The Velvet Cerebellum

David was walking by the buffet and just as he set the bag of peanuts down he spied a scrawny little Chicken! Of course he was gone in a flash, geckos are fast that way.

David managed to catch him and we got him back in the aquarium (with better sealed openings so as to not lose the Chicken again). We fed him little crickets and mealworms so he can bulk up again.

As we were setting up Chicken's space Stinkwingo managed to escape, but anoles are not nearly as wily or quick as geckos. David found him pretty quickly and everyone was soundly put to bed.

Welcome back, Chicken. I missed you.

Posted by Heather at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

David's sister, Julie works for Carlson Companies as an event planner (seriously, I think that everyone who works for Carlson has a job relating to planning company events or HR. It's really weird). Every year they rent out Valley Fair, a mini-wiener version of a 6 flags style amusement park. There are rides and long lines and cheap cotton candy and little piles of puke and a little marching band that plays all kinds of weird instrumental pop music songs.

One of the free attractions of the park is that it backs up to a landfill and is next to a waste water treatment facility. The term "Minnesota Pride" means Different things to different people.

The nice thing about having the park bought out by the company was that lines were virtually non-existent and since it was a company event, the threat of having your boss near by seemed to make the parents less likely to scream at their children.

Here's the deal, I'm not much of a ride person. I adore places like EPCOT with their slow moving, educational rides. I like the spinning swings, the ferris wheel and the carousel. I despise the sensation of falling, I hate rollercoasters. David really likes rollercoasters a lot.

David likes rollercoasters. I like David. David knows me really well. David bribed me with ice cream, cotton candy and kisses to go on the Wild Thing. The Wild Thing has a 4,926,781,438 foot drop. It literally has to take you into space before dropping you back to earth at speeds that will force your skin to peel off your body and find a safer way home. In fact, I went on the Wild Thing, the rickety wooden coaster with the peeling lead paint and the Excaliber which is also a rickety wooden coaster but with a big drop and one of those sections where anyone taller that 62 inches will have their skulls sheered off.

I didn't just get an ice cream, I got a hot fudge sundae! I'm no fool. I know what I deserve.

We did the log ride (david got some of that foul water in his mouth), the corkscrew, a water raft ride in a pitch black tube where we got totally drenched and the Enterprise (twice) but I could not convince either of them to go on the tilt-a-whirl or the scrambler.

The strange thing about Valley Fair is that there really aren't that many rides but it's set up in such a convoluted manner it takes forever to get from one ride to the next. I guess that's intentional, the longer you are in the park the more likely you are to buy food, novelty hats or monkey shaped backpacks.

All in all, a lovely day. Way more fun that I could have expected and at the end of the day I declared myself the champion of the rides and danced through the park.

Posted by Heather at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

Part f me has always wanted a hobby farm. A little place with a couple of ducks, a few chickens and some goats for milk and cheese. More of a hobby than a farm.

We're starting small. First it was the 2 dogs, then it was the lizards. With the lizards we can't just buy a bag of Anole Chow or Purina One Mealworm and Rice Formula, they need (prefer) live food. Initially we were buying crickets, but they need more variety so we got some silkworms to supplement. The thing about live food is that it is alive and it does alive things like eat, grow and shit. The eating and shitting are fine, they balance, but the growing is problematic when the silkworms grow faster than the lizards can eat them. Within 2 weeks the silkworms were too big for the lizards which are growing but are still pretty small.

And the crickets are problematic as well. They don't grow so fast but they cost money. Nine cents a cricket doesn't seem like much, but with 3 lizards it starts to add up, plus there are the trips to the pet store to restock the cricket supply.

So what to do? Start breedin'!

The crickets were easy enough. We went to the pet store, bought a bunch of adult crickets and set them up in an ice cream bucket with a special egg laying container with special egg laying medium (dirt with burlap over it) and left them to do the wild thing in relative comfort. 10 days later we are rewarded with teeny tiny baby crickets. Soon they will be big enough to feed to the lizards.

The silkworms are way way more fascinating. The thing is, we ordered 200 silkworm eggs but they sent us well over 300. After they surpassed feeding size we weren't sure what to do. We started picking out the silkworms that got bigger much faster than the other and putting them in a seperate box. After a bit we had about 30 silkworms in the Fat Monkey box. The other ones were deemed too slow to grow and were offered up to the birds as a tasty treat (I had a moment where I felt guilty about feeding the silkworms to the birds then I realized we bought them with the purpose of feeding them to lizards and this was different but equal). We'd have kept all the silkworms but silkworms are VORACIOUS eaters and shitters and they only eat mulberry leaves or specially formulated Silkworm Chow (no lie, that's what it is called) and it's pricey and we didn't want to spend the money on it.

