Charity Crochet Project

This weekend I was busy crocheting 7 cup cozies to help out a friend. She's a volunteer at the Greater Vancouver Zoo and had made a stack of cozies to be sold to raise money for animal care. Except, she came to work the other day to found out several of the ones she made had been stolen.

She was so upset, I offered to help her out and make some too, to replace the stolen ones. Here's my collection:

The giraffee, elephant and monkey come from Repeat Crafter Me's Animal Alphabet. The fox, I can't remember where I found the pattern and I made up the tiger and the lion by copying a photo on pintrest. The lemur was completely made up by me.

I sure hope they don't get stolen again.

Full Moon Trouble

Wow, it was a little crazy on the interwebs yesterday with all the blood moon photos, wasn't it? Almost every posted a photo. Okay, maybe it was just my friends.  I didn't really get too see much of it - the way our house is situated and all the trees in the neighbourhood, it's hard to keep running outside to see if it has turned red. Still it was a lovely sight to see.

I don't know about you, but I'm having a terrible time at work. I can't tell if it's just a blip in my life, or our company's seasonal schedule, or if I can blame the full moon. It would be nice to blame the poor moon, who just sits up there and brightens up the dark sky because it's only full for a couple of days.

In the mean time, I'm trying to take it easy on myself since I'm having such a struggle getting through my daily 8 hours. Let me know if you think the full moon is affecting you too.

- by for now, D

Providing for Patty

"Most people I've met who weren't kind to animals weren't kind to people either. Kindness is kindness. Simple as that."
--Ricky Gervais

If you're an animal lover and live near Detroit, you may have hear about this horrific case of animal abuse   - Patty, a little rat terrier found stabbed and partially skinned alive  - read more here. I've been following Patty's progress since she was found and she's doing very well despite the extent of her injury - she is fortunate to have been found and turned over to a wonderful team of people who are giving her round the clock car, and has raised money for her care (and possibly other animals as well). A reward of over $10,000 has been offered but so far no one has come forward - not the abuser nor the original owners.

Providing for Paws is also helping to take care of her. Here's what she looks like this morning, about 10 days after being found:

A sweetie isn't she? It's so sad that people would inflict such horrible damage to an innocent little animal, but even more sad that they also do it to children and each other. I never will understand violence, I just hope that people get the help they need. But what would be a fitting punishment to the person who did this? It's really unmeasurable. Doesn't someone want to do the right thing and turn someone in?

The Give and Take of Living Around People

Since the weather was so beautiful yesterday afternoon, I decided to sit outside and enjoy it. I should've been weeding the garden or mowing the lawn, but decided since the rainy season will soon start,  I would just enjoy -  except it's not always easy to do when you live in a city or suburbs, is it?

I find it amazing how little children who are only 3' tall and only weight 40-50 pounds can be so loud. The lungs on some of those kids, my word! Yesterday a three year old neighbour was emitting some weird whine that I found quite disturbing, so much so that I resisted the urge to yell "shut up" hoping that his throat would get sore or he would get tired of it. But no, he continued for about 10 minutes (it felt like an hour). His parents seemed completely oblivious.  Another set of kids were playing on a trampoline and arguing as that group often does. If children learn from their parents then I suspect their parents must fight a lot!

I consider myself a fairly quiet neighbour but I'm sure that Eco's squeaky toy or her ball-in-the-pool game can be quite disturbing to others. And of course one neighbour's lawn mowing is never a convenient time for another is it? My mom used to lament (she still might, but I don't live with her anymore) about neighbours mowing the lawn during our dinner time. But really my dad might have mowed the lawn during someone else's dinner time  - we just never know do we?

The give and take doesn't just include backyard sounds it includes street activities too - children riding bikes/skateboards/scooters up and down the road or playing in the street. I always find it 
humourous when a little kid gives me the 'slow down' hand signal when I drive by, especially since I am doing about 5 kph past them and the speed limit for school zones is 30kph. They have no way of judging my speed, they have no idea how slow I am going, yet someone's taught them that they should tell cars to slow down.

Street parking is also included in the give-and-take and this is where I am at a disadvantage because I live at the 'bubble' part of a cul-de-sac and so the space in front of my house is only about 1 car length. My one neighbour has much more room, but has much more visitors and their guests have learned to park perpendicular to the street so they can fit about 6 cars in front of that house, however to back out of my driveway I have to go the long way around since those cars all stick out so far into the cul-de-sac.  I don't own the road or the street, and it's not up to me to police it and who's going to listen anyways - as long as they don't block my driveway, there isn't much I can do about it is there? Even when they park in front of my house - that's just life with neighbours.

As I've long said, when you own a house you're like a sitting duck. And one should always be cautious of others who have a lot less to lose than you. Some people have loads of time to think of evil and devious ways to get even. I don't need that. It takes them less time and money to cause damage to my things that it does for me to fix and clean up. So I discourage the children from playing in my driveway, drive slowly down the street so I don't smoosh a kid and put up with other people parking in front of my house. It's all part of it. And then I can go back to sitting in my back yard dreaming of winning the lottery and buying a house with a big property so I don't have to be so near to my neighbours. Or moving to the back country, or buying an island, or ...

