Confessions of a 1st Time Roller Girl...

This is Rocky. He is my beastly friend. He is sort of the first born in this house, he looks out for his two younger siblings.

   Recently however Rocky has become sick. What we thought was a possibly urinary tract infection has had him on weeks worth of antibiotics; progressively stronger, a surgery, prescription foods and he is only getting worse. We are a lower middle class family. We are currently spending every penny we can on saving this guy. He is so amazing and seeing him in pain daily and doing not much more than crying is killing me. The vets keep telling us there is hope, the problem is hope is breaking us financially. We are averaging $300 a week in vets visits and another $40 a week on food. When he is willing to eat.

   He was the most active dog around less than a month ago, his favorite activities were jumping at low hanging tree branches and playing fetch. He was so muscular and full of life. Over the past few weeks he has barely been able to climb the back stoop to get in the house. We’ve been carrying him up and down stairs, to help him alleviate the pain it takes for him to climb. All of the muscle in his back end is slowly disappearing. All he does is cry, and I cry with him because I just want him to be better. He is our kids best friend. Especially our son. They are attached at the hip. Connor; my son, is now 5 and doesn’t remember a time without Rocky. They play outside for hours. I always know where Connor is exploring because I can hear Rocky’s tags jingling. Connor is feeling lost without his playmate.

   When we dropped Rocky off at the vets for surgery Connor was very adamant with the vet about how she was to care for Rocky, whom he calls his “big, big friend”

    I’ll try to keep this updated, in case anyone cares to follow our story, but the long and short here is my husband started a go fund me account to help us pay for his vet bills. Anything will help, even just a share folks. Please help us out, we don’t want to see this gentle soul of an animal gone before his time. Thanks so much for reading this! Take care!

This is Rocky. He is my beastly friend. He is sort of the first born in this house, he looks out for his two younger siblings.

   Recently however Rocky has become sick. What we thought was a possibly urinary tract infection has had him on weeks worth of antibiotics; progressively stronger, a surgery, prescription foods and he is only getting worse. We are a lower middle class family. We are currently spending every penny we can on saving this guy. He is so amazing and seeing him in pain daily and doing not much more than crying is killing me. The vets keep telling us there is hope, the problem is hope is breaking us financially. We are averaging $300 a week in vets visits and another $40 a week on food. When he is willing to eat.

   He was the most active dog around less than a month ago, his favorite activities were jumping at low hanging tree branches and playing fetch. He was so muscular and full of life. Over the past few weeks he has barely been able to climb the back stoop to get in the house. We’ve been carrying him up and down stairs, to help him alleviate the pain it takes for him to climb. All of the muscle in his back end is slowly disappearing. All he does is cry, and I cry with him because I just want him to be better. He is our kids best friend. Especially our son. They are attached at the hip. Connor; my son, is now 5 and doesn’t remember a time without Rocky. They play outside for hours. I always know where Connor is exploring because I can hear Rocky’s tags jingling. Connor is feeling lost without his playmate.

   When we dropped Rocky off at the vets for surgery Connor was very adamant with the vet about how she was to care for Rocky, whom he calls his “big, big friend”

    I’ll try to keep this updated, in case anyone cares to follow our story, but the long and short here is my husband started a go fund me account to help us pay for his vet bills. Anything will help, even just a share folks. Please help us out, we don’t want to see this gentle soul of an animal gone before his time. Thanks so much for reading this! Take care!

This is one of the most original, painstakingly beautiful works of art about kitchener that I have seen! It’s so relevant to today for a million reasons - it’s all about drinking beers at kitchener’s former wasteland/Mecca the circus room, it features dancing Star Wars characters (and its May the fourth), and most importantly it mentions the important, epic local punk band The Rotten.

If I can get a little serious here for a moment, I want to talk about the importance of The Rotten to the K-W punk world, and my personal development as a Waterloser. One of the frigging coolest things about The Rotten is that they had an amazing female drummer, Angi Orchard! I suspect Angi came into this world as a natural born punk, with band patches and anarchy symbols safety-pinned to her diaper. I can’t be sure, but I know when we started high school together at age fourteen she was already one of the most interesting creatures I had ever seen - so intelligent, sensitive and kind, at the same time as being incredibly cool, powerful and badass. I was always a little shy of Angi because I wanted to be just like her, but I observed as she grew into a major fixture and driving force in the KW punk scene, as well as a wicked feminist inspiration and anti racism activist. Along with her high school sweetheart turned life-long partner in love and super cool guy Jan, they raised the tone of the KW punk scene in their band The Rotten and many other projects, and their shared screen printing business.

Something that I always admired about Angi was her ability to make deep, familial relationships within KCI (and the larger punk scene in KW) and hold on to them forever. It both filled my heart with happiness and broke it a little to see that in her final days she was loved and surrounded by the same faces I saw her surrounded by almost twenty years ago at KCI. That is such a testament to her greatness as a person. I know that me and all of the other women who were inspired by and looked up to Angi are a little bit cooler because of her being on this earth. All of her longtime friends and family (especially her sister) and of course, Jan, must be so devastated right now and I hope they will derive some solace from the fact that she seemed to accomplish so much in her short lifetime - she was an incredible artist, a local hero, a feminist icon, a business owner, a great mom to dogs, and a beloved friend and partner, and an inspiration to us.