Adding up the columns

Looking back over this week I feel like it must have been a month or more. My level of exhaustion and emotional freak-out has been at an all-time high. Let’s take a look at this week by the numbers.

10: Days I had to wait between a routine dentist appointment and an appointment with an oral surgeon because the dentist found a lesion on my tongue that he wanted biopsied.

9: Documents over 30 pages I’ve done so far this week, which means more money but also a state of total wipe-out for my brain and eyes.

8: Puppies that make me cry with happiness and mourn the fact that they are not in my living room, making their little grunty noises.

7: Days this week I have gone to bed after 4 AM and gotten up before 10 AM.

6: Days the older girls are gone, up in Maine with their grandparents. They’re having a great time, but no older kids means my two ‘right hands” are gone. Baby care is constant.

5: Minutes it took for the oral surgeon to say “Oh, that’s nothing,” sending me into what must have seemed to him to be a mysterious state of weepy nervous collapse.

also 5: The number of Zithromax pills prescribed by my doctor because it turns out I’ve had walking pneumonia for about six weeks.

4: The family vote “for” (with 1 “against” and one abstaining due to drooling) letting Bronte stay with Kate after our lease term is up. This has been an obvious choice for weeks, honestly, but we’ve struggled hard because we love Bronte so much. I’ve rehomed plenty of adult dogs, but it’s always been because they were so obviously not the right fit for our family. This time it’s a dog we adore and get along with beautifully, who we never imagined letting go. But seeing the way Bronte lights up every picture taken of her because she is so plainly overwhelmed with glee to be at Kate’s place and hanging out with Kate… well, this was a choice for her, not for us. There are still details to be ironed out and we’ll be talking much more over the next months, but barring some major complication Bronte gets to live with the people and dogs she has chosen.

3: Piles of poop left for me this morning. One was so unimaginably rank that Doug wondered aloud if Ginny had eaten a demon.

2: Weeks left until the VERY EARLIEST POSSIBLE date for a final construction number on the House of Fire. That number is the key to getting started, though even once we get the number we have to wait for the check, then send the check to our mortgage company, then the mortgage company releases it in dribs and drabs to our contractor. I hesitate to say that this is the light at the end of the tunnel, but at least someone is talking about “next month” instead of “well, just be patient.”

1: Cardigan head, heavy on my foot, and every once in a while she coughs in her sleep because she’s got her throat pressed so hard against me. But somehow, in that magical little dog brain of hers, the pleasure of having her lovely head on my stinky foot is so great that she just coughs and closes her eyes again. And that, in one action, is why there is nothing better and more wonderful than this.

Coffeeporn

It’s taken with the crappy camera phone, so it’s more the grainy home-made porn than the good stuff .

Beautiful liquor-black beans; this is Matt’s dark roast.

The tools of the trade: Zojirushi coffee maker, Barazza Maestro grinder, organic sugar (a no-no for the true cup-addicted, but I like just a little).

Matt’s Coffee: Wood-roasted in Maine. You’re welcome.

I was a late bloomer, coffee-wise.

I had my first cup at 22, trying to make it through grad school. I was engaged, working full-time, going to school full-time. My sister was (minus the engagement) doing the same, at the same school. We’d sign up for as many classes together as we could, so we could help each other study.

She lived in what was almost certainly once a chicken coop–a tiny two-level shack in the backyard of a much larger house, heated by a mini propane tank, with floors that fell off into nothing and a minuscule bathroom with a shower that you had to step in, wash your back, and then step out so you could turn around and wash your front.

This shack was memorable for having a rent of only $300 a month, in an area where (even in 1996) rents were routinely three times that much, and for a massive coffee maker that sat, full, close to 24 hours a day. Both (the shack and the coffee maker) were passed down from grad student to grad student; everyone we knew had lived in the shack at one time or another. It was never advertised, as far as I know never inspected, and never empty.

Which, coincidentally, describes the coffee maker as well.

