two months 'til 31

Kindly direct your glance over to No. 4 on the 30 for 30 list. That honestly has been one of the hardest goals on the list for me, and also one of the most worthwhile. It's been interesting to try to balance out my over-enthusiastic consumption of modern literary fiction with something else, and I wanted to make sure I finished A Bright Shining Lie before I introduce books and articles for school into the mix. I have a ton of reading to do before the one-credit introductory class I have next weekend (plus a preliminary essay, oh the joy, already) and my regular semester-long classes start the week after, and I have a feeling this nonfiction won't be as well-written as what I just finished.

And here is No. 7 for No. 18: That isn't any ordinary bubble gum -- that's Spiedie Fest bubble gum. It was slightly more photogenic than the fried Oreos.

the happiest place on earth

That is still Hershey's slogan, right? No wait, it's "sweetest place," isn't it. Whatever it's called, I am totally looking forward to heading there for Angie's wedding and spending time with so many of my favorite people. And then this struck a chord and made me want to do it too. So, consider this a meme! I tag you and you and you.

Thunderstorms. Snow. Big, fat earthworms. Waking up with someone's arms wrapped around you. Dan Savage. Getting lost in fiction. Big dogs. Small dogs, medium-sized dogs. All dogs. Alpaca yarn, handpainted sock yarn, jellybean-colored cotton yarn. All yarn.

Kayaks. Life preservers. The ocean. Crockpots. Iced coffee. Ice cream cake with those chocolate crumbles in it. Food on sticks. Old cookbooks with lots of turned-down pages. Looking up recipes on the Internets. JibJab. Facebook friend requests from unexpected people. Google Reader. Bingos in Word Twist. Paint samples. Seeing what your handwriting looked like when you were 10.

Tomatoes on the vine. Clean sheets. Open Midwestern skies. The crackly plastic covers on library books. A new red Netflix envelope sitting in the mailbox. Porch swings. Festivals of all kinds. Familiar voices on the phone. Pottery. Taking off your shoes at the end of the day. Greek mythology.

I feel like I now need to balance this out with my customary sarcasm and negativity, but I'll refrain. Tell me some of the things that make you happy.

garden party

So much garden news, I don't know where to begin. Oh wait, yes I do:

• FROG IN THE GARDEN! FROG IN THE GARDEN! I was peacefully weeding around the grape tomato plants this afternoon, listening to one of my favorite podcasts, when suddenly there is this huge rustling commotion and a brown frog about the size of a 3x5 card crashes out of the weeds at the bottom of the plant. What are you doing there, little guy? It has been raining a lot, sure, but I haven't noticed any ponds springing up in the middle of the field. He hopped off into the distance, hopefully in search of a speckled log and some most delicious bugs. (Everyone knows that song, right?)


• Squash in the garden, too! I picked two off the same plant, and we ate one for dinner the other night in this fancy-sounding herbed summer squash and potato torte, and it was pretty delicious. Eating vegetables you grew yourself is fun. Duh.
  
  My two favorite roommates demonstrate the scale of the first proud squash: Five or six more are in various stages of growth, although none are ready to pick yet. And the fourth plant, which has always been a bit runty, doesn't have any fruit growing yet -- it would be kind of cool if all of this spaced itself out and we had one or two squash a week instead of 10 all at once, wouldn't it?


• There is this apocryphal story about me as a little kid in which I apparently went to the doctor for my whatever-month well checkup, and the doctor asked how many words I could say. My mom said, "oh, about 10, mama, dada, no, etc." The doctor said that was normal. A month or two later, we were back in the doctor's office, and he asked how many words I could say, and my mom said, "about a million." He looked at her skeptically, and I chose that moment to say, "Do you think the cord for your stethoscope is blue-green or green-blue?" I am sure this story has been more than grossly exaggerated over the years, but I am not exaggerating at all when I tell you that that's exactly what's going on with the tomatoes. I went from knowing exactly how many fruits were on exactly which plants to about a million tomatoes all over the place: It is hard to take a photo of this exactly, but they are really exploding. All the cages except the biggest ones have been outgrown, and I'm putting up makeshift stakes like crazy.


