We picked up Simon Taylor Grey, the baby African Grey parrot, from the breeder on Saturday morning.
Remember how I cried every time I sold a lovebird? Well, the breeder cried as we were leaving. I know the feeling, but I was surprised that she still feels it after all these years and all these birds. She has sold hundreds and hundreds of birds. Maybe even thousands.
Simon’s a sweetie pie. He’s used to being surrounded by his brothers and sisters as well as conures, macaws, eclectuses and amazons, but he’s adapting well to being alone in the quarantine room. He loves it when I pop in for a visit though. He barks whenever he sees me. He loves to come out of the cage for a snuggle. He explores me very gently with his beak and tongue…my fingers, nose, chin, lips, cheeks. He’s got very sharp talons, though, and he hangs on tight. I have puncture wounds.
He’s a bit of a klutz and a clown. I found him hanging upside down from his toy airplane this morning, spinning in circles. He barked as soon as he saw me, and then fell to the ground in a mad flap of wings.
I really want to move him downstairs into his big cage, but I’m supposed to keep him separate from the other birds for awhile.
I make my own bird food now. Check out these ingredients: millet, quinoa, oats, kamut, buckwheat, brown rice, mung beans, adzuki beans, lentils, chick peas, carrots, yams, kale, beets, peas, oranges and apples. I made a 10-day supply of breakfast for the three birds this morning, which I froze in one-day packages. I also make birdie bread for them.
Oboe the lovebird gave up commercial bird food altogether a couple of months ago. He only eats the foods I prepare. (He also likes to ‘help’ me prepare his breakfast; he eats the food as I peel and dice it.) His favourite food is walnut crumbs. Kazoo, the Amazon, loves Granny Smith apples and peanuts best. Simon loves warm corn and toast. I get the feeling he’s going to be a good eater.
Kazoo has been quite a handful lately. His new favourite spot is the top of the microwave, and from there he likes to open the pantry door and climb in. He has to clamber across the molasses and pasta boxes to get to his very favourite spot, which is on top of the cans at the very back. He sits back there and laughs. Sometimes he falls out, and lands in the cat’s water dish, clinging to a box of rotini.
(In case you’re wondering, he never poops in the pantry.)
Today is the last day of the art contest that could see Keir MacDonald’s artwork hanging in the National Gallery. Keir’s a talented and creative artist, and an interesting and likable young man. I really hope he wins. If you’d like to help, you can view his excellent art and vote for him here. (I think you need a Facebook account to vote.)
The top twelve pieces of art (based on popular vote) will advance to the final round, in which a panel of four judges will decide which is the best. The winning artwork will hang in the National Gallery. Keir is now in 10th place, so he’s got a good shot.
The Middle Place, opens tonight at the Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC) and runs till April 17th. It’s about homeless youth, and it’s based partly on interviews with kids in a youth shelter. GCTC is asking for help spreading the word, because this play is targeted to a younger audience than they usually see. If you do go see it, consider taking a young person with you. Let me know how you like it. (I’ll probably blog about it again after I see it.)
And here’s a Rick Mercer rant about the youth vote. It’s a couple of years old, but just as relevant to this election as it was to that one.
If you’re a scrounger like me, there’s nothing like the thrill of finding a treasure at a garage sale or a thrift shop or even on the curb.
On Friday I was at Value Village (a thrift shop), rooting around and looking for things to make parrot toys out of. I was scanning a shelf of kitchenwares, when something caught my eye. It was a plate. It looked like a Chandler Swain plate. Chandler’s a local potter and I collect her pottery. I love following the progression over time through all different phases of her art. This looked like a fairly early Chandler Swain piece. I picked it up and turned it over. Her autograph was on it, right next to a price tag of $1.99. I got a big thrift-shop thrill out of that.
Also on Friday, GC and I went to the antique sale at Carleton University. You know you’re not going to get any big scoops at an antique show, but it’s still a lot of fun to look and admire.
