Ch. 52: Dispatch from the World Rain Capital

Vancouver Rain Festival: September 1 to August 31
Greetings from Vancouver, where it raineth againeth, and we are celebrating the Vancouver Annual Rain Festival, which runs from 1 September to August 31. Yesterday night it was raining so hard, it woke me up, several times. And it's cold too. I celebrated the longest day in summer by visiting the tanning salon and wearing a woolly sweater.

So after total excessiveness at Gay Disney in Orlando, I'm here very quietly, mostly staying at home with momma, her 92 year old man Hugh, and my brother. Here's a picture of us on lovely Hornby Island. Oh, I have lots of amusing things I could write about my family, but I've been warned not to expose them to public ridicule, so I shall steer away from those particular delights. But let me just say that the constant gray rain is not good for momma and me, since we suffer from a terrible combination of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and an acute (one might almost say "grossly dysfunctional") sensitivity to the fine nuances of each other's moods. This means that we seem to spend every other day glowering at one another and suppressing sighs of irritation. But that's only every other day. There's still lots of Vancouver fun I can write about, even if I'm not allowed to report all the salacious and amusing anecdotes from 1220 Dogwood Crescent, oh yes!

Me And My Lezzie Friends
Like hanging out with two of my oldest and best friends, Ruth and Kerry, each of whom happen to be a lezzie. (Which would make me a true blue diesel weasel.) With Ruth, I went hiking in Stanley Park, which bizarre hurricane winds last winter decimated. It was like a nuclear bomb had gone off, all the 300 year old trees felled in a tangled jumble. We also visited her sister, Katherine, who's sick with a terrifyingly aggressive form of MS. We sat outside and Ruth fed her mango and pitted cherries and yoghurt and cigarettes. I always liked Katherine, for being the wild child of her family and for her super-mischevious smile and the bluest eyes I've ever seen. Ruth asked if Katherine remembered who I was, and after a long pause she said, in her funny Steven Hawkings-like voice, "Yes, Peter's the one who's always been your friend". This was heartbreaking because it showed that maybe somewhere inside the ruined body was a girl with memories and feelings and thoughts, which she isn't usually able to express through the fog of what the disease and anti-MS drugs have done to her mind. It was certainly a reality check on the fat-funk I'd been indulging myself in. Pray for Katherine.

As for Kit-Kat Kerry, we've been friends since we were 4 - with a hiatus between 14 and 35, when a letter out of the blue from her while I was living in Joburg brought us back together and she thereupon karate kicked down the door to her closet. On the one sunny day, we took her dog Jeffrey, a golden lab, for a the sea-to-sky walk in West Vancouver, the uber-wealthy enclave where I grew up, before my family decided to run down the socio-economic ladder. Jeffrey's got an artificial hip, and is on anti-anxiety pills, which Kerry just chucks into his kibbles.
"Can I have some?" I asked. "Would they work on humans?"
"I think so" she replied. "I mean, I just get them from the pharmacy."
She's living deep in the suburbia of West Vancouver with her two kids, but they're nearly graduated from high school, if anyone knows any suitable chicks, I think Kit-Kat's ready to meet a nice girl.

Training the World's Naughtiest Dog with Cheese Incentives

No need for anti-anxiety pills for mum's extremely naughty dog Obi! Valium, and lots of it, would be more appropriate. Maybe Obi has attention deficit disorder. But he's very sweet, and anyway, I'm quite pleased because I've taught him not to jump up and pee on the floor when I come in the front door. I've taught it to lie down and stay and not pee on the floor when I leave the room. And I feel that we're nearly there on "shake a paw" and "roll over". Little cheese treats are very incentivizing! But those doggy synapses just fail to compute on "fetch". Oh he so badly wants to please, and you can see the total confusion in his eyes when he just doesn't understand what I want. However, the consequence of all these cheese treats and training is that I have become The Most Favourite Person in the house, which apparently entitles me to have Obi sleep on my bed.

Wildlife Frolics in the Worthington Sun Room
I've also enjoyed chasing the raccoon out of the house. He comes in daily to eat the cats' food. Oh, raccoons are so cute! When I was young, I always wanted a pet raccoon called Frosty, like a disgustingly pert and know-it-all girl in a book I read. But you have to get them (raccoons that is, not girls!) when they're very young. If I tried to catch this one to make a pet or a fashionable slipper out of it, I'd get a rabies-laden bite for sure. We always know when the raccoon is around because the crows outside start cawing like crazy and Obi goes absolutely ballistic, but the raccoon's cool as a cucumber, not afraid of anything, as he slowly saunters around the sun-room looking for more food. Yesterday, I meant to grab the amonnia bottle to repel him, but instead I gave him a nice squirt of fabric softener. I wonder if he likes how his coat is now static free and smells of lavender.

Where Are Those Little Pink Critters?

Searching for mum's hearing aids is fun too. They get lost frequently, and if we can find them before the dog (or potentially, I guess, the raccoon) eats them, all the better because then Mum and I can actually have a real conversation, in which I'm not motivated to put a pencil in my eye out of pure frustration. Nonetheless, my eyes have become eagle sharp scanning the house for something that looks like a little pink pig lying on its back. [I just want to say, for the record, that I love my Mum to pieces. I couldn't have been blessed with a better, cooler, hipper Mum.]

How to Have Fun with Farting (or NOT!)
And let's not forget about the farting! It's been fun - for me, if not for anyone else. Seriously, I don't know what it is, but I'm having the most terrifyingly potent gas attacks. I'm becoming a pariah in my own home. I think Mum is planning to evict me. Even the animals are starting to look at me with great apprehension and suspicion. Last night the dog baulked at the doorway of my room and just whined. Just thought you all should know.

Mohawk, Fauxhawk, or Mockhawk? You Be the Judge

I'm also soliciting opinions on how to style my hair. I cut it into a mohawk, which has been very popular with some. My friend Chip, who repeats ad naseum with a certain breathy enthusiasm to me "You look good with a shaven head, but I think you'd look even better with hair" opined "Well, at least a mohawk is a start. It's some hair, as opposed to none." Now however, my mohawk is growing out and I'm debating whether to renew it, or turn it into a fauxhawk or a mockhawk. Votes please.

More on Unpredictable Predictive Texting
In my last missive I mentioned how odd it was that my cell-phone predictive texting didn't know "prawn", but it knew "spawn". The phone seems to lack words particularly for food. My friend Chantal - whom I love for many reasons, not least that she always reads my blog and comments! - pointed out that predictive text didn't know "sushi" - which is just downright inexplicable. And this morning I realized, my attempt to text "I would like a mango" came out as "I would like a manho, which is actually quite amusing if you want to pause for a moment and think about me (Man Ho). Moreover, I've noticed that my phone is actually quite forgetful. I know I have "taught" it "f*ck" and "bi*ch" several times, and yet it continues to not recognize these highly useful and common words. And cock comes out as anal, which is not only annoying but potentially the cause of some quite serious confusion. If my phone doesn't pull its socks up, it will get a spanking.

That's all for now.