Feed a Cold.
Dan woke up AGAIN this morning at 6 to bake muffins. That's baked goods every day this week, except for yesterday when we had enough dinner-party leftovers to feed a small country (especially if that country is Mybellyistan... mmmm good leftovers). Because i'm still sick with the stuffy-head runny-nose fever-monster-cold-flu, i slept late (until 7am!) and awoke to fresh muffins, and because i'm still sick, hot tea and oatmeal.
To all you reading this post:
HA HA Suckers!! He's MY husband, and YOU can't HAVE HIM!!!!!
Tonight we're throwing anouther dinner party for my girl-scout-leader pals and their significant others. By WE i mean Dan is doing all the cooking and cleaning and preparing and i will come home from work a half-hour before the party and set the table. Again, i say it: "He's MY husband!!!!!!! And I win."
tomorrow's blog post, today!
Ha ha! Leah thinks she can make all the posts these days, before me?! (See, when she already posts in a day I have much less motivation to write anything myself; as I noted previously, my main motivation for putting anything down in these pages is to fill up one of those little calender days over there.) This time I've foxed her, though, because even though it's still today to us since we haven't gone to bed yet, the Moveable Type system thinks it's tomorrow! Welcome to October 2nd, suckers!!!
In other words, the dinner party was entirely sucessful. So sucessful, in fact, that when folks finally got up to leave I was shocked (shocked!) to hear that it was past midnight. Leah will probably say more about it, but my joy of meeting people who were willing to have an extended conversation about cookbooks is considerable. Maybe they'll be our friends; that would be nice! I cooked nonstop from about noon until 7:00, half an hour after folks showed up, so they better like me after all that! The menu featured my favorite type of cuisine, skewed american traditional. I think folks enjoyed it... it all tasted good to me.
Weakened by the Weekend
What a great dinner party Dan made Saturday night!!! The food was VERY impressive, and i much enjoyed the group of people: we invited two girls who i knew well in highschool because we were all members of the same girlscout troup (Yes, i WAS a girlscout for 12 years, JEALOUS?) and their significant others who were a delight to meet. It was lots of fun hanging out with these people because
1) We never get to hang out with folks our age, and when we do i get to remember that it's not just me who's poor, under-respected, and hating her job.
2) We never get to hang out with couples, and doing so makes me feel WAY less booring than i usually feel when hanging out with my single young friends.
3) Intelligent conversation!!!!!
Maybe because i was so tired from Saturday night, or maybe because my grad-school application is due in like 10 days, on Sunday i got very sad and into one of my my-life-is-worth-absolutely-nothing-i-don't-contribute-anything-to-the-world-Dan-would-be-better-off-with-a-wife-who-wasn't-such-a-fat-lazy-slob kinda funks. Or maybe it was just the flu, i can never tell. With either problem the solution is always the same: drink more fluids, eat less solids, and go to the gym so often that i no longer have time to think about the vast expanse of the universe as a whole to which i add no particular goodness. Is my role in life to succeed in business only so that i can strip other people of their net worth and add to my own? Only to have a good college education for my future children, rince and repeat? These are the type of questions people my age think about, and i'm told they start to go away once you're thirty or when you buy your first Prada purse whichever comes first.
OMG, don't i almost sound like a whiney hippy? CEASE TRANMISSION NOW!!!!
Happy New Year!
I almost forgot, today is the Jewish New Year! In the ancient culture we celebrate this day by reminding Jews that You have exactly 9 days to appologize to God and to everyone you know for all your sins you've commited this whole past year, or your death will be sealed on October 13th. Hey, that's when i have to send in my grad-school app! Funny coincidence, isn't it?
driving in the dark
It's not my fault I haven't written more: I've been really busy with choir! Heehee, no really, I did just have a choir rehearsal this evening, but that has no relavance other than to allow me to introduce that reference to a cinematographic gem particularly enjoyed by Leah and myself. Also, on the drive there I happened to notice that it was dark out. That's what fall does to you: makes it dark out when you leave your house for evening engagements. I'm never used to it, each time it comes around again, and it always takes a little while to become readjusted to driving in the dark. Sure, we all do it even in the summer, but it feels different somehow then, it being nighttime and everything. Now that we're getting towards winter it's dark, like, all the time! If nothing else that means there's more cars on the road. And... there is something else, something phsychological in my own brain here. It just seems different! I wonder if anyone else has a similar perception.
Coffee Coffee Coffee
Remember how, like, before the wedding when i was like starving myself and stuff, i was all,
"After this wedding is over i'm going to eat all kinds of carbs and get super fat and LOOOOOOOOVE IT." ??????????????????
