Rough Sketch

wednesdayloppers-small
Proof that Wednesday can turn anything into a bed.

Some long needed admin stuff:
I’m still toying with domain name/branding/etc bullshit, which I’ve been mulling over since I published A blog with an identity crisis. Some concrete decisions: I’m letting modgirl.net expire, I will be consolidating and creating eBooks of the back entries, volumized by year (I’ve not gotten this plotted out as of yet) and that is as far as I’ve gotten on that project. Thanks to everyone who commented on the entry, it helped clarify some ideas I’ve been bouncing around in my brain.
The April 30th edition of the Morris Street Project published prematurely and without content in the entry. I’ve corrected and updated the entry so it is no longer empty, so make sure to check out this past week’s photos!
There has been so much going on, but I have a terrible habit of starting drafts and then not finishing them. I’m leary about creating new content until the drafts folder is better sorted so I decided to clean up my entry drafts, over 30 of them in the next few weeks. Do not be, then, terribly surprised to see a plethora of content being pushed over the next few weeks. My goal is to do two drafts pushed to published before a new entry is written.
We’ve been doing loads of gardening since the weather has gotten infinitely better around these parts. I’ve been taking a gazillion photographs in and around our gardens so there will be a lot of heavy image content upcoming as well.
Last, but not least, I’ve been doing some writing for The Rapidian, a hyper-local indie paper. I’ve included a widget on the sidebar that has the RSS feed for all of my work, which will be updated automatically. I’m planning on stepping up my game for them to publish a minimum of once per month.
Cheers,
x0x0x,
Lisa

Morris Street Project: March 19, 2011

Morris Street Project, Week 1
Back in high school, I remember for a biology or some class, we had a group project where we tracked a specific area of land over the course of the semester to learn about the subtly of nature and how change slowly happens. A few years ago, armed with that same idea, I started tracking the growth of the daffodils at Wilcox Park, which after a month or so I abandoned.
Three weeks ago, after receiving my iPad2, I stepped outside on a fairly bright Saturday morning and started taking pictures just to see how well the camera worked. The idea of tracking something over a period of time still appealed to me, coupled with spring finally coming into its own after such a long winter. Doing the tracking using my iPad2 to illustrate the camera clarity and use was also bonus. Also showing off the garden work that TheHusband and I are doing couldn’t hurt either.
While I lapsed for a few weeks, I stepped out and shot images this morning after walking Wednesday. But because there is so much happening on our street right now, it didn ‘t seem fair to start today without giving you a context of the before. So thus every Saturday I will publish the images I took the week before.
Below are the images I shot on March 19 and you can still see some of snow mounds, I had not taken the live wreath down yet and to be honest, nothing physically outside has changed much in the missing weeks so I feel comfortable using this as a starting point.
But just wait until you see the images I took from today… 🙂
Looking south, at Morris and Logan streets.
Throbbing Manor

Five minutes in heaven

eatpraypommefrites-small
Solarium cum yoga studio.

In making roads on my inner self (more deets coming in another post, soon), I decided to spend five minutes in the morning just being.
For someone who comes from a long line of Type A personalities, who can’t leave her bedroom in the morning before making the bed BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE (this also includes making said bed with dog and husband in situ), just being is hard. It means I have to reject the voices in my head that are whirling dervishes, I have to reject the twitching of my body to go do something, anything; it means resisting the urge to open up one eyeball to peer around the room. It means being still for the sake of being still.
Originally I planned on 15 minutes but if the mediation game on the Wii and yoga classes have taught me anything, I have not yet earned that freedom to do 15 minutes. Five I can be grateful for and accept, which I did wholeheartedly. Wednesday, however, was not amused and decided that if momma was going to sit on the yoga mat in the middle of the room, she was going to go sit on the new leather couch across from momma, the same couch she’s been barred from a million times over.
This morning’s ritual was slightly painful in learning to be still and reject everything around you, including internally, which creates a lot of energy in doing. When the timer went off, I slightly scowled. This should not be a game, there is no competition.
Another lesson I must teach myself that it is for the inner good and the prize is living longer, better, more meaningfully. I may not have sat as silent as I wished this morning, but I can only continue to try to be better than I was before. (Yes, yes, that in and of itself is a competition, but shhhh. We’re in denial.)
This evening, while baking cookies, I found myself with a few extra minutes on my hands. We had finished dinner, kitchen was cleaned and I was just waiting for the batches of cookies to be completed. I had 00:05:53 left on the clock – enough time to walk to the mat, sit down and try this mediation thing again. Wednesday joined me as well, but this time instead of shedding all over the purple leather couch, she laid down in front of me, protecting me while I sat lotus-style with pretty hands on my knees. This time it was far easier than in the morning. I imagined white light around myself, the dog and the house. I paid attention to the sounds going on around me. The sound of my breathing, the sound of Wednesday’s snort breathing, the sounds of my Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness Pandora station playing in the kitchen. I listened to what the house was saying, what the world was saying.
My mind began to clear. There is still whirling dervishes of thoughts but those were held back against the tide of light. Even for a few seconds, it was nice to just be.

