I thig I'b gettig a code

So I skipped yoga today, in favor of a nap, hoping that if I baby myself I can prevent the cold from becoming full blown. Although what I ended up doing was a ton of housework in the morning - litterbox, vacuuming, cleaning someone's shitty paw prints off the couch, starting laundry, changing the sheets, yadda yadda. And I drank like a gallon of orange juice, for the vitamin C. Now I'm all full of juice and sloshing around.

Then after the chores in the morning I napped, and if there's anything nicer than snuggling under a quilt for a nap on a Sunday afternoon with a clean conscience, clean sheets, sunlight streaming in through the windows and a purring cat, I don't know what it is. Dave was at band practice so I had total peace and quiet. Woke up around 5:30, showered and started some bread. Man, I love that KitchenAid so much. Thank you again, Mr. and Mrs. Lynch. The dough came together in about 5 minutes.

I adapted a James Beard recipe (which is itself an adaptation of a Jane Grigson recipe) to suit the ingredients I had on hand. In a funny coincidence, I own the Jane Grigson book that Beard talks about, too. There were so many good people writing cookbooks in the 50s and 60s - James Beard, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson - that that's what my cookbook collection is based on. I have Julia Child but I confess I've never cooked out of her. The modern writers I turn to most are Mark Bittman, Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. Oh, and my friend Anne Bramley's Eat Feed Autumn Winter arrived from Amazon yesterday and I've already read most of it (I inhaled it like a novel) and given my mother a recipe from it (for roasted vegetables.) It has actually made me excited about the squash and root vegetables that I know we'll soon be inundated with from Boston Organics, our CSA.

Anyway, the bread is in the oven now so I can't report yet on whether it's good or not, but so far it seems to be acting normally. I've never made so many drastic alterations to a recipe so I'm a little nervous about the outcome. I will update this post if it turns out gross, otherwise you can assume it was delicious.

Here's Beard's original recipe:

5 cups of all-purpose flour (preferably unbleached)
1 tbl salt
2 tbl sugar
2 pkgs active dry yeast
2 c. warm milk
1/2 c. walnut oil or 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled
1/2 c walnuts, roughly chopped
3/4 c. onions, finely chopped

Sift flour, salt and sugar into a warm bowl. Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 c. warm milk and pour into the middle of the flour, together with the walnut oil (or butter) and the rest of the milk. Knead well until the dough is firm and blended into a smooth, springy ball (about 10 minutes.) Leave in a warm place to rise for two hours (or in a cool place overnight.) Punch down the dough, mix in the walnuts and onion, shape into 4 rounds and leave on a greased baking tray to rise for 45 minutes. Bake at 400F for 45 minutes, or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped underneath.

Here's what I made:

Pesto Bread

5 cups of all-purpose flour
1 tbl salt
2 tbl sugar
4 1/2 tsp. bread machine yeast (bought the wrong yeast by mistake)
2 c. warm milk, between 120F and 130F
about 1/4 c. pesto topped off with 1/4 c. olive oil (to keep the right proportion of fat.)

I put all the dry ingredients together in the bowl of the kitchen aid and gave it a few stirs. Then I added the milk (apparently bread machine yeast requires a higher temperature than regular yeast, or so the sides of the jar say. Anyway the higher temp thing was handy since I accidentally let the milk get a little hotter than I planned and I didn't have to wait too long for it to cool enough.) Once the milk was in, I dumped in the pesto and olive oil and let the whole thing come together. I stuck a towel over the bread dough just as it was, in the kitchen aid bowl, and let it rise on the stove top (where it got a bunch of residual heat from the pre-heating oven.) Technically I should have washed and greased another bowl and turned the bread to oil it all over and let the bread rise in that, since mine stuck a little. But who cares when you're skipping a whole pain-in-the-ass step? The sides of the bread machine yeast jar said to let the dough rise for 10 minutes, but I waited until it doubled in size and that took about 30 minutes, which is still faster than the two hours in the original recipe.

