Today is the third day of a three-day migraine. I get them fairly often, and they’re pretty predictable. They’re not as bad as some people’s migraines; I don’t throw up or anything like that. I can function, more or less, as long as functioning doesn’t require a lot of motion or noise or strong light or thinking.
After screwing up so magnificently with respect to the testing on Wednesday, I returned to the test centre that afternoon for the English Writing test. It was on spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence order and vocabulary. I love taking tests and I think I aced this one.
I sent an email regarding the test I missed, asking if there was any chance I could reschedule.
On Thursday they got back to me and said they’d rescheduled me for September 8th for the Situational Judgment Test. YAY. (Thanks, by the way, to all of you who commiserated or left hopeful comments on Wednesday’s post – I didn’t respond, but I did appreciate your support.)
What else is new? Well, Piccolo can FLY. Yes he can. He flew from my finger and landed on the bars of his cage. The only one who can’t fly yet is Oboe. Pretty soon it’s going to be like living with flying toddler triplets!
The other big news is that GC outdid himself in the kitchen last night.
I’ve never been a big fan of fish, largely because my mother hated it when I was growing up because she associated it with Fridays in boarding school, where she was forced to eat fish until she threw up. Every Friday. For years. Needless to say, she never made fish when I was growing up, and she spoke quite disparagingly of it.
I was a picky eater as a child. It didn’t take much to get me to dislike a food. In fact, disliking food was my default position. I didn’t like anything with ingredients in it, like spaghetti sauce. I liked my foods very simple. I could have lived on Jello, pancakes, Smarties and naked pasta.
My mother said my sister and I could each have one food we never had to eat, but we had to eat everything else that she served. It was easy for Debbie, since the only food she disliked was liver. I picked peanut butter; I hated it so much that even the smell made me gag. But I didn’t eat everything else on my plate either. I stuffed it in my pockets and discarded it in creative places when she wasn’t looking. For example, in one apartment there was a “bottomless pit” under the kitchen counter. At least that’s what I thought. I shoved all kinds of unwanted food into that slot. I also flushed food down the toilet, tossed it off the balcony, and threw it in the incinerator.
Anyway. I digress. I was talking about fish, which she never served.
Now that I’m a grown-up, I still harbor suspicious feelings about fish, even though I know it’s very good for me. I think I should like it, but it kind of creeps me out. GC, on the other hand, loves fish. And he has taken it upon himself to help me like it more.
Every couple of weeks he cooks fish and I eat it. It’s okay. He hasn’t served anything I hate yet. I find the tilapia mild and inoffensive.
But last night he made blackened rainbow trout. (Coincidentally, the sky was full of rainbows last night. Did you see them?)
It was delicious! I loved it. He even had to give me some of his after I devoured all of mine.
He found the recipe online, but modified it to make it healthier.
1/2 tsp paprika
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
olive oil
4 oz rainbow trout fillets
1. Take the batteries out of your smoke detector and open some windows.
2. In a small bowl, mix the spices and make a paste with some olive oil. Set aside. Heat a heavy cast iron pan on medium-high heat until extremely hot.
3. Gently rub each fillet with the spice paste.
4. Place fillets into the hot pan without crowding. Cook until fish has a charred appearance, about two minutes. Turn fillets and cook until charred.
GC served it with a fresh baguette, some broccoli and a wedge of lemon. It was amazing.
Have you ever screwed something up that was really important to you? That’s what I just did.
I was scheduled to take two tests today to qualify for a pool of government writing jobs. I really want one of these jobs. They’re one of the few government jobs that don’t require bilingualism. Actually they’re one of the few jobs of any kind in Ottawa that don’t require bilingualism.
There was a Situational Judgment Test from 8:30 to 11:30, and an English Writing Test from 1:00 to 3:00.
I google-mapped the location, I OC-Transpo-Travel-Planned the location, I wrote down the directions, I planned an earlier-than-necessary departure just to be sure I wasn’t late, I trained GC to feed the baby birds their lunch, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, showered, gave the babies their breakfast, and by 7:05 I was on my way. I had my directions on an index card in my back pocket.
