Doggie dog dogs :)

Vintage Boxer Framed Signed O.E. LARSEN Lithograph

All I want to do right now is eat cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. I prefer that they have milk chocolate. I'm kinda off the dark chocolate train right now. I love those peanut butter blossoms with milk chocolate Hershey kisses - those are amazing. I will eat them with milk. Right now I have soy milk. I like soy milk.

Vintage Painted Ceramic Whippet Figurine

Dogs also make me very happy. I think they make other people very happy too, so I often buy vintage dog stuff for my shop. Just think of how it feels when you see a dog's smiling face pointed in your direction. There are a lot of dogs in my life. When I'm feeling sad, no one makes me happy quite like a dog. Last night it was a skittish little chihuahua wearing a bow tie and a fleece sweater watching me make cookies. Ah, bliss.

I have nothing to say. I have nothing to write about that feels right to me. My store keeps going and my life keeps going, but I don't have anything to say. I will go running tonight though. That might feel good.

Single and in need

Oil + vinegar + seasonings = Homemade dressing

Are you married, or partnered? Is there a single (i.e. unmarried) person in your life that you love to love? If not, get one, and soon. The fate of single-kind rests in your hands. We are weak and unorganized. We tend to gather in groups, but real unity doesn't always stick. We need more stable entities to ground us, hold us to a neighborhood, a home. We need people who will stay even when that staying is not a civil agreement marked by the courts.

I don't know when I first started adopting families. I was probably about fifteen or so. I needed something that my own environment wasn't providing, and I looked far and wide for something boring to latch onto. I found that stable boring wonderful something in my best friend and her parents, who sat down every night at 9pm to have dinner together. I was always welcomed warmly, though I never had anything to give beyond my strong dish-washing abilities ;) Those moments helped me stay grounded in a chaotic world, and have served as a template for other families and other dinners.

Tonight, I shared one such dinner. We discussed pink slime and my current employment status. Many strawberries were eaten, and I had an extra helping of salad. It was wonderful because it was shared. I don't sit at home and cry when I eat dinner by myself. I enjoy silence quite a lot, and often long for it during the chaos of the day. But there are times, usually Saturday nights, when all I want is a family to eat dinner with. So thanks to all of my family friends, who welcome me warmly into their homes no matter what I'm wearing, or how much I monopolize the conversation.

Toaster oven pizza

I haven't had a kitchen for the past six months. Starting a new job kinda turned my life upside down, so it's actually been okay. Yeah, I eat very simply, but I don't mind.

But since I got my new countertop, I've slowly been trying new things. Over the weekend, I decided to make pizza. Now understand, the only thing that changed in my set-up is that I now have a countertop. My toaster oven has always been here. However, when I finally bought the countertop I'd been planning on getting (and looking for at every single thrift store for months), my toaster oven broke. But since I famously fixed my toaster oven, I had all of things necessary to make pizza!

 

The second photo is the final product. Boy did it taste good. My meals lately have been more monosyllabic, if you get my drift (i.e. less prep time). So take some cheese that I can now get just a mile from my house (yay for stocking vegan cheese!), add some sauce and dough, and I made myself a pizza in my toaster oven in 45 minutes.

So there you go. You too can live without a huge oven. Or you can live without turning it on every day and heating up your whole house (yay for hot summers!). I don't know how much further I'll take the experimentation. But now that I have the countertop, anything is possible.

Suggestions welcomed :)