I haven’t posted here for a while, due to a little distraction:
Meet Shawnee
That people who volunteer at cat shelters sometimes end up with new pets isn’t much of a surprise. But I was resisting the lure pretty well, until Jean started to waver—even though he only knew of Shawnee based on my descriptions (and a few cell phone photos).
Shawnee at the shelter
Shawnee had been at the shelter from the first day I volunteered, but I only really noticed her some months later, after she got some extensive dental work done. This left her with no teeth whatsoever, but also, with an altered personality. Whereas previously she’d been at best aloof, at worst cranky, she became very friendly and affectionate. From my perspective, all of a sudden this little tabby cat was coming up to me for pets and face rubs.
By summer (I started volunteering in January), she was added to the shelter adoption list. (Not all the cats under this shelter’s care are considered adoptable.) Shawnee was about six years old, and had been at shelter for about two years. Previous to that, she’d been a colony cat. She was part of a TNR (trap/neuter/release) program, only they decided to not release her (despite clipping her ear). She was at the Humane Society for a while, then brought over to Pet Patrol.
I didn’t particularly need another cat, so I fairly relieved to hear, a couple months later, that she had a prospective adopter. This person took their time deciding, but finally did bring Shawnee home. It was funny to not see her at the shelter, but I was happy for her…
…until my next volunteer shift, when she was back at the shelter. Turns out she’d spent all her time at her new home hiding in a closet. After four days, she was returned.
Jean and I hemmed and hawed about it through the fall, but finally in January, we went out to see her. And brought her back home.
Though the standard advice is to let the new cat be completely on their own in a dedicated room after adoption, given Shawnee’s history of always living with lots of cats, they suggested she could meet ours after a day or two. And indeed, the meetings generally went well. Mac was a little dubious at first, and she had to make some moves to win him over. But she generally did.
Mac and Shawnee in her room
Gus seemed pretty enamored of her. She wasn’t quite as sure about him, but seemed OK as long as he kept a little distance.
Shawnee and Gus, keeping some space
Shawnee was getting comfortable with us (she already knew me, which helped), seemed OK with the cats, and was starting to explore the rest of the house. It seemed as though we’d have this whole adoption thing settled in a couple of weeks.
For the cows! The life quality of dairy or beef cattle on factory farms… isn’t great.
For the humans! Migrant farm workers, in particular, are often exploited.
It’s all got me thinking… Maybe I could at least cut back?
Where’s the beef?
The meat part is done and dusted. I gave up eating beef years ago.
To be honest, I didn’t do it for any of the fine reasons I listed above. Since being a teenager, I’d been a little suspicious of ground beef. I wondered, what was really in that burger? But I didn’t entirely stop eating them until I read Fast Food Nation, which provided an answer:
There is shit in the meat.
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
(Here I feel compelled to point out that Fast Food Nation was published way back in 2001. Maybe the sanitary conditions have improved since then. Maybe there isn’t so much shit in the meat now. I dunno. I haven’t looked into it.)
Steak, though less shitty, was excised from my diet some time after that, more as a health measure. To follow that general “try to eat less red meat” advice.
Got milk?
Drinking milk all by itself, in a glass, is also something I gave up decades ago. And again, not for any particularly high-minded reasons. At some point, as a teenager, I just decided I preferred drinking other beverages.
Silk unsweetened is generally my favourite almond milk
But I continued to use milk as an ingredient. Continue. It’s not a past tense thing. But, I have reduced it, without much pain.
Almond milk, for some time now, has become my go-to for smoothies and hot cereals, because I enjoy the almond flavor with those foods. And while almond milk is not the most environmental choice of milk alternative, it’s still more environmental than dairy milk.
It’s also lower in carbs than dairy milk, if you care about that sort of thing.
And while I haven’t tried this yet—because I don’t bake that much—I’ve read that barista-style oat milk is the best substitute for dairy milk in many recipes. Speaking of which…
You’re the cream in my coffee
Finding an alternative to cream for my coffee was initially a challenge, because many non-dairy creamers contain sugar. I don’t like my coffee to be sweetened, and I don’t need any extra sugar in my diet in general.
But Elmhurst makes an unsweetened oat coffee creamer that I like just fine. It also works for me in black tea. Not going to lie—it has a somewhat different taste than milk / cream, so it might not work for you. But could be worth a try. And oat is a really good environmental choice.
Earlier this week, I realized I’d written Garbage on the date of December 25 on our paper calendar (yes, we still have a paper calendar).
Now, that wasn’t a reflection of my feelings about Christmas—at least not consciously! It’s just that Monday is our usual garbage pick-up day, and since they only accept trash bi-weekly (recycling and compost weekly), I put on the calendar which Mondays are the actual garbage pick-up days.
