I Don't Understand

Outhouses.

In this age of composting toilets my dear friend remains inexplicably attached to the "adventure" of her cottage outhouse. Not so attached that she was morally prevented from having a composting toilet installed in the quaintly designed, tin roofed, pine panelled, professionally constructed outhouse that is some 4o yards -- excuse me, metres -- from the nearest cottage door. Not a significant distance unless you suffer some urgent and impending sense that you must empty your colon immediately if not sooner lest you should soil your jammies, the floor, the dog, the walls and your unsuspecting and blissfully snoring partner. Then it may as well be on the moon. Even under normal circumstances, when nature makes a gentle but insistent midnight call and you are faced with putting on shoes and long pants and the long sleeves and probably socks and one of those fetching little net veils over the stained ball cap provided and perhaps a little of the heavy duty bug spray because its been raining for three days and the out house is out in the woods with the biting insects, its still more of a hike than most persons would want.

My friend describes her cottage as a "heritage" property. She is keen to preserve it in its original form . But even the well cared for historical hovels and castles of England have some modern conveniences. No one expects the devoted dwellers of these estates to toddle down the garden path to pee. They're not crossing their legs and limiting fluids after 7, becoming cranky and constipated and dehydrated so as to avoid the dreaded midnight run.

Even if you don't want to spoil the line of your heritage property by all means make an addition or a very closely aligned separate building in a hidden spot, no more than a hop, skip and a fart from the back door. I would even suggest a board walk. Consider a screened in breezeway.

I have a composting toilet IN my cottage. It can be done. Our Spun Sugar Delicate former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson has one in her cottage. And if her dainty digestive system can empty its white rose scented discard into an indoor composting toidy, well then we can all follow her lead, and smugly lower our smarty pants nearer to our dear ones, privately ensconced and enthroned upon our environment and olfactory friendly loos. And we may feel royally pleased with ourselves.

All with grace and dignity and without feeding the mosquitos.

Attempting to attempt

For a while there it was the trend for young couples to become "pre-engaged". It involved a generally one way gift presentation, he to she, almost always in the form of a ring. Said ring would have a modest diamond mounted on it, and if the she were lucky enough to be pre-pre-wed to a man with money in the family, or if the admirer of the ring had an electron microscope, then it was probably quite a charming piece of jewellery. More often, though, any precious stone fixed to a pre-engagement ring was too modest, in the sense of being shy, to be seen. It hid just beyond the normal focal limits of the healthy human eye to protect itself from the glare of harsh judgement.

"What do you mean pre-engaged? Like you are planning to plan to get married? What is that? Let me see the rock. Oh. there's nothing to see, really. So that's what that is: nothing".

I only tell you people I am Attempting a Novel. It is My Attempted Novel. Sometimes, when I am driving one of my kids to work or school or picking grubs or washing my little dog, I have moments of brilliance. And I've learned the hard way they are not still there when your hands are otherwise unoccupied. So I also have a stack of receipts, lunch napkins (sadly no cocktail napkins) FYI's from the school and mutilated envelopes from bills, all now stained with coffee and suds shaken off a dog, upon which I have scribbled my genius.

And then -- when Jo is watching TV, the laundry is hung, the sky is clear, two teens are on the trampoline, one is on the phone, hunny husband is doing the Vulcan mind Meld with the main computer -- I tip toe to my corner, remember Virginia Wolfe and settle into A corner of My Own, because I don't have a whole room.

I redo yesterday's work, then 65 words, 115 if I am really lucky then

"WaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Someone just bounced over the net and into the neighbours shrubs, or the dog filled one shoe with pee and chewed its mate to bits, or hunny wants to know if he should cook a roast yak for supper because its almost six o'clock (he had to pass the chilli bubbling on the stove to ask me this) or finally, as I predicted so many times, the phone has become fused to my 15 year old's ear and she needs to have it surgically removed.

Thus endeth the brilliance, the attempt at My Attempt.

Right now I am just a bit blocked. I need a literary laxative. Maybe a chocolate popsicle and a cuddle with my dog.

Except she has shoe breath.

Yuck.

Water dog disclaimer

I think when you get a dog from the pound that they should come with a 'water dog' disclaimer.  They always warn you if the puppy will grown into a 200 lb monster, or if it is likely to chase things...but they never warn you that your new pet might have an affinity for water.  

Big deal, right?  Wrong.  This is a HUGE deal.  

My first dog, the great dane, is not a swimmer.  She's too fastidious to even get her feet wet.  She's always clean, dry and ready to hop in the car or up on the couch for a cuddle.  The hound however, is the water kind of dog.  He is driven by his need to get wet and dirty.  If there is a puddle, he is in it.  Rolling gleefully in two inches of oily street water is his idea of a great afternoon.  He finds water in places there isn't any water.  I live in a desert for heaven's sake!  Still, he comes home dripping wet and muddy the likes of which I've never seen before.

He nearly killed himself twice yesterday by careening into a river at full flood for a quick dip.  Both incidents found me, laying on my belly on a crumbling bank, reaching wildly for any hand hold on a wriggling, drowning dog.  After what seemed like hours, and in both cases was probably about 15 seconds, I managed to haul poor George-Michael up to safety only to have him shake , roll and head back in for more.  He's exhausting.

Shoot me now.
I have reached the point in my writing life that I am trolling for dirty clothes in my kids' rooms so I don't have to sit and write the next bit in my Attempted Novel.

Oh look! Gym socks in the bottom of a back pack in the back of a closet! At least I think they're socks. Lets try to un-ball them and turn them right side out to see.... drats! They're just shattering.

