How To Suck At Animal Rescue

It was a bitter, cold winter day.  I sat in my office typing transcripts, when I heard my co-worker say, “There’s a duck in the road.”

I leaned back in my chair and removed one earpiece.   “A duck?”

“A duck.”

“A duck???“

“A duck.”

What can I say?  I like to look at wildlife.  I threw down my headset and ran over to the window.

Sure enough.  There was a duck in the road.  A kinda dead-ish-lookin’ duck.

A man got out of a nearby truck, placed the mallard drake on a snowbank on the curb and got back in his vehicle.  I could only assume he was the murderer.

But wait – what if the duck still had life?  It must be saved!  Leaping into action like the superhero that I am, I raced to the coat closet and grabbed my shawl.

I raced down the stairs and out the door, barefoot in the snow (I work in a very casual office – don’t judge), darting through traffic as I made my way across the busy street (well, okay, sort of busy…ish).

The duck was clearly in shock, though without too much visible injury.  It lay on the snow, looking up at me with sad, pleading eyes.  Wrapping it tenderly in the shawl, I carried it quickly to the heater inside, barking out phone numbers of vets for my co-worker to call as I ran.  After a few hasty phone calls, a doctor was found who would treat the wild bird and a driver for my car was found to transport us both to the clinic.

The car wove in and out of traffic, making every second count as we rushed the injured bird to the doctor.  It refused to stay in the box designed to be used as an emergency stretcher, preferring instead to stay in my arms, twining its long neck around my own.  This bird would not die!  This bird must be saved!  It was DESTINY!

Leaving the animal in the trusted care of the doctor, I returned to my office, triumphant.  Confidant that I had made a difference.  Grateful that I had found the bird and been able to play a part in its survival.

Glowing and relieved, I bounded up the steps to the office two at a time.  Several regular clients were at the top.  I greeted them cheerily and waved, smiling my big I-just-saved-something smile.

They looked at me weird.

I went to the washroom to wash my hands before returning to my desk.  That’s when I noticed my face was smeared with mallard blood and my sweater covered in feathers.

And, um…yeah.  The duck died.

The Batty Old Lady I Shall Become

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter”  – Jenny Joseph

I’ve known for some time that I would likely have to deal with getting old.  (You know, once I realized I was a superhero and thus unable to be killed.  *pause to listen for ominous horror movie music indicating imminent flamboyant death scene…*)  Most of the time I am able to achieve complete denial about it, though, through an elaborate combination of avoiding mirrors, heavy drinking and dating men younger than myself.

But the other day, I got sick of looking at my profile picture on Facebook and changed it to the most recent one I had of myself, one that was taken just a month or so ago.  It was a test for myself, a part of an attempt to include my own face in my appreciation of ‘good’ wrinkles on other people.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know I have wrinkles.  I mean, thanks to Olay beauty products (yes, I will plug them, because I just love them that much), I’m better off than many who have spent as much time in the sun.  But they are there.  But most of them are small and easily ignored by one as easily deluded as myself.

But check it out:

Do you see it?  Right there between my eyes?  The ginormous furrow??

So, I am getting older.   Which is a bit of a surprise, because in my teens I always assumed I would die young – probably of something sordid like a drug overdose.  In my twenties, I  figured I would be murdered by a jealous boyfriend or something.  For most of my thirties, I’ve maintained this line of thinking, but figured it would something adrenaline-related, like speeding in a car or a parachute malfunction.

Well, I’ve begun laying down Plan B.

I am not going to age gracefully, I’m telling you right now.  No way.

But it’s a fairly safe bet that if I don’t start thinking about this, I run a high risk of dying alone and having my face eaten by cats.  So my best friend and I came up with a plan.  I have to admit, I was somewhat snotty to my friend about this at first, because she has kids, which I presumed would leave one immune to the cat-face-eating fate.  However, she is pretty sure her particular kids would be more than happy to leave her to this fate as well, so we have come up with a solution that makes us both happy.

