just be.

hpapy bithday to me!

at least, i think that's how pooh spelled it. wobbly and all.

and a hpapy bithday it has been indeed. lots and lots of good wishes from friends here and far, productive errands to start the day, fun knitting time at the shop, a catnap, and a fabulous dinner out with my guy. knitting time was extra-awesome thanks to the visit of eight-year-old amanda, a new knitter, with her four-year-old sister lucy and their mother. amanda sat beside me for a nice chunk of time and practiced her knitting in "her blue": hawaiian blue. adorable. lots of stories, smart and funny girl. the kind i'd want to have if i had a daughter. my favorite thing she said, i think, was "this is my favorite yarn store. everyone is so nice. <thinkthink> i think, if i ever go to another yarn store, i'll still think this is my favorite and first. well, it'll still be my first, but i hope it's still my favorite." squeezeyay.

my favorite remark of my own of the day: on the way to eleven for dinner, i said to smartboy that my favorite thing about taking off on a friday was that it felt like saturday so, when it was all over, you felt like you'd had a three-day weekend.

rather than tell you what smartboy replied, i'll let you fill in your own reaction as that sinks in. i'm sure they will be similar.

dinner was teh yum. the amuse-bouche was a tiny little grilled cheese sandwich made with pleasant ridge cheese, morels, and pesto. teeny tiny crispy good. then we had a couple of cheeses for appetizers; the triple cream was as smooth and mild as it sounds. yum-o. i had a mesclun salad with a goat-cheese dressing—i don't care for goat cheese, but i must have accidentally ordered the wrong thing. it was still really good. then came the vichyssoise, to which i'd looked forward for days, and it was every bit as delicious as i'd hoped. i don't know why it's not on every summer menu—it's cheap and easy to make, hard to screw up, yummy, and cool and soothing summer food. eleven makes its with tiny crisps of fingerling potatoes, adding a wonderful saltiness. and of course i saved room for dessert, which was a s'more, eleven style. this meant a thick graham-cracker triangle on a plate drizzled with chocolate sauce, with a small scoop of marshmallow ice cream on it and a cut-out of the same cracker atop that. scattered across the plate were a few truffle-looking scoops of some kind of chocolate ice cream—so good—but the best part (elbowing space with the vichyssoise for best part of the meal) was the homemade marshmallow, a heavenly, creamy sploosh about the size of a lime, browned perfectly with a torch. as andrew put it, it was like the best part of a toasted marshmallow: not the black char, just the creamy part and the brown crispy part. definitely not your run-of-the-mill jet-puft.

oh: another favorite of the day was a sign outside big mama's. the chalkboard sidewalk sign read,

peach cobbler $3.50
parking $45.00
total $48.50.

(big mama's is a barbecue joint a few blocks from downtown.)

anyway, tomorrow is lots of cleaning and houseworky kinds of things that should be very gratifying. plus knitting, because i have a lot of that to do. and it'll feel like i had a three-day weekend to do it.

p.s. dan abrams is hot. he makes the ridiculosity of michael jackson coverage much more pleasant. that is all.

why, yes, thank you, i *am* feeling better.

as lisa and i have long said, everything is better once you've been to the bathroom. and, paraphrasing that, once you've had a little smackerel of something.

(okay, it also took some scolding of my knitting and starting a new project using some needles that i never use but love, but still. the food helped a LOT.)

so does seeing my boyfriend (aka president obama) on the teevee. i heart him so hard.

i made my shopping list for tuesday, which i'm trying to make my regular grocery-shopping day. i have appointments outside the house more often on tuesdays than on any other day of the week, plus it's not a terribly crowded time—middayish—to be at whole foods (and who isn't happier surrounded by the friendliest, most knowledgeable, and most helpful staff in all of grocering? and the most gorgeous produce and meat ever?). and best of all, it's one of the days on which i can see anna at the store, which combines two things that make me *very* happy: anna-banana + knitting.

