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."

a scientific study

How do you pronounce n-i-c-h-e?

a) nitch

b) neetch

c) neesh

d) nish

e) we aren't French! speak Amurrrrcan!

all you need are goats

Just an excuse for another goat picture? No, the explanation of the nicest Valentine's Day present ever: a sixth of a goat from Heifer International. J and I are officially on the books as not celebrating this Hallmarkian travesty, but somehow each of us winds up doing a little something or other. His something or other was cute and perfect. Mine was boxers with giant hearts and a snarky card about George Bush reading your email. Not quite as touching.

(Side note: The Year of the Goat had a pretty profound impact on the way I have been thinking about life and its possibilities, in addition to the pretty profound impact it had on the way I have been thinking about goat cheese.)

I am so looking forward to this three-day weekend: errands and Eastern Market with a friend this morning, new Netflix tonight while finishing knitting a sock that is taking foreeeeeever (I'm going to let myself do a different project before starting the second one), extensive mimosa-ed brunch tomorrow with the roommates, trip to the National Gallery (lookin' at you, No. 7) in the afternoon, no plans whatsoever on Monday. Yay for Abe Lincoln and all the other good guys.

water landings

At the risk of being all Seinfeld, here, what is up with flight-safety videos? As in, the fact that no one watches them? The planes US Air flies to Syracuse are usually pretty small, but last night, for some reason, it was a real live plane with three seats on each side of the aisle -- much to my relief, because it meant my suitcase would actually fit in the overhead thingie even though I was one of the last people to board.

Normally, on the regular wee planes, the real live flight attendant does the little song and dance with the belt buckle and whatnot. But the big grown-up plane had the special screens that deploy to show you the safety video. I realized halfway through that I wasn't paying attention -- furthermore, I never pay attention to those. Ever. It's white noise: "plane loses pressure... seat cushion... flotation device... help yourself before the person next to you... oxygen... zzzzzzzz."

Last night, I looked around, and not one single other person I could see was actually watching the video, including the dude next to me who would go on to watch the silent infomercial about Hawaii they played for the rest of the flight with shockingly rapt attention. (Hawaii trivia I learned: The state is made up of 137 islands!)

It seems to me like this says something profound about humans' sense of denial. That couldn't happen to me. Even though that information could save my life, it isn't relevant enough for me to stop reading an essay about Bill Clinton in order to pay attention for 30 seconds. Weird, right? Like, life-saving information-- ooh, look out the window, shiny!

progress report

Many of the 30 for 30 goals down and many still to go. Specifically, 16 and 1/3 and 7/10 and 3/5 and 2/3 and 2/3 still to go. Some recent developments...

No. 8:


A sweater for T and J's baby. It's knitted from the hood down and was an immensely satisfying project the whole way through.


Detail shot. I wasn't sure about the color combination when I first started, because my large stash of cotton offers a lot of choices and I was a little overwhemled by them. But I think it worked out OK; reminiscent of Charlie Brown without dooming the poor child to a life of having footballs pulled away right before he kicks them.

No. 26:


This guy started out 2007 looking like this...

...and ended it like this:

There were a few uncomfortable moments (for me; for our pal the lobster, I would like to think it was just one brief but very very uncomfortable moment) but overall, this was not as hard as I thought.

And finally, three and four for No. 18:


In J's lab.


Amazing glass sculpture (called Woven Heaven, Tangled Earth, by Susan Plum) at the fantastic Corning Glass Museum.

three years and counting

Third time’s the charm!

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?

Flew in a teeny tiny plane piloted by a friend. Edited an entire book (freelance, not my own). Took long bike rides without a safety net. Went parasailing. Milked a goat. Became an avid comsumer of mussels.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I actually have been referring to my 30 for 30 list instead of doing the resolution thing, so I plan to keep doing that until 10/17/08. Please note that although several of them have been crossed off the list, all the freaking hard ones -- seriously, 30 miles on a bike, what the hell was I thinking -- are still left.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes! Several people, actually.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, knock on everything.