Former Leah to present Leah: "Sucker"
I am now on an all coffee diet. (Could that give me an ulcer?) Benefit is that my brain runs so fast now sofastsofast that i can hardly stop to think about the upcoming grad-school-application deadline and in extension the directionless mess which is my life.
Downside is that when you go into starbucks and order TWO Venti Soy Lattes, and then you put six packets of equal into both of them, and then you TRY both of them to make sure they're sweet enough, everyone in the place totally knows that you're a crazy addict and not simply doing a favor for a co-worker.
The guy who usually makes my drinks was taking orders this morning, and when he saw me he held up two fingers like in a peace sign and said, "Two?" He is totally hip to my illness.
nice things
DAN IS THE MOST WONDERFUL HUSBAND IN THE WORLD AND I LOVE HIM!!!!!
just, you know, fyi.
i don't say enough nice things on this blog. I thought that getting an actual therapist might help with that, so that i could say all my mean things in private, but unfortunately it didn't. She only pissed me off more, accusing me of not listening to my body and working out too much, when i should be like watching my breathing and saying OM and crap. I'm sorry lady, we can't all be fat lazy hippies.
Dan says that i've spent so much of my life in therapy i should be able to give MYSELF therapy sessions. Unfortunately, i am ALREADY boored of hearing myself think... why would i want to hear myself talk? Outloud? To no-one? Sounds Queer.
PS: Sounds Queer should be the name of a new-wave boy band. You know, if we ever get a new new-wave
Hungry for fashion
Last night Dan and i did one of my favorite things in the world...... go to the mall!!! Dan wanted to get some cool kid jeans, tired as he is of his single pair of old-dood jeans which keeps falling down on account of them being Too Big and Dowdy. Before he married me, Dan didn't care so much about looking suave, but little by little my undeniable style hotness has rubbed off on him. So we set out on the look-out for cool-kid jeans and boy did we find some! Dan picked out a super-cute jean and T-shirt combo that looked so dashing that i wanted to pin him to the wall of the Gap dressing room (Yuck, i know someone who actually DID IT in a Gap dressing room... She got kicked out of the Santa Monica Gap FOR LIFE!!!)
I also bought a very very very dashing brown jacket from "Tristan and Iseut," which does NOT mean in French "Tristan and America," contrary to what the gay salesman thought. (OMG, i have SO got to get out of working retail!) Dan picked out the jacket for me, and it was a big winner, if twice as expensive as his whole outfit.
This weekend we will hopefully look like coolkids together at Canadian thanksgiving. Hopefully the suaveness won't be lost on the Canadians.
chickenshit
Leah is right, we went to get new clothes the other day. She unfairly disparages my old ones, though: they're perfectly respectable, it's just that I wanted a bit of a change! I picked everything out myself, but in keeping with long-established tradition I allowed her to do the actual buying.
That's not what I'm writing about, though (I was planning to but I really can't now, can I). No, my topic for today is the tons of work I did on the lawn today, including fertilizing it with the substance mentioned in the title of this entry. See, we're an organic shop here at the squibix farm, so no Scotts winterizer or what have you for us. The alternative, I find, is chicken manure--suitably processed and pelletized, of course. Before I deployed the fertilizer, though, I had to rake up the ground, and in doing so I noticed that there were even more weeds out in the grass than I had even suspected. Not wanting to favor them with the fertilizer meant for the wonderful little grasses, I spent some hours trying to pull them all up. I actually made a fair dent, and only got bit by two bugs in the process. I also spread an additional layer of grass seeds all over the front part of the lawn. I can't want to see if they'll come up!!
The bags under your eyes make you look so much more mature
When you are wide awake at 2 in the morning, heroically fighting the desire to ingest an entire bottle of NiQuil, Thank Goodness there's someone somewhere on TV making unfunny cruel jokes about celebrity marriages. Otherwise, i don't know how i would have made it through the night.
When i get upset and mad i can't sleep a wink, like when someone tells me that i am naive and childish for caring when someone else botches in the printing a project that i spent every waking second on all week, because it was finally something i had to do that was important that i cared about. "Oh honestly, get-over-it-Leah, you little pouting baby, because other people have other jobs that are way more difficult and obviously more important than yours, and why should you be so upset since what you do is essentially useless and doesn't matter. You should smile and have fun and do things that are more your age level like dance in a tutu on the coffee table purely for my own entertainment. And it ruins your prettyness when you don't smile. And my personal enjoyment of your physical attractiveness is the only valuable reason you have to continute to live on this planet."
