i fought the law and the law won

Dear Gravity,

Just wanted to write and say thanks for stopping by to say hi today. You know, I take you for granted sometimes. I know. I know! It's really not cool of me. Those four stairs down to the sidewalk from our front porch, coated in a transparent sheet of ice -- which we can chalk up to the fact that our house has no gutters, so the melting snow on the roof drips directly down onto the porch and refreezes on the steps -- were your perfect opportunity.

But I have a small quibble: It wasn't really necessary to remind me so HARD. The multi-hued, dinner-plate-sized bruise on my lower back and upper ass... it kind of hurts. I'm aware that the ass is nicely padded, but, you know, I can still FEEL it. I'm sorry to be ungrateful for all the things you do for me, though, like not allowing objects to fly randomly around the room and hit me on the head. (Or on the ass -- which, come to think of it, makes this a very apt punishment.) I promise I'll never forget you exist again. I know. I know! It's really not cool of me.

You take care now,
Gwen

freezy

I just saw "2009" in my iPhoto upload thingie and thought it was a typo. Can it really be 2009? But I guess it is: My wonderful visiting friends have gone home, this two-week break that I so needed will be over tomorrow, the wheel of work and school and daily obligation is slowly grinding into action again.

This morning, I finished (and totally loved) Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. The word "faith" never sits that well with me; I am not a very faith-full person, in a lot of ways. I described myself as an "agnostic Jew" on my online dating profile once upon a time, and that's pretty much right in terms of the whole God thing. Most of the time, I also don't have much faith in my fellow humans, in our government or anyone else's, in myself, in the idea of "meant to be." H. recently sent me this amazing sermon and I've been thinking about radical self-acceptance ever since -- could I ever have enough faith to do that?

I'm totally mimicking Anne Lamott's writing style right now and completely annoying myself. So I will just quote randomly from her and slap down a few photos from a New Year's Day mini-hike to the frozen waterfall near my house. May your year be full of amazing icicles and nice friends and everything you want and deserve. Bring it, 2009.
"During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy received two letters from the Kremlin. One was aggressive, the other gentler. And because Kennedy said to his men, 'Let's respond to the saner message,' we didn't get blown up, or have to blow up to the world. So I tried to respond to the kinder voice." (66)

"I love my life more, and me more.... And as that old saying goes, it's not that I think less of myself, but that I think of myself less often. And that feels like heaven to me." (176)

"My mind is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, like macrame, but it prefers to think about things, and jot down what annoys it." (259)

a year in review

Third Fourth time’s the charm!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

Moved in with J. Quit journalism. Started becoming a librarian. Went to grad school. Volunteered for a political candidate. Took out student loans. Grew a garden. Co-painted a whole apartment. Wrote a press release. Kayaked solo. Switched to tofutti cream cheese.

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

31 for 31, my dears. Someone just pointed out that if I live a long life, that list is going to get really impressive (i.e., impossible) eventually.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Shannon!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Just found out about a dog I’ve known for a long time, which is sad, but no humans (no kinahurrahs, please).

5. What countries did you visit?

No foreign travel this year except Canada. All your money belong to us, says the government.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

More self-discipline (fourth year running! again, that one is probably a permanent resident of this list). A regular yoga practice and/or exercise regimen. A more diverse garden. A clearer focus on school. A Zen-like sense of calm and detachment. Ha.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

May 31/June 1: moving days. Dec. 14, my mom’s 60th-birthday surprise party.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Changing a lot of stuff about my life without more drama than necessary, hopefully. Also making some really lovely new friends both at school and in Ithaca.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Lack of progress on the novel(s).

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I had bronchitis and strep throat this summer... I’ve been sick with minor things more in Ithaca than I was in DC.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

An old-fashioned wicker sewing box for $2 at the Unitarian Universalist rummage sale. Also the donations from the alternative gift fair in the same church.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I guess I have to give a few hundred million voters a shout-out here. Yes they can.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Let’s award this one to every member of the Bush administration who didn’t see this recession coming.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The credit card company, is the short answer.

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

The election. The idea that Hillary Clinton could wind up on the Supreme Court. The selection of the presidential and vice-presidential puppies. Starting school. Getting a Wii. Living with J.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

Not exactly a song, but this is the year I became relentlessly hooked on multiple podcasts and re-established a close relationship with my old-school 2004 iPod.