i base my shopping list on my dr. phil food plan (mine comes from his book, but it's much the same as this online resource). the more closely i follow this plan, the better i feel, in every way. this week's plan presents some challenges: salmon, king crab, shrimp, and tuna steak. if you have ever planned a meal with me or been out to a restaurant with me, you know that i am an embarrassingly picky eater and that i cannot stand seafood. (i do not count a tuna-fish sandwich with mayo and, preferably, crunchies like minced onions and celery.) i have long wanted to make myself like seafood, so i googled "salmon for people who don't like fish" and read a few message boards. one suggestion that made plenty of sense to me was that you try seafood at a good restaurant, well prepared. another was that you learn to like seafood much like you learned to like vegetables. these rang particularly true for me in that i adore a good restaurant meal and in that there really aren't many vegetables that i dislike and i love them as simply prepared as possible—something that was not true when i was a child. so i asked smartboy—who LOVES seafood—what the best salmon is that he's had in town. this was a harder question for him to answer than i anticipated, since he gets salmon virtually any time we order in or eat at a restaurant. we talked a bit about my goals and my options, and we decided that we would go out to a seafood restaurant this week for those meals and see whether i could like any of them. we talked about mccormick and schmick's on the south side and legal sea foods downtown, but i know that i'll be more likely to make time for this if we try mitchell's at the waterfront, since i can combine an errand or two as well. so we'll start with mitchell's and see what happens thereafter.

i initially thought i should try to stick with the healthiest preparations possible, but i am going to give myself permission to ignore health considerations for these meals. after all, i probably learned to like zucchini after eating fried zucchini, broccoli after eating it with cheese sauce, and so on. and now i love just steamed or roasted vegetables best of all. so mitchell's has some interesting-looking preparations, including its shang hai preparation: the catch of the day steamed with fresh ginger (one of my three favorite flavors in the world, so hey!) and scallions and served with sticky rice, spinach, and rice-wine soy sauce. i'll try maybe some tuna with that. they also do a blue-crab and jumbo-shrimp penne with alfredo cream sauce (how do you go wrong with that?), and beer-battered jumbo gulf shrimp with sea-salt french fries, hush puppies, and cole slaw (the latter i will skip, thankyouverymuch). or maybe the chesapeake bay jumbo lump crab cakes with scallion mashed potatoes and sweet-corn saute. or the ginger-crusted atlantic salmon with sticky rice, stir-fried veggies, and orange-ginger butter sauce. the point is that, if i focus on the preparation and the sides, i can at least taste some of these things and try to learn to like them. i won't lose weight doing it, but eventually it'll be possible, i hope, to order them in healthier  ways. wish me luck.

and now i shall return to knitting. much more soothing than thinking about seafood.

know what reasonably healthy, yummy dinner you can make in less than 10 minutes?

anything, if you buy all the veggies prechopped and the turkey kielbasa precooked. i have been trying to eat more healthily, like i did before we got married, and that means cooking. and shopping. i had a wonderful, peaceful, sensory-overloading time at whole foods yesterday and bought all kinds of yummy, healthy things. i forget how colorful and beautiful real food is.

anyway, i bought some prechopped celery+onions, prechopped onions, and prechopped peppers, among many other things, and tonight i threw the celery+onions and peppers into a wok with a drop of oil (okay, like 10 drops, but nowhere near anything i could measure in a spoon), cut a turkey kielbasa into little half-circles and threw them in, and cooked it up while i washed some red-leaf lettuce. smartboy is having his midwestern stir-fry over pasta, but i just put mine over the lettuce and called it a nice warm salad. yum-o.

last night's dinner was a cheat, too; i'd gotten some thai peanut–marinated chicken breasts from the meat counter and roasted them over some baby vegetables (nothing to do but wash) while smartboy walked the dogs. i love my meat thermometer-timer. wait till it beeps and dinner's on.

tomorrow night, i'll put the leftovers from tonight's stir-fry into the crock pot with some buffalo burgers, some prechopped butternut squash, and maybe something else (i bought broccoli rabe, but i think i should steam that, and i have a couple of yams, but that's not very interesting contrast with the squash...apples? that sweet+savory thing?). let that cook all day while we work, and dinner will be ready when smartboy gets home.

