Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by Zoom! on May 16, 2011, at 9:24 am |
 Kazoo and Oboe I got all the birds’ vet tests back last week, and everybody’s healthy.
The big news is that Kazoo was DNA-sex-tested. With most parrots, including Double Yellow-Headed Amazons, you can’t tell the boys from the girls by looking – even by looking very, very closely. Even a vet can’t tell. They don’t have external genitalia (parrots, not vets).
If your bird happens to lay an egg, you can be sure it’s a girl, but otherwise you need a blood test to find out.
Kazoo’s 14 years old now, and nobody ever knew for sure whether he was a boy or girl. His former owners thought he was a boy. GC thought he was a boy. I thought so too at first, but as time went on, I began to think she was a girl.
GC’s reason for thinking Kazoo was a boy was that he Kazoo spent an awful lot of time in his tent masturbating.
My reason for thinking Kazoo was a girl was that she was fascinated by the lovebird egg I showed her a few months ago. And she loves dark enclosed spaces like closets and pantries and boxes, which have good nesting potential.
Anyway, on Kazoo’s 14th birthday – May 11th – we got the DNA sex test results back.
It still feels weird to be saying “she” with respect to Kazoo. We always referred to him as a “he” since that was what his former owners did. But I like that she’s a girl.
 I’m typing this right now with Simon and Oboe both sitting on my chest kissing my lips, by the way. My laptop, which is on my lap, just took this picture of us.
Simon and Oboe are both boys. Simon was DNA-tested by the breeder. And Oboe, I just know he’s a boy by his behaviour. He doesn’t do girl-lovebird stuff, like shredding reams of paper every day.
 Oboe and Simon are best friends now. They preen each other and Simon has learned how to talk lovebird. They’re very cute together. Sometimes Oboe even sits on Simon’s back. Simon doesn’t like that, but I know Oboe….give him a few weeks, and he’ll have Simon all saddled up and providing winged transportation on command.
 For those of you who have been asking about Duncan – he’s doing well. The various drugs seem to be helping – he’s not throwing up much, he’s eating better, his breath smells nicer and he seems happy. Those appetite enhancers are amazing. I give him one-eighth of a pill every other day, and he eats five meals a day. If I skip a dose, he doesn’t eat.
He’s still very cuddly, and even though he’s lost quite a bit of weight, he still manages to take up half the bed.
 Logan and Duncan (Photo: GC) Duncan and Logan are best buddies now. They go out for walks with GC every day. Here they are, two older gentlemen, sitting on the porch, enjoying their golden years. All they need is a backgammon board.
Posted by Zoom! on May 13, 2011, at 9:51 am |
The Harper Government TM is still attempting to shut down Insite, Canada’s only supervised injection site. The case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada, which is where I spent yesterday morning.
 I had to line up to go through a scanner, and empty my pockets and put metal things in a bin and so on. The security guy and I didn’t like each other. I think he thought I was being willfully obtuse, when in fact I was just being a little scrambled because security procedures make me nervous. He openly sneered at me. Twice. I didn’t sneer back, but I thought he was a jerk.
The courtroom was full, so I joined a number of other people in the lobby, to watch the proceedings on TV. We were given headsets and chairs.
A little background
Insite is a supervised injection site in Vancouver. Addicts bring their own drugs to Insite, and inject them in a clean place, using clean equipment, under the supervision of a nurse. This helps prevent contamination, the spread of disease, and death by overdose.
Every single scientific study (over 40, to date) has indicated that Insite is an effective public health initiative and helps to prevent disease and death. Many of these studies have even been funded by the federal government itself.
In order for Insite to operate legally, it has an exemption from the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to permit illegal drugs to be consumed on its premises.
The Harper Government TM is ideologically opposed to Insite, and wants to shut it down. It refused to renew Insite’s exemption.
Insite took it to the BC Court, which ruled in Insite’s favour.
The government appealed the BC Court’s judgement, and the case is now before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Yesterday’s Hearing
Much of the debate hinged on the federal/provincial division of powers. The government says drugs fall under federal jurisdiction, therefore it has exclusive control. Insite however is a health care facility, and therefore falls under provincial jurisdiction.
It’s more complicated than that, and I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of paramouncy or interjurisdictional immunity or any of the finer points of constitutional law, so I’m not going to get into that.