So we kept feeding the fatties and one by one, they started cocooning in the shoe box. Once they emerge they cannot fly or eat, they just fuck, lay eggs and die (I know people like this!!!). The eggs can be refrigerated and doled out judiciously to hatch as needed.

We're like little bug farmers, breeding our own little bugs. I'm very excited about this. Pictures soon.

Posted by Heather at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

You know, I'm not feeling particularly charitable at the moment. I know I should, I've been propped up against disaster by my friends and family. I know that I should be given my current situation, but I am not.

No.

Let's talk about cops. Generally speaking, I have positive feelings about the cops. They have a hard job, they put their lives on the line to keep us safe (I mean city cops, not you fat bastards in the suburbs). I don't generally feel that cops are assholes with small penises and tenuous grips on power. No, that's just not me. I appreciate that there are jobs to be done and there are cops who do those jobs.

But not tonight. Tonight I do not feel so charitable about cops.

I should be posting about how Owen just foiled a cherry pink starburst into my hair and how we made quesadillas and drank beer and watched some shitty show where second rate celebrities sang with a lot of old singers. That is what this post should be about. I'd had most of it hammered out in my head on the way home, all about Owen's new condo and how gorgeous it is and about how I love my hair and adore his abilities and blah blah blah. It was going to be a happy post, a cheerful post.

It should not have been a rant about cops, and yet officers #4697 and #3955 have ruined my night and my post. Yeah, I got pulled over 5 blocks from home. I was so close. I got pulled over for a fucking headlight being out. A fucking headlight. Okay, I have no problem with getting pulled over, fine, but I got a fucking ticket. A $132 ticket for a headlight. Jesus christ.

Seriously, do you mean to tell me it was such a quiet fucking night in the barrio that you had nothing better to focus your attention on than a burned out headlight? that's it? Nothing at all going on in the 3rd precinct for you to cover that you had to pass me, drive 2 blocks, stop, turn around, follow me for another 2 blocks and then pull me over? Did you guy debate this? Did you go back and forth and discuss whether or not it was worth it? or did you have to go over your action quotas for the night and discover that it was pretty slow around here and old sarge down at the precinct might figure out how much time you sit with your fingers in your asses eating doughnuts so you figured you'd better get a ticket out for something?

yes, officers #4697 and #3955, I know you're just doing your job, I know how important it is to the well-being of the city and the people and your own shattered sense dignity that you pulled me over and made me sit in my car for almost 15 minutes while you 'ran my license' and printed my ticket on your space age ticket printing machine. I suppose you guys need to collect as many fines as possible to pay for the high-tech gadgetry you use to print up these tickets and keep track of how little else you are doing.

Yes, I'm sure you'll get to go home to your lovely families and regale them with tales of your bravery..."oh darling, I kept the city safe once more! I worked hard all night making people pay dearly for their criminal ways!". Your children will be so proud, "oh mommy!!! What sort of criminals did you catch? Burglars? Murderers? Homosexuals?"

And on "What does your momy do for a living" day at school your kids can cite statistics showing how many fewer people died as a result of my headlight getting fixed and my cash being drained from my soul.

So, officers #4697 and #3955, how many lives did you save tonight? How many criminals did you stop?

Posted by Heather at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

David is rubbing maddie's head, "Maddie, you have a soft head today" and she responds with a lovely high-pitched whistly fart.

Posted by Heather at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

I was having one of those weeks and I went out to see my dad one morning so he could help me feel better. Now my dad is not like your dad, he's not a slumlord or a gynecologist or the captain of a ghost ship. My dad has a 'retirement job', as in he retired from a job he hated and decided the one thing he wanted to do more than anything was to fly helicopters again.

And you should always do in retirement the thing you love the most! Luckily for my dad, his retirement activity comes with a paycheck as opposed to the whole "villa in tuscany" thing which has the opposite effect.

My dad flies medivac helicopters in town. If you are in a terrible car accident in the middle of nowhere or if you have a strange 14 syllable disease at a country hospital or if you are a teeny tiny baby in need of super special care they're gonna chopper in help and chances are, my dad will be at the controls and you are in safe hands.

This is his little LifeLink copter. It's very small, but pretty fast. It's so small that the patient's feet sit next to my dad as he flies. (that's Mike putting new locks on the doors so no one steal the packs of tubes or vials of precious liquids)

This is my dad at the rear of the copter helping them get it attached to the tractor thing that pulls it into the hangar.