I saw a lovely 1980s silk blouse with a Mexican Day-of-the-Dead doll print. I was admiring it when the dealer told me it was “only” $900. (Usually, he said, they sell for about $2,000 in stores.) I could have bought a pine washboard, an antique toy sewing machine, an embroidered down-filled cushion, a crazy quilt from the 1800s, and a fabulous lamp from the 1950s for $900!
There’s something about seeing a $900 used blouse that makes other things seem relatively affordable. I ended up buying the fabulous floor lamp from the 50s and the embroidered down-filled cushion. GC bought an old slide rule.
The lamp really is fabulous. It has three tiers of lighting that can be turned on separately or all together, and it can light my entire living room if I turn the top two on at the same time. It’s even got a button on the base that lights up the slag glass base.
I have solved my living room lighting problem, which has plagued me for my whole entire adult life.
Plus, I used a time-honoured bargaining technique taught to me by an old scrounger from way back. It involves negotiating two or more purchases from the same dealer simultaneously. So I got the lamp and the down-filled hand-embroidered cushion too, for just slightly more than the price of the lamp, and all for a fraction of the cost of a second-hand blouse!
Have you ever heard of the Kelly Family? I just found out about them yesterday. They were one of those eccentric showbiz families with a whole bunch of talented kids. In their case, the twelve kids were all home-schooled with an emphasis on music and dance. Nobody ever cut their hair, they wore funny clothes, and they lived on a houseboat and traveled on a double-decker bus.
Here’s a video from their early days. The lead singer for this song is Angelo Kelly, the youngest boy. The song is called (not surprisingly, once you’ve listened to it) “Ain’t gonna pee-pee in my bed tonight.” Call me crazy, but I LOVE this song. I’ve watched the video dozens of times. The song is stuck in my head like Crazy Glue. I’ve even memorized all the words.
If that doesn’t do it for you, have you heard that the Ottawa Public Library is now allowing anyone with a library card to download three free songs a week? There’s no cost, and you can keep them forever. The selection is apparently huge, and includes the entire Sony catalogue. The service is called Freegal.
From the Hold-Your-Nose department, the OPP has exonerated all the cops in all the videotaped cellblock abuse cases it investigated over the last few months. Two special constables (civilians) were not exonerated. Chief Vern White says the special constables will not be identified, and any disciplinary action taken against them will not be revealed.
GC and I started our quilting course last night at The Running Stitch in Kanata. It’s an eight-week course and I think it’s going to be great. There are eight students, and we’re each making a twin-size sampler quilt.
For the first class, we just went over equipment and supplies and then picked out our fabrics. There are nine fabrics that need to be chosen for this quilt, including borders and sashing and cornerstones (see, I’m learning the lingo already).
Because of my highly eclectic tastes, I often find it hard to narrow choices down and make decisions. But the teacher and the store owner are very good at nudging students through the process. Actually, they are very good at commandeering the process and imposing the benefits of their far greater knowledge and experience on the students. Once they had decided on each of our fabrics, and consulted each other on the selections, they would ask for our opinion. “After all,” said the teacher, “It’s your quilt too.”
I deferred almost entirely to their judgment, after giving them a starting point: I wanted my quilt to be black and white. As it turns out, it’s going to be black and white and red, and I think it’s going to be gorgeous.
Most of the students started by picking out at least one fabric that they loved, and then the teacher or the shop owner would help them take over from there. I really liked everybody’s final selections.
GC thought he was going to go with blues and greens, but the shop owner sent him away with a dazzling pile of purples and oranges. He wasn’t entirely sure about it at first, but I think by the time they had it all worked out, he was on board. They told him he was very modern, and he liked that.
I already had most of my supplies, like rulers and cutting mats and so on, but GC had to stock up on all that stuff.
GC took this picture of me, Kazoo and Oboe this morning. That’s not mold all over my kitchen cabinets, by the way; it’s the camera app’s grunge effect.
