Life with Odie: Part 1

(This looks like the day to clean house in the blog.  Here's another entry that apparently didn't get posted until now.  Knowing how life has progressed for Odie and the humans in his flock, you might be interested in the beginning of the relationship.)

I've always liked birds. I like them but they, at least the ones we have in our flock at the moment, seem to much prefer Richard. We got Odie, the Senegal parrot, just over a year ago. He was mainly my idea. I wanted a parrot that had the potential for training and was a bit more acrobatic than Bailey the cockatiel or Angie the budgie.

A friend told me that she thought a Senegal would be perfect. I did my research and talked to our avian vet who agreed that this particular species would likely be a good fit. We were set on having a male because they have more potential for talking and because we've had so much trouble with Bailey being broody and wanting to lay eggs. I've been checking out the bird ads on Kijiji for a couple of years now, just to see what's out there. I don't remember exactly when Odie came to my attention. An ad for him would appear and then it would be gone for a month or two. Then it would appear again. In the meantime Richard and I talked about whether or not we should get another bird. He wasn't too keen. I guess I was looking for a replacement for Koko the Quaker who was with us for 7 years and died very suddenly in 2007. In reality, I knew that it wasn't possible to replace a Koko. No two pets are alike.

Just before we went to Italy in the fall of 2009 I saw Odie advertised again. Of course, we couldn't do anything at that point because we were going to be away for three weeks but I decided that I would call about Odie if he was advertised again after we got back. In December of 2009 Odie's ad showed up again. He seemed to be well-socialized and, according to the owners, interacted with both of them. We arranged to meet Odie. He let me pick him up and return him to his cage although he did set his beak on my hand when I put him down on one of his perches. We went home and did some more soul searching. A parrot that can live 40 years is a big commitment. We wanted to travel and as my mother was fond of saying, "Pets are a tie." Pets also enrich day-to-day life. We next arranged for Odie to have a health check with our vet.

We met the owner outside the vet clinic one cold winter day before Christmas. He handed us Odie in a box wrapped in a blanket and then went to get a coffee. The vet checked Odie over and took blood for the DNA testing. We returned Odie to his owner and waited for the results. By this time we'd pretty well decided we'd take Odie even if he turned out to be a she. The results came back: Odie was a relatively healthy male.

On December 27, 2009 Odie joined our flock. His former owner brought him and his small cage over to the house. I gave her a cheque and we proceeded to get Odie settled in. In the first days he seemed to accept me all right although I would get the occasional nip. I'm not sure at what point things went sideways for me and Odie. The nips became serious bites which often left a trail of blood on the kitchen floor.

I read many training manuals, watched DVD's on parrot behaviour. We had two consultations with our vet about how to stop the biting. Birds don't usually bite in the wild so somehow I had taught Odie to bite. All three of us were unhappy. Richard was unhappy because he didn't like to see me getting hurt and because Odie had chosen Richard when our plan was that Odie would interact with both of us. I was upset because I very much wanted to be able to handle Odie. I knew he was a smart bird and I had hopes of training him to do some tricks which, some of the literature said, would help a bird bond with its owner. Clearly something was off with Odie because he kept biting.

There were days when Richard wanted to find a new home for Odie right away. Parrots are intelligent and require a lot of daily interaction. Because, I didn't want to be bitten I stopped trying to handle Odie. That meant that it fell to Richard to attend to this energetic and demanding creature. There were days when I was ready to give up on Odie and give Odie up but I've never been one to give away pets once they are in my home and it wouldn't be fair to Odie to simply shuffle the problem off onto someone else. As the vet pointed out, "He's just being a bird."

(And five years later he is still 'being a bird.' I haven't been bitten for quite a while but then I haven't tried to scratch his head when he is outside the cage or pick him up either.)

Thoughts on Rotten Bananas and a Cockatiel

(August 1, 2014. I guess I got organized at one point and thought I would write a blog entry and post it later.  I didn't expect I'd post it this much later.)