136 different kinds of weather

frontyard-small
Violets struggle to grow in our front yard.

In the spring, I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. -Mark Twain
I’ve been circling around my blog for the last few months like a vulture to prey. I know that I should update because so much has happened since we closed on the house but I can’t find the will (as it were) to do the actual writing. So as the dead prey decomposes, so does this blog.
It would seem that my life is in flux, our life is in flux, though we have permanency (we closed on the house on 1/7/11, moved 1/13/11, TheHusband’s birthday), I have some sort of an income (I’m now working as an adjunct librarian at our local community college ) and our long laid plans are finally coming to fruition. We have started plotting our edible (fruit/veg/herb) and non-edible (flowers/shrubs) garden. I submitted a short story to a local contest. The pug, Ms. Wednesday, has had a few health scares but those seem to be under control. We are not poor, by anyones standards, and can enjoy the luxuries of roof over our head, clean water in our taps and the ability to purchase food. It’s hard to complain about our first world issues (shoes recently ordered were not the same color as on the website; I can only find our favorite bottled water in plastic bottles, not glass; etc) because in the larger scheme of things, they seem so trivial. So stupid.
I know the reasons TheHusband has been restless: this winter has been long (we woke this morning to find a dusting of the white stuff everywhere and it has been officially spring for a week) and most (if not all) of his hobbies are based out of doors. Cabin fever? Maybe. Lack of constant sunlight? Very much so. After living in California for over a decade, shuffling off to the greys of Michigan is a switch his body is not prepared for. He needs to feel the dirt between his fingers, eating the fruits of his labors.
We are depressed and that depression feeds back and forth to the other. I’m tired of being cold, of wondering when we will have a day when the sun will be out and it will BE warm and not an illusion as it is today. Regrets of why I, we – us, did not pursue living somewhere south or warm. Friends on social networks talk about flowers blooming, wearing skirts and flip-flops and all I can think of wrapping up in layers of clothing and drinking hot beverages to keep myself warm, inside and out.
In flux.
How to describe, then, when on the surface everything looks fabulous but you’re in misery? Misery is probably too strong of a word, more like conscious of the missing element. Something is missing and has been long before we made the move, bought the house, obtained the job. I’ve talked with friends who also feel it, that sense of self that seem to have locked itself away for awhile. Is it, then, a search for self? Everything I have long worked for is finally coming together, do I simply just need a new big life project to feel happiness? Maybe. It is, perhaps, about being centered about what it is I’m looking for? Probably. I have found that I am not alone in feeling as if they are missing the element of something in their lives when everything else is robust and happy. But we don’t want to talk about it – not to each other, not in our blogs, not to agony aunts. We keep it bottled up until we burst forth like an uncorked bottle of soda that has fallen. Some of it is about finding the center of ourselves, others it is for a search for some kind of meaning. The internet was to bring us close together, to commune with those like us and yet, when it comes to the inner parts of our soul, we hide and seek because retribution of differing opinions on these topics can be brutal. But it seems that for all the social networking we do to be connect with others, at the end of the day we are still alone in some fashion or another.
I wonder why that is? No one has an answer. Bourgeois, aging Generation X syndrome. Far too young for AARP, too old to think waking up in my own drunken vomit is a good thing. A slew of generation problems that go beyond the basics. To harp on comes off as snot nosed, spoiled Western brat. To ignore, causes distress and pain.
That is my confession.

