If I could write, this is what I would write about: A sunny morning with the mountain out and Seattle misty and shining across the water; Neko Case challenging the unknown in my ears; a gull swooping and riding the wind in front of the boat.
(song: “Challengers,” The New Pornographers [listen!])
At the new house, there is a fence all the way around, but it is not a very reliable fence. We keep patching it in bits and pieces, because Ruby is an escape monster, and she finds new holes pretty regularly. This wasn’t too bad, for a while; she would just stand on the other side of the fence and wait to be let back in. Then last week she went down onto the road, which is pretty busy during commute times; then the next-door neighbor scared me by telling me their last dog died on that road. So this weekend we (mostly Garth & helpful pal Scott) spent a bunch of time finding and patching all the places where she went under/over/around/through. No trouble so far.
Also the new house (which has about an acre of woods) came with some really nice pre-started leaf compost back in the forest, just from leaves that had fallen and been piled up. One of the first things we did was build a compost pile with some metal fence posts and chicken wire, so we have about a 4 x 4 foot area back in the corner, which we filled with some of the leaves and have been adding our regular food waste to as we go. It’s a bit far away from the kitchen, but we have the relatively stylish compost bucket, which looks nice on the counter, doesn’t smell, AND holds a lot of stuff between emptyings.
It snowed out here last night, so Garth got to stay home, which led to the following conversation:
[08:33] garth: so , about your dog and her fondness for fences
[08:34] Lauren: oh, damn.
[08:34] garth: there is one fence she can get under
[08:34] garth: it’s not the outside fence
[08:34] Lauren: ?
[08:34] Lauren: into the next door yard?
[08:34] garth: I went looking for her and found her
[08:34] garth: cowering and shivering
[08:34] garth: looking very guilty
[08:34] garth: in the compost pile
[08:34] Lauren: oh haha
[08:34] Lauren: did she eat it?
[08:35] garth: I don’t know. I kept calling and calling but she couldn’t get out
[08:35] garth: so she just looked sd and guilty
[08:35] Lauren: poor ruby
[08:35] garth: it’s hard out there for a ruby
…
[12:40] garth: (UPS is here. soon the dogs will go insane)
[12:40] garth: Speaking of which, ruby is *obsessed* with the compost pile
[12:40] garth: she still can’t get out though
[12:40] garth: she just sits in the cage and looks sad
[12:42] garth: it’s really funny
[12:42] Lauren: did she do it again?
[12:42] garth: yep. twice
[12:43] Lauren: oh, ruby
[12:43] Lauren: i wonder why
[12:43] garth: I think she just likes garbage
[12:43] garth: which is fair enough, on account of she is a dog
(Song: “Ruby Tuesday,” The Rolling Stones. I didn’t mean for it to be, but this is pretty much her theme song.)
The first night in the new house, we drank a bottle of wine I received the day before, my last day at my old job, and then a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Old job/new job, old house/new house, old wine/new wine; the changing of the season came a bit early for me, I guess.
I have been at my new job for three weeks now, and I am starting to feel pretty OK about it. I like all the folks, and I love working on campus. We have been staying at the new house full-time for just a week; last Monday was our first ferry commute. I think it will go pretty well as long as we plan and prepare for mornings, which would enable us to be zombies during the bus-ferry-bus trip.
Next step is to find a name for the little farm, so I can start a farm blog (which I will also probably not write in).
(Song: “Go Places,” The New Pornographers)
Ruby and I ran a block on our walk tonight, in work clothes and trench coat and un-ponytailed flying hair, just for the joy of spring. Tomorrow I will be requesting the day off because my daffodils announce that they will be blooming in the morning and I would like to be with them on their special day.
I have gone back to school! I am learning about research methods and statistics. It is interesting and I am learning a lot, even though it is for four hours on Monday nights, and even though I have like 250 pages of reading this week. Boo, textbooks.
Ultimately, one hopes, after three more terms, this schooling will result in a certificate in User-Centered Design. And then I will get a raise. One hopes.
