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Monday, October 27, 2008

It's here!

Well, sort of. (Autumn, that is.) At least we're getting back down into the 70's this week, with (fanfare please) a chance of rain on the weekend.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Sometimes I am really, really lame.

This morning I was merrily folding laundry in my room -- OK, I can't stretch it that far. I was... ungrudgingly? moderately happily? smugly?... folding laundry in my room, when C came in and informed me that she had found a plastic-wrapped tray of Italian sausage in the fruit bowl. On the counter. Where it had been since Tuesday night. Apparently the bagger had bagged the sausage with my apples (HUGE pet peeve, by the way: please, baggers, please keep the possibly e-coli-laden raw meat away from the fruit which will be eaten uncooked and, knowing my daughter, possibly unwashed), and then I, in a moment of supremely wasteful stupidity, had just plopped the whole grocery bag of apples into the fruit bowl on the counter because I'm all classy like that. (To be fair to myself, I had also thought that T would be taking them to work and it would have been easier for him to just grab the bag.) And then I had completely forgotten that I'd bought Italian sausage, until, well, this morning. So now I am cooking up one and one third pounds of what would have been really good topping for our next Friday pizza in a solid chunk which I'll put out in our woods for the stray cats and the foxes, who will eat it up in no time, and I'm feeling really stupid and wasteful and lame.

Too bad I can't muster that much guilt when I blow three dollars on junk food or at, say, Starbucks. (Can you spend only three dollars at Starbucks?)

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The garden: RIP.

Cami (who is, I just realized, my very oldest* Internet friend -- in fact, she was the first person I ever met on the Internet. I have no idea why it took me twelve years to fully grasp this fact) asked me about the garden. In short: The garden died.

*Not that Cami is old, of course. Is there a good way to word this concept? "My internet friend of longest duration" sounds terribly awkward.

But wait! It was supposed to die! That's right, I, me, Rachel of the Black Thumbs, actually maintained a garden from seedlings to first frost. Well, not all of a garden. There were those beans that looked really cute and amazing when they first sprouted but then they never did anything. And, um, the broccoli, which I planted at the wrong time of year and finally gave up watering sometime in June. And then the corn went and got corn smut, and it hadn't been doing too fabulously before that either, so we didn't eat any of our corn this year. (Really, really small ears. Definitely doing a different corn variety next year.) And there were those squash plants that the gophers demolished, but not until after we'd at least had some squash from them... and the watermelons that never got bigger than footballs... and the winter squash that, shall we say, underperformed. But really, the fact that I even noticed that a frost had happened and killed what was left in there is kind of amazing. With past gardens (really, just corn and tomato patches), by October the stuff had long since died of neglect or at the hands (hoofs? teeth?) of the neighborhood deer gangs and I didn't notice when the frost came along to finish it off. This time I had tomatoes and peppers and a few squash hanging in there right until the very end. I even did a last-minute frosty-morning harvest of the bell peppers, which I then chopped up and froze for use in spaghetti during the winter.

So I would say that Garden 2008 was a minor success, and definitely a huge learning experience. Next year, DEFINITELY more compost, even if I have to (sigh) buy the stuff. You apparently need a whole lot of compost if you're going to use it effectively in a good-sized garden. It's shocking, really. I have compost on my Christmas list. That's how determined I am.

I'm thinking of trying onions over the winter, just for kicks, but my main goals for the fall (between now and the onset of the wimpy drizzle that passes for a rainy season in California) are: to get all the plant remains mulched, mix that and our measly supply of compost in with the top of the soil, toss in some worms, and cover the whole thing with spread-out newspapers and then wood chips, in hopes of getting some nutrients into the soil by spring. If there are any gardeny types who've just read that and either laughed out loud or recoiled in horror at the shuddery wrongness of it, please please comment and tell me what I should really be doing because honestly I don't have a clue.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

things you may or may not know about me

That "Five things nobody knows about me" meme is always going around, and I hesitate to participate in it because my life has been pretty much an open book on here in the past, and the few things I haven't already shared about myself or my family or whatever are unshared for a reason. But what the heck: it's one AM and I'm wide awake with nothing else to do (except, of course, the everpresent studying, but I did a LOT of that this evening and I am now Taking A Break). I'll give the thing a try.

