April is kind of like February.

Longest month ever.  And its so cold!  Way colder then March.  I'm exhausted. I'm feeling a little weird about work.   We have 12 Industry Events that we are planning, and we had our first one last night.
I feel like I may not be as valued as the other CIL's, though.  I'm very logistical, but I feel like sometimes I'm not really needed.  And like I'm really not valued.

Maybe I'm just being self doubting, I don't know.  I know I'm tired and that expectations are super high.  We had our first event last night and it went really well.  I just really hope they all go that well.  I'm feeling like I'm fluttering - we have 3 events in one week and we don't have enough professionals, are unsure about the seating situation, and for one event I don't even know what room they are in.

I just hope I  can make it through.  Worst though is that Jack died today, of Jack and Angie, Bill's mom's cousin.  I know it sounds distant but its not.  Its Bill's only extended family in the states.  He's very sad as is the family, and if I wasn't working so much yesterday I could have had an opportunity to visit with him one last time.  What a month.

To Sheba.....

Life is really not fair sometimes.  Today, my parents had to put their dog Sheba to sleep.  This is so sad.  Sometimes I just feel like my family takes hits constantly.  It's awful.  My parents are so sad, as am I.  I wish I didn't know this information for another 2 hours when I'm off work. 

Sheba was a beautiful Husky with an amazing personality.  As a Husky, she was an escape artist and once was found inside Binny's.  As my mom said, "She really is a Ford!".

She will be terribly missed, and I hope I can be a help to my parents during this time. 

Almost There!

I need a vacation.  So badly. I'm running on fumes at this point.  I'm burnt out. Out of creative ideas and energy.  But...finally what I have been working on (and off) is Mom's Cookbook!
Memories of Love From the Kitchen and the Heart.
I'm so happy and proud its finally completed!  But now we can only hope it comes in 9 days.  I'm kind of doubting it, so Amy mounted the front and back cover just in case.
Here are some of my favorite photos from the book:

                                       Mom, Cousin Jeanie, Aunt Carol and Uncle Denny Paul.

                                                   Me & Dad in Mom & Pop's dining room.

                                                                         Mom & Pop

 One of my favorite childhood memories was grilling outside, sitting at this table and braiding all the fringe.  And eating of course.

                   This looks like just a regular dinner at Mom & Pops. That's where I always sat.

 Uncle Denny Paul at the head of the table.  I feel like I can smell all the awesome food on this table.

        The "Nosh" portion of a Julian gathering.  Please note Bob Ford's famous Deviled Eggs!!!

                                                   Mom, Pop and Uncle Denny Paul.

                                                          Eating Amy's birthday cake.

                                                    Mom looking hot behind the bar!

                                     Proud Amy on her 8th (?) Birthday?  And that's THE CAKE.

                                                 The cover of the cookbook, Mom & Pop.

And there goes summer!

How on earth, is it that when you feel like as a kid that summer goes so fast, but as an adult it goes faster? Well, I lost my cord for my camera, and it was a teeny, tiny cord, so I had to do some fast magic to download these pictures.  Anyway, here is the rest of the summer is summary.
Work was mellow during the summer, now we have two new creative liaisons that started in the portfolio center and thus far, barely two weeks it seem to be working out ok.
However, here is the real reacap on life.

My lovely friend Amanda's birthday party!  She's third from the right and one of the coolest people ever.

John & Kadima's engagement party at the Bristol Renaissance Faire....amazing as you assume.

Bill and I at the Ren Faire, what a great and awesome engagement party!

Our lovely Christian and his girlfriend Jackie moved to Miami, and this was his going away party. He is a crazy talented cinematographer, and just a wonderful guy.  He worked at Sip Coffee House and we have known him for at least 5 years.  Hell of a guy, super sad that they moved.    But they're doing well in Miami, for now!

 Oh how I love Denise and Colleen, our downstairs neighbors.  This is Denise at her birthday party, straight off the trolley.  We are honestly blessed to have instant, awesome and amazing great people right downstairs.  It made the summer even funner, and makes it even harder for us to move!

Mr. Bob Sage was in town, Bill's best dude.  He's awesome, and a lovely man who is crazy smart and a wonderful person.  It was so great to have him around for a few days, Bill was over the moon with him in town!

 Ryan and Harper about to eat their birthday cake!

 How are these girls so grown up?  Sofia and Zoe with little Jimmy.  How in the world is Zoe a freshman?  I'm not ready!  I'm not ready!

