Haulin' ass involves ignoring the puppy rules

Worked from home today - beginning of a long weekend - in the hope that four straight days home will bring some order to the chaos.

I have a 'daily routine for puppy' that someone gave me. It involves bringing puppy outside for a pee 13 times a day.

This puppy's puppy likes to take about 20 minutes to decide if/when/where the deed will be done.

So 13 x 20 = 260 minutes = 4 hours 20 minutes = I don't friggin' think so.

Plus two x one hour walks = 6 hours 20 minutes.

Which is the total time I have in the day when I'm not sleeping or working or commuting.

This is my problem. Trying to follow the correct raising of a puppy rules.

The correct raising of a puppy rules are for people who have time to follow them.

Like many people who have dogs I have to go to work (or work from home) plus run the house plus do the shopping plus spend time on FaceBook plus sleep plus eat plus converse with lovedd ones plus plus plus.

Himself has had to work 13 hour shifts all week including an all-nighter tonight and on Sunday night, so he hasn't been able to help.

How do other people do the 'daily puppy routine'?

Me, I've decided puppy's daily routine is whatever the hell Queenie decides it is.

And she better learn to pee around it.

So there.

Ass-hauling has begun.

Now.... ignoring dirty house.... can someone give me a manual for that that I can tear up and scatter around the slightly chewed acacia wood coffee table?

Murakami's well, Queenie not so much

What do you do when you can feel your fingernails slipping and you yourself sliding headfirst down Murakami's well, even though there is no earthly reason for it to happen right now because, according to everyone, you have reached the personal nirvana for which you have strived for so long?

Do you give in to the pull and let yourself slide down a little bit? Making it that bit harder to get up.

Do you haul yourself out again? Knowing the struggle that entails.

Do you ask someone to pull you out? Who can ask that of someone else?

Chemicals don't work.

I guess it's time to start haulin' ass.

Shannon arrives at Eagle Drive

Hi, I'm Shannon and I've come here to live in East Lawrencetown with Queenie and Himself. I am nine weeks old, but I am a big girl already. I have David Bowie eyes and a wolf face but I am a sweetie really.

So far, I've jumped in and out of the mud hole lots of times and chased the cat from next door, and gone to the beach and tried to eat all the seaweed there and the foam, and chewed the deck and Little 'Un's jacket and some other stuff.

I like blueberry pancakes. And digging in Himself's vegetable patch. And peeing in the flower garden. I don't like the bristle brush on the barbeque much though, I tried to chew it and the bristles pricked my mouth, so I barked at it.

It's hot today, so I'm gonna go lie in the shade a little.

Is my secret Knuckelrock shame really shameful? Or should I give myself up to Twitter?

While playing my nine new iTunes songs, the iTunes made me listen to Nickelback's If today was your last day?

Although I note there isn't a question mark in the song title.

Which kinda sums it all up for me.

I am the kind of person who thinks that you should put a friggin' question mark at the end of a question.

Therefore, Nickelback OFFENDS ME.

Because they are the worst kind of kock rock.

I am a girl who knows her Killers from her Kings of Leon; her Cary Brothers from her Kathleen; her K'naan from her Kaos.

But still, when I listen to a Nickelback song, my body escapes from me and sort of twists around like a teenager at his first disco.

Which further OFFENDS ME.

Because I am being marketed.

And I friggin' hate being marketed.

On a sidebar, I also noticed that the song is edging towards that christian rock crap that's going on in Canada right now, a Nickelback finds god kinda thing which I was really hoping NB would ignore.... but no... they've crunched the numbers and moved slightly to the righteous.

But anyways, I have a secret Nickelback shame. Which I can indulge because I am pledged to a man who thinks NB is great. And ToaD. Which is also a secret shame of mine - Santa Monica being the Chocolate Lake anthem of course.

And 3 Doors Down.

But I really hate 3DD.

And Snow Patrol.

Retch...

So here's the rub.

I have a Twitter account.

I would die rather than tweet @Queenie_NS Nickelback playing while Queenie blogs her latest intellectual thoughts.

Why?

Because Twitter is a haiku-type format. That calls for irony or outrage or one of the other pithy emotions.

And NB is a personal, unexplainable vice that needs context in order to set up the necessary irony.

Which is not possible in a haiku.

Well not for my brain anyway.... submissions welcome btw....

I'm reading a great book at the moment, about the social history of Europe from 1648 - 1815.

It's so heavy I have to steal one of Himself's pillows to prop it up to read in bed.

