Eulogy In D Minor

I have come to see myself so differently than I used to that I forget sometimes about the magic of adornment. I forget to wear lipstick. I forget to put on jewels and bangles. I can't wear the clothes that suit me as well as my own skin because they won't fit over my skin anymore. One day several weeks ago now I received a package from Alice of Futuregirl with two wonderful bracelets she made in it. They are all at once bold and delicate, lightness in thread and yet somehow more than that. I put them where I could see them. Often. Like I do all my pretty things now. They fit as perfectly as a couture glove. Yet I felt that to put them on would somehow muddle their charge.

I'm treading carefully with words to try and tell you something that has come to me in code. Thoughts that aren't thoughts and yet stand in for them. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to stop hiding behind our own nakedness. Common wisdom is that we hide in our make up, our clothes, our adornment, as though we are never real until we strip down to what we were wearing when we arrived in this world.

I vehemently disagree.

Adornment isn't in itself a vanity. Adornment is a celebration of what we arrived in, of what we found when we got here, and what's left when we leave. Our breasts will go south, our teeth will darken, ear hairs will sprout, balls will shrivel, all of us in our wonderful skin of every color will change. At every stop there is call for celebration. For wearing your favorite fancy golf pants, or your diamonds, your Bakelite bangles, or your finest threads. I've forgotten this. Too wrapped up in wondering how people will judge me for not being what I used to be.

That is the ultimate vanity.

I am reminded of my eulogy. I have been writing my own eulogy since I was ten years old. I don't trust anyone else to write it. If I die and leave behind me silence, someone is going to fill it with tripe and I can't bear to leave in a smoky veil of lies. So I keep on writing it. As I somehow keep surviving I have to revise and make amendments to the text constantly. There are people who would consider this a morbid past time (mother), but I don't want anyone stealing the truth of my life just to appease themselves (or me) in my death. You can't ameliorate the pain of life by saying it aint so.

If for some reason this becomes the great work I leave unfinished, it's important to me that everyone I know is aware that there are some things you must not say when I die. If you say them I will poltergeist your ass.

• You must not say I died too soon or too young. I will stick my finger in my ghosty throat and I will retch up slime all over your lies. To say this is tantamount to a sacrilege in my peculiar worship of the truth as I see it. Whenever I go, however I am relieved of this body, I can guarantee you it was the right time. People don't die at the wrong time, they don't die "too young" or "too soon". We all die exactly when we are through with this world and no one on earth can possibly know that it was too soon.

• If anyone makes vapid generalizations such as "Everyone loved her!" I will smite the whole funeral party and make all the cubed cheese curdle in your mouths. I know for a fact that this isn't true. Erin Fry hated me. Or else she was a lesbian unable to show me how much she loved me and so tortured me with her bullying instead from third grade through sixth grade. I know there are a lot of people I've pissed off. I don't doubt there are plenty of people who I haven't yet met who won't like me.

• If anyone suggests that I am in heaven with God I will not smite them because it would be rude since they obviously believe in the pearly gates (a very fragile type of belief relying largely on your ability to believe that people sprout wings), but I will feel disrespected. I don't want anyone talking about me and my "relationship" with god. I believe I will be evaporating, liquefying, and rising up through the prairie grasses, into the bellies of birds, and out again onto the caps of unwary tourists. I will be everywhere there is air, I will be your next breath, I will be the dirt you're collecting on your shoe. If you must imagine that I've become an angel in death, as I never was in life, then you should keep that close to your chest, quiet like.

I want to remembered for being human. Being imperfect. I want never to be raised on that familiar pedestal of the dead. I don't do that to others. I think it disrespects who we've all really been. How can we remember a person, honor them, and truly appreciate what they brought to our lives if we're too busy trying to say only nice things when they've left us with their dust?

I write letters to my dead all the time. I think I may have to write them down soon. I was full of them while I was picking the most perfect green beans I've ever seen. Out there in the light and the blustery fall air, the dead were all around me and I only spoke truths with them and my love of them is not less for it.

Mostly I want people to remember that no matter how thin or how fat I have been or will become, no matter what age I have the privilege to reach, I want people to remember that I celebrated this world by putting it's jewels on my person, keeping the ocean close, the mountains closer. I want people to remember that I eventually learned not to take myself so damn seriously.

If you want people to remember anything you have to remind them. So I am going to wear what few diamonds I own, I am going to drape myself in my pretty buttons, and I'm going to wear lipstick most days again. Not to be something I'm not, but rather, to be what I've always been.

Dog Eared

Remember when the mail used to arrive in the mailbox instead of being shoved through a hole in the door where the dog turns into a vicious rabid beast and tries to rip fingers off of the postman? Back when there was no dog to haul favorite publications into "secret" corners where she drags all forbidden treats to maul them in private? Ah, those were good times. Philip isn't a magazine whore like I am, but there are three publications he looks forward to: The Rivendell Reader, Dirt Rag, and Bicycle Quarterly. This last treasure was hauled off to the "secret" corner and was violated by my dog's teeth.

Indeed, they can look so beseechingly up at you and you wonder how the heck such a compact package of muscle, teeth, claws, and dense black fur could bring upon one house such mayhem, such disorder, such complete destruction of personal property.

No I don't. I don't wonder at all. The only thing I wonder about is how I fell under her spell in the first place. It's the irony of the black dog.* The irony being that in twenty five years of being terrified of dogs, I was always most terrified of black labs. And now I have one. And I love her.

I can feel that this post is going to wander all over the place. I want to report that Max has had two temper tantrums and neither one brought about a blood bath. One of them was a spectacular show of screams and wails and hyperventilating, a show which only last week would have brought on the side show. So that's promising. Hopefully not misleading.

I have been so happy canning food and picking produce at the farm, riding my scooter on the back roads in the countryside, and watching my jars fill up. This is the kind of thing I love to do the most. I was bound to crash from that high. It's inevitable. I started thinking about how I have to look for part time work. I checked Craig's list for jobs. Then I checked the local newspaper listings. And then I got really depressed and panicky at the same time. My favorite emotional cocktail. I don't want to work outside my home. It's not because I think I'm some kind of princess. It's not that I don't want to help Philip keep us afloat.

I started thinking that here I have this company, I have stuff to sell, I have this business that I've painstakingly built into a multi-dollar institution. I realized that what I ought to do is go get some wholesale accounts. There are lots of cool stores in Portland. Then I was thinking about how I want to produce my apron patterns to sell to quilt shops. So I actually did what I've been meaning to do for all eternity and went to a couple of local print shops to find out how much it would cost to print one. The answer is: they will happily take your left breast for one large printed page. It has become immediately apparent that I can't produce them commercially to sell wholesale. It's too expensive. I don't know where other people get them printed and how many they have to print to make it affordable, but they aren't doing it through my local copy shops.

So my bright idea plummeted and my mood went south with it. I got to feeling like every which way I turn, I am no longer capable of earning a living. Even if I want to. I could work at a mushroom farm for $8.00 an hour and put Max in daycare. That sounds like fun. (Actually I keep thinking about it. Unfortunately I don't think we could afford daycare with a salary like that.) I'm not qualified for most jobs now. It's the classic risk of staying home to be with your child for any length of time. You lose your spot in the professional world.

