Scene of the crime(a tale of two dogs)

This morning just before dawn I was awakened by someone touching me gently on the cheek. I opened my eyes and in the gray stillness a dark shape loomed over me ... It was the Taterman, sitting next to me on the pillow with his paw on my shoulder and an unusual alertness in his posture. When he saw I was awake he leaned in and licked me once on the chin with just the tip of his tongue. That's when I heard it: a muffled crash, followed by the sound of someone quietly rummaging around in some other part of the house.

Now that I was awake and aware, Tater felt free to hand over his role as protector and climb into my lap, quivering. But early morning is not my most lucent time of day, and as I lay there listening and assessing the situation it took a few moments to come up with three possibilities. Maybe Mr. A had forgotten something he needed for work, and was trying to find it without waking me. That didn't seem likely, though, since he knows I sleep with earplugs most of the time so he doesn't have to tiptoe around when he's getting ready to leave at 4:45 each morning.

The second possibility, which seemed somehow more real for at least a few seconds given Tater's obvious anxiety and stress, was that someone had seen Mr. A leave and thought the house was empty, and had broken in and was robbing us.

(An aside: The last time my house was robbed, I walked in through the front door just as the thieves were running out the back, and my first thought when I realized what had happened was to find my precious dog – who was hiding stock still and silent under the bed. People have criticized him for this behavior, for not defending my few poor possessions with ferocious fangs and claws ... But people willing to kick in a door might also be willing to kick a frightened animal, and I've always thought he did the only sensible thing to do under the circumstances – since he wasn't able to keep them out of the house, he did his best to protect himself until I got home. In his defense, he did become a much better watch dog after that – for weeks I didn't sleep through the night, thanks to his constant barking at any little sound from outside.)

Whoever was making noise in the house this morning was not trying very hard to hide it, though, and the sounds I was hearing were all concentrated in one area: the kitchen. I listened for cabinets and drawers opening, or the refrigerator, but the perpetrator only continued rummaging around. Then there was silence.

I slid out of bed (briefly considering whether I ought to put on some pants before venturing out), grabbed the little canister of professional-strength pepper spray Mr. A bought at a safety seminar at his work last summer (just in case), and crept toward the kitchen. The rustling started again just as I reached the door, and as I parted the curtains ....

Well, it was the Jeeps, of course. He had turned over the garbage can and distributed its contents the full length of the kitchen in order to reach whatever slimy goodness he hoped to find at the bottom of the trash can liner, which he was burrowed into up past his shoulders. When he heard me yell he tried to pull his head out without letting go of his prize, got stuck partway out with the bag bunched up around his ears, moonwalked back several steps, then made a dash for the dog door with the inside-out bottom of the bag still gripped in his teeth.

URRRGH! That's all I can really say when this happens. Because of course, it can only happen when one of us (who shall remain nameless) forgets to secure the garbage can under the sink. It really isn't the Jeeps's fault if he can't resist those delicious treats we ungrateful humans thoughtlessly toss in the trash – dogs are scavengers, hard-wired to sniff out and make use of the leftovers we discard.

Still, I will note: Tater has never once taken part in this time-honored canine ritual. He doesn't get into the garbage, counter surf, chew furniture, bark endlessly for no apparent reason, or do any of the other annoying dog things I worried about when I was thinking about getting a dog. When – after booting the Jeeps out of the house and cleaning up the mess – I headed back to bed for another hour of sleep, Tater was still there, curled up in a ball under the comforter with his head on my pillow. Mr. A likes to say this is proof of his general wimpiness and lack of robust dog-like qualities (which the Jeeps possesses in such abundance), but to me it meant only one thing: my spot was still warm.

Postscript: I didn't have the heart to punish the Jeeps for long. I let him back in after the mess was cleaned up, gave him his breakfast and fluffed up the blanket in his new heated dog bed. Merry Christmas, Mr. Jeeps!

Also, I am babysitting the editor's six-month-old yellow lab puppy under my desk at work this week. She's very cute, as well as a good reminder of what it's really like to live with a baby animal who's still just learning the rules of being part of human society. Tater was so easy as a puppy – I didn't even have to house train him, he already knew! I only hope our next puppy is as good as him.

Here comes the sun

Well, we made it! Every year it happens, and every year it feels like a miracle: the return of the light!

