WIP Thursday

The latest romper in progress from the 2006 J line.

This is the new flannel "wall" in my sewing room. For my non-sewing readers, whom I know are in the majority, quilters like to have a big piece of flannel fabric to use as a design wall. The cotton fabric pieces one uses to quilt with can be placed on the flannel in various combinations until the desired design is achieved. The cotton sticks to the flannel, so you can stand back and look at it from a distance for perspective. I didn't have a lot of wall space I wanted to give up, so DH had the brilliant idea of manufacturing a temporary one. I backed a giant piece of flannel with a polyester lining fabric with a sleeve at the top and bottom for a wooden dowel. When in use, it hangs from the dowel in front of the closet. When not in use, or when I need to get in the closet, it rolls up to be tied out of the way with lovely pink ribbons. Ingenious, no?

Bob demands being included weekly in my blogging. She calls this one: Bob in Basket.

And this is the result of an obscenely expensive puppy supply shopping trip. It actually looks like so little for what we paid. It's all but the food though. Including a collar to grow into. We didn't buy food yet because I'm looking into the raw food diet. My parents have been feeding their dog some special, gourmet dog food for years in an effort, not to be fancy, but to avoid all the by-products and give her the healthiest diet they could. The breeder is currently feeding our puppy the BARF diet one meal a day and fancy kibble for the second. I need to learn more about this raw food program though. I'm concerned about how to keep the bacteria under control. I ordered a book from Amazon. My answer to every question in life, after a Google search. By the way, for anyone looking for an excellent puppy/dog training book (you, Daddy-o?), I highly recommend this one. Not even so much for the training info as for the animal behaviorism; fascinating stuff.

New Vocab

bershon, see http://queserasera.org/archives/000802.html

Snakes on a Bridge

Thank you domesticali for the suggestion! DH's response was a reference to the giant gingerbread man from Shrek 2. Which I took as a "thank you, but not quite right for our pup." So please, can we have some more submissions to the Name That Puppy contest, inspired by Farmgirl Fare's Name That Sheep contest of 2005? We would love to read any and all suggestions! But you won't win any puppies.

In other news, DH and I enjoyed a lovely spa day last Saturday. Well, he enjoyed a spa 90 minutes of Thai massage. He could have done more, but didn't want to. Silly boy. I had a haircut (I was waaaay overdue for a trim), facial, pedicure, and deep tissue massage. The facial was amazing, loved every minute and actually saw a noticable difference that I didn't see after the only other facial I've ever had, over three years ago. The pedicure was probably not worth it. I've learned that pedicures up to a certain monetary value are worth the money. Apparently there's only so much they can do to the feet after that. The massage was probably worth it, but not enjoyable. That was my first deep tissue massage and it really hurt. I had some huge knots in my back, presumably from the abuse it took during the move, and she could not break them all up. One in particular is actually visible, accoding to DH. Is that gross? Sorry. I may be hanging out with too many PTs lately. Anyway, all financed by various gifts we'd saved up over the years. A rare treat and much enjoyed.

That night we had a lovely evening of walking our friends' dogs (practice, practice!) and ice skating, which I hadn't done in years. I seem to be gaining a lot of fear as I age. I grew up in the land of ice and snow, after all. You'd think I'd be right at home. I think the knee surgeries I had and the doomsday diagnosis about having the cartilage of someone in late middle age when I was only 23 kind of shook my confidence in my body. But I persevered and progressed and didn't fall. Needs more practice.

Monday and Tuesday were uneventful work days. Wednesday I finished the copy editing job from hell. However, on the way to the Starbucks at which it was finished, via bicycle, I was nearly killed by a snake. Maybe a little exaggeration on the "almost killed," but no exaggeration on the "snake." The Starbucks is about two and a half miles from our house. Getting there requires crossing a bridge over the Santa Cruz River wash. Crossing the bridge, I didn't see this snake until I was almost on top of it. It was just to the right of the bike lane, and it was huge. I don't know what kind it was (brown, if that's a kind), if it was poisonous, or what, but it was huge. And did I mention huge. I can't guesstimate tonnage, you'll just have to take my word for it. DH's response: "Why didn't you help it back into the wash?" Oh yeah, why didn't I? And for that matter, why didn't I throw myself into oncoming traffic? Or off the bridge itself? Or drink a gallon of bleach? Why haven't I attempted to kill myself in any of a myriad of ways? Where has my head been? Men. Anyway, I wasn't the only one startled. I swear the snake jumped upon hearing my sharp inhalation of breath. As I crossed the bridge, recovering, and proud of myself for actually not swerving into traffic, I noticed anew the huge construction site on that same side of the road, and now I think the poor snake was probably sans home. Then I felt bad. But not bad enough to go back and commit hari kari via snake bite.