My morning started out so crappily and within an hour my dad made it better and we were laughing. I met his coworkers and I could tell they really liked and respected him. I think there is little that a daughter can see that compares to seeing her dad being liked and respected as a genuinely good guy.

Posted by Heather at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

You know you are a total nerd when...
David and I finally went to go see Wordplay tonight, you know the movie about the crossword puzzle enthusiasts. Towards the end of the movie Neal Conan came on. You are a total nerd when you see Neal Conan and you get all excited because you listen to him on "Talk of the Nation" every single day!!!!! Oh man, it's a good thing I already ensared David, because at this point i'm oozing so much nerd stink it is possible I could never get laid again.

In other not so interesting news...
This past weekend was damned near perfect and there was not much of note to report on, we watched crickets breed, there was a romantic picnic by the lake, Jessi and Ahmed had a lovely housewarming party. It was good.

I'm doing crocheted 'shop models' for the Clickety Sticks Yarn Shop. Shop models are the sweaters and purses and whatnots that you see hanging in the yarn stores. Usually you see something and say "I WANT TO MAKE THAT!!!" and they sell you the pattern and the yarn. They're doing that with one of my purses right now (so they're selling my original pattern. woo) and hopefully I'll get the damned messenger bag pattern together for them and they can sell that as well. Right now, however, I am making patterns that they give me, not my originals, because they need more crocheted clothing and I just don't know enough to make my own clothes patterns yet. The goal is to start to attract more crocheters. People will come in and say "I WANT TO MAKE THAT!!!" and then will have to "I don't know how crochet" and the store people will say "come to our class". The yarn store will make money, the customer will learn a valuable skill, my work will be on display and I will get paid in yarn. Everyone wins.

Also, where do you get those little tags you can put into your handmade crochet items that say "lovingly made for you by..."? or whatever the hell they say?

Yeah, so I need to get started on my shop model and stop this rambly random post of pointlessness.

Posted by Heather at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

Chicken has flown the coop.
My little gecko finally found a way to sneak out and start a new life somewhere else. Geckos are sneaky little bastards and the very small openings (the kind you wouldn't take note of) were just large enough for him.

Perhaps he's off fighting lizard related crime
maybe he's growing fat and tyrannical on the excess spiders
or he's decomposing in a pile of ghengis turn in the front yard.

goodbye, Chicken! I wish you luck in whatever adventures your lizardy life brings you (until you freeze to death this winter)

Posted by Heather at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

pointless conversations

coworker: you have flowers on your underpants
me: I know
cw: I can see them
me: i'm sure
cw: doesn't that bother you, why did you wear them with those pants?
me: no, it doesn't bother me, what really bothers me is that I haven't done laundry in forever

Posted by Heather at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

So, when you're a girl and you're dating a girl and you live with the girl there's a certain level of familiarity that you take for granted. Panties, fingernail polish, boobs, tampons, bras, hairless chests, shaved legs. You don't notice these things so much because you have them. They are familiar.

When you find yourself living with a boy and previously you'd spent the entirety of your adult life living with a girl, you have these unsettling moments of realization.

There are boxer shorts, hairy chests, stubbly faces, unintentional division of work by gender (he mows the lawn, I occasionally do the dishes), testicles, tube socks, deodorants with names like "endurance" and "sport" as opposed to "spring" and "rain".

I was sitting there the other day minding my own business when he walked by in his boxers and I was so struck by the moment. I don't know that I can describe it fully, but I am still, almost 2 years later, fascinated as all hell by the utter Man-ness of him. He has testicles! I mean lord knows I've seen them before but I'm just so charmed that I actually live with them! And I live with boxer shorts and deodorant that can "Endure" and stubble.

You'd think i'd get over it by now, that this would be old news. Maybe I need to take another zoloft!

Posted by Heather at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

We booked our trip to NYC for next month. We'll only be there for a weekend. A friend of David's is getting married. We'll have one day of siteseeing/eating/shopping. That's probably for the best.

I think what I am looking forward to most is taking the subway across town while wearing a little black cocktail dress and heels. I know we could take a cab, but I'm thinking there's no real adventure in that.

Oh, Anna/Emily, this means I need a dogsitter for the night of 10/13-10/16. Let me know.

