Bon Jovi probably didn't see this one coming

(This was not one of the deer we saw. I found this pic on Google.)

So, just past dusk a couple of nights ago, the girls and I were in the car, driving Kylah, one of Leah's friends, home from our house.  She doesn't live too far away -- a couple of minutes in the car, tops.  There aren't many street lights in this residential part of the village, and I slowed down when the brake lights of the SUV in front of me flashed red. 

I was wondering why he was stopping in the middle of the road, when my answer arrived in the form of two large does bounding over the snow bank and in front of the SUV and disappearing between two houses.  A third one trotted through the snow after the first two, and, tracing her path backwards, we could all see that one of the homeowners has set up a feeding station in their unfenced back yard.  Three or four deer were eating out of a trough underneath a suspended light, just perfect for viewing from a window.

"Well that's pretty stupid," I said.  "Someone is going to get into an accident trying to avoid one of these deer.  You look out for them on the outskirts of the village, but you don't expect to see them coming out from between houses.  People are going to get hurt."

"Deer, too," replied Kylah.  "Some poor deer is going to end up dead meat."

From the back seat, I could hear Leah singing something, and then a whole bunch of giggles from the girls.

"What are you singing?" I asked.

"Oh, just a Bon Jovi song," Leah answered.

"Really?  Which one?"

Leah [singing louder]:"♫This deer is just bad venison, bad venison is what I need. Eat it up just like bad venison, bad venison will give me disease.♪♫"

[hysterical laughter from the back seat]

Someday I will learn not to ask these kinds of questions.

A haiku composed on the occasion of driving Old Carp Road at dusk

Deer are not lonely

They cross the road with their friends

Your brakes must be good

Back seat conversations

In which attempts are made to articulate the degree of awfulness of the smell of turtle urine


It was just after supper on a beautiful early summer evening and we were on our way to Dunrobin for a soccer game. We were coming around one of the curves on Carp Road, past farms and silos and the Carp Ridge up to our right. Something round and dark was sitting on the centre line ahead of us. “Mum, it’s a turtle,” yelled Rachel, “Don’t hit it!” I slowed down and pulled over on the side of the road.

It was a big old snapping turtle. His shell was about a foot across, and he seemed to be pretty happy sitting on the warm roadway. We decided that I needed to pick him up and take him across the road so he’d be safe in the ditch and long grass.

Now I’m not a novice turtle saver, and I know that turtles will pee when threatened. I found this out first-hand last summer when I stopped to help a painted turtle across another section of Carp Road, and got wet feet for my pains. (I’m not sure if it’s because you’re scaring the piss out of them, or whether it’s because they’re trying to make things unpleasant for a predator.) So this time I was careful to grip the turtle by the edges of his shell and hold him far out in front of me so that I wouldn't be in the spray radius.

He was not amused. He was whipping his dinosaur-like tail from side to side, hissing at me, and trying to dislodge my hands by swiping at them with his back feet. He was also trying to bite me, which was impossible due to where I was holding him. "Hah, turtle," I thought, "you can't do anything, so just relax and enjoy the ride." Suddenly, I could feel something warm and wet on my fingers. Damn. He was peeing.

I walked as quickly as I could across the road and put him down on the edge of the ditch. He hissed at me one last time and headed down into the ditch. I was left standing there with brownish fluid dripping from my fingertips. It smelled very bad. I wiped my hands on the grass beside the road and hopped in the car.

Of course, there were no tissues in the car. I dug around in my purse with the non-pee-covered fingers and found a wet nap and did my best. The smell was still apparent. Even with all the car windows open. The girls were both delighted and horrified. Horrified at the stench, but delighted that their mother had been peed on by a turtle.

Rae [through the car window at me as I approached the car]: Mum! Did he pee on you?

Me [wiggling my just-wiped-on-the-grass fingers in her face]: Yeah. Wanna sniff?

Rae [recoiling, horrified]: Eeeww! That smells awful. It’s like…like...[words fail her for a moment] like...asparagus mixed with burning rubber.

Leah [joining in, as we pull back onto the road]: No, it’s worse than that.

Rae: It’s like asparagus and burning rubber mixed with cherry cough syrup. [The cough syrup smells and tastes fine, but Rae hates it.]

Leah: If Rebecca Black was a smell, she’d be turtle pee.

Me: [explodes in laughter]

Rachel: [trying to outdo her sister]: No, no, no, wait, if Justin Bieber was a smell, he’d be turtle pee.

Leah: If Rebecca Black and Justin Bieber had a baby…

Rae [interrupting]: …and the baby fell in a portapotty…

Me: OK, now you’re just getting carried away.

Rae: But it does really stink, Mum. And I meant the part about the asparagus and burning rubber.

Me: I know.

Rae: At least we know he’s OK.

Leah: Yep, he’ll live to pee another day.


