We are alive, and even well.

The Feasting and Family day has not occurred for us yet, though we did have an excellent time with angus_mcnitt this past weekend. I am headed to Chicago for our annual Harvest Celebration with sheekayt and sorrowsheart. Yes, I am traveling out there instead of visiting any of the rest of you. I want to and it's a tradition and I refuse to break it again. You'll get a visit eventually, just you see.

Anyway, the real reason I'm posting is because I am aghast that only Lu and lunathecat have mentioned the new video of the Muppets singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody on YouTube. Seriously, people? Is this news just too old or have none of you seen it? How could nobody have linked to this?

Go watch it. Now. If you have seen it already, watch it again. Yes, it's good. Yes, it's that good.

A complete Muppet obsession might have nothing to do with this post.

One logic board later, we have a computer again. Thank goodness. We actually did pretty well without one, though I am more impressed with Jim's tolerance of not being connected -- I was able to check email (and Bookmooch, and had Google) at work at least. He had nothing but the telephone, which he mostly avoided as usual. We are making an effort to actually turn the computer off when we're not using it so it doesn't suck us in by virtue of being readily available.

I am dealing with Autumn much better than I did Summer. Summer this year seemed sort of shallow and empty -- I couldn't get into it, although I visited the lake and went to festivals and amusement parks, and ate watermelon and garden-grown tomatoes and strawberries and grilled and gardened and had the windows open in the house. The chilly weather had something to do with it, but I felt like I should have gotten past that. Either way, I (for the first time in my life) protested the coming of autumn, feeling like we were cheated out of a proper summer.

I got over it a few weeks ago, and cider and squash and the smell of leaves and woodsmoke and clouds in the moonlight on a windy night have soothed any ills I bore early in the season.

We have the yard largely raked and leaves piled onto a lot of next year's garden beds, which is two steps farther than we were last year at this time. Still cutting and splitting wood for the winter. We did not get the house cleaned and refreshed for Samhein though, due to a relentless lack on energy on my part. Silly, right? Yes, and also frustrating.

We celebrated Hallow'een more secularly than I had been hoping to, but we enjoyed it. We dressed Connor as Robin Hood and took him Trick-or-Treating at my work on Friday and around the neighborhood Saturday night. He enjoyed this, and is enjoying having a pile of candy around the house. This pile of candy will not last much longer, and we are grateful.

We did end up honoring dead family on our little-used house altar. Little mementos to represent each creature, a gift of flowers and sage and a share of our dinner, a few moments of our time. I'm not skilled at this sort of communication and don't know if they got the message. It's a tradition I'll try to improve upon next year.

My mother attempted to guilt me back into Christianity on the phone last night. I would like to explain my beliefs to her some time when she's not trying to be inflammatory, but this was not that time. She did succeed in nudging me into a sort of navel-gazing mode of which i have been needing, so i suppose the conversation did me some good. I will probably swirl around a little and consider posting questions and thoughts here but fail to do so.

I needn't have posted here about Connor's lack of imaginative play so soon. Since that observation a few months back, he has been chased by alligators and bats and spiders, has started making up words to songs, and has created guitars and drums and pianos out of kitchen equipment and random things from the back room. He enjoys falling asleep to Winnie-the-Pooh and is still obsessed with his ball collection. And he's pretty damn awesome, even for an almost-3-year-old.

Otherwise, I've been tired and lonely, but that's largely my own fault. I'm hoping to remedy the lethargy with vitamins (since I suspect I'm not eating enough or the right things and don't have much way of fixing that at the moment) and the loneliness by actually crawling out of my hole and meeting people, so we'll see how that goes. Hurrah for social phobias, right?

Cheers, all. Hope you are well.

We are currently without computer, and thus currently without e-mail, LB, FB, AIM, MS, TXT, ICU, P2P, CTD, ASL, NOYL, or WTFIHYDAGTH.

TTYL. <3

P.S.: Phone lines and post box are still open.

We managed to pick several pounds of apples, a bunch of peaches and a handful of plums on Saturday. While Jim made pickles from the cukes and dill from our garden, I put together what was supposed to be plum jam. We didn't have enough plums to make a proper pot of plum butter like we did last year, so I followed this recipe, which uses methods remarkably similar to the way we cook anything. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I either didn't use enough burn salve or didn't use a small enough basket to gather the plums or both, because the plum jam turned out to be plum sauce. And too sweet for my tastes, but foo. We probably will find some use for it; I bet it will be great on waffles.

Speaking of waffles: I just discovered that yesterday was National Waffle Day, in honor of the anniversary of the day Cornelius Swartwout patented the first waffle iron in the U.S. Sadly, I didn't make waffles yesterday, though I did make blueberry pancakes. I will need to remember to celebrate International Waffle Day on March 25.

We still haven't finished trellising the tomatoes, so they are crawling all over the ground, happily feeding the slugs. The slugs know better than I when the tomatoes are ripe, so they have taken most of them thus far. Fortunately, that hasn't been too too many. Unfortunately, the presence of mosquitoes and the need for clothing have prevented me from getting out into the garden as much as I should, so bugs have gotten more than their share this year. There's some sort of commiseration between the mosquitoes and other garden bugs, I'm sure.

Note: Slugs do not care for Yuengling. Note: Hubbard squash is not squash bug resistant. Note: a cocktail of three natural bug sprays do not keep mosquitoes from eating my son's face.

The next few days will bring apple sauce and apple butter, and something with peaches. Mmmm fruit.