 News flash!!!!! This hat is going to be on everyone's Christmas list this year!  I mean, how can you not want an Alevizos hat!!!!!!!

Our little bunny Jimmy.  check out those smudge legs!  I love him!  What a joy he is!
Hmm....anything else?  Lets see.  Work. Summer. Love.  Oh wait, sleeping dogs!

How can you not love those faces????

End of Summer Realizations.

Every August, I am the most destitute of the year.  Even more so then Christmas.  However, I am thinking ahead this year and I am working on making my Mom's cookbook which are a collection recipes from my Grandmother, into a cookbook for her.  I'm also adding mine and Amy's favorite recipes.
This is what I have so far: Taste Book. 
However, I'm switching over to Create My Cookbook because that way I can add family photos, and with Taste Book, although that one is fancier and more modern and sleeker, for some reason I can't change the cover.  And that bugs me!

September 1, we have two new Creative Industry Liaison's starting.  My boss, Caroline, is off to get married and move to Boston, so instead of one person replacing her we have two.  One is going to be focused on music and marketing, the other one on design, fine art, photo, illustration and advertising, and I have film, television, radio, dance, theater, journalism, etc.  I'm pretty freaking nervous about this whole thing.  I don't feel like I know enough yet. I came into this position before Industry Night, so it was a different situation then coming in at the beginning of the semester.  It's not like a regular job where you have XYZ tasks at hand, its about planning, attending and organizing events and meeting with students.  But I'm unsure how to handle this but I hope to handle it well.  I'm going to make this job what I want to - this is still my dream job and I want to be 150% for students.  That's the whole point.

And in family life, my dad has to have some serious surgery.  He had a lump removed, we're waiting for the biopsy results, but regardless he has to have surgery to pull up his stomach lining over his esophagus.  It all stems from Barrett's Esophagus which  runs on his side of the family, and its a 5 day hospital stay at Northwestern Hospital.  And having a double hernia removed.  It's a nightmare, and I'm scared.  But we will deal with it when it comes.  :(

Birthday Faces!

May is Birthday Month.  And August, too, but there are many more in May. Last night we went to Two Brothers for dinner to celebrate Joshie's 7th birthday.  Seven. How the heck is he seven?  I remember the day he was born.  Sigh.  He was so tiny and just a little peanut!  And now he's finishing up 1st grade and heading into 2nd. It's wild.

 

 We bought Joshie DC Skate shoes for his birthday, and he loves them!  He put them on right away in the restaurant! 

And finally, Lenny and Olive played and played and played and ate a camera and played and played for Lenny's birthday.

Then it was Bill's birthday, and we had a party. No photos, though because I no longer own a camera.  We had tons of food and beer, and it was super fun.  He got some gifts, I paid for the party and bought him a new subscriptions to  TransWorld Skateboarding magazine.  Last week was one of those weeks with something every day after work, so this was on Thursday: Bill ate this two days BEFORE his birthday from Big Star. 

My only friend from work had her last day yesterday, so Bill, Megan (whos leaving) her manpanion and another person from our office went to Big Star to say goodbye.  Ugh so sad. 

And finally, on Bill's birthday, he bought himself a new vacuum that we're both stupid excited about.  So he vacuumed around 1am after we went out for drinks!

The Year of Big Decisions, Let's start with Dog #2.

When we adopted Lenny (fostered 6/7/10, adopted 6/22/10) they were hesitant to give him to us because they said he needed to be in a 2 dog environment.  His separation anxiety was too intense, and even training classes proved to be somewhat useless.  We used Chainsaw, the dog that used to live downstairs, on our side to show he wouldn't be alone.
Chainsaw + his folks (Jeremy + Shirley) moved out a couple months ago, and it has been tough on Lenny.
Bill and I decided to look at local shelters.
When I first saw Lenny's face, I feel in love with him, hard, and so did Bill.  He just looked like an Alevizos.  But I knew finding dog #2 would prove to be way more difficult.  We went back to CCR to see which dogs were available that we liked online, and we saw Olive.  Now, I really wanted a SMART dog, like a collie or something, because Lenny doesn't really know how to listen and could use improvements in various areas.  But there was Olive.  Terrier/Corgi/god knows what weirdly cute female dog with a Fu Manchu.

So here we go.  Yesterday was Day #1, and I'm not going to lie, I was pretty much emotionally unstable all day. Let's start with the fact she is IN LOVE with Lenny. I have never seen a female dog attempt to hump so much.  Really.  And she wouldn't just chill and leave him alone.