I would much prefer working on my business. I would like to find out how to promote my web-store, how to bring customers to my shop directly rather than shoot myself in the foot trying to make it doing wholesale. I would like to have my company do well enough that I don't have to work for someone else. First of all, to do that requires time and energy. Two things I won't have any of if I work outside the home even part time.

Secondly, I have not regained my confidence. Remember how I'm the HUMAN MONEY REPELLENT? Is my company worth working on? I've been doing it for three years and it's gone almost nowhere. They say a business takes a long time to establish, but how do I know if it's headed in the right direction? How do I know if it's worth giving CPR to it? This used to be the kind of stuff my gut would help me with. I have no inner compass anymore when it comes to business. The only thing my gut is telling me is that I SUCK AT BUSINESS.

Which reminds me: I found out yesterday that I can take a seminar on running my small business and making it more profitable for the small class price of $595. Doesn't it seem like anyone (like myself) who really needs a class like this is probably not in a position to hand over what amounts to their life savings? It seems to me that a good business decision would be to keep my $595 in my pocket.

Anyway...Philip thinks I should work on my business. Since the refinance went through we have a little leeway before the other shoe drops on our life as poor people. His saying I should work on my business shows a level of confidence in me that I don't think is much deserved. I'm scared to make the wrong decisions. I'm worried that I've already been given the message to stop trying to make money with my own designs and get myself to the mushroom farm where I'll at least get exercise. Is there any reason I should believe that if I do some more work on my company that it'll start picking up?

I started writing mental letters (a favorite past time) to Moda:

"To whom it may concern at Moda,

I think it would be a big mistake not to hire me to come up with great ideas for your "Sliced Bread" line.

Sincerely,
The Human Money Repellent"

I do have lots of great ideas. My head is full of them. (Even as I write this I am wondering if that's actually true.) If I can't use them, wouldn't they be a great asset to someone else?

I really don't know what to do. I don't know what's the smart choice. I know I can't do everything. I know a direction has to be chosen. I think this not knowing what to do is payback for all the times I have been exacerbated by other people not being able to decide what to do. Here's me: with their shoes on.

Why oh why did Max's Magic Eight-ball kick the bucket??!!!!

Philip has basically decided for me. He wants me to work on my company. So we agreed that I would spend the next week finishing up my canning projects, then clean and begin the torturous process of cleaning up and organizing the garage, and then I will hunker down and start to clean up and organize my business (which requires that the garage be cleaned and organized since it's filled with my business and store things). I just hope I'm not wasting more time and energy on a horse with a broken leg.

I need an expert to step in and advise. If any of you are experts, please step in and advise. Otherwise, just watch and see what happens like I'm going to be doing.

In other news, it is a gorgeous day out there. Fall is here. I feel it in the air and fall is a great time to not be depressed. I love the cold as it creeps into the sunshine. I love how it grabs at your bones and fills them with crisp energy. I'm going to go pick more tomatoes and enjoy my last few days of "care free" homesteading fun. Doing the things I'm best at doing. And listening to the first four songs on the Wilco album that features Billy Bragg and is nothing but Woody Guthrie songs and poems made into songs. The same four songs...OVER...AND...OVER.

The poor neighbors.

*I really think this should be the title of a book. Since I'm not writing any books but keep coming up with great titles for them, I wonder if I could come up with a career based on selling book titles to authors?

Update: I have had a chat with a good friend who has helped me begin to clear away all the extraneous crap that stands between me and doing what I want to be doing. What I need to be doing. I can tell you that I am already breathing more deeply. She's going to help me come up with an ORGANIZED plan. This is why we have friends. I will report more on this at a later time when I am not in need of blasting music before the kid comes home from school. I don't know if there's an end to this tunnel, but I do know there's some light somewhere ahead of me in it. I hope it's not "white" and filled with Jesus.

Quest To Destroy The Universe

Ozark would like to rule the universe.

Since having a kid I've watched more than my human share of the good ol' fight between the classic forces of good and evil. I've noticed that nearly all villains have one thing in common:

They want to destroy the world.

This is something I think most of them haven't thought through very well. They all need to talk to Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who when given the choice to pair up with his fellow bad guys to destroy the whole world or to enlist the good guys to stop them, chooses to stop the world from being destroyed because he rather likes feasting on humans and engaging in his nefarious activities. If the whole world were destroyed, what the hell would he do with his bad self?

It's time for all the other villains to ask themselves the same question. Destruction is the name of the game, obviously, but why not stretch the fun out and keep the world intact so you can keep being evil?

The other villainous goal is to rule the world. I understand this one much better. From a critical thinking point of view, it's a much more sound ambition. However, have they all considered how much work that would be? I mean, running a store was hard enough, I really think ruling the whole world would be exhausting. All those insurrections, rebellions, damn bleeding hearts with pure intentions getting in the way all the time, all that betrayal. I imagine there's a high burnout rate in that line of work.

This is why I've largely dropped all my ambitions. Especially the one about ruling the world. When I was seventeen I really didn't realize how much work it would entail and how extremely lazy I am. I had to discover middle management for myself to really understand the great tedium involved in being in charge. I'm glad I figured that one out before I invested a lot of money in an indestructible super-suit.

34 Pints And 6 Half Pints Later...

I spent ALL of Sunday canning. I made two quadruple batches of marinated two bean salad*, ten pints of salsa, five pints of dilly beans (would have been six but for the first time in my eight years of canning, a jar broke in the canner), and one pot of cooked down tomato sauce for the freezer (I have to try it out Karmyn).

It rained yesterday which was wonderful. I really don't understand why everyone finds it so hard to live with. I was even out on my scooter in it which isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it doesn't sap my enjoyment of it. This summer was so mild and bearable, if this is the kind of summer northern Oregon is used to having (as opposed to last year which cooked me like a pig on a spit) then I've picked the right place to live. Heaven. I suppose, though, that even if this cool summer is the usual, global warming will slowly transform this climate into one where all summers are unbearable like last year.

The only problem with the rain is that it may make the tomatoes split at the farm. I'm not done with tomatoes yet. I plan to finish this week. I just hope I am still going to be able to pick them. I plan to go out to Bernards today to pick more beans and tomatoes. I still need to make more dilly beans (because I still have some gorgeous fresh dill heads from the market), marinated green beans, and stewed tomatoes. My plan is to can and freeze heavily this week and then work on organizing and cleaning half of next week, then see if I can get a couple of cases of good Bartlett pears. Once I've canned twenty four quarts of pears I think I'll declare my canning season over. Because I have to start looking for part time work.

Max's nose is healing. It still hurts him when I dab a little Vaseline on it to moisturise it, and he's very dramatic about letting me know it. A couple of times this week-end he scared the bajeezus out of me by yelling out "I have a bloody nose!!!!!!" so I come running only to find out that there was just a tiny spec of blood coming out when he blew his nose. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to strangle my sweet little lieberschleban**. Max woke up last night in his sleep and I'm so used to blood and calamity around here I had to steel myself up for the inevitable fountain of gore...instead I discovered that he woke up to the sound of the kitty retching and wanted me to find the vomit. I didn't find any so hopefully it won't be like the time the kitty pooped in Max's room and cleverly hid it for one week.

