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The year started in David's arms in the French Quarter. Tonight the setting will be the less exotic city of Minneapolis, but i intend to be in his arms all over again.
I eagerly await 2007 and all it has to offer.
All my love to all of you who are part of my life. Thank you for your love, your support and your good humor. I could not have done it alone.
I totally went ice skating.
Matt was having a party at the Depot Skating Rink on Wednesday night. I haven't gone ice skating since I was 18 or 19. I gave it the good old college try! Mostly I skated like a little old lady with my arms flung out and my legs all stiff. I looked like a total retard, but I didn't fall down at all. It was totally cool.
Waiting for the slowest zamboni driver in the world
David being molested by Matt.
Later we missed out on sushi, but we managed to get some amazingly expensive food at Azia in the middle of the night. Huzzah.
Also, let's send good vibes to my sister, she had hip surgery today and is feeling like death.
At the end of the year I like to do one of those retrospective posts wherein I recap the previous year's events. I talk about what I gained and lost, what I learned and what i fucked up.
These things usually take me a couple of weeks worth of pondering and then a couple days worth of actual research as I go through the website rereading things and then through other documents and notes and bits of writing that I have here and there.
One common theme that came up was that 2006 was a very hard year for me. My depression and anxiety got the better of me, I made some bad decisions, some things happened that I had no control over. I lost my Ghengis.
I have a list next to me, a whole sheet of paper covered in scribbled notes where I tried to make sense of the year and put it into a coherent bit of writing. In rereading my posts and going over my memories for the year, one moment stuck with me, a bright, shiny moment that I think umbrellas everything.
In July I flew down to meet David in New Orleans. He'd already been there for a few weeks and we missed each other terribly. On my last day there we took the ferry out to Ship Island and went swimming in the gulf. It was amazing for me, porpoises swimming within reach. Jellyfish, crabs and stripey fish hanging out with us. After we got in the water a lightning storm started to roll in. It was close enough to scare everyone else out of the water but not so close that we were in danger. David and I were alone in the gulf, swimming during a lightning storm.
As we were swimmming, David put his arms around me and floated me on my back as he swam around. I did not even notice at first, it was such a subtle move. I found myself completely relaxed in his arms, floating on the surface of the water, watching the lightning in the near distance. I had to put forth no effort to keep my head above the waves, I just floated there in the safety of his arms as we went here and there in the water. The whole time he talked to me, sang to me and made me smile.
And that was David this entire year. For no matter what happened, he quickly and quietly put his arms around me and held me above water. Not just to keep me safe from the waves, but to allow me the chance to relax. For all of the times that I have been upset or hurt, he was there to hold me. For all of the times I was celebrating, enjoying myself or experiencing sheer joy, he was there with me. When I was floundering or in need or lost, he was next to me. He boosted my confidence, he supported my decisions and he stood by me when I failed.
So many things happened in 2006, good, bad and ugly. For every thing that happened, David was there.
2006 is the year that David held me and I could not be more grateful.
"...that was a hard year but it passed on like all the rest."
Grandma Moses - "My Life's History"
The other day I was in the kitchen cooking and it occured to me that the dogs had been awfully quiet for some time now. As much as you might want the dogs to be quiet, a pair of quiet dogs is usually a pair of dogs that has teamed up and conspired against you.
I put down my rubber spatula and walked into the living room...
It seems like one of those quiet Rockwellesque moments, but there's something far more sinister at work here.
Maddie isn't really a chewer. She will sometimes chew a pig ear or some chicken jerky, but she's really not all that interested in chewing. She can take hours and hours to chew a rawhide strip, the same strip that Chester or Ghengis would devour in 30 minutes or less. Maddie is not a chewer, but she can be mean.
That's not her bone, it's Chester's bone. Chester DOES chew things but he does not chew rawhide bones. In some cryptic bit of wiring in his head, he cannot actually stop to chew those things he loves to chew the most, he must bury them. He will spend the better part of an afternoon 'burying' a bone behind the sofa or under some cushions or in a box of packing peanuts by the backdoor waiting to go down to the basement. After he has buried it, he will find a bone that he has previously buried and he will move that to a new location and bury it all over again. he will do this over and over and over, burying and moving and burying and moving. It's not uncommon for me to stumble across in a bucket of rags or in with my yarn.
