Alecto's Ophelia

A Love Story - part 4

I'm going to start this with a statement about this blog which is about to turn 2 years old in a couple of days. This space started out as a way for me to journal the things in my life. You know, day to day events that were noteworthy to me. This rapidly turned into a life blog (which it probably was in the first place) and the entries became raw, painful, sometimes joyous but mostly incredibly emotionally honest. And then some rather extreme events occurred (OK, a lot of extreme events occurred but toward the end of 2007 they got REALLY hairy) and the focused turned away from the rawness of how I experience my life to a more prosaic detailing of what I was doing. There is a big difference between discussing the 'being' and documenting the 'doing'.

Well, we just came full circle and we're back to what most people call TMI and I'm not even going to apologize for that, this is my blog and it's for me. So here I am.

And yes, love's got everything to do with it.

I have another blog, some of you know where it is and you are welcome to go there otherwise I'm not going to advertise it because it is a journal, sometimes moment by moment of what I'm experiencing right this second and I've got to write it down somewhere just to keep myself focused and aware.

So the love story today is about emotional exhaustion. I am completely exhausted. I don't eat much, I don't sleep much and I drive my body to the brink in order to feed on those endorphins whenever possible. I swill coffee at an alarming rate and smoke like a chimney (hey, don't judge it, nicotine is a very powerful drug and I have no intention of keeping it) and at night I drink wine in front of my computer writing in my journal and praying for contact. And I do get contact and lately it's been very nice and I am grateful for whatever he can give me. A simple 'I love you' or 'I love you too' is enough to reduce me to tears and they aren't the bad kind.

I also want to talk about the tube and the cheese because of a comment MC left and my response to that comment. Unfortunately somebody took this metaphor and wrote a book called Who Moved My Cheese and the metaphor became trite and useless (and if you found it useful, I apologize but the version of the exercise (and it's an exercise, not a book) is a very powerful experience.

Rats are smarter than people:

The Rat
Imagine there are five tubes and at the end of tube five is a piece of cheese. The rat knows where the cheese is and every day he goes and gets it until one day the cheese isn't there. The rats sniffs around to see if he's missing something and then heads right back out of the tube. He goes into tube 4 and then 3 and then 2 and then 1 and there is the cheese. He eats it and he's happy. Each day the cheese moves and each day the rat goes and finds it wasting no time wondering why is fucking cheese keeps moving.

The Man (apologies to men, this could equally be a woman but that's not how the story was told to me)
Imagine there are five tubes and at the end of tube five is the mans significant other, committed partner, what have you. Each day on the way to tube five, the man has a look down tubes 1 through 4 just to have a look at the view and see if there's anything better down there. This causes conflict in the relationship and trust becomes a problem.

The Woman (could be a man too but in my case, it's me)
Imagine there are five tubes and at the end of tube five is a man. Each day on the way to tube five the woman rushes right to the tube and throws her arms around the man, or pisses him off, or asks too much or refuses to be responsible or just doesn't keep up with who and what he is or needs. One day the man walks out of the tube. The woman says, no! you can't do this, this is not what we do in a committed relationship! We stay and we work it out. But no, he says, I must go and he goes saying that he will return in a few short days. The woman waits, the days pass and he does not return. There is very little communication. What she knows comes from a third party. Initially the woman fights it tooth and nail. She cries all day, cannot leave the house, picks up smoking again but what she does do, which is unprecedented for her, is call a friend. After that she calls another friend and then another letting them all into her vulnerability and telling her story from as responsible a place as possible (no victim, it's his fault shit). And then she turns outward and focuses on the man. First up. He is not in tube 5. Letting go of that is so hard she bangs her head (metaphorically) against her own delusions until she realizes he's another tube. He hasn't said he doesn't love her, he hasn't said he won't come home, he's only said he can't come home just yet.

The rat goes tube to tube until he finds the cheese. The woman stews in it feeling abandoned and lost until she realizes he's just in another tube. Now, she can go get him, she can go find him, she can join him in the cube or they can go to a new tube together. What cannot, or should not do, is go back to tube five. That didn't work so well.

And that is the story of the rat, the cheese, the tubes and the people.

And I'm so damn tired I have lost the ability to resist. Can we have a Hallelujah chorus please.

Walking on glass, toe heel, toe, heel all the way across the plains

 

This Christmas my dad showed up with two plastic storage bins from my Aunt Ann with whom I had a conversation some years ago about some family china that I didn't feel I had any right to as the only girl once removed and that surely one of her boys would have gotten married and taken it with him.

Apparently not. Anyway, I think this because my paternal grandmother once compelled me to return an heirloom Christmas ornament to my father because 'our things pass down through the family name' and it didn't much impress her that I'd kept the family name. And that doesn't make a bucket of sense because my Aunt sure didn't keep the family name but I never could keep this stuff straight.