• Which is not to say that all of the tomatoes are pristine specimens of the platonic tomato ideal: Is that a worm hole, you think? I am not that concerned, but I've definitely seen two or three of these. Do I pick them off? Leave them so the worms/bugs/whatever don't get into non-affected tomatoes? Hm.


• The cilantro is on the decline, sadly, but the basil is really coming into its own: More pesto is in my future. (The olive oil was rancid, ew. Kitchen detective Shannon solved that mystery from another state, she's that good!)

That's about all the garden news that's fit to print. This has been a bit of a trying week... I had a really annoying cold at the beginning of it and a really annoying grad-school logistical situation at the end of it, but both of them are now resolved and I'm really looking forward to just being here for the first weekend in a month. I'm going to something called Spiedie Fest with an old G*zette friend on Sunday and I cannot wait... I have never eaten a spiedie, which I am told is some sort of celebrated local sandwich, but I am a very serious fan of fests of all kinds, and this one has a hot-air balloon launch and also something called "frisbee dog exhibitions." That can only be incredibly awesome.

I leave you with a photo that will strike joy in the heart of exactly one of you, and you know who you are: The Ithaca Ravelry site and the Stitch and Bitch group I've gone to a couple times alerted me to an amazing yarn sale. I dragged my very tolerant visiting parents to the store and came home with new Addis, three skeins of alpaca and silk blend and two skeins of a summery linen/cotton/merino, all for 50% off. Heaven.

smash! I mean, squash!

(Hulk! Smash! Poor Hulk and Smash, RIP. I hope they are in hermit-crab heaven, crawling through rocks and eating lettuce and never losing any claws.)

Pretty squash blossoms apparently grow pretty yellow squash:


But they also mean my first (possibly) major gardening challenge, which is not pretty:
That, I believe, is damage from my now-mortal enemy, the uncreatively named squash bug. They are grey and white and made of pure evil that wants to eat through my gigantic squash leaves. The only organic way to kill them, apparently, is by squashing (ha ha) them and picking off their little bastard eggs. I did that, twice, and knock on wood, they don't seem to have dramatically increased in number since the first time I saw them. But I'm on to you now, squash bugs. I have your squashy buggy number.

The very first baby yellow peppers:
They are not looking particularly yellow yet, are they. But they are awfully cute.

The transplanted basil seedlings are doing nicely:
I now have basil at three different stages, and the biggest plants (the ones from seedlings) are wanting to flower. I have been pinching the new growth off mercilessly and made my first round of pesto, which was not entirely successful, and I am not entirely sure why.

Some new cats in town:
The grape tomatoes have made their first appearance. They grow all clustered together and spaced really haphazardly, as you can see.

That is quite unlike their compatriots, the cherries, who seem to have a passion for orderly spacing:
They have grown, no?

And finally, the big guys make some progress:
Those are the Jetsetters, I think, although the Keepsakes and the Green Zebras all have some fruit as well... probably about 20 small tomatoes in all, not counting the grape and cherries.

I didn't take a picture, but the late-planted tomato seedling from my neighbor, which I posit is sungold tomatoes, also has several little guys on it, despite the fact that I think I stunted its growth by keeping it in a too-small pot for too long. The full-size mystery plants from my neighbor continue to be more gigantic yet less productive than the others, although I think that J. and I did find one tiny fruit on one of those plants as well during yesterday's weeding extravaganza. My parents are coming to visit this weekend and I am going to show them the garden, so it has to be all presentable-like.

My secret wish is to have a cherry tomato or two ready to pick when we go out there on Saturday, although I think that is not to be. Gardeners to the south who have already eaten some of their tomatoes: Is the reddening process slow or quick? They lighten gradually and then turn red, right?

writer, block.