I love banana bread and occasionally I get around to making it. In the meantime if the bananas get a wee but too brown even for us I hoard them in the freezer waiting for a day when I decide to make banana bread.

Earlier this year I had quite a few bananas saved up. I read somewhere that the best way to freeze bananas is to peel them before you put them in the freezer. I read that after I had frozen a few in the skins. The internet was rife with stories of how hard it was to peel the bananas once they were frozen. As a result, I used up all the peeled bananas first. In fact the ones in the skins sat there for months. One day I decided I either needed to use the bananas or throw them out.

I took them out of the freezer and looked at them. The skins were completely black and they were hard as rocks. I had nothing to lose so I decided to try an experiment. I unwrapped the bananas and stabbed the skins with a paring knife. I had no wish for the bananas to explode in the microwave. I didn't know if they would but I knew if you didn't prick the skins of potatoes they would explode. I set the microwave to defrost, put one banana in and waited. The microwave beeped when it was done and I took out the hot banana. It was really squishy. 'How on earth am I going to peel this?” I wondered. I cut the top off and gave the banana a bit of a squeeze. Some mushy banana came out the cut.

I got a bowl, turned the banana upside down and squeezed it like a tube of toothpaste. The banana slid neatly into the bowl. I nuked the other two bananas and made banana bread wondering why I had put off using the bananas for so long. Something I thought was going to be an icky chore turned out to be really easy and, the banana bread was delicious. There are many times when I have put off doing something because I thought is was going to be too hard or too unpleasant only to find out, when I finally got around to it, that it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.

There is a flip side to this story, though. In January of 2013 our 17 year old cockatiel tried to fly off my shoulder and had a rather hard landing on the stairs. The next day I could hear a whistling noise when she breathed and when she tried to tuck her beak into her back feathers to take a nap she couldn't settle but took it out again and faced forward. She seemed to be happy enough sitting on my shoulder but I was concerned. This bird had been to the vet so often that the vet joked she should have her own key to the office. I didn't want to take her in it if was nothing but I wanted to make sure she was okay. I called and got an appointment for the afternoon.

When I got to the vet's with her she was running around in her traveling box squeaking in response to the other birds in the office. Watching her, I began to feel foolish for brining her in. Still, the receptionist assured me, it was better to be sure. When we got into the examining room the vet listened to her and palpated her abdomen. It was spongy and the vet recommended x-rays.

They x-rayed her and brought her back. Her abdomen was full of fluid and that fluid was pressing on her air sacks making it hard for her to breathe. We could start her on diuretics but the vet said given her age and her history the cause was probably either a failing heart or a failing liver. In either case the prognosis was not good. Since we had been jabbing her with needles quite regularly for the past two years we thought it better to euthanize her rather than subject her to more invasive treatment that wouldn't likely change the outcome. The vet said I could take her home to say good bye.

I called Richard and we agreed that he would come to see her at the vet's and we would sign the necessary papers to have her euthanized. My last glimpse of her was sitting on Richard's shoulder and snuggling close to his neck. When I took her in that day I didn't think we'd be returning home without her.

Why are these two incidents linked in my mind? Perhaps because both serve to remind me that in simple and in complex things I cannot predict the future and I really don't know as much as I like to think I do. Sometimes, now, when I'm putting off a task or rushing through a day without really paying attention I remind myself to enjoy both the banana bread and the cockatiels that cross my path.

Bailey our first and oldest bird

Adventures in Flospy: Ottawa

One Accord singing in the lobby on parliament hill
Photo by Selim Sayegh

Richard, who doesn't consider writing among his favourite pastimes, is putting me to shame on the blog front. During our recent trip across the country he wrote a blog post every day. There was a wee bit of whining some days about why he thought it was a good idea in the first place but he wrote faithfully and his followers enjoyed the adventures. Since the list of readers doesn't necessarily overlap, I thought I'd take the chance to bring you up to date on our comings and goings so far this summer. It has been an adventure in many senses of the word.

