Welcome to Chaos !!

Yesterday while driving around swamped with a ton of stuff to do I saw a dog running loose. A lost dog. I can't just continue driving and leave a dog on its own where it can get hurt so I pulled over and tried to get the dog to come up to me. The dog was scared but after a few tries I managed to put my sarong around her collar. She was wearing a collar with no tag. Since I was quite busy she had to ride along with me for a few hours and she seemed to be OK with that. She laid down and relaxed. Later on I had to drop her off at the Humane Society. I hope things work out for her, she is a very sweet and well behaved dog. Situations like these are difficult. I hope the owner comes forward but her toenails were long and her teeth were in rather bad condition, in fact when I gave her a treat it looked like she was uncomfortable chewing. Perhaps a nice and caring person will adopt her. Little Mama....such a cutie.

Hello. I haven't been here for a while because I am trying to deal with and adjust to my new "normal" and that is all I can say for now. But I am still here....and life goes on for all of us even when it's almost too painful to live. It feels like my soul is on fire right now.
I hope that everybody had a nice weekend. Back in the day I used to get anxiety on Sundays....more so when I was still living in Sweden and Sunday night meant that there would be school the next day. That anxiety or more of an uneasy feeling stayed with me for years afterwards and I know that it is a real feeling for many. Some have a really hard time on Sunday nights.....But before you know it the weekend will be here.
Here are some things that I have been doing since I last checked in....
My garden....so pretty, so colorful. I have veggies growing....WOW! I gave this big red tomato to my friend Mr.B that happened to drive through here last week on his way to a different destination. Mr.B is so very nice and a tomato is not really a worthy "gift" for such a good friend but that is what he got. We had coffee and talked for hours, it felt good.



More tomatoes......my Mom told me that this picture reminds her of when she would pick tomatoes and put them in her shirt, a long time ago when she was a young girl. I miss my Mom.



I found a place with locally grown and organic vegetables.....a super cute place.





That visit resulted in this.....pickled cucumbers! I am bringing two jars to Burning Man.



Yes....I am going to Burning Man. Sixth year in a row now. I am slowly preparing, I lubed the chain on my bike, one of the tires needs air.



I ate at my fave food cart, Ma'ama Jama's. Yummy.



What else? I signed up to volunteer at the Humane Society. But it's not a done deal yet....first there are some formalities and training next month and who knows, I might go in the first day and decide it is not a place for me. You never know. I love animals though.....



We had a pajama party at work all weekend. How many girls dressed for the theme?
Like three. I was one of them. The girls did not want to be without their platform heels and their usual outfits, they felt that they would not make money dressed in pajama stuff and slippers. Yes...those high heels make wonders for legs and butts. I got these slippers at Walmart for $9, they are great. I felt short compared to how tall I am when I wear my seven inch platforms and my feet were happy.
I got a guy kicked out....well the bouncers decided to kick him and his group out after he had mouthed off a bit too much to several girls, I just happened to be the wrong one to get smart with. And he was from Croatia.....yeah no wonder he thought he was being better than the rest of us. I know plenty of people from former Yugoslavia and I can say this....many of the guys from there have a crappy attitude towards women. His friends that were cool, said that he was an asshole in general and he just would not quit mouthing off to me even when I tried to be nice and ignore him. Finally it got kind of heated and the bouncers were like....what is going on here? I stepped to the side and they decided he had to go. Bye.



I got acquainted with this French mastiff (Dogue de Bordeaux) today, a big and friendly boy - Quincy. He lives with another mastiff and two pugs in an amazingly animal friendly house.
I want to live like that one day.



And that's it. I am not sure when I am writing again. It could be this week or it might be after I get back from Burning Man....I just don't know. I sometimes feel that I have said everything I want to say, that I am done with the blog. I have felt like that this whole year. But then another part of me loves writing, sharing my thoughts and taking fun pictures to go with the writing. Another reason for not wanting to write the blog anymore is that I simply do not want certain people to know anything about me anymore. That is how I feel....not sure what to do. Anyhow....it's almost 1 am and I am going to bed.

