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A Case of the Crazies

01 September, 20:45, by Kim Toomey

I have a dog. She is a great dog. She is almost two years old and finally starting to calm down a little bit. But every now and again, she has her moments.

Now when we got this sweet little puppy, I swore up and down that dogs do not belong on the bed. I had always grown up with cats, and they only slept on the bed because they’re impossible to train or control. But dogs take up way too much room and belong on the floor.

However, this sweet little doggy started out as Dylan’s pet. And so while he was working in Corvallis, Tele was able to go to work with him during the week and hang out in the trailer. And at night, Dylan let the dog sleep in the bed with him*.

At home however, Tele knew that she wasn’t allowed on the bed and needed to sleep on the floor. But she had tasted the good life. She knew what it was like to snuggle up to another warm body, and sleep on the warm, soft blankets and a mattress instead of her doggy bed.

Time went on, Dylan got to work where he could stay at home for a few months and the dog adjusted to her full time schedule of sleeping the night away in her doggy bed. But eventually, Dylan was sent to another job where he couldn’t bring the dog with him and it was doggy and I on our own**.

And what can I say to this.

And now the dog thinks this is where she belongs when its time to go to bed.

So I have resigned myself to the fact that the dog now sleeps on the bed during the week until Dylan comes home. And the dog seems to comprehend this relationship of people vs. space and ability for dog to sleep on the bed. However, last night it was kind of chilly when I was going to bed. Tele hopped up onto the bed and I tried to stick my cold feet under the warm little doggy. She growled a little bit. And I scolded her because obviously she does not realize that I am the superior being in this relationship and she should be so lucky to be laying on my bed with the ability to warm my feet. So after some more shoving of the dog, she got up and stared at the blankets, wondering what on earth could be disturbing her ability to sleep.

Now – I also have a crazy cat, who LOVES to pounce on your hands/feet under blankets. This is a great game to play if you are a cat.

However, if you are my dog, this is not a game. This is a terrifying monster. So while I’m scooting my hands and feet under the blankets “attacking” the dog, she is getting more and more concerned about her safety on the bed. And eventually surrenders. I have been trying for months unsuccessfully to get the dog to stop sleeping on the bed and last night she was finally freaked out enough by my own feet that she refused to sleep on the bed with “the monster”.

Well, for a little while. This kind of just backfired on me because when she did decide it was safe to sleep on the bed, it was only safe if she slept right next to my face instead of down by my feet where she usually sleeps. And let me tell you, waking up to dog in your face isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. So now my dog is just scared of my feet and wants to be even closer to me at night.

Please send help.

* In Dylan’s defense, he only had a mattress on the floor, so the dog just assumed that this was also her bed.

** For the record, despite the fact that I have now portrayed my dog as a HUGE wuss, she is very ferocious and will eat any attackers. She is always hungry.

The Peak of Summer

18 August, 17:45, by Kim Toomey Tags: ,

Look what I just pulled out of my garden!

My cherry tomatoes have been more than successful. Still waiting on some heirlooms to ripen. Zucchini is going gang-busters still. I’m planning on making some zucchini-chocolate chip muffins once the next batch is a bit larger, maybe this weekend they will be ready.

The Great Curtain Debate

17 August, 20:20, by Kim Toomey

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a marital dispute in our midst at the Toomey house.

Curtains.

We bought out house over two years ago, and decorating didn’t really fit into our priorities when we first moved in. We were more focused on things like getting heat in the house and a functioning stove. Don’t get me wrong, our house is functional and cute enough, but most of our furniture is from Ikea or a hand-me-down. The one joint home decor purchase Dylan and I have made together was an area rug, and that took months…and its tan.

We have a large window in our living room and I had put up some purple curtains from Ikea but they were pretty awful IMO and in my haste I cut them too short and they were a really strange length. So I made new curtains.

Dylan hates the fabric.

You can’t really return fabric to the fabric store…right?

So I made the curtains anyway, convinced that once they were actual curtains and not just fabric Dylan would have a change of heart.

He did not.

Here are the curtains in question.

Dylan claims multiple arguments against said curtains:

  1. They have flowers on them. Dylan – you married a woman, you now live in a house where you will find floral print fabric on things.
  2. They don’t match the rest of the room. We have a tan rug (see above) a WHITE couch and some red furniture which matches the red in the curtains. And the room color is a light gold with a dark purple accent wall (both colors in the curtains) They match.
  3. They are retro/bad 70′s flashbacks. The main art on our walls in this rooms consists of two vintage Jimi Hendrix concert posters and a huge Bob Dylan painting of Dylans. We kind of have a vintage/retro vibe going on in here. Modern is not our style.

