Before I get around to Starting at the Beginning

I know, I know. The wedding already happened and I'm still not spilling the lush details. I swear, it's close, I'm going to tackle the daily blogging for the month of June and slowly dole out the whole wedding story, every bit of it. We're still waiting for the majority of the photos to come in and I'll just keep rolling it all out as we go along.

But today, I just want to say goodbye to my old friend Ingrid. She's been gone for a week now and it's very sad. We all knew this was probably her last summer. Summer was never her best time. She was 12 years old, which is very old for a 140 lb. dog with bad hips and bad teeth. In fact, every summer for the last couple of years, there has come a point where Dad has mournfully predicted that she wouldn't make it through to the fall. We certainly didn't think she'd make it through all the way to twelve, which is a conservative assumption of her actual age. The adoption flyer said she was three when I brought her home in December of 2001. And that flyer had been hanging up at Petsmart for a year, so maybe she was already four by the time she joined our family.

Some observations about Ingrid: she was never, ever mad at me. She was always happy to see me (and pretty much everybody else) and she had a great sense of humor. Sometimes she'd run across the yard to me and I would think, "Oh god, she's not going to stop," and my life would flash before my eyes. But she always stopped, and always wanted to give me her big heavy paw. She hated helicopters, sirens and municipal vehicles with flashing lights. And bicycles (sorry, Patrick...). She didn't like strange men or kids walking past our house on Eastside Avenue (that's why she eventually went to live with Dad out in the country).

When she first came to live with me, we tried having her be an inside dog. She even slept in my bed, where she snored heavily and tried to spoon me. That lasted exactly one day. Brandes and Dad built her a pen (this was when I was the sole occupant of the little house out on Ashland City Highway) and it was woefully small. Eventually, after a couple of years of trial and error, we determined that the only fence that would hold Ingrid was one she didn't *want* to breach. If she could lay up against the foundation (or, ideally, the door) of the house where I lived, she would never try to leave. That's when it really worked.

Even though she spent the last few years as the galloping snowbear of Leiper's Fork, where she was doted upon by Dad and Lynn, she remained my big dog. We just went out to visit Dad in April and got to spend some quality time with the Biggest. I'm glad for that. I'm grateful that she was loved and fussed over up until the end. Thanks to Dad and Lynn for that.

RIP Biggy Bigrid, the Biggest Ingrid. Missing you today, my happy happiest.

muted

Austin has pointed out that I shouldn't talk about the wedding details in case some of my readers aren't invited to the wedding. That seems to assume a lot about my readership (as in, it's more than just my mother, and you know she's totally invited), but he's probably right. Instead I'll overshare when it's all over and just say that the invites have gone out, the rvsps are flooding in (boy is THAT aspect of wedding planning gratifying!) and we bought our wedding rings today. So I guess we really HAVE to get married now.

Just kidding. I'm so excited about getting married. I'm excited about the party, I'm excited about our families and friends coming to visit, I'm excited about the dress and the paper flowers and the place cards and the corn muffins and the playlists and the pizza party the night before. But mostly I'm excited about BEING MARRIED! It seems like the whole time we've been together, I've known this is where we were heading, and it's finally here, and it partially feels like we've been married for years, and it partially feels like the big step that it legitimately is. I'm going to share his name. He's going to be my guardian. It's big. And it's exciting. And it's lovely.

How's that for non-wedding wedding talk? I know, weddingweddingwedding, right? I'm trying not to be that girl. What else is going on? Charlie Murphy is still peeing on things in our home. Like the dog beds, if we leave them on the floor unoccupied. Or a stack of papers in the office that needed to be filed. Or my brown boots (dammit). Austin's done plenty of research into possible causes. The vet suggested that we let him go outside, which is of course never going to happen. Instead we started letting him go into the basement unsupervised, which he'd been vocally begging to do since we bought the house. We've also tried giving him ample doses of catnip, with the hopes that he'd chill out. Oh, he chills out alright, laid out spread eagle on the kitchen counter in a patch of sun, drooling.
And then he pees on the green blanket when it falls off the bed. The apparent conclusion is that we have too many pets and he's being territorial, although damned if I know why this suddenly came on when we've been a 6 pet household for over two years. And we're not about to start getting rid of the others just because Charlie Murphy thinks he needs to assert himself. In the meantime, I have to figure out how to get cat urine out of leather. Which is awesome.

The troubling thing is that he doesn't act like he's having a hard time at all. He gets along fine with the other pets, except for when he pushes Mackenzie's buttons, which can be done pretty much by breathing. He and Mischa wrestle and chase each other, and he's very patient with her. He'll rub his head under Bridgey's chin and it's too sweet. On the weekends or sometimes in the evenings he comes and snuggles us on the couch, and it's the most gratifying feeling in the world. I don't want him to be mad at us, or at war (inside his head) with the rest of the pets or our home. Because that's what it feels like: piss warfare.

In other news, Casey and I went to NYC for a long weekend to visit Jenny. It was gorgeous and delicious and we shopped and ate until our faces fell off (nearly). I loved just walking around with my sisters, that immediate natural flow of conversation and interaction that kicks in whenever it's the three of us. Some things I observed: My sisters still think of me as being a terrible traveler. That is fair, because I truly was, for years. I overpacked, I lost shit, I got lost, I procrastinated, I got flustered. I'd like to thank Austin (and also just traveling a whole, whole lot in my mid 20s) for having made me a better traveler. I still get nervous during takeoff and landing. I also still have to compulsively repack every time I take something out of my suitcase. But I've managed to plan ahead for this quirk and try not let it affect anyone else that I might be traveling with. Still, my sisters wanted to make sure I woke up early enough every day to be ready to leave the house at the same time as they were, and I ended up just waiting on them a lot and feeling smug. I also observed that my sisters' patience and stamina for shopping has gone inversely up in relation to my own decline. They used to refuse to shop with me because I'd take so long, liked to be thorough and look at everything. They were always On A Mission. This trip to New York, I ran out of steam in the first 10 minutes of each new store we visited, and wound up sitting on the floor by the front door of H&M, totally over throwing elbows in the name of cheap clothes. I bought six shirts, only because I didn't have to try them on (I refused to enter that hellhole of a dressing room) and figured that if they didn't fit I'd give them to someone they would. The girls completely racked up, happily for them.

I'm running out of steam and thoughts tonight. Remember when Myspace would play a song when someone visited your page? Mine was Fake Palindromes by Andrew Bird for forever. If my life were a song tonight, it would be this: Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John. It's the new dancing-in-pajamas song in the Gill-Gray kitchen. Mom, you'll like it! Be ready to dance to it with me and my groom in 6 short weeks and two even shorter days...

Developments

Some exciting recent occurrences in the Gill/Gray (soon to be All Gray) household:

1. Wednesday night, in the midst of hosting a very lovely little dinner party, I managed to neatly slice off the end of my left thumbnail. About a half an inch in. Whilst slicing up a chiffonade of basil with my chef's knife. I managed to not freak out, since our dinner guests were watching me prep dinner. Just wrapped it up and quietly dug the piece of thumbnail out of the pile of basil and continued on with supper. But oh man, it hurts like a mofo. I can't put any pressure on that thumb at all, making me a single-finger texter and incapable of putting on my own necklaces.

2. Last night we installed the HDMI cord on our new Toshiba 32" HD 1080p flat-screen television. We'd put the tv in on Tuesday but didn't have the right cable to make the HD channels show up. Got it all set up last night and watched the NBC shows and it's just astonishing. It kind of gives me a headache to watch because the picture is so precise. I'm sure I'm the LAST person on the planet to come to this realization. But it's a fun treat and just in time for March Madness...

3. Honeymoon in Ireland: Booked! We bumped it ahead to a month after the wedding (so June 18-26). Initially I liked the romantic idea of heading straight off on this big adventure trip right after the wedding, but the more I thought about it, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm an OCD asshole right before a vacation. And this is the biggest trip we've ever taken, and I didn't want to transfer any of those nerves/preparations/chaos to the wedding week. This way we can get back to life as we know it, post-wedding, and then be ready to take off a few weeks later. To Ireland! Holy cow! We're doing two nights each in Galway, Kinsale and Dublin. Taking an (expensive) train from Cork to Dublin, and otherwise knocking around in a rental car. Flights in and out of JFK, so we can see Jenny and Patrick for a day before we leave. We'll be there during the World Cup, so we can watch some games in Irish pubs and bash England with the locals.

4. Save-the-Dates: Sent! Later than I had originally planned, but they look gorgeous, of course. Designed by my future husband, the most talented man I know. We've also set up our wedding website, with just a placeholder now and a spot to sign up to be alerted by email as we add more info. We need to get the hotel stuff finalized (I'm kind of horrified by how hard this part has been...) so we can share that info on the website and help our guests get their travel plans in place. It doesn't look like we're competing with any major events or conferences in Nashville the weekend of the wedding, which is a relief. Downtown can be a madhouse sometimes.

