Odie update

I know many of you are fans of Odie, our Senegal parrot, so I thought I’d provide and update on him.

It has required a little adjustment with all of us home all the time. We can pay a bit more attention to Odie and to learn some more about how he communicates and what that communication means. Although Senegals are considered ‘quiet’ parrots Odie is still capable of making your ears ring when he gets wound up. So what winds him up? Sometimes we know and sometimes we don’t.

 A wing stretch = friendly greeting

One of the things that puzzled us was that when Richard and I are sitting at the table chatting quietly Odie will often launch into his loudest of loud squawks. He doesn’t need food. He doesn’t need water. We are right there in the room so why on earth is he yelling? When it’s after supper, he seems to be telling us that it is bedtime. If we cover him, turn off the lights and leave the room he quiets down. It doesn’t explain his yelling in the morning when we are having our hot drinks or in the afternoon if we are sitting at the table. One day in desperation I took my chair over, plunked it down right beside the cage and sat down. Odie shut up. Interesting.

With the Covid restrictions Richard has been having his singing lessons via Zoom. Although Odie’s singing along is enthusiastic it’s not particularly helpful. In an effort to keep his vocalizing to a minimum, I’ve been wheeling his cage into my study, placing it where he can see my computer screen, closing the door and watching videos. He has a large cage and when I get it into my study there is just enough room for me to squeeze past to get to the window or the door. I try to keep the cage far enough away from the bookshelves that he won’t poop on my books. At first I made sure I had chewables and millet that I could offer him to try to keep him entertained and quiet and, I gave him a head rub whenever he asked for it. One day I had some transcription I needed to get done. I looked at him and said, “Odie, I’m busy. You’ll have to entertain yourself.” Then I ignored him for the rest of the hour and a half. Not a peep. Again, interesting.

I know it’s not good to reinforce behaviour you don’t want. We could do without the yelling. On the other hand Odie seems to want to have one of us on the same ‘branch’ as he is sitting on. Apparently it’s not good enough to have us not only within sight but within a few feet of him; the bird requires that someone in the flock sits right next to him. We’ve taken to sitting ‘on the same’ branch’ with him more often before he starts to yell about it. Since I don’t think Odie and I will ever get to a point where I will allow him on my shoulder, this is about as companionable as we get. He blinks his eyes, sits with his feet close together on the perch and, at times, even tucks his head into his back feathers and has a nap. So far, knock wood, it hasn’t been difficult to encourage him to be quiet during Richard’s lessons.

Another funny thing about that, the other day R was singing in church. Our church service is streamed online and there is usually one soloist (masked and separated from the pianist) live in the church. I was watching the service online and as soon as Richard started to sing Odie joined in. It seems he recognized Richard’s voice.

Odie is a smart bird so I’ve been trying to think of things to keep him busy and I’ve continued to work on the behaviours that are now on cue. He will come out of his cage to touch the target stick. He turns around with a hand signal cue. He will step on and off a ladder that I hold for him and lately I’ve been training him to ring a bell when I say, ‘ding dong.’ He now rings the bell to let me know that he wants to train. Not sure who’s training whom. He doesn’t get peanut butter if he rings the bell when I haven’t cued him but it’s effective in getting me to go over to him and cue other behaviours before we get back to the bell.

I’m still very aware of that sharp little beak and I don’t entirely trust him but I am enjoying just hanging out close to him when he settles and makes soft little whistles and chirps that I associate with contentment. I don’t think he will ever allow cuddles from me but we are getting along pretty well. He is entertaining and intelligent and I continue to learn about how to live peacefully with him. As I get better at reading his body language I’m hoping that there will be a day when I can get him into his carrier without drama and be able to transport him to various places in the house on a hand held perch. For now, I’ll take stepping up and stepping down off the ladder. I get a bit nervous when he starts to move down the ladder towards my unprotected hands. We’ll keep working on it.

A blink = I trust you. I'll close my eyes in your presence.