The chapter I read last night was about manufacturing, and it extolled the invention of the cotton ginny/ jenny as the pivotal moment in wealth creation.

I can understand something like that.

Holy fuck... Mozart's Requiem just ended and faded into Nickelback. Waaagh!! Although nice to see iTunes is still as ironic as ever.

Apart from the fact that this fact was beaten into me in school by Jim Loftus (figuratively beaten of course), it's obvious. It created cheap clothes. It increased the role of the state in the affairs of the individual because manufacturers needed workers. It created opportunities for home-based work, which helped break not only the power of some of the guilds (thus unleashing innovation), but the concept of serfdom and the seigneur, and consequently helped ease the plight of European peasants.

Of course when you think about it, as Jim Loftus made us do back in the eighties, it was the reason for the huge spike in slave traffic as well.

So, it changed the way the world operated. It improved things for some poor people and disimproved things for others and ruined the lives of still others completely.

Nowadays, people talk about social media like it's the new cotton jinny.

I wish someone would write a book and explain why being able to talk to everyone all the time on a number of platforms is good for me. And bad for others. And devastating for another group.

Or vice versa.

Or just recommend the book if it's already written.

So I won't feel like I'm being marketed.

Which I have felt since 2001.

I suppose this is how you feel when you are living through a seismic shift in something or other.

I guess I better just live every day like it's my last... like a good littel knuckeldragger!

Should we move to Halifax II

Well, not right now because it's raining again.

That's because it's a summer Friday.

It's a summer Friday.

So we gotta rain down on all the poor plebs, who went to the liquor store, just in case it was warm enough to sit on the deck and enjoy a cold one.

You can sit on the deck tonight and enjoy a cold one.

Drip-drip-dripping down the back of your neck.

So I am inside.

Alone.

With a glass of wine.

First one all week.

I had an intense urge to hear Once in a Lifetime, by Talking Heads, so I just popped onto iTunes and bought it.

And some Alabama 3, and some K'naan, and some Cary Brothers, and some Mozart.

And you may ask yourself.... how did I get here?

And then some Nickelback, so I won't feel too guilty.

I won't tell Himself about the Nickelback until tomorrow but.

Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.

A wet Friday in July.

Come to Halifax for the weather.

I did.

People here literally fall around laughing when I tell them that.

They think it's one of my 'Irish jokes'.

The absurdist tinge to my humour which comes from being Irish is not really gotten here, but it is tolerated, which is as much as I can hope for.

But it is actually true.

The summer I came here, I was backpacking, I worked outside on a farm all summer, I met the love of my life, and therefore, the sun shone everyday.

So I figured it would always be like this.

Of course it still shines in my heart every day here.... aaah....

Letting the days go by...

Wow, I had forgotten about the crappy muddled ending to that song!

But yeah... to return to my point... despite the wonderfulness of the finding of the soulmate and soulcountry, the weather turned out to be the same as it ever was.

So don't move here for the weather.

Is my point I think.

Like I did.

So should we move to Halifax Canada?

Interesting question.

It was in a comment I got the other day.

I don't know. I don't even live in Halifax anymore, I live thirty kilometres from the bridge across the harbour to the city. And I commute in and out every day. Twenty minute drive, then thirty minute bus journey. Longer in the winter.

But I did live there for over three years.

I suppose it depends on where you're starting from.

I mean, if you live in Victoria, BC, then I would imagine you are swapping one city for another similar city, minus the balmy climate.

Why do people move anywhere anyways?

I moved because I was bored and despairing with a 463 square foot apartment in a complex that had a sign stating that children should not play on the grass. It was looking like that was the pinnacle of my existence and there was a little voice inside me that said somewhere there's a house with a nice guy and a dog and a garden just waiting for me to find it.

Which reminds me... why is the dog guy not emailing me back?? We want the puppy NOW!!

But Halifax was a sort of random end point. It could have been somewhere else. It just happened that the job turned up, and then the little yellow house found me, and then the guy moved in, and then his job turned up, and then the credit union got on board, and finally the house that we bought emerged out of the mess of For Sale signs we were sifting through.

Still waiting on the D-O-O-O-O-G!!

At the same time, there isn't anything I particularly dislike about Halifax.

Apart from the mayor.

Someday in about six years I will get my citizenship and then he'd better watch the hell out if he's still mayor.

Well, there are a few things I dislike:

- the wind tunnel downtown caused by the high-rise development on the waterfront
- the tumbleweed zone that is Barrington St. which is mostly owned by one guy who papers over shop fronts with Starfish Properties logos while he waits for ... what? A mayor who will let him knock it all down and build more high-rises?