Posted by Heather at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

I wish I could tell people that wearing cologne reminiscent of chemical fertilizer is not...attractive. Sure, cologne is one of the many ways we do posturing displays to attract a mate, a clean fresh smell indicates general health, cleanliness and lack of disease. This tells me our offspring will also be healthy and have the same access to cleanliness because you can provide it. You cologne should not say to me "I want to plow your earth, create deep furrows in your field and mortgage your future to monsanto"

Posted by Heather at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

And on this day of reflection and sorrow, of inner reflection and outward declarations I feel pain.

I feel pain because I do not own www.mightycock.com

Posted by Heather at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

It's the week of sickness again...

First Maddie goes to the vet for her routine infected feet romp. New vet thinks it might be allergies. I don't know what to think anymore. Anyway, the vet was giving her the once-over and said "has she always had this lump?". That's not a question I want to ever hear. More investigation shows that all of Maddie's lymph nodes are gigantic, way bigger than expected for just an infection. Vet runs through a number of possibilities and suggests we screen for lymphoma.

In your mind you know your dog does not have lymphoma but you are unable to say 'no' because in your heart you know anything is possible with your dog that gets sick all the damned time. The doctor starts to discuss treatment options for Maddie's feet but says we shouldn't giver her the regular steroid shot because it could mess with the chemo if we have to start that next week.

Chemo? Next week? The vet sounded so damned sure. What the fuck? I just brought Maddie in for her routine antibiotics and steroid shot and suddenly we're discussing chemotherapy for my dog?

Jesus.

I spent many hours consulting my animal loving friends about my options and my concerns about the most humane course of action. My goal with Maddie has always been to provide the happiest, most comfortable place she has ever had. For all that she has been through and all that she is inside that giant head, she deserves only the joy and comfort and none of the pain and illness (except for her fucking feet and her yeast infected left ear which is infected AGAIN).

It took longer than expected to get the results back from the lab but they came back negative. Maddie is all about the hugs and love! She doesn't know what it is that I am celebrating but she seems to like it a lot.

As for me, I am one of those freaks of nature that carry strep in their bodies. I get strep infections in my throat pretty regularly but also in my bladder/ureters/kidneys. I got me a streptococcal UTI this week. Pain in the ass. It was about 2 years ago when we discovered that the regular UTI's I was getting were not normal and they discovered that I was carrying the strep in there.

And it won't go away. Maddie and I have a lot in common.

So now I am on new and awesomely fierce antibiotics that cause their own side effects.

and I spent the bulk of yesterday passed out in bed under many covers with dogs and the boy bundled in with me.

Okay, so, later I'll come up with something happier to post about!

Posted by Heather at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

It's that time again to shamelessly march out the photos of the things i've done with yarn recently. Most of this stuff was completed midsummer but I had to wait until everyone got their stuff in the mail before I could post the photos and mail to canada is slow.

Also, i made a scarf for the Irish Boy but forgot to photograph. Sigh, maybe he'll be so kind as to send a photo.....

Posted by Heather at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

I just looked down to find a slug on my foot. A slug. On my foot.

It's either 1) something I picked up while walking the dogs or 2) some sort of karmic repayment for feeding an ant covered cookie to Anna.*

David put it outside. All is good in the world

* of course Anna did clog my sinks and cause my wash machine to leak

Posted by Heather at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

I've posted the photos of my weekend camping trip and I will give you the lovely highlights...

• I gave the dogs special bones as a treat to have as we left. They both decided they wanted the same bone. They got into a very violent fight over the bone. Maddie ended up bleeding from her face and I ended up with a nasty bite on my arm. My trip has not yet begun
  
• For some reason we decide to get lunch at Arby's. We are fools. When will we learn?
  
• Things get remarkably better fast! We pull into the DNR station to get maps and info on the area. As we head in we are informed that we are closed. We're bummed. Who told us the place was closed? The dude who works there! His parents were in town from florida and he was showing them where he worked. It was pure dumb luck that we pulled into the driveway while he and his parents were enjoying an afternoon ice cream. This was the perfect opportunity for him to show his parents what he did and he let us in and logged onto his computer and pulled up all kinds of special DNR maps of the area and printed them up for us and gave us all kinds of info. He had access to all kinds of crazy maps and stuff. Also, he showed us the special press where they pressed walleye scales onto plastic slides so they could keep a record of the age of the fish in all the lakes in the area. He was like the dude in charge of fish in northern minnesota. he pretty much ruled.
  