I don't think I'll totally relax about Max's nose job for a few weeks. If I don't have to deal with any bloody noses for that long I'll start to relax. It took two years of frequent blood drama to get me to the point where if I hear Max say the word I come running with five tissue boxes and my little box of tricks that almost never work to calm him down. (Maybe the kids of zen-type parents respond to deep breathing but Max really resists the temptation to get enough oxygen. He prefers to hyperventilate.) I get more stressed out than most moms when my kid has a tantrum because all Max has to do is tense up his whole body for a good scream and he can make his nose blood vessels pop. I look forward to not having to worry about this anymore.

This cold of mine has turned out to be quite mild. I had decided already not to complain a lot or try to fight it. I find that colds run through my body faster when I just relax and let it do it's thing. As it turns out, it's just an inconvenience. A little discomfort, but nothing compared to the million other worse colds I've gotten along with Max over the last few years. Sometimes I don't know how I've survived the last six years of parenthood. I am made of stern stuff. I mean, I've gotten mugged and scared the mugger away with my extreme wrath. I've gotten punched in the face by a drunk skinhead (not a shining moment in my life). I've lived through a lot of stuff that it's taken a certain amount of grit in my gut to get through, but nothing compares to parenthood when it comes to challenging me and my resources.

It just struck me right this minute, how hard the last (almost) seven years have been. Right from the forty hour labor through to now. Nonstop challenges. I have actually admitted once or twice that I am not a person who should ever have had a child***, I'm not naturally equipped to deal with the constant little emergencies that having a child ensures you will experience. By the same token, I love the bones of my baby. He's pretty extraordinary. I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is that even if Max doesn't get bloody noses any more, there's always some new challenge to replace the one you've gotten past. So the best thing is to find more inner strength, build a secret fort to hide in when the going gets rough (shhhhh, I think I'll choose my pantry for my secret fort. Don't tell my family, OK?). I want one filled with fashion magazines and beer. And cheese. I'm just coming to accept that unless you're Lucille, parenting never gets easier, it just gets different.

On the more positive side of this parenting gig, I have to say that babies are for the birds. Just kidding, I wouldn't really throw any babies to the birds. I like babies actually. They smell good a lot of the time. What I mean is that having a baby is not nearly as cool as having a kid. I don't for a million rubles wish Max was a baby again. It did used to be easier to entertain him when he was a toddler, we played a lot of chase and that was so much fun. Now he's always complicating things with RULES. He makes new rules every seven seconds. And he doesn't tell you what they are until you break them. What's cool though is this whole reading thing. The whole universe is opening up to Max now that he can read. He can read better than he wants us to know about. What it means is that I can't hide the world from him. He can read the writing on the wall better than I can sometimes.

He doesn't want to read anything when we ask him to and he pretends to hate reading, but once a curious mind gets it's grips on a tool as useful as reading, it can't help but use it. I find Max mouthing words to himself when he thinks I'm not looking. He'll read signs, labels, he reads along with us now when we read to him. He constantly asks us where we are on the page, a totally new phenomenon. It's because he's kind of reading along with us. He wants to see the words he's hearing us say. I always think it's so dorky when parents go all gushy about their kids learning to read, as though billions of people haven't learned to do that before them. But I totally get it. I feel the same way.

The way kids look at the world and explain it's mysteries is captivating. How funny is it that Max thinks Santa and God are perverts for seeing EVERYTHING we do? He doesn't think it's cool at all that they can see us go to the bathroom, he thinks that's very wrong. I find it hard to argue that one. I think it's wrong too.

Enough. I have a lot to do. I have a lot of jars yet to fill. I have to admit (well, I don't HAVE to) that I have this semi-secret ambition not to buy any canned goods all winter. Yes, I'm saying I want to can all of of the food I'll need for the winter besides fresh food such as in season vegetables (cabbage, chard, lettuce, winter squash, etc.). Is there any reason I shouldn't have this ambition? Does it reek of obsession...or good sense? Wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't that be amazingly satisfying?

Alright, I'm off to shower and pick food. Laundry be damned!





*The less famous cousin of the "Three bean salad" known and loved by all deli aficionados. I didn't have any garbanzo beans but I have twenty five pounds of dried kidney beans so I just used more kidneys and more green beans.

**I spell that word differently every time. I figure that since it's a word I made up, I can spell it however I want. It just now occurred to me that maybe it's a real word in German and someone is going to bust my chops over it. Let 'em bust me...I just hope it doesn't mean "penis" or "nose job" in German.

***Don't anyone bother trying to say otherwise. Sometimes the truth sounds harsher than it is. I wouldn't probably say something like this about any other woman on the planet, because that's not something we can really know about other people. But we certainly can know it about ourselves.

You Can't Force A Pen To Speak

You know how sometimes the writing is on the wall in huge red dripping spray painted letters but you still try to erode them beyond recognition with a little TSP? You know how sometimes you prefer to bang your hard head against the proverbial brick wall because it's there, you're there, and it doesn't occur to you to climb over the wall, or to walk away from the wall, or that it may be possible to just love the wall and accept it as part of your mental landscape?

That's what I keep doing. My head won't crack, the wall won't crack, and I just have a big brain ache from the effort. I once read the Deepak Chopra book the "The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success" (I'm still not sure what my dad was trying to tell me by giving me that book) and the main thing that stuck with me was the whole bit about taking the path of least resistance. I am thinking about this now because I have that sensation that the path of least resistance is the one that I ought to be taking with my writing. Yet I still sit down and struggle to make my "pen" perform a task it doesn't want to. Bad monkey pen!

I keep trying to start a book, but here's what happens when I do that: I take an hour to figure out where to start it, once started I really try to get the voice going in my head, I try to keep the tone at a certain level of irreverence, which is impossible because inevitably the voice gets dark and wistful and tragic and I start writing a Dickensian account of how I used to own a store. Or it gets all dusty and hopeless like a Steinbeck story. Or it gets twisted and bogged down with a thousand words that no normally educated person uses which is a favorite Falkner method of not drawing you in. The biggest irony is that when I sit down to attempt a "real" piece of writing, what I write is the kind of dark and bleak stuff I refuse to read. (I refuse to read it now, but I've read it all years ago. I know these authors because I've read them.)

I write only the kind of disturbing stories that make you want to kill yourself. Yes, that's me: the same one who won't watch "The Office" because it makes me want to shove crushed aspirin up my nose it's so depressing. I don't want to go there because it's already in my fucking head and when I sit down to really tell a tale, that's the kind of stuff that comes out.

