Recurring theme

Yesterday, I took a look at my second novel(la), which I have retitled “Unbridaled.” Have decided all my works will be titled with homonymic plays on words.

My first novel(la), “Czech Mate,” has a scene in which the heroine goes on a hike in the woods with her dude and is freezing cold, wet and miserable. “Unbridaled” has a scene in which the heroine goes on an eagle float with her dude and is freezing cold, wet and miserable.

When I’m dead and they teach my books in college lit classes, students will write essays elucidating this well-crafted symbolism.

Is something missing from your life?

Could it be that it’s been too long since you’ve seen pictures of my dog catching a soccer ball?

I know these probably look a lot like pictures of my dog catching a soccer ball last March, but she was only five months old then, and now she’s a year old!

I’ve decided that I need to limit my picture taking of this particular activity to 50 or 60 pictures at a time. And probably we need to get her a new ball. She doesn’t have any that aren’t flat.

Them apples

An appropriate topic for this Washington-based blog, no?

I’m eating apples again, now that my TMJ has stabilized. It started with a visit to the Olympia farmer’s market in August, when some dude sliced off a bit of a Ginger Gold and handed it to me. Delicious! I bought two.

Buying apples can be frustrating sometimes, because you never know when you’re going to get a bum, mealy one. So you need to determine what strain of apples you prefer and stick to those, methinks.

Another kind that tastes as good as its name implies is Honeycrisp. A few weeks ago, a local grower was giving away samples with honey roasted peanut butter at the grocery store. I bought a couple, even though the local apples were $2.29/lb and the imported New Zealand apples (Gala or Fuji, I think) were $1.29.

This news story gives an inkling as to why that might be. Honeycrisps are harder to grow here than in the Midwest. As I read the article, I actually got hungry for one of the Honeycrisps I bought earlier and left in my car. And even though there was the possibility of leftover donuts in the conference room, I went out to my car to get the apple.

However, as I wrote this, my coworker brought the remaining maple bar and a half to the front of the office. I would have eaten just the half (since I’d already had an apple), but you know how pastries can get stale when cut in half and exposed to air? So I had the whole one.

The way to a man’s heart

To attend my mother’s wedding, Rob had to work an 12-hour overnight shift the previous Sunday, followed by his regular 8-hour shift Monday. Then he traveled with me on Thursday, listened to his iPod during the brief rehearsal and regaled my mother’s friends with fart and ass jokes during the rehearsal dinner.

Friday, he wandered the streets of Studio City from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., while the final floral arrangements were made and my mother’s and my nails manicured. (I have buyer’s remorse about the color of mine, but I don’t think it ruined the wedding.)

Then there was the wedding and the morning-after brunch, and then I told him we could do whatever he wanted to do with our remaining 24 hours in L.A. He chose Halloween shops and three separate visits to Amoeba Music. And an hour-and-a-half Thai massage, which was a splendid choice from my P.O.V., because mine was heavenly.

I was exhausted and cranky on the drive home from the airport, but I let him stop at Half-Price Books in Seattle.

He called twice this morning from work. The first time to see how Isis was when I picked her up from the kennel. (After racing around me in circles, she embodied the expression “hangdog.” I hope she’s just tired, and not a changed dog.)

The second time, he asked how I was doing at work after the eventful weekend. “Are you missing anyone?” he asked. “Like me?”

I think that means he was missing me!

It hadn’t occurred to me to miss him before then. I was busily uploading photos of him from the wedding. But I miss him now. And I really miss Isis.

OMFG, a Roomba

(To quote Chelsea.)

My house is being vacuumed. As I write this. By a robot! It takes a while, as the house is big, but it’s doing its thing.

Isis is definitely intrigued, and has licked it a few times, but she doesn’t bark incessantly at it. Rather, she barks sporadically. That I can live with. Each time she walks by it and doesn’t bark, and when she sits next to me quietly, which she is doing right now, I tell her she’s a good girl.

Now I just need to come up with a name for my Roomba. Unless we’re just going to call it “Roomba.”