• I read a certain few comics online with nearly-religious devotion. If I'm up past midnight, as I am now, I read the next day's strips. Sometimes I'll stay up an extra half-hour if it means being able to find out what my comic-strip people are doing before I go to bed. These comics are, in the order in which I read them: Sally Forth, Baby Blues, Between Friends, Luann (YES OKAY LUANN SHUT UP), Zits, 9 Chickweed Lane, Dilbert, and Pearls Before Swine. For Better or For Worse used to be in the rotation as well, but when she "retired" and went back to the beginning, or whatever it is she's doing, I lost interest.

• I had forgotten what it was like, until this semester, to have a little callus on the last knuckle of my middle finger from writing, but I have worn the letters off half the keys on my beloved ergonomic keyboard, and the popular keys have grooves worn into them by my fingernails.

• I miss my piano. When I drive past the house of the people to whom we gave it, I think of it, and hope they're being nice to it and enjoying it.

• I have never danced at a wedding -- mine or anyone else's. In fact, I haven't danced outside the privacy of my own living room since high school.

• I have owed my Aunt Mary a letter since last spring. I am a bad, bad niece.
  

See? Now you know.

Monday, October 20, 2008

I feel... writery.

It's probably because I have an exam for which I could be studying right now, but suddenly I feel like composing a blog post. Or maybe it's the refreshing nap I just took. I'm not totally sure I actually slept -- I think I did, between phone calls -- but lying there thinking about what would happen if I died in my sleep (would the kids know T's work number? I'm absolutely certain they know to call 911, but who would let T know? And would his boss let him come home early from work?) was actually weirdly... relaxing. Don't tell me you never do this while you're trying to drift off to sleep. Oh. You don't? No, no, don't call the people in the white coats. I'm fine. Really. And you don't know my address anyway. Right?

Um. OK. Moving on.

I haven't been talking much about school lately. (Well, honestly, I haven't been talking about much here lately, period. Not even the books I read in September. SHUT UP. OK, I'll do it: Marian Keyes' latest: Don't buy it.) I complained a lot about my two classes this semester, early on, and I thought that I should update and say that they're not that bad. Well, one of them isn't. It's actually pretty interesting once you get past that first chapter that's all about the different theories of human development. I'm not even annoyed (much) by the application of those theories to the way children grow, not that I'm going to run and change my major to psychology or anything, being more of a hands-on kind of gal than the type to sit around analyzing why people think the way they do for eight hours a day. But that class is nice. Communications, on the other hand, has me counting down the days to the end of the semester. It's kind of this perfect storm of subject matter (they call it "communications" but what they really mean most of the time is "sensitivity training", and oh my GOSH the navel-gazing that's required in this class is heaped up in INSANE quantities), a rawther disorganized teacher who probably does much better in an in-person class than an online one, and subject matter that can only be graded subjectively, which was kind of worrisome for a couple of weeks there, after I had a calm, quiet disagreement with the instructor about something that's neither here nor there as regards the course, and suddenly all my perfect scores and glowing praise turned into Bs and Cs presented with surly silence. That appears to have turned around now, though, for whatever reason, and I'm just working my tail off to do the best I can to earn an A from her even if she doesn't want to give it to me. Next year by hook or by crook I WILL take an algebra class. I was going to take College Algebra With Trigonometry, but the class is at an impossible time for me, so I'm going to have even more fun taking the two classes separately and streeeetching them out all luxurious-like. After eighteen weeks of psychology stuff, I am looking forward to some hard and fast indisputable facts where either you know the stuff or you don't. Anyway, no matter what I'm taking, I'm loving being in school just as much as I thought I would during that looong stretch of time between high school and college. (Isn't taking a year's break all the rage? I just took that to extremes.) Just being on campus -- and while it's a nice, green-treed, pretty enough 1970's campus, it's not exactly a bricks-and-ivy university or anything -- is soothing and nice. Worth the wait, definitely.

So that's my school. The kids' school is going along quietly and fine. LT has not taken to algebra like I dreamed he might, not because he doesn't get it which he does, but because he dislikes it. I would wonder how I could give birth to such a child except that I do happen to know his father pretty well; he wanted to be an engineer but decided not to because that career would involve too much time spent studying mathematics. Anyway. It's going fine even so, and we actually have a pretty good time at it. I'm actually -- sit down -- applying some of the stuff I'm learning in PSYC-09 (the human dev class) to my teaching. And it's working. Maybe thar's sumpin in that p-sy-chology stuff after all.

