Dog Written in Dog Hair

So last week I trimmed the dog. Well, sort of. I tried, if that means anything, although probably not to her. She is mincing around the house looking embarrassed. Can't say I blame her. She looks like Grandma's old fur coat, the one that was accidentally stored in a moth's nest.

When I was done there was a pile of hair bigger than the actual dog. I gathered it up and threw it outside thinking the local robins could use it to build their nests. I imagined it being carried on the wind, like a loved one's last remains over ocean waves, winsome tufts of Misty hair blowing on the breeze, but it merely fell to the grass in sodden clumps.

Perhaps the rain was to blame.

That was then. Today I was hanging out the laundry and I glanced down at the clumps of dog hair, still lying exactly where they had been unceremoniously dumped a week ago.

"That's disgusting," I said to myself, pretending someone else had dumped dog hair on the front lawn. "I wonder what kind of an idjit would do a thing like that?"

Then I gasped.

Written in the dog hair, as clear as any picture of Jesus on any wall of any Tim Horton's, was the word dog.

What does this mean? Is it a message? Is "Somebody" trying to tell me something? Did you know God is dog spelled backwards? Maybe I should call someone ... like the National Enquirer ... or the Pope.

I've always laughed at the weird places people see images of Jesus. There's a good link here on Momlogic and a pretty horrifying group of photos (including a close-up of a dog's butt) on  The Frisky. But I googled "dog written in dog hair" and came up with bupkis.

What can this possibly mean??????

The Man in Red

He's so brave. Twelve years old, standing at the side of the busy highway, waiting for his school bus. Red from head to toes.

Sam looks like an alien. A martian who wears headphones, sneakers and a backpack. Underneath the typical schoolyard paraphernalia he's wearing a red Morphsuit. Don't worry if you've never heard of Morphsuits. I hadn't heard of them either until Sam began saying his young life would be meaningless without one.

"What do you do with a Morphsuit?" I asked.

"You run around and stuff," Sam replied. "Oh I HAVE to have one. HAVE to. Puhleeese???"

You can imagine the drama. But can you imagine the suit? Picture yourself wearing pantyhose over your head and you get the idea. It's a one-piece, flimsy, body-hugging suit that I wouldn't wear for all the tea in China. I said to my kids yesterday that, if I had a white one, I'd look like the Michelin Man.

On Sam it's not so bad. He's skinny as a rake and the suit does show off his cute little rear end. And frankly I don't care if he wears it around home all day long but he insisted on wearing it to school today. I told him it wasn't a good idea. Kids would tease him. The teacher might give him grief. I mean, you know school these days – it's hard enough surviving the chalkboard jungle  without wearing a skintight red suit.

I gave him all the pros and cons (mostly cons) but let him make his own decision.

So there he stands, waiting for the bus. He's excited, I can tell, bouncing up on his toes, neon red head turned towards the hill over which the school bus will come. He hears the bus coming, turns out and waves a red hand at me and yells, "Love you!"

"Love you, too!" I say. "Have fun!"

He nods. The bus slows to a rumbly stop. The safety arm comes out, Sam's red head looks both ways and he crosses the road.

It's an hour later I can't help wonder how his day is going. Are the kids laughing with him or at him? Is he still wearing the suit? I made him pack other clothes just in case.

I have a lot of things to do today and I should get doing them. Instead, I sip on my cold coffee and think about my favourite martian. My brave little alien. My man in red.

M is for Grandpa Munster

I came out of the bath tub just now and briskly rubbed my newly grey hair with a towel and realized I was a doppelgänger for a famous celebrity.

It could be worse, I suppose. I could look like ... hmmm... wait a minute while I think... Uh, nope, it couldn't be worse.

I wonder if Grandpa Munster looks at himself in the mirror and says, "FECK. I look like that Webster chick."

L is for Lake, a dish best served Cold

Credit

I'm back at the Tim Horton's in Cold Lake, sucking up their free Wi-Fi and handling real estate running-around while Dave is at work. It was snowing this morning. Snowing. On April 18. I'm beginning to think spring is never going to get here, although yesterday was nice and I saw a teenaged girl carrying her shoes and walking barefoot beside the highway near the high school.

I have a lot of time on my hands, waiting for Dave to get through his work day. I don't feel like hiding away in the basement room he rents – as nice as the people are who own the house (and they are super nice, the best kind of people actually), I feel I don't want to interfere with their day. So I find coffee shops with wi-fi and sunny spots to read my Kindle. The other day I fell asleep in the car at the Cold Lake Marina, the sun making me warm and drowsy, the view of a vast frozen expanse of white oddly pretty and comforting. I slept for a couple of hours, rousing every once in a while as a plane roared overhead.

Credit

There are a few things you have to appreciate if you're going to live in Cold Lake. One of them is the planes. Cold Lake is home to Canada's largest air force base and all manner of military jets come and go at all hours. I could sit outside for hours and just watch the planes go by. You know, if it wasn't snowing... The military has a big presence in Cold Lake. There's a young woman in fatigues, waiting in line for a prescription at the drug store. She is bubbly and pretty, and she's talking to a friend on the phone about girly things while she stands tall in army boots, her blonde hair in a tight bun. There's a military policeman ordering breakfast at McDonald's. He wears a red beret and a dashing jaw and he is sharing early morning conversation with the smiling Filipino woman who fetches his coffee and Egg McMuffin. There are a lot of people here from the Philippines. Almost every restaurant, retail store and hotel has Filipino men and women on their payrolls. There are too many jobs in Cold Lake and not enough people to do them, so workers come from all over the world. For some reason the Philippines has become a primary source of workers willing to take the lower paying jobs. In Ontario those jobs are held by folks from India.

So there are military people from the base and Filipino workers behind the tills, and there are also the oil field workers. Men. Tons of men, all of them with greasy hands and muddy boots, all of them a zillion miles from home. They are the tradesmen and the labourers who have left their homes behind to make ridiculous amounts of money working for the big oil companies. Many are in the oil field camps for five weeks at a time, cut off from the rest of the world; others rent rooms in Cold Lake and are bussed out to the fields for long, cold, dirty days. Every motel, every apartment or spare room, is filled with the men of the fields. When Dave and I move here early this summer we will rent out two rooms in our house to these men. Their rent will pay our mortgage. This is how it is done in Cold Lake.  The houses are expensive but the well-moneyed men are lined up for a place to rest their heads at night.

There is money everywhere. Money, and pick-up trucks. Almost everyone drives 4X4 trucks and even though there are at least three car washes in Cold Lake, these trucks are covered in mud. Part of it is from being in the oil fields. Part of it is the crappy roads. Seriously, the roads are terrible here. Pot holes the size of ponds. Nobody complains about it, though. Nobody worries. They just ride their big expensive pick-em-ups over the bumps and mud puddles, and carry on.

People are friendly here. This is a good place, I can feel it.

And if spring never arrives in Cold Lake, so be it. I shall buy a new coat and learn to curl.

K is for "OK-OK-OK"

If I put "K-K-K" in the title I'd probably be deluged with stupid KKK searches but I'm not talking about any white supremacist idiot clubs, I'm talking about Joe Pesci's much-loved Leo Getz character in the Lethal Weapon movie series.

I don't think I quote anyone as much as him. His uproarious repetition of the word OK cracks me up. I found this compilation of all his KKK's for your giggling pleasure. Enjoy it, OK? K? K...