It's all in the jeans

Not too long ago I was given an amazing pair of jeans. They fit me in all the right places, the pockets were the perfect size for my sturdy Swedish "background" and they were not distressed or torn or bleached or ragged in anyway. They were fresh off the denim mill and sewn into a shape I could wear with joy. 

The only tiny problem was they were incredibly long. On this new kick of realizing quality is worth fighting for, I had them altered to fit my vertically challenged legs. Then, feeling all confident and happy with a great pair of jeans, I wore them to a work weekend in Chicago. I'm pretty sure they made it home, but I can't seem to find them anywhere. I tore apart my closet looking for them. Nope, they are still missing in action.

The closet tear apart was a good thing though, I ended up trying on everything in my summer closet and then some. I put some items back in rotation and permanently let go of others after close inspection. A full length mirror with a hand mirror as an accessory is hard to take, but knowledge is power. I also gave a good hard look at my shoes and told a few pairs to hit the road.

While I didn't find my perfect jeans, I found a pile of jeans someone gave me for my quilts on Etsy. Rather than call my search a complete failure, I got out my rotary cutter and mat and went to work on that stack of denim. There is more than enough for my next quilt idea, which is a Casual Friday quilt with jeans on the back and shirt material on the front. I made one in the past that turned out super cute, and with fall coming along soon, I need to get my quilt inventory up for the colder weather.

While jean styles come and go, the fabric is awesome for making rag quilts. So certain friends who frequent thrift stores and garage sales give me the unwanted jeans they come across at dirt cheap prices. In this latest stack of donated jeans, mostly ones I wouldn't dream of wearing, I found a pair that made me take a second to try them on - full length mirror and all. They looked better than my "old good jeans" (stay with me here), which are now my "new old work jeans." Oh the drama Levi Strauss put into play with his invention.

     

        

The stack of jeans for the chopping block!

 

No skinny jeans need apply, I want jeans with some wiggle room!

Short shorts!

Distressed jeans. What Would Audrey Think?

Ready for their new life in a quilt.

If McDonald's Made Evening Gowns

Have you heard of the "slow food" trend? The antithesis of fast food, the slow food movement emphasizes quality over quantity and balks at the idea that food should be fast, cheap and/or good - quick pick two. Here's the basic concept:

• Ignore the lure of convenient, cheap and "shovel ready" meals. It's not about speed - embrace the idea that preparing food isn't a waste of time. Food prep is an enjoyable part of a happy and healthy life.
• It's not all about the price. It is OK to spend a bit more on high quality and superior tasting ingredients that will produce high quality superior tasting meals for your family.
• Fake food is not food. Say no to genetically modified ingredients and products full of chemicals, additives and preservatives.
• Making food takes time, and that's OK. Enjoy the process. Sit down for meals. Chop. Cook. Chew. Chill.

All new movements have to have their little clone movements, and so enters "slow fashion." Saying no to cheaply-made, in-this-year-out-the-next, poorly-constructed throw-away clothes, the slow fashion movement has the following advice:

• Ignore the lure of cheap fashion. It's not about the price, it's about the quality of the garment. If you end up buying a timeless piece that you'll wear for years and years, you save money in the long run by purchasing well made clothes.
• Look for pieces that were designed and constructed with care. Pay attention to pattern matching, how well the buttons are sewn on, how the seams are finished, is it lined, does the zipper seem to be high quality, is it made of natural fabrics, etc.
• Know your style - don't just run in a store and buy anything off the rack. Examine your wardrobe and see what pieces may be needed, and then carefully shop for these items. Build a wardrobe, not a closet full of clothes.
• Look for well-made, well-respected brands at thrift stores and in re-sale stores. 
• Say no to cheaply-made, poorly-constructed clothing made from inexpensive fabrics. Clothes shopping isn't a race, it's a journey.

And that's been my goal for a while now. I just love the Talbots, Liz Claiborne and Jones of New York items I find at my favorite local thrift store in Sacramento,  Fabulous Finds on Fulton. It's right up the street on, you guess it, Fulton Avenue. I've been on a bit of a bright clothes kick, so you might want to slap on some sunglasses for the next photo.

Talbots, Jones of New York and my new Tommy Bahama skirt.
With bright summer Talbots sweaters to match!

Ignore the weird pose.
Look at the skirt.

It's got little tiny beads all over it.

This is the underside.
The beads are sewn on, not glued.
That's slow fashion.

