Mad Zoo House

But dog owners? Uh, yeah. The pups and I met a friend and her new dog at a dog park and had the pleasure of meeting two 7-month-old Boxers. Cute little dogs. The male was, um, intense though. As the owner of Intense Boris, I feel pretty confident in describing Charlie The Boxer this way. He fixated on my friend's dog right away, and there was a stressful few minutes while Charlie's owner tried to get a hold of him to get him back on leash. Okay, disaster averted.

Until less than ten minutes later when a new dog and his person came into the park and the Boxers start the same greeting - barking and dominating the new dog until the new pup starting baring his teeth and snapping. Where was the Boxers' owner? Oh, he was outside of the fenced-in dog area pushing his daughters on the swings. He finally came in and after a few minutes got the dogs back on their leashes.

I hoped at this point that he would either take the dogs out of the park. But oh no. Those of us in the area during this last altercation had all left, but I was still in my car getting the pups water and a treat when I heard a lot of barking, and guess what? Charlie and Lucy, the Boxers, were "greeting" the newest arrival at the dog park, and again the owner was trying to get his dog under control. Cheese and rice.

As I mentioned, I have an intense dog. Luckily, 99% of the time his intensity is focused on the trees in the hopes of one day getting his paws on that elusive squirrel. The few times he's been intense (read: aggressive) with other dogs, I get him out of there ASAP. No second chances. It's not worth the risk. And I certainly don't leave the dogs behind and leave the fenced-in area. Tool.

However, my dogs are now exhausted and happy. And my friend's dog is freaking adorable. So overall a good morning!

Remember Psycho Kitty Moe?


"Bitch, where's my dinner?!"



(it's a good thing my mom doesn't read my blog)

I got a request for a brightly colored monkey. So, I give you, Mardi Gras Monkey.



Mardi Gras Monkey doesn't appreciate the heatwave either.

We're having a heatwave in the good ole Pacific Northwest. Ack. When I first moved here 8 (EIGHT? Yikes, when did that happen?!) years ago, there was maybe maybe a week in August where it was in the 90s every day. Not so much anymore. Now the high temps seem to come earlier and earlier. It's supposed to hit at least 100 today and tomorrow, before tapering off to the 80s on Wednesday. :(

My remedy? Staying inside and eating sorbet. I got this ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer for my birthday last year and have been enjoying the fruits (ba dum bum CHING!) of its labor, namely fruit sorbet, for a while now. The recipe is awesome in its simplicity:

▪ 1 cup cold water
▪ 1 cup sugar
▪ ⅛ teaspoon salt
▪ 2-3 cup fruit, fresh or frozen
▪ juice of 1 small lemon or lime

In medium bowl, combine water, sugar and salt. Mix well to dissolve sugar; set aside.

Place fruit in food processor work bowl with multipurpose blade; add lime/lemon juice and process until smooth. Add sugar mixture; process until blended.

Assemble and engage freeze bowl, dasher, and drive-body interface. Turn to Stir Speed 1. Using container with spout, pour mixture into freeze bowl. Continue on Stir Speed 1 for 15-20 minutes or until desired consistency.

Immediately transfer sorbet into serving dishes, or freeze in airtight container.

I made one batch using mango, pineapple, papaya and passionfruit, and the other using blackberries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. I am addicted.

Says a sticker at our favorite local bike store, The Bike Gallery. Recently I decided, in an attempt to save on gas for the car as well as an attempt to get into better shape, to use my bike as a means of transportation instead of just for pleasure. The Bike Gallery was nice enough to help trick out my bike with a rack to hold panniers and I was good to go.

The first time I set out to use my new 'grocery bags' my list included, but was not limited to, the following:

5 lb bag sugar
bottle of wine
~40 oz jar (not plastic, of course) applesauce
3 bags pre-cut salad mix
and a few other odds and ends. Did I mention I live at the end of a looooong hill? Quite adventurous. I made it home, and rewarded myself with some of that wine later.

