So for the most part, May passed in a bleary fog. I woke up every morning to the click-clack! of a phantom dog door, or I'd imagine the usual roll-over sighs from the cushioned bed on the floor next to me only to roll over myself and squint at it, empty. For a while I'd get up and stubbornly go through Jake's favorite morning routine, The Opening Of The Patio Doors-- something about a full bowl of food in conjunction with a wide open door used to hit The Captain in the sweet spot. I love food, should I eat? But I love outside, too, should I run?  He'd do both at once, generally, mouthfuls of hastily snagged dry food garfed out on the floor between weird stunted darts onto the patio. 

I'd open the doors and go outside to sit and cry, and Randy would come out and widen his eyes, pointing at a rogue chicken just moseying through the pasture, all the confidence in the world, and we'd both just shake our heads. Laugh it up, chicken. 

At some point during the month, Randy started closing the doors after I opened them because we live in Phoenix and this is May I'm talking about. I'd open the doors and the air conditioner would start to whine and some coils would get hot to the touch and other parts would freeze; Randy would close the doors, the air conditioner would stop panting, the alarm bells would silence, red hot coils would dim to burnt orange like usual. 

I stopped going to the gym four times a week and starting going none. I stopped eating vegetables and chicken and lived off endless oily napkins of microwaved cheddar cheese Triscuits. On the days I didn't wear my big purple robe all day (Robey), I wore my standard uniform: one of four thick cotton skorts I bought at Sam's Club in 2010 and a pilled-out vintage Old Navy tee from roughly the same time period. I'd pull my hair into a Utility Bun, which is as ugly as it sounds. It involves wrangling all the hair into a giant ball (or "blob" if you're Randy) and securing it to the very top of my head-- the very top, mind-- so it wouldn't pull to the back and give me a headache. The very top. Right on top. When I washed it-- and you can count that shit on one hand because I don't know exactly what they're putting in dry shampoo these days but I'm using it to dehydrate apricots-- it went straight back up, only the bun (blob) sagged wetly to the side for a while. 

I started recording and watching Dateline reruns exclusively. Did you know Dateline is on probably six channels? Did you know you can watch it probably twenty times a day if you have enough space on your DVR and enough emptiness in your heart? I've watched so much Dateline I'm convinced every marriage ends in murder. I've watched so much Dateline I've practiced getting myself out of the trunk of my car. I've watched so much Dateline I'm using Dateline as a verb: as in, "That guy in the Safeway parking lot better not try to Dateline me," or "Driving into that abandoned warehouse district is probably a great way to get Datelined, take the freeway instead." I somehow feel safer yet scared beyond comprehension at the same time. 

I missed Jake every second. I was so used to being around him every second, see, that every second I wasn't around him there was a void. Randy missed him terribly, too, of course, but Randy mostly missed him in the mornings and the evenings, the times he'd typically been home with him. Randy didn't have the all-day interaction like I did, the constant running verbal and physical commentary. If I wasn't actually stepping over Jake, or if I wasn't brushing my fingertips over the top of his body walking down the hall,  I was poignantly missing him. 

And that was all the time.

Randy and I have a new gorgeous, healthy granddaughter; she was born on May 10th and we were both lucky enough to have been at the hospital when she came into the world. The joy and adrenaline from her birth and presence was an enormous buoy. And I had some amazing friends come out for Comicon-- friends who have been through this same scenario several times over-- and so that was also huge. 

But it just fucking sucks. I had gotten to where I wasn't missing him to the point of tears every day when we decided to go up to the cabin. And lo and behold, Jake wasn't up there, either. His water bowl was, though, and his sheepskin doggie bed, his Big Pillow. The cow hide rug he used to "hide" in. ("Has anyone seen Jake?" Jake looks up from his camouflaged spot on the cow hide rug. Never got old, that joke.) It was like starting over. 

So yeah. It's been one month today and distractions aside I have to say it's not much easier. Randy and I are talking vaguely about getting another dog; we're dog people and we'd like the companionship, but at the same time we don't want to make a move too soon out of grief and end up resenting some poor sweet dog simply because it's not the dog we're grieving. We'll probably do something sooner rather than later, though; at the cabin I spent about fifteen minutes trying to convince a squirrel to let me hug it. A friend of a friend just had a litter of Aussie pups and has offered us one, and we're stalking the rescue sites, too. We're thinking one of each, it's just a matter of timing. 

I opened an Etsy shop for all the quilts and throws I had leftover from Comicon and I'm enjoying working on other quilt projects. And I went back to the gym this week, too, so that's progress. I also threw out the goddamned Triscuits. I have to keep the skorts because I don't have any other shorts (skirts?). But my hair is down.  

It isn't down. I lied about that. Baby steps. I have stopped watching Dateline, meaning I can once again accept a drink from my husband without sniffing it suspiciously, and that's refreshing.

Thank you for all the sweet comments and emails. I'm a month-late getting back to some of you and I apologize for that, but in fairness I spent a lot of that time locked in the trunk of my own car. 

We lost Jake on Tuesday.

We were up at the cabin over the weekend and Jake was in fine form; sniffing the breeze and trying hard to figure out squirrels and napping in the sunshine. Sunday night we were back home and he wasn't hungry. By Monday we knew, but it took until Tuesday to accept it. 

