What Dirtbunny has been obsessing about this week

ISSUE NUMBER ONE:  SPECIAL SWEETHEART

Hey!  That's the same color nail polish that I have on now! OMG.  I haven't gotten my nails done since before Christmas. *sends Mr. D out to clear an ice-free path to the car.*

Der Kirbenhund has been worrying us lately.  His weight is down to 19 pounds from about 28 and he is bony and frail and all his test results keep coming back all weird.  He has a heart murmur now, and fluid in his lungs, and that led to yet more tests and the results are back and.....well.  Kirby has lymphoma.  That's what it has been all along instead of the GME thing we've been treating him for.  It is, FINALLY, the one condition that explains all of his symptoms.  In a way, that's good news.

There's more good news.  The treatment for lymphoma is the same as the treatment for GME.  This means, in effect, that we've been giving him the treatment he would have gotten if he hadn't been misdiagnosed a year and a half ago.

How come the light reflects out of his right eye but not his left?  Cataracts.

The bad news is that, with treatment, his life expectancy is 12-18 months, which has already passed.  We're going to see the oncologist to get some questions answered and try to figure out whether there is any treatment left that isn't worse than the disease.  In the meantime, aside from the weight loss, you wouldn't know that he's sick.  He's a happy little guy having a nice dog life with doting humans who adore him, and a Tiki friend to be beta to his alpha and make him feel like a big man.

That's Mr. D back there, wearing this year's Christmas sweater.

I would have thought I'd be devastated about all this, but I seem to be surprisingly calm.  

This is him today.  Look at his bony knee, the ridges on his scull, his hair standing up on his spine. *sniffle*  

I'll have a better sense of what to expect after we see the oncologist tomorrow, but right now, it's kind of like he's already passed his expiration date and every day is some sort of bonus life-extension, and that mindset turns out to be a pretty good way of remembering to appreciate what I have.

ISSUE NUMBER TWO:  LUNCH

"beans n greens"

This is a recipe adapted from Jack Bishop's Italian Vegetarian Cookbook.

1.  Slice one red onion and sauté in a few tablespoons of olive oil on low-ish heat until they start to caramelize.  

2.  Add a pinch of sugar and cook for a minute more.  Add a handful of raisins and a bag (or a head) of chopped escarole.  Stir.

3.  When the greens start to wilt, add about a quarter cup of water.  Turn the heat down to low, cover, and let it cook for 10 minutes or so until the escarole is cooked.

4.  Stir in a can of drained chick peas.  Replace the cover and cook for 5-10 minutes until the beans are heated through.

5.  Season generously with salt and pepper and serve.

6.  If you can be bothered, stir in a few tablespoons of toasted pine nuts.  Or not.

Pros:

• Vegan
• FIBER!
• It's healthy beans and healthy greens and you probably don't eat enough of either.
• Amounts of everything = flexible.
• I like escarole best, but any greens will do (chard, kale, spinach, etc.)
• Once the greens go in, it cooks itself unattended, and an extra 15 or 20 minutes won't hurt it.

Cons:

• The onions won't caramelize until they're damn good and ready, so you have to watch them to make sure they don't burn, and that might take 20-30 minutes.
• Escarole is not easy to find, at least not around here.
• If you have omnivorous beagles, they will pester you for some, but onions and raisins are bad for dogs.

ISSUE NUMBER THREE:  DIRTBUNNY IS AWESOME

We lost a tree this summer, if you remember, which blew.  However, it left us with a lot of firewood.  Sadly, the logs were too big to burn, unless you have an enormous old-world style walk-in fireplace, which we don't, and which, if you did, you'd have servants so inconveniently-sized firewood wouldn't really be your problem, would it?  I like a fire in the fireplace, so this is what I did on Wednesday:

Therefore, when we had a little snow and ice Friday night and I got the urge for a fire, there was burnable firewood, courtesy of moi.

ISSUE NUMBER FOUR: YARN

My birthday was this week and, yes, I went on my traditional yarn binge and, yes, I bought a buttload of stuff and spent a lot of money and there's nowhere to put it so it's all sitting around in bags on the floor in my room and I'm trying to make sure Tiki doesn't get bored enough to poke around in there.  I also got more yarn from Mr. D for my present.  I'm all excited about the projects in my head.

They are still in my head, however, so here is a photo dump of things I've finished relatively recently:

Both of these went to my mother.  I knew she'd be tickled at the orange ones, and she was.

Mittens from left-over sock yarn.

Socks.  I think I sent these to a friend of mine who's been sick, but that might have been a different pair.

A cardigan, from Ye Olde Yarne I bought at a Birthday Yarn Binge several years ago.  I think this was the oldest yarn in my inventory, but that's hard to say.  All that sock yarn tends to run together.

pilling so quickly.

The cardi left me with a lot of left-over yarn, so I started making hats.  And I continued to empty out my vase of left-over sock yarn by making mittens.

No, this is a different bright blue hat and a different pair of mittens.

Another hat.  'S OK, but I won't bother with that pattern again.

There's that blue yarn again.  The weird hat?  Definitely not worth the hassle.  As for the red yarn, I used it to make Mr. D some mittens last year, and there was enough left-over from one stinkin' skein to make another pair of adult-sized mittens...

...and two pairs of child-sized mittens.

I still have more of the blue yarn and tons of left-over sock yarn, but I feel like I spent all of November and December cranking out hats and mittens to give to the clothing drive and, well, I'm done with hats and mittens for now.

Maybe it was the boredom of all those hats and mittens for other people that drove me to the record-breaking yarn binge this year, but now I'm onto throws and shawls, which are nice things to have in your lap when there's ice trapping you in your house.