Cut to now, a few weeks later, and according to my calculations (though I was told there would be no math) I have put over 40 miles on my bike in six days! I've been on my bike almost every day this week, gotten a nice tan on my arms (my legs are still pasty white, unfortunately), and have been getting the best sleep of my life. Go me! :D

Mr. Zoo House and I went to Seattle last Sunday to see the Giants play the Mariners. Now, I've been to my share of games at the ballyard (though I just learned that day that apparently another word for it is, in fact, "ballyard"), but in typical Candace fashion any new knowledge coming from the sports arena leaves my brain almost as quickly as it enters, so each game is usually like my very first game.

Anyhoo, while we were maneuvering our way past all the concession stands and other vendors hawking (is it "hawking"?) their wares ("Stop here for your complimentary gift! That means it's free!" Uh, thanks for explaining, Bubba.), I noticed a Chinese food stand and immediately felt embarrassed for them as they had obviously misspelled the name of their little mini-restaurant. It was called "Intentional Wok." It wasn't until I said the name out loud to El Fyd to point out how much smarter I was than the owners that I realized it wasn't supposed to be "International Wok." Oh no. It was intentional all right.

I suppose my embarrassment was fitting considering we were two of about 11 fans in the stadium/ballyard who applauded Barry Bonds rather than booing him.

Because I did today! Unfortunately, it was one of those skin prick tests for allergies. I only did the first half today and I reacted to every single one. Grass and mold are the main irritants, but cat and dog dander is also an issue. Fun times for the Zoo House. :(

And what did I do after learning this? Go outside and work in the yard. Why? Because my dander-filled dogs keep digging up my new plants that I put up to border our deck. So, I started Operation No Diggidy Dog and nailed some protective fencing to the deck so that they would stop digging huge holes big enough for them to crawl under the deck.

Now I'm tired and my right arm looks like I have hives.

So our neighbor came over the other day to borrow an item of irrelevance, and as a thank-you, he brought over red velvet cake. YUM. Keith, if you're reading this, thank you again.

Today when we got home from a hellatious bike ride, we noticed both of the neighbor dogs resting on their porch. Unable to resist such cuteness, I barged on over and proceeded to receive puppy kisses and, of course, get them ten kinds of riled up.

Is this what the jerkoff neighbor does after being gifted the yumminess that is cake? Get the neighbor's dogs all wound up? Yeah. I'm that jerk. I now need to bake something for the neighbors. Keith, if you're reading this, my bad. Sorry!

See it!


http://www.vaudecast.com/academypodcast/kinkybootsPPF.mov

My former work husband and I went to see this last night. Then we went to a neighborhood dive that I was previously too scared to go into. It's called Sassy Jack's and there is a sign on the door that says "Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women." Apparently Mondays are "men's night" at Sassy Jack's. Well, unless, as indicated by a post-it next to the "Mondays are Men's Night" sign, you are Jeff R. Then you are not welcome.

You know, in case you haven't been bombarded with ads for Father's Day sales several times a day like I have. This will be my second Father's Day since my dad died, and for some reason it seems more difficult than last year. Maybe last year I was still in some kind of shock and/or denial, and now I've moved on to the more interactive middle stages of grief. Fun.

It's been 20 months since my dad died. Normally "20 months" or "over a year and a half" seems like such a long time to me - like if you're planning a wedding, talking about how old a baby/toddler is, looking forward to a future vacation. But the 20 months since my dad has been gone feels like minutes. Maybe it always will. Maybe I'll always regret not getting home sooner once we knew he was terminal. Being told that you have a limited amount of time left with a loved one is a horrible, heartbreaking gift, but it's a gift nonetheless, and one I didn't take advantage of.

Here's part of the eulogy my brother wrote:

Dennis Aguiar
March 1, 1938 - October 11, 2004

My father grew up in the sparse and humble world of the sugar plantations of Papaikou. He didn’t have a college degree – in fact, he didn’t take classes until much later in life, yet he was the smartest man I ever knew. He was more intelligent and much wiser than my professors in graduate school. I read books; he lived life.

