K I T S C H — Cate's Blog

Monday, February 23, 2004

You'd be reckless to mess with, um, Ontario

Peeter called me early Saturday evening to let me know that he'd been in a minor traffic accident. He pointed out that he'd have to wait for the cops to arrive before he could even call a tow-truck, and that it might take hours. Hours!

At first I thought Peeter was exaggerating to get some sympathy. After I got off the phone with him, I went into our bedroom to try on some wicked-cheap Cotton Ginny tops I'd bought earlier. First, though, I walked over to the window to close the curtains and did a double-take as I saw that there were a number of tow-truck drivers, like, right outside our apartment building. One truck was driving off with a fender-bendered car from next to my window, but the rest of the lights belonged to various emergency vehicles that were taking care of a seven-car pile-up just slightly up the way. I suddenly realized that Peeter might indeed be a tad late getting home.

As it turned out, he'd been traveling slowly and had managed to do some nifty defensive driving on black ice to hit the curb instead of the cars ahead of him. The guy behind him wasn't as lucky, though, and ended up ramming into our car. Hey, considering the black ice situation, it's probably nobody's fault, ultimately. But do I think dealing with the insurance company is still totally going to suck? Hmm?

And have I mentioned yet today how much I love Austin, Texas? Oh, I did? But not on this blog, right? Okay. Well, consider it mentioned now.

Ministry Of Freaks, part 1

Our DMV is called the Ministry of Transport. Makes them sound all dignified and serious and competent, right? Well, they're not, unfortunately.

My ex-roommate Anita came from a small town, where I'm guessing at least half the townsfolk were inbred. How do I know this? Because the Ministry of Transport made her take her driver's licence photo wearing sunglasses.

She had to wear glasses while driving but didn't happen to have them with her. So who was driving that day? I hope it wasn't Anita. Anyway, some bright star down at the Ministry decided that Anita couldn't have her photo taken unless she put on glasses. This person then helpfully dug up a pair of sunglasses and made Anita wear them for the photo.

The result was a driver's license that Anita could have rented out to underage drinkers, had she wanted to. Basically, anyone with medium-toned skin and dark hair could have used it. Or, you know, anyone with access to some makeup and a dark wig.

Of course, making people believe it was a genuine Ontario driver's licence was a little harder, and Anita told me that writing a cheque wasn't a whole lot of fun. Getting past bouncers usually wasn't too difficult, but it could be time-consuming since, more often than not, they would laugh at the licence for a few minutes and then call someone else over to laugh at it also and then jovially let her into the club.

In case you're wondering, this is no urban legend. I saw the licence with my own eyes. Then, once I was done laughing at it for a few minutes, I called someone else over to laugh at it also.

Ministry Of Freaks, part 2

Whoever screens the licence plate allocations here is either brilliantly, subversively funny or else massively, colossally stupid. Did you know that in Ontario you can get a licence plate that says "PMS" or "WTF"? In fact, if you're lucky enough, you may even have one of those assigned to you without asking!

I don't know how I'd feel about the PMS one, but I so want a licence plate that says WTF on it.

Monday, February 16, 2004

Rabbits I have loved, pt. 1

(It's the first in an ongoing series. And I must warn you that things could get a little twee around here. You may want to leave if you're not into reading about how adorable and charming my pet bunny is -- you know, if you're, like, the Antichrist or something.)

Meet Mr. Sir Pet-A-Lot.



He's our current bunny. I love to watch people try to keep a straight face the first time they have to say his name out loud. Especially if they leave off the "Sir" or "Mr." and we have to correct them. People seem a little confused by all that. I can't imagine why.

Gwen very creatively named our bunny, inspired by his overwhelming requirements for affection. It's funny that this rabbit has been through so many homes, because he really has the best personality. Maybe he was meant to spread the love around to multiple homes. Who knows? Legend has it that when the woman who brought him in to the shelter originally saw him, he hopped up to her on the street. Right up to her, totally trusting. An abandoned street bun and a complete stranger. Mind-boggling.

The bad part is that the bunster is getting pretty old for a rabbit, and he's really slowing down. Last week he fell asleep while grooming himself. He was shaped like the letter "P" at the time -- definitely not the most comfortable-looking position. He's like a one-bun game of Twister. If he wanted to groom his left hip, he would probably turn his head around 270 degrees from his right side to do it. It's Advanced Rabbit Yoga, and our bunny invented it. In fact, jellyfish write to him, like, all the time, wanting to know when he's going to put out an exercise video.

It's good that the bunny's so bendy, though, since the onset of arthritis means that his feet are always slipping out from under him when he runs. And rabbits have notoriously weak spines. He's also entirely blind now, and pretty scruffy to boot. In short, he's turning more and more into the Velveteen Rabbit every single day. And it's killing me. It's possible that I have, you know, "loss issues."