Introducing Throbbing Manor

Throbbing Manor

We’ve bought a house. A 3200 sqft, 1924 Arts & Crafts/English cottage-esque house in Heritage Hill, replete with a bootleggers ballroom in the basement, two fireplaces, and sitting rooms in the master and guest suites to name a few of its enticements.
Yes, I’m bragging.
The last two months have been a whirlwind of packing up our Royal Oak apartment, living in a hotel for nearly a month and finally closing and getting into the house. This is not including holidays, family drama/illnesses, job interviews, car related issues and other tchotchke like things that have been thrown in our direction. The night we moved in, we were in bed by 9:30. P.M. WednesdayThePug is beside herself because there is SO MUCH SPACE. In this period, I’ve discovered two things:

  1. A lot of people are into house porn. Beyond House Hunters and House Hunters International, I’ve had near-strangers on the intarwebs ask for images of the house just because they dug the style, look, etc.
  2. My husband is secretly a woman. There is NO (straight) MAN on the planet who will call you up and say, “Let’s talk about dining room chairs!” And mean it in a, “I’m serious, let’s talk about style/fabric/etc of said chairs.” This fully confirms that I missed the shopping gene at some point because if I have to look at another goddamned dining room chair that looks almost identical to the last dozen I’ve recently seen, someone is getting a boot up their ass.

It is these two lessons learned that I decided to start uploading a pic a day of the house, including before, during and after. The house, if you haven’t heard me bang about this in person, is a flip that was completed by a local man/company and took nearly a year to complete. The house was almost literally gutted to the studs but a lot of the original architectural detailings were preserved and added back in. Simply put, the before images will make you cry. The during photos are photos of us moving in, so expect a lot of empty rooms and random pieces of furniture. The after will be the “finished” room. The images will be haphazard but I will also be updating a Flickr set with the images and linking back to said set, which will be in order. The idea is to have regularly posting content (Monday through Friday) about the house that will not take away from regular blogging itself.
I’ve toyed with cutting myself off from various social networks to get back to some projects now that the house stuff is all settled, but that still may be a few weeks and everyone is clamoring for pictures NOW. With that, I introduce you to Throbbing Manor, our home for the next 10-15 years! It also fully confirms that becoming an adult apparently is to have a garage door opener.
x0x0x,
Lisa

Lisa vs the Laundry Anonymous

For the last several weeks, while we wait to close on the house, we’ve been snuggled up in an extend stay hotel. While this sounds super romantic and before you picture us like Eloise or even, $deity forbid, Suite Life of Zack and Cody, hotel living is not as gorgeous as one may expect or sounds. For example, we have a kitchenette which gives us a full-sized fridge and dishwasher, but no oven and a two burner flat top stove. The only dishware and cutlery we have is a two piece setting with a few extra plates. One pot. One food strainer. The sink is not large enough to do hand washing so we tend to run the dishwasher half-empty. And of course, the one cabinet in entire place holds all the dishware and the one pot. There is no room to house food or added cookery items, even though there is no cabinetry above the kitchen/stove/dishwasher area. Incredibly poor planning.
We were planning on bringing with us our non-perishable foodstuffs and cookery but there is no storage in the kitchen, or really anywhere in the suite. Those items are now in storage! A single, 10 hanger wide armoire and two medium 3-drawer dressers for our clothes and personal effects. Even for two people who donated bags and bags of stuff to Salvation Army before the move and only took enough to last a few weeks, it’s a little beyond tight. There is no additional storage space for personal items, bathing items or even shoes anywhere else in the suite.
I’m still seething with another example of why hotel living sucks with an example from tonight when I had a laundry war going on with Anonymous. This extend stay hotel is frequented by pilots, flight attendants and traveling business people and to make it more attractive, they have laundry facilities on every floor which is awesome. What is NOT so awesome is incidents like tonight when someone in the mistaken guise of being kind, pulled our laundry out of the washer and threw it all in the dryer and turned the dryer on high heat AND took over the washer, when I had a bag dirty laundry still sitting on top of the washer.
Now, I’m irritated as with living in a complex for the last several years, I\’ve gotten in the habit of setting timers to move laundry from washer->dryer (wash is 30 minutes, dryers are 1 hour) every time we did laundry so not to trap all the machines. Since hotel used same washer/dryer brand as the complex, I set my timer on my iPhone for 30 minutes appropriately only to find that at 33 minutes after I had thrown the laundry into the wash, someone had thrown the laundry into the dryer. The irritant comes in because half the load were items that were NOT TO BE TUMBLED DRIED.
I yank open the dryer door, pull out all the not-to-be dried stuff, throw in my fabric sheet and continue with the drying. Once I get back to our hotel room, I set my timer for 45 minutes to see if I can finish the rest of our laundry since Anonymous has taken over the washer. At 40 minutes, I waltz down to the laundry area to discover that someone had pulled our laundry out of the dryer and thrown it on top of the dryer, put their stuff from washer into the dryer and filled up the washer with another load. The load in the dryer was in there for some unspecified time as the dryer was stopped but the clothes were hot to the touch. They probably assumed since our (now few) items left in the dryer were already dry, so what was the big problem with taking a few extra minutes from our load?
I stomp back to our suite, wanting to wage war against the assholes who fuck with my laundry while Justin is rolling his eyes at my melodrama and my angry fist shaking. Reporting it to the management is fine, I GUESS, but it doesn’t really solve the issue because I have NO idea who it was, so I didn’t go running to management with my tales of woe. I was thinking of pulling some bullshit passive aggressive move (such as pulling their laundry from the washer, putting it on top of the washer and letting the washer continue on) but decided that I couldn’t be that much of a dick. 2011 is should not begin with war waging over stupid laundry, but hey, I have a theory that the more shitty NYE/NY day is, the better my year.
Thus, here is why hotel living is not the bee’s knees and why I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.
So I didn’t plan on turning this entry into some sort of rage against laundry anonymous because this entry was to be more of a short, hey these are my resolutions for the year, as inspired by Kate, and instead I paint a picture of me skulking about hotel hallways waiting to pounce unsuspectingly on Laundry Anonymous. I think of myself more of a “I’ll get you my pretty!” kind of person. With that, my resolutions and continuances will come tomorrow.
x0x0x,
Lisa

