Alecto's Ophelia

2010 - Coming Home

The last 90 minutes of 2009 frizzled out while I was sleeping. When my contacts are fogged enough I'm stabbing myself with a needle every third stitch it's time to go to bed. I left the girls in front of the television, gathered up my animals, peeled the contacts off my eyeballs (and I do hope I'm going to find them in solution) and went to bed. I wish I'd brushed my teeth. Sometime in the night a small tribe of Pygmies set up camp and decided to have a rain dance on my tongue. It was dry, dry, dry in there. This morning I staggered to the bathroom,spit them unceremoniously into the sink and proceeded to beat the hell out of my mouth until I looked into the mirror and noticed I was just South of rabid. That's usually a good indicator.

The alarm on the iPod went off at 7:30 like it does every weekday morning. I was dreaming it was something else until I woke up enough to turn it off and then climb back into bed warning the dog that it was technically still the middle of the night. Somewhere. I haven't bothered to turn that alarm off because it makes a good 15 minute warning before Little Girl needs to head out to the bus stop (which is the end of the driveway) and on weekends it doesn't go off at all although Simon will generally put his great slobbery face right up against mine (or the back of my head if I'm lucky) and breathe heavily while moaning pathetically about the fact that he's not going to be able to keep his legs crossed forever. Simon has no trouble getting my attention in the morning. He is 79 inches long snout to tail tip, 31 inches at the whithers and his head is massive. Someday I'll figure out how to weigh it. Maybe I can slide the flat digital kitchen scale under his head while he's sleeping. Remind me to try that. The drop from the top of my mattress to the floor is 36 inches and while that's five inches above his whithers we must consider the length between whithers and snout. Unless I'm sleeping in the middle of the bed there's really no escape and if I don't want St. Bernard slobber ON my sheets I need to respond fairly quickly even if it means telling him to lay the hell back down and go to sleep. If his need is not immanent he will. He's a good boy. 

Little Girl let him out this morning. I was out cold. I have no recollection of the door opening and closing again after my baby boy lumbered across the threshold, made an abrupt 90 degree right turn and galloped down the hall coming to his usual skidding stop at the top of the stairs. When he's got his bearings he tip toes down the six carpeted stairs and stands patiently at the front door followed shortly by the manic Rat Terrier. The only time the Rat Terrier is not manic is when he's overslept and slinks up the stairs from the lower level hoping I won't notice but knowing perfectly well he's been caught sleeping on the couch again. Sometimes he hides until I'm back upstairs. He's sly and has great bladder control.

I nuked a cup of yesterday's coffee and here I sit thinking about what to write while my fingers typed out three paragraphs (which I just read) while I wasn't looking. I was thinking about resolutions.

I have no resolutions. I don't do resolutions. The only time I made a resolution was in the first few minutes of the last year of the twentieth century and that was more of an invocation to the fertility gods (it worked too, I delivered Little Girl on December 11, 2000).

I have nothing to invoke this year except maybe patience, perseverance and the strength to let be the things I have no right to control. I know perfectly well what those are too I just have a really hard time not panicking and grasping a float that has no intention of being grasped. The float does like to be grasped at though. I think it makes him feel wanted and needed. I think that's poison for me.However, invoking a negative does not create a positive. So here they are, my resolutions in spite of not doing resolutions (because God forbid I don't keep them):

1. Bake more bread. We lost that in 2009.
2. Order the seeds and actually start the seedlings.
3. Repair the fence and till the garden hopefully one week after the last hard freeze (sometime in March most years).
4. Compost. Everything that ought to be composted. Lost that in 2009 too.
5. Put the seedlings in just after Mother's Day and protect the tomato plants with plastic bottle hot houses. Pay attention to the weather and don't boil them.
6. This year pull UP all the volunteers from last year. That was fun but unproductive.
7. Cultivate early and often.
8. Order more broiler chicks. Maybe even eggs if I can work out an incubator and commit to turning them every day.
9. Get back on the elliptical in the morning at least until the heavier garden work is in full swing. Bikram is not enough.
10. Walk away from 2009 and don't look back. I can't imagine turning into a pillar of salt particularly pleasant.

