This was my absolute favorite booth at the Fiber Fiesta. The women were nice and helpful but were also kind enough to discretely leave Aubree and I alone to fondle and bond with their beautiful handpainted yarn. The wool and silk blends were like a magnet for me as was a particularly beautiful gigantic skein of multihued red mohair. But I was good! I resisted my potentially very expensive urges and only bought two skeins of handpainted superwash wool for me to try my hand at making socks for father’s day. I’m starting to recognize that I need to plan a bit more in advance for handmade gifts.

I also indulged in a beautiful nubby blue cotton that was a great bargain at sixteen bucks a skein for about three hundred sixty yards. It’s so soft I ended up holding and cuddling with it most of the night after I got home. With the marked difference in gauge I *think* I have enough for mariposa. My first sweater. I’m terrified.

I also picked up some Fortissima Colori Disco Sock yarn. Self-striping sock yarn with sparklies! Whee! A copy of The Yarn Harlot’s book, some fuzzy sparkly yarn handspun by a very nice lady I met, some Japanese silk remnants and pretty cloisonne beads - perfect for more purse making, and, the big buy: a Lantern Moon basket.

Oh. My. God. These things are cute. The purplish yellowish iridescent silk lining can either sit flat within the basket or be pulled up and held with a drawstring. They’re made in Vietnam as part of a program to keep traditional arts alive. The basket is woven out of bamboo root and smoked to dry so it has an interesting smoky scent. When I saw it at the Village Wools stall (the ladies were being really nice!) I looked at the price expecting to see sixty, a hundred bucks on the tag. THIRTY dollars! EEE! Oh yeah I had to have it!

It seems that taking up knitting also entails getting the uncontrollable urge to buy cute baskets. I think it has something to do with wanting to put your pretty handpicked yarn in a pretty handmade basket. It’s a strange phenomenon that took me completely by surprise when I found myself suddenly lusting after a giant lidded basket priced for ten dollars at the estate sale last month.

I was very good at the fiesta. I bought enough stuff to feel like I got fun treats but we won’t have to eat peanut butter sandwiches for the whole month of June either. And I got gift yarn! I don’t think the yarn you buy to make something for someone else counts does it? Shut up it does not!

So here are some more shameless birthday hints. Only thirty-two more shopping days until my thirty-third! You know I’m just kidding right? I totally don’t expect anyone to buy me this stuff I just think they’re neat
That fabulous yarn company I mentioned earlier has hit upon the most brilliant idea in the universe: gift baskets with bath products including a pattern and yarn to knit your own washcloth or bathmat. These women should get a nobel prize.

I’m not sure what the threadcount is on these sheets and those who know me well will be shocked to hear me say this: I don’t even care I love them. Just wish they had them for a king.

Miss M makes the most beautiful jewelry that I always admire but I must have a pixie necklace. Did you know I still have fantasies about being a fairy princess?

This weekend has gone by really quickly. In fact, the whole week has flown by and we didn’t get nearly as much cleaning done as we wanted to. But we made a respectable dent. And got a lot of pesky errands done. As well as a fun trip to the NM Fiber Fiesta where I didn’t spend too much! Go me! But at least it’s a start with the house and I don’t feel so totally overwhelmed.

Mel tagged me for the book meme but I thought I’d do both just for fun. I’ve never been tagged for a meme and noticed it before so that’s kind of neat.

DVD Meme

1. Total number of films I own on DVD or video:

I’d say about two hundred fifty to three hundred. Including box sets and bonus disks. Having worked for an online store (not the one with the name starting with an A but a cheaper one I wouldn’t really recommend) made a good contribution to the collection. There are a lot I’m hoping to sell on ebay soon.

2. The last film I bought:

I picked up Excess Baggage for six bucks at Best Buy a few weeks ago. Benicio is totally one of my secret boyfriends.

3. The last film I watched:

I watched Waiting for Guffman, Bend it Like Beckham, and Shrek 2 while doing chores and starting my very first sock this afternoon. And didn’t have to change the channel, HBO was very cool today.

Until Ghost came on and I had a bad flashback to the time I was nineteen when I was at the doctor’s office in Alabama getting my shots for my Australian visa. A very drawly woman with HUGE permed hair was taking my blood and asked what my major was in college.