Gardening -- the beautiful Back Yard. I do it because I want it done, not because I have any particular love for it. There are a lot of things I would rather be doing. I could grow fat on wish sandwiches on white bread and leave my small misshaped lot to the pestilence of the season. I could take comfort in the fact my neighbours to either side are essentially useless in the out door beautification department, to the point that my doing nothing would look way better than their doing nothing plus old rusty cars and broken toys combo. But my OCD won't allow it. I want the garden just like the garden in the magazines I read in the check out line.

Yes, those gardens are all south of Maryland, in the U.S., owned by wealthy people, measured in acreage not square centimetres and hardy to some soft and lofty zone I cannot even imagine. But that's not the point.

Slowly I turn, in my unflattering yellow shorts before the season of shaved legs begins, and trudge into my not-garden to work my obstinate magic on it.

For weeks I dig, turn, yank and fill four large trash bins with clumps of crabgrass, Rasputin runner weeds and clover enough to drive a herd of cattle giddy with delight. I pick grubs by the dozens with my bare hands and collect them all wriggling, white and vile in an empty Zoodles can. Jo, my four year old, wants to keep them as pets. I say "no" but assure her they will go to a Better Place than under my once and future lawn. Then, when she is properly distracted digging a giant hole for a single grass seed, I pour salt on the grubs and watch them burn and writhe, hopefully in horrible pain.

"I toss them out on the road for the racoons" says one gardener. He is a far more generous soul than I. Nor will I leave them to the skunks that reside under the play house. I have seen the destruction they cause. And though I placed a cheerful, kindly lettered sign at skunk eye level "Please Replace Your Divots" they refuse to take heed. Illiterate poop heads.

We put that almighty grass seed in the hole Jo dug. We could also drop a full grown man and an old John Deere in there as well. Like all dogs and children, she loves to dig. Then we cover it over, chant a rapid growth incantation, and she goes in to wash her hands and watch a congratulatory hour of TV. I wish I could join her.

But while she is absorbed by Martha the Talking dog (as opposed to Martha the Eldest Sister) I fill in the hole, smooth and tamp the soil, and mix in the rest of the bag of grass seed, so much lighter now that that one Jo chose is gone and buried.

I have compressed the process for the blog purposes. The whole ordeal took several sessions of two to six hours and many glasses of wine and days of therapeutic whimpering to complete.

And in the end, this is what I learned:

1) generally grass will grow where you don't want it, won't grow where you do want it, unless you go out of your way to impress and intimidate it.

2) no matter how much grass seed they eat, the birds will not get too fat to fly

3) 4 year olds will cry when you fill in the beautiful holes they create

4) squirrels collect peach pits, bury peach pits but do not eat peach pits, and peach pits, together with the stickers off fruit, cockroaches, rats and Twinkies will survive a nuclear holocaust. As the doomsday clock ticks ever nearer to some despot pressing the Big Button I am collecting all the peach pits I found in the lawn and constructing a bomb shelter out of them.

5) blood meal may deter the squirrels from taking out their little back hoes and digging up all the tulips you so carefully planted in perfect rows, but it also drives the dog mad and makes the whole back yard smell like a horror house butcher's shop.

BUT -- more than a month later my grass is growing in, my garden furniture is comfy and clean, I have a decoy weenie strategically placed next to my chiminea in case the neighbours call the fire brigade on me for having a back yard fire, the flowers are thriving and the vegetables are yet to be discovered by the insects. Environment Canada tells me all danger of frost has passed. Clap your hands if you believe in Environment Canada!

(thunderous applause)

And I have a lovely back garden, almost like the ones in the magazines. Now if I could just keep people from lounging around it and messing it up.

OMG it's still there.

You know how you sometimes tuck something away in a closet and find it years later, delighted at this long-forgotten treasure? That's how I felt just now when I logged in to begin contributing to this blog. My profile triggered a visit to my old travel blog, Pole to Pole with Me. I'd almost forgotten about it, since the blog had lapsed since 2007, and, well, I just expected that it would go "poof!" into the ether of internet synapses like all of the events in my life, trivial or not, that I can no longer remember. But, Lordy! It's there! And it brought back such wonderful memories.

Now you may come to realize through this blog that I am an inconsistent diarist (is that a word? Journalist is not right... you know what I mean). Travel gives a wonderful excuse to record extraordinary experiences. Everyday life is just...everyday. But I pledge to take the minutae of my life and type it out for all to see.

This should be fun.

Contact Information

I had to move home.  At 27, this isn't easy.  I have found a new place, all of my own, but for a few weeks I have been staying at my parents house. It's my turn to empty the dishwasher.

With moving comes all sorts of new information....new address, change in insurance, new phone numbers...all of which I have trouble remembering.

In all the confusion, I posted my new phone number on my Facebook profile so that I wouldn't have to look it up every half hour for one of my friends.  Nobody called.  I mean nobody.  I have friends, and yet none of them wanted to talk to me during this trying time in my life?  

After about a week I started to receive strange e-mails all going something like this,

"Katie!  Ha Ha Ha!   You're so funny!"

"Oh friend.  If you needed a place you stay, you should have asked!"

"Hey, we can hang out later, if you want.  I mean, If you're free....we could keep it professional."

Finally, after ten days of this,  one friend finally tracked me down at my parents house and explained that I had posted the wrong phone number.  All my friends, some of my family and even one potential employer had been leaving messages for me at Merritt's own, 'Happy endings massage parlour,' above the Husky station at the truck stop.  No kidding.  I couldn't make this kind of stuff up if I tried.