Today I looked down our hill and saw that our three huge black oaks down by the creek (and the black oaks by the creek that aren't ours are charitably joining in) are turning yellow. Black oaks are pretty much the only native trees around here that put on any kind of a color show, and this was such a lovely thing to look out of my yard and see. I don't talk about it much anymore but I'm still feeling the blessing every day of having this house. It was a year ago now that we were in that terrible escrow period when I'm sure the stress took at least six months off my life and I wasn't sure I'd ever get to be here, in a place that's ours to do with as we like. (It was also a year ago that we were staying with my parents, which was so awesomely much fun that LT and C refer to it as a "three-month vacation" -- and not because they took pretty much the entire month of December off school while we were over here working on making this place livable. Maybe we'll start taking our annual vacations at Mom and Dad's. It would be much cheaper than driving to the beach.)

I had more to say but I have to change my clothes VERY fast and get ready to go to chorus rehearsal. You're off the hook THIS time (I hear your relieved sigh), but I'll be back tomorrow. Or in ten days. Whenever.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

blah blah blah.

Something tells me I shouldn't update when I'm feeling this cranky. Whoo boy! I'm in a fun mood. I missed my nap today, and then Scout woke me up when she jumped on my bed and WOULD NOT settle down, and now heartburn won't let me go back to sleep. And I feel so not cheerful about all this, and want to whine. Don't you LOVE me? Don't you want to come hang out with me right now? Oh, I know you do. But you can't, so like the accommodating person I am, I will bring the whining to you.

Well, I guess that was kind of all of it, actually. I feel... sort of better. Thank you for listening.

In other news, as I was drifting off (briefly, as it turned out) to sleep tonight, I remembered that I had completely forgotten about a transcribing job I was supposed to do within a week of last... Monday? Tuesday? I have never done this before. At least I remembered now, when I can still stay up till the wee small hours and get it in on time. For a second there, though, it was like all those nightmares I had for all those years where I would suddenly realize that I was enrolled in a college class I didn't know about (or, worse, had been thrust back into high school, adult age and all) and oh my gosh there was an assignment due YESTERDAY and I DIDN'T DO IT. (Funny how that was never shocking any of the five thousand times it actually happened between sixth and twelfth grades.) So I guess I'll work on that now (the transcribing job, not the assignment that was due yesterday in my circa-1998 nightmare). I won't be sleeping anyway, and I feel another bout of whining coming on (CAN ALL THE POLITICIANS PLEASE SHUT UP NOW being the general theme) so I will spare the Internet that discomfort and go try to be productive.

Could that paragraph have contained any more parenthetical statements? I'm not sure it's physically possible.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

perspective

You may have heard about the problems Iceland is facing right now. What I haven't seen any mainstream coverage about is the effect this situation is having on ordinary people. I have a friend in Iceland. We met nearly a decade ago when I started an egroup for expectant mothers and she was the first to join. Her daughter is eight days younger than mine. This morning my friend told us that their last bank had collapsed, taking their currency down with it, and that stores, no longer able to import food due to the impossible exchange rate, are emptying. She is understandably frightened. (Our group is doing what we can to help. We can send food and love, but we can't do much about long-term hope, unfortunately.)

I don't even know where I was going with this, other than a nebulous be-grateful-for-what-you-have kind of idea that seems ludicrously inadequate and trite at this point. It's just been a very sobering situation for me. I am full of heartache for my friend, and I wanted to share the human side of the story that (in my reading anyway) has mainly had its focus on the more political aspects of one little nation's economic collapse.

Friday, October 03, 2008

yes again! an entry consisting of many small snippets on various topics! I am SO ORIGINAL OMIGOSH.