Today I decided to bring out my frugal side....oh yes I have one of those. When I find change on the ground I get ecstatic!
I am always eyeing the ground for change, hawk style.
Anyhow....Oregon charges a ten cent deposit per glass bottle (not all bottles count though) when you buy whatever beverage that comes in a bottle. I have until now recycled all my glass bottles by putting them in a container outside my place when there is pick up for recyclables. But today I took my bottles to one of the bottle redemption locations and got $3.20 for them. You basically get your deposit back per bottle. So this is what I will do from now on. My daily latte is $4.75 plus I leave a tip of course. All that extra change that I find and bottle money will pay for a percentage of my lattes. Yeay!

I have squash blossoms (aka zucchini flowers) growing in my garden. I heard that you can eat them but I never tried them until yesterday. I went to a local place for dinner and saw that the restaurant had them.....so of course I wanted to see what it was all about.
I am not sure what they tasted like because they were filled with a cheese that made them taste like....cheese. They looked pretty on the plate though. Now the question is.....should I eat the squash blossoms that are growing in my garden? I'm scared! 🙂

So the night I put up those collages at the club is also the night they got taken down by one of the managers. He took them down after we (the dancers) were gone and put them in the office. I did not work at the club again for almost a week and I noticed they were gone when I returned. I had a talk to the other manager about it (we have two) and he took a look at them and thought that some of the images could perhaps be offensive to some of the girls. ???
I mean, the collages in MY opinion are funny, spot on and relatable and they are made by a dancer so how could they be offensive? If that is considered offensive to one of the other dancers then she must be a very whiny politically correct annoying person in general and I am myself definitely not politically correct. And I sincerely doubt any of the girls at the club would find this offensive.
Manager two pointed out a couple images in particular, one that is called "Menstrual Man" and the other one has a girl doing a pole trick when her baby happens to pop out.
OK, let's discuss those....yes I know that a large percentage of men are scared of menstrual blood (OMG GROSS), in some places women are shunned when they are menstruating and have to go hide somewhere until they stop bleeding. Getting your first period as a girl is often considered somewhat embarrassing and these matters should not be talked about loudly so a drawing depicting a man as a bloody tampon is of course cringeworthy for men. They can't handle it. On the other hand women should looooove getting semen all over their faces, preferably from a group of guys at the same time and we should enjoy swallowing it too, like it's a gourmet meal or something. Newsflash to men......that if anything is GROSS. And that is my opinion and I think majority of women agree. So period blood is disgusting and semen is like a nectar. I beg to differ. Period is natural and there should be no tabus about it.
Now the girl with the baby. First of all it is a joke OK. No baby has fallen out of a womb while a dancer has been on stage. Are there pregnant dancers? Yes of course. In fact we had a girl dancing until she was about eight months pregnant and no guys knew because she concealed it well and she was doing pole tricks. Somehow (I just don't know how) the baby managed not to fall out. In fact she is my absolute fave dancer at the club and she came back a few weeks after giving birth and looks amazing, better than most girls that never gave birth. I doubt she would get offended over the baby drawing.
I stood my ground and brought up the matter of the taken down collages with the owner.
He said he does not believe in censorship, this is America after all. And I was given permission to put them back up, although he too was a bit concerned that some random dancer might get offended. Well guess what, I am offended that you are offended. One more thing that I reacted over was the obvious mansplaining. Here we have men telling women how we should feel and react. I am completely convinced that we can make our own decisions over what we find offensive or not, we do not need a man telling us how to react. We work in an environment that is deemed adult oriented but some manager is deciding on our behalf that some collages made by another dancer might be offensive. Really?
I did have to write some disclaimers stating that the collages are not the views of management. I had no problem doing so. And the collages are back up on the wall.