The Cat Came Back (And Now I Want To Hate Him)

The cat.

Grrrrr.

The cat is an indoor cat.

Occasionally I put the leash (that he came with) on him and let him snoop around my stoop. I'm nice that way. Part of the reason he is an indoor cat is that he doesn't have front claws and there are some large territorial tom cats in my neighbourhood. I fear he would get the snot beat out of him.

This morning while trying to leave the apartment with my laundry (which is a feat you'll understand if you've ever been to my place), the cat decided he too should exit. I hoped he would just stay on the stoop and I could put my laundry down, scoop him up and toss him inside.

Nay, nay.

Of course he wouldn't make things easy. He quickly made his way down the first flight of stairs, then onto the roof, then on to the roof of the garage.

There he is, perched, happy, delighted and filling me with angst.

I got some food to try and lure him back up the stairs.

As you can see, his level of care was not altered. And so he decided to keep exploring. He explored by walking on narrow things above the ground, leaving me to envision the conversation between me and his parents and just how he broke his hip.

Awesome. In his high wire exploring he found a friend. How neat.

Eventually he got down, explored one neighbour's yard, went under another neighbour's deck, ran around in the alley, got caught by me, fought me, won, ran into the neighbour's yard again, started eating the neighbour's plants and then got caught by me again.

He was very happy that I caught him. So happy in fact that he decided to give a little love nibble, right through my glove.

How delightful.

So now he is in my apartment (hopefully thinking about what he did) and I am out doing laundry (thinking about what he did). Somebody is going to lose their leashed stoop snooping privileges for a while.

Normative...Not!

Due to certain terrible, terrible pains while trying to use the left side of my mouth to chew I need to go to the dentist.

My appointment is at 8am this morning. Yup, 8am on a Monday morning, the dentist. Since I haven't been to a dentist since the summer of '03, I can only assume that this will be nothing but a pleasant experience.

Cough.

Why I Think Winter Is A Crock O' Nasty

I know its only November and it hasn't even got really snowy or really cold yet. But as the white begins to pile up here in London I am already reminded of why I think winter is dumb. Do I think there are some profoundly beautiful and awe inspiring parts of winter - yes. Do I think there are some fun things you can do in winter that you can't do at other times - yes. Those things are not the point of this ranting, griping, crank.

My main complaint with winter (aside from sub zero temperatures) is this: everything takes longer (I have composed many songs about this in my head). You could accuse me of western rushing attitudes and tell me that winter is God's way of making me slow down. You could do that, but you'd be wrong.

Let's compose a little list of things that take longer because of winter and all its accoutrement.

1. showers - no longer can I dash out apres shower, now everything must be moisterized lest it dry up and fall off or crack, itch and burn
2. getting dressed - just throw on a dress? heeeeck no! long johns, pants or tights ('cause dem hose just ain't gonna cut it), shirt, long sleeved shirt, sweater - layers, layers, layers - a person could die of skin suffication.
   
3. leaving the house - throw on flip flops, grab keys and go - oh, no. put on socks, put on boots, put on and zip up 20lbs coat, find hat, find mitts, begin sweating
4. using a car - fight polar bear on way to car, use mitts to dig way into car, start car, I said saaa-aaaart the car, turn up anything that makes heat and defrosts things, dig out scraper/brush, scraaaape scraaaaape scraaaaape, brush brush brush brush brush <-- repeat brush and scrape routine for 20 minutes, brush snow and ice off self, wring out now sopping wet mittens, get in car. oh, not so fast - silly, you forgot that you have to shovel the driveway in order to even get this freshly cleared car out. i hope it's not snowing heavily while you're shovelling 'cause all your hard brushing work is about to get undone
5. driving anywhere - main roads are plowed and salted? sweet! what's that? you don't live on the 401? oh, your house is on a purely residential street, oh and that won't get plowed until 4pm the day after it snowed like mad. ok, so it takes you 20 minutes to ram your way out to a main route (this is added to the 20 or so it took you to get your car ready to leave the driveway - and add to that the half an hour it took you to shovel) . now you're on that main route but traffic is moving at an astounding 36 km/h which should have you at work only 3 hours late (you have second thoughts about having won in the fight against the polar bear and wonder if just having let him eat you would have solved a lot more problems).

So by my count something (exiting the house and getting to a main route in a city) that would have taken you 5 minutes in June has now taken around an hour and a quarter. And there my friends is my just some of the fuel for my fire of thinking winter is dumb.

This Isn't Right

Here is what I came back to last night (some pics taken last night, some this morning - all of them gross):









There are limbs and whole trees down all over the city. Cars have been smashed by falling debris. My one roommate said that the snow was touching the bottom of the car as she drove down our street to get to work. It's a mess. It's not creationally normative to have snow on the ground before Halloween. I'm glad that its supposed to get up to 15C here tomorrow. Take that snow!

I Think It Was A Good Day

I spent some time at home on the weekend. I got pretty tired (for various reasons) and decided it wouldn't be safe for me to drive all the way back to London on Sunday night. Therefore I thought I would get a good jump after breakfast on Monday morning and be back to London just after lunch. That was a pipe dream.