Vaya con Dios, Mr. Turtle.

Things I learned today, vol. 2

• When your children go to bed gleefully anticipating a snow day, and you have to wake them up in the morning to tell them that the school buses are running and the schools are open, you should be prepared for levels of grumpiness never before seen. Nuclear-strength grumpiness and pouting.

• Wild turkeys can fly. It ain't pretty, and they don't get much altitude, but they can fly. I nearly ran off the road this morning when one seemed to fall out of the sky right above my car. Fortunately she veered off and landed in the forest next to the road and not spreadeagled on my windshield.

• Hat head isn't fatal. It only feels like it should be when you get to work and take off your hat and realize that you look as though you've been simultaneously electrocuted and drowned.

• Knowing that you're going out for lunch with friends takes a lot of the sting out of a late-season snow/freezing rain/rain event.
  

I'm not a cat lady, honest. I'm stopping at two.

Pulling into the driveway one evening after work about two weeks ago, I saw a small furry creature streak across the lawn and into the bushes near my front door. It was small, but it didn't move like a squirrel. The girls and I went over and peeked into the bushes, and a tiny brown tabby kitten looked at us fearfully for a fraction of a second and then took off running into the neighbour's yard.

Over the next few days, I saw the little guy twice more. Once I caught him peeking at me from the hedge separating our yard from next door. And once, alerted by Max staring fixedly out the sliding glass doors, I saw him up on the barbecue, which I had forgotten to close after using it the night before, licking the grill to get at the last remnants of stuck chicken. Both times he fled when he saw me.

We live in the country, sort of, and so do coyotes:


martens:


and fishers:

Oops, sorry:


All of which (except for the guy who married Carrie Underpants Underwood) would look on a kitten as a tender morsel about on par with popcorn chicken. Not to mention the fact that winter is coming, and we live a block away from a very busy road full of potential kitten-smushing traffic.

I was not going to let that happen.

I started leaving a bowl of cat kibble out on the back deck near the sliding glass doors, and soon he would show up for a quick bite and then would disappear. With some help and direction from my friend Lori, I read up on feral kittens, and began to plot the kitten's capture. I started putting his food inside a cat carrier, and calling to him when I put the food out for him. Last Sunday, when he was in the carrier eating, I slowly slid the glass door open, put my hand out, and closed the cat carrier. The target was acquired.

He's been given a clean bill of health from the vet, except for worms and ear mites, which are to be expected in a feral kitty, and he's been medicated for both. He needs to stay in isolation (in my ensuite bathroom) for another week before being introduced to Max. How the Evil Ninja Assassin Cat is going to react to having a henchkitten is anyone's guess. I am sure we will hear from him in the fullness of time.

Here he is, peeking out from behind my clothes hampers:

and here he is with one of my giant shoes for scale:


When we first caught him, he was too scared for me to check whether he was a boy or a girl, so Leah and Rachel and I made a deal: if the kitten was a girl, they could name her, if it was a boy, it would be called Angus. I've wanted a cat named Angus ever since I read Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. It turns out he's a boy.

Leah doesn't think he looks like an Angus, but I don't know, I think he kinda does:

Squirrels: cute woodland creatures or evil vermin? Discuss.

I have a really nice mature oak tree in my yard. It is large, and spreading, and produces big, glossy brown acorns that look good enough to eat. So, if they look appetizing to me, you can only imagine how delicious they look to the squirrels in the area.

Lately, there have been scads of squirrels in my yard, busily burying the booty from the oak tree. 'Oh how charming,' I thought, 'you know it's fall when the industrious squirrels are out looking so cute and busy burying the acorns.'

That was a few days ago. Now I'm not quite so charmed. See, the very best acorns grow at the very ends of the branches, which are thin and springy. And the portly squirrels, seriously in need of a zumba class or two, have trouble staying on the branches to eat or collect the acorns. Their solution? Bite the ends off the branches and toss them down, then climb down the tree and stuff their fat little faces in comfort on the grass. The lawn under the tree is littered with the branch ends -- a clump of 10 or 12 leaves on a twig that's been neatly severed with a perfect 45° bite.

It can't be good for the tree, and it makes a lot of work for me and the girls picking up the now acornless branch ends off the lawn. At first, I found myself muttering, "Stupid freakin' squirrels" under my breath, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that they're pretty smart freakin' squirrels.

Smart .... and evil.

I have to wonder that since they figured that problem out, can attempted world domination be far off?

Moonlight sonata

The spring night was magical.

Warm breezes, scented with a hint of the barely open lilac blossoms on the bush outside my open bedroom window, swayed the filmy pink curtains softly to and fro.

The just-past-full moon lit the yard and turned everything silver and black -- the lawn, the trees, and a raccoon hurrying by on some solitary errand.

Stars blazed and wheeled in the night sky, a Van Gogh canvas come to life.

