Happy Sunday: Good intentions

I love dogs, and still don’t want to pet yours

Me & the world’s cutest dog.

When I began reading Farhad Manjoo’s “No, I Don’t Want to Pet Your Dog”  I was expecting to hate it…but something surprising happened. Despite being an all-around animal-lover and owner of the world’s cutest dog, I realized that I don’t really want to pet your dog either (in the most general of terms). Here’s what Manjoo had to say:

“Sometime in the last decade, dogs achieved dominion over urban America. They are everywhere now, allowed in places that used to belong exclusively to humans, and sometimes only to human adults: the office, restaurants, museums, buses, trains, malls, supermarkets, barber shops, banks, post offices. Even at the park and other places where dogs belong, they’ve been given free rein. Dogs are frequently allowed to wander off leash, to run toward you and around you, to run across the baseball field or basketball court, to get up in your grill. Even worse than the dogs are the owners, who seem never to consider whether there may be people in the gym/office/restaurant/museum who do not care to be in close proximity to their dogs.”

Best photobomb ever?

My May Garden

I am a woman obsessed! Work gets slow in May, so I end up taking a lot of half-days and long weekends. Do I head off to the beach or the mountains? No. I head outside to my garden… and I just can’t stop…

If you follow this blog, you’ve no doubt seen my other gardening posts, and you’ve seen that my flower beds and vegetable gardens are my pride and joy. My lawn, on the other hand, is the family embarrassment.

Happy Sunday: Three Things

What do poverty, yachts, and gardening have in common?

On Friday nights I often curl up on my couch with a cup of tea and a movie. This week I decided to watch American Winter, a documentary that follows 8 Oregon families that happened to call the state’s 211 hotline looking for help with their desperate financial situations. It’s a heartbreaking movie, really. It made me feel guilty about every penny I spent on dry-cleaning and junk food over the past few days. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the gut-wrenching gist:

Happy Sunday: Your Huckleberry friend

In Defense of Macklemore

The other day I saw a Tweet from self-publishing success story Amanda Hocking that got me thinking. Here’s the Tweet:

There seems to be a lot of backlash against Macklemore & Ryan Lewis which seems…well…unfair. You know what else is unfair? Comparing any artist to the Beatles, as if every musical artist is supposed to be earth shattering. Not every musician can change the face of music, nor should they be expected to. But Macklemore & Ryan Lewis actually are shaking the ground of hip-hop a bit.

A Depressing Earth Day Tale

My conscience is heavy on this Earth Day. *Sigh.*

Last week I started noticing a pair of birds flying back and forth to the gutter above the window in my office–which has gutter guards on it. When I would go out into the yard I’d try and get a look, and eventually I caught the birds coming and going. Rain was in the forecast, so I decided to leave it, thinking a good rain would make the birds reconsider their choice. But either it didn’t rain hard enough, or the little guys started rebuilding. I put out a Facebook call for suggestions, and my friends told me rain and Darwinism would take care of it. Then my mother dropped by on Earth Day, and as we were standing outside, both birds left the nest so I decided to crawl up on the roof, remove the gutter guards and get a good look. 

Happy Sunday: The number one threat to women

Not Easy Things

Today I turned on NPR and heard Tom Ashbrook talking to Dennis Lehane and Ray Maliozzi (otherwise know as one of the “Car Guys”) about Boston, their hometown. This was funny (not HaHa funny, but you know…) because I’d been thinking a lot about Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day since Monday, when a friend who had been manning a water stand along the marathon route posted a Facebook update that alerted me to the unfolding situation in Boston.

The Given Day is about one of the most turbulent times in Boston’s history, the early 20th century. The Boston police strike of 1919 resulted in several nights of looting and rioting. And, of course, we’ve all learned about things like the Boston Massacre and the of course the battle of Lexington and Concord, which Patriots’ Day commemorates.

As I listened to Lehane this morning I learned about an editorial he’d written in the New York Times. “Messing with the Wrong City” put into words something I’ve always thought about not just Bostonians, but New Englanders in general: “Bostonians don’t love easy things, they love hard things — blizzards, the bleachers in Fenway Park, a good brawl over a contested parking space.”

We don’t love easy things.

If we did, we’d move somewhere with better weather. We would root for a baseball team that didn’t break our hearts year after year.

Happy Sunday: But I don’t wanna wait

Is it legal to be this amazing?

Me + Spring Fever = Bad Blogger

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. This is, in part, because I’ve been busy with work and it can be hard to come up with something to write after a long day… but let’s face it, I’ve also got Spring fever. When I’ve got an extra half an hour, I don’t want to spend it at the keyboard. I’ve been spending a lot of time cleaning up the yard and gardens, planting bushes, and even some cold-season veggies.

My new quest, though, is to get some wildflowers growing behind my fence (where my giant trees used to be) to help hold down the dirt and give me something to look at from my office window. In my imagination, it looks like this:

Happy Sunday: The bird said it

Happy Sunday: Perspective