Hello and welcome to the first letter in years that doesn’t read or feel like a «pandemic year in review». Covid is still tricky, worth avoiding, and taking a toll around our part of Ottawa– but this year felt different than other years. In a better way. As ever, the letter reads largely as an account of what Zoe got up to, and how her parents tagged along on her adventures.
We pick up again where our last letter left off– the winter of 2022-2023. The family leant in hard to winter sports this year. For Zoe, it was love at first sight with cross-country skiing, which lasted until she tried downhill skiing. Then downhill replaced cross-country in the ‘skiing that I love category’. Ewa and I held harder to cross-country skiing and also did quite a bit of snowboarding. My yardstick of success was getting down the hill in one mostly unbroken piece. By mine and the family’s measures of success, we did quite well.
We celebrated Zoe’s sixth birthday with the family at Winterlude, and Zoe and I made it out on our yearly ‘Snowy Owl Spotting + Hookie Playing’ day– this is turning out to be a fun yearly tradition.
This year we learned more than we were ever interested to know about iguanas. In Miami we discovered that iguanas (Green Iguanas) love Corn Pops (American Corn-Pops though– no one loves Canadian Corn-Pops). In Mexico we learned that iguanas (the Black Spiny Tail variety) love bananas!
Had I known this in the 1990s, my pet iguana Dave might not have been so ill-tempered. My feelings were a little mixed when I learned that Ewa and Zoe, without my influence or interference, had had some serious conversations about getting a pet Iguana. If anything comes of that, dear reader, you’ll hear about it here– even if I have to type it with my toes after «MicroGodzilla» chomps off all my fingers.
The Spring found Zoe, Naomi (cousin of Zoe), Adam (father of Naomi), Andrew (expectant father with Ali), and myself in Montreal and uninvited to Ali’s ladies only baby shower. Five minutes into our drive to Montreal’s Biodôme, the uncles had determined that this excursion would be wrapping up at La Belle Province to make sure Zoe and Naomi understood their Québecois heritage.
After a full day at the Biodôme, when the kids were spent and whiny, and against their protests they discovered La Bell Pro– quite the highlight!
Three years on and a number of the ‘pandemic kayaks’ began appearing on Facebook Marketplace. We picked up a blue tandem kayak. On Oma’s suggestion we named it Gyrados– a blue water and flying Pokémon. Basically a water dragon known also as the ‘Atrocious Pokémon’. Yes dear reader this is one of the letter’s passages in which you get abused with Pokémon facts you neither wanted nor needed. Life with a six yearold leaves one with many Pokémon facts– shouldn’t the reader get the full experience of the year? ‘Tis also the season for gentle mercies– I’ll try to keep the Poké-details to a minimum.
Gyrados’ maiden voyage was on the Rideau River near our house. We spotted quite a bit of neat wildlife in the river. Most notably that day was the snapping turtle that slunk off and hid when we got too close. I’d probably slink off also in the face of a ferocious water dragon like Gyrados!
I started to notice a class of photo creeping onto my phone– the ‘really bad picture of exciting wildlife’. I opted to use the useful piece of information from the photos (the GPS location) and tied it to a website of much better google photos of the same animals and built the Lying Birds website (Lying Birds is an hommage to the Tracy Morgan’s SNL character Brian Fellowes– an animal enthusiast– who once, hilariously, accused a bird of being a liar).
http://pipedreamer.org/lyingbirds/lyingBirds.html
Here’s the legend for reading entries on the map. Herpetology– with reptiles and amphibians but not birds– has always been a little bit bullshit; birds are closer to reptiles than amphibians on the tree of life. But it fits better for ‘cool animals found around swamps’. So we use it. I may also have to re-classify the invertebrates section later on.
| Icon | Animal Type |
|---|---|
 |
Bird |
 |
Fish |
 |
Reptile & Amphibian |
 |
Invertebrates |
 |
Mamals |
LyingBirds isn’t for all the animals that we see, like squirrels and pigeons, it is for the rarer ones that could feature in the ‘guess what I saw’ updates at the end of the day.
We made it out on a couple camping trips this year. We made it to Sandbanks Provincial Park with our friends Behrang and Virginia. Later in the month we made it out to Silver Lake Provincial park with Isabelle, Mila and their parents Katya and Alex. It really paid off strapping Gyrados to the roof, getting her down, and launching her– we got about 20 minutes worth of kayaking in the rain that weekend.
There were a good number of books read this year– most of the pulpy mystery/chase genre that keep me reading into the night. Notable among them was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, in which a Giant Pacific Octopus narrates every other chapter and is instrumental in helping a family solve mysteries of the past– like an octopus detective.