Then I peeled it off the sides of the bowl - like I said, it stuck a bit but not terribly - and punched it down and shaped it into two loaves on a non-stick cookie sheet (instead of 4 loaves like in the original recipe. That would have made four elf-sized loaves.) I've made this bread before and not only were the walnuts and onions a pain in the ass to incorporate at that stage, I didn't think they added that much to the bread - not like essential moisture or anything - so I didn't even add pine nuts (though that would probably have been pretty good.) I did brush it with olive oil to prevent it from cracking as it rose, which I guess worked since it didn't crack. I nearly sprinkled it with coarse salt at that point, thinking of foccacia, but decided that salty bread might be strange in sandwiches, which is probably the fate of this bread. My hope was for it to be tasty enough that just smearing cream cheese in between slices would make a good, and easy, lunch.


Once it was shaped into loaves, I let it rise again until it was doubled in size, which seemed to take about half an hour - the kitchen was pretty warm by this time, which I think helped the bread's rise along - and then stuck it in the oven. I set the timer for 45 minutes, figuring that if anything, it would take longer than the original recipe but either my oven timer is messed up (possible) or the bread machine yeast does something crazy, because it was only in there 25 minutes (according to the oven timer) before it was all brown and hollow-sounding when rapped on the bottom. I dunno. I think it's the oven timer, because bread usually takes more than 25 minutes to bake. I didn't look at my watch, either, which means we'll have to wait until it's cool to cut in and see if it's raw in the middle or anything horrible like that. Oh, the suspense! I really know how to live, huh? Probably no pictures even if I do update this post because I still don't have the right memory for the new camera and I don't really want another dachshund fetus incident.

update three seconds later: it is delicious. Om nom nom. The milk made it super fluffy and light, and you get just the right amount of pesto taste, distinct but not overwhelming

I learned it by watching you!

Dave and I quote this one a lot at each other. Heh.

Fresh Apple Cookies

I decided to make cookies yesterday, kind of on a whim (as opposed to a crumble from a couple of weeks ago that I considered a chore, since I had to make it that night or the peaches would have gone off.) I looked through a few cookbooks - really just looking for a recipe that I had all the ingredients for.

James Beard's Fresh Apple Cookies fit the bill. (From American Cookery, which Lysne kindly sent me, since she knows how much I love Beard on Bread.) I was thinking I wanted crisp and spicy and these are more tender and cake-y than crisp, but still delicious. Plus since they are crammed full of apples and raisins and pecans, I have been pretending that they are health food. Yeah fucking right - the recipe calls for a stick of butter. At least the KitchenAid makes creaming butter super easy even if you haven't bothered to let the butter sit out and soften. Next time I might mix up the spices a little with some cardamom and fresh ground black pepper, but these are pretty good as is. I'm bringing some into the office tomorrow as part of my quest to win friends and influence people.


They won't be winning any beauty pageants any time soon.

Fresh Apple Cookies

1/2 c. butter
1 1/3 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 c. sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 c. apple juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, or milk
1 c. chopped, unpeeled raw apple
1/2 - 1 c. chopped walnuts, filberts, or pecans
1 c. raisins

Cream the butter, cream in the sugar, and beat in the egg. Sift the dry ingredients (I totally didn't bother, just combined the dry ingredients in a bowl and stirred 'em with a fork) and add to the creamed mixture along with the juice or milk. Stir in the apples, nuts and raisins. Push the dough from the tip of a teaspoon with the back of another onto a buttered cookie sheet (I used nonstick), leaving about 1 1/2 inches between each cookie. (I found that they didn't spread very much.) Bake in a preheated 375F degree oven for 10-12 minutes or until a light brown. Yields about 4 dozen cookies. (I had exactly 4 dozen.)

Caturday etc

Immediately after taking this picture Pip let out the most heinous fart. I had to turn the fan on, the air is practically brown.



