Five Minutes of Good Things

In no particular order:

• My grades are turned in.  I don't have to teach again until AUGUST 28. 
• Justina Ireland's Dread Nation, which will appear later in a book reviews post, but it was SO GOOD.
• I went and planted, no joke, four dozen flowering things at Sweetpea's preschool today, and am looking forward to seeing them grow.
• My mother is coming tomorrow just to do fun things with me.
• I'm still transcribing things for the Anti-Slavery Manuscripts project and it's neat and I feel I have a valuable skill to offer (I am actually trained in reading holograph letters!)
• This summer I am taking the children to the beach; none of them has ever seen the ocean (we lived in the Midwest, y'all) and it will be exciting!
• I finally got my serger working and then I sewed myself a dress from a comfy knit and it was sooooo fast.
• I BOUGHT MYSELF A TREE PEONY!!!!!! (They were tragically out of the stripey ones but clearly this means I should go back next spring and get another.)
• I helped a good friend re-design her front yard and we planted it all and it already looks amazing. 
• I learned of this delightful nursery which sells about 700 varieties of irises.
• I put together an order of fancy daffodils for me + front-yard-redesign friend.
• I planted some lovely heirloom beans!  My perennial onions came up and are growing!  (If anyone has an Ito'i onion to sell me.... I tried to order one and they sent me bunching onions instead!) And so are my cucumbers!
• All the garlics I planted in the fall are growing with great enthusiasm.
• Someone asked me about what fruit trees to plant and I was able to give them good advice!
• My apples and my Nanking cherries have set fruit!
• All my flowers are flowering all over the place and it brings me joy.  I'll post a picture some time.
• (If all of these seem like they're about plants it's because I really, really love plants.)

What's good with you?

Daily Write It Out: Gardening as Therapy

With regard to my feelings of trapped misery, I have to say that gardening helps.  On good days, when Bug isn't home and Sweetpea consents to sleep Not On Boob, I ignore the mountain of cooking, housework, and other boring adult chores, and go outside with a trowel.  Friday I planted two lilacs, a rhubarb, and three thornless blackberries; put down mulch; pickaxed a few stumps out; and sprayed the poison ivy* for the Nth time.  Earlier in the week I put in three currant bushes, 100 okra seeds, and some hyacinth beans.**  For some reason, this largely irresponsible digging-in-the-dirt makes me feel a great deal better about life.  (Probably some combination of sunlight, fresh air, things-that-aren't-children to do, and exercise.)

My theory is, therapy would cost me $25 a week (copay + babysitting) whereas $25 a week can buy a LOT of plants.  And most of my plants are free!  So clearly this is a perfectly reasonable outlet.

(Also we have 0.9 acres, and when we moved in there were three scrubby barberries planted in full shade and two scrubby rhododendrons planted in full sun.  CLEARLY it needs a lot of gardening.)

* The only thing on which I use nasty herbicides.  Dr. S requires steroids when exposed to poison ivy, so... sorry, environment.  Everything else gets pickaxed out.

** In addition to our Major Budget Item Landscaping, I've been scrounging plants from everywhere.  Friends, neighbors, things growing by the side of the road, brush piles, stuff set out for trash day, things that rooted themselves.  Also my dad brings me plants periodically, including two rhubarb crowns and several dozen hot peppers and a bunch of tomatoes.  The lilacs were runner-ing into my yard and the blackberries were from the garden I work in with my friend C- they'd escaped into the veggie beds.  Bought and rooted the currant cuttings; okra seeds from Experimental Farm Network; hyacinth beans collected last year from the library's garden beds.  Dr. S insists that I have a plant problem.  I don't see why it's a problem.

