The Babs Journal: Day 1 (May 9, 2005)

I tried to enclose the actual journal in block quotes, because from time to time, I have to make remarks on what happened, notes from now to my past self, if you will. So off we go.

Here I am. Holy shit. I stayed up all night last night because I’m a big dope and didn’t want to pack right away. So I sat and talked to people on the phone, got the pants scared off me by some sergeant major who lives in Guelph and went to Guiding Eyes. I don’t know if I believe I have to be that severe. Oh well, anyway, suffice it to say that I spent the time I should have been packing on the phone. So, Headrick began to pack and found that she had to fill her suitcase and backpack to capacity, as well as a plastic bag. Almost split a few zippers in the process. Woops.

Note from present self to past self: That was your first mistake. Somehow, you did not realize you would be bringing home more than you brought, so you packed way too much clothes. Past self, there is a reason that they make laundry available to students for free. Even though you’re gone for two and a half weeks, you do not have to have a fresh outfit for each day. Well, part of that was the fact that when you asked if towels were provided, you didn’t get a straight answer, so it wasn’t all your fault. But it’s all about the laundry!

Really I didn’t pack that much. It was just this rainsuit I bought for shite weather that really mucked up the works. But I’m sure I’ll find a reason to appreciate it.

Oh, it was appreciated. I remember a muddy day in the grassy paddock.

My train ride was…eventful but pleasant. Got on the train in Guelph with this woman who was going to Ottawa to see the tulip festival. Her son is also pretty messed up from a brutal home-invasion and has spent a month in hospital. Yikes. Anyway, I got to talk to her, and then Sharon, the first classmate I knew about, got on the train at Gildwood. Oo that was exciting. I managed to cause a bit of a stirr unintentionally. I said there was another blind lady getting on at Gildwood and I was hoping she could sit near me. Then, because I had mentioned that there would be another of my class on the train with me, the lady who I was sitting with piped up, saying “she’s going for a guide dog too.” So the conductor’s looking around for a blink with a woof, there’s a blink, but no woof. Now, poor Sharon started thinking she had to bring woof back to school, and got all flustered. She’s cool. We talked in between falling asleep and wondering why our train kept coming to a complete and utter stop. But it was fun.

Then we got off the train, and one of us almost lost our stuff. Woops. Well not really, it was just that nobody knew exactly where her bag went and so it was great fun. Sue Hawkins, the head trainer at the school, picked us up. So far I have seen no sign of scary Jane, the head of the school and the lady who taught me orientation and mobility stuff when I was a wee little girl. You can tell what kind of a rapport we had, can’t ya? ***update*** I saw scary Jane. She came in when we were signing agreements. Luckily, that was *after* I got busted for falling asleep while Sue Hawkins read the contract.

My instructor’s name is Tim. He’s a cool dude. Very very very patient and unintimidating. must save file, Tim is knocking.

Ok, have gone on tour of building. Pretty basic but pretty cool. I’ve been handed my dog dish. That’s weird. I’m gonna get my beast tomorrow!

All my classmates are nice. Sharon seems like a nice lady, she’s got a hint of sarcasm which I think is fun. She thinks I’m funny for having two exploding bags.

And so she should. Exploding bags don’t usually take new contents very well.

She’s like what are you bringing a rainsuit for. I’ve hung up my stuff, everything has a home already.

It’s a little chilly in here…we have central air and it’s on full swing. I have a long-sleeved shirt and some jeans and I’m a little ber ber chillie.

I will be able to send from my rogers. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t have access to my email account somehow. They really lock up the computer in the day time. You can only use it in the evenings.

Note to past self: You will learn that that is the biggest pile of bullshit you’ll ever hear. You have access to the grooming room all the time, and they never lock the actual computer room, so all you have to do is go into the computer room from the grooming room whenever you have free time.

I’m gonna have fun finding the computer room. Haha. But it’s in this giant grooming room with a huge bench and there’s an exercise machine in one corner, and the dog food is in here. And here’s something weird. In the room where the beast is, not the canine beast, but the computer beast, there’s a ham radio. Of all things a ham radio! Hello blind geeks.

But my three classmates are all different. Sharon is Sharon. Funny, young, cool. Margery is cool, but in a grandmotherly sort of way. She’s from Kingston. If she’d just been on a train a bit earlier, there would have been three blind mice on the train.

