Go here and read the comments for the recipe for Salted Water for Boiling.
Brill.
We adopted a dog today. This morning I was all set to go see a miniature poodle at the Boulder Valley Humane Society. He had a real sad story and I wasn't sure I'd be up to the challenges he might present. Then I thought, oh wait. I haven't checked the Larimer County Humane Society's website in a few days, I'll look there. And lo and behold, they had a Bichon Frisee/Poodle mix who looked like this. Before they groomed him, that is.
So I got dressed tout de suite, and as soon as Mr. Man was back from his run, I made my run to Fort Collins. I met the guy (called Marley-eeeww) and we hit it off. I placed him on hold and drove to Boulder to make sure I really wouldn't rather have the smaller, younger but more traumatized poodle waiting there. I saw him and immediately thought "Sugarbear will damage this dog". I mean, not intentionally, but with too much overbearing love and affection. That little dog needs a quiet home where a very patient and loving person can help him live up to his potential. Our home may be loving but it is rarely quiet. Also I worried about such a small dog in Sugarbear's hands. We needed someone sturdier. Marley fit the bill.
I called Mr. Man and we arranged for all of us to meet the little guy. And wouldn't you know that dog could sense who to suck up to the most: the cat person.
He immediately jumped into the man's lap and didn't want to leave. He has been there quite a bit since he came home with us this afternoon. The girls are ecstatic. We all are. He fits right in.
Yes, he has some weepy eye stains. Being at an animal shelter can make anyone cry.
We are still trying to agree on a new name. For now, we are calling him Turnip. Those in the know will get a little laugh from the joke.
Remember that? Not really, huh. Me either. But here's the gist. We piled into the car and drove to RMNP. We parked at Bear Lake because that's where the parking lot is. Bear Lake isn't very impressive, so we skipped it completely. We started our hike up the snow-packed but mostly sunny trail to Nymph Lake. This hike isn't long (I think it is less than 1 mile) but it is winding, and you gain altitude fast. Fast enough for us to feel it, anyway. This time, though, the hike wasn't nearly as hard as last time. I guess this is due to our comfort level with the altitude combined with a better attitude from the kids. Junebug was actually running ahead far enough that we had to tell her to slow down. We didn't want to lose her up there. There was one time when I got pretty sharp with Sugarbear over her grouchiness, but after that she turned it around and we all thoroughly enjoyed our hike. Some things we saw: a snowshoe hair, lots of birds (gray jays, Steller's jays, magpies), chipmunks, black squirrels.
After we'd spent some time at Nymph Lake with the girls climbing giant boulders, we decided to hike up to Dream Lake. This was a first, and really made us feel like Coloradoans. Someone on the trail asked if we were continuing up and we were all "What, there's another lake? Hell yeah! Andiamo!". Of course, after we'd spent some time at Dream Lake, and the girls and I had taken a nature pee, we heard there was a third lake higher up! But by that time we were pretty tired and we were losing daylight. We decided to head back down and go for barbeque in Estes Park. Once we got back to the car, we were so proud of ourselves that we did a really loud family cheer just to let everyone else know how awesome we are. Obnoxious, right?
Click on the slideshow to see it bigger.
What is wrong with me? I need safety goggles to cut bread! Seriously, tonight? I took some super-crispy french bread out of the toaster oven and placed it on the cutting board. I started slicing through it with a bread knife and WHAMMO! Huge bread crumb lodged in my eyeball. Owie!
This incident reminds me of way back when I worked at the coop marketing company where I met the man. My boss came in to work one day looking like ASS. She was wearing her glasses ( I didn't even know she had glasses!) and one eye was huge and bloodshot and nasty-looking. Turned out she had somehow managed to get a hair from a strawberry lodged into her eyeball. A HAIR FROM A STRAWBERRY.
Double-you tee eff, dude?
True story.
My friend Megan shared this on Facebook. My favorite part of the video is when the dog declines a treat offered by the orangutan, and the ape just shoves it in the dog's mouth.
Hi. Is anyone still there? I'm still here, just not so much HERE.
I will get around to the Nymph Lake post super-soon, I hope. I'm waiting on that until Mr. Man puts the desktop computer back together. For now I'm on the annoying laptop, so I'll keep it brief.
I'm currently:
41% full of Tibetan Noodles with Lamb from Sherpa's, where one of the sherpas paid so much attention to Sugarbear she didn't know WHAT to do. It would have been creepy if it hadn't been so sweet. It is clear that Nepalese people really, really dote on their kids.
27% new haircut. Why did it take me 3 months to decide maybe the hair wasn't working. Symptoms: "Hm...should I go for the ponytails or the hat today?". Repeat 90 times.
18% Wow, we stayed out WAY too late last night. I wonder if the Johnsons will ever invite us back ever again??
12% It's that time of year when I really start to get the itch for a dog. I've been surfing the net looking at homeless doggies. There are so many who need a good home, but I'm also pretty happy with the being-able-to-leave-food-out-all-night situation. Plus, it would be nice to get some bills paid down first, before we take on more responsibilities.
If this doesn't equal 100%, I blame the 18%.
In other news, we had a super-foggy morning last week. Here's how my iphone saw it.
Here is a little ditty composed by me & the girls via the Swedish Radio. You, too, can gather your clan around the computer for minutes of fun!