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

a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? thinner
c) richer or poorer? poorer

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

Spending time outside in the summer. Visiting DC friends. Exercising. Writing.

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

Worrying -- fourth year in a row and probably forever. Also whining.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Watched “Seven Pounds” (awful) and went out for Chinese food (good) in Lancaster with my parents.

*(editing starts here)*

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Mad Men, Brothers and Sisters, Project Runway, Top Chef, How I Met Your Mother, The Wire. Thanks to Neflix and the Internets, I manage to watch a lot of TV for someone without cable.

25. What was the best book you read?
Elizabeth Crane’s “When the Messenger Is Hot.” According to GoodReads, my other five-star books were Kate Atkinson’s “When Will There Be Good News,” Calvin Trillin’s “About Alice,” Kiara Brinkman’s “Up High in the Trees,” Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” Ann Patchett’s “Run,” Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth,” Alice McDermott’s “After This,” Marjorie Williams’ “The Woman at the Washington Zoo” and Margaret Hathaway’s “The Year of the Goat.” Either I was participating in some grade inflation or it was a good reading year for me.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Anais Mitchell, from a friend at school.

27. What did you want and get?

A wonderful new home in all senses of the word.

28. What did you want and not get?

Everyone I love living in the same place.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I loved Doubt, Silver City and Rachel Getting Married.

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

31, and J and I made sushi.

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

Depressing that these are always the same. Just like last year: A published book with my name on the cover. A year with no cavities. Both seem equally impossible right now.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

Decimated, then rebuilt. I got rid of tons of old stuff when I moved, and now I seem to have replaced it all from the secondhand store that’s way too close for me not to be tempted into it every few weeks.

33. What kept you sane?

Aw, you.

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

Kind of in love with Don Draper on Mad Men, even though he is a jerk and I also do not know the actor’s name. Also still in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman and possibly Meryl Streep.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

Getting an annual physical will not cause a complete mental breakdown.

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

"’Cause we don’t want to be the ones/
To lie and cheat and slander/
So we hold each other up to a higher standard/
But I’ll tell you what, I’ll never try to make it hard/.
‘Cause when you’re hard just to be hard/
The only thing that’s hard is you.”

better late than clever

Kindly look to your left and observe the new 31 for 31 goals, posted just two short months after my 31st birthday. There are some old familiar faces (who wants to join me on the 20- and 30-mile bike rides?), but I cleared just over two-thirds of the 30 for 30 list. A few that I didn't make, like hiking Humpback Rock, were made somewhat irrelevant by pregnancy (Shannon) and relocation (me). A few were also irrelevant because my goals changed, and a few didn't happen either because I am not flush with cash or because I am completely lame.

Note that many of them are financially focused (fun!) and health-related (more fun!) Let me know if you think I missed anything or I'm heading for a train wreck.

just... one... more... quiz...

You know what's awesome after a full day of work (at a job, by the way, that is not quite as secure as it once was, due to The Economy You Know How It Is I Mean Don't WORRY About Your Position Exactly But Maybe Worry Just A Little Bit)? Reading 50 pages of "Foundations of Library and Information Science" and taking a quiz on it.

You know what else is awesome? Opening up an estimate from your insurance company that says it will cover exactly FOURTEEN DOLLARS of the proposed $4285 that your dentist wants to charge you for some really fun and exciting times in your future. Great timing.

Damn it. All I want to do is bake some pumpkin muffins and watch some crappy television on the Internet. I would like to do those things with a paying job and also with all my teeth. Is that too much to ask, universe? Actually, it sounds like a lot when phrased that way, so maybe it is.

you say it's your birthday

Shannon had her baby! Woo! I can't figure out exactly which date is wee Katie's birthday... Shannon called to say her water broke around 9:30, and then the she's-here-yay! text arrived at 1:10 a.m. Assuming that texting me was somehow not the first thing Ernie did the very moment after his daughter was born, does that mean she was born very late on the 10th or very early on the 11th? Mystery!

Anyway, she is adorable. I am not technologically adept enough to be able to get the photo from my phone onto the Internets, but I'm sure she will be posting photos soon. (Shannon, not Katie, although I'm also sure that Katie will surpass all of our technological know-how by her fifth birthday. Also, Barack Obama was the president-elect when she was born. Awesome.) In the meantime, in her honor, here is the meme Shannon tagged me for a little while ago.

