It's Hot

I know... I shouldn't complain since our warm weather is so rare, but as a seattle native I must say 90 degrees is just TOO HOT. Now if I am on the coast and their is a breeze 90 is still ok, but here in the city I prefer 70-75.
I came home from work and took a cold shower then took blanche out for a quick potty break. She thought it was too hot also. I didn't eat a whole lot today because I was super busy at work and, well, hot. So I have kind of been scavenging my kitchen to find something. I ate a date, put a little bit of cashew butter on it, I couldn't resist. Couldn't decide what else to eat. Drank a big glass of water thinking maybe I needed to hydrate before my body could properly register what it wanted. All I can think about is watermelon juice, but no watermelon around my house. I decided to make a juice. Which I never do because it takes so much food and I usually add something that makes it taste gross. I was thinking about this good juice they have at chaco which is apple cucumber and basil. Then I thought, I should add celery because it has lots of electrolytes. Then I did and it tasted gross. So I thought, maybe an orange will drown it out. No, still gross, just spicier. I pretty much downed it, didn't want to waste it. I know you are supposed to drink juice slow but I just couldn't do it. I had another date to wash it down. Now I feel pretty content.
Someone give me some good juicing tips??? It should be easy, I think where I go wrong is in my proportions, oh and adding that extra thing because it's healthy, even if it doesn't go with the other things.

Last night my dad didn't make it to my house until after 10. We were planning on going to get food but by then everything was closed. Instead we all just hung out and visited for about 40 minutes. They met my uncle billy in federal way (about 40 minutes from my house) and left the motorcycles at his house and drove up to seattle. On the right is my Uncle Billy (obviously not biologically related), then my Dad, his daughter (my half sister no one knew about, not even dad, until about 3 years ago. She's nice, you can see the family resemblance), and her husband. Alas, I am not in the picture as I had to take it, but you can picture me a good 6-8 inches shorter than anyone else standing in the front.
I think I will try and take a nap. Maybe when I wake up it won't be so hot!

friday night lights

Got these new shoes today which will make it totally safe to run in the evenings being that the neon colors will reflect car headlights and keep me from getting hit. At least thats my theory. Having a white dog probably does the same thing. I usually get all my shoes from the sneakery a local woman owned shoe shop by my house... with a cool name... and lots of vegan shoes... but I wore through my old pair of tigers and wanted more just like em. Except a new color. I got them online through zappos and since I was already SURE what size I needed I didn't worry like I would normally if I were ordering shoes or clothes online. They came the next day. Gotta love zappos overnight service with no extra charge. Now I just have to figure out in any of my clothes actually match these shoes. Maybe I will just go naked, they look great with my tattoos ;)
haha
My dad is gonna be blazing through town tonight with some other family members and we are gonna get some dinner. He is at the tail end of a 3 week motorcycle road trip and is stopping here on his way home to ellensburg. No, I am not from ellensburg, don't worry. We are going to a burrito place so my plan is to bring a giant "taco"esque salad and maybe if we eat on the patio they wont notice. Or maybe they wont say anything with my gigantic dad and 6 ft tall uncle there... I mean, bikers are supposed to be scary, right? I will get a family picture.

The end of a long day...

Thanks for your kind words about the "incident" this morning. I was clearly more bothered by it than blanche as she promptly rolled over onto her back and fell asleep after our run. Dogs are amazing.
Work was long, and hot, and only my Tuesday. Tomorrow should seem like a slightly shorter day as I have (dun dun dun!) another coffee tasting. So donuts and coffee tasting (and spitting out) for me tomorrow. Even with swallowing very little of the stuff I felt like I was buzzing last time after we were done. It will go fine though. I was so worried last time and it really wasn't a big deal. Well the coffee tasting will take up a good portion of my morning and then I have a ton of stuff to do around the bakery. I think the only reason today seemed so long was because I had to stay til 5pm and I am normally of by 4pm these days so my routine was different.
I made a yummy dinner tonight to make me feel rewarded for my hard work. Lasagna and a salad. I didn't have any cheese, which was fine because frankly I have had way too many nuts lately... and a little bit more fat than my body can handle as well. For the next few days I am trying to lay off the denser fats (nuts, seed butters, coconut butter gasp!!!) I can feel that for me nuts are not my best friend. A little on occasion seem to be ok, but if I am eating them everyday I start feeling bloaty and my skin begins to get a little itchy (candida anyone?). Seeds seem to be a little better, especially if I am getting lots and lots of greens. I should probably pay a little more attention to food combining but I gotta say fruit+fat=love.

