I know you exist – Google analytics tells me so. If you have seen my dog around, please let me know or call my parents (they are in the phone book) – she went missing from their house on Sunday evening and has been seen on Sellers Road & Cowhouse. She has never run away before. My dad was shooting and we think she just got scared and took off over the hill away from his gun and is trying to find her way back, based on where she was seen in the time afterwards. She hardly ever goes anywhere but is a hound, so we are hoping that her nose will lead her home or at least to the scent of my parents’ dogs, who run for miles around. Email me if you want more info: emilyiafrate@yahoo.com

I posted a note with a flyer on my facebook page, which people are passing around, and my parents’ are posting it around town, too.

Thanks.

They played a friend’s book launch tonight as the Tylenol Cold & Flu Stringband, because Mikey & Alison are both sick. The more I hear people describing their bouts with H1N1, the more I am convinced that IS what Hazel had a few weeks ago. I assumed it wasn’t a virus because her appetite never faltered and she wasn’t vomiting, but most people are saying they have eaten normally – just a fever that won’t quit, and aches / a headache. Which is exactly what she had for a whole week, and is exactly what Mikey has right now. I told our friend Brian (whose whole family just had it) that I thought yesterday was Mikey’s worst day and that he seemed to be on the upswing today, and Brian said “No, no, this is where he SEEMS to be better and then it’s going to get really bad. You’re looking at three or four more days of having to pack by yourself.”

Um, haven’t I already done that for… oh… sixty or so while he flits around between libraries and conferences and music practices? I think I can handle a few more :) I am the queen of packing up our life. And I get to do it all again in less than a year – yay!

Mikey just went to bed and I am headed there now. It’s 11:51. I don’t think our whole family has been in bed together before midnight, EVER.

Oh, I was on the phone with Kelly today when a call came in from my parents’ house. We were almost through so I just let it go to voicemail, intending to call them as soon as we hung up. Immediately after that my cell phone rang, and I had my standard “shit, someone is dead” moment. I called back right away and my dad answered (my dad NEVER calls me, ever, ever), and I realize he’s in the middle of hyserical laughter. He had called to tell me that about an hour and a half before, he’d gone to get something from his truck and Paisley got in, ready to go for a ride. She threw a fit when he tried to get her out, so he just rolled down the windows and left her there. He forgot all about it until later, when he let all the dogs into the house and she wasn’t with them. He went out to look for her and found her still sitting on the passenger seat of the truck, looking around at the scenery, where she’d been for an hour and a half.

“Well she sure does travel well! She’s having a nice long trip out there.” he tells me between fits of laughter. He wants to know how to get her out of the truck. I suggest that he drive down the driveway and back and she’ll think she’s arrived home and that the trip is over. I don’t know if he tried it or not – he didn’t report back, but I suppose two phonecalls in the same year is a bit much to expect. I can’t wait to have my dog back! Neither can Hazel. She looks all around at least once a day yelling “dog!! DOG!!”, as if expecting her to come trotting out of the next room.

May 2008

With no dog or baby around, Dorothy and Dietrich ruled the roost. This afternoon while packing up some books I read Pablo Neruda’s Oda al Gato, and it made me want to look at this photo. I found it. Taken exactly three years ago – strange.

Man wants to be a fish and a bird,
the snake would rather have wings,
the dog is a lost lion,
the engineer wants to be a poet,
the fly studies the swallow,
the poet tries to imitate the fly,
but the cat
wants only to be cat,
and every cat is cat
from whiskers to tail,
from hunches to live rat,
from night to its yellow eyes.

Listening: Patti Smith
(I am) Reading: recipes in old Vegetarian Times
(Hazel is) Reading: Eric Carle’s From Head to Toe
Packing progress: four boxes

I feel like I haven’t been finishing very many projects this week, and at the same time I feel like I never stop moving. Hazel napped for almost four hours this afternoon, so I worked on Etsy shop photos for two of those, until I felt like my spine might never be straight again if I didn’t stop. And then I knitted until she woke up. After she went to bed I started working on earrings for Erin’s House Craft Show/Party and almost finished them before she woke up at 11:00 to play (she’s so predictable – long naps ruin her bedtime). Sometimes I feel like my vintage buttons will have to be ripped from my clenched and dying hands, because I can never bear to part with them except for projects for friends. I steeled myself, though, and made about fifty pairs of earrings – half from my vintage stash. I’m a little proud of myself, I gotta say.

