Bed Love!

I looooooooove it! So simple, yet still fun!

And the people I bought if from were so nice. The guy delivered it and then helped me set it up. It was really nice of him. I would never have been able to get that mattress on top of the box springs without help.

Oh, Portland! Why did I Ever Leave Thee?

First off, let me just say how much I hate carpet. I hate it with a burning and abiding (and almost all consuming) passion. I would gladly draw and quarter whatever moron came up with wall to wall carpeting.

Ok, now that that is out of the way I can get on to posting about how much I adore Portland. I was thinking today, on my way home from the park with Gunter, about why I'm capable of enjoying Portland this time around, when last time I didn't enjoy it nearly so much. I think there are several reasons for this.

1) Money. I now have the money to enjoy being here. I am no longer poor and unable to go and do stuff. That alone makes a huge difference.

2) I'm older. I now longer feel the need to go to places that are infested with hipsters and their news boys caps (Nothing against those hats, actually. I own several.), tattoos, tight jeans, and dirty looks.

3) I think it took going to live in a place that was infested with douche bags (i.e. silicon valley) to truly understand this one fact: I prefer hipsters to douche bags, hands down.

And then of course there is the fact that Oregon is so awesome in the summer.



This! This is the park near my house. Off leash! Oh California! How I hate thee! How I hate thee and your parks and recreation department! (Although I feel compelled to mention that the other dog people have not as been as friendly as one would hope. It's a little disappointing.)

Gunter doesn't want to leave...

HOME FRONT UPDATE:

I have a dresser, witness below:

Hand painted and old as old. Rickety as hell, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. Here it is pictured in my bedroom. Which is upstairs. Which begs the question: "how did you get it up there alone?" Answer: Very carefully.

I Have Arrived

Ok, I actually arrived last week, late Thursday night. My brother was a champ, crossing the river on public transportation at 10pm in order to help me shlep my stuff into the house. He rocks.

The drive was miserable. I won't lie. It was long, and I had two dogs trapped in the front passenger seat. Getting a pet crate to lock Dieter in was the smartest thing I've ever done. It would have been madness to have him loose in the car with his sharp little vampire teeth and crazy puppy energy. But the crate meant that poor Gunter was relegated to the floor space on the passenger side. Poor thing. But I did give him a giant bull pizzle chew thing and he made sweet chewing love to it until we got to the Oregon border, at least. There were a lot of nice rest stops too, and I let them run around a few times. Pulling the trailer wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, now I'm in Oregon. It's been lovely. The sun is out and I'm just trying to enjoy as much of it as a I can because I know the cloudy overcast winter will come soon enough. So, what have I done to celebrate my joyful return to the land of my birth!? Let me make a list:

1.) Lunch at the Kennedy school, off leash romp at the huge nearby park with Gunter
2.) Dinner and beers at the Goodfoot with my bro. Garlic fries make me happy.
3.) Chocolate Latte at Full City in Eugene with my lovely sister and cute niece. Afternoon at the Oregon Country Fair. All the hippies and the wonderful northwest vibe (not to mention the familiar country side) really let me know that I was back home. Fun!
4.) Lovely church service at the big episcopal Trinity Cathedral in NW. La Bonita! Oh how I missed you!
5.) Pho Jasmine! Soaking in the hot pool at the Kennedy school with my bestest friend ever in the world. More La Bonita! Tostada goodness. (I think I mostly missed all of my eating spots here in Portland, it seems).
6.) Walking through lovely neighborhoods with fancy front gardens to Extracto for coffee in the morning.
7.) Fresh picked blue berries from Sauvie Island. I didn't get to go picking, had to work, but Kellie was kind enough to bring me a huge bag of them. I've been stuffing big handfuls in my mouth and loving it. Man, I love fresh blueberries.
8.) Yoga at a cute little studio on Mississippi. Stumptown coffee afterward.
9.) Delicious tapas and lovely wines at Navarre with my beautiful friend Heather. Awesome. So much fun.

I am SOOOOOOO happy to be back here, I can't even say.

So my house still needs a little work. I pretty much have zero furniture still. My office/studio is coming together.



Still trying to get things organized, but I love this table I bought off of craigslist. I also got that cool dresser cabinet thing. I need to strip it and stain it, but it's ok for now. I'm planning on a deep indigo-ish blue.

I have a mattress! An awesome tempurpedic mattress. It is the most comfortable thing ever in the world, I have to say. Especially after sleeping on the floor for almost a week.

Ok, that's all for now!