I'm happy, though, that our guy manages to find his way around amazingly well. When we moved into this new apartment a few months back, Mr. Sir Pet-A-Lot was only half-blind. For the first week or so, he had this new routine while exploring the apartment. He would take little trips from his cage in all different directions to sniff things, always heading back to the burrow every ten to fifteen seconds. I'm convinced he was building a mental map of the place to ensure he will always know the quickest way back to the burrow in case any hawks or owls should happen to fly through our living room.

We encourage the bunny to run every day, but it doesn't always happen. Some days Peeter has to lift him onto the couch for petting and then lift him back into the cage afterward. But Pet-A-Lot's normal routine is that he jumps out of his cage and hops around the apartment for awhile, making sure nothing's changed. Bunnies are creatures of ritual, don't you know. They're also extremely trainable and adaptable, by the way.

After hopping, Pet-A-Lot jumps onto the couch for a little head-petting. That's right, head-petting. And if you're not petting his head, he'll move around and gently nudge your hand until you figure it out. And if you don't...well, he really has no recourse but to nudge your hand again and again until you finally get it.

Gawd, humans can be slow.

When the bunny's had enough with the head-petting, he sniffs around to see whether it's Peeter or me who's holding the nut treat. Unlike petting styles, nut treats are wide open. In fact, the bunny will accept just about anything in the nut-treats department. Anything from A(lmond) to W(alnut) is fair game, and if you want to invent a nut whose name starts with "Z," he won't argue.

Okay, don't tell the vet, but we usually give the bunny more than one nut. Pet-A-Lot's really not supposed to have any nuts at all. (Oh, shut up. And yes, he has been neutered.) But how can you deny a skinny, old, blind bunny one of the greatest pleasures of his life? Would you tell your grandma she can't have any cranberry sauce with her turkey at Thanksgiving? Of course not. Now, it's true that Thanksgiving happens pretty much every day around here, as far as the bunny and nut-treats are concerned, but never mind that. The bunny has a cast-iron stomach.

Time for an important biology question. Can rabbits count? We figured probably not, so we call these treats "Nut" and "Nut Again."

Hey, wait a second! What do you mean, I've vastly exceeded the recommended cutesiness quotient for this post? Because it's about to get even worse, you know.

Awhile back we started encouraging the bunny to hop onto us to find the nut treat. And that is working out remarkably well, thank you. At least I think so. Who knows what the bunny thinks, though?

Here's me:

Aw, the bunny wants to hop up onto my chest! He loves me! He wants to be the son that I'm afraid to attempt to have because I'm so damn scared of pregnancy and childbirth!

And here's the bunny:

Well, it is kind of weird that she wants me to hop up onto her chest to get a nut treat, but whatever. I am bunny! I'm trainable. Adaptable too!

Of course, none of this is any weirder than the fact that my burrow is a wire cage done up retro-style to look like an old-school Howard Johnson's, or that the people had me castrated just because I liked to hump the stuffed-animal husky dog. Hey, whatever happened to that chick anyway? Dang, she was HOTT!!!

So, on Saturday we brought Mr. Sir Pet-A-Lot to the vet to get his eye pressure checked. I've been trying not to freak out over the past week while anticipating this. If the bunny develops glaucoma, he may need to have his eyes removed, and, quite frankly, I don't know if we could afford the surgery. Even worse, Pet-A-Lot's so old and frail now that the prognosis for surviving an operation like that isn't great.

Last Thursday he had one of his bad days, and I was convinced we'd lose him soon. For the first time ever, he flopped down on my chest and let me pet him. (Usually bunnies like to have their feet on something firmer than my flabby stomach. Plus, while I know it's inconvenient for him, I kind of have to breathe once in awhile.) Pet-A-Lot was probably just tired and figured that if I were willing to pet him, well, why say no to a good thing? Besides, you never know -- there might be another Nut Again afterward.

But being the drama queen I am, I felt like he knew he was going to die soon, and he was trying to say goodbye to me somehow. Yeah, I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but I was always the kid who used to ascribe feelings even to inanimate objects. You know, like thinking that the less-than-perfect pinecone sitting on the ground in the forest would feel bad because I picked up a prettier one. Yeah, I'm the quintessential INFP.

So I lay there and scratched the bunny's head and cried a little while I tried to convey just how much we love and appreciate him. Like the bountiful attention and treats over all these years wouldn't attest to that. It's not like rabbits are stupid, you know.

And it turns out the bunny's okay for now. He's got a bit of an eye infection, but we'll give him some eyedrops for that and plan for him to be around awhile longer.

