Author Archives: bubbo

Three Years!

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When David and I first got together there were betting pools on how long it would last. It’s not that they questioned him, they knew he was a good guy. Really, they had no faith in me. I don’t blame them (not a lot anyway), the summer before I met David was…busy. I wasn’t interested in committing to anyone for any reason. After just ending a 10 1/2 year marriage/15 year relationship, I was pretty certain that it would be best for me to not get attached.
But who am I to be certain about these things?
David’s awesome! He’s kind and smart and sweet and he can lift me up so I can touch the ceiling (but not often!). Of course I spent the first year wondering what the hell he saw in me, a spastic weeble with poor housekeeping skills and a seemingly bottomless capacity to make poor decisions.
I’ve learned to accept and not question. I’ve learned that he stays with me because he wants to stay. It doesn’t matter what I know or understand.

the desperate joy

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The dog park was packed and has been for a couple weeks now. The evenings are getting shorter and shorter and the temps are dropping. We are reminded that even the paradise of the dog park is subject to the harsh ministrations of winter.
The dogs can sense it as well.
Time is running short. Soon the park will be frozen, snow packed down to slick ice, suitable for only the most tenacious of dogs and their psychotic owners.
The dogs gathered in packs and ran. The packs are constant, mercurial, almost ephemeral. No single group maintains cohesion for more than a few minutes. One pack, a number of terriers ganging up on a surprisingly sprightly Irish Wolfhound, lasts only until it collides with the barking mass of border collies and cattledogs all trying to herd one another. The packs mingle briefly and break apart and the border collies are herding the wolfhound, the terriers and cattledogs spin out of control. Dogs run the fringes looking for like minded buddies. Boxers lover to chase and wrestle one another, they prefer to be equally matched. The retrievers desperately look for something to chase and the whippets are happy to oblige.
Asses and faces are sniffed, demeanors calculated. Chester knows the dogs that he wants to chase him. Black and white spaniels seems to be the best. Perhaps he knows they are fast enough and interested enough to chase him without ever becoming aggressive. He loves to be chased, but not hunted. If he can’t find a suitable partner he’ll go find Maddie. Oblivious to the chaos around her, Maddie is often found snuffling, marking and drooling. Over and over, she snuffles, marks, drools. She knows the other dogs are there. She does not care. From a distance, Chester will spy her and freight train his dense little body into her. Bugging her until she is well and truly irritated, he takes off with her in pursuit. They are well matched, chasing, wrestling, knocking each other around. Chester knows that Maddie will never actually harm him and off they go.
Other dogs see the chase and again, packs are dispersed and reformed with little thought. The occasional fight breaks out, the dogs are separated and moved to different areas and the bassets continue their constant play by play commentary to anyone who will listen.
The sun sets early. At 7pm dusk is on us, Maddie’s failing eyesight is even more apparent as she loses the ability to distinguish shapes and she relies on her nose and ears to find me. At 7pm, the dusk reminds us that we are on borrowed time, that the 8pm treks to the dogpark in June are gone. We hold on as long as we can, letting the dogs chase each other one more time.
We can all feel it coming to an end, like fighting a strong wind we puts our backs up against it and for a minute we can pretend it’s summer for a few minutes.

my head asplode!

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I’m still working on my shawl/wrap pattern. I’d say I’m 85% figured out at this point. It’s a little tedious. Get idea, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t what’s in your head, figure out why, get idea to fix that, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t match what’s in your head, figure out way.
Rather, rinse, repeat.
You get started on something and you think it’s going to be so easy, “oh, yeah, I just have to do this!” then you realize you hadn’t thought about the relationship of one kind of stitch to another. Then you realize that direction is way more important that you would have expected. Oh, and drape! You get going along and it feels more like a heavy scarf than a light wrap. Frog, pick a new hook, take notes. Start over. Pick a new yarn, frog, start over.
Julie has volunteered to be a tester. This means that I need to write directions in a straightforward and coherent manner. It also means that the directions can’t just be a series of notes that only make sense to me. The awesome thing about having a tester work your pattern is that you get real feedback about the instructions. The thing that sucks is that I can’t just throw out some unknown technique that I made up on the fly to make smooth edges or to hide an inherent flaw in the design. I have to actually come up with answers for the bumpy edges (mmmmbeaded eadging) and I have to fix that flaw.
This whole process has made me really appreciate designers even more. This is why I have to pay for the good designs! You get so used to finding free designs online that you are prone to act the brat when you see something you like and discover you have to pay for it. A lot of work goes into designing a pattern!
All of this work on this pattern has meant that my other projects are taking a back seat. It also means I’ve not updated ravelry lately or taken photos. Oh well. It will get there!

