Money Monday: August 16, 2010

I know, blast from the past, right?! It is consistently amazing to me just how much this contract has thrown a wrench into my (so-called) normal life. From getting the bathrooms clean to making a budget to writing regular blog posts (ahem), it feels as though there is always something I didn't do because I was doing something else because there are only so many hours in a day, dammit, and furthermore why is everybody always picking on me IT'S NOT FAIR WAAAAAAH!.

Oops. Sorry. Still in the "post-vacation why am I expected to know everything get OFF me and NO, I don't know where Precious McCantSleepWithout'Em Puppy got to…" mode.

Anyway…until relatively late last night (relative to when the alarm was going off this morning, anyway), I was paying bills. Because my life? One big old never-ending rollercoaster of awesome, that's right.

I found myself contemplating just how far out of whack things have gotten since I started this contract. If I had been this disorganized before I started back to work, I'm pretty sure we would have ended up in an even sorrier way than we did – I don't think I'm exaggerating much when I say I think we might actually have found ourselves staring down the foreclosure barrel without so much as a dime for our own cannon.

I've been stuck in "reaction" mode for nine months now; stuck in the dreaded maelstrom of stimulus-response-stimulus-response.

It's hard to find a calm place to think, a moment of time away from "everything" to regroup and plan…and it feels as though it wouldn't matter even if I did, because right now Life is just plain out to get me.

Oh, did I just squeeze 10% of my paycheck aside into savings like I planned? HA HA! Welcome to a leaking water heater, splish-splash all over the garage! Warranty? Suuuuuure, it's under warranty, and you can choose one of the following two free water heaters: Ten gallons smaller with a lesser warranty than the original, or ten gallons bigger with the same warranty…great! Oh, did we forget to mention that you'll need a bunch of work done to install the bigger one, and that the labor for same is not under warranty?

…sorry, our bad...

And of course, when am I trying to sit down and do this stuff? In the evening! When there are children!

It's like trying to work on your Mozart flute solo in a kennel specializing in the rehabilitation of abused terriers.

Seriously. It is.

Life right now is more about surviving than about living. It's about getting through another day, another week, another dinner, another trip to the mall for whatever fool thing somebody forgot to tell me they needed (or I forgot they told me, or I lost the slip of paper informing me of said need, or, well, whatever).

This, of course, is nothing noteworthy. This is not a unique situation that only I get to endure; it's not my personal and exclusive cross to bear, something nobody else in the whole entire world could possibly understand.

This is just how life is, sometimes. Sometimes it's mellow and easy-going and we can take on all kinds of special projects. Sometimes, it's all wild and crazy and we don't have time for a danged potty break, let alone a nice long stretch of "me time" to regroup and reorganize and reprioritize and get our @*^@ together.

As things stand at this precise moment, I have another six months to go on this contract. That's very good, because I haven't made nearly the headway on debts and savings that I would like – the money has evaporated as fast as it has come in.

It has a way of doing that, if you're not staying 110% on top of it.

So I was having this conversation with myself where I was basically calling myself on the carpet for the lack of progress toward clearly established goals.

At first, I was really defensive. Show me what I did that was 'bad', I groused. I defied myself to come up with anything I had bought that wasn't necessary.

But coming on the heels of our camping trip, during which I had spent a considerable amount of time pondering the differences between the way I used to camp and, well, this…well.

Back in the day, I actually didn't camp at all – I was a backpacker. It's a whole different reality. You look at every single thing you might bring and you ask yourself a simple question: How am I going to feel about this wonderful whatnot when I'm five miles into my hike? Ten? Twenty? How about on day 3, when we're still three miles from the summit and oh by the way, it's another four days before we get back to the cars?

You start downgrading things pretty fast. What is "vital" and what is "nice to have" begin to veer sharply away from each other.

I seldom brought a flashlight. I used a rock to hammer in tent spikes, if I brought a tent at all which was not a given. I brought almost no clothes with me, and certainly not anything that was merely for sleeping in.

My jeans were warmer anyway.

But when we were camping ten feet from Homer the Odyssey…well. We brought soooooo much crap with us. Seemed like we had fifteen flashlights. We did have seven sleeping bags. {pauses to count on fingers} Yeah, there's still only six of us.

We brought two tents: One that sleeps nine, and one that sleeps (technically, although they'd better be really good friends) four. We needed them! In case!

And we brought enough food to feed about fifty people for a month. And way too many clothes. And lanterns and flashlights and games and decks of cards and tarps and door mats and sleeping pads.

You would have thought we were going camping for six months in the wilderness, y'all.

I found myself thinking about that as I was shaking my head over where the money went these last nine months, looking for where I shoulda/coulda/woulda done things differently.

Apart from a few (dozen) too many pizza nights, I couldn't really point out anything that wasn't "needed"…until I started asking myself whether I would have taken them on a fifty mile roundtrip peak-bagging backpacking trip.

Oh.

Wants and needs aren't really that complicated. We tend to put a lot of stuff on the "need" list that really doesn't belong there. We say we can't live without our iPhone, or our cable television, or our organic clover-honey mead…and sometimes we know we're wrong about that, but I suspect more and more we don't understand that.

We really do think we will curl up and physically die if we don't have these very specific things that mankind somehow managed to stagger around without for generation upon generation.

How they ever got anywhere without a phone that could guide them via GPS is beyond me…but they did. Even sailed right out to sea and somehow got to whole new continents, while we can't get to the local dry cleaners without that steadying voice telling us, "…in 500 feet, turn LEFT…"

I want to accomplish two things in the coming month.

The first is, I want to get back on top of things. I want to regain control of where our money is going, instead of constantly and passively allowing whatever crisis has arisen to decide where it's going to go. Yeah, I'm tired and I don't have time and I don’t feel like it and wah wah wah…but at the same time, I'm not a danged twig caught up in a river here. I'm a full-grown woman (allegedly), with an oar and a compass and dog-dang it, I know how to row.

The second is, I want to clamp down on the spending, reevaluate these "needs" we seem to think are vital to our survival, and make sure we're not losing sight of where we want to go…which is a long of way of saying, I'm going to institute a spending fast. I don't care what it is or who thinks they will D-I-EEEEEEEEE without it (and Tama, I am looking at you right now, madam if-I-don't-get-a-netbook-I-will-no-really-physically-D-I-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E), the answer is no.

Unless of course you really will curl up and die.

All you have to do is prove it, and whatever it is, I'll get it for you. Go ahead. Prove that without coffee, you will actually, physically die…I'm waiting…go ahead…prove it…

(ohmygah, I'm going to die doing this, aren't I…)

(no-no, think positive…I have tons of coffee in the Den right now, it's ooooookay, we can get through a month of this…)

Headlong

Seriously? It is not actually Sunday evening already, is it?!

…seriously?...

This last week went by in a blur. A blur of noise and heat and smoke and laughter and beaches and campfires and seriously, how many people did we THINK we were feeding?! and having to explain why it was that my son thought it was perfectly OK to just grab your kid’s bike and make off with it (he got confused…after all, it was a family reunion and we had six campsites and he didn’t know these people but it was OK to just walk on into their camper, and he didn’t know these people either but it was OK to grab a juice box out of their cooler, and he didn’t know these other kids at all but they were OK with him playing with their toys…so obviously, this whole entire place was just one big Captain’s Personal and Private Family Affair and it was totally OK to go into any tent, trailer, camper, cooler, box or any other thing he found just help himself, no, no!, don’t bother getting up Auntie Whoever You Are, I can get my own beer and bag of chips, thanks…) (oh yeah… “embarrassing” doesn’t begin to express my feelings, kids…especially since it turned out that just about every single time I thought this cousin or that uncle “had him,” uh, they sorta-kinda only partially MAYBE “had him” and he was actually off on his own terrorizing the whole, 200-some-odd-space campsite…) (in related news, we can never go back there again) (or anywhere else from Malibu to Oxnard) (seriously, I think they printed up posters…)

And then we came home and the next three days vanished into a rush of back to school (the Denizens started back to school Wednesday! Wednesday! Excuse me, but is that not, like, right smack in the middle of what should be summer vacation, School District?!) and unpacking and cleaning-cleaning-cleaning and wait-a-second, if I’ve been cleaning for three days straight…

…um…

…question…?

Why does this place look like it has never seen the business end of a broom, mop or vacuum cleaner?!

Well, I can tell you at least partially why: Four quarts of Italian-style tomato sauce and five pints of zesty zucchini relish were canned this weekend. Because I had fourteen pounds of tomatoes and a zucchini the size of my leg growing out there when I got home, that’s why…plus the former site of Lake Chaos is now Lake O’Weeds (there’s a surprise) and part of the fence fell down and I have deep unrest about one of the butternut vines because I think it may have gotten a squash borer and furthermore the yellow-striped heirloom tomato plant looks a bit…yellowish and scrawny…to me, AND the ooze tank for the sunflowers isn’t oozing enough and the poor things were giving me this look that clearly said, “what kind of mother are you?!”, AND PLUS the sweet potatoes are overtaking the unexpectedly reviving artichokes and the Christmas limas are trying to attack the neighbor’s overhanging tree AND!!!!!!!! we have corn that should have been eaten, like, yesterday, but wasn’t and I didn’t get around to it because I was dealing with the Aforementioned Everything but, guess what? All four of my newly planted pumpkin hills have sprouted, and the back bed I was afraid had an actual leak-leak doesn’t (we capped it off at the surface and it is dry as a bone, woo hoo – no subterranean leaks!), and, there are two little tiny baby yellow squash in the front boxes!