It has been so long since I've written anything down that I do not remember how the words go. How do you make words turn into characters and themes and plots and stories? Words are so small, and these things are so large and complex and impossible-looking. I look at the book I wrote, all one billion pages of it, and I wonder how the hell that happened. Where did it come from? How is it possible that it will ever happen again?

and

I don't want to give up writing for pleasure in favor of writing for--well, I still find it a pleasure. But what I do every day is not fiction, stories, books. It's not the kind of stuff that I feel lost without. It is strange, and kind of stupid, that I know exactly what this hollow is, and exactly what will fill it up and I continue to not do a thing about it, to walk around with a hole in me.

From one of my favorite bloggers, saying it better than I could. There is some stuff standing in between me and writing now (go to work. write and edit for money. read for class. go to class. finish final paper for class. obsess about failing next class. garden. bake cookies. ride bus. walk up hill. walk down hill. have lunch with new people. read books. play 629000 games of word twist on facebook. check out yoga DVDs from library. knit baby hat in shape of pumpkin.) but that's not drastically different than what's always been standing between me and writing, and somehow, on weekends and between other stuff, I found the time to write a billion pages of the first book.

My deal is not exactly like the deal of Anne, the blogger quoted above... I have been writing, actually, fairly recently, but it doesn't feel the way it feels when it's good. Some of the items on that list aren't even a tiny fraction as important to me in the long run as fiction writing is -- I know how to fill that hollow -- but the easy words aren't there right now, and that makes me not want to try after a long day. Not trying is less scary than not being able to do it. One of my great writing weaknesses has always been that I need a calm mind and a long stretch of time to get to that flowy clicky it's-just-working feeling, and that weakness is still weakening me, and I am not happy about it.

Ah, but on to the garden pictures, yes? Yes.

I could see these guys peeking out, not so subtly, as soon as I came into the garden yesterday:
Squash blossoms!

They are an amazing color -- golden yellow orange lovely. Aren't fried squash blossoms served as a fancy appetizer or something? I think I might have tried them once.

A tiny, blurry pepper:
He was really nestled down in the leaves and feeling camera shy. Three of the four green-to-red pepper plants have their first fruit (woo!); the yellow pepper plants are much smaller and taking their sweet time.

And finally, a surprise guest:
One of the keepsake tomatoes! It's about the size of a ping-pong ball and again, dug in pretty deep in the middle of the plant. He has a few friends as well -- I hadn't really been examining the regular-sized tomato plants that carefully, because I figured I'd have tons of cherry and grape before the big guys came in.

It's also interesting to note that the rest of my tomato plants are dwarfed by the mystery plants from my neighbor, which are so tall they're almost up to my shoulder. But the keepsakes definitely win for first fruit, so apparently plant size is not necessarily connected to fruit-bearing. Which we knew from the cherry tomatoes, I guess, but I was assuming those were more different from regular-sized tomato plants than other regular-sized tomato plants, which is perhaps an incorrect assumption. You know what they say about assumptions: They make an ass out of you and mptions.

the big (small) reveal

What's this I spy?
The tiniest cherry tomato ever! It is, like, half the size of a pencil eraser, but it's right there along with two wee friends. I didn't inspect the other cherry tomato plant, but it has plenty of flowers -- as do the grape tomato plants and the three mystery plants from my old neighbor.

Meanwhile, back at the herb ranch, we are harvesting like crazy:
Note the first basil leaves in there. I'm now that person who foists mixed herbs on my coworkers and fills the freezer with bags labeled "chopped cilantro 7/08." Hopefully in December, it will bring a little taste of summer.

(Hey, did you see that tomato?!)

with silver bells and cockle shells...

... and three tomato buds, all in a row:

The tomato plants are growing like gangbusters, although they aren't flowering yet. Two of the red-to-green pepper plants have 'em beat:
The delicate little white flowers are really pretty, and I saw a delicate little white butterfly flittering around them, and the clouds parted, and delicate little angels sang hymns of praise to the delicious vegetables that are hopefully in their heavenly futures.

