laurenisms

Ruby and I ran a block on our walk tonight, in work clothes and trench coat and un-ponytailed flying hair, just for the joy of spring. Tomorrow I will be requesting the day off because my daffodils announce that they will be blooming in the morning and I would like to be with them on their special day.

I have gone back to school! I am learning about research methods and statistics. It is interesting and I am learning a lot, even though it is for four hours on Monday nights, and even though I have like 250 pages of reading this week. Boo, textbooks.
Ultimately, one hopes, after three more terms, this schooling will result in a certificate in User-Centered Design. And then I will get a raise. One hopes.

Busy stuff lately. Classes all over the place — free jewelry class, hot yoga with work folks, regular school class — and shows — Chuckanut, Jesse Sykes — and folks coming and going — G’s mom and stepdad, my mom, Arlie. Soon I am headed to a conference in BC, and then after that I will have no free weekends until June.

(song: “The Rain King,” Counting Crows)

Last night I went for a run with the dogsters and I could have sworn it was spring. Could have sworn it so much that we were both independently worrying about getting seedlings started. (G. and I, that is, worrying, not the dogsters. The dogs said YAY RUNNING ZOMG RUN RUN YAY RUN ZOMG, and not much else.) It is about time to start tomatoes indoors if we wish to have them from seed, and time to start planning the outdoors situation. He really wants potatoes, which I fully support, so that will take some planning, as they need to have extra months in the ground. I am also interested in garlic, onions, and broccoli.

All day I have had in my head this totally ridiculous country song from when I was, like, nine, and listened to the pop country station. It was quite risqué, at that time, including the song “Black Velvet,” which I now know/suspect to be about young Elvis. Additionally, today’s title, which is about women who use men for their own nefarious purposes. I have something snarky and feminist to say there but I can’t find it among all the wine currently in my mouth.

Everything makes me cry lately. There are dogs who have died (not mine, knock on wood, but one of Oscar’s oldest friends) and there are grandmas gone too (not mine again, knock on wood again) and then there are so many new babies come into existence (not mine, knock on wood more than ever, and hi baby Ciaran! hi baby Mina! hi baby Hank!) for whom life is so small, I am worried for it. And if I spend even a minute on that thought, I become distracted and distraught with how small life is for us all, because really it is, and we are so tiny and chronologically insigificant, and then I will cry for nothing; I will cry for imagining all the so many things that could change all the other small lives so much. I will be forever changed when these dogs and these grandmas and these babies are lost. And it is too selfish to wish that I should be lost first, but I do not know if I can bear the loss of them.
What is the solution? Are all adults just veterans of the war of aging, where there are daily casualties (parents, children’s childhoods, pets & loved ones, garden plants, bus routes, hair lines, waistlines, roadkill, favored shoes chewed by new puppies, all the things large and small in which we used to rejoice but that are now gone)? Or is there some way to avoid it? Must we all submit ourselves to that? Can I opt out of one section of growing up and thereby shed all the rest? If I choose to devote my child-caring to another’s child, not my own, do I mourn with the parents when that child changes, grows, is gone, or do I mourn alone? And do I mourn less or more — does the sharing increase or mitigate the pain? Or do I merely mourn the recent demise of my glass of wine?

I hate being the youngest. Everywhere I go I am the youngest, and I feel inexperienced and foolish. I want to know what will happen to me, and to know if my current situation of conflicting heartache and jubilation will be henceforth a constant. (Big words!) I suspect it will, but more than anything I fear I will be surprised by something that experience (that I don’t have) should have prepared me for. What do I do? What can I do? I can, I guess, love my dogs and my husband and my surrounding friends and family and babies, and I can know that all of that is contingent on their continuing existence. And that love requires acceptance of the fact that they may not continue to exist. And I will deal with that when it comes, I guess.

PS. any post that starts with “I went for a run” and ends with drama and tears and wine and discussion of the meaning of love is PURE WANKERY.

