Trouble Spots

Today is Philip's 40th birthday. I keep asking him if he's going to sell our kid to get a red sports car and a nubile blond girlfriend with giant fake boobs. While I am obviously joking, I'm not really because these are the classic things men acquire in their mid-life awakening. What separates men like that from mine?

So then I was walking through the hazelnut orchard feeling kind of depressed because I recently saw some pictures of old friends who are only slightly less close to forty than I am and look about twenty. Then I was feeling my face, like I do sometimes suddenly when I realize I'm a person in a body that's currently in motion and it surprises me every time. I feel the way I'm wearing my face, which I normally don't and there it is: me frowning. I've been doing it my whole life. The only difference between my look of deep serious concentration between now and when I was a kid is that I no longer allow my tongue to hang out like a cartoon kid.

Max asks me all the time "How come you're so mad mama?" and I come out of whatever hole my thoughts have been accumulating in and with surprise say "But I'm not mad at all Max! Why would you think I'm mad?" And he points out that it was my mad expression that gave me away. I tell him how I don't realize I'm frowning and I try not to but it's just the face I wear when I'm not thinking about what face I should be wearing. He informs me that I should change that face. So true.

So this face above is one of my serious faces that I constantly wear. The other one I got pictures of but they made me look much worse than I really look and if I really look that way I hardly want to acknowledge it so this one will do. Then I had fun in photoshop using tools I have no inkling how to use well and pointed out why I'm not supposed to be wearing this face.

I'm not actually concerned with the wrinkles much. What DOES concern me quite a lot is the sudden development of a couple of dark mustache hairs. I have never in my life had a dark mustache hair in spite of being liberally covered in dark-ish hair everywhere else. What's up with that? Thank god they aren't stiff and wiry like my chin hairs which could seriously put someone in critical condition if I didn't stay on top of plucking them!

Philip says he's not worried about being forty years old. This is why I married him. I'm not really worried about turning forty either. I turn thirty nine in a little less than a month and that doesn't phase me any more than turning thirty did which was not at all.

I have a resolution for the new year that I don't think I'm going to tell anyone about.

I do hate my hair again. Having bad hair is much worse than having wrinkles. You can quote me on that if you want.

Well, I better go do some cooking and preparing for the kid to get home. We're going to go celebrate at Hotel Oregon. Where there will hopefully be no carolers. It's hard to get up when I have a sweet cat purring in my lap.

I'm feeling frustrated with my photography efforts. All of a sudden I can't seem to take any sharply focused pictures. I really want to be a better photographer. Taking good pictures is so satisfying that once you've taken one or two it makes all the mediocre ones intolerable.

Oh well.

I'll be posting again today so I better stop playing around here. Hope you're all having a great Thursday.


Happy Birthday Philip!!!!

What Is In My Head
(is now in yours)

I once said that rain hitting my face while riding my scooter feels like bullets*. I would like to add that sometimes rocks hitting your knees while on your scooter feels like bullets too. Or maybe rain feels like rocks but I like to be dramatic. When traveling at a speed of 60 miles per hour and a rock hits you anywhere on your body you don't particularly care if it's a rock, a marshmallow, or a squirrel because the main point is that it hurts like fucking hell.

Sometimes when I'm going really fast on my scooter I wish I could completely take off; be like a smear of light stealing other people's air as I speed past them. It makes me feel a little bit like an asshole. And a man.

When a dog doesn't want to see you, they have no inhibitions about letting you know. Today was the first day I ever stood around a dog whose hackles are up and teeth showing to say nice things to him. I think that shows how far I've come from hiding in the coffee Roastery's bathroom whenever a dog would come in.

I saw a dead kitty on the side of the highway and I said "meow" to its spirit.

It makes me really sad that there is a product so sub-standard that it has to be called "chocolate flavored chips".

I'm really thankful I don't pee my pants all the time. I wonder if I should present this gratitude at the Thanksgiving table.

I know it's terribly "western" of me, but I think eating the sperm of an animal is not a whole lot different than drinking its pee. It may not be bad for you (being sterile) but bodily fluids (including blood) as food really trips me out. I might still be thinking about it tomorrow morning.

