Praline is snuggled to my foot.

Mochi is on her back next to my shoulder, feet up like a little possum. Chuy's tail is sticking out from under the covers. Everyone is asleep and so soft and peaceful and safe. Having spent Wednesday night at Mom and Dad's, these moments are especially sweet for me on the first night back home. Through the stress and the pressure, my pups remain a constant joy to me and moments like this are among the greatest pleasures of my life. :)
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Yummy. Gouda sausage souffle at Panera

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Um, I, uh...

...think I want a cob house.

The making of a pair of Fluevog Miracles

It's really something to see the shoe going together. This will be a pair of Miracles from John Fluevog, he of My Favorite Shoes EVAR. Amazing to see the craftsman's facility with a very wicked razor, and just fun to watch, in general. I mean, if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Slowly going insane here. Surgery is two weeks away. I can't believe I'm about to do that. It's grisly and magnificent all at the same time. Trying to focus on studies, and not really doing well. Manic, mostly, and not using that energy productively, either. Except for the million or so pecans I've picked up. Only having shelled a few hundred or so, I am weary of the task.

Love love love this shoe, btw. This style is such a sweet throwback to the shoes my Great Granny Smith used to wear in the early 70s. Very old-school and sensible. Maybe a slightly lower heel on her, but the tone was the same. A good, classic, serviceable style tha would have been quite at home in the 1930s or 1940s. Good enough for me.

Was just thinking about this today - I think I bought my first Fluevogs about 25 years ago. They had a platform creeper sole, huge buckle and a quilted glow-in-the-dark panel on the top of the shoe. They were ever so slightly flamboyant. I know: surprise, right? Anyway, I'll never forget wearing those shoes out, and being whirled around in a two-step on the dancefloor at a country/western gay bar in Dallas by a guy I went to school with whose last name was Strange. True story.

For a guy, I love these shoes, too. If I were a man, I'd wear a seersucker suit with these in every Jordan almond color available. Candy colored suede is its own reward, I say, and I'd aspire to be the dandy who could pull it off.

Uh, where was I?
Oh, I can't remember.

I think I'll go sniff my shoe cabinet for a second. Nothing going on here, and absolutely nothing strange. I promise.

;)

sad news.

I am greatly saddened to learn that one of my dearest friends has lost her youngest brother quite suddenly. Today I am holding her and her family close in my heart.

Toofies!!!

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Hymn to St Cecilia

This is one of the finest recordings I've found of this, among my most treasured choral pieces.

November 22 - Feast of Saint Cecilia


Saint Cecilia - Patron saint of musicians and church music

Cruddy.

I am sicky. Aching all over and aggravated because this has derailed plans for
Visiting dear friends for thanksgiving. :( I am definitely not up for what would've been a long drive, but CRAP!

Grump.



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Strange comfort.

Living in a house with no closets is not conducive to orderliness, but I find that my slovenliness has reached an absolute nadir.  Oh, sure, there are the occasional cursory efforts, the teeny stabs and quick lunges at cleaning, but mostly the stuff piles up around here like so many trappings of the unravelings of an unquiet mind.

So it was with abject glee that I regarded a recent post on Retronaut of this picture of Pablo Picasso in a bedroom.  See the hats and accessories and clothing piled higgledy-piggledy with books?  See the arty scribblings and half-executed projects strewn about? 

Anyway, it struck me: I'm a creative genius! That's what this means!

Great googly moogly, it's like someone time-warped my bedroom back to prime era Picasso.  Mostly I don't gad about in boxer shorts and popeye gear, though.  Mostly.

Twisty bendy psychological side-trip-- Picasso always identified with the bull, and a bull in a painting by him was a representation of self.  So what's up with the matador jacket?  Did he have his wife wear the jacket?  Or did he wear it in a fit of self-loathing?

Yes, I'm near demented with fatigue and anxiety. At least I can still laugh at something.

*********************

I dug up the superb documentary on The Donner Party by Ric Burns, and it finally hit me: those few people at work being shitty to everyone else, trying to point out the flaws of others to draw attention away from their own?  We're the Donner party.  Rats on a sinking ship.  Eat the others and maybe you can use the stiffs for a life raft.

*********************

Did I mention I have stress?

*********************

It sucked to go back to Dallas for an unplanned visit to the orthodontist, but it was a tonic to see Mom and Dad. 

