(puppy spray)

branner, my new vizsla puppy, has a few different moods that are becoming consistent.
the predominant mood is a mix of curiosity and shark.

basically while branner's feeling like a curious shark he's focused on biting the things that he can see. when the target of this chewing fights back or or yells, "NO", it's interpreted as encouragement. if the subject of this mouthy attack just moves across the room and ignores branner, he will most likely bark. i usually just respond with, "bark with your purse, sissy."

that mood has subsided a bit over the last 72 hours, and it's been replaced with a much preferred, much sweeter demeanor characterized by a lot of laying around and running into mirrors.

that audacious vizsla puppy in the mirror (i have a mirrored wall in my bedroom*) is STILL taunting branner and in order to establish dominance he's taken to hopping into the mirror with his teeth out only to be smacked in the face by the...mirror.

there's light barking involved, but the other puppy seems to be playing the repeat game right on cue.

the only other consistent mood we've seen here at Casa del D and Branner is dead tired.

which is obviously when most of the pictures are taken of said puppy**, and which usually includes a sort of exhausted moan on every exhale which seems to suggest something along the lines of, "do you have ANY IDEA how much WORK IT IS TO BE ME?"

or, "could i get a massage or SOMETHING because i'm SO TIRED...did you HEAR how TIRED I AM because if not I'LL CONTINUE MOANING."

i'm combating the less desirable moments (involving sharp puppy teeth) with a little of branner's own medicine, moaning dramatically at the same time that he does so he knows how TOUGH MY DAY WAS TOO.

it confuses him, and if you hadn't heard; confusion means QUIET in the world of puppy.

i'm not, as you might assume, biting back when the little guy is in shark mode...

no, i'm not quite as confident as to whether i'd win that battle outright.

instead, i've attained the upper hand in our epic battle for APLHA DOG del Casa by employing a mix of yelling and SPRAYING HIM INTO A CORNER with a water bottle.

which branner would prefer NOT EVER EVER EVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

*bawmp chicka bowwwwow.

**in the interest of, you know, still having a camera.

(lunchtime music)

you'd be hard pressed to care if you're not in chicago.

but word on the street is kt tunstall is playing in daley plaza at 11:30am.



i have no idea if this is true.

(slaps)

the band played Slaps at the boundary in wicker park.

SauSau was good...a natural you might call her.

(dooceTV)

it's a dooce kinda morning. a venti pike place coffee and televised interviews of bloggers = goodness.

somehow i managed to be the first person to stumbleupon dooce's nightline interview last night, so here's my stumbleupon homepage/resulting shameless self-promotion.

also, here she is on good morning america:



also, abc needs to let us bloggers post their content on our websites. the addthis functionality is great, but let me embed your damn video, old media goons.

(mother's day)

mother's day yesterday was another trip out to the suburbs with the pup in tow, followed by a lot of red wine and broken waterford crystal.

the red wine was for me, the waterford crystal saucer a present to my mother many years back. the curiousity about everything in my parents' house was branner's, and as he squirreled around a particularly wobbly table with said crystal and a frighteningly ancient china lamp on it i was able to jump across the room and catch the lamp as it bucked its perch.

the crystal hit the floor and shattered.

happy mother's day, love branner.

it was no big deal, and the day at mom's house with my sister and her dog was extremely relaxing once i decided that branner would in all likelihood not kill himself on my parent's first floor.

previously described damage aside, the afternoon passed without major consequence.

every few hours my sis, her boyfriend, and i took our dogs out back and let them sprint in huge circles around the luscious green early springtime yard, branner following in tow as shiloh bounded back and forth, easily faster and more agile than his younger cousin. branner took to head-on collisions to express his excitement, and more than once both dogs bounced off of one another onto their backs like furry trainwrecks.

as a gift to my wonderful mother i offered to set us up with a cooking class downtown sometime this summer. the two of us love to cook, and she's been so worried as of late about packing our house into boxes and the space she'll be giving up by moving into the city that i couldn't bring myself to give her more stuff.

she loved the idea, and were anyone to have a great recommendation for us i'd be much obliged.

we sat around the dinner table long after the food was gone discussing politics and theater. and family.

our family dinner and post-dinner discussions are among the most poignant fixtures in my life.

as such, i lost track of time and arrived back in the city as midnight approached and carrying an unconcious puppy.

how was your mother's day?

(san diego revisited)

the edward hopper exhibition ends on saturday, and i haven't seen it.

i want to. i'm thinking friday sometime after lunch. join me.

the main concern this weekend, however, is the arrival of my dear friend SauSau from san diego. you may remember the band's trip to san diego.

Sau took us all over san diego, first to pacific beach then to del mar and she's the reason i stayed another day and switched my flight while i was standing on the beach.

my buddies fell in love with her and decided she needed sunglasses so they bought her some, because she wouldn't buy them for herself.

when we're all together we tend to wear our sunglasses.

so she's in town saturday, and we want to take her to a delicious and fun dinner, followed by a deliciously fun after-hours venue.

i want your help.

what are your favorite spots in chicago for entertaining out of towners?