For those of you with very dirty minds, the conclusion that you have come to about me is correct.**

Do any of you understand just how very much I despise balloons? I didn't think so.

I think it's important for everyone to recognize what they're good at and celebrate that. Even if what you're good at is counting raisins or picking fur out of sweaters. That takes patience. Don't let the rest of the world keep you from your empowerment.

There are a lot of people busy out there, right now, feeding yeast. I think that's just about as brilliant as it gets. I get very excited talking about yeast. Not yeast infections...yeast that we tenderly feed sugars to and encourage into full bloat mode so that our breads will rise, our grapes ferment, and our sodas fizzle. It's harvest and in my area and that means a lot of people working very hard to serenade the yeast that is now hanging out in the grape juice.

The owner of a winery has decided to call me Denise. Do Denises generally have chin hairs? I've decided to be Denise for this guy. It means that I can start calling him Ralph.

It freaks me out that almost all the Oregonian election candidates have six or seven children. I almost want to not vote for them just because of that. Except for the Catholic one. I kind of wanted to vote for him anyway. But only because the Catholics here are insanely outnumbered by the more fiery hot and bothered faiths. Catholics have the best music and art. But obviously I'm not going to base my voting on how many children a person has.

I will absolutely base my voting on a candidate's stance on a woman's right to choose.

I will also base my voting on how a person looks. I don't think you can be a really put together human being if the picture you send out of yourself for your campaign looks like a federal prison mug shot.

I'm super bummed that Sarah Sidle has left Gil. Seriously bummed. Can't anyone have a good relationship anymore? Damn it.

SO NOT surprised that Madonna and Guy are getting divorced. Now I just wish they hadn't stolen that African child.

*As if I would know how that feels.

**For those of you who need it spelled out: I don't think human sperm is sexy "food" either. Pointing out how salty it is will not make it more appealing to me. Yes, prude prude prude me. I rather like to think of it as being discerning, rather than prudish.

Around the Farmhouse

Pippa, stalking scraps and moths in the kitchen.

Feet. Not Philip's.

Tomatillos waiting to hit the stew pot. Think they smell the fear of the ones that just got cut and dumped?

The top of our town. Not technically a shot from the farmhouse.

Philip and Max enjoy chess in the morning.

All of these pictures are the first batch from my Rebel XT that I bought used from Mary at "Confessions Of A Craft Addict" several months ago and am still scared of. I am finally playing with it and Mary sent me this book to help me take better pictures...Thanks Mary!!!

Chick would like you to know that you should really give her that thing you're eating right now. She also would like to know why the chickens get all the scraps while she only gets the ones she steals?

Something I saw today: a book of pictures of dogs that live in vineyards with little bios on each one. It is so funny! The pictures are really cool too. Someday when I can afford to buy a special treat of a book- this one is coming home to me! I saw the American version and the dogs in it are sweet, hilarious, pretty, and just make me want to know them all. I'm not even really a "dog" person but this book had me laughing out loud.

I don't know how I lived for twenty five years without seeing why people love dogs. (I was twenty five when I started overcoming my intense fear of dogs)

A random question I would like to ask myself- why continue eating a cinnamon roll that is squishy like half cooked dough and tastes like perfume? There's no sense in finishing something so gross.

I've come to realize that I am joyously obsessed with photography. I'm working on my first professional photography job too with Walnut City Wineworks.* Isn't that funny? I mean, I didn't really see it creeping up on me. It just did. Now that I look back, I recall being obsessed with my very first camera that took square pictures. I spent hours setting up my barbies in different "scenes" and actually did some on-location shoots in Lithia Park. I still have some of those pictures somewhere.

I know there are a lot of purists out there, and I respect it, but I prefer digital photography over actual film. I think you have so much creative control over the outcome and it's so much less expensive to learn to take good pictures when you can instantly delete all the bad ones.

It is largely thanks to Angela that I take decent pictures at all. And now Mary is pushing me deeper into the world of digital photography than I ever imagined I'd go.

Ultimately I have Hope to thank for making me realize that I'm a budding photographer.

Thank you Hope!

Now it's time to fight some mighty Bionicle battles at the top of the stairs for which I need a freshly cracked brewski. Happy Friday everyone!



*None of the pictures on their website are mine right now.