Hey, remember those wee little squash plants that were looking so wilted and sad just three short weeks ago, when each seedling only had two leaves apiece?
Not anymore! Go squash. I think they like all the rain we've been having. J. also helped me weed like crazy this weekend, and I'm not sure if that's directly connected to the exponential growth of some of this stuff, but it couldn't have hurt.

Behold, a whole lot of heavenly cilantro:
I tried to show you the spade as a gauge, which was sort of unsuccessful. Some of the plants are over a foot tall. I'm not totally sure what to do, here... I thinned it a little, but it still seems to be growing (just like its minty friends behind it) and it hasn't sprouted any flowers yet. Do I let it keep going? One of the people I work with said you can take fresh herbs, chop them and throw them in the freezer, and then take them out whenever you're ready to use them. True? False? Should I try putting some in our somewhat lacking freezer and see what happens?

Upon more advice, I tried thinning some of the out-of-control basil rows and replanting the seedlings:
The seedlings I pulled out didn't have nearly the same number of roots as any of the seedlings I bought and planted in the first place, and they were completely flopped over after their first hour in their new homes. I have so much basil (three quickly growing rows of probably 30 small plants each, plus the 12 older seedlings I planted when I foolishly thought the ones I started from seed weren't sprouting) that I figured I could experiment. Even if these guys don't make it, I needed to thin the rows, so all I will have wasted is time. Right? Right.

"If I was a flower growing wild and free..."
"... all I'd want is you to be my sweet honeybee..." (Will that song be featured in someone's wedding this weekend? Stay tuned!)

The big picture:
It's impossible to see in a photo this size (click to enlarge, but then you can't read the guided tour). Let's see... herbs started from seeds -- mint, cilantro, basil basil so much basil, oregano, chives -- in the far corner; tomato plants to their left (getting so big! the tallest ones are up to the second rung of the cages already); cherry and grape toward the middle of the plot, surrounded by cardboard; basil-from-seedlings smack in the middle; dill and parsley barely visible on its right; butternut squash on either side of the bright marigold in the middle. Not pictured: pepper plants, upper left corner; arugula, bottom right corner; yellow squash, next to the arugula.

And this is me trying to look fierce in the yellow hat:
I hope Tyra would approve.

a is for hell yeah

The arugula, it has been picked...


... and washed...

... and eaten. Some as straight salad greens at various times and some as part of a zucchini carpaccio salad, which was pretty darn good. I picked another four cups or so to serve with a strawberry/balsamic/goat cheese concoction at a barbeque we had Sunday night, and that was pretty good too. I felt the need to notify everyone at the barbeque that that was MY arugula from MY garden and OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE I GREW THAT, which was doubtlessly obnoxious, but I couldn't resist.

That one early-success row of arugula -- which was of the roquette variety; the other two are wild arugula and some unidentified kind that my old neighbor contributed -- seems like it might have run its course. Almost all of it is flowering, even though I've pinched most of the flowers off at some point. And the leaves that are left are getting really big and their taste is really strong, verging on bitter. I still like the flavor, but I think it's about done.

Anyone know what you do at this stage? Do I pull the plants up, or take off all the leaves, or keep pinching off flowers and see if new leaves grow with that old baby arugula taste? (They don't seem to be on the plants I've already pinched.) (And if it does grow, I need more arugula recipes, stat...)

send in the clowns, and the goats, and the chainsaws

Actually, only one of those three things wasn't in the Ith*ca Festival parade I went to last night, and you can probably guess which one. It was cloudy and pouring, periodically, so the photos are crappy and not really representative, but it beautifully encompasses the randomness that is Ithaca.

Woman on stilts. Two seconds before I took the picture, she was texting. Note the awesome hat on the woman in front of her.

Girl in a lifejacket with a peacock... attachment?

Country singers on the back of a truck. I actually kind of like this picture... let's call it No. 6 on the 30 for 30 list.