It's Saturday, and we're open, so if anybody wants to come in and buy jewelry in the middle of this rainstorm, i will be here. The jewelry ranges in price from $15 to $10,000, but my blood sweat and tears are free of charge!
Happy Thanksgiving, Eh?
Last night we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving at the house of Alan, who is Canadian and, not connected to being Canadian, dating my friend Cara but, connected to be Canadian, threw a great Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. There were lots of people there, all wonderfully under the age of 30, and miraculously amidst that group there were two other couples who were married, one couple who were engaged, one couple who are seriously dating, and only one single guy (but he has a serious relationship with the Lord Christ). So all in all, it was a very stable environment to party. That's what you get when you hang around with Christian school-teachers, i guess: Swell folks who marry early; not like all those promiscuous atheists i went to school with. My only quam with the party was that they didn't put out appetizers. Are appetizers traditional for thanksgiving? I just think a dinner party without appetizers equals a room full of hungry people getting too drunk before the food is put out. But that's only a minor quam. Mostly, i had a very excellent time.
Now i am in my store on my day off because our house currently features no computers in working order, and i need to type / write for the first time my grad-school essays which are due at the end of this week. Only one more to write, and then to finish my resume, and then to get them all checked and looked over before sending. I have been procrastinatory up until this point, because i am somewhat ambivalent about entering grad-school this January. If i get in, i will be very happy with it, but if i don't in i may also be happy about it. I don't know. I am quite ambivalent about my life right now. At least being in the store to write my essays did some good; i sold two gold chains and a gold charm to a customer who came pounding on the door. Even on rainy monday holidays, if they can see you inside, they still make you work!
an ounce of prevention is...
An ounce of prevention is... about the same as an ounce of cure, when it comes down to it. The story to go with this moral follows.
The other day one of my hard drives decided it didn't want to talk to the rest of the computer. It was the one that has the music on it, among many other things, so I noticed when the song I was listening to stopped abruptly. We never assume the worst, so first I just restarted the computer, expecting things to be back to normal; no luck. Then I tried to use Apple's Disk Utility to fix things: it managed to repair two of the four partitions on the disk, but didn't have any sucess with the others. Alright... so next I bought an application called DiskWarrior and tried it out: it handled one of the remaining two broken partitions, but couldn't do anything with the last one. Sadly, that last one (which I called 'most things') was the one which contained all my digital photos, all my music, and all the art I had created over the years. Backups? What are they?
So then I turned off the computer for a few days. It wasn't the end of the world; could survive without all those files; I just couldn't face their absence so soon. The loss was still too raw! Today, though, I had to get back to work, and, unwilling to give up, vowed to try harder to recover my data. After considering and rejecting Norton Disk Doctor (I've never seen a program with that many terrible reviews!!) I came across somthing called Data Rescue II. It's not designed to repair broken file systems, but rather to recover data off of crippled disks, and in my case it worked prefectly. Yay! The file system was completely destroyed, but as far as I've been able to determine every bit of the data emerged unscathed.
All in all, I spent about $180 to get it all back: $80 on DiskWarrior and $100 on Data Rescue II. Now I bet you're thinking, I could have got some kind of a reasonable backup system, firewire hard drive or whatever; sure, but this works too, right? Everything is nearly back to normal now! And I still have the restore aps in case things go wrong again!
No really, I'm probably going to invest in some sort of backup capability in the near future. But I am also very happy to have escaped with so little long-term pain!
almost done...
3 essays,
2 letters of recomendation,
1 resume,
1 college transcript,
4 pages of neatly written application,
and 1 steamy photo!
My application is almost complete. Now all i need is 15 cents, and a nail, and the shell of a great-great-great-grandfather snail.
der, lightswitch?
I used to think love was like a Yes or No, On or Off thing. Like either Yes, i absolutely love you, or No, i'm really only kinda hot for you, but no biggy. I also thought that when you were in love it would always be sort-of the same feeling, like now i love you and it's nice, not it's 10 years later and it continues to be nice, no biggy.
However, these days i am surprised by how exponentially my love continues to grow for my husband. Of course i loved him before, more than the entire universe, even. But even just this morning i was giving him a hug before i left for work, and i was thinking, "If you let go of this hug i think my heart just might rip out of my chest and be stuck to your sweater, i love you that much."
I love him so much that i miss him when i go to work, even though it's only 10 minutes away and he often brings me lunch. I love him so much that i miss him when i'm in the bedroom and he's typing in the next room over. I miss him when he's brushing his teeth because we don't have two sinks. We should look into two sinks. Then i wouldn't miss him so often.