This bone that Maddie has in this photo was one of his favorites, he spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep that bone safe. Maddie found that bone and she took it to her bed, the one place where she is 'safe'. She must have spent a good hour there intently gnawing on his bone, chewing it up and there was nothing he could do.
When I walked into the living room he just sighed dejectedly and watched her chew.
I only laughed. I laughed and laughed at them. I'm that kind of dog owner. Then I took photos and posted them on the internet.
She doesn't chew. No, not unless it's Chester's bone and she is seeking revenge!
So, a few years ago I was wondering if I might like flannel sheets. On one hand it seemed like a nice, cozy idea for Minnesota winters, on the other hand, they might be too hot for this girl who occasionally turns into a little furnace at night.
Target had some flannel sheets on super clearance and it was decided that this was the best way to find out. I could get the warm, flannel sheets and if I did not liek them then I would not be out a lot of money. Turns out I did like having the flannel sheets in the winter, they were snuggly and warm and very comfortable. They unfortunate side, though, was that they really only put the sheets that no one likes on ultra clearance. If people liked them, then they would sell and would not need to go on ultra clearance. These sheets are ugly as hell. Bad pea soup green with ducks, duck hunters and hunting dogs splattered across in some incredibly ugly motif. These are the kind of sheets an autistic hunter would love.
They're ugly as hell.
What does it mean that I saw those same exact sheets used on the set of internet porn? What is the world coming to when production values at porn houses fall to cheap clearance bedding that looks awful on camera. What does it say about me that I share this in common with them?
We did Christmas dinner at my sister's and it was a lovely time. My sister puts on a lovely feast. Potato souffle', green beans with herbs de provence and ham...HAM! the king of the pink meats!
April's special guy cemented his status as "good enough for my sister" by putting away the Skyy and breaking out the Ketel One for me. He also kept mixing me vodka tonics all night long. I lost count at 5, it may have been as many as 7. I'm just not sure.
We ate, we talked, we caught up on happenings, we wiggled in and out of those uncomfortable family conversations and we generally had a good time. Didn't get home until after midnight and it was only with considerable effort on my sister's part to kick our asses out of there.
(note to April, if you want to get rid of us, don't bust out the good stuff...a bottle of Stoli would have had my out of there by 8! no lie!)
I also had a major envy moment when my sister came up in a pair of flannel jammies with santa lobsters all over them. I want those!
My uncle Russell and Aunt Carol are in town with their girls, Emily and Rosalie and they will be heading over this afternoon to see the dogs, harass the lizards and visit. I'm really looking forward to this, but I really need to get this place cleaned up. I also need to get some leftover ham into me!
Also, David is playing his guitar and the speaker is next to my head and I get to play with the settings. Guitar on phaser...pretty sweet.
Happy happy christmas to you all!
Last night we spent Christmas Eve at my dad's. Since Anna was unable to make it home for the holidays we brought her along. We spent the evening eating, drinking, laughing and telling tales. Poor Anna, she thought I was just some sort of anomaly, a strange imp placed on this earth specificallyto torture her.
Once again, she learned that I came from a family, one that I get along well with. One that will work with me on my mission to corrupt and torture. Or, if not to work with me, at least not hinder me.
Last night I brought two dishes to dinner, my Chai Spiced Rice Pudding and a roasted winter vegetable dish. The pudding was a tad undercooked and I was sad about that but it tasted fine. The vegetables were a big hit
Sweet Roasted Winter Vegetable
1 large sweet potato, chopped
1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 head cauliflower broken into large florets
1 apple, cored and chopped (it should have been 2 apples, but one was rotten in the middle)
1 head of radicchio, quartered, cored and seperated
1 cup baby carrots
1/2 rutabaga, peeled and chunked
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and separated but left whole
3 tbl butter
1 tbl olive oil
1 tbl rubbed sage
2 tbl curry powder
Oil the bottom of a large roasting pan, dump in veggies. Liberally salt and pepper vegetables.
