First Anniversary

September 16th was mine and Lee-Anne’s first anniversary. We rented a hotel room in St Jacob’s for a weekend, which is a small settlement basically attached to Waterloo. Not very far from home, but still kind of nice to have a change of scenery.

Our room had two framed pictures of birches.

It seems to me that artists love these trees specifically. I can think of a handful of pieces hanging in the homes of various people I know. We even have one in our house.

It's the sole survivor of my "buy nice looking things from the thrift store and throw them on the wall" era. Lee-Anne did away with everything else from that time. You might notice it's not hung up right now. Almost all our decorations at this point have some form of sentimental value, but the birches keep hanging in. Even though we don't have a use for them, they're just a little too nice to get rid of.

We recently came back from my grandparents and they definitely had at least one example of birch art. I'll be writing more about that experience in consecutive updates.

These trees also seem to pop up frequently in events hosting local artists. Maybe it’s because the black and white scarring on the bark is high contrast and can pair with a variety of background colours. 

Looking it up, their prevalence in art appears to not be a common observation. I think it might be a region-specific thing, with birch trees making more frequent appearances in Canadian works because they’re more common in Northern climates. Apparently Russians like them too, which tracks with this theory.

Saturday morning we went to the St Jacob’s farmer’s market. Being closer to the country makes it convenient for local agriculturalists. We got  sweet potatoes and zucchinis from someone yelling that the latter was “good for your weenie”. That’s not why we got them. I’ve since wondered what she meant by that. I have a few guesses.

We got Brussels sprouts, green beans, and some oddly coloured bell peppers. I’m used to seeing green, red, yellow, and orange. This was the first time I’d seen purple. We later learned that they may have been that colour because they were so close to turning bad. Even the very next day they seemed over-ripe.

We later cut them up to bring as snacks for our trip up North but wound up leaving them at Lee-Anne's parents' place, which we used as an intermediary step. I will never know what a purple bell pepper tastes like.

At the market, we also found oddly coloured carrots. These would hold their integrity better and were exciting for Lee-Anne because she’d been wanting to find red ones ever since they were served at my cousin’s birthday party. She believes they have a different taste, but I can’t tell the difference.

We stopped by an African artist and bought a couple of spoons with handles fashioned after giraffes.

It just seemed like a good idea to get something non-consumable to commemorate our first anniversary, and Lee-Anne likes giraffes.

The Shea Butter Man was there. He used to own a shop in Guelph but mostly does markets now. We were already stocked up and couldn’t justify a top-up, though.

For lunch, we had empanadas, churros, and strawberry lemonade.

I always forget how good fresh lemonade is.

I knew one of the buskers and we got to catch up. It was someone that has used our services before, who inspired one of our key phrases, who’s been in the newspaper multiple times for his music, and has toured cross-country with his band. After we left, Lee-Anne said that I always get star-struck when I meet people that I used to work with. I countered that this person is a legitimate star.

Apparently there's a tradition of celebrating with a different material each year of marriage, and for the first its paper. We didn't plan anything for it, but Lee-Anne got a paper bill in change which we're counting as fulfilling the ritual. For those that don't know, Canada stopped producing paper bills in favour of plastic some years ago. The paper ones are still in circulation but are increasingly rare, making it exciting whenever you come acrosss one.

We followed the tradition of preserving part of our wedding's key dessert to eat on the first anniversary. For most people it's a cake, but for us it was a tart tray. When we got back home, we pulled them out.

I took this pic after Lee-Anne had already eaten one of the blueberries. They were freezer burnt something mean. There was no fruit flavour coming through at all, and somehow the crust tasted raw. There may have been a better way to preserve them. We both managed to eat one of each, purely for ceremonial purposes.

Neurology Update

 In my last update, I forgot to mention why I felt inspired to try and make the purple tie-dye shirt. 

Lee-Anne had an appointment with her neurologist. It was going to be the one where we talked about treatment options for her epilepsy. However, before it happened my family in Guelph's house burned down.