Very, very unfortunately not pictured: the roller derby team, the SufferJets (so clever!); the guy dressed entirely in plastic bags and waving a giant sail (?); the three women singing and playing the ukelele; the Israelis for Peace contingent; the Volvo Ballet, which involved multiple Volvo station wagons and people in tutus dancing on and beside them (!); the Tailwaggers, dogs -- and one lone, awesome goat -- jumping over a pole; the chainsaw band (?!) at the end, as the grand finale.

I can't believe the parade wouldn't be the highlight of the festival, but I'm totally looking forward to the rest of the activities tomorrow and Sunday, when my good friend C. will be visiting. Yay visitors! All of you should visit, too. Come to Ithaca, there are jumping goats and ballet-dancing Volvos here. Seriously.

RIP, little russ

This interview with Tim Russert's son (I can't link directly to the video, but it's worth watching) made me weepy. In that footage from a couple weeks ago, the beaming smile when irritating Matt Lauer brings up his son's graduation did me in.

I interviewed Russert after his second book came out last year, and I was extremely intimidated beforehand, and he was really normal and kind and engaged. He didn't talk down to a no-name reporter from the books section of a no-name weekly community newspaper, and he asked me about my own dad and really listened to the answer.

Plus, of all the people we couldn't affort to lose going into November. He was one of the only rational but hard-hitting voices in political journalism. Truly sad.

maybe if i planted a money tree...

This New York Times article just made me laugh and laugh. I am not saving money with this gardening thing, I don't think. Definitely not at this point and probably not ever, unless it's a tremendous success and we don't have to buy a single vegetable for the entire month of August. An incomplete list of things I have bought to date:

- the plot itself
- seeds, many of which I did not plant
- seedlings, many of which I also did not plant
- tomato cages
- special tomato food
- giant wooden stakes to make a fence
- smaller wooden stakes to make the rest of fence
- 100 feet of netting to make the fence actually function as a fence
- more netting for a trellis that I have not yet used and probably never will
- a large shovel
- a watering can
- a rubber mallet
- little marker things for the beginning of each row
- a special nozzle for the hose
- a floppy yellow hat

That isn't even counting all the stuff J. already owned or scrounged from his parents' house (a staple gun, a hose, scrap wood, a spade, a cultivator, more tomato cages) and the stuff I scavenged from our garage (bamboo stakes, a hoe/two-pronged ax thingie). NYT, where are the numbers? Are these people really honestly saving money? None of those things individually are SO expensive, but they add up.

Also, let's not ignore the time commitment. I liked the way this was phrased:

"a fence has been erected to keep the deer and people out"

Who erected the fence, purveyors of the passive voice? Was it the Ames, Iowa, woman who "who fits gardening into her 12-hour workday" and "is not intimidated by the 20 kinds of vegetables she has planted" and, she says, "probably spent maybe $50 for everything"? That woman has me beaten on so many levels, I don't even know where to start.

I mean, I'm not saying it's not worth it, for sure -- I am having fun and learning a lot and I picked my first arugula today and I am going to cook with it! The garden is awesome, in all seriousness, and I am so glad I'm doing this. But it's more work than I thought it would be, and it's a fairly significant investment of money and time -- and, except for one cup (a cup! it seems like a lot) of arugula, it's all still hypothetical at this point. A huge thunderstorm or a marauding gang of committed rabbits could knock the whole garden out in one night. In other words, NYT, I am not Banking on Gardening.

Picture time!

First, your favorite success story and mine, the arugula:

I thinned it today, pulling out some of the plants by their roots (painful but necessary, says my gardening book) and pulling out some of the leaves at the stems.

Teeny tiny squash seedling:

Looking a little wilted and sad today. Keep your fingers crossed that that's temporary.

Mulching with cardboard around the grape and cherry tomatoes:

Not sure if that'll work! I talked to the guy whose plot is next to me and looks like the very model of a perfect plot. He seemed skeptical.

