Cioppino

I am but 1/4 Italian. If you were to chop up all of my body parts and separate them out according to their country of origin, you would have a lovely pile of my digestive system happily waving this at you. While other girls gorge on chocolate, i can not leave a piece of garlic bread uneaten. give me some kind of tomato based sauce for me to dip it in and it's game over.

My mom's body parts would all be in one pile. she was all Polish, but she cooked Italian like her married last name dictated her to. It confused me when i was younger, to be honest. what do you mean my mom is not Italian? She just made us chicken piccata for dinner! and it was so gooood! i just don't geeet it!

A part of this "no one in my family is Italian but me" tradition was that every Christmas Day, my mom would make us all a big pot of cioppino (pronounced "Shu-pee-no). Cioppino is a seafood stew, invented in San Francisco by Italian fishermen. At some point, all of my cousins either got knocked up or knocked someone else up, so they had kids to tend to on Xmas day. We moved the tradition to New Year's day because, frankly, i was a total pest and was not willing to let the tradition die. It was really the only thing i ever liked about Christmas, and if i just had to wait one more week i could.....as long as i got my yearly cioppino.

And as so many of my stories go, we now come to the "and then mom died" part. There was talk of whether or not we would continue the tradition, but none of us knew the recipe and i think it is just scary to sit down your gaggle of family members and hand them a dish that you are totally winging, when they have been eating the perfected version of it for 2o something years.

A few years ago, i decided to try and make some. Not for my whole family (skeeery!), but just for Neil and I. I looked online for recipes. And that is when i learned that I knew how to make cioppino all along....not because the recipes looked so familiar. it was the exact opposite. Some called for saffron. wrong. that is bouillabaisse. All say that the freshest fish is required (technically, that is true about all fish dishes), but then some add a green pepper. um, if you had the freshest fish ever, would you waste it on a soup? and then throw a green pepper, the most invasive flavor on the planet, in with the soup? red wine? this isn't some heavy stew. it is seafood! i even saw recipes with alaskan king crab. i don't think that is what the fishermen from san francisco used, when they had a whole bay full of dungeoness crab directly under their butts.

So i got to it. i gathered the ingredients from my memories of helping mom for all those years and i made a pretty stellar pot of cioppino. the smell....it is so specific.....it has stages, from the onions and garlic sauteeing in olive oil and butter, to when you add the spices, wine, and tomatoes. then, at the very end, you add your seafood and it all shifts and you know that you have succeeded. i totally did it.

i am sitting here, in Denver, currently breaking another Law of The Cioppino Recipes According to the Rest of The World. it is virtually impossible for me to "use the freshest fish available", but i am at stage two of the smellathon right now....wine, tomatoes, and spices have been added. the longer it cooks, the better it will taste. my stomach is growling already. i will have my yearly cioppino, people. it will be done!

So here we are, at the end of another year. there were some big changes this year and i have no idea what next year will hold. i haven't made a list of resolutions. right now, i am just thinking that my mom left me with so many things that are so ingrained that i don't even know they are there most of the time. they may not be how everyone else would have done it (why so many pets? volunteering is a waste of time. gay people aren't normal. here is a green pepper for your fish!!!), but i like how my mom did it. i really really do.

~~UPDATE~~
it has been brought to my attention that maybe i should share the darn recipe. here it is, from my memory, and not very specific at all...

equal parts olive oil and butter
1 onion
couple of ribs of celery
4 or so cloves of garlic.

chop the above veggies and saute in however much butter and olive oil you need to do that until soft, adding the garlic only long enough to smell it (less than a minute) before you add:

i jar of clam juice (i think it only comes in one size and it seems 8 ouncey)
approx. 2 cups of white wine
a 28 oz can of whole tomatoes with their juice. squish the tomatoes in your hands to break them up.
a box of chicken broth
1 tablespoon of dried basil (or twice as much fresh if you have it)
ditto on some parsley
a bay leaf
salt to taste but i, being a person who salts salad and pizza, rarely need to add salt because of the clam juice

simmer as long as you can. at least an hour or two. you want the broth to stay light and thin. resist all pasta sauce making memories where you urge your food to thicken up. you can add more broth and/or wine as you go if you need. just don't make fishy spaghetti sauce.
add whatever fish you can get your hands on, and dungeoness crab. if your fish dude won't break up the crab for you, get a new fish dude. if not possible, you'll have to bang up the crab a bit before you put it in the pot. add prawns in the shell. you can add clams, mussels, scallops, any firm white fish. i add the crab first, and then everything else according to size; biggest to smallest, as to not overcook anything.

for eating, you will need a nutcracker and those pokey things for your crab, a bowl for shells and used up napkins, and lots of garlic bread to sop up the broth. you may need a bib if you are something of a sloppy eater. i won't judge. the point is to get messy, anyways.

i apologize if the above recipe reads a bit Rachel Ray-ish. Her recipes are vague because she is annoying. mine are vague because i don't have a paid staff to follow me around and write my crap down for me. (there are about 7 million other reasons that rachel ray is annoying, but there are already enough blogs devoted to that subject. google away, fellow haters!)

enjoy the foods and if it sucks, add some saffron or something.