Seven interesting/odd facts about me.
1. I like writing things in lists.
2. But I don't usually make to-do lists.
3. But I do have a list of the holiday gifts I am knitting.
4. I am obsessed with grammar but I have no trouble starting sentences with conjunctions. Ah, the contradictions.
5. I have alien connected toes.
6. I kind of wish I had liked science and math more in school, or at least tried harder to like it.
7. Are any of the things on this list really interesting or odd? Maybe just the toes thing.

Now for the eights.

8 Shows I Love to Watch:
This is hard for me to admit, but here goes:
Brothers & Sisters (shut up)
America's Next Top Model (seriously, I know)
How I Met Your Mother (slightly more socially acceptable)
Project Runway
Top Chef
uh... hm... that's all the current-ish shows... how about some old shows?
Six Feet Under
Friday Night Lights
A Different World

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:
1. Finished American Wife, which was decent.
2. Whined about having a cold.
3. Ate pretty much nothing but J.'s homemade chicken soup.
4. Started watching "Brother from Another Planet."
5. Started writing an assignment, an interview with a reference librarian.
6. Finished writing an article about an awesome online exhibit.
7. Got on the Wii Fit.
8. Played Word Twist on Facebook.

8 Places I Love to Eat (and the links to go with them):
Ithaca: Moosewood, Taste of Thai Express, ABC Cafe
DC: Udupi Palace, Bistrot du Coin, Oceanaire, Coppi's Organic
Everywhere: Chipotle

8 Things I Am Looking Forward to:
Visiting DC in a week and a half!
Thanksgiving with my family
Going to Lanky afterward
Meeting Katie
The first big snowstorm
My classes next semester
My library internship
The new season of Top Chef

8 Things on my Wish List:
Obama presidency Thoughtful and deliberate Obama administration
One published novel
OK, more than one published novel
More time to write
Fulfilling jobs for me and J. in the same place
New pots to replace the one(s) I've ruined in the last few weeks
Thai food

keystone kalls

If someone had told me a year ago that right now, I would be sitting in an apartment in Ithaca, halfway through my first semester of library school, no longer a journalist, I might not have believed it. But I definitely would not have believed that I'd be saying these words: "Hi, this is Gwen, and I'm a volunteer with the Barack Obama campaign."

I wouldn't have believed he'd win the nomination, and I wouldn't have believed that I'd ever do something like sign up to call voters in Pennsylvania on his behalf. It is... weird. Not me, not at all. But also oddly fun and extremely easy. I'm "phonebanking," as they say, from home -- you can sign up here -- and five seconds later you have a list of 25 people to call in the battleground state of your choice. You click one button and a suggested script pops up. Voila, you're a volunteer.

I've tried to call 75 people total, in two nights; I've spoken to about a third of them. Most of those people, most of you will be happy to note, are already Obama supporters. One of my lists was almost all elderly voters in Philadelphia, and talking to an 89-year-old woman who wants to discuss why Obama's right on Iraq is fairly awesome. Not one person on the Philly list said he or she was voting for McCain. In fact, I don't even think one of those people was undecided.

But then I got to the second list, which had mostly Harrisburg-area numbers on it. Several of these people said very clearly they were undecided, which sort of left me at this weird impasse and urgently calling Kelly for advice. The script has the question phrased as, "I'm calling to see if you have any questions about Barack Obama and if you've decided who you'll be supporting on Tuesday," or something similar. That seemed right to me, because it's awkward to launch right into TELL ME WHO YOU'RE VOTING FOR RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT, which is really the point of the call, along with seeing whether anyone needs a ride to the polls. But the order of that two-part question gives people a chance to say no, they have not decided which candidate but also no, they do not have any questions. And then you're like, "uh. do you, uh, want to talk about it?" like you are some kind of absentee therapist, and they've already told you they don't have questions, so... yeah. Where do you go from there?

Some interesting case studies:

• Very unfriendly 63-year-old woman who basically hung up in my ear after she said, "Yes, I know who I'm voting for," and I asked if she'd tell me or if she'd prefer not to, and the click came before it was out of my mouth.