Coyotes yipped and howled down along the river, the sound of their revelry carried up the ridge and through my window on the night wind.

And I was awake at 2 a.m, 3:17 a.m, and 4:03 a.m. to enjoy all this freaking nocturnal beauty because the freaking cat kept jumping up on the bed and standing up on his hind legs to look out the window, sniff the breeze, and growl at the passing fauna -- while using my head as a conveniently positioned standing platform.

And using his claws for balance, of course.

Ice ice baby, or, Me and Eric Lindros -- we're like this *crosses fingers for emphasis*

Living in Canada, Canadians quickly learn to embrace winter. Realistically, we don't have a choice. So we skate, and we ski, and we snowboard. We snowshoe and build snowforts. We play hockey and broomball and snowball wars. We go snowmobiling and ice fishing. We sometimes say 'screw it' and lie on the couch eating potato chips and playing Wii for entire weekends in February. And we toboggan (also known as sledding, for my non-Canadian readers). Oh boy do we toboggan. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find any incline steeper than 15° that doesn't have snowsuited children hurtling down it at breakneck speed 24/7.

Yes, these were the thoughts that were going through my mind as I sat in the Emergency Room at Queensway-Carleton Hospital Sunday night, clutching a couple of paperbacks and waiting to see a doctor. Douglas Adams once wrote, "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort." Much the same thing can be said of waiting rooms in hospitals, along the lines of "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as restful as an ER waiting room.'" -- especially on a Sunday night. During a freezing rain storm. In winter. In Ottawa.

Not that it wasn't interesting -- oh no, interesting was definitely at a premium that night. I counted three people with splinted arms in slings (see freezing rain, above), and some poor guy had dropped an ice auger on his foot (imagine a wicked sharp corkscrew-shaped steel blade about 3 feet long, handily topped with a small but heavy gasoline engine. Now imagine what that would do when dropped on one's foot. Ouch.) There was a nauseous man who was so wan and pale that he approached actual transparency, who arrived with a girlfriend and his own bucket. The bucket sat at his feet. The girlfriend sat a healthy distance away. Parents were there with small unhappy children with various complaints. But I digress...

Why was I sitting in Emerg, you ask? Well let's return to the subject of my first paragraph. I took Rachel tobogganing. Leah was at a playdate, and I bribed Rachel with the promise of tobogganing in order to get her to come with me to run errands. Late afternoon found us on the toboggan hill practically behind our house along with Darian and Payton, the two girls from next door. Rae and I had our foam snow saucers: and the other girls had their snow tube: which was about five times the size of the saucers and would seat two comfortably. We've been having some alternating warm and cold weather, and the hill is very icy. This makes for long, fast runs -- ideal really. Some enterprising kids have made a jump on one side of the hill by building the snow up into a bump. It's now a mogul of pure ice. There's no way I'd take the foam saucer down the jump run, I like my vertebrae right where they are thankyouverymuch, but Darian was sailing down the jump run and floating over the jump on the big inflatable snow tube.

It looked like fun. So I asked if I could take a turn (idiot). Rae wanted to ride with me, so she jumped on my lap -- thus putting all of our weight on one side of the tube. You see where this is going, don't you? What we had was an unbalanced centre of gravity:




Where R = centre of gravity, M = my stupidity, mj = the amount of air displaced in the tube due to mine and Rae's combined body mass, and rj = the slope of the ice jump.

We slid majestically down the run and hit the jump. Our combined weight on the back side of the tube meant that instead of going over the jump, the tube headed straight up and shot out from under us so that we fell backward onto the jump with the tube landing on top of us. The back of my head hit the ice followed instantaneously by the back of Rachel's head hitting my face.

You really do see stars, you know.

When Darian asked if we were OK, my first question was, "Is my nose the right shape?". I seriously thought my seven-year-old's skull had broken my nose. We were starting to lose the light, so off we went home. Rae and I collected Leah from her playdate and I cooked us all supper with a big headache. My dinner stayed down for all of 6 minutes before it came back up again. Hmmmm, vomiting after a head injury -- this sounds like a job for....The Internet!

Never look up symptoms on the Internet.

The rational part of my brain was saying, "You're fine. You just bumped your head. Go to bed early." The not-so-rational part of my brain just kept screaming, "Natasha Richardson! Natasha Richardson!!!" over and over again. So, I called Telehealth and talked to a nurse. She said that although I hadn't lost consciousness and could remember the incident, the vomiting meant that I should go to the ER. Damn. I was hoping she'd tell me to go to bed early. No such luck.

Connie next door took the girls for me (candidate for sainthood, seriously) and off I drove through the freezing rain to the hospital.