However we have to make it happen, we are going to end up in the same nursing home/retirement village/mental institute.  (We can’t really figure out why some old people cause such a stink about this.  We can’t think of anything much better than having someone else cook and clean for us.)  We will proceed to hang out on the patio in the sun all day, every day, drinking what people will assume is coffee (it’s not – it’s Kahlua).  She will knit (what look like afghans and mittens but are actually beer bottle cosies and fingerless gloves).  I will work on ‘crafts’ (custom shadowboxes filled with slightly macabre displays created from items left over from various medical procedures).  We will commandeer the community rooms for weekend mosh parties.  We will feign early dementia in order to get away with telling people exactly what we think of them.

It’s gonna be awesome.

On Wandering, Lust, and Wanderlust

You may have noticed I haven’t been around much lately.

It’s because I have a severe case of wanderlust.  The seven-year itch is slipping in and I wanna slip away.  I’m throwing a tantrum in my head.  It’s getting like a daycare right before naptime in there.

I have a history of this.

Some people collect stamps, Lady Di memorabilia or those little tiny spoons that never actually get used as spoons, but I collect experiences.  It is my goal in life to experience everything at least once.  (Well, wait – let me amend that.  It is my goal to experience everything cool at least once.  I have no desire to experience poison ivy, starring on a reality show or living in the suburbs.)

I used to be so bad, I used to move every year.  I would have 3 jobs at once, because I couldn’t stand working 40 hours a week at the same place.

I’m haven’t been that bad in a while, because I’ve learned that there are other, better ways to stave off the restlessness and get my adrenaline fix.

Sometimes the spontaneous acts that are bred by this ambition lead to good things, sometimes not so good; but the things that remain are the memories, the experiences.  I’ve jumped out of airplanes.  I’ve dropped everything and given away all of my stuff to take a road trip across the continent.  I’ve torn off my clothes and gone skinny-dipping with large numbers of near-strangers.  I’ve taken a lot of chances and I don’t regret a single one.

I’ve never understood boredom, with everything there is out there to experience.

Except now, I find myself climbing the walls.

I’ve been living in the same place for eons. I’ve been working the same job for centuries. I’ve been getting entirely too much sleep.  Even skydiving is getting old (and where do you go from there?  I mean, I’m still waiting to hear back from NASA, but in the meantime…?)

I find myself dreaming constantly about the city.  I am craving the noise, the smells and tastes and sights.  I miss people-watching.  I miss summer, too.  I want to wander the streets late at night without the police pulling over to ask if I’m okay (because the streets in a small town are empty at night, except for drunks and abused women running away from their spouses.)  I want to make love in the field of sunflowers painted by van Gogh, I want to make love on a train rattling through ancient towns full of people and sights as yet unseen, I want to make love in the London Eye (there has to be a way).  I want to celebrate life.  I don’t want to read about it.  I don’t want to write about it.  I want to live it.

This longing has been going on for some time, well over a year.  I need to shake things up.   (And right about now, my boss is reading this and having a mini-heart attack and already beginning to search for my replacement…)

I probably just need to rearrange the furniture or get a new haircut or something, right?

Je Vous Adore, Mes Amies <3

On this magnificent holiday, bred to appease the capitalist corporations and push the lonely one step closer to suicide, I would like to offer you – along with my heart, of course – a few of my favourite romantic items, virtually.

A song (WARNING:  Contains hot semi-pornographic opening scene which *may* help you forget that whole breast-implant incident):

 

[What?  Marilyn Manson is romantic...?]

A movie:

 [Because if you're gonna fall in love, go big or not at all, man.  And it doesn't hurt to drop a bit of acid, either.]

But most of all…

A quote:

“Marry yourself first and promise to never leave you.”  – Sark

[Well, it's just smart.]

