I want to love like my dog does

We had a kitchen accident the other night. A falling knife, a dog who assumes that anything which falls in the kitchen must be food.... You can see where that lead to. What that simple retelling doesn't say is how Shane and I both worried that she'd been blinded at first (one cut is on the skin of her lower eyelid and it bled HORRIBLY, right into her eye) and how bad Shane felt for not setting the knife down properly. Visions of midnight vet calls, stitches, blindness in our beloved dog's left eye, all went rushing through my head but thankfully didn't happen. The cuts are small and the one somehow managed to miss her eye.
The crazy part, though, is the dog's reaction. She didn't yelp when she was cut, and she didn't freak out at all until we started making a big fuss over her. She did not like getting cleaned up (and who does like having people mess around with your eyes?) but we gave her some treats and within five minutes of the accident, while we were still reassuring ourselves that she could see out of that eye and that she'd be fine, she was wagging her tail. She spent most of the rest of the evening comforting us. When all was said and done, the bleeding stopped and our hearts not pounding so much, we took her back to the bedroom so that we could all snuggle together. Pepper laid on her back between the two of us, belly up for plenty of rubs and neck scratches. When she rolled over it was to put her chin on Shane's chest and sigh a little bit with contentment. There was no blame in her eyes. She didn't resent him (as he felt she should) and she knew that he was upset so she set about trying to comfort him, even though she was the only one hurt.
I looked at her little face and thought, I really wish I could be like that. My dog loves with her whole heart, and aside from a little jealousy (why would the humans want to pay attention to the cat?) she loves unreservedly. She has separation anxiety, but when we're home she doesn't scold us for having been gone. I realized a while ago that she barks and lunges at people, bikes and cars when she's on the leash because she thinks the leash is for my protection, and she needs to warn others away. (I know this is true because when she gets to walk off-leash, she doesn't have these issues. As soon as I take up the leash, others become The Enemy.) My silly little dog wants nothing more in the world than to keep us safe and snuggle us. (And to eat, but that's beside the point.) I want to be more generous with my love, the way she is. I want to be more grateful for the time I have with people. I want to be less demanding, and less critical. I should go take notes from my dog.
I found this fascinating article about things to do with leftover milk jugs and thought I'd share it. I've mostly switched over to paper cartons, but next time I feel the need to buy a whole gallon I'll save the jug and use it for one of those ideas.
I harvested the last of summer's bounty this week. The pumpkins and other winter squash (I think one might be a spaghetti squash?) are sitting on the counter to finish ripening. (There are five altogether.) And I pulled in the last of the lettuce, since the frost has killed most of it. I could harvest a bit more rhubarb, but we have plenty in the freezer and no freezer space left anyway. It'll be better for the plants if I leave them on as well, so that they're stronger next year.
The cherry tomatoes and the pepper plant at work are still going strong, though. Still not too many at one time (the pepper plant has only produced three peppers) but enough to help out a little bit. One of the peppers went into a marinade for tonight's dinner (pork tenderloin) and I pulled 10 little tomatoes off the plants today so those will combine with the lettuce for a salad.
We're doing quite well with our plan to eat out of the freezer. We've got a meal list going so that we know what else we can make. Planning ahead is absolutely essential! But we have so much food in the house we really don't need to buy more than the trimmings. I'm looking forward to all kinds of meals. Pot roast tomorrow with family (our younger brothers and Shane's cousin, who's a freshman at the U, are coming over), and soup later this week. Homemade sourdough bread, pecan pie cookies, chicken pot pie. Yum!
The only thing missing is the snow. Where is it this year?