The wait in Emerg actually wasn't that bad. On the whole it was better than the strategic planning and branch integration meeting I sat through this week. Sure, there was more puke in the ER, but much less jargon. (I swear, if I hear 'stakeholders' or 'core competencies' one more time at work, I'll need a bucket of my own.) I had some books with me, and another patient found a channel showing back-to-back CSI episodes on the TV in one corner of the waiting room. So, after two CSI Miamis and a half a CSI New York, I was called in to an examining room, feeling somewhat of a fraud, since I was feeling very normal (although tired and headachy). Ten minutes later, a doctor examined me. She shone lights into my eyes, made me follow her finger with my eyes, felt my head, checked my reflexes, asked me a zillion questions, and then said she didn't think I needed an X-ray. She told me I had a mild concussion and I should rest for 24 hours, take Tylenol or Advil for the headache, and have someone wake me every six hours.

So I spent Monday at home sleeping and reading, which was nice. And now I'm back at work wondering if I should see how outspoken I can get at meetings this week and blame it all on the concussion. Could be fun, people.

January 3, 2010 in Carp so far

8:30 a.m. - Struggle into consciousness, aware of something hard lodged under my rib cage.

8:31 a.m. - Remove Rachel's elbow from my rib cage. Briefly regret the two glasses of sherry at bedtime. Notice that Rachel and Leah are both in bed with me. And the cat too.

8:32 a.m. - En route to kitchen, admire the cleanliness of living room, except for the tree, which the cat apparently decided to un-decorate while we were gone. Helpful of him. Not.

9 a.m. - Making breakfast for girls. French toast for Leah, toasted bagel with butter for Rae.

9:22 a.m. - Standing at window with coffee watching the snow blowing off the roof and new snow falling and blowing sideways.

9:47 a.m. - first snowmobile of the day zooms down the road in front of the house.

10 a.m to 1 p.m. - girls play with plethora of Kinder Egg toys they received from Santa and Josie. Also, Leah challenges me to Wii tennis. I win, but my arm feels like it's on fire. It's still snowing.

1: 15 p.m. - the girls offer to shovel the driveway for $5.oo.

1:26 p.m. - I peek out to see Leah building a snow fort and Rae digging out the driveway.

1:33 p.m. - En route to kitchen, I stop and survey the complete destruction of the living room: Kinder Egg toys and stuffed animals everywhere, and all the sofa afghans on the floor in some sort of pattern acting as Barbie houses.

2:03 p.m. - girls come back in. Driveway is shovelled completely -- they have done a good job. Girls decide to play with new Lego sets.

2:05 p.m. - girls are instructed to put away toys in living room. Somewhat grumpily, they comply.

2:15 p.m - snowplow shows up and fills end of driveway with snow.

2:16 p.m. - I say a great many unprintable words under my breath. Girls are upset because all their work was for nothing.

2:20 p.m. - I am out shovelling the plow ridge. I am not having a date with Murray because I need to buy gas, and also I need to work off my breakfast of an omelette, toast, dark chocolate candy-cane bark and shortbread cookies (Josie's fault).

2:24 p.m. - the neighbours are out too, shovelling. We compete to see who has the most colourful descriptions of the snow plow driver. I win.

2:45 p.m. - back in the house thawing out. The second and third snowmobiles of the day go past the house.

3:00 p.m. - watch in disbelief as snowplow returns. Fortunately for his continued good health, he doesn't turn down my street.

3:14 p.m. - open large can of Blackthorn cider and finish taking the decorations off the tree that the cat has so graciously started for me. Sigh, it's back to work and school tomorrow.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Things to do now that it's almost winter

1. Catch snowflakes on your tongue.



2. Make soup from scratch.



3. Take a bath, put your jammies on, and read a book.



4. Nap.


5. Bake something yummy.



6. Challenge the neighbour kids to a snowball fight.

There is a big giant hole in my front yard

Here, look at this:



Or this: (Mmmmmmm)



Or even this:


These lovely pictures will have to hold you for a while, since I will be dealing with this for the foreseeable future:



Late Friday Night/early Saturday morning, a thunderstorm dropped more than 6 inches of rain in less than two hours. My basement was flooded and I might have lost my computer. I'll know when it all dries out. Also, in a probably related occurence, a giant sinkhole appeared in my front lawn. Approximately 1 metre across and 2 metres deep. Nice.

I have to keep this short, as I am at work. I don't know when I'll be blogging again in any sort of regular manner, but rest assured you'll find out all about the flood and the recovery when I get a home computer up and running again.

Random thoughts

• Random thought upon seeing a bunch of highschool boys at the ice cream stand trying to impress the girls: Just because you can grow a beard, doesn't mean you should.



• Random thought upon first noticing the unusually large number of robins in Carp this spring/summer: Awwww, it's so nice to see all the birds around. It must mean that the environment is doing well, at least around here.