Jane Austen Didn't Smoke

I rented the movie "Mansfield Park" this week. Not the one that was done in the seventies, but the more recent one featuring Jonny Lee Miller as the parson-bound hero. Yeah, more on that later. First though, I just want to make a complaint against all modern film makers of historical stories in which they feature the cigarette as a symbol of women's liberation. I'm not saying there is no chance in hell any woman smoked a cigarette before the 1920's, because it would take some exhaustive research to prove that, and I may find that buried under a thousand tomes in which women in history never touched tobacco, is the one story, the one biography in which a woman in the early 1800's indulged in smoking.

But here's the deal: smoking tobacco was not a widespread indulgence in the early 1800's for anyone. Snuff was regularly indulged in and perhaps sometimes even by racy women (though this is debatable) , but you would have been mighty hard pressed to find cigarettes anywhere at that time. Now, assuming you could find it, you wouldn't, as a "modern" 1800's liberated woman even think of smoking a cigarette to show your freedom from convention. Smoking as a symbol of your free spirit and staunch independence did not find it's place amongst women until the 1920's.

In "Mansfield Park" the character Maria Crawford is supposed to be a liberated, somewhat wild, "free spirited" woman of questionable moral center but solid social standing. Uh huh. So in this version of the film she is shown playing pool and smoking a cigarette. I've seen this slipped into some other modern versions of historical stories. It's supposed to help us relate our modern sensibility to a much more complicated and archaic sensibility that I guess the directors don't think modern people are capable of understanding without these little suggestive devices.

I really hate it when film makers try to jazz up perfectly perfect classic stories with their modern humor. As in the miserable Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma in which the quiet humor Jane Austen wrote into the original story was dumbed down in an effort to make it funny to modern audiences.

The whole beauty of period pieces, for me, lies in how unlike modern times the stories are. The enchantment is to be taken to a time when women didn't wear g-strings to the beach. I don't want to see a period film in which all the characters are exactly like modern people. Society and it's expectations have changed dramatically, what value is there in a period film if all it does is dress modern people in antiquated styles of clothing? All the fun is gone out of period films for me when directors don't understand the material they are working with, or understand it but don't think it's good enough for us liberated people of the twenty first century.

So, when I see women smoking in period films set in the 1800's, I get really annoyed. Such a lazy cheap device.

About Jonny Lee Miller... I thought his version of this character was a little milkier than necessary, yet he was good. Unfortunately I had a very difficult time keeping Angelina Jolie's face out of my brain every time he came on screen. As in: what kind of man marries Angelina Jolie?

In other news, my cat has crawled away and I can't find him. It didn't occur to me to lock his kitty door to keep him inside but I'm afraid he may have exited stage left for his final and private scene and while I would be relieved if he has finally let go of his poor poor body (he hasn't eaten in four days, yet as late as 5:45 am he was tottering around the hallway, mostly still alive) I don't want to have to search for his body in the yard, because, what if we don't find it until the dog does?.

We've been spending lots of time snuggling up to his bony little body and telling him how much we love him and last night we all sat in the bedroom watching Scooby Doo (I suffer!!) and it was such a nice family moment. Ozark on the bed with us all. I had hoped that Ozark would die while in our arms or in our little circle of warmth because I didn't want him to die alone. But perhaps most dying beings do prefer to die alone. Is it, after all, the most private moment in our lives?

Oh, back to blithering about idiotic things... can anyone actually imagine Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt still together as old people? I can't. I can't even imagine them being old separately. Will Angelina still be adding to her zoo of children when she's seventy?

The sky could not be more blue out there this morning nor the air more frigid. It's a gorgeous winter day. I think winter is the best time to be born and the best time to die. What to do on such a day? I have a feeling that it will, at least in part, be spent digging a grave. I have all these random things floating around in my head waiting for a chance to air and all I can talk about is grave digging and crawling away to die. Typical Angelina. My blog sure has been a dark place to come lately. Where's the levity gone to? I wonder what other dark events await me?

The queer thing is that even though my blog still wears it's serious colors, I feel so much lighter inside. (Except for the agony of watching my tabby die). I mean, I do feel that something has opened up in my life and let the doves out. I feel as though a new beginning has finally unfolded itself in the light of day and is no longer a tight bud of unknown possibilities waiting for spring under the dark cover of winter. I feel like the blade of a daffodil breaking through cold hard ground in midwinter. Carrying with me all the potential for bright yellow scented hope.