After a day or two of drizzly fog and rain (which I also love), this morning I woke up to a beautiful pink and gold sunrise in a clear blue sky. What a lovely way to begin a new season.

Starting tomorrow, I will be offline for several days visiting family in Utah, where I hear they have lots of fluffy white snow to play in. I'm excited, too, to do some drawings and photos for a couple of art projects I've had in mind involving my family. As always I wish I had more time to spend on this trip ... but I'm grateful for any time at all, and can't wait to see everyone. I'll also be meeting a new nephew for the first time – something I always enjoy.

Warm wishes and bright blessings to all!

Staying warm

Aren't these pretty? They're knitting needles topped with beads - Beadles, they're called. I'm obsessed with beautiful handmade tools and would order these in several sizes if I thought I could be assured of getting some cool ones, but I have a personal ban on spending money on anything that says "let us choose a color for you." Nine times out of ten, I will be dissatisfied with their choice – and I can see a couple in this bucket of Beadles that I would not be pleased to own.

Cool idea, though – possibly something I could make for myself! Right now everything I'm knitting is in the round, though, so I'm sticking with plain old bamboo double-pointed needles – no colored beads, fancy carved ends or decoration of any kind, other than the number stamped on each one. I'm making arm-warmers and fingerless gloves, a couple of different kinds in a couple of different yarns, after trying on a pair belonging to a friend at work and finding them to be incredibly effective at, well, warming my arms. My whole body felt warmer while wearing them, in fact, and I've since discovered that this is an article of clothing that used to be part of every working person's winter wardrobe for this very reason. Unlike gloves, these leave your fingers free to work, work, work – work to the bone in the freezing cold – work until they bleed and fall off, leaving crimson splashes in the snow ....

Rather than knitting according to a pattern, I'm inventing my own on these, which I will post along with a picture as soon as I finish figuring out what I'm doing. The first pair was easy – just a couple of long tubes. Then I decided to do a pair with thumbs, and I've had to rip out my work three or four times and start over after realizing that the stripes were not going the way I wanted them to. I think I've finally got it together now, though. All that's left is to finish the first one, wash, block, measure and adjust, and then knit the second one in its exact mirror image. And then the magical finishing touch that makes all the difference when you're wearing something to keep warm and not just because it's pretty: I'm going to line them in minky fleece. I know it's all polyester, but I can't help loving that stuff! It's just so ... minky. Minky soft. And warm.

I found this page of links to free knitting patterns, including one for these ruffly Victorian style wrist warmers that I will be playing with after the holidays. Looking at the picture again, though, I can see already that I'm not going to be able to stick with the pattern – I think I will need to make them come down a little farther onto the hand, and add a lightweight tube inside with a hole to stick my thumb through, so that the palms and backs of my hands will be covered as well as my wrists. I'm not so sure I like the way the ribbing is finished on the wrist part, either ... looks like it would kind of bulk up under your sleeve.

Usually when I make things like this I end up doing at least two pairs – the first in which I make (and attempt to correct) all the mistakes but soldier on to completion just because I'm kind of stubborn that way, and the second, which is usually perfect. I'm not making any promises as to the timing of all this ... and it may be next winter or even later before I actually deliver ... but if anyone is interested in having the first pair of these after I finish them, just let me know how to reach you and they're yours. Of course, you'll have to let me choose the color for you.

Pictures I would have taken

Had I had a decent camera:

1. Black crows on a frozen field, recently plowed and rough with clods of dirt and dry grass. About a hundred of them (the birds), also spilling into a walnut orchard next to the field.

2. A row of six old black fence posts topped with white squares of sparkling frost crystals. Sagging wires between posts also festooned with frost.

3. A big circle of clear ice floating within a thin ring of water, reflecting pink clouds in an orange sky at sunrise – the puddle that forms at the end of our driveway when it rains.

4. Tater standing chest deep in the creek holding a long wet stick in his mouth, wearing his red studded Christmas collar.

5. Black-barked trees with bare branches against a painfully blue sky – the thinnest scattering of yellowing leaves still clinging to the very tips of the top branches, like a crown – one twisted and curled into the shape of a tiny bird flying; one happy and generous, like an open hand; one eye-shaped, long and thin, that shivered violently whenever the air moved it.

It's cold here this week! Forty-four degrees in my bedroom the other night; thirty-nine outside at ten o'clock the next morning. Thank goodness for down comforters and wooly head scarves.