Something to think about

"We don't need to save the planet; the planet will survive without us. We need to save us." --Jeff Nesbit of Climate Nexus.
It's been slowly dawning on me over the last year or so that environmentalism and concern for human rights are not just linked, but integral to each other. How can you be concerned about people dying in wars and not people dying because of the chemicals in their water? Conversely, what is there to care about in rising ocean levels unless you realize that there are real people who will be impacted by that? Entire cities will be washed away like Atlantis. If you care about people and humanity, you have to care about the environment as well because they're two sides of the same coin. By bettering the environment we make life better for every person. Reducing pollution doesn't just help you, it also helps the kid with asthma up the street. It reduces the chances of your neighbors getting cancer. This really is a matter of human survival. Whether we win or not the planet will still be here, but I don't want to see what it would look like without our rich heritage of biodiversity. I don't want to know the kinds of health problems that would arise in a world taken over by toxic chemicals and pollution. That's what keeps these issues in the back of my mind when I make choices. To recycle or not to recycle?

"Because she's baby crazy!"

One of the things Shane and I decided on while we were in Europe was the fact that we wouldn't take our kids anywhere (except to visit family) until they're around the age of 10. Not even to Disneyland, where all of the fun rides have height requirements. For one thing, the kids won't remember the trip so it's not fair to them. I'd rather save their travel costs and take them on bigger vacations later in life when they'll actually get something out of it. What's the point of travelling the world if you're not going to understand or even remember it?
For another thing, the kids miss out on valuable grandparent bonding time. If we wanted to go on vacation, sans kids, that would be the perfect time to either have one set of grandparents visit to take care of them, or to send the kids off to those grandparents. Having spent a lot of time with my own grandparents as a child, I know how much this helped shape me and how important it is. Plus, it's important for the grandparents, too. Since we don't live close to either set of parents, we'll have to make opportunities for our kids to go see them.
Finally, what really cemented our decision was the fact that we saw so many parents with young children (under the age of five) who were obviously spending more of their vacation worrying about their kids, and feeding them, and making sure they weren't throwing tantrums, than they were actually vacationing. These people were everywhere, and none of them looked like they were having a good time. They all looked completely stressed out, and who wouldn't be with the strollers and bottles and diaper changing and kids screaming or running around? We even saw one family (I believe it was at the Colosseum?) who had bought their approximately 2 year old child one of the audio guides, then got mad when the kid threw it. Seriously? Did they really think their child was going to understand any part of what the guide said? The kid was in a stroller! We get so little vacation time as it is, why spend the whole time worrying about your kids? Vacations are supposed to be fun. And I think it's important for parents to take a little bit of time away from being parents so that they remember who they are, and reconnect with their spouses.
Absolutely every parent we saw, no matter what nationality, had the same frazzled look, the same frantic I'm-not-having-fun attitude and the same almost panicked gestures. That is not what I'd call a vacation. It's expensive, and a waste of what would be a fantastic experience for these children later on in life.
Not that I'm trying to announce anything here--no impending little ones. (We went to J&L's house the other night and while I was holding their baby J asked Shane, "Doesn't that worry you?" Shane said, "Absolutely not. The more she gets to hold your baby, the longer we can put off having one of our own." I had to add, "We need to have two paychecks before we can think of babies.") So no babies for a little while. But this was on my mind this morning.
The autumn weather is making me crave all kinds of comfort foods. Apple pie, butternut squash soup, pot roast, lasagna, chicken pot pie... I get the feeling that I'll be making each of these things in the next couple of weeks. Yum!!