One Accord, the community choir in which we both sing, got the opportunity to go to Ottawa for the Unisong festival of choirs from across Canada. We decided to drive “Flopsy” our 1984 Dodge camper van to Ottawa and then point her nose east to see how far we could get. In Ottawa we sang our heads off for four days and had a great time. The culmination of the rehearsals was three performances at the National Arts Centre on Canada Day. The first, in the morning, included all the choirs singing the pieces we worked on the previous three days. Of course, we worked on the pieces before we got to Ottawa but it was up to guest conductor Kelly Walsh to put it all together beginning on June 28. It was great to sing for her. She was very clear in what she wanted, was always positive and had a terrific sense of humour.

There was one concert in the afternoon and one in the evening both with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and conductor Alain Trudel. Kelly Walsh prepped us ahead of our rehearsal with Trudel saying that if the conductor didn't have to tell us to speed up we would truly have made the grade. In her experience it's common for orchestral conductors to remind choirs to keep up. We were pleased with ourselves when Trudel didn't have to remind us even once to keep up.

Mi'kmaq Honour Song during the choral concert
Photo by Selim Sayegh

The concerts at the NAC were fun and in some ways much like any other concert. It might have been a different experience for folks from smaller communities who are not used to having performance opportunities in large venues. The most difficult thing for me was trying to memorize the words especially the ones in French. I confess to even needing a cheat sheet for the French verse of 'O Canada.'

Concert with the NAC orchestra
Photo by Selim Sayegh

I was seated beside a grade 11 student from Ontario who was quite willing to help me with the French. I enjoyed talking with her at breaks and remembered fondly why I like that age-group so much. Although the powers-that-be really wanted us to perform without music they weren't actually standing in the wings taking it away from us which, from my point of view, was wise. As far as this particular chorister is concerned they had a choice of gibberish words and improvised notes if I sang without music or something far closer to being accurate and musical if I sang with music. I did try to memorize the songs and, these days, I find it much more difficult to get words and music to stick than I used to. I can usually remember the notes but get mixed up when phrases repeat with slight differences or lose count when we repeat the same phrase a number of times. I'm not the only one. Thank heavens for the kids' choirs and the high school and college singers who were able to get the stuff into their heads.

While in Ottawa we toured the mint which I really enjoyed. We also had a river cruise and were able to find a spot to watch the fireworks on Canada Day. Our accommodation while in Ottawa was in the university residence. Richard and I shared a suite with our good friends Deb and Steve and we had a riot. It was hard to fit in enough sleep because we stayed up late after rehearsals and performances laughing talking and telling stories. You're never too old to be silly and have a good laugh.

The only down side to Ottawa was the humidity. I am not good in the heat. End of story. I have a few chores to do so I'll save the rest of the adventure for a few more posts, not exactly immediate news but a good way to recall a fun summer nonetheless.

My Mother's Sewing Machine

 

It was in the house before I was born, bought sometime in the mid nineteen forties. Mum spent hours and hours at that machine making most of the clothes for the two of us until I moved out on my own. I loved to go with her each fall to pick out fabric for blouses. I liked all the different colours and the fact that my clothes were different from anyone else's. There were turquoise fabrics, rusty brown ones and forest green ones. Some were paisley and some had small flowers on them. Sometimes we bought striped material and sometimes I wore checks.

Mum would bring the material home and the first thing she did was to wash it. Once it was dry she would pull a thread out to determine the true grain of the fabric. I don't know whether grain is the correct word or whether I have transferred that from my passion for working in wood, but I know that orienting a pattern properly on the fabric was very important. She would then lay out the fabric on the dining room table and place the pattern pieces in such a way that she could get the most out of the fabric. Next she took the tissue paper pattern out of its envelope and, if it was a new pattern she trimmed the patten pieces down to the lines being careful to cut around the notches so she could later mate pieces to be pinned and sewn. Sometimes if the patterns were really wrinkled, she ironed them to flatten them out.