It's a Boy!

Well, we already knew that. But now we know which boy! And we're officially taking suggestions for names. This is turning out to be much harder than naming the cats was. Probably because I keep picturing myself yelling it across a park in front of large numbers of people. So post some comments with male puppy names, please! We just might use one. These are all him:




I have lots more to blog, but I also have to go to bed. More to come, asap.

Snow Days

This morning came with a very sudden and welcome turnaround from the direction it had been taking toward The-Most-Stressed-I-Had-Been-Since-Grad-School, a cold and dark
wasteland from which I just barely escaped once, never mind a second go around. I finished one copy editing job last night, only to open another one and find thick stacks of about 250 pages of papers, many single-spaced, due in about ten days. This figured out to approximately an obscene number of pages that I must complete each day to reach the deadline (and I was just recently late with a deadline, something that's happened only a handful of times in the three years I've been doing this). The problem is that I copy edit articles for academic journals, and most of those journals are quarterlies, which means I get dumptrucked on quarterly. And I have not been my hyperorganized, on-top-of-everything self lately. There's a huge stack of bills and filing, I'm missing birthdays, the house is a disaster, my sewing room is still nowhere near complete, too many errands for my comfort are pending, etc. It's hard for your garden variety type A to deal with.

Then two things happened: First, I learned I would not have to go in to work today at all. Ah, the magic of working PRN! "Snow days" come more frequently here in the desert than they ever did when I was growing up in the 'burgh, north of the Adirondacks, if you can imagine such a concept. Of course the reality of a snow day is a little different in that there is now no actual involvement of said snow, but there is still the unexpected thrill of waking up expecting to face another day, put another "x" on the calendar, only to get the phone call from heaven that, in fact, I have the day off! And there's the downside of not getting paid. On the other hand, this meant I could spend the whole day copy editing, for which I do get paid, and thus carve a nice chunk out of the work I had expected to be tethered to all weekend.

Second, I checked my email and found more puppy pictures!


The breeder will be doing temperament testing this weekend and allocate the puppies to their families on Monday. The two girls are apparently already reserved, so now we also know that we'll be getting a boy. She sent a dozen pictures of only nine puppies, so obviously some are dupes, but Lord help me, I can't tell them apart. Some look more reddish than others, but that could also just be the lighting. They're all just darn cute (as all juvenile animals are meant to be) piles of fluff. She also asked for preferences regarding ship date, and I learned that he could come home as early as the ninth, but I don't have a set date yet. Time to make a list of the 10,000 things that need to be done before he gets here and get cracking. Or get DH cracking while my butt is glued to the couch with my hand glued to my red copy editing pen.

I also learned three interesting things today (interesting to me anyway):

My old standby technique for copy editing, whereby all unknown or unfamiliar words and terms are replaced by such ubiquities as "whosit" and "whatsit" thus making the sentence comprehensible for grammar checks, does not, in fact, work for all academic fields. Specifically, I have stumbled upon a segment of academia so baffling to me that there are more whosits and whatsits in the sentence than anything else, making it instead less comprehensible than it was before. Case in point: "The spread of whatsits such as thingamajig, doodad, and whatsitsname has greatly contributed to the rapid dissemination of whosits among several thingies of human and verterinary importance." And that's a tame one. I just don't have the time to find the wild ones hiding in the bush for your reading excitement.

Despite the fact that I live in a so-called desert, one's lawn can apparently turn into a veritable jungle within a matter of three weeks during monsoon season. And further despite the fact that the real estate agent specifically told us she thought all the grass was going to die. It didn't. In fact, DH and I somehow failed to reckon with the fact, until days after we had moved in, that it was actually our responsibility to now care for this lawn. Lawn? Who said anything about a lawn? Wait a minute, lawncare requires a lawnmower! No sir, we did not sign up for that. Who has a lawn in the desert? Actually, far too many people, if you ask me, but we never intended to be one of them. We just never put two and two together and now we have to buy a lawn mower. This seems as overwhelming and daunting a task as buying a new car. In theory, DH is on it.