5. Last night, we were woken at about 4 am by the sound of an elephant herd in the front of the house. This turned out to be Corvinius, who had caught a MOUSE and was zooming around the house torturing it. Austin got up, chased the situation down the hall and eventually lost the mouse in the office closet. He gave up and came back to bed, figuring it had gotten into the ductwork and there wasn't anything to be done. The cats held their vigil, though, and I was woken up a half-hour later by squeaking, thumping and fluttering on top of me in the bed. Corvinius had found the mouse and brought it to us in bed. I flung the covers off and heard the mouse hit the wall, then leaped over to the other side of Austin and started shouting. Austin understands the basic principle of our relationship, which is that if it *might* be a mouse, he has to deal with it, so he finally managed to get the damaged-and-traumatized-but-still-alive mouse into a box and out the front door. Not the greatest night's sleep for either of us. Luckily the dogs had gone out at about 3 (yeah, that part is awesome too) so they weren't around to further complicate the animal kingdom showdown. Good GRIEF.

----------------------------

Okay, so I missed a month or two here. I missed talking about the absolutely amazing night when I came home from work to find 19 of my favorite ladies in the entire world wearing hideous bridesmaid dresses shouting "Surprise!" We feasted, we opened an obnoxious number of lingerie-related gifts, and we danced in the dining room until we were about to drop. It was pretty much the best thing ever.

I skipped the holidays, too. They were mostly low key; Mom and Kam were gone before Christmas and Jenny and Patrick left the day after. Austin and I laid around a lot and cooked a lot. It's been a particularly productive cooking month for us. I've been inventing a few recipes, which I don't do very often (Peppermint Panna Cotta! Spicy Sticky Asian Baby Back Ribs! Grapefruit-Vanilla Bean Sorbet!). Basically, I get a vision for a taste I want, and then research to see if the recipe already exists, and if it doesn't, I cobble together concepts from related recipes until it makes sense. No disasters yet!

And if it hasn't been clear before this, now is the time for my Wedding Brain to take hold and not let go for the next four months. Last Thursday, I woke up wide awake at 5 am with a specific vision of the text for our invitations. Got up, went to the living room, wrote it all down exactly as I pictured it, and went back to bed. It's sort of like wedding autism. My mind is constantly clicking with To Dos and ideas, I can't turn it off. I never wanted to be one of Those Brides, but I guess if I'm honest with myself, I know I have always been. I've got my big binder and my lists and my calendars and I'm ready to get this show on the road.

impressionable

Austin suggests I write about the first time I ever ate Ben & Jerry's Pistachio Pistachio ice cream. That was tonight. Very historic date in the life history of a girl who loves ice cream so dearly. Loves it so much that I took a picture of the astonishingly well-stocked ice cream accoutrement section at Publix and texted it to Agnes tonight. Strawberry marshmallow creme! Cupcake flavored Magic Shell! At least nine different types of ice cream cones! What is this wonderful world we're living in?

I should blog about the soul-regenerating love fest of Guilty Pleasures last night. Or about my new haircut. Or about Kansas, a post I've been working on for a month now. I could talk about some of the new tricks our pets have picked up (Mischa twirls for food!).

Instead I'm going to go watch more Firefly and turn in early on this Saturday night. I'll leave you with an awfully sweet photo of my future husband and one of the things I love the most about him...It's not exactly the best picture of Digby, who is getting so fat, but how about our littlest kid over there with her big ears? This just warms my heart.

why do I always do this?

Gah! I wait so long between posts and then there is too much to say. Let's do the bullet point version of an update:

• Wedding date: moved. Forward one week due to scheduling difficulties with the Bicentennial Mall. So now we're looking at May 22, which I'm told is going to guarantee us a long and happy marriage. So there.
  
• Seattle: gorgeous. We couldn't have had better weather or a more beautiful rental house. With a Viking range and subzero fridge, believe it. We bought stunning produce at Pike Place, cooked up a storm, played lots of cards, took over the jukebox at a bar in the tiny town of Manchester, and had an amazing meal of tapas at Black Bottle in Belltown. I got to catch the Jim Henson exhibit AND the Hatch exhibit at EMP; both were fantastic and the Hatch show made me miss my old friend Huey. Oh, and we spent a lot of time on ferry boats. I never thought I'd be on a boat.
  
• Alaska: awesome. I'm not really sure if I could live there, what with all their issues with day and night and the proper scheduling of each, but the scenery couldn't have been more beautiful. We saw a small black bear and were woken up by a 5.4 strength earthquake. The Great Wedding Adventure came off without a hitch and it was an absolute honor to be involved and to finally get to meet Agnes's big crazy family, especially Peter, who I feel like I've known for years.
  
• I will say this: air travel = sucks. I swear. It's never going to be any better. We had the most absurd amount of drama getting on a direct flight from Seattle into Anchorage (and avoid a scheduled 5-hour layover in Juneau). We also took a red-eye home from Anchorage to Chicago and, despite being heavily medicated, it was just terrible. Neither of us slept at all (thanks to some well-timed squalling infants); by the time we got home at 1 pm we collapsed in a four hour nap. I have written red-eye flights off of my list of possible travel solutions for the future. At least when flying coach.
  
• Bowling: rocks. We've been participating in the Emma bowling league, and a few weeks ago I bowled a career-high 156. How about that?! It almost feels like exercise. But in a fun way.
  
• ELO night: insert enthusiastic hyperbole here. How I Became the Bomb and Kindercastle joined up with a seven piece string section to perform Electric Light Orchestra's double album opus Out of the Blue, one night only at the Mercy Lounge. And these are both extremely talented bands in their own right, but if they decided to take this (daunting and time consuming) act on the road, they'd be INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTARS, I tell you. I kept looking around at the crowd and everyone was smiling the *whole* time. Tell me the last time you saw a rock show in Nashville where you could say the same...
• Fourth of July: vaguely apocalyptic. Casey and I sucked up an uncharacteristic bout of nerves and ventured back into Ashland City for a visit with our oldest friends that turned out to be simply delightful. Then we rode back into town ready to hit the baseball game and were subverted by absolutely ridiculous weather. Monsoonish rainstorms, thunder and lightning, the whole bit. I seriously can't remember ever being rained out of Fourth of July. We didn't see any fireworks, despite having planned to see both the downtown extravaganza and the Sounds blastoff. Weird and boo. The whole situation resulted in us reminiscing about happier Fourths of July in years past, particularly those spent out at the Paine Family Farm, and then I got really sad about missing Jenny and Patrick.
  
• Bridgey: escape artist. After the Epic Independence Day Fail, we arrived home to discover Bridgette, running around a neighbor's yard, soaked and completely freaked out. We assumed that the fireworks + storm had somehow worked her into such a frenzy that she jumped the fence without realizing what was happening. We dried her off, put her and the others to bed, and were most disappointed when she spent all of Sunday showing off her new fence-climbing skill. That's right. Bridgette, the GOOD one, the shy, well-behaved, slightly backwards brown dog has learned to scale chain-link like a monkey. We've temporarily curbed the efforts by wrapping a tarp over the top of the gate, therefore giving her nothing to claw onto, but our eventual (and hopeful) solution involves rabbit wire and hard labor this weekend. Good GRIEF.
• Hot Rod: ridiculous. Austin wakes up every morning and watches part of the Andy Samberg movie Hot Rod, about a quixotic pseudo-stuntman and his loony cast of surrounding characters. He just watches a bit and then stops it and picks it back up again the next morning, laughing like a little kid the whole time. I think it's his new Wet Hot American Summer, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.
• MJ: just sad. I've had this whole defense of Michael Jackson's character and skewering of the media lined up in my head for a week now, but mostly it's been said and it's kind of past the point of relevancy. But Jenny made me smile when she said that her first instinct when she heard the news of his death was to call our cousin Josh and see how he was coping.
  

There, how was that for the Greatest Hits recap version? I think we're all caught up to speed now. I have got to spend more time blogging and less time on Facebook. Can that be a mid-New-year resolution?

never been better

Tonight I'm knocking around the house, solo for a little while. Austin's playing FIFA Soccer with JB. I had planned to spend the alone time working on the filing drawers in the desk in the office I excavated yesterday. Instead I poked around online, played a game, read some educational wedding-related articles. Then I straightened up the house, put away the remnants of our crackers-and-soda snack from this afternoon, and got out the ingredients for tonight's Mexican pineapple salad. And I realized, while I was moving around the house, going through mindless motions, I was smiling the whole time.

I don't talk about religion, on here or anywhere. I'm not a subscriber of any specific doctrine. We don't go to church, and we don't follow any scriptures. I don't have astral convictions, and I don't miss them. But the only word I can find to describe this feeling, this day, this place I'm at in my life, is blessed. I am saturated by blessings. It washes over me, so many times a day, and I wish there was a better way to express my gratitude.

I love our home. We cleaned it yesterday, got the office near to full function, and made some decorating progress. It is safe and warm and comfortable when it's filled with girls, sprawled on the couch with popcorn and ice cream, or when it's just us and our pets, on quiet tv afternoons, or when it's just me and my iTunes. There literally isn't a day that goes by that I don't think how utterly lucky we are that we found *this* house. It felt like an arduous search, and it turned out exactly right.

