She’s Young and With It

That, my friend, is a very good question.

Most recently I have been at home painting. We are in the process of going from beige

to blue

We still have much painting and touching up to do. We are doing this alternating thing with two shades of blue. We hope to get the lighter shade up this weekend.

Before painting, there was the Stitch fashion show, which was great fun. I spent a little too much money.

There are the lyme sulfur dips for Callie. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this is the last week of dips.

Neko has weekly obedience training (for six long months).

Ikea Opened!

And we enjoyed going to artist studios on the East Austin Studio Tour.

There you have it. Those are the places that I have been during November.

Last weekend we dropped by the Texas Book Festival to see Ms. Amy Sedaris in the cooking tent. She was making a brownie recipe from her new book. We have yet to purchase said book but I do want to pick it up at some point. She made the brownies with David Rakoff and together they are pretty funny.

Highlights:
Amy: “Who calls it a balloon whisk?”
David: “The gays.”

Amy: “David, have you ever seen me drunk?”
David: “No, I haven’t.”
Amy: “That’s right, David. I do not drink to get drunk.”

Those quotes are not completely accurate, but you get the point. She also noted that they skimped on the chocolate because it was Whole Foods brand and not Nestle. When she saw the mirror above the stove, she said, “Oh cleavage,” and pulled the top of her dress down. She is a funny lady.

After seeing her, we went through the tents and discovered McSweeney’s was present as an exhibitor. I had been reading all the hype about The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian, but I was not sure if it was real hype or hype created by McSweeney’s since McSweeney’s was publishing the book. So after a big debate, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Issue 20 or The Children’s Hospital, we went with Issue 20 because it was comprised of short stories, had an excerpt from The Children’s Hospital in the back and because we have short attention spans. The Children’s Hospital was huge (625 pages) and I was not sure I could focus that long.

I came home and read the excerpt from The Children’s Hospital and I was hooked. I bought the book on Tuesday.

I guess it was real hype.

Dog news: The puppy, Callie, has become a little destructive. I cannot blame her really because she is stuck in a small room by herself. However, she has a lot of toys, and since we just bought this house, it would be nice to not have it wrecked. We discovered that she has been chewing on the bathroom cabinet. She also shreds her housetraining puppy pads. The good news is that she is getting healthier. The bad news is that getting healthier means getting more destructive. We cannot crate her yet because she is still too young to hold it for nine hours while we are at work and we do not want her having crate accidents. At least, that is what I am thinking.

Neko is going for her evaluation with a trainer this afternoon to see just how aggressive she is and whether she will be allowed to join the group for obedience training next week.

Dogs are a lot of work.