reading Craigslist Missed Connection ads.

yellow tulips.

animals. all of them.

crossword puzzles.

music. loud.

Prussian blue…


© Wikipedia

^ takes my breath away.

a crackling campfire. on a cool night.
and the smell of a hot tent.

still lakes.

ravens and crows.

the sound of crickets.

absolute silence.

hot pavement
seconds after the rain starts.

bob seger on a sunny day.

moments
exactly
like
this.

long drives without
destination.

the way suntan lotion skin smells
while lying on a beach
under a really hot sun.

words.

crooked teeth.

birch trees and oak trees.

planet earth.

piggybacks and arm wrestling.

the idea of Bora Bora.

© Tanehonu

the design of a chain-link fence.

It’s two-and-a-half days away from a new decade. I’ve been sitting here contemplating if I have any new year’s resolutions that I will actually stick to. To date I don’t believe there is a single resolution that I’ve actually executed. Some, maybe half-ass but never a full-ass attempt. I enter them all with the right intentions. Sometimes half the excitement comes from coming up with the resolution on its own. This would then lead to a trail of thought based on how much more bright and clear my life would be after said resolution is accomplished. Sadly however, the excitement dissipates about as fast as it took to build up and before I know it I’m sitting somewhere blank-faced trying to remember what the hell my resolution was in the first place.

I usually aim low; something achievable. I do that on purpose specifically so that it is a) easier to stick to and b) harder to forget what it was. Unfortunately these low expectations become like that one important object you don’t ever want to lose so you place it in an obvious and easy-to-remember spot only to never see it again.

My resolutions are like that.

So perhaps today I will start easy. It will be like my old year resolution to prepare myself for the new year ones. I’ll build up to the pièce de résistance - what it will be though, I am not entirely certain of. I intend on devising it at 11:59:00PM December 31st. This will give me an entire minute to iron it all out and enter 2010 with a full plan of attack. I just really hope no one tries to French kiss me while this process is underway because I don’t think starting a new decade off with an assault charge is necessarily a good thing.

Okay, my warm up resolution will be:

Only easy Sudoku puzzles before bed.

Tired.

Jet-Lagged.

Partied last night until 3:48AM, which is really 6:48AM Ottawa time.

Oh silly me.

Will blog soon.

To keep you company: Depeche Mode – Enjoy The Silence (Live)

I’m doing that thing again, that thing where I sit in front of my laptop waiting for the world to change. I’m very tired and maybe I’m too tired to even think about getting ready for bed? So I just sit here. I sit here and nothing happens. M&O&M are sitting at my feet staring at me. I think they’re trying to say “Look, if you’re going to stay up, can you at least give us some food?”

Okay Otis mounted Marshall just now. He does that when he’s hungry only it’s a very aggressive maneuver. He jumps on him and bites his furry neck flesh. So then, Marshall wails but Otis doesn’t stop. The most fucked up thing about this is if I raise off this chair to break it up, Otis jumps off instantly and runs to his food bowl. Like, is that smart or what? He’s so sneaky. Unfortunately for him, his plan is always foiled when I throw him in my bathroom for a time out. He usually makes the best of this though by rolling around in my bathtub making these singing noises. Honestly, sometimes I think if he were human he’d seriously be “that guy.”

Enough about my cats. Can you tell I’m single and I LOVE my cats? There’s such a fine line between between being single, in your thirties and loving cats, or being single, in your thirties, and having cats to keep you company. Most of the time it’s the first. I don’t know many non-cat-lovers who keep cats around. Usually of all the domesticated pets I’ve found people either love cats or dislike them. There’s no, “I guess they’re okay,” business.

Write that down!

I watched two epis of Dating in the Dark back-to-back tonight. It’s on ABC on Monday nights. My friend had PVRd it so we caught up. If you’re unsure of the concept, basically they have three men and three women who meet in a room that is devoid of all light. Not even a crack under the door. So they meet this way as a group at first – completely blind to each other’s physical appearances (each sex knows what each other looks like though).

They’ll go on a couple “dates” in this pitch black room which will often entail some really interesting body language. The neat thing is the viewer is watching them entirely under night vision. So we can see if they roll their eyes, or pick their noses, or are making funny faces but they can’t see each other.

In the end, after the couples pair up through various activities they will stand alone in the room across from each other. Then, they will take turns having a spotlight on them so the other person can see what they look like while the person under the spotlight looks out into complete darkness. So they have no idea if the other person is making gag faces, or laughing, or scrutinizing, or just standing there in shock. 

After this they decide if they want to pursue something with their match. This is where things get incredibly, socially interesting. Oftentimes solid matches are made in the dark to the point where full on make out sessions ensue. The attraction is based entirely on personality and physiological chemistry however when they get to see each other it can be pretty fascinating how quickly someone can become turned off from the other person. I’d say of the few episodes I’ve seen the result is 50/50 with someone walking away or something going somewhere. 