That's it. I'm stopping at ten because I'm an over achiever and usually bite off more than I can chew without choking. Those ten are probably a big mouthful but maybe there should be an 11th:

    11. Give myself permission to fall down and get up again. You know, permission to be a bona fide member of he human race. The expectation of perfection is a horrible conceit.

Happy New Year, peoples. I wish you joy, love, passion, strength and surrender.

Peace out - Alecto

 
Borrowed without permission from an artist who's name I can no longer locate.

Unexpected

I bought the usual bulb in a box at a hardware store a month before Christmas, followed the requisite instructions and up popped a mediocre bloom (which is better than the one I took to the office which did nothing). However, my expectations were met given what I bought and where and continued to water it while the old bloom finished it's process.

And then the most amazing thing happened. Another shoot came up off the bulb. I thought, this isn't going anywhere but the bulb knows what it's doing and one day there were three magnificent blossoms on the one stalk.

Looking out my kitchen window in the quiet of falling snow, the juxtaposition of the unexpected and beautiful just felt to profound not to share.

On Patience and the things we can learn from ourselves and animals

My mother says, 'wait for it... wait for it...' You know she's speaking in the context of training horses but she applies it directly to me as well and I'm grateful for that (who doesn't want to be trained with the patience and love with which horses should be worked with?).

Reminds me of my dog. The big one, not the little one. The little one waits for nothing and throws himself about in a terrible froth that only he enjoys. My big dog has been patient since he was just a few weeks old (according to his human mom). He waits, watches and then pounces sometimes. Or he waits, watches, thinks about it and maybe walks away, or lays down to forget about it or maybe wait some more. My favorite is feeding time. He knows he's hungry. He doesn't know exactly when he will eat but he knows he will (big guy has complete faith in me, it's a beautiful thing). When I pick up his water bowl first and then put it back he sits patiently and waits because even if he is thirsty at the moment, that's not the cheese he's looking for. When I pick up his food bowl he looks at me, still sitting, and that is all. When I leave the room to go to the feed bin his eyes don't even follow me. He sits waiting. When I come back with food in the bowl and run the water until it is warm (warm water in the food tends to prevent bloat and we don't want that) he sits very still and watches. And when I put the bowl down in it's place he does not rush the bowl or push me aside (although he sure could!). He waits until I step away and then he goes right to it. With dignity.

When Simon was just a baby (not that he's not still a baby, he's just past 4 months now) we kept him on a six foot leash at all times unless he was in the kitchen with us (gated) or in his pen or a crate. We allowed him no opportunity for trouble and an awful lot of imprinting time. And he only fought the leash once, by the way, and that was the first time outside. He did not want to go and so I waited until he was sure he wouldn't be forced and by his choice he came to me and then came with me.

In the morning when it was the in between time from the early morning outing with husband and then the final release from the crate by me I insisted that he not pull at the leash and that he wait for me at every step. I guided him outside and to where I wanted him to potty and then walked around with him until he said he was done (he says he's done by playing with little dog). When we went back into the house and little dog galloped up the stairs I stopped, waited and then we went up those stairs one calm step at a time. We stopped on the landing and then went up the next set up steps in the same manner.

Recently Simon is off the leash for the most part, even outside (although as soon as he hits adolescence we'll be going right back to the leash and the next stage of his training). And the beautiful thing about Simon is that he waits for me when I release him from the crate regardless of the little dog's leaping about. And when I open the door to outside he walks patiently by my side to the potty choice that is still my decision. And when we come in the door he waits for me at the stairs and the landing and we go side by side.

When he needs to go out he sits at the top of the stairs and waits. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he's just laying there or really needs to go out. If we fail to understand him he goes down to the landing by the front door and waits there. If we fail to come right away he starts to dribble a bit but never just lets it go.

