It is so fallish, and it feels like it happened so fast this year! The maples have completely burst into flame. There aren't as many here in WA as there were in Vermont, land of the maple covered hillside, but they are still very beautiful. The apple cider is back, and my favorite bar has local cider hot toddies. I think I will be drinking a number of those this season. When I was there tonight I watched a couple have an unbearably cute second (I am guessing) date. There was a lot of leaning in across the table and gazing. Lots of adorable gazing. And at the end they both took out their Blackberries and scheduled, so it must have gone as well as it looked like it was going.

The dog has gone back to his cold weather sleeping position, which is an unbelievably tiny dogball curled up against my shoulders. I have gone back to my cold weather cooking: chicken and dumpling soup, banana bread, quiche. I have a date to go apple picking with my friends and their kids, and then I will make pie, and possibly tarts, and other exciting apple things.

I haven't really missed New England yet, and in the past fall has been my missing season. It's early days, but usually by this time I would have had little pangs here and there. I *notice* the differences, like just the dots of color here and there, instead of the whole mountain. But here I have the steel grey sea, and that counts for quite a lot.

Work has been hard lately. I have felt whiny, like my suggestions (which would markedly improve various things) are either not valued, or are used without acknowledgment. I have felt like many of the things I do on a daily basis are fundamentally unsatisfying.

Which they are.

But I am oh so grateful to have the work, really and truly I am. Even if they cut our hours back, I am still making enough to support myself and that, in the current economy, is a very good thing. Also, I don't hate to *go* to this job. I have had a lot of jobs that I hated to show up at in the morning, usually because of the people. All of the people I directly and regularly interact with at this job are good. We don't talk about politics, and I definitely present the Queer for your Straight Friends version of my life at work, but in an office I feel like that's fine. One of my co-workers has radically different views about pretty much everything, but we've negotiated a very polite no fly zone on various topics, and it mostly works out.

I have been doing writing that I am happy with, writing that is going somewhere. This is deeply satisfying, and also scary.

Roasted vegetables are my new best friends. I have been trying to gently pay attention to how many vegetables I eat. Part of this process is buying things I have never tried before, and then trying to prepare and eat them. This has involved some failures (oh, eggplant, I am sorry for what happened to you), but more successes (spring onions: yes, please), and also very pleasant conversations with an adorable guy at the Co-op who likes to suggest things I may not have tried yet.

The things in my garden are getting taller--I think there may be buds on the plants along the back wall before too long. Bless the early spring in the Northwest. I have a forced hyacinth (now *there's* a title for a period romance novel) blooming happily on my windowsill, and the whole house is full of that deep sweetness. It's not a smell that could be translated at all well into perfume, or candles, or anything scented. The only "hyacinth" scented things I've ever sniffed smelled like a dead flower threw up on them.

Conquered:

1. The fencing for the beds in the garden.
2. The buttonholes on my black wool coat.
3. The zipper on my oldest pair of jeans--it's busted, and I don't know how to replace a zipper, so I...sewed the fly up. Shut up. It totally works.
4. Delivered my friend's birthday present and took her out for an amazing breakfast: Eggs Benedict on belgian waffles.
5. Homemade bread. This last batch is by far the lightest and the best.

Conquered by:
1. Valentine's day w/out a valentine.

I have just discovered the solution to a coffee shop problem I have for ages--ever since I started going to coffee shops: the annoying coffee shop patron. This problem comes in many, many forms, but the most offensive is the Loud Boring Coffee Drinker. It is ok to be loud if you are moderately interesting. It is ok to be boring if you are relatively quiet. But if you are both, when I am sitting here tappity-tapping on my laptop, eventually it will make me feel homicidal.

Are you ready for how easy this solution is? Headphones. Headphones with good music (in this case, Bach cello suites), and I am good to go! No matter how annoying your topic of conversation, no matter how high-pitched and caffeine-fueled your voice, I am ready to ignore you and get some shit done.

I am here to officially announce to you that trying to quit smoking is making me a complete and total bitch. Be forewarned, if you have to interact with me for any reason. I am keeping it tamped down most of the time, but then it sneaks out around the edges at strange moments. I told someone today that I was very Concerned about how we had been Communicating, and I thought that they had perhaps not been behaving very nicely towards me for the past two weeks.

