Friday-the goodness edition

Right at this moment I can hear my faithful kitchenaid kneading away at the Friday challah. This time I used a bit of mollasses in place of honey (maybe a tablespoon and a half?), but it made it a really nice brown color. I'm excited to try it. (Don't tell J, but I also substituted 1/3 cup whole wheat flour!)

I'm sipping a delicious spicy cup of chai that I made with milk, black tea, and spices. It is fancy, and almost a breakfast in itself. Which is good because there isn't much to eat here in the house. (or as J said "we are low on edibles....but not on grains and beans and barleys.) Which is true, we have plenty of pretty jars of dried beans and grains....but not a lot of things that you can just take out of the package and eat. Which sure is virtuous, but not that convenient. (Speaking of virtuous, I just contributed to our public radio station because I just couldn't stand the guilt any longer).

The pugs are snuggled together in an armchair, looking as deceptively sweet as only pugs can look. I'm sure you all will be interested to know that the Demon-pug has recently made a reappearance. He has discovered that he can make it onto the kitchen table by jumping onto the bench first. So we can now no longer leave anything edible up there. He indulged himself in a bagful of plums a week or so ago, which first alerted us to the problem, so we had been diligent about clearing the table top (which is very annoying and inconvenient since we have a small kitchen and it was nice to store some fruit on the table...). But the other day (Sunday?), I received these two photos as texts from J who had just returned home:

Can any of you guess what these things are? No? Well, it was my new(ish) french butter crock that I blogged about here. I had left it on the table from breakfast, never dreaming that Dieter would think to get into it. How could he, I thought. Well, perhaps pugs are as smart as monkeys or crows, or maybe pushing it off the table to remove the hard "outer shell" was just an accident.

It was empty of butter by the time we found it, of course. But the butter holder half was covered in tiny little pug face hairs, stuck in a layer of pug slobber. And now I have to go to the kitchen gadget store and get a new one...woe is me (what other sweet kitchen trinkets will I find there!?!?)

How do I know it was Dieter and not Gunter? Well....Gunter can't jump. Well...he can sort of jump, but he would never, ever, never, ever attempt to jump onto a narrow wooden bench and then from there onto a table top. It would never even occur to him as something that was within the realm of possibility. Poor little earthbound Gunter.

But what makes this Friday especially good? The fact that my sweet littlest niece was born just a couple of days ago! And she is the cutest little eskimo baby ever to grace the earth. And I get to see her in person in about a week. I am so excited! Cutest thing ever (besides all of my other nieces and nephew(s), who are of equal cuteness). Pictures to follow soon. (I want one! I want one!....but not yet.)

An an un-baby topic, I got new glasses:

Ummm...are they too hip? (Just one gear on my fixy bike!) Or just a flash back to the glasses I had in the 6th grade:

(6th grade? I can't remember. Poor little thing, she would never survive in the bullying climate of today's schools. Actually, she probably would since she never gave a sh*t about what any body thought, starting in kindergarten. That is also my hair au naturel, for those of you who are curious.)

I'm not sure. I don't want to be too hip, but I needed bigger lenses since I am blind as a bat naturally and when you are incredibly blind, small frames just make you feel as though you are looking out of a tiny tube. (That is how I feel anyway.)

Okay! What a long rambling disconnected post! One other thing on my mind recently:

1) I love fall. I love the cool air and the spiders webs and pumpkins and dew on the grass and the lovely crisp evenings. Probably my favorite season. (Except for spring, summer, and winter. I love them each the best when they first start...)

Have a great weekend! I know I will, I see a pumpkin patch and caramel apple in my near future.

A post I have been meaning to write for a while

Dearest readers,

When you have curly hair, it defines a far larger segment of your personality than, say, straight hair or wavy hair. I'm sure I will be stepping on some toes here, but those of you with what I would term wavy hair....I'm sorry, that is not curly hair. It never will be, and you have no idea what you are talking about. If your hair doesn't form ringlets and/or lift off of your head with a mind of its own, combined with frizz and static, you don't have curly hair. If you can use a brush to brush your hair when it is dry without too much trouble, you don't know what I'm talking about. If you don't have to comb out your hair in the shower with copious amounts of thick conditioner, you don't know what I'm talking about. I

And then, there are those of us who have what I like to call Frankenstein curly hair.

My hair, brushed when dry, and partially straight from being pulled back the day before. This was after I removed 2-3 bobby pins from their secret nests hidden deep within (lost from the day before). I am constantly finding bobby pins secreted away in the endless depths.

And that is it.

Summer's Final Huzzah!

Well, I've been meaning to share these pictures with you of our (only) summer camping trip, but moving and re-moving got in the way. But, I finally found these photos on J's computer and have a moment this morning to blog them.

We had been planning to do a lot of camping this last summer, we talked big talk, but in the end we had to settle for a one night rushed trip to the coast. There was so much going on every weekend during the summer (and the summer didn't even really start until the middle of July) that it is hardly our fault. We are neither of us Boy Scouts ( J especially is a city boy...I love you sweetie!), so camping under our own power is a different experience entirely from camping as a tag along on other people's trips. We did manage to get a nice fire going later in the evening, but we couldn't figure out the camp stove. It might be broken, so we ended up driving down the road to eat the worst hamburgers of our lives in some po-dunk coastal town. But that was all made up for by the delish s'mores that night.

(Sunning with Dieter at Honeyman Beach Park, one of my favorite places on earth.)

(Double pug.)

(See! The pugs aren't always cute. Especially when they sneak over to the neighbor's

camp and eat their chili on the sly and then have horrible pug farts all night long.)

(Argh! Pirates?)

(Scenery, or as J likes to call it: Beanery)

(Heceta Head, another of my favorite spots. J said everywhere in Oregon must

be my favorite....It's true.)

(Double Pug.)

The Eagle Has Landed

Oh my goodness. I can't even begin to describe how nice it is to be in my own house again. I celebrated by cooking up a storm (corn chowder, tzatziki, hummus, tabouleh, roasted veggies...) on Sunday for dinner and for lunches during the week. J and I have decided to be virtuous and pack our lunches. (You might remember my new lunch box, purchased expressly for this purpose?) Otherwise he would buy lunch (and what a waste of money!) and I would go hungry because I couldn't break away from whatever I'm doing at the time (or I would go and buy a burrito! Oh cha cha cha!)

Okay! I'm not quite ready to reveal the after pictures (the window molding in our room doesn't go back up for a couple of weeks, but I do have some (very poor quality) before pictures for you:

There was much painting and rearranging done, but it is finally coming together. I'm especially pleased with the kitchen and the living room. I might be able to do some after photos of those two rooms this week. Yay! I'm home!