You can’t see them in that picture, but Duncan and Logan are in the kitchen too. We have an unspoken rule in this house that if one of us goes into the kitchen, we all go.
Here is Duncan and Logan’s first joint project. That’s the foam meat tray from the stewing beef, which I had left in the garbage. When I got home, Logan at least had the decency to look guilty, whereas Duncan just looked satisfied.
And then there’s Kazoo! Up until recently, Kazoo had a few spots where he hung out (in his cage, on his cage, on his playstand, on me) and other than that, he pretty much left everything else alone. Sometimes he went on top of the bookcase and chewed it a bit, but that was as bad as it got.
I began to think living with a parrot was much easier than I’d heard, so I made arrangements to add an African Grey to the mix. The very next day, Kazoo started eating the house.
First he explored it. He flew places he’d never flown before. (And it’s quite impressive when an Amazon parrot flies, by the way. He’s a big, heavy bird and he generates a lot of wind, so every piece of paper in the room takes off and flies around too.)
Landing’s a bit of a hit-or-miss thing. If he lands successfully, he laughs. If not, he flaps his wings and slides down the wall or the furniture or whatever he failed to land on.
His favourite spot at the moment is the front hall closet. He loves it in there. At first I was worried that he would poop on the coats, but he didn’t. He spent about two days of his free time in the closet. Sometimes things would fall out of the closet, like purses and jackets, and occasionally Kazoo himself.
At one point my good winter coat came tumbling out of the closet. I picked it up and saw that there were a whole bunch of GREAT BIG HOLES in it. That’s when I realized that he was building a nest in the closet. (This explains, too, why he never pooped in the closet: they don’t poop in their nests.) (I think Kazoo might be a girl.)
So now the hall closet is off limits. That doesn’t stop him from flying to the top of the closed closet door and trying to chew through the door. This is a very persistent bird. He knows what he wants and he’s not easily distracted.
There’s a cabinet in my living room where I keep some collectibles, and he likes to sit on top of that and chew it. He also wants to explore the kitchen cabinets and the top of the fridge. Plus, I see him eying other things around the place, and I know it’s just a matter of time til he eats them too.
I provide him with lots of good chewy toys, but he prefers to eat the house.
And then there’s Oboe. Oboe is literally about one-tenth the size of Kazoo, but he’s absolutely fearless. Sometimes I’ll have Kazoo on one shoulder and Oboe on the other, and Oboe will sneak around back and nibble on Kazoo’s tail. He also divebombs Kazoo and flies within swatting distance of Duncan. Kazoo finds him interesting but annoying. Duncan finds him just plain fascinating.
Simon, the African Grey, will be arriving in about two weeks. I can hardly wait!
Have you heard of the Good Food Box program? It’s kind of a produce shopping collective, and it’s open to everybody in Ottawa. I believe they have this program in cities all across Canada.
“We are a non-profit community-based initiative bringing neighbours together to buy a variety of delicious and nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices. Our goal is to purchase food that is in season and is grown as close to home as possible.
It works like a large buying club with centralized buying and coordination. And it’s open to everyone – with no membership fees.”
I got my first box yesterday. They suggest a small $10 box for one or two person families, but I went for the medium box ($15), because of the birds.
For $15 I got a bag of spinach, a bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, a bag of carrots, celery, a turnip, an avocado, a sweet potato, a broccoli, five apples, five oranges, four bananas, and a grapefruit. It even came with a newsletter that featured spinach recipes. I made wilted spinach with lemon and pine nuts last night. Today I’m making a big fat beef stew. I need to cook up a storm to ensure this stuff doesn’t all end up in my green bin.
Speaking of green bins, today is Green Bin Day in my neighbourhood, AND it’s St. Patrick’s Day. That only happens once every 42 years.