If you can't get this one to do it... you'll be waiting Mr. Resnick, or whatever your name is.

All the great stores I hung out in when I moved here are gone - Sam the Record Man, Ginger's Bar, Dooley's pool hall are closed, the craft gallery is off down the waterfront somewhere I can't find. The pawn shop is gone, the little clothes place beside it. I knew the staff in all those stores; before I had any friends here, I talked to them most days.

Before you know it, John Doull will cave to Starfish, the bookshop will be gone, and that will be the end of a beautiful little street.

I will be forced to shop at the Mic Mac Mall like everyone else. I may consider another province when that happens.

SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED, MR. MAYOR!!

Other things:
- floatables, obviously
- the crappy bus system, which means I have to drive anytime I want to go slightly off-track
- the half hour lunch break. I mean, why can't we have an hour, like a normal city? We have fantastic restaurants here, we should have French eating hours, so they can make money and I can digest.

The fact that lunchtime is announced with a cannon roar every day rocks though.

The city itself is beautiful, a ramshackle pile of old and new all huddled up against the hills sheltering from the wind and the rain. Nice parks. Nice residential areas. Lots of room.

NO TRAFFIC.

Like I said, it depends on where you're coming from... if you're coming from Kennetcook well yes the traffic is terrible. But I came from Dublin, where the traffic IS terrible.

Quirky shops and did I mention the great restaurants?

Anyhoo, have to go watch Breaking Bad episode 4 with Himself and eat strawberry and rhubarb pie. More about this anon....

The summer is not living up to my expectations

I am getting the teensiest bit annoyed with my summer so far. We've had the occasional spell of good weather, but mostly it's been rain on the weekend, followed by cloud, then glorious sun just at the point of the week where I am stuck into a piece of work and can't take a lunch break, followed by a glorious Friday evening drive home to the barbeque, whereupon the clouds descend for another two days of rain.

Which is making our mosquitoes legion. And legendary in size.

And of course no camping. Because if I wanted to go camping in the rain, I would have stayed in Ireland and bought a tent there.

Although all our vegetables are growing away like there's no problem with the clouds, my carefully planted humming-bird attracting flowers are mouldering away in pots on the deck.

No humming birds this year I guess.

My photography sessions have been non-existent this year so far, as I cannot be assed taking more pictures of the fog around the lake.

And now my laptop is starting to die.

My laptop is well over five years old of course, and in computer years that's about 120, so it is entitled to be a little cranky and slow.

But I don't want to spend money on a new laptop right now.

Because I am Fear of deh Credit Card Bill Girl.

Dear weather gods, make something nice and bright and extended happen soon, please.

Despite using the word extraordinary too much, Queenie is pleased

Something extraordinary happened to me today.

I only use the word extraordinary because on reflection I used it a little too much in the experience I am talking about.

A woman I know and deeply respect agreed to my request, nay demand, that she interview me for a podcast series she's doing for the Mount (MSVU - Halifax) about political communication.

She had mentioned the series during a phone call about something else.

I hopped on it immediately, which is unlike me. Usually I wait to be asked.

But now I am 39 probably indefinitely, and the askings aren't getting any thicker (unlike the effing mosquitoes in our yard), so along with my youth I am losing my shame about these things.

Anyway, she agreed and I sent her some ideas, and then she came along the other day with her laptop and her headphones and after we had had a long conversation about current political events, I had to arrange myself and speak into the middle distance about my time with the Rainbow Coalition (Irish government 1995 - 97), and I was having a bad day and all the prep I had planned hadn't got done, so I explained that I was going to have to wing it.

Some day I will do something that I don't pull out of my ass at the very last second.

Some day.

Anyway, it was extraordinary. Instead of silence, the words just poured out of me.... except for the bits where I was supposed to point out my learnings. I struggled with them. I used the word extraordinary too much and I lost my train of though trying to describe the internecine bullshit of the post-ceasefire handshake ballet....

But she urged me on with her eyes.

First learning is, I am a media whore like everyone else. I didn't want to stop talking. In fact, if I hadn't had to go pick up Little 'Un from his art class I would be still talking.

She sent me the podcast tonight. I listened to it twice.

It was extraordinary.

It was coherent. The nuances of some of the issues are conspicuous by their absence, but I was speaking to an audience who knows nothing of coalition. Unlike us Irish.

Second learning, I cannot believe how much I remember of those days. They must be seared on my brain.

Third learning, I got a strange feeling about myself when I listened back.