It turns out that fat really does weigh less than muscle. I am now suspiciously close to my wedding weight (according to the MD's scale at my recent check-up), which, for those of you who didn't know me then, was my fighting weight, my I-can-pretty-much-wear-whatever-I-want-without-thinking-twice weight (periods that have come fleetingly in my life). That should sound like a great thing, but I feel like I have the same amount of flab on me I had 16 pounds ago. Could I have really lost that much muscle? DH seems to have no trouble believing it, but he's a boy and that much muscle is nothing to them. Women don't put it on so easy. I recently figured out my supposed "ideal weight," not the fashion magazine kind, but the Women's Health kind with all the very complicated calculations that registered dieticians use for actual optimum health, as close as any calculation can figure it. Now I'm starting to see how that low, low number I figured is actually possible. With the same amount of muscle that most of my girlfriends have on them (i.e., very, very little), that would actually be a reasonable weight for me. Not unhealthy at all. I think being a rower in college just skewed my idea of what normal muscle mass was for a woman; although, I was never by any means any kind of hulking warrior princess. Looking in the mirror, I see the back muscles I've carried for the past ten years are gone. But when I think about the kind of effort it took to keep all that muscle, way way more than the average fitness plan, I start to question whether it's worth trying to rebuild to the same degree. Out of my early 20s, I'm not so insecure about how I look. Other things are more important now. Frankly, I'm busy. I don't have the same drive to excel at fitness so much as to just meet the status quo. But am I really willing to surrender to the fact that I've probably peaked, in that totally vain, shallow, physical way (note me noting that none of this really matters; feel no need to scaffold my self-esteem, sweet as any such intentions would absolutely be)? This is a tough fact to come to terms with for me. Kids are not too, too far in the future and I think I still see that as the beginning of the end, for my body anyway. Well, I'm not going to reach a decision this moment, so I'll just revel in the uncommonly low (for me) numbers on the scale, and ignore the rest for now!

Now really, this can't be comfortable.

No News Is Boring News

This is a token post, a space-filler. Not much quality here today, I'm afraid. DH tore the computer apart today, unexpectedly, so I don't have access to Photoshop, which I usually use to try and pretty up my pics (as much as possible). But I've had these on the camera for days now, so I got him to show me how to upload them to my laptop. We're still unpacking. I'm still disorganized. I'm still getting slammed with copy editing, so I've had no time for anything. I honestly don't even feel inspired to write today. Could it be the three straight hours of Project Runway that's been on tv in the background rotting my brain? I swear I'm actually making progress toward having interesting things to post again, but I'm not there yet. In the meantime, here are a few tastes of what's going on around here.

Not sure what happened with this glass. I had set it down on the floor, then dropped this silver goblet-y thing on it accidentally. It broke right at the level of the liquid, which we found fascinating. We couldn't decide whether to peg it on the cohesive or adhesive properties of the liquid. Any takers on that one?

This is a chocolate chip banana bread I made today because I had some way overripe bananas. It was a new recipe I pulled off Epicurious. Not overly impressed. It's a little dry, but I didn't actually measure out the banana volume, so maybe I didn't have quite enough. Small matter; it's just going to work for the colleagues anyway. It was kind of nice to bake something for the first time in a loooooonnnnngg time. I generally have no restraint with all things baked, so they seldom make appearances in our house.

Here are a couple of promised pictures from the walking/cycling path near our house. The views are nothing phenomenal, I know, but I'm just so happy to have someplace I can walk, alone, even at night, and feel 100% safe.



This last pic is a mountain near our house of which I'm just particularly fond.

Kind of Puts It All in Perspective

DH emailed me these yesterday and I thought they were way too cool not to share. This is one of the most enlightening things I've seen since my first barium swallow video (when my entire dysphagia class suddenly came to a new understanding of the anatomy we'd been poring over for months--"Oh, that's the valleculae? Now I get it.") .

Kitty Bling

DH is still working on the computer, so no pics. Sorry.

I've been slowly edging myself toward getting up earlier in the morning because I have big plans to join the LA Fitness near our new house and go to the 5:45 Aqua Fitness and Spinning classes. They say that when you need to get up earlier in the morning you should get up 5 minutes earlier every day to ease into it. So I am not yet getting up early enough for the gym classes, but I do have time to kill before work, so I went for a walk this morning. I discovered that there's a paved bicycle/pedestrian path in the wash that borders our development, which will be perfect for dog-walking! I'm very excited about this. On the one side, you can look into people's backyards and compare landscaping and patio furniture. Turn to the other side and a wide open desert vista confronts you, with only a few manmade structures visible in the distance. I'll have to post a picture. It's not the most picturesque Tucson landscape, but it's certainly better than the QuickMart we had previously as our walking scenery.

On a totally different topic, since when did Petsmart decide that ID tags should cost $18 each? For the cheapest ones? All three cats need new tags now that our address has changed. I read that you're not supposed to put your name or address on their tags anymore because bad people will use the info to steal your cat or rob your house. Now you're just supposed to put your phone number. So I'm doing that, but I'm ordering them online where I found them for only $4 each. I wanted to order a dog tag, too, but we don't know the gender yet and I really felt that would guide my decision as to what shape and color the tag will be. I know. You don't even have to think it.