When the coffee grew rancid we’d dump it and start again. We drank it cold, hot, room temperature, we didn’t care. We bought the vilest cheap pre-ground coffee we could find at the grocery store; we just needed the caffeine shot and, in the winter, the warmth.

This first glut of coffee ended in a spectacular fashion the semester we were both taking not only a systematic theology class from Wells but a Greek class from our father (his bio is really old; he’s actually on book fifteen or sixteen now). Of all the professors at the school, they are ranked number one and two (or two and one, depending on the year and how many students are left weeping in the hallways) in order of difficulty of subject matter.

Since we were taking my dad’s class together, we not only had to get a perfect grade for him, we had to beat each other to the highest score. Meanwhile, Wells was asking us to read 150 pages a night and research and write 20,000 words every four weeks or so.

And so we simply never slept. I don’t think I got more than five hours of sleep on my very best day that semester, and it was routine to stay up for 48 hours straight.

It was all fueled by desperation, more than a little arrogance, and that horrid coffee.

The night before our Greek final, we huddled on my sister’s mattress and passed flashcards back and forth. Both of our teeth were chattering so hard we could barely respond with “aorist present” or “I think that one is the -iai ending.” It wasn’t cold; we had consumed so much coffee on so little sleep that we were shaking with the effort of staying upright.

We went together to take the test – I honestly don’t remember any of it.

When we were done, we separated and (I later found out) both went home and vomited about sixty times. Yes, the coffee. Whether thanks to overuse or a bad bean in the batch when it was roasted and ground what was probably two years before we drank it, it did us in.

I did not drink coffee again for nine years.

If we went to Starbucks with friends, I’d drink steamed milk. Dunkin Donuts was hot chocolate. Even the sight of coffee made me feel ill.

That changed the year I taught fourth grade, which was (after grad school) the most stressful and difficult thing I’d ever done. Tabitha was one; Meri and Honour were in second and third grade. I NEVER ate; I NEVER slept. And so out of desperation I began to make coffee again.

This time, I started with the brands that advertised that they were easy on the stomach. I graduated to the teacher’s lounge brew, which was bad but at least fresh. From there I did what I think most do–I realized that Lavazza is a lot better than Folgers, but Green Mountain is better than Lavazza, and New England Coffee Co. is better than Green Mountain. After the teaching was over, the coffee continued.

Meanwhile, Doug and I had moved from being dedicated foodies, always in the latest cool restaurant, to frustrated consumers who rarely had anything more exciting than “hold the mustard” on our Wendy’s burgers. Too many kids, no money, no time. We loved the kids, missed the money (at least a little), REALLY missed having the luxury of something that just simply tastes PERFECT.

It’s predictable what came next -  coffee became our one carnal delight. (OK, well, our second carnal delight, but this is a family blog so get your mind out of the gutter.)

We bought a $10 coffee maker, put it in the cupboard when we bought a $25 coffee maker, put it in the cupboard when we bought a $60 coffee maker, realized that burners skunk coffee so bought a French press, needed more coffee than a French press could make at once and bought a carafe model from a country very far from here.

The blade coffee grinder gave way to a burr model gave way to a big burr model gave way to an Italian burr grinder that sounds like a fine motorcar when you turn it on.

Ground coffee was no longer anywhere on our shelves. Bags and tins and wrapped paper parcels and things with their own little visa stamps on them filled the cupboard. Then we used all those up and went entirely fair trade. Upgraded to organic. Upgraded from organic to beans with a roasting date.

It was good. It was GOOD. But it was not yet great.

What made it the thing that makes me get out of bed in the morning and turn on the coffee grinder before I even put my contact lenses in was an article we found in an old issue of the Kennebeck paper. My parents own a house in Maine, so the local newspapers and magazines are often lying around their house down in Massachusetts. I picked one up and I yelled to Doug.