In my view, my father was a great man, but Hilo will never erect any monuments to him. No ballparks; no public buildings; no highways will bear his name, though he worked to build monuments to others, played sports with a vengeance, constructed buildings, and helped to develop this community.

In many senses of the word, Dad was a gardener. He enjoyed growing things. He grew three children and we are now each firmly established in our communities, married, and homeowners. He made sure my sisters and I learned the important values of work, honesty, and self-sufficiency. He encouraged us and provided tremendous support for our education. He made sure each of us got a college education and the “piece of paper” to prove it.

He grew relationships with his family. He is survived by his only sibling, our Uncle Ronnie, who has been a very important part of our family. Dad was also adopted into my mother’s family. The Perreiras truly treated him as a member of the family. My grandmother saw him as her third son. My mother’s brothers were among his best friends.

He grew great employees by developing their skills. He delegated tasks to them as their talents dictated and trusted them to do their best. We should all be so fortunate to have one boss in our lives like my father.

He grew friends by the bushelful, especially his golfing buddies. As far back as I can remember, my father saved Thursday afternoons for gold. Although his retirement years were cut short, he relished those extra days on the course and especially the 19th hole with his friends.

Dad also grew a community: Hilo. No, not by himself. He intuitively understood that to make your hometown a better place, you had to start with good soil, water, and sunshine. That is, you need strong values, a few key resources, and room to grow.

My father – like so many others – are the unsung heroes of American society. He did his duty in the U.S. Navy and grew deep, durable roots in his community. He was civically engaged in a plethora of public affairs that helped to make Hilo a stronger community.

He was a member of the Hilo Jaycees, chairing the County Fair when it was the highlight of community events. He was a charter member of the Big Island Portuguese Chamber of Commerce; a truer expression of community involvement cannot be found. Dad was also a Kiwanis and a Forester, whose members trusted him to lead them. He served his government in a variety of capacities when called. Dad worked to preserve the tradition of a rural school, Kalanianaole, his elementary school.

He did these things because they were the right things to do and he loved doing them. In all these things, he made all of us better people, who live in a better community because he worked to make it so.

Throughout the years, he had one constant in his life: our mother, his wife and love of 43 years. She is the solid rock who did all the “little things” – like feeding and ferrying us kids while running a successful business – that gave him time and the freedom to be active in community affairs. Our mother, who lovingly and patiently cared for him throughout his illness, never complained and was always cheerful.

My father understood what it meant to be a good citizen. He knew it meant much more than obeying the laws of the land, paying your taxes, and voting. He enjoyed – reveled in – getting involved in community affairs to make Hilo a better place.

Dad will never be gone. One hundred years from now, visitors to Hilo may spend weeks in town and see no outward sign of Dennis Aguiar. Yet if they probe deeply and ask around, his spirit will remain forever. It will be in the hearts of people who are better off because he grew the most beautiful plants: community, friends, and family.

No, he will never be gone, because he resides here in my heart and all of yours. His grandchildren will remember him as an old man, but we will teach them that he worked for many things that we all value: honesty, dignity, trust, dependability, responsibility, honor, work, family, country, and community.

My father knew how to savor the simple pleasures in life: hitting the sweet spot on a golf ball and watching it sail in a perfect arc to the hole; the crisp bite of a good scotch with a little water; watching his grandsons score a goal in soccer or hit their first homerun; the joy of getting up early on a Sunday morning to watch the Packers play; the thrill of helping a young couple finance their first home; and coming home to be with Mom.

We meet here at this time and this place not to mourn a life expired, but to celebrate a life well-lived. My father enjoyed simple comforts, but I think his example serves as a challenge to all of us, not to examine our lives with regret and sorrow, but to live life fully, to take a big bite out of life’s apple and relish its tart juiciness.

The family joke was if one of us kids missed our mom or dad's birthday, their anniversary, any of the Hallmark holidays, Dad would say "ah, you're outta the will!" Just so you know I haven't forgotten Father's Day, Dad. I love you.