Jake and I rested on the patio on Tuesday, his favorite place to be, listening to the birds and the wind. I told him every single thing we love about him and it took all day. I started with the story of finding him, how Randy picked him out of a pile of puppies because he had the best face, one black eye and one white eye, perpetually confused. And how when we brought him home he squeaked around the patio like a little wind up toy, and how he never stopped squeaking, he never stopped talking to us. I reminded him for the thousandth time that he jumped out a four-story window and almost gave me a heart attack. I thanked him for protecting us from ocean waves and sea birds, from garbage trucks and goats and our own doorbell and that damn MGM lion on TV. I rubbed his back and told him over and over again that he was our baby, our protector, our very best one. Our family. 

It was peaceful and painless. We held him while our vet checked him one last time and then we said goodbye.

Randy and I are so thankful we had this last month with him, but it doesn't make it easier. I think I thought it might. But no amount of time would've made it easier, ultimately, and when it's the hardest, we remind each other that he had a good life, the best life, and we did the right thing.

Goodbye, my tiny Captain The Jake. There will never ever ever be another one like you. 

Thank you so much for all the sweet comments and emails. Jake's doing really well-- his incision is healing up nicely, and he's happy and wiggly and generally back to his old self. He's also eating more than I thought possible. Like, enormous amounts of food. I think when they took out his spleen, his stomach must've immediately spread out and claimed all the leftover space because I am shoveling food into this dog. Ground beef, sweet potatoes, green beans, chicken thighs, broccoli, oatmeal, scrambled eggs... If he'll eat it, I'm making it. Meanwhile Randy's eating cold cuts out of a bag over the sink. The surgeon called last week with the biopsy results, and it's definitively hemangiosarcoma. No surprise there. Based on the size of the spots on Jake's liver, he said he'd estimate we've got three to six months. And that's a hell of a lot better than two, so I'll take it. We see him on Wednesday for the staple removal and I'm going to try to nail him down to an exact day, which seems reasonable. 

I've been spending a lot of time sewing lately; my auction job essentially dried up after the first of the year so I'm using my time making quilts to sell at Comicon. I've been selling Sock Zombies at Comicon for years, and it's always been a fabulous experience, but this year I just can't bring myself to do nothing but sit and make endless zombies out of socks between now and May 23rd, I just can't. I've made thousands of those guys. THOUSANDS. I NEED A BREAK. 

But I still want to do Comicon. So I decided I'd make geeky baby quilts and (try to) sell those instead. I'm making a handful of crib-sized quilts (48"ish x 54"ish) but my gut tells me the price point for a handmade quilt that size is going to be higher than the average Comicon impulse buy. So I'm also making smaller quilts (30"ish x 30"ish) and even smaller baby "snuggles"; 20" x 20" pieced cotton tops with Minky or satin backs with no batting. That way I'll have a range of price points so I'm not struggling to sell expensive quilts all weekend. 

I love this one. The fabrics are "Petting Zoo Baby Book", "Icons of the Silver Screen", and "SW Kids".  Backed and bound in lime green satin. 

It's perfectly suited to Comicon but again, I don't know how many people are going to come ready to throw down cash for a quilt. 

I love this one, too: The Ghastlies from Alexander Henry. Backed and bound in pink Minky. 

I don't know, what do you guys think? Would you buy a quilt at a comic convention? And if so, what would you pay? I've researched and compiled my labor and materials so I have a pretty good idea of where I am, retail-wise, but I'm curious. 

O Captain, My Sweet Wiggly Captain.

Last Thursday I took Captain The Jake to the vet for severe lethargy and no appetite. I'd made at least three appointments for him earlier in the week but always ended up canceling them; it seemed like the second I'd hang up the phone, Jake would spring into action and either furiously chase down a goat or eat four cups of food. He rallies like a motherfucker. 

Late afternoon Thursday I was sitting at the sewing machine and Jake was next to me on the floor, as usual, my sewing buddy, but he looked me in the face and made this noise at me, like, please? Please? And I got up, grabbed his leash, and put him in the backseat of my car. 

I thought maybe it was allergies. Or, God forbid, Valley Fever. Maybe a sudden side effect of his arthritis medication?

It wasn't any of those things. Jake had fluid in his abdomen. I waited while his doctor gave him an ultrasound, trying to figure out what kind of fluid could possibly be in my dog's abdomen. Mysterious seltzer, maybe, or guava juice? 

I was legitimately shocked it was blood.

Jake was bleeding internally, and the ultrasound didn't show why. The doctor explained that it was common in older large-breed dogs to develop masses on the spleen that eventually rupture and fill the belly with blood. He needed a splenectomy, and it wouldn't wait until Monday. If he made it through that night, he'd need emergency surgery first thing Friday.

If Jake hadn't told me to take him to the doctor Thursday afternoon, I would've given him his arthritis medication and taken him in on Friday.

Except I wouldn't have, because Friday's Jake was a completely different Jake. He woke up hungry and energetic-- although admittedly that might have had something to do with the fact that I slept half inside his bed with him all night, generally dispensing panicky comfort and making sure he was still alive. Friday's Jake wouldn't have needed to go to the vet, and Saturday's Jake would have died. 

Jake needed a splenectomy to remove his spleen and a 5cm mass that had ruptured and was filling his belly with not-seltzer. The doctors at the emergency hospital pulled exactly no punches: Given the blood results, they were willing to bet he had developed hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive and unstoppable cancer of the blood vessels. Nine out of ten dogs presenting with Jake's symptoms and issues had the cancer, and it wasn't really nine out of ten, it was ten out of ten with an occasional miracle randomly thrown in to fuck with you.

Removal of his spleen would buy Jake two to four more months.

Months. Two. Two months.

It goes without saying that Randy and I were beyond devastated. They suggested a chest x-ray; if his heart and lungs were wracked with tumors, our decision would be made for us. The x-ray came back clear. Good, clear lungs, non-enlarged heart, no tumors. 