“Hey, remember Matt Bolinder from college? He moved to Maine! Oh, Doug… he’s roasting coffee! He brought a wood-fired roaster over from Italy, and he cuts the hardwoods in his own backyard and roasts coffee he imports from all over the world. He rents part of that old crappy mill in Waterville, remember that one?”

Family council immediately held, impromptu road trip decided upon, and a couple of hours later we were holding a gold bag full of coffee and on our way home.

When I stood in our kitchen and opened the foil bag, it was like a Disney movie where swirls of sparkles and stars explode out, filling every corner with brightness.

From upstairs and four rooms away, I heard Doug yell, “OH MY GOSH, IS THAT THE COFFEE?”

Ground and brewed and with a trickle of heavy cream, it was like God decided to show us a little piece of what you get if you walk straight and fly right. It was GREAT.

Since then, every three weeks we call or e-mail Matt (who is as much a kind and personable gentleman now as he was when I knew him fifteen years ago) and ask him to send us whatever he’s got. He roasts every Tuesday, so by that Thursday a box arrives with three or four gold bags. I never know what it will be–this week it was an El Salvadorean Peaberry, an Ethiopian Shanta Golba, a dark roast that is the most physically beautiful coffee I have ever seen, and a northern Italian-style espresso roast that is so pungent and glorious that you can chew the aroma, chocolate and caramel and raspberries.

So call Matt. Or visit him online. Mattscoffee.com. I don’t get anything for recommending him except the happy thought that maybe somebody is going to open a foil bag and have a little tear come into their eye.

Seriously, this stuff is amazing. I give you permission to be a hedonist and try it.

Gimpy

Ginny woke up this morning and refused to put her left rear foot down. A quick feel and a consult with my extremely valuable sister (who has a million hours of experience with horses and can feel “heat” better than I can) gave us a tentative diagnosis of a pulled muscle. She was still running around and being her usual persnickety self (and was eating with gusto) so we felt comfortable leaving it for a little while, watching it over the weekend.

Sure enough, by evening she was no longer holding it up–she still limps on it but she’ll put it down. But this is GINNY, and therefore it must be milked for every ounce of adoration she can possibly get.

So if you turn your back, she’ll stand on the bad foot and try to push Clue around, growling like crazy. Outside she was jumping up four-foot snowbanks because she saw The Tree she wanted to deposit .05 ounces of pee on.

But look at her, and say “Oh, Ginny… Poor BABY” and she’ll scrunch the leg up into her belly and slowly, painfully hitch her way over to you, coming to rest with her nose next to your knee, and then look significantly at you and at the couch. If you don’t pick her up right away she lurches horribly as she turns and takes one step away, then returns to your knee. “Oh, darling!” we cry, and gather her up carefully and put her on a nest of blankets and pillows.

And then she promptly flings herself on her back and blissfully closes her eyes, and begins snoring so loudly that we have to turn the TV up.

I would talk about how terrible it is that we let her take advantage, but her hot bath just finished running and I have to go dry her off with warmed towels.

The Internet (which is a series of tubes) reaches me once again

There are 300 messages in my inbox, so if you e-mailed me recently give me a couple of days to catch up. But at least we now have the Web and e-mail again.

Small update on house: Nothing good. Our contractor’s bid and the insurance bid are wildly different. We are pretty sure that this is because our contractor is following our doctor’s orders and it’s pushing the price of all the materials way up. This is totally non-negotiable from our point of view–it’s Honour’s MD and she CANNOT be exposed to mold, damp, smoke, or VOCs from paint or finishes. And low-VOC paint is $40 a gallon, the subfloor needs to be replaced to prevent molding, etc. I just feel like crap because I don’t want to fight this fight, don’t want to be accused of trying to bid things up dishonestly, etc.

I had a question about how Clue and Ginny are getting along, which gives me the chance to expound a little bit on pack order and get my mind off this garbage.

