When the vet told me Jack needed surgery as soon as possible, I was instantly overwhelmed and felt completely unprepared. Even though my vet was fantastic at explaining all my options, the fact he was going out of town next week combined with the genetic problems Jack had that would complicate his current situation (torn ACL) left me having to make a decision extraordinarily quick.

So on Monday I booked surgery for Wednesday, hoping that within a couple of days I could inform myself of not only the surgery (and if it could be avoided) but also any holistic and alternative treatments that could be done.

I have found it somewhat hard to find the information I was looking for and then when I did find it, I felt really overwhelmed and confused by it all. I’m a “simple approach” kind of girl but then when I started to see all these ideas, supplements, food diets, options I just didn’t know where to start. Luckily I received some really good advice/tips on here (thank you, so, so, much!) and found some really useful bits online.

So after a few days of it all, the following is what I’ve learned and am doing for Jack (and as a note, please check with your Vet before doing supplements or diet changes. I can’t say what will work for your pooch only what seems to be working for mine):

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Scandinavians tend to drink the most coffee per capita although specialty, sweet, and flavoured coffees still aren’t as popular as in North America. The coffee here is usually bold, rich, dark and always had for breakfast and after meals (even at 10PM as seen with my mum above in Copenhagen).

However, I was a tea drinker and didn’t have my first coffee until I was 18. Living in England amongst dedicated tea drinkers I had comfortably avoided coffee until I visited with a sophisticated, polished couple that I wanted to be be like. So when they had coffee, I had my first cup and tried to be ever so polite about the horrible taste in my mouth as I sipped it bit by bit.

When I moved to Seattle, WA in 1999, birthplace of Starbucks and coffee snobs, I kept resisting coffee. It wasn’t until a frightfully cold morning commute did I pull into a cafe for a coffee - just to hold. The barista had loaded it up with Vanilla syrup and I found myself finally liking coffee (or perhaps really, just syrup!).

Tea remained my favourite beverage for taste and ritual but when I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago and discovered Urth Caffe’s Spanish Latte, I have to say that coffee began to be a favourite treat and I actually found myself craving a cup on cold mornings or when I was feeling a little sick. The rich, caramel, chocolate flavour of the coffee itself combined with the fact it’s organic and has one of the lowest acidic rates of any coffee won me over. It doesn’t need a lot to be good, which is how most coffee - and food - really should be.

With my mum coming tomorrow and my Danish cousins arriving next week, coffee had to be in the house. So I biked to Urth the other day, picked up a bag of the Italian Roast Coffee for home and I have been enjoying a cup every day since (especially since fall totally hit here and the weather has cooled).

My coffee routine is different than my tea one as is the gear. I love my gear. Here’s what I use to make a great cup:

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My mum in the 1950’s when she was a model. And glamourous.

“The contrast between what is glamorous now and what was glamorous in the days of Cary Grant and Norma Shearer says much about how American society has changed. Glamour used to present an idealized version of adulthood. Now it presents an idealized version of adolescence. In the old days, glamour was all about unattainability, i.e., fantasy projection. These days, it has become unthinkable that a major Hollywood director might echo Cecil B. DeMille, who instructed Edith Head’s department at Paramount to make clothes “that make people gasp when they see them. Don’t design anything anybody could possibly buy in a store.”

Today glamour is tied to the idea of shopping to maintain the illusion that you are (a) kind of famous, or (b) on your way to being famous, or (c) essentially the same as famous people, because you share the same taste in home furnishings, core values and dog shampoo. Some of the stars with whose dog shampoo brand we may be intimately acquainted don’t even appear in the movies, or at least not often. They may appear in TV shows that aren’t so much TV shows as a chance to observe celebrities in their natural habitats. Which kind of resembles ours. Mainstream magazines have transformed themselves from facilitators of idol worship to guides to glamour consumption.”

From an article a few years ago in the LA Times that I wish I could find on their site again, but I can’t. From the article, The Allure of Illusion (thanks Christinia!).

Images courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Soon The Duchess will premiere and I can’t wait to see it - especially the set since details about its location and costume has been heavily dished in the industry. With Michael Carlin as the production designer and Michael O’Connor as the costume designer, I’m sure this will be a visual movie to inspire.

Based on the incredible historical biography by Amanda Foreman, the movie is about Georgiana Spencer who, in 1774 at the age of 17, becomes Duchess of Devonshire. The set is both lavish from the fabrics to architecture with lots of information and sneak peaks on the films official web site.

For the past fifteen minutes or so I’ve been pursuing the “Discover” and “Costumes” area of the site and have developed a craving for a three foot wig ans several gowns with fabulous underpinnings. However, that all comes at a cost and Georgiana, despite having wealth, celebrity and a title, was extraordinarily in debt. The current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire (who live in the home Chastworth where parts of the movie were filmed) still have many of the letters from creditors seeking to collect.

Georgiana was probably first celebrity in the way that we perceive celebrity today. When she appeared in the papers they sold out, she was followed around by cartoonists (the equivalent of the paparazzi). She was a fashion icon and she captured people’s imagination. And that took money.

Keira Knightly who plays Georgiana has said of her character’s debt, “When she died she had been terrified of disclosing to her husband the amount of she owed, because she was convinced he was going to divorce her or send her away and actually when she died he found out how much she was in debt and said is that all. There’s something incredibly sad about her, I think that she’s a victim of herself, of her own innocence. She’s a victim of people using her for their own gain, but what is rather wonderful about this story is she finds a way to live with this. She finds a way to triumph over something and to regain some power in a time when women really had very little.”

That doesn’t sound like only a 1774 problem, does it? The other way in which this movie sometimes parallels the present is the way in which Georgiana’s life resembles that of her great-great-great-great niece, Princess Diana Spencer. Both she and Georgiana were intelligent, powerful women who were almost ripped to shreds by the press and then fought to remake themselves to finally be the women they wanted to be. One of the aspects of Georgiana’s life that makes it so relevant today is that she had to live under the intense glare of public scrutiny. And although I often have a hard time with Keira Knightly, I think the scrutiny in which she’s lived under will perhaps help her with this movie, too.

What also helps the actors in this movie is that director Saul Dibb demanded that all scenes be shot on location. This lead to the incredible task of finding current places to represent real life past homes that were no longer in existence, such as the main residence of the Duke and Duchess, the Devonshire House.

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• Gray walls at Door Sixteen. I’ve always loved gray and have always kept my living room in different hues. Now I’m slightly obsessed with yellow and gray!
• Have old carpet you need to recycle? The Carpet America Recovery Effort site find local carpet recycling centers. I have a 6X8 carpet that got totally wrecked and haven’t known how to dispose of it until now.
• Ads are not the new online tip jar. Great article on how to support your favourite sites. I do have ads on my sites but the revenue generated from them goes to different charities. This sites’ funds goes to Habitat Humanity’s Women Build! Program.
• I have linked to Gypsy Life before but it’s worth another link. Her photography is just absolutely stunning and inspires me to some day learn how to work my camera! I also connect with her writing in so many ways.
• And lastly, I am obsessed with this amazing dress from Makool on Etsy. Yes. Please.