The following are my facebook status updates that I made via my cell (with some commentary):

Laura is on the side of the 401 with a flat tire, although she is capable of changing said tire, she is glad to have caa. 10:51

-I'm just driving along and the car starts to handle all crazy and there is a bad bad noise coming from the back. I pull over and swear. Then I call CAA. Then I wait for CAA. Then CAA comes and puts the spare on and inflates it for me. Then I make phone calls to Dad and L.Bo for advice on where the heck to go and get this tire repaired. I end up at Northumberland Tire. They say its gonna be 45min or so. Alors, I take off on foot to kill the time.

Laura stly) replacement. Hurray! 12:01

-this was supposed to read "Laura is eating chinese buffet by herself in port hope. She was just informed that the tire cannot be fixed and she is waiting for them to put on a (likely costly) replacement. Hurray!" I had decided lunch was in order and a 6.50$ chinese lunch buffet is ok with me.

Laura gives up on trying to update this from her cell. Grrr. 12:03

-I was pretty frustrated that I had taken the time to put that whole long update up and it didn't work. though I think it may have worked over the mobile network because I got a text from L.bo saying that I was killing her. she felt sad that she was working and couldn't come and have 6.50$ chinese buffet with me.

Laura is killing Lesley, possibly slowly and with her song. 12:06

-so I thought I'd let everyone know that I was killing L.bo

Laura just watched some woman named Doris get surprised for her birthday at the aforementioned chinese place. 12:18

-yup, just as I was heading back to the buffet Doris and a couple of friends walked in and she spied a very long table full of more of her friends and very quietly and sporadically they started going "uh, surprise." "surprise Doris" "happy birthday Doris" I was pretty amused. And I was just killing time while I was waiting for N-Tire to put the newbie on my car.

Laura cannot do anything simple. Sigh. 12:42

-while I was in the bathroom my Dad called. he had just remembered that before I got the car, he and Mom had put new tires on it and they might be under warranty. but the warranty would be with Canadian Tire, which I was not at and which there is none in Port Hope. this frustrated me to know at this point. so I called Dad and said that it was too late for this tire as a new one was being put on, but I was glad to know for future tire 'incidents'. I got back to N-tire and the spare was still on my car. what? growl. they hadn't had time to find a suitable replacement. so I took that opportunity to check my glove box for anything that mentioned tire warranty. found it, called dad. after some discussion dad called cobourg CT for me and they said to bring the tire in. I got my tire back from N-tire and slowly headed to the 'burg.

Laura is on her way to cobourg canadian tire, frick. 13:00

-I was obviously thrilled to be back tracking and likely eating another hour of time. if I didn't leave cobourg by 3pm then I wouldn't be making it to London by 7 for rehearsal (because of traffic) and would just go back to my parents.

Laura was really wishing she would get an unsecured wireless signal at CT. that wish is going unfulfilled. 13:17

-I pulled out my laptop and thought I might get some work done while waiting for my 'free' replacement tire to be put on. this work would not be involving the internet

Laura has a new tire and is ready to take off across toronto (into traffic). Oh look, its raining. Fun. 13:51

-after about a million phone calls, a bunch of hours spent waiting on the 401, in port hope, and in cobourg, I was finally able to start heading westward again

Laura is back in London, thinking about supper and getting ready for rehearsal. 17:07

-traffic was nice, I made good time and I made it back with a bit of space to breath and have supper before choir rehearsal.

So I think that was a pretty stellar day and was in no way frustrating or a waste of an entire day. Cough.

B'ah, B.Ed

Sometimes I not so secretly resent the teaching profession and its self education for monopolizing so many people in my world.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

...You aren't squeezing them and making juice.

All I want to do is put a bit of lemon juice in some homemade ice tea. I have been to 4 grocery stores (2 Food Basics, a No-Frills and a Fortinos) and not one of them has had lemon juice in stock. Hoards of lime juice (I don't want no stinkin' lime juice), but no lemon juice.

I have a draft of my letter to the mayor, discussing my outrage almost ready to send.

Hurmph.

Beeeep, The Call You Have Dialed...

If you're trying to get a hold of me via my cell phone, it won't work. And it won't start working again until I get enough employment to pay off Rogers and restore my service. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, you have my shame filled apology.

Snow

Ok, this is a little more like it!

Confusing

I turned on my computer this afternoon to my little Weather Network, Weather Eyes telling me that there is a winter storm warning for both Brighton and Hamilton. I got a little excited about getting snowed in and wondered if I had enough bottles of water and canned goods. I felt sad that it wasn't happening on Sunday night and therefore possibly resulting in the cancellation of classes. I (being both a farmer's daughter and a geek) decided to see just how much snow was heading my way by virtue of radar imagery (courtesy of Environment Canada). Imagine my surprise when I saw only tiny little blips of precipitation moving through the screen. Confused I checked the Weather Network website and saw that there is only a 40% chance of precipitation in either place overnight. In fact for this evening its only a 10% chance. The WN is also saying that they are only expecting 1cm of snow overnight. There are no gusts of wind, there is...nothing? Why then the winter storm watch? I'm so confused. Maybe I'll be laughing out the other side of my face when a polar bear eats the bumper off my car. Who knows.

And School Has Started Again...