i love being back in the rhythm of planning and cooking meals—real meals, with vegetables, variety, and freshness—and i hope i stick with it. if you've known me since before i was married (so, like, summer 2005), you know that i used to be such a whiz of a cook that i catered parties for friends and family and never made anything from prepared anything (except desserts, which i bought premade or frozen as often as not). i was a serious cook. in our old place, i threw dinner parties every *month*! and virtually never made the same thing twice. (under duress, i'd resort to a well-loved recipe for steak au poivre, but besides that, really never the same thing twice.) for one dinner party, i went to SIX SHOPS to find just the right, best ingredients. these days, i'm all chuffed if i just get to one shop. so let's hope that this is a trend back toward my better self, my healthier self. i feel better about myself when i feel good about what i put into my body, and so far, that's working.

knitorama

let me just start by saying ow. owie owowowow. not the migraine i had this afternoon, which has settled down, but my right hand and wrist. i knitted too much on my queen of beads socks too quickly, i guess, not enough breaks or something, and it HURTS. (the reward, however, is pretty wonderful: pretty new socks for me!)

making my living as i have for the past couple of decades making constant daily use of a mouse and keyboard, usually for double-digit numbers of hours per day and usually for six days per week, i am no stranger to wrist and hand pain. the difference with this is that cracking my wrist and hand joints is *not helping* this time. no response. it's not a joint thing but a muscle thing, and the muscles ache like leg cramps that wake you up in the middle of the night. (if you haven't had those, they are tearfully painful. eat a banana.) from the heel of my hand to my elbow. as soon as i finish my two current edits, i'm headed to natural stitches to buy one of those wrist support thingies. a brace, i guess it's called, to compress? i have no idea how they work, but i'm really hoping that they do. :(

that said, pain aside, the weekend has been really fun. i finished these socks, which is more gratifying than i remember finishing a project being (yes, anna, *you are right*), and i'm wearing them, which is also more gratifying than i remember wearing my handknits (again: *you are right*).

the funnest parts were hanging out with anna, as usual. saturday afternoon, i went over to the yarn shop to see (and hear) franklin habit read from his book, speak, and sign copies. he is so full of win that i can't believe that he fits it all in such a compact package. i love the book, too.

after the signing, anna and i went off to a little going-away party for our friend tobi, who is moving to nashville. so sad :( it was fun, though, held at the floral design shop that our friend april owns, which is just gorgeous, catered by our friend michelle, and attended by lots of people i haven't seen in a few years. and i met a few new people, too. punch, mini cheesecakes, lemon-filled cupcakes, spanakopita, crudites, and lots of other things i can't remember, all yummy.

then this morning, we took a class on the history and techniques of lace knitting and knitted lace. i had to escape to the car to sleep off a migraine for a bit in the middle, but it was really a wonderful class. i learned a lot and had fun; a day doesn't get much better than that. oh—and one thing that has made the day even better: i cast on a pair of socks using a merino-cashmere blend that is positively decadent. i am in love.

boycott stress.

from the time when i was old enough to buy gifts for people until probably 10 years ago, i was a regular martha. i planned and cooked every meal; had dinner, movie, and game parties every month; and bought gifts months in advance. (i was a lousy housekeeper, but we'll ignore that for the moment.)

when my first husband and i split up, i think i went through some kind of rebellion. for our nine years together, i'd been the organized one, the responsible one, the dependable one, the one who planned and took care of grown-up matters. turns out, i resented that. a lot. (i know. who could have seen *that* coming?) so when i was single again, i stopped straightening piles of magazines into perfectly aligned rectangles. i stopped planning months in advance for every little trip and life event. i stopped making grocery-shopping lists organized by the store's layout. i stopped categorizing and alphabetizing my books and cds.