On Sundy afternoon in a fit of angst over something I need to talk about but can't, I took myself and the dogs back to the creek to listen to the water falling over the rocks and try to clear my head out. I walked up and down a bit, sat on one of the boulders I like for twenty minutes, then moved to another. Finally I found a place where the rocks are small – not quite gravel, but golf-ball sized – and stretched out on my back next to the waterfall to look at the sky. The ground was cold but the sun was warm. I fell asleep and woke up an hour later with a breeze on my face, leaves in my hair, and a splash of creek water courtesy of Tater's favorite waterfront exercise: "shake your body," a command I use in an attempt to direct his shaking off of water from his fur away from wherever I am standing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes he just shakes wherever he feels like it.

I sat up and covered my face, and when I opened my eyes again, Mr. A was climbing down the creek bank to find me. We went back in and had a fire, and grilled cheese for dinner, and a long movie that felt perfect for the way I'd felt: Remains of the Day.

Today at work I found out that the project I'm now collaborating on, which is supposed to go to press on February 2, is nowhere near where it should be by this stage in the game. My fear is that this lack of planning is going to cause such a time crunch at the last minute that we'll end up with another substandard-looking piece – only this time it'll be my name at the top. So frustrating to have responsibility for the final product without any authority to make things happen, while the people who do have authority have no experience and no idea what needs to be done.

Another day at the office!

Ms. Dewey's dog

I know I must be the last person on the planet to find out about Microsoft's latest bizarro scheme to capture at least some tiny portion of the hip and cool computer user demographic ... Yes, I have finally met the infamous Ms. Dewey.

As I wrote in my comment to Rozanne's review, my initial encounter with this character actually caused me to break out into a sweat (for real!) from sheer embarrassment. Because this Ms. Dewey, she's brash, bold, and in-your-face to the extreme! When the window finally opened on her bleak and strangely futuristic office environment, she was screaming orders at someone just off-screen. Then, when she realized I was watching, she started insulting me. And when she got bored with that, she started simpering and writhing around like a thirteen-year-old practicing making out with herself in the mirror, or lip-syncing to some horrible pseudo-pornographic pop song.

Shocking behavior for a character that, if you think about it, started out as an animated paper clip!

AAANYway, after I calmed myself down (these way-out-there types of folks always make me feel wildly self-conscious, for some reason), I went back to look at her some more. I still hated her. And apparently, she hated me too. Or at least, she kept insulting me continuously the entire time I waited (and waited, and waited) for the results to my searches.

When I finally got tired of watching her, I went to Google to find out what the hell! And I found out that Ms. Dewey has a softer side. A side that loves her big spotted dog, a dog who bears an uncanny resemblance (if you can ignore the spots) to the darling and loveable Taterman.

So, to summarize: as a search engine, I pronounce Ms. Dewey a miserable failure for reasons that are well-documented all over the world wide web. But I give her a couple of points for the dog.

Poodle with an afro

I saw one today – a poodle with an afro. Driving to the post office this morning in the pouring rain, I saw a tiny white poodle zip out the door of the dog salon and take off down the sidewalk, with his person (in a long yellow rain cape) in hot pursuit. The dog's entire body was shaved, while the fur on his head was as long as poodle fur gets, and pouffed up and out as big and round and fluffy as anything I've ever seen.

Within a half a block I also saw a man walking a bassett hound who was so fat her stomach was literally within an inch of the ground. The man was carrying an umbrella and smoking a pipe and seemed oblivious as his dog neatly sidestepped the chilly puddles that would surely have dampened her poor little naked belly.

I always feel sad for thin-furred animals in the winter. They never should've been bred to be so naked!

At home, we are in the midst of an attempted coup d'dog. Twice in the last month or so, Tater has not exactly attacked, but sort of aggressively harrassed the Jeeps in front of me – once over who gets to sit on the couch, and once over a piece of crust from a grilled cheese sandwich that he'd somehow snuck in and left lying on the floor (he often leaves food unfinished, but freaks out if another dog shows any interest in it. That's why they only eat when we're there to supervise, and they never get left alone with any food at all – either of them.).

My theory is that he's been noticing Jeepers' gradual decline, and is starting to think this might be a good time to challenge his status as the top dog in our house. It used to be, they both sat on the couch with us, and both joined us in bed – Jeepers first, then Tater. Now the Jeeps is too frail to jump up onto furniture, or to get down again if he does get up there, so he lies on the floor at our feet while Tater gets all the couch and bed space. Also, because he's up close to us while the Jeeps is down on the floor, Tater is now getting the vast majority of the full-body snuggles and pets.