In a small saute pan, melt butter into olive oil until foamy. Add sage and mix. Add curry powder and mix. Drizzle butter mixture over vegetables and mix to coat.
Roast at 300 for 2 hours, mixing at least once. The long low roasting allows the natural sugars in the vegetables to concetrate. The whole cloves of garlic practically turn caramelly.
Right now I have a pumpkin cheesecake in the oven. It got in there late and this means I will be late to my sister's and i pray she forgives me!
And on a sad note, this is my Christmas without Ghengis. Last night, at my dad's, we laughed and shared stories and I was only happy to remember him racing around my dad's back yard harassing the cat, or sleeping under my feet as we picnicked in the gazebo. Today I am reminded that he only got two Christmases. Only two chances to rip open wrapping paper, to maul a new toy, to fall asleep on a newly eviscerated teddy bear or dinosaur.
Merry Christmas to all of you. Go now, find the ones you love and hold them tight.
Today was the last day of work until the 2nd of January. Hooray for working at a school. We did the usual pizza party, cookie eating, "see you next year" song and dance. It was good in a predictable way.
We finally got the snow we'd been waiting for all winter (and by 'we' I mean everyone else, I can do just fine without it). Thank god for traction control! My car may be big but it's built like a fucking tank, I got no fear in the winter with that thing.
This is the first year in a long time that I just don't have any plans for the holiday break. We aren't going to New Orleans, I'm not hosting anything, just a lot of quiet, some cleaning, some jam making, some crocheting, some bread making and some time with the dogs.
David, being the sweetest guy ever, just called me for dinner, so it's off for me.
(I promise to write something more interesting later)
My spam filter just caught an email from "vampire" with the subject line "penetrate your partner for hours".
Tonight is "hook the printer up to David's computer and hope it all works and make many labels for all the jams and do it quickly because people want presents and I owe the Tech Guys big time for their help". I also need to do dishes, make 2 loaves of bread and whip up some sort of nutritious dinner as yesterday's dinner consisted of Cheetohs and iced tea.
it's like I'm half June Cleaver and half Fat Albert.
I just got back from a weekend at my mother's. Dang. I left with a car full of raw ingredients, empty jars and 2 dogs. I returned with 2 dogs, a good deal of dog vomit, no raw ingredients and 120 jars of various well-sealed delectables. Let me tell you something, canning isn't so much hard work, as it is tedious work and so much of the work is limited by the fact that a stove only has 4 burners! It wouldn't matter how big or well stocked the kitchen is, there's always a bottleneck at the point when you water bath the jars.
On the other hand it does force you to sit down and relax for a minute.
Dog vomit? Yeah, I forgot that Chester gets car sick. Do dogs get car sick? I don't know but he likes to puke on long trips. Ironically, I was just telling Brett that having leather seats in the car is a requirement when you have two dogs. yeah, cleaning dog vomit up in the parking lot of an interstate McDonalds is no picnic, but at least it wiped up and didn't leave any stains.
Of course today I found a whole batch I hadn't noticed that first time around. Dammit.
I also lnoticed that every fucking surface of my car is covered in dried coffee.
Anyway, this weekend I produced:
Spicy corn relish
Lemon ginger marmalade
orange cranberry sauce
strawberry ginger sauce/syrup
rasberry chipotle lime glaze
maple pecan syrup
strawberry lemon jam
I also packed up 14 jars of mustard and I will make a lemon orange marmalade this week. Right before I left on my trip what should I get in the mail but the ultimate guide to home canning from Alex. Dang. I'm so going nuts with that thing.
I'm cold and tired and hungry, I'm off to take care of myself.
So long party peeps
ps. Maddie got into a fight with my mom's cat and lost. Maddie is an exceptionally tough and tenacious dog. My mom's cat, however, burst forth from hell in a ball of furious flame. That can is MEAN! Of course Maddie didn't learn her lesson and will seek out the cat again and again.
All was well, everything was fine. There I was, in the shower and another wave from the ocean of grief knocked me down.
I was blindsided.
