Smile for the Camera!

Karenin is going to be fine. The vet knew what was wrong with her right away... she has something called Gastro-"something"-itis. He said the trick is this medicine he gave her and a strict, bland diet. For now we're going to switch from Pedigree to Purina at the vet's suggestion and probably whenever we get some freezer space, we'll start the raw diet. The raw diet is a little bit like doing cloth diapers--it's a big heap of expense that you don't have to pay again for a long time. It might be well worth it, but it's hard to want to put down all that money at once.

So our plan for the dog now is to finish fencing in the yard so that I don't have to take her out on the leash through the winter, and hope for the best!

I thought you'd all enjoy some peek-churs of my Anja Pie. It's been awhile since I've posted any.

This is Anja enjoying some rice cereal. Yum!

Working up a sweat in her crib

With the knitted teddy bear that I FINALLY finished... and it turned out to be bigger than she is!

The snake who lives in our yard

Evil Carrot Eater

This turned up one morning in our flower bed. I kept it so Martin will have someplace to go next time he's in the doghouse!

A very special trick

Taking a morning walk!

Miscellaneous Update

I am having the most difficult time eating this egg sandwich I made for myself. The egg keeps sliding out from between the bagel slices every time I take a bite, and falling into my lap. I have to put the whole sandwich back together in order to take another bite... and then it just happens again. Good thing I'm wearing my apron!... which now should probably be washed...

Anja's been waking up earlier lately, which means our morning walks happen earlier. This morning was so beautiful! So crisp. We saw Mr. Gettings and our friend Matt Scherger. As much as the return of the Purdue students is an inconvenience when it comes to traffic and empty tables at Vienna, I do like having them around for the most part. Through the summer whenever Anja and I took an early morning walk we wouldn't see anyone but the bums. All the working people were in their offices and nobody else was around. But now the trolley stops are full of students with their little iPod earbuds and their cute, trendy clothes. I really like seeing them. And knowing that so many college kids are living downtown makes me feel safe.

Tomorrow we're taking Karenin to the vet. We don't know what we're going to do. If her bowel problems are just the way she is, we might have to have her put to sleep. We've taken numerous poo samples to one vet who kept telling us she was fine, but she's so clearly NOT fine. The days when she has a solid poo are few and far between. She's had constant diarrhea since the beginning of July (and before that, since Easter, it was about every three days) and she's skinnier now than when we brought her home from the shelter. We can see her rib bones. And then this morning she's been poo-ing blood. So we're taking her to a different vet tomorrow and hoping he gives us a decent answer of some sort. But if he says there's "nothing wrong" we may just put her down. It isn't fair to make an animal live so miserably. But, we'll just wait until tomorrow to see what they say and make our decisions from there.

Today I'm making my mom's spaghetti sauce. I haven't made it in more than a year! Today is the perfect morning to start it, all cool and sunny and I have the doors open and the breezes are coming in. I'm taking dinner to the Daily family tonight who recently had their seventh baby--a little boy after a line of six girls! I figured if I made enough spaghetti sauce I can take them a whole batch to eat and freeze the leftovers, and we'll have enough for dinner for ourselves and hopefully a bit to freeze as well.

But I'd better get started, my morning is slipping away!

Worst Haircut Ever

The first year after I graduated highschool I very stupidly got my hair cut the day before Christmas Eve. At the Lafayette Beauty Academy. Now, I had been to the Beauty Academy before and been perfectly satisfied with all my experiences there. I wouldn't have necessarily raved about anything, but I didn't have any complaints. However, since that Christmas haircut (years ago) I've never been back to the Beauty Academy for anything. It was by far the worst haircut I'd ever had in my entire life. That includes ALL mushroom haircuts from my youth. This was BAD. You can see remnants of that haircut on my Songs from a Bungalow CD cover. That cover photo was taken that following March, three whole months after the butchering job, and that's all the longer my hair had gotten. (Although admittedly, it looked a lot better than it had.) That haircut was very nearly traumatizing.