Can I blame it on the moon?

It's been really crappy lately. Is it happening to you too?  Lots of crappy things happening, and not just to me, almost everyone I talk to is having a weird and crappy week. I hope you aren't.

And I'm tired. Tired of all the little niggly things - missing clothes, rude people, horrible news stories, broken fences, crappy work stuff, compromised credit cards, invoices sent in error that aren't easily fixable and of course the nosy relative story. Everything takes time to resolve and deal with. Things aren't going smoothly. Of course I'm trying not to dwell on them and I'm watching my 'frame of mind' to ensure I'm not looking for things or placing a bigger emphasis on these things but they are  there. And last night at dance almost everyone had what they called a crappy week too! What's going on?  Many ladies in the class said the same thing -they had a crappy week but dance class is often the brightest spot in the week. Sure, we don't practice as seriously as some and maybe there's a little to much talking but no matter how I feel when I arrive, for an hour and a half I forget about life and learn new things and have a giggle or two and I do feel better when I get home. I love my dance instructor and I love the ladies in my class and thank goodness things are good between Jp and I, and Eco is the best little dog in the world. (I'm sorry that your dog isn't as great as mine - LOL)

But back to the crappy week - are you having one too? Do you think the full moon has anything to do with it? Or does it have to do with the long weekend - will it be that much more enjoyable because I can escape the crud? What do you do when you have days like this?

If you love animals..

.. you might not want to keep reading, but I feel I must 'talk' about this.

I want to know what is happening out there????  One of the stories going through many of the dog websites is about a poor little pug that was a victim of horrific abuse and another story that's closer to home is about a cat killer in Maple Ridge, BC.

I find these stories EXTREMELY disturbing and cannot fathom what type of person can and does this sort of thing. I don't know if these types of things have happened for years but because of the availability of news we hear more about these things or if society is getting crazier and people are losing their social mores?

Allergies

Yesterday I went for an allergy test. I my opinion the event  was very unpleasant -  the doctor grilled me with questions and would be 'displeased' when I didn't answer clearly or decisively enough. Then I was moved into a room where  I got stabbed 30 times with the allergens. Both the doctor and the nurse had NO sense of humour and the whole thing took about 3 hours. At the end I was told 3 things I was allergic to and was told I'd need to return for some more tests and THEN he could give me his recommendations and advise. (Did I mention I have to drive 1.5 hours to get there?)

To top it off it was mid-day and I was hungry. I was miserable and felt it was a very bad experience. Jp says it wasn't that bad, and perhaps he's right, but in my opinion - it was not fun at all. Each time I was stabbed with the allergen it seemed to hurt even more. While I lay in the room I tried to focus on my breathing and think happy thoughts.

And truthfully, if Jp wasn't there, I probably would have walked out. Srsly.

Yes, I will go to the next appointment, maybe I'll bring my iPod so I can take my mind of things, and hope that the diagnosis/prognosis will all be worth the experience.

It's also a reminder to stay as healthy as I can so I go through these terrible tests as little as possible.

A little dog revenge

During a recent decluttering session, a Michael Vick football turned up and we decided the best thing to do with it  is to let the dog rip it apart. It's only fitting since that man is a terrible human. We get a little chuckle watching Eco and the neighbour dog pull it apart and shred it. I wish I had a photo of that, but they moved too fast. Instead here's Eco waiting for me to toss it for her:

I know by now it's an old story, but let me just say that it was wonderful so many people stepped in to help those poor animals (aka Vick-tims) including the folks at Best Friends Animal Society and the people associated with the BadRap site. I can't believe the jerk still gets to play football.

A Story

So I'm at Safeway in the express lane around 9pm on Wednesday night. I put my few items from my basket on the belt behind a big buff guy who's next to go through the cashier. As she's processing his stuff a young 20-ish girl swoops in front of me. First I assume she's with the guy - they looked like they belonged together, so I don't think anything of it. Then because she's got her back to me and is leaning towards the cashier, I think she just wants a price check on a pair of glasses which were in her hand. Then she tells the cashier that my goods which are about to be run through aren't hers, so I think she's either wanting a price check or she's a Safeway store employee who quickly needs to run something through the cashier.

Nope.

She was actually purchasing 3 items! I asked the cashier when she had left if the girl worked at the store, and the cashier confirmed she had never seen the girl and an employee should not do that.

So yep, you guessed it.

She just brazenly butted in front of me and bought stuff. My mind went through a gamut of emotions and I tried to be Zen about it. And maybe those who are used to shopping in the big cities are used to this kind of stuff. But this was a new one for me in this little town, on a quiet weekday night at a sleepy little grocery store.

After I finish typing this I will let this story go from my mind, but I just wanted to tell the story and prepare you so you are not surprised by this kind of behaviour as I was.