it was so liberating. for the first time, i was accountable virtually to no one. i was in my third year of law school, so of course i was accountable for my work--though really, if i'd wanted to rebel *that* much, i could have just dropped out, i suppose. i had roommates, and i wanted to be a good housemate, so i tried not to intrude on the common spaces with all my crap. but in my room, in my life, i could be as messy, disorganized, and chaotic as i wanted.

i got past a lot of that and started planning again. and i tried to be organized, though i'm still working on reclaiming that--that's one of those things that is hard to get back once abandoned (just because you have to start by organizing what you already have). i still haven't gotten my cooking and entertaining mojo back. but i'm working on that and my housekeeping.

and this holiday season, i've worked hard to stop the things that stress me out at this time of year. for thanksgiving, i ordered all the sides from whole foods and just made an easy butterflied turkey. as a result, my week was way less stressful and busy than it has ever been at thanksgiving for me. at least since my teens.

and i'm trying to get back in the gift-planning groove. used to be, i'd have every scrap of holiday shopping finished by september or october. that hasn't happened in years, and some of it is, i think, because of knitting. i like making gifts for people, but i never have as much time as i think i will.

this year, i bought a lot of gifts at the handmade arcade, which is so going to become an annual ritual. i found great stuff, all handmade or recycled by individual folks trying to make a living at their chosen crafts. i figured that i'd make the rest of the gifts. i had a couple already finished, but a seemingly long list still awaited.

i've been trying. every time i have knitting time, i'm either knitting furiously away at some present or obsessing on ravelry about what i could be making with the yarn i have or what yarn i'd need to make some perfect gift for which i found a pattern.

stress is a huge migraine trigger for me. i get a lot of migraines at this time of the year. today, i was lying in bed, medicated and trying hard to get rid of the latest attack. i have to work hard not to worry when i'm in this state--i need to relax and let the medication do its work. so when i start thinking about anything that could stress me out, i try to force myself to think about something else.

or, occasionally, a brainstorm hits and pushes the cloud of worry away, letting the sunny solution shine through in a moment of clarity, relief, and major happiness. that's what happened today. my mind began to wander to all the gifts i needed to make. was the sock i was casting on going to fit its intended recipient? would i have enough yarn to fit over those damned huge feet that all the men in my family seem to have? would he like it? would he wear it? would he appreciate it? would i have time to finish it and the remaining four gifts i had left to make?

the clouds parted, and the clarity hit me: order the presents from etsy. i'd pledged to give all handmade gifts this christmas, and etsy is a lifesaver. i love etsy. (i think i've mentioned that a time or 12 here.) i started with its gift guide for dads and found a few things. i moved on to the gift guide for men and found more. i thought of some other ideas and searched for them. i looked at my favorited items and sellers and found the rest. in probably 30–45 minutes, i finished every last bit of holiday shopping, including some gift tags to accompany my handknits. i have two small projects left to finish—one for one of my nephews and another for my little brother—and i'll be finished.

the happiest part of this is that now i can get back to enjoying this time of year and my beloved hobby instead of combining the two of them in a giant cauldron of stress soup. i've already decided to frog the sock and turn it into a normal human's size. some of the things i make now will be gifts next year, but others will be for me. regardless, it is so freeing and happy-making to feel able to make the things i *want* to make, not like i have to make things on a deadline. deadlines are fine at work, but i don't need to impose more of them in my recreation.

insomnia pays. just like crime.

well, how about this? a couple of years ago, a bunch of girlfriends and i got together in middleburg for a just-girls weekend. we stayed at briar patch bed and breakfast, a beautiful, peaceful b&b just outside of town. kim and lotta stayed in the big house, and vickie, handan, and...eep! i can't remember the other person! shared the cottage out back. we brought food to make in the cottage kitchen, though we ate so much in town that i don't think any of us had an appetite for anything else. breakfast was, of course, yummy.
when we were there, those were really the only two buildings open to guests. we saw while we were there that they were rehabbing a stable or garage (both?). i've read about the progress and other changes they've made there since we were there, thanks to the owners' email newsletters that come out a couple times a year. they started doing cooking classes with local chefs teaching and they've started hosting weddings and conferences in the new building. and apparently somewhere there's a pool? i dunno.

