oh, the luck I have

Vacation is wonderful.

In spite of the fact that we established that the fridge was definitely broken on Friday morning. Right before we left.

In spite of feeling horrible about leaving the house sitter with a broken refrigerator.

In spite of the fact that the town we went to has an obvious and deep hatred for tourists.

In spite of the fact that we opted for a cheaper hotel room than we had originally planned and the place we stayed was pretty horrible.

In spite of having to be up at dawn for a wedding, then having a screaming-at-each other ride to said wedding because we were both too tired and didn't know where the heck we were.

In spite of having to leave the Nietzsche dog at home.

In spite of having to wait for an hour for sushi in the cute little family owned place that we found for dinner on saturday night.

In spite of only spending about ten minutes on the beach with Lilith because they would have written us a big fat expensive ticket if they had caught with her there.

In spite of not enough time and too much to see.

In spite of realizing that we should have stayed for one more day.

In spite of coming home to ridiculous heat and a rainy morning.

In spite of having to figure out how to do what we wanted to do and get the fridge fixed, and get Lilith in to see the vet because she has been shaking her head a lot but I can't find any evidence of ear infection.

There has been snuggling, exploring, lazing, wine drinking, delicious food eating, wonder seeing, cuddling, giggling, monopoly playing, swimming, sunshine, flipping television channels with no mission at all, avoiding the computer, not answering the phone, not worrying, sunggling some more, doing as we please, and vacationing in the best way possible.

Life is good.

good and bad part II

We are headed for the beach for a couple of days. The house is clean, we have some last minute things to take care of before we leave this afternoon, but we are looking forward to some yummy food and a bit of relaxing. I am confident that Nietzsche will love being a single dog for a few days, and that the sitter will take good care of him. He will probably be sad when we come home!

But my uncle, the one we went to Florida to collect last month, has gotten established with the doctors here. He had an MRI on Tuesday and we learned that the cancer that was formerly in remission has not only come back, but spread to his brain. He is starting radiation treatments as soon as possible, but we are not sure how long he will want to do that. The chemotherapy was very hard on him before, so if he has a hard time with the radiation... well. We want him to be comfortable and able to make his own choices and be supported no matter what he decides. But we also want him to live forever. It's a tough place to be in.

So I am asking for your thoughts this weekend. For a safe trip for Gabe and myself, and for healthy, easy, long life inducing radiation treatments for my uncle. We need all the help we can get.

one long day

Oh yes, today is going to be long. I have a long, busy day at work because everyone had to wait till the last minute to call me. I sent out an email a week and a half ago! I know everyone didn't get it, but still, I am going to be miserably tired by the time today is over. It's definitely a Taco Bell night. There will be no cooking. No way.

My brain is already in a woosh of things to do. The pre-vacation prep that makes you really need a vacation if you haven't already needed it. Plus I am trying to write down fifty million things for the house sitter so that she feels as comfortable and at home here as she can. It's really hard to remember everything and still want to go to work!

And on top of it all, something is eating all of my sunflowers again. I worked early yesterday, so I didn't get out there in the morning to check things out like I usually do. So I missed the fact that something had slaughtered a flower the night before.

gasp! sob!

It also ate all the leaves off of a couple other plants.

It pulled so hard that it bent my chicken wire fence all to crap.

And even yanked it right out from the staples that were holding it in place!

I sent Gabe out ther to pee round the perimeter, but it came back again last night. It obviously knows that Katy isn't going to do anything, and is unafraid of people smells. My last trick is going to be to cover the leaves with a stinky mixture of raw egg, garlic and red pepper that will hopefully taste so bad that the Sunflower eating bandit will go next door. I realize now that I shouldn't have allowed it to eat the compost flowers. But I was happy to be feeding some critter. Even now I feel a little bit guilty for trying to take away what it thinks is a safe food supply.

But I can't have it eating everything, now can I? We are getting ready to be gone for a few days. I don't want to come home to an empty hole where my garden used to be!

So think happy thoughts for my sunflowers, and hope for a new food source for whatever little critter is going to find himself hungry tonight, would you?

two more days

Two more days, only two more days. You know the other day I was saying that I am fully into the summer lazies and I don't want to do much of anything? Well, it's largely because Wednesday marks the beginning of eight days of vacation and my brain is totally already there!

We usually take a week off in the summer but don't go anywhere. No paid vacation for us, so we are essentially spending money even if we don't go anywhere. We are losing a week of money just by not being at work, so going somewhere is sort of a double whammy money loss. You would think that just being at home for a week would drive us batty, but it is actually wonderful. Not having to be anywhere, not having to get up, not having to think about work, not having to answer the phone... Gabe becomes a completely different person after being away from work for about three days. He is way more fun when he is not working. He's more affectionate, more willing to laugh and play. It's amazing to see the difference it makes when he can just relax.

This year one of my clients is getting married. He said "You're coming, right?" like it was super important to him that I be there. (I have been doing his hair for years, since before he even met the woman he is marrying, so it isn't as weird as one would think. We have never hung out outside the salon, but we are text message friends in between haircuts.) So I said sure I would be there.

Then he told me the wedding is at the beach.

So I said I would see if we could work out something with the dogs, but that the distance would make it more difficult.

Then he told me that the wedding is at sunrise.

>insert crickets chirping, plus a blank, blinking Tara here<

Now, our beaches are on the east coast. A sunrise wedding on the beach is going to be positively beautiful, dreamy, gorgeous. But for me to actually be awake and functional at sunrise? Excuse me? I am so completely not a morning person that I consider it a handicap. I mean, I need some time, and some coffee, and some silence, or I am going to eat your face right off of your head in the morning. And sunrise is pretty much in the middle of the night for Gabe, who is on a much later schedule than most of America. A freaking sunrise wedding. Clients will bring nothing but pain and early mornings, I tell you...

So we are going to the beach for a couple days. We are taking Lilith with us and leaving Nietzsche at home with a house sitter. We should have scheduled one more day at the beach, but we are nervous because this is the first time we have ever left a dog without one of us. It's actually a really big step for us to even be leaving because the dogs are ultimately why we talk ourselves out of going anywhere every year. You could say we are a little attached....

So I hope to have some mildly witty entertainment for you tomorrow, but starting Wednesday don't count on me to be round much. I might be, I might not be. I am leaning more towards not, but I might surprise myself.

Happy Monday to you all, and I hope your holiday weekend was fun filled and you didn't get sunburned!!

Sunday Tidbit

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

~Bertrand Russell

loving up the summer

I am absolutely in love with the idea that we are all outside playing and not really having a lot of interest in blogging these days. Everyone seems a bit withdrawn, and our posts are not as regular as they once were. I like to think that it is, for all of you, for the very same reason that it is for me.

I am totally into the summertime swing of supreme laziness. I am also in the last week before vacation time when you don't really do much of anything at work and you don't really care what is going on because you know that soon you will have noplace to be and nothing that you have to do. I go to work and do hair, sure, but my brain is really back at home eating grilled chicken and corn and playing in the garden, riding my bike and snuggling with my dogs.

It is summer. The sort where you can't help but put down the windows in the car and turn the music up too loud. The sort where you just know that nothing could possibly be bad. The sort where you just want to be out in the world, soaking up the sun and the warmth. Not much time for bloggin in all that, is there?

sunflowers!

We have achieved blooms!

It's too bad they are only there for giants and birds to enjoy. The best I could do was back off a ways and zoom in:

This one is a little closer to my level, and we also have a couple other slightly shorter ones getting ready to bloom. At least there are a few we can enjoy.

And this tiny guy is the one surviving bloom from the compost flowers. He's a spunky little guy, no?