Actually, i'm kind of nervous that i may explode from all this love. I didn't know being married would ever be this intense!
love,
leah
doggy longing; puppy pouting
Dan and i have been considering getting a puppy for about a year now, in the same vague manner we consider ever having a child: wouldn't it be nice one day, if we could ever get our act together, blah blah blah.
Well, the thing about a puppy is it's about the same level of responsibility as a baby, only with about nine months less prep time. As in: This is what your impulsiveness gets you, you wanted a puppy, and now a day later you have a real dog to take care of, dumbass.
But since we still do want a puppy ever so badly, despite obvious logical thought processes, we are putting ourselves through a little test. We have to keep the house clean (ie: stuff off the floor where it could get eaten and then thrown up onto our carpet) for a full two weeks before we can start puppy shopping. The test starts whenever we actually initially clean the stuff off the floor.
So far: no puppy for us.
Sent and formalized
On my e-mail this morning:
"Hi! Leah A-------d: Thank you for your interest in Babson. We received your Evening MBA application for admission and it is in the process of being reviewed. Your application is complete. If you have any questions please let me know. Good luck, [name of admissions rep], Babson College"
I wish everyone would start out conversations with me "Hi! Leah A-------d," We've so gotten out of the habit of calling people by their full name. But clearly from this email we should start doing so in al aspects of our lives.
"Good morning Dan A-------d, did you sleep alright, sir?" Wouldn't you like to hear that from your spouse first thing?
it can't rain all the time
'It never rains but it pours' they say... but I'm not sure I quite know what that means. It's been raining pretty much nonstop since I last wrote in these pages (and that was some time ago, wasn't it!), and it was only pouring perhaps fourty percent of the time. So. In any case, however, it was a tremendous amount of rain; more than I've ever seen before it a similar span of time, I'd even venture to say. Now we know how Noah might have felt. I'm happy to report that nothing floated away here at the squibix household at least, and the basement is no more than damp, so we've come through it all quite well. 'Come through it' I can say now, because today it finally stopped raining and we got to play outside, and what a relief it was. Leah has channeled all her cooped-up feelings into desire for a puppy, so we're in the process of trying to get one in the next couple days. The house is clean now, isn't that enough?!
The rain started scarce hours after I had put my grass in the ground, so you see it was a pretty solid week of precipitation. On the plus side, it fulfilled at no expense to me the instructions on the grass seed to 'water well after sowing until germination'; the seven grass seeds that weren't washed away entirely were about as well-watered as any seed could ever hope to be. The fertilizer I put in at the same time should only have profitted by the wet, though, and ditto for the last-minute plants I bought on deep discount from various nurseries, so that's all good. The latter would now perhaps profit from some sun, as would, I can assure you, the human residents of the neighborhood.
spice cream
I made peanut noodles the other day, and the first step in making peanut noodles is making peanut sauce. The second step is trying to keep enough sauce to put on the noodles, because strange as it may sound that sauce tastes pretty good on its own. After all, it's basically peanut butter, soy sauce, and brown sugar: all ingredients of which I am rather fond. A couple tablespoons of Mongolian fire oil only makes it all the more appealing! So the idea occurred to me, and I suggested it to our dinner guests, that the sauce might be good as an ice cream topping. They allowed that it might be indeed, but no action was taken at the time. Well, today I tried it out (on vanilla ice cream, natch) and I am happy to report that the results are quite tasty. Not exactly what one usually looks for in a dessert, perhaps--a bit too spicy for that, though the sensation of burning was somewhat mitigated by the coldness of the ice cream--but definately an experiment worth repeating at some point.
How to oil your goddess, in a very Puritan way, so don't you be gettin any ideas.
This weekend was a load of fun for the squibix family. By "weekend" I mean "Sunday-Monday-configuration" because like all good retail managers i WORK on Saturdays, when everybody else is out playing, and i'm off on Monday when everyone in the world is grumbling "isn't this the most awful day of the week?" Anyway, on Saturday evening we had a small dinner party with my cousins, David and Sally, who surprised us with a pop-visit. Sally, who is a cantor at a temple in New York, was singing a wedding in the area the following day. An OUTDOOR wedding, which sounded like unfortunate news on Saturday when it was pouring down rain and predicted to continue until tuesday. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to have them just waltz into the store, since i expected them to be in New York you know, doin the New York thing or whatever it is they do down there... eat Rye bread and such.
So i called Dan and asked him to prepare a dinner party in less than two hours, and he came through with flying colors. Thankfully, our house was already clean from the puppy test, and it turned out to be a great party. We even stayed up chatting until 11:00, which is far past our bedtime, and when we woke up the next morning the sun was shining for the first time in what seemed like months! Happy wedding-officiating, Sally!