Twelve Italian basil seedlings planted on Monday, which already seem to be bigger:

For $2, I was willing to put some seedlings in just in case the others didn't survive. Three of the five rows I planted from seed have teeny basil-ettes poking out of the soil right now, but they're a little late to the party.

A long view from the corner of my plot:

Those weeds with the yellow flowers are prickly and tough to pull, but they are awfully pretty, aren't they?

And now a question for the gardeners: Some of my plants, the tomatoes especially, have yellowing leaves at the bottom. Think it means I'm overwatering? It's hard to believe given how hot it's been here, but that was my expert neighbor's guess, and it confirmed what Plant Doctor Google told me earlier this week.

grammar police on patrol

A certain insurance company (rhymes with "psycho," another potentially good reason to avoid it) may have disqualified itself from doing business with me. This is the reason:

"Do you have more than nine car's in your possession?"

Then again, the quote is about $800 cheaper than it would be to transfer my previous policy to New York, which is certainly in the pro column. The old company also wants me to make an appointment with a local agent and go in to sign paperwork, and that just seems so unnecessary in the Internet Age, doesn't it?

So are properly placed apostrophes worth several hundred dollars? It's a decision I wish I did not have to make -- not exactly the kind of issue of principle that Angie has faced lately, but an issue of principle nonetheless.

I am so pleased that one of you asked to see the shelf paper, by the way. Here it is, and it has so much fruit just like good shelf paper should, and I am madly in love with it. Almost as much as our new air conditioner.

the deluxe, autographed edition of gardening with dummies

A fun riddle: It's 91 degrees and humid right now (which I've been assured never happens in Ithaca! really! totally unheard of!) and I'm in our un-air-conditioned second-floor apartment. What's one of the only things I could possibly do to make myself MORE hot?

Answer: Get a serious sunburn from staying in the garden for five and a half hours on a that very same sunny 91-degree day!

God, I am stupid. Although I am at least a stupid person with a garden that contains 16 tomato plants, 10 pepper plants, a whole lot more herbs and a couple other things still to be put in the ground. I should have planted some aloe...

More details and more pictures soon -- to all the people who gave me advice, in the last post, thanks! I am now reasonably sure that the cilantro is indeed coming up and is indeed cilantro, even without further taste testing. And yeah, the ground is really dry. I took that picture before I watered that day, though, and the plants have still been pretty perky. I also gave everything a very thorough soak with a borrowed hose today.

gardening WITH dummies, chapter 1

Aaaaand we're back, live, from Ithaca! I.... live here! It is... pretty lovely! We are... making progress on the unpacking but now the high-speed Internet is set up so I am ignoring all the boxes! I am... going nuts with the ellipses, because that is... how I roll, babies!

That last paragraph is brought to you courtesy of a full week with no professional writing or editing responsibilities. You are welcome.

(David Dye -- digression: the local NPR station broadcasts Live at the World Cafe from 10 to noon every day, which is sooo excellent and almost makes up for the fact that it makes me suffer through an hour of Democracy Now at 9, which is painful non-journalism that makes me a little embarrassed to hold my particular political leanings -- uh, where was I. Oh yes, my pal David is interviewing Aimee Mann, who apparently has a new album. I did not know this! Exciting news!)

OK, so. Gardening. Our progress so far:

Note that my plot is one of the only ones that is not fenced in yet, which should be remedied this weekend. Do not note the three-quarters of the plot that is still made up entirely of very aggressive weeds. The fence has to come first, you see, and is slated for construction tomorrow if J. and I can get our acts together.

Here is the success story:

Arugula! I put seeds into the ground and they grew into arugula. I have tasted it and it tastes good. This whole thing is sort of confounding, isn't it?

Here is the not-quite-success-but-not-yet-giving-up story:

This is where some herbs should be. None of the herbs ARE, exactly -- yet or maybe ever (spying on other people's plots reveals that they should at least be poking up by now, especially the basil) -- but I'm embarrassed to admit that I can't really tell what is a baby herb and what is a baby weed. And that I am trying to differentiate by... eating things to see what they taste like. I know! I know. What if the person who had this plot last year planted nightshade? I will go the way of an Agatha Christie murder victim! Death by garden! Or rather, death by stupidity, but I will go down happy.

