BIRTHDAY

It's a good thing I visited the local library yesterday to borrow their eReader (something new to play with!). Today was not a day I'd enjoy driving even that short distance.

Snow overnight followed by rain meant that the pines and spruces were soaking wet and their branches were hanging low. Terri wasn't keen to stay outside getting a cold shower on her back; nor was I. She decided it was a good day to drape herself across my lap and sleep. When she was dreaming, her feet twitched excitedly.

Being somewhat hedonistic, I baked myself a Betty Crocker Devil's Food cake for a warm evening dessert. It was so fluffy it almost floated through the air! Surely something so light couldn't have many calories? ;-) Terri and Flower were interested in the cake's scent so I let Terri have a tiny bit. Flower got some catnip.

Many things to be thankful for on this damp winter day: My hairy pals who keep me warm and loved, a house with a big yard in a climate that doesn't have too extreme temperatures or storms, etc.

WHO KNEW?

Cats can be just as naughty as dogs or more so! I take Terri outside to play for as long as the weather allows me so she won't feel shut-in and get restless.

This generally works out well but there are days when it's too cold and the snow is covered in an icy glaze so I refuse to go outside with her.

Being a velcro dog, she doesn't stay out to play. There have been a few evenings when she's gone wild with various cardboard containers. We sometimes play fetch for a while and that pleases her (I toss a toy down the hallway).

On the whole, she's a VERY GOOD dog, never chewing inappropriate items -- unlike Flower, the cat.

Flower has been driving me crazy lately. Not surprisingly, she has no interest in going outside longer than 5 minutes, even on the warmest winter days. I don't blame her. The problem is that lately she's been feeling rambunctious from lack of exercise. I roll various types of small balls down the hallway but she isn't interested in chasing them. I jerk her toy at the end of a bamboo stick for her but she only plays for a few seconds; the same for a rope. We even had a genuine live mouse in the house at one point but she just sat and watched it. (I've no idea what happened to it.) So she gets into mischief scratching, biting, and chewing the papers on my desk. I guess I'll have to collect some unwanted papers and see if they will entertain her.

NEW SNOW!

We got some REAL winter snow this week (unlike the light dustings the past few weeks). On Thursday I couldn't see out the windows that were covered in sleet. Friday was warmer at -2°C so Terri and I spent hours outside playing and shovelling the driveway. She was thrilled to have the extended outdoor playtime. My hat, jacket and jeans got soaked and I had to change before going to Giant Tiger for groceries. The heavy snow/freezing rain on my trees loaded them down. Thankfully, the power didn't go out as it all-too-often seems to when weather conditions are like this.

Now it is -21°C. When the temperature falls below -7°C, I like to snuggle under the covers with Terri and Flower pressed against me and read.

I've finished reading a biography of Stieg Larsson written by the publisher of Larsson's non-fiction book about a right-wing Swedish party. Larsson was an admirable and relentless journalist whose investigations and exposés of neo-Nazis in Sweden helped keep them in check. He worked tirelessly against racism and fascism. I think it's sad that he died in 2004 before he could retire and enjoy the money earned by his "Millennium series".

LIBRARY BOOKS #2

José Saramago's novel The Cave must be the most unreadable book by a winner of the Nobel prize in Literature ever published. The long run-on sentences full of commas but lacking in other necessary punctuation (periods, quotation marks, standard paragraphs) makes this reader feel like a passenger in a car driven by a maniac who ignores stop signs and traffic lights. It's a pity since the drive could have been scenic.

More than just a bad publication, The Cave is an affront to readers. When I see the Nobel winner stamp on the front of a book, I have expectations (or at least hopes) of great literature of the calibre of Albert Camus or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In this case, it is false advertising. Shame on Saramago and his publishers.

Some would argue that I should look beyond the "style that looks forbidding on the page, with its meandering convoluted sentences" but a Nobel-laureate should be chosen for literary style as well as content.

* Added Sept. 2012: Lynne Truss writes in Talk to the Hand:

As I noted in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, good punctuation is analogous to good manners. The writer who neglects spelling and punctuation is quite arrogantly dumping a lot of avoidable work onto the reader, who deserves to be treated with more respect.

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In total contrast to Saramago's novel, I would like everyone to read and take to heart Temple Grandin's book Animals Make Us Human. She helps us understand behaviour and emotion systems so we can interact with animals more appropriately. Grandin writes about the "blue-ribbon emotion systems": SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, PANIC, LUST, CARE, PLAY and how they define the needs of predator and prey animals. People who use this information can go on to train and socialize animals with gentleness instead of physical or mental abuse.

WINNER!

I'm a winner! It all started when I discovered a blog called Farm Fresh Forensics. I read and I laughed. Read some more, laughed some more. Then I started from the beginning (early posts) and quickly became addicted to the funny, heartwarming and wise posts written by someone I would love to meet. Not long ago there was an invitation to answer three questions about the blog. I won something very desirable: handmade goat's milk soap from Failte Gate Farm in Texas. Yippee! It looks good enough to eat ;-)

WARM DAYS

In this part of Ontario it sure seems like we're getting global warming. It's already mid-November yet the temperature has been 13 to 17 C until today. I had no excuse to avoid raking so the back yard looks much better this year.

I worry about the polar bears and other animals whose habitats are changing due to climate change (or more immediately, due to habitat invasion and destruction by homo sapiens). It would be easier if I could forget those concerns but I cannot ignore the plight of so many wild animals that suffer in different ways at the hands of humans.

TICK !

Stupid me! A few days ago I felt one or two small bumps/lumps behind/below Terri's left ear. I didn't think anything about it and it was only today that I decided to feel for them again. This time I parted her hair and discovered a gray blob attached to her skin. It was a tick! Horrified, I ran to the laptop and Googled "how to remove tick" and found this very useful short video and explanation:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-remove-a-tick/

OK, I think my diet will be back on track as I don't feel like eating anything after seeing that thing. YEEECH!!!

I've concluded that the tick came from Larose Forest as it is the first one I've seen on Terri in 6+ years and it was our first visit to that forest. At the vet clinic I was told that Larose Forest is known for having ticks. We won't be visiting there again because Terri needs to have bloodwork done to determine if she is infected with a disease the tick carries and injects while feeding.