anyway, this morning i woke up (not by myself; i'll let you imagine how a light sleeper might be awakened by two 60-pound labs, a cat who never shuts up, and an air-conditioning air handler in the next room that shuts the fan off with a loud BANG!) at 3ish, spent a few quality moments with chloe (the good cat), and checked email. what should i find but one of the goldbergs' email newsletters announcing a new briar patch web site. lo and behold, they were even holding a clever little contest: answer the magic question and win a prize! i thought, "i can read," and trawled the web site for the answer. found it and emailed the owner. and looky here! i won! (who'd a thunk it--they sent it out at 2-something, so i answered like an hour later.)

guess what i won? a cooking-class weekend for two people, including a room in the main house for two nights, wine tasting and hors d'oeuvres on friday night, and the cooking class with a four-course meal and wine on saturday night. can you believe it? all that just for answering a question? there are two cooking-class weekends left this year. not sure when i'll go, but i can't wait! who's coming with me?

key one: right thinking and my weight locus of control

key one in dr. phil's plan is about right thinking. and the first thing i'm supposed to do to master this key is to determine my weight locus of control. here goes.
my internal locus of control
gaining, losing, and maintaining weight is entirely up to me. no one else is going to do this for me.
i am overweight as a result of my eating habits and as a result of being inactive and not getting enough exercise.
if i set realistic, measurable goals, i can lose weight no matter what.
failure to keep my weight off is due to poor effort on my part.
my external locus of control
family history has not really determined my weight or size.
i don't need a structured, formal diet program to lose weight.
i don't depend on doctors or nutritionists to help me lose weight.
i don't need prescription diet pills or other diet aids to lose weight.
i don't overeat just because there is too much tempting food in my environment.
chance weight locus of control
being at my ideal weight is a matter of eating right and being active, not good fortune.
my failure to lose weight is not bad luck; it's my choices and actions in the past two years.
if i went on a diet, i'd fail from time to time. i need to make good nutrition, hydration, and activity priorities in my everyday life as constant choices.
gaining, losing, or maintaining weight is not inevitable, but is driven by my choices throughout every day.
i don't need luck to stick to my exercise program, but planning and will.

according to dr. phil's scoring for this process, i highly attribute my weight to internal responsibilities. (read: i internalize everything.) i hardly attribute my weight at all to external responsibilities or chance.

getting my knit on.

had a great knitting outing yesterday. i always have a good time when anna and i go out, because we laugh a lot and she reminds me so of lisa, whom i never get to see enough. yesterday, we met beth, michelle, and beth's friend molly over at natural stitches. i go there at least once a week--it's sad and funny all at the same time. the staff must do a little jig inside when they see me coming, because i'll probably pay their wages for that day. ah, well. it's a good hobby and it makes me very happy. and it's nice to go where everybody knows your name.

also fun because it was beth's first trip into that particular shop, and molly had never knitted before. beth had brought her some yarn, and molly bought some needles. i made sure to get molly to fondle lots of nice yarn so she knew what the good stuff felt like. happily, she had an appreciation for silk and cashmere right from the start :) good woman.

we went to abay for lunch. so yummy but spicy and filling. i ended up bringing most of mine home for smartboy's dinner. he didn't mind. i love the food there, and i love that it's very healthy. i think beth and molly hadn't been there before, so it was fun to see them enjoy it so much. i had an $8 combo platter that had a piece of soft flatbread smothered with my four choices: azifah, which is a little salad of whole brown lentils, diced onions, green peppers, spices, and lime juice; butecha, which is a yummy little scoop of ground chickpeas, onions, and peppers; kay wat, which is stewing beef in a barbecue-like sauce; and doro tibs, which is chicken breast pieces with peppers, onions, and herbs in a light sauce. so good. and i had a spiced apple beer to drink that was also yummy.

