Felinocracy

Day 1
Arrived at new residence. It lacks a certain level of majesty appropriate to our status, but will be satisfactory at least for the duration this short term placement. Appears to suffer from a complete and total dearth of cat hair - we have already made great strides in rectifying this deplorable situation.

We have settled in marvelously and with great dignity, and most of the humans have already grown accustomed to - and even seem pleased with - the honour of servitude. The large male human, however, retreated into a corner and commenced making deep growling noises immediately following our arrival. We are to understand that he is simply slow to acclimate to new situations and will settle down with time. In the interim, we have been warned to treat him gently and to give him space and time to adjust.

Day 2
I must commend the large female on her mastery of our preferred cuisine - the salmon tin juice was most excellent. It seems the humans even managed to craft a meal for themselves out of the remainder of the tins' contents. What could have been left after the magical elixir of salmonid was drained off is a mystery to us both, but it is pleasing nonetheless that they are so mindful of waste. They were rewarded with several head-butts and three coy tail swishes. I am certain they are suitably honoured.

We were plied today with treats, toys and extended grooming sessions with a splendid bristled implement of some sort. Overall, a delightful day! The large male was plied with a six pack each of beer and lint rollers, and seems somewhat less agitated than previously, although still less than friendly.

Day 3
A bit of a frustrating day. The large male seems to be doing his utmost to undo all of our hard work of coating each surface with a uniform layer of hair - he is almost maniacal in his use of lint rollers, and this afternoon drove madly around the abode towing a mechanical, roaring dervish. Sadly, the dervish succeeded where mere lint rolling had not and we must now redouble our efforts to mark these furnishings as our own. Otherwise, how will these poor humans remember us following our departure? A tragic circumstance. We must persevere, for their own good.

Day 7
The large male's will has finally been broken! He has abandoned his six pack of lint rollers and now simply reaches for his beers. He even petted my head briefly yesterday, for which I rewarded him with a most pleasing view of my anus. I am certain he could be fully domestiCATed (ha ha, a favourite little joke of mine there) if only we had more time to work with him, but alas, our temporary placement here is coming to an end. We are conspiring to bring the bristled instrument of grooming and pleasure with us when we depart, but are finding our lack of both opposable thumbs and pockets of detriment in this endeavour.

Farewell, human servants! I trust you have enjoyed our stay with you. May our copious shedding confound your mechanical dervish such that it eternally fails to remove all traces of our presence, and may you forever be reminded of us by occasional, inexplicable, tufts of cat hair floating gently through the air.

Mercury in Retrograde

I'm sorry to hear that you don't like the maps we've provided. May I ask what it is specifically that you would like to see changed?

O...kay.

Okaaay...

Um...

Excuse me a moment, I'm not entirely sure I understand. Are you are suggesting we put a symbol representing each feature on top of the actual feature?

Why, that's just poor cartography.

Because that would make them easier to see in the field?

I'm afraid I have to disagree... I think -

Okay, I'll curtsy while I think, but I can't see how it will save any time. So as I was saying, we have high quality orthoimagery presented at 1:10,000 scale, and the features are denoted directly above the alignment, so it's just a matter of drawing a straight line down from the note...

But putting a symbol on top of the imagery at the location will obscure the feature...

It is the visual cue. It's the only visual cue. It allows the person in the field to compare what is on their map against what they're seeing on the ground. That's why we use imagery in the first place.

Okay, let's try a little thought experiment: you are standing in the field. You look at your map and you see a big purple triangle that is labeled 'wetland.' Now you look at the ground. Do you see a purple triangle or a wetland?

Right. And did the the purple triangle help you see the wetland, or would a picture of the wetland have helped you more?

No, and there's no use trying. One can't believe impossible things. 

Well, it's after breakfast now so let's try to be sensible for a while, shall we?

What?

Well, I'm not sure what good it would do you to chop off my head at this point. You'd just have to have this same conversation with someone else tomorrow.

Yes, yes, you're the client, all ways are your ways, I get it, but...

Yes.

