This cute little girl is apparently being starved, because this is what she does to frisbees:
And all of the plastic from that frisbee has taken the day-long trip to the ground via Kelly’s innards.
And then she strikes again!
Tag Archive for 'Pets'
Our new arrival is the quiet and collected Winston, a true old gentlemen. The only problem being he’s 3 years old and is acting more like 13, but that’s what happens when you live your life with an old lady.
He’s been with us only a few short weeks and settled in very nicely, in fact so nicely that he seems to be keeping Kelly out of mischief, which is an endearing quality all of its own.
It’s certainly nice having the additional company in the house. Kelly having a playmate means there’s less of her demanding to play with us, which with her generally means jumping up and pawing your leg. That means first thing in the morning you’re generally getting nails dragged on your bare skin, but now she just antagonises Winston.
Okay, so I’ve been missing from my blog for over a month now. I’d send myself to bed without supper for being a bad blogger, but that really wouldn’t help the situation. Plus I’m really hungry so it’s absolutely out of the question.
So why have I been so busy? The big move, and a lot of other shit tacked on for good measure, because you know moving isn’t a big enough time sink that we just had to add in frequent socializing too.
We got out around mid-month. Spent the next weekend up in Bobcaygeon for The Tragically Hip concert, the highlight of that poorly arranged concert was actually Bobcaygeon, thankfully the sound lasted throughout and it didn’t turn into a riot. The 2 hours people had to wait for a beer on a Saturday afternoon really didn’t help matters.
Anyway, we returned to the apartment that week to do our vacate clean, to find our landlords had absolutely trashed the place, and conducted illegal entries to allow their contractors in. They then had the gall to tell us we could be back charged for them ruining our carpet with paint and solvent.
That month essentially ended with my wife terrorizing their legal department and myself terrorizing their office staff when they decided it was acceptable for them to refuse to do their jobs and hang up the phone on us. I still don’t grasp why people in this century, over 130 years since the telephone was invented, haven’t figured out that there’s a feature called redial.
We’re now into the new place, with nice and pleasant management. No more elevators, no more frequent police visits to our building. Heck I haven’t seen the police here and we’ve lived here a month, it’s a goddamn miracle! We have a pool that actually has decent times and a dedicated adult swim, plus it’s supervised with life guards so they can have more than 8 kids in the pool at once.
We also went to one of Brad Pattisons classes, which was great fun. It was a brutal onslaught on the humans, the dogs seemed quite pleased. I’m honestly not sure it even phased Kelly, but that’s the Jack Russell monster in her genes. More on that in another post, maybe. No promises. I’ve got writing to catch up on too.
Kelly is in overnight at the vets for surgery tomorrow to remove her hind dew claws as one is detached and one is extremely loose. So while Kelly is gone, Baxter is ruling the roost. He’s free to run and making the most of it. There’s blurs of his cotton tail and the ruffle of his claws scratching the carpet as he binks.
Today was our first day in the new place. Given the overlap we have in our tenancies we presently have two addresses. I guess we technically live at our new place as our mailing address has been switched over with Canada Post, but our asses are still residing in the old non-air-conditioned, non-mail-deliverable apartment.
After nearly all morning screwing around, signing the lease, picking up painting supplies, taking the dog to get groomed (which unknowingly became a necessity as she slept under the bed Monday and Tuesday night as it was the only cold area in the bedroom thanks to Mr Heatwave: May 1st started near freezing, literally lows of 4 and ended with a heat warning on the 31st of a humidex of 42), etc. We finally got to paint, not nearly as much as we wanted, this afternoon with the accent wall in our master bedroom. In the quasi-bastardised-Imperial measurement system used in Canada we ended up roughly the true difference between a genuine “litre” of paint and the quart they sell you as a so called “litre” of paint. Alas the wall will now get a full second coat as a 6″ section of dappled wall won’t be over-looked.
Saturday is looking to be a tackle-the-bull-by-the-horns day to get the bathroom and second bedroom painted and the second coat on the master bedrooms accent wall and we’ll be sleeping in the hopefully (if we paint it in the morning) paint fume free master bedroom on the luxury of an air mattress in the genuine luxury of an air conditioned bedroom.
The basement needs a fair amount of work, but is generally quite good considering it counts as ‘unfinished’.
Kelly seems to like the place. There was no movie-moment of her running through the paint tray and all over the house. In fact she fell asleep whilst watching us and staying out of our way, which is actually atypical of her. Although we will have to doggy-proof the back patio as she can get under the gate without effort right now.
