"Yes, cattle! What were you thinking? Uh, they looked smaller in the catalog?"

I'm watching hoarders while I shop on amazon which is REALLY confusing.  Is season one of burn notice a hoarding item, it's not like I NEED to have it although you never know when you need go on the run.  Educational.  It is a little hard to watch because it does make me think of all the things I don't put in the goodwill bag because I might need it someday.  I'll have to really think about Merry and her purge next time I clean the house.  I have strong desires to dump everything every once in a while but it's just not practical to fit the whole sink in a goodwill bag.

I had like a purpose for blogging and whooosh, it went out of my head because netflix has hoarders to watch instantly.  Bastards.  It's totally their fault.  Now my anxiety level is just too high to blog.  Sigh.

"we love nature, even when it’s being mean or just acting stupid"

It is very cold and very windy and until recently very out of powery.  The wind seems to have died down a bit so I feel confident starting my thanksgiving baking tonight.  Which is of course why I am blogging.  To prepare.  For the baking.  It's the first step in Joy of Cooking, I swear.  Anyway, I am making chocolate and ginger tarts for tomorrow.  I'm also making roasted vegetables and maple butter acorn squash in the morning.  I also need a roll recipe...or a cornbread...I can't decide.  Squashy nutritionless white rolls covered in butter are the tradition in my family but then half of us are pre-diabetic so maybe I shouldn't take my culinary cues from tradition.  I'm going to search for a new recipe tonight, maybe something with a grain.

"chickens that lay 16 eggs a day, which is a lot for a chicken"

Now that all our hens are laying we get a ton of eggs a day.  Or is it a gaggle?  anyway, whoa.  I mean that was actually the point of getting more chickens...more eggs.  but dude, collecting them is becoming a pain. If I had know what i was getting in to I'd have taken up juggling first.  It's all part of the "amy needs to plan better" initiative.  Take the carton in to the coop.  Cook food to take for lunch so you don't end up buying and then eating cheetos for lunch.  Cheetos, uhm, bright and orange but not actually having the nutrients.

Its going to be a long week at work, short handed everywhere and probably very quiet.  I have a book and that'll probably be the highlight of the week.  that and pie.  i'll keep you posted.

"They can take our loneliness when they pry it from our cold, sad hands."

It is raining and winding and very unpleasant outside and if I didn't have two beautiful furry doggies that needed a nice long walk there is no way I would have gone outside.  If I didn't have dogs I would weigh six thousand pounds and eat cake all day.  As it is if I ate cake all day I wouldn't be able to walk our three miles every morning and my dogs would be mad at me.  As it is three miles isn't enough to tire the small dog, who continues to bark at her toys when they are two inches out of her reach.  Grrr.  Aaargh.  

I just received my bra order and I was totally disappointed in the Natori bras which are totally not the size marked and made me feel like a whale.  The Le Mystere bra is awesome, not sexy necessarily but very comfortable and supportive.  I've been attacking Matt with breast queries all evening.  What do you think of my breasts in this bra, and with this shirt on?  He's a little overwhelmed by breasts at the moment.  Poor guy...

"With great breasts come great responsibility"

I attempted to buy new brassieres yesterday at victoria's secret and there was not one single bra in my size in the whole store.  Not one.  It makes me doubt their dedication to breasts.  So I looked at zappos and lo there are some awesome bras with very good reviews they also have huge price tags which makes me doubt my dedication to my breasts.  I'll have to have a good long think about it and the service to price relationship when it comes to me spending my money.  

I've been cooking all day and I really messed up a pumpkin pie.  I cut and peeled and steamed a pumpkin and when I strained it to add it to the pie recipe I strained a bit too much and if I had a brain I would have added some water back in from the straining bowl...but I have no brain and now I have quite a stiff pumpkin...dessert...which I haven't tasted yet but if it is indeed edible I will call it a rustic pumpkin tart and tell myself I'm a genius.  Next time I will roast the pumpkin which seems to be the preferred method for optimum pumpkininess and I certainly will not strain every last drop of moisture out of it.  Fortunately I have 8 more pumpkins to peel, cook and smash so I have plenty of practice ahead of me.  

"But I haven't spent any money, I was all dead...and frugal."

I dunno blogging is just not a priority lately.  I can't do it at work, where I'm not supposed to use the internet at all even to check my personal email.  This is going to be the longest winter in the history of ever.  We'll have to get a chessboard or something because there's nothing else we're allowed to do.  Except work, that there isn't much of which to do.  If I didn't know that they needed me whether there is work or not I'd be really worried.  As it is, I'm worried I'll go completely insane this winter.

