On March

Can we all agree that March is kind of a crappy month, at least in the Northeast?

March can't decide if it's winter or spring, so it gives us the worst of both. Today the windchill here is 15°. In the next two weeks the temperature will vacillate between just-above and just-below freezing, with plenty of precipitation. That means lots of ice. And slush. And drizzly, sleety rain.

Ugh.

Instead of thinking of that, let's use March to start getting ready for spring to arrive in earnest! It's too cold to do much gardening beyond the planning stages up here until mid-April at the very earliest, but the planning is the only part I'm good at, really. I am sort of absent-minded, so watering is not something that I do regularly. But I can plot out a bad-ass, bountiful container garden!

We aren't planning any tropical vacations any time soon, but that doesn't mean it's not a great idea to be on the lookout for some great new springtime wardrobe additions. Jill's spring break packing list is a great place to start! (How perfect is that teal bathing suit?)

And to help get us all into the springtime spirit, how about a little springtime spirits? (WORST PUN EVER. SORRY.) I don't drink vodka (overindulged a little too heartily in my younger days) but if we replaced the vanilla vodka in this with a dark rum, it would be my new favorite, I think.

How do you deal with the March doldrums? Do you kill every plant you come into contact with, like I do?

On dreams.

Picasso's The Dream via

I've always had vivid dreams. The earliest dream I remember - and I remember every minute of it - is from when I was seven. I had just learned about DRUGS, in the way that little kids do: drugs are bad and will ruin your life! In my dream, our babysitter, who was in fact a very nice teenage girl that my parents knew from church, was on DRUGS and beat my neighbor kid to death with a garden hose. I have no idea where I got the idea that that was even a thing. I'm certain I'd never seen a movie or anything wherein a person was beaten to death with a garden hose. Obviously, scared out of my mind, I spent the night in my parents' bed, and I can recall the precise feeling of dread I felt when my mom opened the curtains in the morning and I expected to see Michael's body laid out on the lawn. I feel that I should add that the very vast majority of my dreams aren't nearly this awful. Most of them are just weird.

When I was in high school and had mono, my fever-fueled dreams were even more bizarre than normal. I had one where I somehow owned all of Europe, and because it was mine I could rearrange it as I see fit. I used this power (mostly) for good, by splitting up the fighty countries and such. The weirdest part was that the countries were all laid out on a board, like one of those wooden puzzles toddlers play with, but that I could move the pieces around however I wanted and they still always fit. All the puzzle pieces were an interesting shade of purple. It made discerning the borders kind of difficult, though.

Over the summer I was starting to think in earnest about my next tattoo. I have most of the components figured out, but I have a gap where there's still one missing piece. In a dream, I was thinking about the tattoo, and I suddenly realized that the missing item was a Meyer lemon! Of course! It all fit! It was such a relief to have the whole thing figured out. The thing is, I'm not even sure I've ever seen a Meyer lemon in real life, or if I'd recognize one if I was looking right at it. They hold no significance to me whatsoever, and I'm certainly not including one in my tattoo.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that Charlie Sheen and I were working together to teach reformed prostitutes to crochet and embroider (but not knit, which I actually know how to do) so they could support themselves. Apparently this was some distance in the future, because Charlie, who has been making some interesting choices lately, seemed sober, cheerful, and well rested. He really seemed to have gotten his shit together. He was in charge of the crocheting, and I was busy teaching the hookers how to do really fancy crewelwork, which I've never done a single stitch of and would probably suck at. The former prostitutes were really nice, and seemed to really be happy to have a new way to make money. Of course, once I woke up, I remembered that it's almost impossible to support oneself these days with handiwork, and that hooking is actually a pretty good rate of pay for the hours worked, and that Charlie Sheen is a degenerate woman-beating drug addict whose show I refuse to watch on principle.

I think it's interesting to look at dream dictionaries to see what the various elements supposedly represent. Lemons, for example, according to the first link, suggest something being inferior. Except that I was super-excited in the dream to hit upon the idea. (There was no entry for Meyer lemon or Charlie Sheen, for some reason.) My point here is, dream dictionaries are bullshit, but funny sometimes, like fortune cookies.

Do you remember your dreams? Do you assign meaning to the things you dream about? Anyone want to psychoanalyze me based on the four dreams described here?

On clothes making the person?

This image was sent to me by three different people my freshman year of college - they wanted to know if I had really pieced my face. This girl isn't me, but I used to look like her. I guess. Without the face piercings. Or the spiked hair. Blue, yes, but spiked, no.