I love my job. One of the bigger wedding-related dilemmas I've faced (as with every bride in the history of the world, I know) has been the size of the guest list. And this is complicated by the fact that I have 70+ coworkers who are also friends who I can't imagine not celebrating with. It's probably not going to be realistic to invite every Emma staffer plus one, but right now I'm doing my best to find a way to include as many as we can. I think about the very best days at Hatch, when we all felt like a productive family full of friends, and that's how Emma is too. I love it when I make a breakthrough on a collaborative project, I love it when I've finished processing the daily check run, I love it when the power goes out and I wind up laying on the carpet of the second floor lounge doing half-assed pilates with Brooks and Rami and Rachael's puppy. I think I've said this before, but you don't realize how much of your self-esteem is caught up in the work week until you find a job that fulfills you.

I love our pets. We both do, equally, with an unreasonable fervor. We're those crazy pet people and aren't remotely ashamed. Digby is getting closer and closer to being a good dog, and Bridgette is such a sweet girl. We had a brushing session on the back patio last weekend (shedding time is definitely here) and they were both just inhaling the affection and attention. Mackenzie is completely back to her old self, running the house with her larger-than-life attitude and making sure she gets quality time with us before bed every night. Corvinius is, well, an oddball, but a loveable one, and spent a large portion of this afternoon rubbing his face on the corner of my computer screen over. and over. and over again. Oh buddy. And look, we don't like to play favorites with our pets. But every single day, Mischa and Charlie Murphy fill us up with love. Mischa got a new toy today, and she's currently sacked out on her spot at the end of the couch with this new red stuffy wrapped in her arms like a woobie. I just want to hold her so tight. Charlie Murphy loves weekends, particularly couch weekends like today, and the absolute peace and joy he spreads when he's sleeping leaned up against my lap... it's just the best.

I love my friends. Book club friends, work friends, people who don't fall in either category (there aren't many...), I can't get over the support network that surrounds me. I spent a lot of my adolescence thinking of myself as not a "girlfriend" kind of girl, and I'm so happy that I was totally wrong about that. We threw a surprise bachelorette party for Agnes last night, and the house was about to burst from all the girlie love. Lisa and Jenny were missed, but otherwise it couldn't have gone better and I was so glad we could all spend sweet time with Agnes before she takes off for the Great Alaskan Wedding Adventure.

I love my family. The reason I didn't think of myself as a "girlfriend" kind of girl was, obviously, because I have the best built-in girlfriends on the planet, my sisters. We talk every day and nothing feels complete unless it is shared with them. I'm so glad that we live close enough to my dad that we can just have low-key evenings of ceiling fan installation and (really good) chicken wings with him and Lynn. We're so lucky to have them both nearby. I miss my big crazy California family so badly, and one of my absolute favorite things to imagine about our wedding is having them all here together again. And I am just chomping at the bit to get to Seattle (next weekend!) and give my Mom one gigantic hug, followed by a series of smaller ones. It's been almost a year since we've seen her and I can't wait to spend a week on the lake with her and Kam (and Casey and Trent and a deck of cards!).

And of course you knew this was where I was going, but I love Austin. I'm not going to detail all the reasons that he's the man I'm going to marry (I've done that before and certainly will again) but the place where we are in our life together is just especially good right now. I am excited to see him EVERY DAY. How silly is that? I start to feel restless and shifty if it's been more than a couple of hours since I've checked in with him (thanks to IM and texting for completely spoiling me by having my fiance´ available to me at all times). We're on the same page about all these major decisions we've made in the past year and will be making in the next year. We're not exactly wealthy, but it's been a long while since we've had to look at anything and say, from a financial standpoint, "How are we going to make this work?" We carpool almost every day and talk about the stories we hear on NPR. If it sounds idyllic, it is. I can't think of an aspect of my life that isn't made better by just having him with me. We don't have to do everything together (see: FIFA Soccer) but when I'm walking around our house by myself, smiling, it's mostly because of him.

outline

1. Tonight marks day 5 of successful antibiotic dosage for Mackenzie. I don't know if you can truly appreciate the magnitude of this feat. On Friday the vet tech handed me that little green jar filled with pills and my heart just sank. The summer that Kenzie had kidney stones (she was three), the daily administering of (liquid) meds was like the apocalypse in our house. But miraculously, this time around, we just hide the pill in a small bowl of wet food and she has taken every dose without blinking an eye.

2. I had a movie date tonight with some lovely Emma girls. We watched Notting Hill at Hilary's house and ate pizza. Delightful company, delightful film, I can ask for nothing more.

3. When I got home, Austin was about an hour through Scanners. I don't know anything about this movie, except it is apparently not the same thing as A Scanner Darkly. I'm hiding out in the bedroom while he finishes it, and I can report that the soundtrack is very Buck Rogers-esque.

4. When I was five I somehow saw part of an episode of Buck Rogers, where a man gets incinerated by a laser beam or something. He is standing there, and then SHAZAM there is a charred puddle on the floor where he was. This absolutely TERRIFIED me. Clearly, I'm scarred, if I can recall it in detail 27 years later. I think we were at Uncle Dennis's house.

5. Has this seemed like a long week to anyone else? I can't believe tomorrow is only Thursday.

6. This weekend is the Walden Artisan Market in East Nashville, on Eastland across from Rosepepper. Last month it was a blast, lots of neat stuff from local craftspeople. The weather promises to be absolutely glorious (if a little hot, but I'm not complaining) so you can bet there will be a good crowd at the market. Come check it out! Some especially talented folks will be there (oh, you know, my sister Jenny and her husband Patrick. And Badness. And Carolyn. And Caitlin). Don't miss it!

7. I collect vintage slips and lingerie. Did you know that? I would estimate I have at least 100 slips. This weekend I sorted them into two of those big long tupperwares that go under the bed. All the practical ones that can actually be worn underneath dresses or shirts went in one, and the dressup ones went in the other. It inspired me to actually get them out and wear them more often, so the last few nights I've hung around the house in pretty silkies instead of scrubs. Just a little way to feel fancier (and Austin sure doesn't mind that I'm not wallowing in shlubby).

8. Mischa is so damn cute. She just hands out High Fives like they're free. She warms my heart.

9. I read this article today with a great deal of interest. Making your own cream cheese! What?! That seems outrageous to me. But I think homemade granola is in my immediate future, and homemade bagels are on the horizon. God I wish Nashville had some really good bagels. It's a bagel wasteland, I tell you, starting with the demise of Nashville Bagel on West End. Dad used to come home with bags of day-old salt and cinnamon raisin bagels, we'd eat them for weeks.

10. At least once every few hours, I get distracted just looking at the ring on my left hand. It couldn't possibly be any prettier. I look at it and think how lucky I am, and I can't believe anyone loves me this much.

I realize I'm not much of a food blogger...

...because I never post recipes. I cook from other people's (copyrighted) recipes so much, it's not right to share them, right? Hmm. Maybe later this month I'll find something I invented (or tweaked enough to make it my own) and throw it on the ole blog. Tonight I'm too wiped out from the kitchenstravaganza of this afternoon and evening.

First up: Coconut Cream Tart. A quick shortbread crust, a coconut custard filling, toasted coconut layered between and sweetened whipped cream on top. It's chilling now, I'll report back after the first slice.

The tart left me with three egg whites so I also tossed together a batch of chocolate chip meringues. Easy enough. I had all the other ingredients on hand (including mini-semisweet chips, oddly enough). My coworkers can expect the bounty to be shared tomorrow.

Dinner was a new recipe I pulled out of the "Good for You" page of a recent Cooking Pleasures magazine (which is the same place we found the Sicilian Pasta recipe, so I was optimistic): Orange Chicken with Quinoa and Carrots (or something like that). Chicken thighs browned in olive oil, then onion, garlic, quinoa, shredded carrots, raisins, orange zest, paprika, s&p, all stirred in until they start to get soft. Covered with broth and orange juice, brought to a boil, then shoved in the oven for 45 minutes until the quinoa soaks up all the liquid. After it was out of the oven, we stirred in flat-leaf parsley and chopped green olives. Served in big bowls with more of those awesome honey-roasted carrots.

Austin was concerned about the dish not having enough flavor, so he made a sauce of sriracha, sesame oil, rice vinegar and honey. I drizzled a bit on mine (he probably used more) and it was a very wise choice. I'm guessing this was something of a northern-African inspired dish? Definitely our first attempt at quinoa, and I liked it very much. I like the snap and texture. I think the meal would have been much, much better sans chicken. I don't care for thigh meat (and couldn't find boneless thighs meat, so spent a lot of time cleaning and de-boning those suckers) and the chicken didn't absorb much of the seasonings. But all put together, with the sweet and spicy carrots and sauce, it was a pretty satisfying meal. I'll keep trying different things with quinoa (maybe try to recreate the amazing quinoa tacos from Teresa the Taco Lady!).

Other than the cooking efforts (which really only started at like 5:30) it was a lovely and lazy day. We had leftovers for lunch and watched the third Bourne movie, which was fine if rather exhausting. So many chase sequences, so many fight scenes, it runs together. It's super rainy in Nashville today, so the dogs all hung out inside most of the time and we had some good family time.