1. Drats. The realtor pulled all the interior images of the home and no, we did not buy the house at $115K.2
2. Then I got sucked into updating walkscore.om with information about our new neighborhood that was missing, which in fact raised our walk score. Woo!

Giving Thanks

I’m going to warn you that I’ve been hitting the bottle while TheHusband and I have been prepping our dinner tomorrow. My husband would also like you to know that the more I drink1, the more affectionate I get. Now on this topic, I think it’s a load of bollocks since I’m a pretty affectionate person by nature but he claims I’m more lovey dovey the more I drink. And of course he has examples, which only the annoyingly sober can do in times of pointless arguments like this one.
But I digress.
The last 12 months have been amazing in so many ways by the sheer amount of life crap we’ve crammed into such a short amount of time. This ranges from getting married, to finishing my second master on to our honeymoon, the travels I’ve done on top of that, the people I’ve met and all the other things I’ve accomplished.
I feel like I’ve been extraordinarily lucky not only for having an amazing pookie bear by my side (aka TheHusband), but for the sheer amount of genuine concern, help, outreach, friendship, love and support I’ve received in all avenues of my life, from the job hunt to the building of my Etsy store and everything in between. TheHusband always jokingly kids that, compared to him, I have too much faith in the kindness of the human population but if anything, the sheer amount of people who have reached out in so many ways to me this year- how can I not? I’ve been extremely humbled by how gracious and kind everyone has been to me, to us, in everything.
While I always make it a point to thank people individually when I’ve received something from them, sometimes I know it is more appreciated when the kindness is remembered later on. I would just like to say thank you, again, to everyone for not only enriching my life but for making me a much better person for it. Your kindness has been accepted with much humility and gratefulness. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

1. I’m currently at 2 bottles of Guinness and I’m feeling ALRIGHT MAN!

To: Enlighten – Allergies are not for the win edition

Recently it’s been discovered I have what is politely termed as “adult onset allergies,”1 which decided today to go into full force, which means any work I planned on doing today has gotten pushed aside in the “itcy/watery eyes, headachey feeling shoot me WHINE” makes it difficult to concentrate for tasks for too long. HOWEVER! I wanted to get get some updates about posts-in-drafts that were to have been published about some upcoming projects I’m working on.
In no particular order:

  • Alice and I have decided to learn a new (dead) language, specifically Anglo-Saxon (Olde English) 2. Details forthcoming (post is currently in draft status), but we’ll be updating Dead Language Society and I’ll be x-posting my entries here.
  • Kristin and I have a poster accepted to Michigan Library Association annual conference, taking place in November 2010. Our poster presentation is, Critical Error: The need for Michigan libraries to represent themselves online and it’s the beginnings of a (predicted to be) long-term research project. We’re pretty excited about this and will be posting a lot of our stuff (findings, research interests, etc) over at our joint blog, Librarianation. I will more than likely be x-posting library stuff between the two blogs.
  • The next installment of So, You Want to be a Librarian/Archivist? is also in draft status, with the subject matter of being proactive within the field of librarianship/archives. I’ve gotten prods from various people around the internets that I need to keep this series going.