Daylight savings time is here and it's a pain in the rump.  I hate it.  I don't remember hating it this much last year but probably because I was self-employed and not working a boring and rigidly houred job.  We're taking extra long walks in the morning, and since matt measured our usual walk at 2.5 miles we're doing pretty well.  I'm not shifting any weight personally but the dogs are happy.  I have to get back into pilates to move any pounds and I just can't, my priority right now is keeping the house clean and it's hard.  Actually keeping on top of it instead of being consistently behind is a challenge.  I'd have to wash the dogs at the door to really keep on top of it, or send them out in those suits crime scene people wear on tv shows.  Which would be kind of awesome and adorable.

"pay me for my beauty, i have been paying for it all of my life.

Halloween was awesome.  We went to Salem, Mass and walked 7 million miles of outdoor market and blustery wharfs and ate a lot of food and had fun with sarah!  We were all pooped when we got home, doggies included and we fell asleep at 8 pm because we are old.  Trick or treating with the kids was fun and also freezing and they did it on sunday which seemed kind of insane.  I know that day is actually halloween but a lot of houses were dark and there weren't that many kids out.

We're still waiting to hear who's taking the governor's race in Maine.  The republican has a one percent lead on the independent candidate with 80% of precincts reporting.  I have my fingers crossed for a sudden bump or a favorable re-count, anything but social conservatism.

The days are starting to get unpleasantly short and I know it's just the beginning.  The dark months are the worst months ever and it makes getting my furries enough exercise a serious pain in the rump, let alone my exercise needs.  I am looking forward to snowshoeing I just wish I wasn't going to be doing it in the dark!

"We can't leave work in the middle of the day. We're not Somali pirates."

I have felt pretty much like poo for the last week.  I have not been drinking enough water, getting enough outdoor exercise and I definitely have not been making time for pilates.  Fortunately, the long days at work are over for me.  I am now a completely useless person who can only function with a part time job.  Actually, if I had a full time job in a place where the sun came up early and went down late all year it would probably be fine.  Getting everyone enough exercise on a morning i have to be at work early is vastly unpleasant.  And soon getting everyone enough exercise at night is going to be no fun too so the morning walk is going to mean more and more this winter.

I mentioned already that yesterday's stroll was truncated and damn my legs felt all cramped all day.  I was stretching in all kinds of ridiculous positions but really I just needed my morning walk.  It's amazing how your body gets used to your choices and is pissed when things go wrong.  It's clear to me also that I haven't been drinking enough water so I'm on a tea and soda ban until I feel better.  i have just not been trying and seriously how hard is it to drink water.  Sometimes it seems the hours just pass by at work and my water bottle comes home full like when I left.  tsk tsk, that's not gonna work.  So it's my mission for the rest of the week to empty that bottle a few times at work.

We had a long talk yesterday at work about going vegan and all the things we would miss.  Next week I'm going to pick up a few vegan dairy free things and see how i like them.  I'm finding it harder and harder to eat animal products, for purely sappy emotional reasons.  I was making beef stew for matt this weekend and all i saw were these cute cows i pass on the way home...they like to eat apples off the trees in their pasture and the babies wag their tails for their mommies.  They're so damn cute, how can i make them into stew!

"and I didn't eat yesterday, and i'm not gonna eat today, and i'm not gonna eat tomorrow because i'm gonna be a supermodel"

No real reason for the title, It's just been in my head all day.  Blast from the past.  I'm actually in kind of a pissy mood because on our walk last night we met a hunter.  With a dog.  And actually he was quite nice and the dog was nice and he went his way with one of our partridges and we went our way with no partridges and I didn't talk about how he violated the no trespassing signs because I wasn't the one holding the gun.  Knox actually scared the crap out of him, I guess he snuck up behind him and rubbed his nose on the guy's leg.  Whoops! forgot his bear bell!  Jolie would not give the guy a break though, good girl!

So I called matt to tell him about it, and he was at his brothers' house.  His brother said, oh yeah I told some friends they could hunt there.  Heh Heh.  By the way, I told some random people they could hunt on YOUR property and I failed to mention it to you.  And I guess Matt wasn't mad until he told me and I was pretty mad because if we told people they could shoot things where his family spends time he'd be pissed but our family means nothing because it's not his I guess.  He'd probably be thrilled if my dogs or I got shot.  And this is why I don't like him.

I guess he also told his friends they could also hunt on our other neighbors property, the one who's property is actually posted no hunting without written permission and isn't too worried about our relationship with our neighbor because it's not his neighbor.  I know he was hunting there because he shot a bunny and left it there, on the side of the road.  I know that because Jolie found it this morning not even 10 minutes into our walk.  It's always fun wrestling dead things from the dogs but it was even funnerer while being chased by a pack of coyotes who presumably wanted the bunny too.