…which will be torso-sized monsters in less than 48 hours, I’ll betcha…

I feel as though I am coming out of this vacation the same way I went into it: Unprepared, and headlong.

…and tired…and a little grouchy…and in need of a vacation…

…um, wait…

This is probably going to be another one of them-thar “interesting” weeks, isn’t it.

…buckle up, racing fans, it’s going to be a wild ride…

The faces of semi-civilized wafflers

We're halfway home, at an IHOP in the middle of nowhere. We cut the camping short by two nights because (in husband-who-disagreed-with-my-other-reasons-convincing part) our innocent-faced little Captain there was running like he was fueled with pure rocket fuel. It was like chasing a lit firework. Or a squirrel that had been pounding back Monster sodas.

I am SERIOUSLY exhausted right now. That boy ran me a merry chase these last five days. Wait'll I tell y'all what-all he managed to get into on this trip. Whooooooo-wee. Wee!

..weeeeeeeeeeeee...

..whew...

......oy......

(sent from my Treo)

The face of wanna-be evil

Don't tell her I said so, but Boo isn't even close to being sort-of evil. She can barely work up to 'mildly irritating.' But she's trying...note the horns...try to look terrified for her...oooooh, SCARY EEEEEVIL...

(camping is going about as expected...Boo and Captain woke up about 6,000 times wanting to go home last night...I am now on permanent "do nothing but chase Captain Adventure" duty, because whenever anybody ELSE tries it, well, let's just say he a) can move remarkably fast and b) has a fuzzy concept around which groups are "family" and which are just innocent by-campers who would really rather not have a random autistic six year old rummaging through their tent/trailer/cooler) (I know...some people are SO fussy...)

(sent from my Treo)

Hard to believe, but...

..this is the face of PURE EVIL.

OK, that may be a *slight* exaggeration.

But boy-oh-boy, is our Captain ever on a tear today! Screaming! Running! Hitting! And other uncivilized behavior!

He is terribly (and I do mean TERRIBLY) excited, because we are going camping! In a tent! WITH MOMMY!!!!!

He's gonna HUG me and SQUEEZE me and SLEEP on me and LOVE me and also tent-tent-tent-tent HE!! LOVES!!!! CAMPING!!!!!!!!!

(He has never actually been camping before. Hence the SUPER-EXTRA excitement!)

(We're all gonna die. He's going to kill us with just the noise. Or he's going to vibrate us all to death with the nuclear-reactor like waves of energy radiating from his little body.)

(...why was this a good idea again...?)

Why some people should not be permitted to mobile blog

The first thing y'all must realize about me is…well. This is probably better expressed in story than mere words.

Today, I wore a pair of very nice little sandals. They might even be considered "kicky" – if you do not have a particularly fashionable definition of the term. (They might also be considered "somewhat juvenile" or "gee whiz, woman, did you let your six year old dress you today?" or possibly even "hahahahaha, I can't believe she actually bought those, ohmygah, and did you see how proud she was of them?!" – especially if one takes into consideration the hot pink toenail polish, which I put on last night when I realized, in rapid succession, that…
a) I hadn't put away the laundry and
b) had nothing to wear tomorrow unless
c) I cared to wear Girl Clothes which naturally meant I needed footwear
d) …other than tennis shoes…and furthermore…
e) I can't find my super-comfy sandals but hey
f) here's those metallic blue things I got from…that place…that time…gosh when was that, and where, and why? Oh well anyway, they're cute and comfy and if I squint they kind of go with the only clean shirt that goes with one of my clean skirts, right? right! but gads, they're
g) open toed and
h) ack, toenails! So…ugly…eyes…burning…! Therefore…!
i) I went digging for nail polish, of which it turned out I had three choices, which were
1) formerly mauve, now "solid hunk of colorant + oily stuff that won't mix back together anymore", or
2) formerly…uh…dunno, please see colorant + oily + won't mix problem, above, or
3) hot pink "minute dry" nail polish I actually bought for Denizen manicures but surely it's better than the whatever-you-would-call-THAT currently adorning my toes, right?

I am not convinced I actually did the right thing. But the world will never know, because the…yellowish-orangish-I-surely-hope-that's-polish-because-toenails-should-NOT-be-that-color thing I had going on before is buried under three layers of goopy "minute dry" in extra hot pink.

Because that is how I roll, people.

So the polish I wasn't sure about, but the sandals, those I liked. Cute little kicky things, all…girl-like…and…stuff…

At least, that's what I thought before I wore them today. Soon, however, I realized that they are actually crappy little sandals. They pinch my feet horribly. And there do this…thing…where they dig into the arch of my foot all funny…seriously, I had blisters by 11:00 and I hadn't even left my desk. (Although granted and in their defense, at 11:00 I had been wearing them for seven straight hours.)

I had by that time downgraded them from "cute" to "rotten, ill-fitting little monsters," and I wondered why on earth I had even bought them, seeing as how they were so obviously a pair of real stinkers.

At 4:15, I was standing next to our team developer's desk waiting for my turn to pester him about Something Very Important Indeed. I was already charging past the ten hour mark on the workday, perilously close to missing the last train to the last shuttle to the last train and I was fidgeting in my stupid, ugly, painful, idiotic torture implements of death and despair.

Angrily, I looked down at my aching feet. Because what the HECK, sandals?!

It was at this point…over twelve hours after putting them on…that I noticed something. Something subtle I'm willing to bet had been noticed by many people and which had probably already been tweeted and blogged and Facebooked and MySpaced and written in forty-foot letters on every communication satellite in Outer Space.

There are Grubdjuroians "bfffirting" it right now, people.

Go ahead. Guess what it was.

Yeah. Got it one, folks: They were on the wrong feet. For. Over. Twelve. Hours. I had even looked at them (where "looked" is pronounced "glared"), several times.

But not noticed they were all left-right, right-left.

This is the person you are dealing with on this blog.

Just so we're clear.

Now, with that out of the way…about those pictures down there in the weird post entitled "sent from my Treo"…

Now, maybe one would be tempted to think, Gee, I wonder if this is some kind of 'performance blogging art'! or possibly some new, avant-garde blogging technique! Yes, yes, I think I'm FEELING the…wordless…pathos…of the…minivan…and…boxes…

Or they might think it's meant to make you think. Or a secret code that only the chosen few understand.

Yes, they might think that…if they didn't know me at all.

I suspect it will surprise nobody here, though, when I say that the Story of Those Pictures is this: They happened to be in my cell phone's memory, for who knows how long. And I was trying to send them to my archive folders on Photobucket, because I needed to clear up the room on my Treo, because since I run my whole entire life on the poor thing, it has a way of getting low in memory.

Instead, I apparently sent them to my blog. And had no idea I had done so until I saw a very confusing comment in my email.

"So-and-so commented on my…post entitled…what-now? I don't remember that one…maybe it's old or something…boxes of shoes, say WHAT?!"

And now, children, I want you to just pause for just one more little moment to consider what might happen if I had a Twitter account as well.

I'll give you another moment to get over the searing visions of global communications breakdowns. Don't worry. I'm pretty sure Twitter has safety mechanisms in place to prevent what you're thinking from actually happening.

ANYWHO. So, what the heck are those pictures?

Well. The first one I took when I arrived home from Fagundes a couple weekends ago with (I kid you not) 911 pounds of beef and pork. That's what those boxes are. One whole steer, and one whole hog. I took the picture and have this whole long rambling story to share about that day, which I'll get around to any second now.

But for the moment…hey look! Pictures of boxes! With meat in them! That all had to go into a freezer! Right that very moment and even though it was over a hundred and fifty pounds more than I had been expecting!

It was awesome. Also, if I may make a recommendation: Don't open any freezers around the Den until further notice. At least not without a "catcher" standing at your elbow, in case of meat avalanche.

The next picture my husband actually took. Note that it says if you buy one summer sandal, you get another summer sandal 100% free.

…let it settle for a second…

If you buy one sandal…you can get another sandal… 100% free…

And then ask yourself: how much is a sandal? I mean, are they, say, half the price of a pair of sandals?

Being blessed with two feet and being rather fond of having matching shoes on them (all [copious] evidence to the contrary aside), I've never bought a sandal. So is this an awesome sale? The Gift of the Century? I am the wrong person to ask…

(I know. The husband and I, we are both just waaaaaaaay too easily amused. We must have giggle-snorted over that one for a good ten minutes.) (We were on a date. Together. Alone. Alone-together. No children. We could have been standing knee-deep in a flooded basement with nothing but forks to bail it out with, it would have been a laugh-a-second.)