Now the truth of the matter is that I don't think my aunt got her hands on this stuff until her mother was past ninety but I could be wrong about that too (I find myself wrong about many things these days). It is also possible that Grandma Bess finally relented given the circumstances. In any event, here it is.

My mother once had possession of he soup tureen which is a grand affair with a slot for a very ornate ladle which I returned to my father some twenty odd years ago at somebody's request. He's said I can have that as well.

The thing about the china is it's absolutely not my style in the least. It's fussy, ornate, very old and quite breakable. It cannot go anywhere near a dishwasher, microwave or child under the age of 41. And yet here it is in my household, used immediately to serve Christmas dinner and I am smitten and awed. I wanted it the way I want all things old and family because I'm wired that way. I like to hold the ghosts of my ancestors in my hands and feel what's left they might have to say to me. I just wasn't prepared to instantly love them in a whole other way the moment they came out of their wrappings and into my hands.

They belonged to my Great, Great Grandmother Beyer who came with her husband from Germany penniless sometime before the turn of the century, I believe. My Great Great Grandfather Beyer was a barber with a space at the Waldorf Astoria and my Great Great Grandmother Beyer was a dressmaker. They had one child who was my Grandmother Bess's mother and her name was Lilly and that's about all I've got to say at this writing other than I'm stunned the china made it past Lilly and into Bess's hands in the first place.

So Great Great Grandfather Beyer the Barber had some wealthy clients with some tasty little insider tips and the Beyers lives changed just a bit. And if you think about the probable timing, that would have been a miracle in and of itself. This china would have been purchased after the fact and given the markings on the bottom - Theodore Haviland Limoges France in red with no underscore - these pieces are circa 1903 - 1925. Just before the market crashed.

And here it sits today on my dining room table. A thing to be cherished not for it's inherent value (although apparently I can still buy and sell it and I lean toward the buy, not the sell for heaven's sake) but for the fact of it's continuity. A piece of beauty and grace that is meaningful only in talisman of it's being.

Like I said, I am in awe of it's very presence in my home.

Now all I have to do is manage not to break it which brings us to the segue.

Covered vegetable dish sits on a massive glass table reflecting the dish itself and the contents of the room. Something broke this weekend or broke a year or two years ago or who the hell knows but it broke and I found out for sure last night and I don't know quite how bad but there's a reflection of it in the table. Cletus slept with me last night and I had the good fortune to have a friend, a real honest to god friend to call at six in the morning and say I need you, please come now. OK, I was better than that. I sent the text at 6 and the Facebook message at a more reasonable hour of 9ish and she came right over, adjusted my meds a bit, gave me half a pack of cigs (don't worry, this is absolutely medicinal and no more addictive than the Klonopin I seem to require at the moment and its working which is the good news).

I'm debating sleeping with the dogs tonight. I don't know if that will help or make it worse. I guess I'm just going to deal with it one small moment at a time.

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).

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.

Saint Simon, the socialist St. Bernard

In the interest of staying current, here's my dog. He's about five weeks old in this picture and can be expected to grow, um, significantly bigger.

On the subject of other posts, I've started about six in the last week and have had to trash every one of them due to massive frothing at the teeth and gums.

Take deep, deep breathes, Alecto, and read some more farming books.

(I have in my hands this week, Eliot Coleman's hoop house book, The Contrary Farmer, Root Cellars (or something like that), the latest Michael Pollan book and Joan Dye Gussow's This Organic Life - awesome train reading.)

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.

The abundance of being alive

I didn't expect much of this garden after the first set of tomatoes more or less bit the dust and most of the carrots and onions didn't bother to do much of anything and the cucumbers turned out round and orange and the squash rotted on the vine and Audrey the pumpkin got out of hand and I did my best just to breathe because that's what brought me here in the first place.

The need to breathe.

I am alone today and tomorrow and two more sleeps after that (not in the car, CG, but I do think of it that way because it is hard to imagine any world that does not have he and me in it together) and I am the epitome of uncomfortable. I have not been alone other than for just one night since I came out of the hospital on Valentine's Day blinking into the sunlight and wondering how it got to be so hard to walk outside in the world. A few of you will know what I mean when I say that the world inverted in on itself and I walked around like some crunched up easter egg rolling off the edge of the universe. I miss MC most times like these because she knew too and it's hard to explain if you haven't had the top of your head come off because words don't come anywhere near doing it justice. It's just a state of being too far off the map for speech. Which might be part of the problem, this need to explain something that probably cannot be said in words. Just breath, maybe. And I'll tell you, neither therapist I've been intimate with for six months could even begin to navigate this paragraph. I just go and write the checks and come home because I am still a good girl in my little compartmentalized ways.