This morning, all I wanted was Ghengis back for just one day. Just one day to play stinky dinosaur and go to the dog park, one day to feed him carrots and play tug-o-war.
One day to hold him, to smell him, to tickle his big fat paws again. To rub his belly and listen to him mudgeon around. To give him Frosty Paws and take his picture. I just want to see him sit up and pray one more time. I just want to take him on one more walk. One more evening of him passed out on my lap.
I want to watch him tumble around on the floor with David and Maddie again. I want to see them feel the joy of having Ghengis back for one more day. I want to see him tuck face into David's belly as he gets pets.
One more night with him curled against my belly as I fall asleep with my face in his fur like we did so many times before. He'd be gone when I woke up. I'd have my day. I would like a weekend. I would love to have forever.
But I don't want to be greedy.
Please, just one day?
ooooh here!
What are you reduced to when you stay after work to update your blog?
My god, people, this is how much I care! I care!!
1) The amazing tech guys here at work managed to get my hard drive moving. Much of the data was corrupted, the files were a mess. Nothing was where I left it. I did find a folder of movies I had made of Ghengis. I am so so grateful for that. Of the 10gb's of music I had, there were maybe 8 albums to be found. that was just weird. Does anyone know how iTunes deals with replacing music like that? I've purchased a few things through them, music and audiobooks and whatnot. I will have to figure that out. My laptop needs a new hard drive and a new fan. Considerably cheaper than a new computer! Hopefully I can get that taken care of before too long.
2) I went to Fleet Farm last night. How freaky is that? Fleet Farm is all about hunting and farming and sponge candy!!! Weird weird weird. On the other hand, they had canning jars for stupid cheap. $6.39 for a dozen 8 ounce jars. I got me 8 dozen jars. I'm turning into a crazy old lady, I can feel it. They also had a 23 quart pressure canner for $80 which is the cheapest I've ever seen them. If anyone is at a loss for what to get me for Christmas, I'm thinking either season 2 of Lost on DVD or the 23 quart pressure canner (the kind with the read out dial).
2a) Fleet Farm has everything in the world, but they have it for cheap. I stocked up on pig ears and chicken jerky for the dogs. I'm beginning to think I am the only person on the planet that is not freaked out by pig ears. Yeah, they're greasy and still have hair on them, they come from pigs! They also smell bad. But the dogs love them. They don't bother me one bit.
3) As I mentioned before I will be leaving for the weekend! Go me! I'll be up at my mom's canning like made, trying to get christmas presents done. If I know you and love you, you're getting jars of something for christmas. If I know you and don't necessarily like you, you'll get a jar of something, but it might also have botulism in it!
3a) I want to start making my own pickles. The problem is that I think I would enjoy the process of making pickles but I just don't think I would eat them and there's just only so much you can pawn off on your friends before you start noticing unopened jars in their trash.
3b) I also want to start making bbq sauce. Maybe I can get farther with that.
okay my peeps, I'm off to pick up Anna. We're going to have Tube of Burrito night and then we're going to can the mustard! Go us.
I want my computer back! I want the comforting sound of emails coming in every minute. I want to be able to look up common porn names and see how often they overlap on a whime.
I don't want to sit in the basement to use David's computer.
Sigh.
Also, dogs are way way way cute.
David is super neato
I'll be out of town this weekend and that will help the withdrawals
It seems my laptop is well and truly fucked. Not just regular fucked, but double plus fucked. Hard.
It's sitting upstairs in the tech guy cave being worked on. Initial efforts were futile, hours of work yielded no results. Starting tomorrow they will do the hard core data recovery thing they do. It will take 3 days. If it works I will be happy, if it doesn't work the base price for data recovery at the recommended tech shop in town is $250. Then add a new hard drive ($200 for labor and materials and a new fan ($100 for labor and materials). Jesus, I could cry.
I am trying to decide how important my data is. I got my photos off there and for that I am grateful. If I hadn't there'd be no discussion. I'd do whatever it took to recover my Ghengis photos. I woud like my emails back. I'm not much of an email archiver. I'll save things for a while and then cull the lot. I'd recently cut out anything I was saving for pointless sentimental value. On the other hand, I did have every email David ever sent me and I would like those back. The music? meh. Most of that can be found again. Much of it is on cd's somewhere.