On sunday afternoon we went looking for a rescue puppy to take home. No Sunday Puppies, but a lot of cute older dogs that might be too much work for us on account of them being mentally broken by their previous owners. Monday morning we tried again, driving out to a shelter in Salem which often has puppies, according to their website. No Monday puppies in Salem, i guess they all got snapped up over the weekend, but there was a cute hound-dog that was just the right size and the lovingest sweetest dog we yet saw. We asked the lady about him (Bartley is the name of the dog, not the lady) and she said that he'd need a fenced-in yard otherwise he's run off following smells, and he needs to be in a crate when you're gone otherwise he'll chew everything all ups. Four other families gave him up so far because he needed too much exercize. So needless to say, we didn't take that good dog home with us, although we might still think about it. We're going to go look at some more doggies on thursday, and hopefully we'll have better look finding a baby.
Since we were in Salem already, we decided to go walk around the "historic" downtown. As Dan said, Salem is a one-trick-pony-town, as in all-witches all-the-time, and every other store is either a witch museum or a witch store, of varying degrees of creepy-ness. We went into one occult shop which looked straight out of Harry Potter, selling robes and wands and crystal balls and all sorts of potions, i mean, essential oils. We were looking at some magic mirrors which needed to be activated by "goddess oil" and Dan wondered, "Do they make it from grinding up the goddesses, or from milking them?"
I said, "I only use free-range goddess oil, accounting for the terrible treatment of goddesses in factory farms."
Dan looks at the statuettes: "This one must be chained up for milking purposes.... Hey! Someone stole Meditation #2 from this set of Zen essential oils. I didn't know you needed oils for Zen."
"Of course you do. Otherwise your aura gets dry."
Anyway, we're glad to live in a town with REAL history, rather than a disney-land-ified version of a single rather insignificant historic event which, as Oona will violent protest, ACTUALLY occured in Danvers. Her grandpa lives right by the original Rebecca Nurse homestead, who was the first person in the whole scandal to be accused and hanged, and if you want to learn more about this whole story about Communism, i mean witches, you should read the play "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, who was married to Maralyn Monroe, don't-you-know.
Puppy-shape hole
Dan and i are heading up to the animal shelter in Sterling tomorrow afternoon. WHY MUST I BE TORTURED WITH WAITING YET ANOUTHER DAY????!!! There is a big puppy-shaped hole in my heart, that desperately yearns to be filled with little puppy licks and tail-wags and a little cold nose pressing against my cheek at 5am in the morning when it's 30 degrees outside and time for a walk! I don't know how i ever get so obsessed with things, but right now i want that puppy so bad that it physically hurts. Last night we were lying in bed, and i made Dan say a prayer for the perfect puppy, and then when he was done i turned to him, all thunder and excitement, and said, "Are we really gonna get a puppy?? really?? Can we really get a puppy and take him home with us and love him???"
Dan was like: "You're crazy."
Dan doesn't get crazy excitied about things in the same way i do, (the jumping around repetitive way) but he is very tollerant and supportive, which is to say whatever hair-brain scheme i come up with (getting a puppy, planning a big wedding, demanding several thousand dollars for engagement jewelry) Dan basically just says, "okay" like he knew we were gonna come to this sooner or later, and now is just as good a time as any. Still, i think he's secretly excited in his own way about a little puppy in the house. I mean, he wants to have REAL BABIES someday, and we have to start somewhere.
Please Please Please no one adopt our puppy from Sterling before we get there. We're coming on Thursday Puppy!!! Wait there for your new mommy and daddy!
I Wanna Be Ready When He Comes
Tonight i will be preparing for the possible arrival for a possible puppy: getting from my parents a doggy crate and bed which no longer fit their little Lokie doggy. As of now the Shepherds and the Labs are still on the shelter website for adoption, but will they still be there this time tomorrow???????
The title of this post also refers to my job right now... I was scrambling around all morning for my boss who never actually showed up, and now i'm still scrambling around to complete a million work projects.
Really though, the title is the title of a song that's playing on my ITunes right now. I borrowed from Dan a really great CD of A Capella Gospel, and when this song came on i immedietly thought of the puppy, and not, you know, of the messiah. Maybe if Jesus came with a cold wet nose and wagity tail things would be different.
I take over this blog now
All this blog is belong to me. That's what happen when i post every day--- Dan doesn't feel the need to do so. Which means more mindshare for my own political agenda WaHaHa!! You see, you readers have already been secretly drawn into the "Vote for Puppy" campaign 2005, and you didn't even realize it! Instantly deploy Puppy to Leah's house!!! She's dying for one!!! This is a matter of national importance!!!
