Friday, May 26, 2006

world traveller i am

...i made it to london, all by my big girl self! the flight went well, thanks to a couple of valium, and i'm mostly over the jetlag, thanks to a lot of black tea. did i mention that i love tea? because i am in the right place for being a tea lover. today we went to bouroughs market, where they have so much beautiful food it kind of looks fake. i would move here, based solely on the market. and the flowers.

luckily for julie and i, the dumb americans that we are, they have written in big block letters on the sidewalk "LOOK RIGHT" and "LOOK LEFT" so that we don't get smashed by big black taxis going 500 mph. julie asked someone where to find a bathroom and they looked at her like she had asked where to find a donkey that lays eggs.

i feel like pounds and pence are play money, too bad they cost me a FUCKING fortune. i went to the atm and withdrew 100 pounds, which cost me 186 usd. love that, so much i love it.

tomorrow its off to stonehenge and bath.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

horror

i should have kept my mouth shut about mercy peeing on the bed because that was NOTHING compared to the latest.

she. had. diarrhea. all. over. the. bed.

it soaked through the duvet cover, the down comforter, the flat sheet, the fitted sheet, and into the mattress.

i've been performing pagan rituals to try and banish the smell of puppy diarrhea from the house.

i can't even talk about it anymore, it was so traumatic.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

mercy is a bad dog

i have always wanted to do a bedroom all in white/ivory, but didn't really want it to be my bedroom. so now that i have a spare bedroom to decorate, all my wildest linen dreams can come true.

in preparation for the house blessing today, i went shopping on thursday. i found purrrrrrfect sheets at target, from the shabby chic line with which i am obsessed. at old time pottery, i found a great quilt for the bottom of the bed, and happy little throw pillows. julie also made a trip to target (a different location) and found an embroidered, all-white **gorgeous** duvet cover and matching shams.

last night we washed everything to put it on the bed. it was quite a late night, and the bed got made somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:30 this morning. pretty and fresh and white and fluffy and the yummiest clean looking bed you've ever seen. we went about our business, doing things like ironing bedskirts and painting and etc, until i went back into the spare bedroom somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:30 this morning. where i found that mercy had TAKEN A PISS in the middle of the bed. not a little dribbly like you might think a 4.6 lb dog might make, but a big big yellow puddle that soaked nicely through the duvet and the down comforter. my memory is kind of blurred because of the late hour and the sheer force of my rage, but i think my head spun around a few times while my ears bellowed smoke. because mercy, though far from being housetrained, very rarely has pee pee accidents. and we leave a puppy pad out so that when she does have accidents, she at least goes on the pee pad. she hasn't peed on a bed since the first week we brought her home, and that one was our fault because we brought her up in bed with us while we were sleeping and didn't wake up when she needed to go and she was too little to get down by herself. and there was a pad IN THE SAME ROOM with the beautiful white bed. she was just being a little SHIT and with the crazy precision that children have, she knows exactly which button to push.

see, the thing about mercy is that she thinks that her good looks can get her out of any situation. and around here that may be the case, but i bet it is a whole different story in the puppy penitentiary where i will be taking her, now that she has been found guilty of peeing on clean white linens. those big brown eyes will get her NOWHERE with the seasoned criminals who do things like eat shoes and destroy furniture. nowhere. jailbird.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

technical question

for those of you with some blogging know-how, i need some assistance.

on the screen where i create my posts, i no longer have the option on my toolbar to change the font. i can make it bold or italicized, but i can't change the size or style. how do i fix this? please help me.

...and we're back!

it has been just silly how long it has been since i posted anything. you know it must be bad if i haven't even found time to BLOG. so here it is.....i'm a homeowner!!! we closed the whole she-bang on may 12, i signed 948543985 pieces of paper (i was kind of stressed and i kept messing up my signature because i was all shaky and plus my hand was getting tired because i had signed 2938439284 pieces of paper and then it made me more stressed because i was thinking that they were probably noticing that i was messing up my signature and thinking that i was forging it or some foolishness like that). and it was a done deal. i didn't read ANY of the papers i signed. purrrrrfect. one other side note: i went to my bank to get a cashier's check for roughly 4x my annual salary, and they did not ask to see id.

the house is wonderful. the animals love it, though the cats are pissed because we aren't letting them outside yet. they need to acclimate. every waking moment is spent painting or unpacking and i have so many bruises on my legs i kind of look like i need to call myself at the shelter for some help. julie is outside mowing the lawn (cute!) and we have our millionth trip to home depot planned for this evening. i love my new gas stove and the clawfoot tub makes me wet. in a couple of ways.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

changes on the horizon

at the staff meeting today, our director announced that they will be considering male candidates for the management position that just opened up.

if you don't already know, i work at a shelter for victims of domestic violence. right now our staff is entirely female. the person in this position would have a lot of direct contact with residents.

this has nothing to do with how i feel about men, but i just don't know what to think about this. i completely agree that men need to be on board with the movement to end domestic violence, but i'm not sure i think this is the right place for that involvement. the shelter has a certain energy that, i think, is the result of it being an all female environment. it is a sacred space of sorts. i think there are a lot of caring and compassionate men that would probably do the job well, but i wonder how it would change the atmosphere.

interestingly, no one in the room voiced any dissent. i asked if anyone had spoken to current residents, or to our survivors advisory committee (which is a committee of women who are former shelter residents), and the answer was no, interestingly enough. it makes me sad that nobody sought their feedback before making this decision. so i'm interested in hearing some input about this. maybe i need a different perspective. maybe not. i don't know.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

warning label

i took a quiz to find out what my "warning label" is, which actually wasn't taking a quiz it was just typing my name, but i can't BELIEVE what the result was. so irritatingly accurate.