5. What countries did you visit?

The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic. And New Mexico, which sort of felt like a different country.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

More self-discipline (just like 2005 and 2006! that one is probably a permanent resident of this list). More focus. The ability to do a handstand. A new iPod.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

My birthday, once again the date of the greatest surprise party ever. Not a specific date, but the writing group evening that P. showed us her first book.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Giving J a pretty great birthday surprise, if I do say so myself.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not committing more time to writing and not having the guts to do NaNoWriMo.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I had food poisoning for the first time ever; otherwise, no.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Plane tickets.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Why is it that I can never come up with anything for this question? I can’t think of a single person who did something awesome?

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

If I can’t come up with anything for this one either, does it balance out?

14. Where did most of your money go?

Into a six-month CD, which is scaring the crap out of me because it seems like I just wrote a check and threw it into the ether, and the ether cashed it, and then the money evaporated and ceased to exist. Oh, and to my landlord, restaurants, airlines, the overpriced gym that I now hardly ever go to because I am busy giving more of my money to yoga and African dance classes.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

The final Harry Potter book.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?

Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.”

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? both, sometimes. also nervous-er, most of the time.
b) thinner or fatter? gr
c) richer or poorer? richer, a wee bit

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Writing. Exercising. Spending time with my grandmother.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Worrying -- third year in a row and probably forever! Downloading TV shows from iTunes.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I was in Ithaca with J. We cooked dinner and watched The Queen from Netflix. Yay for Jews on Christmas!

*(editing starts here)*

23. What was your favorite TV program?

The Wire. And Top Chef.

25. What was the best book you read?

According to Good Reads, my five-star books were Kate Atkinson’s “Case Histories,” Thomas Cahill’s “The Gifts of the Jews” and Yael Hedaya’s “Housebroken.” Edna O’Brien’s “The Country Girls” has also really stayed with me.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Probably Dawn Landes. Thanks, Reuben.

27. What did you want and get?

A relationship that’s continuing to grow despite the distance.

28. What did you want and not get?

Smaller pants.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Superbad!

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

30, and I had a surprise party, as documented here.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A published book with my name on the cover. And as with last year, going a whole year with no cavities would have been immeasurably satisfying -- although I got closer this time. Just one little one in the back.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?

Inexpensive? I didn’t get many new clothes this year.

33. What kept you sane?

You know who you are.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

After seeing “Charlie Wilson’s War” last night, my Philip Seymour Hoffman crush is again in full swing.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

Define “learned.” This is something I wanted to learn, but am not sure I have quite mastered yet: Everything is temporary, so stop freaking out, for heaven’s sake.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"When you move into motion, the Atlantic Ocean cannot compare
My heart's out there, but I don't care, I'll throw it anywhere
We all hold on, but when we go, we'll be gone..."

cookies are an all-the-time food

Many a well-meaning... well-meaner has said, semi-helpfully, "You THINK you like Ithaca, but wait until you see it in the winter!" And then laughed a knowing har-har and flicked a glance of pure evil over their shoulders as they swished their swishy capes and swished off to make more dire predictions.

Well, I'm here to tell you: It is 4:19 p.m. on my first full day here. It is as dark as midnight. I am in J's apartment, sitting at his desk in the circle of light from one little lamp. I took a shower two hours ago and I'm trying to motivate myself to stop eating oatmeal cookies (note to Shannon: are these the best cookies ever or what) and leave the apartment for the first time today.

But did I mention it is dark? And also that it is raining -- RAINING, because NPR tells me it is 47 degrees outside, and what is up with this rain, it is supposed to SNOW here because it is supposed to be COLD. Not that I would really be appreciating the coldness, however, given the aforementioned inability to leave the apartment.
I think we're heading for the movies tomorrow night for the third year of our "we're Jewish! let's go to the movies on Christmas Eve!" tradition, and I'm only semi-determined to have gone outside before then.