They disappeared somewhere along the way.
I got off the bus where I was supposed to get off the bus, according to the directions as I remembered them, but it didn’t seem to be the right place. There was supposed to be a Westin Hotel. I seemed to remember I was going to 3700 Carling, but I was at 3685 Richmond. I distinctly remembered seeing Moodie and Carling on the Google Map.
I still had 20 minutes to spare. I phoned GC, who immediately came and got me and drove me to 3700 Carling. We got there with two minutes to spare.
BUT.
You know what was at 3700 Carling? A Mini-Golf place, complete with a polar bear, a zebra and a hippopotamus.
I felt sick. Then we went to 3701 Carling, which was government-y, but not the right place.
Then we went to 3500 Carling, which was at Moodie, and which was the old Nortel complex.
Then we went to 3500 Richmond, which was almost directly across the street from where I’d originally gotten off the bus. It was a Best Western motel, not a Westin Hotel. And it turned out that that was where I was supposed to be.
I had been in the right place at the right time at 8:10. I just thought it was the wrong place. And now it was 8:50 and I was back at the right place but twenty minutes late.
There were signs on the hall door saying testing was in progress, do not disturb. There was nobody in the hallway to plead with. I left.
I’m still going to go back for the afternoon testing, and I’ll go early and try to find someone to plead with about rescheduling the morning testing, but I’m not optimistic. I think I screwed up any chance I had at qualifying for this pool of jobs.
Okay, now here’s some MAJOR news for you. Drum roll, please.
BANJO CAN FLY!
He turned one month old today, and he celebrated by flying off my finger while I was washing his face after breakfast. I was so surprised. I just assumed Piccolo would fly first, since he’s the oldest. And I thought it was still about a week in the future.
He didn’t fly far, just from my finger to the blue box where he and his siblings sleep at night. Only about a foot, total. I told myself he didn’t really fly, he just sort of fell and flapped. I scooped him back up and resumed washing his face. He flew again. This time he landed on the window of his blue box, and clung to it. That’s when I realized it wasn’t a fluke, he really can fly.
This changes everything.
And here’s Duncan the bird-watcher. He’s enchanted and intrigued by these baby birds. Everything about them fascinates him, from the little noises they make to the food they eat to the way they beat their little wings so vigorously without actually going anywhere. If they wake up crying in the middle of the night, he licks my face til I wake up and then escorts me to their bedroom. I think he likes them. But then again, I think he liked the mouse in his own way too.
(Broadcasting live here; I can’t guarantee that you will actually see him flying, though.)
In other news, It was late and we were tired. We played our traditional bedtime Bejeweled Blitz tournament, and then headed off to bed.
“But wait!” I said, suddenly remembering. “We forgot to go check out the new Swap Box!”
“Let’s go,” said GC.
Elmaks had left a comment here on the blog saying the new swap box was in the alcove just east of the east-bound bus shelters on Rideau Street, so we drove down to Rideau Street and parked the car.
I tend to be pretty relaxed about walking at night, but things are a little sketchy down there on Rideau late at night. I was aware of my wallet in my back pocket. I looked over my shoulder more than once. I felt unusually vigilant.
We weren’t exactly sure what an alcove was, and several things could have qualified, including a parking lot. Also, my brain was in geocaching mode, which meant I was looking for something hidden…but of course swap boxes are out in the open. I was making the whole thing much more difficult than it needed to be.
Finally we said to ourselves that maybe someone had ripped the swap box down already. We headed back to the car. And what do you think we saw on the way to the car? That’s right. The swap box, in an alcove just east of the bus shelters. I took a picture and left a bus ticket.
Right beside the swap box there were several people trying to change a tire on a taxi. It looked like an ill-fated operation to me, especially since they didn’t have a jack so they were trying to rock the car over and then hold it up while changing the tire. Fortunately another cabbie came along and lent them a jack.
On Friday night, GC and I went to Elmak’s art show at La Petite Mort Gallery. I meant to tell you about it before the show, so you could go too, but unfortunately I dropped that ball.