I got to visit with Mom for a bit and Dad came home from an errand and told us he ran a coyote off from the front yard.  Big one.  Drove it around the neighborhood with the car.  Mom went to bed and I sat up watching tv with Dad for a bit.  The Ken Burns documentary on The Dust Bowl was on, and we watched that until it spooled out.  Gripping show, if you like that sort of thing. 

The people in the documentary are quite old, but they were small children at the time of the dust bowl.  One lady choked back tears as she talked about the government paying ranchers to kill their herds that were starving and were too poorly to sell.  Mom said "I remember Dad talking about that" and Dad said "Dad talked about that too!"  Heartbreaking bit of history, that. 

Anyway, Mom went to bed and Dad dialed around, landing the tv on a show about the mayan calendar/apocalypse/december 21/yada yada yada.  We exchanged quips.  After a very few minutes, Dad announced he was going to bed and I said i was, too.  Then he asked when my surgery is coming up.  Told him the 13th.  He said "you're gonna be all messed up for the end of the world, aren't you?"

:P

We laughed and laughed.

music for a Tuesday

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: swab and debonair

Isn't he a dashing little brute?


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Another poor showing on a test

I reviewed my test results and found some needless errors. My anxiety level is through the roof. I'm despairing that I might not even make a C. In that case, nursing school would be put off by another year. I'm feeling pretty low.

Work is stressful and the looming surgery is a constant distraction.
*angst*
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How I spent my lunch today.

Went out back with puppies and picked up lovely pecans which my braces prevent me from eating, alas!

I think I'll invent the pecan smoothie.  I have to go to Dallas Monday to see the orthodontist to unwonk my braces, as a rubbery piece of ham in an omelet undid my arch wire. *le sigh*

I may be having omelet smoothies from here on out. I can't afford to miss work and I can't afford spontaneous gas tanks squandered on needless tasks. 

The pecans are beautiful, though.   I'll probably shell some and bag them up to eat when my braces come off in about 7 months.  YAY!

Yay, urinary tract/ bonus puppehage

I never thought the urinary tract would be cause for celebration, but it is. We've hit one of the shortest chapters in the book in A&P II. YAYS!  I lurves me some short chapters.

This semester has been brutal in many ways. I'm hoping I can eke out a B. Still holding breath on that one.

The pupscape photo is from bed this morning, where we've come up with a new puppeh theme song. Wanna read it? Good. I thought you would. It goes:

Wild puppehs!

Wild puppehs!

WILD PUPPEHS GONE WIIIIIIIILD!

rinse, lather, repeat.  Sung to the tune of Wild Puppies Gone Wild™

Anyway, it ratchets them up to a high frenzy which is a wonderful way to start the day. The Mochi-in-hoodie photo is from yesterday. Poppa Dawg found the monkey hoodie and said it fairly screamed MOCHI so he had to get it. I have to giggle at the thought of his manly self moseying up to the register with this purchase.  Cute!  We put one of Praline's Skull sweaters on her and it was just all wrong. Mochi is a bouncy, flouncy, flopsy puppy and the monkey girl thing fits her better. Praline has skulls because she am fierce. Chuy is swab (TYPO! - meant to write suave but didn't have the heart to change it! laughing at myself here) and debonair, so he goes for classics like is brown and orange houndstooth he was wearing yesterday.  He is a dashing hound.

Speaking of warmness, I am utterly besotted with the electric blanket my mom gave me last year. About an hour before bed, I get it cranked up to 11, and then I lower it to 2 or 3 when I get in bed. It's got the most soporific effect on the pups, too. They normally tussle for 5 or 10 minutes at bedtime, because they love bedtime and it excites them. Seems contradictory, doesn't it? but with the bed pre-warmed, they squirt right under the covers and settle in for a yummy night's sleep.  I love the abject joy with which they greet every occasion - life lessons there. I stay cozy all night, and this despite a spate of 30-ish degree nights. I haven't had the house heater on once yet this year. I've got it set to come on if the mercury in the house dips below 60, but it hasn't happened yet. (Thanks to new windows and friends helping with insulating the attic-- I'm talking to Himself, MattG and aepilot_jim.)

Trying to get my ducks in a row for the coming semester, the end of this semester and the upcoming surgery. It's 4 weeks from tomorrow. yeesh.

Oh, and a chunk of ham dislodged a wire on my braces and I need to go to Dallas tomorrow night to be at the orthodontist first thing on Friday morning, and then it's hippity hop back home to work a full day. Remind me again why I have no down time?

It's good, though. Things are good, and I'm doing well. Life is always good if you have puppies. :)