Busy stuff lately. Classes all over the place — free jewelry class, hot yoga with work folks, regular school class — and shows — Chuckanut, Jesse Sykes — and folks coming and going — G’s mom and stepdad, my mom, Arlie. Soon I am headed to a conference in BC, and then after that I will have no free weekends until June.
(song: “The Rain King,” Counting Crows)
Weekend of great yuppiedom: Took a small vacation out to Vashon Island this weekend. G. didn’t know where we were going until we started following the signs to the Vashon ferry, as I had planned everything, which really just involved getting us a little cottage and printing out the directions to the lighthouse, and remembering to pick up a couple of bottles of wine. And given the week I had last week — one full day in Olympia, two late nights (getting off work at ~7pm), and spending 8+ hours on the phone (!), it was wonderful to sit around with no plans.
We spent Saturday morning in downtown Vashon, where we bought a really cute little woodblock print of peapods, and drank some coffee, and went to some garden stores in search of a seed potato for this Saturday’s ceremonial planting. I quite like the art we got, and I am glad we got it, but buying it made me feel conspicuously yuppified, even though I was wearing a comic book tshirt and my hair was all flat from my coelacanth baseball cap. It was an interesting experience.
Weekend of intended vacation and actual work and stupidness: Last weekend I was in Eugene to visit pals, staying with Andi and spending most of my time with her and Shelby. The time that I wasn’t working, that is. I took the day off on Friday to head down, and while I was on the bus on Friday morning, I learned that I would be in Olympia all day on Monday and therefore had to prepare. So I spent Friday bus time, as well as Saturday and Sunday, when I was supposed to be spending time with the girls, working on PowerPoint slides. Boo. I did have a good time, other than that, though, and I managed to go to Rennie’s (which was the only place with free wireless! wtf?), where I ran into Heath — which I hoped would happen, as I didn’t think I had his number — and also met up with Stephanie. I also made it to Roma, where I saw Sho, and we talked about comic books, and Battlestar Galactica, and library school.
In grad school I gave up writing conclusions to my papers. Once, on a not-very-important paper for a class I didn’t care much about, I was tired and didn’t want to finish the paper so I decided not to write the conclusion and see what happened. NOTHING happened. It didn’t affect my grade. After that I wrote very few conclusions. Unfortunately this causes me pain now, as I don’t like ending posts without some sort of conclusion, pref. witty or otherwise punch-line-ish. But I have lost the knack for the conclusion, and I’m not very funny in the first place, so.
(song: “The Old Black Hole,” the Fruit Bats)
Last night I went for a run with the dogsters and I could have sworn it was spring. Could have sworn it so much that we were both independently worrying about getting seedlings started. (G. and I, that is, worrying, not the dogsters. The dogs said YAY RUNNING ZOMG RUN RUN YAY RUN ZOMG, and not much else.) It is about time to start tomatoes indoors if we wish to have them from seed, and time to start planning the outdoors situation. He really wants potatoes, which I fully support, so that will take some planning, as they need to have extra months in the ground. I am also interested in garlic, onions, and broccoli.
All day I have had in my head this totally ridiculous country song from when I was, like, nine, and listened to the pop country station. It was quite risqué, at that time, including the song “Black Velvet,” which I now know/suspect to be about young Elvis. Additionally, today’s title, which is about women who use men for their own nefarious purposes. I have something snarky and feminist to say there but I can’t find it among all the wine currently in my mouth.
Everything makes me cry lately. There are dogs who have died (not mine, knock on wood, but one of Oscar’s oldest friends) and there are grandmas gone too (not mine again, knock on wood again) and then there are so many new babies come into existence (not mine, knock on wood more than ever, and hi baby Ciaran! hi baby Mina! hi baby Hank!) for whom life is so small, I am worried for it. And if I spend even a minute on that thought, I become distracted and distraught with how small life is for us all, because really it is, and we are so tiny and chronologically insigificant, and then I will cry for nothing; I will cry for imagining all the so many things that could change all the other small lives so much. I will be forever changed when these dogs and these grandmas and these babies are lost. And it is too selfish to wish that I should be lost first, but I do not know if I can bear the loss of them.