This darkness thing -- yeah, it's a little harder to love than the Ithaca summer with its farmers' market and its pretty waterfalls and its hippies in their sundresses. But you know what is also hard to love? DC in August. Or July, or September. So I'm reserving judgement; check back in 11 days for the final verdict.

over the river and through the... crafts...

(Through the crafts? What the hell? That song has been stuck in my head all day for no discernable reason. I would like to discern one now, please, and make it go away.)

Anyway, crafts, yes. I discovered Craftster this week, and I am so completely hooked. I want to make everything, EVERYTHING, on that site, including embroidered pillowcases. I have two embroidered pillowcases that my parents got as a wedding gift that I adore. I mean, look at this. How creative and arty is that, and how much fun would it be to make it? Despite the fact that I never like fussy projects, and a project involving tiny needles making tiny stitches in tiny patterns is probably fussier than anything I've ever tried?

The new Craftster fixation actually dovetails nicely with my existing Etsy fixation -- I can admire the stuff of alread-crafty people and then daydream about my own crafty things, like making sketchbooks out of recycled paper and a Luna Lovegood iron-on transfer. And I think it is only a matter of time until I give in and admit that I really want to learn to sew. And some mysterious day in the future, endless supplies of time and money will fall like manna from the heavens, and I will indulge all this stuff.

hallowhat?

It may be that Halloween only has a purpose if you either a) have adorable children who want to dress up in cute costumes or b) want to be a sexy nurse/cat/pirate/antelope/whatever and pick up similarly dressed strangers at bars. (In 2000 or 2001, I was hit on -- so my friends said, let me assure you that I didn't catch on -- by a very drunk man dressed as a very drunk nun at a bar on Halloween. Ah, good times.)

I actually forgot that the actual trick-or-treating portion of the holiday was yesterday until I saw one of my coworkers wearing a psychotic red wig. I ate two mini-KitKats. I went to yoga. We had a handful of trick-or-treaters. It was anticlimatic. But recovery starts now: I'm going to bake these to make up for it. And... yes, that's it, but they sound really delicious...

30 for 30 (goats)

Too bad I didn't make one of my goals to take 30 photos of goats, or else I'd totally be there:


I promise, I'm done now.

so many people in my suitcase heart

I've been told -- and it makes sense -- that your 30s are so much better your 20s; you're more settled, more stable, you have a clearer idea of what you want even if you're not sure exactly how to go about getting it. You're more grounded. You know how to deal with yourself better. I'm not sure if any of that is true yet, but it makes sense, and it holds true for my early 20s vs. my late 20s. And at the risk of tempting fate: So far, 30 is so, so good.

I spent the last hour trying to figure out how to express how wonderful my 30th birthday has been. Fancy brunch and a musical with my family; a weekend trip to Charleston with J.; an incredible and thoughtful and amazing surprise party; another surprise trip still to come next weekend. Words aren't cutting it.

A birthday's not a birthday without a goat.

Or hanging moss.

Or parasailing (photo by J.)

Or sunsets on Folly Beach.

Or giant Dora balloons.

But without being able to show you the faces of the people who made everything this way, I can't even begin to explain what they mean to me and how loved they've made me feel in the last few weeks. So I apologize: These limp words fall so far short of what I want to say.

This pig wants you to know he's happy too, and also thankful for the corn and stuff.

it's a great big universe...

... and we're all really puny, in the immortal words of the Animaniacs, but donating to this actually made me feel like I was part of something pretty huge and pretty great. And this kind of brought tears to my eyes. And the list of prizes kind of made me drool. (Have you seen the Embittermints? Ha.)

fall stories

Pretty lake in New York, near where J. and I went camping this weekend. It was fun and lovely and cold, but not too cold.

Pre-camping, we went to Storm King, which is an amazing outdoor sculpture museum. For scale, I am sitting at the base of that sculpture. Big, yes?

Post-camping, we went to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Also amazing. For scale, that is a tiny plane very far up in the sky. Small, no?