No seriously, we're going to the shelter this afternoon, and if we don't take a puppy home with us today i may be so sad that i'll curl up in the little puppy bed currently unoccupied in our bedroom, and cuddle with all the little stuffed animals. What, you've never done it? But the doggy bed looks so soft and snuggly!
PUPPY!!!!!!!!!
We finally have a puppy of our very own, and he is the cutest dog in the whole entire universe and i love him, so there.
We high-tailed it over to the shelter yesterday afternoon, closing the store a half-hour early in order to get there on time. I was so nervous before we got there, in the car i was tearing out my hair and pulling at my clothes and all other kinds of unseemly things. Dan was busy trying not to get us into a car-wreck, which was difficult because i was reminding him of the imminent importance of avoiding a car wreck every fifteeen seconds. Which is, like, twice as much as often as i usually do it when he's driving.
We got to the shelter in sterling and we were happily surprised to see two little puppies left from the Tuesday batch which we had been eyeing on the web anxiously for what seems like FOREVER. One was a female black lab mix and the other was a cream-colored Australian shepherd mix. While we were looking at them in their pen, a woman came out of the office house to help us, and i immedietly started selling us to her as responsible pet owners. "We have a home with a big yard, and conservation land right by our house, and we're both active and like to be outside, and Dan works from home...." I think i even introduced myself by shaking her hand. I'm sure no-one shakes her hand. It's probobly covered with doggy disease.
Anyway, we went in the pen to check out the two puppy dogs. First we met the baby girl lab, who jumped all over me and nipped at my face about a hundred times. She was very cute, but i wasn't so much playing with her as protecting my chin from mortal injury.
Then we went in the pen with the Australian Shepherd, who Dan was much more interested in anyway, because he has long legs and is bound to be a tall lean dog (Dan's favorite kind) and because his eyes are two different colors, which is painfully endearing. The Shepherd seemed not at all concerned with us, in fact he walked around the pen like we didn't even exist, refraining from any outlandish displays of licking or nipping. Well, that was just the hard-to-get aloof attitude we were looking for! Plus he had the cutest little noble face, and soft soft fur, and i wanted a boy dog, and in the end it's not very hard to pick from just two choices.
So we adopted little Evan the Australian Shepherd Plus, the Plus being whatever his daddy was, we dont' know. Evan was what he was called at the Shelter, only he doesn't answer to anything yet, so his future name is still up for discussion.
We drove the little puppy home and i held him all the way home on my lap. He was very nervous and shivering all over at first, but then he calmed down after a while either because of the pets and scratches or because he forgot what he was doing and the car ride was interesting. Only maybe a bit too bumpy; he threw up his dinner all over me and Dan's car. Then at home he threw up again and peed on the floor. We're Parents!!!
Puppy was a bit skittish and shy all evening, checking out our house and running away from everything (plants, chairs, all noises). He liked his new Crate house though, in which he has a little bed (newly laundered to clean off the throw-up) and a little towel blankey, and a little sheep toy which we gave him as his first present, of many many more yet to come.
His evening walk was a little overwhelming for him, considering it was the first time he encountered a leash, grass, and the concept of walking. When we put him in the crate in our room and turned out the lights for bed he started whining and crying, but then i sang him a lulliby and he was quiet all night. I know, because i hardly slept a single wink, worrying so much about the little puppy and what if he had to go to the bathroom. Still, he was a good as can be, and when we woke up at 6 to take him out, he seemed perfectly happy to stay in his little house lying down. What a lazy dog!
But the sleepyness isn't the poor puppy's fault. He was neutered just three days ago, which makes him a post-op non-sexual as Dan said. Also he's a little shy and overwhelmed, being shipped all the way from North Carolina, and before that only recently being popped out of his mother's tummy 10 weeks ago. But this morning he was feeling more comfortable with us, and ready to explore the house a bit more. He has yet to start playing, but i can feel it building up inside him. He is going to be the best dog EVAR!!!!!
Dan will soon put photos up on the web, and you will hear more about our little puppy (including his new name) in the days to come. It's so exciting being a new parent! When i came into the room from my shower Dan said, "Look! He's wagging his tail at you!" I was so unbelievably proud, it was like my own had just taken his first steps!