There are some documents, articles I'd written and had published, bits and pieces I'd pulled from one place or another. In the scheme of things, nothing too terrible.
The hard part? I don't know what to do with myself when I'm sitting there at home alone. usually I have 2 or three things going, a movie, a crochet project, the cooking group...I got none of that. Sigh-bot. I'll actually have to be productive now.
If anyone would like to kick into a fund to get me a new MacBook pro, it would be greatly appreciated.
In order to use up quickly failing pineapple, I made a jam!
Hawaii 5-0 jam made with pineapple, lemon, orange, love and ginger! It was an experiment and it turned out delicious.
Went to Costco with Keith and David today to buy a metric buttload of things to turn into jams, relishes and whatnot. I'm totally ready for this. Now I just need to go to Fleet Farm and buy jars.
Thank you to Alex for inspiring me again!
I am so stupid! How stupid am I? I schedule an appointment at the Apple store Genius Bar at 5pm on a Saturday night at the Apple Store in the Mall of America just weeks before Christmas. Dumb.
On the other hand I spent almot 2.5 hours there and got a lot of help and advice on my computer issues and it was all free. He even backed up my 4 gb of photos onto a dvd for me as my computer was not wanting to burn dvd's for me. Now, if my computer dies, I will not have lost over 5000 photos, the bulk of which are of Ghengis. I have 10 gb of music, if I lose that I'll be sad...but you know, whatever. If I lose my Ghengis photos...well, you know.
Anyway, I need to wipe my hard drive completely, reinstall the system and then slowly put my stuff on there. If that doesn't work then my hard drive is dying and I'll have to get a new Mac Book Pro. Thank god for the school discount and the interest free loans through payroll deduction! I love my job.
Seriously, now is not the best time for me to be buying a new computer, but, fuckity.
In other news, the dogs are cute, happy and totally rambunctious. I have upwards of 80 1/2 pints worth of food to can next weekend at my mom's (and that doesn't include the innumerable 4 ounce jars of mustard I need to make). I will hopefully be making pineapple jam today with the pineapples we bought but didn't use.
Now we are off to meet Keith so he can take us to Costco to buy the things that will be processed and crammed into jars next weekend.
Had Mary and the delightfully cute baby Charlie over for dinner last night. What did I make?
1) Salmon with a dill seed/fennel seed crust. Both the salmon and the spice blend were gifts from David's sister, Mary Alice, who moved to Alaska earlier this year. I roasted the salmon on a bed of lemon slices.
2) Kale with apples, garlic and sage. This is my standby side dish right now. It's too easy to make and I even finished it off in the oven while the fish was cooking
3) orange chevre risotto. This was delicious. zest and juice 2 navel oranges. Using a standard risotto recipe do this: add 1/3 of the orange zest to the pot when you toss the rice in to cook, before you add the liquid. The first shot of liquid should be the orange juice, the second should be a good slug of white wine and then use broth or whatever for the rest of the cooking. To finish, add 2 ounces of chevre and the rest of the orange zest. it was absolutely delicious.
3) a variation on the figgy pear parnouti in which I made a regular caramel sauce and added 1 tablespoon of fresh grated ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon and cardamom, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp cloves and a pinch of nutmeg. I divided the chopped pears, figs, walnuts and chevre into 6 ounce ramekins and poured the caramel sauce over them. I roasted them at 325 for 45 minutes. the leftover caramel sauce hardened like candy, so I got to spend the afternoon sucking on little chunks of spicy ginger caramel.
You should come to dinner some time!
two recent reads...