(Song: “Fast Movin’ Train,” Restless Heart. Woo, 1990!)

Home! Home has dogs in it, and also Firefox (a pox on you, internet cafes!) and my lovely comfy bed. Spain, on the other hand, has removeable adjustable showerheads and bidets (everywhere we stayed, both apartments and hotels!). Home has shiny new silverware that came in the mail, and a new vacuum, and I feel that my excitement about those things means that I’m old now, much more than being married does. AND, home has rain! Yay!

(Song: “Dimes,” AJ Roach)

Two weeks ago, I made G. drive me out to Molbak’s, of which I had only heard legends and rumors, and I found them all to be true: it is a Wonderful Place. Fortunately, I had spent all my evenings over the last week or so pulling up weeds in the raised bed in our backyard. (This turns out to be a remarkably comforting & calming procedure, actually, and I recommend it. Work all day, drive home through crappy traffic, get out of car and immediately put dogs in backyard, put gloves on, and start digging in the dirt.) So it was OK that I spent about $200 at Molbak’s. Sort of.

In any case, I pulled weeds all morning and then I put steer manure on the ground and stirred it in, and then we went to the store. An hour and a half later, we came home with four tomato plants (two yellow pear, one brandywine, one persimmon), four basil plants (two regular & two Greek columnar), eight cucumber plants (Orient Express, Telegraph, & Lemon, my favorite), two little jalapeño plants, and several lettuces, both green & red leaf. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting them in and then watering them.

All the plants were sad and straggly, especially the lettuces, because it’s so late in the season. I worried that I had just wasted a ton of money & time, but I felt bizarrely parental about all of the little plants. It was like adopting Ruby: she needed a bath and a nap and lots of petting; the plants, especially the poor wilty lettuces, needed some dirt and some water and some love. I gave them a forever home! AND THEN I WILL EAT THEM.

By that Tuesday, the next day I had time to visit, they appeared to have all taken to their new home. There were new leaves on all of the plants and a couple new flowers on the tomatoes. I loosened soil in some of the empty spots and put in seeds for corn, carrots, & a lettuce mix, the kind where you just seed every three weeks or so and harvest the baby leaves as they come up. I put up my four-month white-board calendar and drew lines to represent when the seeds were scheduled to sprout, according to the back of the seed packet. Then I sat down and was very impatient!

Happily, though, exactly seven days later, the corn started to sprout! That was last Tuesday. I love the baby corn plants. Then a few days later I started to notice little fragile carrot sprouts, and now I think I have a few lettuces coming up, too. They did it all by themselves! Also there are two tiny baby green tomatoes, and three cucumber blossoms. I will have fruit soon!

I have wanted this garden for years and years. I am so happy that it seems to be working. Now I am prepared for the collapse of civilization.

(Song: “What Do You Love More Than Love,” Dar Williams)

Spring seems to have arrived in Seattle while we were in Reno last weekend, and it’s made me realize it’s almost a year since we moved into this house. It’s been sunny and warmish and gorgeous, with blooming tulips and lilacs and green growing things, and the light has been coming into the house at a particular angle and of a particular color, like it did when we first moved in about 11 months ago. It’s making me strangely nostalgic, yet motivated.
So I’m especially glad that it was slow at work this week and I got to leave early yesterday and take all of today off, staying home and doing yardwork. Dogs laid around in the sun and watched me crawl around in bushes and get stabbed by holly leaves. I weeded and trimmed and I installed fence and my new compost maker, and then I decided I didn’t like its location and now I have to move it.
It’s also especially good that it’s nice right now because G’s brother and sister-in-law as well as his dad and stepmom are here, so we have lovely weather for walking around beautiful Seattle and looking at colorful vegetables and sparkly water and also cute shoes and fancy clothes. We also have weather and, now, room in the backyard, since I pruned, for the inaugural barbecue of the year: halibut cheek tacos. Turns out halibut cheeks don’t grill so well, but I’ll still post it on Kitchenisms soon.