Just a few weeks after I snagged my nifty Tommy Bahama skirt with the sewn-on, not glued-on beads, it was time for a very important clothes shopping trip. It was one I was dreading. I need a fancy evening gown (gasp!) for a social event in my near future. It's a wedding, and everyone is wearing long dresses. I'm not a long dress person. I didn't even wear a long dress at my wedding, I wore one with a handkerchief hem. I look bad in long dresses, really bad. They hit me in all the wrong places. They don't swoosh out where I swoosh out, unless I want to look like an extra on Gone With the Wind. I need that much swooshing. The worst kind of long dress imaginable on me is one with an empire waist. Back in the day, if I wore a dress with an empire waist, it looked like I was trying to hide being pregnant. Now it just looks like I'm trying to hide a grown person.

So it was with extreme negativity that I walked into my local Ross Stores, the den of fast fashion. But if my local Ross does one thing perfectly, it is they have lots of dresses. Ross DRESS for Less, no joke they have them. So, what was my plan?

• Grab any long dress on the rack that was within 3 sizes of what fits me.
• Look for colors that don't give me a migraine.
• Loose threads and buttons? Ha! I'm never going to wear this thing again.
• The price to hem it for this shorty will most likely cost more than the dress.
• NO EMPIRE WAISTS! 
• No sparkles. Ugh to sparkly fabric.
• Why Oh Why does that invitation say evening wear? Can't that mean pajamas?

With little hope, I grabbed 6 long dresses off the rack. Five were very long. Trying not to trip, I made my way to the back of the store, I got my little card that said 6, and choose a dressing room with plenty of floor space to fall down into a fetal position and roll around wailing.

First dress. Ugh, Ugh, Ugh. No way, move on. It made me cringe even after I took it off. Ugh.

Second dress. Why am I even putting myself through this torture? Do people really have to have weddings? In the evening? Can we go back to the jumping over the broomstick thing, because that had to have been pretty fun, until someone decided weddings should be fancy. 

Third dress. Hmm. Double hmm. Why am I not shrieking in agony? I should be in tears by now. But hmmmmm. Could it be that this dress may possibly look good? It's long. And it's got some shimmer in it. I don't think it's my color. The waist is sort of empire style. It doesn't swoosh much. Quick, send a picture to the mother-of-the-groom, she'll be honest with me. 

Hey, she likes it! She loves it! I found a dress on the third try, it doesn't need to be hemmed. I don't even want to look at it closely because the stitches will probably fall off but I don't care because I'm not on the floor in a heap of tears. And it's only 20 bucks. Oh, Ross, if you are the McDonald's of fashion right now, I just got something delicious off the Dollar Menu and I'm lovin' it!

My McDress!!!!

Coonhound Paralysis? But She's a Retriever!







We live in the suburbs of Sacramento. It's not Daniel Boone country, but we do have our fair share of critters. Our dog has got into it with squirrels, rats, possums, skunks, raccoons and an unfortunate rooster, or was it a chicken? It was hard to tell which when we found it floating in the pool. Molly feels all living things except human beings do not deserve to be on the Planet Earth, and she is good at ridding our globe of breathing things. So far no cats. Thankfully they can outrun her.

She's a sweet dog, she really is. She is great with kids and babies, even the quick moving ones that probably at times sound to her like wild animals. She has not so much as nibbled on any kid toes, even when they steal from her beloved stuffed animal collection. She just walks over to the little thief, gently reaches in ever so gently and takes back what is hers. Not so much as a ruffled feather on her part.

That's why it seemed a bit odd that a few weeks ago she was so subdued at our friend Elliot's Super Hero Party. Molly came as Aqua Dog, with a pack full of water themed toys for the children at that party. Sure she slyly walked over and stole Squirrel Girl's fluffy tail when she wasn't looking, but for Molly, her demeanor at the party was calm. A bit too calm. She didn't jump up or out of the car that night, Ernst had to lift her into the back of my vehicle. She didn't steal any hot dogs or hamburgers, mostly she just sat and had a great time watching all the kids, drinking in the complete canine joy of being the only dog at the party. She got a bit annoyed when the neighbor dog barked, and answered back with a few barks of her own. Deep barks. Serious barks.

We got home that night and she flopped down hard on the wood floors. The next morning we noticed her limping a bit on her left hind leg. It was a super busy day, and a slightly limping dog was not high on our worry list. That night it was worse, and even worst the next morning, so we made an appointment at the vet.

The diagnosis was a relief, a pulled ACL. A relief that is until I started Googling ACL issues in dogs, they can be hard to heal, especially in a nine-year old dog like Molly. But better than something worse, so we knuckled down into making sure she didn't overextend herself and set up her new pain medication schedule.

Wow those pain meds did a number on her. She was weak and loopy and having trouble walking. We backed off the dose. No change, only worse. Googled some more and learned they caused muscle weakness and loopiness. Emailed the vet, and he agreed, stop the Gabapentin. But she just got worse. Her front legs were buckling under her, and her left foot started flapping in a weird and scary way. Back to the vet she went. Xrays to rule out bone cancer had us freaking out a bit. But they came back fine. The vet was perplexed, and began to prepare us for the possibility this was much more than a muscular problem, it was beginning to look neurological. The vet suggested a wait and see approach.