And, for the opening 30 for 30 goal, we have the first entry for #18. Behold, rust:

how to fix an american quilt

My bed, with new Ikea bedspread. Not pictured: the quilt in question.

Slowly, apparently. I took my favorite quilt -- the one Angie's grandmother made -- to a cute little quilt shop staffed by cute little women. Some of the squares need to be replaced, but the binding and backing are OK, so shouldn't be a big deal.

Like all the other idiots in the world, though, I stuck the quilt in my closet in April, when it got warm, and left it there until the first cold night last week. All the other idiots and I think, "Hey, time to fix the quilts!"

End result: I'm waiting two weeks just for an estimate, and then probably until Christmas to get my repaired quilt back. I will be a cold, cold idiot until then.

In the spirit of... something to do with that story, I'm thinking about a little "30 for 30" plan -- 30 goals for my 30th year. (Technically my 31st year, but the year after my 30th birthday, whatever.) So far I have stuff like "knit one item that is not a blanket, hat or scarf" and "go for a 15-mile bike ride." I'm looking for self-contained, definitively achievable things, like items you can put a date on and say you've completed, not big things like "set more goals" (ha) or "don't be an idiot." Suggestions?

why god invented the internet

Blogs and online dating and all the Doonesbury comics you want... great, fine. But the Internet's one real true purpose is to share things like this and this.

the farms that made it through the last days of the century

So, my visit to the New York State Fair really, really, really made me want a goat or two or seventeen. Did you know goats don't really eat tin cans, contrary to my very extensive previous knowledge of goats? It consisted of a children's book I had when I was little, and I thought it was a reliable source, but apparently not. Goats are actually very particular eaters; they might LICK tin cans for the salt and what have you, but they would never actually eat one.

I would like a goat, please and thank you. But they are social animals and do not thrive alone, so I actually need two. Or, you know, seventeen.

OK, that's all.

(Speaking of the end of the summer, did this photo ever give me a lump in my throat. I just saw her yesterday, and we drew pictures and played games and read books and it was just like it usually is... but already with that backpack she looks so grown up, and I remember her when she was a tiny newborn, and oh my gosh.)

medium rare, with a side of condescension and some idiot sauce on top

"I mean, a woman who is really enjoying life, who doesn't withhold anything from herself, a woman who recognizes what she wants and takes it? To quote Posh, that's major. But the assumption that women are only trading one feeble attempt at attracting men (deprivation in order to be or stay thin) for another one (circumventing former vegetarianism in order to get a date) is just fucking sexist bullshit."

I have long had a blog-crush on Weetabix, and this post from her paid gig at Elastic Waist made me love her even more. It's based on a stupid, stupid, stupid article from the New York Times that I'd seen on my own last week and quietly fumed about, because it's all about women overthinking everything and contorting themselves in yet another way to make themselves attractive to men, and men judging women on some ridiculous crap that means nothing, and women doing a right-back-atcha move on the men. (The walkaway quote in this story made me want to stab myself in the eye. I was thisclose to getting away with feeling all superior about how no self-respecting woman would ever judge a man that way, and then... yeah. Thanks, Brice, freelance design writer.)

The way the article was written infuriated me too. And the Internet dating angle. And that weird undertone about sex that's in there also, about what women want and how they get it, and aarghghgh I'm so irritated. This has totally, like, harshed my Wednesday-night post-yoga buzz, man. Read this.

remember when he burned his hand?

I just finished reading Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. The author embarks on a project to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year; she's funny and likeable and a bit of a disaster, and reminds me enough of Elizabeth Gilbert (whom Julie apparently knows and thanks in the acknowledgements) that I wonder if they've started a new genre: self-deprecating memoirs of entirely relatable people taking on some kind of structured project to help them through a rough time.

She's probably someone I would like in real life anyway, and then I found her Powell's interview. When asked which fictional character she would like to date, she comes up with... Johnny Tremain. Ha. What a great answer. I think my sixth-grade self would have totally backed her up on that one.

count the verbs: an interactive text adventure*

I rue the day I accepted this project. I rue, I ruefully rue.