THIS WAY UP: MORGAN HAS FRAGILE CONTENTS WHICH MAY BREAK.

whatever.

Friday, May 05, 2006

contains graphic content

i don't talk about the cats much, and i don't want it to seem as if i love them less than the puppy. the truth, actually, is that i love the cats all the time every day, and i only love mercy when she isn't shitting all over the house.

the cats love me too, so much so that they got me a special gift last night and left it on the front step for me. it was a dead bird.

this brings to mind two stories that i will share.

one morning, very early, i awoke to strange noises, and julie making cries of distress. there was something going on behind the dresser, and it soon became clear that moochie had managed to bring a bird in the house but had not killed it all the way. the bird was seeking refuge, and moochie was trying to finish what she started. julie was trying to intervene. she banished the cat, and got the bird out from behind the dresser. the bird is clearly not doing well, and though it does not have visible injuries it isn't really moving. julie then tells me that we have to EUTHANIZE the bird because it is suffering. she is devastated, but sees this as the most humane option. it is 6 in the morning. we take the bird outside. julie considers how she is going to KILL the bird. her first idea is to crush it with a rock. her second idea is to back over it with her car. she decides on a stray brick as her instrument of choice. she has the brick lifted high overhead, with the poor birdie lying helplessly on the back porch (picture jacob and isaac -- very similar situation) when, by a miracle of GOD, the bird is magically revived and flutters off, away from its alter of death, into the bushes.

the second story, also involving moochie, is a little more graphic. consider yourself warned. julie and i come home one night, and she spies something on the floor behind a chair in the bedroom. she inspects, and finds what appears to be blood. upon further inspection, she finds there is more blood. she follows the trail (much like a detective would do), which is getting increasingly bloody. she follows, and follows, until she finds a MASSACRED BUNNY. it was exactly like in a scary movie where they show the grisly shot of the murdered person all chopped up with the psycho music playing in the background and then they show the shot of the person who discovered the chopped up person with their face all aghast. and it really did look like someone had been murdered, for the amount of blood that was pooled on the floor and SMEARED on the WALLS. upon this discovery, julie squealed and ran into the bathroom and got in the bathtub, and closed the shower curtain, where she would obviously be safe from the killer. as it turns out, moochie ate the bunny's neck. it tooks us almost half an hour to clean up the carnage.

i want to add that, contrary to what these stories might lead you to believe, moochie is the most docile cat i have ever met. she sleeps all the time and is so floppy that sometimes i wonder if she has a skeleton or if she is just fluff and whiskers. she loves to be massaged and sometimes when you cuddle her she gets so relaxed that she drools. she can't help it that she is a killer. bless her heart.

we aren't sure who was behind last night's special gift, but we certainly know who has more experience with killing little cutesie animals. and it isn't bean.

why portland brew is my coffee shop of choice

today i am working from portland brew on 12th, because my house is a train wreck and everywhere i look there is shit piled to the ceiling (the packing has begun). i'm in one of the little cubbies which i love so much, but it is FREEZING back here. so i went up to the counter a few minutes ago to get another cup of hot water (because you can brew green tea more than once, and my first cup of green tea is frozen solid from the icy blast of air coming from above) and i mentioned how it is snowing back here, but curiously, warm in the front (apparently due to the ovens). just now, one of the guys brought a SPACE HEATER to my cubby and plugged it in for me. i could have cried with happiness.

things like that don't happen at starbucks.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

overwhelmed

it seems to be getting increasingly hard to keep my head above water. i feel sad and anxious and stressed and panicky. this is the quote that hopefully will get me through today:

"in this life we cannot do great things. we can only do small things with great love."
(mother teresa, as quoted by jack kornfield in a path with heart)

left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

grocery goodies

going to the grocery store is one of the things in which i delight. i love to get new foods.

i l-l-l-l-l-love cereal. i can't say enough about it. sometimes i get excited before i go to bed, because i know that when i get up in the morning i get to have a bowl of cereal. and sometimes i eat a bowl of cereal at night. lately i have been having a pretty steady relationship with kashi autumn harvest, but sometimes i see cinnamon harvest or raisin bran on the side. but TODAY i got a brand new cereal. it is called "good friends," also brought to you by kashi, and the picture on the box is horrendous. but the FIBER content is even more absurd. one serving provides 47% of your daily fiber needs. and it TASTES SO GOOD. i'm real happy. can't wait for morning to come. please also note that if you like honey nut cheerios, you should certainly try kashi "heart to heart." lurv it. also please note that i will only eat cereal with soy dream soy milk, because it is the best soy milk there is.

i've also decided that i need to eat more greens, branching out from spinach and romaine. so today i got some kale and arugula. vegans are supposed to eat a lot of kale, and i've never really made friends with it. i used kale in my "dragon bowl" dish i made tonight, and it turned out well. it was some serious healthiness i had happening in my bowl, what with the kale and the tofu and the brown rice and etc etc. julie wouldn't even TASTE it. i made her some vegan chocolate chip cookies as a peace offering.

in other grocery news, watermelon is on sale and is GOOD. strawberries are also cheap. the produce stand is open and the silver queen corn has given me a new lease on life. can't wait for blueberries to be ripe so i can go pick them.

and my novel snack for the week is wasabi roasted peas.