I have never been what one would call conservative, clothing-wise. I guess I've always been more of a Claudia than a Mary Anne, if you follow me. Actually, I was probably more of a Stacy, because I am pretty sure I never owned red Doc Martins that I wore with red suspenders and earrings made out of feathers and newspaper, like good ol' Claud did. ANYWAY, I was into punk and shit through most of high school, so there were a lot of ripped clothes, safety pins, thrift-store t-shirts, and so on. I also had blue hair, on and off, through most of high school and college.

I went to a very conservative, small, suburban liberal arts college in upstate New York. I was the only girl on my floor with short hair. I'm not exaggerating. I went to school with some of the preppiest of the preps - to redeem myself in the metaphor arena, I was the lone greaser in a school of Socs. I was pretty lonely there my freshman year, but I worked really effing hard to get people to see me for who I was, so I didn't stop dying my hair or thrift-store-shopping, and by the end of the year I had made some awesome friendships. To be frank, it didn't hurt that I'm quite smart, because that meant that any time kids who were judging on me got assigned to work with me, I carried more than my fair share. One of the highlights of my college career was at the English Major banquet, right before graduation, where the head of the department described his trepidation at seeing me - five feet tall, Chuck Taylor hi-tops, blue hair, and knitting in lecture, and expecting me to be a slacker, but how quickly and soundly I proved him wrong.

Then I started student teaching, and to make things easier on myself I dyed my hair brown. I dressed in button-down shirts and sweaters and khakis. I was a little tired, honestly, of having to work harder than my peers to prove myself. I knew that the immediate reaction to my appearance was to assume that I wasn't going to work as hard or I'd be mouthy or I wouldn't be "a serious student" or whatever. So, I changed my appearance, but not my personality, and I passed as a "normal."

When I finished my student teaching, I was offered a job teaching. I graduated from college when I was 21, and I was going to be teaching seniors. Two of my students were 18. In an effort to maintain an appropriate distance, I kept the conservative thing going. I also found teaching physically exhausting, so I spent more time sleeping and less time going out to shows. Over the three years I spent teaching, I found myself fading. I liked the job itself - the working with students part - but I really had a lot of problems with the district and the school I was in, and I was pretty unhappy. This manifested itself in my totally unenthusiastic modes of dress. Khakis. Neutrals. Flats (a necessity for standing all day, but did I always have to wear plain brown or black?).

When I started the job I have now, one of the first people I met is my work-best-friend, who has several visible tattoos. In my third month, I asked my boss if it would be a problem if I dyed my hair blue. She looked at me weird for a minute, then asked me why she would care what color my hair was. I dyed it blue that weekend. And for the first time in four years, I felt like myself again, sartorially speaking.

I feel more comfortable when I'm dressed in interesting clothes. In the time since I started dying my hair again, I've also started investing more time in how I dress. I like fun clothes. I like putting things together in new ways. I read a whole bunch of fashion blogs. And I feel more confident when I dress in a way that makes me feel good. I've noticed that I dress less punk these days, even in my off-time, but that might just be my embracing of slightly more grown-up styles (I mean, isn't it a little sad to see a forty-year-old balding punk guy, wearing the same ratty leather jacket he's had for twenty years?). But even the slightly-less-loud versions feel like me. I really like being back in a good place, appearance-wise.

How do you describe your personal style? Have you ever changed your style to fit in? How did it go? Any punks reading this?

Adventures at the pound

Sad face: we didn't end up getting that new dog. We got to the pound early and everything, but Numbers 1 and 2 from the list were already there. So he got to go home with Number 1, and we started our search over. (And interestingly, the woman we worked with at the pound said she actually thought it was going to come to blows between the people there waiting for him.)

While we were standing in line (which was about twenty minutes deep, for some reason), we struck up a conversation with the people in front of us, who were only there to get paperwork on the puppy they'd recently adopted, but who told us about this very sweet little girl dog who had just been brought in last night. We went to visit with her, and she's freaking cute. She appears to be some sort of Jack Russel/chihuahua mix, except that she wasn't insane. We decided to get on the list for her. The complicating factor is that she is micro-chipped. This means that not only did her owners care enough about her to pay to have her micro-chipped, so they're probably looking for her, but that the pound legally has to notify the owners and then hold her for ten days. She won't be available for adoption till March 9. If no one has claimed her by then, she's ours.

While we were waiting to get on the list for her, they walked by with a dog who looked JUST LIKE ROOSTER. Same weird body shape, same floppy ears, same weird part down his back where his hair is too long. Because we know the chances of someone claiming the little girl are pretty good... we got on the list for the Rooster look-alike too.

I know. I'm a sucker. And it gets worse: he's available on March 3, almost a week before she is, so we could conceivably end up with both. We are Number 2 on his list, so we're actually almost hoping that someone adopts him, so we don't have to pick between them.