I have been cutting back drastically on cigarettes for the past two weeks.

The person in question did not even bring this up, but let me wind my circuitously bitchy way through some incoherent statements about people not asking how you are doing when you see them, until I finally fetched up with: "Or maybe I'm just horribly cranky because I am cutting back on smoking."

She nodded, in a very sympathetic way, and I promptly burst into tears.

The patch is sounding better and better. I do not know if I can do this without some form of chemical aid, and it drives me absolutely crazy to admit that.

I am not much of a cook. But recently I had a friend come to stay, and she did beautiful and bewildering things involving black mission figs and sherry and braised beef, and these things were very good. After rejecting my suggestion that she stay forever & cater my life, she made a great deal of noise about how easy it is to cook delicious things. Not necessarily things involving sherry (because this friend is realistic about what she can expect me to do in her absence), but tasty food.

So I went to the co-op, and I poked at the meat in a dispirited way. And then I went back the next week and did the same thing. I finally had to sort of close my eyes & hoist a chicken into the cart at random, as though someone was forcing me to do it. Raw chicken is wicked intimidating. It just sits there, all soggy looking, with no instructions on what to do with it.

But I got the chicken home, and I found instructions on what to do to it, and I followed them (mostly), and the process did not scare me nearly as much as I thought it would, although the dog's nose and the ladle did have some near misses. I even made gravy. Gravy & roast chicken. I am extremely impressed with myself.

Hi! Haven't seen you in a while! You look great! New shoes? New boyfriend? Totally different life-cycle you've entered since it's been about three million years since I posted? Yeah, I know. I'm a sucktastic lj-friend, but I make up for it by being a really good actual friend. You win some, you lose some.

In other news, more responsibility is about to happen at my job, thus alleviating mind killing boredom & extreme desire to make little sculptures out of paperclips because there is NOTHING ELSE TO DO! Yay responsibility!

Also, the dog training is progressing magnificiently well. Abbey got her butt sniffed by a dog the size of my sneaker today, and although her hackles went up, she came away with me right away when I started walking. This is huge progress, largely due to my awesome, awesome dog trainer. She showed up at my house the other day, and said, "I'm going to write a book about working at the animal clinic. Actually, it's going to be a book about idiots." And once again I thought to myself that this a woman I can *totally* work with. People *are* idiots, as evidenced by the Young Man Full Of Youthful High Spirits I encountered the other day who rolled his window down, locked eyes with me & let out a wordless screech. Kind of a howl. Only really high pitched. I was so startled I did not do a thing until he was already gone, at which point I elbowed Stinky (who was riding shotgun) & said "What the fuck just happened?" I will probably never know.

Hey, my question mark key is all sticky, which is weird, since this computer is so new. Do I use the question mark more than Apple counted on? Am I a questioning sort of a girl. Come to think of it, there's probably a tiny fragment of burrito holding things up in there.

So yeah, my parents are getting divorced, but it's beautiful out & I have a good dog and one of my best friends in the world is staying with me. The other night he cooked steak with caramelized shallots & morel mushrooms & mashed potatoes so delicious I could have climbed in the bowl with them. You are totally jealous of my house guest, don't even bother denying it. But you can't have him. Because even after he finds an apartment he is still going to live within convenient dinner-making distance of me, in return for which I will take him to fabulous culinary experiences like the Mexican grocery store and the breakfast bowling alley.


PS: When I spell-checked this entry it offered me normalized for caramelized. Which would have made for a very different dinner. How do you normalize a shallot?

Hey all: sorry I haven't posted for a ridiculously long time. I am dealing with some heavy stuff, and not wanting to write about it in this format. But I am reading regularly.

Also, my dad has a lj now claymedeiros! Go check him out, especially if you have actually met him & appreciated his awesomeness in person. Feel free to friend him or comment--he'd appreciate it if folks said hi.