He is still nursing from Simone, they had a session this morning. I'm not sure my regular vet believed me when I told her about it - she thought maybe the milk production would be gone in two weeks because Simone's hormones left over from the spaying would be all done. But she was spayed on July 13th, so those hormones ought to have been out of her system long ago (unless she was in heat when they spayed her, which I guess is possible.) Anyway, neither of the cats cares that they are participating in a medical mystery, they both just purr and get squinty happy eyes.

I pulled the trigger on a new camera, a digital SLR. I have wanted one for a couple of years now but haven't been able to justify the expense, since I am such an amateur. But since I'm working really hard at my new job (and also really enjoying the work, yay!), I wanted to reward myself.

My other big reward purchase will probably be a vacuum cleaner - currently we've got an Electrolux that I think I remember from my childhood. It works fine, but it's stinky from years of dog and cat hair, and it's cumbersome - we have it stored in a teeny closet off the kitchen and it has to be taken apart into three pieces to fit into the closet, so it's a pain to haul it out, and then when you do have it out, it's heavy and louder than a fucking jet engine.

So I have convinced myself that being at home less (because of longer working hours and a longer commute, both of which, incidentally, are responsible for my blogging less) means I have to have a lighter, easier and more efficient vacuum, because when I do get home from work I don't really feel like cleaning the litterboxes and vacuuming at all. It needs to be done, though, or else we end up with snowdrifts of litter accumulating in the corners of the room. Which, yeah, gag me with a spoon. Anyway, I looked at the Dyson Animal but we've mostly got hardwood, so I think it might be overkill - I want something light and nimble that I can use without much trouble. I'm thinking Dyson slimline or Miele, and I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience or a recommendation.

So those are my wild and crazy purchases! Woohoo! A camera and a small appliance! And I'm also plotting to get the couch re-covered and we are thinking about a component stereo system at Christmas. We'll have to see about the couch, I think. I'm not making THAT much more at the new job.

Pip's fall from grace

So Pip fell off the second story porch tonight. It's easily fifteen feet. He probably jumped, the little booger. A neighbor knocked on the door and asked Dave if this was our kitten. Poor little Pip had a bloody, scratched nose and curled up around himself, very still. He was breathing fine but he seemed so lethargic we took him to the emergency vet in Woburn. It's a terrific, if expensive, facility, as we have reason to know. It's where we took Inty for her endoscopy.


With flash.

He's totally fine, and in fact perked up at the vet's (of course.) Now he's back home, sleeping on the bed. Apparently he had the naughtiness knocked right out of him this evening.


Without flash. This is closer to the real colors. I need a fucking new camera. I think I will buy one soon, actually. I can't stand it. Plus it would make a good reward for getting a new job. Wow, this is a long aside. Sorry, everyone.

Wait 'til I tell the other martians about this!

I think this commercial trying to convince kids that fruit was more delicious than candy bars might have been local to the Boston area, Dave doesn't remember it at all. I'm pretty sure my sisters will, though.

\

It totally backfired for me - I used to dream about how great it would be to live on Mars and eat candy bars all the time.

slice of life

So last night while everyone else was watching McCain's speech, I was out at a club watching Dave's band and then Leon Rich, the act that followed them. I was pretty tired by then (as usual) but since there were about 7 people in the club and they were all our friends, I felt like it would be really obvious if I left in the middle of the set so I stayed and half-assedly tried to hide my yawns. I was glad I stayed, though, when Leon Rich started playing a song about dead squirrels that involved some kind of United Nations conspiracy theory. The chorus was "dead squirrel, yeah". Tell me that didn't beat the GOP convention speeches!

And then after Leon Rich I took off. The nice thing about local shows is that I don't have to wait for the boys to load in their gear, I can just take a cab home. Fifteen minutes (and fifteen dollars) later, I'm walking in the front door. It makes going out on a weeknight much more feasible - I was in bed by like 12:30 and so when the alarm went off at 7 I wasn't exactly thrilled but I don't feel too awful this morning. I also stuck to beer all night, which was a deliberate choice - that club pours REALLY strong drinks, which I found out the hard way the last time Dave's band played there. So beer drinking + control top panty hose = physically unable to consume a lot of beer. The elastic in those control tops will beat beer in an arm wrestling match every time.

