Funny Buddy

So I went to my parent's cottage this weekend for a lovely break and of course, Buddy came with. Unlike most dogs, Buddy is not a huge fan of the cottage. Aside from the smell of the rabbits and the heart-wrenching closeness of the wooded hill behind the cottage, Buddy finds it somewhat stressful because he's not allowed to be on the furniture and the open floor plan means there's no contained little spot like his room at home to call his own. Nonetheless, he seems to adjust somehow. Despite our efforts to keep him off the furniture, he often sneaks up to sleep on the bed that Mark and I use at the cottage. We shoo him when we find him but it's an out of the way room so we don't usually see him. As a result, he doesn't take this admonishment too seriously and seems to think the bed is his to lie on.

So the other night I was chatting with my dad and was sitting on a daybed in the room adjacent to the bedroom. Buddy happened along and, seeing me sitting there, decided to join me. Up he hopped and immediately I shooed him off. He just sort of looked at me, gave me the dog version of a shrugged and hopped off and headed ever so nonchalantly to the bedroom, as if to say: "It's no big, I've got a bed to lie on in here." Cheeky monkey!

Buddy was loving the beach this trip. The beach is back and forth with Buddy. In the summer, the sand gets too hot and burns his paws, plus he doesn't like the look of the waves and often barks at them. But the beach in winter he really likes. Ice builds up along the shore providing all kinds of crevices to explore. And on this particular trip, lots of little dead fish. Sometimes buried in the snow, sometimes gleaming on a little pile of ice as if it was a display case in the grocery store. At first he just sniffed them, then he tried to nibble them, then he tried to pick them up and take them with him. I managed to foil him every time but yikes, gross gross gross. You gotta love dogs.

Thank god for the pronunciation guide

Main Entry: pan·a·cea
Pronunciation: "pa-n&-'sE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek panakeia, from panakEs all-healing, from pan- + akos remedy: a remedy for all ills or difficulties : CURE-ALL- pan·a·ce·an /-'sE-&n/ adjective

So I have recently discovered that the Merrill-Webster online dictionary offers a pronunciation guide - not just the - and ' stuff that tells you where the emphasis is but an actual recording of a voice saying the word. This has been fantastic for me. There are several words that I learned to pronounce wrong in my younger years that I still mess up. Mandala, preflackadaisicalsical. And then there are some words that I know from reading but have never said them out loud because I'm not sure how they are pronounced. So I can now use "panacea" freely, which is awesome because it's a useful word. God bless the internet. I don't know what people ever did before.

Kanye West is a fucking misogynist

Okay, I want to support Kanye with his socially conscious music thing and his super catchy tunes but the guy is so frickin misogynistic. In the same song in which he is making a case against diamond trade that supports warfare in Africa, he is hating on women. In songs in which he is talking about the plight of the black man and the poor man, he is hating on women. And Golddigger, which is just SO DAMN CATCHY, is just disgusting. And come on, how much did I love him for "George Bush doesn't care about black people." That was such a fantastic moment. But then, then he does this??? Fuck you, Kanye, and your hypocritical bullshit. You can't raise up one while you put down the other. I mean sure, you can fight against racism without fighting against all other forms of discrimination but you can't fight against racism while actively promoting other forms of discrimination. All forms of oppression are linked and serve the same purpose, and when you support one, you support them all. So stand up against all oppression, Kanye, or sit your ass back down. Asshole.

Sky-cam buddy

So as time has gone on with Buddy living with us, he is letting us do more and more things that he used to clearly find objectionable (as evidence by chuffing and sighing and whale-eyes). One of my favourites is letting us carry him around like a baby or what Mark likes to call "Sky-cam Buddy." He scoops him up and carries him around to let him know what the world would look like if he were 6 feet tall. Buddy used to hate this and try to leap from Mark's arms. Of course, we didn't stop doing it and now Buddy will ride around in our arms, smacking (a sign of contentment) and will even rest his head on Mark's shoulder now and then.



Buddy also lets us hold him like a lap dog on the couch. This is something he's let us do for a long time but usually only for a few minutes. Lately though, he seems to really like it. He sat like this with me the other day for almost an hour. Eventually I had to dump him off because it was starting to put my legs to sleep. It just goes to show that if you mercilessly ignore your pet's comfort zone, eventually they will come around! lol

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's Valentine's Day! Yeah! I love Valentine's Day, mostly because I love all the cute heart-shaped things involved with Valentine's. I always had pretty good Valentine's experiences growing up, you know the kind of thing where the whole class gave everyone Valentines and you got to make a little envelope to hold them all and decorate it with glitter. Some of my friends gave character valentines like My Little Pony or Barbie but I liked the old school ones that we would get at Woolco or the Big V. They would come in a big book and you'd cut them out one by one. The cute ones I would give to my best friends and the lame ones I would give to people I didn't like (I know, mean girl *lol*). I used to spend forever carefully deliberating who should get which one. And in the end they were all kind of lame and usually made no sense. Like that raccoon - "You'll be mine when you see the sign." And then there's a little miles sign beside him. What? Is that the sign? Or is it a more mystic kind of sign? And why is he a hobo? And a "Ra-coon" instead of a raccoon? But he's so cute - I love it! Public school valentines, man. That's the good shit.

