shameless solicitation

Lo! I have decided to do this. Which means that unless you take seriously the following request, I'm going to end up posting pictures of my dog every day. And cmon, some of you might be cat people.

If I'm going to commit to blogging every day for a month, then it's time for some reciprocity, people. You come here for blog posts? Fine. You'll get your thirty days of blog posts, but I want your fresh juicy brains here, and not in a zombie way. Email me (krissa, care of gmail) or leave a comment telling me something you think I should post about, something you've always wanted to hear me blather on about, something you think I've shamefully neglected to discuss in my five point five years of boggling.

It's open season on topics. Topics priced to move! Act now and get a free tupperware set! Etc.

gold stars

Milestones achieved recently, which deserve shiny gold stars for all involved:

1. three weeks, no cigarettes. Halloween party survived and even enjoyed, although remind me never to start an evening with Sparks (!?!) and finish it with champagne. Bad news, people. Just stick with the champagne.

2. Nano and his skyrocketing awesomeness: finally sleeping through the night like a champ on his little bed on the floor of our bedroom. Other accomplishments include bathroom facilities happily accomplished outside, stairs and doors totally mastered, name recognized (and cmon, he's got to be grateful to ditch Popi), and hey! We're not afraid of leaves anymore!

3. ... oh wait, that's it. Still! Those are two pretty decent accomplishments. Back has now been suitably patted.

nighttime tango

Okay, I described nano's nighttime warbling as a walrus imitating a canary. Stuart thinks it sounds more like a llama with a seagull trapped inside.

It doesn't really matter how you describe it, what matters is he's been doing it every night for an hour. Well, not every night. That first night where we were loud looming hulking beasts, he fell asleep just fine in the living room all night. Probably less "fell asleep" and more "finally collapsed from sheer terror".

But the downside to him bonding to us has been that since he's only comfortable hanging out in the living room and hasn't really gotten used to the bedroom, he doesn't understand what we do in that other room. So we're torn between allowing him into the bedroom and having him pace and sniff and try to jump in the bed, or leaving him in the living room where he's used to falling asleep.

As you can see, nothing has really worked. nano is sort of still a puppy - he's only about seven or eight months old. Puppies are used to whining and calling out so that the pack can find them. We are, for lack of a hoard of chihuahuas, nano's pack. And we spend all evening on the couch with him only to inexplicably get up and go to that other room with all the tall furniture and socks on the floor, why? Why, humans?

Is what he's saying with all the whining. And the warbling. And the drawn out syllables of high-pitched questioning. All the literature says don't go! Don't go out there while he's whining! And all that literature is coming smack up against my every instinct to go comfort him, and also to go pick him up so that he will STOP! WHINING! OMG! So that I can sleep.

Unfortunately, on Thursday night, we sort of did exactly that. Stuart had stayed up playing video games so when he came to bed at 2, I'd already been asleep for three hours and then the whining and howling started. And after 45 minutes of it, I was crying from exhaustion so we decided to open the blockade in the living room doorway and see what happened. What happened was he came into the room and jumped right on the bed and generally made a nuisance of himself. Of course he did! When we finally put him back into the living room with NPR playing quietly, he whined for another twenty minutes before falling asleep from exhaustion. What a great lesson we taught nano! Whine enough and we'll come get you! GREAT.

Of course, as everyone's been reminding me, it's getting a little better. Last night he only did it every two minutes for an hour until either he passed out from exhaustion or I did. You'll note the scientific precision with which I clocked the frequency of whines. I'm going to be the valedictorian of contractions, lemme tell you. Stuart, unfortunately, can sleep right through it. (Hmph.)

We've bought him a dog bed, and have been acclimatizing him to it so that eventually, we can put it on the floor of our room and he'll fall right asleep in it, and we're introducing him slowly to the room so that he can come in at night without needing to sniff every single damned inch of it.

None of which makes me feel any better when it's two thirty in the morning and I'm thinking of drinking two bottles of nyquil just to get some sleep.

Notes from the trenches of new-doghood would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Because what I need, of course, to really fully obsess about this, is more piles of information. Bring it!

nanodata

I need to tell you some of my favorite things about nano because people, nano put us through the ringer last night, the ringer of whining and pacing and the various non-canine animal sounds of his warbling, and before I tell you about that, I need to tell you about how wonderful life is with nano. Otherwise that's just not fairly representing nano in the media. And we don't yet know if nano is the type of dude to slap a libel suit and a half-dozen lawyers on us like white on rice, know what I mean?

Once upon a time less than a week ago, we brought nano home from the ASPCA where he was known as Popi and scared of everything including boxes, doors, and paper. When we got him home we added to the list as terrifying items were discovered numbering but not limited to: leaves, curbs, doors and the doorways that love them, fans, thresholds, shoes, cabinets, chairs, and umbrellas.

To be fair to the guy, most of these things have ceased to terrify him. His likes now basically include Stuart and me, snuggling on the couch with Stuart and me, and this rawhide chew that's wrapped around a fake sausage. As far as we can surmise, nano's current idea of heaven would be snuggling on the couch with Stuart and me while chewing on the rawhide chew that's wrapped around a fake sausage. He also seems to like the noises penguins make when depicted on PBS.