Elmaks is the street artist who created the Swap Boxes. The show was great, and GC bought a painting inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis. There was a fabulous octopus box that I craved, but it had already been sold.
Later GC and I were walking back to the car and a very stoned young woman on a bicycle came up behind us on the sidewalk, and graciously smashed into a taxi on the side of the road. She landed in a heap at our feet and mumbled “Ow ow ow” a few times. We asked her if she was okay.
“Yeah,” she said unconvincingly. She had an open wound next to her eye.
“You have a cut beside your eye,” said GC.
“I already had that,” she said.
“Are you okay?” I asked again, because I didn’t know what to do other than keep asking her if she was okay.
“Yeah,” she said, “My shoulder hurts.”
“Is it okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “It’s not from this accident, it was already dislocated.”
I noticed she had a very large, thick railroad-track scar running down the center of her chest and disappearing down her shirt.
The taxi driver got out of his car.
“What you doing coming this way?” he demanded. I think he meant the wrong side of the road, against the traffic, and on the sidewalk.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t want to run into the people.”
That was us. We were the people. I was touched, actually, that stoned as she was, she chose to run into a car rather than us.
“Why you do so much drugs?” he demanded, throwing his hands up in the air. “You gonna get yourself killed.”
“Fuck you,” she said as he got back in his car. “Why don’t you go back to your own country?”
They both threw these insults out half-heartedly, haphazardly, like they didn’t really mean them.
I asked her again if she was okay (honestly, I was starting to annoy myself), and she assured me she was. Then she got on her bike and careened off again.
We spotted her again when we were in the car, heading home. She was weaving and wobbling like a five year old who just got her training wheels taken off. GC gave her a very wide berth, and she got a bit better as she picked up speed. But she was still going the wrong way, against the lights, all over the road.
It occurred to me that this probably wasn’t her bike. She just acquired it somehow, a little earlier in the day. She was using it until someone stole it from her, and they would use it til someone stole it from them. Or maybe it would get traded for a little something something along the way. In any case, I like to think she didn’t have the bike for long, and she’s still relatively safe out there somewhere on the streets of Ottawa.
As for the bike, I’d love to follow it around for a day or two and document its adventures.
GC decided to take me out for dinner last night because I was a bit frazzled from my day. But we only made it part way down the street when we spotted something that demanded our attention. A van, on the side of the road, perched at a peculiar angle, looking like its axle broke or its wheel fell off or something
We always stop for weird things: It’s what we do. Sometimes things aren’t as weird as they appear, though. Like a couple months ago we saw a van with its door open and a man and woman standing beside it, and a big dog lying between them on the ground. We didn’t know if the dog was dead or merely injured, but it looked like they were discussing how to get him into the van to get him to the vet. We circled the block and came back to offer our assistance, but then the dog stood up and yawned, and we realized he had just been lying down because he was bored with their conversation.
Anyway, last night’s van actually was worth stopping for. It turned out that it had fallen through the road. No kidding. The driver had been about to back it into his driveway when suddenly the road opened up and his front left wheel was swallowed by the road’s gaping maw.
We stood with the family for a bit, chatting and taking pictures, while everybody who passed by peered into the hole and said things like “Ain’t that the damnedest thing.”
Eventually a City crew arrived but they said they were just there to put warning pilons up. They told the owner of the van that he would have to call a tow truck to get his van out of the hole. They said it would be a tricky towing job and they didn’t want to risk it.
I asked them what would cause such a thing to happen. They said it looked like everything had washed away under the asphalt. The hole was right near a sewer drain, and the heavy rainfall from last week probably washed away that section of road stuff (sorry, I don’t know the technical term), leaving just the crust of the road over gaping hollowness.
“It happens,” shrugged one road guy. “Not very often, but it happens.”
“But it’s kind of a drag when a car falls through,” the other road guy added.
The moral of the story: Never park close to a sewer drain after a torrential downpour.