“Sculpture,” I said.

“Oh! Do yew werk with claaaay?”

“Yes.”

“Like on a pottery whee-uul?” She says as she changes to the third gallon-sized vial to fill with more of my lifeblood.

“Mmmhmm. Sometimes.” I’m getting slightly woozy.

“Do yew evar wish yew had Patrick Swayze huuugin on you when yer werkin on the wheee-uul?”

“Um. No. That would mess my pots up. I would tell him to go away, that I was working.”

4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

Gosford Park
God I love that movie. I can watch it over and over and not get bored. The combination of English manor murder mystery (a young woman solving the case!) with Altman’s trademark layered characters, dialogue, and storylines. Every single actor in this movie is “on”. Brilliant.

The Philadelphia Story
Smart, funny, quirky characters. A sweet storyline without being too sentimental. Physical humor but not slapstick. A strong female character that remains strong even when she’s feeling vulnerable. And Cary fucking Grant.

Velvet Goldmine
Total glam rock fluff with a great soundtrack and half (sometimes fully) naked sexually ambiguous men. Not usually my thing but it sure is in this case!

French Kiss
Take the good parts from Meg Ryan romantic comedy movies. Add Kevin Kline acting like a crusty French criminal. Season with a fun soundtrack. Serve on a crispy bed of beautiful locations. It’s ass-twitchingly delicious!

Topsy Turvy
I love this movie for mostly the same reasons I love Gosford Park: lots of complex characters with their own storylines, a great representation of a very specific period of time with painful attention to location and dress, and funny aside lines. This one just happens to be about the process of writing, producing, and performing a famous musical operetta based on a culture with which the authors had only vague experience. Many layers.

5. Tag five people and have them put this in their journal:

Um. I’m not very good at finger-pointing. Or remembering who’s already done this meme. Or decision-making in general. How about I tag a few people and they’re welcome to put whatever answers they wish to share on their journal or in the comments. Jocelyn (Happy Birthday!!) will probably snag this meme, Aubree, Juus, Rain, and Michelle. No pressure! Just do it if you want to.

Book Meme

1. Total Number of Books I’ve Owned:

Uh. Hmm. Seven hundred fifty? I say a thousand and Cody says five hundred. This is almost impossible to guess because most of the books I read when I was much younger were borrowed from my parents’ or sister’s shelves. Between used books, art books, junk fiction, and textbooks it started adding up. And when Cody and I got together it was almost like the marriage of two book estates. Actually it was exactly like the marriage of two book estates. My art books and literary fiction books married his biology, writing, and science fiction novels. Still no novellas or poetry chapbooks so please stop asking them about it.

2. Last Book I Bought:

About a month and a half ago I got The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, and World of Knitted Toys

3. Last Book I Read:

I read The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Village of Reduced Circumstances last night.

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:

It’s hard to describe why I like each of these books without sounding like a pretentious ass or a twelve year old writing a book review at nine pm on a Sunday night so I’m just gonna list em.

A Confederacy of Dunces
A Prayer for Owen Meany with A Widow for One Year as a very close second for favorite John Irving novel
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
I Capture the Castle
American Gods
bonus favorite book: Look Homeward, Angel

5. Tag five people and have them do this on their blog:

Uh. I lost my tags they’re somewhere around..oh the dog ate em.

Yeah I’m totally making that up. But it is friday and I have not one, not two but THREE finished projects to show off. Bithday girl got her purse set and seems to like it a lot so now I can share them all. Just call me the little hedgebag lady.

Meet the Tiki Pinky, Red Lopi Marsupial, and Firenze Rolltop Purses.

The Firenze Rolltop Purse is very loosely based on this pattern - mostly the idea of how many stitches to cast-on, to knit a purse in the round, and have two handles. Other than that I was a loose cannon.

I decided to take advantage of the rolling that happens with stockinette stitch - by knitting up in the round then adding eyelash yarn to the last several rows where the roll would happen and sewed up the bottom. Then I knit a short and wide rectangle with a buttonhole for the top and made two i-cords (my very first i-cords ever!), sewed them all and a button (also from Joann) to the body, and lined the purse and top closure with some fabric I’d bought in a cheap fat quarter at Joann.