So share some love today, peeps.  Eat some chocolate.  Drink some champagne.  Laugh a little.  Have some wild hot monkey sex with your favourite lover.

But only because the media tells you that you should.  Tomorrow, it’s right back to being hateful.

She Was Nice to Mice* (and Possibly a Little Mental)

*(title stolen from a favourite childhood book by Ally Sheedy – yes, that Ally Sheedy)

It’s good to love animals, right?  Good people, kind people, Disney princess-type people…that’s who loves animals, right?

How do you know if you are taking the animal-lover thing a bit too far?

Last year I found a dead mouse in my kitchen cupboard.  It really sucked.  More for the mouse than me, I admit, but still an awful lot of sucking.  And it was all my fault for storing an Evil Oil Lamp in my cupboard, just begging for a cute, wee little house mouse with an acrobatic personality to dive into the glass chimney and become trapped, doomed to what was likely a long, slow, torturous death of starvation and terror.  (And this story also illustrates how much action my kitchen cupboards get, in terms of domestic activity.)

How did this mouse get into the cupboard, you ask?  How did this wily mouse make it past the Cat Guards of Death?  (Um, yeah – this story also illustrates how completely useless be my cats.)  Well, this cupboard (now haunted) has a hole in it, a pre-existing hole from an old stove pipe, which was never covered over.

Of course, the logical solution would be to now cover it up.  But this mouse had a family!  It must have!  How would they now make it through the long cold winter without their breadwinner??  I was now all they had.

Turns out they like trail mix.  In little tiny mouse-sized bowls left in now-empty, now-haunted kitchen cupboards, while the provider of such provisions frantically seeks information on the Internet on how to live-trap and release wee cute little house mice.

Days pass.  Bowl after bowl of trail mix are emptied surreptitiously by Bruce the Mouse (a mouse never seen, but imagined as the deeply bereaved spouse of the deceased, named for a dear friend of the Mousie-Lover who is prone to boasting of his manliness) every time the former owner of the Evil Lamp is not looking.  Live-trapping was not being carried out as planned.

One day, Mousie-Lover arrived home, greeted at the door as usual by the Useless Cats, the eldest of which was supposedly slowing down in her old age and was, in fact, in recovery from a very recent surgery to remove bladder stones as well as most of her teeth.   Mousie-Lover reached down to pat Elderly Cat, who gazed up innocently and sweetly with her aged eyes.

Mousie-Lover looked away, then looked back only to see Elderly Cat in precisely the same relaxed position as previously, only now holding a cotton ball in her mouth.

Mousie-Lover said, “Oooo, cotton ball not good for kitty!” and upon reaching down to remove the cotton ball, discovered that the cotton ball had wee little pink feet.

BUT do not despair just yet!  Bruce had life in him yet!  The little feet wiggled.  One little dark eye peeped open, checking to see if the coast was clear.  It clearly wasn’t, so he quickly closed it again, but the Mousie-Lover was not fooled!

An inspection of Bruce revealed no visible wounds, and a quick call to the vet (yes, the vet – shut up) resulted in the advice that the mouse may be in shock and the best thing to do would be to place him outside in a warm quiet place to allow him to recover.  Which would have worked, had the neighbor’s cat not been so very very interested in what was happening inside that granola bar box.  Back in the house we went.  (After a brief encounter with a neighbor, who recoiled with a grimace from the box, saying, “You really love animals, don’t you?”  as if she was saying, “You really love turds, don’t you?”)

I wish I could say that The Story of Bruce the Mouse had a happy ending.  Despite being placed on a soft bed back in the temporary safety of the cupboard, little Bruce lost the battle and perished a few hours later.

The cupboard that was now haunted by TWO mouse ghosts was now forever doomed to remain empty and unused.

Except one day I was in a hurry and must have chucked a few things in there, not thinking.

Because I came home the other day to discover nothing in the cupboard but several empty wrappers.

This Bruce apparently really likes ground cinnamon and extra-strength black cherry cough drops.

