quarter pound with cheese

this week, claire lost .25lbs. she is now under the big 2-9. last night, i swear i almost felt a rib! this is what she looks like after we run. so cute.

a plea

please do not use the term "recessionista" or "recession chic". these sorts of ridiculous neologisms cheapen the english language. i have had a permanent furrow in my mental brow since i first read about it. for my sake, and for the sake of our linguistic destiny, please refrain.

who let the dogs out?

well, today, i returned the "small" collar, whose ends didn't even make contact, and bought a "medium" harness. on the way to petco, i thought about how preposterous the canine sizing guidelines were, given that my dog is clearly "small". turns out, my little dumpling is lucky that she is an "M". the harness barely fit when set at the very biggest setting. after i took it off, i could see an indention left where a fat roll folded over the harness strap.

in addition to being portly, miss claire is very submissive. tonight she rolled over for two stuffed animals, the wizard and moo the three legged cow.

i am very obviously drawn to dogs with self esteem issues. lucky for me, i am also not introspective.

a new member of the club

meet claire. she is a dachshund that i adopted from the humane society yesterday. i wasn't really even looking to get a dog and the breed really entered my consciousness only this past thursday (long story), but we really had a "moment". she is very calm, affectionate and obedient. in addition, she is so submissive that to greet you, she walks up to you and rolls over. she has perma-wrinkles on her chubby ankles/wrists, which are really what won me over.

there is one problem. she is ten pounds overweight. that doesn't seem like a lot, i realize, but she's 29 pounds so that's roughly 1/3 of her body weight. she is still pretty agile for a dog that would be considered morbidly obese but does have some trouble with some of the more complex body maneuvers. when she rolls over, she rolls the front half first and then the back half plops over like a really slow sling shot after a little while. she also has trouble keeping balance sometimes when she's trying to reach around to scratch an itch above the base of her tail. her (giant) butt jiggles when she walks.

so we're going to have our own biggest loser (blake said he would be "bob" the trainer and i would be "gillian") and see if we can't get this little lump of sugar to take some weight off. i'm going to try and get her down to 20-22lbs. until then, i will be calling her "eclair", which is, roughly what her body looks like right now. this afternoon, she told me that she didn't know if she was fat because she was sad or sad because she was fat. it broke my heart.

and in case you are wondering, i am still planning on getting a dane, i thought claire and paul could be friends.

in case. . .

you're as crazy for pots and pans as i am, a great article by the curious cook:

new york times

black like me

i spent the weekend in dallas. i bought black lip gloss and it's awesome (i actually mean that i'm kind of awesome for buying it). i have shades close to black but they all have crimson or eggplant undertones. this true black is a limited edition shade by ysl and is inspired by their fall collection. in my perfect world, all androids and robots (which is what i refer to as people) would look like this. since it's not my world nor is it perfect, i guess i will fake it by taking style cues from this femme fatale automata for a while.

i have worn a diluted version for my family and then full on for lesley. she didn't have a remark, just a gasp. i guess that's cool. right now, with my hair shaped as a birds nest, the addition of the black gloss and time of year makes it read more like halloween kitsch rather than goth android chic. may have to push the launch date to mid-november. off to tweak, don't stare, it's not nice.