You Can Count On Me

A million years (or 8) ago, Molly told me that i absolutely HAD to go see a movie called "you can count on me". she even said that i, of all people, would love this movie. that is the kind of movie recommendation i listen to. she knows me way better than siskel or ebert or the current douchebaggy manifestations of "at the movies" on the Reelz channel.

i was living on lowest haight at the time. i was very single. YCCOM was only playing only at the embarcadero. i took the F train down there for a deluxe solo viewing. i was having a day....what can i say?


i watched this movie. mother effer did i watch this movie. and it ended. i walked outside, lit a cigarette and called molly. thank god she answered because i had some crying to do and crying on the phone to her made it look like maybe molly was breaking up with me, which is totally better than just looking like some basket case at the outdoor mall. so i cried and we talked. for like an hour. i hate the phone. this is a very big deal. and the funny thing is, the movie isn't particularly sad. it's way more humorous than sad. but it is just GOOD. it makes you feel and think. it hit a nerve and i saved about $200 on what could have been a trip to therapy that day.

now THAT is a movie.

i haven't felt that way since from a movie, and i watch a lot of movies. don't get me wrong, i love crappy blockbustery mind fuckers as much as the next proud american. but i also think that if actors and directors and such are going to call themselves "artists", then they best be creating some art every once in a while. not a bunch of famous dead actors sitting in a diner art. real art.

so, did i like any movies this year? of course. i already prattled on about Milk. but i have to say that, at the end of the day, i was most impressed by a robot and a man who acts like a robot. weird, because i am so squishy.

Wall-e gets an A+, in the literal sense. if grading still relies on the concept of a "C" being average and an A+ being exceptional, then Wall-e certainly deserves the grade. I am not a fan of animation. or rather, i am not impressed by it. a movie is a movie and it has a job to do that has nothing to do with the technology behind it. But still, wall-e delivers emotionally, visually, intellectually. disney's name comes beofre PIXAR but we all know the truth here. this movie is a total (pixar) love.

the other surprise emotion grabber? The Dark Knight. yeah, big blockbuster and all that. but who slipped Chris Nolan the memo that people would actually appreciate a little bit more? i saw it in the theater and i saw it at home. when we watched it at home, i was the annoying wife who kept having to pause the movie to explain why the movie was so good. if you would also like to be as annoying as i am, rent this movie.

there is a subcategory of movies that is so close to my heart. it is like "movies" stunningly beautiful stepsister...often overlooked because it is not considered "family". documentaries. i admit, i don't go to the theaters for them often, but we rent them like crazy.

Taxi to the Dark Side. see it. Just watch this movie because it is important and good.
Young at Heart. if you like to kick puppies then maybe you won't like this movie.

i am so sure there are other movies that are worth mentioning, but i suppose my whole point is that nothing has quite done what YCCOM did to me. movies are an important medium. but apparently we are only to be reminded of this every 9 years, not 8.

The First Annual Holiday Card Awards!

Happy Holidays everyone! I am enjoying this holiday season SO much that i decided to celebrate some of the warmth i received via the postal service during this joyous time of year. i even have pictures of all of the cards so you can really experience it with me.....the mail is all in for Christmas, so there would be no better time for such fun. join me, will you?

Our first award is titled "The card i received with the best landscape". There are so many different kinds of holiday cards, you know!

and the winner is......Modamas Fine Painting! Modamas Fine Painting painted our house in SF, so it was all pretty for selling. In all of the years i lived in California, my favorite apartment was right around the corner from where this pic was taken.


This leads me to our second award called "the card that made me the most homesick"
and the winner is.......

Modamas Fine Painting again! Wow! they are really starting strong!

Next is a very special award...."the card where my name was most accurately portrayed AND spelled". This is a tough one...i didn't change my name when i got married, i don't like certain nicknames, and my last name can be a doozy to spell. and the winner is?......

Modames Fine Painting Again! The got my name %100 perfectly!

And our final award. The most coveted award of all. It is the "this card is so special that it almost makes me forget about ALL of the other cards i received".

The Winner is.....
whatever. have you figured it out yet? we didn't get one single holiday card from anyone i ever met in california, including my family. not one card from a friend. none. wait.....except modama's fine painting.

maybe the day after christmas our mailbox will be overflowing with cards declaring happy holiday wishes from people that love and miss us and wish we never left California. If that is the case, those cards will be eligible for next year's awards. Hopefully there will be more categories next year.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

at this point, neil might suspect me of having a little thing goin' on with santa

seriously. it's like santa is my new BFF. i have proof:

you know what that is? it's a mother effing christmas tree. it's a beacon in our window, declaring our love for the big fat man in the red suit.

i also went to a cookie exchange with a bunch of catholic school teachers. man, can they put down some wine at 2pm on a sunday!

i did an ornament exchange, also. but this was just with some awesome ladies who can also put down quite a bit of wine. it was a dinner though, so it's not so scandalous.