Harmony and Balance through mutual understanding, love and gentleness. And of course, paying attention.

These days I am practicing patience in ways that nearly tear my guts apart sometimes. And I wonder, are his guts periodically torn apart when he waits for me? I must try to remember this. And regardless of how I feel I can choose how I react and like Simon, I can stop, wait, think about it and then maybe just lay down and let it go. Or watch some more. Or try something else. But never, never, never cause harm in the need. Just a dribble here and there and if need be find another way.

But you know what else I think? I think that if I was a less than loving momma or less observant, or less caring or even cruel that he would not be the dog he is today. And if I am not a loving person and observant and caring with myself and others then I too will fail to be the person I want to be.

Happy New Year to all and what I want you to know is that You (We) are the miracle.

Waiting

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room with a cat carrier to my right, door right up against my right thigh because it's the only thing keeping my cat from completely losing her shit. Yep, here we go about a cat again.

This cat turned four in October and belonged to my husband's brother Frank who died horribly and alone in his bathroom at home just two years and ten months ago. The last time anybody talked to Frank was Valentine's Day, 2006 and if you want to read about it go here because it's a pretty powerful post and everybody's names are used so please tread with care (I won't edit this post for any reason). Anyway, Nomans found Frank on March 4 and it was as awful as you might expect. It took some time to sort everything out but the net result was a disaster of an apartment full of hazmat that needed to be emptied, the kind of hazmat that happens with a particular flavor of mental illness, and two cats needing homes. Two cats that spent at least two weeks locked up with a body. I'll leave you to work that out on your own.

Shortly after the funeral (and as Jews we should have done this immediately but for what should be obvious reasons, could not) my husband had to go to Switzerland for a week and I, suddenly jobless at that point, chose to stay home. Staying home was the wrong thing to do but half way through the week I put my girls in the car and drove nearly three hours South to bring home what amounted to two feral cats, not much past kitten hood.

One cat made it and one cat did not. By 'did not' I mean he failed to assimilate into the household in any way and had to be removed. His litter mate, named Wicious (because she's 'wicious and fawocious') eventually settled in and did just fine.

A few weeks ago, just as we were becoming painfully aware that we really were in the end game with Chuck, Homer the Dog started behaving badly. He pooped in our bathroom, peed on the couch, peed on our bed and it just went on and on. We assumed Homer (we were right about the bathroom) because it was nearly odorless and Simon can't get up on the furniture by himself to save his life (he just eats it instead). We forgave Homer because he's had a lot to deal with (like a sixty pound baby) and crated him to avoid further issue for the time being. And then there was another odorless puddle on the bed and another after that. You see, she tried the foot of the bed and that didn't work. Then she tried my side and I still didn't pay attention. And then she tried Noman's side when she was accidentally locked in our room and then we knew our last kitty was pretty sick.

And then we noticed that she was always hungry but stopped eating after a mouthful or two and walked away crying. And then we could pick her up and hold her like a baby and she didn't purr and she didn't struggle, she just laid there all snugged up and motionless.

I didn't waste time. I called the vet today, gave symptoms and was told to come in. So the appointment is at 3 and I didn't want to risk not being able to locate or catch her (not like she's moving very fast but she is wicious and fawocious and wiley too. And I'm sitting on this couch with the carrier right against my leg and she's gone to sleep. If I get up and moves she cries like the world might end.

I don't know how this is going to turn out but it can't be good. I only know we love this cat and I will gladly pay the price of fear and pain and possible loneliness to have the right to love and be loved back by this cat. (and the dogs are in the kitchen eating the table legs and I'll probably get over it).

Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins

 

The dog is a beast. He's gaining close to a pound a day with no end in sight. Last checked he was 40 pounds at 12 weeks and 22 pound Homer (on a good day) has lost what little fur like substance he had left due to the constant nomming of the over grown baby.