Normally when I talk about that time I am careful to point out how junior I was, how irrelevant I was. This time, there wasn't time to explain all that, so I chose my words carefully to try to get the message across and I did to a certain extent, but I also heard myself describe situations where I think now I probably did help out in the sticking together of the various bits of that communications experience.

It strikes me as extraordinary that it took a woman teacher from that great woman's university to record the unrecorded work of a woman who didn't even realise she was doing something useful back in 1996.

And so it joins the canon of the quiet work that women do everywhere that is never celebrated.

The second part of my recent media whoredom is my imminent guest appearance on another Halifax blog tomorrow. I had to write a letter to my home town... Dublin.

It's a little mawkish. But I love the piece.

I'm dying to see what the reaction is.

I hope I am busy in work tomorrow or else I will spend all day fretting over comments/ lack of comments.

MEDIA WHORE!!!

I'm thinking though... maybe now I am nearly forty I can finally find the confidence to like my voice. I don't mean my actual voice. I like my voice, even though it is a little lispy on air, which it isn't in my head.

Is it lispy?

I mean my opinions.

stop laughing, people from Ireland...

and people from Nova Scotia...

No, that's not right. Yous are all laughing too much.

I mean my reflections on my experiences. Which are legion, and pretty interesting in a boring kind of way.

I think I heard something in that podcast.

I think I wrote something in that piece.

I think I might have something useful to say.

Finally.

Being Dave Gorman-ish

Dave Gorman is a British comedian who made a name for himself by finding all (well, enough for a tv show) the other Dave Gormans in the world and then going to meet them.

I thought of him the other day when I googled myself (not out of vanity, it was a work thing..... no really it was...), and I was not only not the only person with my name in the googliverse, but the other one (who is a healthcare worker in Saskatchewan apparently) topped me in the results.
Queenie lost the top spot in her own SEO project... doesn't bode well for her future in deh world of deh online ...

But actually, after the shock, I was really thrilled. I have a very unusual name, so finding an exact namesake was pretty cool after about eight years of intermittent searching.

So then this evening I thought... Twitter has a search function...

And I'm able to blog because Himself and Little 'Un have gone fishing without me. Not that I wasn't invited. But it was that kind of invitation you get after they've spent four hours in the shed getting two rods ready and preparing the worms for trout and the thingummies for mackarel just in case, and discussed possible spots for both possibilities and packed the car and put on their fishing boots and are heading out the door sort of pretending I am welcome to come along.

So I said no.

Because if I were to go there would be delays because there would have to be blankets and chairs and thermos', and strawberry shortcake and all kinds of shenanigans. Which is why I don't get invited in the first place.

So it's all good.

I went mackarel fishing once and caught about fifty and it truly was the coolest thing I've ever done apart from taking the hooks out of their poor mouths and killing them.

Anyways, back to Twitter... where nobody dies... unless they're tweeting from Iran.

First of all I put my surname in the search engine and came up with someone who loved my brother's online tennis commentary from Wimbledon so much they posted it to Twitter.

Tennis?

Tennis!!!!!!!!!!!

D'ya have strahwbrees widdat, Baz?

So then I got myself orientated and typed my surname into the Find People engine which is what I meant to do (although it is always nice to see my brother online).

Aaron from Dallas, known as GoPearl, is an artist and writer who works hard saving companies money on their telecommunications. And only tweets about that. He sounds like a typical corporate dick, which is a pity because he's probably miserable (well I would be if I was an artist that had to spend all my time being a corporate dick).

Aaron, what you need to do dude, is to engage in the family tradition of sarcasm loaded with irony in your tweeting, in order to survive. Probably wouldn't save the companies that much money though.
300 followers.

Such a waste of a perfectly good following...

Benjamin from Arizona, otherwise known as Skulljammer is a comic book writer and has been up for 54 hours meeting deadlines.
120 followers. (plus me now so 121).

Dave won't say where he's from but he's moaning about the absence of UK adapters and he sounds like a Brit. He's here for a good time, not a long time.
34 followers.

Probably should vote for mr cameron next time then dave, if you're so fucking jingoistic you can't buy a universal adapter, yet so embarrased you can't put BRIT on your profile.

Matt from Phillie State doesn't like to use his full 140 chtrs. 'chillin'. 'summer'. 'witness'. etc. Having said that, he mourns the passing of Harry Kalas, the celebrated Phillie sports commentator who passed away during a commentary recently.
34 followers too.

A man of few words.

Must be from the Queen Dad branch of our surname tree.

Scott, also known as Mr. Blur, who is from a phone number rather than a place, is an avid cyclist who is tired of people thinking the world is their ashtray.
31 followers.