Wait and see became wait and wail, because our dog was becoming incapacitated before our very eyes. She couldn't stand up or walk without falling right back down, the foot flapping was getting worse and we were complete wrecks. The worst of it had me out on the back porch, down on the blanket with Molly, texting my family through big drippy tears falling from my eyes, while sharing a few drops of my Pomegranate Cosmopolitan with Molly. Hey, she seemed to be days away from having to be put down, what harm could a little booze be at that point?

We set up the back room for her comfort, moved the chairs out, moved in a cot for Ernst to sleep on and put up an ottoman blockade so she couldn't climb the stairs and hurt herself even more. We didn't sleep much that night. The next morning had a new symptom. She was barking like a seal. Actually more like a coonhound. Her pathetic deep bark was the symptom that broke our hearts even more, this was sounding more and more like a neurological problem by the hour. Now it was my husband's turn to cry. That bark sounded awful and it was not in our imaginations, our dog couldn't walk and she sounded like she belonged in a remake of Where the Red Fern Grows.

It was time to hit Google with a vengeance. I typed in "NEUROLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN DOGS THAT CAUSE STUMBLING AND THE BARK TO TURN INTO A COON HOUND OR PERHAPS A SEAL ON A WHARF." You know, just one of those typical Google searches.

I found a website that suggested various ailments, one of which was Coonhound Paralysis. I scrolled on down, because we don't have a coonhound, we have a Golden Retriever with a touch of Australian Shepherd. Ernst Googled his own search, probably much more scientific sounding than mine. That's when it hit us, Coonhound Paralyses isn't just for hounds who hunt 'coons, any dog can get it. They can get it from raccoon saliva. It starts with a weakness in their back leg, moves towards the front legs, the dog can barely walk and it starts sounding like a....coonhound or a seal.

Bingo! By this time we were a bit miffed that the vet missed this diagnosis, so we called a mobile vet to come out to our house. Granted, Molly's regular vet didn't have the opportunity to hear her newest symptom of the bizarre bark, but still, we figured it out from Google, or were pretty sure we had. The vet on wheels observed Molly's walk, or lack of walk, and I played the video of her barking. He had taught at a vet school in Oklahoma and had seen a lot of this unusual disease, and was confident we were correct in our Google diagnosis - Coonhound Paralysis, or polyradiculoneuritis.

The prognosis? Good, she should make a steady recovery in the next few months. She is already walking so much better, her little sick room has been taken down and our house is pretty much back to normal. The mobile vet said we had been doing everything right, letting her rest and just get better, with some swim therapy to keep her strong.

As for how she got it? Either from fighting with a raccoon in the yard, or possibly from eating plums on the ground that raccoons had half eaten. There is some evidence that this awful immune system response, which is similar to Guillain-Barre Syndrome in humans, can also come from possum saliva, and we have plenty of those in our neck of the woods too. The good news is she will get better, and she already is so much better. No more tears, no more Pomegranate Cosmos shared with the pooch. Now if we could just do something about all these critters in our yard. Know anyone with a coonhound?

Not quite herself at Elliot's party.

Aqua Dog!

Molly being mopey isn't her usual MO.

Diagnosed with just an ACL pull.
What a relief!

Still happy. Still goofy.

But getting worse by the hour.



And Pomegranate Cosmopolitans.

Thought the cot was pretty cool.

Couldn't walk, but she was still smiling.

Swim therapy! Almost sinking.

She was not happy about swim therapy, but our instincts were right to keep her limber.

Visitors!

Needed a harness and sling to go out.

More visitors!

Playing possum for the mobile vet.

"Draw me like one of your French girls."

Wearing Doctor Busby's Toe Grips.
So fashionable.

While I've Been Healing

Tomorrow will be two weeks since my Baha Attract implantation surgery. They put a screw and a magnet in my head. I sort of thought I'd feel way better at this point. The dissolvable sutures have dissolved in some places, and in others have decided to stick around and torment me. How can little tiny bits of string against my head be so incredibly painful? I don't know, but they are. But nothing called dissolvable can last forever, so I'm being hopeful.

During my recovery I planned on doing so many things. Productive things. Concrete things. Things that would have lasting value to my life. Like finally tackling our "Photo Situation" that I really should have gotten to by now.