We were trying not to crate him. It seemed like a good idea at the time. You know, big dogs, fast growing boys, should not be confined and all that. So we installed gates in the kitchen and installed an over sized puppy playpen on the lower level so that he and Homer could cohabitate and I wouldn't have to listen to it all night. And then it became VERY apparent that no one was EVER going to make Simon do anything he didn't actually feel like doing. Ever. His strength is, and will continue to be, greatly disproportionate to his actual weight. The good news is he really wants to please. And we are prepared to make good use of that willingness every second of his very impressionable puppy hood.

So we bought the biggest crate known to man. I swear you could put an elephant in there and it surely will never fit through a door again now that it's been assembled. We assembled said crate and then attempted to insert tab A (Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins, don't worry, I'll get to that) into slot B (door of crate) and failed miserably. He was only 30 pounds at the time. Nomans and I, we are very strong people. Lots of upper body strength and all that. It took two of us. One inside the crate pulling and the other outside the crate pushing. It was very demoralizing to the both of us and not a little disturbing to the puppy.

We bought treats. We bought treats and we slowed the hell down. For the first week it took me an extra twenty minutes in the morning after Little Girl's bus left just to sweet talk him to the door of the crate. But that works, you know, the whole sweet talking thing, because he wants to please so very, very much. And now he's crate trained and goes right in without a fuss and stays in too if you remember to toss in a bit of puppy candy. But here's the kicker, normally you would insert a divider so that the crate was just barely big enough for the puppy. This encourages them not to pee in the crate (or worse). We can't do that too him, I don't think it would be good for him. And in the end I don't intend to use the crate forever, I just need to be able to ask him to go if I really need him there.

Which brings me to the next point. If I ever hope to have friends or family in my house ever again I'm going to have to be able to put him away. Most people do not appreciate 240 pounds of slobbering fur in their lap and as I mentioned above, Simon pretty much does what he wants to do. And that doesn't mean he's not being socialized, he is. It just means I really don't have the physical control to fall back on.

Did I mention he has complete respect for the gates in the kitchen right up until he doesn't?

So here's poor Simon locked up in this cavernous crate and he still wets the bed at night. Not that we would do anything so silly as to leave him a bed in there, it would be consumed by morning. He wets the bed and then rolls in it. Or at least lays about in it. And since we can't wash him easily in the winter and have to rely on baby wipes for the most part he's kind of ripe.

We don't really mind.

We took him to Main Street Westport on Sunday. Main Street Westport wants to be Rodeo Drive East (it's not, that would be The Avenue in Greenwich but please try not to disillusion Westport in these current economic times). We figured that's a perfect place to start socializing him because nobody walking up and down that street has any manners to speak of (including me based on the level of snark in this post). Or sense but don't get me started. He's guaranteed to get a boat load of attention wanted or otherwise.

He was brilliantly well behaved with the possible exception of stopping to have a pee on every possible patch of leaves because that's where he potties at home. You know, on the leaves in the yard. He doesn't know sidewalks from Adam. He was pet, hugged, cuddled, kissed and slobbered on by at least 50% of the population. He ate it up. He didn't even try to climb into any laps although I wonder what will happen when he realizes he can pretty much make a lap happen anytime he wants.

By the time we made it down one side and back up the other he was exhausted and we weren't much better. I looked down at my angelic fluffy white pumpkin and realized that Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins is mostly yellow these days.

Don't you have chickens on your front porch?

 

I know our neighbors have struggled with the idea of our chickens. I know this because our neighbor right across the street makes her granddaughter catch and lock them up (ha ha ha, like putting them in the chicken pen keeps them in) when they cross the street and our neighbor to the left yelled at Little Girl one day (and I'm thinking she needs her meds adjusted for yelling at a little girl instead of talking to her parents) and said her dogs would eat our chickens because they cross the invisible boundaries from two acre yard to two acre yard and our neighbor diagonally across the street said, 'oh, I thought that might be you.' In reference to our birds.