i bought presents. i wrapped them. i even bought little sparkly gift tags. they will be shipped tomorrow cos they can't arrive late! it's christmas, people! get to it!

neil's sister will be coming over on x-mas day. i got a ham.

i even got a holiday tunes CD. it kind of sucks.

so my point is that i have realized my way around this christmas hell. it is for folks who eat, drink, shop, and like sparkly things. people knock valentines for being a holiday "invented by hallmark", but at least everyone's cards are on the table (ooh! pun!) for that one. christmas is supposed to be about the birth of christ. for those who believe, this should be a very large deal. but somehow it has been turned into a blow-up plastic santa lawn ornament competition for the masses. and these are the masses that believe! i declare that i will no longer see what Target calls christmas. i will make my own. and i will try to get neil to let us name our first born son "linus", as linus seems to be the only one that gets it. and he's a 5 year old cartoon character. sheesh. so on to more food, booze, and sparkles for me, i guess.......

part 2: rememer my shock at 15? try 1.....

and that was at the warmest time of the day. last time i checked, it was -9. minus 9 Fahrenheit which is 41 degrees colder than freezing. i am seriously considering converting to Celsius (just on an emotional level because i can't figure out how to reprogram our various thermometers). it's such a kick in the balls to hit zero and have nothing to show for it other than "now it is just really a lot more colder than before when it was really a lot cold and freezing already".

some of us are having a harder time adjusting than others. every time i step outside, the cold causes my throat and lungs to sieze up. it takes a bit of getting used to, is all i am saying.

and the dogs keep coming down with "snow toes". they haven't learned that this kind of cold necessitates their visits outside to be incredibly efficient. they dilly dally around and then inevitably have what i would call a "WTF" moment when their little toes are just too cold, too fast. they try to walk without the use of their feet. they don't know that this isn't possible. it's so pathetic that i can't even laugh like the heartless christmas hating biotch i am. poor pups....

merry christmas to all..... just 11 more days until the Best Day Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

our perfect dogs

some dogs are just born perfect:
but not our dogs. this was taken after moose coughed up (and out) one of the treats we were using to lure them into place. he coughed. treat flew. and he gobbled it down, for the second time.


rewind. first i had to just get the dogs to sit together, facing the same direction.
done!

then for the antlers. when moose graduated his basic obedience class, he was the first in his class to be able to tolerate wearing a party hat to celebrate. it's a simple enough process. show dog hat. treat. move hat closer to dog. treat. baby steps until you finally have trained the dog to associate the annoyance of a party hat on its head with treats.
sttttaaaaayyyy.....

success!


well, we never trained moose to tolerate items on matilda's head. silly us for not thinking that one through.
note: matilda antler in moose's mouth:


and to be honest, matilda was never really taught the party hat/treat game. she just tolerates our crap because she is insanely loyal and eager to please. she was nervous...ears back and eyes looking for reassurance.


maybe moose being equally humiliated made her feel better. because in time, they both seemed to relax and ease into it:

until it all fell to crap.....again.....and i just needed to give Tillies some scritchies as thanks.
i love our dogs. this is no secret. i loved them as much as i loved them until i saw this picture:

and then i loved them more. what a lovely mess they are. i wouldn't have it any other way.

15

i need to call Molly back. She left me a message yesterday..she left THE message yesterday. it went like this: "i hate thanksgiving. i hate christmas, too. i hate a lot of things, but i don't hate you." pretty much sums it up, don't you think? well, it does for me.

i tried to be a person who likes the holidays. i went to Target and got a little something for Walter, but he didn't really enjoy it.....
don't worry, we will try again. the hat is actually made for cats. the cats don't know this yet. but if christmas is going to suck for me, it is going to suck for EVERYONE.

i am normally not much of christmas shopper, either. but i tried. i bought gifts for friends. really cool gifts, too. and then the door latch to neil's office failed and moose chewed them all up when we went to the movies. merry christmas everyone...er....Moose.

yesterday, i put up christmas lights outside. just one string of the new fancy LED lights they make. not knowing where the extension cord was, i just put up the string so Neil could easily just connect the extension cord when he got home. but i put the string up backwards, so he had to redo it all anyways.

i am just very bad at this.

the one thing that i am enjoying is the weather. it is snowing. but it is 15 degrees out. 15 degrees is an adventure, people. that crap is COLD. numbingly cold. awesomely cold. everything is prettier in the snow. but i can only enjoy it up close for very short periods of time when the big 15 is in effect.

even my car is cuter in the snow:

somehow, while my body systematically shuts down in the cold, the dogs take to it particularly well...a leisurely squirrel patrol:


moose was made for snow.



i am working on it. it's my Obi One Kenobi as far as this whole holiday season thing goes so i'd better suck it up, huh? please send scarves.

Milk

i have long believed that one should not be allowed to live in San Francisco before seeing the movie The Times of Harvey Milk, the documentary that won the Academy Award for best documentary the year it came out. that year was 1984, by the way. 1984 was quite a while ago. Anyways, it is not so much that this movie is one of my favorites. i mean, how can a documentary be a favorite movie? rather, it has always just been the subject matter...important times in San Francisco, led by a man named Harvey Milk. It is the movie that documents not only this man's life and his impact on The World, but it also documents what makes me most proud to be from San Francisco.

