02.21.08

“I can guarantee that if that gets hot enough it’ll explode!”

Posted in Shop Updates, Uncategorized, dogs, spinning at 3:30 pm by wendy

So, small town life is not without its big city hazards, that is to say, the crazy busybody old man who wants to know what it is you are packing, and then without listening to your answer, tells you that it is ILLEGAL to send in the mail what you are sending, that it is a CHEMICAL and there are LAWS and it will EXPLODE! And so on and such forth.

For the curious, it was a gallon bottle of Fibermaster, a scour discontinued by Louet. It is lovely and the continued availability of it will be missed.

But it will not explode. Not unless you attach some dynamite to it. I just shook my head and politely disagreed, and I am coming to believe that the nicer you are to mean people, the more egged on to @ssholery they are.

But what is to be gained by being mean as well? Perhaps a shorter conflict, but a hell of a bad taste in your mouth. And I try to only put good tasting things in my mouth and keep anger and bile out. Trying. Complaining on a blog feels like a very clichéd and sneaky way of circumventing that hippy goal though.
Speaking of being hippies and trying to be better about putting our money where our mouth is and supporting local etc., we bought a bed (and frame)! You walk into this shop and smell delicious sheepiness and it’s all over, no other mattress will do.
We’d just been in Black’s Furnishings (Yreka’s furniture store) and bought a leather couch, pretty close to our idea of what we wanted, close enough I think that we’ll be happy with it for a long long time. We’ve been wanting leather furniture for ages, they’re better for Nick’s asthma, comfortable and easy to clean. We’ll keep it covered in blankets though because the dogs can be rough on furniture, what with their nails and stealing milkshakes. Blankets can be washed easily, upholstery just sucks up the dander, even with our carpet cleaner.

Anyway, Crivens likes it.

We had thought about ordering a furniture set, finding exactly what we wanted.

Turns out, Crate and Barrel makes exactly what we wanted. But this is still not the world where we will pay that much for furniture…even when we tell ourselves that it will last us twenty or more years…

And it turns out, we really needed a couch. Crivvie was peeved when we gave away her couch (our only couch) before moving, and the movers didn’t show up when we had been told to expect them–turns out we could have stayed nearly a week longer visiting our families, no big deal, right?–so we’ve been eating our meals hunkered on the floor.

Of course, the couch doesn’t really solve this since the dogs have taken it over, but it’s nice to have a cushy place to set your tuchus now and again. I really look forward to the rest of our furniture joining us.

Hey since I took so long to post this, our furniture arrived yesterday! Yay!

Anyway, back to the mattress/bed topic.

We’d just been in Black’s basement trying out their beds and mattresses. The Simmonseseseseses are very nice, but with that crazy pillowtop, how the heck do you get sheets that fit and stay on?

Plus, Nick and I, somehow, are hard on mattresses.  And I don’t mean that in any flip “hehrheh, knowwhatAhmean?” wink, wink, nudge nudge way (well, not completely); I really don’t understand how two people who aren’t overweight manage to make such fancypantz mattresses as we’ve had get lumpy so quick.

We tried these fancy mattresses made of plastic and steel and I wondered how long they would last, really.

We were steered toward the Tempurpedic. I laid down on it and nearly freaked out.

Every time you lay down, or move, there’s this slight sinking shift. Which is what they want I guess, because according to the salesman you sink down to a level and then that’s it and everything’s even and your spine is in alignment with the spheres. Anyway, that weird motion without motion thing reminded me of that motion shifting of perception after lying down when you’re really sick.

I really don’t like that feeling.

Then there was that little discussion of “offgassing.“

We’d already called Shepherd’s Dream from home and Montague is the next town over, so they were our next stop.

And we laid down in the demo bed amidst all the sheepy smell, and it just felt like a good bed. Nothing fancy but a bed without chemicals, made locally and from locally raised sheep and processed conforming to organic principles. Any offgassing won’t be from the bed itself.
So there’s a saga for buying a bed, who knew there was so much to say about it?

But all the things we’re buying now in this frenzy of economy stimulation are things we’ve been waiting on, planning on.

For about four years now, anything big that’s needed replacing has been put off, and now we’re in what is basically a practice house. We bought a washer and dryer. Wow. A very nice washer and dryer. So they darn well better last. They are both supposed to be very energy and water efficient though. But slow. I’m kind of missing our old rental ones with three settings. Nostalgia, eh, whatcha gonna do?

On a different topic, I got the chance to meet up with my new friends, the Siskiyou Spinners and Knitters, or at least some of them.

Everyone was very nice and friendly. I didn’t have my wheel yet as it was Tuesday and the movers didn’t come until Wednesday, but I took my knitting and enjoyed chatting and watching, and finished the collar of my sweater. I still need to do the bottom rib, so no pictures yet, and it might be a while with all the unpacking we’ve to do.

I was blown away by the beautiful paint job of Jo Alice’s s17 though, created by her daughter:

I just can’t imagine anything more perfect.

And on another note:

It’s Tahoe’s birthday! Yay! Our little firstborn bastard son is seven today!

We may go on a little walk later, but Belu is still limping from some mystery accident (we heard a thump on the stone tile floor in the middle of the night and now she’s limping. So, not much of a mystery really. ) and Crivvie just stopped limping from the Jackrabbit Incident.

We were walking in a field and a guy walking his dogs around a neighboring hill flushed a big, fast Jack across our path.

Thus we discovered that Crivvie actually does have some prey drive, and she got pretty close.

But the wily Jack led them up and around a hill which had a lot of volcanic rock, and we got them back with cuts all over. Tahoe had blood dripping from his chin, so he may have biffed it or run the Jack into a hole out of sight. We’ll never know, since none of those involved in the incident are talking.

Most of the damage was self inflicted because of their double suspension gait and the interference, so I think we’ll have to get muttluks (or similar, if someone out there has experience with dog booties I’d love to hear opinions–I like the long liner cuff of the muttluks but it looks like the ruffwear booties fit well) with those long cuffs to protect their legs, and the paw coverings will also help them from knocking the tops of their toes.
Since Tahoe is white, his wounds looked most dramatic:

But we took them home and washed their wounds in a tub full of warm soapy water, and after all was revealed to be relatively minor despite all the blood, sprayed them with WoundKote, and let them be.

No one had any wounds that needed stitching, or breaks, thank goodness, although Crivvie’s limp worried us for a bit. But nothing was broken, or even very hot, so we let it go. She had really gouged the heck of the back of that front leg, and had a cut on the edge of that pad, so that may have been the cause.

Amazingly, that was the only cut pad out of the whole deal, and she’s done worse to her pads playing on the deck at home.
And since Tahoe had run up to a bloated looking fox terrier-type at dog beach the Sunday night before the movers came to say “hi” and got a bite in the side as a reward, we already had an anti-licking cone and him on precautionary antibiotics.

So we’d been putting the cone on whoever seems to find theirself most delicious at the moment.

And hoping this is the end of dog injuries for a while. Dogs are such fast healers though, everybody’s nearly a hundred percent again, except for Belu’s limp.
And Belu bit her tongue during the Jack Incident. Which made a nice change from her biting Tahoe or Crivens or me or Nick’s juicy upper thigh, even if by accident.

Heavens to Betsy, sorry about the novel!

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