(Here is a photo of the art/walls better – obviously there is not currently a tree in front of the window. You can also kind of see the ugly purple curtains)

So let me know what you think. Was I blinded by some terrible retro haze in Fabric depot that led me astray? Or are they cute. Housemate Shannon says they’re cute also (for the record). I suppose if they are really that bad I can sell them on Etsy. :)

Here’s another close up on the fabric since the lighting by the window was not the best. Also, there isĀ  dark brown border at the very top that is the same as the tabs that hang on the curtain rod.

Backyard Happenings

24 May, 21:21, by Kim Toomey

The past few weekends we’ve been super busy in our backyard, and it finally stopped hailing long enough for me to go back outside and take some pictures (which is really quite a shame once you see all the work we’ve done!)

First off, Dylan built me two raised garden beds a while ago and I’ve finally taken the plunge and filled them with dirt and things that will hopefully produce vegetables – I think these things are called plants. Hopefully they can survive on primarily the elements because…well, lets just say I’m trying really hard to be dedicated to growing things. This whole thing is a big challenge that I must win! But did you know that it takes a long time for plants to actually produce vegetables even if you start with mini-plants and not seeds. I did not.

Anyway – here is my garden.

Here is one of the beds, filled with things I’m hoping don’t die now that it has gotten cool again – Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and a jalepeno. Grow little veggies, GROW!

My other bed has a lot of lettuce and a few zucchini plants and seems to be doing just fine.

I also planted strawberries back in April in those crazy topsy turvey things and it is seriously the easiest thing I have ever done. And I’m going to have a million strawberries here in a few more weeks! You can do it!

Mmmmm

And here is one of my tomato plants up close and personal because it had this cute little yellow flower, which I think is a good sign (note, it was nearly this big when I bought the plant…not that you can actually tell that it’s tall in this photo)

Our other big project involved my birthday party. We decided that we do so much entertaining in the summer and have no indoor entertaining space, that it would make sense to put in a patio. One of the reasons we bought this house was the backyard. It’s huge. But it was almost all grass. Now, we have a great seating area and still lots of grass!

And our crazy fire pit actually fits into the yard instead of sticking out awkwardly in the grass.

For my birthday, Dylan got me a hammock – I have always wanted a hammock. Because with a gift like a hammock comes permission to take naps and be lazy!

If the sun ever comes back out I’m never leaving the backyard (or more importantly…the hammock). And see those cute white lights in the background? They are from Ikea and are solar powered and come on magically when it gets dark. They’re pretty awesome, and only $10 for each one. They also come in blue and red.

So that’s been our big spring project! And it literally hasn’t stopped raining since we got the patio done. We had one nice day and night to BBQ and have people over, and then it’s rained non-stop the past 10 days.

So that’s the little tour of our backyard – we love it!

My Quilting Project

31 December, 08:54, by Kim Toomey Tags: ,

So I’ve secretly been working on a quilt since August that I didn’t want to share on here because it was a Christmas present for Dylan’s parents, and there is a slight chance they might read this once in a while.

But after countless hours scattered through several months of weekends (and a little help from my sew-tastic Momma) I got it done.

This is the third one I’ve done and I will say there were far fewer screw-ups along the way than previous attempts. And because I’m a total nutters, I can never start small with these things. In my head, quilts are only useful if you can surround yourself in all their snuggly glory. And there are no babies around in my life that my mom hasn’t already made a dozen quilts for, so I’ll continue to embark on these crazy huge projects.

Date Night Review & Halloween!

03 November, 18:18, by Kim Toomey

So I never followed up with our cheap date. Here’s the deal:

Branch is awesome – go there and have the gnocchi, it will change your world.

The play: Was alright. But here is the deal. I don’t like Shakespeare. I want to like Shakespeare – I minored in English (without taking one Shakespeare class mind you) but I just don’t. We left at intermission.

Halloween has come and gone. My wonderful husband humiliated himself and dressed in drag to be Miss Piggy while I was an uber-adorable Kermit the frog. We had about three trick-or-treaters (up from 1 last year) which means we have about 5 pounds of candy to eat.

Consequently, I have joined a gym.

The dog also dressed up – she was a prisoner – K98URSHOOS – get it!

How Does Your Garden Grow? Dahlia Update

10 September, 07:16, by Kim Toomey

One of my life goals to achieve within the next 5 1/2 years was to grow dahlias. This year was my first attempt, and although I started a little late in the season I’ve had some success. Check out this bloom:

And this one.

Just ignore the ugly white stuff on that leaf. Not bad for some hand-me-d0wn tubers I threw in the ground in June and hoped for the best. I’m waiting to see what color the other plants that have come up are – as I don’t know what they look like yet. And then I’ll need a few more for the yard.

If you want to grow your own – this is the place to go: Swan Island Dahlias. I went with my family a few weekends ago when they have their big show. Lots of pretty flowers to chose from, but you can order online too and they will ship them to you in the spring when you need to plan them.