What is the solution? Are all adults just veterans of the war of aging, where there are daily casualties (parents, children’s childhoods, pets & loved ones, garden plants, bus routes, hair lines, waistlines, roadkill, favored shoes chewed by new puppies, all the things large and small in which we used to rejoice but that are now gone)? Or is there some way to avoid it? Must we all submit ourselves to that? Can I opt out of one section of growing up and thereby shed all the rest? If I choose to devote my child-caring to another’s child, not my own, do I mourn with the parents when that child changes, grows, is gone, or do I mourn alone? And do I mourn less or more — does the sharing increase or mitigate the pain? Or do I merely mourn the recent demise of my glass of wine?
I hate being the youngest. Everywhere I go I am the youngest, and I feel inexperienced and foolish. I want to know what will happen to me, and to know if my current situation of conflicting heartache and jubilation will be henceforth a constant. (Big words!) I suspect it will, but more than anything I fear I will be surprised by something that experience (that I don’t have) should have prepared me for. What do I do? What can I do? I can, I guess, love my dogs and my husband and my surrounding friends and family and babies, and I can know that all of that is contingent on their continuing existence. And that love requires acceptance of the fact that they may not continue to exist. And I will deal with that when it comes, I guess.
PS. any post that starts with “I went for a run” and ends with drama and tears and wine and discussion of the meaning of love is PURE WANKERY.
(Song: “Fast Movin’ Train,” Restless Heart. Woo, 1990!)
Today it was sunny and beautiful, which I found pleasant even though it also meant it was cold. Had a nice day of outside-ness: Pike Place Market in the morning to get bread for dinner tonight and all kinds of veggies for Girls’ Night In on Wednesday. Then came home and suited up the dogs to go to the dog park, where we walked and enjoyed the sun — it was good for our moods, I think — and ran into Oscar’s old friend Emma (and her people). Now we are preparing to roast a chicken for dinner, dogs are too tired to move, and we have a good bottle of Spanish wine.
Also today I learned about molasses and Iceland. I learned that molasses is the same thing as treacle, which word Robin and I both associate very strongly with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and I learned about the Boston Molasses Disaster, which is sad, of course, but also really funny. Then I learned about the Ring Road that goes all the way around Iceland and that you can bike around on. G. has been to Iceland (I am jealous) and thought I was silly for not having known about the ring road beforehand.
Last night was dinner out with my advisor from grad school, who makes beer and music and rides bikes, and his knittin’ wife. Then we went on without them to see Bobby Bare Jr. at the Sunset, which was far too crowded and at which there was almost a fight. But damn, that guy can rock hard with just an acoustic guitar. He’s covering “Sister Golden Hair,” which I really like, and I had a little epiphany listening to his version — the line is “I’ve been one poor correspondent,” not “I’ve been one more chorus partner.” Thanks, Bobby!
Wine glass is empty. Must resolve this situation immediately.
(song: “Summer Fall Winter Fall,” Slomo Rabbit Kick)
“The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.” Thanks, Mr. Noodle.
Lately I have been reading way too much Mimi Smartypants again, starting from the beginning and working my way up to the present. I am not as good as she is so apologies for my disjointed rambly linkification, surely not as witty and intriguing as hers.
It was interesting, though, to read her posts from September 4 and then September 7 and then the 10th and she’s so funny and lighthearted and I know, but she doesn’t, that she is on the verge of this big awful thing.
That made me cry but now I am past that, into summer of 2002, and I am very curious about when she will mention that she adopts a kid, because it’s got to be coming up sometime soon here.
Mimi Smartypants always has lots of links. Unfortunately, as I am reading posts from 2002, most of her links are dead. But here is an interesting thing she showed me: hobo signs dictionary.
