blast from the past

i ran into an old friend from high school today at the coffee shop. she was a year behind me but i always felt this strange connection to her. she was one of those people that i always wondered about after leaving high school. as it turns out she is living right here in lincoln now and is a massage therapist at a local spa. it was such a great way to start the day.

i had to attend a food handler's permit class tonight to get my permit renewed. there was a lot of talk about feces. if you have a youngster at home like my little cousin indigo, who at the tender age of 5 declared to me that "the sphincter is where poop comes out and poop is my favorite topic...but i am not allowed to talk about it at the dinner table" you may want to consider taking him or her to your local health department for the class. they would find it quite interesting...lots of talk about poop.

lower the bar

i have come to the realization several times over that people rarely have the sensibilities i give them credit for. things that i take as either common sense or common courtesy seem to go unnoticed by the wide majority. yet the lesson never seems to stick with me and i am always and forever entering situations thinking that if i behave like a rational adult, the other parties will as well. sadly i am working on lowering my expectations of people in general. i am only glad that the people i choose to surround myself with typically share these sensibilities and value civil exchanges, take responsibility for their words and actions, and think before acting. it is disappointing at best every time i am faced with this reality all over again.

the weather has taken a turn for the better; spring is on its way. edgar unearthed a little patch of green growing things in the yard today, tucked away under some dead leaves, and looking at the tree in the front yard, it appears as if it may have buds! i am ready to pack winter away till next year. i have a friend who hates winter and he finds great personal satisfaction in knowing that even i am fed up with winter. i have been planning for my garden and i am quite excited. i know it will be a challenge to keep it reasonable and not go crazy planting every single thing that i think would be great to grow. definitely tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. basil. maybe radishes, sugar snap peas. see, already the list grows and grows. and then you have different varieties of each thing! yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, roma tomatoes, etc, etc. and i think it might be nice to plant a blueberry bush. this, of course, is all contingent on the idea that the faucet in the back of my building actually works and i will be able to water my garden. otherwise, i will have to eighty-six the entire operation! that would be quite disappointing as i have been planning in my head from the day i moved in.

edgar is happily chewing on a rawhide. after trotting around the apartment from corner to corner, from sofa to chair, looking for places to "bury" it, he decided to just hunker down and chew it. charlie had the good fortune of discovering one day when i accidentally left the closet door open, that there is a basket of hats and mittens that is perfect to curl up in and hide from edgar in. my poor little kittens, they hate my poor little dog. i think i am the only one that loves them all! at least within this household.

tomorrow my friend "a" is coming over to help me pin my quilt together so i can finish it. huzzah. then i am going with "j" to an oscar party. it is down at the old train station and attire is cocktail dressy...i am not sure what that means or if i have anything appropriate. but i will just have to make due with something!

lazy sundays

i spent the day reading and cooking. it was lovely and refreshing. however i just felt melancholy all afternoon. i finished a book called the dogs of babel, which i really enjoyed, but there were parts of the book that i found horribly sad and unfortunately i ended on that note. but, i spent a lot of time in the kitchen which was lovely. most notably, i threw some black beans in the crockpot this morning and made some black beans and rice. i tried them and will save them for meals for the rest of the week and freeze some, but they were delicious if i do say so myself.

i'm toying with the idea of driving up to omaha tomorrow evening. i'm not sure what for...i thought maybe my mom could help me pin my quilt. but i also want to see the oscar nominated movies before the awards are on, and i don't know when i will have time to do that.

there was a strange occurrence this evening. every time i took edgar out he kept looking intently down the block at the house on the corner. i was on the phone with my mom once and at one point commented to her that he must see something that i can't. the last time i took him out i could hear a puppy crying from down the block; from the house on the corner. not just an "i'm cold or hungry" crying, but serious there is something wrong wailing! after all, i could hear it all the way down the block. i ran upstairs with edgar to put shoes on and when we went back out i couldn't hear anything at all. so we walked down the block to the house and i couldn't see or hear anything unusual, but edgar nearly ran up the stairs onto the porch and then proceeded to intently sniff every inch of the yard that i would allow him to reach. it was positively unsettling and i can't stop thinking about it. about what happened to that puppy and why it was crying like that. why it stopped so suddenly. i wonder now if i should have called animal control or the police or something. i'm not sure what i would have told them or what they would have done, but it would have made me feel better.