It just dawned on me while writing this: he probably thinks this means we've demoted the Jeeps.

We still feed Jeepers first, and the other night I found out just how important this really is to them. I usually fill both bowls at the same time, then put Jeepers' bowl down on one side of the kitchen, and then Tater's on the other side. On this occasion, though, I was filling the bowls on the table, which is right next to Tater's eating area. The house was in chaos (dinner on the stove, dogs milling around, phone ringing, etc. etc.) so to save a few seconds I put Tater's bowl down first, then leapt across the room to give the Jeeps his bowl, figuring Jeepers would follow me across the kitchen to eat his own dinner in his own area.

That did not happen. The second I stepped away from that first bowl, the Jeeps was on it, even though it wasn't his bowl, his food, or his area! All he cared about was that it was the first bowl on the floor – ergo, it belonged to him.

I've read all about the social lives of dogs – I know that dogs don't think like people, and that it's best for people to respect and support the heirarchies the dogs establish for themselves, rather than trying to force them into some artificial kind of social order that satisfies only their own human ideas about how animals "should" behave. When Tater and I first moved in with Jeepers and Mr. A, we (the humans) assumed that the Jeeps was the Alpha dog. He was older, he was more aggressive, and he lived there first. But maybe we were wrong. Or maybe the heirarchy is shifting.

Personally, I don't care who the Alpha dog is – I just don't want any fighting. I especially don't want the Jeeps to get hurt; Tater is half his age and about 25 lbs bigger, and the way he was acting the other night was making me very nervous. So I got the number of a trainer who's supposed to be very good, who will be coming over after Christmas to help us evaluate the situation. Until then, these are the new house rules for dogs at Chez Tinarama:

1. Tater will be asked to sit-stay before he gets his dinner, and the bowls get put away (not left empty on the floor) as soon as dog dinner is over.

2. Tater will stay on the floor with the Jeeps when we're sitting in the living room.

3. Jeeps will receive equal pets (I confess I feel kind of guilty, now that I've realized how much I've been neglecting this).

4. Both dogs will be walked at least once a day, rather than just letting them run around the yard on their own. More exercise would do us all good, and walking dogs together is supposed to be a good way to help them bond AND re-affirm your own place as the pack leader – another area where I think I've been kind of slacking off a bit lately.

I have some more ideas I'll be running by the trainer. Dog people? Any suggestions?

Soup of the evening, beautiful soup

I'm pretty sure I've written here before about how much I hate to cook, but I don't think I've written much yet about how much I love to cook. Finally, a new topic!

The condensed version: I never really learned how to cook because I saw cooking as a chore and a drudge. Whenever I thought about it, I would say to myself either "I don't know how to cook," or "I don't like to cook." Then, I hooked up with a man who loves to cook – nay, LIVES to cook! – and by a long process of education, am realizing that 1) I actually do know how to cook, and 2) sometimes I even enjoy it.

Today I add to that list: 3) I'm actually getting to be kind of good at cooking! Or at least, I can now make things I like, and I'm not just talking about buttered toast, brownies and steamed vegetables (the holy trinity of the first 40 years of my life as a cook).

It's actually gotten to the point that sometimes I even read food blogs. To me, these go in the same category as knitting blogs, crafty blogs, photo blogs ... a place to look for inspiration, but only in very small doses, lest I come to see own efforts as lackluster and amateurish, and get discouraged, and go back to eating all my meals in restaurants. Actually, one of the cooler things about learning how to cook good things is that now, restaurants are not the only place I can go to get something healthy, satisfying and delicious. On more than one occasion recently I have interrupted myself while contemplating what and where to eat ... by suddenly realizing, "I kinda want to make my own damn dinner tonight!" Shocking!

Like this soup I made last night. I was in the mood for mushrooms, and there was a big jar of stock left over from the chicken we'd roasted earlier this week. A quick stop at the grocery store on my way home from work, and a half hour later I was sipping the steaming fragrant broth of my new favorite:

Spicy Mushroomy Chickeny Soup of Luv

Stock: Take one big roasting chicken and stuff a bunch of garlic and lemon slices in between the skin and the meat. Roast on a bed of carrots, celery and onions until the skin is crispy and golden and the meat thermometer tells you it's done. Take off the meat, then put everything that's left in a stock pot with enough water to mostly cover it, and boil until the bones start to come apart. Strain into jars – that's your stock. After it cools down, scoop the fat off the top. You can use it by the teaspoon to add a little flavor to your dogs' food – they love it! But a little goes a long way (according to the vet).