And then today I wound up with the exact same haircut.

I don't know how it happened. I went in and requested a cut like Meg Ryan's in "You've Got Mail." He said he knew that movie, yes, he knew that haircut. Snip, snip, snip... I don't look anything like Meg Ryan. I look like someone cut all the top of my head, slmost none of the back, managed to make one slightly bald spot, some horrid bangs and a combination of lengthy pieces at the back of my neck that can either be gelled into a rat tail, or left as a natural mullet.

This haircut is BAD.

So now I think I'll go hide under a rock for about three weeks until it grows out enough so that it can be fixed. *sigh* And I was so looking forward to a cute haircut today.

19 Pounds!

That's how much our Pie weighs. Our Anja Pie, that is.

She had a doctors appointment this morning. It was a horrible morning and I was sure we'd miss the appointment, but we made it a few minutes early and ended up having to wait a long time too, so I shouldn't have freaked out the way I did. Anja woke up at a perfect time, around 6:00, but Martin informed me before I was even out of bed that I wouldn't be able to take a shower because he had Drano-ed the bathtub and it hadn't all gone down and some had washed back up into the tub when he poured the hot water down, so he announced the tub to be out of order for the day. Grrr. So I wet my hair and shaved my legs in the sink, washed my face and felt as good as if I'd showered. Anja was super happy all morning. She and Martin took a long walk together while I was getting ready, and we left the house only 15 minutes later than we'd planned. But then Anja screamed the whole way to Romney until Martin and I sang "Five Little Ducks" to keep her quiet until we got to Linden, where she wasn't having any more of that, so we stopped and I fed her. I thought she'd fall right asleep after eating, but instead she cried the rest of the way to Crawfordsville. Had we not had a 9:00 doctors appointment, we could've had a nice time walking around campus in the cool morning. Unfortunately, we had to get back to Lafayette. So I fed her again in hopes that she'd fall asleep on the way home... and she eventually did, after I kept singing "Five Little Ducks" over and over and over again until we were almost back to Romney. I was pretty disappointed that the appointment was so early. It would've been very nice to take a stroll around Wabash for awhile. The students aren't there yet, it was so quiet and nice. (We took a VERY short walk, during which she was very happy.)

Doctors appointment was fine; her ear infection is gone, she still has a big head, and she's healthy as a horse.

We came home and I got some dinner in the Crock Pot, tried to put her down upstairs for a real nap (since she only got about 15 minutes in the car) but she woke up right away. So I put her in the car and we went to Vienna for an iced vanilla chai. DELISH!! I haven't had one in a long time, so I treated myself. Back in the car she was so happy to just sit and play with her hands. We listened to Patty Griffin and took a little drive around the edges of Lafayette. G-R-O-S-S. We don't often drive out Creasy Lane, but I did for a change of pace today and discovered that we now have a David's Bridal in town. I think that officially makes us a big city. The sprawl on the North side of town is just as bad as the spawl on the South side. It's one strip mall after another, just like Indianapolis and Naples, Florida. It's like a whole little town of its own out there. So strange!

Now I'm going to post a BBQ recipe on the Cooking Blog.

Old People

Okay, I realize that it's not even 10:00 yet, but Martin and I WERE in bed... embarassingly, since 8:30... but we're both still awake, not a bit sleepy! Maybe it's because Anja has had a run of fairly good night sleeps lately. Maybe our bodies have become accustomed to running on only a very short supply of sleep and since we've recently been getting more, our bodies are overflowing with rest and think they don't need any more sleep. Um, if that's the case, our bodies are definitely wrong. But still, maybe that's the problem. It also might be because we both got naps today. I fell asleep with Anja when putting her down for her afternoon nap (by the way, she napped AWESOMELY today, went down for bed at 7:15 and only just woke up for the first time a few minutes ago) and ended up sharing her entire nap with her, which was exactly two hours. Whoops! Then after dinner Martin took a nap on the couch while I went to the grocery store with Anja. And since it was just the two of us, and I knew Martin was sleeping, we took our sweet time. Anja loves the grocery store. So that might be some of his problem too.

