#23

What, you may ask, is this? Renovation gone wildly wrong? World-renowned art installation? It’s actually the no-longer-cat-door, through which a curiosity of cats*—mine, feral, neighbours’—passed in and out of my life. I (over)foamed it in when the last long-term stray, who I had been feeding for over 10 years, died last summer. It marks a change, another door closing.

*And a gaze of raccoons, although a more apt collective noun might be a glare of raccoons, or a scoff of raccoons, since those are the sort of looks they would give me during my attempts to herd them back out of the house.

#22

Although they aren’t birds of a feather, these two obviously flock together. I’m waiting to see what sort of hatchling emerges. For all I know, the cuckoo from the clock substituted its egg for the original one which it then served as egg benedict at Sunday brunch, and in a few months someone’s going to be squawking for a paternity test. 

#21 (My peeps)

I acquired the mountain goat during my summer employment as a waitress at Jasper Park Lodge oh so many years ago (and no, I didn’t name the goat Rocky). As part of the application process, candidates had to undergo a health check. I remember the doctor poking me in the abdomen, and asking me if obesity runs in my family.

#20 (My peeps)

I bought the silver cactus in Arizona while visiting my mother’s cousin Jean and her husband Fred, who got food poisoning 20 years ago after eating Mexican and has refused ever since to go within 100 feet of a tamale. I fell in love with the Sonoran desert and its humanoid saguaros, towering preachers with thick spiked arms raised in supplication.

#19 (My peeps)

Kokopelli is another one of my peeps. He’s hand-carved by a well-known* artist and more menacing than your typical touristy humpbacked flute-playing fertility god. When my aunt gave him to me I mentioned his resemblance to the doll Karen Black’s character received, which turned out to be the worst kind of gift, one that spells doom for you.**

*Among those in the know

**SPOILER ALERT: And presumably for your mother, judging by the end of Trilogy of Terror.

#18 (My peeps)

These are some of my peeps. One is Ganesh, a Hindu god who removes obstacles and difficulties. Poor Ganesh knows about those. According to one account, his own father (Shiva) decapitated Ganesh. Understandably, his mother (Parvati) was upset, and the divine minions were ordered to go forth and bring back the first head they found. It happened to be an elephant’s.

#17 (Objects)

Never doubt the power of red footwear. Today was a gray wasteland of fog and drizzle. Like meteorological dementors, they sucked the soul out of the city's denizens… except for those of us wearing our red Bogs. We splished and splashed merrily through puddles and beamed infrared joy to ward off the malignant morosity that threatened our more conventionally shod brethren.

#16 (Objects)

Is it worth it to pay $70 for a mandoline? If it were a mandolin for serenading the gorgeous guy next door the answer would be obvious. But $70 for a low-tech kitchen implement the same shade of puke green they used to paint hospital walls, which you will probably use at most three times a year? You be the judge.

#15 (Objects)

I am disintegrating… literally. A few weeks ago on a Thursday night, I lost part of a tooth. Then I discovered that one of my big toenails has a deep crack across it just above the lunula. It’s hanging on by a thread. I'm fighting the aging process tooth and nail, but I'm running out of ammo.

#14 (Objects)

I wish enthusiasm was an object, because then I could buy some on kijiji. Or better yet, I could purchase a 50-kg box of it at Costco along with 50 frozen eclairs and a 50-litre jar of pickles. (And no, I’m not pregnant. Although maybe that would generate some enthusiasm on my part, and disbelief on many people’s parts.)

#13 (Objects)

February 14 seems like the appropriate date to showcase this coy cutie, draped  in red velvet and wearing her nine hearts on her sleeve (and ear and chest and tail) and a look of apres-amour heavy-lidded pleasure. One of the many cat-themed gifts I have received over the years, she was bestowed on me by a now aged Lothario.