Other updates:
Job hunt: Still unemployed and still interviewing but nothing concrete as of yet. To keep ourselves sane, we house hunt via Zillow in areas that I’m interviewing in as well as areas we’re interested in moving to. I’ve been collecting the links of the homes in these areas we’re interested in on my Delicious feed.
Walk, Don’t Run: Justin and I have been power walking nearly every day our neighborhood for the last two weeks, with the idea that next week we’ll start a “couch to 5k” like program next week. I’m not keen on this idea for numerous reasons, mainly that running feels more invasive to my arthritis than walking. I’m told this is bullarky, but I can only report what my bones feel. Our diet is going more or less okay, but we’re always looking to improve it. And last, but not least, Wednesday the Pug has had her bi-weekly bath. That is ALWAYS important to include.

1. Not sure what I’m allergic TO yet, but it was pointed out to me all of my health issues seemingly came into being after recently getting married.
2. Yes, Olde English is purposely misspelled. 

The Throbbing’s Wedding Mix

The Throbbing’s Wedding Mix [77Mb mp3]
I’m still working on the post from our wedding shenanigans, but wanted to put together a mix of songs that we would have played if we had a reception and the reason why I choose these songs. I did not change my name (too much paperwork, also rallying against TheMAN) but “The Throbbings” is a nod to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, in which there was a set of characters, Lord and Lady Throbbing. Throbbing has become our personal nom de plum and if we have sign up for anything together, it’s usually under the last name of Throbbing.
I used Audacity to mix the songs together and tried to blend the intros and outros as close as possible, but it’s not absolutely perfect. The track listing is as follows:
Home – Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros

Every couple has an “official” song, usually some Michael Buble remix or regurgitated Emo bullshit. We have Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, a band we both gravitated to after hearing them on All Songs Considered. Lyrics can be found here and YouTube is here.

Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan

Granted, this is not a typical love song by a long shot but Idiot Wind is off of Justin’s favorite Dylan album, Blood on the Tracks. This album was one we listened to on repeat on one of our second first dates back in 2008 and it is also one of our favorite tracks.

Somethin’ Hot – Afghan Whigs

I do not think I could put together a wedding mix and not throw in some Greg Dulli. The album, 1965 came out when Justin and I were together the first time around (’98-’99) and I played it CONSTANTLY. This track, in particular, always gets me feeling a tad bit frisky. YouTube video is here.

No One Else But You – Louis Armstrong

We both have a love for early Jazz/New Orleans Jazz/Swing/Big Band – pretty much anything pre-Bop. This song is from a compilation of Armstrong tunes that were recorded between 1925-29, entitled Hot Fives & Sevens.

Single Ladies – Pomplamoose

I fell in love with this band once their viral video for Beyonce’s Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) was making the rounds last fall. I started giggling when, during our wedding dinner, our friends Lauren and Eric kept commenting that Justin liked it so much, he put a ring on it – thus this song (and specifically this version) was included.

Cherry Bomb – The Runaways

I went out, begrudgingly, with Lindsay to see The Runaways this past week expecting that as history has shown, most bio-pics about bands tend to suck (more specifically, I was thinking this was going to suck because it has the Twilight goddess in it). But lo! It was actually pretty good and I had forgotten how much I loved early girl-punk (Lindsay hooked me up to keep on reminding me). Thus! This song got included because nothing says “true wuv” like overtly sexual suggestive songs. A video of the original Runaways singing it is found on YouTube (of course).

Ball and Chain – Social Distortion

Right, like how can I NOT include this song? Lyrics and YouTube video.

I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash

We’re both fans of the Man In Black, but, I was seriously contemplating including the Joaquin Phoenix version of this song on the mix instead of the Cash one because the first version of Cash I have is a terribly mixed live one. I found a studio quality version of Cash singing the song and removed Mr. Phoenix from the lineup. This is also one of our favorite songs. Here is 23 year old Cash singing this song on the Tex Ritter show in 1955.

Lover’s Day – TV On The Radio

Justin’s love of music that cannot be easily classified made me think that he would love TV on the Radio – and I was right. Well, he more or less would give them a strong “like” over love. Regardless, this is one of the first songs that we declared as ours and the one that reminds me the most of him. Since this was not a single, and there appears to be no video, only the lyrics are available.