Mom: Wait, is this movie about God?
Me: Well, it is called "The Gospel", so I'm guessing...
Mom: I didn't know that!
Me: You didn't know that a movie about gospel music, called "The Gospel", would have religion in it?
Mom: I'm just not into God right now.

( meme from beyondbliss )

It's snowing here again, and has gotten so cold that the sidewalks & streets are iced over. The night walk was more like skating than anything else. I actually think the dog enjoys the sensation of towing me along behind her. My mom has a doctor's appointment tomorrow that she has waited 2 months for, so instead of being snowed in where she lives, in the hills, she came downtown to stay with me. We're going to go together, so there will be two of us listening to what the surgeon has to say.

I just went & looked at the blog of someone I was really close to in college, someone who I thought I would be close to for a long, long time. She hasn't been, as it happens, which is fine: these things so rarely turn out the way I think they will. But I am really grateful for the Magic of the Internet, because I still get to see tiny snippets of her life. Sometimes I get pissed at the way blogs & lj have compressed the world, and how easy they make casual internet stalkery, but sometimes it really is just a nice way to know what's happening at a distances. Tonight there were pictures from her wedding, which happened half a world away, and they were so beautiful.

quote of the week: "People who love themselves eat dinner."

quote of the evening 1: "Sometimes I think I'm just out there, piloting a yacht of delusion."
quote of the evening 2: "Meanwhile, I am desperately paddling the leaky rowboat of family discord."

it is so cold in my house that i should really be wearing my fingerless gloves, but i am kind of enjoying the sensation, for some reason. the neighbors across the parking lot are having a raucous college party, with lots of standing on the balcony shrieking & smoking, and i am thankful that i have nowhere i need to be tomorrow.

but on friday i do, because i am going to see my sister in the land of port, and staying with her & her boyfriend at their housesit. we are going to make christmas cookies & caramels & drink heavily & go to my favorite place in the world to eat breakfast, the marathon taverna. everything there is three dollars, & you can smoke.

i have been making a lot of cookies, and generally baking up a storm. i forgot that i like baking when no one is watching me & i don't have to feed the results to anyone whose culinary judgment makes me nervous. i've made banana bread, popovers, chocolate chip cookies & christmas cookies. for some reason my ability to follow the directions on the food coloring box totally malfunctioned & we ended up with bright psychedelic colors for the frosting. lime green! bright orange! lurid red! very holiday season, if your holiday season is a bit nighmarish, but also delicious.

1. I had a baby. I wasn't delighted, or horrified, just matter of fact, like having a baby was the thing I was doing that week. It seemed to be a nice baby, but I have really no basis for comparison.

2. I was at a resort with bearsir, and he was reading me his new show. It was really good. There were lots of other people milling around, being annoying, so we kept having to move: to the basement, to the garden, to the carriage house.

1. 3000 miles of distance, or twenty hours of driving, depending on who you are.
2. The fact that my parents try to buy as much organic as possible, and compost like rabid creatures, when they made fun of me for wanting to do the same when I lived with them.
3. Non smoking diners.
4. The closing of the Tequila Research Institute, where I would be drinking right now if I had my choice in the matter.
5. Experimental fiction.
6. The Bennington Alumni Magazine.
7. Entries in the Death section of the Alumni magazine with no further information. I think that this is, in fact, just cruel.
8. The time difference preventing me from being on the same phone conversation schedule as half the people I like.
9. I dropped my cell phone behind my bookcase today & didn't notice, thereby missing the calls of half the people I like, some of whom seem to only call when I am unable to speak with them.
10. My sister has a lovely boyfriend, and I haven't been on a date in (omitted) months.
11. I don't get to be Mae West, since there is only one person who gets to be Mae West, and she's it.
12. I am going to make chocolate chip cookies, and although I don't generally want a live in person of any kind in my life, tonight I would really like to be able to feed someone my cookies.

note: Possible spell check suggestions for Bennington: Bending, Blending, Binding, Bonding, Bunting. Bunting? Really?

My town does not know how to deal with snow. We got a foot on SUNDAY. But since we live in the land of snow-denial, where the amount per year is so minuscule (usually) that it barely merits boots, there are no snow plows. No sanding. No shovels. Nothing. Nada. Squit.

