Hello from California: Happiness is a Warm Puppy

Dear Friends,
A lot has happened in the last week. I am cuddling right now with 11 week old Roxy. She is sleeping on top of me like a newborn infant.

If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I'd be lying here with some kind of puppy that now looks like a dachshund, I'd think they were crazy.

No, clearly I am the crazy one. I now am going to smell like a puppy for the rest of the day. But, I'm very warm and cuddly myself right now.

You have to hand it to little Roxy, she's fit right into our chaos quite well. Ruth is in heaven and Birk is a puppy according to Roxy.

I am always surprised by what a magical influence animals have on our lives. Even the "men" in our household are won over. There is nothing like the pure joy you see in a puppy's entire body when it's happily vibrating from head to tail.

That kind of joy is a gift to experience and witness. I feel so fortunate.

Hope this finds you all cuddly and warm.

Deb

Puppy Love

After days of waiting to find out who the lucky family would be to adopt this little cutie pie puppy, we got the happy news. Welcome to our family little Roxy!

This family is a circus. We juggle everything all of the time. This family is also filled with adventure and love. We hope you love it here as much as we already love you.

Puppy Time?

Is it finally Puppy Time?

Our daughter has been working the puppy angle for a year. We've been listening, but this is a humongous commitment. So many puppies have crossed our paths as possibilities, and they would have all been good fits. Up until now, the timing just didn't seem right.

Yesterday, we saw a litter of Spaniel mixes at our local shelter. We've thrown our name into the hat for this little girl. It is up to the Shelter Gods at this point. They take applications, then make a decision after the weekend. Why wouldn't a crazy house of two cats, a dog and three kids make a fantastic circus, I mean home?

This gal is a baby baby baby. The kind of baby that is peeing and doesn't even know it is peeing. Oh boy, I mean girl.

Now we are waiting on two decisions: puppy and high school.

Juicing?

In my quest to solve my allergies naturally, I've tried all kinds of things. Everything seems to help a little bit. By the time I really know whether anything is helping, the season shifts and I'm miraculously cured anyway.

This time around, I am trying juicing. This is kind of what it sounds like, you drink juice. You drink so much juice, that you are so tired of drinking that you can't even finish what they give you. In this particular program, you get 6 Snapple sized bottles of different kinds of juice. You drink the juice labeled one first, and so on throughout the day.

All of the juices taste delicious, it's just that, by the time you're done with day one, you are kind of tired of juice. Then you look in your fridge and there are bottles and bottles of juice that need to be drank. Seriously, it was like the Atlanta wounded soldier scene from the Gone With the Wind movie. Miles of juice as far as the eye could see.

I have 6 more bottles of juice on this last day. People keep asking me if I feel any different. Well, I just cheated on my juicing with a glass of lemon water and 3 dates, and those were the most scrumptious dates that I've ever eaten. I ate half an avocado yesterday, same, delicious.

The answer is, I'm not sure that I do feel any different. Maybe the magic will kick in any minute...

Filling the Void, but Losing the Dance Party Possiblity

When we did our remodel, a lot of our furniture got sent away. Sent away? Yes, I have a very sentimental husband (which, mostly is very cute and romantic) who has a hard time parting with things.

Look in our closet and you will find 20 year old pairs of drawers in his drawers. I am not a bad wife, I buy him new, fresh underwear, but for some reason he hangs onto the old scraggly underwear that has traveled the world.

Don't even get me started on the kitchen table. Before it was refinished, it was the running joke of all of my friends. It was noted on many occasion that the table wasn't fit to be accepted by the Salvation Army or resale. Now it is comfortable, beautiful and going to be around for a long, long time.

This leads me to our living room. It is an empty, cavernous dance floor kind of space right now. We've ordered new furniture, but it is verrrrry slow in coming. Piece by piece it is trickling in. Each piece was carefully chosen, but now as it's arriving, I'm having trouble parting with my potential dance party and packing staging space.

As each piece is carried in, I'm sizing it up in a weird, commitment phobe kind of way. Why? Well, number one, this is the last furniture I'm ever going to get. Ever. With my husband, this is it. I will never see another couch cross the thresh hold of our front door.

Each piece, I'm looking at as a long term commitment. Do I like it enough? So far, even though we picked it out, I'm not sure I like it enough to have it be that last thing that I see before I accidentally fall down the stairs and die.

My friends are funny. They say, "So what? If you don't like, you'll just replace it someday." Then I remind them about the kitchen table, and they quickly tell me how much they are sure that I will love all of my new beautiful furniture that is hand crafted in America and not by children in some third world country and that is why it is taking 8 months to get from showroom to my living room.

Not only am I being slow to warm up to the chairs and end tables that have arrived, I am sad to give up the idea of having the ability to throw a dance party. Not that I'm feeling up to throwing any party at this point, but I love the possibility.

I love having the blank canvas. I love having the possibilities. It's like a new found freedom right here in suburbia.

Now that it's filling with stuff, I'm not sure I want to give up my valuable living room real esate to just any sofa or chair.

Disposable Customers: Why Crappy Places with No Ethics Stay in Business Without Any Effort

We just had a crappy $108 lunch at Rockefeller Center's Rock Center Cafe in New York. This was for essentially 2 people to dine for lunch at a crappy table by this cafe's crappy kitchen.

I knew it would suck. You know you are walking into the Venus Flytrap of tourist traps, but how bad can a $27 steak sandwich be?

Well, if you include bathrooms with all types of horrible bathroom type dribblings, smearings and lack of toilet paper, it makes anything they serve seem bad.

Cleanseliness, being next to Godliness & all, is kind of important. It makes you wonder who is babysitting the staff here & also wonder why they don't care.

But they don't. No locals are hanging out at the Rockefeller Center Cafe. If you have zero repeat business, who the heck cares if the whole experience sucks? How depressing to work in such a place with such a work ethic.

Restaurant dead end. Even more depressing for the tourist who spends that much of their savings on such a careless group of people who don't care if crap is smeared on their bathroom floor.

Crap. My stupid mistake.

Soggy Blog Runs On

Not only have our lives been turned upside down by our remodel, this blog has definitely taken the brunt of the lack of time and energy needed to actually write something thoughtful and interesting. Can anyone say run-on?

Yes, we are all running on empty over here. My husband and the girls left for Ecuador today. The alarm went off at 3:30 and we've been running ever since.

The Birk sub committee is off for a 2 1/2 week adventure. My oldest and I are holding down the fort. We are battling the urban jungle while the others battle the Amazonian jungle.

There is still a lot of change to come this spring. Hopefully, things get a little back to normal and this blog starts to look like itself again.