I'm guessing it wouldn't hurt to deal better with some of my loss issues, though.

Sunday, February 15, 2004

Poetry Corner

I know that spam poetry is old news, but I found this missive to be so beautiful that I just had to share:

When living with polar bear is saintly, from toothache write a love letter to omphalos about cheese wheel.When you see living with cup, it means that swamp defined by strokes.Most piroshki believe that garbage can of judge give lectures on morality to tape recorder beyond.related to wedding dress recognize microscope over bubble, but over fundraiser can be kind to around bullfrog.

Did you know that "omphalos" means "navel" in Greek?

Beautiful and educational.

Saturday, February 07, 2004

Culinary accomplishment of dubious value

Today I made Hollandaise sauce for the first time. I did it from scratch the old-fashioned way, and it turned out very well. (Thanks, Julia!) Unfortunately, I now know what goes into it.

That would be almost an entire stick of butter per serving of Eggs Benedict. Wow. And it's not like our plates were even swimming in the stuff. It was pretty much the same amount of sauce any decent brunch place would give you.

It turns out we could have added even more butter to this sauce than we did, but I'm a little hazy on why anyone would want to do that. Apparently, each egg yolk is capable of absorbing up to 3/4 stick of butter. Okay, that's nice. But how did someone even come up with that idea in the first place?

I'm convinced this sauce was invented on a dare. A couple of chefs are hitting the sauce (heh-heh -- oh, never mind) and challenging each other to come up with the most revolting-sounding combo. One chef is giggling drunkenly as he keeps adding more and more butter to an egg yolk to see how much it can take. Take that, jaune d'oeuf stupide!

I'm sure the fact that Hollandaise is delicious is a total fluke. And just because an egg yolk allegedly will absorb 3/4 of a stick of butter doesn't mean you actually want it to.

Or maybe you do. I lived in this amazing building for a year when I was at university. The best real estate I'll ever live in, it was across the street from the Royal Ontario Museum and within spitting distance of the park with all the insanely friendly black squirrels who will take nuts right out of your hand if you want them to. And once I wrote a paper on a bunch of Margaret Atwood books and was pleasantly surprised to realize that I could see at least half the locations in the novels from my balcony. But I digress.

Each floor had a little kitchen with a fridge and stove and some basic cooking utensils. One day someone put up a note on the fridge that read, "Thanks to whoever stole our 1/2 a pound of butter, thus depriving us of our lunch." My friend Hilary and I cruelly laughed ourselves silly as we tried to imagine how you'd make a meal out of half a pound of butter.

I suppose you could cut it up into pats for hors d'oeuvres. I've heard of people eating butter pats before a night of hard drinking to coat their stomachs. I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd actually try that, mind you. And that's coming from someone who adores butter. I don't mind booze much either.

Then a soup course, I think. Keckler once made a soup out of butter and scallions. Of course, she was a child at the time, not a university student.

What do you do for a main course, though? The only thing Hilary and I could think of was that these people were planning on making mozz sticks, but with butter. You know, butt sticks. Sadly, Googling "butt sticks" turns up no recipes. I guess I'll just have to write my own. Here goes.

Butt Sticks

1/2 lb. butter
bread crumbs
oil

1. Cut butter into mozzarella-stick-sized pieces.


2. Don't bother going through the usual flour/egg/bread-crumb rigmarole. Bread crumbs alone will probably do you just fine here. Roll the butt sticks in them.


3. Heat up some oil until it's hot enough to, you know, deep-fry stuff in.


4. Deep-fry butt sticks.


5. Serve with your favourite dipping sauce.

Mmm, so tasty, I'm sure. Now, I haven't got around to testing this one, so you'll have to do it at your own risk. But please do let me know how it turns out. If it works, I may try selling it to Long John Silver's. Or those Lunchables people.

Ah, but back to brunch. I just want to point out that we used low-carb bread instead of the usual English muffins you get with Eggs Benedict. So this may, in fact, be the perfect diet meal.

Next on my list of domestic endeavours: I attempt to make a decorative table skirt for the weird IKEA shelf thing under our bathroom sink.

Sunday, February 01, 2004

My maturity shines through strong and clear

In between bouts of rigorous napping, combined with hacking up a lung or two, I dragged out my old copy of Civilization II, one of the best games ever. I was in sort of a purple mood, so I played the Sioux nation. Except I'd forgotten how funny all the city names are.

Okay, Wildcat Valley just sounds like a fairly tame '60s porno. But Slim Buttes? First Wind? Big Mound? Hee! My inner 10-year-old is having a damn field day.

Of course, my head is currently chock-full of phlegm, and I call Schenectady, NY, my hometown. So, you know, you might not want to take the inner 10-year-old too, too seriously.