(home for me)

last weekend or maybe the weekend before (you try keeping track of my life, because i can't) i got up at the crack of dawn and packed up a nippy golden puppy and his treats, blanket, and food for the day. we drove out to the far west suburbs to where my parents still live in the house i grew up in.

the house i interviewed last thanksgiving.

it was a truly gorgeous day, that saturday, and i'd promised to help my mother clean up their yard in preparation for the upcoming thunderbolt of change facing our family in the eventual listing of said home and property on the For Sale section of the ubiquitous Multiple Listing Service.

as my father's company nears its headquarters relocation to the far north suburbs, and spring makes its (INCREDIBLY SLOW) appearance, the day on which a stranger from afar will have the option to call my home their home fast approaches.

as such my mother is predictably stressed, and the idea of her crawling around our front lawn turning over mulch and pulling away weeds was just to unbearable to even contemplate...plus i've realized the perfect remedy for stress is cleaning up puppy urine and i also know one puppy who's favorite thing to do is urinate.

perfect. match. as they say.

a long time it's been since i was doing chores that i myself hadn't assigned to me. initially it was disconcerting...i thought i was done with that kind of thing when i moved to the city and stopped living off of my father. i enjoyed being able to help, surely, but when the first rake snapped in half under a heavy load of mulch i began longing for the urban jungle and its...lack of nature.

branner, on the other hand, was happier than a pig in shit.
sort of.
once he'd accustomed himself to the idea that the big yellow house and friendly older woman showing him gobs of attention didn't mean he was in danger, he warmed up to the idea of spending the day outside and watching me sweat.

since "warmed up to the idea" means "desperately wanted to BE the mulch i was attending to," i had my mother take him on a number of long walks. every one of which he was repeatedly relieved to find out didn't mean he'd never see me again.

it was nice, being home, with nice weather, some physical labor, and some suburban solitude.

it was comforting to see our rickety house in such pristine condition, with new hardwood floors and paint and carpet and doors. to open up the stainless steel refrigerator where the clammy white one used to be.

to hear my mom whisper "i love it" whenever she went near an appliance.

and at the same time, it's unsettling, being back there. the ocean of memories i have in that place seem to be slowly dusted off the furniture, and the whole place starts to look like a snapshot of my past that someone took an airbrush to, cleaning up all the grimy or unbecoming nicks and scratches.

our front door had a crack in it for something like ten years. icicles used to form discreetly along that crack line during winter and i used to center my sight line on the sunlight creeping through it as i sprinted down the hallway to make a 180 degree pivot to charge up the stairs. you can imagine how many times.

the crack is gone now, in its place a beautiful new oak front door.

in many ways, the changes and eventual surrender of this place verify the long road i've taken since i ran around the bubble of my old neighborhood without many cares to speak of. the immeasurable journey my sisters have made since they were the little people i remember holed up in their respective childhood bedrooms. i am not as sentimentally inclined as my mother, and i look forward to the steps she and my father will take in their new journey as cosmopolitan empty nesters.

but i'll always be my mother's child, and as such i'll always have a fondness for this acre of land in rural illinois, where i became a good and smart person, a good soccer player, and i threw some damn near amazing parties. it will always be a place i'll go to reunite with people i've loved and cared for.

it will always be home for me.

(me a meathead)

when i go to the gym it's usually at night, in the 7 o'clock range, after i've walked branner, squirted him with water for looking like he'd considered putting his teeth anywhere near my macbook, snacked a bit, and changed out of work clothes.

definitely not in that order.

the gym i work out in resides in the building that the real world cast lived in when the show was filmed in chicago.

this is the reason i joined it, obviously, thinking that one or two of those hot little emotional atom bombs might still be lurking around in the basement or something.

having found no real worlders in the year or so i've been a member, i've also unfortunately not come across any hotty boom botties working out alongside me.

my neighborhood, as some of you know, is a pretty artsy-fartsy kind of neighborhood, with a strong hipster and punk crowd that add a lot of the area's flavor to a city that's quickly becoming one big JP Morgan Chase. it's a great hood. the women, in my opinion, are nothing to complain about.

at the gym, however, i've never been overwhelmed.

let's be clear...i don't go to the gym to scope hot chicks. i have never, ever, approached a woman at the gym. that's not my style.

which brings me to the last few times i've gone to the gym, to find a plethora of cuties where once there were none!

huh??

it's perplexing, to say the least, and unsettling too...i'm not used to having eye candy around, and i think i probably look like highschooler on a college campus as a result, dumbfounded at the scenery. i catch myself doing rows with my eye on the elliptical!

i suppose this is kind an attempt at an apology, for ogling, because i know working out isn't the time when a woman enjoys being stared at. i'm adjusting. i'll be better soon.

did yoga class get cancelled or something?

(single for life)

staish (cha's little sister): oh my god i love your blog. it's like a soap opera or something for me.

braden (laughing): isn't it great? you sit there with your morning coffee, right?

staish: i'm like, please leave me alone i'm reading d's blog! and i was gone all last week and i'm so happy because i get to catch up and read all posts and the comments and i see kate commented and i have to go back and read all the posts about her from before! i'm obsessed.

this in a sarcastic tone, poking fun at me.

braden: if you haven't heard, d's become the go-to guy for relationship advice...everyone just identifies so closely with him and has to share how they went through the same thing.

me: ha, that's true. i've been getting a lot of those kinds of emails. it's sort of amazing how many.

staish: that's what you should do; give relationship advice for a living.

me: i don't know about that.

braden: people could email you their problems and you could just blog about your own life so they can identify with the things you've been through. it's like therapy without the advice.

staish: yeah, cuz if he was a therapist it'd be, "tell me what's on your mind...and now let's make out".

(rss awareness day)

today is RSS Awareness Day, and as such i'm making you wonderful freaks aware of Real Simple Syndication.

because d-blogged dot com is the after-school activities to your pre-school life.

you bloggers all know what RSS is and the ways it can make the internet a lot easier to navigate. what i think a lot of people who don't follow blogs or just read their friend's blogs may not realize is how powerful these feeds can be.

it's quite simply a way to follow all your favorite sites without having to surf the internet.

you bring the internet to you.

tame the beast.

be aware.