So obviously, i have been waiting for the release of Milk with bated breathe. i remember, while we were still in SF, thinking "how awesome will it be to see Milk in Denver, and get to see all the SF scenery as an extra nostalgic bonus?" i can make a mountain from a mole hill like no one's business, folks. Screw T-Day. Milk is out.

So we went and we saw. i would break down the demographic as this: 80% older straight and gay couples who already knew the "story". A couple of first straight dates (the awkwardness of straight first dates is palpable and it can take over a whole theater if done badly enough), a few younger gay couples, and one straight married couple who used to live in SF and who have very high expectations of this movie because the wife is borderline obsessed with spreading the knowledge of the man Harvey Milk.

and it was good. it was really good. it was good enough that i have opened up the SF Toll to include this movie as well. it does its job and tells the story, and it does it really really well. in fact the most annoying thing about the movie is that it shows that we were smarter in '78 than we are now. we are repeating our previous mistakes, but worse than the first time. the only fault in the movie is that we, the people of 2008, are stupid and the movie tells us this. but that is not the movie's fault, i think. don't shoot the messenger....pun intended.

what struck me was the conversations outside of the theater when the movie was done. is Milk a gay story? Yes. Is it a San Francisco story? Yes. it is also a story about humanity and civil rights. It is an American story. it is a huge chunk of our...yes, "OUR" history and all the younger folks in the theater had no effing clue about any of it before tonight. but now, if they want to live in san francisco, i will let them. yay them! have fun trying to pay rent! ooh, wait...not where i was planning on going with this.

i watched an interview with Sean Penn once. he basically said that if you are making a movie and you need to heighten the situation to get an audience's reaction, you are actually providing a disservice. you don't get to lie to the audience. that cheapens the acting process and the experience of the movie-goer. it is a simple concept that i appreciate him vocalizing. he honored this in Milk.

so yeah, Milk was great. it gives a bit more insight into HM's personal life. But The Times of Harvey Milk is equally great. both tell the story, but the actors that play the real people are probably better looking. if that is where your priorities lie, get thee to a theater soon. if not, update your netflix, quick like.

oh sorry...i have gone on for so long about Milk. it must be all the twinkies i ate.

and now, onto the real important stuff......christmas FAIL:

The Mandatory T-day Thankful List

• Neil.

• Having so many pets that if one or some of them are being terribly annoying and/or ill-behaved, there is always another animal around who is being lovely. Most of the time, this weight falls on the guinea pigs. If they would stop going to the bathroom and if I wasn’t allergic to them, they would be Perfect.

• That Gertie came home after being attacked by a wild (or just very bad) animal. Wait, rewind. That Gertie lived through the attack and then came home with all of her broken parts and that there is such good veterinary care around here that sewed her back up.

• The radio show “wait wait don’t tell me” of which I can now listen to at my leisure via podcast. It makes me feel smart while I laugh. This is a stellar combo that I highly recommend.

• The Daily Show for the same reasons just mentioned.

• The television show “Life”. It’s just good AND it has a red head in the lead. In general, I am a huge fan of police dramas (special T-Day shout out to Benson and Stabler) but there is something refreshingly new about Life. Check it out if you haven’t already.

• Facebook and blogspot for allowing the world to keep in touch in such a passive fashion.

• The Arcade Fire. good band.
  

• Sarah Palin for motivating all those fence sitters to vote against her. Wait, that wasn’t on purpose? But she was SO good at it!

• Our neighbor for bringing over fresh tarragon from her garden. How did I go that long without knowing how yummy fresh tarragon is?

• Satsuma oranges for always being easy to peel, seedless, and as sweet as can be. You rule over all other orangey citruses. Really, the only thing that keeps Cuties at the top is their little stickers. I mean, would Finney get all excited if I put a sticker on her that said “satsuma”? no. so all the moms buy cuties. I get it. I just don’t like it.

• Teenage vampire crap and yes I did already go and see the Twilight movie and I liked it, too. (Edward should have been more sparkly, though. darn you low budget!)
  

• Wind chimes. I need to get some of those.

• My camelback water bottle. Crap, it is dry here. Might as well mention shea butter while I am on this particular topic. and my humidifier. and how when i get olive oil on my hands when i cook now, i don't wash it off. precious moisture.....you will not be wasted.
  

• Potted plants, red paint, coffee, emergen-c, the furminator (it works), scarves, and Neil again. He’s worth a double mention.

Oh yeah and friends and family and my health and all the other stuff people say when they won’t bother to REALLY think about what it is they are thankful for. You hear that Family? I may be in the thankful circle via ichat, but IT'S ON….(blame Anna, it was her idea to get all technologically savvy).

happy birthday

this is my favorite picture of my mom and me:



today would have been her 65th birthday.

i had a dream last night that i was trying to serve her a piece of cake, but in doing so i knocked about six pieces on the floor. we laughed.

that's about as good as it gets, i think. happy birthday, ma. you are missed so very much.