But alas, head pain makes for anything involving productivity go flying out the window. I sat around a lot. I watched a lot of aimless stuff on YouTube. I started a YouTube channel? (It's called All Squared Up and it's pretty dorky at this point.) I picked up the dog toys. I managed to clean the house enough to have some guests from Romania. I ate way too much vegan junk food that my friends brought me, and really must get back on the raw food wagon. Mostly I just got thru it, slowly increasing my activity until last night when it all came crashing down and I came home from a party and got in bed and whimpered. My husband got out his magnifying glass and bravely removed a few of my more irritating dissolvable sutures, and I think I can go on with my life now.

I did attempt to eat healthy through this.
Until the vegan treats arrived.

We started a really hard Wentworth puzzle.

I asked my husband to take pictures of my head.
It's really weird having a wound you can't see.

I did some gardening. 

Our street got repaved!
Beep, Beep Beep.
All. Day. Long.
But it looks so nice.

Our congregation put on a big luncheon in Yuba City.
I helped, as in organizing one giant rice cooking palooza.

This was the menu.
Orez is the Romanian word for rice.

We had a terrible cucumber beetle infestation.
I just walked away.

We found out my head really has a magnet in it!

Gazpacho was made!

Cute boys were babysat!

An amazing movie was attended!

Hair was assessed.
Amazing how that bald spot is covered by my long layers.
Amazing. 

Super Hero party? Sure, I'll go as a mermaid in jeans.
Along with Aqua Dog, and a lobster in my hair.

One more luncheon to prep for, and we can put these last two weeks in the history books.
Onward to my Baha Attract activation in a few more weeks!

My Baha 5 Surgery, So Attractive!

More information to come, but my Baha 5 Attract surgery was a success. The entire process at the Kaiser Surgery Center was a breeze, no worries and no pain. My surgeon and anesthesiologist were just great, I was completely at ease.

For some reason I didn’t expect blood, so the soaked bandage thing I came home with was a bit of a surprise. I also didn’t expect the turban-like wrap, so of course I had to have some fun with that.

The full extent of what I’ve had done, that there is a screw in my skull and a magnet under my skin is starting to sink in. I’m ever so gently pressing around the area, trying to feel the edges of the magnet. Gulp!

This summer will be interesting hairstyle-wise. I expected about a half dollar size section of hair shaved off. It’s baseball sized. The incision? I expected something the size of a quarter. My husband says it’s more like a racquetball shaped incision. Funny how when it comes to scars and wound sizes, we immediately go to money and sport balls for comparisons.

Another update in a few days, right now my baseball is itching and my racketball needs some ice.

Read My Lips, No New Chapsticks!

What is the absolute best thing to happen to a house? The prospect of some guests who will stay a while. Dinner guests coming? I get some of the house clean. Over nighters require another layer of preparation. But friends who will stay a week? Hoo boy, run and hide you dust bunnies, run and hide!

A couple from Cleveland were to visit our congregation for a week, and I had plenty of time to get ready. I knew my frantic cleaning of the winter ick would be in the few days before they came, so I decided to attack some of the other areas of the house in the weeks leading up to their arrival. You know, those places that a guest would never ever look in but you fling open to show them because after all, you went to all that trouble. "If you were to need some calming anti-itch cream with no chemicals, just a soothing balm to relieve the ill effects of a sunburn, well we have a bottle right here in this incredibly organized bin of skin potions." You know, occasions like that. Hey, it could happen.

We have a small bathroom, with just enough room to do your business without too much turning around. So we keep the majority of bathroom, hair, skin and other unmentionables in the little closet in the hallway. It's not a disgusting mess or anything, but it needed some attention. So I pulled everything out of it, and screamed. It was a disgusting mess. I sat down in the living room and made piles of categories. Skin stuff. Hair stuff. Cleaning stuff. Medications. What is this and why did we ever buy it and should we keep it because as soon as we throw it away that forgotten condition will rear its ugly head kind of stuff. The piles grew and grew. Then I tossed and tossed and the piles became manageable.

It all looked much better when I found more logical ways to put it all back. And since we let our guests have our room and we slept out in the trailer, it made the transition to tiny house living much easier. I just grabbed my newly organized caddies of makeup and skin care and hair products out to our temporary living space, with the knowledge that all the weird unmentionables in the hall closet were organized within an inch of their existence.

Towards the end of their stay, our friend began to suffer the consequences of a sunburn he got before he arrived to California. His wife asked if we had anything for itchy skin. "You mean some calming anti-itch cream with no chemicals, just a soothing balm to relieve the ill effects of a sunburn? Well we have a bottle right here in this incredibly organized bin of skin potions!" Oh the joys of skin potion bins.

The dog kept me honest.

Four more hotel hairsprays than I need.

Freebie lip balm is the new freebie water bottle.

Love those IKEA catch-alls.
They catch all.

The anti-itch cream is just itching to help a guest.

I rewarded myself with a pile of 79 cent IKEA dish towels.