So we were at Wal Mart buying an air mattress for my brother when we came across a single purple shirt in my size. Being the colour for Epilepsy Awareness Day, this felt notable. I'd searched high and low for one, eventually being reduced to dying my own.

Even though the meeting wouldn't be on the day, I took it as a sign to wear the shirt for the appointment. This sense of fate was reinforced when three of my coworkers and a bunch of members were wearing purple. It was unusual enough that people were remarking on it even though they didn't have context. When I told them, everyone was very enthusiastic and we took a picture.

It was my second time wearing my shirt, and for one of my coworkers, it the first time she'd worn hers. Despite this eery coincidence, the appointment would not be as eventful as hoped. 

Originally it was supposed to happen four to six weeks after her examination. They did meet with us on that timeline and I'd gone as far as to take the day off work to go to Toronto with her. But the neurosugeon had nothing to say because they hadn't received the report of her brain activity yet.

When they got the data, they still needed a panel of specialists to have a discussion on treatment options. We received a copy of the report and I've blogged about it. The main takeaway was that her seizures were coming from a spot a little deeper in the brain than we thought.

So they had their panel, and then we needed to have a meeting with her neurologist to discuss the report. This brings us to the appointment relevent to this post, the one I'd bought the purple shirt for.

He mostly told us what we already knew, that the data showed her seizures were in the insula, not the left temporal lobe like they originally thought. As we suspected, this invalidated her from traditional surgery. However, he did offer a more modern option, in which the procedure is done by laser. Instead of opening the skull, the part of the brain where the seizures are formed is targeted and burned off. It's between that and installing a magnet in the back of the neck, which was the only alternate solution we'd known about beforehand.

But the neurologist wasn't able to move things forward, and said the next step would be to talk to a neurosurgeon. This is frustrating because we already talked to one four weeks after her observation. We're at 19 weeks as of the neurologist's appointment. We'd thought this would be the one where we'd learn definitively what our choices are. It will likely take another three to four months before we can see the neurosurgeon again. If all goes well, I think we'd need time to consider options after having them proposed, and then there would be a wait to have whatever treatment option we chose implemented. I can't see this going faster than another nine months.

So despite the timely discovery of a purple shirt in my size and the positive omen of people at work coincidentally wearing the same colour, the meeting didn't amount to much.

All this to say, it reminded me that I got a ti-dye kit for Epilepsy Awareness Day. I never used it because I wound up making a solid purple shirt instead. Which lead to the theme of my last post.

Sorry for the shaggy dog story. I didn't know how to include all this in a way that flowed with my previous topic, so I just shared tie-dye pics.

As an aside, tomorrow is mine and Lee-Anne's first year anniversary.

Tie Dye

I've been talking so much about fire lately. This time, let's talk about water.

Back when I was trying and failing to find a purple shirt for Epilepsy Awareness Day, I remembered that tie dye was an option. It was the other side of summer though, and not quite in season. I found it difficult to find a kit sold anywhere, but finally found what I needed at an arts and crafts store. I didn't remember how tie dye works and thought the kit was suspiciously light, so I grabbed a bottle of standard dye as a backup plan.

I needn't have worried, the product was fine. I still wound up going for a solid purple shirt. This left me with the tie dye to use at my leisure, and I just got around to trying it recently.

This was my first attempt. I made a swirl in the centre of the shirt and then separated the colours into quadrants. I used blue, orange, purple, and yellow-green. The idea was to have contrasting colours touching and swirling out. It kind of worked, but the yellow-green is almost solely on the back. I wanted the purple to have some prominence to allude to my original intentions, but from the front it only really shows on my shoulder. It wouldn't work as an Epilepsy Awareness Day shirt.

I went for horizontal bands with a colour gradient on this one. Purple in the centre with two shades of blue, starting dark and turning light. Last one was supposed to contrast while this was all cool colours.

This was just a scattershot mish-mash of the remaining colours, since I didn't want to waste the unused dye.  I hadn't bothered to dampen the cloth unlike the other two, so the dye slid around instead of simply absorbing. Frustratingly, I think this one looks better than the other two.