I'm tired of trying to milk a nonexistent muse. I could write a book about a year in the life of a store owner...I mean, theoretically I could, but in reality I don't want to go backwards. I want to be in the present. I want to offer what is fresh and happening right now. To write a book about something that has already happened, that I've already examined and stolen the truth from, is excruciatingly boring. I don't have any more to offer on that. I have this. Right here. The voice that I bring to my blog is the process of life as it's being processed. It's raw, it's honest (most of the time), it gets dark at times, but because life is always moving forward, the darkness recedes almost as fast as it arrives.

I never give myself a chance to get overwhelmingly Dickensian on myself. I love that.

So why keep trying to wash the writing off the wall with an acid bath? Is the message so bad? Is there any reason I shouldn't just learn to love the hard head I have and the fact that there's a brick wall I'm not meant to bring down? Do I need to write an actual book? Does anyone out there really want to get stuck in the mire of my mind when it back-peddles into the dark? I think what I have to offer on a daily basis, this business of being sad or happy right now, of being excited about what's coming, and of examining what just immediately passed, this is the best I have to give with my pen. Immediacy.

If I write a book you will never be privy to such brilliant random thoughts like this one I had while drying off from my shower:

"Do you ever wonder if all of our lives would have turned out better if none of us had ever stopped listening to Barry Manilow?"

HUH? (Yes, yes I did listen to Barry, and I LOVED him. Just like I loved Kenny Rogers, Taco, and Niel Diamond.) By the way, I'm not sure who I am asking here, my other thirty nine personalities?

I can write a blog or a weekly column. Not a book. (Although I'm sure I can write a book depressing and shattering enough to make the Oprah book club. However, I know she'd never read a book I wrote. Me and Oprah are not destined to cross paths in this life. There are just some things a person can know about their own life.) Isn't there honor to be had in that? I should stop wasting my energy on the idea of a book and find myself the perfect publication for my style of writing. Not easy I think. It would have to be a column in which I can write about whatever the hell I want. Who's going to pay me for that?

Is it alright not to have the expected ambitions? Is it alright, as a writer, to not need to have a book? To be happy with my own little world here? To be happy that there are people who come here almost every day? It makes me so happy to write my blog. I'm too busy writing it to hate what I'm writing. I sometimes even crack myself up, even when no one else is amused (I still don't get why no one thought the "leg sideburns" thing was funny). I never amuse myself when I'm trying to write a book. It isn't fun.

When I go out in the world I see everything through a filter which helps me decide if something I've experienced or thought about or seen is interesting enough to bring to anyone who might read my blog. For some reason people come here and I love being alert for things that might amuse, or sustain, encourage, inspire, or that might plunge us all into deeper thought. I feel useful as a writer here. I feel close to my real self here. I'm not trying to be something I'm not.

One of the classic books I most enjoyed was Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". What I loved so much about it was the surprising way he had of suddenly speaking as the author to his readers; giving funny asides about the characters in the story. It was like he was reaching out of the page through time and space to get personal with me (in a non-sleazy way.). It felt fresh and kind of saucy to hear an interesting story and then get glimpses of the author. Blogs are like that. You can tell tales and in the middle of it leap out and talk to your reader. If you have one. Which you always hope you do because otherwise you might feel a little silly.

If you aren't me, that is. I've been narrating to myself since I was born so talking to myself is just life as it's always been. So I've decided I'm not going to try to write a book. If someone out there wants to pay me a living to write a column, I think I just may shine for you. Otherwise, I plan to give everything good that I've got to this blog. I still plan to apply for Blogher advertising to see if maybe I can generate a little bit of income that way. But regardless of whether or not I can make a living writing this blog, I plan to settle into it. It isn't the stepping stone to something greater.

This is the best medium I've found for what I have to give. Other than hoping I don't have to apply for WIC or eat plain beans for the rest of my life, I don't have huge ambitions anymore. I would like to not be so poor, but writing a book isn't going to pay the bills either. Can I join the underachiever club? I'm having trouble ending this post because I've just made a big declaration and I am scared to say it out loud. Until I press "publish", it's still just tentative. I know I can always take it back. But I can't really. All I'm doing is recognizing what is.

What already is is so much more peaceful and simple than what could be. What already is has a plain beauty to it. It feels breathtakingly daring not to be striving to build an empire of worth. To see who I actually am, to recognize what opportunities I have, to turn my face away from what others appear to have, and appear to want, and to stop comparing myself to them. Bitter Betty and Future Girl have both just explored this same topic in their own context. I think there is no better service we can do for ourselves than to recognize our own gifts and let them become what they need to become and not worry what they might become if we were in different circumstances, which we never are.

Dammit. Now I'm talking in circles.

What I'm saying is that I am actually very happy not to be Alicia Paulson, Laurie Perry, Heather Armstrong, Anne Lamott, Alice Waters, or Laurie Notaro, because not a single one of them is going out to pick beans in a field with me and the birds and the quiet this afternoon and there's not place I'd rather be heading.

Forty-Two Pecks Of Pickles

Late Thursday morning I got a call from Lisa E. that she had procured two cases of pickling cucumbers and could I come over right away and start canning them up? I had been sitting at my computer kind of staring at it in an abstract way for about a half an hour because I was still getting over the whole stress of the twenty minute bloody nose of Max's. So I wasn't quite ready to jet. I had to gather myself up from the ether where my head was hanging out and eat food and think about how I was going to survive the ride on Highway 240. It was important to take advantage of this opportunity though because this year pickling cucumbers have not been available for picking at my favorite farm (due to crop failure) and it's nearly the end of the road for them everywhere.

You have to understand that Lisa and I both have friends and family absolutely boiling with anticipation for more of the kind of pickles we made last year because they were better than most pickles any of us have ever had. Well, that's what my sister, a pickle connoisseur, thought about them. Then my friend Sid, who I haven't heard a peep from since last April and who I miss dearly, said the same thing. She's another pickle connoisseur. So people want more. Obviously I cannot disappoint anyone.

The scooter ride to Lisa's house would be very pleasant if it weren't for all the cars I have to share the road with. There is a fifty five mile an hour speed limit on highway 240, a small two lane back road to Dundee from McMinnville. My scooter can keep up that speed limit without problems and I manage to hold that speed, sometimes a little bit faster, and yet there is not a car out there that doesn't feel it has to pass me. It makes me nuts. If everyone is going to insist on passing me (something that makes me nervous whether it's legal or not) then I may as well just go forty miles per hour and have myself a pleasant pastoral drive.

I have come to realize that people feel one of two things when they share the road with a shiny Vespa: 1) they are scared that they might run into me and so out of deep concern for my personal safety they must pass my flimsy excuse for a vehicle, or 2) it bugs the crap out of them that my waspy little scooter can go fast enough to keep up with traffic and they must show me that they are bigger and faster and pass me and then go fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit to stay ahead of me. I don't find this relaxing at all.

I may as well say here that I am constantly annoyed with people on the road anyway because I don't understand every one's desperate need to go as fast as the cops will let them get away with. It's like a rule with people that they must always go at least fifteen miles faster than the posted limit. Stop rushing around people. A lot of times people will pass me on highway 99 and I'll continually catch up with them at red lights. They jet ahead (oh how attractive that makes them, really sexy, you know?) and show me what they're made of and then I casually end up at the same light as them. Me, who tries to stick to the posted speed limit.

