Drumming for Hope

Between where the Farmer's Market and Art's and Crafts sections are located on the Embarcadero was a man who was absolutely bursting with energy and making music on a completely non-traditional homemade drum set. He banged away at his drums for hours never letting his enthusiasm falter and continuing to attract people with his hope.

The Pipelady & The Gnome

San Francisco, what a wonderfully diverse city where public transportation is actually a reality rather than just a discussion and every single person is completely free to embrace whatever the hell they feel like. While strolling through the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market my husband and I stumbled upon a stall labeled "Handmade by The Pipelady & The Gnome" manned by the gnome and his miniature buddy. Looking at his wares, I said, " Are these pipes?" and he answered, "To answer your question: yes, I am high!" That set me a cackling. I laughed even harder when a very proper looking lady in her 50's or 60's closely examined the incognito wooden pipes and her husband pulled her out of the stall saying, "That's not something you are interested in!"

Physical Therapy for your Best Friend!

In 2005 I adopted the world's greatest dog from Little Bow Wow Rescue in Southern California. She is a white fluffy little thing who is probably a cross between a Maltese and maybe Shih Tzu and definitely the world's happiest little girl. She was left at the OC Animal Care Center by people who said she was found as a stray (yeah right, as if this starved little thing had any chance as a stray) when in reality what probably happened is that these people thought it would be fun to have a little puppy for their kids so they went out and got her (probably from a puppy mill), but what? you have to feed and groom a dog? and take them to the vet if they get hurt? what a hassle! So they decided they didn't need to do any of those things for her, not even when something or someone injured her severely as a very young puppy. Nope, they didn't even take her to the shelter then of find a rescue group to fund her care. Instead they let the injury stunt the growth of her femurs which left her permanently crippled. By the time LBW got her, she was already fully acclimated to life with two extremely damaged hind legs. In the time that I have been lucky enough to have her, she had always been little miss speedy, but I noticed earlier this year that she was walking more on her front legs and using her rear legs less and less so we ended up at CARE which is a rehab center for our furry little friends! Dr. Waldman established that my little Lily had torn her cruciate so we began eight weeks of physical therapy which included acupuncture, physical therapy, and water treadmill along with exercises at home. Eight weeks later she was pain free and had gained almost a pound of muscle! That's a lot when you only weighed 5lbs before! Did I mention that CARE is located in Santa Monica? It was about a 45 minute drive one way in the carpool lane (my human best-friend rocks!). They do incredible things there, making dogs who can't walk, walk again. The staff is great, my favorite techs are Steve and Juan. Lily and I miss seeing them twice a week, but we try to keep up with her progress by swimming in the bathtub and doing the physical therapy we learned there a few times a week.

Poopie bag dispenser!

While I was working on organizing my friends stuff, I came up with a seriously simple but kind of cool solution to storing the doggie poopy bags that she uses to discard kitty litter. She uses biodegradable corn starch bags that come in packs of something like 100, but the problem with them is that they come in a plastic bag without any way of dispensing them one at a time so they end up scattered and completely unruly! So I simply took an empty Keds shoe box and cut a rectangle at the top (which basically was cutting out the logo) with an Exact-o knife, which made it like a doggie bag dispensing Kleenex box! I was pretty excited about it, but I guess it really is just a glorified Kleenex box!

What to do when you don't have a job? Make stuff!

Last Saturday I was totally bored because I'm only working one day a week at Dogma, a dog boutique in Newport Coast and I'm also doing a little personal assistant work organizing a friend's house, but seriously? how much time out of a week does that take up. So since I quit my job as a vet tech at an animal hospital in December because of a pretty emotionally abusive supervisor, my motto has been: When in doubt, GET CRAFTY! My first attempt at making a dog bed yielded nothing but one of my new favorite terms, "tippy tippy canoe," and two very blobesque dog beds (of sort). After recovering from this first disaster of creating fluffy clouds for my puppies, I returned to the practice several months later with a renewed sense of urgency (I probably just had to pee). Even though I had discovered this really super cool tutorial at Lorie Marie's Pretty Little Things the result was rather dismal which caused me to strike out on my own! This yielded a blob kind of shaped like a canoe. Well, months later, I rallied and came back with this strawberrylicious bed. I used black duck cloth for the bottom, an old stained towel for the inside bottom and flannel material for the bumper. The second time around, I still kinda misunderstood the instructions because lets face it, I have absolutely no idea what I am doing, but everything turned out all right. Oh, when I tried to stuff it under the sewing machine to close it up, I knocked every single item off my desk nearly giving two of my puppies a heart attack and was standing over the bed using my considerable body weight to try to keep the seam going. It isn't pretty, but who cares? My dogs sure don't!

Taking pliers on a plane???

So, I am going to my cousins wedding in San Francisco next weekend and my mom made me an absolutely amazing necklace to wear, but there's a catch. The stones on the triple strand necklace are so heavy that they keep freeing themselves so my mom said I should take a pair of pliers with me just in case... We are flying from the OC to SF and I wasn't planning on checking any bags and I am pretty sure there is no way I could bring a pair of pliers on the plane with me no matter how innocent I look or how well I explain my accessory situation. I could probably pick up a pair of pliers once I get to SF, but I won't really have time to stalk down some handy dandy pliers with all the matrimonial events surrounding the weekend. Hmmm. Would it be tacky to wear a possibly disjointed necklace? Well I guess it doesn't really matter because everyone will be focused on the bride and groom, but I still like to pretend that it is all about me. I am really excited to meet the bride's mom, I hears she's around 4' tall and at a smidgen over 6' plus heels, I plan to tower over her. I bet she's the cutest little Asian mama.