In my experience, dogs in a healthy pack split up the major roles along the lines of talent and personality. The more flinchy dogs sound the alarm, the more possessive dogs find and guard the food, etc. Even traits we tend to think of as negative have valuable uses in the pack.

Also in my experience, a bitch is ALWAYS the ultimate pack leader. It is usually the oldest bitch. It works best when she is very, very calm and confident, with very little possessive or shy or nervous tendencies.

However, that doesn’t mean that she does everything, or that she tells everybody to do anything. My pack leader bitches have spent most of their time sleeping and relaxing, to be honest. The dogs who are naturally more active or reactive will do more patrolling; if they are alarmed by something they bark, you see a millisecond (you have to watch for this very carefully because it is nothing but a glance) where every dog in the pack looks at the pack leader, and what she does determines the reaction of the group.

If she stands up, they all alert. If she runs to the fence barking, they all join her. If she flops her head back down they all relax.

The other thing that happens when you have a very clear leader is that she virtually never gets in conflicts. The middle-rankers squabble constantly, but the undisputed leader never does. If she walks over to something they all just back away. She doesn’t have to fight for anything.

Clue is very definitely the pack leader at our house. She is by far the most naturally stable dog we have (not that the others are bad, or weird, but she’s the one who reacts to everything with calm and never escalates the issue) and she does an excellent job of keeping the group functional.

Part of what makes Clue a good leader is that she puts up with a TON. She allows the other dogs to get away with quite a bit and has a finely tuned sense of when she needs to step in.

And that’s where Ginny comes in. Ginny, for all her enormous virtues, is a dog who is obsessed with STUFF. And STUFF, to Ginny, encompasses a huge amount. She spends an enormous amount of time figuring out exactly what the most comfortable and highest spot is in the house, and makes that her perch. She is fastidious about her toys and her chewies and her bed and will arrange everything for minutes on end. She hates being dirty and is very vain (and yes, this is a real thing in dogs–I am convinced of it). And affection from humans is also a big deal for her, and over the course of an evening she will move from lap to lap, depending on who she feels needs to be reminded that she is the prettiest and the most lovely. Food, for Ginny, is wholly emotional. She will not eat until another dog is in the room, because she wants to turn it into a big growly display of how she has food and the other dog doesn’t. If the other dog is given food or stops paying attention, she’ll stop eating and will not resume. I’ve seen her fast for days rather than “waste” food on eating for nutrition.

When any of her STUFF is threatened, she turns from a flirt and a princess to a big fat jerk. Never with humans, mind you–it took me several months to get her to this point but she hasn’t so much as rolled her eyes at any person in a very long time. But with dogs she will growl and roar and jump on them and do her best to terrorize her way into owning everything.

She’s basically like Miss Piggy, if you want a cliche figure to look at. Soft and sweet and with a very high opinion of herself, but woe betide you if you try to take something from her.

This gets VERY interesting when you see Ginny and Clue interact. Because Clue ignores about 95 percent of it. Clue has never been possessive about anything, so if Ginny comes over and grumbles about a bed, Clue sighs and moves over. Clue will hang back and look exasperated, but not do anything, while Ginny postures over toys. Clue keeps an eye on her but doesn’t object when Ginny takes an hour to eat a half-cup of food and snarls the whole time.

A casual observer may therefore think that Ginny is in charge. But then, about once a week, Ginny does something that finally crosses the line. And Clue finally decides that she needs to to send a message. I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what does it, because to me it looks like one more time where Ginny is making a big noise about some little thing. But Clue knows.

And in about two seconds, she has Ginny flat on her back and is standing there with one front paw casually on Ginny’s chest. She stands, gently wagging her tail, for a minute or two and then lets Ginny up. And Ginny has her ears flat back and slinks away to a couch cushion and glares poisonously around for a while, but she knows she’s been told where to get off.

The only other time you see the true shape of things is when I am feeding Clue or giving her treats. When I feed Ginny and Clue is in the room, she (Ginny) growls constantly and makes a big deal. When I feed Clue, Ginny hangs way back and pins her ears down. She doesn’t make a sound.