I’m having one of those days. It’s 2:00 in the afternoon and I’ve gotten less than nothing done today. I was further ahead at 3:30 this morning than I am now. That’s when the wee birds woke me up for a little meal. I love those baby birds, truly I do, but why do they cry for food in the middle of the night if they’re just going to lazily suck back a squirt or two of formula and go back to sleep?
Anyway. Here’s my day so far:
Fed the birds at 3:30 a.m., cleaned their dishes and syringes and thermometer and containers and stuff. Fed the cat, went back to bed.
Looking forward to lunch with Richard today. Plot the timing of baby bird meals so that lunch won’t result in starving babies. Woke up at 7:30, fed the birds, cleaned all their stuff again. Fed the cat again. Scooped the litterbox.
Went to transfer the laundry from the washer to the dryer but discovered four inches of water in the washer. Inspected. Discovered the laundry tub was full of water because it had gotten plugged up with pine shavings from the birds’ towels, which I knew I should have taken outside and shaken before throwing in the washer.
Bailed water and poured it down the handy-dandy drain in the middle of the floor. Re-spun laundry. Put baby towels in dryer. Laundry tub still plugged, will deal with it later.
Realized it’s garbage day. The baby birds generate more garbage in a week than I do in a month. Swept bird-room floor of shavings. Cleaned bird house. Swept bird-room floor again. Took garbage out and dumped it in green bin.
Cleaned out fridge and dumped contents in green bin. Dumped kitty litter in green bin. Dumped pine shavings in green bin.
Drank coffee, ate cherries. Doorbell. It’s Bob and Bud, coming to check out my front porch. Duncan and I join them outside while they inspect and theorize. It’s not a little job, they say. It’s a big job. Porch needs replacing. They take a bunch of measurements, and do some out-loud thinking. They’ll get back to me with quotes for a wooden porch and a pre-cast cement porch.
Half an hour later, they leave. I look around for Duncan. He was just there a minute ago, on the neighbour’s lawn, chewing a long piece of grass. He’s gone. I run inside, grab a bag of cat treats and run around the neighbourhood like a maniac, shaking the bag and calling his name. No Duncan.
It’s time to feed the birds again. I feed the birds and then throw all their stuff in soapy water. I phone Richard’s cell and leave a message saying I have to reschedule.
I grab the cat treats again, and run around the neighbourhood again, shaking the bag and calling his name again. Four little girls with doll carriages surround me. They have questions.
What are you shaking? Why are you shaking it? How did you lose your cat? What colour is he? Why is there a picture of a fish on the bag? Why do you have a cat instead of a dog?
I answer their questions. I ask them if they have seen a large orange cat. They all nod yes.
“When?” I ask.
They all speak at once:
“Yesterday.”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Last minute.”
“On my birthday.”
I ask them where they saw it. They all point in different directions simultaneously, and then change their minds and point in other directions.
I tell them it was nice chatting with them. I thank them. They smile sweetly. Their babysitter, who is sitting in a white plastic chair, snarls at them to get off the damn road.
I head back towards my place, thinking maybe I should grab my bike so I can cover more territory. And suddenly I catch a glimpse of that unmistakable orange fur. He’s in the parking lot out back. He’s very close to MY parking spot. I call him from 50 yards away. He looks suspicious. I run up to him, gushing “Duncan, I was so worried about you! I’m so happy to see you, you big ol’ puddinghead!”
He’s staring at me like he’s never seen me before in his life. He’s arching his back. He’s hissing at me. HISSING! At ME! I’ve never seen him hiss at anyone before, except for a dog or two.
It’s then that I realize my cat is deaf and blind. He probably has been all along, I just never knew. I crouch down and shake the bag of treats. Open it up, extract one, offer it to him. Suddenly everything is okay again. He knows who I am. He’ll follow me anywhere.
I open the gate and the back door and he dashes inside, relieved, happy to be home. Me too. Everything’s okay, even if my porch needs to be replaced before Sunday and my laundry tub is plugged.