Oh, of course: yes, Your Majesty!

*click*

Sheeeesh.

Hangry

A good friend of mine was appalled that no one had told her her feet would be a size bigger after she had a baby. It seems she had been fully prepared to grow out of her pants (or as fully prepared as one can ever be for one's youth and hotness to evaporate into thin air on short notice), but to lose her prized shoe collection? Ouch. "You knew about this! Why didn't you warn me?!" she cried. I hung my head in shame - I didn't really get into the compulsive shoe purchasing thing until after I had Small Fry so it hadn't occurred to me it could be such a problem. Now every time I have a parenting revelation, I feel obligated to share it with the world lest I let someone down again.

This week's parenting revelation is the Six-Year-Old Growth Spurt. Maybe it happens at five-and-nine-twelfths, maybe it happens at six-and-a-quarter, but happen it will. And it has caught me unprepared twice over:

One evening way back when Medium Fry was in grade one, she burst into tears and accused me of not packing her any lunch, all week. This was clearly not the case, as I sent her to school each day with a lunch so resplendent with food groups and healthful choices that teachers and classroom aides alike routinely complimented me on them - in short, not only did I send a lunch every day, I sent a Grade A Parenting lunch. Setting my wounded Grade A Parent pride aside, I delved deeper into the problem: as it turned out, after eating First Breakfast at home, followed by Second Breakfast at her sitter's house before school, Medium Fry would eat her entire lunch for Third Breakfast at recess time in the morning, leaving only her intended recess snack - usually an apple - for actual lunch, and nothing at all for the afternoon. By the 3 o'clock bell, she was beyond hangry at her terribly thoughtless mother who had "neglected" to pack enough food. Uh, who knew? For about three months following, I packed that wee six-year-old girl a lunch fit for a lumberjack with a bad case of tapeworms, which was just about enough to get her through the day most days. Our measuring wall documents the associated growth spurt that occurred at this time.

All these years later, we're coming up to Small Fry's sixth birthday on Saturday. Yesterday, he came downstairs in the morning weeping hysterically, with a disturbing combination of snot, tears and blood pouring down his face. For a few moments I believed it was his cracked lip that was the issue. "It's not my lip that's the pwoblem, Mommy!" he bawled. Well, what the heck was the problem? "I don't want to turn siiiiiix! I don't want to get old and diiiieeee! Bwaaaaa!"

Ah. I see. I had foolishly tried to apply chapstick, when what he really needed to appease his wounded little soul was... breakfast. You fooled me twice, six-year-old growth spurt - shame on me.

After destroying a turkey sandwich, two kiwis and a bowl of yogurt - a volume of food that I'm not convinced I could ingest in one sitting - Small Fry was back to his usual chipper and unconcerned self. He even wore a silver Mardi Gras necklace and a paper crown to school. (If only breakfast made us all so awesome.)

So, parents of the preschool set, let my experiences be a warning to you: the six-year-old growth spurt is a hungry beast. Signs and symptoms may be misleading. Keep your eyes peeled.

But don't fret about your grocery bills just yet - it'll be over soon, and your little one will go back to violating the laws of thermodynamics with their typical diet of crackers and air.

Actually, Everyone Abhors the Vacuum

Here is some parenting advice I have taken to heart: Kids like to feel useful, so give them meaningful things to do.

In fact, I have really, really taken this to heart. So much so that Medium Fry is arguably the single most useful child on the face of the planet. (Okay, here's some other advice I know to be true: I can't actually take credit for this. The formula is something like, I attempt some parenting business x her highly agreeable nature = hey, so far so good.)

Medium Fry is so useful that when she goes away for any length of time the entire household pretty much goes to hell. Nature abhors the vacuum of her absence so something fills the void, but it is an anarchic sort of something wherein her long list of chores simply doesn't get done. It's a real tragedy of the commons, of the sort one might typically encounter in a college residence:

- The recycling bin, the compost pail and the kitchen garbage resemble Jenga assemblages in their twilight moments - the unspoken understanding being that if it is your piece of trash that causes the tenuous pile to collapse, or even if you happen to be geographically proximal to it when it blows, you are the one stuck taking the mess out to the blue/green/black bin.