But I think it boils down to whether or not Insite requires an exemption from the Federal Minister of Health in order to allow illegal drugs to be legally consumed on its premises.
Here are a couple of highlights from yesterday’s hearing.
1. The Harper Government TM claims no decision has been made about whether to grant the exemption, which is ridiculous since everybody knows the feds won’t grant the exemption.
2. Insite had an impressive roster of intervenors and expert witnesses to speak of its benefits, including the Canadian Association of Nurses and other health care organizations. The Harper Government TM had only one: Real Women. (I’m not even kidding.)
3. The government’s lawyer, when asked, was forced to concede that the feds have no evidence that Insite doesn’t work.
4. The Supreme Court’s decision is expected in a few weeks. I’m virtually certain they will rule in favour of Insite, as the federal government had nothing – no evidence, no credible intervenors, no logic. Just Stephen Harper’s personal opinion.
Posted by Zoom! on May 11, 2011, at 8:21 am |
I read the papers and the obituaries almost every day. I don’t know how anybody can die in this city without me finding out about it, especially if it makes the news, and especially if they’re a friend of mine. But Rita did.
I ran into my friend John last week and he mentioned in passing something about Rita’s death. He just assumed I’d have heard.
I wish I had known. I’d have wanted to go to her memorial service. Pay my last respects, and all that.
John apologized for being the bearer of bad news, and sketched in the details.
It was a house fire one night in April. Firefighters managed to bring her out and resuscitate her. She was airlifted to a specialized burn unit in Toronto, where she died four days later.
I looked it up later that night. Read the obituary and the newspaper articles, watched the news clip. I hadn’t even heard there was a fatal fire.
I find myself thinking a lot about the layout of Rita’s apartment, and imagining variations on the horrifying scene. She had a guest sleeping over, who did manage to escape, but Rita was trapped. I think about how desperate and terrified she must have felt.
Here are some things I can tell you about Rita.
She was a firecracker. She was in her fifties, but lived life like she was twenty. She loved to party and have fun. When she laughed, she laughed with everything she had. She didn’t much care for rules; life was about having as much fun as possible without getting caught. She enjoyed hosting dinner parties and feeding her friends, but I don’t think she actually ate much herself. She was tiny and she ran on the pure energy that coursed through her veins. She was an intense and loyal friend. She could be preposterous and outrageous. She could be tough and gritty. But for all that, she was sensitive; when she was hurt, she was very deeply hurt. Rita was many things, but she was never a person of half measures. She always went all the way.
Even though I was shocked by her death, upon further reflection I realized I would never have expected Rita to simply grow old and die in her sleep. She was destined to die by misadventure. I just wish it could have been something more exhilarating than a house fire. Maybe skydiving or climbing the CN Tower or overdosing on life.
Goodbye Rita. We’ll miss you. (I’d say Rest in Peace, but somehow I doubt that’s how you’d want to spend all eternity.)
 Bluesfest 2007 - That's Rita on the right
Posted by Zoom! on May 9, 2011, at 8:43 am |
I had a great weekend. On Saturday we had breakfast at Tutti Frutti’s. It’s a Cora’s knock-off – all kinds of breakfast meals with fancy fruit sculptures. GC and I have sampled many of their offerings, and we’re finally ready to endorse the best meal and best deal on the menu.
(Insert drum roll here)
Porridge.
Seriously. They make real oatmeal – none of that instant packaged stuff – and they serve it in a big silver bowl along with a small pitcher of milk, brown sugar, a bowl of sliced strawberries and bananas to mix in, two pieces of toast, and a couple of fruit garnishes like a slice of orange and a slice of pineapple. And a piece of lettuce. (GC brings along a container of mixed spices – cinnamon, ginger and cardamom – to sprinkle on top.) All that for the crazy low price of $4.95. It’s delicious, nutritious, filling and inexpensive. You should try it.
 After our porridge, we went to the Quilt Show at the RA Centre. We looked at hundreds of quilts and voted on our favourites in each category. There were art quilts and traditional quilts and hand-quilted quilts that must have taken years to finish. People quilt the oddest things. One person quilted the periodic table.