Well, guess what, Scott, me and my big fuck-off SUV, we're tired of people thinking the world is their velodrome.

Shannon, otherwise known as Supergrrrl, from Toronto is funny. And the first girl on the list.
30 followers. One of which is The Onion.

Attagirl!!!

John is my personal favourite. He appears to be in Iran, and he has the mullet to blend in well. But he's no Persian so far as I can see.
Give me liberty or give me death.
28 followers.

Here's a thought. You could actually pretend you were somewhere you weren't and tweet about it and get away with it, couldn't you... or am I missing some major Twitter honesty protocol.

This is my problem with Twitter.

That and the fact that the person from The Coast who is tweeting from the virgin mudfest is either really stressed or getting really drunk and incomprehensible, so even if I wanted to memorise the tweets and pretend I was at the concert I might make a big faux pas.... but then I could just pretend I was drunk....

which really is the key issue I have with twitter.

there is no truth protocol when you are dealing with 140 characters or less.

Having said that, look at all the nice people with whom I share DNA whom I have tracked down in just one hour.

There are pages and pages and pages of people with my surname on Twitter.

Follow one. Just for the hell of it.

Me, I'd go for the BeachBandito, otherwise known as Bruce.

That's me when I'm old.

Without the beard obviously.

Foggy times in the Maritimes

"To get people to care about your blog they have to not care at all about your "blog." And they shouldn't. Just words on a page, after all. They need to care about things much more interesting than that.Those things are: The story. The content. The offer."

I am stealing these words from a PR guy in Halifax, Joel, who describes himself as a vegan nerd and marketing asshole. Which I like. He has a blog about social media which you can read here.

He goes on to talk about different types of offer, and the content/ story they should contain.

I fall into his what happens in my life variety blogger I think.

The offer: catch up on what I'm doing without paying for a phone call/ reading FB/ writing me an email to ask whassup.

The content: sporadic, a bit same same, and generally self-obsessed.

The story: right now the story is that there's been no sun here for a long long time and so everyone in Halifax is becoming mildly psychotic, including me and Himself.

So yeah, sporadic, same same, self-obsessed, mildly psychotic post coming up.

If I could be arsed.

Maybe I'll just check the Weather Network again instead ... to see if the Weather Canada joke's finished.

The joke being that the prairie foodbowl is suffering a terrible drought this summer and we are flailing in fog and drowning in mizzle here on the Eastern Shore.

I have already checked it twelve times today.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/index.php?product=weather&placecode=CANS0057#ltermfx

OHMYGOD... the sunshine peeping out from the clouds picture is up for Sunday!!!

No wait, it says cloudy periods.

Cloudy periods means the cloud cover will be so deep that it can creep into the house when we are asleep and make our hair wet, like it did last night.

Thunder storm tonight.. oh goody.

Maybe it will clear the air, said Himself.

Maybe. Maybe the psychotic stress headache we are all getting from the humidity will go away and then the sun will come out in our hearts, if not in our atmosphere.

Maybe.

Tina called to see if we wanted to go camping.

Apart from the fact that we lent all our gear away for the weekend... eh no, I am not spending tonight in a thunder storm in a tent that is located five hours drive from here, I said.

Only 60% chance of a storm, she said. We're leaving right now if you want to come.

I love Tina. She is the most optimistic person I know.

And they are going to New France. Where the sun always shines...

No, I'm too depressed.

Canada Day, I spent trying to plant our vegetable garden up to my knees in mud.

There is nothing more irritating than being completely mud-struck while being harassed by enormous horse flies.

Enormous horse flies who were vying with the blackfly and the mosquitos for the tasty bits of me located at the base of my spine, my ears, my elbows and the bits of the backs of my knees that were above the mudline.

I lost it.

FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKING STOOOPIDDDD COUNTRYYYYY!!

I threw the spade down and watched it get sucked into the ooze that is my dream garden.

IWANNAGOHOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor Himself.

He always thinks I want to go home when I cry and say I want to go home.

Oh lord, he says, trying to cheer me up, imagine what the pioneers must have felt like!

IMAGINE??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IDON'TNEEDTOEFFIN'IMAGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started looking around with that look in my eye that Himself knows means I am looking for something to kick to death so he ran into the house and got me a beer and made me drink it so I got the hiccups the way you do when you are crying and drinking a beer really fast at the same time, so the horseflies won't get it.

After a while it kicked in and I felt better.

But the sun better come out soon.

DO YOU HEAR ME, MR. FOG???