Oh, and last night's undetermined dinner destination turned out to be Eastland Cafe, and apparently J.Burr's celebrity status is such that we got an entire patio all to ourselves for the whole meal. Delightful. We got an awesome appetizer (goat cheese brulee with local honey, roasted tomatoes and peppers and grilled flatbread) and I had a couple of absolutely swoon-worthy cocktails. The first was called the Three Rs, basically a rhubarb lemonade with rosemary syrup and rum. YUM. It was a tiny bit strong at first but as the ice melted became completely delicious. Then after the meal I ordered a Spicy and Sweet, which was muddled strawberries and a jalapeno slice in cava. So good. I just got a goat cheese salad (what, more goat cheese? who, me?) and mashed potatoes and fried green tomatoes for dinner, and Austin got a really delicious pork tenderloin. Jon had ricotta pasta, which was very good, and Ali also had side dishes: macaroni and cheese, roasted brussels sprouts and an iceberg wedge with blue cheese and Benton's (!) bacon. We couldn't NOT order blueberry beignets for dessert. Really a treat of a meal. Then we came back to the house and played another entirely lopsided game of Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture. Note to self: in the future, we're not playing Boys against Girls when one of the categories is Sports. Boo.

Kenzie has spent all day hanging out on my dressing table, which has to be an improvement over hiding under the bed. She stands up when we come into the room, and purrs when she's petted. All good signs. She's also taken three drama-free doses of antibiotic, and we head back to the vet at 8 am tomorrow to get those tubes removed and get her on the road to recovery. Whew!

Austin has just left the television on Spike TV: Zombie Strippers. I think I'd better recruit him for kitchen cleanup and some coconut tart before bed.

pre-date postings

Rather than risk skipping another day of the blogs, I'm going to throw this one up here before we leave for dinner (location yet to be determined). I'm wearing a fun new green sundress and feeling rather cute, even if I kind of think this dress makes an exaggerated bulge out of my tummy. Austin swears no. My hair looks good, anyway.

I spent the majority of the morning and afternoon on Myspace, of all places, exporting all my old blog posts to my desktop (using that Print Preview: Save as PDF trick). I had forgotten that I spent most of 2005 only posting dumb internet surveys instead of actual written blogs, which is pretty obnoxious. I indulge occasionally in the list-format surveys on here or on Facebook, but back then it was 15 postings in a row. It is no wonder that my dedicated readership at the time consisted of two: Austin and Agnes, who were both completely obligated to read. Sorry to both of you, four years later. Would it be annoying to make a blogspot page for these old blogs, so that non-Myspace users could peruse them? I haven't decided yet.

Before I forget, Kenzie is doing ok today. She ate an entire can of wet food last night and again this morning, so her appetite is back, which is a huge relief. We even attempted the trick of hiding her antibiotic pill in her food this morning, expecting a total fail, and it worked! Shocking. So far so good. She's still camped out behind the bed, except for two random (mysteriously motivated) wanderings down the hallway into the bathroom (maybe the tile feels cool to her?). This involved a lot of complaining. Nothing new there. I wish I could keep her under closer observation, but I know she feels safer behind the bed, and I'm glad for the separation that keeps her pretty much unbothered by the rest of the menagerie.

As Mom pointed out, I was due for a third crisis this week (1. slashed tire 2. Kenzie vet drama), so I tried to cut the tip of my left middle finger off last night. It turned out to just be a rather painful, fingernail-invading slice, but nothing life-threatening. I was chopping an onion lazily, with a dull knife, so that's what I get. I need to get my chef's knife sharpened, but don't want to be without it for a day. If you're keeping score, that does mean we had Skillet Chicken Pot Pie last night, so delicious. And watched the Bourne Supremacy, which wasn't nearly as good as the first. I usually love Joan Allen (especially in Pleasantville, swoon) but didn't buy her for a minute in this film. And the Russian assassin's apparently psychic ability to find Bourne in any crowded metropolis was not exactly thrilling. He's just a dude who wears black all the time, how much could he possible stand out? Unimpressive. We'll still watch the third one tomorrow, Austin has it stashed on the DVR.

I guess it's dinnertime. We'll see if we end up eating Mexican food on a patio (which is definitely what the Boo wants) or driving to Joelton for catfish (definitely what I want). This will be a matter of filibustering until our co-diners (Jon and Ali) take a stand. Possible compromises: Sky Blue Bistro or Eastland Cafe, both places I like to eat that also offer porch seating. Bon Saturday!

Kenzerelli, that's what they call her.

**fair warning... slightly gruesome veterinary details to follow**

Kenzie and I had a not-great day. I took her to the vet this afternoon, after she hadn't moved from under our bed or eaten for three or four days. She's not exactly a trooper about being transported anywhere, and especially not anywhere that results in her getting pinned down to a metal table while a strange man pokes and prods her. It turns out she's had an abscess in her rear-end area, possibly for quite some time, and it's rather large now. Poor kiddo. The dr. sedated her, drained the abscess and inserted a drainage tube. They waited until she woke up and handed her back off to me.

I was pretty scared and upset the whole time, but once we got home and she came out of her kitty carrier covered in blood and looking like an effed-up science experiment, I totally fell apart. Her hip is shaved and she has rubber tubing hanging out in two directions. She is NOT pleased about any of the tubing/suture situation. She's been fiendishly bathing herself, and a moment ago I caught her tugging at the tube with her teeth. It's going to be a long weekend.

Really, it could have all been much worse, I know. She's twelve, and her half-brother (my beloved Boogie) dropped dead of a mysterious "sizeable mass" three years ago (and took a big chunk of my heart with him). She's been rather foul-tempered since her feral kittenhood, and it's hard to say if maybe she's been sick for years and we just chalked it up to being calico-ish. I spent the last 24 hours consumed with dread for a disease diagnosis that would involve dozens of expensive treatments that would add up to her as torture. A treatable abscess, a diagnosis of "She's going to be hurtin' for a little while," accompanied with a disconcerting wink, really, it's almost best case scenario. But I'm still feeling pretty volatile, and think I'd better go start dinner and lose myself in the next Bourne movie before I spend the rest of the night having fearful crying jags.

{The picture above is the first shot of Kenzie taken in our new house. She acclimated astonishingly well and was hanging out with me on the new couch within a few hours of the moving crew leaving. I took this picture with the built-in laptop camera, just to show how cool she was being (while my boys, who I would ordinarily think of as being much braver than Kenzie, were still hunkered down in closet corners, freaking out). I wish we had the scanner hooked up so I could post a picture of Mackenzie as a kitten, because she was absolutely the cutest damn thing, with a pansy face and so much trouble.}

recovery

Foolishly, I had the Comcast disconnected Friday instead of, oh, I don’t know, Monday? So at about 7 pm (Friday) tonight we lost television and (horrors!) the internet. So I’m blogging into Word, and will paste and post as soon as my next free moment with wi-fi comes around.

And here it is: Moving Day. Or Moving Eve. It’s 10:30 pm on Friday the 17th and we’re winding down for the night. Tomorrow morning we’ll be packing up a U-haul truck with all of our (voluminous) worldly possessions and heading to 2607 Sandy to start a new chapter in our new home.

I absolutely hate it when people complain about how busy they are or how busy they have been; it’s just one of the least interesting topics of conversation I can think of. But here I go, I’m about to tell you how very, very busy we’ve been. Because almost every night for the last three weeks we’ve finished up our work day and headed straight to the new house to paint, prime, sand, scrub, rip and varnish every inch of the place. The bathroom is coming together amazingly well. Drywall is hung, bathtub is in place, walls are mudded, sanded and primed, and tonight my Dad, the hero, finished placing all of the (one-inch octagonal) tile in the floor. It’s been incredibly exciting to watch the bathroom come together, and I can’t believe he’s done it almost all himself. With lots of help from Austin, plus some from Patrick today. Simply amazing. We picked up a gallon of sky blue (Glidden Falling Rain) paint for the walls, and everything else is white, white, white. At first it seemed like an outrageous undertaking and expense (okay, it’s both) but making the bathroom a room we’re really proud of and love is going to turn out to be so worth it all in the long run.

In the meantime, the rest of the house came together beautifully. Paint is up on all the walls of the main floor. I finished the last coat of yellow in the kitchen this morning, and pulled all the blue tape down to reveal a completely transformed room. The backyard fence was finished Thursday and looks shiny and sturdy. The only major roadblock we’ve come across was revealed on Sunday night when Megan and I, excited to see how everything would look when it was finished, pulled up the carpet in the bedroom to reveal horrible stains on the hardwood floors underneath. I know we shouldn’t have been surprised, and we certainly should have found out for sure one way or the other WELL before a week before moving day, but I was simply heartbroken. Further investigation revealed the office floors were nearly as bad. Two days of discussions later, we decided to undertake a simplified floor refinishing project, and Wednesday night Brandes helped us sand the floors and bleach out the stains. Thursday morning he met me there again and we got woodstain down, then I applied poly that night and this morning and they look REMARKABLY better. Especially the office, where there is only one dark spot left and it’s going to be covered by a bookcase.

So other than the floor drama, which will most likely continue into our occupation of the home because we haven’t even pulled up the carpet in the hallway yet, everything has gone so well. The white trim, while being a major pain the labor ass, makes all the new colors look gorgeous, and this morning while we got things cleaned up it started finally getting exciting, as opposed to overwhelming. There is still so very, very much to be done, particularly to the basement, but the living space is ready for us to move in and start putting our things away.