I think the other reason I'm tired, besides the exciting stress of a job change and the fact that I've had after-work commitments every night this week (except for Monday, which was Labor Day, but I actually spent it in the office) - ANYWAY, as I was saying before I got sidetracked by my parentheticals, I think the reason I'm so tired might be related to the fact that I've had my period for NINE DAYS. Motherfucker! It's extra ironic because if I didn't take hormonal birth control, I would likely not get any period at all, so I wouldn't have to deal with it. I am also most likely infertile so the whole birth control shebang is probably a big waste of time, not that I am interested in testing this theory the hard way. (Also I might be fucked up a different way because of not having the correct hormones swirling around. Plus amenorrhea is really bad for future bone density, and since I recently learned that both my parents are two inches shorter than they used to be, I am all about bone density. Bring on the calcium-enriched OJ!) But still, it sucks to bleed for nine days and not know when (if) it'll end.

So that's my life. Also last night I rashly promised to go out again tonight for dinner and to see another local band, the Russians, who I haven't heard of before but they sound pretty good. I think I might need a nap in between work and going out, though.

It's been busy

For one thing, I am starting a new job on Monday. So instead of a real post, here's a picture of Dave under a waterfall on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico.



Yes, I'm pretty happy about that six-pack. My husband is hot.

And then there were still four

So Zoe tried to die again today. We got home from yoga to find her in the middle of a terrifying episode. Her eyes were all pupil and she was twitching and emitting piteous meows, nothing like her usual voice. She had lost control of her bladder and bowels. As Dave rushed her in the door to the vet, she started seizing.

We cried while we waited because we were pretty sure she wouldn't be coming home with us. I added "shovel" to the list for the trip to Target we'd planned later in the day. The vet came in and it turned out to be a hypoglycemic episode - her blood sugar was way too low. So she's had some sugar and a bunch of food and she seems okay now. We are still keeping an eye on her; at least we know the route to the excellent emergency vet facility if we need it. (That facility is where Inty had her endoscopy.) I took "shovel" off the Target list and added "blood glucose monitor" to the pharmacy list.

In retrospect, Zoe was actually showing several signs of being hypoglycemic - inappropriate toileting being the main one. She probably had a seizure yesterday, too, while we were at work, because when we came home we found that her belly was mysteriously soaked in urine.

When we picked Zoe up, the vet mentioned that she probably does have a tumor on her abdomen. One of our options is aggressive chemotherapy. (The other was steroids, but that's problematic for all kinds of reasons for diabetic cats, making the already difficult-to-stabilize blood sugar even harder to track.) Dave said, "I think our option is more like an aggressive syringe of sodium penethal. Oh, wait. Isn't that truth serum?" So then we started talking about what Zoe would say if she was under the influence of sodium penethal:

"I was the one who crapped all over the house."

"I'm pro-life."

"I endorse Sarah Palin."

"I'm secretly gay."

"I'm a Republican."

Heh. Because in Massachusetts, being a conservative republican is pretty shocking.

Caturday!

Nursing



Love fest; everyone in this picture is purring



Love fest part two



Literary Pip (although Great Expectations is not actually in there; apparently I don't own a copy.)



Om nom nom, delicious camera cords



Look at how much bigger he's gotten!

listy list list

So my shrink and my best friend have both frequently expressed astonishment at how much time I spent doing housework. That's what I spent my evening on tonight, so here's a little run-down, transcribed from my to-do for tonight. (Note, I am blogging at 11:50 pm and I didn't even cook dinner, I just reheated leftovers.)