Checking Back In

Told you I'd be back! Sorry for the long hiatus. Everything is finally moved in. DH and a friend whose stock around this place just went up a hundredfold moved all the big furniture yesterday with the help of a dolly. DH swears we are hiring movers next time. I don't blame him. He's been cleaning the old apartment all day. I've been continuing to unpack the new place. All the important stuff is 99% done. DH will tackle all the electronics (e.g., tv, stereo, computer) over the next few days. Then we're left with his office, my sewing room, and all the decorative stuff: hanging pictures, making curtains, etc. I'm calling Aveda tomorrow to schedule massages for both of us next weekend.

The kitties hated the drive up here. My vow for this move is that next time all three will be sedated. Puck and Lita were in a carrier together and fought. Bob was in a second by herself and I think she was throwing herself against the door the whole drive. When we got here, they had to be locked in the bathroom for hours while all the furniture was being moved in. I periodically checked on them and invariably found that Lita was still in her carrier and Puck was beating on Bob who had her face hidden in a corner. It was heartbreaking seeing Bob, in particular, so scared because she's usually so confident. Poor dears. But they've bounced back quickly. There are lots of big windows in this house, which they love. And the wildlife viewing is much improved from our central apartment. I saw a bunny in the backyard yesterday, and again in someone else's front yard tonight when walking to the mailbox. Also a quail. There are lots of other birds I can't identify and that we didn't have at our last place. Really big birds, too. So the kitties will have lots to watch to keep them busy. Nobody's going outside for a while.

I've also started them all on a diet. Lita has surpassed the cute, chubby weight she was at for years and is now pitifully, downright fat. I'm worried about her, so no more grazing for anyone. They usually have a big bowl of food at all times. Now it will be measured portions every morning and night. Regular food for Puck and Bob, Lite food for Lita. Maybe Puck will even put on some weight while Lita loses. This really would have been a necessary change in another month anyway as I wouldn't leave cat food out with a puppy in the house.

A new copy editing job arrived in the midst of this move, so I'd better get busy with that. Sorry no pics today. Our wireless is set up, but not the main computer, so I'm writing this from my laptop with no way to upload pics at present. I'll get on that as soon as DH has it set up.

Empty Nest

I had a request for some interior shots of the new house, so here's the best I could do with what little energy I had left after work:

Living room, shot standing near the kitchen


Kitchen, shot standing in the dining area


Living room in the foreground, shot standing near the front doorway. The dining area is at the far end, with the kitchen directly to the left of it, out of camera range.

There is also another room through the french doors you can just make out to the left of that last shot. It will probably be the office/DH's computer room. The master bedroom is through that arched doorway to the right of the last shot. Down the hall to the left is a guest bathroom, guest bedroom, & another bedroom that will be a sewing room for me!

As you can see below, the backyard is in pretty rough shape, but we figured that was perfect for a new puppy! No pristine landscaping to be ruined. And I can try some experimental gardening with no reprecussions.

We'll be doing a lot more moving this weekend, and maybe not much else. So posts may be scarce for the next week while we finish up. Patience, grasshopper. I promise to post more frequently in the near future.

New Digs

Work is going well this week. It continues to improve every week as I like to think I get more competent and, therefore, confident. I have learned, though, that, contrary to my previous assumptions, I am not the worst person at dealing with stress. Let's leave it at that.

We've now taken about 8 carloads of stuff up to the new house. And my Matrix holds quite a bit of said stuff. DH is now referring to it as the "clown car." We've been preparing items to pack each night, getting up early to load the cars each morning, then dropping off the goods at the new abode after work each evening. Every morning, when packing my car, we get to the end of what we'd prepared and find the thing maybe half full. Then we run around the apartment grabbing whatever we can to shove in there and get to work. Anyway, here's a pic of the new 'hood. If you look very closely, you can even see my wreath, already transported and hung on the front door. You may also notice, at the very right of the picture (try clicking on it to make it bigger), behind the tree, the gate with spaces between its iron bars big enough for several Pucks and maybe one Lita to get through. Okay, maybe you can't see it in this picture. But, at any rate, don't worry, we'll be covering that with something or other. I'm not making it that easy for him to go gallivanting around the neighborhood. And Lita won't be going out at all unsupervised. I really don't think she'll mind much. She kind of likes having the place to herself now when the other two are out. In the plus column, we are at a nice median distance from both the major road and the wash, minimizing danger to my furbabies both by car and coyote/hawk/owl/generic cat-killer.

By the way, we've had some meteorological excitement 'round these parts lately. It's monsoon season and we had some nice flooding Monday. The Rillito River flooded in a dramatic manner. I tried to take a picture Tuesday, but it was already mostly dried up. Here's one pic from our local NBC affiliate.

Gratuitous kitty picture.

Newborns

A couple of pics from the breeder! The two girls...

...and the 9 boys!The puppies are about about 10 days old now.