Which means, hilariously, that much of the town is still snowed in. School was cancelled for three days. Roads were closed. The police were advising people not to drive. 400 people drove into ditches & had to be towed out, and the tow truck agencies weren't even accepting any more calls.

Part of this is because there is no snow equipment, so the streets had turned into this super exciting game of trying to get your tires into the previously carved ruts so you didn't whizz off into the hinterlands. But part of it is because people here really don't know how to drive in the snow. They just panic.

Since I live downtown, I was still able to access such necessities as flour, eggs, and movies. I have spent a lot of time the past few days working on a secret sneaky craft project that may end up being presents.

I haven't been able to walk the dog that much today, because she weights seventy-five pounds, and LOVES snow. Is obsessed with snow. Would marry snow if a precipitation/animal union were legal. I don't think she'd ever seen it before, so there has been much frolicking, much tossing of snow into the air, much eating of snow. And then when it rained, and everything became coated in a slick layer of ice, there has been much towing of me downhill. Like sledding. With no sled. Until I fall down.

Today I bought a Gentle Leader, which is helping quite a bit, because when she tugs she just turns herself around. She doesn't mind it at all, but I am of course paranoid that it looks like a muzzle. I am contemplating getting her a small sign that says "I Am Not Wearing a Muzzle," just so we can be clear.

But then taking her out would involve:
1. Boots, hoodie, gloves, scarves, coat
2. Cell phone
3. Keys
4. Leash
5. Gentle Leader
6. Poop bags
7. Treats for training
8. Small sign
9. Dog

And that might just be one item too many.

My parents? Still snowed in. Because they live on a HILL. It sounds like interpersonal conditions are deteriorating over there, so I hope a thaw comes soon.

It snowed last night! For the first time this season!

In the alternate universe where I make my living by singing on top of a piano, I would so sing "Comes Love."

In an effort to smoke less, I have made a rule that I do not smoke in my house, or in the area immediately surrounding it. However, I can smoke while taking the dog for a walk.

So last night we went out, armed with the ever present plastic bag for picking up what she leaves behind. (No, my ass doesn't look like that--it's just the four Fred Meyer bags I have tucked into my back pocket, thanks for asking.) I had already lit my cigarette and was ambling peacefully along when she took a shit. I pulled the bag out of my pocket, and due to many years of practice, managed to keep the cigarette in my mouth while picking up the poop & simultaneously holding onto the dog. Then a bicyclist went by. Abbey thought that probably merited some investigation. She took off after the cyclist with great speed, and in trying to keep her out of the road I was unable to press the little lock doohickey on the leash. I switched the plastic bit of the leash to my right hand & grabbed for the line with my hand.

But I was still holding the bag. Which meant that the leash was tucked neatly into a plastic bag full of dog shit. In my disgust, I dropped the leash. Abbey decided to take a brisk jog in the park, unsupervised. I leaped after her and managed to catch the leash with my foot, and then pick it up with my left hand. Now covered in poop: right hand, left hand, shoe, leash, bag.

Dog Poop: 1
Me: 0

But somehow the cigarette remained in my mouth through this whole affair. So I guess I'll call that a tie.

How has the holiday trauma already started? It's not even Thanksgiving. I need a suit made of christmas cookies & green ribbon that somehow endows me with the ability to survive this season without trauma. My mom has already started referring to it as "the Dark Days," which does not speak well for her hopes of a holly jolly Christmas.

Also, my sister & her boyfriend are back together. Yay! She missed him, he loves her, good all around. But this means she is bringing him to Thanksgiving. Which means that she will, for the first time ever, in the history of our family, be bringing a date to a holiday. I will not. This is a weird feeling. I have never brought partners to family events, mainly because my relationship history is pretty spotty (& not in the cute, puppy dog way), but also because our family is a Big Fucking Deal. Perhaps especially right now.

I am feeling like a bit of a spinster. I know that it is totally anti many things I believe in to feel that way, but I do anyway. I feel like I should have someone to bring to the holidays. Preferably a smoker, so they could sneak into the backyard with me when things get too heavy.