(Song: “Spring Street,” Dar Williams)

I didn’t have a chance to get new shoes this time because everything happened so quickly. I applied last Wednesday for a job that was posted the day before; I had a phone interview last Thursday and in-person interviews on Tuesday, and yesterday I was offered the job despite the lack of new Target shoes. I’m going to be a taxonomist! I’m starting out part-time next week and then I’ll go up to full time when I finish school in December.
And now I can buy shoes at places that are not Target! Whenever I want!

(song: “Iowa,” Dar Williams)

I don’t know why it always surprises me that I am most likely to run into folks I know when I’m at the library on campus …
I’ve been sad because of a lack of being on campus and randomly running into people — it’s weird that I got so used to being able to do that, when I couldn’t, here, for at least a year. But today I was in the library to pay my $19 fine (I am a bad person) when I encountered my two favorite Writing Center customers from last year, Adam and Reese. Reese had to run off but I was especially pleased to see Adam, because I learned that he is to be in my Class of Deathly Boredom, aka Management for Information Organizations. I like Adam so am glad we get a class together, but was extra special happy because that means he can take notes for me on the first day.
I have to miss the first day because I am too dumb to double-check my calendar and figure out when class starts before I buy non-refundable tickets to Madison. (Yay, a sixth state to check off! I am a wimpy US traveler.) The first half of the summer term, in which I had one class, ends this Wednesday, and for some reason I thought the second half, in which I have a different class, would start next Monday, but no, it starts on Thursday. And I am leaving for Wisconsin on Thursday afternoon. This is dumb. I am dumb.
But Adam will be there to take notes for me!

This weekend was surprisingly eventful!

Mom’s marriage:
L: “Do you two want to get married?” (It’s the only thing that Washington requires in the ceremony.)
Them: “Yep!”
L: “Yay! Then you’re married!”

Harry Potter:
Finished Saturday night. Interesting. Not sure what I think, actually.

Homemakerdom:
Pulled lots and lots of weeds; did the dishes and cleaned the counter in preparation for a mini party on Sunday night.

Mini party:
Gins&tonic, bourbon, Oban (grâce à Chelle, thanks!!!); delicious guacamole (made-up recipe to be posted on Kitchenisms when I get it transferred); Simpsons, Firefly. Chelle and Tom and John & Laura. Good group!

This week: write a paper; laundry; pack; cash checks; figure out how I can get out of going to the first day of class.

(song: “The New Face of Zero and One,” the New Pornographers. A trail of sisters through New York.)

It mostly looks like I want it to, but the links (permalink, categories, comments, archives) don’t go anywhere yet. Should be done by the end of the weekend, except I have to go to Tacoma to perform my mother’s wedding at a baseball game, and then I have to readreadread my Harry Potter!
But! I am happy to be able to practice my PHP!

now i have keys for three houses!
the new house is awesome every time i go look at it, which is good; sometimes when you’re househunting things look great but then when you go back to sign the lease, the kitchen is actually tiny and the carpet is gross. but this house actually gets better every time, which is amazing considering how much i’ve been daydreaming about it.
fireplace! basement! yard! garden! rosemary, lavender, lilac!
moving will happen slowly, interspersed with paper-writing and code-learning and dog-sitting. but! by the end of the month i will have all my possessions all in once place again! this is, i think, the most exciting aspect of the whole thing.
we forgot to take pictures.

(song: “give me time,” richmond fontaine)

my mornings are good: i am waking up more easily; i have my coffee and walk to the bus stop past pink cherry blossoms and white dogwood blossoms and bright bright red rhododendrons. today a creaky old man with a squeaky old wheelbarrow walked past the bus stop, squeak squeak creak creak, and we all watched him go. as he passed he turned and said “do you guys need a ride?” and chuckled, also creakily.
i like the old man.

(song: “visit me in music city,” bobby bare jr.)