Only December 25 won’t be one of them. I’ll have to look up when they’ve moved that to. [Edit: That would be Tuesday, December 26.]
But December 25 is just a date, and you can choose to celebrate on other ones. Pre-2020, we almost always went to Timmins for actual Christmas, but also had our own Christmas celebration for two the weekend before that, complete with gifts and roast beast.
Post-2020, Jean can’t take extra vacation days right before or between Christmas and New Year’s, which makes it a bit tight to go north then. Last year I went to Timmins in earlier December with my sister; this year I did the same with Jean.
Jean’s Mom, who’d never been quite the same after a stroke in February, passed away in late August. The family decided to have a small memorial service. The date selected was Saturday, November 5.
Wednesday
We left around 10:15 AM, intending to stop over in Sudbury on the way to Timmins. The drive started uneventfully enough; we were diverted by the audiobook of State of Terror, by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny.
But after an hour and a half or so, Jean noted that the car seemed to be losing power periodically, during which it was quite reluctant to accelerate. Maybe just gas quality? he suggested. As we Googled to find the nearest gas station, I suggested options. We still had time before we really had to be anywhere. Maybe we could get the car looked at. Maybe we could rent a car for this trip.
Well, let’s just try gas first, Jean suggested.
And indeed, filling it up did make it run smoother.
For another couple hours, anyway. But then it started doing the losing power thing again. Hills were a problem.
The weather gods were smiling on us during our recent trip to Montréal, Québec, which made for a very pleasant five days and four nights (October 2 to 6, 2022). Though we’ve visited many times, we still found new things to do, along with revisiting favourites.
I’ve learned how to do anchor links in WordPress, in case you want to jump to a particular part…
Covid precautions: Got my bivalent vaccine 10 days before leaving, which also happened to be six months since my fourth dose, so that worked out well. Also purchased 3M Aura masks, Enovid anti-viral nasal spray, Salinex Protect nasal spray, and a portable charger.
Jean hadn’t had any time off since October, and the last week of April was appearing to be the first opportunity to take some. Clearly we weren’t going to be traveling to any distant shores, but this long enough ago that we at first thought we might be able to visit some family. When doing that started to seem unwise (even despite our vaccination status), it still looked as though we could take ourselves somewhere in Ontario.
And then, given increased restrictions amidst rising case counts, we thought maybe just staying over at a local inn (that has great food, to be served in our rooms) for 2 or 3 nights could be possible.
And then, there was the stay-at-homes order amidst still-rising cases, and the inn moved to offering takeout only, and we thought, well… Time off work would still be nice. We can do day trips to hike. We can get some interesting takeout.
The companies have made it clear that we need to take the vacation days to which we are entitled this year–and preferably not all in that last quarter of it. We hope to eventually be able to visit family, even if it’s a hug-free and highly hand wash-y affair.
But our initial two-day vacation was strictly home-based, with different goals than a typical vacation. Less about museums, mountains, and fine dining—and more about just keeping busy with something other than work.
Therefore, hiking the local trails was the main excitement. Though it’s somewhat discouraged, we did drive to trail in Cambridge, and to a RIM park trail on the other side of Waterloo. But the best one we did was in the nature area just outside our door.
This guy wasn’t too worried about us
We also enjoyed walking the neighbourhood Columbia Forest that we snowshoe on in winter. Not as much wildlife viewed, but some lovely foliage, along with it just being interesting terrain (for this part of Ontario).
Trillium, Ontario’s flowerLittle purple flower (I’m not good at identifying flowers!)
I’d had the idea of ordering wine from a Beamsville winery and driving to pick it up, but then that seemed… not really that fun. And a lot of wineries offer free shipping.
So while we were not low on wine overall (we just routinely buy bottles way faster than we drink them), we were out of certain styles, such as Ontario Riesling. Not worth standing in an LCBO line up for, but definitely worth ordering from Angel’s Gate Winery: we got both dry and off-dry Riesling styles. And while at it, added a still and a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, a Gamay Noir, and a Syrah. Though warned that shipping could be delayed, the box arrived in two days. We’ve only tried the dry Riesling so far, but it was excellent (and only $15, despite being a well-aged 2008).
We’d also been mooning over Wine Align‘s offers of wines normally sold only to restaurants, but now available to the public at the price restaurants would have paid. When the latest case included a donation to support local restaurants and food banks, that seemed excuse enough to go ahead. The mixed case of 12, which just arrived, includes an Italian Chianti, Argentian Malbec, New Zealand Sauvignon, French Cote du Rhone red, and a Spanish cava.
For food, of course, it was mostly home cooking. I made a chocolate-peanut butter pie, I roasted a chicken for dinner one day, and on another made “baked” ziti in the Instant Pot, by following this recipe: Instant Pot Baked Ziti—only vegetarian style, as I didn’t have any ground turkey or Italian sausage. It was still really good, and very easy.
