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.

Bag o' bling: Part 2

A selection of pieces from the jewelry bag

I don't think I'm going to do anything today. In the past three hours, I have already stepped into a sinkhole, plugged up a dog-dug hole in the fence with bricks, and ended a dog fight with a hose. Yeah, I'm a bad ass. I know. Also, I cooked and ate a stack of pancakes.

I'm still thinking about the jewelry bag I bought last week. It was so much fun to go through the thing after I brought it home. I spent most of the day going through it, examining each piece, selecting the ones I wanted to keep for myself. I can't wait to do it again. I unwittingly discovered another thrifting thing I absolutely love. I don't know why I chose that particular day to do it. I'd seen jewelry lots before. I guess I never felt the need to treasure hunt before. It was a blast :)

My new goal is for $50 a day in sales. My ultimate goal is $100/day, but I figured I needed some middle ground before that time. I'm trying to avoid low value items as much as possible, though occasionally I find something that I have to share. Anyhoo, I am at my goal right now for the month, so I'm feeling like a really good reseller. I'm also feeling like a really tired reseller, trying to work as much as possible when I'm able, housesitting all over town, and making sure the dog gets walked and I get exercise. I'm getting it all done, but I'm feeling worn down in general.

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No dog love :(

1994 Bergschrund Honey Bear Mug

I'm drinking coffee at this very moment. It took over an hour to make it happen. I am housesitting, and there's a dog, and the dog is depressed, and that makes me feel depressed, and wishing that I was a dog psychologist and I could whisk his worries away. I also wish that I too could get into a small contained space like he is right now, in a dark hallway in his crate, voluntarily.

I have to keep myself from bugging him to come play with me. I tried to cuddle with him, but he went into his crate, so here I am, feeling rejected and not wanting to do anything, and just generally feeling like ass. I get so used to dogs loving me and wanting to constantly be with me, that I get confused when a dog meets me and doesn't automatically want to be bffs.

I did some thrifting yesterday, and maybe found some good stuff. I got into a long conversation with an employee/thrift friend about him working on getting his GED. He has a neck tattoo but I like him anyway. I think this is a first for me. I am pretty anti-tattoo, as a general rule. There were a bunch of new workers at the store. They were pretty energetic, and obviously hadn't seen a woman in a great while. I love it when that happens. Aw shucks [insert blushing grin here].

Senior thrift.

Dante Beatrix New York Shark Starfish Backpack

I traveled to the coast today with my two favorite girls (they're hairy and somewhat stupid....Oh! and canine), and I discovered a senior center/thrift store. Whoa. What an idea. I left the dogs in the car. They were pretty tired from all the bird chasing at that point (to date, they have been chasing birds and ducks for years, and have never caught a single one), and lay like floppy babies in the back seat.

This was a "Thrift and Gift", so some things were pricier than others, but the back room was filled with bridge tables (or some other foursome card game) and the customers just walked around them to check out the merch. None of them moved or payed attention to us shoppers. They just kept playin' and chattin'.

What an idea! A thrift store and community center is a great way to combine things that go really well together. The seniors were laid back and unbothered by people in their space, and most thrift store shoppers are okay with chaos. It uses the space well, as a thrift store might not get a ton of traffic. It gives the group a project to work on. All in all, a great combo.

Kudos to you, Cayucos Seniors Gift 'N Thrift.

Things I'm thankful for :)

1. Dogs - especially ones who whine ecstatically when they see me
2. Men who like big words - mostly because it means they're not afraid of me
3. Doctors - especially those who trust me
4. Art - because where would we be without really great nudes?
5. Insulin - cuz it's awesome; you should try it sometime
6. My poems - especially since I don't show them to anyone anymore
7. My job - because I love it, and I'm really good at it
8. Natalie Merchant - playing in my car all month
9. Rainer Maria Rilke - who always inspires me
10. All of the wonderful, brilliant, interesting people in my life - I love you all

Hey you.

If you have a dog, you will most likely outlive it; to get a dog is to open yourself to profound joy and, prospectively, to equally profound sadness.

Marjorie Garber

100% Dog Person :)

So yeah, there are two kinds of people in the world: cat people and dog people. I've found that cat owners who own dogs, and vice-versa, still have a favored species between the two.

Well, I was raised to be an animal-hater. My mother allowed us to have animals because my stepdad loved dogs, but the dogs in our house were not treated very well. We weren't allowed to love them, and so I grew up not really caring too much about them. Dogs are meant to be loved and played with and cuddled with.

When I was about twenty-five, I met this dog, and that girl changed my heart, opened it wide open, and made me a crazy, talks-to-strange-dogs-on-the-street, dog lover. And when another dog came into the house, I thought my heart couldn't possibly open up to a whole other animal, but it did, and I fell in love a second time. They taught me how to love unconditionally, and they showed me that I was worth loving. It was a very symbiotic relationship.

I don't live with those two anymore. We were inseparable for a few wonderful years though, and I still go to visit them when I can. When I first got my car, we went to the beach, because one of my dreams in life was to see them see the ocean. It was all I had dreamed it to be :)

I can't ever be with a person who doesn't love dogs as much as I do. It's at the top of the list, along with some other things that I imagine a list should contain (like more than one thing), but nothing is springing to mind. It's entirely possible that that is all I really want in a partner. I'm a simple girl.

Summer house-sitting

Vintage Italian Race Car tie

I am often asked to house-sit, since I'm single and people assume that I will jump at the chance to live in a real house (or maybe they just know I love dogs and central air, and know that I won't have to get a housesitter for my own house, seeing as how I live in a garage and carry all of my valuables with me when I leave).

It's pretty difficult for me to leave my bed for more than an afternoon (it's really an all-purpose piece of furniture: desk, chair, kitchen table, sleeping mechanism). So my experience this summer of housesitting has been a really positive one. I was able to pack up my stuff and drive away, and I was super proud of myself for just doing it, without planning to go home every day to check on my store, but just putting it on vacation, and saying, "I'll mail it Tuesday". I'm proud of myself for getting out of bed, for weeding the garden and playing with the dogs, for taking the opportunity to walk down to the river and stumble upon a pack of super-tan cyclists on some sort of long-distance jaunt with bike trailers. And I'm proud of myself for being the kind of person that people trust to leave their dogs, cat, and schools of fish to care for.

And finally, I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to use the coffee maker, because that kind of failure would have been tragic.