Marika came to visit not last weekend but the one before it, the one that contained New Year’s Eve. We ate good food (sushi down the street; delicious roast beef at home; Le Pichet for lunch; McMenamin’s cajun tater tots; fondue at Skip’s house on New Year’s) and we went to lots of museums. We went to the Bodies exhibit and also the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose site seems to be gone now, since the exhibit ended.
I found them both very interesting. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it through the Bodies exhibit, right at the beginning. I wish I could find a trustworthy source discussing the provenance of the bodies, though I might not like to know now that I have given them the money. I learned that the cause of cirrhosis, apparently, and PLEASE do not say “cirrhosis of the liver” because you cannot have cirrhosis of any other part of your body!!, is “the bad diet and lifestyle often associated with alcohol or drug abuse,” not the alcohol or drug abuse itself. Who knew?
The Dead Sea Scrolls was very full of people, including rude children. *shakes fish* I found myself surprisingly little moved by the documents themselves, especially considering their, well, documentality. I liked the rest of the exhibit, the archaeological parts and the language parts especially. Maybe it was because the scrolls are so small and the lights kept turning on and off — which I understand, of course, but they did seem to turn off on me more often than one might expect.
Last weekend I did laundry and read the internets. I have all kinds of half-formed grand plans about making everything in my life work — my house, my computer, my projects, my dog, my skin, my hips and arms and thighs, my hair, my sleep — but none of them have coalesced yet. But I am reading Open Secrets by Alice Munro and I find it to be extremely enjoyable. So I’ve got that.
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ETA: I just panicked that I have used the word “coalesce” far too many times in the recent past, but searching for it on this page returns nothing. Patient readers who might still be out there, sorry if I have abused you recently with too much coalescing. Coalescence.
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(Song: “Painting Her Fingernails,” Bobby Bare Jr.)
Just rescued two lost doggies, a big ol’ blue-eyed husky and a small black fluffy lab-lookin’ mutt. They were wet and dirty and kind of shy, but they liked treats, and fortunately we have two leashes on hand. Their women were out looking for them on foot, and should be very grateful that one of the dogs had a local vet number on the rabies tag, and that the vet was open. And they should get regular tags with their names and phone numbers on them.
They were the third and fourth dogs we have successfully reunited with their folks in the past year, not counting the times Ruby has escaped and I have successfully reunited her with me. I am hoping I am storing universe paybacks for when I can’t hunt her down.
Now we are back inside and home and safe, with dogs and wine, and butternut squash and garlic roasting in the oven to be made into delicious soup.
We took the pups (ours, not the escapees) hiking this weekend to Rattlesnake Ridge. I highly recommend winter-time hiking, and that one in particular. Close to town, short-ish but gorgeous hike. Ruby went off-leash for the first time on a hike, and was mostly well-behaved. Oscar has been off-leash since the day he came home and is too old and jaded to run away anymore.
It’s that season again where everyone’s having parties and every weekend is booked, like it is in the summer. This week there’s an eggnog party and maybe another one, and a cookie party, group-o-friends holiday fancy dinner, and the company holiday party. I want to go but G. doesn’t; I’m blackmailing him by offering to wear my Fluevogs. It might be working.
I hate Christmas but I like buying stuff for people.
(song: “I Will Be Home Then,” the Decemberists)
Recently G. rebuilt one of his old mountain bike frames into a cute little comfy bike for me to ride around the neighborhood. It has pink on it! And it is very fun. Last weekend we rode to the Seattle Tilth Harvest Fair down the street from our house, where we bought hippie vegetables and hippie starts to plant for our fall crops. I got to ride home with my bike basked full of baby lettuces & kales & broccoli. (Garden pictures soon.)
Then today we rode our bikes, pedal pedal pedal, down to the Blue Star for post-pirate-birthday-party hangover lunch with old school friends.
In conclusion, I have a bike! Yay!
AND ALSO, I am knitting like a mad fiend to finish a gorgeous lace sweater that I will be posting on knitblog about soon, with pictures.
(Song: “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” the Beatles)