And I want it noted that we have wild turkeys on the loose in this neighborhood. And I want it noted that the vet's wife two doors down feeds them morning and night too. And I want it noted that our neighbor directly across the street (the one with the granddaughter) rescues raccoons. I just want it noted that in all this wild life we raise eyebrows because we keep chickens and, gasp... eat their eggs and stuff (so dirty, apparently).

I guess the truth is I don't find it even remotely remarkable anymore. What I find remarkable is that we appear to be alone in this neighborhood.

I can't wait until the meat birds arrive in the spring.

That should have been the end of the post but I know I'm going to be too distracted next week to remember to tell you this but...

1. I waltzed about like a lunatic (I was fully clothed at the time, I swear) scattering assorted seed six weeks ago and now I have assorted greens coming up all over the place.
2. I planted many things in this one little patch back in April and May (that gave me nothing but radishes this year) and I see carrots coming up?! Now?
3. The fat chives (I don't know how else to differentiate them from the skinny chives that put themselves to bed already) are making a concerted move on the potato beds.
4. The dill has reseeded itself. Everywhere.
5. My oregano has lost it's mind and headed for the swamp. Everywhere.
6. The Romaine reseeded itself EVERYWHERE.
7. The celery is delighted with the weather and looks better than it ever did.
8. And I am glad I was late putting in the stiff neck garlic because the daffodils are coming up already (they'll duck down again shortly).

I put up no cold frames, have done nothing other than turn over a few beds and pull up the tomato and bean stakes and I just want you to know that on November 16, the garden is very much alive and well.

Chickins and Bugs, Chickins and Bugs

I have two step sons who are being raised on high fructose corn syrup and processed white flour. They are both highly medicated and highly suspect. OK, that last part isn't true but it's funny and when it comes to coping with the reality of who they are versus who I am, I often need all the humor I can find.

In the six years I've cohabitated with their father we've come face to face in a state of abject discomfort more times than I care to think about. Many of these occasions has stopped just short of bloodshed (mine and / or their father's, not theirs (don't worry, I wouldn't (probably (but you never know))). In the last year and a half alone it got bad enough that he (Nomans) traveled South to visit but they (Thing One and Thing Two and I name them that most affectionately) did not come North at all. Last summer we had one weekend that went well enough (although there was a bit of bloodshed over some communications that I filed under the category of entitlement that nearly caused WW III yet again) and then an actual week at the beach (and no one died but oh my goodness it took super human efforts from every single one of us). After that there was nothing due to the holidays and some other such scheduling conflicts as you've got to understand that all nineteen moons (I made that up, I don't actually know how many moons are required) must be in full alignment or god help us all.

The other thing, and this is a bit of an aside, is that in the past Nomans spent a full twelve hours in the car each weekend (three down three up three down three up) on the bloody New Jersey Turnpike until he could no longer and then the trips spread further apart and the whole darn thing just broke down until something finally gave and those boys took the train to and fro.

So you can imagine that I greeted this most recent arrival with some level of trepidation because I have to tell you that when I hear a child recoil in horror from the sight of swamp dirt it just makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I want to drag them into the muck until they get it about not being separate. Plus dirt is good. We need to eat a lot more of it than we do. And... that might just get me started on classroom allergies.... yadda yadda yadda moving right along now...

I was worried about the chickens. I was worried about the garden. I was worried about the fact that we don't have chicken nuggets or anything even close. And I was worried about my ability to withstand the assault of constant whining without ending up back on the psyche ward and / or in divorce court. In short, I was freaking fatigued with panic. Neat visual, isn't it?

Something gave, that's all I can say. Something caved in like a sink hole in Pennsylvania except in a good way and one of those boys ran down the back stairs on Sunday morning as fast as his growing boy legs would carry him and barefoot ran through the chicken pen (with a boat load of requisite chicken poop) and into the coop to release the ladies to their breakfast buffet (called my late fall garden) and help himself to the three morning eggs. The other boy stared hard at said eggs on the table an hour later and asked if I'd added cheese. No way, no chance, no how, they just grow that color when you don't do anything to them but let them eat veggies and bugs and then he proceeded to inhale every last bite and then some.