It’s too bad that Margery is no longer with us. What an unfortunate chain of events that was.

And Tim the student, well he seems cool, but quite bitter, bitter about blindness, but it sounds like he has good reason. He’s from Winnipeg. Wonder if he knows another certain dick from Winnipeg that I had not so good business dealings with. Man that would have sucked if said dick was a student here. Ooo! dangerous! Dangerous combo! I would have been able to be civil with him but considering the elba, which I’m using to write this, the Elba he sold me, is a piece of garbage, it would have been kind of tense. I like it, it just isn’t what it was supposed to be. And he owes me money…anyway enough asides, Tim’s from Winnipeg, flew in. I think he’ll still be cool.

My head aches. I mean I had lots of food, didn’t make it through even half of my train loot that I brought…I was too tired/nervous/everything in between. But Sue Hawkins is a doll. She bought us, Sharon and I, Timmy Ho’s bagels.

There are strange practices here. When you enter and leave a room, you have to knock on the door, no matter which side you come from. Apparently this is so that other people know you’re coming out…and if your dog is sleeping and you have to leave him in the room, the knock will let him know that ya might just come toddling on in.

If they’d only had tie-downs, people wouldn’t have had to leave loose dogs in rooms, but that school didn’t believe in tie-downs. Ok then. Whatever.

But it’s really weird to knock on a door while leaving it, to knock on a lounge door. It’s weird.

Apparently dinner’s at 6. I don’t know what to do with myself. I could wander,and likely will later, but I don’t wanna get lost in front of the instructor. As unintimidating and patient as he is, I wanna save the fuckuppery for another day.

Ooo! The email will open up in like 20 minutes. I can’t phone mom and pop until 6 cause that’s when my cellphone minutes kick in.

I can’t believe it’s happening. This place really feels like my temporary home. It’s like having a res room all over again. There’s a desk, which I’m writing on now, they have a clock, which does *not* talk, way to go ace, but oh well, I brought a clock radio, so suck it. There’s a nice big closet. There’s a place for the doggy dish to go, there’s a doggy bed. Ooo! a doggy bed! right beside my bed. Ber. a little chilly though. Wonder if I can control the heat. Dont think so because Tim was telling me where everything was.

I’m kicking myself for bringing a towel, I wasn’t sure if they provided them or not, I asked and got a wishy-washy anser. They did in fact provide towels. Arg! The towel was totally most of the cause of my split-zipper fun…that and the rainsuit. After all that, it better get put to use one day. Just one day and then it can be nice again.

Oh, and I realize that on top of all this shite, I’m going to have more to bring home. Thank god I’m taking mamma and papa transit back to Guelph.

Note to past self: It’s good that you finally got aboard the train of reality. It’s too bad you were almost too late.

Anyway, enough boring gabble that’s probably more mundane than watching paint dry. Tomorrow will be much more exciting. Later dudes.

Small update. Have eaten my first meal here. The housekeeper, Anka, is a real doll. She served us food and took really good care of us. She sleeps here at night. We signed our training contract, and a couple other small forms. Scary Jane remembers me! aaa aaa aaa! She said I was nothing but trouble, jokingly I have to admit. She sounded nothing like I remember. So it’s official, scary Jane remembers me!

After we signed all that shite, we had to practice exiting the premises. I already got lost once, not during the fire drill thankfully enough.

I’m very tired now. Will try and send this.

Steve, this is justice for you. I’m having to edit a doggy journal and fix all the lines. So you aren’t the only one to go through this.

The Long-Lost Babs Journals

Believe it or not, we’re coming up on a year of Trixie goodness. I left last March 18 and took that big plane-ride to California and had no idea about my dog. All I knew was they’d founda match. This got me thinking about all things dog, and I thought about doing something weird.

Back when I got Babs in 2005, I wrote a doggy journal, but I didn’t blog it. I only sent it to a few people. Some of them were thinking about getting dogs, some were going to get dogs soon, and some just wanted to hear about how things were going and were insane enough to subject themselves to daily emails full of Carin-blather. . I still have the journal and I thought it would be neat to post it here now, taking a retrospective look at those days, knowing what I know now. I thought it would be a neat comparison. Hopefully it will be interesting to more than me. So, over the next 19 days, because that’s all the training I had, *bristle bristle*, I’ll put up an entry a day. Hopefully people enjoy it!