I spent a lot of time this week picturing where everything would go, and I feel like I have a good game plan for unpacking over the next four days. I took a week off work for the moving, so I’ll have M-T-W there to really get my nesting on. Comcast is coming tomorrow for installation, including our new DVR, whoop! And Sears is delivering our new 25 cubic foot Whirlpool refrigerator in the afternoon, a hulking giant of an appliance, the kind with the French doors on top and the freezer on the bottom. We are hemorrhaging money, to the point where it’s like we don’t even notice anymore, but I know it’s gonna hurt in a month. The HELOC is still stalled in the approval process, mostly because no banks have any money or credit right now, I suppose? But we’re confident it will come through and we can start clearing everything up after that.

Packing up the old house has been laborious and bittersweet. I got a little sad, we’ve been really happy in this house and had many dreams for a future here. We absolutely got a better house out of the bargain and I’m so excited about our new home, but it is always an emotional time, stripping a home down to the walls and turning it into a stranger again. I’ve been lucky enough to have lots of tough-love help in packing (“Are you SURE you want to keep all fourteen of these ramekins? How many ramekins does one person need?!”) with VIP credit going to Jenny, who slogged away about six hours today and left a swath behind her of just-barely-contained possessions in dozens of cardboard boxes. I don’t mean to discredit the contributions of Casey, Megan and Lauren, who managed to box up the contents of the dining room and about sixty percent of the kitchen last night, all while surrounded by as many as five curious and muddy dogs, plus Charlie Murphy, who loves helping and packing and helping with packing.

*Editor's note* As I said, those were my comments from Friday night. It's now Sunday afternoon, and we're indulging in a lazy day before getting started on the absolute wreckage that is our new home. It's a maze of boxes and furniture, all just sort of plopped down willy-nilly, and I'm ready to tackle it with a vengeance. Unpacking is one of my favorite things.

Other than all the boxes, things are settling in just fine. We still need to clean the old house and empty the fridge, and take the remaining contents of the garage to recycling. And my cd/dvd shelves were screwed to the wall and we didn't have the right tools to take them down, so we'll need to rescue those before we close up the old house and give Tony back his keys.

By far the toughest part of yesterday was dealing with the pets. My sisters say we should all be alloted like 10 minutes over a lifetime when we can simply talk to our pets and have them understand. I would have taken three minutes to just explain to Charlie Murphy and Corvinius that we were not trying to kill, maim or abandon them by cramming them into a cat carrier and a picnic basket, respectively (poor Vinius). Jenny and Casey bravely took the lead on this endeavor and drove all three cats, wailing their fool heads off, to the new house. I'm so glad I wasn't in the car because I would have cried the whole time. Mackenzie, shockingly, adjusted quite nicely and was hanging out in the Man Room cool as a cucumber when I went to check on them an hour later (Charlie and Vinius were huddled together behind one of the doors). I suppose Kenzie has moved six or seven times now, while the boys were only brought into the Eastside house when they were still too small to care. Happily, by bedtime they were all three out and about, exploring, finding their food bowls, and eventually snuggled up in the bed with us like brave and forgiving kids. Charlie Murphy, especially, I believe has been extra sweet to me today as an apology for nearly gutting me yesterday in the Dreaded Box Incident. If I wasn't so embarrassed by the state of my belly I'd post a photo of the scratch that runs from my breastbone to my navel. He meant it at the time, but I'm getting lots of blinky eyes and sweetness today to make up for it.

The dogs also adjusted. We brought them over here and left them in the backyard before we went and picked up the moving van, and by the time we got back here with all the helpers and trucks they were pretty frantic. But they've been zooming around the yard and clearly enjoy all the space and shade. Last night proved more difficult; when it was finally time to bring them in for dinner it took much coaching (as expected) to get Bridgette and Mischa up the stairs. But they finally made it and explored the house (as much as they could with boxes everywhere) and spent the night sleeping on their three new dog beds in our bedroom. Then when they woke up at five am and refused to go down the stairs, things got temporarily ugly. We finally coaxed all three of them out at about 7 and went back to bed until ten. We spent some time playing with them outside this morning and I think they are really going to love it here. Hopefully by tonight we'll have made more sense of all the mess and they can get a better feel for the new place (and the new couch on which they are not invited...).

That's my excessively long update. Better get my unpacking groove on. Look for a Special Thank You edition of the Delusions blog, coming up next...

sunday, sunday, sunday

Good news! The inspection went well. It was a painstaking process (our inspector was so thorough and meticulous, it was just a marvel watching him work) but the overall diagnosis on the house seemed to be positive. We certainly have our work (and cash outlay) cut out for us, with projects and updates necessary to the electrical, plumbing, insulation, gutters, what could be left after that? But there were no immediate safety issues, and the general foundation/condition of the house is looking pretty good. We are going to have radon and mold tests on Tuesday, and will find out the results of those by Thursday. That's cutting it a little close because we have to turn the contract back into the selling bank by end of day Thursday, but so far, so good.

I think the best part about the inspection was just getting to hang out at the house for a few hours and confirm our belief that it just *feels* good in there. It feels comfortable and like we're surrounded by the place we'll be able to call home. We're coming up with ideas for paint colors, and starting to shape a (very tentative) schedule for painting, carpet rip-up, fence and electrical updates, and then move-in. We're so lucky to have such an amazing support network of friends and family who are willing to help.

I'm still in bed at 11:19 on Sunday morning, and Corvinius is giving me the most outrageous show of affection. I'm thinking that if we needed HIM to help us paint the trim in the new house, he'd totally do it. Because he loves us. And so would Digby, but he'd probably make a mess while he was trying to be helpful. I think we'd give Bridgey a project where she could work quietly by herself but still feel like she'd accomplished something. And maybe let Charlie Murphy just be the team leader for Troublemaking and Enthusiasm. Mischa could help us check all puddles and water receptacles for water content. And I don't think we could ask Mackenzie to do anything. I mean, we don't ask for much now, and we're still catching a lot of attitude.

I know we're pet crazy. But the mere fact that they live here with us really shaped our househunting process. One of the houses we really liked (but was in a very sketchy neighborhood) had the awkward aspect that the door to the backyard was through the master bedroom. The idea that our bed would be the first thing the dogs would encounter when we were letting them in from a muddy backyard was sort of a dealbreaker. Other houses that were otherwise strong possibilities got axed because they didn't have big backyards or weren't fenceable for whatever reason.

And now I love the idea of thinking about where they will all hang out in the new house. I think it's likely that Mackenzie could claim the entire attic as her (lofty) territory, and I doubt she'd get much argument on that matter from the pups. I'm a little worried about the transition of having to have the dogs go down a flight of stairs into the basement before they can go out. Digby, I'm sure, will barrel down headfirst and end up in a pile of limbs at the base of the stairs. He's not afraid of much, nor graceful in his enthusiasm. But I'm pretty sure both Mischa and Bridgette will require some coaching/bribing to get them comfortable with the process of ascending and descending. I'm just hoping that the need for their dinner and their desire to hang out with us will help motivate them to overcome their fears.

Another thought I'm wrestling with is the desire for a dog door into the backyard. That would also probably take some encouragement and time with Mischa and Bridge, but I know they'd get used to it. We just have to find another solution to Austin having to get up in the middle of the night, sometimes multiple times, to let the dogs out. It's more disruptive (to him, not me, I sleep right through it) than having a newborn baby, I swear it. But Austin's concerned that any door the dogs can get out, so can Charlie Murphy, and despite his regular vociferous claims to being perfectly capable of going outside and not getting into trouble, we are just not willing to let him take that risk. David at work suggested trying one of those dog doors that only open to a chip on the dogs collar, but I have a feeling that Charlie Murphy the Wiley would find a way around that.

I've been accused of having homebuying goggles on right now, and I'm sure that is true. I mean, buying our first home is a huge deal, and certainly the biggest thing we've accomplished together, but I can find other things to talk about, right? It's just that most of it sounds so obnoxiously simperingly cheerful that it's rather embarrassing. Work? GREAT. So good, I can't even explain it to you. Life with The Boo? Just super. We're just smile a lot, and are otherwise just having a great time. Yesterday we borderline-crashed a barbecue in Nippers Corner with Jon and Ali, and got to feast on championship worthy brisket and pulled pork until we thought we were going to die. Then a few short hours later (and by a few short hours I mean, literally, two) I met up with some of my favorite ladies for my favorite sushi and may or may not have permanently injured myself by overeating. After that we rolled to the Mercy Lounge for the Bomb show and I spent most of the time holding my stomach and moaning, until the band played and we ran up to the front to dance.

Other than my adventures in overeating, there isn't much to report on the cooking front. I made a pretty killer quiche on Monday, with zucchini, mushrooms and bacon. I forgot to buy Gruyere so I (over)compensated by tossing in every cheese in my fridge. Cream cheese in the filling, layered slices of swiss and mozzarella, and shredded cheddar and parm on top. YUM. We've got lots of vegs from the CSA to roast soon, and sausage links and bulk sausage to find a good use for. I doubt we'll have any problems with that.