I cried on and off all day.  Bill was at work, so my apologizes to the following people for freaking out and losing my mind that had to listen to me sob on the phone: Mom, Mackie, Rachel, Mary-Frances, Kristin, Lex + of course Bill.  I started to doubt, do we want a second dog?  Are we getting a dog for Lenny and not for us (which is partially  true.  If Lenny was fine when we left the house I'm sure we would have held off until we bought a place for dog 2, but Bill has always wanted dog 2 so you never know).  
Is Lenny happy?  Is she happy?  Is she the right dog? Did we make the right decision?  Did we rush into this?  Is she going to be chill and get along with all dogs as Lenny does?  Is she going to bark at night?  Is she going to bark when we leave?  Is Lenny annoyed?  Will she pee in the house?  Will she calm him down when we leave?  Will she like all people?  And so on.  This is literally how I spent Sunday, January 9th, while Olive was in our home a brief 5 hours total, and I lost my mind.

I felt so much better when Bill got home from work (alone time with the dogs, 7 hrs) and Lenny was happy that Bill was there.  And the dogs played and played.

We gave Olive a bath, and she was happier, and hey, I was happier, and I think she is adjusting very well.  Now, this is a foster, so if in two weeks we feel this isn't working out, then she will go back to the shelter, but honestly so far so good......stay posted.

Attempts at a Family Xmas Card Photo

Pre-Thanksgiving Bitching

I know there is something wrong with me, but  I really don't care for Thanksgiving. In fact, I loathe it and dread it every year.  I don't know if its the food, or Bill and I always having to plan between families, or if it means that Bill is going to start working non-stop until the end of the year.

It means the weekend after Thanksgiving I trek it back to my folks, make 85 trips up and down the stairs bringing up Christmas decorations, fighting with people at Home Depot for the perfect tree for the front yard, freeze my fingers off hanging and tying each and every bow outside and making sure each light on the inside tree is perfect.  Obviously my parents can't do it on their own, and of course I love helping since I don't have a front yard to decorate, but man its a lot of work!

I'm sounding extremely selfish, I know, but for ONCE I would love to host a holiday at our house.  Sadly, I don't own a big enough table, but I am determined to get a cool one from CB2 like this one.
Anyway, enough bitching.  I will go into it will low expectations, but come out proud of my hard work I did on their house, full from left over pie and turkey, and buzzed from Bloody Mary's.  So perhaps I should really just stop bitching, and start decorating the Ford's place.
UPDATE.....12.4.10
The decorating went wonderfully, and I brought Lenny and he and Sheba (my folks dog) get along so well!  It was really fun, went off without a hitch, and the house looks fabulous as usual.  I've got mad skills!!!!

Lenny the Dog

Bill and I are still grieving over the loss of Victor Pants. Its one of those things that with time, it doesn't hurt as badly, but we still love Victor and he will always be such an important part of our lives.
We were not actively looking for a new dog, it has only been four months since he passed away.

My parents were actively looking for a new dog, and when I was at their house the day before Memorial Day, I was perusing petfinder.com, and this picture jumped off the page at me.

Wowzer!  I sent in my application asap and called furiously to the Chicago Canine Rescue.  Long story short, I have never fought so hard for something in my life.  They wanted Lenny to be in a home with another dog, and I told them all about Chainsaw downstairs.  They wanted us to have an 8 foot fence, I told htem Lenny would never be outside alone.  And then we met him.  And it was love at first sight.  We took him for a long walk.  Then we went the next day and walked him again.  Then on Tuesday we had our home visit, and Lenny was dropped off.  Lenny was a little scared of the stairs, and he walked in and peed in front of the dog bed, and on the fridge, and on the plants on the deck.

I was worried that he would be in the house, but that was that!  We have him on a totally organic high protein food - he's underweight and he needs to gain more before he can be neutered.  He's so amazing and transitioning so well.  He jumps in bed and follows Bill around everywhere.  He's so awesome. 

I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried to begin with.  I cried a lot about Victor - would he be mad, would he be sad, would he be happy?  Has enough time passed?  I'm feeling guilty, etc.  So many feelings.  But I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.  We got Lenny.  He is happy with us.  He already loves us, and we are quickly falling in love with him too.  We are a family again.  I still miss Victor, though, and that feeling will never go away.  I just hope that they would be friends.