Intergalactic – Beastie Boys

“Intergalactic,” the single off of Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys, was released in the summer of 1998, right when Justin and I started dating the first time. According to him, I listened to Beastie Boys, Lords of Acid, Sarah Mclachlan and Afghan Whigs nonstop during that period. Since I was not, for the sake of the story, sober for most of that period, I’ll take his word. In 2009, Justin bequeathed me an art poster based off of “Intergalactic.” I knew based on the first few lines of the song, and the history behind it in regards to us, had to go into the mix. Video is available here.

God Only Knows – Beach Boys

In the world of pop and rock music, one of the definitive albums that is still seen as the holy grail of influence is the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Any kind of music critic, if apparently worth his or her salt, will name check this album in their review at least ONCE, regardless of the song/album/band/genre they are reviewing. Most of my die-hard music friends also name check this album and agreed that yes, one should at least have Pet Sounds in their repertoire. For Christmas 2008, I indeed received Pet Sounds as a present from Justin. “God Only Knows,” in stereo not analog, is included in the mix. Again, with the stupid still photos with musical background only available on YouTube or terribly edited live version, there is only lyrics, which are available here.

Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division

I was torn about including this song, since it has many different memories associated with it but I totally wanted to reclaim it for my own again. I’ve always said if I ever got married, I’d want this played at my reception -so fuck the memories, here it is. BUT! As a bonus, Justin is the man who used LWTUA to satire it as Pug Will Tear Us Apart for Valentine’s Day – so obviously in ode to Wednesday, the song had to be included. While I know an official video exists, apparently on YouTube it\’s all about crappy cover bands, still images with the music in the background that take precedence on “official” shit. This version was recorded for the Peel Sessions and was edited with other material, so it’s slightly different than the studio. But I can dig it.

Pug Will Tear Us Apart (Again) – A Valentine’s Day Ode

As many of you know, I once had three adorable pugs. The pugs, siblings from the same parents but different litters, were obtained from Ex-Fiance #2′s aunt and uncle in 2000 and 2001, who were starting to breed the parents, Lucy and Linus. After Ex-Fiance #2 and I split, the pugs came with me when I moved to Grand Rapids from Virginia in December 2002. One thing I was adamant about was that I was to never split up the pugs as they had been together since they were weeks old and were my family. However, when I was planning to moving to Royal Oak, every single apartment complex, apartments and houses I looked at would not allow more than one pet. A tough decision was made that two of the pugs would be fostered to good friends of mine until another solution was found. In the spring of 2009, those two pugs were then given up to a Pug Rescue in Ohio because their health and well-being were my utmost priority and I could not afford financially or physically to get them back.
Since then, it has just been WednesdayThePug and I, who has also grown to have her own fan base, complete with her own Twitter account. Wednesday has always been an extenstion of my own personality — she’s haughty and clingy, she likes beer and boys, she’s picky about who cuddles against and she always loved me best of all.
Then Justin moved in and I was kicked to the curb in her affections.
Her schedule is our schedule, she is adamant about ALWAYS being between us whether it is on the couch or in bed. When both of us are home, she clings to Justin like his shadow, preferring to lay at his feet if he’s working, near his side when they are on the couch or sprawling on my side of the bed if I get up first. Her bedtime rituals is that she runs around and sniffs the comforter, then burrowing between us under the covers to lay between us, then she comes snuffling out to climbs up to the top of the pillows on our bed (pillow mountain) and will lay there, dead weight, until the morning. Other times she will burrow back out and sleep between us, on top of the covers, refusing to move the entire night making it difficult to adjust our own sleeping during the course of the night.
Wednesday turns 10 this summer and for this Valentine’s day, Justin wrote me a poem honoring her, to the tune of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
Pug Will Tear Us Apart
Wednesday nibbles hard,
And the temperature runs low.
And the snoring rides high,
With pillow mountain below.
And we struggle for sheets,
Under heavy pug load.

Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Why are my feet so cold?
I look to my right side.
Is this pug that flawed?
Thieving covers with pride.
A tranquil lump of steel.
That we’ve spoiled for life.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Do you cackle in your sleep?
My extremities exposed.
This affair’s going south.
My movement becomes bold.
I toss you from your perch,
You slither and claim more.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again.
Puuuuug, pug will tear us apart…again