I'm rueing and rueing, and I'm waiting for the next episode of Top Chef to download from my iTunes account (more procrastinating! see, still looking at the screen! it counts!). I'm thinking about what to have for dinner. I'm feeling chilly and over-air-conditioned. I'm wishing two weeks would go by faster and I'm liking this quote:

Grace is when something is more beautiful than we deserve, more elegant and lovely than it should be.

-Ayelet Waldman

*You can count "rue" as many times as you want. Like, 45 billion times. There aren't enough numbers in the world to truly express all the rueing I'm doing.

hiatus from the hiatus

Suddenly, I sort of miss blogging. I believe this attack has been brought on by a massive freelance project I have stupidly undertaken... it is so truly massive, so overwhelmingly time-consuming, that I am desperately casting about for something that lets me tell myself I'm working (i.e., facing a computer) but can use to sneak furtive breaks in the actual work. Plus maybe I missed you.

I will add the link list soon, I know you are waiting with bated breath. Be back in a flash.

a story, by the fruit of the genius tree

The scene: J.'s backyard, during his going-away party. Gaby, Shannon, Ernie and I are sitting lined up in a row, and Gaby (age 4 1/2) is dishing on the latest from school.

Gaby: Bobby is my boyfriend. I am his girlfriend. I love him best and he loves me best.

[a few minutes later]

Shannon: Tell us what happened in school.
Gaby: Well, Bobby and I were playing kitty. And then he didn't want to play kitty no more, but I really wanted him to play kitty. I tried everything. I tried giving him a sticker. Didn't work. I tried giving him a hug. Didn't work. I tried telling him the truth. Didn't work. I tried everything! Didn't work. Then Nathan came and he didn't want to play kitty either. Bobby wanted to play Dragonball [I thought she was saying "Dragon Mom," which sounds better] and I did not want to play that. Nathan wanted to play ice cream store and I did not want to play that. It was very hard.

[some sort of tangent about heart-shaped leaves]

Me: So what happened with Nathan and Bobby?
Gaby: We played kitty.

And... scene.

How great is that. I love that kid so, so much, and I really needed some nice distraction from answering the 43rd person who asked me why I wasn't moving to Ith*ca with J. I am so not who I want to be in this situation... I want to be cool and calm and collected. Or, I'd settle for brittle and funny. (At various points during the day, Shannon and Alissa and I came up with quite a few good suggestions for what I COULD say, such as “I wanted to go to Ith*ca, but J says he needs me here to continue prostituting myself, to pay for his Ph.D.” Better, right?)

Anyway. Am not calm, cool or collected. Although I never really am any of those things, so I guess it's unreasonable to expect myself to be them now, under duress. Damn it. I need a sticker.

meme-ory, all alone in the moooooonlight

Aw, Angie tagged me! Hm, six weird things about me...

1. I have webbed toes. Just a little webby web between the second and third toes, higher up on my right side than my left. Tante used to sing, "This little piggie went to market, these two little piggies stayed home together and ate roast beef..." when I was a baby. I*n R*ppke was the only other person I've met with the same thing (besides my father, hence the genetic connection, although none of my first cousins have it).

2. I can't procrastinate. Not on big things, anyway -- they hang over my head and make me crazy, and it's easier just to do them than to worry about them. If I were in graduate school, I would be insane.

3. I am unable to walk down the street without petting every pettable dog in my path. It's a little bit of a compulsion, actually, and something that will probably get a hand bitten off some day.

4. I don't like James Bond movies. They are boring. Sorry.

5. I love vegetarian hot dogs. And I do not know another soul who finds them acceptable as food.

6. I'm unable to throw away books. I have trouble even giving them away, actually... I just saw the stack of 14 gigantic boxes full of them in my parents' basement this weekend and was terrified anew at someday having to figure out where to put them all.

postcards from new mexico

Last weekend, J. and I went to New Mexico for some of his family stuff. We went for a hike near his cousin's house. Look, it is the desert!