Twilight

so, i have decided to use this format to confess to all that i am reading the book Twilight. You would think that the costco price tag would have discouraged me. Not for the actual price of the book, mind you. but for the genre labeling it provided as well. i am 36 and i am reading a piece of "young adult fiction". oh, and i am totally loving it.

some folks, like my lovely husband, think i am just into teenage vampire crap. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, by far, my most favorite tv show of all time. but it's not teenage vampire crap that i love so much. it is how teenage vampire crap does such a much better job of explaining the complexities and heaviness of life when normal life crap (aka "adult fiction") just does not suffice at times.

last year, i revisited high school. or rather, i went to beauty school. but it was so much like high school. so much. there were the popular girls, who were actually just total coked up bitches, running around in the shortest skirts possible and ugg boots. there were gay boys that the girls fawned all over. there were quiet "misfits" with piercings and tattoos who were actually not misfitty at all. and there was an old broad. wait. there weren't old broads in real high school. but in this fake high school, i was there and i was old, comparatively.

in time, i caved to the masses. i joined myspace and myfriended all of my classmates. since most of my teachers were 10 years younger than me, i myfriended them as well. surreal, i say. now, everyone young and old is on facebook so i don't feel like such a fraud on that particular social networking site. but myspace, it is still quite centered to a certain demographic that i am no longer a part of. because life happens, i forgot about my myspace account for an extended period of time.

a few days after the election, i was basking in the glory of all of my facebook peeps posting about progress and the like. yes! these are my internet people and we are a part of an internet community. we agree! yay us! i remembered myspace existed and went to go see if my myfriends were as awesome as my facebookfriends. there is quite a bit of crossover, so i wasn't expecting anything but more of the same. but the first status update i saw, accessorized with a sad face emoticon was this.....and i quote....in spelling as well as words...."i am so bummed obama is are president".

so i deleted her....but not just because of her presidential choice. i deleted her because of her spelling. i deleted her because in beauty/high school, she said that a woman shouldn't be president because they are too emotional. she also once said that she hated whales. i couldn't make that shit up. she hates whales.

back to facebook, thank you very much. i still feel like kind of a dork for participating, but i like it. so there. and back to Twilight because apparently i like teenage vampire crap, too.

you can't relate to a book about a moron who can't spell and who thinks her own vagina makes her incapable of great promise and who also hates whales. you just can't. you relate to vampires. vampires make more sense. and are a lot less scary.


oh, and i looooooove whales.

First Snow

So imagine that you are moving to Memphis. You would hope that your kids would become Elvis fans, so that they would appreciate Graceland, right? Or if you were moving to the beach, that they would become surfers? Well, one can only hope because really, you never know.

The snow woke me up this morning. okay, maybe it was my insomnia. All i know is that i was wide awake at 4:30am, and there was just a light dusting of snow. i turned the outside light on and watched the continuing snowfall, and i counted the minutes until 6am when Neil would wake up and we could let the dogs out for Their First Snow.

I made it until 5:59am and 30 seconds. Literally, i crept downstairs and said "baby wake up it is snowing" and his alarm went off. Thankfully, he was just excited enough to not hate me for stealing his last 30 seconds of sleep. we bundled up and headed out.

Matilda, who is 9 now, has slowed down a bit lately. with all of the glucosamine i have been sneaking into her meals, well, i was clearly on the wrong track. the answer is snow, people. her and moose ran and ran. and then they ran some more. and then there was some running. it was beautiful. it was also too dark to get any pics that weren't total blurs. but we got a good still or two once the sun was higher in the sky.





in all, we maybe got two inches. enough to cover everything is a sparkly blanket of white. then it melted. it's all gone now and it should be in the 70's next week. welcome to denver? the dogs say "yes, thank you!" and so do neil and i.

i think i am supposed to be annoyed with this

but i can't be. i just can't.


way to commit, little guy...
we're making progress with the floors downstairs. any minute now, our basement will look like a yoga studio. i wouldn't normally choose such light wood but when one lives partly underground, one needs to think outside the box and lighten things up a bit, yos. our backs are sore and we have matching wounds on our right hand middle fingers. but it will happen. it will.

one thing i love is just how many things i have learned to do over the last year. neil kind of already knows how to do everything. i can cook a mean tarragon chicken...this is no surprise. but putting down wood floors, tiling a bathroom, taping and mudding sheetrock....who knew? and it is actually quite fun. when it is fun, that is. i don't like sore backs and bloody fingers.

why youtube was invented

maybe you thought it was so that americans would have unlimited access to videos of guys getting kicked in the balls or falling off trampolines, but really it is so more people would be able to watch videos such as this:

a little insight to the complexities of zoo management

here are the facts:

-unlike most dogs who feel safest in a small enclosed area, Moose chooses to have access to the entire property. if we limit him to the inside area of our property, he protests by chewing up our books when we leave the house.
-unlike some recent VP picks, we like books.
-if we leave the back door open for him, he doesn't chew up books.
-matilda will only laze outside if she knows she can get back in at her leisure. if i close the backdoor, she panics and scratches to get back in. if i leave the door open, she naps on the deck. she likes sunshine on her face.
-we can't leave the back door open for either dog in the dead of winter. it gets cold here, dudes.
-we bought a dog door that locks. yay!

~~~~dog problem solved? i think not! enter cat problems~~~~

-gertie can not g0 outside and is smart enough to go through a dog door. boo.
-gertie sneaks out through the regular door anyways. sometimes at night. dog door or no, at some point i will have to release her from her hospital room/prison/my office. at that point, it will be virtually impossible to keep her in, unless i were to relock her in the office each time we were to let the dogs out. this seems a wee bit redonk to me.

