Man, these shoes, they cost way more than I should have been willing to pay. But I had to have them, I swear. I was obsessing over them. They are so freaking adorable. I’m not really a shoe person, I spend most days in my Adidas runners and I’m totally cool with that, but these shoes, they hooked me. I LOVE them.

I spend the most time in the kitchen on Sunday. I make breakfast around 11.00, after I’ve slept late and walked the dog. It’s usually eggs and hashbrowns, sometimes pancakes, sometimes bacon. I only eat eggs on the weekend, so I enjoy it. Sunday dinner is generally a big deal for me. Not for any big reason, it’s not like I have a bunch of people over or anything. It’s usually just me, hanging out in my pajamas. But since I have the time, I use it.

I was in the grocery store and noticed these little ‘spice kits’, a package that comes with all of the spices you need for a specific dish, along with the recipe. Beef Bourguignon sounded like a good idea, so I bought one. The recipe itself was kind of unnecessarily complicated and there were some things I would have done differently, to my own preferences, but I ended up with an excellent dinner. I had it with mashed potatoes, just because I didn’t feel like noodles, and I think I prefer that texture combination. Good stuff.

So, I haven’t written anything since May. D’oh.

Last year, after my grandfather died, I helped my aunt compile a catalogue of all of his belongings. After two days and about 4,000 photographs, we managed to get through most of it. She made discs with all of the photos and lists included and passed them out to certain family members. We were supposed to go through them and call whichever items we wanted. Because I do what I’m told, I finally picked out three or four things and sent her my short list. I put it off for a long time, though, because I didn’t really want to take anything. The idea of his things not being in the house where they belonged was upsetting. I wasn’t alone, either, because very little was claimed. Most of us asked for small things of sentimental value. We all felt weird about it.

I asked for the suitcases because, when we were going through all of the storage and closets around the house, I pulled them out from under the stairs and opened them up. They’re old leather, heavy and solid. One of them has a sticker from Hawaii, another a tag with my Grandpa’s name and address, written in his hand. He took them around the world, from Las Vegas to Japan, over the span of 40 or 50 years. The handles are frayed and there are still slips of paper in the pockets. They make me wonder about the things he must have seen and the places he traveled, and the way he must have looked, carrying them through the airports with his steady hands, not bothered by the weight and not dragged down by their size. I know from photos that when he was younger, he wore suits and an almost arrogant smirk. He and my grandmother dressed up when they traveled, always looking like movie stars.

I love these suitcases. Despite my auntie’s insistence that they’re too heavy and old, I plan to take them with me when I finally start to travel myself, which is hopefully coming soon. It’s my goal now. It’s what’s next for me.

Yesterday morning, he was running around with bangs in his face, looking like he was trying to find his My Chemical Romance CD. I think next month, when it’s officially summer, I’ll take him to get trimmed so that he’s not a little ball of scraggly fluff. I can’t help thinking it’s pretty effing cute, though.

At 5.21 this morning, I was jolted awake by the dog gagging in his crate and I jumped out of bed and rushed over to find him barfing all over the place. I don’t know what the deal is, it happens sometimes right after he eats, but this was just completely out of nowhere. I got him out of the crate and dragged out his little pillow, which went right into the garbage, and his blanket, which just needs a wash. He seemed fine, as he always does, but it’s such a bad way to wake up. Luckily for me I’m not a morning person and I passed out again right quick.

This morning I was on my second bus, on the way to work, and this weird thing happened. I was at the very back of the bus and there were these two guys sitting in the seats ahead of me. The bus took a wide corner and at the exact same moment, all three of us moved to sit up straighter. It was like choreography or something, like if it had gone on a little longer maybe we’d have gotten up and started doing the Thriller dance. Of course no one else noticed, so it was just me sitting there reveling in the randomness. It’s always just me.

We actually just finished our May issue, having pushed the deadline back a little, so we took some downtime after submitting the files. I actually took a couple of days off. We’ve been trying to organize for an editorial meeting all week. The way we’ve set up the new weekly planner, the editorial meeting should happen in week one. So we were looking over our calendar yesterday and congratulating ourselves on it, when my editor looked down at her notebook and said “So, we’re in week 3 now…”

I looked back at the calendar and realized what that meant. “Oh Sarah, we’ve already failed, haven’t we?”

In related news, we went to Staples to look at getting a gigantic white board to write down page assignments and progress notes, and I found these freaking cute office supplies. Push pins, paperclips, bulldog clips and magnets, with the most awesome black and white designs. A few weeks ago, I moved my computer from the living room to the bedroom, where it fits nicely into the corner between the bathroom door and the window. It’s like an actual workspace now, as opposed to a catch-all shelving unit for junk. I got a new desk, because the old one was huge and clunky and didn’t work anywhere. It’s been a big change, everything is much better this way. I’ve been wanting to create a consistently designed space where things match or at least work together and everything is organized and useful. So these cute little bits will help a lot for all of that. I was super excited to find them, which made Sarah laugh at me, but I don’t care. They’re awesome.

Soooo…Hot Rod….

It’s not for me

Of course it isn’t. *handing me the dvd case* Enjoy the show.

Fucking high school kids.