Soup: Chop up a bunch of carrots, onions and Shiitake mushrooms, and saute them in a little olive oil until they start to smell good. Heat some stock gently, until it melts, then taste it – if it's too strong, add a little water until it tastes right to you. Put in the vegetables and some of the chicken, if you have any left. Bring everything just up to a simmer, to heat everything through. Then you can add fish sauce (if you like fish sauce), chili flakes or chili oil (as hot as you like), and coconut milk if you want to do a little Thai thing. Stir it all up and taste it again. When you're happy with the flavors, drop in a couple of big handfuls of chopped up bok choy and some chopped green onions and fresh cilantro and stir those in. Then squeeze in the juice of one Meyer lemon and stir it up again. Then, put it in bowls and sprinkle some more cilantro on top, or a little toasted sesame oil if you like that too.

Okay, so the directions aren't so precise ... But hey, it's my first cooking blog entry ever! And the soup is ever so yummy. It's pretty, too!

Now I really need to get a better camera.

P.S. I just had a very interesting meeting at work ... the upshot of which is that I am supposed to be getting a new job title soon – Creative Director! That would be a nice thing to have on my business card. Heck, it would be nice to have a business card, period!

Femur

This is a picture of a broken femur, kind of like the one my friend suffered on Sunday when she was Hit By A Truck. No, I am not kidding. I just found out about it from my friend C, who was my first new friend when I moved here twelve years ago and who also happens to be this woman's daughter. We saw each other at the cafe at lunch, and she had her very sensitive and impressionable three-year-old with her so didn't want to go into a lot of details, but I am supposed to call her tonight to find out exactly what the hell happened. All I know now is that she's in the hospital with a broken femur and a shattered pelvis, and that she's going to be there for at least a few more weeks.

I managed to get through my first 31 years of life without ever having a tooth filled* or a bone broken, and until then I somehow assumed that because teeth and bones are hard, like fingernails, damage to teeth and bones couldn't be much more painful than having your nails cut. Then I broke two bones in rapid succession – my heel on the Fourth of July, by landing on it on the gravel bed of a shallow pool of water at the bottom of a waterfall I had been climbing, and my right wrist a couple of months later, by stepping off the side of a road to avoid being hit by a car, only to fall backwards into a deep ditch that had been obscured by leaves. I learned that bones have a lot of nerves in them, and that they take a long, long time to heal, and that even after that they still ache sometimes in the places where they were broken.

Being with my bones as they healed was a huge revelation for me. Healing in general always fascinates me – watching the skin knit itself back together around a cut, tracing the neat seam of an old scar, rubbing the new fuzz on the head of a friend who lost her thick waist-length hair in chemotherapy last summer. Even when the body doesn't heal (because sometimes it doesn't), I'm still in awe of everything it can do, and does do, every day we're alive. Breathing – a miracle! The heart – another! The liver, the eyes, even boring parts like the shoulderblade and the colon – there isn't a single part of my body I don't love. And really, I can't say I even find any of them boring – what's boring about shoulderblades? They're great!

Last night I was watching this weight loss show on tv in which they were talking to all these people who've lost a large amount of weight. This woman was shown a lifesize cardboard cutout of herself at the beginning of the contest – almost a hundred pounds heavier than she is now. The horror on her face as she looked at her former self was painful to see. Then the host asked, "What do you want to say to the old you?"

My response to that question was instantaneous, surreal and super emotional. Somehow in my mind the fat picture of the woman on tv merged with an image of myself during my own worst years, when everything was breaking in my life – my marriage, my bones, my confidence, my sanity – and all I wanted to do was embrace that woman and cry with gratitude. "This fat woman is the person who brought you Here," I wanted to tell her now-thinner self. "She gave you the life you have now and you don't ever need to be ashamed of her."

I'm sure everyone on that show has been challenged and grown by doing what they had to do to lose so much weight. But I really hope everyone who sees it will clue in that the fat person in the "before" picture is a hero, too. She made all the rest of it possible.