Day To Day

Day to day, minute by minute.  Georgeanna emailed me and made a great point, that the loss of a pet makes us realize how precious and valuable life is.  It's so easy to take for granted.
We are trying to adjust, in the words of Mackie, to our "New Normal".  Its so hard.  Friday was my first day of coming home from work and not being greeted by the door.  Today was the first time I went grocery shopping and didn't have Victor to search through the bags for treats.  And then there is the uneasy feeling.  Victor protected me.  He made me feel safe.
And then its the noises.  I think I hear him but I don't see him.  And also I always wake up around 3:30 a.m. for some reason, and I would always stop and pet Victor on my way to or from the refrigerator when I grab my glass of water.
I will start talking about cooking again, soon.  I just need to keep on venting for a bit.

Victor Pants Alevizos 5/15/98 - 2/17/10

I can't believe it happened.  Neither of us can.  I washed both of his beds so he would have them nice and fresh when he came home.  I never second-guessed that he would be coming home.
Everything happened so fast, but we know we had to do what was best for Victor.
It's been so hard. We have amazing friends that love us so much, that have offered to do things like make us dinner to cleaning our apartment.  Bill and I fell asleep on Victor's bed together last night. I know its probably not healthy, but we had to. 

I know that other then just missing him being around, its the loneliness that is going to get me.  For Bill, he and Victor had a routine.  Bill said today "I have woken up to his face for damn near 12 years" and its so true.  They had their gig.  As soon as Bill got out of bed Victor was up - they were in total unison.

Leaving today for breakfast (yes, we are trying to feed ourselves) I turned off the T.V. and went straight for the radio.  I cried, as I turned it on, telling Bill, "I still have to do this.  Victor needs the radio on."  It's the first time that there was no guilt leaving.  He's not here alone, he's not begging for a cookie.  I miss that so much.

We dropped salad on the floor, and its the first time since living with Bill that we had to clean it up.  Victor always went running. I haven't picked food off the floor in at least 3 1/2 years.
Eating dinner tonight was sad, too.  Victor always laid between us and the table, and if we pulled the table in I would say "Beep beep Victor".  But now we just pulled the table in.

Minute by minute, day by day.  We are truely sad and suffering right now, trying to be strong because Victor hated when we were sad.  Thank God Bill and I have eachother.  We are very loving and supportive of eachother.  That's what Victor would have wanted. 

 

  

 

 

  

Victor hated being picked up, but he never got mad at Bill!

More Victor News

Ugh, so today we brought Victor back to the emergency vet.  He has moments of old Victor gleaming in his eye, but overall, he isn't any better.
He had some movements, not good ones, and still isn't eating.  And for anyone that knows Victor, the dog loves to eat.  I know some people might think "It's just a dog, why spend so much money you don't have" and the reason is that we love him like we love a person.  Bill has had him from the moment he was able to leave his mom, and that's been 11 amazing years - almost 12 - his birthday is in May.

Considering the vet still cannot find anything wrong with him, gives us the positive belief it could be something as simple as a GI track infection.  We are awaiting the results of his lympomia test (from the lymphnodes between his small and large intestine) so we will hopefully know more tomorrow.

This just sucks, though.  The house is too quiet.  The good news is we can call the vet 24/7 to check up on him. And its a nice hospital - nice big pens, lots of blankets for him to lay on.
We just love our Bunny Pants and we know he's got many good years left.

Victor Pants is Sick

This is has been a tough week.  Victor has been sick again, and last time we just took a stool sample to the vet (TMI, I know) but this time we brought him in.
My poor bunny - was was there on Friday 2/12/10 from 9:00 - 5:30 on an IV, and they did a bunch of tests and x-rays and blood work.  And a very large bill later and a second vistit today, they still don't know what is wrong with him.
It's misery.   Now he's not eating, which is the most terrifing thing.  Victor has been known to eat poop off the street.  Seriously. He will eat anything.  So this is the worst.  And he's on 3 prescriptions that we have to give him, and the only way to give a dog a pill is with food.
My heart is breaking.  Just breaking.  I am happy that the vets can't find anything wrong with them, but still I am so frustrated.  X-Ray after X-ray and test after test after test.  Bill is trying to hand feed him chicken.  Just a little something.   I just want Victor to be old Victor again, happy and healthy.  My dog. My bunny pants.  My Victor.  Bill's Victor.  Our dog-child.  We love him so much and we're both so scared.