If you can catch it you should, it’s pretty neat-o. It’s on Monday nights at 8PM PST, I believe.

Okay bedtime for me. I’m ready.

The story of Margot is nearly complete. It begins and ends like this:

Last Thursday a little, dirty, matted cat followed me home from the SkyTrain. I have a feeling she knew I was the one; I was safe. I was who she was going to find respite with. 

And, she was right. My mother will tell you that I would take in a stranded wild boar if I had the room for it. I’ve been like that since I was a kid … a kind of kinship with animals. They all seem to gravitate to me for some reason; which is fine by me. Who needs therapy when you can have a dirty, lost cat?

On the second day I had Margot I called the BCSPCA with her tattoo number to see if anyone had reported her missing. They advised me no and gave me the contact information for the veterinary clinic Margot was registered at. I called them and received the first piece of the puzzle that is Margs: She is a 1.5 year old, spayed female. They also gave me the phone number of the person who had her tattooed. Over the weekend I contemplated getting in touch with this person. What if they were the ones who destroyed her tail? What if she was running from them for a reason? Do I really want to reunite them?

I had done a reverse look-up on the phone number as well as a Google search on it. It’s a good thing I’m such an Internet stalker detective or this ending wouldn’t have been close to being what it is. The Googled phone number took me to an old adoption ad for two cats. Luckily within the cached version of the page I was able to find the entire ad which also had an email address attached to it. 

I processed for a few more days. In the meantime Margot brought me home a little gift as a sign of her appreciation and I began to fall in love with her quirky albeit extremely affectionate personality. She became curious of Marshall and Otis but would growl at them as she’d approach even though they were the ones all passed out, curled into a ball on the back of my sofa. If I brought my face up to hers, she’d turn her head down and head-butt my chin then rub her face all over mine. There was one spot on her side where if I scratched it, she’d topple onto her side and stick one leg straight in the air. Needless to say, the more of her personality that shone through, the more I thought how awesome she is.

All the while though, I knew I couldn’t keep her. I combed the Lost Cat boards one more time and again, nothing. I put an ad in the pets section of Craigslist trying to find a good home for her. One man emailed me who sounded perfect and I replied to his message. 

Yesterday at work I decided I was going to email the address I found in the Google result that linked to the phone number the vet clinic gave me. I described the situation and enquired of her story. That evening I found out.

Margot was a horse race track cat. 

The woman who had her spayed and tattooed works collaboratively with an elderly woman at collecting the stray or feral cats that run rampant at the race track. If they’re friendly and adoptable they try to find home for these cats. It is entirely out of the goodness of their hearts and an unsurpassed love for cats that they do this. They do not work for any organisation. She told me of this diluted tortie that matches Margot’s description who had a litter of kittens at the track last year. Shortly after the kittens were weaned she took her in to be spayed and tattooed. To the best of her knowledge, she belonged to one of the horse trainers.

She told me when she got my email she contacted the elderly woman she refers to as The Cat Lady and told her of my email. TCL then stated she thinks she knows who Margot belongs to and was going to contact him in the morning. I told her I was concerned about her going back to this person because of the terrible condition she was in when I found her. Luckily the woman shared the same concern and assured me that she and TCL speak for the cats only and will only act on what’s best for them. I was glad she appreciated my concern. We decided she’d call me today after work to give me the update.

I recently got the call. The horse trainer, Tom, is certain Margot is his missing tortie and he misses her deeply. He said she’d been missing for three weeks and he had spent the first week driving around neighbourhoods searching for her and talking to the neighbours. I guess by the third week he had figured she had been attacked by coyotes. When asked why he never posted on or searched online boards he said he doesn’t have the Internet. He also never thought to call the BCSPCA. His efforts to find her were mostly his own ideas. I asked her if after talking to him that he sounded sincere. She stated that yes, she believes that he is genuine and does miss her very much. She even told him that if he wasn’t interested in taking her back that I had fallen in love with her and would keep her. Still, he said he longed to have her back. 

She also learned that Tom had originally found Margot as a kitten at a horse race track in Portland, then brought her to the one here, where he worked. I guess she lived among the horses for a while, which could explain why her tail is so mangled.

The most amazing thing about this is she walked quite a distance to end up where I found her given that her owner lives about 20KM away from me. She’s like The Littlest Hobo.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear a scuffle in my bedroom…

…

…

…

I must go, I have a mouse to rescue.

Again.

I lived like such a bachelorette this weekend and I’m not talking any pampered Jillian here. I let my dishes pile up, procrastinated over laundry, left nail polish bottles on my coffee table, and didn’t clean my brushes after painting. My bathroom looks like Liza Minelli spent the weekend and none of my clothes were put away like a good little girl.