Marian's guide to the disorganized shop

Planer on scrap bin

 

I’m not much on New Year’s resolutions. This year I do have one that, I think, will make a difference to my work in the shop. I’ve never been a tidy creature and I’m never going to have the shop where every tool has its proper place and is in that place unless it’s in my hand. The shop has grown like a weed. If I get something new and there’s a space over here, that’s where it goes. The result is that I have clamps in 5 different places. I’m not sure I have the wall space to get all the clamps rounded up and put with their buddies so that’s not on the list for immediate attention.

What is on the list is to reorganize the shop so that I can spend a session, be it 10 minutes or a day in the shop without knocking anything on the floor. Because I don’t have a home for everything, tools, partial projects, notebooks and other bits and pieces tend to collect on whatever horizontal surface is not already covered. This means I’m often working in a small area with things piled up around and when I need to shift the position of something it bumps into its neighbour starting a chain reaction and what is on the outside of the bench ends up on the floor. I know that the idea of this is absolutely horrifying to some of you and others are nodding because, they too, use every bit of horizontal surface all the time.

Most of the time it doesn’t matter too much when things fall on the floor. I am aware of the tendency of my stuff to leap with very little warning so I make sure that tools don’t sit near the edges of the bench. I also built a lip on the back of one of the benches so that things couldn’t fall off the back. I did get a rather unpleasant surprise one day last week when I pulled out the shop vac and cyclone. In December I started work on a rod puppet with a papier mache head. Turns out I didn’t get very far before plans changed and I didn’t need to finish the construction. In order to make the head I thinned down some glue and put the left-over thin stuff in a pill bottle ready for the next day. When I found that I didn’t need to finish the head I tossed it and went on to other projects. I didn’t dump out the thin glue. At some point the bottle of glue made its way to the edge of the bench and then over the edge. I didn’t notice it at the time. What I did notice when I pulled out the shop vac cart was a nicely cured glop of glue right in front of the heating vent. It’s still there. I will have to take a chisel and very carefully pare it off the wooden floor. Wood glue sticks to wood floors. Who knew?

Making the shop leap-proof is not going to be easy or quick. I’m starting to look at what I use and what mostly collects dust. Earlier this year I gave my mitre saw to a friend about a week before I found myself doing all kinds of baseboard moulding. I could have used the miter saw but I made do with a cobbled-together miter box and a hand saw. Caulk covers up a multitude of sins. I’m not sorry I gave the saw away when I did. It’s been collecting dust for years and even though the baseboards without it was a bit inconvenient, it wasn’t worth having it collect dust for years to come just so I could get the baseboards done faster.

Flip-top model

Another machine I seldom use is my planer. It’s in an awkward spot and often the size of stock I’m working on falls under the minimum tolerances for safety, so I get out the hand planes. I’m not terribly efficient at preparing stock by hand and I think it may be time for me to make friends with the planer. If I can learn to use it the stock will likely be more consistently accurate and will take me less time. I was trying to figure out how I could get the planer into a position where it would be easier to use. I’ve seen guys make flip carts where they bolt one tool onto one side of a table top and another tool on the other side. The whole top pivots and locks so that when you’re using one tool the other one hangs upside down. I probably spent 4 or 5 days watching YouTube videos and then trying to decide which cart would best suit my needs. I wanted to put the planer on one side and my scroll saw on the other. There were various issues but after a lot of drawing, figuring, and even making a rather monstrous-looking model with cardboard and hot glue, it was time to actually start cutting wood. But first I had to get the scroll saw off the steel stand that came with it and get the planer off the shelf in the tool tower.

It wasn’t too hard to unbolt the scroll saw and put it on the bench and then to take out all the bolts in the stand and bundle up the steel pieces and the bolts and put them in the garage. I’m hoping someone will want a tool stand and I can pass it on to a new owner.

Getting the scroll saw out of its spot allowed me better access to the planer. I have a scrap bin on casters that has a lid because there are never enough horizontal surfaces. I checked the size of the planer and discovered that I could slide it off the shelf in the tool tower and onto the lid of the scrap bin. Once I did that, I saw that if I pushed it over, there was quite a bit of space between it and the tool tower. Could I cut down the size of the rolling platform, build a new stand for the scroll saw and have the tools side by side rather than stored on top of one another? Out came the tape measure, round went the wheels in my head and I decided to scrap the flip-top cart entirely. I now have a chunk of pipe that I was going to use for the pivot that I’ll have to find another use for. I’m sure I will eventually.