I was saving my rancor for quaker who inexplicably changed the recipe of their instant oatmeal and it is now so completely gross that I don't know what to do with the left over packets.  Do chickens eat oatmeal?  It has apple bits!  And now I'm rancorous with matt's brother because he is a moron.  I expect to deal with coyotes and bears (although I do not look forward to this possibility) but I don't expect to get shot while I'm walking my dogs.  I probably should, that should probably be my burden but seriously we have no trespassing signs up for a reason.  We have had way too many gun incidents this fall and it's not even deer season yet.  Some fool drove down our road and shot a bunch of glass bottles, full soup cans and soda cans and left all the broken glass and spilling soup and expelled cartridges for us to find.  And if that was Nate's friend I'm seriously going to empty my trash can on their doorstep because that is NOT ok.

So, I have more time this week and I totally expected this post to be about quaker and jeans because not only did quaker do that recipe changing thing which I'm hoping will turn out like coke and their original recipe but also my pants don't fit.  I'm still too fat for the pants that didn't fit before but too skinny for the pants that do fit.  I'm tempted to try drying the crap out of my larger jeans but I'm a little worried that the plan will backfire and I will have no pants at all.  Suggestions?  Lipo-suction maybe?

"technically, Mr. Cynical can't be happy. It's his power and his curse."

My brain is not working.  I swear I haven't had a clear thought in weeks.  My little dog keeps barking at me.  I'm hoping it's a phase we can work through because seriously I can't take anymore cranky.  Circle slash cranky!

Today was a ridiculously boring day, the most boring day ever.  I ran out of internet, that's how boring it was.  I'm not looking forward to two more full days at work, I'm really not.

"It’s ridiculously expensive and spending money makes us sad."

It's been a hundred years since I blogged.  I've been busy cooking and shopping and straightening my hair. Apparently it takes forever to straighten your hair every morning.  I had NO IDEA.  I mean I should have because I'm an adult with a brain but no, still I'm surprised at the amount of time I spend doing girl things in the morning.  Matt is also surprised.  I suggested putting a clock in the bathroom tonight at dinner so I can keep my eye on the time in the morning and he said "You weren't a girl when I signed up".  I have murdered him and buried him in the woods now so many times now...

I am now one of those people who spends time getting dressed and fixing my hair.  Most girls do this in high school.  What was I doing in high school, what did I do with my time?  I have no idea.  I guess I'm making up for it now and whoa it takes a lot of time.  But it's a lot of fun.  A little like being my own barbie doll.  That feels wrong.

"Did the corporation once touch you in a place that made you uncomfortable?"

So, I've been too busy to really put any time into blogging.  I've been shopping way too much for one, and I got a haircut that requires a lot of straightening, Jolie pup had her annual exam and Knox has an ear ache. There's a lot going on.  Especially with the hair thing.  It's a little short.  I'll post pictures later but yeah it's a little short and a little wide, like a house trailer, when I don't spend 12 hours straightening it.

My job is a little crazy too.  It's only part time but they're training me like I run a nuclear power plant or something and apparently you have to wear nylons while running a nuclear power plant or EVERYONE DIES!  I really hate nylons.  Or panty hose, which is the word they used when they explained the dress code to me...slowing with small words.  I think panty hose must be the worst phrase in the history of ever, let alone the worst product.  I'm doing my best to flout the system with brightly colored and obnoxious tights, and very short skirts to go with them.  Also kickass shoes, because that's how I roll now.

"The company feels that if we ease up because someone dies, it will only encourage other people to die."

My sister recently learned that she is pre-diabetic.  It was something we expected because she had pre-natal diabetes three times and hasn't been any more successful than me in becoming a supermodel since.  Now that it it official and she has a sincere desire to keep her feet she's trying really hard to get to the gym.  So, I want to encourage her the most I can.  I gave her all my tips, for as much as that is worth, and I want to get her a special water bottle.  Why a water bottle? because she doesn't drink enough water and it's kind of important, at least in my book.

I want to make her a customized Sigg bottle that says something like "My sister is awesome" heh heh.  Actually, I'm stuck on what to write on it exactly.  Something motivating, without profanity because Handing Diabetes it's Ass!  while probably awesome she'd probably never use because her kids would read it and say it at school and get detention and then she'd miss her gym hour.  Do you have a great idea?  Let me know in the comments and if I choose to use your totally awesome catchphrase on her bottle, I'll mail you your very own personalized Sigg!  So, WOW me with your suggestions and help us all get motivated to shake our booties!