It's the little things

Some days I feel sorry for myself. Everyone has days like these, I know. But right about the time I really need it, when I start to feel like things just never go well for me, I end up getting what I need to show me how truly lucky and blessed I am.
On our honeymoon, Shane and I promised each other that we wouldn't worry about money until we got home. This is not to say that we were throwing cash around, we were very conscious of both the prices of things and the exchange rate. We also knew, going into it, that this was going to be a very, very expensive trip. And that Shane would most likely be jobless when we got home. (He is. The lab is being shut down, so his last day of work was on Friday.) We made our plan to eat mostly foods that we already had stored, and thankfully we're not the kind of people who need to buy new, fashionable clothes each winter so we'll make do with what we already have. (If I really find a lack in my wardrobe, I can see what Value Village has to offer.)
Despite all this, I've been feeling really crummy about our financial situation. Who knows how long until Shane finds another job? I have medical bills from breaking my nose, so my permanent fund (should come out next week, I think) and some of our savings will go toward that. (Shane's pfd is going toward his student loans.) I am doing the FLOT show "Annie", so I'll get paid a little bit for that, but I do mean a little bit. Around $150. Hardly a game-changer when half your household is unemployed.
And then, today, I got the reminder that I needed that, really, we are so lucky. I have a job, and a stable one at that. We have health insurance to help defray costs, and we have savings. Why am I whining to myself about how expensive our honeymoon was? We were able to afford a trip like that, debt-free, when there are so many people in this country and world who are struggling to put food on the table and provide shelter to their families. And in the end, the trip was worth every penny. So I refuse to worry about the cost anymore, because the experience means more to me than money in the bank.
Shane and I are the lucky ones. He has contacts and a network he can set in motion looking for a new job. We're both educated. We have a support system. We can afford food, and heat, and shelter, and even new clothes if we needed to. This week I'm going to once again take up my knitting (a winter project for me) and continue making hats, scarves and hand warmers for those who are less fortunate and remember that I am incredibly lucky. I'm going to make Shane go through his wardrobe to clean out clothes which he never wears, and donate them so that others can make use of them.
If you want to see the kick in the pants I needed to remind myself of how lucky I am, it was this slideshow about the affect of the recession on people.
Lastly, since I'm in an appreciative, I'm-so-lucky mood, I'll share with you the upside to having an incredibly stuffy nose and not being able to taste anything: you don't get sick of foods. Shane got so sick of the salmon chowder we made last week (after eating it for four days in a row), so I polished it off. When you can't taste your food, you can't get sick of any one item and food that might otherwise have gone to waste didn't.

Livin' it up, small-town style

One of the things I love best about living in a small-ish town is simply that here, people are real. I hear about a politician on the radio and it's someone I actually know, not to mention the radio host(s) as well. This is the kind of place where it's not unusual to run into someone you know at the supermarket, and you're almost guaranteed that there's someone you know at the farmer's market on Saturdays.
My dad said once that, living here, he was always disappointed when he had to fly out and he didn't know anyone on the airplane. It only happened a couple of times. Well, the same is still true for me. I usually know, at least by sight, one person on the flight. It was very strange, however, when Shane and I were in Germany, ill and exhausted, waiting to board our flight, when Shane poked me and asked, "Isn't that Cort?" (Our veterinarian, but we're friends with the family. In fact, his daughter was one of my bridesmaids.) He's well over 6 feet tall, hard to miss, so I picked him out right away. "And Connie!" I answered. (His wife.) Across the crowd, neither of us wanted to yell, so we waited for a few seconds to catch their eyes before waving. It turns out they'd been in South Africa, helping a colleague at a wildlife sanctuary.
Even though they were just a few rows ahead of us, we didn't get to talk with them much. Everyone was tired, and Shane and I didn't want to get them sick. Still, it was nice having them along. They were even on the same flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks, so we got to spend a few minutes talking with them when we were all on home ground again, waiting for our rides.
If I had to pick one thing I love the most about small town life, this would be it. When you really know the people around you, nothing is faceless. Our veterinarian is so much more than just someone we see when the pets are sick. That politician is someone I've sung karaoke with (he's amazing at "Piano Man"), and the radio DJ is someone Shane has played ultimate frisbee with, and so was the ER doctor when I broke my nose. The head of my department lives in my neighborhood, so I get to see her and her husband walking their dog when I'm out walking mine. These little moments of running into someone, or hearing someone, that I know make life a little bit more human. They take me away from my own troubles and make me smile. They are the moments that make me think I will never live in a big city again, even though there are parts of it that I miss. I would just be giving up too much.
We had our first snow this morning, although it didn't stick. Soon enough my small town will look like a winter wonderland, but for now I get to enjoy the anticipation. And when I can taste again, when my nose isn't stuffed up, maybe I'll enjoy a few cups of hot chocolate as well. :)