Wild Wild West

Today is DH's and my 3rd wedding anniversary. Three years ago, DH's Big Brother and family gave us some gift certificates through Select Registry, a company that allows you to use certificates at hundreds of B&Bs, inns, resorts, etc. around the country. We finally cashed ours in last weekend, to celebrate our anniversary, at the Tanque Verde Ranch, here in Tucson.

We had a great time. DH said he was worried that taking a mini-vacation without leaving town would be kind of anti-climatic, but he admitted he was wrong. I told them it was our anniversary when we made the reservations, but we only paid for the cheapest room available (student loans, you know). The guy on the phone said they'd put us in the best room available upon check-in. I was a little hopeful, given that July in Tucson is not exactly peak season. But I was not expecting the best room in the place, which is what we got. It was a six-person suite, bigger than our whole apartment, that goes for more than three times what we paid. So we were big fans right off the bat.

Breakfast and lunch were buffets with a huge dessert selection at lunch (we're also big fans of food). All meals were included with fruit and pastries available to snack on between meals (even we didn't need that). Alcohol was the only thing not included, but that was okay. It wasn't that kind of weekend.

All activities were also included, horseback riding being the big draw, naturally, at a ranch. There was also mountain biking, hiking, a nature center, tennis, swimming, art lessons, workout room, etc. We pretty much just did the horse riding, with a little swimming thrown in.

Now, when I was little, maybe eight, nine, ten (my mom would know), I used to go to horse camp for a week in the summers. One year my horse took off, full tilt, with me on it. I was terrified and immediately and completely forgot everything I knew about controlling a horse. I got more and more scared as the distance grew on the train between me and my group. Finally, one of the counselors was able to catch up with us and tried to shout at me what to do. I was pretty much frozen. Eventually she was able to grab the reins from her seat on her horse and stop mine for me.

I harbored a moderately intense fear of horses after that. Well, not the horses themselves, but riding them. Sometime in adolescence I rode a very gentle (but tall) horse of a dear family friend, just around her backyard, with her leading it by the reins from the ground. So, not riding so much as passively sitting on the horse. It was all I could do not to scream. I think I hid it very well though. I'm pretty sure my mother was there and probably had no idea I was scared.

So, when we went on our honeymoon to Jamaica three years ago, we were at an all-inclusive resort that offered horseback riding as an excursion. DH loves horseback riding (When we first moved to Tucson, he tried to talk me into buying one of the many properties here with stables. I nipped that in the bud.), so, of course, he was dying to go. He's much more adventurous and adrenaline-seeking than me (Much more is an understatement. We are at opposite ends of the adrenaline spectrum.), but I didn't want to deprive him, he had no one else to go with, so I decided to take a baby step toward conquering my fear. It was a good choice. These horses were so slow it was hard to keep them moving. I didn't even have to steer; they knew the path like the top of their hooves. It was a success.

So I was okay with trying the horse thing again last weekend. We got up early one morning for a nice, easy walk ride. Exact same experience as in Jamaica, only much hotter. And I learned better control of my horse, mostly able to keep it from eating foliage when it was supposed to be walking. Then we signed up for an intermediate lesson. Also a success. I managed to trot my horse without fear, though with a sore rear end. Then we learned loping, which is one step down from a full run, and I even did that. It was fun! Much smoother than the trot. I was able to get him (Boomerang was his name) up to a lope one out of two tries.

Here's where things went downhill. DH and some of the other guys in the class were becoming quite proficient with the loping and decided to take the "lope test" later that day. Basically, you get three chances around the ring to prove that you can lope safely. This allows you to go on the more advanced trail rides. At first I thought I wasn't ready to try that yet, I shouldn't push it, just leave things on a good, positive note and be proud of all the progress I'd made in conquering my fears. But DH thought I looked so confident and proficient (and the instructor had used the word "excellent" with me) and I started to confuse my careful, in-control, Type A nature with DH's adrenaline-loving, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, reckless nature and was fool enough to think I could do it, too.

I failed. Miserably. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. I stayed on the horse. He didn't take off on me. It was more like he couldn't understand me. And the instructor was yelling at me (not mean, but I don't do well under that kind of pressure) and I was trying really hard to do all the things I learned and not panic, but I was so frustrated and confused and embarrassed about why it wasn't working. And I pretty much fell apart. Well, not visibly until I got off the horse. I knew enough to keep it under control so the horse wouldn't get freaked out.

So I did not get to end on a high note. I may have emotionally regressed to the easy walk rides again. But even if I never get the nerve to lope a horse again in my life, at least I did it once. And we loved the resort as a whole. I would definitely go there again. It's worth the money (even without the gift certificates). I would even try a different ranch resort someday. Just give me the easy horses who are more interested in eating the foliage.