I can't tell anymore if my lack of desire for travel is because the idea of traveling with my child makes me so anxious and exhausted I almost want to crawl right back to bed, or if it's because it feels like all the adventure I could want is right here, under my nose. Is it anxiety or contentment? There is an expectation amongst my peers (it feels like) that any person of real character and culture desires the chance to travel far and wide. I've been to Israel, Paris, New York, (plus many other states), and Scotland.

Time to go get dressed and look for my cat.

Update: I found the cat in my bathroom cupboard- STILL ALIVE. I believe he has hunkered down there to die unseen. So I will not disturb him there but will lock the kitty door in case he gets another weird burst of life. He can barely walk but clearly he is reluctant to let go of life. This is getting a little tortuous for me. But I have promised myself that unless he appears to be in pain I will not call the vet. The vet is unlikely to be available today anyway. I'm trying not to let myself be a coward about this. I do not like death at all.

Random Thoughts On Christmas Eve Day

My laundry is reaching a state of crisis. It is never done. I used to be able to get all my laundry done in one day. Then not do it again for a week. Now I have laundry falling from the ceiling, oozing out of drawers, littering every surface in my house. Every single day. No matter how many loads I get done there are always six more waiting for me. How is it possible for one small family to generate so much dirty laundry? It's so bad and I'm so stressed about it that sometimes, when I'm watching "Dark Angel" episodes I can see the laundry creeping around in the corners of the room.

While at the record store the other day I briefly eyed the Neil Diamond CDs and I have to say that as much as I loved him as a kid, I just can't bring myself to buy one of his CDs at this point in my life. I do not share this reservation when it comes to Abba and the Bee Gees.

While thinking about lyrics the other day I kept hearing Barry Mannilow in my head singing "I write the songs that make the whole world sing" and kept rewording it like this "I write the words that make the whole world cry". So true. So true. Think I should try harder to make people laugh instead of making them want to bury their heads in a bog?

Giada De Laurentiis is like the Playboy bunny of Italian cooking and I don't trust her. I've seen her show and my conclusion is that she is much too thin and toothy to be a trusted cook. Isn't her own food good enough to eat? Saying this out loud makes me immediately aware of how "size-ist" I have become. Immediate reform is called for. BAD ANGELINA. (I must now have an earnest talk with myself and discern whether or not my attitude stems from my very opposite problem of girth. Do I really wish I was more like Giada? C'mon now, self, be honest!)

No, I don't wish I was more like Giada but she's probably really a great cook and I'm just being an ass. Those boobs are almost certainly real and one should not judge a cook by their figure.

(Although I just read an online interview with Giada where she talks about how surprising it is to her that she has such a big male following...are you serious woman?! That is way too artless to be believed.)

Not having a working sewing machine or a working camera of my own is like being a tennis player who just lost an arm. I am experiencing ghost machine...where I go into my studio fully expecting to make something with my Pfaff and I know for a fact that it's there because I can feel it-but it's not. It's at the shop. I may not see my camera again for two months. Such is technology these days that it may be more expensive to fix it than it would be to buy one new. But you know what? I will fix it anyway because buying new would be wasteful if the one I had is actually fixable.

If you want to clear some space around you in a restaurant here in McMinnville, try talking loudly about prison, heinous crimes, how much religion freaks you out, and for good measure: bring along a kid who sprawls himself along the shared windowsill. We had a fabulous time drinking and talking with a really good friend of ours that we ran into at the Hotel Oregon. We're not positive, but we think we drove some people out of the booth behind us.

It's Christmas Eve and I imagine the ether is pretty quiet out there. We do nothing special for Christmas Eve so here I am. Although, now I'm going to blast some Madonna and do a little housecleaning. I hope you all have a great time hanging with friends and family!

Wishing only for snow here in the Valley-send some if you have any extra!