Speed is not sexy to me. This is so far off topic I'm not sure how to get back to the pecks of pickles in question. I guess the only way is to just dive in.

The day was just a jangle of noise and action to me. I had been contemplating getting into bed because I felt a cold coming on and what sounded good was to just stop working. But you can't ignore a pickle emergency so I gathered myself up and it only took me an hour to get out of the house. Like lightning-that's me. I finally arrived at Lisa's house at around twelve forty am. I didn't leave until eight pm. We put up forty two quarts of pickles. I am nervous of the results. Philip says I'm obsessing but the pickles remind me a little bit of shriveled uncircumcised penises. We couldn't get our hands on the freshest cucumbers so we took what we could get and they were a little old. They tell you in all the canning manuals not to use pickles that are old because they will be inferior. They don't tell you they will look like shriveled man parts, though, I guess that's what I'm here for.

A number of you will be thrilled to know that in addition to the dills, we also made a batch of bread and butter pickles. Just to see. Lisa has tried them before and said that even though she doesn't like sweet pickles, she remembers bread and butter pickles being quite savory and good. We cut the sugar in half though. Was that a big mistake?

I feel relieved to have put up the dills. They were so good last year. Even if they aren't quite as good this year because of not being canned the same day they were picked, I feel that we'll all enjoy them.

Silver Nitrate Is A Bitch

Why does this bairn look so dispirited? How can a kid be so low on a Friday? And anyway, when you're six years old, isn't life just a gas? Isn't life nonstop freedom from responsibilities? (Of course, to appreciate freedom from responsibilities one must actually experience them first, right?). While it's possible he's just expressing his chagrin at his mother snapping a picture of him in the hospital elevator...

...I think it's probably because he just had an "engorged" nose vein DUG OUT OF HIS NOSE WITH SILVER NITRATE AND BURNED TO SMITHEREENS WHILE HE SCREAMED WITH PAIN IN THE CHAIR.

I have to admit that I almost couldn't take it. I had the strongest urge to shove the nitrate up the doctor's nose so he could see for himself that the pain is not "like a little pinch" as he promised Max but more like a searing gut wrenching pain not unlike pouring boiling water on your bare skin. When we left the office Max asked "Has that doctor ever had that done to his own nose?". Astute question little dude. I seriously doubt it.

The last time he got his nose cauterized it really wasn't too painful but that's because it was a fairly superficial cauterization that works on most cases. They save the torture for the really stubborn big engorged veins; for the real tough cases. To be fair to the doctor, he really was doing what he knows to be the most effective way to stop the bloody noses and I, for one, will be relieved to live a life without being frequently covered with my son's blood. I hate to hear my son begging to be put out so he can't feel such pain, but the nose bleeds are also incredibly distressing to him when they happen, which is all the time. So if this little experiment in torture proves effective, then I will be grateful for it.

We're a little shaken up over here though. He's recovering his color (what little he usually has) while playing on the play station. I can tell there are going to be rough patches today though. He's pretty emotionally fragile at the moment.

When we got home he wanted me to read him a story. Guess what he brought home from school? I'll just tell you because I think you'll never guess: a book about Navy SEALS. Nice. So like a good open minded* mama I read to him all about Navy SEALS which ends with propaganda rules on volunteering. Because what six year old boy is not going to think it's totally cool to join a stealth team of assassins soldiers who get to play with explosives for the "good guys"?! Do I need to mention how heinous I find it that there are books about Navy SEALS available to little children?

There was mention of how women aren't allowed to join the SEALS and Max wanted further explanation as to why that is. I offered the simplest explanation I could which is that traditionally women are the only ones who can have babies and they need to stay out of wars so they can care for them. So he says "So the women stay home to have babies and protect them so they can grow up and become SEALS?"

Yes honey, it's what every mama dreams of.


*Well, I think it's open minded not to care if my kid becomes a cabaret singer, a cab driver, a liquor store owner, a gas station attendant, or a football player. But I admit I struggle very hard not to scream in horror every time he expresses interest in the armed forces.

Salsa Water

Notice the lipstick? I must say, lipstick really makes a difference. I've known this for so long it amazes me that I ever forgot. I do remember declaring when I was seventeen and stupid that I would never be caught dead leaving the house without make up. That was back before I learned not to use the cursed word "never". You may find yourself wondering how the hell I can bring myself to wear such outre sunglasses...but if you're asking this question then you are behind the times my friend. Didn't you know that the '80's is the new '70's?

(I have a whole dissertation in my head about the asinine nature of this particular statement which is forever cropping up in fashion magazines "Pink is the new black", "50 is the new 40" (with regards to age), "Casual is the new formal"...etcetera. You may as well say that "Penis is the new vagina" for all it really makes any sense.)

Yesterday was another gorgeous day to be out and about. I had to go back to the farm to pick up the peppers I left there, so obviously I had to pick more tomatoes too. And a few more jalapenos. I thought I might take you along. This is what the world looks like from my scooter. Hop on man, let's go to the farm! (Doesn't that make this post so interactive you almost feel the bugs in your own hair?)

Here is one of the many crosses I see on the road sides. This particular road has it's share of ghosts. I don't know what happened to Kate, Katie, and Michael, but I'm pretty sure they were Hispanic and catholic. I only guess this due to the exuberant display of catholic offerings with the slightly cooler Latino flair than my own catholic relatives are likely to have. I risked my limbs for this shot. The road is very small and there's no place to really pull over. I wonder if that's how Kate, Katie, and Michael bit it? Were they just trying to get a more pastoral shot of this pretty landscape when they were tragically bumped into the next life?

Another ghost on this road is a young man who apparently died trying to procure drugs which he was rather fond of. Meth was his nectar. Unfortunately, his body was recently found in a fifty gallon drum on a farm on this road. See, I can't stop thinking about it which I would like to do, but I read the paper last week (big mistake) and this is what I find out about. This is not useful news to me. I already am aware that there are thousands of lost bodies stashed in weird places on the planet just waiting to be discovered, or not. I don't actually need to know the precise location of where they were stashed once found, especially when it's in my neck of the woods.

This is heaven. An endless field of tomatoes. Tomatoes as far as the eye can see. My ambition is to fill every cupboard space in my house with canned tomatoes so that all winter long I can open up that sunshine and have myself some home-made tomato soup on a cold winter day with a hunk of home made bread. I had a great talk with one of the farm owners, Chris, about their policy on pesticides. Bernard's Farm rarely sprays their crops, and when they do the only thing they use is an organic natural rosemary oil. Chris says it's important to her that people be able to go out in her field, pick a tomato, and eat it right there without worrying about chemical contamination. However, they cannot be certified organic because they use a non organic fertilizer.

This is how many tomatoes fit in my apron.

(I was on a role with this post when I got a call from the school that Max had a bloody nose that wouldn't stop and it had been twenty minutes and he was getting really upset...I just got back from sitting with him while the dizziness subsided. You can't call the hospital for advice on whether you should come in to emergency or not, and the advice nurse at the doctor's office is never immediately available and generally will call you back within two hours.