One day the mother ship will come back for me, I just know it.

On Friendship and F@#*-Wits

You know?  I forget sometimes how lucky I am.  (Well, no, I don’t really, but I feel that a certain show of humility is called for here.)

I know some people whose lives, if they were television shows, would resemble shows like Days of Our Lives – lots of melodrama, back-stabbing, infidelity, things like that.

My life, when I really think about it, is more like Sex and the City (but without the stupid clothes and with better makeup) or one of those other sappy, chick scenarios that make you weep on a semi-regular basis because there is just so damn much love going around.  Meaning I have really amazing friends, the kind that are sweet and kind and are there for you in the good and the bad, the kind that hug every time we say good-bye, who say ‘love you’ pretty much every time we talk.  A little nauseating, yes, I admit, but better than the alternative, apparently.  Because who’d have thought this was not a normal thing?

Up until recently, I actually thought the ‘frenemy’ phenomenon was something dreamed up by the daytime drama scriptwriters.  I really did!  But lately I’ve been watching one of my friends (a new-ish friend, but someone I like very much) going through some crazy-ass frenemy stuff with the crowd she spends most of her time with.

I was going to say it’s like junior high…but truthfully, I had really good friends in junior high, too.  In fact, I still have most of them in my life now.

I guess what I don’t understand is this:

Why be friends with people you don’t trust?  Or like all that much?  Or whatever.  If someone is always picking fights with you, if they make you feel crappy, if they stress you out, or if they are nasty or jealous or just plain tiresome…why bother?  I mean, with almost seven BILLION people on this planet, I’m thinkin’…you can probably do better!

None of us are perfect.  My friends are total kooks.  But they know it and they know I know it.  They feel the same about me.  One of my oldest friends gave me a decorative plaque for Christmas that alluded to this, actually…and it made me laugh my ass off.

As for the frenemy thing – I’m willing to bet that these folks love each other, too…because I don’t think you can get that worked up or expend that amount of emotional energy over someone you don’t care something about.  I just wonder about the functionality of the manifestation of that love.  Kind of that “I only hit you because I love you, baby”, it’s-all-fun-and-games-until-someone-ends-up-in-jail kind of love.

So what do we do when we see someone we care about caught up in something like this?

Well, I’m torn.  Part of me wants to clunk their respective heads together like coconuts and tell them to get their shit together and play nice.  Part of me wants to run the fuck away as fast as possible (to have a nice cold beer with my friends).  Part of me wants to laugh and exploit it by writing a tv drama about it (“Bridgewater B4V 1A9″?)

But most of me just wants to make them a sammich and tell them to come party with me and my friends so they can see how it’s done.

25 Fascinating Facts About Mememe

Okay, I’ve been tagged for one of these meme things (I was wondering how long I would be able to dodge this bullet.)  Apparently, I am just supposed to list 25 random things you don’t know about me.  And if you do already know about any of these, then kudos to you for either paying very close attention or for your stalking abilities.

I don’t normally bore you with these things (of course, the thing with that is that I LOVE reading other people’s memes).

And let’s face it – I know how compelling you find me.

Here goes:

1.  I lied for years and told people I didn’t know how to swim, because I’d taught myself and was never sure if I was doing it right.  I got caught one night while drunk and skinny-dipping with a group of friends.  They decided to swim all the way across the lake, and we were all about half-way there when my boyfriend of 10 years stopped and looked at me in amazement and terror (because he already thought I had multiple personalities) and exclaimed, “Hey!  I thought you didn’t know how to swim!”  I just kept treading water and shrugged.  It’s hard to explain stuff like that when you’re drunk and naked.

2.  I can build a computer from scratch using discarded parts and bootlegged software.  (Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  But it’s not really that hard.)

3.  I only like green apples.   But I like those a lot.

4.  My great-great-great-something and Audrey Hepburn’s great-great-great-something were siblings, making me a distant cousin of hers (my mother’s maiden name is actually Hepburn).  I like to brag about this.