These days, Mark and I get each other cool looking valentines from high-end card shops. I swear, I could buy a thousand of them. I just love looking at them. And all the cute stuff there is to buy right now! But Mark and I decided to keep things in check this year and have a $40 spending limit. Since Mark directly requested a $40 comic book (so romantic, I know), I also made him some of my super yummy sugar cookies. But this year I fancied them up with red sprinkles and white chocolate. I must say I'm rather pleased with how they turned out!

Double burn!

As some of you may know, our Buddy is a mighty hunter of squirrels. We learned that the hard way when we first got him and in order to spare our little furry friends only let him "hunt" on leash these days. You may also know that our little Buddy is a canus carborhydratus, or what is commonly known as a carb hound. Bread, pretzels, bagels, chips. If it's starchy and white, he's all over it. He'll take multi-grain and whole wheat too, but he won't be as happy about it. This often raises some challenges in the park. There are many people who like to leave bread in the park for the pidgeons and squirrels and geese and ducks and mice and whoever else is living there. Which is nice in theory until you can't find anyplace to lay down a picnic blanket for all the goose shit on the ground. And then they try to steal your lunch.

Anyway, given these facts about Buddy, you will sympathize his recent plight in the park. We were stalking squirrels when all of the sudden Buddy spotted one in the distance, a black squirrel at the foot of the tree eating a hunk of french bread that some kindly visitor had left out. Buddy started straight for him and I thought, "Oh it will be cute. He'll chase the sqiurrel up the tree and then he'll get to eat the bread and it will kind of be like he caught and killed his prey but without the killing and the blood and the illegalness." Imagine my surprise when the squirrel ran up the tree with the hunk of bread the size of his body. He then sat on a branch looking casually down at us, munching his bread.

More surprising still was that Buddy didn't seem to care. I thought the double burn of missing out on both squirrel and bread would send him into a frenzy of barking and whining and jumping about but instead he sat calmly, watching, for a few minutes and then moved on. I don't know whether it was all too much for him to handle or if he was thinking "That's right, get nice and fat, I'll be back next week...." I'd like to think it was the latter but Buddy hasn't given too many signs of being much of a mastermind. If we try to play with him by tossing a bedsheet over him, he can't even figure out how to get out from under it. He'll just struggle for a minute and then lay down and wait for us to take it off. It's a good thing he's pretty.

Gwyneth Paltrow, how wrong I was about you

So the other day I doing a little surfing and I came across this story about Gwyneth Paltrow:

LONDON (KP International) Just because you're one of Hollywood's top stars doesn't mean you couldn't use a decent pay cheque once in a while.
Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently 'fessed up that the reason she took a much-criticized job as a spokesmodel for cosmetic giant Este Lauder was because she needed the cash.
"I basically stopped making money from acting in 2002," she was quoted as saying. "All the things I've done since then have been things I've really wanted to do and I have not made money from them.
Paltrow, who is expecting her second child with hubby Chris Martin, has also reportedly been singing the praises of girdles. "You think, 'It's fine because I'm pregnant so I'm meant to be fat.' But afterwards it doesn't go for a while, so girdles are good to raise the morale.

Seriously? Girdles? This is just so sad. So a new mother who has a bit of trouble losing her baby weight should wear a girdle so as not to offend the rest of the world with post-partum body? Um. Okay. Because the worst thing that could ever happen, ever, is for a woman to gain some weight while pregnant and not lose it the instant she delivers. Oh, well, not the worst thing, the worst thing, apparently, is for said weight to not be disguised by uncomfortable, grippy, smothering, tight undergarments. That's the worst thing. And Gwyneth Paltrow? Please. Her with pregnancy weight is still skinnier than 90% of the women on the planet.



I mean, I get that she feels a little self-conscious since she's used to being super thin. I get that she's just trying to boost her self-esteem a little. But it's just so disappointing. GP has generally come across as intelligent, thoughtful, if not outright feminist then at least in line with feminist values. So to find her endorsing girdles and publicly worrying about her baby weight is just such a let down. I guess she's lost whatever "sensitivity" she said she gained from donning the fatsuit for Shallow Hal.