Based On A True Story….

My weekend didn’t go quite as planned. Since we didn’t have any plans I figured that I would get a good start on my barn blocks for a neighborhood swap I’m signed up for. I had printed out a paper pieced block that I really liked. It wasn’t until I started cutting it up that it occured to me that the pieces were really small. The block was supposed to be 10 inches but the print out would have made a six inch block.

Backup Plan #1:
Use my new photoshop skills to upsize the pattern to the right size.
What Actually Happened:
I was all proud of myself for mastering photoshop. This proudness continued until I tried to put all the pieces together and they didn’t fit. Apparently I have some additional mastering to do. I upsized different sections to different sizes. Whoops.

Backup Plan #2:
Resize the resized pieces

What Actually Happened:
Just trying to figure out what I had to do made my head hurt. I gave up.

Backup Plan #3:
Start over by redrawing the pattern to the appropriate size on freezer paper. I haven’t tried yet so I’m not sure what sort of fresh hell I’m opening for myself here.

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The SO has a cough. By ‘cough’ I mean bone-jarring, hack up a lung, sort of cough. I decided to try to be helpful when he was trying to sleep. I put my hand on his chest and started to do Reiki without telling him. I’m still a skeptic so I never think it is going to work. He fell asleep and everything was good until I fell asleep. Then he started coughing again. I figured I hadn’t helped at all. I started to roll over and he said, “I don’t know why but it feels better when you have your hand on my chest.” I guess it was helping after all! But. I need to invent a way to keep giving Reiki when I’m asleep since we had a cycle going of I do reiki – he falls asleep – I fall asleep – he wakes up coughing again.
I sent him to a doctor today for strong cough medicine so maybe we can all sleep better tonight.

I’d been hearing all week that we were going to get snow. I don’t pay much attention. I’m from a snowier area than this so locals’ idea of snow and mine are different. I did go to the grocery store yesterday in spite of snow warnings. It was time to buy stuff. I wasn’t there to stock up because THERE WAS GOING TO BE A DISASTER! WE MIGHT ALL STARVE TO DEATH! It did amuse me that everyone seemed to be planning on spending the disaster with lots of beer and chips until I remembered that it was Super Bowl weekend.

When I left for work at 12:15 there was no snow. I drove south and the snow started. We ended up closing early so I got home at 5:30. My backyard looked like this:
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This morning that same picture looks like this.

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The poor lilac bush has been squished by the weight of the snow. The snow is elbow deep on Freckles who thought this was fun last night and now isn’t so sure.

For this post refer to the picture of Freckles in the previous post and try to imagine….

I did a DNA test on Freckles for fun. I don’t believe that they truly are sophisticated enough yet to determine what breeds are in a dog. They tend to say crazy things like “Japanese Chin” in the results. Really? How many Japanese Chins are there in the world? Do you think there are really some running around your neighborhood siring stray dogs? But I decided that it would be fun to see what it said Freckles was made of. You submit a cheek swab and about two weeks later get a result.
I got her results today. Level 1 means 75% of her DNA is one breed, level 2 is 37-74% of DNA, level 3 is 20-36%, level 4 is 10-19%, and level 5 is less than 10%.
Here are her results:
Level 3 – English Springer Spaniel – the English Springer Spaniel Rescue will be glad to know that they rescued the right kind of dog.
Level 3 – Beagle – maybe that’s why she is short
Level 4 – Brittany – I can believe a mix of spaniel breeds in her.
Level 5 – Dalmatian – not so sure about that but that’s just a smidgen.
Now the result that cracked me up.
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Wait for it
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Are you sitting down?
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Level 4 – Pomeranian!

You realize that means one of two things. Either:
A) Snowball has possessed Freckles and has taken over down to the molecular level
or
B) Snowball’s ghost spit on the sample

Don’t try to talk scientific like somehow there was cross-contamination since Snowball died in June and my housecleaner is neurotic so no trace of stray DNA is around. Possession explains a lot. No wonder Freckles can’t stop chasing Riley. Snowball is inside there screaming, “You SOB! I’m bigger than you now!!!!”

Is it really necessary to sit on the back of the couch instead of how it was designed to be used? My cats do this too. I think it is because they can see better.

I love to lift weights. But I figured out that if I’m not following a specific plan then I don’t do it. I’m a total slacker if I have to make it up on my own.

Sunday I went to bodybuilding.com and copied down their fitness bible for women. It is a 12 week plan for lifting 4 days a week with the weight increasing and reps decreasing every three weeks. I’ve done one day of arms and one day of legs. I had to modify the leg day because it called for machines that I don’t have. I added in Romanian deadlifts instead. I love those since it works the entire back of my body. I did that two days ago. I had a massage the next day and my therapist told me that I felt more toned! That was probably just because my muscles were in shock but I’m taking the compliment anyway.

