portland mama and events, food, and visitors

it has been about a week since the last post. since the new t.v. season has started, and the new receptionist valerie and i have moved our walks to after work (getting up at 5 am just wasn't cutting it), that leaves little time for blogging during the week. i'm not as much of a t.v. junkie as i once was, but there are a few shows that i must see.

1. survivor
2. big bang theory
3. how i met you mother

and it has been a fairly painful week and i've been feeling a bit tired. so i decided in order to keep this post from being 100 pages long, i will just hit on a few of the high points. i've even broken it down into three categories.

1. events
2. food/cooking
3. visitors at work

(wow, a theme of 3s is starting.)

EVENTS
first off, getting up in the morning is quiet an event. one that i am not good at. so the best thing to my morning (other than seeing ray and the pups... of course) is my coffee. i love my coffee.

check out the cool chococat mug and coffee container.
chococat rules. he is the only cat i like.

then with the good, comes the bad. the worst part of my day is when i have to go work and leave the pups behind. they have to go into crates for their own safety. maisy has a history of book eating and i just plain ole don't trust cleveland. they don't seem to mind their little houses. they run right in them once they see that someone is filling their kong toys with yummy treats. also, they are pretty comfy, and asleep on the couch is just the same as asleep in the crate, and nobody gets in trouble. therefore, no one needs surgery to retrieve whatever foreign body object they choose to block the intestines.

trust me when i tell you that cleveland's crate is the same size as maisy's, although it does not appear so in the pic.

next, we are currently having an issue with the builder of the house next door. in order to save money on their part, they decided to use part of our fence to complete their fence. first they didn't even ask us if that was ok, nor did they take the time to figure out where the property line is and have cross over into our yard by about 10 feet. now here is the kicker.....they are giving us crap about moving it.
what a holes. i have felt like some kind of covered wagon woman all week screaming "GET OFF MY LAND!" they have come up with every excuse in the book to not have to move that damn thing. anything from "well you should have built your fence on the property line" to "can you move YOUR fence" to "are you willing to lease that land to the new owners." no, no, and NO!! "GET OFF MY LAND!!!!!!"

my fence is the big one on the left. see the marker with the little orange flag. that's the property line. they had it surveyed after we kept complaining and telling them they were over the line. that's probably 10 feet. not to mention that they have two jack russell terriers that could easily dig under the fence and get in my yard, or worse..dig a hole which would allow cleveland or maisy to get out!

now today it really didn't get any better cause i had to go to work this morning. a few good things happen, but were out weighed but a lot of bad things happening. but it is getting better. especially since we have popped the cork on a lovely bottle of wine, which i am drinking as i write this. but, before we returned home we stopped at the framers market where they were having autumn fest. we got two tea olive plants, and three other shrubs that i can't remember the names of, to put in the front flower bed for a really nice price. 5 plants in total for $35. yes mam!

greenville farmers market autumn fest. we will probably go back in the morning for some more plants. tomorrow is yard work day.
oh, and i got a small bag of bulbs to plant as well.

then i returned home and found a big package of mail on my front porch. i LOVE big packages of mail. this one was from portland mama. it was filled with newspapers and magazine all from and about portland. i think she really wants us to move there. what do you think?

loot from portland mama.
she loves me!!

FOOD
i'll try to make this short and sweet. here is my standard morning fare. homemade yogurt made with happy cow whole milk, organic bran cereal, homemade granola, and organic raisins. yummy.

check out the super cool chococat bowl.
one day i should do a post about all my groovy chococat loot.

i had tuesday off again this week, but wasn't able to get much done since my morning was consumed by dealing with my crazy client and picking up her dogs to take to the clinic (which is a whole post in itself) and the fence fiasco. but i was still able to make some bread, although not that well. sadly we have yet to eat any of it. i see more bread pudding in our future.

sad fallen loaf of bread.