Right now, Tabitha is filling a snack cup with cheerios so she can eat them in front of the TV (cream carpet = mandatory snack cups). Ginny is sitting next to her looking intently at the cheerios, looking like she is desperate for them. She looks at Clue and growls, then dances on her paws and begs again. Tabitha just handed her a cheerio and Ginny took it, then spit it out. She’s continuing to beg. This is what I mean by food being emotional–she doesn’t want those cheerios and won’t eat them if given. She just wants to make a big statement in front of Clue.

Obviously traumatized by the transition

Posting from my phone so I don’t know how this will format. Pictures are of ginny who is SO sad (total lie; she walked in and took over the place) and our messy new place. I’ll love it when I have everything put away!

Note that the one thing that is completely set up is the tv. Doug’s priorities are all too clear.

Ginny is doing great. She pees on paper left on the floor, which of course makes sense when she’s been in a place with puddle pads and newspaper. And she’s very stained and has kibble breath. Otherwise she was obviously well loved and is happy and secure.

Ginny!

It’s moving day!

So grab your dog, smear muffin all over your face, and head on out!

Making me sad, making me happy

Sad (because it’s so true that the satire barely softens the blow): The Onion.

Happy:

1) Oh so happy! Bronte is glowing and growing and making me pine for her, but I am SO happy that she’s in a place where she is loved.

2) It’s silly, but retail therapy is sometimes the most potent kind. We lost all four of our diaper bags in the fire, and with this many kids (and the fact that the diaper bags, thanks to their dozen pockets, also end up as dog bags) that was a huge loss. We’ve been carting Zoob’s stuff around in plastic grocery bags for the last two and a half months, for serious. Now that it looks like we’ll be out of the house even longer (see below), I HAD to get something.

I use diaper bags that are roughly large enough to carry a young calf–packed to the very top with an outfit for each child (yes, even Meri–because I can GUARANTEE that she will spill a noxious mixture of coal tar and, I dunno, raspberry jam over herself in the first 15 minutes of a seven-hour errand run), a shirt for me (because the kids came by their clumsiness honestly), a minimum of three outfits for Zoob, a dozen diapers, entire container of wipes, five snack cups, three sippy cups, four water bottles, at least one leash in case I see a stray dog… and that’s just the standard packing. Add in board books, toys, chew toys if we have the dog(s) with us, digital camera, hairbrush, and a thousand other things depending on the length and complexity of the trip.

So you may understand my glee when I found a sale at Fleurville and I was FINALLY able to get the bags that are famous for being the size of the trunk of a VW. Therefore, coming to me for about 75% off are

Doug says the patterns on both of them will force him to examine his feminine side, but I am totally seduced by the fact that they’re like fifteen inches long and twelve inches high. I can stuff them both and load up the kids like pack camels. Whee!

3) This is the big one: We’re coming to the end of our first three months out of the house after the fire.

Yeah, remember how the insurance guy told us we’d be back in the house after three months? Oh, me too! Good times, good times.

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Absolutely zero.

Realistically, even if we could start construction April 1 (and it’s not looking like that’s going to happen) we’re looking at four months of construction alone. And adding in the inevitable surprises (there is an elephant in the room called “asbestos wallboard” that nobody is talking about–we think it may be there, as do the contractors, but the contractors have to “discover” it; they can’t just go test the wallboard…and if we have to do asbestos abatement “that’s a whole new ballgame,” as our insurance guy says) and we’re talking five to six months from now.

It was a mutual decision to not continue to live here–we initially contracted for three months and both the homeowner and we are ready to part as amicably as possible. So we had a week of anxiety as we looked for an apartment that would take a short-term lease and would accept Clue. It also had to have low utilities because we have to continue to pay utilities at the House of Fire.

