanging upside down from their hair so he can look into their eyes.
I also like how smart he is. Â If he was a person he’d be an engineer. He’s busy, Â curious, and always thinking about how to get what he wants. He’s the most persistent little guy in the world.
Even though Kazoo, the Amazon parrot, wants nothing to do with him, Oboe insists upon having a relationship with her. He follows her around, plays alongside her, is her sidekick in all home-wrecking activities, and is her number one fan. He knows exactly how close he can get before she’ll try to peck him, and he never, ever stops pushing that limit. As a result, she now tolerates him hanging out about six inches from her, compared to 12 inches a year and a half ago.
Anyway. I love that little bird. For his birthday I gave him an extra pistachio nut.
Have you seen that crazy video of the motorcycle out in BC going 299 kph? Somehow I missed it when it was first making the rounds. Here it is, if you missed it too. It’s nuts.
Turns out the motorcycle was driven by a 25 year old with no license and a whack of related prior convictions, fines and suspensions. His mother is the registered owner of the uninsured bike.
I can’t stop wondering about both of them, the mother and the son. What was he thinking? Why does he need such a crazy thrill? Â What kind of mother supplies a super powerful bike to her crazy, risk-taking, unlicensed, uninsured son? What other insane things have the two of them done?
It reminded me of something that happened when I was 25 and back in high school. A group of us former drop-outs would meet in the cafeteria for coffee every morning. There was a guy named Steve who told us about his fantasy of having sex while driving really fast on his motorcycle. The woman would be half-sitting, half-lying in front of him, facing him. She’d be wearing a skirt and crotchless underwear. He’d be accelerating into her, under a full moon. There was more, but I can’t remember it all. It was a long time ago.
Steve was looking for someone to help him act out this fantasy. He asked me, but I declined (although I did go skydiving with him a few months later). He asked everybody. Everybody declined.
Every day he’d come to school and fill us in on his progress. One night he rode the stretch of highway on which the fantasy would be lived out. Another night he made the crotchless underwear. Another night he modified his own pants. And so on.
And then one day he came in and shocked us all by reporting that he’d found a willing partner! (This was pre-Internet, when you had to do these things the old-fashioned way, like go around asking hundreds of women, one by one, if they’d have high-speed sex with you on a motorcycle under a full moon.)
I’m sure we all gazed up at the moon that Saturday night and wondered how it was going.
Monday morning, bright and early, we gathered in the cafeteria, eager for the juicy details. Steve arrived late. He sat down with his coffee and told us everything.
He said everything had been perfect, just like the fantasy: Â the weather, the road conditions, the full moon, the skirt, the crotchless panties, the girl, his mood, her mood, everything. He picked her up and they drove out to the country. Then they stopped so she could get into position, Â half-lying in front of him, and they started roaring down the highway, accelerating, faster and faster, and everything was perfect and thrilling and exciting….except for some inexplicable reason he couldn’t get it up.
None of us, including Steve, had even considered the possibility of this happening. It was the epitome of anticlimactic.
I ran into him years later and asked him if he’d ever tried again. He said no, reality had killed the fantasy for him. He’d been forced to get a new fantasy.
They say you should never get an African Grey parrot because of their famous speaking abilities. It’s not fair to the parrot, and besides, there’s no guarantee that the African Grey you get will actually talk, unless of course you adopt an already-speaking adult, which is a very good idea.
While African Greys on the whole are considered the best talkers of all the parrots, many individual Greys never say a word. Â Most, however, start talking before their first birthday, and many have large vocabularies by then. They don’t just mimic, either. They talk. They communicate. They speak in context.
Even though you shouldn’t get one for the speaking ability, that’s precisely why most of us get them. Otherwise, we’d probably choose less challenging parrots.
Greys are known to be extremely sensitive. They hate change. They are famous for developing, in captivity, the neurotic tendency to pluck their own feathers out if all their needs aren’t perfectly met. They tend to have many fears, and they can literally die of fright. They become very attached to one person…if you’re lucky, they’ll tolerate other family members, but they’ll generally fear and loathe your friends. And no matter how extensive their vocabulary is, odds are they will be absolutely mute when you have guests over, so everybody will have to take your word for it. If you want a show-off, get an Amazon parrot.
My African Grey, Simon, adores me. He tolerates GC, and gives him a kiss through the cage bars every night at bedtime. He likes Oboe and Rosie, is indifferent to Duncan, and his relationship with Kazoo is complicated. He screams bloody murder if anybody else approaches his cage.
For a Grey, he’s pretty easy-going. With some Greys, you have to introduce new toys very gradually, hanging them several feet away from the cage for weeks, then moving them a few inches closer every day until the bird finally allows them into the cage. Simon welcomes new toys eagerly. He loves toys. Â He’s also an enthusiastic eater and happily tries new foods.
He turned one and a half years old this week, and he has never uttered a word. He whistles and clucks and loves to make sounds when there’s music on, but he doesn’t speak. Even though I broke the cardinal rule and got him for his (potential) speaking ability, I fell in love with his personality and I will love him forever even if he never speaks. And, frankly, I was beginning to resign myself to that possibility.
Until last week! He started babbling away in conversational tones. This is how Greys get ready to speak. It’s the conversational equivalent of  lorem ipsum text! I am absolutely mesmerized and charmed by this. He even speaks in two distinct voices, playing both roles in the conversation! One voice sounds like a man speaking through a mechanical voice box, and the other voice sounds like a sweet little girl.
I made a little video of him. It’s not much to look at, but it’s lovely to listen to.
By the end of the week, I’d made a coffee mug, a pitcher, seven bowls, two cruets, a casserole dish and  a couple of tiles. Most of it still needs to be painted, glazed and fired, which will all take place on a separate day in August. But we did paint and glaze a couple of pieces each. Here’s my mug and my pitcher. As you can see, I’ve retained the essence of kindergarten ashtray style, with much lumpiness and patching.
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