Something else we've learned from nano this week is how fucking loud the entire world is, oh my god, did you know this? Well let me tell you, when you are walking along the street with a skittish chihuahua who barely knows where he is, and there is a gaggle of teenagers hooting in one corner, a dude with a leafblower in another (as if leaves weren't scary enough now we have machines that make them attack you in great swarms), a livery cab honking incessantly in a third corner, and me with my giant terrifying feet right behind him, well. It starts to look like a video game nightmare that you just have to dash through screaming which is pretty much what nano does. And these are just normal street noises. I haven't even mentioned the people who own businesses with grates, sweet blessed mother of jesus, that they release from their holds and just allow to crash down to the sidewalk like so many dozen Armageddons descending from heaven. Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a book about the World Trade Center attack titled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In nano's world, that book is about Eighth avenue in Brooklyn.

Really, the coolest thing we've discovered so far about nano is that he's ours, and he's starting to know us too, and know that we're his. And all the other stuff, the two-steps-forward, three-steps-back week we've had with eating and potty training and leash-walking and the noises he makes in the night that sound like a walrus trying to imitate a canary, those are just the sounds of settling.

I'm pretty impressed that I managed to be this fair on four hours of sleep. It's because, I mean, look how cute he is:

yes, we're in love

And although he's a little shy right now, we're hoping with love and patience and a judicious application of liver treats, Nano will grow to love us, too.

state of the union iv

Dear Stuart,

A few weeks shy of our third anniversary, we went to the Catskills, to what I can't help thinking of as "our" cottage, and the best thing about our vacation was all the talking we did. And I mean, we're normally pretty talkative but that week, I feel like we talked about literally everything. We talked about planets and chipmunks and raising teenagers and first loves and writing and ambition and family and dog names and weather patterns and that's just what I remember from our nights outside under the inky black sky, drinking wine and trying to figure out which one was the North Star.

We talked so much out in the garden, and on our drives into and around the mountains. I remember, at one point, we started talking about fate. I said at the time, I don't believe in fate, so I've had a hard time explaining us to myself. If I don't believe in destiny, does that mean it's absolute chance that we met? Can I really give no credit to anything but dumb luck, that I met the perfect man for me out of all the millions of people in the world?

How does dumb luck explain us?

Two nights before we met, I was in Brazil. I had recently, for the millionth time, made a stupid choice about a boy. I sat on my friend's balcony smoking a cigarette and I remember clearly, SO clearly, telling myself something very profound and true. I said, Universe, that is enough. I am done with stupid boys and my stupidity regarding them. Here's the deal, Universe, I'll wait. I remember saying those words to myself. I will wait until you find me a decent man to love and cherish and honor but until then I am done road-testing them. This one, I said, you've got to show me up front that he's right before I even so much as bat an eyelash. And then I went to bed and flew to New York the next day. And met you.

Now, I know it might seem hard to believe, but I already loved you before I batted my eyelashes at you, five days after this conversation with the Universe in Brazil. I loved the way you'd come into New York like a true explorer, taking the subway and a bus to Shiv's apartment from the airport in a city you didn't know. I loved how you'd argued with me about Hemingway twenty minutes after meeting me. I loved how you delighted in ordering Chinese food and I loved how your first day here, you walked from Park Slope to Times Square just to get the lay of the land. And I loved how you bought me a book that day, simply because you thought I'd like it.

So was it dumb luck? Is there a fate, a destiny? Or is the Universe inside of me, a part of me, and it was simply a matter of admitting to myself that I needed to be looking for the right person and not just a right person?

I don't know. I think I believe both, contradictory though it may be. I powerfully believe that we met right when we were ready for this impact and no sooner and no later. I believe we met by chance but knew each other by design. But I also believe that something true and profound happened to me when I addressed the Universe, either within or without myself. And I know, crazily, that I promised to be patient with myself and my desires, and then was engaged less than two weeks later.

So, there's no way to know if it was sheer chance or, as Barrie would say, b'shert. I know that something - perhaps some combination of the two - brought you into my life and me into yours, and damnit if we were going to let some tiny concern like Continents or Time or Sanity get in our way. And I know that we were right to trust ourselves and jump. I hold that truth to be self-evident - contrary to all logic, we were right. I just don't know who to thank for that.

But I know that I fell in love with you, Stuart, and whatever forces I have to thank for that, then my offering of gratitude is this: every day and every conversation and every kiss and every hurdle and every victory and every sweet goodnight. I am not a spiritual woman but I know you are the one man in all the world for me and I am the one woman for you. So if it's fate or luck, I'm equally grateful.

Happy, happy, happy anniversary. I love you.

Kaaterskill creek, September 2007.

isn't it a lovely day

I know, darlings, I've been terrible! You know, something about the magic of our vacation felt lasting, like I've been carrying this tiny piece of the Catskills around with me. Which would technically be a rock. But a really relaxing and restorative rock!

Some things I didn't photograph:

Driving through the back roads along the edge of Catskill Park, Stuart behind the wheel, listening to Gomez and taking little side streets to see if they took us up the mountains. They didn't.