So can any of you tell what in this picture could be a burgeoning cilantro or oregano seedling, say, and what is a weed? Clearly there is a lot of rogue mint running around, but do you see anything else in that picture that I shouldn't be yanking up?

I'm not terribly concerned, because I fully intend to buy some basil seedlings and stick them in the ground for try No. 2 if the seeds never sprout. I can live without the rest of the herbs if necessary (and my mint, of course, is the only herb I planted that is gracing us with its nascent presence) but I refuse to grow tomatoes without basil.

In our next installment: Tomato cages, fruit-patterned shelf-paper, a fascinating meeting with my new HR department and a pre-DMV pep talk.

the best-laid non-plans

So, hey, remember that whole "I won't have a job this summer" deal I was so excited about? Yeah, about that... I kind of... have a job now? A full-time one? With benefits and a salary and an office, etc.?

But it's good! I think it's going to be really good... it's library-related, writing about librarians and library programs at that big school on the hill in Ithaca, and it seems like just the right bridge between what I do now and what I'm going to do. I'm really excited about it -- more excited than I am about school, in some ways -- and it just feels right.

But, another but: I'm worried that I'm overcommitting myself, following my same old patterns and making my same old mistakes by trying to do too many things at once, scattering myself, making myself diverse at the expense of making myself actually *good* at anything. Also worried that this job, which is pretty writing-intensive, will mean I'll be working on fiction even less than I do now, and that I define myself too much through my work and was therefore too intimidated to embark on a future without a paying job. And I'm mourning that lost summer a little bit, too. The garden and the biking and the writing will all still be there, but sandwiched in between the 9 to 5. It's worth it, I know it is, but there is a little sadness around the edges.

During the packing process, which I have actually been weirdly enjoying so far, I rediscovered this packet of old papers my oboe teacher in high school gave me. This quote made me feel a little relieved when I wasn't sure that taking a job that truly speaks to me but that doesn't have quite the right timing was the best decision I'd ever made:

Perfectionism is slow death. If everything were to turn out just like I would want it to, just like I would plan for it to, then I would never experience anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes.... My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful, I will not fall from heaven. But a "mistake" is a delcration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder that I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown.

Nice, right? There is no right answer and no right path. If this path, this new thing I have chosen, is a mistake, I will try to listen and grow from it. (If it's not, I will be perfect! Er wait, no, that's not exactly what Mr. Hugh Prather meant in "Notes to Myself," is it... :) )

baa. baa. baa.

I spent a large part of yesterday -- actually, all of yesterday -- at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. There were sheep:

And wool:

Yarn abounded. The place was knitters' paradise, and I felt rather at home among my people.

Whole trees of yarn!

We also watched a demonstration of working sheepdogs, which were pretty awesome:


That reinforced the idea that sheep are... how to put this polietly... really not at all bright. But, also true to the stereotypes of their character, they did seem pretty docile -- their handlers led really big, active sheep through thick crowds of gaping city-folk without appearing to be at all worried that they'd bite or kick. (Unlike a properly feisty goat, say, which were sadly but understandably underrepresented.)

These guys were here, though:
The noble alpaca, thinking, "Hey, where's MY festival?"

So continues my deep and abiding love of state-fair-type extranvaganzas such as this one. I'm not sure what exactly it is about them, but one step onto the grounds and I feel a special giddy excitement -- the heady combination of the hot and sunny weather, the company of lovely people, the scent of fried everything in the air, the looming barns filled with awesome animals. Love it. M, A and I all managed to walk out of there with our wallets mostly intact (I only bought one skein of yarn, actually, in a dark green called "Ocean's Depths" from a semi-celebrity vendor) and the new knowledge that "baa" is the most onomotopaeotic animal sound in the world. Sheep voices sound amazingly similar to human voices... instead of "baa" being a sort of semi-inaccurate representation of the sound the animals actually make, it's as though they are pronouncing the word "baa" each time. It's a little freaky. In a good way.