Other things in the works:

Supplies for Hazel’s Christmas gift to her grandparents.

Future pendants.

Birthday project in progress.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time picking out the paper for Hazel’s first birthday card. Very ridiculous.

I might finally have a vision for these beads, which were my Grandma’s. I love the beads but the necklace is not exactly me – needs revamping (and babyproofing). This will probably have to wait until after the move and the holidays, becuase what I have in mind is more than a little tedious.

I started feeling bad the other day that Paisley never gets her picture posted on my blog anymore. She’s so put upon, I know. Such a hard life.

I love you, dog, but your sister is way cuter than you are. It’s a fact.

Ready to go out on a cold day.

Bedtime, take two.

Listening: Mikey playing banjo
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: tiny square Bright Baby books about puppies and kittens – sometimes eating instead of reading.
Working on: all of the above, y mas.
Packing progress: two boxes

I simply cannot believe that this kid is already eleven months old. Cannot. Almost every night for a week I’ve found myself wistfully looking at her tiny baby pictures, and I’ve finally resigned myself to packing away a few tiny baby toys that she doesn’t play with anymore, her Etsy onesie, her banjo onesie from sarah holsapple, her mushroom hoodie, and I am constantly deilberating names for #2 in my head… oh my.

Anyway, she is such a big, big girl these days:

- she doesn’t crawl and only walks if you hold her hands. The latter is her favorite mode of transportation, and we really thought she was so close to crawling this week but instead the “crawling stance” has manifested into this really hilarious… I don’t even know what to call it. I can barely describe it. Her left leg is always tucked under her and her right foot is sticking out. She either rests her weight on her left knee or her left bum-cheek and hitches herself along with her hands and her extended right foot, leaning as far forward as she can manage, bum half off the ground. It’s an amazingly fast way to get around, especially if she’s wearing smooth cotton pants instead of jeans or something. She looks like a tiny little ogre dragging herself all over the room. There is a girl many months older than Hazel who comes to our mom’s group and gets around exactly the same way – I thought it was one of the single most hilarious things I’d ever seen the first time I met her, and now Hazel does it.

- her words are still limited to “mama”, “dada”, and “digga”. She might have signed “water” the other day but I can’t be sure because she hasn’t repeated it since. We’ve been trying to teach her to sign that and eat, more, and milk, but she just flaps for all of these things.

- her favorite foods are fruit (she will inhale an entire kiwi or banana), breads and crackers, soup, and noodles. Still has eaten everything we’ve ever put in front of her. That or she’ll feed it to the dog.

- tooth #7 seems to have been coming in for ages, although in reality it’s been sitting RIGHT THERE ready to cut for two weeks. It’s been a long two weeks. For the most part she’s very happy, except for a right after dinnertime, usually, which is affectionately known as “the witching hour”. Usually we just strip her down, let her streak, and then play in the bath and this cheers her up.

- she is still horrified of the bobble head Jesus and Pope John the 23rd, and things hanging over her head make her wary (even though I’m sure nothing has ever fallen on her head to cause this) – crosswalk lights, showerhead/shower organizer, etc… I think this is the first I’ve ever known her to be consistently afraid of something, except Clint, which she got over eventually.

- I’ve started brushing her teeth with the tiniest dab of Tom’s of Maine strawberry toothpaste instead of just warm water, and she LOVES LOVES LOVES to have this done – she opens wide for it every night.

- she seems to recognize herself in photographs.

- she looks for Paisley in her bed on the floor first thing every morning and after every nap we have to wander from room to room looking for her.

- newborn pants now fit her perfectly as capri leggings, and dresses as babydoll tops.

- she loves to give things to other people (usually wanting whatever it is back right away), put things into other things, dump things out, try to fit things together and “read” her books. She still loves her silks/fabrics and little animals more than just about anything, but she’s also a huge fan of the edges of her playmat (tiles that fit together like puzzle pieces and have strips along the edges to make them straight), which she rips off every morning and waves them around and beats the dog with gusto. We’re trying to teach her to not hit the dog (they don’t actually hurt – they are just one inch strips of foam), but unfortunately Paisley LOVES any sort of attention from Hazel – smacking, fur-pulling, ear-yanking and all. She also loves her tub of cards (and a photo of Morgan) and any paper you will let her get her hands on.

- she’s very ticklish. Her hysterical laughter when being tickled is a magical sound.

- she still dances to almost all music, an flashes us grins of approval then glances at the stereo during her favorites.