And if it is a good day it's all good and I do what I do and I am satisfied that I have a place in the world. And if it is a bad day I come home and crawl into Beloved's arms and find some amount of peace there. And if it is a very, very bad day and I scream and rail at the world he finds a way, most times, to bring me home again.

He's not here.

I am OK but OK and uncomfortable are coexisting which is a step or two in the right direction. I was never afraid like this. OK, once, when I was pregnant with my boy and I thought about how I would feel if my husband died and I thought, well I have this boy inside me (I knew) and as long as I can get him born all right I will have a piece of something to get me by. I have always struggled with being alone in the world and hold on with all my might when I find a place to put my heart.

And now, really for the first time, I hold on with all my might when I decide to be safe outside my own four walls. I cried last night and fretted up one side and down the other for weeks and finally worked out that none of this was about being alone for four days. It is about being alone forever.

Eighteen months ago we all went to this conference. Eighteen months ago I held Jeffrey's hand and we found an old friend and he confessed to a ten year crush and she blushed and he did and it balanced something and we moved on. We went to dinner, Nomans and Jeffrey and me and another friend who matters like air and is hardly seen at all these days and ate Tapas and drank Sangria except Jeffrey who was still trying to say alive. And we were together and we were happy.

And Jeffrey is dead and NoMans is in San Francisco and I couldn't bear to go without Jeffrey this year even if we hadn't suspended all travel and I didn't want to leave the girls alone for that long with just the nanny. And I know that not all rats bite but I am so very, very afraid that he will not come back the same way that Jeffrey just did not come back and I have no idea how I would even begin to bear that.

Sometimes there are land mines and sometimes there are craters and I'm sitting in one now but I think I can see the end of the other side and I can get there on my own. And that's a good thing.

On the politics of politics

I don't know if it's age or time but with each presidential election the issues seem to become more blurred and the screaming louder. I would indicate the direction in which I dress (and for the love of god would somebody Puleeese pick up on that reference we could all USE a little humor these days) but regardless of the revelation I'm bound to take fire one way or another. So why bother? Just so I can add to the screaming? Pass.

OK, having written all that it's only fair to fess up and admit to being just as polarized as the majority. I am as freaked out over Sarah Palin as anybody on the right might be freaked out over Barack Obama and I can give you leventy-leven reasons why too. And at least leventy-ten of them would be fact checked and validated but that's hardly relevant because the idea of voting against versus for something is truly terrifying. In my decidedly humble, if a bit snark like, opinion. But that's the truth of it.

I personally have been voting against benchmarks my entire adult life. And that's not bragging, it's a confession. Of sorts. Yes, I do vote the party ticket even though I don't actually fit most of my party's ideals. Hell, I don't fit any party's ideals. My point being, I vote against the things I find most offensive. Anti-abortion laws, inclusion of church and state and censorship. Those are my big hairy boogies and I choose based on those issues even though the scary party in question may be more supportive of a large number of smaller and possibly less hairy boogies.

My point being that doesn't leave much room for a clear and positive agenda, does it? Might explain all the shouting.

I do not watch political events. I do not listen to political events. I don't watch state of the union addresses unless we've been blown up and or are going to war. I'll read just about anything but I will not actually watch or listen to the circus. Can't do it, makes my belly knot up and my eyes go crossed. Last night oldest daughter needed to watch one of those debatable news type shows that come on after the little kiddies have gone to bed. She needed to watch this for her American Government class and I wanted no part of it. She went off to watch on her own but came back ten minutes later because there was just this yelling and screaming and something about lipstick and pigs.

..................

So I sat down and watched the rest of it with her in an attempt to make some sense of the conversation.

...................

Horrifically painful. We watched four apparently well educated and intelligent people, two men and two women ostensibly one of each from one of each, behave like nine year olds with roid rage. Seriously.

So now I know just exactly why Sarah Palin is the queen of all evil and why Barack is a terrorist but I have no idea at all what either party actually sees in their candidates. None. OK, that's not true. I googled 'Why do Republicans like Sarah Palin' today because, like Amy, I do want to know because I do not understand and I don't want to hear words like maverick and change either unless you can get darned specific about what kind of change and how being a maverick will support that clearly defined change (because I'm a maverick and I can sure as shit make a mess of things when I get to being a bull in a china shop).  Anyway, the first site to pop up was the gay republican site and here's what I gleaned from two pages of text. Sarah Palin has awesome Audry Hepburn like hair and she backed a bill on same sex partner insurance. That's it folks.

So seriously. What is it? Or are we all so polarized by our own fears (me too) that we can only see through a red haze of rage? Have we become a nation of raving lunatics who feel so strongly about so many polarized beliefs that we are all, myself included, making complete asses of ourselves? And is Putin really licking his chops?

