Author Archives: Court

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This is Courtney Vallentyne's blog.

The Tale of Harvey and the Swear Words

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Did I ever tell you the time when Harvey taught our then 8-year old daughter all of the swear words in English?  No?  Here’s how it went.

Many years ago, probably around 8 BL (Before Lloyd), Harvey had developed a stomach bug of some sort as all dogs do from time to time.  He had the runs and was throwing up, so I was giving him my by-then standard practice of “no kibble for you if you are stupid enough to eat ALL of the cat poop in the park at once”.  Usually a day of fasting followed by some plain white rice for a day or so put him right as rain.  Anyway, this particular night he was still having some accidents and keeping us up until all hours  one night when I finally tired of him ralfing on the rug (what is it about dogs and puking on a rug?  I mean they are MAGNETICALLY drawn to carpet when they feel sick, forget for a minute that probably 80% of our entire house is some form of hard flooring that is easy to clean up)  and I put him in our bathroom so I could at least clean it off the tile if he got sick.  I immediately fell into bed and back to sleep, but Nikki stayed up listening to Harv whine about being stuck in the bathroom.  Finally her soft, sweet, gentle female heart couldn’t take it any more (and she couldn’t sleep through his bitching), and she woke me up and asked me if I thought it would be ok if we let Harv out now as he hadn’t had an accident recently.  I sleepily agreed and staggered over to the bathroom door to let him out so I could salvage the last couple of hours of the night. Naturally I was too sleepy then to predict what happened, although it’s as obvious as can be now.

I opened the door to let Harv out, which he was very grateful for.  So grateful that he popped out of the bathroom and immediately barfed on the carpet at my feet.  I responded with a strangled roar and Harvey decided that it was time to book it before he was hauled back into the bathroom.  However, he wasn’t quite done throwing up at the moment, so he started running down the hallway towards the stairs, barfing as he went.  Finally my sluggish brain kicked into action and I proceeded to give chase in an attempt to get him to stop so I would only have one pile of dog vomit to clean up.  Picture me in my gitch (sorry for that) yelling incoherently at Harvey, running after him down the stairs wide-legged so I don’t step in the barf.  I am essentially the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark, if the boulder yelled a lot and wore boxer briefs, and Harrison Ford was a constantly puking dog.

Harv was pretty quick when he was young and so I didn’t catch up to him until we were downstairs in the hallway on the hardwood and grabbed him and shoved his butt downwards to keep him in one spot.  Unfortunately I staved my middle finger on the floor in the process pretty hard.

At that moment you might say that I was a little upset.  I might have said some things that don’t need to be entered here really.  There was a crackling blue haze surrounding me, and I went on for quite a while pretty loudly before I was able to regain control.  At this point Nikki is very wisely still upstairs, probably trying to decide if I was going to commit just one murder or two that night.  The next hour or so was spent cleaning dog vomit off the carpet with nine fingers.  Harv was suitably chastised already, I didn’t need to do anything more than just look at him without the guilt radiating outwards.  Finally we got back to bed for the now tiny bit of sleep left in the night.  I got up, showered, got dressed and walked downstairs to see Jordy eating her breakfast at the table, and the first thing out of her mouth?

“I heard you last night.  I didn’t know you swore like that.”

Sigh. That was the first time either one of us had broken that particular barrier, I didn’t realize that I had awakened Jordy with my rather unfortunate outburst.  So now I have to deal with an 6-year-old’s loss of innocence too.  Awesome.

Nikki asked me to open a new jar of jam before I left for work, which I did (while favouring my throbbing hurt finger), and which immediately exploded jam all over my clean shirt.  The fact that I didn’t further demonstrate a few words for Jordy again (I mean she already heard them all last night, what the heck, right?) was evidence of a stupendous act of self control that Tibetan monks still speak about today in awed, hushed tones.

So there you go.  The tale of when Harvey taught Jordy the worst words I know in the English language.

Awesome Museum Ads

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Saw this on the Twitters this morning, haven’t had time to put it up here until now.  This is some dang fine advertising, creative as hell, and obviously it’s working since when was the last time you saw ads for a museum make the rounds?

Funny, gross, informative, awesome.  Well done!

 

Saw this on @BenthePCguy’s feed here, linked to here.  Lots more there, go and check them out!

 

iPhone 5 Complaints by SNL

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Saturday Night Live did a beautiful job on this parody of a technical review show, and the uncomfortable and ridiculous distance that exists between the folks that make phones and the folks that use them.  It’s aimed at Americans but I think Canada falls into this rather directly.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJh2eylm5BY

The final kicker joke is the money shot for sure.

Grocery Store Mission Impossible

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Grocery shopping on the weekend with Nikki together in the store, I remarked that we were just like real people.  Nikki knew exactly what I meant because we were together in the store, unhurried, browsed around a bit, picked up a few things, paid and left to go home together and watch a movie.  Like real people.  This was made possible because we had no children (thanks Mom!), and we were in full on work-mode at the house this weekend.  It was a rare freedom to just work all day on things that needed doing, then stop when we were tired and just go and be together and do stuff.  Usually a trip to the grocery store is much different:
I will be driving home through traffic on a weeknight, in constant communication with the team at home via hands free call.

“Sitrep, Lincoln Fields, light traffic.”
“Ok, what’s your ETA?”
“Inbound, probably 15 minutes”
“Affirmative, 15 minutes.”
“At this speed I will be able to complete objective B (the grocery store) with 8 minutes to spare.”
“Affirmative, copy that.  Dinner will be complete in 34 minutes, that is a hard stop.  Copy?”
“Copy.  Still able to achieve objective B, just ran two red lights and cut off an old lady.”

And even when I get to the grocery store, it’s not all strolling and thoughtfully reading labels and making the right choices for my family.  Nope.  It’s more like four wheeled cart slides around the dairy case, sneakers screeching on the terrazzo, fighting for purchase to change direction and get to the deli counter to buy ham before supper goes critical and we lose the window.  All the while, my phone is to my ear sandwiched between my sweaty cheek and hunched shoulder, getting updates on how the rest of the team is doing.

“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, do you acknowledge?”

And at home, Nikki has been carefully orchestrating the after school melee, cheerfully and efficiently defying the laws of time and space and somehow making more simultaneous stops at more locations than we even have children, and still managing to find something that we can eat.  How does that even work?  She was in four places at the same time last Tuesday, all 5km apart from each other.  My wife the Time Lord, sexy and omnipotent all at once.  A regular week at our house?  2 swimming lessons, 3 Karate lessons, 2 drivers ed classes, Jordy works 3 times, dance lesson for Cael, dance lesson for us, dog training, and for some dang reason we are having a HELL of a time getting back to the gym.  Pussies.

Anyway, at some point I lurch to a halt in the tactical Sienna in our laneway, leap out into a shoulder roll with the grocery bags and sprint through the front door, delivering the final supplies for dinner with no margin left, often opening the packages as I run down the hall so I can slam dunk the food into the pot.  It gets flash cooked for 30 seconds and then scooped out and put onto plates that are then slid under the waiting forks of the rest of the family.

I dare you to try to eat a leisurely and relaxed dinner at that point.  I’m done in about 3.5 seconds, and have flipped the plates and cutlery into the dishwasher, shuriken-like, and moved onto the next thing.  Usually still chewing my last bite as I fire up the tactical Sienna for the next mission.

That’s most week nights at our house.