FMB: Assorted Updates

• I stepped on one of our hazelnut twigs (tree-to-be) and another died in the exceptionally cold winter.  BAH.  
• The mastitis is maybe... mostly gone?  Something is still not quite right in the nipple area but overall, a big improvement.  I took a third week of antibiotics that I had laying around (not even expired!) without arguing with the doctor about it, because I am officially the World's Worst Patient.
• I know that many people are not into sleep training but I am counting down the days until this child is old enough that I do NOT have to nurse her all night.
• That said, she is still sweet and adorable and a complete chub ball and she laughs and cuddles and loves to eat.  Also she thinks her brothers are hilarious, which they find charming.  
• Today I took a nap.  I kicked everyone else out of the house and SLEPT.
• Fatigue makes me deeply unsympathetic to my spouse, which I realize is unkind, but... I haven't slept more than a few hours in a row in SIX MONTHS.  So, you lose.
• Gardening!  So much gardening.  Every afternoon I go work on my flower garden.  Every weekend I go do things at the vegetable garden.
• Eventually planting season will be over and I will be forced to do housework again.
• Re: this last, the washer sprung a leak and now requires repair.  You know who really needs a washer?  Three small children and two adults.
• I have just now restrained myself from late night fruit tree buying.  See my superhuman restraint?
• I almost never have access to a computer-with-keyboard because the above, plus the kids, suck up all my time.  
• I must harass the Chem department head about how surely he would like to hire me again in the fall. SURELY.  
• Because it is amazing to be paid for time away from my children.  

More on Gardening, and Metaphorically on Friendship

It turns out that when you round up half the parents (mostly mothers, but the occasional father) of preschool-aged children in a very small town, you get a very motley group.  I did not previously know any full-time waitresses.  Nor magazine editors from the Southernmost Swamp by way of Movieland, USA.  And now I do!  I choose to find it fantastic and delightful instead of really, really surreal.

A friend gave us some spare plants for our garden, and said they were squash, but they turn out to be zucchini instead.  Here, everyone we know: have the gift of zucchini.  We have nine plants of it.

Right of the trellises: Only part of the zucchini.  The trellises are 4 feet tall. Oh, dear.

Someone I know here, probably one of the people I like best, happened to show me her family's prepper stash the other week, including more weapons and ammo than I have seen outside a large gun store.*   NOT what I was expecting.

We drew up a plan for our garden, but some of the plants died, and then there was an incident with tomato plant buying in which we failed to consult each other (there are about 30 now... maybe 40), and then the corn got eaten by crows and we put in more cucumbers, which was probably ill-advised.  And also two of us are pregnant and so the squash patch ended up a little haphazard, and the bunnies ate a couple of them, plus we didn't label which ones were butternut and which ones were cantaloupe.**  Besides - that patty pan squash totally said it was bush-type on the packet, and yet, it is vining up a trellis as we speak.

The bed that is mine, all mine.  Patty pan squash trellis in front. The obsessive block system is in NO WAY reflective of my personality, y'hear?

The person who owns the garden is not someone I would have thought I had a lot in common with.  She's my opposite in terms of personality - and also a warm, loving, generous person who also likes to garden. Sometimes things that aren't what I planned turn out okay!  Sometimes people's lives intersect at strange places and it's still an interesting relationship.

(Sometimes your despair at someone else's strawberry patch leads you to suggest that on Sunday, you could get together, dig up the whole thing, and replant the crowns the RIGHT way.  I swear, it'll grow better this way.  Fertilize!  And add lime, the soil here is CLAY!)

I am now extremely grateful for my slightly desperate, boredom-inspired chatting up of every random stranger in town. My life here growing, although I hope  less like the zucchini (why is it so big?  why did I plant so many?  what was I thinking? I don't even like zucchini!) and more like the cucumbers (in an orderly and directed, yet still organic, fashion).

This last year has been awful in so many different ways and - unexpected bonus child aside - I'm still holding out hope that it's starting to get better.

* The question perhaps arises, how many gun stores have I been in?  Well, they sell guns at Walmart down here.  Plus, a lot of good hiking/camping gear at gun shops.  And if you want a decent pocketknife - yes, I carry that around; yes, it's legal - your local huntin' an' fishin' store is the best bet. 
** When they set fruit I am sure we will be able to tell the difference, so...