1. The Zoom Groom For Dogs brush made by the Kong Company.


2. The ONE SWEEP BROOM.

Trust me, people. Buy them. :)

While I am a pretty good cook ifIdosaysomyself, I have not had the best luck with baking. I've been trying to work on that, and my latest project has been banana bread. I've gone through a few recipes, morphed some, combined aspects of some, tweaked a bit, and am finally happy with the result.

Those that know me well know of my various food issues - most of which involve texture. For me the joy of banana bread is in the subtlety of banana flavor, and I struggled to find the fine line between not enough banana-ness and the too-much-banana-mushiness akin to pudding. (I loathe pudding. I don't even like to say the word. *shudder*)

So you may want to add a third banana to this recipe. And you may want to add nuts. I personally believe that nuts should not sully the beauty that is banana bread (or brownies, but that's a different post, I guess), but that is your option. For what it's worth, I'm also the Crazy that grew up in Hawaii but doesn't go nuts over pineapple and coconut, and I like my peanuts boiled not roasted, so you can take my advice with a grain of kosher salt.

Banana Bread


2/3 cup sugar
¼ c butter or margarine, softened
3 eggs
approximately 2 medium bananas
¼ cup water or milk
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. vanilla

Optional additions:

½ c chopped nuts

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a loaf or muffin pans with vegetable oil cooking spray. Beat the sugar and butter or margarine in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, bananas, vanilla, and water or milk. Beat on low speed until well blended.

Mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Stir into the banana mixture until moistened. Pour and scrape into the loaf pan.

Bake the 8-inch loaf for 60 minutes, the 9-inch for 45-50 minutes, a small loaf pan(s) for 30-40 minutes, muffins for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool five minutes. Loosen sides of loaf from pan. Remove from pan and cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Our internet service has been down FOR. EVER. Or, since Saturday morning. I always forget how much I use the internet. Need a recipe? allrecipes.com. Need to figure out how to not kill my orchid? google.com. Want to find a contact number for my internet provider? comcast.com. Oops, can't contact my internet provider because I can't get online. And of course I can't look up the number on my Comcast bill, because I get my bills - you guessed it - via e-mail. I also don't even know if we have a phone book in the house because I use the internet to look up numbers. That, my friends, is how they get you.

However, we are grateful for the wifi coffee house down the street. Thank you BiPartisan Cafe!

A friend and I went to see Swan Lake the other night. Our husbands, shockingly, did not want to come. Actually, they both, independent of each other, when they found out that we wanted to go, said "You guys have fun." I haven't seen a ballet since the Nutcracker in 1990 or 1991. I really enjoyed it, and despite what my friend Stacie thinks, it is NOT about a guy "wanting to do it with a swan." The dancers were amazing, and the set was beautiful.

Of course, because our seats were in the second row, the main thing I came away with was that those tights on the guys leave nothing to the imagination.

It occurred to me that since my first post I have left my readers (all two of you) hanging by mentioning that two of our pets are of the psycho variety, and then like a bad tv-series, I only described one of them before apparently taking a brief summer hiatus.

Let me introduce you to Psycho Kitty Moe. Moe is short for Molasses. Molasses got his name because he was adopted at the same time as Gus, short for Asparagus. Asparagus was named after a cat The Fyd had as a child. And since my pet names have to "match" (my first three cats were Hamlet, Medea and Pandora, for the record) I knew we needed another food-ish name for Moe. So Molasses he became. Even though, as my mother kindly pointed out, molasses is actually brown, not black like Psycho Kitty.

Moe is one of those cats that can open doors. He can open kitchen cabinets. He has mastered opening the kitchen cabinet that has a child-proof (aha, but not Moe-proof) lock on it. He opens drawers. But not just any doors or cabinets or drawers! Oh, no. He only opens the door to the closet in the den where we keep his feather-and-bell-on-a-stick toy. He also only opens the kitchen cabinet which was the former home of the aforementioned toy. He only opens drawers that house the rubberbands (that I occasionally find all over the house when I wake up in the morning) - even when I move the rubberbands to another drawer. Unless, of course, he opens other drawers as well but then is kind enough to close them after realizing the rubberbands are not in there.