I’m starting to worry about my front porch again. I managed to get an extension on the deadline for fixing it, but now the new deadline is rapidly approaching. August 15. Does anyone know anyone who is a good handy-type-person with some experience in patching concrete steps? I think it’s just a little job, but I have a few other little jobs I could throw in, to make it worth their while. Fix a wooden railing on the back porch. Replace the indoor/outdoor carpeting on the back porch. Stuff like that. Please let me know at zoomery at gmail dot com. Thanks.
Are you tired of hearing about my baby lovebirds yet? Hang in there – I figure we only have about six more weeks to go. I’ll try to write about other stuff too, even though my universe seems to have shrunk quite a bit over the past ten days.
I don’t get tired of them, because they change every day. Today, for instance, they had first breakfast at 2:30 in the morning instead of 4:30. And while I was cleaning their house, Piccolo and Banjo climbed right out of the margarine container. They couldn’t do that yesterday. I was thrilled. (See what I mean about my universe shrinking?)
Also? They can look out the window of their house now. They climb up on top of the bolster and stretch their necks to make themselves tall, and peek out the window. It’s so cute.
They’re at the stage where they put everything in their mouths. Food, poop, shavings, whatever. I even found Oboe trying to peck the pictures off the wallpaper yesterday. I’m starting to give them real food in addition to formula. Yesterday I grated a cherry for them. It’s not easy grating a cherry. Or cutting a blueberry into 32 pieces.
I’m lucky that a very experienced and generous bird breeder – California Dreamer – has taken me and my baby birds under her wing, so to speak. She’s mentoring me as I raise these little guys. Every day she watches the babies on the webcam and gives me more nuggets of useful information.
She tells me they’ll be flying in a week or two. I wonder if they know they’ll be able to fly someday? Or will it come as a big surprise to them? Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow and discovered you could fly? I’d freak with joy.
When I was about five years old, I learned to swim underwater before I could swim above water. The only problem was I couldn’t swim for long because I couldn’t breathe. I had to keep resurfacing for air, but I couldn’t swim up there with my head out of the water. So I alternated between swimming but not breathing underwater, and flailing helplessly while gulping air at the surface. This was neither an efficient nor an attractive way of swimming.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, so I invented the snorkel. I figured I could swim underwater for hours if I kept a straw in my mouth. The straw would have to be bent upwards, so the other end would be above water.
I never actually tried it; it was purely a theoretical invention, just like all my other inventions.
I also invented stick-on nipples for mannequins. It used to be that mannequins never had erect nipples. Maybe people thought that would be vulgar or something. But then suddenly – I think it was in the 80s, but maybe the 70s – mannequins got sexier, and all the stores rushed to buy the hot new erect-nippled mannequins. It occurred to me it would be a lot cheaper and easier just to transform the old mannequins into new mannequins by inventing stick-on nipples. I never did anything about it, and before you knew it, the transformation period was over, and that window of entrepreneurial opportunity closed.
What else did I invent? The ring watch. Instead of taking up a whole wrist, a watch could be set into a ring. Of course, I invented this concept when I had much younger eyes. Nowadays I’d need to carry around a magnifying glass to read a watch ring. The weirdest thing was that the day after I came up with the idea of the watch ring, I saw someone wearing one. Not only that, but it was the ONLY time – before or since – that I ever saw a ring watch.
As you can see, I wasn’t the first to invent some of my inventions. But I was the first to come up with the idea of Car Shrinker. It’s a magic liquid that is dispensed drop by drop from a bottle. You drive wherever you’re going, apply a few drops, then put your little car in your pocket. No more searching for parking spots, no more parking tickets. When you’re finished whatever you’re doing, you use drops from a second bottle to re-expand your car.
Some people actually go beyond the conceptual stages of invention, and create prototypes. My grandfather, for instance, invented Christmas in a Frame. When he died we found the prototypes and copies of correspondence between him and the Patent Office. (It all came to naught, I’m afraid. But at least he tried.)
And I used to have a friend, many years ago, who invented the Odorless Cat Litter Box. Since I had five cats at the time (Mr. Jones, Catastrophe, Mean Joe, Screamer and Beethoven) I got to test all his prototypes as they evolved. With each new iteration he added hooding or screens or extra levels or baking soda or neutralizers. He spent a lot of money refining his invention, building prototypes, and trying to get it patented, but the Odorless Cat Litter Box was, sadly, not really odorless.