Somehow in the magic of the frogs and the bugs and the tree houses (it's on the ground but she and nanny built it themselves)and the swamps and the dirts and the Little Girl on the swing with a chicken in her lap (oh WHY does this one chicken permit this?) Thing One and Thing Two fell down the looking glass and came out grass stained and grinning without a single smidge of processed anythings anywhere about their bodies all weekend long. (OK, nice story but we did go for Hibachi on Saturday night and it was the holy hell of bad food but nobody died and it was Thing One's fifteenth birthday and he was so very happy with it all)

And at lunch which involved a veggie lasagne that did not come out of any sort of can or box followed by a Dutch Apple pie made before their very eyes, before the ride to the train, Thing One has been thinking that if all of us just ate a little more locally and with a little bit less fosile fuel involved (well, yeah, OK, I was ranting a bit over the weekend) and took a little bit more care of the world and maybe took care to eat food that was really food that we might just be, well, um, a little bit happier and a little bit healthier and maybe, just maybe a lot less likely to blow each other up.

And we all lived happily ever after until the very next adventure which might have started three minutes after.

Sometimes you just have to wait for it.

When the world is spinning, spin yourself the other direction to unravel the tilt

OK, I think can say (write) this now. If not, I'll delete with the rest of my miserably failed attempts at sorting through my own feelings and realities (since, really, we do make it all up, every one of us).

I,we, my family and and I, stand to lose quite a bit. Maybe we already have (I'm not looking at the moment). We stand to lose our retirement funds, our jobs, our home, our four remaining minor children's college funds. We stand to lose it all. We always have, day in and day out just like anybody might lose anything. Today, just like any other day in the last few weeks, it is horribly and painfully evident.

There is no right or wrong to this. We do not live in debt (oh, wait, there's the mortgage, right?), we do not take part in manipulating the market (oh wait, we do trade, don't we?) and we have busted our proverbial asses getting to where we are today and that might be all gone now or tomorrow. It really might.

I did not support the bailout. I do not support the bailout. I firmly believe this economy, this country needs a reset, and not a free and painless reset either because we are all compliant, one way or another. I say that in the face of what I still refer to as a horrible loss. I quake in my space boots (to borrow a Cletus phrase) and cry out in the night. I am terrified. But I still don't support the bailout.

It makes you take stock of what matters though, I'll tell you that. I sit at a chair in my kitchen, head and shoulders bent over two pots on the floor. One is full of apple peelings and the other salt water and apple bits. I peel, peel, peel, core, core, core, chop, chop, chop until after no time at all half a bushel is processed and set aside for the winter. I go to the farmers market and my own garden and I buy up all the fresh produce I can store away. I take that home and can and freeze and cook and eat and feed my family one step closer to the earth. I have set aside a ridiculous quantity of flour and rice but in reality, is 300 pounds really so ridiculous?

On Mondays I go to work with tiny cuts and abrasions on my finger tips from all the peeling, cutting, processing, cooking and I type on the keyboard for enough money to keep paying the mortgage and those cuts remind me that I am far from helpless after all.

None of this changes or alters in any way the level of fear I experience on a pretty regular basis these days. However, when I turn my face away from my fear and toward that which is hopeful, real, and living, I find it far easier to breathe.

Adventures in raw food, or, I feel better now, thank you.

I'm feeling much better now, thanks.

In an effort to distract myself from the absolute panic over an impending 5 solo days I ordered up a juice fast. Actually, I think they call it a cleanse, but whatever. This is nothing I've ever done. As a matter of fact it goes against every grain in my belief systems in terms of what we should or should not put in our bodies and how. It also goes against my belief that we should have an intimate relationship with the food we consume. I am also late to Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma but I appear to have drifted in that direction anyway. 