~~~~soooooo.......~~~~
we are looking into some kind of cat fencing. our 6 foot privacy fence just isn't enough to keep gertie on the property when she gets better. the cat fencing goes on top of our current fence. it's basically netting that is angled in. supposedly, cats won't climb over it. they'd better not. it's not cheap. but this way, we can install the dog door (the back door is open right now and it's about 40 degrees out. awesome), the dogs can have free reign, we'll be able to read our remaining books, and the cats can go out but will be forced to stay on our property that is properly protected by the dogs! jules and midge just sunbathe on the deck anyways. it really is gertie who is the problem child.

so last and final update on the above mentioned problem child. she got her 20 or so stitches removed this morning. yay! the vet says she is most likely pain free at this point, so we can stop giving her the crack. unfortunately this means that she will not be so content in her room, so the above plan will need to happen sooner rather than later. she also saw a neurologist today. looks like her femoral nerve was chomped through. it may or may not repair itself and there isn't anything that can be done to help it. so gerts might be a bit gimps from here on out (see wobbles video below). we won't know for another 1 to 3 months. way to keep it vague, vet dude. but as long as she is pain free and acting like a cat, i am thrilled.

now here is the ironic thing...if her nerve doesn't repair itself, that would keep her on the property. she can't really jump. but only a really evil and selfish person would hope for that. so cat fence it is, folks. looks like installing the flooring downstairs is getting postponed once again...i sleep on plywood! yay!

WTF?

When i woke up this morning, i raced to my computer to make sure it was all still true. the two previous elections made me something of a cynic. i expected to hear the sound of the other shoe dropping. and i did. it's just that it wasn't the shoe i expected and it was all the way in california.

people. are you kidding me? while the nation celebrates progress and diversity, California sucked it big time and passed prop 8, a ban on gay marriage. if i was a person with normal blood pressure, i would say that i am disappointed. but i am not so i will say that i am fucking outraged.

did you hear the boos during mccain's concession speech last night? his supporters booed every time obama's name was mentioned. when you run a campaign based on divisiveness and hate, people get confused when you support the "terrorist" as your president. nice speech, mccain. maybe if you took the high road during your campaign instead of after, you'd be president elect right now.

and while i am at it, since i am sitting here fuming already, a large portion of mccain's speech seemed to imply that obama won because he is black. that is the same backwards logic that got him to invite the lovely ovary-having palin onto his ticket(she got a few boos herself last night). i would like to announce to mccain that there are other body parts besides skin and reproductive organs. i have a heart and i have a brain. so does the rest of the country. we've all got the same guts. and THAT is why you are not our president elect.

so equality and progress for everyone in America, unless you are gay. just when i, we, thought bigotry was getting the finger, it rears its ugly head in my home state. hate and fear....hate and fear. shame on you, 52% of California voters. shame on you.

i cried tears of joy last night. this morning, neil and i talked about how our kids will never know that they can't run for president....well, unless they are gay. screw you, 52% of california voters. you are totally killing my buzz.

peace out.

no good very bad day

and i got to sit by the window. okay, that joke only makes sense if you remember the kids book about someone's no good very bad day. there is a character named Becky who got to sit by the window on the way to school and this, along with many other terrible things, ruined the main character's day. i do that. i ruin days.

for instance! gertie's meds were pre-dosed. i had a weeks worth of syringes filled with the perfect dose of her morphine. i noticed yesterday that the remaining ones were looking less full. maybe it's some kind of denver desert no moisture air evaporation thing. so today, Gertie was awake. AWAKE all day. i went to pet her and she had some kind of reaction that i can only describe as very seizure looking-ish. what's worse is that it probably wasn't a seizure. it was more likey just a very acute pain reaction. ugh. poor kittykat. so tomorrow morning we go off for a check up and more feline morphine. her range of motion in her back end hasn't improved. but she *is* managing quite well. except for when i pet her and she goes into a fit of all-encompassing pain. um, sorry?

Moose seems to be living in some alternate universe where nothing can go wrong and doormats are dog toys. god love him.

a short video of the wobbles

here is a video documenting gertie's awesome wobbles. normally she has her e-collar on but i take it off when i am with her so that she may remember me as the torture device remover/food bringer instead of the torture device applier/medication forcer. note her position at the end of the video. this translates to "let me the eff out of here, warden lady".
and please excuse the state of the room. it was in mid-remodel until a barrage of beloved house guests and a kitty emergency happened. but anyways, in case you are wondering. yes, the walls will be orange because it will be my office and i like orange. and yes, the walls used to be red under the trim. it's a thin line with wall colors, but that red is too too much. srsly.