We’ve been celebrating GC’s birthday for a couple of days now.
For his birthday I gave him a blood pressure machine and an art journaling book. He was thrilled with his blood pressure machine. It’s just what he always wanted. (Remind me to tell you about the thermometers someday.)
Thursday night we went to a Jamaican restaurant opening – The Giggling Jerks. Not only was it the grand opening, but it was being filmed for a new Food Network reality show called The Opener. Here’s the trailer:
We started with a short lineup to sign permission forms, then we moved to a longer lineup to get into the restaurant. After about 20 minutes, we were seated at the bar to wait for an available table.
We people-watched while we waited. There was an older couple there (I’d guess they were in their 70s) and she was swathed in leopard skin – even her earrings and bracelet were leopard skin. She wore rings on every finger of both hands. He was dressed in a wife-beater and tight jeans. They were both deeply tanned and somewhat disturbing.
You can only people-watch for so long on an empty stomach, and that “next available table” they spoke of never did materialize. Nobody ever moved from the bar to the restaurant, at least not while we were there. We left after about 45 minutes, with a promise to come back another night.
We walked around the Byward Market reading menus and trying to find somewhere good to eat, but by this time we had our hearts set on Jamaican food, and apart from the Cajun Attic, there didn’t seem to be anything like that. (And the Cajun Attic? We did go in for a peek, but there was just something about that place…)
Eventually we were pretty hungry and it was almost time for the baby birds’ next feeding, so we ducked into a shwarma joint for a quick bite. They only accepted cash and I didn’t have any, so GC had to pay for his birthday dinner. I promised him I’d take him out for a real dinner on Friday.
We tried to go to Caribbean Flavours on Friday, but we couldn’t find it, so we went to the Savanah Cafe on Gilmour Street instead. It’s a Caribbean/Thai fusion restaurant.
While we waited for our appetizers – chick pea pakoras, served with edible flowers, along with gazpacho for GC and kalaloo soup for me – we did a little people-watching. There was a young couple at the next table – maybe 24 years old – and as they ate their appetizers, she talked on the phone while he sat there looking first bored and eventually annoyed. She hung up when the main course arrived. They appeared to have a bit of a spat, and then ate most of their meal as if they were in different rooms. Almost no conversation. No smiles. No exchanging bites.
Photo: GC's Birthday Bass (the colour's not true because I didn't use a flash, but as you can see it looked pretty spectacular.)
GC ordered the catch of the day, which was sea bass roasted in banana leaf and served with chipotle lime demerara sugar lacquer, plantain chorizo fufu andsavana slaw. I ordered the Dhal Puri Chicken Roti with steamed greens and fried plantain.
We talked (not on the phone), smiled, and exchanged bites. For dessert we shared a creme brulee.
With the exception of my too-spicy soup, it was all absolutely delicious. Best meal I’ve had in ages. When we go back, I’m going to order the exact same thing, but with a different soup.
We would have gone out and partied the night away, except GC had a dog to walk, and I had baby birds to feed, and it was time to take our blood pressure.
I’ve fallen head over heels in love with these baby lovebirds since I started feeding them a few days ago! It’s like watching babies grow up, but even faster. Every day they’re bigger and smarter and more competent. The oldest one, Piccolo, climbs up my shirt now to nestle in my hair. This morning he was so happy to see me, he climbed up onto the lip of the nest box and perched there, stretching up towards me. Then he toppled over and fell two inches out of the box, onto the towels. I’m calling it his inaugural flight.
Anyway. I just got the webcam set up, and you can get a really good look at them now. It’s much better than when they were in Billie’s nest, which was dark. I even decorated the nursery. Check it out!
If you haven’t seen Shannon’s blog about Oscar the Baby Squirrel, it’s amazing. When her cat dragged him home a month ago, he was so young his umbilical cord was still attached, and she couldn’t even tell what kind of animal he was. The pictures are incredible.
Popular Posts