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where, in one scene, Lisa and Bart explain to Marge why they’re always so happy when they get home from church – ‘it’s the longest possible time between now and more church’. I feel like that right now. It’s the longest possible time between now and when I have to go back into production on the magazine at work. I’ve really started to resent giving up my life to get it done. I had to work all weekend and I was so pissed off about it, there were probably wavy red lines above my head. It’s not that I hate it, it’s that we pushed the deadline back and so we got paid a few days ahead, so I had money that I couldn’t spend because I couldn’t do anything I wanted to. I was very petulant about the whole thing.

We finally finished it today and tomorrow I’m taking the day off to catch up. I plan to go to the mall and buy some new t-shirts, because I am oh so exciting. I’m tired, it happens when you get old. Besides that, I kept taking the dog to work with me, and after a while, that walk can be just plain brutal. When we finally got home last night, I felt like I’d been wandering for a few years. I’m just going to kick back and keep it low for the next little while.

I started bringing my lunch on a regular basis a couple of years ago, when I started noticing how much it was costing me to go to the place around the corner or down the street every day. I also was getting really tired of and grossed out by the amount of fast food I was eating. I love the idea of bento boxes, and mine aren’t exactly authentic, but they’re filled with things I like to eat. Most days, it’s hummus and pita with a mini wheel of cheese and maybe some carrot sticks or a separate container of fruit. Occasionally, if I have some, a few chocolates. It’s surprising how satisfying they are. Plus, I like arranging everything into a cute little container and having a nice, compact set-up.

Today, it was ramen and gyoza (I bought them frozen) with failed carrot flowers. I have no idea how to make carrot flowers, obviously.

Yesterday I brought the dog to work with me, which is turning out to be a pretty cool thing to do with him. We still have issues with certain areas of his training, but his behavior is so much better than it was when I first got him. He listens to me (most of the time) and goes downstairs and sits by the front door when he needs to go out, patiently waiting for me. He doesn’t pee in the boardroom anymore, or make a run for it if he sees the door open. When we get to stoplights, all I have to do is pull at his leash and he sits down beside me to wait. He doesn’t always stay, but he at least recognizes the gesture.

Things like that make me feel like I’m not a complete idiot dog owner. Sometimes, I make the mistake of searching for advice on the net and it starts a shame spiral of ‘do I spend too much time playing with him? do I not play with him enough? am I making him gay with all the grooming?’ or ‘I bet he’d have cured cancer by now if I just worked harder at being the Alpha dog’ and I freak out about the whole thing. I have to constantly remind myself that he’s doing just fine and remind myself that I have pretty good instincts about this. He was a stray who probably ate garbage, for pete’s sake, the fact that he sits still while I clean the crud from around his eyes is a pretty good indication that it’s gonna be okay. I mean…right?

He likes hanging out at my office. There are always people around so he gets way more attention than he does from just me. My co-workers like him. He gets into things, but he hasn’t chewed any shoes or destroyed banking records or anything like that. He’s pretty happy just to trot around getting pats on the head. It’s good for me, too, because it keeps my stress levels way down. For one thing, I don’t have to take public transit. I walk him to and from my office, which is roughly 3 miles each way. It takes about an hour, because the dog has to sniff everything, but I don’t mind. It’s actually only 20 minutes longer than it takes me on the bus, which is pretty goddamn ridiculous. When the weather’s nice, it’s a good jump start. I get to work a lot less irritated and I can stay longer because I don’t need to rush home to check on the dog. Plus, I can stop and nerd out with my camera along the way and the dog’s used to it, so he doesn’t care. It’s kind of awesome all over, really. I don’t have it in me to do it every day, but a couple of days a week can be good for both of us.

Now that we’ve adjusted to a pattern and we’re both more settled, having a dog is turning out to be just as good as I was hoping.

Yesterday I was hanging out with the dog, not long after I gave him a mohawk and took this picture (it was funny, shut up) and I caught him chewing something he shouldn’t have. My dog, in the short three months that I’ve had him, has put into his mouth: my bank card – the tellers thought it was adorable when I went to get a replacment and slapped my twisted chunk of plastic on the counter in front of them – random chicken wing bones that he digs out of piles of leaves about ten miles from where you’d expect a chicken wing bone, a piece of glass, and feathers. He grabbed them up off the ground and tried to eat them. He is always chewing on things he shouldn’t, so by now he knows that as soon as he does, he’s in trouble. It’s some kind of self-hating impulse, I swear.

Anyway, so yesterday I caught him chewing on something and before I could even say anything, he dropped it and scurried off to the corner to put his tiny little dunce cap on. And as I watched him go I said ‘You’d better run, egg!’ because it always goes back to The Simpsons.

A conversation I had with my brother yesterday:

“Hey, check this out, dude”

This is where my brother gives me that look that says he’s wondering how he could have been so stupid as to believe his parents when they told him this crazy alien was his sister – “There are so many things wrong with what you just said. Like, first of all, it’s not like I haven’t seen that about 12 times already. And it’s the Discovery Channel, that’s the kind of stuff you see on the Discovery Channel. And did you just call me dude?

Anyway, it was stupid of them to get so close for that footage. I’m surprised they even got into the bubble net. You do know what a bubble net is, right?”

“Just because I don’t watch the Discovery Channel, it doesn’t mean I don’t know anything”

“…actually, that’s exactly what it means”