That last one is the 4:48 ACE train roaring into the station in a cloud of noise and brake dust. If you stand on the platform and just stare at the tracks as the train comes in, that's what you see: A blur of gray and blue.

It always amazes me that something that big, that forceful, that fast-moving, can somehow manage to actually stop at the end of the station. It also fascinates me that something capable of such violence, such grand and terrible noise (which between the HEY-hey-hey, waaaaaaaaake-UP!! whistle that blows shortly before it arrives at the station and the metallic screaming from the wheels and brakes as it arrives, is impressive), can then turn right around and provide such a gentle and (relatively) quiet ride for its passengers once we embark.

Standing on the outside looking in, it's a bright, barreling, noisy blur in the darkness.

From the inside looking out, it's a merely adequately lit, gently rolling, muted trip…past people sweating and stalled in endless, nose-to-nose cars on the freeway, in the dust and heat and bother, poor lost souls.

And that, in not a bit brief, is what was up with those photos.

Because I am nothing if not not concise.

(sent from my Treo)

How To Motivate A Mojo-less Knitter

1. Have a beautiful baby girl.
2. Keep pictures of beautiful baby on your desk.
3. Ask knitter to make this hat for beautiful baby girl.
4. Mission accomplished.

(I am charmed by the quirky smile on this hat's face. I hope I can replicate it.)

(In other Very Important News...due to a Very Annoying Snafu, my lunch plans fell completely apart at the last second today. Irritated, frazzled, with a to-do list of epic proportions and now NO LUNCH, and also hungry, I went to the Specialty's website and ordered a boxed up salad lunch. And threw a cookie into my online cart at the last second, because I am now in a mood, people. Worked a bit more, raced over to grab my bag off the wire shelf, raced back to my desk, reached in for my salad and guess what? My after-thought cookie? Was still hot. And gooey. And marvelous. And I ate it before I ate my salad, shamelessly and having to resist the urge to show everybody around me like a six year old: "Lookit! I haz a warm cookie! mmmm, warm cookie!")

(Funny how much the littlest things can give you the biggest glow sometimes, huh?)

Lla;jfdsalkfdsjafdsl;jk

*snork!* Huh? Wha? Oh! Hai! How are ya, how's yer cat, how's the weather, how's every little thing?!

What? No! NO! No-no-no-no-no, heh, no. I wasn't asleep on my keyboard or anything! I was just doing this…thing…see, in Welsh, you always put an 'll' before, uh…

OK, fine. I may have dozed off just a smidge. It's been that kind of…hmm. Less than a month, more than a week? Weeth? Meek?

Oh gosh no. It has been no kind of 'meek,' y'all.

Work the last two weeks has been…let's see, what can possibly describe my working life these last couple weeks…ah yes. Here we go: I have been running like a schizophrenic squirrel pounding back highballs of espresso-meth infused Red Bull.

To make a very long and involved story shorter, we're deploying a new process in about a week. It's a pretty big deal; extremely "high visibility" and so forth and so on.

One of those things that has been talked three-quarters to death since April, but then sort of simmered on the back of the stove for a good long while before suddenly erupting into flames two weeks ago.

Because why do things over a matter of, say, six luxurious weeks when you can cram the entire six week lifecycle into only two? Oh, and if you can throw in some Technical Difficulties, the database servers having to be reset, key personnel being on vacation on critical weeks and such, well, you can have yourself a real party.

So I've been pretty much logging in to work as soon as my butt hits the bench on my 4:40 train every morning, and then I work straight on through until it chugs back into town at 5:30.

Awesome.

Speaking of which, the new schedule is working out really well. All obligatory "gosh doesn't commuting suck" kvetching aside, this is turning out to be a really good idea. MegaBank is getting a better deal in terms of how many hours are available for me to work for them, and in terms of how active my brain waves are during said hours. Much as I hate to admit it (don’t know why, actually), I'm one of those "morning" people types.

My ability to process information goes sharply downhill after, I kid you not, noon.

I know. That's pretty lame. But there it is – by 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, if you don't see me write whatever you're saying down, just assume I will have forgotten all about it by tomorrow morning.

My timesheets are quite a bit better, too. Gone are the 5.5 or 6 hour days – right now, I seldom have a day that doesn't involve overtime. And it feels so much easier, since I'm not trying to log back in from home while the Denizens are pounding around trying to break the house apart with the sheer power of their noise.

It is impressive, their noise.

Speaking of the Denizens, I'm arriving a full hour earlier to grab them from the sitter's house, which makes them happy. And if anything goes wrong along the way, from meetings running just a little over to delayed trains to missed shuttles to more delayed trains, I still get there in time.

The delays would have to be pretty epic for me to miss my deadline these days.

I'd say the only real downsides are that I get a lot less time with the husband, and that I'm really tired, really early in the evening (golly, really? because usually people who have an alarm blaring at them at 3:30 in the morning are so chipper at night!).

Meanwhile in other news…I have some form of knitting-related depression. I've lost interest. It's all just sort of gray. I can't get worked up about anything.

This is because I want to knit a lacy shawl, but do not need one, nor do I have the appropriate yarn easily at hand, and furthermore I intellectually know that a lacy shawl (at least, any of the ones I want to do) (because why do an "easy" lacy shawl when you can choose one with a 600-row, 38-stitch pattern repeat?) is exactly-precisely the wrongest possible thing to choose as a "oh goody, let's sit on a train and knit!" sort of project.

And thus, I am sinking into a knitterly lethargy. I look at Eldest's Lillehammer and think, Meh – too heavy, too wool-y, too hot.

I look at my sock yarn collection and go, Yawn.

I look at every single ball of yarn in my easily-accessible stash and dash off the reasons it, too, just isn't right.

Too bright, too cool, too cotton, too wool, too acrylic, too blue, too orange, too brown, too not appropriate for a lacy shawl…

I don't know why I get like this. I really don't. Most of the time, I'm pretty promiscuous easy-going when it comes to project loyalty. If the sweater is too big, I'll just throw a new sock on the needles; if the sock isn't charming me, I'll grab the sweater again. If this project is too complicated for a "take along" project, I'll just keep it next to the sofa at home for "at home" knitting and take something not-fussy in my mobile kit.

But then…every so often…I just… get my mind set on something that is completely inappropriate for some reason. Something that requires a yarn I don't have, at a time when I'm on a yarn diet. Something wool at a time of year when 97 degrees is a "cool" day.

Something complicated when all I have is train-time available for knitting.

Will I actually do that to myself? Will I make the time to dig through the put-away stash looking for a fingering weight yarn to make one of those excessively fiddly lace shawls I've been daydreaming about for the last two weeks?

I honestly don't know.

Except that yeah, I totally think I will.

Because visions of knitted on borders, cunning cast-ons, and the thought that seriously, it's not THAT hard to keep track of pattern repeats on a moving train (inability to learn from past experience: check!) keep running through my head. And maybe it's a Sign! And if I don't start this project, well, maybe something…awful will happen!

Far be it from me to bring about global economic disaster (or something) by refusing to Knitter it up and take on the overly-fiddly knitting project on the train…that's right, I would never let the world that depends on me down!

Because I'm a giver, people.

That's right.

A giver.

The Garden Report: July 27, 2010

The garden is still moving along. This weekend, I was looking at the butternut squash from a respectful distance.



And then I reached down to fiddle with a dead leaf. Which led to fiddling with a few more dead leaves. Which led to fiddling with a whack of dying leaves trying to figure out if I had a catastrophe on my hands or just a normal life-cycle sort of thing and then I sort of, uh, well…accidentally picked one.



Dog mah witness, I didn't tug on it. Or twist it, or pull on it, or step on it, or anything else. I lifted it slightly to pull a dead leaf out from under it, and it just went, ::snap!:: off the vine in my hand.

Usually I would call that a sign that it was ready…but I'm not quite sure. I wouldn't have bought this one at the supermarket; it's mostly-almost completely tan, but still has greenish white stripes right at the very top. Hmmmmm.

But, what's done is done. So, I'll just have to hope for the best…and resist the urge to prune out the dead leaves around the remaining squashes, I guess. (eeeeeeeeyeah, not going to be able to do that…it's like not pulling on a loose thread, I just can't do it…)

The first round of cucumbers failed to even sprout, thanks to the drip system being off when we thought it was on. Yeah. Funny thing there: No matter how much time you give a seed, if there's no water, none at all, it's probably not going to do much.

But the two plants that we planted later are doing just fine – and one of them went and made a cucumber!



It's not the prettiest I've ever seen, but it's the first one this season – which tends to make up for an awful lot of hawk-nose-like skinniness.

Also, it was sweet and juicy and I ate it standing over the sink. Because, quality control is my middle name.

The roma tomatoes are heavy with fruit. Really heavy, with really green fruit.