then we headed to borders to knit. i love that the whole east liberty area seems to be getting more businesses, though we all worry about the survival of the decades-old businesses that line penn avenue and the side streets around it. there are some beautiful old storefronts with original vitrolite, original signage, and chrome and glass block trim. i hope that they'll see increases in traffic and business as the chain stores and more upscale locals that open around them start to flourish. anyway, borders was a blast. i found a copy of curly girl (turns out i have botticelli curls), and we all camped out in a corner and laughed so hard. conversation goes in the craziest directions when we get together. i picked up anna's stitches and she weaved in some ends for me. i helped (i think) beth teach molly to knit, and i cast on for smartboy's cobblestone pullover. i'm using a very soft, tweed-flecked, forest green alpaca-wool-microfiber-viscose blend. i think it's going to be really perfect for him; the garter-stitch yoke should enhance the pects, and the straight cut (no ribbed hem) should slim the waist. plus it's a very easy knit.

afterward, i stopped at trader joe's for some fresh produce and meat, which i hope will keep us from eating so much prepared food with all its chemicals and preservatives. after dropping anna off, i drove molly home. i loved making this new friend, who is hilarious and interesting and happens to live in my 'hood. she's also planning a wedding, which i love to do, so fun stuff to talk about.

all in all, a really fun afternoon. i was exhausted when i got home and wanted nothing more than a nap. that's the mark of a good day. and this morning, i had new projects to knit. what's better than that? (answer: for a knitter, nothing.)

work gets in the way.

man, a crunch week at work really cramps my lifestyle. seriously. enough of the rush projects! three more landed on me early in the week, i had others already in process, and more are coming. did anyone mention thanksgiving? yeah, i didn't think so.

not that i'm complaining. i am a true type a, love to be busy, thrive on deadlines. i worked like mad to get everything done and was amazed to find last night that i finished everything i had. i worked for a few hours this morning, then went to the mailing center to send the architectural drawings to the code-enforcement office (yay building permits!), and then...the new yarn shop! squee! it was fantastic. so many yarns i've never seen, oodles of color, plenty to fondle. it was fab. i bought a little here (three new addi turbo lace needles for socks magic-loop style). and i spent a little here
(eight skeins of lorna's laces shepherd sock in black watch
(not my photo--from yarn for socks) to make the pretty as a peacock shawl. the colors are very peacock-like. i am so excited to cast on tonight.

alas, time at the shop ended after two slow and longing trips around the store and paying the nice lady for my purchases :) i found lots and lots of things to get on another day, and i told smartboy that a gift certificate to the shop is hereafter the perfect gift for me :)

but i had to hurry home to pick up around the house a little, because today the general contractor, the insulation subcontractor, the hvac contractor, and the architect were meeting us at the house. the hvac guy never showed :( + ! but we had a great meeting with the other three. WE CAN HAZ STAIRS ON NOVEMBER 28!!!1!! omg ponies! i am SO excited. we'll finally have a third floor! we will have a master bedroom! we can buy a new bed!! squeee!!! i cannot wait. and the insulation guy is awesome; we're getting blown-in cellulose (made from recycled newspaper) in all the exterior walls, which should make the house a lot warmer and of a stabler temperature than it ever has been (currently i'm pretty sure that there's zero insulation--we had heating bills in the several hundreds in the coldest months last year).

i didn't make it to the grocery store like i'd hoped, though; i wanted to get some nonperishables today so that my just-before-thanksgiving trip would be a little easier. but i've made my list, so if i get up the nerve to walk into whole foods tomorrow, i'll know what to get. i'm making two batches of soup--one with bacon and one vegetarian--two batches of brussels sprouts--one with pancetta and one vegetarian--and vegetarianizing the stuffing recipe. we're having two vegetarians (actually, one wants a salmon steak instead of turkey, so she's not *really* a vegetarian), so i'm making everything good for everyone :)

and tonight i'm casting on for the peacock shawl, and i get to knit more of it tomorrow with anna and beth. yay girl time!