Speaking the unspeakable

I have been asked if I'm going to blog this and I'm not sure I can. There are two things and the second is much easier to write so I'll write it first. Last night one of my six chickens was murdered savagely by what can only be raccoons. I'm not exaggerating the brutality of the death. She was dragged from the coop (I think they lifted it right off the ground), over the fence, across the lawn and into the swamp shrieking the entire way and leaving a swath of blood and feathers that will have to be cleaned up before Little Girl comes home this evening. I was afraid NoMans was going to sit out there in his bathrobe for the remainder of the night throwing rocks but we put the dog in the pen instead and despite his diminutive size (he weighs all of 22 pounds) he sure does have a deep and ferocious sounding bark. And before anyone gets up in my face about it, yes I do know what those raccoons might have done to my dog but they didn't and he won't have to stay out there again.  Tonight the remaining five girls will stay in Homer's old puppy crate in the shed (which is fort knox) and the new fort knox will be delivered by fork lift on Tuesday of next week. There. That's that and I just wish I wasn't so damn upset about it but I am because I should have known better.

Here's the other part. The first part. My son came home last night. I called him on Tuesday because it was Cletus's birthday and he actually answered the phone. I asked him to come to her party but he was working and I asked him to come to dinner last night and he said he would and he did and I kept my judgmental mother mouth firmly shut and it was lovely. 

Doesn't sound like such a hard thing to write does it? Well, unless you're me and you were beginning to believe you were never going to see or hear from him again (it's been 17 months) it wouldn't sound so hard at all.

I can barely breathe and if I start crying now I will probably never stop. So listen, any of you out there not speaking or being spoken to by someone you love maybe now would be a good time to get over it. Seriously. We are all any of us ever has. Good, bad or indifferent.

p.s. there are a boatload of little baby eggs. we are eating all of them as fast as we can.

Just pickles I suppose

Well, you know I really wish I'd taken the time to use the camera at least once this weekend. On the other hand this will cause no download problems for my dial up peeps! I mentioned at the end of last week that my head was spinning from the nanny revolution and I think it still is, or will continue to, until we're settled in with just the one. In the mean time we've got territorial battles, language issues and food issues I was definitely NOT prepared for (you eat only lettuce? really. OK. Am I responsible for your getting scurvy if it comes to that? Probably not but you still need to set a reasonable example for my children.)

Big segue bump here. A very wise man wrote a blog entry a few days ago (OK, maybe only yesterday) remarking that a ton of people started gardens and then had fits when only half the garden worked out and he mentions in his blog that 50% seems pretty good... 20 watt light bulb flickers on over her head momentarily... but does not go out.  He might just have something here.

This is what I wish I could show you:

1. There are no less than forty tomatoes growing on my 20 very scrawny plants. They might not be strong enough to stay tied to stakes and hold up the weight of the fruit but they sure are producing.
2. I made a mess of pickles. My first ever. That fermentation disaster from last year does not count because even the dog would not eat them and also because I can blame that on Nomans (hands down). I only made five jars because apparently that was the end of my seals. Off to acquire more. They are, however, quite beautiful and made from my pickles and my dill. I can't discuss the garlic or the vinegar.
3. From the local farmers market I purchased a mess of tomatoes and made a marinara thick enough to stand up a spoon which was used on pizza which used up the remainder of my harvested veggies for the day.
4. I also made a bolognese and a gazpacho but have yet to convince new nanny that gazpacho is liquid salad and should be at least tasted before turning up one's nose and demanding lettuce (boy is she going to love it when I explain that the butter crunch I will deliver up to her this evening grows wild in my swamp because that's where I let it bolt and bolt and bolt again).
5. And there were two batches of bread, the cheese and the no knead wheat. I am wondering if new nanny will eat them. Old nanny will not.

The chickens are hilarious. We have one small poult egg that Nomans wants to frame on the wall like first dollar bill. He suggested we put it up in formaldehyde like St. Thomas's finger in Rome (really, we saw a finger in a jar of fluid, I am NOT making this up). I suggested he eat it but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get it out of his clutches long enough to crack and cook it.

We are learning that while some chickens roost at home (like the coop, ladies, come on, please) other chickens run amok. One of these prefers roosting in the bushes in the front yard. I'm tempted to leave her there except she'll attract more raccoons. Old Nanny chased her back to the pen yesterday. I'm not sure New nanny will even acknowledge her presence (although I'm not so sure that's accurate because I believe her family kept chickens in the back yard until fairly recently, she just won't eat them or their eggs).

Overall it was a very productive weekend. I question my sanity and my choices periodically but I suppose we all go there periodically.

Now if I could just get my heart rate under 120 and get a decent night's sleep I'm sure everything would be just peachy.