In Which I Try Very Hard To Be Cheerful (For Five Minutes At Least)

Our garden is lovely.  We picked a ton of leafy green things today and I managed to eat a chard omelette for lunch while C. fed my children home-made pizza.  Pretty soon we will be giving striped Italian zucchini to everyone we know. Also, if the cucumbers grow well, everyone within 100 miles is getting holiday gifts of pickles.

I am still in pain but trying to figure it out.  I am still nauseous but the drugs help.  I am still really angry and depressed but trying to figure out why so I can work through it.  (If I can't figure out why, I can't examine my feelings, and I can't accept them.  I feel a little stuck.  Maybe... I'm angry because I'm frightened and angry is easier to countenance?  And, of course, I'm depressed because I feel powerless.)

The interview-y people are finally interviewing me!  So at least perhaps that will be resolved.  Eventually.  (University policy requires that they interview two people on campus, so there's that.)  I am resolutely not worrying about what will happen if they DO hire me - there are only three daycares in town, and one is full already.

I have finally mastered a recipe for gluten-free chocolate crinkles that actually taste mostly right!  They are not in any way healthy, but they are delicious.  We made Yuppie Hamburger Helper for dinner last night, and it was delicious.  It's the natural successor of Desperation Tofu.  Here, have a recipe:

Yuppie Hamburger Helper (Mostly Vegetarian Dinner, of Things in Cans That I Can Buy at Walmart, Which Takes 20 Minutes)

2 lbs pasta (corn pasta, rice pasta, regular pasta)

Your choice of the following, though I prefer all:
Jar of marinated artichoke hearts
Can of cannellini beans
A fresh tomato or some sun-dried tomatoes
A large jar of roasted red peppers+
Some Kalamata olives
Fresh peppers, sweet onions, garlic, basil, parsley, rosemary, capers, whatever...
(Optional: Filet of salmon, preferably fresh)
(Also optional: spinach, kale, baby kale, or anything green and leafy that's good cooked)

(Yes, I can actually buy all these things at Walmart, except the fresh salmon.)

Put some water on to boil.  Meanwhile, if you want fish, put your salmon on some parchment paper, sprinkle some salt and pepper and rosemary on it, wrap it up, put it in the oven at 350 F, and bake until done..  Cook your pasta.  If you're using onions, saute them.  Chop up your artichokes, tomato, peppers, olives, fresh peppers, and whatever spices/ herbs/ fresh stuff you're using.  Drain the beans.  When the pasta is done, put it in a colander, put a little olive oil in the bottom of your pasta pot, throw in the green stuff if you're using it, toss the pasta on top, then mix in all the rest of the vegetable ingredients.  Serve with salmon on top, or not.

And Now For Something More Cheerful

A couple weeks ago, someone on the main road trimmed their bamboo.  I sat my children down on their lawn, gave them each a pole to 'fish' with, took off all the side branches with my hand clippers, loaded it all into the passenger side window of my Honda-Civic-plus-two-carseats, and drove it over to the garden a friend is generously sharing with us.

This week, someone else in town cut down a huge pile of huge (HUGE) bamboo stems, each about twenty feet long.  One of my new gardening pals and I, over the course of two days, with two small children in tow, sat by the side of the road with our clipper collection, whacked off all the side branches, chopped it into manageable lengths, and loaded it into her truck.  Now we have all the bamboo for poles and stakes and trellises and a tipi in her backyard.  For free!

(Two people of our acquaintance drove by yesterday while we were doing this and texted my friend, "What ARE you DOING?"  Oh, small towns.)

Also, last week, the local grocery store was giving away all the rest of their seeds.  For free!  And I told some friends and we all got free seeds!  (They're remodeling and apparently couldn't be bothered to care.)