In addition to all the quilts, there were many dealers of quilting-related wares, such as fabric, sewing machines, cutting machines, tools and patterns. There was even a thread dealer – just thread! It reminded me of The House of Staples. At any rate, we managed to look at everything and buy nothing. (I attribute this accomplishment to my iron willpower and my recent vet bills.)
 Here’s an observation: When you attend a quilting show with a man, everybody assumes he’s not a quilter. They crack jokes about how he’s just there “to carry the credit card.” And total strangers come up to him and suggest that he might like to look at the Harley Davidson quilt, which was made entirely of Harley-Davidson T-shirts from someone’s motorcycle travels around the country. Because, you know, it’s a manly quilt. And he’s a man.
 After the Quilt Show, we went to a wedding party for some friends and fellow bloggers who had tied the knot earlier in the day. It was a lovely party and even the most jaded and cynical among us (XUP!) got all misty-eyed during the newlywed couple’s first dance.
We could only stay for a couple of hours because we had to go home and medicate both the dog and the cat. (These guys practically need their own Monday-Sunday pill containers now. Duncan, for example, has one antibiotic twice a day, one-eighth of an appetite stimulant every other day, and one-quarter of a Pepcid every day. Logan has one injection twice a day, plus liquid anti-inflammatories squirted on his supper.)
On Sunday GC went to Montreal to celebrate Mothers Day with his mom. Meanwhile, I went to The Table with my son and we ate delicious vegetarian food. He really liked it too, which made me happy since he’s not the world’s healthiest eater (he frequently frequents the poutine wagon), and mothers never stop hoping their children will acquire healthier habits, no matter how old they get.
After The Table we went to The Oak and drank cocktails. We had fun exchanging gruesome stories. I told him about a poor macaw locked in a tiny cage for 17 years. He told me about some creepy twins whose mother fell down the stairs.
I hope you all had as much fun this weekend as I did.
Posted by Zoom! on May 6, 2011, at 6:49 am |
 This is what Kazoo thinks of Stephen Harper.
For the record, this was not staged. I didn’t even notice that Harper and the other candidates were lining his cage until I went to change the paper today.
Nor did I unduly influence Kazoo with my own well thought out and strongly held opinions; he and I don’t actually discuss politics all that much. Kazoo did his own research and reached his own conclusions quite independently.
Which makes me wonder if parrots have better critical thinking skills than the majority of many Canadians…
Posted by Zoom! on May 5, 2011, at 7:46 am |
The election took all the wind out of my sails. Even though I was pleased with the NDP’s unprecedented surge forward into Official Oppositiondom, I was knocked flat by the Harper GovernmentTM securing its majority. Four years of unfettered power. Four years of tyranny. Four years of watching him dismantle the things that matter while spending like a drunken sailor on things that don’t. I literally felt ill. For two days I felt like I had a hangover, which I didn’t.
I was also saddened to see that Tony Martin, the NDP’s poverty critic and truly a class act as far as politicians go, was defeated in his riding of Sault Ste. Marie.
On the bright side, Elizabeth May captured a seat for the Green Party, so she will finally have a right to be heard.
What else?
I worked 13 hours on election day, without a break. I lived on pudding and fruit. I didn’t even have coffee. The time went by surprisingly fast, except for the last hour. It was actually kind of fun.
There were two registration officers – me and a young man. I found myself in the unusual position of being the bad cop. He was accepting anything as ID and proof of address, whereas I was (as per our training) sticking to the officially sanctioned proofs (which were fairly wide-ranging – a utility bill, for example, was acceptable). It felt strange for me to be the stickler for the rules.
The other weird thing was that the central poll supervisor – the boss – was confused about a lot of things. She was very nice, I’ll give her that. But at first she believed that anybody who was eligible to vote in Ottawa Centre was eligible to vote at our polls. (There are hundreds of polls in Ottawa Centre, and you have to vote in the one designated to you.) And then she didn’t want us to have the voters’ list, thinking it more rightly belonged with the information officers, even though it was key to what we were doing. So for the first two hours we limped along without it while it sat, unused, on the information officers’ desk. (I finally reclaimed it.)
The strangest thing was when she had a conversation with a voter and he told her he was leaving his ballot blank, in protest. She kept telling him not to do that, because his ballot would be rejected. He kept telling her that was the point. It turned out she’d never heard of the concept of deliberately spoiling one’s ballot. I explained it to her after he left, and she laughed and laughed. It was the craziest thing she’d ever heard.