But then the other, much more annoying problem, is that our air conditioning started making this horrible high pitched, steady noise. It's one of those noises that once you notice, you can't STOP noticing. So I was lying there, trying my best to block out that noise by thinking about other things, when I looked over at Martin, who looked back at me and said, "Do you hear that annoying high pitched noise?" I told him it was the air conditioning, he said he thought it was something outside. So I went downstairs where it's quiet to listen for something outside, and it took me a trip to the bathroom and back before I could get the noise enough out of my own head to realize that it was nothing outside, it was just the air conditioning. I went back upstairs and switched it from medium to low and that stopped it. It still went on in Martin's head though, so eventually he got up and came downstairs to read. I then realized I was hungry... so I came down too. So here we are!

Anja and I went to the Farmers Market this morning. We were supposed to go peach picking with my family, but at the last minute they found out the Peach Picking Place was closed! Bummer! I still wanted peaches though, so I bought some from the Famers Market. I even got a big bag of seconds for a dollar. I also got a pint of blackberries and three apples to make those delicious apple cinnamon scones. Yum! I should make them tonight so we can have them for breakfast tomorrow... hmm....

So in the afternoon after my wonderful nap with my wonderful baby, I blanched and peeled enough peaches to fill two freezer bags. I recently froze some blueberries as well. I figure if I freeze enough fruit now, I'll be all set to make pies all through the fall. I had made some pie crust in the morning, so while I was making dinner I put together a blackberry pie with the blackberries I'd bought, it baked while we ate, and was hot for dessert! Except we didn't eat any of it. You see, I'd kind of filled up on the raw crust.... heh heh heh....

And it was an otherwise pretty uneventful day. I'm really dreading Martin's travel season, which starts on September 2nd, although the bonus of this year is that the Cluster Flies seemed to have not returned. At least without as much gusto as last year. We've only had about five all summer, and by this time last summer they were BAAAAAD. Still though... it's going to be a poopie two months. Because last year while I could hole up in my house and watch chick flicks and eat popcorn and Subway sandwiches to my heart's content, this year I have a baby to look after.

But I'm also a little bit dreading winter. Mike Prangley is calling for a mild winter and an early spring, which is good. It will be a little bit okay since Anja will be one and able to go for winter walks... but we just spend so much time outside, and she loves being outside! Sometimes when she gets fussy in the house, all we have to do is sit on the porch swing together and watch the cars go by and she is happy as a clam. I guess I'll just have to invest in some good hats and mittens for the winter.

Also, one of my shelves fell off the wall yesterday. That's annoying. But nothing broke, so that's lucky.

Magazine Pages

Weird. I guess Blogger has revamped its main page. It always throws me off when things change like that, and I always wonder, what's the point? Ugh, weather.com used to do that all the time. It drove me nuts.

So a little bit ago Anja was pulling all the magazines out of the magazine basket. Then she started flinging one around and all of a sudden--riiip!--out came a page! She looked absolutely shocked. It was hilarious. And since then (it's been like a half an hour) she's been carrying her magazine page around with her everywhere. What a funny baby!

Anja's been in a great mood the past two days. Yesterday we went to the Farmers Market in the morning and Anja took great naps both in the morning and in the afternoon. Martino and I just kind of hung out; I intended all day to make pie crust, but never really got around to it. We also intended to go to the Pilgrimage mass in the evening, maybe even do the end of the hike with them, but Anja fell asleep again right around 4:00 so we weren't able to do that either. We didn't eat much for dinner because we'd bought a box of Cheez-Itz earlier in the day and Martin ate the entire box. Well, ok, I helped him out a little bit, but I seriously only ate maybe 15 crackers, and then went back later in the evening to eat some more and the box was only full of crumbs. While he filled up on Cheez-Itz, I gorged myself on this delicious loaf of toasted garlic bread from the Klein Brot Haus and green olives. I felt so Italian.