We looked at a bunch of stuff, were told no by another bunch (either wouldn’t accept a short lease or wouldn’t accept Clue), got VERY worried (the second-to-last place we looked at estimated between $400 and $500 for electricity and heat, PER MONTH), and yesterday finally found “home” for the next six months (or maybe five, but the lease is for six and we’ll eat the last month’s rent if we need to). We were just approved this morning and will be moving this week.

It’s a beautiful apartment in a converted mill, with twelve-foot ceilings and giant windows. It’s very small (just over a thousand square feet) but that’s OK because utilities are teeny. About a hundred bucks a month. Amazing.

Two bedrooms, two baths, washer/dryer, tiny perfect kitchen. We’ll be stuffed in there like sardines but it’s in a very quiet area and you can walk out the exterior door (the apartment is right next to one of the doors out, so we won’t have to walk dogs through the building–a big plus) to a lovely paved riverwalk that extends three miles along the Powwow River. It’s completely safe, no cars, so we can let the kids bike and rollerblade and walk the dog and relax.

AND… oh joy, and this is something we never anticipated… they will take TWO dogs. Which means that sometime in the next couple of weeks we get to go spring Ginny from the boarding kennel, which we honestly can’t even talk about because as soon as anyone mentions it we have to stop and bite our lips because we get teary. We have missed her so incredibly.

Bramble will stay at the kennel, which is a choice no one likes but it makes no sense to have him be the second dog. He’s still a puppy, with normal housetraining issues, and he’s a chewer and a digger. The new apartment has a hefty security deposit and cream carpet. So he’ll stay there, continue to go to daycare every day so he won’t go nuts, and (oh my gosh!) we get Ginny back.

So one sad, three happy… I’ll take it!

A Zoober Zu update

As many of you will remember, the week before our house fire Zuzu fell and got a skull fracture. Well, we had the follow-up appointment (and her 15-month well baby visit) yesterday and she is doing GREAT. Her head had an incredibly alarming divot (about the size of a silver dollar and deep enough to be visible, shaped like a tulip with a rounded bottom and jaggy top where the bone had splintered) in it for several weeks, but then literally over the space of 48 hours it totally remodeled and now you can’t feel even a tiny remnant of the fracture. She looks to have healed completely and is meeting all her milestones just perfectly.

She’s just a little peanut, 19 lb and 29 inches at 15 months. For the statistically inclined, that’s 7% in weight and 12% in height. That makes her bigger than Tabitha, who hovers between 0% and 3% on both, but she’s no Amazon. I sure wish I could peel some off me and put it on her!

She says doggy, woof, kitty, meow, that, right there, TV, hot, daddy, boo! and a bunch of others. She can point to everyone in the family except me; she has no clue that I have a name and when she is asked where Mommy is she points to the curtains or to Clue. She is FINALLY walking well–she took her first steps on her first birthday and then refused to walk again for two months. Just in the last month she realized that bipedal was a lot faster and easier than crawling and she now cruises around in the zombie pose, hands outstretched, looking for brains on which to feast. 

So there you go–a non-dog-related, totally fluffy post of happy update .

Oh, and for those who are interested: No vaccines yet for her. I do vaccinate my kids, though Honour (who reacted so horribly and is still hurt by it) will probably never have another one, but I do so very slowly and very cautiously. Any sign of reaction and we stop the series. For example, Tabitha began her Prevnar series at nine months, and our pede said he never saw ANY reaction with that vaccine. On the second one (second of a series of three) she ran a fever. So she never got the third one. But the DTaP series (which she was given starting at age 3 and every three months until she turned 4) didn’t bother her a bit. Tabitha’s next hurdle is the MMR; we’ll try just one and see if she mounts an adequate response and doesn’t need the full series. Zuzu has had zero vaccines for anything–we’re not sure if we’ll start with Prevnar or with the DTaP but we aren’t doing it now because of the respiratory virus she’s just getting over. In three months we’ll see if we’re ready to start something.