The whole purpose of the cleanse (I thought) was to create enough physical discomfort to mask the emotional drama because I'm well known for creating physical discomfort to mask emotional drama. Or trauma. Take your pick. As it turns out I wonder if it was something else all along.

After a bit of research, and I'll be honest, it wasn't a lot of research, I eliminated all powdered mixes, cooked or processed in any way food (?) and focused on raw food. I found a very local vendor (NYC and Southern CT only and if you really want to know who and what, leave a comment and I'll send you an email and no, they don't ship) placed my order on the internet and then promptly put it out of my mind until Sunday at 3 PM when I had to drive 20 miles to pick it up. Now, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you probably have a good idea of what goes on in my kitchen on Sundays.  All the cooking for the week. That's right, all of it. Unless Nanny's cooking something in which case I'm off the hook (she's awesome, this one).

I started early Sunday morning with a trip to the farmers market for the stuff my garden doesn't give me enough of these days. I needed to slow roast some tomatoes for paste (thanks, Kitt, worked wonderfully), make a boat load of Sunday sauce to eat and to freeze, braise some frozen (I thawed them first) lamb shanks with a ton of leftover salad turnips (they're really sweet) some potatoes about to get too starchy and a mess of other veggies needing to be consumed (plus an entire bottle of Chianti, to braise in, not to drink) and then also some red beans for rice to sit and stew in hot sauce for three days in the fridge. We had a potato leak pie for Sunday dinner so there was that too.

In the middle of all this I have to pick up my juice. I leave Cletus baby sitting the roasting tomatoes and bubbling sauce and head out to parts generally avoided. Not a bad neighborhood, per see, just a bit snootier than I tolerate easily. I'm still having trouble with the Prada Moms in Escalades. I pick up my juice at a yoga studio. I am happy about this because I keep thinking yoga might be a nice thing for me to do I've just never gotten around to working it out. When I arrive the juice has not been delivered and there are several unhappy women milling about. It is not really that late, just twenty minutes and the poor guy is stuck in traffic.

I sit down to wait. I have found a book to read and the silence of the space is working for me. Until more women show up and the atmosphere turns a bit testy. After awhile the man is still not here and the women are demanding their drinks and the poor girl at the counter is beginning to lose her cool and I bury my nose deeper into my borrowed book. By the time the delivery vehicle arrives there is a swarm on the back of the truck reminiscent of Filene's Basement in the old days. I am not a pusher. I hate confrontation so I sit and wait. After awhile I get nervous because what if they don't have enough? What if a mistake was made or someone took what wasn't hers? What will I do? I wade into the crowd in hopes of grabbing my three green bags. One of the more irate women is blocked in by the truck. She yells at him to get out of her way. He cannot move his vehicle, there are too many women stuck head and torso first inside. I am suddenly one of them; I dive, I scoop, I bolt. I run like hell for my car nearly getting myself run over by one of the hostile ladies screeching past me and out of the parking lot.

I am terrified.

I go home with my juice, unload it into the refrigerator as instructed and promptly (again) forget about it. I finish cooking and baking. I am light headed with the smells in the house. I want to eat all of it immediately if not sooner. I am beside myself in anticipation of coming meals. I sit down to write the last post and I go to bed. 

In the morning I get up and remember that I am fasting. I am not too sorry yet. I pack literally half a gallon of fluid (properly contained) into my backpack along with my computer and all the other garbage I haul back and forth every day. I get on the train and go to work. The fluids were fine, I was not.

Eventually I learned about juice fasting. I learned this because I googled everything I could find to explain the current state of my body, which was in significant upheaval. I went to bed that night and slept very badly. In the morning it was a little better and off I went again with my fluids. At this point I want solid food so bad I'm ready to chew tree bark (city tree bark even)and need I mention the effect of the re-roasting lamb shanks and lingering scent in the morning?