In the meantime, I think it's a patty melt and onion ring kind of day. Gold Rush, here we come!

hut

I asked Austin for a food topic I could write about tonight. With gusto, he immediately suggested,"SAUSAGE!" Thanks, babe. We did have our new favorite sausage dish tonight, Rigatoni with (Italian) sausage and Parmesan. I'm not sure if I'm crazy about rigatoni? It's tough to cook just right, without it ending up too toothy or too mushy. But it's an easy carbonara-type recipe where you stir eggs and cream in at the end and it comes together as a creamy sauce. Mushrooms, onions, garlic, can't go wrong there. Loads of beautiful roasted squash for a side dish, from the farmer's market, including butterfinger zucchini, which is the same shape and texture as regular zucchini but super rich sunflower yellow. Just gorgeous.

The good news is, our new camera came. And it is great looking, and I already took one very cute picture of Emily. The bad news is, I did not take any pictures of our cooking adventures tonight. I forgot.

I was going to try to pull something thoughtful out tonight, but James McAvoy is on The Daily Show and boy, am I distracted. Are Austin and I going to see Wanted, and not even be embarrassed about it? Yes. We are.

Our dogs must have had a long exhausting day, out there in those storms. Our house looks like some kind of canine Chernobyl. Limp, muddy corpses littered every few feet, both the living four-legged kind and the shredded, emptied stuffy kinds. Most of the time we keep the dog toys closed up in a box with a lid. If we leave it open, Mischa will continually play with a single toy for sixty seconds, discard it and dive back into the box for the next. You can't take a full step without an objecting squeaker under your heel. But she's seemed extra bored lately, and the joy with which she responds to every re-opening of the toy box is always worth it.

No more cooking plans til this weekend. Fridge crammed with leftovers, and fun plans tomorrow, about which I will hopefully brief you tomorrow night.

**You get a bag of chocolate chip cookies if you can correctly i.d. the origin and significance of tonight's blog title. Goodnight, y'all.**

Past Due

What does one write about when life is good? I feel like such a boring person right now; my family and old friends check in and I can only say, "We have lots of pets. I love my job. We're watching the first season of X-Files." Where's the drama? My best story from the last month involves Blue Cross Blue Shield somehow getting the wrong information and marking my account as belonging to a Man. So they weren't covering lady-type insurance claims, and I had to call and set them straight. It's a better story when I tell it (it involves my Korean pharmacist saying, "I tell them, 'I saw her! She a lady!'"), but my point is, it doesn't involve trees falling on houses, or dogs climbing into cars, or bosses making me want to rip my eyes out. It's just a funny little tale of a misunderstanding that was fixed easily, and that's all I've got right now.

And you know what? I'm OK with that. I smile a lot at work, and snicker to myself while I'm having amusing IM conversations with coworkers, and revel in this sudden addition of sixty new friends (and cool friends, too, with no power trip conflicts or flaking on dinner plans), and I also really enjoy kicking a project's ass at work. It's not just an amazing environment. I enjoy the work I'm doing and it's completely remarkable. I didn't really realize how much of my self-esteem was wrapped up in the 40-hour work week, and what a difference it makes to spend those hours feeling filled up with the good life.

And everything else is good too. The dogs are healthy and funny and dirty and affectionate. The boy kitties are great and handsome, and Mackenzie is, well, Mackenzie. Can't ask for more than that. Our house is really filthy all the time with summer storm mud drying off the dogs and becoming piles of dirt in our living room floor. But it's fine, I'm just not that worried about it. We clean when we have visitors. Otherwise we spend our time on the couch like always, and feel lucky, like always.

There have been fun things to plan, like my ice-cream themed birthday party (a major success! Thanks, Badness), a work outing to a ballgame (too cold but otherwise fun), lots of fun little girlie things, and now Megan's bday cabin extravaganza, for which I leave tomorrow (Happy 30th, MCB!). These plannings keep me busy in a pleasant, list-making way. We're also participating in a CSA, a local farmer's co-op where they bring me a box of vegetables and eggs to work every week and I spend the next week trying to figure out what to do with all these radishes. It's challenging and fun and, obviously, delicious. And we're sort of spending time lately with a different group of people, and boy is that fun.

I'm only writing to be writing now, to get something back out there. Maybe I can check back in from the cabin tomorrow or Monday. We're going to get some cheeseburgers right now...

Several Updates Necessary

1. Happy March (or as Shalene would say, Birth Month). Tuesday I happened to glance at the tiny blue text on my desk calendar to discover that SUNDAY IS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME! Oh man this makes me so happy. Proof! Spring! Baseball! Sunlight! all of it.

2. I'm counting down til my last day at work. I took two days (today and yesterday) to tie down the balance sheet and backup our Quickbooks. Then I'm taking Monday through Thursday of next week to train my replacement. Then I'm taking Friday off to put together my birthday party. Saturday is party, Sunday I'll be getting my head in the game and Monday the 17th, walking in the door at Emma.

3. As I mentioned, I'm training my replacement at work, which means I've been handling advertising for the position, fielding resumes, interviewing candidates, and now making the final decision with my coworkers. Let me tell you, this has been an adventure. At Hatch, we used to make a game out of handling all the intern applications, which were often funny or creative, or at least occasionally so dumb it was entertainment-worthy.

This time around, I am alternately saddened and appalled by the things that the general public might think is appropriate for a resume. Here's a hint: no floral or smiley icons. Also, please don't center-justify your cover letter. Additionally, I don't think it's proper to tell me you're charismatic. Isn't that for me to decide? And the most important detail of all: SPELL CHECK YOUR RESUME! PERIOD! This is not negotiable! These are WORD documents that weren't spell checked! Word does it FOR YOU! Oh man. One applicant misspelled the word "government" when she was telling me she used to work there. For the goverment. And another applicant, happily, joyously, delivered to me the Elusive True Definition of Irony: misspelling "detail-oriented" on your resume. Thank you, Ignorant Job Applicant!

I know this is all incredibly mean-spirited. I should tell you that out of the 50-or-so resumes I received, we had at least 15 strong candidates, and out of those, seven interviewees who all seemed bright and sharp and at least partially qualified. And I think we've made the right decision with the final candidate. I really don't want to leave any big vacancy here. I'm trying to make the transition as smooth as possible.

4. In one week I've had two cooking disasters. One burned skillet lasagna and one totally foul one-pot kielbasa mess that I don't even want to detail. What is WRONG with me? I can't take it too hard, though, and I should cheer up my bruised chef-ego with thoughts of the delicious Italian sausage, mushroom and onion penne with a white wine cream sauce from Wednesday. That was tasty.

5. What, you wanted bigger updates than those ones? Something that makes a better story than Random Annual Time Changes, The Idiotic General Public or Ruined Dinners? Oh, okay.

Last Thursday morning I headed to the bank on my way to work. I was sitting at the light at 5th Avenue North and Jefferson Street and realized that traffic was stopped despite the light being green. Being an unnecessarily aggressive driver, I said, out loud, in my car, to no one, "WHY are we not going forward?" Then I saw some white and black movement between the cars in front of me and realized that there was a dog in the road, and people were (politely, safely) stopped to avoid hitting it. I watched the dog wander around in the road, on the median, in front of other moving vehicles, and then it finally ran right up to my car. I opened my car door. The dog jumped in my backseat and laid down.

Oops.

I drove around Germantown and asked people in the street if they'd ever seen him before. He was wearing a chain collar, with no tags. Then I just let him out of the car when we were far enough away from 8th or Jefferson that I felt like he could find his way home without being on any major thoroughfares. He ran in circles in the street for a minute, then ran straight back over and put his paws on my driver's side window.

Oops.

SO I put him back in the car, drove straight to Eckerd, bought a leash and a rawhide bone and a small bag of food, and brought him to work with me. I posted his picture on Craigslist and two petfinder websites. He spent the day sleeping on my feet under my desk.

Oops.

After work, I drove around with him to give Austin time to get home and wrangle Mischa and Bridgette so we could at least partially control their introduction. Which didn't end up being entirely necessary: Bridgey was a little iffy at first but Mischa was overjoyed at another friend to follow around and play mouthbiting games with. Within an hour, all three were crashed on the living room floor and we were suddenly seeming like a bigger, happier family.

Oops.

When I first brought him into the office, I was calling him Buddy. "Hey buddy, come sit in here with me." By the time I took him home that day, he had a new name: Digby. He stayed with us over the weekend, got along famously with the girls, basically ignored the cats (which is quite a feat when Mackenzie is launching herself at him, spitting and hissing like a banshee), slept on one of the dog beds in the dressing room. The only behavioral problem we're having with him is a territorial issue with the couch. As in, we are territorial about our couch, and he feels he could share it with us.

So I took him to the vet on Tuesday, got him his shots and all checked out. He's a 70 pound Dalmatian/black lab mix (at best), 2 years old with no health problems other than some issues with his Man Part that they are going to fix surgically when he gets neutered on Monday. I won't go into more details than that unless you want me to. I think most of you do not want me to.