Why Rob’s not so crazy about me

I have an iguana named Stew. Rob is not as fond of Stew as he is Isis. No kisses, no rubs to the belly. He insists Stew is a boy, but I’ve decided she’s definitely a girl.

Rob doesn’t even like to touch Stew, who lives in his computer room because it was the best place to give her some southern exposure.

Last night, Rob was at his desk, on the phone with his sister, who’s going to feed Stew while we are out of town this weekend. I walked in and noticed that Stew’s habitat door was open. Apparently I didn’t close it after cleaning the poopy paper three hours or so earlier. I’ve done that before, but usually find that Stew has not left her post by the window.

Not this time.

“Where is he?” Rob asked in a panic. But before he got to the question mark, I spotted little Stew perched on a shelf next to the habitat.

“She’s right here, she’s fine,” I said, picking her up.

“So that’s how all my stuff got messed up,” he said. Not like the room was spotless to begin with, but yeah, I could tell at that point that Stew had not taken a direct route to the shelf, but had knocked over stacks of papers and climbed across the printer and Rob’s video camera.

“Oops,” I said.

“I feel so violated,” he said.

I mean, I can see how it’s pretty distressing to think of a four-foot iguana crawling all over your stuff. But sheesh, we’ve had the iguana more than a year and this is the first time she’s gotten out. That’s pretty good! And we found her within a second of realizing she was out. Imagine if I hadn’t found her…she could have been anywhere in the entire house. She could have crawled over Rob’s stuff for several more hours. She could have crawled across his face while he slept…

Ebb

Rob thinks I’m going to get fired.

Pssh. Impossible. I work very hard when there’s work to be done. I spent eight-plus recent workdays engrossed in InDesign, making our magazine perfect. Everyone’s very happy with it.

Unfortunately, now that it’s done, there’s not much other work to do, so I’ve slipped into slacker mode, spending way too much time with Facebook and iTunes.

The irony is, I’m happier when I’m doing the great work; when I slack, I feel bummed out, which makes me slack more.

Another reason I love Rob

He took me to see Weird Al for my birthday, even though he’s not a huge fan. (Neither of those is the reason. The first was a boyfriendly obligation as far as I was concerned, and I knew that he would enjoy the show more than he thought he would.)

Al closed with a little ditty called Albuquerque, which was a great treat for me because it is a very unusual song and he didn’t perform it during his last tour, except in Albuquerque.

I was standing at this point, bouncing and singing along. Rob was still sitting, which I forgave him for, because he’d never heard the song before. On the way back to the car, he asked what the deal was with Al and Albuquerque. “It’s just one of his songs,” I said.

Four hours or so later, when we were back home (the concert was in Yakima, more on this in a moment), Rob said, “That was a pretty crazy story. He was living in a basement and then he won that trip to Albuquerque, and his plane crashed, but he just went to the hotel, instead of getting treated for his injuries, and that guy came to his door…”

I thought maybe Rob had been sitting in his seat, wondering when this song was going to finally end, bewildered as to what his girlfriend sees in the artistry of Weird Al. But no. He was listening to the lyrics. I mean, what else could a girl ask for?

Actually, I asked if he could grow his hair out like Weird Al’s. When Rob was in high school, he had a really scary long frizzy mohawk. Since his hair was curly, I thought if he grew it out, he could put some product in it and it would be like Weird Al’s.

Rob said, “You’re not really into that, are you?”

Uh, no. Of course not.

The first time I saw Weird Al in the state of Washington, it was at the Puyallup Fair and I’d lived in the state for 9 months. It surprised me that during the song, Smells Like Nirvana, the crowd erupted in cheers after the lyric, “A garage band from Seattle.” The same happened the following year, at the same venue.

This year, I saw Al in Yakima, because he happened to be playing there on my birthday. What’s a 4-hour drive both ways? I fully expected a similar reaction to the line about Seattle. But, nothing.

Evidently, the folks in Central Washington don’t identify with the birthplace of grunge rock like those of us west of the Cascades.