They are taking a fair bit longer than the projected time on their seed packet. I can't blame them, of course – they had a rough start in life and all. But still, it's making me crazy to go out there day after day, week after week, and see the same couple fruits with the same tiny bit of almost-blush on them.

The sweet potatoes, though, are doing awesome.



It's like an ivy ground cover, and spreading fast. If I were doing "edible landscaping" and I wanted something that looked like a traditional ivy, I might go with these little guys. The only tricky part is, they like to send down little anchors into the ground – and apparently if you mess with them too much, they get pissy. And who wants pissy sweet potatoes? So you've got to keep a good eye on them and move their runners quick if they're going somewhere you don't want them to go. Or risk the wrath of the tubers. Which sounds like an excellent name for a rock band. Or a 1950s sci-fi movie.

They're going to take over the area where I moved the artichokes which, alas, have not survived. One already died completely, eaten by the cats. The other two sickened badly where they were, probably due to a combination of being chew toys and litter box fodder.

I've got a few new peppers that are settling in nicely. Say hello to my little friend…



This is an "Inferno" chili. It's all mild and green looking now, but it's supposed to turn a bright orange when ready to go and kick like a mule.

I've also got some "cherry bomb" chilis starting to fruit (they're milder than the Inferno, and allegedly make good red pepper flakes when dried), and some good old green bell peppers, and some anaheims.

The corn is getting ears, unevenly. Although every time I say that this stalk or that one is "obviously" not going to "do anything," it will immediately swell up and stick out its silk at me. Nyah.



This variety (Kandy) is producing two ears on just about every stalk! The variety we planted last year ('Gotta Have It') had a strict rule: One stalk, one ear. And we only planted about fourteen plants. Which led to fist-fighting a lot. We still won't have "plenty" this year, but we should have a satisfying round – followed by another one in early fall, when the second little field hopefully gives us one last hurrah.

Last night, I noticed that the summer squash I planted in the reclaimed-from-the-neighborhood-cats front boxes is starting to sprout; naturally, because I planted too many of them due to poor success rates from that particular seed packet, every single seed I planted is coming right on up. Sigh. I'm going to have to thin, which is not my strong suit. I just hate doing it, is all. Perfectly healthy little plants, but because they're too close together, some of them have to go.

Seems so darned unfair.

Like the romas, the white potatoes are also taking longer than I expected to get to the finish line; I'm coming to the point where I'm going to need to just pull them in, regardless. It's getting hot, and when it gets too hot, the potatoes stop growing – all the plant's energy goes into, well, surviving the heat.

Just like the human energy does.

I brought in about eight pounds of red potatoes last week, but left the majority of them in the ground because the plants seems to be sending out an awful lot of new little babies – I figure if they're willing to give it a try, I'm willing to let them. For another week or so, anyway – but pretty soon I'm going to want to take whatever I can get so I can cycle the patch to something else.

I find that part of gardening so strange; unlike landscape gardening, where you plant a bush or something and expect it to hang around pretty much forever, the vegetable garden is in constant flux. Bare patches, barely-there patches, big beautiful plants that start to bear fruit…and then, you rip it out and plant something else. Back to a bare patch.

I often feel a little sad, or even guilty, when the time comes to take one thing out and replace it with another. Sure, the pea vines are wilting in the heat and we've already got a freezer stuffed with peas and everybody is sick to the point of tears of spending their evenings shelling pea pods (and begging me to buy a sheller), but still…it worked so hard for us. It gave so much. And I'm just…ripping it out? Just like that? "OK, that was swell, thanks ever so, now get out – we want watermelon now"?

I mean, what kind of message is THAT for the Denizens?!

Although I have to say, the watermelon is a thumping success. The vines, just two "little" vines, are taking over the whole patch…and we have about eight baby watermelons forming. I pointed the first one out to the girls, and they cooed over it like it was a cute widdle baby bunny wabbit.

They haven't been that interested in anything growing back there before. Oh, they're interested, sorta. They like to pick the tomatoes, and to peer through the corn. They love bringing new friends over to see their yard, and are always begging to "plant something."

But that's about it. They're not that interested in watching over what they plant, and have to be dragged out and forced to admire any progress, and will generally have that air of "I'm just waiting for you to shut up so I can go back to playing" about them the whole time.

Also, I think they find my Fascinating Facts to be…less than riveting. Like, did you know that each individual bit of silk is attached to an individual corn kernel? Yeah, and if any one strand doesn’t get fertilized, well, that's a kernel that won't plump up with sweet, juicy deliciousness.

Now, when I learned that, I was all, "WOW! I HAD NO IDEA!!!!" and got this lovely glow of I just learned something kewl all over me.

The Denizens just looked at me like, Ya, whatever and waited for me to shut up so they could get on with what they actually wanted to do, which was pull every single cherry tomato that could by any definition be considered red-ish off the bush.

Furthermore, they have not suddenly developed a deep, passionate love for vegetables. No new-found respect for carrots (one of my personal favorites, cooked or raw). No epiphanies around green beans. No sudden clamoring for "more peas, please!" (In point of fact, one of those little heretics looked at the peas on her plate one night, sighed heavily, and said, "Mommy, why can't we have real peas anymore? The ones in the cans, that taste good?" So I threw her out of the house yelling, "…and don't you come back until you are dating a guy named Snake who plays the drums in a two-bit wanna-be metal band!!!!!") (OK, I made that last bit up.)

But undaunted, I carry on, pushing more and more vegetables on my family like a grimly determined drug dealer. I grow them, I cook them, I serve them with ever-dwindling amounts of meat and pasta. I hide them in sauces, and leave them brazenly whole on their plates. Season copiously. Sweeten on occasion.

Eventually, they'll learn to love them.

And then, they will move out, get married, start families of their own, and call me moaning, "I don't understand it – little Johnny won't eat carrots! Carrots, mom! I mean, seriously, who doesn't like carrots?!"

And I will go, "Oh my gracious, imagine that, not liking carrots, tsk-tsk…"

And then I will hang up and die laughing, the end.

Funny, I don’t FEEL particularly god-like

At 5:00 this morning, my life went from Fast to Stop. Captain Adventure went to bed with a fever last night, which automatically meant I was not going into the office today – but I hoped he’d be feeling better this morning and I’d be able to settle him down with some crayons or the Wii or something for a few hours and, you know, work for money.

At 5:00 this morning, I woke up to him crying in his room. Aw, biscuits.

So I got up, grabbed some children’s Motrin and went in to check on him – burning up, sweaty, clingy, super-extra-high-maintenance.

Captain Sez: FULL STOP!!!!

This post has been interrupted seven…heh, eight times so far. (He started bellowing, “Noooooooo, doan touch it mine pay-per!!!” – apparently, a sister was trying to “help” him color. Sigh. Full-bore sibling warfare, and I’m the United Nations. Awesome.)

But I’ve been thinking today that, you know…Mommyhood is a crazy job.

I didn’t gain any Cosmic Insight the day I became a mother. Shoot, poor Eldest spent the first year of her life bawling because I couldn’t tell the difference between a ‘hungry’ cry and a ‘hurt’ one and a ‘bored’ one. We dragged Danger Mouse to the hospital emergency room because of a fever – one that came right down with a single dose of Tylenol, never to return.

I frequently feel like I’m in a boat without an oar when I’m confronted by things the children drag into my life.

But the Denizens trust me to know what to do about just about anything; the older ones are starting to suspect that maybe I might have a human failing or two, but for Captain Adventure I’m still infallible.

He stopped crying the minute my hand was on the door handle this morning. He knew it was me. He reached out for me from the bed, confident that I was going to make everything all better.

Not the grape flavored medicine – me. He trusted me so much that he stopped crying the instant I was there, so sure that relief was coming with me that he actually felt it before it was really there.

Being the woman behind the curtain, I know the wizard is full of flaws, frequently uncertain about what she should do, not sure which path is the right one.

But to the Denizens, The Mommy is all-knowing, all-seeing, and (mostly) benevolent being.

It’s a lot to live up to, day in and day out.

But comes in handy when somebody has a rotten sore throat and is running a fever – I shall use my shazam!, and because you beeeeelieve, you shall feel better immediately (and by the time you’d start to think maybe I’m full of it, the Motrin will have kicked in…SHAZAM!!!!!)

(Bets on how long before whatever germ he’s got moves into my system, anyone…?)

(Ohmygah…he’s trying to give me his candy. Which he has probably already licked. Seriously, is it, like, a kid rule that they have to do everything they can to give Mommy whatever disease they’ve picked up?!?!)

The Garden Report: Now with added DRAMA!

OK, so, this isn't really a garden report so much as a welllllllllllllll, isn't THAT…special… report.

To really set the scene, I need to let y'all in on my grim new reality latest awesome idea.

I turned to my husband weekend before last and said, "You know what we really ought to do?"

He paled.

The only thing more horrifying than, "You know what would be fun?" that comes from my mouth (well, other than the occasional charming turn of phrase picked up from my armed forces buddies) is the phase, "You know what we really ought to do?"