Of course later that night when it was time to drive Anja around to sleep (as usual) I was so incredibly thirsty from all the olives I'd eaten (and, oh my gosh, that bread with butter and salt dipped in the olive juice was AMAZING) we stopped at my favorite drive-thru gas station and got a giant Powerade. Yummm yum.

This morning we were late for the 7:30 mass, but we made it. It was actually my fault we were late. Usually I can blame it on Anja, but this time I fell back asleep while Martin was walking the dog and didn't get up until almost 7:00. Anja woke up right after me and Martin got her ready and they were all set and waiting on me for a long time before I finally got myself out the door. Anja was sooooooo happy all through mass! And afterward we sold Germanfest tickets. We didn't think we'd sell any--but we sold FIVE!!! Isn't that incredible?!? And the big sales gave Martin this huge surge of confidence and he started talking about all the people he's going to try to sell to in the next week. So we'll see how many we get sold! We also got to sit behind Andy and Kristin Korty and their new little baby Anna who is sooooooo cute. She smiled at us over her daddy's shoulder! She is so tiny with big brown eyes. You can tell she's going to be another one of those really pretty Korty girls.

After mass we went to brunch with the Schap side of the family! Very fun, as usual, except for the part where we all had our eye on the same dessert, which we all thought was something different, which turned out to be nothing more than jello. Isn't that lame? They had these delicious looking desserts in sundae cups on this iced tray that was surrounded by blue lights. So in order to really see what something was you had to pick it up and study it away from the blue lights, which distorted everything. I took something I thought was chocolate (after I realized the first dessert I'd had my eye on--thinking it was oreo mousse--was jello) and got back to the table only to discover it was blueberry pie filling with a dollop of cream on top. Very disappointing! But the brunch itself was delicious, as always. We went to the Trails.

This afternoon we went out to Prophetstown for their Front Porch Sunday. Not many people were there, but Aunt Anna May was; she was working on her super cute baby blanket on the front porch. Definitely the way to relax. We wanted to show Anja the animals, and today she was most interested in two sheep who were chasing each other around. She thought they were very funny. The pigs came right up to their fence to say hello to us, and while I was patting one, another one bit me!!! It was so funny!!!! And I was covered in mud and pig spit, which was only a little bit gross, but definitely worth the experience of getting bit by a pig. I guess he more just kind of gummed me... but still. VERY funny. The cows and horses were not in the barn so we didn't get to see them, but there was a very friendly kitten lounging around and the chickens let Anja get very close to them, but wouldn't let us pet them.

We were going to go from there to Columbian Park to see more animals, but Anja fell asleep in the car and by the time she woke up we'd kind of lost our enthusiasm and Martin wanted to mow the lawns and so we decided to go on Wednesday after I pick Martin up from work. I'll have the car because Anja has a doctors appointment! Not as exciting as usual though, since she got weighed at the emergency room and that's the whole reason I look forward to her appointments. My wonderful neighbor Tara called me though and asked me if we'd had dinner. When I said no (I hadn't even thought about it yet) she said she'd make us a homemade pizza and bring it over! So she did and it was delicious. And very funny because I've been meaning to look up a dough recipe and was planning on making homemade pizza one night this coming week. Now I know I can just call Tara for the dough recipe!

Oh, another thing that happened last night when Anja was refusing to go to sleep, was we decided to go to the Frozen Custard. It was really fun. Anja was so happy and there were other little babies there that she liked to look at and one very chubby dog. I got a chocolate soda, just like my mom always used to get when we would make Custard runs when I was a kid. On the way home we talked about the fun times when Martin and my sister and I would all hang out, back when I lived with them and there was only Christopher and Gracie and for some reason we all seemed to have a ton of free time. What happened to those days?! Anyway, one night specifically we were remembering was when we had that wonderful Sally girl as our waitress at Luxies and it was just the three of us and Martin was kind of flirting with Sally, so Sarah and I pressured him into asking her out, and he did!! He said, "I was wondering if I could take you out sometime?" and she handled it beautifully. She said she was so flattered but that she had a boyfriend, and could she buy him a drink to thank him for the offer? Isn't that wonderful!? She was such a nice waitress. I miss that place sometimes.