The last vacation day, we got takeout from White Rabbit.
Fish tacos, cauliflower “wings”, protein power bowl, and more! (Yes, we had leftovers.)
Then, there was the matter of my hair. Going on nine weeks since my last hair appointment, it was both rather long (at least for me) and rather gray-rooty. I decided to tackle the easy part first: dyeing the roots. I was lucky that one of the few remaining colours available from Shoppers was the one I wanted anyway, and also that I don’t have complicated color requirements that (I have learned from Internet reading) are tough to do at home. I just wanted to make the gray more brown. Success!
Hair coloured but not cut
As for the cutting, Jean’s since made a few modest efforts to shorten the longer pieces that were falling into my face.
He hasn’t missed his calling as a hairdresser.
But, it’s also not a total disaster, and with a bit of gel and hairspray, I can now mostly just style that hair off my face, which is fine. I’m a bit daunted about what to do about the overgrown layers behind that… Attempt a trim? Let it all grow out to equal length? Bah. Still pondering that one.
In the most-est fun ever, we also got our taxes done. This year we used a new (to us) “pay what you want” software, SimpleTax. It doesn’t “walk you through” the tax form in the same way as TurboTax does, so it’s good to have an idea what deductions you qualify for (and therefore, to not have a very complicated taxes to file). But, that also gave you more ability to move around the different forms than TurboTax did, and I liked that aspect. (Along with paying less to do my taxes.)
And it’s true (and maybe sad) that doing taxes wasn’t even the least fun thing I did on vacation. That would be spending a lot of Sunday (the one day with crappy weather) trying to figure out what was wrong with my Sonos sound system. It somehow kept losing the Internet, even though our Internet was running fine. This affected our morning alarm (CBC radio), which set up the whole day badly, and continued with streaming music stuttering out on a regular basis all day.
It’s also very strange to have your Google speaker tell you: “I cannot find the Internet.”
I’ve actually had them since May. Normally I would have written about them earlier, but it hasn’t been a normal year (emotionally, anyway). A lot of my excessive anxiety and depression centered around them.
The integration wasn’t really smooth. Zoe accepted Mac pretty quickly, but took an instant dislike to Gus, and proceeded to bully him for months. (The fact that she’s half his size didn’t particularly matter.) It wasn’t the funnest experience to go through.
But, things have improved.
Gus
Gus, 2 years old at adoption time, was a cat I inquired about when looking at those available from Pet Patrol (the same rescue organization we got Zoe from 13.5 years ago). But we were warned that he was a very anxious cat, and thought maybe it wouldn’t be the best choice.
Shy he may be, but Gus knew how to sell himself. We went into his room at the shelter to see another cat, but she had no interest in us whatsoever. Gus, however, did. He purred and encouraged us to pet him. Whenever we tried to move away, he pulled out a paw to try to get us to stay. It was terribly endearing.
Shy but so sweet
Once at our house, he initially crowded himself into a cat tree cubby and came out so rarely we were worried. His progress was quite slow, aided not at all, of course, by having a cranky old cat run at him whenever he dared to explore new territory.
But, he did expand his world from the cat tree, to the rest of that room, to the room next door, to the whole upstairs–a long phase, that one–but finally on to the main floor, which is where he now spends most of his time. Only in the past few weeks has he been regularly visiting the family room downstairs, and only this week (8.5 months later) become comfortable enough to plunk himself down and snooze in front of the fireplace there.
Milestones in Gus’s life: Getting on a chair, hanging out on the main floor…
From the first, though, he had a fondness for getting pet, and at some point–while still mostly living upstairs–he decided that I was great and became incredibly affectionate toward me, with full-body cuddles and loud purring. Jean took longer (Jean is not the feeder), but now Gus will walk up to him for pets also.
Nah, not going to pose for you, non-feeder
He’s the most gorgeous thing, but it seems he had to learn everything about how to be a pet. (Well, not everything. He’s always been great with the litter and a good eater.) How to play. (All the toys scared him at first.) That he is allowed on furniture. (Still working on that, really, but he much more regularly goes on chairs now.) How to get a human’s attention (and that you might actually want a human to pay attention to you!). How to “stand your ground” against cranky old cats half your size.
Well, we said we wanted him to go on furniture…
We don’t know much about his background. He’d been running around a neighbourhood for some months, outside in winter, before the cat rescue people were able to trap him and bring him to the shelter. And he was there 4 months before we adopted him. I suspect his home before that wasn’t the best-est ever.
Gus has come far, but has more to go. I look forward to seeing the cat he becomes.
Mac
While pondering Gus at the cat shelter (while I was smitten, Jean was dubious), Mac–who had been sleeping–jumped up to greet us with a “Hey, how about me?” attitude.
How could we resist?