The fact that these greens (including the green in the eyelash) matched was sheer chance - I had not bought any of them with the others in mind. But when I started putting ideas for this purse together it hit me just how well they all matched.

This purse is not felted, and is very stretchy and flexible. The body is knit with some sort of 75% acrylic 25% wool blend (very probably wool-ease chunky by Lion in charcoal. The label fell off almost right away so who knows.) from the very early yarn shopping days where I could find only acrylic blends, namely, before I discovered Fiesta’s Outlet and Village Wools.
The eyelash is Firenze - a wool/nylon eyelash yarn from Plymouth (bought at Village) and I have to say, it’s quite fun to knit with and the colors are just beautiful. Unfortunately I don’t remember the color number for the Firenze and the label seems to have been swept up with the big Spring Clean (that’s limping along).

I didn’t have much of the wool-ease left but enough to want to do something with it so I whipped up a silly little cellphone cozy with some stripes of homespun that, also surprisingly, matched the eyelash yarn. There was just enough fabric left to line it. It turned out to be so dorky-looking I debated up until Wednesday to even send it with the other two. It’s sort of a knit item that only a mother could love. I mailed it anyway.

There was enough of the eyelash yarn to make a matching scarf. I had tried knitting the eyelash with other yarns, like many different configurations of the homespun and even a few lamb’s pride I had leftover from the ipod case. But nothing made that the colors in that Firenze “pop” like the darker black and greys. And I had some pretty nice soft black wool (that needed a good bath, it was kind of smelly) from the estate sale last month. So into the bath with some baby shampoo and up on a hanger to dry went the estate sale wool. Even here in the desert (where felted items dry overnight) it took two days for that stuff to dry.

I wanted to make the scarf long so it had to be fairly thin. It’s knit in a plain old stockinette to match the rolled brim on the purse. It feels like a boa, but doesn’t make me want to sneeze like a real feather boa. The wool is nice and warm and the eyelash softens the scratchiness of the wool. Ms. Birthday is going to have a warm and fashionable neck this winter.

Altogether I think it’s probably the best thing I’ve made so far. Who knows why I’m on this purse kick and no one is more surprised than I that the most fun part for me is adding the little finishing details. I can see why people are so crazy about this eyelash stuff it’s pretty neat. Although I kind of get the feeling I just learned to drive with the eyelash yarn equivalent of a Maserati so we’ll see how the other stuff feels eventually. For now I have other, non-eyelash, items on my plate.

Techniques learned with this project - what it’s like (fun) to knit with eyelash, i-cords (totally quick and easy to do), how to line a purse from the inside out so stitches can’t be seen, to trust my instinctual color buying instincts and try putting things I wouldn’t expect to match together, finishing with quirky details (like lining with almost silly fabric and embroidering a flower-like thing with wool around the buttonhole to reinforce the lining) is FUN!

The Marsupial Red Lopi Tote is the pattern from hello yarn’s Fulled Lopi Tote pattern - I knitted it several inches longer because I wanted to be able to fit a lot of stuff in it. I had bought three skeins of Reynold’s Original Lopi - two red and one natural so I had enough wool left over to make a pouch and attach it to the inside with an i-cord like in Mema’s Marsupial Tote pattern in Stitch n Bitch. I made the pouch a bit bigger than the pattern - I shaped and dried it on a double checkbook holder if that’s any indication of size.

The lopi fulled beautifully in the washing machine. I even like the fuzzy halo around it, miss “oh my god I have to shave that”. I was a bit nervous about attaching the i-cord to the purses before felting but I did and it was just fine - I’d read somewhere that larger items felt faster than smaller items and it’s true. It ran through two cycles - and with the amount of red fuzz produced, I can’t emphasize using a pillowcase strongly enough! The lighter natural color felted just fine - I don’t think any bleach had been used on that yarn - I’ve heard bleaching sometimes inhibits the fibers from felting together.

Both pouch and purse are lined with a really funny el-cheapo red and yellow plaid cotton fabric remnant from Joann.

I took this purse to the fiber fiesta yesterday and got all kinds of compliments on it. It holds a LOT of stuff and the handles are flexible enough to go over my arm. I might end up having to shave it after all - the fuzz is starting to pill. I have enough shedding things in my life.