- she spend lots of time sitting on the floor spinning in circles.

- she is very awesome.

Listening: Muddy Waters
Square count: 35 + 2 middles… I’m officially out of brown yarn until we go home again
Progress towards moving: this morning I packed two big plastic totes full of craft supplies. I’m destashing some paints and marbles to Andrea/Sophia, and Paisley is destashing some milk bones to her WV dog family (she is a bone snob).

Is there really no listing for Andy Kaufman in the social security death index?

Here’s a boy & his puppeh:

Last night there was a surprise 50th birthday part for John. Actual surprise = success. He made off with lots of gifted bottles of scotch.

But not before Drew and Mikey had some…

(lovers’ quarrel?)

(theologians.)

All of these people are having babies (except that grandmother of four in the back). I’m jealous.

Home sweet home.

Last week I decided that Paisley’s growth has slowed and she’s not going to get so much bigger that she’ll outgrow a bed, so I finally got one for her.

She loves it much more than a pile of blankets on the floor. She’s already starting to eat it, though. I hope ikea keeps their $8 dog baskets in stock until she’s out of her chewing stage of life.

I told Mikey and Drew this story last night and they demanded to know why I didn’t blog about it, so I shall:

A couple of weeks ago I got to work before everyone else and was locked out, so I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall to listen to music while I waited for someone to show. After I’d been sitting there for about ten minutes (in my coat) one of the resident homeless men came by and offered me some of his food.

Do I look scraggly or homeless in any other way? I mean, it was totally nice of him, but it made me feel really bad. I’m pretty sure I showered that morning.

Drew will never let me live this down.

Listening: The Elected

RIP, blog entries back to November. I probably won’t miss you.

So there was some kind of catastrophe with the servers that our websites are on this weekend and nothing from the past few months could be restored. This doesn’t concern me too much – I tried to fix the links that had been added/deleted in that time, and at some point I will add the little “what I’m listening to” box back into the sidebar. Mikey lost a whole bunch of stuff, and his email and all of his band pages are on those servers, too. Oops. If I cared about eternally preserving these entries I would write them in a notebook, not put them on the interwebs.

Anyway, not a lot happened in my absence. I made some new things and listed them for sale in my shop. Some necklaces a few days ago (the housewife is my favorite) and some more fun plastic earrings this afternoon (more beads in the mail today!):

I’ve also been making lots of stuff for Danielle’s show and trying to figure out how to display what. Maggie made TEN bags and fifty cards and is getting those in the mail, which I can’t WAIT to see. I’ll be way more confident with MAGGIE’S goods on my table! I’ve been getting stuff from Etsy-ers left and right, and Etsy as a whole is sending me some promotional stuff from their press team. So far the people coming the furthest to this show are from Wisconsin and South Carolina. Not FROM those places… they’re WV boys… you know what I mean. I’m really excited / sad / nervous / excited / sad / nervous.

It snowed a whole bunch and Paisley LOVES it. Photos under the cut of frozen campus (I forget which one… they all run together. I know it’s not Mikey’s) and of her playing. I found a remote corner with big drifts and no people/streets so I could take off her leash and let her run. At first she freaked out and pressed herself against my legs, scared of her new freedom and the weird fluffy white stuff. Then she RAN… it was the most adorable clumsiness I have ever witnessed. She kept falling and grunting and rolling and flailing around. By the time we got home she was soaked and shivering and still wanting more.

What else. My tonsils are swollen. I probably shouldn’t have them… this happens every year. I’ve watched six episodes of season two of LOST in the past few days, and finally caught last Wednesday’s episode online just before they removed it from the site for copyright infringement. It’s on at seven again this week, and sometimes I have to work until seven or after. I think this means that I will finally have to learn how to program a vcr to tape something for me. I’ve never in my life had something worth taping. I need to talk to someone on the phone. Last night I called Meggan & Angie, who weren’t home, my parents’ house, which was busy, and Jess, who was out somewhere (but Dustin was watching Lost - I’m so proud!). I gave up and watched Lost, too.

I got most of our taxes done today and Mikey has to do his fafsa tonight. Bills are paid, letters are waiting to be mailed out, the floor is swept. I love getting things DONE. I hate my JOB. It keeps me from getting things DONE.

The dog and the laundry still need washed. Eh.

Ok, photos. Then eating cereal and then boiling old vinyl records. Nothing good, I promise.

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I have the cutest cats in the world.