Randy and I celebrated. It was a weak celebration, sure, because we were crying and trying to eat chicken sandwiches at the same time, which is really hard to do, cry and eat, and honestly it's pretty gross, I don't recommend it.  But we celebrated. Next we got a second, more sophisticated ultrasound to determine if there were more tumors and where; again, if he had a bellyful of tumors or if his liver also showed tumors, we wouldn't put our Jake through surgery. The ultrasound came back relatively clear; isolated tumors in the spleen, nothing in the belly, nothing in the liver. 

We celebrated. i.e., had trouble sobbing and swallowing chicken salad at the same time. 

The same doctors who were so (necessarily and kindly) blunt about the situation also let us know that, though it's definitely a major surgery, dogs traditionally recover from it extremely quickly. Moreover, they typically regain all of their lost energy, appetite, and joie de vivre in a week or two. Quality of life returns. For a time. 

We decided to have Jake's spleen removed. What could we do? It was too much to handle, way too sudden, we felt blindsided. Randy felt it as hard or harder than I did. He's our baby Captain, he's been our Best One for almost ten years... I mean, we couldn't... we just couldn't. We needed time. And if he wasn't suffering with fluid in his lungs or an enlarged heart or a myriad of tumors in his belly, well, let's take the spleen out and bring our wiggle home. 

The surgeon called Friday evening after the surgery. Everything went as expected, and Jake pulled through like a champ. His voice fell an octave as he relayed to me the fact that during the operation he'd noted several pinprick lesions present on Jake's liver, meaning no random occasional miracle for us.  

But The Captain is home. We brought him home Saturday night and it was rough; I held him all night while he cried and thrashed, waiting for the oral pain medication to catch up to the waning general anesthesia. Sunday morning he woke up clear-eyed and hungry, though, hungrier than he's been in a good long while. And since then he's only gotten better, they weren't lying about a quick recovery. I'm cooking all of his food from here on out and he's making an absolute pig out of himself, which I find incredibly flattering. 

I can't really talk about this with any amount of gravity, and if you've read my blog over the years this won't surprise you-- you already know I can't talk about anything with any amount of gravity. I've been dreading writing this post (there are several short, emergency "real time" iPhone posts about it on tumblr) because Jake's entire life is chronicled here and that's so poignant to me right now. 

We're so incredibly heartbroken. But at the same time we recognize what an honor it is to have this extra time to love our Captain. He gets his staples (ow) out next Wednesday and we're going to take him to Mexico on Friday so he can walk on the beach and pee on dead fish to his little non-enlarged heart's content.

I don't know what I'll do when he's gone, I really truly don't. I can't think about it.

So in the meantime, here's a short video taken today documenting Captain The Jake's ability to Still Get The Goats, even though he's down one spleen and plus one stupid inflatable blue donut. 

Suddenly I feel like I know where I could find my missing Rudolph pot holder.

A couple of years ago we had my parents and my brother's family over for a "casual" Christmas Day dinner; the idea being that everyone would bring over all of their respective holiday leftovers and we'd provide... shelter. Shelter and a deep-fried turkey, actually, because deep-frying a turkey is something Randy has some experience with and it requires almost zero work on my part. So Randy sets up the deep frying contraption out in the yard, and my parents arrive and start unloading a veritable boxcar of gourmet leftovers-- honeybaked ham, grilled flank steak, a wheel of gouda cheese baked inside a pastry shell, potato casserole, marinated chicken tempura with a selection of four homemade sauces, a wheel of brie buried beneath an avalanche of caramelized brown sugar, two pork tenderloins... they just keep going out to the car and bringing in more food like their Kia Sorrento is an all-wheel-drive cornucopia, right, and here I am, providing a room, shoving an entire pork loin into my mouth and realizing we're out of ice. 

Suddenly self-conscious about my one hundred percent lack of hosting followthrough, and also second-guessing wearing my bathrobe to Christmas dinner, I did the only thing I could do: I focused on Randy's deep-fried turkey project and began a comprehensive paranoid nagging campaign to ensure its eventual failure. 

In my defense, the only other time I've seen Randy deep fry a turkey I was instructed to "eat around" the raw parts. So insisting he leave it inside the stainless steel volcano for an additional thirty minutes seemed like the responsible thing to do. 

Long story short, after dealing with the ramifications of having to extinguish a flaming twenty-four pound bird with a garden hose, we decided to stash the turkey cooker on the side of the house and out of sight because it seemed to be the best way to get the littlest kids to stop crying on Christmas. And it's just stayed there. Every fall we have a load of firewood delivered and stacked right about here, meaning from roughly October to February we can pretend it never happened, that we never burned a turkey so hot and for so long that its black melted carcass cracked a glass-topped table, and that the crime scene isn't still perfectly preserved inside a silver vault hidden behind mesquite and juniper logs.

But then invariably we run out of wood. 

I was outside dumping eggshells into the composter earlier and I almost talked myself into opening the lid on the cooker. How bad could it be, really? Can knowing possibly be any worse than not knowing? 

And then you get closer than you've ever been and your eyes focus for the first time on the two-- TWO-- hastily discarded meat thermometers that were sacrificed to the turkey cooking horror show despite being in perfect working order. "FUCK IT, JUST LEAVE THEM!" someone once screamed through clouds of acrid smoke and a veil of hot tears. 

So yeah, you know what? Knowing might be worse, I think.

Hopefully she likes every single color imaginable.

Three years ago, I promised Chelsea I'd make her a full-size quilt from the pattern and colors of her choice.

