Birdwalk

Things I am enjoying lately

Two commercials. One, the "bring out the animal in your cat" commercial that looks like a documentary except it's a housecat stalking the gazelle, not a tiger...you can actually hear the cat's little bell as it bounds across the Serengeti in pursuit of it's prey, and two, the Office Max "rubberband man" commercial...I just love that guy. I think he appeals to me for several reasons -- he's just darn fun to watch, and second, it appeals to my need for order and organization in my life. I put down whatever I'm doing whenever I hear that music come on and run to the tv to watch him do his thing. (Sort of reminiscent of last year's Joe Boxer dancing guy commercial.)

Warm, unattractive clothing. I don't even bother taking my "nice" but "uncomfortable" clothes out of the closet these days. It's either snowing, or wet, or bone-numbingly cold and there's just no way I'm putting on a black suit and slingbacks. In fact, most of my outfits lately incorporate long underwear in some way.

Breyer's chocolate low carb ice cream. It's as good as the real thing. Extra points if you add a squirt of Chocolate Reddi-Whip. Hoo-wee!

My husband. He shovels snow, takes the dog out when it's cold and dark, and lets me keep my car in the garage where it's nice and toasty.

The Apprentice. Guilty pleasure, what can I say? I enjoy watching these go-getters make fools of themselves every week. Plus, they finally fired Sam who then proposed to his girlfriend on the Today show and made me like him despite myself.

When is a sweater more than a sweater?

I knit in my spare time. I suspect that, as a hobby, knitting is somewhat similar to golf in that it is infuriating, frustrating and yet totally addictive.

Sometimes when I am working on a piece I make a mistake. Sometimes I catch the mistake right away. Sometimes, though, I don't catch it until I'm several rows past it. If I'm close enough to the beginning of the piece I just rip it out and start fresh. It's a great feeling, to just rip out your work and start over, erasing all of your mistakes in the process.

However, sometimes I make a mistake and don't realize it until I'm pretty far past it, and I'm too far into the work to rip it out and start over. So there the mistake sits, in the middle of the work, practically neon-blinking at me. It wrecks the pattern. It sticks out like sore thumb. Looking back I can clearly see how I made such a stupid mistake, I just wasn't thinking and ended up knitting a stitch instead of purling it, or something like that. And once I've made one mistake it seems that I can't stop myself from making more, and more, until my previously-pristine knitted piece is now riddled with errors. I'm ashamed of my own work. The work is confirming my total lack of skill and concentration, highlighting that no matter how I try I'm still, deep down, exactly what I fear I am -- a sloppy, messy doofus of a person, someone whose best efforts are shamefully inadequate and who is not to be trusted with anything important.

Sometimes I wish I could just rip everything out and start again. And sometimes it feels like I've made so many mistakes that there's really no point in even finishing the piece.

Welcome to Chinese Restaurant
Found printed on a chopstick wrapper...I am not making this up nor did I take any liberties with it.
Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your nice Chinese food with chopsticks, the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history. And culture.

Hugh is back! Hugh is Back!

Hugh and Polly just back from a trip to Florida for the holidays.
I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Crap Everywhere and I have come to the other side.

BRRR!

Wow it's amazing outside! Like, single-digit cold and snow! Bright sun! Makes me wanna ski! I know many people think I'm nuts but if it could be like this all year I'd be happy. I'm all bundled up right now with my most unflattering-yet-warm clothing on -- big old boots rated to 25 below, big thick sweater, toasty scarf...I'm so happy!

Another Poop-Related Entry

Speaking of my dog, he was rather ill this weekend. More ill than I've ever seen him, and ill enough to make me really concerned. Apparently it was a virus of some kind, one of the symptoms of which were high-pressure, projectile liquid poop. I'd never seen anything like it, and I felt so bad for the poor little guy. He had one such episode first thing in the morning and it was enough to make me decide to work from home for the day to keep an eye on him. Fed him rice and boiled chicken, which he ate hungrily but did not stay in him long. By the end of the day he was barfing, too, and shivering, and my husband decided we had to take him to the vet. The vet was surprised to find that the dog was dehydrated (despite having eaten and drank all day) and gave him a shot and sub-q fluids, which made a difference immediately. The pooping stopped and he slept pretty much for the next 24 hours straight. He's feeling much better now and I am racked with guilt for not having taken him to the vet earlier in the day. If I were a mother, I'd be unfit.

The Vole Story
So our basement was invaded by a teeny tiny rodent called a vole this weekend. I got a call from my husband while I was out and about on Saturday to let me know that he saw it walking around in the basement. Apparently our hunting dog with the high prey drive who can smell a chipmunk a hundred feet away took no notice whatsoever of this creature running around in the house.

Later that night, we were downstairs watching TV and eating italian takeout and I saw the little guy for myself. What a cutie! He was so tiny and sleek and black and furry...how could you be afraid of such a cute little critter? We both leapt up and went after it, and it hid under the bowflex. We tilted up the bowflex and the poor little guy just sat there, sniffing the air. Then he took off...under the dehumidifier, behind the desk, and -- zip! -- under the door into the mechanical room, where he could have hidden anywhere under the mountain of junk that's in there. Meanwhile, my vicious dog, bred for hunting vermin, took the opportunity to finish off my antipasto salad. My husband attempted to seal off the space under the door until we could get a havaheart trap set up in there the next day.

The next morning, I go downstairs for some paper to wrap my mother's birthday present in and there, like a little calling card, is a tiny poop right in the middle of the basement floor. I tell my husband that the little guy was out and about the night before and he sets off around the room looking for it. Next thing I hear is "I got one!" "You got one what?" "I got a mouse!" "What do you mean you got it, where is it?" "In the sofa!" I go over to the sofa and under the overturned cushion is an upside down tupperware container with a very small, very frightened rodent under it. We slid it off the couch and it fell on the floor and we had to trap it again, which was when I deduced that it was actually a vole, not a mouse, and we managed to wrangle it into a large cooler with a lid. My husband took the little guy for a ride to a wooded area near us and let him go, where, most likely he was eaten by a hawk moments later.

Grill update

Well I did not burn the house down with my new indoor contact grill advertised by a famous boxer. It worked fine except I was kinda grossed out by the panful of blood/grease etc that ran off while the burgers were cooking. Was I eating all that before? Eeew. On the upside, though, two large burgers cooked in about eight minutes. Not bad.

Passive-aggressive tennis rule

I just found out that according to the official tennis rules, if you hit your opponent with the ball it is your point. I wish I had known this over the summer when I was playing with those not-so-nice people. I would have been pegging people left and right. I think this is my new favorite rule, and I plan to use it at my first opportunity.

Bring on the grill

So after completely abandoning all low-carb dietary restrictions from Thanksgiving through now, I've put on a startling amount of pounds. Enough to make me say things like, "Holy crap!" and "Dear God!" when stepping on the scale. It's almost like fat is attracted to fat...I didn't gain an ounce for weeks and then I gained a pound and it was like all of a sudden I was a fat magnet. So tonight I'll be using my new indoor contact grill advertised by a famous boxer for the first time (I'm not saying his name because I don't want a million Google search hits.) I hear very good things about these appliances. Wish me luck.