#12 (Objects: Serial/Saga finally ends)

worked! Later that day I decided to take a picture and send it to a friend I’ve been exchanging “to do” lists with as a form of peer pressure*. I rotated the dial on the dimmer. Nothing happened. Cue Clark Griswold at 1:35 in this video. WTF???????? I eventually discovered two loose wires. Fast forward to 2:09 … BIGGEST HALLELUJAH EVER.

*Although I have been sternly admonished to refer to our efforts as peer support.

#11 (Objects: Serial/Saga)

still didn’t have them up by October I might take him up on on her offer… which I was too embarrassed to do come October. To make a long story short(er),* earlier this month I made myself focus and completed all the fiddly wire stripping/connecting/sawing/drilling/installation. When I turned the dimmer on, bigger Hallelujah, the whole shebang 

*Mega Hallelujah, because even I”m sick of this saga by now.

#10 (Objects: Serial/Saga)

for months and months. I can’t explain why: perhaps when they do a postmortem they’ll discover I lacked a crucial structure in the brain that controls this sort of thing, or had a pathologic polymorphism in the “get ‘er done” gene. At one point in May a friend asked if I wanted her husband to help. I jokingly said if I 

#9 (Objects: Serial/Saga)

everything out on the dining room table for several months, hoping the bits and pieces would get sick of waiting and assemble themselves. When that strategy failed, I tentatively tried connecting the power supply bone to the dimmer bone to the lights bone and lesser Hallelujah, there was light! But the momentum fizzled and my dining room table saw no action

#8 (Objects: Serial/Saga)

two strips of LED lights, one surface-mount channel, one diffuser, one razor saw with lacquered maple handle, one 30V power supply, one LED dimmer, two surface mount clips, four end caps, two screw terminal blocks, and a roll of low-voltage wire.  The installation instructions were thus: Power supply —> Dimmer —> Lights (with a stern warning to maintain polarity).

I laid 

#7 (Objects: Serial/Saga)

was worth putting my mental health at risk to deal with them again. So I waited, and waited, and waited, in the hopes that the lights just needed a good rest before resuming normal life. When that strategy failed, I got an electrician to take a look. He confirmed the lights were toast.

So I went to Lee Valley and bought

#6 (Objects/Serial-Saga)

hidden behind the cabinets/tiles, and I knew it would be impossible to achieve the same level of visual unclutter with a new lighting system. 

The lights didn’t actually fail in March, 2017. That happened six months previously. They may have still been under warranty, but they were purchased by the company that did my kitchen and no amount of money

Objects (#5/serial continues)

entire set-up had to be replaced. I really really really resisted this, because a) the lights had cost a lot; b) they were funky and I really really really liked the look of them; and c) they had been installed when I renovated the kitchen—or had the kitchen renovated, to be precise—so a lot of the wiring was 

Objects (#4/Serial)

SOUND THE TRUMPETS!!! 

This is deserving of multiple exclamation points. On March 14, 2017, I reluctantly concluded that my undercabinet LED potlights in the kitchen, which were supposed to last up to 23 years, had died a premature death at age 4. They also had a gigantic design flaw: when they failed you couldn’t simply change out the bulbs; instead, the

Objects (#3)

I am finding this month’s theme a difficult one. It can’t be for a lack of source material: my long-ago dream of creating a living space of zen-like minimalism proved powerless against my love of objets. I really should have had an interior decorator at the ready to hit me with a keisaku at the slightest lapse into clutter.

Objects (#2)

Recently, I attended an online mindfulness summit. One presenter—whose porcine appearance and adenoidal voice initially creeped me out, but who turned out to be a sweetie—stated that in the beginning one uses the breath as the object of attention, but eventually one abandons all such objects. Some day, you may find my breath in a basket on your doorstep.

Objects (#1)

The exclamation point—the pinnacle of punctuation! What better way to express energetic enthusiasm and ecstatic excitement in a tiny pointillist package of perfection!!!!!!! Only sad sacks, the sort who write to the female editors of the Oxford Dictionary to complain about the inclusion of “mansplaining” in the new edition, would prefer a passionless period over an exuberant exclamation. (Point taken?)