Let's go, Buffalo *clap. clap. clap clap clap*

Dudes. Hockey games are fun. Or maybe it is just that anything is fun when you get enough guys from Buffalo together. It's a strange phenomena that leaves my throat scratchy and my stomach sore from all of the laughing. and after the adventures of gertie, lord knows i could use some laughter.

it was also a very educational weekend. did you know that there are lizard people that enslave and/or eat humans in a 6 story bunker under Denver International Airport? it has something to do with the Mayan Calendar ending in 2012. Denver will become the new US capital and/or New World Capital. Also, the murals in DIA predict a very grim future, and it is all proved true by a part of the mural that depicts the twin towers burning. And this may or may not have something to do with the number 23 and/or the freemasons.

What i find most interesting about the above paragraph is that, with the exception of the lizard people thing and the predictive murals, i could pretty much buy the rest of it. and as much as i recognize the fact that upon reading this, one might decide i am a crazy person, i am not willing to rule out the possibilities of such planning and scheming and building. weirder things have happened. and if you don't believe me, please explain how W ended up being the American President for 2 full terms.

and while i am at it....i also believe in the possibility of bigfoot. if we overlooked 100,000 gorillas in africa for this long, then who is to say that there isn't some kind of North American gorilla that we haven't stumbled across yet? and seriously, if you were bigfoot, wouldn't you do your best to go undetected by humans? have you seen E.T.? Scientists bad!

i am just saying.

we went to an Obama rally but couldn't see a thing....well, except for the other 100,000 people there. To be in a sea of Obama supporters is a powerful thing. It felt good. i think it is that whole "hope" thing. it works for me.

here is something i am not feeling terribly hopeful about: Gertie, who is as high as a kite, wearing an e-collar, and essentially just broken, snuck out of her recovery room the other day. i am the presumabely smarter human who has nothing on her mind other than not letting gertie out and yet she still wins. she actually made it through 2 rooms before i caught her, too. she can hobble incredibly fast. i have no idea how we are going to be able to keep her inside. no idea.

maybe i need to hire some lizard people to work as gertie guards. i have not yet met a human slave who has escaped the DIA bunker. Those lizard people must be much better at this than i am. help.

it's sooo f-ing early in the morning. sun isn't up yet. but i am. i am just too excited to bring gertie home.

her surgery went well, in the sense that it is done. but the surgeon found a lot of hemorrhaging and a few puncture wounds in her diaphragm. also, it is not likely that her ACL was torn. it is more likely that it is just nerve damage. So between her fractured pelvis and the nerve damage, Gertie has a lot of healing to do all on her own. unfortunately, there is no guarantee that any of these things will just fix themselves right up...especially the nerve damage. the good thing is that even with all of her injuries untreated, gertie was still pretty able to get around, use the litterbox etc. granted, she was on kitty morphine....she probably could have done just about anything that crossed her little mind. oh well. we can only wait and see.


al is flying into town tonight. why? for a hockey game, obviously. the buffalo sabres are playing the denver avs tomorrow night and buffalo will be present and accounted for, with a little help from manhattan, raymond, and mill valley. i think there are 10 of us going. oh yikes. i wonder what i have gotten myself into. do hockey fans just punch random girls who don't really care about hocky anyways? let's hope not.

Gertie....part two

it had been 7 days AND it was in the 20's last night. i told neil this morning that i was going to go get her carrier (that she loves) from the neighbor who last saw her's house. he agreed. we both had given up hope. we only partially admitted that to each other but really...how could she make it a week with occasional freezing temperatures? well, she did. so there.

i had forgotten to pick up the can of stinky wet food i had left out for her. and thank god i am such a space case cos at about noon today, she showed up for a snack! i went outside and brought her in. she wasn't using her right rear leg and she was sooooo tired. she just limp/hopped to her favorite chair and gave me her best gravelly meow and she took a little nap like everything is so not a big deal.

she is such a faker.

so it was off to the vet for us. she had lost two of her ten pounds. oh AND she tore her ACL (just like Matilda! yay!). AND she fractured her pelvis. AND a bit of her bowels are squeezing through a hole in her abdominal wall. BUT, with some excessive surgery starting at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow morning, she should be just fine.

Gertie most likely battled it out with a moving vehicle of sorts and she f-ing kicked its a$$. or at least she survived and that most definitely makes her a winner in our book.

She's got the dreaded e-collar on and she has very little control over her back end but she actually seems to be in pretty good spirits. that must be some stellar pain medication she is on!