She originally picked none of this. None of it. But she happily took the quilt because being pretty agreeable by nature she appears to genuinely like it, and also she knows me well enough to rightfully suspect that if she wants something different she'll be quiltless and shivering till roughly 2017. At which time I'll present her with a blanket made entirely of fuchsia fake satin and denim gingham.  

I'm just going to put that turkey cooker on craigslist, see what happens.

It's that time again!

Obviously we're 100% ready to go. Once we claw whatever that one thing is that continues to cling to thorny life out of the plant bed. And once we convince the mystery clown to come back and ride away on his tiny motorcycle. And to maybe drag the wheel-less wheelbarrow behind him for ten bucks. 

I've made certain strides. I've opened the composter, for one. It may not sound like a big deal, but that composter has been sitting there with its lid sealed shut for like two years-- some people lie awake at night creating grocery lists or diagnosing themselves with dread diseases, I sweat it out wondering what the hell's going to come flying out of this composter. I finally gathered the courage this afternoon after convincing myself that nothing could have possibly survived two Phoenix summers incased in a sealed black box, and I'm happy to report I didn't have any Ark of the Covenant skin melting issues. Just some dust. I think it might have coughed at me. 

We also have a turkey deep fryer we never cleaned out after the Christmas Day Turkey Flame-A-Thon Incident of '09, but I'm willing to bet any fears in that particular instance are valid. I'm not opening it, fuck that, it's a Mrs. Lippman situation at this point, someone else can handle it. Or not handle it, for that matter, as I have no doubt it will continue to handle itself, left as it's been in the sunny side yard for three years to its own quietly bubbling devices.

We're sowing our own seeds again, too, since it worked out so well the last time. I've upped the ante with larger individual (accurately labeled) pots and a germination-inducing heating mat, so now all I have left to do is scowl at the surface dirt and wait. 

Tomatoes, basil, melons, cucumbers, tomatillos, and seven different varieties of peppers for my husband who eats raw habanero peppers on everything but ice cream and who's looking for a challenge. I'm trying to grow a pepper called the Carolina Reaper. It honestly looks like one of Satan's toenails. It's something like a million and a half Scoville Heat Points; it doesn't so much ripen as smolder. I'm also trying scorpion peppers and ghost peppers. I'm hoping they cross-pollinate with the melons and create little volcanic honeydew geodes. 

One Crispy down, one Crispy to go.

I don't have horrible vision. I don't. I've worn glasses for maybe twenty years, tops, so barely most of my life. I mean yeah, I like to have my glasses with me in a movie theater so I don't get a throw up migraine, sure, who doesn't? And it's true I keep them in precisely the same spot on my nightstand every single night, but that's just good organization-- a place for everything and everything in it's place, you know? Besides, sometimes I need to grab them first thing in the morning so I can figure out whether I left my bathrobe in the bathroom or in the attic. But it's not like I need glasses to drive or anything. And PS, lots of people see halo ghost cars speeding toward them when they drive at night, that's a completely normal, completely legal thing. 

I stopped wearing my glasses for over a year after I had surgery on my ear-- the skin graft just made it too uncomfortable to wear them for any significant amount of time, and the only thing worse than not wearing glasses is wearing them for forty minutes at a stretch. And save for a dizzy seven hours in 2006 I don't wear contact lenses, so there was a period of time where I was essentially fabricating sight. Where the day would be rolling along fairly smoothly and then, bam!, dusk would fall, the house would grow progressively darker, and I'd morph into a mole person. I'd have to stop whatever it was I was doing and go sit on the couch and stare open-mouthed at a wall until it was time for bed, or until someone took my hand and led me somewhere, preferably somewhere with food. 

I've been wearing my glasses more regularly recently but it still aches to wear them for an extended period of time. Randy, most likely tired of hearing me complain about ear pain and/or luring me off the couch at night with a trail of earthworms, has been trying to get me back into contacts for years. 

"You'll love them," he reasons, "You just need to find the right pair. They're so much easier than glasses."

Randy has genetically horrifying vision. He's had three (two or three but I legitimately think three) corrective eye surgeries, including a radial keratotomy which if I'm not mistaken was done with actual knives. By his neighbor. In the garage. On a dare. 

He still wears contacts because he, and I'm quoting, "likes things to be crisp". At night before he goes to bed, Randy takes out his contacts. Any number of things can happen at this point: It could be that this was a night where Randy diced and sprinkled a raw habanero pepper on his dinner salad with his bare hands only to now try shoving his lethal fingertips into his eyeballs. It could be that one of his contacts Houdinied out on him completely, leaving him confounded and scrutinizing his own appendages in the bathroom, slowly turning his arms over and under like a living statue. Or if I'm extra lucky and it's that special time of the month, it could be that this is New Contact Time! Meaning I can look forward to finding his used up contacts hidden in my beauty supplies sometime in the next week. My toothbrush is a favorite hiding place. Or inside my foundation compact, that's a good one. He calls these old contacts "crispies". Good old-fashioned fun. 

On a good night-- a night that doesn't involve chili oil, escaped, or expired contacts-- Randy clips his lenses inside a vial and then douses them with a hydrogen peroxide solution. This may sound good in theory, sure; I mean, what better way to clean something delicate and porous that hugs the organs responsible for sight than with a 3% acid solution? But whoops, it looks like they've had a couple of problems with it, who could've seen that coming.

When we go out of town, there is a veritable arsenal of eye crap that comes with us. Vials and cases, squirts and sprays and leakers and clickers, shit, man, I don't know. It's a whole duffel full of liquid-- we get to the airport and security treats Randy like a mad scientist. And forget going out of town-- ask me how many tiny teal bottles of eye drops we have strategically placed around the house right now? Well, I can't tell you exactly because it's like 4:35 and I'm afraid to wander around the house by myself this close to sunset but I can confidently remember five. Six if you count the one in the laundry room I accidentally washed. 