So essentially, we're always in our own hands when it comes to drawing the emergency line. That really sucks. Our doctor told us that a twenty minute nose bleed is the limit they should go, beyond that we should take Max to the hospital. But what the hell will they do for him? This one stopped right at about twenty minutes. I think the office gets tired of seeing my son and I feel bad for Max having to be the kid who is always bleeding.)

This is what I took home with me.

Heading back to the barn to weigh up my pick. I love it here. It's a very calm productive spot full of potential meals and abundance, I find it addictive to come pick my own vegetables here. I love it even more now that I know for sure that they don't spray with anything except a rare dose of rosemary oil.

Before heading into the barn I couldn't help but stop to pick a few jalapenos since I used up most of my stash the day before. I didn't wear gloves to pick them. We need to talk about that later.

Over forty pounds of produce for $19.00 is such a great price. Especially when most of that is tomatoes. I fit it all on my scooter. I admit that there are moments at the grocery store and at the farms when I wonder if I'll really be able to fit it all onto my little vehicle, but I always manage.

Tuesday I made a salsa recipe that I got from Karmyn at Dreaming What Ifs... and then yesterday I used a recipe from a pamphlet of recipes developed by The Pacific Northwest Extension. The one I did yesterday was supposed to make 16 to 18 pints of salsa. That would certainly have been the case if what I wanted was SALSA WATER. I not only squeezed all the seeds out (the juiciest bit) but I had to cook that salsa for over an hour and also ladle out several quarts of watery tomato juice. I like salsa to be thick enough to hang onto a chip. So what I ended up with after a huge day of work was 8 pints of salsa.

I also made some stewed tomatoes from the leftover fifteen pounds of tomatoes I picked on Tuesday. They turned out really well, I mean, they didn't ooze out of the jars after removal from the boiling water bath, and nothing floats to the surface. I want to do this recipe I found in a British preserving book but I can't figure out how to make it work with the recommendations of the USDA. So then I was thinking of freezing some tomato sauce or soup, but I know tomatoes can well so I'm reluctant to waste energy freezing anything I'm unsure of.

I've also slow roasted a couple of batches. I will certainly post the recipe for these in the next couple of days. The great thing is that you don't need a bushel of tomatoes and it takes almost no work to do them.

Here are a few tips I'd like to give to anyone who is canning this week:

• Obviously don't douse yourself in boiling water. You'd think this is something we all already know, yet only two weeks ago I shuffled across my patio with a pot of boiling water and got myself good. So really: Don't run with boiling water kids...

• You know how people are forever saying you should handle all hot peppers with gloves? I'm a tough girl and I don't listen to pansy advice like this, do you? There's a difference between chopping three roasted jalapenos and de-seeding sixteen of them raw. The difference is: skin that burns for 12 hours no matter how hard you try to scrub your skin off of your hand. Yes, I bought myself some latex gloves for the purpose of handling hot peppers and the next time you plan to handle hot peppers, I recommend you follow that advice. Unless you are one of those people that find pain sexy, in which case go ahead and take the pain highway, just don't tell me how much you like it because things will be uncomfortable between us for a while if you do.

• If a salsa recipe says the yield will be 8 pints, be advised that in all likelihood what they mean is that you will get 8 pints of SALSA WATER, or 4 pints of regular salsa. Ladling out the watery part that settles on the top will reduce the total time it takes to get your salsa to a regular consistency.

Now I must be off to cook more tomatoes. Which I don't feel like doing because I am coming down with a cold. Think I can trick it into never arriving? I am actually shocked that it has been over a year since the last time I got a cold. Ever since Max was born I went from getting sick once a year to getting every single cold that drifted through town. Hell, if Carla in Kentucky got a cold I'd get it from her. This is the first year that I've gone back to my normal cold programming. I still wish I wasn't feeling it coming on though. So maybe I should make some delicious soothing tomato soup?

Note: Finally the advice nurse called me back and guess what? After a year of torture and agony and us begging for answers or help with the bloody nose situation, they've made us an appointment with the ear throat nose specialist. Of course, I know what will happen there too. They're going to tell us there's nothing that can be done, there are no answers that we don't already have. But the point is: it took a year for the doctor to decide that this might be an issue? They didn't think this was an appropriate step way back in (whenever that was) when I almost passed out from the bloody nose that came out both nostrils like a river for twenty minutes and the only reason I didn't pass out was because Philip DID?

Homemaker Action Figure

If they ever design a homemaker action doll, can I be the designer? This would be her super suit: a Vespa helmet, goggles*, a cheerful apron, comfy black clothes, flip flops, and lipstick**...

She's ready for anything!

Such as flying to a farm on the back roads letting the warm air rush past her; picking forty pounds of tomatoes and an apronful of ancho chilies in less than an hour; making one big batch of salsa even though the peppers were left behind*** in her super rush to make hay while the sun still shines; after hours she whipped up six batches of pesto for the freezer, filed all the papers that were threatening to kill her in a great big paper strangle, and though it was a struggle...she managed to write out a bunch of checks for bills all on just under 2,000 calories. Which included some modest amounts of beer.

That's right. You don't need to clean out your ears. I said MODEST amounts of beer. See, I'm very vain and it's finally getting to me that being as porky as I am prevents me from wearing my super-chic aprons without looking like myrtle the giant pig. (I would link to a picture of her majesty if I could access them on the old computer, but I can't. You'll have to use that fertile imagination of yours.) Myrtle is the biggest hog I have ever seen. Absolutely queenly proportions and some serious teeth with which to nosh on ears of corn with all the grace of a...of a...well, she's got no grace at all, actually. Anyway, the beer was modest, the hour of sleep not ridiculous.

Oh yes, and she managed to go to the gym and do the cardiovascular portion of her work out. Is that not all worthy of an action figure? Tell me Arnold can do better. You can't.

*Sunglasses are way cooler looking but I broke mine while picking tomatoes and if you don't wear some sort of protective eye-wear while scootering your eyeballs become a mini-windscreen against which bugs will die. I had these goggles at home waiting to be worn for rainy conditions or night time driving when sunglasses would be dangerous. But I think they have a serious dork factor to them.

**About the lack of lipstick...I admit that my ensemble wasn't complete and there's no excuse not to wear lipstick to go tomato picking. Something I will rectify today.

***In her girl scout-like preparedness she had a bag full of jalapeno peppers picked just two days previously waiting to be used and in a dexterous switching of recipes, she made do.

The Last Ten Days In Pictures

(Plus: lyrics to live by)

One of my old friends in the Portland Rose Garden "Frederick Mistral". His scent is a heady old rose scent, his leaves are healthy and relatively disease free, his growth is prolific. He likes to get very tall. He is generous with his blooms all season. I will be planting one of this rose in my new garden and if you're looking for a great rose with rich scent, I highly recommend this one.

The rose garden is so sprawling, so large, it is difficult to capture it's scope with a camera, at least a camera like mine. I didn't see the whole thing on our visit. I'm hoping to go once more this season which must be about to end.