1) Iron Council by China Mieville. The third in the Bas-Lag series. An incredibly good book in its own right, but compared to the other two Bas-Lag books, it just doesn't hold up. Mieville's writing is engaging and thought provoking, he conjures up entirely new worlds easily and makes them believable. The cities are as gritty and frayed and filthy as the deserts are parched and blinding. You could get lost in his worlds, but you don't want to because you'd probably get your little ass kicked. Iron Council, unfortunately, strayed a bit from the gritty dark of the previous two novels. The books aren't a series, the stories are not related at all, there is only the barest crossover of characters or situations, they just all happen to take place in the same world, Bas-Lag and its chief city, New Crobuzon. The first two books, Perdido Street Station and The Scar both felt infinitely unique in their settings and situations. Iron Council felt like a mash up of western, socialist revolution and railroad/gold rush story. The fascinating mosaic of humanoid species such as the cactacae, the anophelii and the garuda are less prominent and just added as an afterthought.
The book itself is an engaging and fascinating read, but compared to his other novels, it's just not as good. I do hope he has more Bas-Lag novels in the hopper.
2) Olympos by Dan Simmons. The follow up to Illium, this is the book that wraps it all up. Just as fun and engaging as the first book, but still suffers a bit from sequel-itis. When you have a book as amazingly intricate, disparate and complex as Illium, it's hard to follow up on that and hold the center. I was initially irritated with the Deus ex Machina slathered all over the climax of the book, but when you have a book with little Jovian robots, the principals of The Tempest, a Caliphate that sent robots to the future to kill the Jews (an entirely too heavy handed literary move in my opinion) and the Greek pantheon recreating the Trojan war on Mars you can understand a little Machine of the Gods sweeping in to clean things up.
Today I picked up Dan Simmons' Hyperion and I'll give that a spin, as well as the book-on-CD version of Ian McEwan's Saturday.
I had a burst of energy today and cleaned the kitchen but now I am paying for it. I am going to bed to sleep the sleep of the sick and the dead.
I have a loaf of rosemary, garlic, olive oil brad going in the machine right now and the house just reeks of fantasticness.
Tomorrow night Mary is bringing the new baby over for dinner (well, specifically, the baby is still on the boob tap, but Mary will be eating dinner). Proposed menu:
Salmon with a dill/fennel seed crust and lemon
Herb and chevre risotto
Kale with apples, garlic and sage
the aforementioned bread
figgy pear parnouti, dairy free variation
I'll let you know how it goes and I will post recipes. Of course I will let you know how it goes, I always do.
Spent the day at home, sick with another systemic strep outbreak. Had to get a shot in my ass, but I also got a snoopy bandaid on my butt, so I guess it evens out. I even accused the nurse of trying to see my ass since the doctor told me it would be a shot in my arm. The doctor lied.
Yesterday at brunch, Owen, Alan and David started talking about tv's and speakers and remote controls on radio frequencies and something or other. The conversation went something like this:
Owen: Speakers!
Alan: Dolby number point one?
Owen: yes! speaker speaker speaker subwoofer
David: pertinent remark
Owen: remot control
David: walls?
Owen: Radio blaster moonbeam
Alan: space!
Owen: plasma
David: lcd?
Alan: mirrors!
This went on for quite some time. Mostly I just stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and hollandaise sauce.
My only contribution to the conversation:
me: I bought my tv because it was silver and it was on sale.
And that's the truth, I got my tv because my 30 year old 19 inch Zenith with the fake wood paneling looked shitty in my formal living room and I was consolodating the family room with the living room as my sister was moving in to my house. The extent of my interest in the actual tv was that it look nice and not cost a lot of money.
At some point, when I finally broke down and got a dvd player, I was pretty psyched that it had a 5 disk tray. I could finally live the dream of filling the tray, getting unconscionably stoned and not having to move from the sofa for twelve hours. Sadly, I never managed to hook up that tube from my bladder to the bathtub so the dream was never fully realized. I'm sure the DVD box mentioned something about laser quality or skip protection or SOMETHING...I don't know, it was cheap and meant I didn't have to move a lot.
Aw crap. Christmas is coming. My plans to make lots of things for lots of people for Christmas this year sort of went to hell.
The doctors and I have been playing brain pill roulette for weeks now trying to find the right combination of brain pills and sleeping pills. It's hard to be productive when much of your time is spent wanting to puke, cry, sleep or jump off the Ford bridge. Exacerbating the issue is, of course, the loss of Ghengis. Even in the best of times, losing my special little fella would have made me want to puke, cry, sleep and jump off the Ford bridge.