• Very friendly man I talked to for an HOUR last night. He is a member of a group I truly thought didn't exist and was a product of the media's collective imagination: a Hillary supporter who switched to McCain. He finds Obama "scary" and "untrustworthy" and was actually fascinating to talk to.



• Nice woman whose daughter's name was on my list and who assured me that "everyone in her family and also the entire city of Harrisburg" was voting for Obama. When I told her that unfortunately that was not the case based on the people I'd called that night, she tried to convince me to give her the names and numbers of the McCain supporters and undecideds so that she could give them a piece of her mind.



• Somewhat nice man who told me that he is undecided because he's retired, and the most important thing to him was each candidate's "retirement spending plan." I tried to ask him what he meant by that exactly (do any of you know?), if he was talking about Social Security or something else, and he would not specify. He just said that it was the most important thing to him and the Obama and McCain plans were similar and therefore he couldn't decide. I'll confess to being rendered speechless by that one. Really, you can't think of one other thing that's important to you? Not the economy, not the war, not health care, not Sarah Palin's $22,000 hair... nothing? I briefly considered reading this David Sedaris essay to him, but then I thought the Obama campaign might not be helped by some random volunteer using profanity on the phone, so I refrained.


Anyway. I am kind of loving this whole experience, and it's made even more interesting by the fact that I never thought I'd do anything like it. I'm still holding on to my disillusioned journalistic cynicism and I still think the Democrats have plenty of time to mess this up, as well as plenty of faith that many voters in this country can disappoint me in myriad ways, so I'm not counting any chickens or putting any eggs in baskets or generally participating in any poultry-related metaphors until after Thanksgiving.

Chicken says, Leave me outta this.

seven lists a-listing

Much working! Much reading! Little blogging! All items in no particular order!

Seven awesome birthday gifts I received:
1. A handknit cashmere scarf from my favorite knitter, plus pumpkin swirl brownies
2. A Wii Fit
3. A mug with an electoral map that turns red states to blue when you pour hot water in it
4. An awesome iron skillet that fries things astoundingly well
5. Bananagrams, a word game so addictive I played it in a crowded bar
6. A journal in which you write a few lines every day for 10 years
7. Very nice Facebook messages, emails, phone calls, Hoops and YoYo e-cards, etc., plus a visit from my parents

Six pieces of garden news:
1. The mysterious orange tomatoes from my neighbor are Brandywines, and they were delicious, and I'll be planting them again
2. There was a nest of baby rats -- yes, rats -- beneath a sheet I'd put up to try to protect the tomato plants, and they were cute, and some of them probably aren't doing so well now, and I feel bad about that despite my profound ambivalence about rats in general
3. Parsley is undaunted by frost
4. Basil is not
5. Neither are the season's last tomatoes
6. Lettuce gets sweeter the longer it's allowed to grow

Five things I am looking forward to learning in the next few weeks:
1. How to make soap
2. How to make necklaces with beads and crocheted hemp
3. Who is the next president
4. Whether I am going to need to move to Israel/Canada/the moon because of No. 3
5. How long fall can hang on

Four dead things I recently saw while walking up the hill:
1. Squirrel
2. Crow (West Nile, anyone?)
3. Impossibly large worm
4. Used condom

Three things I should do that I don't want to do:
1. Laundry
2. Take giant terrifying spider spinning web in kitchen window outside in some sort of humane way
3. Call the Fidelity guy and figure out how to transfer my 401(k) that I don't want to think about

Two things I did recently that I'm proud of/excited about:
1. Got a flu shot
2. Found an African dance class

One new blog I created today:
1. Has Shannon Gone Into Labor Yet? (Dot Blogspot Dot Com)

the end of the summer

Here's the dying-tomato picture I've been avoiding: This isn't nearly as bad as it is now, even. It's seriously just barren sticks, with a few unripe fruits hanging off of them. And at first, the tomatoes themselves were healthy and fine, but toward the end they were getting some brown spots and weird rotten patches. No idea if that has anything to do with the wilt, but it isn't pretty.

Goodbye, parsley: Both this and the basil was so entrenched that I had to pull it out by the roots. The parsley -- flat-leaf Italian, for future reference -- is now mostly residing in my freezer.

The final big haul: Yes, those are trash bags full of basil. Two trash bags, and that was only about a third of it.