Moe is the feline version of Boris. It's rare to see such intensity in a cat, I think. He will sit in front of the closet door or kitchen cabinet where he knows his toy once was and stare intently at it for hours. Like Boris, his body almost hums from the unspent energy. I've decided that his talents are wasted with us. He should be sold to the Circus. Or perhaps the Red Cross - with his dexterity he could likely learn to take blood pressure or maybe even draw blood. At the very least, maybe he could earn his living with us by being a sort of helper monkey for someone bound to a wheelchair or whatnot. If, of course, the wheelchair-bound only needed cat toys and rubberbands.

Also like Boris, when Moe does decide to sleep, he does so with the same level of intensity. Just yesterday I went upstairs and found Moe and Gus asleep on our bed - they were each on their sides, fat bellies facing each other, all 8 paws tangled up in the middle and heads tucked down. The two of them made the form of a heart. *swoon* Massive cuteness. All is forgiven, little Psycho Moe.

Or, my anniversary! Yes, four years ago today I was a wound-up stressball getting aggravated by having to answer simple questions and just wanting to get the ceremony going so my man could get on his way to buying the cow. Happily the day is a great memory, and every year on this date we return to the hotel where we got married, have our picture taken in front of the lobby fireplace, then have dinner in the hotel restaurant. Last year was the first year they seemed to make note of the occasion and gave us a complimentary cake - coincidentally with a sugar calla lily on it, the flowers that I carried on our wedding day. This year we also got a chocolate cake with fresh berries on it. YUM CAKE! Oh, I mean, happy anniversary El Fyd!

So until a few years ago, the last time I had been on a bicycle was when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old - I remember riding around my neighborhood listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller on my walkman.

Then, we got a dog. A hyper, intense, spazz-dog (as mentioned in prior posts). Our trainer suggested bicycling with him and recommended items like WalkyDog bicycle attachments. It attaches to the dog's harness so the rider doesn't need to hang on to the leash. He tolerated it, but mainly he just likes to wander, pull, sniff and pee, so the walks are really more his style.

We took a brief hiatus from biking, but recently we started up again sans pooches - mainly just on the bike path near our house, which is often traversed by some hard-core cyclists complete with the gear, matching outfits, racing poses, etc.

Well, today I took my first "real" bike ride in the city, by myself even! I rode to my friend Kali's house, which was 5 miles and took 35 minutes. We then took a walk together for approximately 2.25 miles. Then I biked 5 miles home. yeeeeowza. It was a bit scary at parts, especially when I ended up having to cross Sandy Blvd on the way home and stupidly did so at an intersection without lights or a stop sign. And the hill on Burnside heading toward home is a killah! My legs and back hurt, but I did it. woooooo!

I just finished this baby blanket for a client's friend. Hopefully said client hasn't passed along my blog address to her friend. :P

It's a sage green with alternating puff stitches and a pale yellow border. And soooooft.


Here's another recent project - bright yellow, fuchsia and orange for a client's soon-to-be niece. Made me want sherbet the entire time I was crocheting it.

This little guy may be sticking his tongue out at you, but please don't take it personally. He's just a dog!

1. Banana bread cooling (two batches - one with nuts and one without)

2. Chili cooking in slow cooker.

3. Stew cooking in crockpot.

4. Tortilla soup cooling on the stove (for freezer).

5. Marinara cooling on the stove (for freezer).

6. Baked Ziti in the oven.

I'm exhausted!

What is it? What could this pancake- and Ziggy-like crocheted stuffed whatever be? I realize I should know, I made him. Or her.




I wonder if this is how the almighty felt when the aardvark* appeared.

Regardless, you can buy him/her/it at www.cozyyarns.etsy.com!



* This is in no way meant to offend any aardvark fans. You have to admit it's a weird-looking animal.