5.  I have framed portraits on the wall of my library of:  e.e. cummings, Björk, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and J. D. Salinger.  (Björk  is just there to keep you on your toes.)

6.    I can play piano, clarinet, guitar, recorder and tin flute.  Though none of them well.

7.  I am still best friends with my best friend from high school.

8.  I regularly walk alone through ‘dangerous’ neighborhoods after dark, walk under ladders, pet strange dogs, refuse to carry an Epipen even though I’m allergic to bee stings, and go camping alone in bear territory without telling anyone where I’m going.  Because I’m a bad-ass rebel and don’t you forget it.

9.  My design won the National Dental Week Poster Contest in sixth grade.

10.  I can complete a Rubik’s Cube in 54 seconds flat.

11.  I strongly feel that playing The Sims 2 should be required for all high school students (along with all the downloaded mods and hacks that allow for risky woohoo).  It would teach them a lot about time management, finances, choosing a spouse, teenage pregnancy, and the risks of trying to fix electrical equipment without the necessary mechanical skills.  At least this is what I tell myself when I waste an entire day playing it, rather than admitting that I just like to play god.

12.  I got my navel pierced in 1991, long before most people in Nova Scotia had ever heard of it.  I had to bribe an Indian lady to do it for me in the back room of her import shop, surrounded by swirls of smoky incense.  She accidentally pierced my main trunk nerve and it hurt like fuck.  But it looked cool and was a bit of a freak show, because no one else had one.  (I took it out when Britney got hers.)

13.  I once missed my cue to enter onstage because I was in the green room making up my gorgeous male dresser to look like Marilyn Monroe.

14.  I used to sleepwalk a lot.

15.  I am deathly, retardedly, ridiculously freaked out by spiders.  And I can’t kill them, because it’s not their fault I’m a retard.  So this has actually resulted in me driving to someone else’s house to use the bathroom instead of dealing with the spider in the shower, or standing on my coffee table until the spider on the carpet goes on its merry way, etc.  I used to have a voracious cat that ate them all, but he died last year and I had no idea how much I took his appetite for granted.  It’s very embarrassing (especially because I jump out of airplanes without breaking a sweat) and quite debilitating.  I plan on overcoming this soon, because it’s a serious pain in the ass.

16.  I listen to classical music in the car a lot.  I think it would reduce road rage if more people did this.  Unless you hate classical music, of course.

17.  I have naturally curly hair, but didn’t discover it until I was 35.

18.  I used to have a go-cart track membership.  I had to have three pillows behind my back to allow me to reach the pedals, but it was all worth it when I ran the guys off the track and into the haybales.

19.  These are the jobs I would like to do before I die:  architect, seeing-eye dog trainer, pottery artist, and astronaut.

20.  I drove all the way across Canada and forgot to visit the Pacific Ocean.

21.  The last time I had a cold was 2002.

22.  I love people with good wrinkles.  Good wrinkles are the kind you get from laughing, talking and just generally living a great life.  I like to grin and squinch my eyes up at myself in the mirror just to check out how my crow’s feet and laugh lines are coming along.

23.  When I was a very little kid, I was obsessed with rocks.  I filled every pocket I had with pretty rocks.  I pulled the handle out of this ride-on duckie I had when I was two and filled the hollow body of the duck with rocks.  I still have a bit of a problem, actually.  The surfaces in my house are covered in geodes and chunks of raw amethyst.

24.  According to my mother, I started walking when I was eight months old and learned to read when I was three years old.  I’ve always been a very impatient person.

25.  WordPress doesn’t feed my incoming links to me consistently, so I have no idea who has blogrolled me or how long I’ve been tagged for this meme.  I also am not entirely sure what to do to tag someone else, but I’ll get on that right away so I can read all of your silly ‘25 Things.’  You’re almost as devastatingly interesting as me.