• Random thought upon seeing that Norwalk Furniture has changed its name to Lûxe Home Interiors: It's about time. Really, who wants to buy furniture from a store that shares its name with a virus that causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Kind of like bragging to your neighbour, "Yes, that couch is stunning, isn't it. We got it at Stomach Flu Fine Furniture -- you know, down on Carling Avenue?" That was probably the worst business name since "Ayd's Meat Market" back in Windsor.



• Random thought upon noticing all the bird poop, mostly from robins, on the driveway: Wow, there are a lot of birds around this year.



• Random thought upon purchasing LCBO gift cards as end-of-year teachers' gifts: Nothing says "Thanks for educating my child" like alcohol.



• Random thought upon skimming bird poop out of the pool for the first time: Hey, bird poop floats! Who knew?



• Random thought upon skimming bird poop out of the pool for the second and subsequent times: Freaking birds, stop CRAPPING in my pool!



• Random thought upon being woken for the first time at 4:20 a.m. by the sound of birdsong: How beautiful! Back when I lived in Ottawa, it was sirens from the fire station that woke me in the night. This is so much nicer and gentler.



• Random thought upon being woken for the second and subsequent times at 4:20 a.m. by the sound of birdsong: Shut up, shut up, Shut Up, SHUT UP! OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME SLEEP!!!!!!



• Random thought upon finding the remains of a robin on my front walkway that had run afoul (afowl?) of a predator during the night: Yesssssss! (accompanied by Gretzkyesque fist pump.)



• Random thought upon hearing coyotes yipping and howling down in the valley in the wee hours of this morning: Wow, the hair on my arms just stood up. What a wild and amazing sound! How lucky am I to hear that haunting noise coming in through the window on the night breeze while I'm tucked up all safe in my bed? Nature is beautiful.... I wonder if coyotes eat robins.

Dr. Strangelawn, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Weeds

As a single mum with a full-time job, a commute, a house, and two girls in soccer, you can imagine that my schedule is, well, a little on the full side. And one thing that often gets ignored is the dandelion plantation lawn.

And really, to call it a lawn is to besmirch the word 'lawn'. (The fictional motive I created for the murder in CSI: Carp, episode 1 is totally believable to anyone who has actually seen my lawn.) After casual perusal careful study, I've determined that the breakdown of the plant species in my lawn is as follows:

Dandelions 45%
Plantain 35%
Pricky things that I step on when I go to retrieve toys off the lawn barefoot after dark 10%
Grass 7%
Clumps of daisies and violets that I am forced to mow around or the girls cry 2%
Weird plant that resembles the unholy offspring of Devil's Snare and a mutant blackberry bush that send up shoots into the lawn from its lair under the pool 1%

Not exactly the stuff of golf greens. My real-life neighbour has a lush carpet of emerald perfection that just mocks my poor excuse for a lawn. I used to worry about it. I used to worry that if I didn't get around doing something about the weeds or mowing the lawn on time, then all my property would need would be an old washing machine in the back yard and a rusted out pickup on blocks in the driveway to look like it was inhabited by people named Cletus and Brandine.


But the time involved in trying to make my lawn into something resembling Glen Abbey is not something I have any intention of spending. And really, unbroken expanses of green are a little boring. Dandelions are cheerful. And so are the violets and occasional johnny-jump-up that have colonized the grass in the back yard.

I started thinking about how to make the most of what's growing there now. Hmmmm, if the planned LCBO strike happens, I have the raw materials to brew up enough dandelion wine to keep most of Carp happy through the summer. And plantain is an amazing natural remedy for bee stings -- you pick some leaves and chew them up and then put the wad of chewed up leaf and spit on the sting site, and it relieves the pain. According to my calculations, if the girls get stung by 18 bees/wasps per child per day for the summer, then I'll be able to use up most of it. Mind you, I might get a bit tired of chewing up plantain and/or run out of spit before hitting the 18-sting mark.

So, I do what I can in the mowing department, fitting it in around soccer practices and games, pool maintenance and laundry, grocery shopping and dentist appointments, trips to the library and the splash pad. I don't worry about how much of the lawn is really weeds, because a having perfect weed-free lawn is not as important as all the other good stuff going on. And as my neighbour Chris told me: "If you mow it short, it all looks like grass anyway."

CSI: Carp -- "Mask of Death"-- episode one recap

XUP made this comment in response to my last post, CSI: Carp --

"Does Alex brush the lint dirt out of the corpse's eyes and then gaze lustily at him like she wants to climb on top of him then and there and do the nasty? Does Callie find some reason to shoot a gun and compare bullets? Does Horatio find some reason to shoot a gun and kill at least one person? Does the hot latino guy stand around looking hot and latino making the gorgeous blond suspect swoon and give up all her secrets which he will then use against her? I need closure here."

Who am I to deny my few legions of fans? (This is where I wait while you go back and read part one of this post if you missed it. No, go on, I've got a drink and a comfy chair, I'll be fine.)