This is Tama-speak for, "I am about to suggest something that is not at all pleasant, likely involving some form of personal sacrifice that you are going to hate to the very core of your being, but it is logical and if you were a Vulcan you would have suggested it a long, long time ago and thus you will not be able to argue with me. Much."

"What?" he asked, cautiously, with the air of a man who is trying to decide whether he'd rather turn and fight the mountain lion, or attempt to run through the field of landmines.

"We ought to split our commutes. One of us should take the very first train, and the other should take the very last one. First one in leaves the car at the train station, second one takes the kids to the sitter's house and leaves the van – then the early bird catches the very first train home, grabs the van, picks up the kids, gets dinner started and so forth, then the late bird catches the last train home and we all yay, 'Hooray, we're all home again!' And then we eat dinner. And go to bed. Unless Deadliest Catch is on because we have SOME standards around here."

The logical aspect of this is undeniable. Catching the early train (at, by the way, 4:40 in the morning) gets the first person into the office just before 7:00. Said person then leaves the office at 3:00 on the dot, catches the early train home, grabs the Denizens and is home by around 5:30.

They're not the last kids at the sitters, and in the entirely likely event that something goes horribly awry on the many, many rails between Here and There…you're not screwed. If Early Bird misses the first train home, the second is still there and will still (normally) get them to the sitter on time – granted, the kids are the last ones there and this causes Drama! and also Angst! to happen, but you know hey – at least I turned up, right?

Meanwhile, the Late One shows up around 9:00, and can stay until 5:00.

Thus are we both less stinky in the nostrils of our Esteemed Leaders and our really don't give a gosh-darn but whatever floats your canoe, you guys long-suffering coworkers, I get a full week of work without having to go all She-Ra on my work from home day, and, well, there you are.

It's brilliant.

Except for the part where the Early Bird (which would be, naturally, me) has to not merely get up, but have her sorry carcass to the train station by 4:40 in the morning.

Beloved friends…I have done it for one week and two days so far. Lo! I have managed to not die. (Actually, all joking aisde, it's working out well – my "natural" biorhythm is actually the early bird sort, so shifting to getting up a bit earlier isn't that bad for me.) (And, I'm brighter in the morning. I think my IQ actually drops throughout the day – by 12:00 it starts to sort of taper a bit, takes a sharp drop after about 2:30 and by 5:00 at night I'm functionally a moron.) (Don't tell me anything important after 5:00. I'm daydreaming. Money-back guarantee on it.)

So yesterday I did everything just right. Got out of the office at 2:50, caught the 2:54, had a nice saunter to the bus (instead of the mad run I have to make if I miss the 2:54 and catch the 3:09 instead – it gets me there, but I have to RUN! about, eh, three block I think?, to the shuttle stop), caught my train, melted like butter out of the ACE parking lot, and picked up the Denizens right at 5:15. (And two of them were all, "Oh, man! Why are you here so early?!" because one had just finally gotten their turn on the Playstation and the other one had just gotten her turn in the playpen with the Cutest Baby Evah™.) (I mean, really, you can't win – get there late and they're all, "{sob! sob!} Why are we always the last ones here?! WHY can't you get her SOONER?! Don't you love us AT ALL?!?!" – get there earlier and they're all, "Gah, what are you doing here?!")

Loaded their squabbling, babbling, pleading bodies into Homer the Odyssey.

Aaaaaand drove on home. I was thinking about what to make for dinner, and of course the perpetual mental checklist of Stuff I'd Like To Do Tonight.

Stuff like, Find my bedroom floor (it's gotten a little crazy in there) (yes, again) and make a new playlist for my iPod because I've had the same three lists for about two YEARS and the same three lists every single day for the last seven months is getting a little old and picking out a new, lighter knitting project for my commute were high on the list.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the Lillehammer pattern and all – but I'm on #4 of 6, I'm almost to the collar of Eldest's so it's getting bulky and awkward for a train commute and, well, I'd like a nice pair of socks or maybe something in a laceweight for a little bit now. Something extra light.

And small. Very, very small.

Also easy. Something I could do with my eyes closed. Which I can't do with the Lillehammer, as the recent episode of having to drop back five rows worth around each end of the underarm areas would attest.

But I digress.

These are the sorts of ideas churning around in my mind as we pummeled into the Den after a long, hard day of commute, work (and my job is becoming more and more demanding as I'm migrating into a new role under a new manager – who, by the way, is an absolute doll and also scary-smart and demanding – which is good because I need to be challenged like crazy or I get pissy, lazy and ironically harder to get working again), and you know what would hit the spot right around now? A beer. A nice cold beer from the fridge in the…wait…why am I hearing water running? Why am I hearing lots of water running…?!

Friends…I looked into my backyard and…



Lake Chaos.

What happened was this. The husband and our neighbor were rebuilding the fence this weekend. (I know. He gets all the most-fun jobs.) As part of this, they had joined two hoses together so they would reach to where they wanted to soak some of the ground to make it easier to dig out the rotted fence posts.

Then somebody (who shall remain nameless, but the name rhymes with my husband) left the hose turned on, full blast, and it sat there under pressure for at least 24 hours…maybe a little more…definitely until after we both left for work yesterday…and then…:pop!:

The hoses blew apart, and the water just gushed and gushed and gushed allllll day long.

I don't know how well you can see this in my frantic cell phone picture, but that entire area is flooded all the way up to the very top of the concrete "pen."

But that's OK, because as we all know, California is a water state. We have loads of the stuff! Shoot, we're constantly shipping it by the truckload up to Portland, because we just don't know what to do with it all! We have constant rain, swollen rivers, water tables mere inches below the soil…oh wait… NO WE FREAKIN' DON'T!

We're that other thing – a desert sort of state! Constant drought! Water rationing! The "If you dare to waste water on your garden, we will hunt you down and kill you!" State. (That is our official motto, right?)

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Seriously. I didn't. I just looked at all that water soaking the play equipment and, on the one hand, I was glad it hadn't flooded my garden instead.

On the other hand, though, wah!

That's a good hundred bucks right there, going to waste…

But then my inner pioneer said…well, let's not repeat what she said exactly. She has kind of a potty mouth at such times. But the gist of it was that I would kick my own arse if I didn't think of something to do about that, right.NOW.

So I got the sump pump, and I hauled all five of our "rain barrels" (a.k.a., 48 gallon black trash cans picked up from OSH to go under our downspouts during our annual rainy season week), threw off the lid of the spa-slash-graywater-containment-unit, hooked up the hose to the sump pump and dropped it into the middle of Lake Chaos, and started filling.

And filling.

And filling.

And filling.

Kids…the spa holds roughly 450 gallons of water. It was about half empty – now it is full to overflowing.

The five trash cans are also full.

As is the yard tote – another 50 gallons.

Plus everybody in the garden got a nice, long drink. Even the front lawn, which has been feeling like maybe we don't love it anymore since those stupid vegetables came along.

On the plus side, Lake Chaos was drained to just a few (impressively deep) puddles here and there. The majority of the formerly-standing water is safely stored.

On the downside, well, I've shut off the automatic sprinklers completely. It's just me and my sump pump for at least the rest of the week while I use up all that water.

Because you know, that's just what I need: Another time-consuming, manual, daily task.

Yet another reason why we are the Den of Chaos, not The Restful Home of Eternal Peace and Tranquility.

Don't panic, dinner's in da Crockpot

Even thoug this does mean there will be food tonight even if I'm still running around like a psycho trying to cram One Last Thing into the weekend, there should perhaps be maybe an...ever-so-slight level of...concern.

This pork loin has been heavily glazed with a new steak/burger sauce recipe. A coworker gave us some beautiful little plums, and as we were eating them on the way home (what? Commuting is a hungry business, y'all) (the kids did not deserve ANY of those delicious little morsels of pure sugary, juicy goodness. They left wet towels all over their floors AND let their brother spread half a ton of beads all over the Den while I was "catching" for my table-saw-using hubby - no plums! Nothing but salted ROCKS for a week!), I thought something like, "I wish I had fifty pounds of these so I could can some for later."

Then one thing led to another and I found this recipe that uses plums, peaches, apples, banana chilies, blahblahblah lots of spices and stuff, and then I went to the farmer's market for what I didn't have and went all "mad chemist" (term here pronouced, "messed with a perfectly good recipe for absolutely no reason") and produced five pints of this glaze/marinade/stuff.

Canned all five, then promptly cracked one open and poured half of it over this pork loin roast.

I have no idea what I've actually created. It's sweet, tart, mildly spicy, a hint garlicky...hopefully, it will be awesome with pork.

We shall see. And until then, hope.

(sent from my Treo)

That's my boy...

Guess who is helping me clip coupons this morning? (Fortunately, I already got the ones I REALLY wanted - the 25 cent notebooks and 12-for-a-dollar folders. Back to school is coming waaaaaaaay too fast this year!!!!!)

