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Dumpling

Lunatic

Always Recycle TO THE EXTREME!

Today I tweeted "I just figured out that I can use my old tax documents as a weed barrier under my mulch." As you can see that wasn't an idle threat. I like this idea much better than throwing them all on the burn pile.

I Gardened Today

It's like a miracle! My schedule and the weather both smiled on me today.

And look what I found - a September asparagus!

I didn't know there was such a thing. I'm not going to eat it out of respect for its survival abilities.

I weeded out the herb/rose garden.

I used this photo because I'm proud of the giant pile of weeds I amassed on the tarp.

Here you can see the ground I covered (or uncovered) better:

The roses look terrible for the most part. This summer was too wet for them and because I didn't have time to clear around them the air circulation was poor. I hope they recover next year. Similar story for the lavender.

I also found fragments of the discarded skin of a huge snake. I never saw the snake itself though, much to my disappointment. I wanted to see if it would creep me out with its size. Small snakes don't creep me out.

I was creeped out by a rather aggressive worm, come to think of it. It burrowed furiously towards my gloved hand rather than running away. Yeeee. I was glad I was wearing gloves.

Tomorrow I mulch. Very exciting.

Back to Making - At Last

Here is a current project I'm working on: I'm knitting two cabled socks on one circular needle. They're going to be knee socks. I've kind of been dragging my feet on this project, I'm not sure why.

One good thing about knitting socks this way is that I know these socks will be exactly the same in all measurements. Working toe-up means I'll be able to tell in time if I'm running out of yarn.

The only bad thing about working this way is that it feels like it takes unusually long to finish a round for sock knitting. I have to remind myself that it's really a double round, maybe more like a sweater than a sock.

Pumpkin Pecan Pancakes

September first arrived in Vermont brisk and beautiful. It was forty degrees out and sunny when I woke up this morning. A perfect morning for pumpkin pecan pancakes.

Jenn found the recipe on Marthastewart.com (by the way, if you're ever trying to find something on that site their search engine SUX. You're better off just googling it) I added the pecans. Thanks Jenn!

Hoopin'

My mother-in-law (a very fun woman) gave me the Acacia catalog last time we were visiting my in-laws in Florida. It's mostly yoga clothes, Aisianesque home decor items and alternative-y work out dvds (I'm not at all sure how my mother-in-law got on their mailing list)

That is where I discovered hooping. Hooping, it turns out, is kind of a thing. Did you know? I didn't. Hoopnotica is featured in the Acacia catalog. In my area there's Boston Hoop Troop. Maybe I'll take some classes with them. Good hoopers are hypnotic.

It looked fun so I ordered the instructional dvds and a travel hoop. Turns out it is fun. I love it! Every morning I wake up psyched that I can hoop today (unless it's raining) I'm not good at it yet but I'm feeling determined.

Below you can see Pete's hooping debut. I already posted mine on Facebook.

He's got kind of a horsey-riding style.

My Crush

Here it is, the Mustang I rented when I was visiting my parents earlier this month. I shouldn't say I fell in love with it. It was more of an infatuation. I was really sad to see it go when I dropped it back off at Hertz. I had a TON of fun driving that car.

Still No Car Photos

Ms. Observant just noticed that she never posted one word about the closing on her house.

I'll tell you right now we were a little bit sad but overwhelmingly relieved. It was a great house and we loved living there. Now we don't live there and that's completely okay. It's not even a little bit weird, possibly because we still haven't had time to think about it too much.

If we go on like this we might not ever think it's weird!

One thing I may have learned (you know how slippery lessons can be) is that I don't want to live in a big house again. I'd live in a sort-of big house as long as I could afford to have someone else come and clean it regularly.

Since we still have Vermont (with a clogged sink in the bathroom upstairs among other things) we still have maintenance issues and plenty of them. But maybe we've cut them in half. We no longer have tenants and that's a load off.

Of course you can't shirk all of life's hassles. Then you'd be dead - or as good as. I can dream though.

My dream: Making making making all day long, only stopping to eat, have fun with interesting people, play with my dog, go swimming in the ocean (or have a snowball fight or something) read a book, learn some languages, garden, meet more interesting people, daydream, nap...okay, there'd be a fair amount of stopping. Let's call it fifty-fifty, making plus activities.

Enough daydreaming. Time to strategize for the future! (And eat a piece of apple pie)

Sorry About The Gap

Wow, it's been over a month since I last posted. Sorry about that. Here's a post for today. I can't swear that this marks the start of a posting roll though.

All of us east coasters (Pete, Fay and I) are back from CA. Dad's surgery went well though we haven't received the biopsy results yet. We even managed to have some fun.

Mom and I did some shopping and went to the beach. Dad took us all to the hang glider/parasailing launch point near the Salk Institute. The young 'uns went to the Whaling Bar more than once.