17 eggplants, 20 tomatoes, 5 zucchinis, 7 hot peppers, 2 bunches basil, 3 onions, and 2 cucumbers for: $23.18

I picked the eggplants and tomatoes myself. Now, in my new bargain shopping ways, wouldn't you say that I got quite a lot of produce for my money? Considering that I once paid $9.00 for three tomatoes at a pricey (but gorgeous) upscale market* I feel like I've done quite well here. The way to shop during the summer is to do as much u-pick as possible, preserve tons of what you can't eat fresh, and don't buy any produce between four walls.

This is nice in theory, but I do still have to buy some things in the market like cilantro because no local farms are selling it. This region is very short on fresh grown herbs.

I think Russian accents are way sexier than Italian or British accents.

You weren't expecting that, were you? It's one of those things that is just randomly floating around in my head.

It's already 10:27 and I haven't started my laundry yet, which is a problem because I haven't got any clean underwear. So I should go start a load right now. But there's nothing I feel like doing less.**

That was also floating around in there.

Some good news is that our refinance loan got approved! Yay! So if it all goes through smoothly, we will be able to keep our house, for the time being. Plus there may be a part time job I can do from home, but I won't know if I'll get it for a few weeks.

There are lots of little things nagging at my brain right now. I wish they would go away, but they're like fast fruit flies that are always just ahead of the swatting hand. They slip into shadow where I can't find them until the air is still and then they're right there again, hanging onto the wall of my brain. In case anyone is wondering what it's like to have a clinical problem with anxiety, this is how it is most of the time. Medication really helps with the bigger issues but it doesn't really kill the brain flies. Without constant maintenance the flies multiply quickly. Sometimes I worry that they'll start coming out of my nose. They do often come out of my mouth in the form of random and often inappropriate thoughts being expressed without regard to the company I'm in.

Life is much too messy for a person like me. I feel best when I am immersed in a project that takes absolutely all of my concentration and the hours fill with the drive to see to the task at hand. Which is why I love becoming obsessed with preserving food in the summer. I can temporarily forget all my concerns. As soon as I slow down, like today, all the little threads that need tending start to press in on me and I want to crawl away from them and have someone clean up all the messes while I'm not looking.

At least my burn is no longer leaking.

Zac Ephron (the "hunk" in all the magazines who is in some show I've never seen about a high school musical, which frankly sounds like an awful nightmare to me) looks like a pre-teen. It makes me uncomfortable that such a baby face is being called a hunk in grown up gossip rags. Are adult women swooning over him? Why is he everywhere? He looks like a girl.

More things floating around in my noggin.

I think the word "hunk" should stop being used. I hate it. I think it sounds very course.

Well, I better go get dressed. Lots to do today. Like place an order for oilcloth. Finish up two courage boxes. Take photos for Etsy. Copy some recipes from my well used cookbooks into my recipe box. Make tons of food to can and freeze. Work on a cushion covering project. Work on sending out an Etsy order. And do laundry.

Max's bloody noses are back. I'll leave you with that little bit of brain float. Have a great afternoon!

*For the record, I had no idea the tomatoes were going to be that expensive until I was rung in. I have a problem making a ruckus at check out stands, a little problem of mine, and so I meekly paid for the tomatoes while feeling that I had just robbed Max of his college education.

**Right after I wrote that I decided to drag my reluctant bones to the laundry room with a load and I found my "last" clean pair. That's in quotations because who knows if there's really another pair lurking in that mountain of wrinkled clean clothes?

A lot of random thoughts

Fava beans, yellow zucchini, and pasta with fresh herbs.

My back is in a very fragile state right now which makes me angry with my body. Once again, right at a crucial moment it is failing to hold me up and do the work I need it to do. If it isn't my back it's my hip. If it isn't my hip it's my feet, which have also been giving me some trouble again. How is it possible to have such a deep disconnect between the person I am inside and the shell I carry around on it? I have sewing to do, cooking, canning, and gardening to do. I went outside to water my vegetable garden last night and the weeds are phenomenal. A sea of them stretches out over my whole yard, weeds taller than myself. I started to rip a few out to give to the hens and realized how much strain that would put on my already fragile back.

I am strong. I am able. Why can't I just go out there and weed for four hours without having to worry that my back will go out; that my back will collapse in on itself and send me to bed? I look at my yard and see how I want it to be but I don't know how I'll ever have the chance to transform it, to bring it back from the grips of choking bindweed and every type of giant weed known to man? I want my hands out there but if time isn't directing me elsewhere, then this stupid body of mine is.