Techniques learned from this project: Slip, Slip, Knit (used with k2tog to make a flat bottom), three needle bind-off, single cast-on (for the bottom of the handles), sewing on snaps

Tiki Pinky is from this pattern from Joann using Lion Brand Landscapes yarn in Rose Garden.

The bamboo handle is from Joann, as was the fabric remnant I used to line the inside. I have ordered a couple of bamboo O rings from an ebay store to make the scarf into a belt.

I knitted it a bit larger than the pattern called for, using about one and a half skeins for the purse, and one and a half for the belt/scarf. Both were felted together in a pillowcase using the washing machine on hot with two pairs of old jeans for agitation and a capful of baby shampoo (we were running out of laundry detergent). I think I only ran one cycle.

The yarn is 50% wool and 50% acrylic so it will never felt completely. I like the colored pebbly effect that is produced. I think the garter stitch contributed to the textures.

This was an extremely quick knit (both the purse and the scarf were finished in about a day) and it’s a pretty cute little purse.

Techniques learned from this project: picking up stitches (for the handle straps), sewing the handle straps to the bamboo handles correctly (this was the hardest part for me)

There are lots LOTS more pictures in the photojournal, including some cute ones of a fully recovered Melon

Melon’s doing great! She’s still not interested in wet food but she will eat treats, and has shown interest in human food. At this point I let her eat whatever the hell she wants - if she wants some fried shrimp it’s fine with me as long as she eats something. Otherwise she’s active, hasn’t been going off to sleep in obscure places, and has been demanding attention at her regular intervals.

This is the most I’ve written in days so I thought rather than writing essentially the same things here I’d just plonk this email up to save the time.

Sort of in the style of the mason-dixon knitting site.

Not much I could add to that really. But here are some shameless quirky handmade birthday present hints:

much better ipod case than mine
this secret treasure yarn (no idea what I would make with it but it seems to neat)
oh my god oh my god oh my god must have Led Zeppelin look at that Robert Plant doll! Then I could make Joey Ramone and Joan Jett!
totally adorable and can be personalized

I think the hedgehog was having a strange dream a while ago. She was doing this funny chirping squeaking thing. Naturally when I went to check on her I woke her up and she started huffing and bitching.

I grew up in:

Now I live in:

My name is:

My grandmothers’ names are:

and

Favorite food is:

Favorite drink:

Favorite song:

Favorite Smell:

Favorite shoes:

This interesting meme was snagged from moonshine highways.

Visit: images.google.com

Search: the place you grew up, the place you live now, your name, your Grandmother’s name, your favorite food, your favorite drink, your favorite song, your favorite smell and your favorite shoes.

Then, post the first (or your favorite) results for each.

Don’t be an asshole: be sure to save images and upload them to your own server.

The vet called Monday afternoon to say that we could come pick her up. They had a subcutaneous saline iv in her front shoulder to get her hydrated before we left. Apparently the tech never managed to get an inline iv in her Sunday night but now Melon’s sporting two lovely shaved bands on both her front legs.

Now I have to give her two pills twice a day and one pill three times a day - anti-nausea, anti-diarrhea, and amoxicillan. She hasn’t been eating or drinking that much so I’ve been doing the oral syringe thing with diluted wet food and water. I feel like I’m torturing her several times a day, and her incomparable pouting abilities don’t do anything to assuage the guilt. I couldn’t find her after yesterday morning’s pills. I searched the house several times yesterday and even enlisted Cody to help before he got ready for work. I found her in a dark corner of the guest room’s closet behind a box for a keyboard around six pm. Last night I shut her in the guest room with food, water, and a litter box to make sure she stayed in one place (also so I could see if she was eating). But she was sleeping right in front of the door when I came to check on her this morning. Good thing I opened it slowly, eh?

She was keeping quiet today hanging out on a pillow on the back of the sofa looking like a little Pomeranian until I got a call from our insurance guy about how he’d like to get paid (damn legalized extortion). While I was in the office she ran off and has hidden somewhere in the house. I put a bell on her collar yesterday but she’s been keeping fairly still so I’m going to have to search around for her in a bit. Naturally she’s not answering to calls (Phunq, Kurry, and Winter are doing so enthusiastically thinking there’s wet food involved) and at the moment she will only respond to the weird whistle tone (don’t remember why but a few years ago I discovered that a long single b flat whistle makes her meow and come towards me - probably telling me to shut the hell up) when I’m sitting right in front of wherever she is, looking right at her. I’ve been considering getting myself one of these and attaching them to each of the pets for some time now and this just confirms it.