Tucson 2006; Jamaica 2003. Speaking of foliage, that seems to be about the only thing that has changed here! I'm pretty sure those are even the same pair of jeans...

Brain Officially Dead

To anyone wondering where I've been: I'm still here, and I'm hoping to accomplish an elaborate post tomorrow, sharing our anniversary weekend at a local resort ranch. Posts are fewer and further between now that I seemed to have been hijacked into what looks suspiciously like a four 10s schedule at work. This is fine, good even, except that it came pretty quickly after I had settled into the nice 16-20 hrs/wk gig I had had going. And I'm still so new in my profession that I feel like I'm at 100% cognitive capacity every single minute I'm at work. When that's 600 minutes a day, it's proving to be overwhelming. In all honesty, the last few hours today I started to question whether I should even be working. Ethically. I know I was making at least some mistakes for that reason alone. Anyway, I know I'll adjust and it will get better. I'm not worried. And I know I'll get no sympathy whatsoever from my MD friends. I'm not worried about that either. :)

Nevertheless, it makes things a bit harder for now. On the bright side, now that I'm out of school, it's great to know that a day off is actually a day off. As opposed to a day where I don't have class, but I still spend 14 hours straight doing schoolwork.

Full House

The puppies are here: 9 boys and 2 girls. Oy. I don't envy Lexie, the dam, right now. No pics yet.

Stay Tuned...

Our puppy's mama is in labor! The litter is being born as I type. Updates to follow as available.

Rejoice!

The prodigal sewing machine has returned and it comes bearing a new pattern selector gear. I picked it up Tuesday afternoon and have already pumped out two rompers for Jonah. *Spoiler alert for Jonah's 'rents: there's a pic at the end of this post.* I hope to get a couple more done this weekend. That kid is going to have a whole new wardrobe via his only auntie come Christmas. That's okay, he's a good excuse for me to practice my sewing skills. Someday, I'll make clothes for my own babies and Jonah will have a chance to say, "You know, back when I was young, your mom was throwing some thread and a needle at a pile of fabric and calling it a romper. Meanwhile, your sitting here in your designer duds and I'm stuck in this potato sack she likes to call clothing. Hmph." And my babies will say, "..." (because they're imaginary babies; they can't talk yet).

Well, the lease is signed and the deposit in, so the rental house is official. We'll have those keys on August 1 and we have our current apartment until August 15, so we have 15 days to make the transition. I'll post pics when we get in there.

The puppies still aren't born yet! Or, if they are, the breeder hasn't posted it on her website yet. Which would be understandable if she has a houseful of new puppies. I feel like such a traitor, sitting here writing about a move and a new puppy with Puck ferociously cuddling and head-butting in my lap. Oh, they are so going to hate us for a while. Their peace will hold out a couple more weeks, though. And I have a stack full of puppy books to get through! I'm actually really looking forward to training this puppy; I think it will be fun for both of us. The not so fun part will be training DH to train the puppy. DH is not so fond of rules and structure and, although I think he knows how important these things are for a dog, I'm not sure he's completely willing yet to follow through on them. But he's so busy with work and school, I think I'll be doing 90% of the training anyway. DH can just show up for playtime, which is the best part anyway! He did say he'd go to as many puppy-kindergarten classes as possible, so that will be a help.

Here's the latest catnip pic. The sprouts keep growing taller, but their stalks aren't getting any thicker, so they're just kind of folding over on themselves because the stalks are getting to be too weak to support the leaves. I didn't remember catnip looking quite like this. The stuff I remember growing in my mom's garden had very thick stalks. Maybe it's just still too young at this point to look anything like it will. The cats seem to recognize it though. I thought I was safe leaving it on the kitchen counter at night because they're pretty well-trained not to jump up there. Turns out they're just well-trained not to do it while we're looking. The plants are now fairly nomadic. Never a night in the same place. My bathroom counter seems to be a haven as I think the cats decided long ago that this was a boring place, not worth visiting. Plus, it can be wet. So they steer clear. For now. One whiff of the catnip and I'm sure it'll become the happening hang-out spot. I can't wait until the plants are big enough to be planted in the ground at our new place and to withstand the affections of the kitties.

And, finally, here are the aforementioned rompers:

Cross Your Fingers

It was a productive weekend. Some waiting is over.