no good dumbo nothing

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  • I have owned 3 dogs in my adult life. All three were adopted from rescue organizations. In all three cases I signed contracts that held various stipulations like that I would get the pet neutered, that this animal would be a pet that lived indoors and not an animal used for work and so on. When I adopted Maddie I had to promise not to eat her (no lie!). Different groups have different contracts but in essence, they all ask you to follow the same rules. The big rule is that if you cannot keep the pet, it must go back to the same rescue agency. It’s standard. Now, here’s the deal, you own the dog for say 5 years and suddenly you have to go to the moon and you can’t take the dog, you could probably give the dog to a trusted friend without raising too much ire. if you own the dog for like 2 weeks and it’s too much to deal with, you have to bring it back to the rescue agency. Seriously, it’s a standard rule.
    Rescue shelters have the dog’s best interest in mind. Certainly you can go to the pound and get a cheaper dog, no questions asked. It’s easy enough. A rescue shelter sees a dog from a bad situation and wants to make sure that the dog ends up in the best possible situation for him. That’s their job. They’re not a retail store, they are a shelter. With each of my dog adoptions I was interviewed and asked any number of questions, did I have a fenced yard? How much excersise would my dog get? how much did I spend on dog food? what was my housebreaking method? where would the dog sleep at night? They aren’t trying to be monsters, they just want to make sure that the dog will be healthy and happy, they want to be sure that this dog is not a whim. Something purchased to satisfy a passing fancy and then seen as a burden once something new comes along.
    I feel bad for what happened in the whole Ellen thing, but she messed up.
  • blueberries are natures caviar!
  • Designing new lace patterns is a pain in the ass. I spent the weekend making swatches, filling in graph paper, furrowing my brow and eating blueberry pie. I may have found a solution. If so, I will keep careful notes and publish the pattern!
  • The “under the bed” area is the private domain of the little dogs. First Ghengis had it. It was his place to hide, to chew his special treats and to play goofy games with me. Chester took over immediately upon move in. 2 years of dog lair has turned into 2 years of dog hair. Last night David move the (giant king sized) bed out of the way and vacuumed the hell out of it. That’s pretty damned awesome.
  • Cheney wants to eat your baby
  • I need more yarn

…obligation….grumble….tagged….FINE

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So I got tagged by Dawn to do the ‘8 random things about me’ thinger. It’s not the 8 random things….it’s trying to find 8 people to tag!
The Rules:Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged.
hmmm randomness
1) when I see bumper stickers I often want to append things to them. “and your mom” is always my favorite option. For example, yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said “I (heart) rhythm gymnastics”…’and your mom’. “Free Tibet”…and your mom. there’s also a lot of bumper stickers that say “Have you hugged your kids today?” to which I want to add a second sticker, “no? well I have!”. See! the back of someone’s car would tell you that the driver hugged your kids and is bragging about it!
The only bumper sticker I would never change is “My other ride is your mother”. That stick is perfection itself.
2) when i was a kid I hated oatmeal. It tasted like 12 simultaneous asses. Now, I eat it. I eat a lot of it. Of course now I don’t eat crappy quaker quick oats. now it’s all organic rolled oats because that’s how I roll (ha ha). As a child I also hated onions, olives, mushrooms, and bell peppers. There were many struggles at meal times. I still hate those things. Hate.
3) Warrantless wire tapping pisses me off to no end. I guess that’s not so random, anyone who knows me knows of my almost spiritual love for things like due process.
4) I hate Oprah. She used to be a trailblazer. Now she’s just making money rubbing the butts of suburban housewives. She used to make a difference, now it’s just “10 foods to keep you healthy” “the same ten foods in different order to make you feel better” “9 of the same foods plus a new one to eat for longevity” “10 currently popular foods” “I am on yet another diet!” “10 foods to avoid and the sketchy science behind these claims”. It’s cheap pandering. The ROI in this must be fantastic for her.
5) Once the cover of Cosmo promised to teach me to have 2 different kinds of orgasm and the secret new ways to achieve this nirvana. I was so…excited. It was almost as if someone offered to me pants that fit correctly! I snatched it up while waiting in line. I flipped to it. I think David was not as interested. I wanted to learn this in the checkout line, bag the groceries, run home and bag this new physical shangri-la.
These weren’t 2 new orgasms! These were just the 2 regular kinds of orgasms! They weren’t new techniques! These were the techniques we often engaged in!!! Then I remembered that Cosmo markets to 17 year old sluts in training, not 34 year old retired sluts.
6) The death of Ghengis is still the absolute hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. Childhood, gawky teen years, my divorce, losing my house in the divorce, all of it was hard. Losing Ghengis? Indescribable. Truly. The anniversary is coming up. It scares me.
7) Fall drains me. I feel like Persephone descending. In the spring, I rise again.
8) I believe in my heart that it would be possible to exist on an ice cream only diet! I know this can happen. I’m gonna do it or die trying.
okay, there. I’ll have to add tags this afternoon because I need to go take a shower and go to work. How does that make you feel? I wrote this post wearing only my robe and my stink.
Bonus random fact: my belly button has a funktastically bad smell. I wonder if I can claim I have a light refreshing odor if my belly button smells like this.