The good news is the vet called today with Kurry and Winter’s test results. Winter is healthy and heartworm-free - not much of a surprise with her heartworm pills and the bevy of supplements we give her. The only thing they can criticize about her is she needs to lose about ten pounds and I should trim her nails more often. It’s always about the nails, no matter what pet it is I’m such a slacker with the nails.

Kurry’s test results were amazing - she’s in great health and even had excellent teeth (aside from the few missing tiny front ones) for her roughly estimated eighteen years. The vet was delighted about her results.

So now we just need to get Miss Melon through the rest of this infection and eating again. And to quit hiding in obscure corners of the house and not answering to calls. Who’d have thought that I’d be wishing for her to eat and harass me for attention?

Final bill? vet: 1269 dollas. car insurance 365. Damn I hate being a grownup sometimes.

It feels like we’ve been going back and forth to the vet all weekend. It’s a bit of a drive to get to their office and we pass several other vetrinarians on the way but we’ve been going to these folks for years. They took care of Ascii, they’ve taken care of Winter since we first brought her home at nine weeks. And though they have other doctors in residence we usually see one woman who knows each and every one of our pets by sight, their nicknames, history, and their personalities. And she didn’t tease me too much when I asked if I could put a shirt I’d worn in the cage with Melon so she’d smell me and feel more at home (Can’t imagine what kind of teasing I’d get if I brought the bed I’d knitted). So it’s worth the drive.

Kurry needed to spend a day at “the spa” yesterday too. They needed to get a pure urine sample for her senior wellness checkup so she was kept there with access to water and nowhere to pee until she had a full bladder so they could do a catheter. That was super fun to hear from the other room. Now they know how Kurry bullies the 97 pound dog.

So we were there when they first opened Sunday morning to drop Kurry off and check on Melon, who had chewed through her iv and removed the needle in the night. She then proceeded to beat the shit out of the tech when she tried to put another iv in. We all considered this to be a good sign, it means she’s getting her energy back and acting more like her cantankerous self. Don’t let that sweet little face fool you. She’s a hell of a fighter and is a master at twisting around and taking advantage of the fact that there’s a lot of fluffy fur but not a whole lot of cat to keep hold of.

People think I’m kidding when I say she uses her adorable looks for her own evil purposes. It wasn’t all that surprising when Cody joked that maybe she had done this as part of a plot to throw us off balance since we had just recently gotten our finances under control. It actually seems possible that she would do it.

The good news is she was her usual vocal self when I saw her. They let me pick her up and hold her the way she usually likes and she was purring. They had shaved her right front leg to get a vein for the iv and it looks like a tiny little pink twig. It’s hard to imagine under all that fur there exists a little gerbil on stilts but I’ve bathed her, it’s true. There was medicine and food all over her face and ears from the various struggles. The good news is they’ve been getting her to eat on her own, which she’s kept down for the most part, the anti-nausea medicine is really helping.

They seem to think this is infectious hepatitis or maybe fatty liver disease (which would be weird since she wasn’t overweight). No idea how she could’ve gotten hepatitis. Aside from the fact that vaccinations are supposed to cover hepatitis, none of the cats go outside and the last escape was in 2001. Winter’s vaccinations cover it too so I just can’t figure out where she’d get it. I’ve asked several times and been told that no one else in the house is likely to catch it.

When we went to pick Kurry up in the afternoon Melon had been doing pretty well. Definitely looked a lot less lethargic and I saw her nibble at the wet food several times. They were about to put another iv in and put her in an Elizabethan collar for the night so she wouldn’t take it out again. They’re saying I might be able to take her home tonight!

Thanks to everyone who has sent emails and comments wishing her well. And thanks to the folks who have sent paypal donations! I honestly wasn’t expecting to get any but thought I’d just put it up there because it’s been something I’ve wanted to do for my blog friends when their kids or pets have been sick. Have to admit, seeing them come in made me cry. I’m going to knit something fun for each of you.