I love Nature’s Variety dog food. It cured Snowball of all her allergies. She went from eating steroids like candy to keep her from itching herself bloody to taking steroids on two days in her last 3 years of life. When I got Freckles I started her on it right away. I was using the Prairie line of food that is all natural meat and grain. Her coat was ok. She was still itchy. So I switched her to their instinct line with is all meat and no grain. That was about a month ago. Her coat is amazing now. No more flakiness even in the black part. It is super smooth and silky. I’d like to recommend this food to everyone with allergic dogs but I live in an area where lots of time the best I can do is to get the dog off of the WalMart brands of food.

Freckles has had three episodes of GI explosion. Here were the causes:

1. The SO fed her chicken with skin and fat.
2. I started using poultry toothpaste with her.
3. The SO fed her chicken without skin and fat.

See the connection? I didn’t until last night. She has now officially lost her chicken privileges. Her food is chicken based also so I guess I’ll be switching her to either the lamb or salmon food.

I, on the other hand, have been eating like crap. I kept a food journal for one week and ate really well. Since then I’ve eaten junk. I think that means that I should keep a journal at all times.

I’ve been dedicating my junk food eating to my brother. He has to fast for one week every year for his job. He works for a church and apparently God wants you to starve. He lost 15 lbs this week. It can not be healthy. I’d be homicidal if I was doing it. Just thinking about it makes me want a cupcake.

Done! (The top, that is.) Yeah! It is huge. There are two people standing on chairs holding this over their heads.

Your dog is no longer having fun at the dog park if she gets on a bench, grabs her leash, and stares at you.

I laid awake this morning in bed composing a post about people teaching kids to be incompetent. I was awake because Z was awake. She feels that she needs to be supervised at all times. Therefore, she can’t be awake and entertaining herself. We have to be awake if she is awake. We can’t convince her otherwise.

This isn’t the only area where it seems that she’s being trained to stay baby-ish. She is certain that it is a crime to have a knife at her place setting in a restaurant. She carries on until you remove it even though:
A) it is a butter knife with which you could only hurt yourself if you poke it directly in your eye.
B) the fork is probably sharper
C) she will hand it to you to get it off her side so she would rather handle it than just ignore it.

Makes me nuts. It may be that I read the Free Range Kids blog too much but the idea that letting a six year old use a toaster is crazy risky is just wrong. Don’t even get me started on how hard I had to talk to get her to plug in my sewing machine. The plug is at floor level under a table. What is the point of small children if you can’t get them to crawl on their hands and knees for you?

But I wasn’t going to write the post until the matches. The SO picked up a box of matches. Z ran to another room. When I questioned this she stated authoritarily that if the box touched her she would die. I expressed disbelief. She told me that her mommy told her so. I said that she probably did but that it wasn’t true. (I try not to undercut her mother but this is getting crazy.) I told her that she would have to work hard to be killed by a box of matches. She has no idea how to light matches so I’m sure touching the box is safe.

How is it better to make a kid fearful of everything instead of teaching her how to navigate her world?

There is a thing called TMI Tuesday or Thursday, I can’t remember which.  Since I can’t remember I’m splitting the difference and posting on Wednesday.  You’ve been warned…

As part of my last gynecologist visit I had a full STD panel. An astute observer might point out that it is a bit late since I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for almost 2 years but we were being complete. I mean, imagine that conversation with the SO at this point, “Um, honey, whoopsie?” I didn’t expect to find anything but when I got the call today that I was clear I was absurdly proud. I wanted to go bouncing around telling total strangers that I didn’t have AIDS (yeah, yeah, I know, HIV, but it didn’t have the same ring in my addled brain). It wasn’t like I had done anything special besides being very lucky in my choices of sex partners but still. It needed celebrating. I wasn’t sure how to blog it and figured I probably shouldn’t put it as my newest Facebook status. I called my sister-in-law.

Me in super-perky voice: Hi. I don’t have AIDS!
Her, without missing a beat: Congratulations!!!!

That’s what I wanted to hear. Someone as insanely perky as I was feeling. If I hadn’t gotten her I would have had to have called my mother and it just wouldn’t have been the same.

But then, then, I came home and decided to do a hip opening sequence yoga podcast. In all my years doing yoga I’ve been frustrated (which is a very non-yoga feeling) about my inability to do the very basic and fundamental pose downward facing dog.