So I was laying in bed with an ice pack on my back and I watched the pilot show for Little House On The Prairie. It got me thinking even more about what would have happened to a person like myself if I had lived on the frontier. I don't have to look too far for an answer: I'd be dead. I wouldn't make it very long as an adult. I would have died in childbirth, or Max would have. But if for some crazy lucky reason we didn't, I would have not been able to do the work necessary to stay alive. What did people with bad backs do back then? What did they do if their feet hurt all the time and their arches fell (mine haven't, but I'm worried about that right now)? Oh the fun of having an imbalanced brain with no medication and only fear from every person in your life that you might be catching, or dangerous, or that the only solution is to lock you in the attic and not talk about you ever again.

Obviously I would have been done for once I broke my hip unless my family had lots of resources to see them through caring for a useless family member who couldn't walk for three months.

My refusal to have more than one child would probably have resulted in my being abandoned by my spouse who would have expected me to have as many babies as our union could shower down on us and the only way to avoid having children back then was to be infertile or abstinent. Abstinence from sex has never been popular with men. Among the decent ones it merely ruins your relationship. But any woman unlucky enough to marry one of the rough members of the male of our species might find themselves being raped by their own spouse. You can cringe if you want to, but that's the truth. And if your only choice is being savaged by your own husband or being savaged by the waiting wolves, what do you do?

There is an easy feminist direction I could take here, but that's not what this is about. It's about survival in the modern world compared to survival on the western frontier.

Here's a question I have had for as long as I can remember and have heard no one else ask:

Back when there was no toilet paper, what did people use to wipe themselves after relieving their bowels? I have heard it suggested that leaves may have been used. But leaves may not have been available all the time. So did pioneers use their hands and then wash their hands? Or did they not wipe themselves at all, and wouldn't that have created the most uncomfortable conditions for pioneer bottoms everywhere?

Here's another totally random question I've just snatched out of it's trip around my head:

If the entire planet is warming up and becoming an inferno, doesn't that mean that solar power will be more practical than ever? If the sun is hotter and brighter all over the place doesn't it seem that the one positive thing about it is that there's more sun to harness into power? Don't think I don't realize all the profound changes that global warming is making such as the extinction of many species of animals and insects. But I am trying to think of something positive here too. If global warming is irreversible at this point, then shouldn't we at least try to make the best of it at the same time that we try to change our ways to slow down the whole degradation of the earth?

If the planet could ice over ten thousand years ago or so, how do we know that it could never happen again? What made that happen the first time?

Have I said recently how much I think all Hummers should be burned at the stake? (Uh, not the people driving them for crying out loud! Just the cars.) Wait a minute though, that could create some nasty toxic fumes-all Hummers should be SCRAPPED.

On a related topic:

I am troubled by some questions about being green. Just as we are discovering that eating and shopping locally can be more important than eating and shopping strictly organic, I am wondering about making choices between consumerism and energy efficiency.

Let me give you an example: I am shopping for a second fridge. Having two refrigerators may not sound like a very green choice to make in the first place but having one will enable me to do more canning and freezing of local fruits and produce which will reduce the amount of canned goods I will need to buy during the winter from other states. So it aids me in supporting local farms. I decided to make it a priority to buy an Energy Star approved unit to at least use as little extra power as possible. But my friend Lisa B. knows someone who bought an energy efficient fridge and has had to have the motor fixed at least two or three times. She told me that it seems the energy efficient models have weaker motors.

So how do I make a responsible choice? One of the major problems with energy waste in our country here is people buying crap all the time-a new car every few years, brand new houses, more junk and more junk without demanding that that junk be made in factories that use responsible methods of waste disposal and efficient use of power. Consumerism drives the waste of resources in this country. The antidote to consumerism is to buy good quality things that you really need and not replace them all the time. TO BUY LESS. The better the quality you buy the longer your purchases will last, the less you buy.

But if buying the energy efficient product means you will have to keep fixing it and probably replace it sooner, how does that serve us all? It is important to me to make a good choice that will benefit all of us in the long run. How can I tell which choice that is?