I have spent the past five days studying madly and feverishly for a Human Development exam. (The teacher has us scheduled to take an exam every three weeks. Fun times!) The first one took me by surprise with its brain-bending difficulty, so I was determined to be more prepared this time, and I made myself a very nerdy fill-in-the-blank study guide based on my notes and then studied it until my eyes nearly bugged out. (You would never, ever have caught me doing this in high school. In fact, I had no real concept of studying for tests back then, and I don't think I ever actually did it. However, that was before I lost those neuron pathways in my old age, not to mention the synaptic pruning that's been going on for all these years. Gee, what do you think these Human Dev. chapters were about? You'll never guess.) At any rate, I think the studying paid off, or else the instructor had pity on us and made this test a whole heck of a lot easier, because I just took the exam and I feel pretty good about it. Now I have to study equally madly and feverishly (and nerdishly) for the Communications exam I have to take by Tuesday. The fun never ends. Until mid-December, that is, when I (hallelujah) gleefully sell my current textbooks, and put this semester behind me with much rejoicing.

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We went to the library book sale today and spent more than we meant to. But it's on books, and books really matter, so that's OK, right? right? I mean, that's an investment, right? (I can't even remember offhand what I bought. A handful of children's books, I think, and maybe a book of plays, or did I put that back? And the kids got... lots of stuff too. But rest assured it's all very important and well worth blowing the budget a little bit.)

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So. Politics. Anyone have any life-changing moments during the debate? Didn't think so. I think both parties did fine. I also think it was extremely boring. Next time let's have some mud-wrestling, please. Or at least a few contentious issues. Or, barring that, a serious gaffe along the lines of telling a guy in a wheelchair to stand up so that people can look at him, or discussing FDR getting on TV when the stock market crashed in 1929. Bring on the funny if you're not going to bring any passion, please. (And while I'm at it, can I please request that we ban the word "maverick" from any further public political discussion? There are synonyms you can use if you need to. Thank you. Oh, and Sarah? I still want to be your pinky-swear new best friend, and the accent is cute, and the lack of political polish is refreshing if a little scary, but please do remember that the word CLEAR is inside the world NUCLEAR. See it? Right... there. After the "nu". HOW HARD IS THIS, PEOPLE.)

I'm too sick of the subject to do any real justice to the whole not-a-bailout-but-really-it-is thing. (But watch me keep talking about it anyway.) I think it's time to let the economy correct, but that's not Politically Expedient and also it could be kind of disastrous, so whatever, bail us out to the tune of $2,500 per person if you really want to. Just stop placing all the blame on Republicans, please. We weren't the ones forcing banks to lend to people who really shouldn't have had mortgages. (Wait. That's RACIST, as Rachel Lucas would say. Nevermind. Carry on.) There are plenty of causes for this mess, but don't we all have a great time assuming that our side has no responsibility and the other side has all of it? Isn't it just inspiring? Aren't human beings awesome? Election years just make you glad to be alive, don't they?

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O-K. Moving on.

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C had her birthday on Tuesday. She is now nine years old, oh my gosh. (I so remember being nine. I was just like her, only without the good hair.) I just realized that I missed doing the traditional birthday post. Did I skip LT's this year too? I think I might have. I AM A BAD MOTHER. I'm very sorry, kids. A good mother would never do this; in fact, she would bore the entire Internet with intimate details of your development over every month of your lives, something I'm sure you'd relish reading later on as well. Maybe for your children, I'll do that. No? You don't think? Oh, OK.

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WHAT book was it where the mother was constantly teasing her kids about what a Good Mother would do? Oh, yes. Izzy, Willy-Nilly. Please read this now. This means you. Thank you. (You must admit it's more polite than my usual style. I'm trying.)

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It is raining -- the first real rain since May. (Three minutes of tiny sprinkles last Monday do not count.) I am SO SO HAPPY about this, especially since we went ahead and moved C's birthday party from tomorrow to Sunday so now we don't have to worry about the beautiful, wonderful rain keeping all sixteen of us indoors for the entire afternoon. I am, however, supposed to bury a treasure tomorrow and construct a map course for the kids to follow to find it, so I'm hoping that I get some gaps between the "afternoon showers" after the "rain in the morning" that we have been promised. Either way, THANK YOU, GOD AND NWS. KISSES.

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And thatisall. Goodnight. I'm going to go get into comfy jammies, lie in my bed with the window open, listen to the rain falling in our little woods, and read Wives and Daughters until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Feel free to envy me at any time. I can take it.