Did you feel the earthquake yesterday? I was sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap, and Duncan was curled up on the Zoom Blanket and Kazoo was hanging out on the shelf in the front hall closet, which is his new fort. Suddenly things started rattling. Duncan and I both looked up and around, and then it stopped. Duncan was traumatized by the last earthquake, because he was all alone and furniture fell over and things crashed to the floor all around him and he fled to the basement, where he cowered for hours until I got home. So he has a traumatic earthquake history. But he was pretty cool about this one. After it ended he kept a wary eye out for another minute or two, and then put his head down and went back to sleep.
Speaking of earthquakes, we went to a Buddhist chanting meeting for Japan last night. We chanted for an hour. This is what we chanted: Nam myoho renge kyo. This is what it sounds like:
Steve Desjourdy, the Ottawa police officer who cut off Stacy Bonds’ bra while other officers pinned her to the ground in the cell block, was charged yesterday with sexually assaulting her.
Even though it’s good news, I rolled my eyes when I heard it. I don’t see it as a sign of real change. I think the SIU simply realized that it, too, was implicated in the whole police brutality scandal that erupted following the assault of Stacy Bonds, because of its history of almost always finding in favour of the police. Reporters started presenting the actual numbers of cases the SIU investigates, and the outcomes of those. A whole series of incidents (which included videotaped assaults of other prisoners in Ottawa, as well as the absolutely appalling videotaped behaviour of many anonymous police officers at the G8/G20 protests in Toronto) caused many citizens to start viewing allegations of police brutality very differently than they had previously.
After five months of investigating, the SIU has ruled that there are reasonable grounds to charge Desjourdy with sexual assault. (Potential charges against the other officers will be the subject of a separate investigation, this one by the OPP.)
Personally, I am skeptical that this is representative of any substantial change in how things are done. We still need a new, independent, unbiased, civilian body that investigates allegations of police brutality and other forms of police misconduct. Anything less is just more of the same.
I’m still sick with the flu. Now I can hear my chest gurgling when I exhale. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. Duncan doesn’t like the sound, but I’m kind of intrigued by it. Maybe I have pleurisy or something.
I’ve got another job interview! Tuesday morning, ten o’clock. Hopefully I’ll have shaken the plague by then.
We had blueberry pancakes last night, to celebrate Pancake Tuesday. The dinner table keeps getting fuller. There’s me and GC, who sit in chairs, Duncan who lies on the floor between us, Logan the Dog, who lies on the other side of GC, Kazoo, who perches on his playstand on the other side of Logan, and Genvieve, the mannequin, who stands in the corner beside Kazoo. I’m not sure where Simon’s playstand will go. I guess it will depend on how well he and Kazoo get along. (Oboe would love to join us for dinner too, but he’s got terrible table manners. Not only that, but certain other members of the family would like to eat him.)
I haven’t gotten very much done since being felled by the plague. Today’s goal is to try to figure out the automatic needle-threader on the sewing machine. I’m half-way through making a hanging sleeping tent for Kazoo, but I ran into problems which resulted in the needle becoming unthreaded.
Speaking of sewing machine problems, GC and I are mystified by his vast knowledge of how sewing machines work. He doesn’t know how he knows what he knows, but he knows stuff. For instance, the other evening he walked into the house and I was busy taking apart the sewing machine. I’d taken off the foot and was in the process of removing the plate under the needle with a screwdriver. (I was consulting the user guide to do all this.)
“What are you doing?” he asked from the door.
“Taking apart the sewing machine,” I said.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I think I know what’s wrong and you just have to turn the dial thingy a bit.”
I didn’t know how he could possibly know what was wrong, even, let alone how to fix it, since the problem had just happened and he couldn’t even see the problem from where he was standing.
Then he came over and turned the dial thingy a bit and everything was fixed. Just like that. We stared at each other, amazed. It was like we’d just found out that he could play the piano flawlessly even though he’d never touched one before.
We picked up Simon Taylor Grey, the baby African Grey parrot, from the breeder on Saturday morning. 
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