I just can’t get my heels to touch the ground. I have the most super tight hamstrings in the world. I was doing about the sixth repeats of downward dog and felt something brush my heel. I thought that was odd since Riley is outside. I looked at my heels and …… THEY WERE TOUCHING THE MAT! Years and years of yoga and I haven’t been close. I don’t know what was different today than every other day but I’m going to take it. I came to that very Zen understanding after I analyzed my posture because my first thought was that I must have screwed up somewhere else since it was impossible for me to do it right which is also a very bad yoga attitude.   That was when I decided that this seriously was the Best. Day. Ever!

I started to put the sashing in my Carolina Christmas quilt. I’m using a 1.5 inch green sashing. I think it sets off the blocks just enough to make the overall look less chaotic to my eyes.

One of my friends finished this sampler top for her great-niece.

I took Freckles out for a walk and decided to take the camera since we got some snow. I wanted to see if we had anything photogenic in the neighborhood ala Eurolush. I found out that my dog flat out refuses to pose adorably while walking like hers does! It was way too cold today to linger over setting up shots and I had a nagging suspicion that someone might call the cops about me casing the houses.

When I brought Freckles back from the clinic yesterday I decided to slowly reintroduce food so as not to upset her system.  She had some leftover dry food in her bowl because she hadn’t been interested in eating.  She still wasn’t interested in it.  Then I picked up the bowl and put it on the counter.

Freckles:  MY FOOD!!!!!

I explained very logically about starting food gradually and that I’d make her some scrambled eggs later, wouldn’t that be nice?

Freckles, standing on her hind legs to look wistfully at the bowl on the counter: I WANT MY FOOD!!!!

Me:  Look, you weren’t even interested until I picked it up.

Freckles: Lady, today you dumped me off with strangers, who you seemed to know but I ‘m not getting into that conspiracy right now.  They stole the blood from my veins and then added fluid back into my veins.  What kind of madness is that?  Then, then, they PUT ME IN A CAGE and you know I hate that!  And now you took away MY FOOD!!!

This was clearly a time for firm parenting.  I kept the food on the counter.  She’d go in every so often and stare longingly.  A few hours later some scrambled eggs helped her to forget so by the time I started offering her a few pieces of dog food she didn’t even want them.  But it wasn’t until this morning when I put the food bowl back on the floor that I was forgiven.

Both of my invalids are sleeping on the couch. Freckles is feeling better. She did ok getting doctored without my supervision until I came back. Then she got so crazed that she disconnected her IV and had blood spraying everywhere as she jumped around in her cage. I hurried up and cut the IV out to stop the bleeding. She felt better as soon as we got outside the clinic.

I’ve been working on learning to do digital scrapbooking. That’s something I swore that I’d never do so I’m not sure why it started to appeal to me. I worked on this layout so much last night that all night I had dreams that I was teaching photoshop tutorials. I need to do a little bit often since if I go too long without I forget how to do everything and have to start learning all over.

I was proud that I managed to get the photos in the frame, change the color of the embellishments, and sort of get the type to work!

I’m hanging out in the endoscopy waiting room waiting for the SO to get done with his procedure. Freckles spent all day yesterday and all night with diarrhea. She was dehydrated and very sad looking. I dropped her off on the way to the human hospital at a clinic that opens crazy early so she could get fluids. I’m sure she’s driving them crazy by now with her howling. We were in such a hurry that I forgot to tell them about her cage phobia.

Figures that everybody needs medical attention at once.

I have a coworker who is doing a YMCA fitness challenge and needs to keep a food journal. After reviewing her journal for the first week her trainer told her that she needs to eat more veggies. She wasn’t sure how to go about doing this since she doesn’t like them so she showed me her food journal to get my opinion.

That week she had a cup of potato soup.

That was her only vegetable consumption for the entire week. This was a normal week for her. I think that as a vegetarian I tend to not get enough fresh vegetables in my diet but I never really considered that it was possible for an omnivorous adult human to avoid them entirely. I invited her to go to lunch with me since I go to a restaurant with a huge salad bar but when I listed off the veggies on the salad bar she declared that she didn’t like any of them. I think I got her talked into trying baked sweet potatoes at home. She likes broccoli and cauliflower chopped up small so I told her my cold veggie pizza recipe. It isn’t healthy but it may force feed her vegetables.

My mother always wondered how I could be a vegetarian when I didn’t eat vegetables as a kid. I think I’m better now. To find out and to give my coworker an example of what you can eat with vegetables in it, I’ll keep a food journal this week too. I’ll start with yesterday which was a bad food day just so I won’t just list things that are good to eat since I’m reporting it now. Hopefully, knowing that I have to report will shame me into making better choices too!