Queerying The What The Fuck Department…

15 Mar, Sat, 19:56:20
Google:
what can you sing after someone just went juicy doodoo?

Um, why would you want to sing after someone just went juicy doodoo? I usually don’t like to hang around people while they’re taking a crap. Why are you watching them poop? You’re a sick man, a sick, sick man. The only song I can think of is that stupid diarrhea song we used to hear as kids. Anybody else got any ideas? All I know is I never want to meet this person. That’s too weird.

I Can’t Think Of A Roomba-Spinoff For The Title, So I Won’t Try.

Jen sent me something fucking hillarious. It’s a little weird, but I thought someone else might get a kick out of it, especially if that someone owns a cat.

In case anyone wonders what the hell a Roomba is, it’s a vacuum that moves all on its own and goes around and under the objects in your house. I thought it would be sort of cool, until I envisioned it sucking up things I’d forgotten to pick up, etc. Anyway, Jen and I were talking about them, and how they kind of freaked me out, and then she got the following emailed to her.

Viva La Roombalución! Roombonkers!
Chapter 1: Vrrrrrrrroomba!  

I get home from the post office and the Roomba is all charged up and ready to go. I have provisionally named the Roomba “RoomBob,” knowing that I will have to pick another name for it eventually because I have already named my plant Bob. (…Shut up.) I carry the Roomba into the bedroom and put it on the floor, but before I turn the power on, I stop and observe the cats, both sleeping, each stretched out peacefully in his own sunbeam, unaware of the horror that awaits.  

I turn the power on. The Roomba sings a little song, just a few happy little “ready to work now” notes; Little Joe opens one eye, regards the large, flat, round beetle on the floor, and goes back to sleep, but Hobey is immediately suspicious.  

“Sorry, cats,” I say to them, although I am not really sorry at all, and hit the “clean” button, and as the Roomba cranks up to full whir and does its little starting pirouette, Hobey gives me a glare that could cut glass and bolts under the bed. Little Joe, still half asleep, scrambles down from his chair and heads for the bedroom door, at which time the Roomba shoots back out from under the dresser in front of Joe and heads for the bookcase at the back of the room. Joe jumps a foot in the air and gallops into the closet and hides in a boot.  

Heh.  

Chapter 2: The Love Song of J. Alfred Proomba  

In the room the felines come and go
Talking of “oh HELL no”  

So, Hobey’s under the bed, Joe’s in the closet, and the Roomba is courting the back tire of my bicycle. When a Roomba hits something, it turns a little and keeps Roombonking into it until it either figures out where the edge lies or it gets sick of the bonking and whirs off at a right angle to go do something else, but my Roomba can’t quite figure out the bike, so it’s Roombumbling around and conking into the kickstand and the bike is just sort of standing there, the striped cat to the Roomba’s Pepe Le Pew. “Aw,” I say. “It’s the Love Song of J. Alfred Proomba.”  

But the Roomba is really really into the bicycle — it’s, like, nuzzling the gears, and I’m on the point of telling the two of them to get a room(-ba) when the Roomba suddenly makes a Roombeeline under the bed.  

You can see where this is going.  

Joe is just sticking his head out of the closet when Hobey, whose tail is so incredibly fat that he looks like a funny car trailing a parachute, shoots out from under the bed and hauls ass down the hallway to the living room. Joe’s like, “What the he– AAAAAAAAACK!” because hard on Hobey’s heels is the Roomba, which is now wearing a giant seventies-porno mustache of lint and cat hair and is, if anything, even more determined to have its way with my bicycle than before.  

…Until.  

Joe, seeing an opening, is worm-squirming towards the door when, I swear to God, the Roomba sees him and gives chase. Yeah, yeah, “it can’t possibly tell” — it can tell. It knows. Joe pulls a “you’ve gotta be kidding” face and trots down the hallway, and the Roomba Roombarrels determinedly after him.  

Chapter 3: Flight of the Roomblebee  

I follow all three of my pets into the kitchen. Hobey is treed on top of the microwave, which is on top of the fridge, and is hiding, hilariously, behind…an avocado. Whatever. Joe is tucked under the couch.  

The Roomba is eating their food.  

No, really. The Roomba is Roombashing into their bowl; the bowl is tipping from side to side; kibble is spilling out; the Roomba is sucking up the kibble.
 