Rascal
Rascal is the "working title" name for our dog. Last night it was Rosco, but Rosco was really crying out to be Rascal, so now that's what he gets. It's only been two days so far, so he needs some time for his name to solidify. Other ideas were Murfey, suggested by Dan, which makes me think of oil soap, and Trumpet, suggested by leah, which Dan thinks is just plain stupid, which i admit it is. I dreamed we named the dog Trumpet, and i haven't been able to get over it yet. Then again, if i went ahead did everything i dreamed, i would come to work a lot in my pajamas. Mmm, working in pajamas. Come to think of it, i haven't gotten a lot of sleep these past two nights!
Last night we mistakedly put Rascal/Rosco in his crate with his collar still on, and his tag banged against the crate all night: jingle jingle JINGLE JINGLE! Despite the noise, he slept well. He had a pretty busy day on friday: playing with Dan and Aaron, then coming to the store, where he mostly slept, and then in the evening a play date with Lokie, my parent's Shetland Sheepdog.
Oh my goodness, did Rascal and Lokie have a fun time! Rascal patented his new favorite move of jumping onto the couch, and then jumping off directly onto Lokie's back. Very WWE, that little smarty.
My mother called in the afternoon and asked if she should bring over dinner. Is this like when you have a new baby and people think they should cook for you? Really, we're not THAT overwhelmed. But anyway, she did make a lovely dinner, and we all ate while the doggies played. In the evening Rascal used his new-found courage to explore more of our yard. This morning he was venturing all over the little neighborhood. His courage is increasing exponentially every time we take him out.
This morning Rascal met the neighborhood kids, and while nervous at first, he soon warmed up to the crowd! He even started playing with me a bit inside the house. He's starting to feel quite comfortable with us, and his favorite thing to do is sit on the futon and have someone pet him. And since now he has chew toys, there's nothing he lacks in the world.
We have been so proud of our little puppy's milestones. Yesterday he went down the porch stairs for the first time, and this morning he went up them!!! Also, yesterday he started to run along side me, and caught on enough to follow me when i turned around to run back! I was such a proud parent, i felt like i could burst. Yes, our puppy sure is the cutest and smartest. And i'm not just saying that cuz he's mine. Really.
The Savage Beast
This morning the puppy pooped in the middle of the living room, and even though Dan got out of bed at 5am to take him out, and i took him out at 7 in the pouring rain, when he pooped on the floor i felt like the most horrible failure of a parent in the whole failed world of failure. My whole life of failure flashed before my eyes: we will never teach the puppy to go outside; he will pee in other people's houses and we will lose all our friends; he will bite big holes through our covers and arms even though we keep telling him no; the store will close after a horrible christmas and i will never find a better job; our children will become under-fed anti-social maniacs who spit at other humans and pee on the living room carpet.
Training a puppy is hard. I love him so much, but he keeps chewing on me and going to the bathroom in inappropriate places. Then i feel myself getting all frustrated, and i can't take it out on the dog, because it's not his fault that i'm a horrible dog-trainer who can't convey a simple message of THIS-IS-NOT-A-TOILET! Yesterday i sat petting the puppy for two hours, because i wanted to let him know that he's loved, and also because i felt horrible for letting a neighborhood kid hit him in the face with a plastic sword. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN PROTECTING YOU!!! I am the world's worst mother.
The hard thing is that, when we try to tell him No or teach him something, he looks at us like "What is this horrible indignity you're putting me through?" And it hurts my little heart to see that look on his face. Why shouldn't he be allowed to gnaw on the sheets? or eat from the trash-can? He is a dog, after all.
Dear puppy, please forgive me. I try hard to be a good mommy. I don't mean to be a horrible failure at training you. What i lack in any actual skills, i promise to make up in pets and kisses. Just please stop biting my nose.
but he's so cute!
Leah thinks the puppy is a bit of a bad dog, but really he isn't! And no more is she a bad mother. He's just a baby, our puppy, and still he's learning so many things so quickly. Plus, he's a real cutie:
Puppy love
I just licked edamame salt off my fingers and caught the faint scent of puppy lingering on my hand. OMG i am sooooooooooooooo in love with that little dog! I don't care if he poops on the carpet; he rests his chin on me when he's sleeping. I squeeze him and he licks my face. He's like a warm little bubble of love, packaged in sweet-smelling doggy fur. I am powerless to resist!
He loves me!!!
Yesterday was a difficult day for Leah the new mommy. I had to walk the puppy six times in the pouring rain, and drive him across town against his better wishes, and he threw a tantrum in the car, and then my errand was all for naught because the brochures weren't REALLY printed, and i forgot to ask if he REALLY had them ready, because i obviously should have called a THIRD time, but i didn't cuz i'm such a crappy manager. I got to feeling like i just can't DO IT ALL!!! and then i called Dan at band practice and left about five messages on his voice mail in various levels of sobbing. That's what you get when you marry a lunatic, sucker!
