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i have always been very strict about my boundaries with animals. i feel less able to draw these same boundaries with claire. i am smitten by her chubby forearms, by her giant rump, by her eyes, she's for sure a sweet one.

she is nuts about riding in the car. if i even open the door slightly, she bounds in and will not get out, and if i try to pick her up, she rolls over and goes limp.

this is a picture of her after she climbed in as i was loading up the car. i kept calling her name inside the house and she was nowhere to be found. she had been sitting in the car for at least 15 minutes, motionless, ready for action. she reminded me of one of those over-eager kids, sitting in the car, buckled up, repeating the spellings of words, even before the key was in the ignition. yes, like me.

a curious map

from the times. . .


larger version here

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