Remind me to tell you about the time (8 days ago) when we hiked up to Nymph Lake.
More to come.
We woke up to a beautiful, snowy scene on Saturday morning. After I cooked up some flapjacks, I grabbed the macro lens and headed out to the backyard. Photos clickable, as always.
Above, you see the flakes piled up on top of the hook on a hanging basket on our deck.
They were just wet enough to stick, balanced up there. These are the flakes which made me grab the camera and venture outside.
While I was working at the farm on Thursday I'd seen just a little bit of snow falling. The weather was a bit warmer, and the stuff falling from the sky wasn't like the snow pictured here. The substance was more like little ice pellets rather than these beautiful, distinctly shaped and floaty flakes. But even so, I remember looking at these tiny bits of ice landing on the ground and thinking "Wow, how many of these things would it take to make even 1 inch of accumulation?". I just know I can't count that high. So when I looked out of the window Saturday morning and saw 4 inches of snow on the deck railing, it seemed truly miraculous.
Honestly, I'm a little bit tired of tomatoes. I KNOW. I can't even believe I'm typing that.
But it's true. I also know that, come February, the merest thought of a home-grown tomato will make me salivate.
After a protracted search through all the closets and the disco ("where in the world did I put those snow boots??") the girls got themselves all bundled up. They played in the yard until they were frozen. It took about an hour. Then they came inside for hot chocolate (which Mr. Man figured out is the solution to the Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle. Sorry if that spoils it for you. It took him all of half a second to solve.).
Why must it be eaten like soup, with a spoon, hm? HM?
I don't know about you, but a cold and snowy day makes me want meat and simple carbohydrates. So I set about making gingerbread cookies (hey, I found snowflake cookie cutters at target!), Bolognese sauce, and focaccia. The entire family pitched in to ice, ice these babies.
It also seemed like a good day to paint fingernails. Somehow, Mr. Man escaped that fate. I'm a little surprised he didn't demand his turn.
Oh yeah, I also made it to the Farmers' Market. It was a sad little market, with only about 8 or 9 vendors braving the weather. Poor things, they were so cold! And there their produce was freezing while I shopped. But I brought home some lovely brussels sprouts, carrots, parsnips, yukon gold potatoes, onions, shallots, and an enormous winter squash ( I think it is a golden hubbard).
Well, that was MY Saturday. What did you do with yours?
I ventured out of the house today to go sit in a dark movie theatre. This film was a tonic for my sad, tired, 44 yo, recovering from the flu-assed self. I highly recommend it to any former Austinites who happen to be rather desperately missing your best friends/hometown/Mom/reckless, feckless, punk rock youth. Wait, is that too specific? Well, it did feel sort of custom-made to grab me. <&hearts>
I'm recovering, slowly, from this flu. Junebug has just begun her bout with it, complaining (mildly) of sore throat, headache, sneezing and loss of appetite. That leaves only Mr. Man in this household who has yet to succumb. Surely it is only a matter of days before he falls prey. So the bug and I are laying low at home this Saturday morning, working puzzles and listening to Of Montreal on the hi-fi. I've dispatched the Man and the Sugarbear to my beloved Farmers' Market to buy a few things. Flowers. Eggs. Tortillas. Baby squash (you will know them as butternut squash), some for me to cook and some for the Bear to mother.
**Update** I wrote that earlier today and was unable to post it due to the instability of Firefox's latest version (Shiretoko. I hate you, Shiretoko.). Is anyone else having issues with this? Maybe it's a Linux thing. Anyway, now it's afternoon and the Man & the Bear are off gathering dal and saag paneer and naan, oh my. And bagels. And Monsters VS. Aliens. One thing I know is that applying a thick layer of TV viewing makes almost every illness more tolerable. That's why hospital rooms have TV's. I myself have lately enjoyed A Good Woman (on the Roku. It's a remake of Lady Windermere's Fan), as well as Glee & Modern Family via hulu on the laptop. All good.
As promised long ago, here are the bug's new peepers.
Sugarbear was so jealous of Bug's new ones that she'd taken to wearing bug's old glasses. We didn't like that because they are prescription lenses after all. But she insisted on wearing them. So I popped out the lenses, and now she wears them to school every day. Presumably she does it in preparation for the day when she will need real ones. Won't it be funny if she ends up with perfect vision, unlike anyone else in our family?
Like everyone else you and I know, we've been touched by the (presumably swine) flu. Sugarbear missed 3 days of school last week, along with fully half of her class: 12 out of 24 kids. Now I have it. As flu bugs go, it isn't so bad. But it still isn't great. What worries me is that we haven't even gotten to the actual flu season yet. We still have that to look forward to!
I'd heard it would be cooler today than yesterday, so I sent the kids to school in jeans and long-sleeves. It is sunny and gorgeous and warm now. I'm certain they're sweltering. Unlike Texas schools (and restaurants and offices), their school doesn't air-condition the nipples right off of you. The inside temperature of the school will be close to the outside temp. So I'm feeling flu-ish + a bit guilty about their inappropriately warm attire. Don't you hate it when that happens?
This morning Junebug told me she has a new wart. I looked at it and told her it is a cute, tiny mole, not a wart. She said "What's the difference?". Sugarbear, always alert for these opportunities, piped up, "A mole is a wart that is NOT on your nose".
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