Mac was a one-year-old sprite, mostly white with a few black patches. He’d been found stuck in a tree, and when rescued, the volunteer was able to carry him all the way to the shelter; he just stayed calmly in her arms. Mac was a Gus opposite, not only in colour but temperament: bold, unafraid, friendly, adventurous, chatty.
A one-year-old cat is still quite active, making him not really the ideal match for a 15-year-old cat. But as a compromise (?), we ended up with him, too. Despite Gus and Mac’s opposite personalities, they’ve always gotten along with each other. (They were in different rooms at the cat shelter, and only met at our house.)
But Mac was happy to teach Gus all he knew
Naturally, Mac adapted quickly. As already noted, Zoe accepted more quickly and easily than we’d expected–I think she found him kind of entertaining at first. While we were distracted for months trying to get Zoe and Gus to tolerate one another (as they do now), we probably didn’t give Mac quite enough attention. We’re trying to make up for it. (Particularly as Mac will pester Zoe when he’s bored, which she does not find in the least entertaining!)
Ready for action. Always!
Because given his age and temperament, Mac flourishes with a lot of attention. He taught us to play fetch with him (only the second cat I’ve ever had who will bring a ball back). When errant chipmunks came in the house, he proved himself a great hunter. Since winter, he’s had to make do with “hunting” Da Bird wand toys and some nifty animated toys like Hexabugs. I’ve also been training him to get used to going in the carrier, traveling in the car, and being on a leash. He’s proven a quick study on all counts, so he should be able to get outside in the nicer weather in a controlled fashion. (I don’t want him running off, getting stuck up another tree, and winding up somebody else’s pet.)
Mac has caught the Hexabug!
(Yes, he is micro-chipped. Still.)
He’s not as cuddly as you might think, but he is the easiest cat imaginable to pick up, he does sleep with us each night (very politely, down by our feet and not up on our heads), and he loves to rub his white fur all over our clothes, especially if they are dressy. And every once a while he will plunk himself down on your lap for a short sleep.
Showing off his battle scar (it’s really hard to clip Gus’ claws…)
Mac has a fully formed character, but some maturing to do. He’s a very nice boy now; I expect he’ll become a lovely older cat. Maybe even develop some cuddles.
We miss your cuddles, the head-butting so powerful it could almost knock you over, the purring that you learned to do, the insistent meowing for attention that you also learned to do, those deep kitten sleeps of yours, your determined hunting of toy mice, your favorite spot in the middle of everything, your appreciation of sunlight and a warm fire, and even your habit of batting anything in your way onto the floor. Zoë is not so sure that she misses you stealing her food.
But we’re all glad that you’re not suffering anymore.
Not everyone comes from an exciting home town, but home it is, and that’s where we typically head for Christmas. Of course, the biggest bonus is getting together with family, since we are now disbursed and rarely all in the same room. (“I really enjoy these leisurely McNair breakfasts, with conversation,” Jean commented, on about day 3. “Doesn’t really happen with my family.” Of course, other good things do happen with his family, I feel I should add!)
My brother and niece unwrapping gifts Christmas
Overall, it was a lovely Christmas, with most everyone up, no travel problems, delicious food, and no one with serious ill issues.
But I also realized there are other benefits to Christmas in Timmins.
Snow
Sometimes it’s only a little snow, sometimes it’s a ridiculous amount of snow, but there’s always snow in Timmins in December! If you live in some beautiful, sunny, and warm part of the world, not having snow at Christmas is not much of a tragedy, despite its traditional association with the season. But in southern Ontario, where we now live, no snow typically means gray, coo, dreary, drizzly weather. It’s just depressing. (And thanks to climate change, it’s what we can expect for one of two Christmases from now on.)
Me in a snowy landscape, full of natural Christmas trees
Taking care of (government) business
This one applies only to those living in Ontario, but… Are the lineups to take your driver’s test just too long in Toronto? Have you been putting off replacing your old red and white health card? If you said yes, then you’re probably related to me.
Having been discouraged by the Toronto crowds, on December 24, my nephew went to the Ministry of Transportation office in Timmins, and passed his driver’s test! Same day, his father went to Services Ontario and got himself a proper photo ID health card. In about five minutes.
Same province, fewer people, faster service!
Shopping!
Of course Southern Ontario has more stores, but is more always better? No running around to different LCBOs to get the wine you want; you just go to the only one there is and make do with what they have. And at the only men’s clothing store downtown, you might just discover, as Jean did, that custom-made shirts are much cheaper there, and that they’ll ship them to your house.
Grosbeaks
The blue jays, cardinals, and eagles we have around here are cool, but dig these red and yellow grosbeaks. (The pileated woodpecker also made an appearance.)
Wherever you were for Christmas, hope you made the best of it. In Timmins this year, that wasn’t hard.
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