(I hope not, but it seemed a fitting end.)

Now I don’t sell soap, but wouldn’t these be great Pug Sudz product shots?

And while I’m uploading pictures, here’s a snap of Harry on Christmas. The ribbon traumatized him.

1) Amazingly, the ranch didn’t burn. The fire was only about two miles away, but everyone stayed and were fine. I was pretty useless for a full week, doing nothing more than hit refresh on the various google map mashups people created. What is really stunning is how different this catastrophe was than Katrina.

2) Obie the foster pug has been adopted. Steve is relieved; he hated him. As for me, I grew rather fond of him, but it’s nice to have a single mellow dog again,

3) No progress on the kitchen, but Steve did finish rebuilding the deck this summer, started and finished carriage doors for the garage, and busted out more concrete in the backyard. He also ordered new windows (2 large , rather than 4 narrow ones), which are sitting on the deck.

4) All of a sudden, I’ve gotten really, really busy workwise. This is going to be one of those weeks. Actually, this is probably why I’m probably updating the blog, after these many moons. It’s funny, but when I’m not busy, I get nothing done–and when I am, I get oodles and oodles accomplished. Not very logical, but there you go.

5) I’m feeling all sustainable living and stuff. Those pumpkins I grew? Peeled, pureed, and frozen. Okay, okay, I never quite got around to making the pickled green tomatoes, or making as much jam as I did last year, but there’s something so satisfying about putting up the veggies you’ve grown for the winter. Granted, most of it will probably end up as dog food–and granted, if I HAD to do it, we’d starve. And, of course, it wouldn’t be fun anymore. However, I’m kind of on a buying locally kick, making a concerted effort to buy only food that’s grown around here. Alas, my efforts are completely negated by:

6) On the Japanese print front, I finally took the plunge and bought some from artelino. The shipping costs are outrageously high, so you can choose to hold your prints over a period of time and then have them shipped all at the same time. So I don’t have them in my hot little hands yet. Funny thing though–I keep seeing prints recycle their way across the Internet. Something that was on ebay with no title reappears on ebay with artist and title and then wends its way over to artelino or a gallery.

7) But speaking of the buying locally thing–I’m trying to buy more stuff locally too, so no more book chains, local supermarkets, and so on. But here’s my question: Amazon and Starbucks are headquartered in Seattle, so does that constitute buying locally??

To explicate: I am fostering a pug for Seattle Pug Rescue. He’s a little, erm, bundle of energy named Obie. He and Harry get along just fine, though sometimes Harry has to put the smackdown on the rambunctious puppyness. Which secretly thrills me because most of the time, Harry just lets Obie hump him.

Also, Steve is now working the night shift. He goes to work at about 3, and comes home about 2 in the morning. He’s actually on a schedule that’s more like mine, which is weird because he’s always gone to bed at something obscenely early like 8 in the evening. But I find that I’m lonely rattling around the house at night.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post: I have become a crazy pug lady. Steve pointed out the other day that I actually CONVERSE with the dogs.

Scary.

“Why?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and preparing to stagger into the kitchen for coffee.

“They’re a bad influence.”

Indeed. Mr Potsticker pulled the flour off the bottom shelf and proceeded to wreak havoc.

And as if that weren’t enough, he also started licking it off the floor.

Remember how you were a kid and made paste out of glue? Harry discovered that if you lick up enough flour, you’ll eventually glue your mouth shut.

Anyway, he came across this. Which had us ROLLING.

And then we found this … pure pug porn:

“I thought you hated him.”

“I do. I hate the little bastard. Now where is he?”

We puttered around the house, doing laundry, dishes, nagging Steve about hooking up the water to the sink. Finally, Harry finally moved …

…outside.

Joanna Martin plows through the records, letters, and other documents of her ancestors, the Fox Strangways, to deliver a portrait of women and children of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Then we plow through 356 very long pages of Wives and Daughters: Women and Children in the Georgian Country House.

The book is divided into two main categories. The first describes the 4 women of the 4 generations of women her book covers. The second category is broken into different sections, such as education, household management, servants (so difficult to find in those days), and so on. The most interesting section, to me at least, was on health (though it STILL didn’t answer that burning question of what Georgian women did without Monistat). It’s pretty amazing that she had all these resources on hand to go through for firsthand accounts of what life was like.

But herein lies the problem, at least for me: There were fascinating characters and riveting snippets of information, but the scholarly tone laid a dull finish over everything. The bulk of the book was taken over by excruciatingly long lists of who earned what, the furniture in the inventory in each room, the exact cost of coal for umpteen houses during the winter of 1797 … I am sure there are far more scholarly people than I who delight in these details, but I wish they had been footnoted instead.
Also, I got the decided impression that the title was tacked on by the publisher to make this more appealing from a feminist perspective. And while it did favor women, the link between the title and the content often felt tenuous.

So in a fit of bookmooching, I got two Patricia Wrede novels (very entertaining froth and by the way, I loved The Enchanted Forest Chronicles). I found the first one, Caught in Crystal, tiresome. But The Raven Ring was a very nice way to pass an evening. Basically, a woman of the Cilhar, a very fierce tribe, goes to collect her mother’s belongings after she is killed under mysterious circumstances. Amongst the things is a ring that has been passed down in the family for seven generations. And everyone seems to want it. Our heroine Elerat teams up with a callow magician and an honorable thief to solve the mystery. Of course she does, and of course she finds love during the process.

Apparently, this is the sixth in the Seneca Falls mystery series, featuring a librarian sleuth in the 1860s.

And I am hooked.

Glynis has the town constable at her beck and call, and a dashing loner named Jacques Sundown in her bed (that is, when he’s around). And she’s the best sleuth in town. So when an upstanding citizen is murdered, the constable whisks her into the middle of the investigation, where she investigates and solvest he case.

This was such a great read less because of the mystery itself (though that was good too), and more because Monfredo does such a great job if infusing history into the novel. At no point is she didactic, but she makes the events of the day–the Civil War and the burgeoning women’s movement–and integral part of the story. I suspect I will be reading all of these.

I miss Steve when he’s gone — but at the same time, I relish the thought of climbing into a freshly made bed and reading til the wee hours of the morning. Remembering how much I loved Jacob Have I Loved as a child, and feeling the need for some comfort reading, I clambered into bed last night with a paperback and a snuggly little pug. It was strange; I had read this so often that the words echoed in my memory, but I was taken anew by its power. I cried. Honestly, I did. There were two main parts that got me. The first was at her grandmother’s malevolent whisper, “”Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated” and she realizes it was God who was speaking. The second was when she bursts out at her mother when they’re washing windows, and her mother tells her that she’ll miss her more than she misses Caroline.