• My Amazon books came and I am happily planning future practice quilts so I can hone my skills and eventually make one for our bed. However, I just don't get this whole scrapbooking thing. I ordered a book that I thought would help, but I just can't "get" it at a creative level. That book may be returned.
• We have an application in for a rental house! It's somewhere between 1500-1600 sq. ft. It has 3 bedrooms and a den, so DH can have his own computer room and I can have my own craft studio! Sooooo excited about that. There's a fenced in yard for the dog. It's about 10 minutes closer to where I work and about 15 minutes closer for DH. It's only drawback is that is has blue carpeting, which I often don't care for anyway, but the carpeting has brown spots in it, as part of the design. I'm sure it's meant to hide dirt, but it just looks like mud splatter everywhere. But, whatever. We figure we can easily live with that for a year or so. And we kept within our ideal price range, which was great, because it was starting to look like we would have to exceed it.
• We put a deposit on a puppy! We also had to fill out an application for the puppy, so please keep your fingers crossed for us regarding both these applications. The puppy's not even born yet. The litter is due any day now. It's a breeder in Oklahoma. A couple with a Master's and PhD who live on a farm with 7 kids. The wife stays home and runs the breeding business. The puppies' colors should be creams, apricots, and reds. We told them we didn't care about the sex, but gave them lots of information about the personality we were looking for in a puppy (i.e., calm, laid-back, calm, not too aggressive, calm, not to shy/insecure, calm, neither the alpha nor the omega, calm, and calm. Oh, and calm.). I'll post a picture when they're born. Still not sure if we're going to drive to OK to pick it up, or have it shipped here. Breeders ship all the time and seem to have success with it, but I'm a little worried about shipping to Tucson in September due to the heat. I'll talk to some breeders and maybe our vet to determine the best plan.
• Still waiting for the sewing machine. Sigh.

Meanwhile, the catnip is growing, the oat grass is recovering, I've made a chicken & garlic stew for dinner tonight (DH's choice as an experiment from the new cookbook), and the house is relatively clean. So, I'm off to copy edit.

Que Pasa?

I was supposed to go see a potential house today after work at about 6:00. I got done at 3:00. Instead of driving the half hour home to turn around and come back, I decided to kill time. I went to buy a fourth pair of scrubs, now that I'm working four days per week. I drove around to familiarize myself with the northwest side of town, now that we may be living there. I explored the Foothills Mall, to which I'd, for some reason, not yet been. Probably because it's one of those outlet malls without any exciting stores; just your standard Levi's, Big Dogs, etc.

But there was a Linens n' Things there, too. I've been looking everywhere for a set of sheets with pink in them with no success (no success with any I like anyway). I want to make a quilt for our bed (after a couple more practice smaller ones) and am dreaming of pinks & browns, but that means convincing DH that pink on the bed won't bother him. So we agreed on a trial set of pink sheets. Today I actually found two sets that I liked, as well as a brown set (clearance, no less!), so I snatched them all up and paid for them before the pink sheet gnomes could come and spirit them out of my arms.

And as I was checking out, I had a little incident. My skills as an SLP got me mistaken for a bilinguist. Some woman, obviously Spanish-speaking, at the cashier next to mine kept asking for "roz." And the cashier kept saying, "Rose? Rose? I don't know what you're talking about." And I asked, helpfully, I thought, "Ross?" (as in Ross Dress for Less, akin to TJ Maxx and probably many others, varying regionally). At which both salesladies and many customers looked at me and smiled as though I were the cleverest person in the store. Unfortunately, the Spanish-speaking woman thought I was clever enough to speak Spanish, which I'm not (yet), but should be, and started saying a lot of Spanish words really fast and everyone was looking at me expectantly... And all I could utter was a meek "No hablo Espanol." And only the English-speakers seemed to grasp that concept. She kept right on spewing rapid-fire Spanish at me. So then I'm wildly flinging my arms around in the air trying to communicate in gesture how she could get to Ross because I'm, in fact, not clever enough to tell her in Spanish. Nothing makes me feel stupider, living in Tucson, than my inability to speak Spanish. That was going to be one of my goals for the summer, but I'm too fully aware of the mass of the undertaking, and other things seemed more fun, in the end. Ultimately, I'll have to do it. Maybe when I'm not so new at the speech path thing and my brain isn't so exhausted every day I'll have more mental energy to devote to that.

Anyway, back to the shopping. I met with more success at the Levi's outlet. A pair of jeans that fit! In a dark rinse! Jeans, or pants of any kind, never fit me, so this was a huge breakthrough.

Then I discovered the Carter's outlet. Good Lord, I think I spend every day fighting off temptation after temptation to buy my nephew more clothes and books. I go through stores picking stuff up, making a little pile, carefully calculating costs, months-old, and sizes in my head, only to finally come to my senses, abandon the pile somewhere for the poor saleslady to find, and skidaddle before the baby-gift-buying demon overtakes me again.