I think the Roomba hates my cats.  

I think I love the Roomba.  

Roombolero!
Then the Roomba Roompages over to my standing ashtray and tries to climb it, zips over to the couch and Roombumps into it fifteen times, eats and spits
out a phone cord, vacuums my boot, and disappears under the couch. Exit Joe, followed by the Roomba, which has a cat toy trapped in its undercarriage, a state of affairs that causes great conflict for the cats — there’s the cat toy, zipping along enticingly on the floor, but in the jaws of their mortal enemy.  

Chapter 4: Roombikaze  

Satisfied that the Roomba won’t suck up anything harmful, I retire to the bedroom — also my home office — to post a recap. Occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, I can see a cat dashing across the room, followed by the Roomba…the other cat fleeing…Roomba…cat…Roomba…catRoombacatRoomba.  

Finally, the cats figure it out and skulk back into the bedroom and flop down on the bedroom floor, exhausted. The whirring of the Roomba issues faintly from the other room as it cleans under the kitchen table and near the coat rack. The cats begin to relax.  

Roombig mistake. I hear the clarion ka-chonka-chonka-chonka-chonka that means the Roomba has clambered onto the kitchen tile and is heading our way, and I point to the hallway: “Um…cats?”  

Cats: “[Zzzzz.]”
Roomba: “[Chonka-chonka-chonka-rrrrrrrt-chonka-chonka.]”
Sarah: “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Roomba: “[Chonka-chonka-chonka…RRRRRRRRRT!]”  

The Roomba heaves into view at the end of the hall, spots the cats, and picks up speed. I swear to God. Hobey slinks under the desk, and Joe sort of stomps towards the closet all put-upon, but the Roomba enters the room as Joe’s passing in front of it, and when it spots him, its “dirt detect” light goes on.
 
The Roomba thinks Little Joe is a 16-pound ball of dirt. The Roomba wants to eat Little Joe.  

Love!  

Chapter 5: Roombellissimo  

By the time the Roomba finishes its Roombinistrations, sings its little “all done!” song, and shuts off in the middle of the living room, the cats have pretty much stopped caring. It isn’t as loud as the Hoover, or as big, and they can hide from it if they pick a safe surface that isn’t the floor — not that they’ve quite grasped that, of course, so the Roomba follows them around all little Roombrother “I wanna play with you guys!” and the cats keep appealing silently to me like, “Mom, make it quit Roombugging us.” Poor J. Alfred, Roombarding my apartment with its whirry, indiscriminate love.

Can’t say that made me fall in love with the Roomba, although it did make me laugh really, really hard.

Season Until Slightly Stupid

A pair of bank robbers burst into tears and collapsed choking in Poland after they tried to use pepper spray on a cashier in front of an air conditioning unit.

The wind blew the spray back over the pair, who staggered from the bank in the south-western city of Wroclaw empty handed.

A local police spokesman said: “They told the cashier to open the till and then tried to put her out of action to grab the cash – but the pepper sprayed back in their faces because of the blast of warm air from the heater.

“They only managed to escape because they had a pal outside in a getaway car.”

Full story
here.

I Think the Daily Mail Has A Fear Of Good Questions

How is it possible to write an entire story on a
famous chef with a food phobia so intense that all he could eat was cookies
without asking him why, if the fear was so bad, he decided to build his entire life around cooking? Call me crazy, but it seems to me that would be the first thing most people would want to know.

Hopefully the
Freaky Eaters
people will do the basic journalism that the Daily Mail should have done and get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all.

Trixie, Are You A Dog, Or A mountain Goat?

Hey there Trixie. Why at the end of the winter have you decided that the only place for your poop to go is high up on the nearby snowbank that has recently formed? Don’t you realize that I have to line myself up with your butt so I can pick it up? This means that I have to become a mountaineer to get to it, and then when you do your victory dance, you send me straightdown onto my butt. I’m sure I look really funny to passers-by. I’m a blink at the end of a leash falling on my butt in a snowbank behind some dog poop. Dandy! Isn’t that flat spot right in front of us good enough? Why must you brave new frontiers just to poop? Do other dogs do this? What’s up with that? Do you have to find virgin territory to poop on? You’re pooping! Just poop, and poop where it’s flat, please!