Baa. Baa. Baa.

thawing out

D.C. isn't much for spring. It goes from 50 degrees to 80 degrees -- too cold to too hot -- in about four days, just like it did this year. That has always irritated me, and suddenly this afternoon, I realized I won't be around to be irritated this time next year. I'll be living in Ithaca, which prompts every person I tell to make some joke about snow and freezing and ha ha you're crazy. Next year I'll be commuting in that snow, too, almost an hour each way, to graduate school, on my way literally and figuratively to becoming a librarian. And when I get home, J will sometimes be there, because we will be living together in one apartment -- even better than the same zip code, which was all I was asking for a while. I am... well, psyched is putting it mildly.

I will have a garden! A huge plot in a community garden, which is already firmly in the "biting off more than she can chew" category. I'm going to work on the current novel-in-progress every day and pretend like I'm a real writer, the prospect of which both freaks me out and makes me buzz with possibility. I'm going to ride my bike a lot and try to start a home yoga practice. I'm taking two one-credit classes on two weekends in July. I will also have a volunteer job in the public library, I hope, but probably not much income-generating employment for a few months. I'll still be looking for library-related work and the assistantships from my school (wow, I have a school?), but if I have to get a job just to pay the bills, I'm not going to do it until the fall. This decision feels totally irresponsible and utterly, fabulously, thrilling.

This isn't news to most of you, but I realized there were a few blog friends who didn't know. And I also think it deserves some kind of formal announcement in this space, because it's made me want to make a bit more of a commitment here.

You heard it here first: You, me, this summer, this blog. At least a little post on most days, a few thoughts or a link or a picture (I am sure nearly all of these will be of the garden) (if I actually manage to grow anything) (and if I don't, I will probably post pictures of the barren soil and whine). I don't often feel a need to document things, but I am just so excited and I want to put it into words -- if is is wonderful, if it is scary, if it is both.

i think about the dirt that i'll be wearing for a shirt**

I didn't really intend to write this down, but ever since I read Maggie's list of scenes she hopes to see when her life flashes before her eyes, I've been thinking of my own and it seems like something worth remembering. So, in no particular order...

1. Getting drunk-ish for the first time on warm red wine in a European beer garden
2. Skinny dipping in the lake in Wolfboro beneath the starriest sky I've ever seen
3. Being blessed by the priest at H & K's wedding
4. Taking Puddles home from the animal shelter
5. Standing on the corner outside Ben's Chili Bowl with J. after the first time we met
6. Banging the hell out of a cowbell at one particular freezing football game
7. Looking at an inchworm in front of glass doors at nursery school, my earliest memory
8. Staring out at the view from the top of Mohunk (after being rescued by Robert, after being sure I would die getting up there)
9. Riding a bike for the first time
10. Sitting on the floor at the first pre-Thanksgiving
11. Opening the door to see my friends behind it on my 30th birthday
12. Watching my parents dance at... wow, I don't remember where that was, actually, but I can picture the room vividly
13. Walking up the stairs at the Vienna Opera House
14. Watching snow fall out my apartment window in Jerusalem
15. Seeing my name in the acknowledgements of a friend's published book
16. Playing the final note of Beethoven's 5th with full orchestra and chorus
17. Kayaking in the Bay of Fundy
18. Lying on the bed in Nanny's house watching Christmas specials with A. and A.
19. Recording a fake radio show with J.'s 45s in her living room
20. Lying in the street in the middle of the night to watch the meteor shower
21. Playing Careers and eating pumpkin bread on Thanksgiving with S.

**"I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die," a They Might Be Giants song that I memorized in, oh, 1992? And I still find it hiliarious. My other favorite lines: "Clear off the kitchen table, darlin'/For on the kitchen table I must lie/I'm just tired 'cause my wife just served the banquet of my life/And I hope that I get old before I die."