This could have been so much worse

Our honeymoon was amazing. Not to brag or anything, but it really was. We took close to 1000 pictures, and yet there was so much that couldn't be captured with a camera. The church bells constantly ringing in Zurich, the traffic in Rome which was just as crazy as I'd heard (Shane was nearly widowed the first day there when I didn't cross a street fast enough), the unexpected things that overawed us (I didn't think it would be a big deal to me, but when we stepped into the Sistine Chapel and I looked up, I almost started crying because it was just so...so much more than I expected, even having seen the image thousands of times), getting lost in Venice and realizing that the only wheeled vehicles we'd seen were strollers and a couple of wheelchairs, waltzing to the music in Piazza San Marco, the crushing crowds in the Oktoberfest beer tents and the sound of thousands of people drinking and singing with the band, wearing dirndls and leiderhosen. It was amazing.
And we got sick the last day in Munich. Horribly, horribly sick. Shane less so than me, but even he was pretty miserable. We had a day and a half in Frankfurt to kill, but we spent most of that in our hotel room because we were too sick to want to do anything. I am now able to say that flying with the flu is just as miserable as flying hungover. Today is the first day I've started to feel better, thanks to the ministrations of my pets as well as lots of tea and honey. I found a natural "cure" for coughs, which is just apple cider vinegar and honey mixed together. Try it next time you're sick and let me know how it works for you. I've still been waking up at night hacking my lungs out, but that happened even when I took a Nyquil.
When we had down time on our trip we talked about how poor we'd be when we got home (Europe is expensive! Also, it's Shane's last day of work today--the lab is being officially shut down) and we came up with a plan to eat mostly out of our freezers at home. Thankfully, my little brother (who was house and pet sitting for us) figured we wouldn't want to cook when we got home, so he went shopping and made a big casserole for us. We ate the last of it yesterday afternoon, so I made dinner last night: salmon chowder. After all of the eating out we did in Europe, it's been so nice to get back to home-cooked meals. And if I cooked while listening to Rachmaninov's "Symphonic Dances", even better. :) I pretty much avoided any seafood on our honeymoon because I knew we'd be eating lots of it when we got home. (And we'll have to get very creative so we don't get sick of salmon.) Chowder was also a welcome change from the pastas and pizzas we'd had in Italy. (Even I got a little sick of so much starch, which I didn't think was possible!) Anyway, we had both our younger brothers over to share dinner last night, and it was fun despite how ill I've been.
It's good to be home. We need to spend a lot of time this weekend putting things back in order, though. So much cleaning and organizing to do!

Salmon Chowder:
Remove the bones and bake 1 large salmon fillet.
While it's baking, pour 6 cups of milk into a large pot and slowly start bringing to a boil. Stir frequently so the bottom doesn't scorch. At the same time, make a roux from 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of butter (melt the butter in a pan, then whisk in the flour). Temper it (pour in some of the heated milk) before adding to the milk. Spice it. (A little bit of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.)
Chop up carrots and potatoes, add to milk mixture along with frozen corn if you want. Continue to stir frequently.
Cook some bacon, drain fat, and add it to the milk mix.
When the salmon is done (doesn't need to be baked through, just mostly done) remove the skin and any last bones and add it to the soup. Add one chopped onion and keep on heat until onion is fully cooked.

*I'm sure chicken could also be substituted for salmon, though we've never tried it that way. This is modified from a clam chowder recipe, so feel free to mess around with a variety of seafood.

"Reader, I married him."

We're going to Europe on our honeymoon, so I won't be posting anything for a few weeks. I just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy our trip. Talk to you all again at the end of September!