"Uh, twice a week after work, I put on a totally realistic bear costume and hang out in the park."

In the same day I saw a beautiful bald eagle soaring above the ocean and a cyclist smoking.  Not just a guy on a bike going to pick up a six pack, a genuine spandex wearing cyclist lighting up in a national park.  Weird, weird, weird.  Well, not so much weird as anachronistic.  Is that the right word?  Spellcheck didn't give me the underline of shame so I guess it's ok.

I'm making an effort to get my blog on.  I haven't been managing my time very well.  Actually, maybe I just don't have enough time.  After work and walking and gardening and cooking we have dinner around 8.  And then we go to bed.  Everything in the garden is ripening at once and we have a lot of harvesting to do.  We have a slew of baby pumpkins and one butternut squash I hope will make it into the fall.  The tomatoes are all green and plump and ready to ripen any day now.  We have been seriously drowning in snap peas and green beans and I've been eating stir fry like it's going out of style and now the zucchini are taking over.

Everyone else has been handing me zucchini for weeks and ours are now at that stage where they're cute and adorable one minute and the incredible zucchini hulk the next.  I have some chocolate zucchini cake recipes that are enticing and the words zucchini and relish keep popping up.  I personally hate zucchini relish but I relish using up the zucchini in a suzy homemaker way so that might be the way I go.

"Friendship. It's the same as stealing."

So many people checked in yesterday, what did you forget it was a holiday?  The one where you're supposed to celebrate a year of industry by eating charred meat and jello salad?  What were all you people doing online?  Don't you care about the jello salad?  Have you no humanity?

I don't know where that came from.  I think it's a sugar rush.  I had a cinnamon roll for breakfast and I think I might be tripping.  How much sugar do you need to eat before it's lsd.  Is there a rule for that, like switching out applesauce for oil in a weight watchers cake recipe?  Unless it's the runner's high from this morning's run.  I wouldn't say it was my longest run ever you know but I hit an endorfin place at a really good point and it was awesome.  And I'm wearing purple leggings to work today so yay for color.  I guess I'm just in a really good mood this morning.  I didn't lose my doggies on our walk and I'm watching a cute french movie on netflix.

Jolie is curled up on two pillows so Knox has to sleep on the floor.  I wonder if she thinks about how many pillows she'd like to sleep on or if it's an accident of pillow location.  Knox used to move pillows around for the best advantage but he doesn't do it lately and I wonder if Jo has become queen of the pillows and is now in charge of all pillow usage.  These are the things I think about.  I like to imagine their dog hierarchy like a married couple, I imagine they argue over the remote and chicken pot pie.  I've got to get out more.

"Running just annoys them."

Sometimes I look at my blog and I think, wow...it's been that long since I blogged?  and then i think wow, nothing has happened at all that anyone would want to blog about, or read about.  Working part-time is a full time job.  seriously.  I must have a serious time management problem because I get nothing done.  The house just barely runs with enough clean dishes and laundry and groceries.  The dogs get walked at what we would consider a minimum at only 1 to 1.5 hours a day.

What do I have to talk about?  Recently we started watching White Collar and I decided I love the casting department for that show.  All of the women are beautiful and round and while they're not fat by any normal standard...they aren't skinny with bones sticking out hither and thither.  It's pretty awesome to see curvy sexy women on tv who aren't starving themselves.

I've been trying to make the most of my body the way it is and I've been dressing completely differently.  I've been wearing a lot of dresses and skirts and seriously I never knew how easy it was to wear dresses.
I have always been weary of wearing dresses and skirts and now that I am an adult I have no idea why.  Lately it's been all dresses and boots and it must work for me because I spend half my time tallying up admiring gazes.  Good for the self esteem.

Puppies where they belong, safe in the house making a mess of the bed.  

"it's like dog racism"

My sister goes back to Prague this week so this weekend was my last cross New England drive to sit and watch reality tv and eat too much at the family homestead.  There is a certain relief although I'll miss all the fun we have together doing nothing.  This weekend was kind of not the best because I've had to pick up extra hours at work and I have some kind of terrible summer cold and my other sister's kids are on crack oh and also my baby got attacked by a pit bull.

I suppose technically if he was really attacked he'd be dead but I don't have a better adjective.  And I don't want to be the person that says all the pit bulls in the world are evil because this one owner is a moron but holy shit it was scary.  We always walk our dogs on leash away from home because I could not deal if something happened and my woofs got lost.  Not at all.  So we're very diligent about being on leash and screaming at the children to CLOSE THE DOOR, NOW!  NO, NOW!