When she was satisfied with how she had laid out the pieces she pinned them to the fabric using steel dressmaker's pins and then cut them out. The next step was to put the pieces in the order in which she would sew them and do any basting that was needed. She was pretty quick with a needle and thread. I remember she was always slightly cross that in every single project she had to pull out a seam. Even though she had sewn most of her life she never got to the point she thought she should be where a garment went together flawlessly.Many nights after I went to bed I could hear the sound of her machine humming away in the room across the hall from my bedroom.

I think she would liked to have passed on her love of sewing to me but she never complained when I professed to hate Home Economics, the subject in which she earned her university degree, and grumbled that it was unfair that girls couldn't take shop.

I did do some sewing. It was hard to escape that in the compulsory Home Economics classes of the day and Mum was a big support. She helped me with my projects. She never sewed anything for me but she gave me the benefit of her years of experience showing me an easier way to tie a knot in the end of a thread or how to thread the sewing machine correctly. She gave me tips for getting the seams straight and told me about the importance of basting and pressing as I went along. I sewed what I had to sew and happily gave it up as soon as I could.

Mum's sewing machine remained in her house until she sold the house when she was in her early nineties. I told her I wanted it, although I had no reason to since I did everything I could to avoid sewing. Besides I already had a portable machine willed to me by my grandmother. It was a more modern one than my mother's. Somehow I felt I needed to take care of her machine as she had taken care of it all her life.

When my mother died a few months short of her ninety fourth birthday I held onto the machine. Many things that had been important to her during her life were not important to me and she understood that. She cleared out all of her silver and china because I wasn't interested in them. Why then did I hold onto the sewing machine which really didn't interest me either? Maybe if was because I respected all the hours she had spent making clothes for me. Maybe it was a symbol of her consummate skill or maybe it was the object, more than any other, which made her who she was.

I know that once we let go of our possessions we cannot expect anyone else to treasure them the way we did and yet, I wanted someone to take the machine and appreciate it in a way that my mother did and I did not. So, it stayed in our basement. I made a few attempts to see if anyone wanted it and even decided not to give it away to someone who wanted it because I didn't think she would take proper care of it. I looked on kijiji a few times for similar machines and it seemed they were a dime a dozen. Nobody was going to want this old machine and yet I could not part with it.

One day I read a Facebook post from a friend requesting sewing machines for an NGO that works with women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their mandate is to educate children and to teach women skills and advance them micro-credit so they can support their families. I called the number and and the founder of the organization and her husband arrived the next day to collect the machine.

  

When we brought it out to the car her face lit up. She told me they loved to get older machines like this one because they were sturdy and simple to maintain. She told me she could tell it was in excellent shape. I gave her all the accessories and the manual which Mum carefully kept with the machine. We had to bungie the trunk down because it wouldn't close.

As the couple drove away I felt at peace that the old machine had finally found a dignified home. My mother was a teacher and, to me, it is fitting that the machine should make the trip to Congo to be used by some women I will never meet. I think Mum would have been pleased that her cherished machine went to a place where it could help make the lives of some women and children just a little bit better.

When I bought my piano the person who sold it to me said, “Sometimes I think it is our function to hold onto something until the right person comes along to accept it from us.” I think she was right.

Empathy for John Smith

The rains have stopped and people affected by the floods in Calgary and Southern Alberta are putting their lives back together as best they can. Evacuation orders have been lifted and many are back in their homes. The main theme of these floods has been people helping people and, for once, positive stories makes the news regularly. I have done very little to help, other than staying off the roads and trying to conserve water. I look forward to doing my laundry and having showers more frequently when the state of emergency is lifted. We will also attend a benefit concert tomorrow. It's not much but it's better than being in the way or being, as some people have, a “Nenshi noun.” Google that one. It's a good story.

My empathy for “John Smith” is for all whom I know and don't know who have lost so much in the flood and for all those who have worked tirelessly to help in whatever way they could.

My empathy for “John Smith” is also for a much more mundane reason: his name. Beginning in December of last year I began receiving some rather puzzling emails. The first emails that showed up in my inbox were newsy and interesting describing a holiday in Australia. I know a lot of people and, although I couldn't place the names, I thought we must have met the couple on one of our cycling or hiking trips. I read the emails with interest, still not able to figure out exactly who these people were.