I was able to cut down the platform the scroll saw used to sit on so it will fit in between the tool tower and the planer. I have yet to build the stand for the scroll saw and I’ve been looking at YouTube videos of scroll saw stands. I’m not going to spend a long time on the ‘research’ aspect of this project. I want to get it done. A bonus of this latest plan is that I have removed the shelf on which the planer sat from the tool tower and that will give me a place to store my table saw sleds that have, to this point, been sitting on the floor - in the way. Another good thing is that I’m getting closer to uncovering the small lathe at the bottom of the tool tower. Richard has a large lathe and a lathe that can turn big things can also turn little things. I don’t know of many people who have two lathes and we certainly don’t need two.It already has a new home once I extract it from its current position.

Base for new scroll saw stand

In the next few days the scroll saw and the planer should be happily situated side by side and I’ll look around for other tools I can pass onto someone who will use them more than I will. As I said, I don’t expect my shop to ever be one of those where everything is immaculate but if I can cut down the number of things that leap off benches I will have made progress. Stay tuned.

January 6, 2021

One of the stories I used to teach was titled ‘The Broken Globe.’ This story by Henry Kreisel presents the conflict between a father and a son over whether the world is flat or round. The reaction of most of the kids was one of disbelief. Of course, the world is round. How could the old man be so stupid? I don’t think they really accepted my argument that both men were defending beliefs. The father walks out the door every morning and looks at the flat horizon of the Alberta prairie. A priest in Ukraine told him of a flat world when he was a boy and he trusted the priest as a representative of God and truth. The son believes in science and the round world as taught to him by a teacher he admires, a representative of truth. When the son brings home a globe to try to explain to his father the roundness of the world, the old man breaks the globe. My memory of the story is a bit sketchy and I don’t remember whether or not the boy tries to repair it.

The actions of Trump supporters today provide a perfect illustration of the strength and danger of beliefs when not handled in a calm and mature way. Statistical evidence only counts if someone is willing to accept its validity and Trump has expertly, in the view of his followers, called into question the validity of statistics and the workings of the American democracy. I will not likely forget the image of a bare-chested man with paint on his face and a horned helmet on his head striding triumphantly down a corridor in the capitol building after the mob had broken in. I will also remember the image of a man in a ball cap with his phone out, possibly taking a selfie, seated at the desk of an elected official. At the same time I think of the opposite. I think of Mr. Rogers: ‘Look for the helpers,’ for they are always there. I hope so. I hope they are legion and that they will respond with wisdom as yet unimagined. It’s going to take wisdom, patience, grace, and a huge roll of duct tape to repair this particular broken globe.

A butterfly with hiccoughs

Here we are on the last day of 2020. Many people have looked back on the year with eloquence and humour and I don’t feel like trying for either one of those, so in my final 2020 post I’m going to hop around among my current thoughts. I don’t know who described thinking as a ‘butterfly with hiccoughs’ but I’ve always loved that image so here goes.

I’m ridiculously happy that I managed to complete two projects in two days. The current ukulele build has been underway for two years now and most things I undertake last for at least a week. I gave R an IOU for new scales on one of the many paring knives we have around here. They came from his parents’ place and have no markings whatsoever on the steel although they are great knives. I’ve done two in the past and decided it was time for a third one. Eventually I hope to do all of them but that means rounding them up and that's for another day.

I didn’t get the scales on in one day but while I was peening the brass rods I used to pin the scales on, I took a good look at the little ball peen hammer that was my dad’s. Ever since I can remember it has been wrapped with electrical tape near the head. To give you an idea of how long the tape has been on there, it is cloth tape, not the plastic sort we use now. I figured the tape was probably to hold the handle together because it was cracked. I decided I could make a new handle so I cut the tape off (the handle was cracked) and then cut the handle off just below the head. I had quite a time getting the remaining piece of wood out of the head. I drilled and whacked at it and completely destroyed the edge on one of my chisels. Luckily I know how to fix that. Eventually I got all the splintery bits out of the head. There was a metal wedge to hold the handle on and when I whacked the last bit out it went on the floor along with the wedge. I did a cursory look and didn’t find it so I decided to use a wooden wedge instead.