Things have just been a little trying at work this week, what with the TRYING to do three people's jobs and TRYING not to kill myself in the process. The good news is that when it's not raining and overwhelming, the puppy brings us so much joy, simply by wagging his tail and following us around. When i came home last night he jumped around like he was so glad to see me! Why doesn't Dan do that? I would like it if i walked in the door and he shook his little bum at me.
baseball love
I have come to terms with the abrupt end of the Red Sox season, and I love baseball again. Now, if only the Astros could win a game or two so things could keep going this year for a little while longer; but in any case, I'm all ready for next season! (As an aside, why on earth do these games start so late?! It's already way past my bedtime, and they're only in the 5th. The World Series could end tonight, and I wouldn't even know about it until I read it in the papers! Only we don't even get the papers here, so I don't know what I'd do.)
On the puppy front, we've started giving him ice to gnaw on. It stops his gums from hurting so much--poor little guy--and it keeps him from resorting to his other favorite teething tool: rocks. I have mixed feelings about these minerological tastes of his: one the one hand, rocks won't fill his little digestive tract with splinters like sticks and bark mulch probably do, but on the other, if he does swallow em it probably wouldn't be good. Plus, it's eating rocks. I'm taking him for his first vet visit tomorrow; I think I'll ask if it means our dog is crazy.
"La langue internationalle"
This morning Dan showed me this on his favorite multi-lingual website:
"Les White Sox de Chicago ont remport» les honneurs de la S»rie mondiale de baseball pour la premiÀre fois depuis 1917 quand ils ont battu les Astros de Houston 1-0 mercredi pour balayer les honneurs de la s»rie en quatre matches."
Dan read this posting aloud in a perfect french accent, while i was in the bathroom brushing my hair.
"Are you practicing your french for when L'Africainne gets here?"
[backstory for the uninitiated: Tom's girlfriend will be arriving from Gabon, Africa in less than two weeks.] [For the wicked uninitiated: Tom is Dan's brother, and he is in love with a girl from Africa.]
"No, i don't speak french, i only understand it."
"So you won't talk to her, you'll only listen? I will have to introduce you as my mute husband."
Privately, and also publically and on the internet, i have been worrying about my potential communication skills regarding L'Affricainne (french for female resident of the dark continent... haha... i added in the racist part just for fun.) As our family's resident former french major, i am supposed to have a certain command of that language. Really, if i'm not able to speak french after 12 years of schooling and 150grand of colleging, there would need to be some mental issue addressed in more depth. Secretly, though, i am out of practice in the whole forming-sentences thing. I remember being fluent at one time in my life, but then i also lived in France and dated a french significant-other, and lingustic fluency can be like a STD: strong at first, but clears up over time. Hopefully when i get excited about French again, it will all pop back up, like an inflimation...
Did you know that even if you're not currently having an outbreak, you can pass on genital herpes any time? I learned this on a TV COMMERCIAL last night. i felt so violated and grossed out.
PS: I was pulling out of the driveway this morning, when i suddenly realized it. I rolled down the window and shouted to Dan:
"Wait, the White Sox won the World Series???"
It's SNOWING!!!!!!!!!
Happy Winter Everybody. Tonight we turn the clocks back, and then hopefully life will regain some normalcy, a new better period in which i run in the morning and stop eating brownies for breakfast...
..... yeah right.
winter-fall-wonderland">winter fall wonderland
We got snow today. Lots of snow, a suprising amount indeed for a first snowfall. The grass is all white. You know there's troubles when snow interrupts you mowing the grass. The puppy seems pleased with his first glimpse of the better sort of precipitation: after a moment of hesitation, he indicated his delighted acceptance of the white stuff that had mysteriously covered everything while he was playing inside by eating as much of it as he could conveniently manage. Actually, attempting to eat them is often his response to new things--leaves, rocks, squirrels--so I suppose I could have expected it. (A note to the wild-animal-lovers among the audience: you have no need to fear for the lives of the squirrels, as they are currently considerably quicker and more clever than our puppy. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to, though!)
trick or treat weather
Actually, trick and treat weather. After the snow the other day, it got all warm and sunny: spring is come again. Good thing, too: alot of those costumes are pretty flimsy. I remember some cold wet candy gathering expeditions myself, in my youth. Sadly, we didn't get many customers. That, I suppose is one of the downsides of living on a dark dead-end off a dangerously busy street. We like the advantages all the other days of the year, though, so it's all good.
Also: Happy Halloween from all of us here at the squibix family!