Getting back to my friend in the hospital, I'm trying to imagine what it must be like to be totally immobilized by such serious injuries. It might be a long time before she's fully mobile again, and even then, her life will never be the same as it was before this happened. And yet, C told me she's already started physical therapy. The body starts healing itself the moment it's injured – you don't have to tell it to do anything, it just does it. A whole, healthy body is a great blessing I want never to take for granted.

All this is good to remember at times when I feel disappointed with or disapproving of my own body, which still happens to me every once in awhile, especially when trying on clothes. I do think I'm becoming less vain and more compassionate as I get older, though. Yet another thing to be thankful for.

* I've been lucky in the tooth department; I've still never had any cavities, fillings, big chips or other major damage (knocks wood). And I still have my wisdom teeth – in a little plastic box in my underwear drawer!

Smells like teen spirit Tabu

Just a short post today, to report a near freakout I experienced this morning in the perfume aisle at Long's Drugstore. Every time I go in there I get sidetracked by something – today I went in for a bottle of saline and ended up hypnotized by the hundreds of different flavors and formulations of toothpaste, a small and very strange selection of sewing notions, rows upon rows of cheap makeup, and finally, the cheap perfume section. I've been thinking about Love's Baby Soft ever since Rozanne wrote about it a few weeks ago, and now, as if by magic, there it was on the bottom shelf at Long's.

It smelled exactly how I remembered it, only stronger! Not satisfied merely to sniff the box, I sprayed a spritz up into the air and jumped back out of the way so as not to become permeated with it. No such luck – I saw the mist landing on my sleeve and instantly sneezed. That was when I noticed that the shelves were full of all the cheap drugstore perfumes I remember from my childhood – Jean Nate, Wind Song, Jontue, Emeraude and even my secret favorite, Tabu – to name only a few.

Of course I had to smell them all. And suddenly I couldn't stop myself! I was smelling even perfumes I know I don't like, just to see if I still don't like them, as well as all kinds of new ones I'd never heard of – for instance, stinky designer "fragrances" named after B-list celebrities like Shania Twain and the Olsen twins. Weird!

By the time I got out of that aisle I reeked to high heaven. All I wanted to do was buy my stuff and get out to the car where I could change into a fresh sweater. And that was when the near-panic began. The store had seemed almost deserted when I went in, but now that I was ready to check out it was somehow seething with millions upon millions of white-haired senior citizens clutching paperback books and heating pads and gallon jugs of inexpensive wine ... Every cashier in the place had at least five people lined up in front of her (I did actually count), and it ended up taking me almost 20 minutes to finally get out of there and out into the fresh air in the parking lot.

It's now the end of the day and I can still smell a hint of Tabu when I move – I must have got some in my hair.

O happy day

Today is the first day in two weeks that my office has been warm. Hallelujah! First it was the air conditioning that could not be turned off. Then, it was the heater that could not be turned on. Finally, it was the broken thermostat that could not be repaired. I've been wearing a hat and scarf and a full suit of capilene long underwear to work under my clothes every day since before Thanksgiving, hunching over the tiny little space heater hidden under my desk and clutching my hot water bottle with frozen, curled up fingers. On two occasions last week, it was actually warmer outdoors than it was at my desk – going out for a walk at lunch, I had to take off several layers to avoid sweating to death.

The heating and cooling guys finally figured out the problem while I was out for lunch today though, and I celebrated by going into the bathroom and taking off all my thermal underpinnings, rolling them into a ball and stashing them in my bag. I can't take off the hat, because under it my hair is in a disgraceful state – but I'm glad to know I won't have to wear it again tomorrow. Or the scarf, either! Hooray!

The hat I am wearing today, by the way, is the one that was missing for a month or more during the fall. Mr. A found it in a pile of sweaters last week and I was so happy to have it back that it's only just this moment occurring to me to wonder: How would it have gotten there? It's possible Tater might have stashed it there somehow; he does like to pick things up and carry them around the house. Hmm.

About this picture: it's from the cover of this book of felting projects, which I purchased today more out of shock than because of any interest in felting, because it struck me as I stood and stared at it at the checkout counter at the yarn store that I am wearing an outfit today that is uncannily similar to what the girl in the picture is wearing. It freaked me out!