On a totally unrelated note:

Filling up a tiny tank of gas is challenging. In Oregon it is against the law to fill your own tank of gas. You must let the gas attendants do it. There are two problems Oregon gas attendants have with filling up my Vespa tank: 1) they are scared of overflowing the tank and 2) they don't understand fractions so when I ask for "one and a quarter" gallons they invariably look at me like I just landed on their nose bringing them a fresh case of malaria. I quickly put it in terms they can understand and say "1.25 gallons". This is when they stutter their confusion and hand me the gas nozzle.

Yesterday when this happened I filled my own tank but when I tried to let go of the trigger to stop the flow it wouldn't unlock so my tank overflowed all over my scooter. And my hands. This isn't good for several reasons, the most important being that I am a person with serious anxiety issues and one of the things that makes me especially anxious is any fluid that has the potential to explode. So if I have gasoline all over my scooter and some got on the battery case, could some have seeped inside, and if so, in this 90 degree heat-could my scooter catch fire? I couldn't possibly ask any of the gas attendants if it's safe to drive when you've just spilled gas all over your vehicle because I already know that they would just look at me with more fear and loathing.

The other reason why this isn't good is because it's a waste of a precious resource. I definitely use infinitely less gas than a person driving a Hummer, but even so, I can't help but think that no drops should be wasted if we are willing to kill for it, which our people most certainly are proven by the fact that that's what we're doing right now. So then an uncomfortable question comes into my head: how much gas did I waste and what does that look like in human life? Did I just waste an Iraqi adult? Or did that waste just represent the loss of an Iraqi baby?

Either way, I can't help but look at gas as something to take seriously and every time I go to fill up my scooter tank I am participating in something much larger and darker than just cruising around town running my errands. People are dying so I can keep doing that. I'm not saying we should all stop using gas at once, but that we should be mindful at all times of what it's costing all of us to do it.

Here are some simple things all of us can do to make a difference:

• We should consolidate errands and use our bicycles more often.

• Making one trip a week to the grocery store on your bicycle would be a meaningful saving of resources.

• Walk your kid to school if you live within a quarter mile of his/her school.

• See if your bosses would let you work slightly longer hours for four days a week so that you can commute one less day a week?

• Ditch your gas guzzling car for a more efficient vehicle.

What is wrong with my wee little seedlings?

See how the stem of this beet is growing? Why does this happen to my seedlings? You should know, before you answer that question, that it is growing in a spot that gets sun almost all day, the seeds were planted about a half an inch deep, and have been regularly watered. I've had this problem before. Did I not bury the seed deep enough?

They droop over. The stems aren't rotting off though. It's just that the shoulder of the plant is too high above the ground. I've been mounding soil around them to stand them back up.

My dill is doing it too. But it isn't as bad because dill doesn't grow a swollen root for me to eat which sounds really disgusting.

It bugs me. It bugs me to not know why this happens.

Isn't that the most cheerful thing you've ever seen? The first fruit to develop. There are actually a few more but at this point they all look exactly the same so I'll spare you the five hundred pictures I was tempted to take.

The eggplants aren't far behind. The nightshade family ROCKS!

My caserta squash (Mexican zucchini) is getting large. I actually have a few of these plants. While common wisdom is that you will always have way more zucchini than you can possibly eat and will become the pariah of the neighborhood with all your baskets of free squash, I have never found this to be the case.

Look who showed up late for the party.*

Random thought ten minutes ago:

I wonder if I put too many plates in this cabinet, will the whole cupboard fall off the wall? And if it all came crashing off the wall, am I standing too close to it to avoid being crushed?

Random thought fifteen minutes ago:

It's been a long time since I went across the street to check on Max. I wonder what they would do if I just left him there until it's time to go to Lisa B's house for dinner? (vision of them dragging my kid across the street to dump him back at home where he belongs, with his hag of a mother who leaves him at the neighbor's house for two hours without checking to see if he's still alive.)

Random thought twenty minutes ago:

I wonder if everything in the vegetable garden is going to die before I get to eat it?


There is a blessed silence in my house right now. It will end at any moment. Right here on my blog is one of the best ways to enjoy the complete absence of all other people in my space. Complete silence, except for the constant flow of random thoughts in and out of my mind.

