karen’s Neighborhood

　

　

I was walking home - desperately - from work one day, shuddering with my disinterest, when I looked up and saw a simple composition floating in the impatient sky.  All of the elements were ruled by astronomy, so as each second passed, they were shifted by a celestial slight-of-hand.

I saw a crescent moon, hanging in the sky like a slice from a ghostly fruit.  A rag of cloud, the color of sweetness - apricots, irises - was pulled across the pale lunar fraction.  The sky was a gentle product of the negotiation between daylight and sunset:  a lavender agreement.

The sky assembles visions like this every evening.  It is common drink.  But I would dare anyone to take a sip from this vignette ordinaire and not return home happy and reeling.

I forgot about this song until it came up in an iTunes genius playlist. It's one of those songs that just gets to everybody...it's so full of hope. I was recently reminded that it's not such a stigma to be ambitious. Good remix.

Ok, today, I have:

• 20:44 Sinatra on the box and old Italian couples dancing on Saturday night...perfect! #

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• Ben and I rode our motorcycles south and east through a bit of Amish country. Hills and curves OH MY!
  
• Finished painting front door "wild currant" - but still to tacky to hang back up.
• Finished painting the halls, the guest bedrooms, the offices, the kitchen, the sun room and entry. (thanks to Pat, Carol and Pete)
• Ordered new office furniture for Ben - I'll be pulling pieces from his office to make mine work better.
• Wired more of the house for TV cable and internet (thanks to Andy and Steve).
• Tomorrow I pick up the last of the family room furniture and talk to the carpet folks about new carpet for Ben's office and all the bedrooms (Ben gets brown, bedrooms get beige)
  
• Put together one of two side tables for our bedroom (they match patty's lights) and have another for living room
• Have an order holding on Overstock for the "couples" guest bedroom - holding out for the bed frame I want.
• Cleaned up the kitchen from the 4 days of painting and home projects
• Fixed the lighting in the entry, sun room

And when all done, I was able to cook dinner and eat with Benny! I have decided to "master" the electric cooktop before pulling it out and replacing it! I did not burn dinner! Hurray!

So you know, I miss

• My kids
• My girlfriends
• Whole Foods (especially the soaps and salad bar)
• Sushi
• Trader Joes (especially the frozen foods)
• San Francisco (in general)
• The beach (even through I did not get there often)
• My kids (again, because I really really wish they could come visit my new home!)
• And all our CA friends - Too many to list y'all - but you know who you are.
  

I'm headed back to CA to see Cas graduate in Dec and spend time with my girlfriends - then bringing Aaron back here with me for a bit. I am looking forward to it!

It was a big day for Penny yesterday as she completed and graduated from her Family Dog I class.  For the past month and a half or so, we’ve been working on sitting and staying and heeling and coming when called – all the things that are needed to be a good dog citizen.
 

I will have to say that Penny didn’t really love the classroom environment, because she couldn’t quite conceive of a place where there were half a dozen nice dogs and that she wasn’t supposed to play with them.  What else could they be there for???
 
Still – when called on to do her series of behaviors, I have to say that she did really really well and passed with flying colors.  After the final class, there was a little graduation ceremony and all the dogs received their diplomas to everyone’s cheers, though I’m pretty sure Penny was everybody’s favorite (not that I’m biased or anything).
 
After the class, Penny got an extra treat and then got to go play with her BFF Roxy the Vizsla at dog beach.  They ran and ran and ran together and just had a great old time.
 

Afterwards, we all tramped over to a dog-friendly café in Del Mar for a late breakfast, relaxing well into the early afternoon over good food, pleasant conversation and tired pups.
 
Good job, Penny!

When it takes one hour to defeat your soon-to-be-six year old in chess, it means (a)  you suck at chess or (b) the kid is good.

Maternal vanity makes me choose (b).

So, I've been using my Typepad account instead of VOX, and whenever I come back over this way I have shit loads of spam comments to delete. Surely, VOX, if you delete a spam account, it should automatically delete all of the spam comments they've left as well?