I got home at about 7:30 - which is not unusually late for me - and sat down and wrote the following list, in all its tedious, tiny-itemed glory:

THURS PM

go for walk

blog

make lemon pepper cashews

laundry (W)

use up basil to make pesto or tomato sauce (I heart my cuisinart mini-prep, it's so much easier to clean than the big guy and perfect for a small job like pesto)

eat dinner

clean catboxes

vacuum

read

go to bed early

clean fish tank (W)

prep Inty's meds for tomorrow morning

wash and refill cat food bowls

remove evidence of ravages caused by dinner, cashews and pesto from kitchen

email

refill brita


The ones with lines through them got done tonight; the (W) items are reserved for the weekend.

So I don't know - is this excessive? Because it all seems very normal to me to want to do this kind of stuff on a regular basis - this is totally regular maintenance stuff, nothing too ambitious - yet I probably won't get to sleep until well after midnight, and I need to be into work at 8 so that means getting up at 6:30 for realsies instead of hitting snooze until 7:15.

Whatever, if I'm normal or not doesn't matter, I am in serious need of the long weekend coming up. I plan to hang with our colony of cats, actually get some reading done instead of reading three pages in bed before I fall asleep ... oh, and I totally have a list of bigger projects to get done around the house this weekend, of course. Because long weekends are made for domestic puttering and naps and drinking beers with lunch. I hope the weather is nice.

Milk Maid

Simone, our recently adopted large motherly cat, has taken Pip (teeny boy kitten) under her wing, to the extent that she allows him to suckle. That's right. We thought he was just latching on for comfort and she was letting him because she is good natured and easy-going and then on Friday night I was on the phone with my brother and petting Simone idly and I noticed something and wrote this note to Dave: I THINK SIMONE'S NIPPLES ARE ENGORGED.

Yeah. There was no think about it, they WERE. The stimulation/massage actually brought her milk in. Isn't that crazy? She's spayed so it's not a heat or recent kittens issue, though we think she's had litters in the past before she got to the SPCA. I didn't know the milk-producing hormones could still work if the animal in question has had a hysterectomy, which is basically what spaying is. But now when she and Pip settle in for some milky minutes, not only can you hear tiny slurps, you can also hear tiny swallows. He has a favorite teat (actually two) just like he would if he was part of a regular litter. (I guess each kitten usually has their own teat.)

So at first I was kind of grossed out by the idea (mostly by the thought of furniture cleaning). I'm not sure* why I was a little squicked, though, because he was nursing this morning in bed and she was purring and grooming him and it was just about the sweetest scene you can imagine. Slurp-gulp slurp-gulp lick lick purr purr purr purr purr knead knead purr purr purr.

I don't have any pictures of this yet - mostly because my camera battery refuses to hold a charge for more than 5 minutes; also I didn't have my camera next to the bed or anything and the second I got up, the little bucolic scene was disrupted. (Simone is like every other animal I've ever seen with a litter, which is to say when she's ready to get up or wants to move around, she just does, and she doesn't give a shit if it interrupts Pip's nursing. I remember visiting Red, a corgi predecessor to Mom and Dad's current pair, when Red had a litter, and Red just kind of casually stepped out of her nursing box to greet us, using the edge of the box to scrape her puppies off as she went. Heh. Plus I know Pip's teeth are sharp.) But I'll keep trying for pictures, because it's pretty darling to see.

And apart from maybe making sure that Simone is getting the right nutrition (maybe the nursing will use calories and help her lose weight!), I don't think there's any reason to interfere, since they both seem to be enjoying it and no one is being harmed. Pip is now 9 weeks at most, and kittens shouldn't really be weaned until 12 weeks, so it's probably actually helpful for him. (He is mostly eating dry food, he just supplements with milk.) And Simone loves him, and apparently was a good mother in her past life. I'll discuss it with the vet when I take Pip in for his shots in a couple of weeks. (None of the cats go outside so no one is at risk for any diseases, but immunizations are a legal requirement.) I called the vet on Saturday morning and got this response from a tech: the tech was not sure why Simone was allowing this behavior**, but suggested we put her in a baby t-shirt to discourage it. (This was before we knew she was actually nursing.) By the time we got home from Maine on Sunday night, we'd decided that unless there were furniture cleaning issues, we wouldn't bother with the t-shirt idea, and shortly thereafter we realized that she was actually nursing.