For the last month or so we’ve had to feed our eighteen year-old cat, Kurry, wet food. She’s not one to fight others for food, although she loves to take any other opportunity to grouch at all the other living beings in the household, so we have to shut her in the guest room alone with her food. It’s taken some doing to figure out what she’s willing to eat. It’s not the good stuff we have shipped from Wisconsin, oh no. Or turkey or chicken or even beef baby food. It’s cheap ass fancy feast, only the fish flavors, and only if it’s filleted. Yeah, we now have one of those cats. Not something I ever expected.

And I certainly never expected to have food refusal issues with our little grey terror, Melon. But for the last week she has refused to eat, and has been very much not herself, i.e. quiet and listless sleeping in corners of unoccupied rooms, not harassing me every few hours for attention or whenever a tin can is opened. When she refused the canned tuna Friday night I knew something was seriously wrong.

Melon is a ten year-old grey and cream tabby who was a rescue from a house of cat hoarders in Los Alamos. It was clear she’d had to fight for her food in that house because when we brought her home she would make horrible little Tasmanian devil sounds, presumably to scare off the four other cats (Phunq and Kurry, as well as my roommate’s two cats), whenever she ate.

One of the three jobs I had that summer was delivering sandwiches on Canyon Road (the gallery row in Santa Fe) and as a “bonus” I would get to take home leftovers. This is the one and only time I worked, or will ever work, in the food industry. I hated those fucking sandwiches and I hate ranch dressing to this day. So usually I’d take a tuna sandwich home and give it to the cats.

Melon loved that tuna. She even had a little tuna dance she would do, moving her front paws in a funny little timestep move: front left forward, front right back, switch, front left back, front right forward. At one point we considered changing her name to tuna. My roommate later worked at a natural food market and would take home the day old sushi so melon could have it. She was also bad about getting into unattended taco bell bags and eating the bean burritos and ravaging the garbage. This was before the canines took up residence, Kurry was too prissy to deign to eat garbage or scavenge, and Phunq preferred to keep his extracurricular nibbling to greenery.

She’s the only cat I’ve heard of that’s had to be fixed twice. The first time was a celebrity vet in Santa Fe, the one Carol Burnett supposedly took her pets to. But a year later she went into heat again and it was the no-nonsense country vet in Los Lunas who found an ovary that the other guy had missed, or it had somehow grown back we never got a full story (but I did get the ovary in a little test tube as a dubious pre-Christmas gift).

Winter was due for her shots, annual exam, bloodwork, heartworm meds, nail trimming, and anal sac expression (yeah, I know, ew, but believe me it’s better to pay someone else to do it) while Kurry was due for her annual senior bloodwork (at her age we get a full panel every year to catch a potential problem early on) so we packed everyone but Phunq and the hedgehog up and headed off to the vet yesterday. After a few hours we came home with everyone but Melon.

I hadn’t noticed the tinges of yellow inside her ears: jaundice. Something wrong with her liver. They did a bunch of tests and an x-ray, processed them in-house to figure things out quickly, and put her on an iv with anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, and were talking about a stomach tube if they couldn’t get her to eat. I’ve done the force-feeding they were talking about, with the pureed prescription a/d food and an oral syringe. Did that when Kurry went through a bout with refusing to eat a few years ago, but her bloodwork at the time was fine she was just being finicky. Melon’s so far has a crazy high albumin and white blood cell count. The good news is the x-ray shows an enlarged liver but nothing that looks like a tumor. Still not sure what’s causing this. But it’s really just the first stage.

Believe me, we are not people who believe in keeping pets alive by invasively artificial means.

We wrestled with that moral dilemma when Ascii was diagnosed with severe bilateral hip and knee dysplasia. We researched all the options and, when faced with twelve-thousand dollars and four years worth of surgery, we decided to control her pain as much as we could but have her put down when it got beyond the point where we felt we were sacrificing her comfort for ours.

Before we finally decided what to do about Ascii I was the one who talked about a home equity loan for her surgery but Cody took a hard and rational (and what I believe now to be right) stance: we will not put ourselves in a vulnerable situation where we wouldn’t have any options if one of us needed surgery. I think that’s the dividing line between animal welfare and animal activism: We love and take care of our pets but humans come first.

