A few notes:

• I designed and painted the entire thing – so proud. Shane says it is ugly, but I don’t even care.
• Valspar color Swiss Chocolate really does look like chocolate and I had to go get a candy bar after I started painting with it. Looks delicious.
• I wish I had a wide angle lens so you could see it all at once, but a small room means I can’t get far enough away for a wide angle shot.
• I was up until 2 am finishing last night. I just couldn’t sleep until I was done.

It is so nice to have a super clean house. Not just uncluttered. Actually spotless. It really has taken the whole week!

I did find some time on Day 4 to go to the farmers market in Salem. I learned that eggplant is in season. Never had it. Never cooked with it. Any ideas on how to prepare it? I also came home with fresh tomatoes, basil, carrots, scallions, and fancy heirloom tomatoes. Yum.

One more day of cleaning. Then the real vacation can start.

Like…

Clean the house. Design and paint a mural in my elf room. Go to the farmer’s market. Cook French onion soup. Read a new book. Organize the house. Take the dogs to the beach. Sew dog collars. Make the perfect homemade salsa. Sew a camera bag. Enjoy the best month of the year in New England. Sew a new case for my Kindle. Take a nap. Learn a new technology. Play tennis.

Maybe I won’t get through this whole list, but at least that’s my choice. It is my time and I get to decide what to do with it.

Week one is dedicated to cleaning and painting the elf room.

Today I have begun cleaning. I bought some heavy duty cleaning supplies and started sanitizing the kitchen after weeks of neglect. It was gross.

I also resurrected my 2001 iBook. It hadn’t been turned on in the two years since we moved to Salem. It had failed to boot up the last time I tried to turn it on. But now that I am without a laptop (work stole it) I need one for various tasks (the most important one being fantasy football stats). Had to nuke the computer and reinstall but finally got it to boot up. It can manage to browse the internet which is all I really need it to do. Yay for my 9 year old Mac.

Right now I am enjoying watching Monday Night Football while doing laundry and not worrying about how late I have to stay up to watch the end of this game.

How do I know this, you ask? Because of the panic I feel almost everytime I walk down stairs. Maybe I’m the only one but I am often happily taking one stair at a time when I look down and fear that I’m about to take one and half stairs – which is bad for staying upright. In an instant I see me falling all the way to the bottom of the stairs up until I feel my foot land flatly and firmly on the next step. One day it won’t end so well.

At which time you’ll want to know what to do with my body. Shane knows this but I very specifically do not want to be buried in the ground in a casket. Cemeteries are one of the great inefficiencies in our society. What a waste of space to put bodies in the ground that could be put to productive use! Living in an area where land is at a premium I get agitated when I see large cemeteries. And they only get bigger with time! Why do humans feel the need to hold on to bodies after the soul is gone? The body is useless. And stinky. So grind me up, burn me, or just throw me in the ocean, but don’t spend money on a casket and don’t bury me in the ground. I don’t need my name on a headstone to know my life mattered.

But I have dogs, so things are different.

When we just had Ajax, I thought he was the perfect dog and no other dog could ever be as lovable. He was calm, friendly, well behaved and had quite unique markings for a greyhound. He was a successful racer so I could brag about him, but he was low energy so there was no headache about dealing with a hyper dog. Any other dog would surely have something that wasn’t quite right, so I would always love Ajax the most – or would I?

Then we got Tiki and she was a racing school dropout which meant she was very young and never competed. She was a female when we were hoping to get another male. She has the most common markings for a greyhound (red brindle) and was nothing unique. She was much more rambunctious, not as affectionate and was very shy and reserved around new people. This dog was nothing like Ajax – how could I possibly love her as much?

For the first few months, she was difficult. She learned the stairs very slowly. She never wanted to eat – there was always something more interesting than food. And for a dog that had no room to lose weight, this was scary. She wanted to put her nose on everything, started barking at every dog she saw (although in a friendly manner, it scared all the other dogs), and was generally much more work.

But lately – about 7 months after we picked her up from the greyhound store – she’s really started to grow on me. I love her face: petite, bright-eyed and beautiful. She’s very graceful and slender and now at the perfect weight. She’s overcome the stairs and is now even better than Ajax at them (she can actually change directions in the middle of the stairs!). Her playfulness is now an asset. She makes me laugh every day as she gets a running start to pounce on her toy of choice (as of now this is a small bird) and scoots along the wood floor. She has a really cute ritual of taking every toy out of her toy box one by one, playing with it for 30 seconds, and going for the next one until the box is empty. Even if I start to put them back, she’ll continue in perpetuity. She even has an adorable trick we like to call “dance” where she’ll prance around in a circle on command.

So could this dog actually be as good (or even better) than the perfect Ajax? It remains to be seen. But she’s certainly gaining ground and might almost be even with the dog nobody could beat. At least in my mind. Shane might have different ideas.

Idiots.

Little Joe on his birthday

Congrats to Lance and Susan – you’ll be great parents!

Tiki the Greyhound on the way home for the first time.

Tiki turned 2 years old in May 2009 and is a racing school drop out – she just didn’t want to chase the rabbit. She is very affectionate and just loves getting attention. Stairs were very scary to her for the first couple of days, but she’s already mastered them!

We can’t wait for more of her personality to unfold in the coming months.

Shane finished it up a while back and I just did the finishing touches on the green stain this last weekend.

This is no regular desk – it is a suspension desk. It is completely suspended by the cables attached to the wall and the desk. No legs makes for more room underneath the desk for storage since it is in a small space. And its strength has been tested – both Shane and I have stood on top of the desk and it didn’t break! Thanks to Jim, David and Shane for the great unique desk. I absolutely love it!