“Rita—Rita—Rita!”

“Rita-Rita-Rita!”

“Rita—Rita—What the hell are we doin’ back here in this dump so freaking early!”

“Rita-Rita—Obviously Mr. Grumpy has woken up on the wrong side of his branch this morning?”

“Told you we should have waited another month, but no, Ms. Know-it-all has to get us flying 2000 miles back from Florida 'cause you just gotta get back to Canada right now, even though the place is still knee deep in freakin' snow!”

“Was the flight back too much for you poor baby? Are your wittle wings all tired?”

“Rita—Rita—Rita! Hey look down there, there’s that guy walking his yappy dog along the top of the bluffs. Remember him from last year? He's still doin' it! What kind of sick, boring life is that? Back and forth, back and forth”

“Well I think it’s charming. At least someone seems to care about something other than himself.”

“Rita-Rita and will you look at that, he’s got a bag and he's bending over to pick up that dog’s poop! Yuck, never catch me doin’ that! Oh gross!”

“Sure, that from someone whose had no toilet training whatsoever!”

“Yippee, that tree over there still has berries on it! God, was that a brilliant idea of mine to come north early! Get out of my way, I saw it first!”

I saw my first cardinals today. They have such happy songs!

Alright, so here is my sad Watkins story.

I originally posted a shorter version of this as a comment on Sherry's Raindrops Make Things Beautiful blog. She had an interesting posting on vanilla, with a picture of a bottle of Watkins Vanilla as illustration, that brought back memories of my wife's encounter with the Watkins man.

My wife and I met at College and agreed we would live closest to whoever got the best job on graduation. Little realizing the best job offer would require us to move to the small town of Callendar in Northern Ontario. That's a photo of Callendar above, population 1000. Both Linda and I had grown up in Toronto and had never lived outside a major urban area. It was culture shock for us on a grand scale.

We brought a wonderful home overlooking Callendar Bay on Lake Nipissing, set back in the trees on two acres of land. It was located to the left of the picture and about a mile out of town. One thing we hadn't planned on was the lack of job opportunities for Linda in such a small area. While I was involved in exciting work, Linda was fairly isolated and alone, just her and Jenny our dog.

You may have heard of Callendar? For a brief moment in time it had actually been famous. World media had descended on the town. Major Hollywood stars could be found hobnobbing with the locals on the main street. In 1934, quintuplets had been born to a young rural farming couple, Elzire and Oliva Dionne, in Corbiel, a small homestead just outside Callendar. The complicated delivery was attended by two midwives and Dr. Dafoe. The odds against success were 57,000,000 to 1.

All five Dionne Quintuplets survived but were immediately made the wards of the provincial crown until they reached the age of 18. Across the road from their birthplace, the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery was built for the five girls and their caregivers to live in. Their parents could only visit by joining the thousands of people in the Observation Gallery who watched from meshed screens as the children played twice a day as part of "Quintland," a theme-park like atmosphere showcasing and selling Quintuplet merchandise.

Approximately 6,000 people per day visited the observation gallery to view the Dionne sisters. Close to three million people walked through the gallery between 1936 and 1943. In 1934, the quintuplets brought in about $1 million, and they attracted in total about $51 million of tourist revenue to Ontario. Quintland became Ontario's biggest tourist attraction of the era, at the time surpassing Niagara Falls.

Of course that was all decades before our arrival in town and Callander had drifted back to a sleepy anonymity. The only remaining connection to those heady times was the woman who ran our variety store who was the granddaughter of one of the quints midwives. She sold pictures of her grandmother with the quints to the tourists.

But back to my wife and the Watkins salesman.

One morning, after I had left for work, my wife was getting dressed when she heard a knocking on the door. It took her a minute to finish dressing before she could answer.

And when she got to the door she found the Watkins man peeing on our lawn.

I guess he had figured no one was home because my wife had taken so long to answer. He looked acutely embarrassed but was obviously having trouble stopping what he was doing.

He said, "Watkins?" My wife said, "No thank you."

And that was the last time anyone came to our door selling Watkins products.

February is behind us and already March has taken a turn for the better. It is about 10 degrees warmer today than yesterday. The City plows have been out and cleared the road from our most recent storm.

Lindsay and I are back running the high path along the bluffs above Lake Ontario. Today the Lake looks grey and dirty, heavy with all the silt picked up by yesterday's winds.

I'm worried about the Lake. I posted the finding of the International Committee on the Great Lakes last week. Now the New York Times has published new information:

CHICAGO — Regional government agencies around the Great Lakes spend some $15 billion a year to protect the lakes from invasive species, contaminated sediment and sewage overflows, a new study shows. But local officials say that still more protection is needed and that the United States and Canadian governments should pay for it.

“They’re saying it’s not a federal problem, but it is,” Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago said of the five lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. Mr. Daley and other regional leaders say they intend to press for more federal money in light of the study, to be released Wednesday, which for the first time estimates what local governments are devoting to the lakes.

Several mayors said the lakes should not be deemed merely local concerns, but seen as a broader issue, akin to assisting the New Orleans region after Hurricane Katrina or restoring the Everglades in Florida. The study, arranged by the Great Lakes Commission and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, both advocacy groups, concluded that the 688 local governments in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River region spend much of the money on aging wastewater systems, which can release sewage when overwhelmed with rain. The $15 billion estimate was based on responses by 143 of the local governments to a survey on their spending in 2006.

It is uncertain exactly what federal authorities in the United States and Canada now spend on the Great Lakes, in part because so many agencies and programs are tied to the lakes. “That is one of the problems; we can’t find out what’s being spent,” said David Ullrich, executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

No one was available on Tuesday at the United States Environmental Protection Agency to answer questions about Great Lakes spending. But Dale Kemery, a spokesman for the agency, wrote in an e-mail message that its budget provided “significant funding” for wastewater infrastructure nationally.

“We’re doing more with less by advancing innovative technologies and growing greater partnerships for sustainability,” Mr. Kemery wrote.

Still, Mr. Ullrich pointed to a main federal fund — one that helps states with wastewater projects — as an example of shrinking federal money that he said would leave the Great Lakes in jeopardy: the Clean Water State Revolving Fund dropped to $689 million in the 2008 fiscal year, from $1.08 billion a year earlier.

“The same problem can be seen here,” David Miller, the mayor of Toronto, said of Canada’s federal financing. “The national government doesn’t seem to understand the urgency and importance of the Great Lakes.”