Anyway. It was an interesting day, full of interesting people.
 I’m very pleased to announce we have a winner in the Melting Snow Pile contest. It’s Valerie from Wandering Cat Studio, who correctly guessed May 2 – election day. (I didn’t actually visit the snow pile on May 2 because I was working those 13 hours – but I visited it at 10 pm the night before (when it was a very small pile) and again the morning of the third, when all that remained was this wet spot.
Congratulations Valerie! Please email me your address and I will put your prize in the mail.
Posted by Zoom! on May 1, 2011, at 1:37 pm |
Where’s everybody watching the election results tomorrow night? I’ll be working at the polling station all day, and then I think I’ll dash over to GC’s place to watch the results, since he has a TV and everything.
Remember the Ontario provincial election about 20 years ago, when CBC (I think) announced that the Liberals had won, but then they had to reverse it because the NDP came out of nowhere and surprised everybody and actually won? I watched that election in bed with my son, who was eight at the time. When they announced that the NDP had won, we were so excited we jumped up and down on the bed about a thousand times.
I’m really curious to see what happens tomorrow. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high. As long as Harper doesn’t get his majority, I’ll consider it a victory. (Still, I’d love to see the kind of results that would have me jumping up and down on the bed again.)
The snow pile featured in our contest still hasn’t completely melted. It’s getting there, though.
Here it is as of 1:00ish on Sunday May 1st.
It has shrunk away from the building, so it looks even smaller when viewed from the side.
This is what it looked like on April 11th. It’s made a lot of progress in just three short weeks.
The following contestants have already been eliminated from the contest:
Kathleen (April 17)
Pamela (April 18)
Jen (April 23)
Finola (April 25)
Grace (April 27)
Connie (April 29)
Reb (April 29)
These eight contestants are still in the running:
Nancy (May 1)
Valerie (May 2)
Mudmama (May 3)
Deb (May 5)
Gramps (May 6)
Natasha (May 8)
Kathy (June 1)
Auntie Michal (June 3)
Florence (June 24)
But I think it’s fairly safe to say that anybody who chose a June date stands about a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this contest.
Posted by Zoom! on April 30, 2011, at 7:11 am |
 The good news is that Duncan doesn’t have diabetes or a problem with his thyroid. The bad news is that he’s got kidney disease. And the bad news with that is that there’s no cure. But treatment can make him more comfortable and improve both the quantity and quality of his life.
Treatment. If I was rich and crazy, I could contemplate options like a kidney transplant or dialysis.
Instead, I’m changing his diet (low protein, low phosphorous), putting him on antibiotics and an appetite stimulant (he lost another third of a kilo in the last week or two), trying to keep him very hydrated, and getting his blood and urine checked every few months.
The vet says he’s at the beginning of Stage 3. Stage 4 is when they die.
She wouldn’t predict how long it’ll be until he reaches the end of Stage 4, because every cat is different. From what I’ve read, the median, based on his stage at the time of diagnosis, is two years. But it also depends on what is causing the kidney disease. Multiple causes would likely lead to a faster demise. Often they don’t know what’s causing it.
In Duncan’s case, he has kidney stones. There may also be other contributing factors, like dental plaque or an infection.
She took an x-ray. Actually, she took two, because he was too big to fit on a single x-ray plate. (That made me smile, even though it cost extra.)
She showed me the x-rays. The only things I recognized without being told was his spine, his tail and his poop.
One of his kidneys is all shriveled up. The other one is better, but not great either. His small intestines looked funny too, she said.
So far it has cost about $700 just to find out what’s wrong with him. This stings a bit since I didn’t think anything was wrong until we went for his annual checkup.
While we were at the vet, I talked with a woman with a gorgeous cat with a few behaviour problems. She said Percy hasn’t been the same since he fell off her 7th story balcony. He shattered his palate, dislocated his jaw, broke some bones, and suffered a bunch of other injuries.
She didn’t have the $5,000 required to put poor Percy back together again. The only person she knew with that kind of money was her dad. But when she was a kid, her dad wouldn’t spend money on vets.
“Too expensive,” he’d always say. “If it dies, we can always get another cat.”