So that's the big cat news this week. The other cats are fine, too - Inty is adjusting to Pip and I think we'll see them playing together soon, and Zoe is her usual crabby, randomly affectionate self (she is sitting on my lap and purring as I type this.)



* I think I can maybe place the blame here on a Dan Savage column about Adult Lactating Relationships. Okay, not really, Dan Savage rocks. Probably I am just too culturally inculcated with the idea that pets are supposed to be neutered or spayed and be big teddy bears for my pleasure, not so much that they can have other agendas and think for themselves. But I have gotten over myself.

** Clearly the tech did not understand the disposition of my big gentle sweetest & most affectionate cat on the face of the earth, Simone, who has had litters of kittens and apparently enjoyed being a mother.

weekend in Maine, in pictures (mostly)

we had good weather for the drive up and light traffic.


keys to the house in maine




my dorky hat






There's not much to look at on the drive up



Going over a bridge provides a rare dose of scenic excitement



Ye Olde Nyew Englande



Once you get close, it starts getting real pretty real fast



Yes, I think mud flats qualify as pretty. These ones, at least.



the pump house. I don’t think anyone calls this little building their home (maybe a few squirrels) and I don’t think anything is pumped here, but it’s an excellent arrival marker



View from the porch of the "Up House" (guest house. That's the corner of the "river house" - main house - in the photo.)



Of course I am reading instead of looking at the view. (Special Topics in Calamity Physics*)



Dave studying in the Up House (plus our messy crap all over the counter.)



We went for a hike amongst tall, skinny pines



salt marsh. Mmmm, salty...



Ovenmouth tidal inlet. I love the way the trees come right down to the water in Maine.



Plenty of red and yellow toadstools but where were all the fucking gnomes?



Goggies.






* which I liked, if not loved. The ending kind of fell apart and I thought the whole book was a little bit too pleased with its own cleverness and overwritten. Very Secret Histroy-ish. But still fun - I liked the voice overall. And I'm a sucker for the adolescent narrative. But Special Topics is not a patch on Black Swan Green for capturing adolescent angst.

Portrait of a lady

haw haw. Check out the beer and extension cord at the foot of the bed. I have a new haircut too, of course.





All the classy lassies drink beer in bed




I dunno what the deal was with my Flickr account the other day, but it's working fine now.

for my sister the artist

This is right up Sue's alley. In fact, anyone who's got a zen for zombies and/or claymation should watch this. It's REALLY well crafted. Srsly. Note to my other sister: wait until the kids are in bed until you watch this, because it's pretty gory and the boys will get scared.



via BoingBoing, where so many good things come from.

jebub dog, I are tired

as the title suggests, it's Monday and I'm already tired and feeling whiny and lazy. You have been warned.


Now I'll commence complaining, fueled by a Lisa speedball. Well, she once referred to a "poor woman's speedball", a glass of wine and a cup of coffee she was having after a day at work to help get through a free-lance project (uh, I hope she doesn't mind me exposing this) and that's what I'm having, to get through tonight's many after-work projects.

So here are some cop-out pictures of Pip, the naughtiest little booger on the planet:









overexposed by the flash











no flash

















I am very aggravated with Flickr because they won't let me access my own photos, blocking me with a filter that won't pass me through to my pictures, even when I cleared my cookies.

In other cat news: Inty was grooming Simone tonight! Just a few tentative licks at a time, but I'm thrilled. I've also noticed that Inty has calmed down a LOT when we return to the house - she used to follow one or the other of us around yelling for 15 or 20 minutes (fixating mostly on Dave, unless I was the only one there, since she likes him better than me.) But now she just screams hello a few times and then settles down. I think the companionship is helping her.