All in all, it means busy busy Nik. ‘Official’ move in is the 18th when our apartment loses our cable and internet and the new place gets it. So it’s not likely I’m going to be getting any writing done before that date.
It’s almost been a month since I posted, and then I barely posted in April so I don’t think that counts either. So Nik’s putting himself back into writer mode, and apparently into the third person too.
We’re busy in the midst of putting Kelly through obedience classes, which are going amazingly. I can’t give higher praise for Brad Pattison’s program. I find it rather hilarious that people criticise him and his program, despite it getting results and dealing with the dogs rejected from the commercial dog training programs like pet smart.
The other time sap right now is the apartment and moving. We have a lot to pack and get ready, but thankfully we have a whole month to do the move. So I don’t think we’re overly concerned. If we had to be out on the 31st, this would presently be those few slow-motion seconds as you see the dog turd drifting towards unprotected fan blades.
Along with the plans of moving, I’m planning on constructing a wooden bed, which is going to be an exceptionally fun project. I’m going for maximum sturdiness as I only plan on building it once and for it to survive not only me and my wife, but the future possibility of kids jumping on it. I have memories of my brother throwing me through my bed, quite literally I ended up ass on floor with the mattress pinning me in place against the side rail. Thankfully we had a second set of slats in the garage so I still had a bed to sleep on that night.
That childhood incident is partially the inspiration for why I want to construct my own bed. Basically because all the ones in stores today are shoddy as all hell. As we’ve currently got our bed frame propped up on books, it certainly tells me that steel bed frames aren’t any stronger.
So I’m eating a lovely piece of double-chocolate cake left over from my birthday. Why am I eating delicious cake at almost 10pm? It isn’t because I just finished an awesome gourmet dinner (although I did make a yummy dinner earlier, but that’s four hours ago now). It’s because we just got back from Kelly’s obedience class and took her on a half-hour walk, meaning we didn’t even get in our front door until 9:40pm.
Well, that’s a lie, I got in at around 5pm and made dinner and got cleaned up to take the dog to obedience class. My wife got back around 5:30pm and took the dog out for a half-hour walk and ate dinner.
Why am I saying this? I honestly don’t know, perhaps so a random morphine addict can stab me with a needle and sedate me so I actually get some rest.
I haven’t written in a few days, which bugs me. I need to haul my ass to Writer Obedience classes so I learn not to procrastinate. Although I feel more like marching Mr Procrastination out back down by the creek and blowing its head off with a shotgun. Not so much because I dislike procrastinating, I quite enjoy it which is the whole problem for me doing it so much. It’s because if I didn’t procrastinate and actually finished one of the half-dozen half-finished stories I have, I stand the off-chance of actually selling something and resolving this problem.
Although if I ever do become a writer for a living, I feel like I’m going to look back on this and feel like marching younger Nik down to the creek and blowing his brains out.
I was up late last night writing, and up early this morning writing so it’s still progressing well.
Especially considering I’ve been playing Napoleon Total War (I dare not test my computer with a more recent Total War game as it may commit suicide) as the Brits and have Napoleon on the run. I conquered Paris (with about 10 mortars and hiding below a hill-line so they couldn’t slaughter me with their 12lb cannon) and have Napoleon pushed into Eastern Europe. Austria fell to him and he’s decimating Prussia, however Russia has been expanding well, decimating the Ottoman Empire and I’d already wiped out the Spanish during my first cessation with France. Now we’re in the second cessation I took a foothold in Greece.
Now we’re making my wife’s Chilli for dinner. I think we’ll be needing bigger bowls soon because I’m always going back for seconds on it.
Also in braking news: The dog is lazy. Apparently the Dachshund is coming into full blow whenever she’s calm because she just loves to sleep.
We just had a busy, busy weekend with my wife’s family Christmas. My in-law’s were hosting it, but we had some of the spill over of my wife’s cousins. It was an extremely fun weekend, but bed at 3am was a killer.
Kelly got fed a 1/4 lb piece of butter by one of the little kids, so there was extra fun of vomit clean up all Saturday night – but she was well behaved enough when we went to bed that she managed a night with her crate open without an accident – at least till the morning when she got told to shut up for barking at the hot water heating pipes expanding when she squatted from anxiety.
I knew my hedgehog was a lot on the weird side for how animals go, but this morning I caught him being unusually smart rather than being usually stupid.
He’s overturned his food bowl and positioned it to make it easier to get to his water bottle. It’s not that he had difficulty, I guess he just got fed up with reaching a little. Although this looks 10x more awkward, so I don’t see the improvement – but then again I’m not a hedgehog.