This sounds cheesy, but I feel like the land is sort of being reclaimed -- like the garden was on loan to me, and now it's time for me to give it back. At first, there were more animals invading, more bugs and snakes etc., but now it just feels like it's slowing down, dying, ready for fall.

Lessons for next year:

- Hey, I can grow stuff! Experiment more.

- Diversify. One mistake I made this year was feeling like the yellow squash seedlings came in a pack of four, so I have to plant all four, and I shouldn't waste the seedlings, and I shouldn't buy more if I can only put a few in the ground. But the small expense of throwing away a few seedlings would be worth it. On next year's wishlist: sugar snap peas, green beans, zucchini, broccoli, sungold tomatoes.

- Put in seedlings earlier. This one wasn't my fault this year, but the peas and the beans would have come to pass if I'd been able to plant in mid-May.

- Try some flowers. The accidental sunflower and the marigolds have been really fun.

- More herbs. Scratch the peppermint and halve the basil at least; increase the chives and dill; try spearmint, rosemary, cinnamon and Thai basil, sage, thyme.

- Fewer tomatoes. Duh. I'd keep two cherry and two grape, but I only need one, maybe two of the other varieties.

- Figure out what went wrong with the butternut squash and fix it.

- Plant bug-repellent plants earlier. I think the hot peppers and the marigolds did some good; not so sure about the lavender.

- Try the soil-burning method with black plastic bags to try to keep the squash bugs down.

- Pick earlier. Green tomatoes ripen faster off the vine than you think.

- Do an earlier second planting. I could have gotten the buttercrunch lettuce in right after the arugula was finished, and it would have had an extra few weeks.

Meanwhile, post-frost, things are still happening. No one seems to have notified the cherry and grape tomato plants that it's getting cold, and they're still going strong. The lettuce is also coming up, although I'm not crazy about the way it tastes... it seems a little bitter, and research suggests it might be because it's later in the season.

But it's apparent that it's drawing to a close. Goodbye, garden! I'll miss you. Until next year.

when jack frost comes a-nipping (bort bort bort!)

Dum da dum! Did the frost warning yesterday night mean certain death for the garden? Did it actually get below freezing? Did the bedsheets protect some of the tomato plants and the new baby lettuce sprouts? Did the remaining basil perish? Does the snake live on?

Tune in next time for these exciting updates! Plus many long-overdue photos of the ravages of the evil wilt and a list of things to do differently next year. (Sneak preview: Don't plant 16 tomoato seedlings, go lighter on the basil and parsley and heavier on the dill and chives, get the bug-repelling plants in earlier.)

But tonight, J. and I came home early from a really nice barbeque at a new friend's house to do more schoolwork. Instead, I've been watching Swedish Chef videos. Of course. I blame Shannon, who totally started it with all her Muppet links, although I haven't figured out yet how I can blame her for the ENTIRE HOUR I've spent searching YouTube for more.

De chickie in de baskie! This was live TV... how did he throw the chickie right in there on the first and only try?


Fun Muppet trivia: Jim Henson did the voice and the mouth of the Swedish Chef, but those are Frank Oz's hands -- the Chef was the first Muppet that needed two people to operate him. The very first time he appeared, Frank Oz was trying to make Jim Henson laugh by doing ridiculous things with his hands, and thus the awesomeness was born.

How did they do this one? Strings from the ceiling? Cut-out in the table?


Also? "Bort" (as in "bort bort bort!" at the end of his theme song, when he throws whatever's in his hands) means "away" in Swedish.

Tort-leh! I swear, I remember watching this one as a little kid:


Consider de loobstairs (why are they Mexican?!):


OK, last one -- chocolat moose:


There's a Sarah Palin/moose-hunting joke in there somewhere. The Swedish Chef has more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin!

a post not about tomatoes

Why Dan Savage is a genius:

... Sarah Palin is pleased that her daughter made the decision—on her own—to keep the baby.

But Sarah Palin doesn't believe that other girls should be able to make their own decisions. Sarah Palin believes abortion should be illegal in almost every instance—including rape and incest. So Bristol Palin is being celebrated for making a choice that Sarah Palin would like to take away from all other American women. Apparently, today's GOP believes that choice is a special right reserved for the wayward daughters of Republican elected officials.