It was awesome.  Today I began to pick up after myself to regain some sort of control over my life. I do believe this largely has to do with the fact that I did deprive myself of sleep when my body was begging for it. It’s those 5 hour long sessions under the hot sun, it slowly melts together the brain power that involves dedicating myself to something. So then when I push it a little further by gallivanting and avoidance, it rebells against me by refusing to allow me to get my head around diligence. 

Dear Body,

Look, I really am sorry. I’m sorry for only wearing SPF 8 and in a dry oil to top it off. I’m sorry for leaving my wet bikini on for too long. I’m sorry for spending an entire day eating only blueberries then introducing a crispy, dried, hamburger puck and a bottle of beer at 11:PM that night. Can you pass on to my hair that I’m sorry that I didn’t give it a moisturizing treatment after spending a combined total of nearly 9 hours on the beach in front of the salty air and that I ignored all signs of “beach hair” by trapping it in a ratty twist on the top of my head. Tell my feet I’m sorry for making them suffer in flip flops that caused my left toes to cramp. Finally, please tell the 1st and 2nd layers of my epidermis that I’m deeply sorry for failing to reapply even SPF 8 on it after emerging from the ocean.

Consider this the final night in a while where I will stay up until the hour that it is now. I promise. 

Kissing our ass,

- Andrea

Tomorrow it’s back to work. Back to my clients, back to the grind, back to getting in trouble for walking around the office in my bare feet. Back to my apartment at the end of the day to tidy up.

Dear Apartment,

I disrespected you this weekend and disregarded how truly lovely you are. I bestowed upon you a tragic display of exploitation that very closely resembles what’s become of Janice Dickinson. Tomorrow is a new day, a new load of laundry, and putting away my toys.

Yours in fleeting clutter,

- Andrea

That’s what’s been going on. A little issue on the hosting end, which has since been resolved and this is why I’m able to type this little sentence that’s not going to go anywhere just yet.

Lukas, oh Lukas. Hosting my blog and fixing the troubles when they come up in such a timely manner. I can’t even begin to explain to you the amount of hours Lukas has explained, coached, and endured my craziness when it came to configuring, HTML, layout, design, etc. – all from 5000KM away, too. 

I’ve got some ideas brewing and things’ll be rolling again in no time.

How nearly every time I log into Hotmail I’m assaulted by some WSPA banner ad that contains images of a dog with its lip split open and slash marks on its face and body or a dancing bear with a pashmina around its neck and rings through its nostrils. 

I understand the purpose of the ads, believe me. If anyone on this earth understands the plight of all animals, insects, rodents, etc., it’s me. I just don’t want to see that ad however many times a day because I find it incredibly horrifying, deeply disturbing, and enough to make me want to do that hermit thing and cleanse my body of the thought of things like this still happening by lying in my dark room, deep breathing the images away.

I used to tell my mom I thought I needed therapy because of how hyper-sensitive I am toward animals. I remember a time when my mom took my brother and I to see Benji the Hunted in theatres. I was 10 years old. Within the first scene, a hawk swoops from the sky, snags a leopard cub, and flies off with it caught in its talons. I was so beside myself for having witnessed such a thing that I burst out crying so hysterically that my mom had to remove us from the theatre. 

Growing up I’d be the kid that intervened when a cat was preying on an unsuspecting bird or chipmunk. Then, if any one of these little creatures was caught and left clinging to life I would be the kid that had various-sized cages and a mini infirmary in my bedroom closet. 

I was the 15-year old who had a rat named Susan. When Susan was diagnosed with a tumour on one of her many nipples my dear mother, fully having identified and understood my obsessive and powerful compassion for all creatures, booked an appointment with our vet to have Susan’s tumour removed. This resulted in a mammectomy and she lived another two years. 

I was the one who happened upon an possibly abandoned Canada goose nest containing six eggs. I was the one who made Kenny drive to the nest at midnight with me  just because I couldn’t sleep while my mind raced wondering if mother goose had returned. I was the one who then made Kenny let me take the six eggs back to our house because they were in the nest cold and abandoned. I was the one who then stayed up until three in the morning researching how to incubate goose eggs. Kenny and I were the ones who went to Home Depot the next morning to buy the wood to make a platform that the humidifier would sit under while the eggs incubated on top. Kenny was the one who let me rig all this up in our walk-in closet. Kenny was the one who never yelled at me when he’d walk in and be overcome with steam and heat then walk out with wrinkly dress shirts.

I once witnessed a father Canada goose lead his family and wife onto the 417 highway in Ottawa then proceeded to dry heave and almost pass out.

I’m the one who has seen seven loose dogs running on either highways or major streets in their life time. I am the one who will risk life and limb to catch these frantic, thirsty, and scared dogs, then resorts to calling 9-1-1 if unsuccessful and requests a return phone call once the dilemma has been solved. 