also we are still trying to cook and eat all the produce that we bought at the farmers market last weekend. during the week we were able to polish off one eggplant, all the green beans, some more potatoes, most of the crowder peas, three peppers, one zucchini, and a yellow squash. (still to go are the heirloom tomatoes, an heirloom squash, an eggplant, a few small white potatoes, and two sweet potatoes.) i also have a big bag of carrots and three oranges that i need to use to make juice. i will also probably use the carrots to make muffins or a cake.

tuesday dinner: green beans sauteed in a little bit of bacon fat, potato salad made with sour cream, dill, chives, and bacon, and sun dried tomato and basil chicken sausage.

wednesday dinner: fried eggplant (crust made from parmesan cheese, flour, and cornmeal), sauteed zucchini and yellow squash, with a bit of happy cow pasta sauce.

wednesday night i also made a crowder pea salad with basil from the front porch, chives, onion, 2 small purple peppers (that turned green a few days after i cut them up...interesting), and a big red pepper. dressed in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, honey, salt and pepper. this i feasted on for lunch the rest of the week.

i also made these really great cookies, but i haven't got a picture yet. i still have some dough in the oven to bake up this weekend. since i actually have a recipe for them, that will be a separate post later.

left overs for lunch on thursday and friday. organic apple for snack.

i like to take my lunch as much as possible. since the weather is cooling off i can now spend lunch in my car. which sounds weird at first, but it is really lovely. i generally drive over to the park across the street, eat my lunch, whip out the pillow i keep in my car, lean back and read a book. right now i am reading 150 healthiest foods. between this book and real food by nina planck, the every day diet is about to take on some major changes, but again, that is a post in itself. good thing i try (but not always successful) to eat pretty good during the week, because it was all down a yummy hill starting thursday night. SURVIVOR!!!!!!! that calls for what? that's right folks....PIZZA AND BEER!!!!!! we got a simple cheese pizza from the little pizza place down the street (no delivery pizza at my house) and a samuel smith's organically produced beer. right now my favorite beer is pinkus organic hefe-wezien. then it was homemade cookies and organic ice cream for desert. of course on friday we had left over pizza and more ice cream and cookies. THEN today i broke my no meat at restaurants other than fish rule, and went out for the big exception to all the diet, local, organic rules....BAR-B-QUE!!!!!!

holy crap!!!!! ok now, ray helped me eat some of those ribs. but i did eat a lot of them myself. now i am full of meat and drinking some wine in a desperate attempt to thin out the blood before the arteries start clogging.

VISITORS
it is always good when i get special visitors at work whether they are human or animal, and whether or not they are really there to see me or someone else. this week we had a few really outstanding visitors. first there was THE MAN! mr. colby, cutest baby on earth. well colby really didn't come to see me, but came to see his aunt nicki. but he makes me smile just the same. my favorite baby. (sorry all you other work babies, he's the man). we also had a cute bulldog pup with a busted lip, and the BIGGEST dog i have ever seen in person.

this kid should be in a gap ad. well, minus the drool.
or a john deer tractor ad.

he got a little sad when i took his passie out to take a picture. he is sitting on my desk while aunt nicki had to go do something real quick.

little bulldog baby with a busted lip. ouch!

introducing truman. 210 pounds of love.

susan and truman.
susan is about 5 foot and truman probably out weighs her by a good 100 lbs.

susan's hand, truman's paw. wow!

yeah man, that's the spot! truman is the coolest. he is very well behaved and extremely friendly and loving. what a great dog! he really liked getting a tummy rub from ray and susan.

well folks, that's all for now. looks like there is still more to talk about, but this post is long enough. i still need to fill you in on my other exciting mail i got this week, the on going organization of all things photographic, my fall garden which has really grown with the new cooler weather, my crazy client and her two little dogs, the new change in diet around the house (we got raw milk today!) and of course those delicious cookies that we have been comsuming the last few days. also there are a few cool festivals coming up. there is the pumpkin festival in punpkintown and the used book sale by the friends of the library. not to mention the on going fence saga and food food food. but for now it is goodbye. have a happy weekend.

(i think my spell check quit working half way through the post....crap. and i am having some font/spacing issues as well)