I would vote for him for president in a heartbeat. I also had a whole ridiculous political entry planned in my head about Palin and book-banning thing and the media and this and that and blah, but a friend's husband was unexpectedly in town for dinner -- a lovely and pleasant surprise I am not complaining about, but I told myself I'd get a chunk of reading done tonight so I could do laundry and make tomato sauce* guilt-free for much of tomorrow, and then go to guilt-free yoga and guilt-free brunch with a new friend on Sunday. So, in the spirit of guilt-avoidance, I will take my leave.

Savage for President 2016. (Here's hoping there will be an incumbent Democrat in 2012, please. for heaven's sake.)

*oops! one tomato mention

sweet sixteen

So, I suppose we knew this day would come: I believe the technical term for that would be a whole hell of a lot of tomatoes. Keep in mind that that's only the haul I picked on Sunday; there were still tomatoes in the fridge that I'd picked on Wednesday, and I think we still had some from the weekend before waiting to be used.

Note that almost all the green tomatoes are ripe green zebras (which are pretty delicious), not unripe tomatoes. Also note that there is a lot more fruit still ripening on the dead-looking plants. The cherries and grapes are slightly closer to being tapped out, although one of the grape plants is inexplicably still flowering. The three mystery plants from my neighbor, which I have determined are heirlooms, have produced exactly zero ripe tomatoes. All of which is to say, there are a lot more tomatoes to come.

No complaints, though -- it's actually pretty fun, and theoretically, I knew what I was getting into when I planted 16 tomato plants. But I think it's no coincidence that I keep forgetting my camera when I go to the garden these days... my subconscious doesn't want to document how pitifully sad it looks. Tomato plants totally fried despite the red ripe fruit, cilantro and mint and oregano all gone to seed, significant squash bug damage. And the butternut squash plants seem to have the same disease as the tomatoes, somehow, even though I think wilt is just a tomato disease. There are three biggish butternut squash, but they don't seem anywhere close to ripe. The basil is still thriving, although I'm told it goes bitter if you leave it too long and I need to figure out what to do with, like, half an acre of the stuff after I'm totally pesto-ed out. Oh, and the new planting of lettuce is doing OK too, so there's hope for a full salad yet.

Here is my favorite tomato, and yes I had a favorite tomato. It was one of the keepsakes and it was just so freaking huge the whole time, growing weirdly trapped at the very bottom of a plant, sandwiched between seven other tomatoes that aren't ripe yet. His name is Giant Tomato: Please ignore the fact that I appear to be making out with Giant Tomato. No tomatoes were harmed in the taking of this photo.

J. displays Giant Tomato's fabled giantness and carefully cultivated sense of balance: The question now is, what do we do with him? I cooked up a quadruple batch of fresh tomato soup that is pretty good (barely put a dent in the supply), but I feel like Giant Tomato needs something more auspicious and solemn, like a sonnet composed in his honor or a memorial erected in the town square.

september's still summer but the nights are like fall

(Is 2 1/2 hours too far to drive to see Girlyman in November? No? Good.)

Last week, I started out with this many tomatoes, and I was very proud:

On Sunday, during the marvelous visit from the marvelous H., we picked this many tomatoes:

Today, there are this many tomatoes:

The fruit on the tomato plants are beautiful, but the plants themselves are suffering. They have bacterial wilt, according to my new entomologist friend who came out to the garden last week. They look awful -- they look DEAD, really. On the plant that's the most affected, pretty much every leaf is brown and crispy. And at least half the leaves are dead on every tomato plant except the cherries and grapes, which are just starting to show signs of the dreaded disease.

I'd tried to be careful about not letting the plants touch, but it didn't seem to do much. There's some small comfort to be found in the fact that everyone's tomato plants in the whole community garden seem to be brown and crispy as well, and that my friend says it's carried in the soil and there's nothing you can do and it shouldn't affect the fruit that's already on the plants because they're fed through the stems... but it's a little hard to watch the lush green plants go this way.

Ah well, I will have to eat some spaghetti or something to compensate. Send sauce recipes that do not involve canning or blanching or anything difficult.

THERE'S A MOTHERF-ING SNAKE IN THIS MOTHER-FING GARDEN*

Squash plants, very dense, many leaves and thick stems etc., killing more damn squash bugs, pulling stubborn weeds, disturbing thick growth in middle of plant, sudden rustling, feel SOMETHING MOVING ON OWN FOOT, look down, SNAKE MOVING OVER FOOT, snake not all that small, snake actually quite long, oh my god, gasping very loudly**, snake disappearing into gigantic weeds at end of garden, no more snake, still somewhat shell-shocked, no one around to exclaim to about snake.