AND i got my ravelry tees and buttons today! i'm going to wear one of them tomorrow along with my juliet (provided that i can make myself put some buttons on it). yay ravelry! yay knitting! yay weekend!!

lazy-ass weekend.

man, what a lazy weekend. last night, after taking claudia and neal to dinner at la feria (yum-o!) and showing them a little of the east end neighborhoods, i knitted a bit but mostly read blogs and email. i caught up on my soaps and dr. phil, took the dogs for a late walk, and collapsed into bed. i had my usual bizarre dreams but woke up in the middle of the night with a heinous headache. this has been happening a lot. my dentist says that at least some of it is due to tooth grinding and jaw clenching, so she's fitting a splint for me to wear during my sleep. i've been doing this for more than 20 years, but my current splint isn't actually a splint; it's a tooth-whitening tray made of rubber. but i didn't want to get out of bed to take anything for the pain because it hurt too much to move, much less think about anything enough to get myself a drink and take a pill. plus, if i had, the dogs would have thought it was time to go out for a walk, and i would never have gotten them settled in for sleep.

but this was stupidity. i couldn't sleep through the pain very well at all. eventually, the dogs became so impatient for me to get up that i finally did (plus i had to pee). so i experimented with the whole pain-relief thing: i rubbed a bit of ben-gay on my jaw joint and a little above and below it, took the motrin that my dentist prescribed, and put some polar frost on my temples to ease the migraine. it didn't get rid of the pain or inflammation completely, but it was good enough that i could eat some oatmeal and chill for a bit before i took the dogs out. they were VERY happy to get outside by then, poor things. but this is why i hate being in charge of taking care of the dogs (and why i'll never have children): my head pain is just too unreliable. or it makes *me* too unreliable, i guess i should say.

anyway, after an uneventful trip outside--damn, these are good dogs, i must say--we came back inside and i watched my morning show. i took a long nap and putzed on the computer this afternoon, the closest things to effort being expended on (a) making a plan for vegetarian options for my thanksgiving menu (fortunately, not as hard as i thought it would be--she won't eat the turkey, obviously, and i need to find a vegan or vegetarian gelatin substitute for the cranberry mold, but otherwise it's just a matter of making a separate little pan of chowder with no bacon, putting the pancetta aside for the brussels sprouts and radicchio, and making a separate ramekin of dressing with no sausage (or maybe vegetarian sausage) and (b) making a few decorating and layout decisions about the bedroom. i decided to stick with earth tones for the paint and reaffirmed my decision to put the bed against the west wall.

i ordered dinner in tonight from ali baba; since wheel deliver took so long (for the second time in a row) to get my food to me, they paid for it. so free dinner! w00t! shish tawook (i LOVE the salad and rice, and there's plenty left for tomorrow--i just wish i'd ordered some hummus for the pitas) and oreo cheesecake. i didn't really need the latter, but it was yummy.

the dogs were great on their walks, too. these are seriously good dogs. luxo never fails to amaze me with how smart he is. smartboy trained him in just a few evenings to bring the food balls not just to him at the food bin but right in his hand. so cool. and when i put their harnesses on, he aims his nose right through the straps to make it easier to get on. he is SO an example of the premack principle--he gets it like crazy. (the premack principle is the idea that you can get the dog to do something that doesn't really excite him--say, bringing a food ball or standing still for a harness--to get something he really wants--say, food or a trip outside. he also runs to his crate as soon as he knows it's time for walks, because he knows that the sooner he does that, the sooner we'll get zuzu back from her walk and get him. seriously amazing dog.)

and now i'm chilling with "trading spaces," which i haven't seen in a while--we tivo new episodes, but it hasn't had any for a while. i am loving the new designers and carpenters (well, faber's not new, but he's adorable and wonderful anyway). i love all these shows. i pretend i've been in training for this renovation for 15 years :) as if.

oh--speaking of the renovation, the building permit and no-lien agreement are all but complete, and the contractor should be starting work any day now. squee!! i'll be trying to keep up with it all (including before, progress, and after photos) on the house blog, if you're interested.