Why did it freak me out? Because it made me feel like I was in junior high again, worrying about whether someone might think I was being a copycat – the worst thing in the world to be! When will I ever be old enough not to care about stuff like that? Probably never. I seem to have a maddeningly enduring confidence in my own originality ... maddening because it's so obviously a false confidence, since it's well known that there is no new thing under the sun, ever. And here's the proof! Good for me to remember, especially after yesterday's bruised ego-fest.

I do still enjoy my own ideas, though! And I got the book. I took it as a sign, of what I'm not sure. But I've never felted anything before (not on purpose, anyway) and I figured now is as good a time as any to take a go at it. Maybe I'll make these funny corsages!

That's silly, though – why would anyone need a pattern for that? I'll invent my own. The book is still good for inspiration, though. And I love that girl's skirt. Maybe I will do some copycatting, after all!

All I want to write about is my PMS symptoms (processing)

But that's so boring, right? For some reason I seem to be unable to just snap out of it this time – maybe I'm becoming perimenopausal!

This morning I had another run-in with a certain person I work with, who apparently believes that their job involves not only doing their own work, but also telling me how to do my work as well. Obviously I can't go into details, but I am taking note of how it makes me feel about my work. Not good, mostly.

A few months ago I was invited to submit designs for a new product that was supposed to be the nicest, slickest, most high-end, beautiful amazing thing this company has ever produced. I put together three comps, then delivered two or three rounds of refinements on the one they liked best. Production was then outsourced to some friend of the editor's, who is now getting all the credit for creating this gorgeous thing, even though (I just saw the preview copy) the entire design, right down to the page layouts and color palettes, is all mine. The only credit I received was as a "contributing artist," same as everyone else in my department. That does not make me feel good about working here.

So that's one end of it - the end on which I contribute my best work and receive zero credit.

The other end is the one where I put together what I consider a really nice feature spread, only to be told by someone who is NOT in charge (who is nevertheless for whatever reasons still allowed to push everyone around) that I must not do this or that, must change this other thing, and by the way – blah blah blah, the point being, that this is in a way the opposite of the former situation, in that here, I am doing my best work and receiving only criticism and blame.

It's funny though – it just occurred to me that the way I feel when this person comes along and ruins my work may be about the same way that person feels when they think I haven't done justice to the stuff they've contributed to the piece. Well, I don't care. The work we do here is not about kissing the ass of one person's enormous ego – it's collaborative by nature, and it makes me mad that everybody bows down and allows this person to bully me, just so they won't have to deal with the person's temper tantrums if some infinitesimal detail is not to their liking.

The way I see it, if you want to be a capital-A "Artiste," you can do that on your own time. This is why I didn't make a big fuss about the "contributing artist" credit, even though it bothers me a lot to see that putz getting patted on the back for my design – because I know this work does not belong to me. It's a product that I get paid to create for someone else.

So yeah – I guess what's really bothering me is that this whole episode is making me feel like this one person is being allowed to retain creative control of their work AND receive public credit for it, while I am not being allowed to do either of those things. They're being treated like an Artiste, and I'm being treated like a mindless drone. I don't like that.

Well! Good to get clear about that. I still don't feel any less hostile and aggressive toward this person right now, though.

I will also say: Now this is more like it! When I first started this online journal lo these many years ago, I spent a lot of time processing through annoyances large and small to get to the bottom of what was really bothering me (my old tag line used to be, "tinarama: it's cheaper than therapy!"). This all of a sudden started to feel like that again, and I liked it. Now that I know what the real problem is, I can solve it.

The solution being, that I can now re-enter my working day with a clear understanding that what I'm getting paid for here is to create work that satisfies the people I am selling it to. For now at least, my ability to do that is what enables me to do my own work, which exists solely to satisfy ME.

Also, if I'm taking my day job this personally, it's probably a sign that I need to be spending more time enjoying doing my own work. So I'm going to get right on that now.

Beeswax, torch, dog run

I'm melting and filtering beeswax tonight and man, is it sticky. It looked so clean and white when I took it out of the hive, but now that it's all melted down there's all this fine brown ... stuff ... I don't know what all is in it (besides dead ants and bee hair), but when I pour it through the filter about an eighth of the volume of what I've melted ends up being this substance that sticks in the filter like dust, only all melted together with sticky wax. I started out with a half gallon Ziploc bag full of wax flakes, and have ended up with a solid slab of beautiful pure beeswax about four by four by a half inch. Nice.