"don't you dare laugh"

gertie

i am a total a-hole.
gertie did not come home thursday night and she hasn't been home since.

gertie has been spending the entire three years of her life trying to get outside. if i were to estimate, i would say that she has "gotten out" at least 50 times. so we moved here to a very quiet street and i started letting the cats go out during the day. jules sleeps on the back deck. midge stays inside. gertie would explore...but come home when we called her or when we rattled her treats. not thursday, though.

gertie is the reason neil and i decided to move in together. also, she snuggles with moose. midge hates her. i love her.

we put up at least 50 signs and have gotten two calls. one was someone who saw gertie wednesday. oops! had to update the signs on that one. i got my hopes so high and then....boom, crushed. and one was a lady who has a different calico stalking her porch. we put an ad on craigslist and are checking the shelters.

gertie does this thing. when moose chases her, she just scrunches down and lets him lick her on the head when he gets to her. i am hoping she didn't have the same reaction to a fox encounter.

please think good thoughts of her return. we are trying to remain optimistic, but it's hard when she's just so obviously Not Here.

carpet is great!

...for moose to poop on. and i don't mean that in a Triumph the Insult Comic Dog kinda way. Our recent trip back home was Moose's first experience with a house sitter. Moose failed. Mostly he failed on the carpet downstairs, a lot.

So i steam cleaned the entire downstairs. and then i steam cleaned the entire downstairs again. then i had a professional come by and steam clean the entire downstairs. Then i just said "f-it" and we ripped out the carpet entirely.

it was concrete in the main room but alas, my office and our bedroom also had some very attractive asbestos vinyl tile.

i wouldn't say that either of us was particularly thrilled about any of it.

but we got it out of there.
i couldn't move the next day (asbestos related issue or not?...you decide!),
but i still think it was worth it.

this is the proper way to remove toxic material from your home:
break it into a million pieces and be sure to not wear a mask.

Moose protested in his laziest manner.
He really can get his point across with little to no effort.

"i could be sleeping on any of this 600 square feet of concrete
but i choose this 3 by 3 patch of poocarpet instead. i am awesome."

so the grand plan is that we have to have a concrete guy level out the flooring and then we are going to throw down some engineered wood floors. we're going to do it ourselves to save money and to also make sure that at every point in our lives, we will be working on a basement. it is how we are happiest, apparently.

Neil started his job today. Moose has remembered that he is housebroken. and i am still waiting for my license to transfer.

and shane and t's little baby girl arrived yesterday. but why would anyone care about that when i have such exciting poo carpet stories to tell?


When Finney was born, i wanted to go to the place where you look at all the babies through the glass like in the movies. then someone informed me that those don't exist anymore because of all the creepos who ruin it for everyone else. but at this hospital, there is kind of one of those rooms. you can watch them wash the babies and weigh them and also see when they get their little footprints (i so just wanted to type "teensyfootsyprinties", but then you'd throw up, right?) done. So we, and some other random baby onlookers, got to see Camille's first bath, although her mom and dad didn't. that's weird, right?

so, Denver's human population just went up by one, as did Denver's number of employed residents. me? i just kill carpets with the assistance of my toxic dog.

Have you met my ovaries?

 

they rule the school around here.  i like to pretend that this is something new, but really they have been co-bossing my life for quite a while now.  i was never the girl at 22 who knew she wanted kids.  but then i would have a dream where i had twins.  wait....twin squirrels.  seriously.  squirrels, kittens....anything but a human baby.  i am destined to nurture, for sure.  no amount of swearing, denial, and/or multiple other vices is gonna stop that train, no matter how hard i try.

so J and Noelle sheepishly invited us to watch their three year old daughter's soccer "game".  do i have to pay?  can i pay?  seriously, can i just give you some money?  make you guys dinner?  am i allowed to go?  am i worthy?    don't answer that, please.

The Denver Kickers are pretty rad.  The three year old's team consists of anywhere between two and 5 players.  

Most of the time it is girls against boys, because if the girls can't hold hands, they cry.

the boys have clearly done this before.

but the girls still have a move or two to show off, and they are very supportive, 

which is totally f-ing awesome to watch.

and this is just a rad action shot.

the final score was "yay everyone!" to "good game kids!" and we celebrated by checking out the Denver Zoo.  

i now realize that the SF Zoo is groundbreaking.  it qualifies as animal abuse AND child abuse. what a miserable place for the animals to live.  What a miserable place to take your kids to.   hey SF parents, did you know that at other zoos the animals actually walk around?  i'm just saying....

and please let me describe to you the most amazing/sad/inspiring/confusing thing i have ever witnessed at a zoo.   so you know how the animals tend to ignore the humans?  and it seems that the higher the animal is on the intelligence scale, the more they absolutely detest humans?  well, the orangoutangs were in their temporary inside enclosure.  one was moving hay around, trying to make a cozy spot to rest.  the other was doing this:

if this doesn't send chills down your spine, i think you might be dead inside.  sorry about that.  maybe you should go watch ET or Old Yeller or something.  anyways, there were hordes of children looking back at this curious guy.  he was so f-ing aware of being enclosed, being watched.  so he watched back.  i felt terrible.  but then, how many kids got to see this amazing creature and will grow up remembering the experience and do everything they can to preserve wildlife, our environment, the planet?  it's such a double edged sword.

i don't think anyone ever took Sarah Palin to the zoo when she was a kid.  i mean, unless it was a target practice tutorial...

http://www.defendersactionfund.org/newsroom/sarah_palin.html