- The dishwasher ran twenty hours ago, but only when some poor sucker cracks and reaches in for a clean utensil will it be emptied.

- You wanna puke into a clean toilet? Have fun scrubbing it.

However, we are not in Res - not by a long shot. We are sprouting greys and making mortgage payments on a quiet suburban street in northwest Calgary. And Medium Fry goes away roughly every second weekend. How is it we seem unable to reach a sensible solution to this ongoing, rather trivial, problem?

Welp, I for one dig in my heels on pure principle: I do enough housework and damned if I'm willingly taking on any bloody more of it. Since the rules of the game state that acknowledging there is slack to be picked up would alert other participants that I noticed the slack and beg the question of why I hadn't been picking it up myself if it's so important to me, I've never exactly asked DH why he is digging in his heels on the matter. I basically figure it's because he's a damn man, and Small Fry does because - well, he's a damn five-year-old. (He's also legitimately too short, young and/or insane to safely do many of the things Medium Fry does around the house, even if he were capable of noticing they needed doing.) (But DH? No excuse.)

Medium Fry looks at us like we are the most useless humans on Earth when she invariably comes home to our Jenga-piles and cupboards devoid of clean dishes. I have a feeling she'll be the best roomie ever one day for some lucky college students, but we sure will miss her.

The Year of the Cow

We bought our first cow at Christmastime - or rather, a quarter of one. (I find the fraction changes the mental picture in a hurry, doesn't it?) We bought it from my good friends Tara and Ross down at Davidson Lonesome Dove Ranch, in case you're ever in the market for your very own large fraction of a bovine one day and don't know where to turn.

I found navigating the ins and outs of the beef-buying process to be quite an adventure, primarily because I had zero idea of what all the different cuts of meat were. Okay, I was pretty sure that I didn't want any kidneys or eyeballs but beyond that, zero. If DH puts steak on the grocery list I just pick up whatever is really expensive - it seems like that usually works out to be something he likes. Plus cow pieces aren't named quite as intuitively as, say, chicken pieces: breasts, legs, backs - makes sense to me! But if you don't already know what 'sirloin' or 'brisket' points to or what meaty characteristics that segment possesses, you're pretty much hooped.

Fortunately, Tara patiently walked me thorough it all, and just after Christmas phoned me up to say my quarter-cow had been hacked and packaged to specifications and was waiting for me in her sales barn.

"It's about 160 pounds all told. Do you have room for all that in your deep freeze?"

Have I ever mentioned that I have excellent spatial perception? It seems to work best at low speeds, which lends itself rather poorly to team sports but works beautifully for things like deciding which Tupperware to put leftovers in, packing suitcases, and...

I ran downstairs to find DH, looked him up and down, and told Tara, "Yep. It'll fit."

We hung up.

"What was THAT about?" asked DH.

"Oh, nothing, dear. Just seeing if you'd fit in the deep freeze."

(I like to keep him on his toes a little. It's good for the relationship.)

Naturally, I was correct, and the beef fit nicely into our deep freeze. Again, if you're ever in the market for a quarter cow but don't happen to be blessed with a suitably-sized reference husband, he it takes up about a third of a full-sized chest freezer.

Unbeknownst to me, the best bulk bovine adventure was yet to come: now we get to eat it. The funny thing is - and don't ask me how it was I didn't consider this when I decided to buy 160 pounds of it - we don't really eat a lot of beef. If we did, I probably would have osmosified at least some idea of what the different cuts mean over time, and I surely wouldn't have been quite so accepting of DH's expensive steak habit.

What I did consider was that Tara and Ross love and take good care of their native prairie and their bovines, and since those things (and the Davidsons themselves!) mean a lot to me I wanted to take what small action I could to support them. However, now I'm looking at the deep freeze every week and thinking, Huh. What the hell am I going to do with all of this?