Suffice to say, it's been immensely hard to concentrate and that's been frustrating.
Alex has been making homemade jams and it got me thinking and I might just be motivated to get some canning done. Flipping through my recipes, I've settled on some jams, some pickles, mustards and fruit relishes. Between that and pumping out a few scarves, I think maybe I can get some gifts together.
hmmm, maybe I'll go up to my mom's for a weekend and she and I can spend a weekend together canning. She's a billion times more organized than I am! Hey mom! you reading this? Wouldn't you LOVE to spend an entire weekend with me making a mess of your kitchen? You have a dishwasher, right?
we're so damned low class we're drinkin' our red wine outta white wine glasses!
Also, David ordered new checks tonight and he's getting "What's wrong with being Awesome?" printed in the extra line under the address and "From the Orphans' Christmas Fund...to You" above the signature line. Personally, I think he should have gotten the "Life on the Farm" checks, but what are you gonna do?
Today, Chester went to the dog park for the first time. He was happy enough to see the people, but too scared and nippy around the other dogs. We'll just have to keep taking him and socializing him. We'll get him enrolled in obedience classes, too, that will help immensely. it was 15 fucking degrees out. We didn't stay long.
blah blah blah
(analworld, vaginal plunger, clown car, meatball subs, biggus dickus)
Let's talk about how you got here, shall we. How did you find this site? How did you get from whatever it was you were looking at to here.
Did you search for something?
Did you follow a link?
Was it just some random pounding on the keyboard?
That image is a list of search terms that brought people to this site.
Velvet Cerebellum? okay, that makes sense. It's the name of the site, but it is not precisely the name in the URL so searching for the name of the site makes sense. Searching for velvet-c confuses me. You already know the url, why are you searching for it?
Beebombom also perplexes me because it's a word I made up, it's in exactly one post, it's utter nonsense and only occasionally will actually turn up a result on Google.
Chris Noth, Subaru Brat, floating raviolis, neils yard dairy, formfit panties...these are all things I have written about at one time or another. Knitting? Yeah, I knit and I've talked about it. Monkeysnaps? no idea.
Plastic vaginal plungers manufacturers??? What the fuck???? Seriously! What the fuck is that? I have no idea what that is, I have no idea what a plastic vaginal plunger is and I certainly don't know who manufactures them!
Who are you people? Why are you researching plastic vaginal plungers??? WHY??? Seriously, if you or someone you know is researching plastic vaginal plungers or the manufacture of said plungers and you have stumbled upon this website, let me know! You dn't have to reveal anything about yourself, just tell me about these plungers.
Also, "don't want to hear about vagina"? Who DOESN'T want to hear about vagina? Speaking of vagina, there was a 100 pound vagina replica on the 3rd floor at work today. I make sure to mention it was a replica because I am sure that somewhere at work there is an actual 100 pound vagina.
"covered elastic underpants". aaaaah yeah...hammer time.
“Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.”
Samuel Johnson
There are those of us who are listeners and dispensers of advice. We are the people that others go to when they need their problems put into perspective or they need advice on how to proceed. We are the one who can look at a quandary from all angles and make suggestions from an objective point of view.
It's not bad work.
In fact it can be rewarding to see that advice you give fingered to life by this other person.
There are those people, however, that come to you with their problems, their needs, their complaints. They come to you and you listen and ask questions, mull things over and give advice and where most people would consider this advice and perhaps even go with it, there are those whose only reaction is to argue.
They have problems, but they also have an almost bottomless bag of reasons why they cannot move forward and fix these problems. You, the giver of advice, will find yourself in an exhausting race towards a moving finish line. You can't keep up. Every solution you give is fraught with danger.
And then you realize that it is inaction more than anything that the person with the problem craves. And, as Samuel Johnson so eloquently put it, there is something not disagreeable to the person. They enjoy being where they are. They don't complain about their problemns because they want resolution, but they complain about their problems in the same manner that we might speak of our vacations or promotions. They are the best things these people have.
A thank you to Alex for reminding me that sometimes it's not my fault that I don't have the right answers. Sometimes, the right answer just isn't,