Gardening, Cleopatra, The Desert, etc.
1. It’s new planting season for my garden, but I’m having trouble emotionally parting with the old one. It just seems wrong. I’ve spent all of these months nurturing my eggplant into this enormous rambling thing that’s taken over half of my garden box and now I’m just supposed to pull it up and throw it away?
It just seems cruel. And what about my giant bush of basil?
I’m not supposed to dig that up, am I? Even the non-producing tomatoes and pepper plants are tall and beautiful (ok, less so the tomato). Who am I, Dr. Kevorkian? I don’t know if I have the emotional stamina for this gardening stuff. What kind of heartless monster can be watering and baby-sitting and nurturing something one minute, and then just violently uprooting and heartlessly abandoning it to the recycle bin the next?
You gardeners are a fickle and black-hearted bunch, aren’t you?
2. I rented movies for Jason and me this weekend because we’re in that horrible transitional week when summer TV has all ended and fall TV hasn’t started yet. I hate transitional week.
Because I remembered reading something favorable about it in Entertainment Weekly when it first came out and because I usually dig Michelle Williams, I picked up the movie, Blue Valentine. Before we watched this movie, I used to think I was sort of into indie films that are a little deeper and out there. Turns out this is just not at all true.
Turns out I actually like moderately quirky indie movies with generally happy endings that turn out to really be totally mainstream. You know, like Garden State and Little Miss Sunshine. However, I have absolutely not the stomach for well acted, beautifully shot and hideously realistic and depressing depictions of a failing marriage.
I realize this means I’m even less hip and intellectual that I thought I was. I should probably just start wearing mom jeans now.
3. Have I mentioned I love the desert, lately?
It rained a week or so ago and the weird snaking wash that runs beside the freeway near our house filled with water briefly. Now the bed is dry, but we’ve got grass for a short time along the path the water took.
The thing about the desert is that the harsh, spiky, brown, desolate back drop is the perfect frame for the persevering beauty. Places like Oregon and Hawaii are littered with color and flowers and delicately gorgeous plants; so much so that pretty kind of becomes the norm. Here it’s impossible not to be amazed and enchanted by the small, stunning things that poke through the brown. Or at least it’s impossible for me.
4. Yesterday after we’d sent them upstairs to play while we finished making dinner, Gray and Jonas came down with a project they’d been working on. This is Gray’s ‘cumputre’ (he’s still working on his spelling skilz. Although honestly, without spell-check I’m not sure I would be much better. Spelling is not one of my God-given talents. I’ve already tried to put 2 ts in ‘water’ twice while writing this post. It’s possible the poor kid is genetically doomed):
It’s a laptop, natch. He’s opted not for the boring old traditional qwerty keyboard, but instead for the repeating ABC version, because he likes to think outside the box.
I swear sometimes I just want to crack that little noggin of his open like a pinata so I can see all the gorgeous creative confetti come spilling out. (That’s not weird, is it?)
5. I was buying cards at my favorite card store last week when I came across one I felt compelled to purchase and give to Jason. It had the Cleopatra quote:
Fool! Don’t you see now that I could have poisoned you a hundred times had I been able to live without you.
On the front and was blank inside. I gave it to him yesterday, but I don’t think he took it as the compliment I meant it. He responded, “Uh… thanks for not poisoning me?”
I only meant that while I often feel I could strangle him with my bare hands, I know if I did it would mean I’d have to live without him, which would be unacceptable, of course. I mean, really, how could I say ‘I love you’ more clearly?