Originally we were intending to find his family. But after thinking about it, maybe that wasn't the best place for him in the first place. As Casey put it: (found him in) North Nashville + (he still has his) balls = ghetto. And that's assuming that they even still wanted him; my theory is that he was dumped in that neighborhood after he wasn't aggressive enough to be a fighting dog. He has scars on his ears and mouth, and it's also possible that his ween problem was from scarring. So then we said we'd try to find him a good home. And now, I think, obviously, we have.

Oops.

Meet Digby.

double switch

I was going to blast out of NaBloPoMo with the Other 50, but that is going to have to wait. I have had A Day.

7:40 am Oversleep a tiny bit, which is novel, construction workers running late and only start milling around outside close to 8. Okay with that. Throw on slob clothes. Wrestle with conscience and decide that must go to work today and will be fine to leave the dogs in the backyard with workers, with whom they are now good friends. Workers say this is fine, they will be careful about opening and closing the gate.

8:45 am Meet Austin at Berry Hill Animal Hospital to pick up Precious Baby Mischa. Die a little inside when they hand us papers that say 10 day house arrest (for a puppy?! what are they thinking?) and a receipt for $255 (WHAT?!). Want to cry when they bring the Little Girl out and her belly is shaved and she's so happy to see us that she is wiggling and whimpering. Load her up in car and head to work. While starting car, think, "Why does it take so long for my car to start when I turn the key? I'll have to get that looked at next week."

10: 16 am Make exciting double date with Favorite Sarah and Ben that may or may not involve the new Pizza Hut Double Deep Pizza and our couch. Admit that if Sarah and Austin sat too close to each other on the couch, I would totally be okay with it if they ended up making out. Don't think Ben will really want to make out with me, though.

11:12 am Miss three consecutive calls from Dallas, the very very young foreman on the house construction (son of construction company owner). His message is panicked, announcing that the "brown dog" (Bridgette) escaped from the yard and they have her cornered in an alley. Says she is growling and snapping at them when they try to reach for her. Rush home to help them coax her back, leaving Pitiful Sleeping Mischa in care of coworkers. Well, rush home as soon as my car finally starts.

11:33 am Arrive home, run inside to grab the leash and a collar, and discover that Workers have no idea where Bridge is, and she is in fact not so much cornered as loose in Shelby Bottoms park.

12:01 pm Call off Workers from searching and send them back to work. Go into Rick's Market (Coldest Beer in Town) to give them my phone # and ask them to call me if anyone comes in saying there is a yellow dog in their carport, snarling at all overtures of friendship. Crazy Tanned Neighborhood Crack Lady is in Rick's chatting with Whitehaired Lady behind counter. Whitehaired lady is understanding, approves of me coming to her, agrees that people are always coming into the store saying, "There's a dog out here." Indicates Crazy Tanned Neighborhood Crack Lady, "She's always walking around. She'll keep an eye out for you." Crazy Tanned Neighborhood Crack Lady smiles and nods encouragingly.

12:12 pm Decide to give up the ghost and head back to work, with the hope that Bridge will eventually return home to be with her Best Friend Ingrid. While driving out of the park, spy brown blur crashing through brush next to road. Stop the car, call out in an excited voice, "Bridgey! Bridgey, it's you!" Bridge comes running out of the woods, excited, straight to me, tail wagging. She puts her nose in the palm of my hand. I veeeeerrryyy subtly reach my hand around to grip her shoulder (and haul her like a sack of potatoes into the car, if necessary) and she bolts. Back into the woods, I can just see her through the trees and I know I can't go after her or she'll keep running. Call Dallas and have him come sit (silently) on the side of the road to monitor Bridge's movements and drive home to load up the car with the Biggest Ingrid.

12:25 pm Sit on side of road with Ingrid until eventually Bridge starts to approach. Very calmly get up and turn around to walk home. Ingrid is having a blast. Bridge doesn't mind walking with us if she thinks I'm not going to grab her. Call Workers and have them leave the gate open and clear out of backyard. Walk both dogs into yard and slam gate shut behind us. Want to cry from relief. Refrain from taking aggression out on Bridge. Workers are very relieved. Dallas says, "God, I was so nervous about the butt chewing I was going to get from my Dad tonight." Leave dogs locked inside for the rest of the afternoon.

12:46 pm Call Dad and tell him whole Dog Saga. He's amused and gracious when I blame him and call Bridge "His Dog." He cheerfully acknowledges that he would have been no help in catching her even if he had been within 30 miles of the situation.

1:12 pm Arrive back at work and process checks that arrived in today's mail. Put together today's deposit, hurrying to get everything together and to the bank before 2. Getting hungry. Want to give Kristin big hug when she offers to bring me a sandwich.

1:39 pm Run out to car with Mischa to take deposit to bank. More blank clicking noises when key is turned in ignition. Then smoke wafting out from under hood of the car. And smell of burning plastic. Look at Mischa and say, "This is what it looks like when I'm about to have a freakout." She tilts her head. Go back in office, slam keys down, complain to anyone who will listen, wander around office in huff.

2:10 pm Finally gather thoughts enough to call CarMax and have car towed to their service department. Call extended service plan company and argue about rental car reimbursement policy. Extended Service Plan Company Man is both reasonable and correct. Give up fantasies of driving hot rental car for weekend.

3:40 pm Tow truck picks up car. Realize am now stranded at work with pitiful puppy with shaved tummy, and big messy grownup dogs locked in house.

4:02 pm Have remarkably reasonable and productive negotiation with sister re: Family Christmas Vacation and Dogs, and whether or not those topics can coincide peacefully. Also discuss hypothetical sister tattoo ideas. Does not go over as well.

4:48 pm Arrange ride home with Brandes, guardian angel of desperate rides home with post-surgery puppies.

4:52 pm Spray air freshener in bathroom to be polite. Spend next fifteen minutes listening to Weird Computer Coworker complain about how bad the air freshener smells. Loud. Without stopping. Complaints. Want to point out worse alternatives.

5:12 pm Spend last twenty minutes in the office scrolling through I Can Has Cheezburger slide shows. Feel much better. Laugh out loud.

5:23 pm Have text message exchange with Chris Crofton about possibility of organizing Evel Knievel Memorial Poetry Reading.

5:33 pm Picked up by Brandes. Realize trying to carry too much stuff. Including puppy.

6:31 pm On couch surfing YouTube with puppy on my ankles and kitty on my lap. Realize it's all going to be okay. Eventually evict puppy and kitten to go into kitchen and start chopping vegetables for Favorite Sicilian Pasta. To which we add sliced sauteed andouille sausage tonight, just to be gross and delicious.

7:43 pm Settle down with dinner, Boo, many pets, first season of 30 Rock from Netflix. The day drains out of me as I'm filled with laughter, joy, comfort, home.

house update

This week started like the last five: without a word from contractors. No gutters, damaged siding and cracked plaster in the blue room, still. Then yesterday morning I got a call: they had finally stopped trying to find siding to match the pale blue (faded from baby blue, my guess) of our house. So we got to pick out a new color for our house, with very little notice. While waiting to meet a guy at the house with some color samples to choose from, we drove around the neighborhood and looked at houses we like, and decided to go with a darker color, since we already have white trim. And lose the black shutters.

We picked a sage green. Then a few hours later they call and say that green would take 6 to 10 days to get in stock, and they'd rather start the work immediately. More samples delivered to our house at 7:30 am today, and the final choice was only slightly lighter/more gray than the original option. They started ripping siding off the front of the house immediately. I left them working on the front and side and went to work for a few hours, then had to head home in the afternoon to bring the dogs in so they could start on the back of the house.

The front is done and looks great. There is still part of the east-facing side of the house to finish, and the back and then the west side will be done tomorrow. They're also bringing blue paint (Royal Breeze by Behr) to finally fix the blue room. I warned them that it took us three coats. So I'll be working from home again tomorrow, getting caught up on contracts that have been neglected for a month, while there are workers climbing all over the house and hopefully finishing up by the end of the day.

Here is the sad part: Mischa goes in for her lady parts operation early in the morning... and they keep her over night. I have to pick her up Friday morning and I'm taking her to work with me so she can rest and not rough house. This all makes me want to cry. I don't want to be home all day tomorrow without her, and I can't stand to think that she's going to be weak and pitiful when I see her again. I keep hugging her too tight when I think about it, and she squirms and looks at me like I'm crazy.

And Dad is picking up Big Ingrid tomorrow and taking her back out to his house. Bridgitte is going to stay and we'll see how the little girls do, just the two of them, for a while. I think they're going to have a good time, but if any of the bad behavior starts, or if Ingrid seems unhappy out at Dad's by herself, we'll reassess. Just having the two small(er) dogs will make our lives easier over xmas, when we're gone for over a week, first to Kansas and then to a cabin at Center Hill Lake with the sisties/husbands/Mom/Kam. We have a tentative housesitter lined up while we're gone, and I can't TELL you what a relief this is. The thought of scheduling 8 days of petcare with friends, or sending the dogs elsewhere, or even kenneling, was too much to even deal with.

Now if only I can figure out a New Year's Eve plan that somehow makes everybody happy AND get the Book Club Christmas Party details nailed down, maybe I'll be able to take a deep breath and possibly pick up the next guilty Scottish historical romance that is collecting dust on my bedside table.