He is such a momma's boy right now...whatever I'm doing, he wants to be doing too. Enjoying it while it lasts...all too soon, I'll be nothing but an ATM made entirely of chopped liver, I'm sure...

(sent from my Treo)

Yeah, we should totally have that talk…some…other...time...

"Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Sure, sweetie. What's on your mind?

"Can I stay home tomorrow? It's soooooooooo boring at daycare; I mean, you know I'm also thirteen, and I was talking to Leader yesterday and she says that she doesn't take kids who are over twelve anyway, so I was thinking that instead of being bored at daycare, I should, you know, practice being home while you're working, since, you know, I'm going to have to since I'm almost thirteen and all…"

Bored, huh? Well, I can fix that. What YOU need, little princess, is your bear…

">

"…and I promise I won't blah blah blah and I will yadda yadda yadda and I have my cell and etc. etc. etc…"

Yup. One pink bear. HOURS of amusement. Just need to find your bear and you'll be A-OK at daycare for ten, fourteen hours, no problem…



"I can fix my own snacks and I swear I won't even think about using the oven or the stove for anything. I'll even not use the microwave if you say I can't, I can make a sandwich or something…"

A sandwich? Aren't you just the cutest thing…sandwich, indeed…



"…after all, school starts next month, and I'm supposed to be walking there and back with Melissa and Jackie from next door, right? So you're supposed to be giving daycare notice anyway, right – although do you even have to do that, or are they giving you notice? Well, anyway, so, I really think it would be prudent to have me, you know, try staying home on my own a few times and…mom? MOM! Are you even listening to me right now?!"

{blink-blink}



What the @*&^@?! When did that freakin' happen?!

In just over a month, this tiny baby will be starting seventh grade – and will officially be over the age and grade limits for every daycare I've contacted. With the budget cuts, the after school programs are likewise history.

There's nothing for it. She's going to have to be home alone from time to time while I'm working away from home.

Whether I like it or not, she's…she's…she's not…well. Allegedly and if recent photographic evidence can be believed, she's not seven pounds, nine ounces anymore. She's not eating mushy, flavor-impaired vegetables from a rubber-padded spoon, either. Nor is she particularly keen on the idea of taking a fluffy pink bear to daycare, even though I'm pretty sure it would be The Answer to that whole "bored" problem of hers.

How does that happen? How does something thirteen years in the making go by in the blink of an eye like that? How does a creature that can't even get through a night without bawling for me two or three times suddenly, seemingly overnight, become something that not only can start having independence…but arguably should.

Oh baby. I know it horrifies you terribly, but you're still, well, my baby. Yes, yes, I know how old you are. I know how to do the math, even if it involves carrying a one. I know "all" your friends are doing the same thing (and that's actually part of what worries me, but let's not go there right now).

And I know you know the rules (and that vee haf vays of knowing whether you're following them) (the cell phone GPS thing? I'm so freakin' glad my mom didn't have that when I was a kid…not that I ever did anything she didn't know about and wouldn't approve of, mind you, ooooooh no, heh heh, never! Except maybe once or twice…a week…or so…)

And yes, I trust you. I really do. I trust you to be cautious, and to avoid being in trouble, and to be a good kid. (Don't let the "nanny cam" stuff we're installing all over the Den mislead you. That's because, uh, we want to keep tabs on Dharma. I'm afraid she's on heroin or something. I don't want any kitty raves going on in the Den while I'm at work, yo.)

But, you, you are a good kid. And a mature and sensible one. Far more mature and sensible than I was at your age, come right down to it. I did some pretty stupid stuff when I was your age, stuff that could easily have gotten me killed…because my mom didn't have nearly the control issues or the control mechanisms we have today, and hey, guess what? I lived. And learned. And have to admit I'm probably a better rounded person because I was taking city buses to and from school alone by the time I was your age…or in the company of the little brother who was under my thumb in my care for most of my return trips from middle school…

But I just…I can't talk about it right now.

Let's talk about this later, OK?

Maybe, you know, when…when you're just a little older…



Yeah. We'll definitely have to talk…when you're just a little tiny bit older…

Clipping it fine

Last night, I cleaned and trimmed Captain Adventure's fingernails. One of those everyday sort of parenting things that hardly seems to merit any discussion or thought, you know? I mean really…Dear Diary, you'll never believe what happened today!! followed by the blow-by-blow excitement of cleaning and trimming a five year old boy's fingernails?

Not exactly reality TV material.

Unless, of course, the boy in question is autistic and not terribly fond of the fingernail cleaning and trimming process (or any personal hygiene routines, come right down to it…which I suppose is more "yeah, he's a boy all right" than "autistic symptoms" except for the way he reacts to it, which is more like "demonic monkey on crack" than "typical little boy who just really would rather not take a bath right now thanks all the same").

Because in that case, it's like, Next, on World's Scariest Parenting Moments…!!!!!!

It's one of those areas where I choose my moments carefully – but the "right" moments tend to be few and far between and I often wonder if his teachers and therapists wonder if I am one of those mothers who is too busy taking more stray cats into my trailer and finding creative ways to recycle my empty Southern Comfort bottles to notice that her child is filthy…and has holes the size of bread plates in the knees of his jeans (all of his jeans acquire these holes by the third wearing, whether I've sewn patches into them or not), and that his obviously ancient shoes (purchased less than a week ago) have holes in the toes through which his dirty socks (well of course they're dirty, he's got holes in his shoes!) peek like frightened (and unwashed) potatoes.

Monday night, after three whole days of frivolities, I looked at his fingernails and I thought (concisely), Ugh.

"Filthy" doesn't begin to cover it. I could have planted potatoes under those fingernails. And they were too long – which is a bit dangerous with him, because when he gets into A Certain Mood, he'll dig those suckers into me, or a school aide, or his teacher, or anybody else who happens to irritate him.

But he wasn't in the best mood. He had seen Toy Story 3 with daddy over the weekend, and then the two of them went out to run some manly errands together, and everything was cool, and there was a manly trip to the hardware store and a manly haircut and a manly stop at Starbucks…and then there had been manly discussion about watching Toy Story 2 at home on the way home, which of course daddy meant as a "sometime we ought to" but which was translated by our Captain to mean "the instant we get home we will totally do this immediately, even though it is already dark and I haven't had dinner yet."

Oops.

It was far too late to start a movie when they got home. And sisters were already piled up on the sofa watching stuff. And they yelled at him when he tried to climb up and get the DVD binder. And took it away from him because they assumed he was up to No Good. And then when the parents waded in an intervened (before he killed one of them), we couldn't find the DVD anyway.

And really, is life even worth living?!

Furthermore dinner was yucky and he didn't like it and there was no!ice!cream!, and while a cookie is OK and all let's go back to the part where I was essentially promised a movie and now am being cruelly sent to bed instead.

And then here I am, looking at his fingernails and thinking personal hygiene is in order.

Let the games begin.

First, I got him to wash his hands by pretending I wasn't going to let him use the strawberry soap. Reverse psychology, getting little boys to use soap since 1802…BC…

Then I pointed out the dirt under his nails and asked if we should grow some potatoes under them. And because autism and subtle don't go well together, I'm exaggerating my expression and tone of voice wildly to make sure he recognizes that I am being playful right now.

He looked at me sidelong, judging whether I was kidding or not. Sigh. I swear, I could put on a clown wig and start juggling goldfish and he'd still not be sure I was kidding around.

"Nooooooooooo, no ap-tah-toes," he told me solemnly. "Dat silly."

"Oooooh. Well then. We'd better get the dirt out so I don't make any mistakes. Because that looks like potato-growing dirt right there." Duuuuh-duh-duh-duh-duh…{juggle-juggle-juggle}…c'mon, these are the jokes, folks!

There was a long moment of silence. I've got my what? I'm not up to anything… face on, and he's looking at me all sidelong with an expression that clearly says, Oh, you are TOO up to SOMETHING… and I'm thinking that the gig is definitely up and he's going to school tomorrow with enough dirt under his nails to grow a fine crop of prátaí and oh well, whaddya gonna do…except that he's still sort of sitting there, like he's waiting for me to make the next move here…

…well…in for a pence, in for a pound…

"Allllllllrighty, mister. C'mon, let's go to my bathroom and we'll clean up those nails!" I sang out cheerfully, as if it were all settled, then.

And. He. Went. With. Me. WOOT!

There are large victories, and there are small victories, and then there are victories that aren't really victories but they surely do feel like one at the time. I'm not sure what category this actually was, really, but was too happy to care whether it was large, small, fake or fleeting.

He sat still while I took the orange stick to the first little pinkie, being careful not to give the impression that I was, you know, holding his hand. Because that would have put an end to the whole thing, dudes. Hand holding is right out. He loathes it under any and all circumstances. He's like a cat – don't hold the paws, man.

Whisk! Out came the dirt, like magic.

"OooooOOOOOoooooh!" he exclaimed, like this was some brand new trick he'd never seen before. "Dat is sooooooo cah-wean! Good job, mommy! NOW, uuuUUUUUUUU do-it da numbah…da numbah…da numbah TWO one," he commanded, holding out the next finger.