Here's another one happening right now:

Does anyone ever achieve silence in their own head without trying? Does any one out there go around without any thoughts at all? What would that be like? Is it peaceful or eerily empty feeling? How could that be possible? Do thoughts in other people's heads sound like a personable narration, as it does in mine, or is it less like talking to themselves and more like...like what?

Warming up to my theme:

What would it feel like to be a person with no thoughts in their head, ever, and then suddenly they get a lone solitary thought that pings into their brain...would it scare the shit out of them or be a pleasant change of pace?

(And just when you thought it couldn't get more interesting):

What if that one thought was: I sure would like to play ping pong. ? How weird would that be?

Actually, that kind of sounds like fun right now.



*That's asparagus, in case you didn't recognize it.

Two Wet Dogs

My friend Chelsea has made her own tags for the sewn products she makes. Right now she only sells to my store, but I think she needs to start an Etsy store. I love this tag. While I sat around on my ass moaning about the need for sew in tags she just whipped this up using what she had around the house, her computer, and her own ingenuity.

This is a little girl's apron/headscarf combo. How flippin cute is this?! We sold the last three she made for our store and this is one of the new ones.

Today I'm just going to make a multitude of random observations in list form:

• Two wet dogs under foot is NOT less messy than one. Two dogs underfoot is NOT less likely to trip you up as you try to get from your bedroom to the living room. Especially if said dogs happen to glue themselves to your legs every time they see you on the move. It's become dangerous for everyone to get around in our house. (We're watching Stephen and Dominique's dog Penny while they are in the hospital learning how to wipe meconium off a baby's bahookie. Nice.)

• Two wet dogs also has a way of smelling like two wet dogs.

• Just when you thought Jessica Simpson couldn't get more trashy...she does!! I think she needs to give her breasts a little vacation. In Touch magazine seems convinced that no one actually knew that Simpson wasn't a natural blond. HELLO? I thought the periodic appearance of dark roots kind of gave the show away.

• When is someone going to talk about Angelina Jolie's life threatening illness? Either that woman has a disease that is withering her into nothing but skin and bone, (otherwise known as "childenous-run-you-raggedeth syndrome"), or she's got an eating disorder. It's time we all stopped being coy about eating disorders. No person looks naturally skeletal unless they are very ill which is no joking matter, obviously. You may be naturally thin (though I doubt it), but nature doesn't encourage people to naturally abstain from food. That woman has become unattractively thin. Oh, and so sorry, but I just spent an evening watching Queen Latifah who is one of the hottest women on the planet and compared to her, Angelina is just gross. The other disease Angelina Jolie has is a little known disease called WWL (Women Wanting Litters)

• Cameron Diaz needs to stop dressing like an adolescent in the eighties. And by the way...how is it possible for the eighties to be the new hot "vintage"? Has it already been twenty five years?

• If Paris Hilton doesn't do Jail time, I'm going to blame Bush for it. That woman needs to start realizing that celebrity doesn't buy you immunity from the law. And the picture of her "praying"? Nice touch!

• I am terrified of having to watch Max lose all his baby teeth because teeth hanging by bloody threads in people's mouths give me serious heebie-jeebies. On the other hand, he's six and a half and hasn't lost a tooth yet, what happens if he is one of those people who never loses their baby teeth? Teeth are important to me. Like, it bothers me that so many of JoAnne's employees here in town have visibly rotting teeth. Baby teeth in an adult's mouth are really disturbing looking. Will he have to get all his teeth capped to look normal? But if he never got adult teeth they won't have any way of knowing what shapes of teeth would look most natural in his mouth. So then he'll end up with one of those fake Hollywood smiles like David Bowie and Catherine Zeta Jones (both of whom used to have way more attractive mouths in my opinion.)
  

Max and Philip are fighting. Max likes to push his buttons early in the morning. Philip is not a morning person. Max has developed a peculiar (and when I say peculiar I mean heinously annoying) habit of asking Philip for a waffle and then refusing to eat any waffles Philip makes him, claiming that he doesn't make them right. It's a terrible little power trip. It's the kind of thing that makes rage rise up in our chests like bile. Really incredible how a fifty pound boy can be so obnoxious. I better go intervene.