The next evening, which was last night, I went to bed and slept better than I can remember only waking to disturbingly loud music coming from a disturbingly lingering vehicle at five AM. I didn't go back to sleep. Apparently my body was done sleeping. I can't remember the last time this happened either. I laid there for an hour wondering what was wrong with me and then I got up, went downstairs and ran like hell on my machine (which I'd been doing since Monday anyway in an effort to sweat out as much garbage as possible). When I arrived this morning, on day three of my fast, I felt unbelievably good, nearly euphoric. It is now nearly 4 PM and while I'm looking forward to my prescribed raw fruit and lightly steamed veggies tomorrow, I am not in bad shape at all. I miss my husband, he really needs to come home now but you know, I'm OK.

I wonder about balance, I really do. I also wonder how those women feel today. Better, I hope.

And the next time I feel the need to do this I can bloody well make my own.

Passing by the open windows

It is really very easy to get yourself lost in the world and wind up serving your soul sunny side up to some cosmic parking lot attendant at the train station. I was sitting in my car at the station this morning, not feeling all that balanced, staring at the platform and thinking, what the fuck? My ears and throat hurt and I've yet to recover from the lost sleep incurred during the trip into the city Tuesday night with the big kids to see one of the final productions of Rent (I'm still crying over that one).

And then I got out of the car and approached the platform. I'm reading Jack Kerouac's On The Road from the original scroll which means it's like reading the inside of my own brains at nine thousand miles per hour minus any sort of punctuation or spell check. I rather like it a lot. The rest of you might get to feeling a bit sea sick as most people eventually out grow the desire to be hung upside down by ones feet and spun around until the world forgets the lie of linearity. After awhile I forgot about the soul sucker in the parking lot and got lost in Kerouac's version of reality (I quite like it).

None of this resolved the soul sucking and its really just a bit of a bandaid. Sometimes I need to come home and just get hit upside the head with the desires and textures of my own life. You know, the real part where I operate under the illusion that I'm making up at least a good portion of my own rules. So you know how this goes; I take off my monkey suit, pour myself a glass of wine and head out into the great and mighty jungle which calls itself my back yard.

Some of you might remember this little guy in a prior iteration when he was quite a bit smaller and I questioned Audrey's ability to keep him hanging off the deer mesh. Well, here he is and I suspect he'll hang here, slug free, for quite some time. This is food people. Through the garden walls and into the mini jungle, this is food. It's awfully hard sometimes to find a way back to something real and true in all the muck of soul suckage out there. And to reiterate an earlier point, I do actually love this thing they pay me money to do. I LOVE it. However, it is still corporate america, not my life and a bit of a soul sucker all the same. I need grounding, people, and here it is.

This is a little hard to see but it's one giant mutha of a sugar pumpkin (they are supposed to be TEENSY) resting in a bed of corn. I'm just going to wait and see what it does despite the fact that the slugs (that I thought I didn't have) have finally moved in and consumed the first of my ripening sugar babies (bastids).

When Little Girl shakes this pumpkin it sloshes.

Here is a butterfly stuck in the meshing. We freed him without contact and he flew away...

  To the tiny cupola on the roof top. You can see him, he's the little beige spec, on the peaked roof of the cupola.

  You can see the bottom of the new chicken coop behind Little Girl who is doing her own version of geeking the camera (does anybody out there besides me recall the origin of the word geek and it's relation to chickens specifically?).

  And then there's this seven nearly eight year old version of peace. Yeah, I do actually buy it.

In the light...

And finally, I know it's kind of hard to see, but this tobacco type plant I bought two of that got no more than 18 inches high at any point in time suddenly makes this gianormous offshoot that's nearly four feet tall (not that you can tell because those cone flowers are nearly eight feet tall now) and he stands up like some porn star out of the seventies and says, come 'er, babe. let me show you what I've got...

Have a great weekend. I'll be rolling about in the dirt and other such scandalous things.