YES! Thank you oh $DEITY and I promise I will never swear in public again… (I had my fingers crossed behind my back on that one. Just so you know.)

He numbered each of his fingers and held each one out in random order.

"NOW you do-it numbah SEB-BEN! OK! Good job, mommy! NOWWWWW, you do-it numbah FOR-YAH!"

Eventually, ten squeaky clean little nails were ready for the big test: The Clippers.

Duh-duh-duh

The clippers are a challenge for both of us. The chances that I'm going to accidentally hurt him with the orange stick are very low; the chances that I could accidentally nip a little skin with the nail clippers is significantly higher.

And he insists that they tickle. So he jerks around a lot. He twitches. He falls over in hysterical laughter.

I'm always afraid I'm going to take half his pinkie off trying to nick a quarter-millimeter worth of fingernail. (Which would be some trick considering that I still use the Gerber nail clippers on him, but still…)

But this time…he held still. First I had to do-it dah numbah one-one. Then dah numbah two-one. And so on and so on, each decision carefully made, each finger proffered with great seriousness and the quality of work minutely inspected, the project suspended until each phase got the Captain Seal of Approval: OK, good job, mommy.

Eventually, I got to sit back and look at my handsome little guy. Freshly shorn hair, brushed teeth, clean and neatly trimmed fingernails…wow. What a looker.

And I felt like mother of the year.

For a moment.

And then…I eyed his feet as they beat a rapid tattoo against the side of the bathtub where he was perched, admiring his potato-less fingernails and humming to himself.

Let's see, the last time I went after his toenails was…uh…um….er…

…oh…dear…

And also, oh well. The feet were a mile too far. The feet were soooooo ticklish that even taking off his socks sent him into paroxysms of giggles. He kicked. He flailed. He shrieked and thrashed.

I immediately gave up.

I'd won one battle, and found myself content therewith.

The tootsies and their potato loam will be mine another day…oh yes, they will be mine…BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA…

The Garden Report: July 3, 2010

Today was a long, hard day out in the garden. We got started at shortly before 10:00 this morning, and I only just staggered in – sweaty, tired, sore, and with a massive swath of dirt smeared across one cheek.

I’ve often wondered how it was that someone could walk around with a big old smear of dirt on some part of them and not, I dunno, feel it or something.

I didn’t feel a thing. I had no idea I had a half-a-dollar-bill sized smear of dirt on my cheek. Awesome.

Anyway! The peaches are starting to get ripe. We knew this, because look what we found when we went back there to peek at them:



Uh-huh. Birds. It’s funny how quickly I’ve gone a bit primal on this; my immediate thought was that I needed to do something about this, and fast. You would have thought the world food supply depended on what I did next, y’all. I was actually worried about the peaches.

And then two things occurred to me. One, the birds are going to get a few no matter what I do. And two, they were only gnawing on the ones on the very top – the ones they could easily reach without having to go to extreme measures like dangling upside down under the little tree or something. The ones underneath those were completely untouched.

While I was inspecting them, one fell into my hand.

And then people damage happened.



Sweet, juicy, tangy…it was on the small side, but it was perfect. (Also, I’m sure I made quite a spectacle walking around with my camera in one hand and juice dripping all over my other hand, and then I kept trying to find somewhere other than my jeans to wipe the juice off, not because I didn’t want to get juice on my jeans but because the jeans were so filthy that it would have made things ten times worse to use them as a towel.)

About this point, I looked up at my little empire. And, you know…wow.



It’s strange to think that not that long ago, it was just a dead lawn…in some ways, it’s even stranger to think of it back when it was a lush lawn. Even though a lawn would be a perfectly rational thing to expect in a suburban backyard, a perfectly normal and automatic sort of thing for someone to do with 30% of their backyard. Or even 100% of it.

Whereas this is…well, kind of crazy.

But it’s a cool kind of crazy. Except when it’s hot outside. Then it’s a too-hot-and-sweaty-but-at-least-you-can-cool-off-and-recharge-with-a-big-fresh-organic-salad-you-grew-yourself kind of crazy.

Behind me here, there is a new small patch of sunflower seeds planted. We decided to go for a sunflower patch, because one of the things I regret is that there wasn’t a good place to put a whole whack of sunflowers this year.

I love me the sunflower seeds. Hopefully, this spot will work for them…it gets a lot of sun right now and isn’t too horribly windy thanks to the narrowing of the fence at that point.

Back in the back forty(yards), the empty space is already starting to see some sprouts of the next round of corn.



While the first round is starting to play coy with us.



No silk yet, but definitely kernels peeking out, here and there. The pumpkins are moving slowly right now, and the pinto beans are having a grand time in there. It’s like a sea within a sea…



There’s some cilantro growing on the outside edges of the corn, and it just erupted with some lacy white flowers.



Eventually, those will get little “fruits” on them – and those fruits will become coriander. I use a lot of both cilantro and coriander, so I’m hoping to restock my spice jar with lots of those little seeds.

The green beans are slowing down a bit. I “only” got a little over two pounds off the bushes today…but guess what?



Blossoms. There will be at least a few more green beans before these bushes give up. Which will undoubtedly sadden their lady friends.



Which is good, because the aphids have found them – big time. Feh.

Meanwhile, their neighbor the zucchini is quietly starting its quest for world domination. Remember that little tiny nothing of a thing? That you had to squint to see last week?



It’s an actual zucchini now. And there’s about six more that are “oh, never mind us, we’re just little nothin’s here…” right now.

It might be a case of sibling rivalry, though. The butternut squash are setting fruit like they’re single-handedly fighting world hunger – and a few of them are getting big.





The vines themselves are also huge. Apparently this is a known thing about butternut squash – the vines don’t fool around. They go nuts. They try to take over every square inch of the whole garden.

But we learned our lesson last year. We’re keeping a very close eye on them, and pinching off the runners as they start encroaching on other beds.

I pulled in some potatoes this week; this is what I pulled out today.



They have much thinner skins than what I’m used to getting at the supermarket, and their texture is a lot creamier – probably because I’m digging these up before the plants are really done-done. Which is a bit of an art form and by the way, your hands get really dirty when you’re digging up potatoes. But it’s an awful lot of fun going after just one or two from the top – like a treasure hunt, or digging for fossils. Yeah, probably more like digging for fossils, because you have to be really gentle and brush the dirt away, looking for that flash of white or red…and then more brushing to see what you’ve found, get an idea how big it is and how much digging down you’re going to have to do to get at it.

I’ve found my hands work best for it, too. Just bare hands, feeling around in the dirt – my fingers can tell the difference between “just dirt” and “wait, I think that’s one of those potato-shoot-thingees.”

The brandywine tomatoes are starting to blush just a wee tiny bit.



The cherry tomatoes are hopping. (This is post-harvesting – there were about ten more little bright red nuggets of juiciness on there before I went picking.)



The yellow striped ones are still green.



I’m trying to be patient, really I am. I know how it will be, with one minute nothing but green tomatoes and the next holy crap, what am I supposed to do with 625 pounds of tomatoes each week?!

Especially with eight more beefsteak and six more “mystery but probably something large” tomatoes in the ground, plus the fifteen surviving roma bushes. I’m going to be up to my eyeballs in tomatoes all too soon…but man oh man, am I ever staring at the pot willing it to boil right now…

The assorted berries are starting to grow a little bit; they’re still awfully slow off the mark, though. I gave all of them a little berry-food today, and hopefully that and the warming weather will give them a firm shove in the “grow faster” direction.

Meanwhile…we harvested everything in the front boxes. And now they’re empty again.



The pak choi was ready and the lettuce really wasn’t quite, but we had two things that kind of hurried us along.

The first was the heat. Lettuce and heat don’t go together, and we’re charging into our three-digit phase fast.

And the other thing was…the cats. That’s right, the @*^&ing cats again. They discovered the boxes and wreaked some havoc in there – tore up a bunch of lettuce, turned one corner into a potty, nibbled and chewed and dug like crazy.

So we got what we could out of them, and tomorrow the husband is going to be installing some anti-cat wire frames just under the dirt. Hopefully they’ll really dislike walking on wires and quit messing with the boxes. And I’ll be planting some summer squash in there, which will make big old hairy bushes that aren’t a lot of fun to brush up against – between those two things, hopefully we’ll keep them out of those boxes.

OH! I didn’t take a picture of it…man I stink…but…one of my sweet potatoes suddenly decided that it would like to live after all! Three of them died outright, a fourth is still undecided, but this fifth one went, “Oh, wait…you know what? On second thought, I think I’m going to go ahead and just take off!”

It’s a small bush right now, beautiful and healthy and happy. And it made me feel happy, even though when I noticed it I had already been weeding / mulching / composting / leaf-mulching / mowing / fertilizing / yet more weeding for about four hours.