Aside from the money the idea of having to keep such a happy, active dog absolutely still four to six months at a time after four different surgeries..it was a quality of life issue. She let us know when she was ready to let go.

We’re already weighing thoughts like this with Melon and we don’t know what’s wrong really. It could be a simple infection and a few days in the icu with fluids, meds, and feeding she’ll be all better. The bill is already at 700 dollars and counting. Right now we wait and see.

I know a lot of you will ask for a way to help, since I’ve donated a few bucks here and there or sent little presents and things to a few of you at different times. So I’m putting up this donation button for paypal.

Please don’t feel like you have to but if you feel like giving a few dollars I’d really appreciate it. So far we’re doing ok and we both have a lot of belt notches we could tighten. But I know a lot of you will want to offer help and this certainly would.

I hope this doesn’t come off as crass. I’ve been reconsidering my “no paid ads for things I don’t use” rule and selling some ad space but I have to admit I’m more comfortable leaving the option up to you.

So if you have a few extra bucks and are feeling generous please click the paypal button. Or just go make a donation to a local low-cost spay/neuter clinic or the ASPCA in Melon’s name. That would be good too.

Thanks guys. Keep your fingers crossed, candles lit, prayers made, etc. for us.

Name four books on your bookshelf:
The Artist Outsider
The Spiral Dance
O’Reilly’s XML in a nutshell
Being and Nothingness

Name four DVDs Movies in your collection:
Muppets from Space
The Royal Tennenbaums
Le Divorce
The Women

Name four things on your walls:
poster of Van Gogh’s Mulberry Tree painting from the Norton Simon Museum
Suicide Girl’s calendar
a corkboard
a Henry Moore lithograph

Name four things in your wardrobe:
stripey socks
black twelve hole doc martens
black t shirts
a long jeans skirt

Name four artists in your music collection:
The Pixies
Lou Reed
The Ramones
Willie Nelson (shut up I love him)

Name four real life stores you shop at regularly:
Smith’s Grocery Store
Petsmart
Best Buy
Barnes and Noble

Name four things in your bag:
Burt’s Bees lip balm
Philosophy pure grace solid perfume
driver’s license and credit cards
lopi tote knitting project

Name four things in your cupboard that are in cans:
roasted and chopped green chiles
green chile stew
tomato soup
mandarin oranges

snagged from Snarky Stacy

Don’t you love those late nights when you’re flipping around and manage to catch a movie at the very beginning? I got really lucky this week.

Cabaret - No I’d never seen this in its entirety and it was much better than I expected. But I’m a sucker for Bob Fosse stuff. Like ANYthing by Bob Fosse. So I shouldn’t have had such low expectations for it. But I tend to do that with musicals. The political foreshadowing was really interesting. And I was surprised that I didn’t sit there the whole time feeling creeped out by how prophetic this was for Liza Minnelli’s marriages. The women entertainers in this were not all tiny dancer pixies either. In fact at some point I was wondering if a few were men in drag but, no, they were just curvy. There were a few men in drag but I don’t think there were any in the line dances. How incredibly cool.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar - a woman gets the ultimate punishment for being promiscuous. I’m really disappointed by this movie I was expecting something a lot better. The scenes were a bit jumpy for me. Possibly a reflection on her completely different lifestyles (teacher for deaf schoolchildren by day and bar woman sleeping around with lots of guys by night) but it just struck me as wrong in lots of different ways. Surely there can be something between a woman getting violently punished for promiscuity as in this movie and women being frighteningly promiscuous in shows like Sex and the City with little to no consequences. Neither seem very realistic to me.

(The original) Alfie - Speaking of sleeping around with consequences… I’m really hoping they’ve updated the recent remake, like a LOT because this was very..unfriendly. This guy was not charming. He was manipulative and sad. I’m sure it was supposed to be but, damn, I’d had a completely different impression of this movie from interviews with Caine and previews. This is not lighthearted flirty movie fare. Hmm maybe in a way I’m hoping the new one is a bit gritty as well. Sort of the realities of being a playboy.

Wait Until Dark - Actually made me jump once. Alan Arkin was a great villain. The little girl was creepy and I’m not sure she was supposed to be. Audrey Hepburn was overacting a wee bit.

The only one of these I’d watch again is Cabaret. But I’m glad I finally saw them all. Hooray for Direct Tv.