Last week I forgot to mention that I did get a torch and practice firing some of those PMC pieces with it. As I feared, I ruined the first piece – melted the detail right out of it, and then decided to go ahead and see how much more I could melt it, just to get a feel for the torch. The top of the piece went from flat to round, leaving me with a half inch square solid silver cabochon that I embellished with files and metal stamps. It actually turned out kind of cool once I polished it up. No idea what I'm going to do with it, but eventually something will come to me. And it was fun to play with those metal stamps again. I bought a bunch of different sizes when I was learning silversmithing and haven't done anything with them for at least four years. You can stamp little words and sentences into almost anything metal with them – tools, lawn mowers, mailboxes, lids of canning jars ... whatever.

Anyway, after that first item I did get the hang of it and am now pretty confident I can torch fire at least the little pieces without destroying them. So, no need to buy a kiln, which means more money for supplies and tools. Yay! I love tools.

Other news of the boring: I accidentally bit the inside of my bottom lip yesterday, and today I started counting how many times I bit it again, and lost track after 12. The last time I bit it so hard I actually sank to my knees on the kitchen floor and cried for about a half a minute, I was so mad. It's now so swollen I may have to go on a liquid diet until it heals – every time I try to eat something, I bite it again.

I have also wiped muddy dog footprints off the kitchen floor at least 12 times in the last two hours. I had decided to kind of let it go for a few days last week, and finally today I had had it – the floor just inside the dog door was disgustingly black with dried mud, with footprints all the way across to the living room ... I spent a half hour on my hands and knees scrubbing. Of course, within minutes it was dirty again, though not as dirty as before. The good news is, I think I almost have Mr. A convinced that we really should route the dog door through the garage first, and THEN into the kitchen – instead of directly into the kitchen – because then we could set up a whole automatic dog foot cleaning system that they would have to walk across to get into the house. As it is, we have little mats on the back step and also inside the door, but there isn't room to set up anything really effective.

I also told him my latest great idea for the yard – about how instead of letting the dogs have 24-7 free access to the entire fenced area of the back yard, we could create a separate, smaller dog run area on one side of the yard and route their outdoor access through the garage and into the dog run. I've been campaigning to move the fence back about 50-100 more feet to make the enclosed part of the property bigger and the fenceline less visible from the house, but Mr. A doesn't want the dogs to be able to get that close to the neighbors house – he envisions them standing at the fence and barking at deer and raccoons all night, and us having to slog all the way back there in the dark to drag them back in, which I have to admit I can imagine happening, too.

With a dog run we'd have the option of limiting their outdoor access whenever we want, like at night, and we could always leave the gate open to the rest of the yard when we wanted to give them more space. It'd be nice to have a smaller area to patrol for dog poop, and we're going to need a smaller, puppy-safe area next year anyway. Plus, if we lay down a load of wood chips or some other dog park type of ground cover, I think we can do a lot to minimize mud in the house during the rainy season.

So that's my latest brainstorm. I think he likes the idea. For now, I've pledged to be vigilant in my defense of the floor, and wipe up the footprints every time I see them. Not that I don't have anything better to do with my Saturday nights!

Satsuma 2006

A small point of light appeared in an otherwise kind of dreary week last night when my beloved Satsuma tangerines FINALLY arrived at the grocery store. This is a day I look forward to every year and it couldn't have arrived at a better time. I bought a big bag full but waited until this morning to eat the first one, so I could enjoy it sitting in the sun in my favorite blue adirondack chair, out in the space where the alleged studio is going to be. I really needed that little moment of pleasure.

The photo here is the same one I used on Satsuma Day last year. I charged up the camera battery overnight planning to celebrate with a new photo documenting the occasion, only to find that even with a full charge I can now only take one photo before the camera informs me the battery pack needs to be changed. Maybe it's the charger, or maybe it's the battery (it's a new one, though), or maybe the camera is just past its prime. Whatever it is, I'm sick of it! I want a new camera. I want to be able to decorate this blog with good pictures of the beautiful things in my life.

So, I'm starting to do some research. The camera I have (the first generation Canon Elph) was great when it was new, but it's only 2.1 megapixels – crap by today's standards, even for viewing online. I like some of the new Elphs – or Powershots, as they're now called – and the quality seems to be good for the price (I don't want to spend more than about three or four hundred bucks). Anyone have a camera they love? I am taking suggestions.