Monday, March Evening

I'm listening to an owl speak the language of hoot. It is verbose, this owl. I haven't heard an owl for many years and I feel a sense of relief at its' hoot, hoot, hoot. Hoot. Always four.

Strange, this relief. They are master hunters, owls. They are the raptor of raptors, so hearing one should not give me peace. But they have been gone, when once I heard them often. And there it is, loud and clear through the closed-upness of a house in a Minnesota March.

Everything is wrong, it is polluted, contaminated and irradiated. It is immoral and unconscionable. I feel as if America is a Tim Burton movie. With a bit of international irrationality tossed in for good measure.

And I hear the owl. 

Rerun 2009

I clicked on the link of a random blogger and read a post about being ordinary and how people are thinking about the ordinary things in life. This made me remember something I wrote a couple of years ago about this subject, brought to my mind not because people are contemplating ordinariness, but rather because I saw so many extraordinary people blogging. In my not always humble opinion, I think it is worth a rerun. May 7, 2009:

Wonder Woman

Snow & Chow

What spring looks like on my frozen piece of earth. Wish you were here?

On another note, and because I have absolutely nothing interesting happening in my life, other than nearly being picked up by the wind yesterday and deposited in the Land of Oz, I will talk about my dogs. Or rather my cooking for them. This is what the dogs' dinner (as well as breakfast and lunch) looks like.

I make their food. Some may remember Grace's near death experience in January '09, the hemorrhaging all over the waiting area of the referral clinic and the panicked staff as they rushed her into the treatment room. Grace had Inflammatory Bowel Disease and would have been a very dead dog within minutes. It is amazing that she is alive today.

It is the dog food, there are too many different protein types in dog food. The gut is assaulted and a rather large number of dogs succumb. I fed a very expensive food, no corn or beet pulp. There were 14 different proteins in it. If you have ever seen a dog slough off its' dead intestinal lining, you know why I became a crusader. The problem is, no one listens.

So this is this morning's batch of chow: parboiled rice, rolled oats, peas, carrots, extra lean ground beef. I put a little olive oil in, as well as flax meal. I change the meat with each new batch. Sometimes ground turkey, another time I will boil chicken thighs for stock and give the dogs the meat. As a special treat, they sometimes get organ meat. I supplement them with a calcium, mineral and vitamin powder mixed in with their breakfast. They also get Teddy's Pride, a probiotic for the teeth. Greyhounds are notorious for very bad teeth. Breakfast gets some yogurt or cottage cheese as well. It helps mix in the supplements.

They get bones and dental chews for the hard chew they need to clean plaque from their teeth.

So there we have it. I am a bit of a crazy dog lady, but they appreciate me! And I do love my pooches and never want to experience such trauma again. There are good dog foods on the market, but for what they cost, I might as well cook. CosCo has become my BFF.

March Madness

Howard knows how to handle depressing overcast March days.

Grey, dreary March. I read of spring in New York, Illinois, Oregon and see only snow, mud and wet manure in my own landscape. This is the hard time, the patient time. I am not a person who waits well. There is, of course, nothing to be done about it. I fret and fuss anyway, complaining to the universe about the mess that is March. And the universe smiles its' lopsided grin and continues as it will.

On The Domain Train, Or Help!

My new look.

After spending the past several hours trying to point my domain name to a new server and making a total mess of that, which finally led me to where I should have been in the first place: on the phone with tech support. Let me say this, GoDaddy has very good support. He was so patient with me I think he deserves a commendation.

This journey began about three weeks ago when, while suffering the effects of a concussion, I unwisely decided to edit my neglected business website. I actually crashed my website. After spending time trying to bring it back, I decided to dump it. I spent a lot of money a decade ago having it built, so I was reluctant, but enough was enough. Also, I could not change it beyond photos and text and it was looking a little tired.

The templates for building your own site are so different now from then. I was able to put together a nice looking website without frustration. The frustration comes trying to publish it. I have to use the site I built it on, so I cancelled the former server, HostRocket, and I needed to go to the site holding my domain to point to the new server. Are you frustrated yet? Designing the website is easy, but why a web designer is a good thing is, they do all of this other stuff for you. In 28 - 48 hours I will find out if this worked.

I am better. My headaches are mostly gone and I am not walking through a fog. 

Over and Over Again My Friend

This song has been running over and over again in my head. From Madison, to Michigan, to Indian and Ohio. Culminating in Japan. Oh my god, Japan. I cannot get it out of my head.

Hello from headache and dimness. I have not even looked at this space for the past week. I cannot type. Honestly. I type gibberish and it takes me so long to edit it that I tend to stay away. I have been doing brief Facebook updates, but even that takes me ten minutes. I find that taking photos is a challenge as well. I am usually out of focus, but I think these are not blurry. Who knows, they may be, but I see them as right.

When I feel up to it, I can cook. It's about the only thing I am doing. I don't think I mentioned that I have a rotten sinus infection on top of a concussion. My cup runneth over.

Since I have nothing but my problems to talk about, I have food. It is amazing how self-absorbed I have become, but perhaps not, since all I do is sit in my office with the curtains pulled or cook when I feel I can.

Today I made a focaccia dough and topped it as a pizza.

Olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, thyme, rosemary, parsley & chives heated through in a sauté pan. Some chopped kalamata olives, a little bit of artichoke tapenade, fresh mozzarella, crumbled goat chess and a little grated pecorino romano. 

A nice lunch on a dreary day. It is tangy, which I liked. This is filling, so plenty is left over for dinner tonight if I find myself unwell.

I got through this post without too much unintelligible words to correct. Perhaps it is a sign. 

I hope everyone is well, I miss your stories and the sense of community, but it is hard to look at the screen for too long and I am so worried I won't catch my weird writing. I would be mortified if I did not. This last sentence read: I me fortified at I did not. So now I will proof before I publish. Several times.

See you all soon, I sincerely hope.

Short Note

I wake up with a profound sadness every morning. I wraps me, actually swaddles me. It takes about thirty minutes for the feeling to subside, but it is there to greet me in the morning.

I have a constant headache, some dizziness and fatigue. So this is what you get when you bruise the brain.

It's best for me to limit my computer time, as my seriously messed up website proves. I thought I would do some changes and I sure did. I have disabled it. My brain won't allow me to put any effort into fixing it right now. My instinct is to let it go. But my instincts are not to be trusted, so I'll leave it alone.

The consensus seems to be that this could be a long haul. I sincerely hope not. I'm getting too old to spend so much time doing nothing.

This is all the news fit to print. Perhaps I'll be back with some better news soon.