But there were more deciduous trees and fewer giant cacti wearing sombreros than I anticipated. It is definitely spring there.

A fence. Not pictured: The Rio Grande river, because it was really glarey. But we saw it.

Black and white = I M R-tistic.

These are the Dr. Seuss guys, no?

The next day, we visited Santa Fe, where we went into a store with this amusing barbeque sauce. The sauce helped me feel less bad about the delicious pork-filled tamales we ate on the street a few minutes later. I am not a vegetarian when the spirit of "cultural exploration" strikes, no sir.

We went to St. Francis Cathedral, right in the center of town. Outside it is a statue of the first Native American woman to become a saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.

Pretty votive candles in the church.

Santa Fe was really lovely. For all you "Rent" lovers: We did not open up a restaurant there, but the song was in my head all day.

missed connections

There's a sign in the locker room at the gym threatening to punish people who don't pay a monthly fee for a locker and then leave a lock on one anyway. Or something like that, I'm not sure; living across the street from your gym allows you not to need a locker and therefore exempts you from paying attention to signs like that.

But anyway, the sign:

Clean out your locker blah blah something WE WILL CUT LOCKS.

Why do I always, every single time I see it, think it's talking about hair?

pretty pictures

Photos from Europe are here -- in under a month, this time! A low bar, but I have cleared it. Low expectations, baby.

I wish I were still in Europe. If that were the case, I wouldn't be going to work, which would mean I wouldn't have been trying to merge onto Rock Creek Parkway at 6:50 this morning, which would mean some woman wouldn't have whacked into me with her car and cracked my fender. No one was hurt, no big deal, but inconvenient and annoying. Only one reason to want to be across the ocean right now, but a pretty decent one.

up in the air, junior birdmen

(Five pretend bucks to anyone who can explain that song to me... who are the junior birdmen? Why are they up in the air, upside down?)

I am leaving for Europe in one (1) week. That is seven (7) days from now, but really not even that, because my flight leaves mid-afternoon, so it is actually less time than I thought. I had the urgent need to touch my passport today to prove that it still existed, because I didn't really remember bringing it back from Canadia. It still exists, and is good until Oct. 17, 2010, in case you were concerned.

We will be going to four (4) (is that annoying yet?) (it is annoying to me) cities in less than two (ha! not doing it anymore! i am free from its clutches) weeks. I don't really know anything about these cities, which seems like something I should correct. Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, in that order. Ideas welcome.

re-upping

It was fun last year, so let's have a re-meme...

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?

Watched the world's highest tides come in at the Bay of Fundy. Cared about tides at all. Learned to like pretty much all seafood. Took a lot more work-related responsibility. Rode a bike.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Yeah... I always make them, and I always sort of keep them. Emphasis on the "sort of" part of that sentence -- I need some new ones now.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, and more people close to me are on the list (and the list of potential adoptive parents) for 2007.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, unless you count James Brown and Gerald Ford. Which I do not.

5. What countries did you visit?

Canadia.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?

More time for everything. More writing. More self-discipline (that's the same as 2005's wish, sadly). Some sort of coherent life plan.

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Er, hm. Is it bad that I already am not remembering any?

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learning to ride a bike. At last, my friends.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not riding said bike a little more, and not keeping some of my health-related resolutions from last year.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Not except for my DAMN TEETH, the evil bastards.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Bike!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Are we avoiding political topics? We are, right. Um, non-political: Margaret Atwood, for writing the most amazing book for 2006. Also Mark Haddon and several other authors, and the good folks of Bookslut for telling me about them.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

No politics, la la. Maybe some of those non-underwear-wearing celebrities, although I can't pretend I really truly care about that.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The verbatim answer from last year: If only I knew. To Amtrak, to car repairs, to various yarn stores, to my overpriced gym, to eating out way too much. [Plus: DAMN DENTIST. --ed.]

