The continued misadventures of Kimelle’s Optimum Jive aka OJ the standard poodle.
As I was saying in the last entry, skillful counter surfing requires stealth, balance and ingenuity. OJ’s ability to balance objects is particularly impressive, especially when one considers that he has to do it without opposable thumbs. He’s not even a particularly huge standard, either, reaching only 25 inches at the withers, so he can’t use height to much advantage. Yet, it is not uncommon that I should wander down the hallway and discover a now clean frying pan nestled artistically in the centre of a dog pillow. I’ve never caught him at it, so I’m not sure how exactly he manages to remove the pan from the stove and get it into the living room without dropping it on the floor. Talented dog, indeed.
The best example of OJ’s remarkable balancing skill came on a day that I’d made myself tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. I made up the can of soup (artfully seasoned with garlic, oregano, basil, and parmesan) ate my lunch and then wandered off to do some chore. I left half the soup in the pot on the stove for a second helping later.
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Tomato soup.
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Did I mention my living room couch is white?
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I went into the kitchen for another bowl of soup. I went to the stove and looked around blankly. The pot was missing. I was the only human at home. I went hunting. I came around the corner saw something suspicious twinkling in light. I stepped closer in amazement. You’re imagining my couch looked like a scene of carnage from a horror movie, aren’t you? You’re imagining it appeared as if a murder had been committed at the stove and the hapless victim was dragged, thrashing in agony, splattering red all the way to the couch where he’d been finished off in some gruesome throat ripping way, right? Yeah. So was I.
Well, we were both wrong. All that greeted me in the living room was a spotlessly clean sou
p pot glistening in the middle of my still pristine white fabric couch. There was not a drop of tomato soup to be seen anywhere. Not in the kitchen. Not in the hall. Not in the living room. How on earth did he manage it? Your guess is as good as mine. Like I keep telling you. He’s a talented boy.
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Really, I just need to figure out how to train this dog to return the scrubbed pots and pans into the sink.
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PS. OJ wishes you to know that he posed today for the accompanying photo under duress, simply for illustrative purposes. He asserts that he has absolutely no knowledge of any empty tomato soup pots alledgedly found on the living room couch .
OJ likes tomato soup, but his favourite is butternut squash, as you’ll see here.
Shawn L. Bird 
Why I Am a Rotarian. July 9, 2010
Tags: District 5060, Rotary, Rotary Club of Salmon Arm (Shuswap), Rotary International, Rotary Youth Exchange, Shuswap Rotary
My daughter was raised knowing that we had ‘family’ in Finland. Every Christmas would come plates, glass, ornaments, and textiles from companies like Arabia, Iittala, Aarikka, or Marimekko. She knew they were very special people because they were my host families. We hosted many exchange students ourselves over the years, and the kids learned about other places, cultures and experiences from their foreign siblings. My daughter dreamed of becoming a Rotary exchange student herself. When the time came, she studied the history of Rotary, the purpose of exchange, and the projects of local clubs. As a result, she did well on her interviews, and was chosen to represent the Rotary Club of Salmon Arm (Shuswap) in Spain for 2005-06. During her year of preparation we were invited to attend several Rotary meetings. My past experience as an exchange student was made known. At one of those meetings a Rotarian asked, “With all your history with Rotary, why aren’t you a Rotarian?” I responded frankly, “Because I was never asked.” Needless to say, within a few months, I had become a member of the club.
Was it just nostalgia for my own involvement as a student? Perhaps. But I still believe in the things that I respected most about Rotary back in 1982. When I was a student, there were no women members in Rotary. When I heard on the news in 1989 that women were being accepted as Rotarians, my first thought was that it was now possible that I could actually join this amazing organization. It was a delightful prospect. Of course, it was years before the opportunity presented itself! I am fiercely proud of Rotary’s international and local service projects. I am honoured to be part of the battle to eradicate polio from the planet. I am thrilled to support literacy projects. I am delighted to see lives changed because of who we are and what we do. Our communities are better because of us.
My little club stuns me on a regular basis. The members are a poster for Margaret Mead’s famous quote, “Never underestimate the power of a small but committed group of people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The twenty-five members raised over $40,000 to fund a CT scanner for our local hospital. We have built and maintained trails, built fences for a shelter, provided an industrial shredder that allows mentally
challenged adults to do meaningful work. We support single parents going to college. We support innumerable community projects, particularly for youth. Internationally, we’ve provided funds to vaccinate twenty-six thousand children against polio in the last two years. We support mid-wife training in Guatemala, are putting two girls in Africa through high school, and have provided dental care to orphans in the Ukraine and to the poor in Ecuador. We have sent youth and young professionals to participate in year long high school exchanges, short term Ambassadorial Exchanges, Group Study Exchanges, and this year we sponsored a graduate student who is now a Rotary Peace Fellow. We are making a huge difference in our community and around the world.
That’s why I am a Rotarian.
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