i just can't fathom how people can intentionally harm animals. that was part of the book i finished that made me so sad, there were bits of animal experimentation, etc. granted it was all fictional, which i realize, but sadly there is nothing fictional about sick people that hurt animals. one can only hope that their actions will come back on them at some point.

not as planned

so all i wanted to do tonight was come home from work and read, relax, and play with my dog. it was a crazy day at work and i am exhausted. however, that was not meant to be. by some stroke of non-luck i was scheduled to work at the shop, despite the fact that it's one of the few nights i'm not available and didn't get home until nearly 10:30. now i just want to go to bed and crash! but my poor exuberant little puppy has been alone all day and i don't have the heart to send him to bed just yet.

waiting, waiting...

little lapses in the winter weather, like today's make it hard. even for winter and snow lovers like me. this evening you could smell spring in the air, edgar and i went for walk and everything just seemed fresher. i love winter more than most and even i was not happy to hear a forecast of near frigid temperatures and snow showers for tomorrow.

tomorrow is valentine's day, a day that i have actually always liked despite being perpetually single. i guess i seesaw back and forth between enjoying it and being totally cynical about it. this year i anticipate it being okay. there is a donor recognition lunch at work tomorrow where j will be recognized as advocate of the year and then the rest of the day will be filled to the brim with various tasks and then on to the coffee shop. the university cabaret is apparently performing there tomorrow night...i can't say that i am looking forward to that. and i feel quite badly about being gone literally the entire day. sammy cat and charlie can fend for themselves, but edgar i am sure will feel neglected.

my mom and dad sent me a valentine today. there was a card and a book as well. my mom is making me a quilt; the squares are a sampler of the the underground railroad quilts. during the times of slavery people on the underground railroad would hang various quilts to give messages and directions to the slaves that were traveling to the north. the book is called hidden in plain view and is about this aspect of history. the only thing i love better than getting fun mail is getting fun packages in the mail, even more so when said fun package is a book!

i finally finished atonement. i really liked it, although my friend a hated it. different strokes for different folks!

trials

my little travel companion pictured to the left was awfully naughty last night. i simply had projects that needed to be done and wasn't paying him the attention he deserved. he agreed, and decided to tell me so by antagonizing sammy cat all night long and getting into everything that is supposed to be off limits to him. he chewed my second favorite pen to smithereens. it's funny, no matter how puppy proofed i naively think my apartment is, he finds something to get into. he went to bed early with no dessert!! today i bought him a new toy as a peace offering, a lady bug with a squeaky and rope for its arms, legs, and antennae. he's a fan and we are off on a better foot this evening.

one of the aforementioned projects was cutting out the fabric and batting for the quilt i am making. it was far less scientific than i had anticipated. today i purchased an iron and small ironing board as i did not previously have one. well, i have an iron, but it is all gunky from some past project. so now i have a shiny new iron and ironing board and can complete my quilt.

to the market

off to the market today, in all the blustery cold! got the goods to make lots of yummy (and healthy) food for the rest of the week. i can't fathom why it so expensive to buy healthy food...it is so much cheaper to buy crap. i also can't fathom why it is that i typically buy and eat really healthy food and that doesn't seem to matter! my splurges are blueberries and edamame and whole wheat tortillas and i am overweight! i love healthy food more than most, not fair.

edgar had a bath today, he smells much fresher now. the cats, as usual, did not tolerate much nonsense from him today.

i had to go to b&n to return a book i bought the other day, as it turns out i already own the book; i don't really need two; even if one is hardback and the other paperback. since i was there i decided to get a new sewing book. (it doesn't take much to persuade me to purchase a new book) it's called "bend the rules sewing" by amy karol. i am very excited to try some of the patterns out, although the space in my apartment for sewing is not ideal and i left my cutting mat at my parents house in omaha, so i am not sure when i can get started on anything.

edgar and i traveled to omaha for part of the weekend. i went to a fish fry last night to celebrate s's birthday. it was really bizarre; it involved waiting in line for about two hours while drinking beer and then getting fish. not being a fish eater, i had fries and coleslaw. delish! it was a surprisingly good time and i would do it again.

mom and i sewed all day today and i finished the top to my first ever quilt! now i just have to figure out what comes next. it is painfully cold out, which makes it the perfect evening to just stay in with a blanket and a movie and two cats and a dog and a cup of something warm. i am currently watching the brave one; i got it a week ago and have been watching it in spurts...it is pretty good, probably a lot better when watched all in one go, but that's not how i like to do things!