Moving Eve

So, right on the eve of moving to a new place, I get a call from my bank and they tell me that someone in Maryland has been using my debit card to buy gas and almost 300 dollars of clothing from Macy's. Luckily, they caught the big Macy's spending spree, but the gas charge went through. They shut the card down and are issuing me a new one, but for now I have no card for my personal accounts. Yay!

One sign of my scatteredness: I tried to use my electronic car unlocker thing to open the front door to the house. I stood there and pushed the little unlock icon twice before I came to myself and realized what I was doing.

Packing Sucks, Moving is Depressing

locked out for the duration

kitchen

ugh.

There is one truth in life that holds true for everyone (I think), and that is: Packing sucks and moving is depressing. No matter how much you might want to move, no matter how happy and excited you are to move, packing still sucks and moving is still depressing. Why that is is easy to explain. One, it's hard and hurts your back. Two, you have to look over and touch all of your belongings and then think about all the things that have happened in past, and all the memories, good and bad, confront you in the form of actual physical items. Perhaps it's just me, but each item I own has a history that stays silent in the dusty quiet depths of my mind until the day that I start packing, then my mind is like a still pond that has been invaded by a crowd of small children, whose little feet kick up all sorts of sediment that then hangs in the once clear green water. That is exactly how my head is at the moment. Full of big swirling clouds of grayish brown sediment. I'm doomed to endure this sediment for at least two weeks, until I get settled in to my new place and I buy a bed and bookshelf and a dresser. And then the sediment might clear a little bit, and my mind might once again be a clear green pool.

BFFs?

The Great Thaw

Warming Up

So, Gunter, predictably, isn't entirely pleased with the new addition to the family. They both slept in the kitchen last night, but in the morning Andreas found them in separate beds. I hope Gunter adjusts to Dieter, because it is making me sad to see him so disturbed. Dieter couldn't be a happier though. He is adorable. And pretty much potty trained! Well, at least he always runs outside to go potty, which is pretty cool.

Cutest things in the whole world

Fierce!

Dearest Faceless Masses

I have finally come to a decision!

I know where I am going to move. These were my criteria:

1) I needed a place where I could get these things on a regular basis:

Lebanese!
Pho!
Bibimbap!
Ramen!

AND

Where I could ride my bike all over town and take these things for leash free romps in the park:



I've decided. Now I just need to find a place to rent.

Here? Near Belmont:

And then industrial space here at this cute little collective in the SE?:



(Of course if I rent both of these I won't be eating any of the above for a very, very long time.)

Louisville resident?

Should I become a Kentuckian? Is that what they are called?

Should I rent this cute little apartment?




In this cute little building?


Yes? No? I've heard it's cool. The cost of living is cheap, cheap, cheap!

I'm Going to Get Married when I'm 80, too!

My Papa (aka Papa Bald) got married this last weekend. It was just the excuse we needed to get all gussied up to eat and drink more than was good for us. It was also a great opportunity to meet my newest and cutest nephew, Cairito Burrito, who is the worlds smallest muscle man. I wish I could get him into a leotard for a photo-op.

Here he is in the arms of his hot-mama!


This is my other sister and her spawn, oh, I mean progeny.


Does she not look like a 1950's advertisment for milk or something else that is totally wholesome? I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up as one of the creepy ads of white people they always have in the Suguo's in China. I can see it now, hanging over the big bank of fake grass on the side of the escalator.

Here is Bodi-kins, planning dastardly deeds.


The Parental Units:



2 of my 5 siblings:

The brother (1 of 3):

Ah, the blushing bride and the handsome groom:


Just keeping in real (back at you, jonna, neener neener neener):

Deet Bug - Revealed!

Back to Black

I'm afraid I wasn't really a blonde. Not at heart.

Poetry Friday!

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

-Anne Sexton

Dieter the Magnificent

2nd cutest pug in the world! The breeder says he is really tiny and will probably take after his mom, who is a tiny, petite pug. But that is what we thought about Gunter too, so we'll just have to see. He's been eating solid food and drinking some goat milk so the weaning process is going well. She says he's pretty lively, which is good. I've seen pugs who are kind of lazy and non-responsive. But he looks alert! When Gunter was a little, little puppy I went to visit him at the breeders a couple of times before he was old enough to come home, and he was the smallest little bouncy ball. At one point he couldn't really walk very steady, but he could sort of bounce, but only backward. It was so cute. I can't wait to see Dieter and Gunter together. I'm not at all worried about Gunter being gentle enough to play with him. You should have seen him with my baby niece this last week.

He was awesome. Didn't scare her at all. No barking no pawing or jumping. Just some gentle sniffing and a few attempts at licking her face. She would bat him in the face and he would just sort of look away. Best pug ever. He did seem a little bored though.