"I don't know," I always answer Randy, "It looks like a giant pain in the ass." And then I usually trip and fall face down on something.

Last week I finally succumbed. I don't know what made the difference-- maybe I'm just tired of losing a quarter of the day twitching my whiskers at the wall-- but I went and got fitted for contacts. I pick them up tomorrow. I've been assured I won't need to soak them in acetone or rubbing alcohol before putting them inside my face, so that's a plus. It couldn't come at a better time, either, because apparently it's that time of the month. This morning I found a pale blue Crispy perched dryly on top of my plastic drinking straw. I saw it at the last possible minute, and in fairness I didn't see it so much as I licked it. A contact. A used, acid-washed, thirty-day-old contact lens. I almost ate it. So yeah, I clearly need some help here. And if not help, I at LEAST need my own ammunition. 

The key is to just keep sliding.

I went to the dentist for my semi-annual checkup anticipating my typical "way to do everything right!" dental standing ovation, but lo and behold, I had three cavities. The dentist swung this enormous mobile x-ray screen around in front of my chair and pointed to two upper molars and one lower. 

"You see right here?" the dentist asked, pointing. "These little gray triangles?"

"I do not," I answered. 

He moved the screen closer to my face.

"I see nothing," I said levelly, staring past the screen. "I see teeth."

Here comes the screen.

"Really? Right here?"

I was now trapped on my back in the exam chair with this giant monitor suspended four inches from my face, radiating gray triangle shame directly into my brain. I exhaled deeply, preparing to flatten and wriggle out from under it like a ferret. 

"Does it hurt right here when you floss?" he pointed.

I stopped. Inhaled and slid back up into the chair. Pulled my tee shirt down. Looked him in the eyes.

He looked at me back.

"You and I both know I don't have any idea."

He smiled. "How's next Tuesday?"

So I got three cavities filled. Three cavities and approximately forty-five shots of Novicain. All three were on the right side of my mouth, and I lay there with my mouth open as a never-ending parade of needles arced over my face and into my right gum lines. I closed my eyes for a second and it's possible he snuck one into my cheekbone because thirty minutes later I couldn't feel my forehead. 

"Wow," I mumbled, "You really numbed me up."

"You're welcome!" he chirped, snapping off his gloves.

I felt to make sure I still had a neck before sitting up.

"Oh, you're doing way better than I did," the receptionist laughed as she checked me out.

I didn't know how that was possible since I was manually blinking my right eye with one hand and holding my mouth closed with the other.

"Jesus," I gurgled, "were you hospitalized?"

She laughed again. "Thanks, you too!"

So I officially have three cavities now. And aside from a traumatic incident on the way home when I decided for the sake of scientific experimentation to roll a Tic Tac around inside my mouth (only to completely lose track of it in the vast nebula of my right cheek causing me to panic, pull over, and drool it out into my lap), everything worked out okay. The timing on this thing was perfect, too; I've got an opthamologist appointment next week and I've ferreted out on that guy like four times. 

Tumblr

We were out of town over the weekend and there were a couple of little things I wanted to post here but the Squarespace app still really doesn't work for me so I ended up posting them to Tumblr instead. It occurs to me that I should mention somewhere that I actually HAVE a tumblr.

outofcharactersuburb.tumblr.com

In related news, I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. The recent TOS madness made me realize that-- amended TOS or not-- I just fundamentally don't trust their ever-changing slippery policies. So if it looks like I unfriended or unfollowed you on either of those sites, please know that's not the case. 

Three Things:

1) Last weekend Randy decided at the last minute that we should drive up to the cabin.

"It's supposed to snow!" he announced gleefully.

Oh, right on! So I grabbed a pair of ankle socks to wear with my flip flops. And like a family of four whistling their way to a nice picnic lunch overlooking the First Battle of Bull Run, we naively headed up north. 

We woke up Saturday morning under six inches of snow which surprised us, frankly, because news flash, snow is quiet. It continued to snow all day Saturday despite our repeated requests for it to stop. I spent the majority of the weekend wearing a purple robe from Costco as a coat and waiting with bated breath for the accumulated snow on the roof to slide off and kill us. 

Jake had a tough weekend. As he gets older he's had more and more trouble with his arthritis in his back legs, particularly this time of year, so for the last few weeks I've been giving him dog aspirin to try to counteract the pain. The cold, damp weather up there was too much for him, though; ordinarily Jake loves bouncing around like a fool in the snow, but after a few hours his back legs were locked up to the extent that it was difficult for him to stand up. Randy and I both fretted over him, layering soft thing over soft thing on the floor around him until we looked around and realized there was no place for us to sit down, and maybe we'd gone too far with the couch cushions and the mattress. 

I took him to the vet when we got home, and the first thing I learned from the vet tech was that Jake had lost six pounds. SIX POUNDS! Jake's never lost weight before, not ever. I'm in the habit of hoping he's gained less than five pounds. We upgraded his food a while back in an effort to slow his roll and apparently it's working. 

"Six pounds!" I announced to the vet when he came in, Jake all proud and slobbery.

The vet, who apparently spends his day with animals who AREN'T morbidly obese, suggested I cancel the parade and work toward another ten pounds. I looked at my 72-pound The Jake, sitting like he does on one butt cheek with his fat dog belly rolling over a leg. Yeah, okay. Less cheese, Jake. Less cheese, more elliptical machine. 

He's on a prescription NSAID now for the arthritis and he seems more comfortable. Still not super confident on the elliptical but I think he's getting the hang of it. 