And then another time the three of us went to the Main Street Ice Cream Shoppe and got grasshoppers, except only Martin and Sarah could get them because I wasn't 21 yet. So those to got to enjoy their deliciously minty alchoholic beverages together while I just had hot chocolate. But it was a fun time anyway.

That's another place I miss. I had a lot of good times at that Ice Cream Shoppe... like the time Matt Spencer and I roller bladed down there and Kim was playing. Or the time Martin and I went there during the ice storm after throwing rocks on the frozen river. *sigh* Good times.

Seaside Escape

Gosh, I love Mike Prangley. "We will never forget how we had severe weather and rain for like 100 straight Fridays!" That is a direct quote from his blog. I love him! He should be a chick-lit writer.

So I haven't been to a beach in 6 years. But whenever I mop my kitchen floor I can close my eyes and smell the "seaside escape" aroma of the floor cleanser and imagine I'm lying on some sandy shore with palm trees gently shading me. I think it's funny all the ways that household cleaners try to make the lives of housewives seem more pleasant. Laundry detergent called "After the Rain" to trick you into thinking of peaceful, deliciously scented raindrops instead of wet dogs tracking mud all over your floor that was just a beach party a few minutes before... And the "fresh apple pie" scented stuff that make your kitchen smell like you actually have time to bake apple pies every day. Or all those citrus cleaners convincing you that you really have a beautiful orange grove in your backyard... even though you live in Indiana and really all that's back there is a dead garden and a scummy alley.

I think I've mentioned this before, but the only bad thing about being married to your soulmate is that it's hard to surprise each other. Last night was another rough night with Anja and then this morning she nursed from 5:00-after 7:00. She simply wouldn't let me go. Finally, I tried just getting her up around 6:30, but she wasn't having that either. Eventually I was able to get her detached and remain asleep and I came downstairs where Martin told me to get in the shower. Well, I really didn't have time to be taking a shower when he wasn't even ready for work yet. So I told him, "No, there isn't any time." He said, "Oh, sure there is." And I thought, "he's going to get bagels for breakfast." So I started laughing and I HAD to tell him that I knew what he was doing, and he was a little bit disappointed, just like he always is when he tries to surprise me and I call him out on it. I should just keep my mouth shut and pretend to be surprised, but it's hard. I like that better though than when we were dating and engaged and I would try to buy him surprises and almost every time I bought him something (mostly books) he already had it. Grr! That was frustrating. But I guess I knew what he liked.

Speaking of baking apple pies... Laura mentioned on her blog that she's going to bake one for Dan's birthday and I am in the mood for a pie myself. I think I'll have to make going to the Farmers Market a priority tomorrow and I'll get some berries to make some pies. I was really on a pie-making kick for awhile, but then I realized I couldn't button my pants anymore so I had to stop. I can't resist the urge though with this cool fall weather!

The Feast of the Hunter's Moon is earlier than it's been the last few years. I'm looking forward to it. It will be Anja's first Feast and she's all set to go with her own little pack basket, some moccasins, and I think she even has a little Feast shirt and I can whip up a little skirt for her in no time. I'm really excited. I love the Feast!!!

Anja has taken excellent naps today and I'm hoping that is a good sign for tonight. We're going to the Otterbein mass tonight (is it at 6:00 or 6:30? Anyone know?) and I'll have her in her pj's and hopefully she'll fall asleep in the car on the way home at her usual bedtime.

Man, I'd like to bake a pie RIGHT NOW!! Too bad it's Friday and there isn't a Farmers Market and I don't have a car, and even if I did, Anja is asleep so I couldn't go anyplace right now anyway. Tomorrow!