Well, the rest of the episode goes something like this. Alexx, despite the wholly unnecessary extra 'x' in her name and all it implies, does draw the line at beastiality, and merely caresses the little furry head before tenderly closing up the body bag and wistfully trailing the back of her hand along the zipper while the paramedics cart it off across the dandelion-infested lawn.

Calleigh does not need to shoot a gun and compare bullets, but does drop by the Canadian Tire in Kanata to pick up an assortment of rakes and then spends some time bashing a raccoon-shaped homicide dummy and comparing the resulting tine marks to the marks on the raccoon's body (the amazingly detailed CSI remote rake database being down due a tractor with a load of hay taking out a hydro pole on Carp Road).

She eventually comes up with a match to (collective gasp from audience) the same brand of rake missing from Alison's garage. When asked by Horatio where the rake is, Alison stammers (gorgeously) and answers that it was right there next to the shovel.

Meanwhile, hot latin guy (aka Eric) spends much time dusting things for fingerprints while wearing a tank top and glistening in the sun.

A nameless uniform guy shouts from further down the road. They've found a rake in the bushes on a neighbour's property. There is fur caught in the tines.

Horatio: "I think we have... [puts on sunglasses] ...our murder weapon." [he then pauses for Roger Daltrey's signature scream, but realizes that it isn't the beginning of the show anymore, and walks away]

Eric dusts the rake for fingerprints (in slow motion, muscles rippling) and announces that the only prints on the rake are Alison's, but there are suspicious blank patches where the rake has been wiped clean. Then he and Calleigh decide that it's a long shot, but during a short musical interlude with jumpy photography, they dust the shovel that was next to the rake in the garage. Bingo! Prints that don't match Alison's.

Using the computer in the hummer parked in the driveway, they manage to patch into the CSI ultracool Database of Everyone in the Whole Wide World (complete with flattering head shots) and the prints from the shovel match up with.... Mr. Chalmers, Alison's retired neighbour behind her house.

Horatio pays him a visit, surprising him in his garage. While Horatio takes off his sunglasses and gazes out over Chalmers' weed-free emerald lawn, Chalmers surreptitiously hides a dandelion removal tool and a box labelled 'GrubsBGone'. The others arrive at the open garage door.

Horatio has figured it out. "You were angry, weren't you... [puts on sunglasses, realizes he's in a garage, takes them off again] ...at the raccoon digging up your lawn. [H reaches past Chalmers and pulls out the dandelion tool and the insecticide]. You came home last night to find it digging up your lawn looking for grubs. You chased it into Alison's yard, and noticed how many dandelions she has. Dandelions that might just colonize your pristine grass. [stands sideways and puts hands on hips] You decided to kill two birds with one stone -- get rid of the raccoon that's been ruining your lawn, and frame Alison for it. Payback for letting so many dandelions grow in her lawn that your lawn was threatened. You broke into her garage and stole her rake, using it to kill the raccoon and leaving her...[puts sunglasses on anyway, garage be damned]... to take the heat.

Nameless uniform cuffs Chalmers and leads him away. Horatio and Calleigh smile reassuringly at Alison, who looks even more gorgeous in her relief. Eric glistens.

End credits.

Stay tuned for scenes from next week's exciting episode of CSI: Carp. Horatio and Calleigh investigate the body of a squirrel found in the middle of Donald B. Munro Drive. Suicide.....or murder?

CSI: Carp

WARNING: This blog post may be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.

I saw a familiar figure skulking in the hedge that separates the front yard from the back yard tonight when we drove home from soccer practice. A raccoon. You don't usually see raccoons out when it's still daylight, but maybe this guy was getting a jump on all the other raccoons by heading out early to find some grub. Or grubs. (Note to critter: Dig up my lawn again, and you're toast. I don't care how cute and fuzzy you are.)

It reminded me of the last time I'd seen a raccoon up and about in the daytime -- it was a couple of years ago, during the summer....

[Cue wavy scene dissolving to signify going back in time]

There are some things you shouldn't have to deal with before you've had your first coffee in the morning. Like dead raccoons.

The previous night, Rae was in bed but Leah was still up. The sliding glass door in the kitchen was open but the screen was closed. Elvis [Max's predecessor] was hissing at something through the screen so I went and looked and there was a raccoon on the deck. I called to Leah and she got a glimpse of it before it ran off. I figured it could smell Elvis's cat food (I feed him next to the back door) so I closed the glass door. Leah was all excited -- "A raccoon! We can call him Ricky!"

I got up late the next morning -- summer vacation -- and I opened the curtain over the sliding door to check the temp on the thermometer outside, and there, right on the doormat on the deck outside the door is the raccoon. And it's dead. Paws-in-the-air, no-longer-breathing. Dead. (We can call him Stiffy!)