Here's a not very informative photo of the Whaling Bar. In real life to the right of the white flowers in the picture is another room the mirror image of the one you can see only it's all dining room, no bar. That room has a fireplace flanked by life-sized ceramic leopards.

Don't let me forget Mr. Taco! I went there at least three times.

I also fell in love with a car. I never thought it would happen to me. Pete took some pictures which I hope to post soon.

Fay even had a good time mooching off of extra people and terrorizing her doggie cousins (my brother and Sarah's dogs) John is an Australian Cattle Dog and Atlas is a Golden Retriever. If there was food around Fay would try to kill them. Fortunately for her they were very nice and ran away from her. They were terrified of her.

The only reason I can think of for their fear of her is that they have no clue in hell what she is - I mean, she's a fraction of their size. Sometimes she has wheels, sometimes she drags herself around at top speed like a seal. She's incontinent and on so much medication I imagine she smells really weird to them. Plus she's crazy fierce - like a lunatic. That's got to be intimidating. She's also unpredictable: most of the time she's peaceful and friendly. I don't think they clued in to the fact that she was only homicidal around food. I just wish I'd got some video (it's not video, it's not "footage," what is it - a movie?) of her in action for her neurologist who would have been very proud of her.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but California always weirds me out. Maybe it's my own sense of unworthiness, like I think this place is too beautiful for me to ever belong there. I don't know, it's beautiful but it's awfully built up and paved. Maybe it's just that the topography and climate are so unlike what is familiar to me. I just feel when I'm there that nothing is real.

I wonder if I put extra pressure on California because I think I'll probably live there one day? I didn't think any of those things about other places like Santorini or Ireland or Rome or St. Lucia or Vero Beach. Well I'm not going to figure it out tonight.

So now that our major events of the first half of 2009 are over - the house is gone and I'm back from California - well, now what's going to happen? Now what am I going to do?

Too Much Stuff

This move has consumed my life. We're still organizing, tossing, donating, packing and driving.

I hope I've learned something important though: I want to be sure to appreciate the nice things I have rather than just concentrating on achieving the next goal. I've taken so much in my life for granted while I focused on the things I wanted to bring in to my life, let a lot of potentially rewarding things slide. I'm hoping to turn over a new leaf about that.

We close on the house in about ten days. It will be empty and clean. The room in the barn where I work out and have my sewing machine set up will be stuffed with boxes and unusable for anything besides storage. Boxes tower in the rooms of the Vermont house.

That will have to wait though because I'll be heading for California the minute this move is settled. My dad's mouth cancer is back.

I know - he just got out of the hospital.

Dad was treated for mouth cancer back in the late nineties. He was cancer free for over ten years. Unfortunately the original treatment damaged his mouth and that damage will complicate his recovery from this next round of treatment.

I want to make it out there in time to spend some time with him and my mom before he has to recover from anything else. No doubt I'll be there during and after too.

Stupid cancer.

But that's a worry for next week. This week it's hauling another couple of carloads to Vermont then back to Brookline to fill up a dumpster then maybe rent another truck to move out the very last stuff.

The light's at the end of the tunnel that leads to the next tunnel.

!@#$%&*!

Pete and I are in the middle of our last push for emptying the house in Brookline.  As I go through the last of our belongings I can't seem to stop the stream of obscenities that is coursing through my brain.

We have SO MUCH STUFF that we don't need that I can't figure out how to part with.  

Sensible Me: "Goodwill."

Ridiculous Me: "But the tiger on that mug is SO CUTE and if I give away the set without that mug then nobody will want it."

SM:  "Give them all away."

RM:  "Bbbbut..."

SM:  "Loser."

RM:  "Screw you!"

SM + RM:  "!@#$%&*!@#$%&*@^#!@%&*#@~!" etc.

See - I'm really getting somewhere.  

Anyone need a gravy boat and matching butter dish?

Certain Disgusting Bugs

I've been away. Now I have a backlog of things to write about. Unfortunately I'm really beat right now so I'll just tell you about my most recent gardening.

When I got up to Vermont a couple of days ago I saw that I had lily leaf beetle larvae the size of winnebagos (the vehicles) chomping down my lily buds. Honestly if I hadn't seen them in the act I would have blamed deer. No exaggeration.

Lily leaf beetle larvae have to be the most disgusting insects on the planet. They are revolting and vile. I don't like 'em. I like most bugs but these are just nasty.

I swiped this photo from a UMass website. The page has everything you need to know about lily leaf beetles on it, including photos of the much less revolting (actually rather attractive looking) adult form.

As you can see the larva itself is bad enough (gross!) but while it's up to its evil business of killing the hell out of your beautiful lilies it is also crapping all over itself to ward off predators. That's fine and dandy in Asia where it actually has predators but totally unnecessary here.

So this weekend's gardening consisted almost solely of me going around with a container of soapy water and flicking the nasty grubs off of my lilies.

I also did some reconnaissance and I hope to have time to post some photos tomorrow.