We were walking on leash behind my dads house where we always walk and we never see anyone, not even the very often off leash cocker spaniel who lives next door and frequents the same path.  We turned up toward the college and we saw a guy walking one dog off leash...so we went the other way.  Why ask for trouble?  So we're on the path and begging the dogs to transact their business and all of a sudden thunder paws from down the dirt road and whooze and yelp and there is a very large pit bull with his very large mouth on Knox's neck.  Knox's instinct must be to play dead because he threw himself to the ground in the face of this scary ass dog.  Matt was able to grab that dog by it's collar and pull it off but then he had that dog and knox's leash all tied up, when the other two smaller pit bulls arrived.  And they were fine, they didn't growl or bark or even get close to us before their owner arrived but we didn't know that situation would continue.  The owner comes pounding after them and is obviously terrified that our dog is hurt and I don't know if that's because this has happened before or because it hasn't, but he did say that the big one is the only that's "like that" so it strikes me he knows there's a problem there and still had him off leash.  I feel for the guy because those were strong dogs that need a good run in the woods and the smaller two were fine.  He's clearly not an altogether bad owner but if my dad's wasp neighborhood ever hear there were three unleashed pits back there they will have a collective wasp style cow.

The two smaller pit bulls were fine and even Jolie said hello to them while he got them all on leash.  And the big one submitted to the owner immediately but whoa, it was altogether unpleasant.  I don't want to be one of those people who blames a breed because it could have been any kind of dog with (let's assume) a history of that behavior but the dude should have had that particular dog on a leash.  I didn't tell my dad because damn, he hates pit bulls for no other reason than he heard he was supposed to on the news one time.  My sister reacted similarly but she's only been bitten once and it was by a pomeranian (to no one's surprise).

It was something I knew could happen, either with an off leash dog or at a dog park but I was completely unprepared for actually happening.  We've watched enough dog whisperer to not freak out and start screaming and escalate things and hopefully that helped.  And hopefully we'll be more prepared for the unexpected next time.

"Well, what if the baby killed a man?"

I haven't been blogging.  I try to find the time and seriously I'm no that busy but somehow the interwebs just fall by the wayside.  I've been running a lot lately.  I've had to rebuild some of my running stamina but I was pretty proud of my morning and evening runs.  See that, TWO episodes of running.  Spastic as I know they were, I still feel accomplished.  Every bit of running or walking is not time spent eating cookies so that's positive.

Lately I've been spending most of my time working and the rest of it working on myself.  I have been trying to work on boundaries especially with obligations, especially with matt's family obligations.  I have some issues to work out there and I'm trying to work them out without making things worse but also without spending the rest of my life doing things I don't want to do with people I don't want to be with.  It's kind of hard and there isn't a whole lot of understanding.  And maybe there shouldn't be, maybe it's wrong to distance yourself from situations like that but what we have going on is not working and I'm reaching that point in my life where I don't want to put up with things that don't work for me.  I guess I'm realizing that I don't have to put up with things that don't work for me and that I never did but I was too young or something to know that.

I suppose it's never too late to start living your life for real, instead of just going through the motions.  I know I'm not the only person reaching that point, PQ moving because she wanted to and Rebecca starting an exciting new career and I'm sure many of you are reaching a crossroads too.  Where are we all going, whither are we bound?  Who knows eh, excited to see where the road goes though...

another pound hits the dust!

I've decided that that pound is gone forever so I put it up on the title bar.  I'm at training today and tomorrow and it sucks hard.  Seriously.  But I'm trying real hard to be a grown up and do the corporate thing and not make enemies or burn bridges with my cynicism.  Trying REAL hard.  I did get some shopping in though, so that's good.  I got some black slouchy cowboy boots to match the brown ones I already have...because I love the crap out of them and I wear the crap out of them which I never thought I would.  I would not have called myself a cowboy boot person but it seems that I am and I have been wearing them to work which may or may not be dress code but no one mentioned anything today at training.

I have to admit I feel chic when I wear them.  I like them with casual skirts and dresses and business skirts too.  I've been wearing wide leather belts Deschanel sisters style because it's supposed to give people the impression that I have hips...which is a good thing.  Course when I wear them every day it's less of a fashion statement and more like a uniform.  To be even more tv gorgeous I bought a Mrs. Harris dress today because there is no gorgeous like Joan gorgeous.  I'll get some pics when I have a chance.

The hotel where I'm staying is dog friendly and there's a storm tonight, the woof staying next door is seriously freaked out and it's breaking my heart.  It's making me miss my pups but I've got to say it's nice to have no responsibilities for an evening except shopping and eating.  Not so great for that one pound loss but I made good choices and I have a ton leftover...good thing my suite has a fridge!