Oh crap, I hadn't even had coffee yet, and I had to get rid of the body before the girls woke up, I didn't want them to see it. Oh the drama if they saw the cute little forest creature tits-up on the back deck. (Yuck.) And the clock was ticking. The girls don't usually sleep in that late. So I put on some rubber gloves and went outside. It was a lot heavier than it looked. Stiffer, too. I couldn't see any signs of trauma, maybe it had been poisoned or just decided to have a garbage-overdose coronary at my back door. I bagged it up in a couple of garbage bags and an IKEA bag (Dear IKEA, thanks for making such strong plastic bags. Did you know that they are exactly the right size to hold a dead raccoon? I didn't think so. They are truly a superior product. Sincerely, a grateful customer.) and then I threw out the gloves and the mat and washed my hands about 18 times.

Luckily it was garbage pick-up day, so I was spared the awfulness of a raccoon festering in the garbage can in the garage for a week. The day got better from then on...well, really it would have to, wouldn't it?

As I drank my post-raccoon-disposal coffee, I started thinking about the fact that I had found an actual dead body. Sure, it was an animal, but it made me think about all those detective novels that open with some poor peripheral character stumbling over a body. Not to mention the crime dramas on TV. The place I live in is a pretty sleepy little village, so a dead raccoon is about the extent of the excitement we get around here (not that I'm complaining). My freshly caffeinated thoughts started wandering and imagining, yes, you guessed it -- CSI: Carp.

[Cue another wavy dissolve with harp arpeggios to signify imaginary sequence]

From Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of CSI, CSI: New York, and CSI: Miami, comes an exciting new show, CSI: Carp.

[Show opens with a pounding drum beat accompanying a montage of arial shots of Carp -- the fairgrounds with the iconic red rotunda of the farmer's market building, the soccer field, the cows grazing on the field on top of the Diefenbunker -- ending with Alison's back deck.]

Horatio Caine stands there with Eric Delko and Calleigh Duquesne. Alexx Woods is kneeling down about to lift a dead raccoon onto a gurney. Alison, a tall, willowy, blonde knockout (Shut up. It's my imaginary show, I can look however I want) is leaning against the deck railing, looking distraught. Gorgeous, but distraught.

Horatio [taking off his shades, polishing them, putting them back on, brooding a bit while staring at the body, then turning to Eric and Calleigh]: What do we have here?

Eric: Hi 'H'. Not sure yet. Not a lot of blood at the scene, we think it's a dump job.

Calleigh: The homeowner, Alison, found it this morning when she woke up. [Alison nods wanly, but gorgeously, in response] We're canvassing the neighbours, but the raccoon could have been here overnight.

Horatio [standing sideways and taking off his sunglasses]: Alexx, any ideas on cause of death?

Alexx: Well, there's soil on his paws and a half-eaten grub in his mouth. And there are some marks on his head that look like the tines of a rake. It looks like this poor baby was eating some grubs he'd dug up from the lawn, when someone chased him up on the deck and hit him with a rake. Horatio, who could do this to a poor, sweet raccoon? [Camera pans to Alison, who looks shifty. Gorgeous, but shifty]

Horatio: Well, we'll just have to dig up an answer... [puts on sunglasses] ...the killer won't like.

[Horatio broods for a second and then theme music starts: The Who singing Pinball Wizard -- all the other good and possibly relevant Who songs having already been taken by the other CSI franchises]

***
I don't know. I think it could be must-see TV.

UPDATED: Full episode storyline posted due to one person asking popular demand. Click here for CSI: Carp -- "Mask of Death".

A whiter shade of pale

Have you ever been in Florida or Arizona in the winter months? And have you ever walked past a hotel, snug in your cardigan/jacket/windbreaker, and noticed very, very pale people cavorting in and around the outdoor pool in bathing suits saying things like, “I can’t believe how *warm* it is!”? Those people are Canadians.

I should know. I’m one of them. I remember December 2006, basking by the pool outside a Phoenix hotel while grounds staff wearing long pants and jackets wielded leaf blowers the other side of the ornamental fence. Christmas carols were playing, and my kids and I were jumping in and out of the emerald-green water of the outdoor pool.

Cut off from the sun and subject to subzero temperatures for long periods of time by our lengthy winters, Canadians (especially those like me, who are of British ancestry) on holiday in tropical climes will strip down to shorts or bathing suits as soon as the thermometer creeps above 18°C (66°F) and expose their blindingly white skin to both the elements and the locals with exuberant abandon. This is so prevalent (and we are so very, very pale) that the only way you can see Canadians lying on a nude beach, and avoid stepping on them, is to watch for them to blink. (Not that I'd know about the nude beach from experience, mind you, I'm just sayin'.)