Yesterday:
Breakfast – one chocolate luna bar on the way to a Dr’s appointment
Lunch – California Pizza Kitchen cup of southwestern tortilla soup and the hummus appetizer with mango lemonade
Dinner – Chipotle veggie burrito with rice, beans, corn salsa, tomato salsa, and cheese. Root beer
Snack – mini bag of salt and lime popcorn

Verdict – too much restaurant food and sugary drinks! But that was a weird day since I was away from home before work and starving afterwards.

Today
Breakfast – fat free Greek yogurt with honey and fresh mango pieces. I don’t like the taste of plain Greek yogurt but the dog and cat love it so it ought to count as a workout to try to eat this and shoo them away at the same time.
Snack – 2 pieces of celery with peanut butter. This isn’t something I’d normally eat but the celery is soon to go bad in my fridge and I’m trying to eat more protein. I’m not a natural fan of protein packed food like yogurt or peanut butter so I’m easing into it by just doing little bits at a time. This tasted pretty good though.
Lunch – mashed sweet potato with 1/4 cup of black beans and 1/4 cup salsa. I couldn’t eat all this at one sitting so I’m saving it for later.
Snacks – more celery and peanut butter. Then I had a small double chocolate chip cookie dough blizzard. I thought long and hard about this because I knew I’d have to write it down but I did it anyway.
Dinner – potato soup. 2 cans of sliced potatoes, 1/2 carton of vegetable broth, and 1 cup of salsa in the crockpot all day. Blend with immersion blender. I topped it with a bit of cheddar cheese and some soy milk.
Snack – apple and cheese

Verdict – Not bad except for the blizzard. Pretty potato heavy but I was thinking of potatoes while writing this post.

I finally finished up all the blocks for the Carolina Christmas Mystery Quilt. I was disappointed at first when I saw the finished layout because I didn’t like it. I like both of the blocks but together it seemed too cluttered.

I think my problem is that there isn’t a secondary design that forms when you put the two blocks side by side. (This is only a picture of part of the blocks. The real quilt is huge.)

I’m thinking about using sashing in between the blocks to settle it down a bit. My friend suggested a Christmas print to pull it all together. The cheap part of my brain perked up because those will probably be on sale now!

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Today was the first day I felt able to run outside in a long time.  It’s been at least a month.  I’ve been trying to keep my fitness level up inside but I just can’t run on a treadmill.

Freckles also desperately needed to go for a run. This dog isn’t nearly as quiet and calm as I thought she was when she isn’t running regularly. She still runs but her target is Riley if I’m not taking her for formal runs.

It is still too wet to get out on the trails so I drove around my neighborhood and plotted out a one mile course plus about 3/10 extra for warm up and cool down. We headed out and I felt great running. There was none of the hip pain that showed up as soon as I started running on the treadmill. The first half mile was wonderful. I was going fairly fast (for me) and wasn’t winded or anything. Then on the second half mile I started to see how much fitness I’ve lost by not running regularly. I ended up alternating walking and running. I wasn’t really tired but my legs were. It probably doesn’t help that I was doing squats, lunges, and deadlifts with weights last night for the first time in a while. I started out already a bit sore. I told my brain to tough it out and keep running. Don’t be a wimp. My brain said, “Whatever” and ordered my legs to walk. So that’s my new mini goal – to be able to run that mile without my brain rebelling and letting my legs walk.

My father wants to run a race with me. I laughed hard at the suggestion. I am slow. By slow I mean very slow. He is winning his age group in races all over the country. (Certain uncharitable people, i.e. me, may have suggested that he is doing this well because most people in his advanced age division are dead – probably from running too much. That’s what he gets for asking me if I was the only who entered the horse show every time I brought home a blue ribbon.) My point is that for him to run with me he would have to be running circles around me or in some other way annoying me. Since the shortest runs are 5Ks and I probably can’t even run that far this is not an option. I’m also a super competitive person so I don’t relish the thought of coming in last. Now if I could find a short trail run that might work. But all the ones I’ve found so far around here are at least 25K. Most of them are called 50K Fun Runs. Really, are they saying that with a straight face? 30 miles is considered a “fun run”? Runners are nuts.

Pretty Drive

Originally uploaded by spirit97

I drove through the mountains in West Virginia and Virginia this weekend. It is a really pretty drive even in the winter. All the small waterfalls on the cliffs were frozen. I kept trying to get a picture but wasn’t coordinated enough. They should probably add taking pictures of icy cliffs while driving fast on a curvy interstate to the list of things that you shouldn’t do with your cell phone.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The mission of mercy went well although my friend was much more mobile than she was probably supposed to be. I got there Friday night and we hung out in the living room and talked. Our other friends got a late start and didn’t get there until 3 AM Saturday morning.