Probably garter snake, right? Looked something like this:
Know those snakes are not poisonous, know snakes are actually helpful in gardens, know they are nothing to be scared of, know they eat mice and possibly bugs and other animals that are bad for gardens, know that birds are scared of them. Fine fine. Not necessarily wanting snake to go away and am perfectly happy if snake wants to live in harmony with the squash but perhaps not on own FOOT which is attached to own BODY and please keep hands/tail/snakeitude to ONESELF PLEASE SNAKE THANK YOU OK.

---

*Normally, I am something of a supporter of that word and I wouldn't hesitate to write it out in the right context, but this is a family-friendly blog.

**I was actually much more startled by the frog, which jumped very suddenly because I probably scared it. I think I yelped loudly (rather than gasping loudly) when that happened. But please note the frog did not physically touch me. Also the frog then sat still, trying to blend into a tomato plant and pretending it didn't exist, so I was able to sort of understand what had happened -- quite unlike our parsel-tongue friend who slithered away before I could get a good look.

you say tomato, i say yes please

A day I have been waiting for (and never quite believed would come) since I planted the garden: The day I walk out with a big old bowl of STUFF -- basil, parsley, chives, green bell pepper, ripe cherry and grape tomatoes, five or six green tomatoes, yum.

Grape and cherry tomatoes have officially arrived, enough that I don't eat all three of the ripe ones before I get in the car. Not to be immodest, but they're awfully good, too... very sweet, and the skins somehow seem thinner than regular tomatoes so that they kind of pop when you bite down. Also, they are really good when they're warm from the sun. Yum.

All this is not to say that there aren't some tomato-related problems. Note the color: None of the full-sized tomatoes are even close to ripe. They must have lost their little standard-issue tomato calendars, because they seem not to realize that it is the middle of August, in theory the warmest that the weather is going to get, and that means they need to stop it with this green nonsense and turn red already. But I don't blame them for being confused, because the weather here is distinctly un-warm... it doesn't break 80 most days, which I think is unusually cool even for Ithaca, and I'm wondering if the tomatoes aren't a little confused.

Also in this category is this guy: There are now three butternut squash, all of which are the proper shape of butternut squash but are the size of a mass-market paperback book -- again, a little worried it's going to start getting cold before these guys are actually ripe. Moronically, I think I broke one of them off their stems yesterday when I was trying to get a bug off of it. Not sure if it's broken the whole way through, but even if it doesn't do the fruit in entirely, it that isn't going to speed up the ripening process.

The summer squash are not suffering the same fate: That's probably the fifth or sixth nearly full-size squash, yay! We've eaten three or four of them already and even the little runty plant is starting to produce little runty fruit. Those damn squash bugs are still waxing and waning, sometimes with a bunch of adults and eggs on the leaves and sometimes nowhere to be found. That photo also shows the slightly troubling weird white stuff on the leaves... not sure if that is bug-related or what.

Also in the news of the troubling, I did not document this photographically, but the tomato plants definitely have a number of yellowing or dead leaves on the bottoms of the plants. Too much rain? Air flow problems? Overabundance of unripe fruit sucking away all the nutrients and attention from the rest of the plant? It's seriously hard to overestimate just how many unripe tomatoes are on these plants... all of them but the ones in the biggest cages are constantly falling over, the drama queens, no matter how many stakes I add to prop them up. On the list for things I've learned for the next garden will be ALWAYS buy the biggest cages, and plant the seedlings farther apart so that you can walk between the giants without stepping on anyone.

Let's see, what else... oh yes: New sprouts! I replanted on the spot where the arugula (RIP) used to be after I got two free packets of buttercrunch lettuce, with no big expectation that a second planting would work in this temperature. But the lettuce is actually sprouting in a shorter time than the packet said it would take the seeds to germinate -- I think the cool weather is actually working in my favor, here, and these guys think it's spring.

That's it! I am going to do a big post at some point about the changes I'm going to make in my next garden, but for this year, I think we're in the heyday and it's pretty fun.

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.