Proud Parent of an Adult Family Manners Graduate

Mischa's puppy class graduation was tonight. She did very well (alarmingly so) at the Loose Leash Walking trial, including giving several successful "sit"s when we stopped (genius), and she did ok at staying in a sit, staying in a down, etc. Gave a high five when asked, touched her nose to the palm of my hand when asked, and really was very focused and enthusiastic.

We know that having the big dogs here has probably done as much for her behaviorally as the class did. I mean, we learned TONS in the class and it was sooo worth the money and I highly recommend it to everyone. But I think we also just have to know that boredom and loneliness were contributing to the most of Mischa's behavior problems. Now she is just exhausted in the evenings, after running laps with her mouth around Bridgette's head all day. Before she was a complete spaz and wouldn't leave us (or poor patient Charlie Murphy) alone when we got home from work.

So what does that mean now? I think we've officially decided that Ingrid is going back out to Dad's after he gets home from Florida. She's more comfortable out there, I've said it many times. And probably Bridgette should go as well, right? Of course. For one thing, she is a Destroyer of Yards. She has found every random bit of plastic in the yard (bowls, tupperware that once held dog food, planters) and shredded it. She digs. She has TRAMPLED my lavender and I'm worried it won't recover. She should stay with Ingrid, they are good friends and Ingrid is a good mentor for her. But Mischa is in loooove with Bridge. The truest love. I'm very worried about how Mischa will respond when her pretty yellow friend goes.

So the way I see it that we have three options:
1. Send both big dogs back out to Dad's and deal with the consequences with Mischa, making more of an effort to keep her active and applying all the training we've learned in class to help her make the adjustment.
2. Send Ingrid back to Dad's and keep Bridgey and see how that goes for a while.
3. Send both big dogs back out to Dad's and get a new dog (I can't believe I just said that out loud...).

I guess the phantom option 4 would be to keep all three dogs up here, but I don't know if Dad will stand for it, or our grass.

Ingrid is snoring happily in front of the door. Bridge is in the middle of the floor, almost under the coffee table, and she's extra pretty when she sleeps. Mischa is SACKED out after all the excitement of graduation (liver brownies! a diploma! pictures with Mom and Dad!) laying across my (Guinness-slippered) feet. Charlie Murphy is on his throne (formerly Mackenzie's throne, but whose fault is that?). Kenzie is in the doorway of the bedroom, vocally pointing out several discrepancies in her food-bowl fill line policies. Corvinius is licking the blinds in the blue room. Because he is Odd.

I have been working on the be-all, end-all post about how I'm feeling right now regarding children and parenthood. Having the house full with all this animalia, and being very happy about it, makes me feel like my current position (kid free for the foreseeable future) is the right one. This is a good place to be.

P.S. I'm thinking of holding a benefit/fundraiser/donation campaign to finance a Return Move to Nashville for Badness and the Redbeard. I miss my Sous Chef, and christmas cookie season is upon us! I'm going to issue a release demand to Chicago and see if I can't get their indentured servitude canceled.

hog rally

Yesterday we drove out to Dad's and picked up the Big Dogs. Dad and Lynn are heading to Florida for the Frank Brown Songwriters Festival for a couple of weeks, so Ingrid and Bridgette are coming to stay with us. This is probably just temporary. We've talked about bringing them home to stay, that was the idea, just banishing them for the summer, and we were hoping that Mischa would benefit from having canine company. But Dad's really in love with Ingrid, moreso all the time, and Leiper's Fork is a lot more her speed than the East side. So it seems more likely that we've just got a couple of four-legged houseguests until Thanksgiving.

The car ride home from Dad's was pretty chaotic at first. I forgot that Ingrid will hang her head out the window if you open it for her (Mischa doesn't do that). Otherwise, Ingrid would rather drive. We got home to much rejoicing. Mischa loves other dogs, especially when they come to her house. Bridgette and Mischa have spent most of the last two days with each others' heads in their mouths.

I didn't make it home from work today in time to get them all inside before the rain. By the time I opened the back door for them they were three solid puddles of hysterics. I think it was the first time Mischa has ever been outside during a thunderstorm (because she is absurdly spoiled). It took three beach towels (one and one half for Ingrid) to get them down to just rather damp, but everybody has settled in nicely and right now there are three snoring, gassy dogs in the floor.

So, sure, there are too many animals in our house right now. But everybody is having a great time, and Mischa seems especially well-adjusted right now. She still spends some time on the couch cuddling with us, but right now she has her head leaning on Ingrid's back. It's a lot of sweetness.

Halloween Ghost(dog) Story

So Halloween night, Austin and I pulled together our costumes (he was a mime, I was a buttery nipple shot). We left the house around 8, with the intention of going to Carmen's house for the costume party and eventually moving on to the 5 Points Pub Crawl. We were running a little bit late, but it was ok. We put Mischa in the back yard, kicked the cats out of the front room, set the alarm, drove away from the house, heading down 19th towards Holly.

I was wearing false eyelashes, which maybe diminish my eyesight a little bit. I saw something moving in the road, and said, "Is there an animal ahead of us?" I realize it's a dog, and it's running down the street in the same direction we're driving. I see a pink collar, a familiar shape of brown backside, black body. I said, "Austin, oh my God. It's Mischa."

Austin leaped out of the car, I drove slowly down the street, calling for her, freaking out. Austin was running full strength down 19th (in mime makeup, striped shirt, beret, dress shoes). At different points we were both running, both driving, calling the whole time. We saw the dog run behind someone's house and almost had her cornered, and then she took off again through another backyard. By this time we were at the corner of 20th and Holly, which dead-ends into the golf course. And we couldn't see any movement, for about 15 minutes we just rode in circles, trying to shine the headlights into the park, driving around calling out the window. And I was thinking, We have lost our dog. She's gone. She's not even going to know how to come back. We spent all this time falling in love with this dog and she's gone. How are we going to go to sleep tonight? I kept saying, "I can't believe this. I just can't believe this." Like a mantra.

After we'd been searching for about a half hour, I said,"Let's go back to the house and get a flashlight and come back and retrace our steps." We drove home, pulled up next to the house, and there is a familiar nose peeking out of the chain link fence of the backyard. Mischa is at home, where she belongs. And apparently has been the whole time.

We just sat there in the car staring at her through the fence. I could have cheerfully strangled her, and she hadn't even done anything wrong. Apparently we've been harassing some stranger's dog all over Shelby Bottoms. Austin says, now, after the fact, that he knows it wasn't her. I still feel like maybe it was. Maybe she jumped the fence, let us give chase, then doubled back and headed home and someone (who read our address on her collar) dropped her back in the yard while we were still driving in circles. I know that is unlikely. But I stood within 6 feet of that dog in someone's front yard and I swear I would have known if it wasn't Mischa. This dog had the same markings, the same ears, the same sleek shininess, the same PINK COLLAR. And the same extremely annoying habit of letting you get near to her and then taking off again right as you grab for her collar.

So we locked Mischa up inside (just to be safe) and headed to Carmen's. By then the party was in full boozy swing, and it took me forever to calm down, to get my head out of the near-disaster it turns out we just WEREN'T in. Austin's eye makeup was smeared from running. After a while I settled in, and the party (and subsequent adventures) was a lot of fun. I was a buttery nipple shot because my other girlfriends were also shots: Shannon was a White Russian, Megan a Purple Hooter Shooter, Carmen a Redheaded Hooker, Leia was Sex on the Beach. I posted the link to pictures yesterday. Austin was a killer mime, while Chris Grainger might have been my favorite costume of the night (a redneck football coach or something, but it was just so NOT Chris, it didn't look anything like him, it was very bizarre to look at his face and realize it was him).

We walked to Rumours East and then to 3 Crow, which was such a mob scene it took ten minutes to get from the front door to the back. I bailed after that, headed over to Mercy Lounge to see Trent play a showcase for Americana Music Week. That was a great show, high energy, much hilarity from Supe and Mike Webb in (sort-of) costumes. I was getting body glitter on everyone I hugged, I hope I didn't get any married men in trouble. Home and in bed by 12:30. Very successful Halloween, after all, and I'm really glad Mischa was in her bed at the end of the night, even if maybe there was no chance that she wouldn't be.

Oh, and remember me saying that it wasn't long before she decided she should sleep in our bed with us? Yeah, not long at all. That was last night, and it took an extended negotiation session to settle her back in her spot in front of my closet. Austin got up with her about 7:30 this morning, and at some point between then and 9:30 (when I woke up), she came back and slept with me. It was sort of nice.

I'm getting into this NaBloPoMo challenge. When have I ever promised you I'd talk about something and then actually DID? I'm probably not going to bother discussing the pumpkin patch/orchard trip, since I shared some cute pics from there and that is sort of all I wanted to address about it. But I have lots more I want to discuss now, thoughts I jotted down during a panel discussion at the Country Music Hall of Fame today (featuring Scott Miller, my favorite) about musicians and writers and the creative process and inspiration.

Happy 87th birthday to Mary Frances Jansen, my maternal grandmother, my abuelita. I miss you, Grandma.