2) Randy's had a cold for the last week and I am determined not to catch it. We just HAD this cold like two months ago and I feel a little like Randy's a failure, frankly, for bringing it back into the house and not staving that shit off like a man. He blows his nose and I just glare at him disgustedly, shaking my head, eating Zycam like they're weird, dissolving candies. I'm getting ready for bed and I hear him cough wetly from the other room, so I spray a stream of that Halo "germ defense" crap into my mouth, trying to guard against whatever's planning to leak out of my husband's face while we sleep. 

Ultimately I know what's going to happen. I'll make it through the next month or so, high on a wave of artificial immune boosters and hand sanitizers only to inevitably drop my guard, hug a child, and immediately drop dead from the sheer shock of human interaction. 

3) I made a quilt for my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas.

This is a Cherry House pattern from the City Quilts book called "City Lot". She primarily uses solids in her quilt designs-- including this one-- but I substituted a patterned fabric for the solid rectangles and I like how it turned out. I finished it a whole ten hours ahead of Christmas and realized I hadn't taken any pictures of it (oh, the horror!) so I threw it on some various pieces of furniture in my house where I knew the lighting would be horrible. You're welcome. 

Honestly I just need one really, really long leg warmer.

I work for an investment company that buys property at county foreclosure auctions. Specifically, I'm a bidder for this company, meaning I purchase (or try to purchase) properties for people by proxy. The Discovery Channel locally filmed a show about it called Property Wars which I never watched but IMDB gave it one star so obviously I highly recommend it. The job is essentially a lot of sitting around interspersed with brief periods of extreme stress; there are multiple auctioneers all calling different properties, and it's critical that I hear everything that's going on. If I miss a house and it sells to someone else, or if I bid on the wrong house, or if I bid the wrong amount on the right house, it's a pretty big fucking problem. It's never happened to me (hallelujah) but I saw it happen to another bidder, and right after he handed over his non-refundable ten thousand dollar deposit check for the wrong house, I watched him throw up into a cement ashtray. 

The auctions are held outside on the county courthouse steps, and this is Arizona, right, so ten months out of the year I'm sitting outside sweating my ass off. But the specific area where the auction is held is in this outdoor corridor that's almost completely enclosed and covered by brick and cement. It has literally never seen the sun-- the courthouse is downtown and nestled between much taller buildings, so even when it's 116 outside, our little tunnel isn't insufferably hot. 

But then winter hits-- or our version of winter hits-- and "our little tunnel" transforms into a goddamn ice castle. Example: Today when I got out of my car to go to work it was 71 degrees outside. Absolutely gorgeous day. Today I wore: tights, jeans, wool leg warmers pulled up to my crotch over my jeans because yeah, socks, boots, a tee shirt, a cable knit sweater, a wool cardigan over that sweater, cable knit fingerless gloves. And a scarf. I'm walking down the street next to moms in tank tops and shoeless babies in onesies and I'm bundled up in a ridiculous cocoon of wool and bulk and sweat. I start to second guess my ability to dress myself; I live in the desert, true, thus my blood is essentially paint thinner, but I'm probably being absurd. I have to be being absurd, I think to myself as a woman walks by in a strapless maxi dress. 

Then I walk up the courthouse steps and into the tunnel and everything goes dark. I fill out my paperwork and rub my hands together, pull my sweater tighter. I sit where I always sit, on top of a brick-topped bench built into the wall, and I have to stand up again and put a notebook down underneath me because sitting on that brick is like sitting on cold death and I can feel my reproductive organs climbing over each other and jockeying for position inside my chest cavity. 

A friend of mine finishes adjusting her earmuffs and hands me one of those hand warmer pouches-- the kind you put in your ski gloves when you're trying not to to die of hypothermia while heli-skiing in Whistler-- and I shake it up and work it down into my bra, right in front of my heart. 

Later when I leave for the day I throw a sweater, a scarf, two gloves, and a damp, oddly-shapen hand warmer into the back seat of my car and I get in. The thermometer on the dash tells me it's 76 degrees outside. The Chapstick I keep in the center console has melted in the sun. 

I make two mental notes: One, grab another Chapstick from the pantry. Two, stop at Ski Chalet to stock up on heart warmers, PS: see if they have full-body leg warmers.

There was a third quilt but the tree ate it, oh well.

I finished two more quilts last week:

This is a traditional log cabin quilt that was actually one of the projects in the six-week quilting class I took three years ago, I just never got around to finishing it. I'm taking it up north to live on the couch at the cabin. 

And I finished this one for my nephew:

I looked for fabrics that weren't too babyish (pastels and bears and wagons, etc.) or too sports oriented. You'd be amazed how many different ways there are to slap soccer balls on cotton. 

I think the space fabric is my favorite.

Okay! Just checking in. As you were.

Oh right on. I'm glad you don't hate it like last time.

I read about this Korean tea base that's essentially just honey, lemons, and fresh ginger chunks in a mason jar, and it sounded a lot like a tea I tried in China a couple of years ago but couldn't find. So when I got home from work yesterday I filled two mason jars with all the required stuff, right, and I'm leaning against the counter watching the honey squoosh past the lemon slices, and there's all this Erin-As-Nurse porn running through my head because I'm about to cure, like, everything for everybody with my new gooey refrigerated apothecary, obviously, and I'm imagining friends and family scrabbling up the driveway on their hands and knees, clawing at their collective swollen throats, croaking through the pain... Save me, Erin... I need your magic tea! 

Then this morning I ate most of it with my hands. So maybe just go to the doctor I guess. 