Now I'm not positive (because a couple of days have passed already) but I think this is a rose called "Karen Blixen" that I've never grown. She doesn't have a stunning scent, but the blooms are really elegant and arching (weak necks) which is not ideal if you like erect stems, but when arranging bouquets in old teapots, which I like to do, arching stems make for a better arrangement.

My mom giving the ol' sniff test. Like most of them, this one failed. So sad. So unnecessary. It's time that all rose breeding programs included a direction in scent. There are enough mild and scentless roses to please those who prefer them (or who are allergic to strong scent). I love that David Austin makes that a priority, though what he likes about the "musk" scents he sometimes comes up with is a huge mystery to me. But his rose "Abraham Darby" is brilliant with it's rich warm rose scent and it's prolific growth and gorgeous form. Sorry, I'm getting carried away aren't I?

Lots of eggplant fun in the past week. Not everything I made turned out as good as could be hoped. These did though. Simple round slices of eggplant grilled to perfection on the BBQ after being brushed with a rosemary marinade.

These stuffed round eggplants turned out pretty good, the stuffing which consisted of the insides of the eggplant sauteed with sliced stale bread, dried thyme, fresh tomatoes, onion, butter, olive oil, and lemon zest turned out superb...but the stuffing was so good that we kind of didn't enjoy eating the plain eggplant it was stuffed into. So as pretty as these are, I am going to do this again as an eggplant casserole or as a stuffing for something else such as big zucchinis or tomatoes.

The commissioned project I did to cover my friend Sylla's chair cushions. This is the before picture. I don't blame her for wanting to have them covered.

Especially in this wonderful bark cloth!! This was a very satisfying project. I did have to redo one of the zippers which sucked, but that's the way it goes. Better to redo it and preserve my professional reputation than to let anyone think I do shoddy work.

She was pleased with the results too which is the most important thing.

And lastly, this was a superfine summer meal we had. Freshly picked corn on the cob with a nine dollar sandwich made with bread from our local bakery "Red Fox Bakery", and grilled eggplant, pesto, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. Oh my. So good. It's making me hungry right now.

It's such a relief to have pictures again. The main computer is still not fixed. The motherboard was fried and can't be easily fixed because it's a Dell and they have all kinds of proprietary issues. We've been debating how to proceed. We could have another computer built more cheaply, to replace this one, but we are leaning towards fixing what we have because this is a chance to not throw something away. Something I want to be more careful about in my life. It's so tempting to just start over with a computer, it can be cheaper, but overall, if we can just fix up what we have and throw away only 25% of it (the motherboard and the case for the hard drive both must be replaced apparently) then we're keeping more out of the landfill.

Anyway, Philip installed my camera software onto the laptop and now I can move on. I can update my Etsy shop, and just as soon as I recall what my password is for my flickr account I can update that too. It's such a relief. I know, I already said that.

IT'S SUCH A RELIEF!

So I folded six loads of laundry, even though I only washed four yesterday. That's because I had to fold the loads that had been sitting around collecting dust for days before even starting. All I got through were my back log of sheets and towels. I have a lot of raggy towels I use for canning and drying the dog and other fun things like that. The hamper was full of them. Every sheet and comforter cover and towel in the house was in the hamper. So I have a whole extra day of laundry doing to do if I want to be completely caught up. Here's the thing: we have only a family of three and I can never keep up with my own laundry, how the hell do you larger families face such gargantuan piles of it? I know that I am a weak-ass when it comes to laundry so I'm hardly a person whose laundry skills you want to compare yourself to. Laundry has always been my downfall and I'm mostly alright with that.

It doesn't mean I don't keep trying though. I'm an excellent housewife in most ways, but we all have to have our dark areas, right? Except for you perfect people out there. Don't talk to me.

I had a nightmare last night. It was not one of the worst, thank goodness. I don't remember much of it except that there was a very bad man who must have had some keen evil powers because he was monitoring myself and two other women through a television we couldn't turn off. One of the women was pregnant and eating something spinachy. But then we were all three eating something spinachy. Then the bad man was in the room with us and I was hiding. That's all I remember. Spinach-baby-badman. Aren't nightmares fascinating?

Oh wait, and I costumed a bunch of people for some strange event but my old costuming partner Autumn was there and was scoffing at me and my work and it was all very stressful since I apparently have quite the inferiority complex. It was all somehow connected with my mom living in an apartment in the city.

My knee hurts today which is annoying. It's always got to be something, doesn't it? I can't decide if it would be wise to skip the gym today or not. I don't want to hurt my knee more but I need to not lose any momentum with the gym thing. I feel like I should not strain it today, that's what my gut says. At least my burn is scabbed up and healing well. (I hope you're not eating your breakfast right now.)

On the agenda: laundry, pesto making for the freezer, and salsa canning. Which means a trip out to my favorite farm. Which means locating the back road so I can avoid taking Highway 18 on my scooter except for about a quarter mile.

Do you ever think about all the ghosts that walk the highways? I was just suddenly remembering the old lady who died in a violent crash on that same stretch of highway last week. We were on the highway not long after the crash happened and had to take a detour to the farm because of it. Lisa E. and I were both pretty sure we saw fire on the road just before turning off. On our way back we saw the white car that was wrecked in the ditch, smashed like an insignificant pumpkin. What's amazing is that the old man who was driving it lived. But what an awful day. And to make it so far in life with a person, to be old together and then lose one of the pair in such a violent way. I can't help but wonder if the old man hasn't died now too? It's not uncommon for old folks to follow loved ones into the grave not long after being left solo.

It happened to Johnny Cash. When we heard that June had died, Philip and I both said we wouldn't be surprised if he followed her in the near future. Not three months later and he was dead too.

I don't know that I believe in ghosts, in a haunting kind of way. I guess I kind of do. Or at least I believe that spirits linger. Or at least leave some imprint or memory of themselves behind. I've felt them before. Maybe they were actually the spirits themselves, but I tend to think that what I have felt is the residue of their existence. Like a three dimensional photo. Sometimes I get the shivers walking through such imprints. I was just thinking about how many lives are lost on American freeways every single day. It's a phenomenal number. It's eerie to see how many crosses are set up to remember them on the sides of the road. I used to be haunted by those, especially because one of the first ones I saw was to commemorate a girl who went missing (last seen at that spot on the freeway that is marked in Rio Grand California) and (I think) later turned up dead.

So I wonder, if you were to clear all the cars from a stretch of freeway and achieve total silence, could you hear the spirits there? Would they be weeping? Screaming? Sometimes, (and this is one of those instances where it would be totally appropriate to remember that I am a freak), I feel like it's one of my main jobs in life to remember the dead. To speak for the voiceless. I see dead animals on the road, or crosses commemorating human life cut off, and I find myself speaking to them in a kind of mental undertone. Making a note that here was life. Here was the end of something beautiful. Remembered. It can be overwhelming though when in my head I start taking count of all the dead in the world. I write them letters. I send them notes.

My head is like a mailbox for the dead.