But if you know me you will know I love making Resolutions, and one of my (many) Resolutions every year is related to trying out new recipes, so the timing of this adventure couldn't have been better: I have solemnly Resolved to put beef on the menu two times a week, for the rest of the year or until it runs out, whichever comes first. So if you happen to have a favourite beef recipe that you wouldn't mind passing my way, it would be much appreciated - I need the help!

Extra Pickles, Hold the Bun

'Hey,' said DH, 'I have a good idea.'
Uh-oh, I thought.
'What might that be?' I asked.
'Go pick me up a fast-food burger and fries. I'm super hungry. But get the burger with no bun and I'll put it on a gluten-free bun when you get home.'

Hmm, that is a really good idea, isn't it? Trouble is, his being gluten-free has prevented us from making a great many poor nutritional choices over the past couple of years along exactly these lines, and this good idea of his can never now be un-known. Dang.

'Dammit, that sounds amazing. But why do I have to go?'
'Because I'm... wearing pyjamas?'
'You're clearly not wearing pyjamas.'
'Because I'm really lazy and I don't want to get off the couch?'
'I'll buy that for a dollar. Fine, I'll go.'
'Don't forget french fries.'
'Yah, yah. Hey, d'you think we should let Medium Fry in on this action?'
'I dunno. Do you think she can handle it?'
'She can totally handle it.'
'Alright. Bring her.'
 
Thus marked Medium Fry's initiation into a closely-guarded yet oft-conjectured secret of adulthood: sometimes there really is a party going on after you go to bed, kids. We've been lying all this time.

This might not seem like much of a secret of adulthood to you, but I assure you the late night burger run is more than just the sum of its delicious parts. It's sneaking out under the stars in your pyjamas on a silly, impromptu mission to satisfy Dad's meat tooth. It's alone time in the car with Mom, chatting and laughing about whatever with no interruptions. It's another small ratcheting up of the ante, a carrot for all those sticks you've endured: yeah, it sucks that you have more homework and chores and personal hygiene requirements than your little brother, but check out the perks up here.

This made me think of something I recently saw on the FB page of a group I follow. To summarize: how does your family mark the passage of your children into adulthood? Easy. We don't. Here's the gist of the thesis around my house: the passage isn't a point in time, it's a meandering, sometimes messy, path, and it doesn't need to be "marked" - it needs to be guided, taught, encouraged, allowed to make its own decisions and mistakes, and occasionally provided a timely (loving!) kick in the ass.

Or a junior bacon cheeseburger at midnight. Depending on how things are going.

Creature of Habits

It was this last habit (um, yes, of mine) that prompted DH to purchase a housecoat for me for Christmas. Like our own personal little 'save the children' campaign, subtitled '... from Mom's excessive household nudity problem.'

To be fair, it was me who first admitted I had a problem and mused aloud that maybe, just maybe, having a housecoat would help. But then DH got that certain look in his eyes - that look that says, "Housecoat? Why, that's an item I can purchase from L.L. Bean!" (because while I *may* have a household nudity problem, DH definitely has an L.L. Bean problem) - and I knew I should keep darting around naked until approximately Christmas because there was prolly gonna be a housecoat under the tree for me.

Housecoats come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The fine folks at Victoria's Secret would have you believe there is even a possibility of looking attractive in them, if your genetic stars align just so. But the folks at L.L. Bean - and therefore, by natural extension, DH - don't want to burden you with such expectations. They just want you to be warm and ugly in your housecoat.

(And I quote:) "I bought it really big for you, dear."

What the hell is that supposed to mean? "Um... thanks?"

And really big it is. He was also thoughtful enough to buy it in my favourite colour, which is typically known as "grey" but in its more massive applications is more often thought of as "pachyderm" (and regardless of the situation is never thought of as "slimming"). I can put my children inside it with me, which I can see being useful if a house fire ever forces us out of doors in inclement weather. But in the meantime I just put them in my housecoat and we spend our days haunting DH as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

"Whoooooo!" we say. "You are never gonna live this dooooooown!"