We had an ash tree cut down a few years ago and I found a relatively straight-grained piece of ash for a handle. It took me quite a while to shape the handle, fix it into the head and put a finish on it. By the end of the day I had a new handle on the old hammer. There’s a spot near the head where a small branch was growing and I know that will be a weak spot. Since the hammer is small and light and I’m likely to use it only on brass rod and other soft metals, I think it should stand up as long as I need it to and then some.

The second day-long project I finished was a bread saw. I’ve seen them but never owned one. Now that I’m occasionally making bread again, I thought it would be a fun project. I went online and found a place to buy the blades and I watched one of my favourite YouTubers make one using only hand tools. I wasn’t a purist on this project and used the bandsaw to roughly shape the handle. From there I used chisels and rasps and at the end of the day I had a kitchen tool finished with oil and wax and ready to cut bread. Now all I need to do is to bake bread so I can test it out.


I’m a great one for alternate uses of things. Because everything is on Zoom these days, SAWS was able to arrange a Zoom call with Anne of All Trades, a well-known YouTube woodworker. She commented that her grandfather taught her to use what she had to make what she needed. I thought of all the ways that Jake does that when he makes and repairs instruments. I’m pretty sure there’s another post there but I’ll put the brakes on that butterfly.


I needed to put new strings on one of my ukuleles. I haven’t done it that often and I feel like I have ten thumbs when I come to do it. Anyway, I got the strings on and then needed to cut off the excess. I have a number of cutting implements at my disposal but the one I settled on as being easiest to use was a pair of ordinary nail clippers. They are light and they fit into tight spaces so I could cut the strings close.

The second item I found an alternate use for is a little shaker for oil and vinegar dressing. I think R has used it in the past to mix flour and water for gravy but my use is in making hot chocolate. All the hot chocolate mixes contain milk which is difficult for anyone who is lactose intolerant. We treat our milk with drops to make it easier to digest. I’ve always thought that it was a nuisance to make hot chocolate out of cocoa powder - mix sugar and cocoa, add cold milk, mix it up until it’s not lumpy and then add hot water and milk. First I cut down the amount of sugar so the ratio of ingredients became 1:1:1 and then I used the shaker to combine the cold milk, sugar and cocoa. It worked like a charm and it’s really not that hard to do. An added bonus is we have a bit more control over the amount of sugar so our hot chocolate ends up being more like a dark chocolate and I can add a drop of peppermint if I want to be especially decadent.

As this year draws to a close, I've been rereading some of my journal entries. This exercise taught me that if I spent even 1/10 of the time tidying up my study and the shop that I spend thinking I ought to be doing so, both spaces would always be spotless. I'm an untidy creature at heart and I may as well get used to it. When it bugs me enough I'll do something about it. In the meantime I have better things to think about. Resolution? Drop those two 'should's' from my list.

New Year's Eve last year

Finally, I’m pleased that this is my 38 post of 2020. That is the highest number of posts I’ve ever made in a year and I’ve surpassed my goal of two posts a month. Before I get too carried away with patting myself on the back, I know that quantity and quality aren’t the same thing and that got me thinking about what quality is to me in terms of my blog. I guess it’s posting things that are interesting to some of you, most of the time. I realize that everything I write is filtered by the way I view the world and, because of that, there’s a danger to sound like a broken record. I try not to. As I’ve said in the past, I write primarily for myself and I’m pleased and humbled that others find common ground in what I say. I’m grateful that you read these posts and that they connect us to each other. I think 2020 has taught me to look more carefully at the little things that delight me, from hammer handles to chickadees outside the window. In 2021 I’m going to continue to look for what is delightful in the ordinary. I wish each of you pleasant surprises and moments of love and laughter in 2021 regardless of what else is in store for us. Happy New Year.