I once lived with a chipmunk in my kitchen while Kenny was away on a fishing trip. I gave it fresh water every morning along with some leafy vegetables and whole wheat Shreddies. I fed the cats in the living room while boarding up the kitchen so the chipmunk would be safe. Come Kenny’s return we had a Hav-A-Heart trap which ended up catching this less than appreciative chipmunk while he was in the middle of peanut butter and crackers. He was then released back into the wild with a full tummy.

I once made a boyfriend’s friend look into a black, garbage bag thrown on the side of a farm road because I thought it had a calf in it. They wanted to bet me money that I was paranoid and mentally ill but I ended up winning. 

I spent two hours once cleaning off glue from the legs of flies that I had picked off strips of fly tape at a cottage. 

In my first apartment here in Vancouver it wouldn’t be uncommon to have some wolf spiders hanging out in the shower drain when it was time for my shower. I would pick them out with toilet paper every time and bring them to my front door then release them. 

I figure if I never make it to the pearly gates of human heaven, I’ll have a VIP pass to the barn door across the meadow made of clouds. I don’t think this would even bother me anyway; sometimes I feel like I like animals more than I do humans anyway. 

The long and short of it is … I just don’t want to see the WSPA ads anymore.

I meant to write this on the day … but needed some time to confirm and verify the story that I only knew from conversations throughout my life. So here it is, finally, a little tribute to my Dido (my paternal grandfather in the Czech Republic) for his 100th birthday.

He was born on June 17th, 1909 in Mukachevo, Ukraine. At that time, Mukachevo was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire so technically he was born in the Hungarian part of the empire. He became a coppersmith by trade, specialising in the repair of large boilers for steam trains.

When WWII started in 1939, he escaped to the USSR but was caught at the border and sent to Siberia, spending the next two years in the GULAG  prison camps.

When the Czech Army formed in Russia to fight the Germans, he enlisted in 1941 and fought in many battles including the Battle of Kiev. After WWII ended in 1945, he moved to Prague where he met and married my Babka (grandmother). Shortly after that, the army relocated them to Hodonín, Czech Republic where my dad was born in 1946. Three months later he was relocated to Olomouc, Czech Republic. My titka (aunt) was born not too long after and they have lived in Olomouc as a family ever since. Throughout his years with the army, my grandfather raised through the ranks of the Czech Army becoming a captain and just before being released in 1952, was appointed the rank of Major.

The 1950s were a dark age for the Czech Republic, many who fought against the Germans were let go from the army where others were imprisoned. Many vets suffered great injustices during this time in history. In the 1990s, the government attempted to reconcile these injustices and my grandfather was promoted to Colonel. He was also granted weekly visits from various nurses and or estheticians receiving a wide range of services that included manicures and pedicures for the rest of his life. 

In the midst of all this, he was diagnosed with melanoma on his face in the late 1940s. Since then, he had been undergoing radiation treatment every year or two up until early 2000s when the physicians accidentally left him in radiation for 15 minutes too long resulting in burns to his skin and destroying many of the muscles and nerves to the right side of his face. By this time, however, the cancer was gone and no more treatments were needed.

Despite all this he has lived to see his 100th birthday. This milestone officially made him the oldest person ever on record to live in Olomouc. My dad is there right now and mentioned that four newspapers came to their place to interview and take photos of him. As soon as the photos are up on the Internet, I’ll post them.

At 100 years old, my dido does struggle with his health. He is now nearly completely blind and deaf and is not entirely coherent. Some days he’s up and about, conversing in any one of the six languages he knows, telling stories from his life. Other days he barely recognises my dad as his own son. So it’s hard on everyone. I imagine it’s hard on my dad because he was the only one from the family to emigrate to Canada and I think he finds it hard being so far away with my grandfather’s current state of health. My titka alternatively, has spent her entire life caring for my grandfather and this has taken a toll on her in her own way. As well, much of my babka’s senior life has been devoted to helping my titka take care of him too. 

Despite this incredible history that was often very trying and tumultuous, there is some kind of inner strength that my grandfather obviously possesses. Genetics might have something to do with it, but at the same time I believe a lot of it is will. Taking control of your life and picking the battles you are willing to let overcome you and which you’re going to fight. 

I saw him last in 2004 on his 95th birthday and hope to make it there again within the next two years. If all goes well, we’ll be sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea, a sip of red wine with breakfast and celebrating his 102nd birthday.

Like, what would happen if you’re a vegetarian and your boyfriend spritzes this on between his pecs. Or, what if you’re a ravenous meat eater so much so that you grill your steaks for breakfast and quiver the minute someone says short loin or foreshank? What if all of the sudden your dog asks you out on a date? 

I hate to sound like the most gullible person in the entire world but what the mother?