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Going on vacation with J. Seeing a friend I'd worried I'd lost touch with. Going back to African dance. Dumb reality TV.

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?

The Weepies' "Gotta Have You."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? both, sometimes
b) thinner or fatter? about the same
c) richer or poorer? about the same

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Bike riding. (Hello, theme.) Exercising in general. Cooking. Visiting my family.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Worrying, again. Watching stupid television shows.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Too late, but I had dinner with friends and went to Lancaster the next morning. We will be trekking out to Rockville to go to a party on New Year's.

*(now is where I started editing last year because this is getting boring and repetitive)*

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Top Chef. Or Grey's Anatomy, when I get to watch it with Shannon.

25. What was the best book you read?

Abovementioned Atwood and Haddon.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Weepies, also abovementioned. Thanks, H.

27. What did you want and get?

Love, happiness, etc., barf. And a digital camera.

28. What did you want and not get?

Nothing I'll admit to.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Little Miss Sunshine.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

29, and J. cooked a lobster. It ruled.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Second verse, same as the first: If I had gone a whole year with no cavities. This is getting really repetitive, sorry.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?

Nonexistant? But I did get really nice work-appropriate shoes.

33. What kept you sane?

All y'all. (I learned to spell "y'all" correctly this year, also -- thanks, Cindy.)


34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

McSteamy. I'm such a cliche.


38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.

Oy, again. Let's do another quote:

"As humans, after all, we become that which we seek. Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless." -- Linda Greenlaw

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Five green and speckled frogs, sitting on a speckled log, eating the most delicious bugs. Yum, yum, yum.

kept down by the Man

The Dental Man, that is. I walked in my door just now, home early from work on a beautiful sunny day, picked up the mail, leafed through it, la la happy. What is this? Oh, an envelope from my dentist. He must be writing to wish me a happy Chanukah, right? Wrong. A bill.

(I'm going to write this next part in white, because it is really scary. Highlight it if you're not afraid of the scary scary number.)

$1,061.84

I knew this bill was coming, and I knew it wouldn't be pretty. I already paid them $850 back in the middle of all the fun, but this payment was waiting on the dentist to check to see if my insurance company would waive its $1,000 per year limit.

Hey, guess what?

It wouldn't.

[Editor's retrospective note: Why did I think it was even a possibility? Why did the dentist's office? Insurance companies aren't exactly known for flexible and forgiving policies.]

This means that I've had $2,911.84 of dental fun in 2006. Here's the part where I could go into how I have a somewhat large credit card bill this month, and how I am supposed to buy plane tickets to Amsterdam, Prague and Vienna next week. But I won't. Instead, I will just say... damn it.

a statistically representative survey

Apologies for the long absence -- things have been v. busy, so I'm a little behind on my reality TV viewing... and thus have nothing to discuss on ye olde blogge. But I am in need of opinion and turning to you in supplication. Some questions, written in traditional poll-speak:

1. How do you feel about the following poem -- very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative or very negative?

2. Do you feel that the inclusion of the word "death" makes the poem appropriate or inappropriate for a festive occasion?

3. If this poem were read at your wedding, would you be pleased or not pleased?

(Please be advised that the pollster -- me -- loves this poem very much for some reason, and the lines "O, to take what we love inside/ to carry within us an orchard" bring a bit of a lump to her throat every single time she reads it. Said pollster is just not entirely sure it's appropriate for a bridesmaid-y toast.)

---

From Blossoms, by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

demanding a recount

I might take it back -- this interview makes Emily sound really terrible. The defense "I've worked in really good restaurants, so I couldn't possibly have made food that's too salty" is incredibly stupid. I hate what she says about the woman who didn't like her stupid upper-crust ice cream, and her incredibly snotty comments about Friday's and being a chef in general. All the rest of those people are chefs too, and they managed to figure out how to do this, so don't blame the show for your lack of creativity. I kind of can't stand her now. It's all sooo coooomplicated, you know?