We're planning to bring Rooster in on Wednesday for another meet-and-greet with both of them (separately, of course). Man. This is so much more complicated than it first seemed.

Change of subject: without admitting to having watched three episodes of Bones while Andy was at work this morning, I did spend some time today wondering what the forensics team would be able to tell about my life. You know, if I were a dead body and they were trying to piece things together. And if they weren't fictional. I think that show is making me morbid.

What's your weekend like so far? Am I a sucker for signing up for both dogs? Reassure me!

This and that

via

So I finally finished my first just-for-me knitting project in a long time! It's so warm and comfy, and it's just like wearing a security blanket all day. The only problem is, it's kind of big and cape-ish, so I think I may have looked like Dharma's mom, Abby, from Dharma and Greg (that's her above). I shared this fear with Andy, who pointed out that I wasn't wearing any crystals or patchouli, so I should have been just fine.

It snowed ten inches in my city today, and my new car doesn't have an auto-starter OR a snow brush. Oops. Today I was the asshole scraping my windshield with my mittens. But I'm still better than the asshole who cut me off because he hadn't bothered to scrape his rear window. Seriously, if you drive in a snowy climate and don't clean your rear window or your mirrors, you're an asshole. That's all there is to it.

In regards to not getting my hopes up about the new dog, I'm searching Craigslist for crates for him. Also, new name suggestions include Chainsaw, Ferdinand, Rumpelstiltskin, and Emily Dickinson (who, for the record, is one of my least favorite poets. I'd sooner name him Sylvia Plath. Or Chaucer.). If we don't get that little guy (I HOPE WE DO!), we're going to check out an adoption event in our town tomorrow afternoon.

Tonight we're going out to celebrate a friend's birthday, which is going to be fun. I've been doing this thing where I don't drink beer during the week. I really like beer, a lot, so it used to be that I'd have one with dinner. But I really like good beer, like Sam Adams and Killians and Dundee, which is absolutely not light beer. So in an effort to really do things right for my body, I cut out booze during the week. It's been going pretty well. And it means that by Friday night, the word "beer" makes me start salivating.

Any thoughts on names for this guy? Any thoughts on beer? What are you up to this fine weekend?

Various updates

1. The dog meeting went really well! Rooster usually seems to think he's an alpha dog (even though he weighs 30 pounds) right up until the other dog looks at him, at which point he hides behind me or Andy, but he and the possible-new-dog sniffed each other and wagged their tails then went on about getting petted. It was seriously the best introduction to any other dog I've seen with Roo since we got him three years ago. Now it's even harder to not get my hopes up that the new guy comes home with us.

2. I realized yesterday that it was three years ago this week that we got Rooster from the pound. I was teaching at the time, and had the week off for February break, so I went and looked at dogs while Andy had to work. Weird.

3. My yarn is still kind of a mess.

4. The Kid's pregnancy is going really well! She's having a girl (did I tell you that yet?). She sends me occasional pictures of her baby bump, which is getting big, and frequent texts about how much she wants to kill her neighbors for playing rap music too loud in the middle of the day. I don't think the pregnancy hormones are doing anything for her patience levels. I can't wait until she's back on this coast!

5. I'm really, really hoping that Andy will finish the spackling today or tomorrow so we can paint the upstairs bathroom this weekend!

What's up with you-all? Also, please suggest a name for the sweetest dog in the world!

Busy, busy, busy.

Gorgeous (and free!) pattern via feministy

I'm in the middle of trying to untangle some really pretty, soft, fluffy, pale grey alpaca yarn so I can start knitting the pattern above. It's a scarf! With leaves! And it's named after a character from Bones! I'm obviously pretty excited to get started, so I wish I had been a teeny bit more effing patient instead of making a giant mess out of winding the yarn from a skein into a ball.

I'm meeting up with my knitterly friends in a bit so we can trek to a new-to-us yarn store, and I'd seriously be ashamed for any legit knitter to see the mess I've made, so I have to go take care of that.

Before we go to the yarn store, Andy and I are taking Rooster to meet a possible new dog friend! The way it works at our pound is that they hold the dog until a certain date, and you can sign up for said dog during the holding period. On the day and time they release him, he goes to the first person on the list who's signed up for him. We signed up for a sweet little Dachshund mix (note to self: if we get this dog, learn to spell Daschshund) but we're third on the list, so we won't know if he's ours till Saturday! It's hard not to get my hopes up. Making sure he and Rooster aren't arch-enemies from birth is an important step, don't you think?

Also, we're accepting suggestions for names for Dog No. 2. I really like "Monster" but am worried about it sounding too close to Rooster. Thoughts?

Have you ever gotten a pet from the pound? Any tips on not making a mess out of winding yarn next time? What would you name my second dog?