A merry Covid Christmas

Tree ornament

There are so many uncertainties these days. I have discovered one small certainty that I appreciate thanks to Covid 19. Usually this is a time for rehearsals, performances and parties. Usually I exchange gifts with friends at these other functions. This year, since such gatherings are cancelled, it has given me the chance to pay attention to giving these gifts and make that a focus rather than an afterthought, and it’s been kind of fun.

We made three trips specifically to deliver gifts this year. The first took us out of town on a wonderfully warm winter day on a highway devoid of snow. The drive together was pleasant as we talked and took in the countryside. At our destination we enjoyed air hugs and exchanged gifts at arm’s length before getting back into the car to return home. The other two trips were in town.

Initially we intended to deliver all the gifts on the same day. Our route took us to the south and then to the north of the city. We were going to deliver the gifts to those nearer our home on the way home but we decided we were tired,  and the bird needed feeding.

The final trip was on a grey day with a heavy snowfall warning in the forecast. We delivered the last of our gifts, scuttled home and dug in for the storm. When we got home we discovered gifts in our mailbox. Since then the storm has passed. We are assured of a white Christmas and we have had friends email and text before dropping off gifts for us. It has been fun to see people face to face, however briefly. We don’t need to worry about whether we have cookies in the freezer or whether we should invite friends in. The answer to both questions is no. Whether we are delivering gifts or receiving them, we know that the interactions will be very brief and that has made the moments noticeably precious. Each gift whether given or received, has brought with it sparks of delight and gratitude. As we eat the goodies and, as we put the new ornaments from this year on next year’s tree, we will remember that Christmas 2020 was not only odd but was also oddly special because it brought home, in two and three minute intervals, how important we are to each other.

So, in this familiar season of light in this very odd year, Merry Christmas, Shalom, and may 2021 be good to you.

(Outdoor photos are from around the neighbourhood)

Thoughts on sorrow

I had a chirpy post about baking bread all cued up and ready to go. I will post it later but not today. Today I need to recognize sorrow. I had news yesterday that a young man, the son of a friend, completed suicide on Wednesday. I often try not to post when things look bleak. In this case I have only my words to honour both his life and the family’s grief. These are strange times when we cannot reach out and hug one another or give the briefest of touches when they are most needed. We cannot sit close to each other in silence. And so, today, as we approach the longest night of the year, give a few moments over to gentleness for yourself, for others, and for this weary old world that just keeps chugging along. The days will get longer. The light will return but in the meantime we must sit in the darkness and make peace with it as best we can.

It's all very odd

Today we took an hour’s drive to Didsbury to do a drop-off and a pick-up. Last year at this time we looked forward to having our Didsbury friends in our home, between Christmas and New Years, to share lunch with us. Last year, during that lunch, we talked and laughed until our cheeks hurt. This year we drove up to their house, put on our masks, opened the trunk, got out the box, walked up the sidewalk, exchanged the box we had for them for the bag they had for us, stepped back beyond 6 feet, exchanged a few sentences, smiled behind our masks, mimed hugs, wished each other Merry Christmas, got back in the car and drove home. It was a good day and, at the end of it, I’m happy and content. I have so many good people in my life and every pandemic has an end.

Late afternoon driving home

Preparing for a remote church service

Plastic barriers and masks

I’m not always content. Last week I was angry, irritated, and despairing. Those days pass and with increased perspective, I’ve been looking back on all the excitement and craziness that Christmas preparations usually bring. So often at this time of year I have raced the clock, to get the shopping done, gifts made and wrapped, food made for the numerous parties. It’s always been an enjoyable whirlwind and, this year, things are different. I’m sitting back, taking time, enjoying the quiet. I have gifts to make and some folks may end up getting IOU’s. I have food; I have shelter; I have friends; and I have the ability to connect with those friends remotely. We aren’t able to hug and Zoom is exhausting in its own way, but it’s so nice to see people smile, to laugh with them, even if it is on a screen. We can share photos too, easily and quickly so instead of going on with words, I’ll leave you with images of this unusual holiday season. May you be safe and warmed by the knowledge that we are important to each other.

So many lights