Funny, though. Cats show status by grooming - the cat who grooms is the one who's higher status than the groomee. (This explains a lot about why Zoe loves to groom people's hair and mustache - she totally thinks she's the boss of us. She kind of is.) So Inty groomed Simone but wouldn't let Simone reciprocate because Inty thinks she is higher status than Simone. Simone is literally twice Inty's size, but she's so docile and chill she doesn't care. Hee.

Argh! There's so much more I wanted to talk about and now I need to shut up and go get other shit done! I'm working early every morning this week so it's unlikely I'm going to get back to the computer for a while, which is a fucking drag, since I love writing. But upcoming topics may include: migraines, magnesium and constipation ("ooh!" you're thinking. "I can't wait!"); more cat news (there's always something); how much I love the cleaner who made our house smell nice for me to come home to tonight; reading Henry James plus my sisters; uh ... that's all I can get to for now. But I'm sort of surprised that I thought for an instant I could ever be anything other than a generalist blogger, because I love talking about all the random crap that's constantly falling out of my head.

Bacon spectacular

Bacon is strangely trendy these days. Therefore, in honor of it being Friday and me being tired, I'll leave you with this curious collection of links.

Salon on bacon mania (part of their Pork Week series. Heh.)

Bacon cupcake. I'd eat that.

Bacon flowchart. Hilarious.

Bacon alarm clock. I feel like this would be a fire hazard. It would probably also get really grody really fast. But still: funny!

Cups made out of bacon.. From NotMartha. I love her site.

the famous bacon bra. Ew. But funny.

Bacon ice cream. I made this, it is delicious, I documented the process with photos and I owe the internets a giant post about it. But for now you can check out the recipe I used.

Viva Las Vegas

As usual by Wednesday, I am exhausted, so here are some pretty pictures from Red Rocks, outside Las Vegas. My company had an off-site team building thing in Vegas this year and a bunch of us did a hiking excursion in Red Rocks. It was totally the best part of the trip, not just because the scenery was so gorgeous and the exercise was so welcome, but also because I got to know the people I was hiking with and they all turned out to be awesome.




Those ants are the rest of the group; it was surprising how quickly they got away when I hung back to take a picture.

So it's come to this:

Apparently I have become someone who vacuums every day.

I also clean the litterboxes daily. (I have to; otherwise the whole house smells like a big cat turd.)

I am no longer able to ignore messes around the house.

Given $600, I would probably spend the money on a vacuum and not a Nikon D60.

I think that's kind of a female thing, actually. Spending the money on something household related for a shared good rather than a toy for myself. I'm kind of bummed out by realizing this, actually. I'm also completely disconcerted to realize I have become something my ex-husband reserved a special sneer for: I am house proud.

And I can't tell if that's bad because it's embracing traditional female value assigned by a patriarchal culture or if it's okay to groove on a clean house, the way it's okay to wear lipstick and heels and feel like you look awesome.

Pip pip, teeny chap

Okay so Pip arrived yesterday and he is SO TINY AND CAH-UTE! I love him even though he has pooped in a particularly disgusting way outside the box several times since. He is so tiny and naughty and playful and clumsy - he has that stubby kitten tail action.





And Simone loves him too.






She grooms him all the time and he tries to fight with her. He creeps up behind her and launches himself to her hindquarters. She usually gets this patient look on her face and keeps walking. It's pretty much like watching a lizard attack a brontosaurus.








Zoe hates him fiercely and will swat him off of his kitten chow so that she can eat it. (They all love the kitten chow except for Pip, who loves Zoe's prescription diabeetus food.) Inty seems simultaneously scared of him and annoyed by him, but she will is willing to share the kitten food with him, if not her tuna. Simone shares her tuna and treats with him. It is the cutest motherfucking thing in the world.





Oh, and I have been INSANEly busy the past few days (not just with the kitten, I swear!) so that is why posting has been kind of quiet.