I got an email about a property someone wanted to buy and thought it must be some kind of Google aberration, so I deleted it. Next I got a lunch invitation to a restaurant that certainly isn't in Calgary. I wrote the sender back saying that I would love to come to lunch but since I lived in a different city, I was pretty sure I wasn't the intended recipient of the invitation. I also expressed the hope that the intended recipient wouldn't miss a lunch date because I got the invitation instead.

Next, I received an email from a woman undergoing chemotherapy. The tone of the email was friendly and familiar but I couldn't place the name. I emailed back saying that if I knew her I was drawing a blank and asked her for some context. I got another email saying that a previous email had somehow been sent to another Marian Hood and giving me further updates on the state of her health. I wrote back, wished her well and again said I was not the person she wanted. The line from Star Wars, “These aren't the droids you're looking for.... Move along,” began marching through my head.

I figured out that the problem must be with my gmail account. I hardly ever give out my gmail address because even people who know me well sometimes misspell my first name. Then I got an email from a church in Washington. I emailed the sender saying that if I knew the email address of the person they wanted I'd gladly save them a phone call by passing it along. I got a very polite, somewhat startled, reply asking me to delete the previous message. No problem.

Finally ( I'm a bit slow sometimes) I googled my name. I expected to find a couple of references to articles I have written and not much else. This time the first hit was for Marian Hood, a realtor in Washington. The site included her business email. I emailed her the story. I think she was as surprised as I was that there are two of us who spell our names the same unusual way. She promised she would do what she could to straighten out things at her end and asked that I forward any emails I received in error to her. So far I haven't received any more of her mail.

The experience is odd for me in a couple of ways. I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of people named “Marion” I have met. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of “Marian's” I have met who spell their names the same way I do. I'm simply not used to sharing my name with anyone. I imagine for John Smith being mistaken for someone else is a tiresome reality.

The second thing that struck me is that, for a time, I felt part of a a specific network of friends who tell each other of their travels, reach out to each other for support, and plan lunch dates. I am grateful for the photos of Australia and the lunch invitation even though they weren't meant for me. This is a circle of good friends doing what good friends do for each other. Somehow I'm glad this woman who shares my name is part of such a circle even as I am part of one in a different country. It is circles of friends like this who come together as a community to offer their homes to flood victims, who don rubber boots to help muck out basements. It is circles of friends who find ways in which they can help others and, in so doing, give to their communities kind and caring faces.

Calgary Flood

As I sit here dry and warm, the rain drums on the skylight in the ceiling of my study. Normally this is a soothing sound. Today it serves to remind me of the 100,000 Calgarians who have been evacuated from their homes because the Bow and the Elbow rivers are in full flood. There are helicopter shots on the TV networks and Facebook and Twitter are full of photos of devastation. Many people have asked how they can help and Mayor Nenshi has requested that we simply stay home and leave the streets which are not flooded to emergency vehicles. Tempting as it is to go out and do something or just to look, we are staying put.

We are lucky. Our foundation was patched last year in the course of our basement renovation and the drainage from next to the house was improved. We live on a hill, not the highest in the city, but quite far up from the river. So far, we are okay.

We talked to my father-in-law this morning and he said there has been nothing like this in his lifetime. There certainly has been nothing like it in mine. It is a strange surreal experience to see video images of the pathways where I trained for so many races now completely under water. Friends who just moved to Bowness in the last week or so have had to evacuate their new home which is now flooded, and, although the Bow has supposedly crested, it continues to rain. One Facebook post announced that the water had reached row 14 in the Saddle Dome in Stampede Park.

The route my walking buddy and I take on Mondays includes walking over the top of the Glenmore dam on the Elbow River. Water is now coming over the top of the dam and there is a huge lake behind the dam. I do not know this city in which I was born and raised.