Standing frozen on the dusky street near the house, watching a widdle bunny wabbit giving me the hairy eyeball as I tiptoed for a closer look.

The crowded horror of the Saugerties Garlic Festival, with three hundred stands and two hundred of them selling garlic. GARLIC! So much garlic and nothing to do.

Singing along in the dark to songs coming from the window speakers and shining the flashlight regularly into the woods checking for bears.

Trying to figure out exactly how many chipmunks were living in the high-rise chipmunk apartment building that was our retaining wall in the garden. Five? A million? No one knows.

Driving thirty minutes into the mountains following signs to "Brauhaus German Beer Hall!" only to get there and find a retired persons bus tour unloading for the, NO KIDDING, Annual SCHLOTTFEST! What's a schlott? We didn't know! We were afraid! We ran! back to the car, and sang "Love Train" as "Schlott Train" all the way back down the mountain.

Climbing, climbing, CLIMBING up the Plateau Mountain outlook trail on Friday afternoon only to give up after two hours as dusk was falling and heading back down the mountain, my shaky legs carrying me stumblingly behind the reassuring back of Stuart, because I knew he'd turn and catch me if I did stumble.

The feeling of being safe and cozy in the passenger seat as Stuart ably handled the roads, even when we didn't know where we were going and just exploring in general compass directions, like, "let's go west!" or "look, we're off my map!" Being so proud of his driving.

Pawing through the mounds of dusty books at the Woodstock Library sale, chatting across the table to each other about what we were looking for and what we were finding. Walking about with two bags of paperbacks for seven bucks.

Delightedly chowing down on hamburgers we made ourselves, on the grill, with bacon! We were so proud, grill-less city slickers that we usually are.

Fighting the random invasion of wasps into the bedroom, well, Stuart fighting them as I stood shrieking in the bathroom. Deciding that the wasps were doling out pissed-off revenge from our evacuation of their cozy home in the garden umbrella.

Getting thwarted every time we tried to do a specific activity, like visit someplace called "Cider Press and Country Store" that had no cider, or going to Hunter Mountain and having the sky ride not working yet or going to the bowling lanes and it being league night, or heading to hike Kaaterskill Falls and finding it closed. And being reminded by all this thwarting that what we really needed to be doing was the dolce far niente, which is exactly what we went back to the cottage to do.

Waking up in the cozy quiet buzz of morning, nothing planned, nothing demanding, just us. Relaxing, talking, eating and driving and laughing and, oh, oh, it was marvelous.

It was the perfect vacation. I guess I did have a lot to tell you after all.

insane stories from the depths of my brain

A short summary of dreams I have had on the nicoderm patch:

- I am the blonde girl from Law & Order: CI, and I am a beach in San Francisco with Vince D'Onofrio and there is a lot of unspoken affection between us but we are there to rescue a skinny kid that looks like Wallace from Veronica Mars because he is scuba-diving for gold and will be killed by mobsters if he pursues this life of crime. We pull him out of the water and I almost drown and this makes Vince very emotional and he hugs me, conveying all that unspoken love he obviously has for me.

- I am at Niagara Falls with Stuart and a Joan Didion-like person is advising us not to jump into the falls on a slide like everyone else is doing because our lives are too precious, so we decide to go visit Stuart's parents on the Isle of Wight which is right next door, basically, so we split up in Portsmouth and I tell him to call me when he's taking the ferry but he doesn't so eventually I take the ferry and when I get there, he's already been there for hours and Shiv meets us there and her hair looks JUST like Ginny Weasely's and I can't stop touching it, and I want to go to the Spyglass but instead we go to some weird pub in Yarmouth called the Butler. I am still annoyed with Stuart for taking the ferry without me.

- Somehow I am roped into driving this annoying woman and her child to the store but along the way the car turns in to two shopping carts and when we arrive in the neighborhood of the store the woman (who is actually Bree from Desperate Housewives at this point) is freaking out because there is a red blood-like substance in the shopping cart and I convince her it can't be blood because who would we have killed between there and here? But we end up at the police station anyway and now it turns out that I am Bree's daughter from her undesirable first marriage to the portly detective that questions us, and I am his daughter.

- So me and my detective father go to the Met where there is a mosiac swimming pool and my friend Barrie is swimming there and she tells me to take her bathing suit as she is done and go change around the back of the museum, and she is babysitting her niece-in-law and so I go outside with my detective father and suddenly there are fighter jets and chinooks everywhere and they are bombing the living shit out of the city and the museum and the park at very close range and I can't understand why as they all have American flags on the sides but everyone is dying and screaming and I run to a ditch and jump in it but when I look back at the museum I see Barrie's red head on the steps and I see that she's holding the baby and I want to hide in my ditch but I think I need to protect them so I start running but suddenly there are marching lines of starving people, disaster victims, in my way, and they are all praying and kneeling and I keep looking for that bright red hair but I can't find Barrie and I get lost in the woods and when I come out, still terrified, it is 20 years later and the waters and the ground are still radiated and burnt but everyone lives in the sky and they don't know what to do with me.

OH! And those are just last night's dreams.