I also made chicken piccata for dinner last night, and halfway through eating I looked at Randy and asked him how it was.

"Really good," he answered. "A lot better than I remember, actually."

I wear my robe a lot. Like... it might be a problem.

Well, I flunked NaBloPoMo. I think I've written that same sentence every mid-November for six years. I'm pretty sure I've still posted more this November than I posted in 2011, though, so I'm not really beating myself up over it.

Yesterday Helen Jane posted a recipe for green posole, and because yesterday was also the first day of the year I didn't wake up wrapped in a damp sheet and choking on my own sweat, I decided to make it for dinner. You know, to celebrate the air conditioner shutting off occasionally. And I have to say-- Helen Jane, I hope you see this-- that it was without a doubt the best posole I've ever eaten. Let alone made, I mean please. Outrageously good. I followed her recipe exactly EXCEPT! I added some chopped and seeded Roma tomatoes because I had them and it seemed like a good idea at the time, AND! I added some hatch green chili for the same reason. When I make it again I won't add either of those things, they added nothing. 

I was so busy staring at the recipe on my computer screen I sort of missed the part where HJ made her posole to feed a party, so imagine my surprise when I ended up with enough posole for a thousand people. I stood there staring at this cauldron full of food and then I started last-minute texting people to come over for dinner. As luck would have it, my daughter-in-law who lives about a half a mile away was totally into last-minute not cooking, so she and my step-son and granddaughter last-minute came over. We all ate a ton, I sent them home with enough for another night, and I STILL have enough for dinner tonight, easy. Thanks, Helen Jane! You provided dinner and an impromptu dinner party. To which I wore my robe. And my granddaughter wore purple horse pajamas. But hey. A party's a party. 

Oh! And it was a real bitch to iron.

This is the time of year when I move our four-foot Costco table from the garage into the family room to start working on Christmas quilts and Sock Zombies. I do this every Novemberish, and it means the part of the house we most live in is covered in bits of thread and weird fur and pieces of fabric and random eyes and safety pins where you were thinking about sitting down. 

I've been working on a quilt for a few months now; not because it's a particularly complicated quilt, but because I've grown less and less fond of it as I've moved along. I started out with all these great fabrics-- a lot of plaids, some flannels, some comfy solids to bring it all together. And I made the incredibly awesome decision to turn most of those fabrics into 2" half-square triangles. 

That only took, like, my entire life up until now. Hundreds and hundreds of half-square triangles. Not exaggerating, I think I've been making half-square triangles for more than a year. 

So then I had this Rubbermaid tote full of half-square triangles, right, and it was more half-square triangles than you need to say, mow the lawn or roast a chicken, but it wasn't enough half-square triangles to make a whole quilt. I originally thought I'd pair these guys with some other flannels and plaids in larger pieces, but when I looked at everything together it was just too much. 

I work with an older woman who quilts, and we were discussing my quandary.

"I think I'm going to pair them up with a neutral solid, something so they'll stand out."

"Be careful you don't pick something too light," she warned, speaking from roughly forty years of quilting experience, "It could wash everything else out and look too bland."

"Huh. Good tip. Thanks," I replied.

But I, having been quilting for what, three months now? Went ahead and bought the creamiest, most washed out, dingy-looking fabric I could find. I think the actual color name is "Meh".

And surprise! I don't like it.

I mean, it's fine. And it's almost done, too, which is a big selling point. But there's definitely too much nothing happening. I'm not thrilled I spent fourteen months making half-square triangles just so they could look like they're floating in a milk bowl. 

For the most part I like the way the triangles turned out.

I'm still a fan of the colors and patterns I used (completely randomly) but because there were so many different kinds of fabrics, they didn't line up together very well. 

The good news is the entire thing is enormous so it'll no doubt be an incredible pain in the ass to quilt.

I'm trying to think of more things to complain about. Give me a minute.

Most fruit is actually from another planet, FYI.

I think I mentioned once before that Randy and I put in a garden. Worked out pretty well. I think the key to a good garden is being legitimately afraid of interacting with it. I feel like this theory pertains to good parenting as well, but no one will leave me alone with their kids long enough to try it. 

So to catch us up, the longer the summer wore on, the more intimidating the garden became. I'm pretty sure the cucumbers started shooting steroids because they swelled up to about three times their normal size and started getting really hostile.

My mom came over one day and found me in a sweaty standoff with a cucumber who wouldn't stop rolling around the counter in a clammy sleeveless tee and yelling, "COME AT ME BRO," so she took me to a canning class. 

That started Phase Pickle. I got out my axe and started hacking through enormous, belligerent cucumbers. We pickled pickles in enough dill to strip the paint off a Volkswagen.  We pickled pickles in so much sugar we essentially created sweet pickle Jell-O. 

We didn't stop with the cucumbers. We pickled cherry tomatoes in a very complicated rosemary / Himalayan salt solution that looked like something out of a William Sonoma catalog. Our gourmet concoction was decanted into a ramekin to the oft-rehearsed oohs and aahs of well-meaning family, but every pickled tomato I popped in my mouth was like a half-formed salty alien dissolving on my tongue. That drew a halt to the tomato pickling.

And lead to pepper pickling. Randy has a deep affinity for anything spicy, the spicier the better. Sixty percent of my role as wife is making sure we don't run out of this bright green and orange habanero sauce he loves-- I buy bottles of it by the dozen. The cashiers won't even touch the outsides of the tiny habanero peppers I buy for him to add-- seeds and all-- to his salads. I've seen him sign wavers in order to try The Galaxy's Hottest Chicken Wings (rolled in broken glass and soaked in fire ant brine) only to watch him get bored after five wings. 