• We headed into Tower and hit the local grocery store. My phone finally got a signal and let me know that I had voicemail. Unfortunately the system I was on was not allowing me to access my voicemail and I worried that Anna had killed my dogs. She had not killed my dogs, only clogged my sinks and lost track of the q-tips
  
• We forgot the camping pan for cooking stuff over the fire so we bought brats to cook over the fire on sticks. David suggested veggie hot dogs. I'm not opposed to veggie hot dogs as a rule, but this is camping and, well, you know. Camping!
  
• The campground was found with no problems as we had excellent maps (thanks DNR dude). We set up, went on a little nature hike, came back and started our campfire.
  
• I love campfires
  
• I also love roasting wieners over a campfire and eating them right off the stick. And I love roasted marshmallows and making MRE s'mores (MRE saltines with MRE peanut butter and a roasted marshmallow. YUM)
  
• The campers a couple sites over were enthusiastic and boisterous. At first this bothered me because I wanted a secluded camping experience. Then I realized that it was not my place to begrudge someone their fun, besides, I don't want to spend my evening irritated with them, that would ruin my fun. I'm starting to see what a shitty and asinine thing it is to begrudge someone their good time just because it is not the good time you would pick.
  
• Something shuffled through camp in the middle of the night. Bigger than a squirrel, smaller than a bear and not interested in the food we left on the picnic table so my money is on porcupine or skunk.
  
• When we go camping I sometimes wish I could bring ghengis along because I know he would love it. Then something ambles through camp in the middle of the night and I am reminded of how vehemently he likes to remind things of his dominance over his territory.
  
• We ate fire roasted wienies for breakfast!
  
• We saw many deer.
  
• The neutrino lab was cool, but the tour was led by a non-scientist and she was nice enough but it wasn't the tour I wanted. Mostly she was just showing us what was there. I wanted to learn more about what the hell was going on. I did learn more about neutrinos and dark matter, but it was not enough. Also, I did not get to touch the big iron collection plates. There are 485 of them
  
• Remember seeing "March of the Penguins"? Remember Morgan Freeman telling you every few minutes how easy it would be for every damned penguin to die from whatever was going on and yet that wasn't even the worst of it and things were going to get worse and worse and it was awful and you really expected piles of penguin corpses? Yeah, the mine tour (after the physics tour) was a lot like that. You expected the entire Iron Range to be littered with the excess corpses of iron miners.
  
• We explored the option of kayaking out to an island in Lake Vermillion but the lake was clogged with motor boat traffic, they were practically stacked up on each other. I was afraid that some drunk jackass in a motor boat would run me over in my little kayak. We went off in search of quieter camping accomodations.
  
• My faith in humans was restored when two trucks pulled over to help pull us out of the ditch we got stuck in (I wasn't driving). The ditch had a really really steep drop off that you could not see for all the grass growing there. David went to turn the car around to explore camping options and *POP* the car fell right in. The car as at such an angle I had to climb out the window. Soon enough we were rescued and on our way.
  
• Our second campsite was so lovely and perfect and beautiful that pictures and words cannot describe it. Was it the seclusion? the peace? the burbling stream? The culmination of a very happy weekend with someone so sweet? I don't know, but I could have cried for happiness a few times. and I did.
  
• On monday we meandered home stopping at a tiny cafe in Isabella to listen to the accents and drink the weakest coffee on the planet.
  
• Outside of Duluth we came upon Beaver Falls. David wanted to climb to the top but I was unconvinced. I'm not athletic and certainly not much of a climber but he prodded and supported me and I made it to the top. I celebrated by making up a victory song and eating licorice.
  

Go. Go see the pictures and feel the love.

Posted by Heather at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

at a little wooden cabin
up in northern minnesota
we ran together down to the dock
and you jumped right off it
and from out in the water
you called me to join you
and i said baby i cannot swim
if i jump i’ll surely drown you
you said life has no limit
if you’re not afraid to get in it

and oh baby i jumped to you
since then there’s nothing i can’t do

"IF YOU AIN'T GOT LOVE"
Mason Jennings

I'm home from my camping trip. I'm tired but freshly showered and snuggled with the dogs I missed so much. There is so much to write about but I am exhausted and I don't have time. This weekend I did a lot of things I never would have tried had David not been there to prod and support me, to convince me that I can do the things I never would have tried.

When this song played today I held his hand and a few happy tears fell. The weekend was lovely and I will leave you with this brief perfect moment snapshot...

Laying on my back on a blanket at our campsite. To my right is a popping campfire keeping me warm, to my left is a burbling stream. When I open my eyes and look up I see the sky filled with stars and ringed with trees. David holds me as the owls begin their nightly conversation.

Posted by Heather at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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