I worked 20 hours in a row, post-election, and now I have tomorrow off. And let's just say I'm too jaded to say more than this, but I'm not sad about the outcomes of said elections.

it's official, part II

I don't know when this happened either, but now I'm not just someone who cries at poignant sociological experiments, I'm someone who cries -- in public, no less -- at reality TV. A reality TV show I'm not even watching.

Maybe I saw part of the Top Chef premiere after the Project Runway finale, and maybe I kind of saw the end of another episode after that. And, OK, maybe I accidentally downloaded last week's episode from iTunes (yes I accidentally paid for it... it's only $1.99... I spend that much on coffee some days... that doesn't mean I LIKE this trash or anything... it just sort of fell into my open browser window...). And tonight I went to the damn gym specifically at 6 p.m. on a Friday, knowing that I'll have to take a shower before I can leave the house again later and therefore will be stepping outside into the 30-degree night with wet hair, just so I could see this week's episode.

That doesn't mean I'm watching it or anything.

Ahem. So here is a brief recap. Actually, HERE is a brief recap, told better than I can tell it, plus I missed the first 10 minutes and all the drama about the bacon-and-avocado ice cream.

I came in right as the big quiet sexy guy who always wins immunity was winning immunity. The main challenge this week is to create a dish for TGI Friday's menu, and it would be judged by a TGI Friday's chef guy and a bunch of firefighters and the really annoying permanent judges, whatever, some contrived thing, OK.

The bottom three -- as in, one of them will get kicked off the show at the end of the episode -- are:

1) an older guy who made this psychotic Alice in Wonderland thing that looked completely inedible, but you sort of had to give him points for trying

2) this woman who was sort of out of her league because she's a fancy high-end chef who hadn't ever been to Friday's or something, and whose dish was too salty

and 3) this horrendous, obnoxious, ridiculous asshole overgrown frat boy who insults all the other contestants and basically ruined the last challenge for his whole team. He, Michael, spent $8 of his allotted $100 to buy beer to drink and put back some damn cheese he needed for his gross nasty cheesesteak so he could get something for himself. He is the kind of guy who can't hold down a job and is proud of it, and he is the kind of guy who ostensibly makes good television.

[Insert paragraph about how yes, it's reality TV, and yes, they're stereotyping and editing people into characters. Totally true, and I'm sure applicable in this case, but you can't edit words into people's mouths and I would bet everything I have in this world that real Michael is not measurably different than TV Michael.]

Do you see where this is going? Michael didn't lose, and the woman -- Emily -- had to go home. You guys... it was so unfair. It was SO UNFAIR. Emily looked like someone I worked on the paper with in college, and like someone you would actually be friends with amid the sea of fake personalities. She was quiet, and she wasn't sexy like big quiet sexy guy, and she didn't make good television. They sent her home EVENTHOUGH, as the recapper put it, Michael deserved it so much more.

She cried. She cried so much because she CARED, maybe more than she should have or whatever, but you could just see how this was humiliating to her and how she couldn't stop and how oooooh I hate that freaking Michael. When the final verdict was announced from those obnoxious, manipulated judges, she couldn't even look at them, and then when she told the rest of the characters (er, contestants), big quiet sexy guy just folded her into her arms and she sobbed and sobbed. Aargh. The unfairness of the world is too much tonight, I'm serious.

I'm going to hit publish now before I delete this and try to deny I've ever seen this show. Is it the hugging? Maybe it's the hugging. Geez.

(Side note for the cooks: Some of the food, especially the grilled cheese and tomato-red-pepper soup and the skewer things and the mint fruit salad looked so good I wanted to reach into the screen and take some. The recipes seem pretty doable, too.)

it's official

I don't know when this happened, but I'm now someone who cries at things like the Free Hugs Campaign. (The You Tube video streams better, perhaps because the real site is getting too much traffic from sappy individuals like yours truly.)