All this water reminds me that, although we can do marvellous things with our technology and our engineering, we are no match for the sheer power of the natural world. It's easy to forget that. I am shocked by the devastation but also humbled by the realization that people in all parts of the world experience this sort of thing regularly. And so, as I listen to the rain I will stay inside and be grateful to those who are working for the good of the city, for those who have done without sleep for so many hours so they can pluck people from their homes, for the employees who pump water from the basement of the water treatment plant so our drinking water is not compromised. We human beings can be incredibly good to each other and one of the results of a situation like this is that it brings out that good.

The Right Way is the Way that Works

One of the first times I attended a Freefall workshop was right after a day of cycling in the mountains. Richard was going to drop me off at the workshop and he was giving a ride home to another cyclist. The other cyclist seemed a bit concerned that I was willingly walking into some kind of cult. Then I didn't know what to expect. Now I do but that doesn't seem to help me explain what goes on in a way that someone not involved in the workshop will understand.

I don't think I'm often at a loss for words but when people ask me questions about the workshop and I try to answer them I know that what is in their minds isn't even close to what I experience when bunch of writers get together to focus solely on the process of writing and listening to each other's work. A common question is, “What do you write about?” Seems like a straightforward question but it's hard to answer. The general answer is, “anything that comes up.” Sometimes I have an inkling of what I'm going to write about when I go to bed. (We always write in the morning.) Sometimes I'm thinking about a dream I had when I sit down at my computer. Sometimes I have no clue what I'm going to write about. When that happens I usually fall back onto my training as a poet and begin by observing and trying to describe my surroundings. Often I find myself taken back in time to something in my family of origin. In the most recent workshop I found myself engaging in a rant at an author whose work made me feel inferior and stupid. Sometimes I sit down thinking about one thing and in a few moments the writing takes off in an entirely different direction.

It's not process whereby I sit down to write a poem or a piece of memoir or a short story although all of those things have come out of it. I admit that, at first, I mistrusted this way of writing having been in many writing courses of one sort or another. There I saw people who sometimes had many pages of writing that seemed to have no form. They were desperately looking for someone to help them make all these words into something, anything, and in those classes the usual suggestions for tweaking abounded. “This image really works. You could take out that part, extend this metaphor. ” Often the owner of the writing would go away looking puzzled. It's not easy to bring together the rush of creative imagination and the form and structure of a particular genre.

Having now experienced the process of Freefall writing as Barbara Turner-Vesselago teaches it and more conventional process taught by many other gifted instructors, I am incredibly grateful for both types of experiences. Freefall has helped me to, “get out of [my] own way,” as Barbara often says. I am also grateful for the years in which my more critical self was developing. All writing experiences give me more tools for my toolbox and the knowledge to pick and choose the best tool for the best job. After I have written a piece I can put it away for a while and then go back to it and identify, to a certain extent, where I can compress the writing and where I need to find more accurate words. Sometimes I can do that better than at other times. In working with hand tools we call it, “workmanship of risk.” Just because I cut a perfect dovetail yesterday there is no guarantee that I will cut a perfect one tomorrow. Sometimes the writing flows effortlessly and has tremendous energy to draw me in. Other times it is stagnant and flat and no matter how hard I search around for something that has more life to it, it remains flat. Perhaps the not-knowing is part of what draws me to woodwork and to writing. I could set up jigs on the machines in the shop to get the same results every time but I find that I quickly lose interest. I'd rather be trying something new even if it doesn't turn out very well in the end.

The only way I will run out of projects to do in the shop is to run out of things I can think of. The only way I can run out of things to write about is to stop thinking, period. If I can think about it I can write about it. Much of what I write will not move beyond the computer screen just as many of the things I make from wood will remain with me because they are too flawed to give to anyone else.

Barbara has written a book which helped me place Freefall in the context of what I already knew about writing. It's a good read, an interesting read if you want to know more about writing.

Writing Without a Parachute

If you're interested in seeing an example of where I am in my work, in part, because of Freefall you can find my first attempt at writing for Kindle Dreaming over Water

Happy writing and happy reading to all of you regardless of which side of the text you currently inhabit.