This is her puppy Spirit. It seemed wrong to call him that. It feels like the name should be retired after my Spirit died just like a jersey number. LOL

He’s Dane and Mastiff and 135 lbs of goofy.

I was sleeping downstairs and figured that I’d have both dogs with me. Besides Spirit there is also an older Lab. He has reached that stage of Lab-dom where he gives off a very quiet dignified air. We all went downstairs were I had a mattress on the floor. Spirit laid down across the whole mattress so I told him to get up so I could get in. He very politely did and stood at the side of the mattress waiting for me to get settled. At that moment the Lab abandoned all dignity and leaped onto the bed beside me. Spirit was crushed! He hung his head and stared at his friend sleeping in the spot he wanted. He went upstairs to sleep but came down every few hours to see if he was still there.

On one visit the Lab was not in bed. I told Spirit to get in and then closed my eyes and cuddled up to my new bedmate. When I woke up though I was cuddled with the Lab so he must have appeared as Spirit was thinking about getting in bed and beat him to the spot again. As I explained to Spirit, cunning and quick beats slow and clumsy every time!

I am headed on a mission of mercy today. I am going to Virginia to sit with a bedridden pregnant friend.

I plan on pointing, laughing, and otherwise provoking her knowing that she can’t get up and chase me! The mission of mercy is actually to her husband. Since her description of being on bed rest was that she makes lists of things for her husband to do in between asking him for drinks of water, he may be close to killing her by now. She needs him to help her take care of the twins when they come so she can’t make him go insane yet.

Another friend and her husband are coming for the weekend too. There will be games and eating and movie watching and lots of talking. I’m providing hummus since the sesame-allergic SO isn’t going. I love hummus just slightly less than I love him so I am willing to not eat it most of the time. But let me head away for a weekend without him and I pig out on every flavor available.

I have to go clean the car out, get packed, and go food shopping!

I came up with a resolution!

I never do resolutions at New Year’s time. It is too much work to think up things that I’m just going to forget about anyway. This plan only came into my head coincidentally around this time of year. I wasn’t sitting around thinking up resolutions.

I am going to save 10% of my money.

Since I’m self employed I don’t have a 401K or anything like that where money is automatically deducted. So far I’ve been putting money into my IRA when I think of it or when I have a bit extra. It has been haphazard. I’m behind on my savings anyway since when I was married to a financial mess I had to use all money to keep our utility bills paid and food on the table.

I got paid for the first time this year yesterday. Today I set up my IRA to automatically deduct 5% of my paycheck every two weeks. The other 5% is going into my savings account. There is a possibility that we may move and I will be out of a job until I find another so I want to make sure that I have money set aside for bill paying at that point. My bank website doesn’t let you do transfers automatically every two weeks. So I set up my calendar function on my BlackBerry to make an appointment for me on the day after each paycheck. It says Pay Yourself.

When I look at the amounts being taken out it seems very small. Because I have been contributing less often I have been putting in larger amounts. Doing it this way though will automatically put the same amount in my IRA that I have been contributing without me having to think about it. Then if I have a bit extra I can add it to boost my savings more.
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This morning I had a plan. I was going to go to the combined Tim Horton/Cold Stone Creamery and get ice cream cupcakes for sewing day. That was a good plan until I was reading blogs this morning. I got to the running and weight loss blogs on my RSS feeder and I just couldn’t do it. That was the purpose of adding those blogs – to keep me motivated to eat healthy and exercise. But, if you have one of those blogs and you felt something strange this morning, that was me cussing you out heartily!

I had oatmeal with raisins, honey, soymilk, and peanut butter. I’m feeling all self righteous now even though I’m being a bad hostess by not having treats.

Then in my fit of self improvement I took the dog for a walk instead of just to the dog park. I told her that it was good for her brain to get out and see the sights. That is until she was suddenly holding up her right hind leg. We headed back home and she got distracted by another dog and was no longer lame. So we headed off in another direction again and after a bit she was holding up her left hind leg. Both times we were on sidewalks that had been scraped clean and she was shivering. I think the bare cement was too cold for her feet! What a wimp! We were very close to home so I picked her up and carried her home while muttering about how the 17 year old infirm 5 lb Pomeranian never needed carried on a walk around the block and planning on telling anyone who saw us that I was working on my weight lifting instead of carrying my wimpy dog.