I haven't really said these things out loud before. Not in detail. You can totally understand how come one of my most frequent fantasies is to take a ten year vow of complete silence? Anyone who knows me knows that this would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE. Which is perhaps why it is a particularly compelling fantasy. Isn't it always what is most unreachable that we reach for in our dream world? The flat chested poor girl wants triple D breasts, right? The nerdy guy who can't speak to girls wants to be the next James Bond, am I wrong?

This all reminds me of the music I was listening to while cleaning yesterday. My play list started with "The Buena Vista Social Club" soundtrack, then I listened to "Ziggy Stardust", and finished the event off with Roy Acuff singing one of my favorite all time songs "The Wreck On The Highway" which is all about whiskey and blood running together. It's also religious. Even though I am not religious, I love a lot of religious music. Mahalia Jackson is a favorite, as are the old classical pieces written for the church or in celebration of Jesus like Handel's "Messiah". Another of my favorite songs is "Were You There" by Johnny Cash which is all about being nailed to the cross and being shoved into a cave to die, you know how Jesus was entombed and then rose and all that jazzy jazz? These are very violent songs.

On a side note, I have been a huge Bowie fan since I was 13 years old when my mom insisted that I would love this guy. She bought his latest album "Modern Dance" on a trip we had made to Mill Valley and we listened to it all the way back up to Ashland Oregon where we were living at the time. She told me when he would be appearing on MTV, which was relatively new at the time, and made sure I was up to see it. I totally fell for him and his music was the main soundtrack to my life for years. As I was listening to him yesterday I was amazed at just how many of his lyrics are completely loony. Yet I totally get them as do so many people. He evokes a feeling, he communicates something with drug addled words that somehow makes sense. How does he do that?

"You're squawking like a pink monkey bird" can only come from either a crazy person, or a crazy person on drugs. We know the answer to that one by now. It kept making me laugh, hearing these lyrics that I took so seriously when I was younger. His was a voice that spoke my language. Yet, I had never been exposed to, and would be surprised at being exposed to a pink monkey bird even now. I'm going to look that up...

Yeah, I think Bowie made that one up.

I will leave you with this sage piece of advice gleaned from the Ziggy Stardust album:

"Don't let the milk float ride your mind."

That's what I always say.

Cleaning Day

What could be better than an entire day devoted to laundry and cleaning? I hear Pam in my head saying "Yeah, crazy girl, we've been over this already. I-DO-NOT-LOVE-CLEANING." I know, it isn't for everyone. But we're messy people over here at the Williamson Ranch. Someone has to do it. I have been three loads of laundry behind for months now. Actually, I'm kind of scared of all the things I really have to do. There are things I can't put away because about a million other things have to be put away first. The garage is a very scary place right now. I need to clean out the space the freezer is in so I can convert the whole thing to my pantry, but that means shifting everything that's in there to somewhere else. My garage is packed SOLID.

Here's what I hope to do in six hours time:

• Go to the gym.

• Do every last load of laundry in the house.

• Fold the damn laundry. All of it. Seriously.

• Put away as much as I can (magazines, books, toys, purse contents that my purses have vomited all over the house, beer bottles, jars with definitely dead cocoon-type thingy, and all the rawhide scraps the dog has left in handy corners and under chairs.) *I have opted to do what I can from this list today and tackle the tougher bigger garage job another day soon.
  

• Dust all dustable surfaces.

• Sweep all sweepable floors.

• Vacuum all vacuumable floors.

• Mop the kitchen floor.

• Put all clothes away.

• Find space for canned peaches and tomatoes in cupboards.

• Cut fresh flowers for the house. *there was only one bouquets worth of flowers to pick.
  

• Take library books back.

• Take movies back.

• File papers accumulating on the bill desk.

Think I can do it? I know, seems impossible. But if I'm going to be able to do other things like my preserving projects, I need to clear the slate. It's time to do the following canning projects:

• salsa

• marinated three bean salad

• stewed tomatoes

• pears

• corn relish

• frozen corn (corn is almost done for the season)

So you see? Oh yes, somehow I managed not to mention paying bills. I'm scared of my bills. I think they're going to choke the life out of me. I think they're going to wait until I'm asleep though. This is fine, I'll just avoid sleep like usual and they will give up.

We got some yard work done yesterday. It felt so good to get out there and do some of the things I've been meaning to get done. I trained Kaiserin Fredrich to the house, trimmed up all of the plants to the left side of the front door, and Philip pulled up the obnoxious bushes that I hate on the right side of the front door. He also finally planted my Peace rose and my Mr. Lincoln. We were talking about how long it takes us to get our yards looking nice. It really takes us a couple of years. During that time we let a lot go to shit while we figure out what we want to do with it all. It took us three years at our old house to get it looking really nice. We're never super tidy so our yard never looks showcase pretty.

It doesn't matter though because even with a certain amount of constant weeds, we got our last garden to where it had a nice structure to it and even when getting sprawly had a charm to it that pleased me so much. You won't ever come to my house and think "Dang, I should write to Sunset Magazine about this place!", but you just might sit back and want to relax while the bees buzz like mad and the humming birds take a dip in the buddleia. You'll want to smell the roses and pick the daisies. You'll want to be in it because at some point my gardens do overflow with amazing scent and color and generally something good to eat.

I get very excited about planning my garden. Yesterday I started looking through some books I got from the library. Border gardening is what I'm most interested in right now because I need to plan a great big border around my front yard. I know I want to mix in some roses, peonies, salvia, yarrow, rudebekia, shasta daisies, coreopsis, lupine, purple cone flowers, lavender, Veronica spicata, Echinops, Scabiosa, Alliums, Achillea, and some penstemon. Some of these are new to me (growing them myself) and many are not. There are a lot more I want to plant as well but how exhaustive a list can anyone read?

Looking through garden books it seems that a favorite tactic is to choose color themes. What I want to choose is every color mixed together. I don't want a cool or hot color scheme. I want to just plant a huge array of colors all jumbled together with certain randomness. Nature doesn't do her planting in color blocks, she just lets seeds fall where they may, so perhaps sometimes there is a big patch of one color where most of a plants seeds have fallen or bulbs have multiplied. But then the birds mix things up. The wind mixes it all up too. When you look out over a field of wild flowers (not easy to find anymore unless planted by humans) you see all the colors and plants mixed up and it's so beautiful to me.

It's time to get ready to clean. So I will leave you with thoughts on your own gardens and homes. Please tell me what your favorite plants are in the garden and why. What are your favorite color schemes? What about your garden gives you the most pleasure? I realize that this is a little bit like asking if you're naked right now, but go ahead, tell me anyway!



Note: I just got back from the gym and returning my library books as well as fetching a couple of items from my store storage and on the way back I realized that my plan is incredibly flawed. If I can't put things away very well until the garage is organized, then why aren't I doing that monster of a job first? I have to do laundry no matter what so I'm going to start and then perhaps revise my original plan. Perhaps I need to do most of the cleaning tomorrow after organizing and cleaning up the spaces that desperately need it. Meanwhile...the clock is ticking. It's already 10:30, so I only have four hours to do whatever I choose to do. Dang it.