Since I didn't think any of the shirts I made showcased purple enough to wear on Epilepsy Awareness Day, I came back and dedicated a whole shirt to it. I made two swirls on opposite sides, and used two shades moving from darker at the centre and turning lighter. I fell into the trap of not wanting to waste the leftover dye and dumped a bunch of it into the empty spaces, making one of the shoulder maybe a little too dark. Otherwise pretty happy with it, and I think I've got something to wear next year.

Tabby, Cow, Tuxedo, and Cast Iron

My brother has chosen to stay with his partner for some time to collect himself after the fire on Grange. This means that no one has to sleep in the living room, and I can drink my coffee on the couch with the lights on instead of going back to bed and drinking it in the dark so as not to wake Lee-Anne.

This might not decrease the amount of living beings in the apartment as much as you'd think though. This is because outside of the humans, we've also brought in these guys. 

Castor (colour of cast iron) and Pollux (rhymes with tux)!

The added complication being that we already had these guys.

Kieran the tabby and Finn the cowcat!

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that we are still within the legal parameters of Kitchener, which states a limit of any combination of five cats, dogs, ferrets, and rabbits. I kind of get rabbits, but I don't know why ferrets are listed as equivalent to dogs and cats. Also, could we have ten iguanas if we felt like it?

When we first got  Kieran and Finn, introductions went as smoothely as possible. I'd been through seeing one of our first cats, Penny, try to maul a kitten Blackavar on sight. When we got Thor and Luna, things were tense between them even though they were coming from the same household. In each case, things smoothed out over a period of time, separating them in different sections of the apartment, rotating them so they got used to the other's scent.

When we brought Finn home as a kitten, we let Kieran sniff him through the carrier and neither seemed upset. We tried presenting them to each other while holding them and they were chill. We supervised them freely interacting and they just enjoyed playing with each other. We separated them at night in an abundance of caution, but the next day they were fine with each other and we didn't have to do it again.

It's not as simple as them being okay with other cats though. Every once in a while we'll hear Kieran growling at the kitchen window and Finn will run away. This is usually because an outdoor cat has come into the backyard. So I wondered if they would react the way they did with each other, or if it would be more like the strangers in the window.

Finn is actually the genetic brothers of Castor and Pollux, albeit from different litters. They're the descendants of a barn cat owned by Lee-Anne's sister-in-law. So I wondered if there would be some kind of instinctual familiarity that would create a calming effect.

Castor and Pollux came in carriers, so we let Kieran and Finn sniff them through the bars. The same first step we gave last time. Kieran was cautious while Finn didn't act as dramatically as he does around outdoor cats, but he hunched down and low growled. So we decided to separate him and let the other three try interacting on their own.

 

Kieran didn't verbalize discomfort but he sort of shrank away. I felt bad because he didn't have his pal to support him, while the other two had each other. Pollux kind of postured like a tough guy while Castor was pretty chill.

On continued attempts at introductions, a bit of a dynamic formed. Pollux would shy away from Finn's growling, but Castor would run up and stop just short, then stalk away, try to sneak up and do the same thing again. I kind of wondered if it was bullying behaviour.

They joined forces to pop the air mattress at their first opportunity though. We had to replace it with a foam one. Four cats can be quite destructive.

We salvaged the Grange Street cat tree. It wasn't in the hallway long but the two that were familiar with it were eager to have it back, and the ones unfamiliar recognized its quality right away.

It was only a few days before Finn could be with the new cats without crouching and low growing. He continued to be a bit tense and Castor kept trying to interact with him, sometimes teasingly.

Eventually he relaxed and their dynamic became more equitable.

Pollux is the most athletic of the four. He can get into every windowsill except the one in the office, so I've had to move my succulent there. Finn's always been the resident climber, and ever since he's seen Pollux at work, he's been motivated to try more challenging jumps. Castor tries, but often finds himself barely catching ledges with his front paws and scrabbling to get up. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn't. Kieran joins sometimes, but he's the least motivated.

Throughout my life, I've usually lived with two cats. The most was three, between Blackavar, Thor, and Luna. Four seems pretty crazy, but life circumstances require flexibility and for what it's worth, it's working out.