I spent some more time with Drew Magary’s The Hike. I’d read it a couple years ago, but I found myself still thinking about it quite a bit. It is a vivid tale of a man who gets lost on a hike and has a time finding his way home. There are a couple fun twists in the adventure and much of what I found online was along the lines of “oh what a twist! didn’t see that coming!”. Susan, a retied English professor and long-time family friend, agreed to have a read and give me her impressions. Which was simultaneously wonderful and terrifying– «Cool, maybe she’ll see how all these strands come together– that’d be neat». AND «Oh shit! I’m back in an English class for one, no faking your way out of this one, Tim!». I didn’t do too badly, the median mark in the class was a passing grade, I’d guess… You’ll never get a yes/no definitive on whether the giant sexy witch that eats hotdogs and ghosts is a metaphor for university or not. It is entertaining, and if it gets you thinking beyond that, it is a bonus. I did re read the book and was surprised at how different it was from what I remembered– careful of the tricks your mind plays.
After watching the Apple series Slow Horses, I picked up some of the other Mick Herron ‘Slough House’ novels. I hadn’t been able to get into the first one– likely because I was looking for a daring-do spy novel which the Slough House novels aren’t. That reading is paying off handily now with the current season (3) that is now running– I’ve got a sense for where it is all going and am really enjoying it.
Our Reef Fish Identification– Travel Edition: Caribbean Bahamas South Florida book got some good use this year again. Quite a few members of the family found themselves needing a consult to know what they had just seen (in the Caribbean!)
Ok, I can’t do the fishing section of the letter without doing the Anniversary section of the letter. Ewa and I have been married 10 years! We opted to do a big to do of it.
Family and friends were able to join us on the beach in Mexico where we celebrated the first 10 years of our marriage. There was a gang! Oma (Renée); Ali, Andrew, and Maddie; Gill; Cait, Adam, Naomi, and Xavier; Ciocia Ilona (‘Ciocia’ = Auntie in Polish); and Behrang & Virginia. This was many more people than were there when Ewa and I got married– we eloped. More precisely, we eloped in Old City Hall in South Beach– among people settling their parking tickets and misdemeanour violations.
The last time were were in the building behind us in the below photo, we got married in it. The photo below also makes clear the best thing produced by our marriage– Zoe (in addition to the mutually ever strengthening bonds of love and commitment between Ewa and myself– obviously).
Through the week various outings saw much of the group snorkelling with sea turtles and deep sea fishing. It was a great week.
It was good year for fishing. I’m still able to get Zoe interested in outings, so that is great. We’ll see how the Papineau-Labelle adventure for brook trout next Spring pans out.
Zoe and her friends Isabelle and Talia took part in the Sparks fishing adventure at Dow’s lake. Everyone caught at least one fish. One very gullible and very small sunfish. Probably not same fish over and over, but the fish are very gullible. The outing was a hoot.
With Gyrados at the ready, many of the lakes up in the Pontiac region became easily fishable. I made a couple outings and thoroughly enjoyed myself. In the coming year, I hope to rig up a way to set a line and troll for the lake trout from the kayak– those guys hang out deeper in the lakes and require a bit of gear.
As you’re already aware, we were down in Mexico. And made it out fishing– the party was: myself, Zoe, Adam, Gill, and Virginia. And we all caught a barracuda! Not that it was a competition or anything.
All in all, we had a full year. There was the better part of a week up at Lac Doré with Ali, Andrew, and Maddie. Zoe took her last ride on the school bus to the kindergarten pavilion and started walking to the considerably closer big school this September. The family put together a pretty awesome Team Rocket (from Pokémon) group costume for Halloween. Zoe was Jesse, I was James, and Ewa went as Meowth. Zoe and I got more serious about badminton and began playing in a drop in session this fall.
And then there was the «Seagull Incident». Some blunt foreshadowing for the non-Pokémon readers:
Having established that Leafeon was the approximate size, shape, and colour of a wrapped filet-o-fish sandwich, you might guess what the bold seagull did next. You’re right, he took it and flew off desperate to keep his loot from his chasing comrades in feathers and over Zoe’s screaming. We got to watch him fly around Mooney’s Bay for a couple minutes before dropping Leafeon into the bay. We’re less keen on seagulls ever since.
Ewa’s usual request to be left out of the letter that no one reads cannot really apply this year– she’s stuck with me for 10 years and you’re all going to hear about it! Instead, she’s promised to only allow photos she looks really really good in to be included in the letter. Other than a couple colds to end the year, we are healthy and have had a pretty good year. I hope the letter finds you well, that you are able to enjoy the holidays with friends and family, and to hear from you in the new year.
Merry Christmas, Best Wishes, Festivus for the Rest-of-Us, and Happy New Year– Tim, Ewa, & Zoe