This carries over into our behaviour at home. Long after our neighbours to the south are giving themselves sunburns while gardening, we are shovelling the last patches of snow off the lawn and onto the driveway to get it to melt faster (and believe me, the irony of that situation after a winter of doing it in the opposite direction is not lost on anyone). So when an unseasonably warm Saturday rolls around in mid-to-late April and the thermometer goes up to 27°C (84°F), tradition dictates that we purchase beer, fire up the barbecue, uncover pasty white arms and legs, and let the children welcome the warm weather with the annual rite of spring: the slip 'n' slide.



The sharp-eyed among you will notice that while there is no snow left on the lawn, there are no leaves on the tree yet either.

Little Miss Muffet redux, now with extra snot

Man, I'm just hittin' them out of the park with my titles lately, aren't I?

Well, here's the scoop. I apparently spit in the Universe's eye last week when I was bragging about making it all the way through the fall and winter without a single cold. Sure, we danced a bit with a gastro flu once or twice in the household, but no pain-in-the-ass, drippy, sneezy, coughy colds. The Universe has a wicked sense of humour, though. It bided Its time and let me make it just past the vernal equinox and into spring before unleashing the mother of all head colds on my unsuspecting body. I'm thinking of redoing the occupation portion of my business cards to read "mucus factory". The one bright spot (and I really hope I'm not jinxing us yet again) is that the girls are showing no signs of this plague.

So, since my head is full of what feels like bricks and, well, snot, I'm incapable of coherent writing and will once again reach into the archives for a previously viewed post. And seeing how well snakes went down, this one's about spiders. I'm *not* a fan.

Gardening for the arachnophobic

My back yard earlier today:

Shhhhhp. [sound of weeds being pulled]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.[pause][sudden intake of breath][realization that crawly sensation on arm is just breeze ruffling arm hair][relieved sigh]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.[pause][a more-panicky intake of breath and slight scream][realization that what was thought to be a spider was only part of a dead leaf][slight embarassed laugh and relieved sigh]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHH!!!!! Fuck! It's on my arm!! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Oh my God where did it go? Where did it GO? It's up my SLEEVE! AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGH! CRAP! [wild flailing of arms and shoulder shrugging, like a test subject in a nerve gas experiment] THERE IS A SPIDER UP MY SLEEVE! [attempts are made to take long-sleeved teeshirt off right there in the yard] Shit! Shit. Shit.

[small black thing falls out of sleeve]

Oh..... It's just a cricket. Well hello, Mr. Cricket. You gave me quite a scare. Run along now like a good six-legged bug.

Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
[delayed case of the willies, because it *could* have been a spider up the sleeve]
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Screw it. I'm going in for a beer.

Spring

It's above freezing today, it's nearly 11 degrees. The sun is shining, there's birdsong in the air -- the metallic-sounding calls of the first robins, the chirring of the red-winged blackbirds, the harsh croaking of the bluejays, and the autumnal honking of the geese heading back north -- and my front walkway is a small lake from the melting snow. I have all the windows open to air out the house, and I'm already thinking about all the yard work that will need to be done when the last of the snow is gone.

And I'm not the only one in the house who's noticed that spring is coming.

Intimidation and cranberry sauce

Today, American President Barack Obama is visiting Ottawa. Also, I was late for work this morning.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that these two events are linked, but actually they're not. It wasn't presidential road closures or steely-eyed Secret Service types that prevented me from reaching the office on time. It was gang activity.

Yeah, in West Carleton. I know. I'm surprised and disturbed too. There I was, minding my own business, driving down Old Carp Road, when a gang stepped out into the street. A girl gang. All dressed alike in black, sneering at me. They were loitering all over the front yards of a couple of houses, and when they saw me coming, they stepped out into the road, blocking my way. Daring me to blow my horn at them or get angry. I'm not ashamed to admit I was a little scared. They looked mean.






When I got out my camera and started snapping pictures they moved off, swearing at me. At least they didn't key my car.

As I drove away, I started to feel hungry, and I swear I could smell sage.

How I spent Valentine's Day

Becca was back in town from college, and she came over to our place to hang out and visit with me and the girls. This had something nothing to do with the fact her parents wanted to have a romantic Valentine's Day evening at home alone.

This is what we did

Tobogganing:



(Notice how Rachel tries to take her big sister out at the bottom of the hill in the above clip. Sisterly love at its best.)



Rachel doesn't make it all the way down the hill this time. She ends up with only Becca's hat and no sled.

Cooking:


Making a heart-shaped pizza is harder than you'd think. A quarter is cheese-only because Rae is too damn picky possessed of a discriminating palate.


Caesar salad. Thanks to Daysgoby for the crouton recipe, they were soooo good.

Eating:


After that, I lost interest in photography, but we had ice cream and strawberries for dessert and then we all watched Mamma Mia! on DVD and I wanted to sing, but Rae kept shushing me. Then the girls fell asleep and Becca and I watched the late hockey game on TV and talked.

It was a very good Valentine's Day.