I think I shall retire to bed with the dog and a book. The mountain was looking especially beautiful last night so I took this photo for everyone to see how lucky I am to live where I do. Alex went with friends to western Washington to the hoh rainforest. I am anxious to see what he thought since he hasn't spent much time in the dense woods being a socal native. Click on the photo for a better look :)

good run, bad dog

not my dog, she was an angel...
We have been running more regularly and we pretty much follow the same route. I map quested it so I know how far we go. I have been adding a block on every other run or so, gradually increasing our millage. Today was kinda a bummer. Blanche was lagging behind a bit. I don't know if she was tired or just wanted a chance to sniff around a bit. Well we were having an otherwise good run and she had picked up the pace a bit and this dog came out of his house with his mom, off leash of course, and saw us and ran down the stairs to attack blanche. On leash OF COURSE. The mom was yelling after him but he wouldn't stop. I tried to yell no at him and pull her away for a second hoping the mom would come grab him before they engaged, but the dog was biting at blanche so I had to let her loose. I couldn't try to pull her away while another dog was biting her. What a betrayal that would be. I had to let her fight back. Luckily the mom came soon and pulled "washoe" away, I pulled blanche away. Neither seemed to be hurt. It would take a pretty furious lab (which he was I guess, but not mad enough) to put a mark on blanche. She has skin thicker than an otter.
It was a bit upsetting though. You know the feeling after a traumatic even where the adrenaline leaves you and you start to cry? I almost had that. Definitely a little shaky. It's not as if this is my first dog fight. Many of the dogs I had growing up were dog aggressive, we did dog rescue and fostering and we would have dogs in and out of the house and the slightly more than occasional fight. I also taught dog obedience for a few years and saw and had to break up the occasional fight then... but I guess it's different when you have a pitbull. You are so worried about your dog being a good representative of the breed and so worried that if your dog hurt another dog, wether they started it or not, that your dog will be blamed and taken away from you and put to sleep. If someone tried to put blanche asleep we would go on the run. Like fugitives! Also I got a little taste of how blanche must feel... I understand better why she is fear aggressive with other dogs while on leash. We couldn't get away. This other dog was attacking us and ran at us, and he was free and we were stuck. She must feel defenseless and cornered :(

I am pretty bummed because she is 3 and I have had her since 4 months old and NEVER EVER let her get in a fight. I know she didn't start it but I have been working a long time to slowly diminish her aggressive response to other dogs and this may have permanently set us back. I am mad at the lady. I am sure she didn't intend for her dog to get in a fight this morning either but I expect more from someone who knows their dog is dog aggressive. NEVER let your dog outside offleash. Well really, if you don't know 100%, 1000% really that your dog will respond EVERY TIME you call his name he shouldn't be offleash outside by a road aggressive or not. What if they had gotten into the street and a car hit them?!
Anyway, I expect someone to be as responsible with their dog aggressive dog as I am with mine. This psychologicay damaged my dog. Now every time she sees a black dog approach her she is going to react with fear and aggression.
Ugh. Sorry to be dramatic, and post this bummer blog. I have just been working so long and diligently to prevent her from EVER getting in a fight and this was out of my control.

Ice Cream Party!

Tonight we had an ice cream party... not that I haven't been eating ice cream all day...
Chocolate and vanilla banana splits with sliced strawberries and strawberry and fudge sauce.
Chuck's filling me in on all the olympic scandals while I type this

sunday

well for ME it's sunday... The last day of my weekend... boo hoo.
It's always so sad. I feel like I got a lot done these last two days so at least there is the sense of accomplishment alongside the grief at the brevity of a two day weekend. I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen and picked up a bit in general. Although it could be a LOT cleaner. Chuck (my boyfriend, that's his nickname) and I went grocery shopping together last night and got enough for the week. So I probably wont get a spud order this week. I got to read a bunch yesterday which was nice and relaxing. I made ice cream. Lately I just want Chocolate and Vanilla. Nothing complicated. I got LOTS of salad greens. And for some reason i decided to shave my head. Well this is how it happened. I was like "ugh, my hair feels so dry from ironing it all the time, and I am sick of my mullet." So I thought, oh, I can just go get it cut all pretty short and let it me curly and hopefully it will be cute and really low maintanence. Then I was feeling very impulsive and I was like "I don't want to pay 30-50 dollars for some hair cut that I don't even know if I will like!!!" and then I got this idea that our clippers at home had a comb on them that would be about 3 inches long. HA. So not true. So I set them on the longest setting and started shaving my head. And now I have no hair. It's ok, I have had a shaved head before so no big deal. My hair grows really fast. It is super nice and easy though. Last night I just rinsed it out and put coconut oil on it and I was done. And this morning when I went running I didnt have to figure out how to put it back out of my face, which was a pain with my mul-hawk.
So you should all tell me I still look like a girl and I am cute so that I can feel ok about the fact that I have the same haircut as chuck.
half joking. half.
PS you should all take a glance to the right and note that the next hp movie comes out in 100 days! So like right as I am finishing up with the challenge. Maybe that will be my reward!

green sandwich

I realized that with my week being so busy I have not gotten salad greens. I actually haven't eaten a green salad in days. Weird! So I had a green sandwich to make me feel better about the lack of green in my diet. I am going to have a green salad for dinner too. Dessert is going to be the same as breakfast though... chocomole pie. We are watching olympics right now. Sychronized diving is CRAZY!