Vegetables in Vans and Mouses in Houses

Well, that was an eventful morning! We don’t usually run the dogs on Sundays here at Miortuk Kennels, but warmer weather in the forecast for the week forced us to do so while it was still cold today. And by cold, I mean, when I looked at the thermometer at 5 am, it read…0. The Arizona girl in me was tempted to wonder if that meant that the batteries were dead or something, but then the American girl in my head went on a bit of a rant about how she finally realized whey her country is one of five in the word to NOT use the metric system: because those who do are clearly masochists for two main reasons.

Reason A: “0” is a deceptively neutral number. When we have 0 apples to share, this means nobody gets any apples and everything is fair. When we have 0 degrees, the score is Nature-1, Julia-nil. Nature is winning by a long shot, and she typically is a poor sport who blows raspberries at you as your ears freeze off.

Reason B: Why would you choose to have nothing, when you could have something? I mean, 32 is not a lot, but I would rather have 32 apples if I could than 0 apples. Even if the 32 apples are just imaginary apples, at least your mentally feel like you have something. I mean, who played house as a kid and said “well, I am gonna pretend to be a princess and I don’t have anything.” (come to think of it,  I was really obsessed with playing orphans and street urchins when I was little, but we have established that I was just weird)

Why all this talk about apples you say? Welllllllll, because on Thursday, I met my second favorite person in all of Quebec (yes of course Stan, you are the first =D): THE VEGETABLE LADY! After a week of not so many vegetables here at the chalet, I learned that I do not just have a fondness for all things green and vegetabally, I have a full blown addiction. It seemed very fitting then, that Vegetable Lady sells her blessed bounty from the back of a van on a side street in St. Michel des Saints. I was literally shaking with giddiness as I bought a bag of apples, 3 GIANT broccolis, cauliflower, 2 MASSIVE leaks, a bag of tomatoes, 2 bags of the crunchiest carrots ever, 5 zucchinis the size of my forearm, and 5 HUGE red peppers. Vegetable Lady upsold me on everything, but I was a willing victim of her consumeristic schemes, buying things like celery that I don’t even really like, but hey, they are green. The excitement continued when Stan proceeded to purchase 25 pounds of beets, 3 cabbages, 50 pounds of potatoes, bunches of green onions, and some green peppers to round it all off. Good buys, and good timing, as my veggie deprivation was leading me to want to eat all of the mushrooms, moss, bark, and berries that surround me here in the northern forest.

Anyway, I didn’t travel to Quebec for the vegetables, but the dogs of course! Running this week has been pretty exciting, with the yearlings (dogs between 1 and 2 years old) first run yesterday, and some really great runs from the A and B team throughout the week. I am back to my usual self after a brief hiatus with my ubber bruised arms and legs from hauling dogs and jumping on ATVs and getting my legs tangled in gang lines and chains. Oh, and biting dogs…or one biting dog in particular-Bergen-who is my best friend in the kennel, but loses her mind in the middle of a run with excitement, so naturally responds to me untangling her with biting. It is a real joy. No hard feelings though =D

Enough of my ramblings though, I know you only come here for the pictures! So here they are, and as always, I will get to continue my ramblings in the form of all of my very concise captions ;)

Oh, (haha you thought you were home free) I plan to start a French-only blog to practice my writing in this land of the French Canadians. I have had several great opportunities to practice my conversational French, though as one of Stan’s friends told me this week, “Quebecers don’t speak good French, nor do they speak good English,” so occasionally it takes more focus to navigate the dialect.  Anyway, if you already speak French and want to follow my life in French AND English (you brave and bored soul), I will post the links as they come. If you don’t speak or read French, I am not sure why you have even continued reading until this last sentence.

Noooootttt the best way to start the pictures, but meet putine. It is French fries, gravy, and cheese curd. No, absolutely not was this my meal. I will not touch that "squeak-squeak cheese" concoction. Stan only likes it if it is the diet version... (don't let him fool you, he throws that word into things to make them seem healthy. It is a lie.)

That's more like it! Good morning Lac Charland!

Also good morning mice! I found these little guys in our food bucket this morning. I had never seen a mouse in a house (nor a dog in a bog or a weasel in an easel) before, so my initial startle at seeing something moving in a bucket, turned quickly into praising them for being so cute, much better than the cockroaches that come from the sewers at home. That too faded though as I though about how there are probably more in my bed or in our flour or in the shower etc. And concern that they had probably been in that bucket long enough to make more mice, and being mice, we all know that they only needed to be there about 3.4 minutes. And in other news about wilderness encounters, a squirrel tried to break into our cabin this morning through one of the window screens, but I was freaking out too much to get the camera in time. Not scared freaking out, just Arizona city girl freaking out. 

Meet Blue. He is doing something very very strange here that I just barely managed to catch on my camera. He is sitting still.

My name is Hinto and I like playing with my bowl and Julia. Especially when she gives me the bowl full of food. 

                                                

                                                                      See a trend here?

   

                                   Pearl                                   Pippin 

                                    

                                          Pearl again                               Katie

                              

                                                             Bergen                             Tanya

                             

                

                                                           

There is not much I can say to sum up how awesome this is =D

Had a great time playing construction time this week with Stan, building new insulated dog houses for the winter. 3 down, 3 to go.

And now some nature. I feel quite blessed to be living where I am living right now. I may not be able to go to church every weekend like I would like to, but I am really and truly in God's good earth, and I am very grateful.

For the honor and glory.