By the time I left the outlet mall to head over to this house for rent, I realized I'd left my phone in the car. Doing so is a sure guarantee that I will have missed at least 17 calls in under 3 minutes. Not quite, this time, but I did miss 5. All from DH, who was frantically trying to warn me that this lady had cancelled. Apparently, her dog died 4 days ago and she's "too distraught to do anything." Normally, I'd be nothing but sympathetic, but DH called her at 4:30 to confirm and that's when she told him she wouldn't be there. Hello? Were you ever going to call us? Or were you just going to let us drive the half hour from where we work to be stood up? So I'm 90% annoyed and only 10% sympathetic.

It was probably an omen. The place was really far away. We live central and ~30 minutes from where we work in the NW. This woman was another 30 minutes west of there. The draw was that there was an acre of fenced in backyard. An acre! What dog needs a park when his backyard is an acre?! But there was also the little problem of the six feral cats she was feeding twice a day. That would have become an issue. So she's off our list. DH will go see two places tomorrow and we'll see a third on Saturday together. Wish us luck.

I know there's at least one Republican reading this blog, so this is fair warning that you may want to scroll past this paragraph, Republican. :) But I feel the need to mention what I see as a poor, poor decision made by my hometown state of New York today regarding gay marriage. I can't say I was as surprised as the gay activists seem to be regarding the state's decision to ban gay marriage, but it's the state's reasoning I get worked up about. One of the main arguments was apparently the questionable wisdom of allowing gays to raise children. What, are we afraid that the straight kids are going to be confused into "gay-ness" by the deviant natures of their adoptive parents? Really, we think they're better off in the foster care system? Really?The moral fabric of society is unraveling as I write this. Oh, wait...it already did. And it ain't the fault of the gays. But that's a whole other gigantic tank of worms. Are we worried about the decline in reproductive rates when this whole gay thing spreads to the hearts and mind

I'm off to watch another gripping episode of "So You Think You Can Dance?" Anyone else as in love with Ivan as I am? Oh...I'm the only one over the age of 14 watching? Never mind.

Here's a current plant picture. I've been shutting the cats out of the bedroom during the day to let the plants sit in the windowsill. One of us messed up this morning and accidentally shut Lita in the room. Entrapment, I know. You can see a little of the minor carnage here, in some snapped grass blades. The catnip was slightly mauled as well, though I don't think it's visible in the crime scene photos. I'm not sure if it was the smell of the catnip or the dirt that lured her in to a life of crime. This one has a strange thing for digging. Always has. Comes from being born in the mean streets of Norwich, NY. Unfit mother, absent father. You know the story.

You can't be any geek off the street. Gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean. Earn your keep!

(please excuse the background-of-questionable-taste; focus on the kitty!)

Waiting

I hate waiting. I should have worked these past two days because I've driven myself crazy.

1. waiting for my sewing machine to be repaired

2. waiting for the quilting and scrapbooking books I ordered from Amazon to arrive

3. waiting for various house rental people to get back to us

4. waiting for various puppy people to get back to us

That's right, we've decided to move our long-term plan up a year and get the dog now. This means moving to a bigger place, so we're looking at houses to rent. So the dog will have a yard, our living space won't be splitting at the seams, and we can live closer to work (we work about 5-10 minutes from one another, but about 35 minutes from where we currently live). I'm very excited about this, but I'm also a member of the "now" generation, so I have very little patience.

In the meantime, here's a wreath I've finally finished (I started it when we were still in Philly, so at least 2-3 years ago).





And the catnip sprouted a couple days ago, so here's where it was on the 2nd. (I didn't take a picture today, but the plant life is abundant in one catnip pot and the grass is starting to look like grass. Sparse grass, but grass nonetheless.)

Sprouts!

The oat grass has sprouted! The challenge I hadn't yet tackled was how to move the pots into an area with decent sunlight without leaving them susceptible to curious paws and noses. My less-than-ideal solution was to put them in the bedroom windowsill with the door shut by day, back to the kitchen counter (where the kitties don't dare set paw) by night. I'm not sure how well this works when the catnip sprouts; it may be too odiferous for them to resist, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (when did I start using the royal "we"?).

Worked four days this week. It's getting much better now that they've given me a modicum of independence and now that I've reaccepted the student role and stopped fighting it. I also got yet another copy editing job, so I feel like I'm raking in the dough for someone working part-time. Ooh, and I got a surprise couple of days off for this long weekend; I thought I was going to have to work through the holiday.

Sewing machine update: I called Friday afternoon to get the status report and they claim (and I have no reason not to believe them) that the company sent the wrong part! Wah! They had already reordered it, but it could be as long as another two weeks. I'm trying not to think about it and satisfy myself with scrapbooking. I've gotten another four pages done, but it's a poor substitute for the pleasing whir of my machine. Sigh. The wee wonderfuls pattern continues to taunt me from the coffee table (I should put it in a drawer before it taunts me a second time). Meanwhile, other recipients have torn through the kitty and are well on their way to having a bear-rabbit-kitty army.