At that point, I would have said the only thing that would have made me feel happy was a triple margarita and a big old bowl of tortilla chips and salsa and possibly a professional gardener who could do all the hard, sweaty stuff while I sat in air conditioned comfort hollering instructions to him via walkie-talkie. (None of which I actually have, by the way. My life, she is sad…)

But turns out a suddenly lively sweet potato bush does a good job of cheering me up, too.

Today was one of those days where I had to make up for a fair amount of laziness on previous days – days when I’d stepped over weeds, ignored dead leaves, muttered “…later…” as I walked past something that needed trimming, propping, pruning or pulling.

It was a long day. A hard one.

But still deeply satisfying. A day that felt like it meant something.

Kind of like days spent playing with the kids, or working with animals – both hands fully on life.

Pretty good way to spend it, all things considered.

Feels like a Monday

..but at least I've been knitting. Eldest's sweater is clicking alone, one train ride at a time.

I had a good old-fashioned nightmare last night. I was chasing Captain Adventure around a parking structure. He thought we were having a grand game of Defy Mommy...I was terrified that he was going to be hit by a car.

And then he turned around, laughing at me as he ran backwards...right off the edge of the structure.

Woke up in a heart-pounding cold sweat and could NOT get back to sleep.

Ah, the joys of parenting are without number...and include Thursdays feeling like Mondays because even while peacefully asleep, they can make you crazy...

(sent from my Treo)

Old dog tricks

Have you ever owned an older, formerly-awesome vehicle? You know the kind. Back in the day, it was a muscle car, a car that made people look, one that responded with joy to even the lightest pressure on the accelerator, one that did zero to whatever effortlessly?

But today, wellllllllllllllllllllllll…let’s just say…it’s maybe…not quite the vehicle it once was. A bit faded, rusty, a part missing here or there, the engine’s purr more like an asthmatic wheeze, the response to the accelerator first a pause as if to say, You’re joking, right?, followed by a full-body shudder and the asthmatic wheeze turning into a desperate whine and maybe a humongous gagging cough and then it sort of lurches into motion in a pathetic, slow-motion version of its former glory?

I’ve often wondered how that felt, you know, for the car.

Today, I found out.

SEE, today, we had massive delays at BART. First there was an incident where somebody tried to escape the police by running up the tracks.

Then someone (allegedly) tried to commit suicide by throwing themselves under a train. Needless to say, it took a while to get him out from under the train, off to the hospital, and the station opened again.

The trains were packed. So packed that the trains could barely move, nor could the people already in them. Couldn’t get on, couldn’t get off.

Which meant each station took forever to get through.

Which meant that, far from cooling my heels for fifteen minutes waiting for my shuttle to the next train, I saw that bad boy pulling through the tunnel while I was still several people back in the line.

I got through the turnstiles, and thought there might be a chance I could make that bus (now alllllll the way down at the end of the depot), if…

Run! I commanded, stomping down on the accelerator in my mind.

It was at this point that I discovered how that old car feels.

You’re…joking…right? my body replied. Then it shuddered. It coughed. It let out the most bizarre assortment of pops and gasps and cracks. And for the first few strides, it felt like running in a nightmare – where you’re running through molasses, and just can’t seem to get any speed going.

The first passengers were getting on.

I thought about sitting there, at the BART station bus depot, for over an hour…waiting for this same bus to return to take me to the next ACE train. I thought about not getting home until 7:30.

I ran a little faster.

The last of the passengers were getting on. My body was threatening large repair bills. I’m gonna bust a gasket, I just know I am…

I thought about having to be around people an extra hour. People who would undoubtedly want to ask me things, ignoring the iPod earbuds that are clear commuter-speak for “don’t even THINK about talking to me.” “Does this bus go to Livermore?” “How much is the bus fare?” “Can I catch a train to Sacramento here?” “Can you spare a dollar?” “What are you making? What are you typing? Are you a programmer? Is that COBOL? Or what’s the other thing, ASCII? I have a cousin who’s a programmer and he’s totally rich – are you totally rich? Can I have a dollar?”

I stepped it up. go go go go go

The very last passenger turned and waved at me to come on!

I stomped the accelerator one more time. A hideous whine erupted from my engine as I crossed the last few feet and jumped into the bus. Made it!

The driver, normally a really nice and friendly sort of guy, grumbled as he shut the door. Gotta GO we’re LATE…

Then I sat there on the bus as my body let me know precisely what it thought about me and my accelerator-stomping ways. HECK! HECK TO PAY, MADAM, THAT’S WHAT THERE WILL BE…

We jolted and rumbled and skidded our way around Pleasanton the long way, slammed into the designated temporary bus stop and raced across the street. Validated tickets. Began loitering around waiting for the train to arrive in about two minutes…I’d made it. In spite of it all. In spite of delays and crazy and crowds and general insanity. On my way home, on time…

Attention all ACE train passengers at Pleasanton station: ACE train number six is currently running thirty minutes late due to a freight train on the tracks between Pleasanton and Fremont…

Well, I’ll…I’ll be…

Sigh.

Knackered, that’s what I’ll be.

Completely knackered.

Endurance

Sometimes, it seems as though my whole life is one big old marathon, as if absolutely everything about it comes down to enduring.

Sometimes, it is kind of irritating.

Sometimes, I find myself wondering why something can’t just once arrive in the form of instant gratification.

Why (I ask myself peevishly at such times) does everything have to require a blend of patience, hard work, perseverance, more patience, more hard work, and maybe just another heapin’ helpin’ of freakin’ patience?!

The thing that makes this question particularly irritating is that frequently, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Take today for perfect example.

I’m working from home today. And it is hot. Hot, hot, hot.

It’s a hair over 100 degrees outside today. Inside, well, that depends on where you are. This house has some of the worst air circulation imaginable; the temperature variances can be…crazy.

Downstairs hallway: 78 degrees.
Kitchen: 90 degrees.
Kids’ bathroom: 72 degrees.
Master bathroom: 95 degrees (!!)
Master bedroom a.k.a. my office: 90 degrees.

I guess when it comes to temperature I’m more like lettuce than tomatoes because I’m dying. Seriously. Dy-ING. I am sweating. I am barefoot, in shorts, sucking down lemonade by the gallon, ceiling fan whirring, floor fan buzzing (but I have to turn it off whenever I get on the phone because WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU, MY FAN IS ON!!!!!) (so naturally, today is “hey, let’s call Tama and ask about that! At great length!” day)

And here’s the corker: I’m stuck in this sweat box because I am a prisoner to network connectivity. This Satan’s Waiting Room is where the speed is, people. Sure, I could unplug, waddle off to one of the cooler spaces, and switch to my wireless card…and every query would then take twenty minutes to return and my email would be all “wait for it…waaaaaait for iiiiiiiiit…” and we shall not even begin to discuss how long it would take to upload a single Excel spreadsheet.

I can feel my hair turning gray just thinking about it.

Oh, do I have an air conditioner? Why yes, yes I do. Did we have the old funky one replaced a couple years ago during the Great Remodeling Adventure with the uber-efficient model of great air movement? Why yes! Yes we did!

So why am I sitting here sweating my arse off (alas, not literally)?

Because! I have a budget, and it requires my PG&E bill to stay under $275 – which requires that I not crank up my air conditioner just because I am (pffft!) a little hot. I would have to set the air conditioner to something like 70 to get this room cooled off to 80-something…which would still feel “too hot” and would also mean that it would just run-run-run-run-run.

Cha-ching-cha-ching-cha-ching. For PG&E, it’s like hitting the jackpot. You can stand there and watch the electric meter spinning, and actually feel all your month being sucked out of your checking account.

This is one of those moments where I find myself feeling pissy about the ‘endurance’ thing.

I’m putting up with the heat because I have a very clear budget. I have the budget because I have goals – and at this stage in my life, they’re ridiculously large. Grandiose, even. The kinds of goals that my younger self would have just stared at with her mouth hanging open before saying, “Yeaaaaaaaah, right. So, uh, good luck with that and if you need me, I’ll be over here chasing something shiny and by the way attainable…”

Sigh.

Sometimes, I really rue the day I realized that every action I take causes a ripple, that every choice I make has a consequence.

And that each “small” choice is only small in a vacuum – out in the so-called real world that is my overall life, they add up fast.

In aggregate, all those “just this once” and “only a little” and “I deserve it” choices become dream-deniers.

Used to be I could not see the connection between what I was doing now and that whole not having the rent a week or two later.

Now, I can’t not see it. Before my hand can even leave my side, I’m already thinking about our dreams…no more debts to pay, the ability to shift slowly into a less frantic working situation, stepping gradually into a working retirement as the kids start going off to college and from there into their own lives…making less but loving what we do more…

And I can’t do it. I can’t choose being cooler over all that.

So, I don’t do it. I leave the thermostat alone, and I go back to my office, and I drink more lemonade and try not to cuss when my phone rings and I have to snap off my floor fan.

I can endure temporary discomfort in exchange for getting those other things that much sooner.

…don’t promise I won’t kvetch about it, though…