So they went through a lot of cats in her childhood, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask her dad for help with Percy’s emergency.
But her sister talked to her dad, and her dad phoned her and said “Don’t worry about the money.”
I like happy endings, even if the cat did suffer a personality change as a result of the head injury, and now bites her and her other cat mercilessly.
Posted by Zoom! on April 29, 2011, at 10:27 am |
 Here’s my quilt so far. I’ve got seven of the twelve blocks done. Just five more blocks, and then there’s all the sashing and cornerstones and borders and stuff, and sewing it all together into a complete quilt top.
This course doesn’t get into the actual quilting, in which you turn the completed quilt top into an actual quilt, by creating a sandwich with the backing and the batting, and stitching the whole thing with a decorative design. That’s another course.
 Here’s GC’s quilt so far. It’s so dramatic with the black background and the vibrant colours!
GC and I are thinking about getting our quilts professionally quilted when we’re done. It costs $3-something a square foot. Even if we take the second course (the actual quilting course), we wouldn’t be quilting our own quilt tops for awhile. We’d be learning on smaller things that it’s okay to screw up on. So we’re a little concerned that our quilt tops might end up unfinished in our linen closets, gathering dust.
Just like the prayer shawl that GC made in a weaving course he took with his son years ago.
Just like so many things, really. My linen closet is full of good intentions. So is my basement, my art/sewing room and my office/lovebird room. I even adopt other people’s unfinished projects at garage sales, with every intention of finishing them. How crazy is that?
Posted by Zoom! on April 28, 2011, at 12:34 pm |
 Oboe, my little lovebird, gets to come downstairs and hang out with the big birds and me a couple times each day, while Duncan’s outside. He doesn’t waste a second of that time.
I’m convinced that lovebirds are the border collies of the bird world. They’re active, agile, energetic, cheerful and clever, and they’re always a step ahead of everybody else.
Oboe acts like a bratty little brother. He’s small and fast and he teases the big birds, flying circles around them and divebombing them. Then when they’re really pissed off and ready to bite his pesky little head off, he taunts them a bit more. They snap, and he lets them almost get him – he’s always just a fraction of an inch beyond their beak, just barely out of range.
Sometimes he even stands on top of Simon’s cage, with his back turned to Simon, whistling nonchalantly while giving Simon a chance to catch up with him and get even. Poor Simon is a great big baby, and he’s clumsy. He lumbers across the cage as fast as he can, just so he can bite that brat, and then, at the very last instant, just as he lunges for him, Oboe ducks out of the way.
It’s kind of like Charlie Brown and the football.
 I believe Oboe really likes the big birds, and just wants to be friends with them. But for his own safety, he has to train them first. He has to establish dominance over them, because he’s so small. He has to convince them that there’s no point attacking him, since he will always beat them. This is why he bites their toes, too – to show them who’s boss.
He works on them every single day, one of them at a time, cycling back and forth between them every couple of minutes. He even finds time to bug me too. He wants me to pay attention to him, so he nips my fingers to make me stop typing.
He can read us all like books. He knows when it’s safe to work on developing his friendship with Kazoo or Simon, instead of his domination. Sometimes, after harassing them mercilessly for half an hour, he helps them with a task they’re working on, like breaking into the bag of peanuts, or getting a toy out of a bag. Sometimes he cuddles up right against Simon, while Simon nibbles on a toy. I haven’t managed to get a picture of this yet.
Anyway. I think lovebirds are underrated. If you want a smart little bird with a sense of humour and a lot of chutzpah, maybe you should consider a lovebird.
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I’m typing this right now with Simon and Oboe both sitting on my chest kissing my lips, by the way. My laptop, which is on my lap, just took this picture of us. 
Oboe and Simon are best friends now. They preen each other and Simon has learned how to talk lovebird. They’re very cute together. Sometimes Oboe even sits on Simon’s back. Simon doesn’t like that, but I know Oboe….give him a few weeks, and he’ll have Simon all saddled up and providing winged transportation on command.
For those of you who have been asking about Duncan – he’s doing well. The various drugs seem to be helping – he’s not throwing up much, he’s eating better, his breath smells nicer and he seems happy. Those appetite enhancers are amazing. I give him one-eighth of a pill every other day, and he eats five meals a day. If I skip a dose, he doesn’t eat.
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