Lucky for Randy, the garden spit forth an habanero volcano. The habanero bush actually crippled itself creating this whirlwind of habaneros. Every day I'd walk out there and the bush would be face-down in the dirt, habaneros waving at me by the thousands. 

"Fuckin' QUIT IT," I'd whisper between clenched teeth. But then a new one would pop out and start waving like a hot little maniac. 

At first my plan was to just pickle the jalapeños (another bush martyring itself to death through violent production) but with the habanero apocalypse looming over my head, I finally caved. 

I started tossing habaneros into everything. Seemingly innocuous jars of bread and butter jalapeño slices floating in a tell-tale orange acid. Everything I canned became increasingly poisonous. I knew it at the time; no one wears three pairs of latex gloves and ski goggles to handle anything they're realistically planning to eat. And you know that shit gets stronger the longer it sits. Those jars have been in the pantry for more than a year now; at some point that glass is going to disintegrate and the shelves are going to catch on fire. 

And the melons. Honestly, I thought I was off the hook with the melons because several weeks after planting we developed something of a whitefly situation. At that point, months deep into the scariest garden ever, I did everything I could think to do: I took a picture, mumbled, "Eww, gross", made a face, and went inside. For maybe two months.

Then I accidentally went outside. And did I find the sticky, curled up leaves and barren vines I'd been planning on? No. No, I did not. To my ongoing horror I found goddamn thriving melon plants, is what I found. Thriving melon plants complete with dangling melons. 

I saw this guy hanging there and I reacted like I'd just seen a human being hanging from a fire escape-- I threw my hands up and kicked around in a circle looking for some way to help. I'm pretty sure I actually yelled, "HANG ON!"

Believe it or not, this was the best I could do.

Ripped thigh-high nylons. The classy way to support your vining fruit. Randy came home and wanted to know if I'd started a melon escort service. I told him I had, and time was money, mister, so if you're not reaching for your wallet you better get on inside. He didn't hear that part because he had, in fact, already gone inside. 

Something happened not long after this, either the weather changed or the whiteflies came back or the melons found a better madam, I don't know, but the plants all withered up and died. Leaving me exactly one half-finished melon.

I cut him loose from his stocking hammock and set him gently on the counter, planning to cut him open at some point and see what half-finished melons are all about. But the more time that went by, the more I couldn't bring myself to do it. 

Something about that green and white pod, sitting there all quietly and expectantly, growing more wrinkly by the day...

You know that scene in Cocoon? Where all the senior citizens storm the energized pool next door and they start pulling the alien pods out of the water and shit gets unmanageable? 

There was probably a tiny sick alien trapped inside my melon. 

So rather than cut into it only to look into those pitiful dying alien eyes, I opted to ignore the entire situation and then one day the melon / alien pod was gone. Either because Brian Dennehy swooshed through my kitchen in the middle of the night and took it Home or because Randy got tired of looking at it and threw it in the big trash outside. 

Probably the first one.

So that's where we are. Right now the garden looks like someone just scraped a condemned Dairy Queen off a highway exit lot. There's something growing out of one of the beds that's either the world's most terrifying rosemary sprig or a moderately-sized ficus. Growing seasons keep coming and going and so far I've been able to wince and snap my way through them with an, "awwww, man, I missed it!" But I think Randy's onto me. We're gonna have to do this whole thing again in the spring, I think, only this time Randy's insisting on ghost peppers. I should probably just go ahead and Amazon Prime myself a full Hazmat suit. 

On the bright side, it'll be nice to start over again from scratch. I'm really tired of waiting for these jars of pickled tomatoes to hatch. 

Sometimes I exaggerate. Other times I do not.

I heard voices outside a minute ago and lo and behold, the bee guy's back. For the fifth time. I don't even know who called him out, maybe the state. About two minutes after I took this photo the guy in black started swatting himself and took off running for the front yard.

NaBloPoMo is hard.

I think I posted maybe four times in 2011 so I'm trying, I am, but man.

This is a total phone in but hey, Saturday Night Party Wrap Up! Turns out the best man was stung by a bee on the neck and someone had to kill a giant spider that landed on the bar. I witnessed neither of these events so as far as I'm concerned it's all hearsay and I'm still safe to testify in court.

(There's only like a 20% chance I'll get subpoenaed.)

We take 99% of our travel tips from Turistas and the Hostel franchise.

Bonus picture from Mexico. We took a cab ride to explore and ended up at this completely isolated bar. They were pouring free tequila shots which to me is a giant red flag because bars don't typically just hand you free alcohol unless you're a young attractive backpacker: a) with two perfectly good kidneys just BEGGING to be expunged from your young attractive midsection, or b) staying at a hostel in the Eastern Eastern Bloc and for some reason you don't check out even though all your young attractive backpacker friends keep disappearing. 

Before we left, though, the owner/amateur surgeon organ smuggler/wealthy creative murderer insisted I take a picture with Poseidon. 

I didn't even notice Poseidon getting naked as the shot was taken. I don't know how it got by me, I must've been too preoccupied keeping up with my internal organs and deterring eccentric millionaires who would pay handsomely to eat my face off. 

The people at the table behind me thought it was hilarious. They'd clearly been there a while and were free-tequila'd up. I turned and laughed along with them. I felt kind of bad, honestly. I mean, how many kidneys do you think they have between them now? 

"One? Maybe two if they're lucky," Randy whispered, safely back in the cab. 

"Right? And probably no faces."

"No faces," Randy agreed.

So all things considered, a little Poseidon wang never hurt anybody if it means you get to keep your pancreas AND your face.

Write that down.