I've started reading the complete Sherlock Holmes adventures, hoping to be properly indignant at the new movie coming out soon. It looks fun, and according to a few review sites the portrayal is nontraditional but not necessarily inaccurate. I'm hoping to draw my own conclusions. I'd rather attack or defend the movie with first-hand knowledge, and I'd been meaning to read the series for a while now, so it's a good excuse. We'll see how far I can get.

Connor is becoming interested in cooking, which is helpful because I can have him add ingredients and stir things to keep him occupied, and that means I can get stuff done. That also means he is gaining confidence in the kitchen as well as height and dexterity, so he helps himself to a spoon and pushes his step-stool up to the stove and stirs things at will. His make-believe also involves cooking his toys. Today he was making "bacon" with his diaper inserts and "pasta" with his matchbox cars. His other make-believe is that he is washing things -- he takes our deep strainer pot and fills it with toys or clothes and says it's washing in the washing machine. I worry about his imagination some times. Maybe we need to read him more fantasy. Anyone recommend good fantasy books for 2-3 year olds?

Life recap No. 2 sponsored by tea and apricot jam. Hopefully next post will include brain content.

Brainspace and energy have been sparse recently, and a lot but not really much at all has happened.  Some minor boots to the head recently have fixed some gears that were stuck, so deeper thoughts from this front soon.  Hopefully!

( Blabbery McStuff )

Today, Connor and I walked around our yard and through the woods, discovering the first white and purple flowers blooming among the grass, finding early buds on the raspberry canes and the willow, confirming the survival of the wee fir and sassafras saplings.

We had some people we love at our house last weekend, and Connor expressed my sentiments every time we sat together at the table, counting heads over and over again. ("One, one, one, one, one!") It was good to have friends/family in our home, eating with us as though sharing dinner were normal cultural tradition.

I dug a hole and found that the springtime water table tops at about three shovels below the surface. I heard a report on NPR about the existence of "city-states" of herring in the Atlantic, 25 miles wide, that synchronize their motions to move as one entity into warmer waters to mate. Fuzzy is off the next three days, I was able to work on the warp on my loom the other night, and I got seeds in the mail.

Despite all kinds of concerns, irritations and preoccupations, I'm happy!

Dear Mr. President,

Please just give me (and every other taxpayer) $6,000.

Love,
Me.

P.S. I know this won't solve any long-term problems. But still.

In two years, the Squid has grown from
to

I wish you health and happiness, balls and rocks in the year to come, my childe! Happy birthday, Connor!

I am more and more often faced with the decision of whether to consciously present my friendly, sunny, pleasantly but not abrasively optimistic self over my cynical, antisocial, disgruntled, sarcastic self. The more I watch the world and notice the broader trends, the more cynical I become -- but at the same time, the more I'm aware how helpful a little light could be to someone else who might be drowning. People naturally like me until i growl a little too liberally. I mostly like being cheerful and amicable, but wish people would leave me alone, and especially wish they wouldn't start conversations near or with me.

A large part of my somewhat eclectic personal philosophy always has been that the world not only should be saved, but can be saved. I'm beginning to realize that i may have been wrong -- members of the species loosely defined as humanity largely have always been selfish, lazy, disrespectful, power-hungry and short-sighted. I don't see that changing, and i wonder sometimes why I continue to act as though it will.

I don't get why it's so hard to try to understand the opposition. Why it's unreasonable to have perspective and insight. Why it's so difficult to admit to being wrong, or to admit that there might be two right answers, or no right answers. Everything has context. Everything is complicated. The world can not be divided into Us and Them. I'm sick of hearing about what They are doing and saying; get the flashlights out of each others' eyes for a minute and realize that Everyone is in the dark.

This isn't "can't we all just get along." I'm fully aware respectful disagreement is too much to ask. But it doesn't help that i hemorrhage empathy. When people suck too much, something's got to fill the vacuum.

So I never update! And the pattern continues. But! Here's a bit of reflection inspired by (but not directly recounting) the past four months:

( Rambly but jointed )

I'll update for real about our gardening efforts at some point. For now, join a club with me!

Tell me something you think I should know. Post anonymously if you like; I will not track addresses.

And/Or:

Ask me a question and I'll answer honestly.


(Anything to do with anything. Silly? Perhaps. Really, I'm just bored.)

And You: I'm not sure if you deleted your comment or if I accidentally did. But we miss you too, whether or not that's what you meant to say.

You ever stop what you're doing and look around, realizing you're not where you're supposed to be? You were going somewhere... you don't remember where, but it wasn't here. Or maybe you were only supposed to be passing through here. But you forgot. Got distracted. Lost energy, dropped the compass, stopped for a quick nap. And now you're a little behind, maybe a little off course, with only a fuzzy recollection of how to understand what the stars are trying to tell you.

Maybe the reason I've been wondering around feeling lost is because I am.

Lost can be good. Lost can take you places you never would have been, can show you things you never would have seen. Lost can be a nice break. The adventures of the lost need to end some time, though. That time may be now.

My darling sister is considering a job in Bethesda. I need advice from those familiar with the area!

Looking for info on affordable apartments on a public transit route, places to avoid, ideas on how to save money in a very expensive area, trustworthy people seeking a roommate, general tips. Any information or resources would be appreciated.

Thanks!!

Does anyone use a web calendar, public or private? Reviews/recommendations? Thoughts on sharing/linking/friending calendars?

I've recently come to appreciate the convenience of del.icio.us and might be interested in logging events, deadlines, and plans in a similar way. Also it might be neat to share with friends what we're doing, but am not certain about this.

I've not been documenting the progress with house and yard. Must remember to take pictures tomorrow!

We are achy and tired after shoveling mounds and mounds o' (free!) compost into a U-haul trailer, shoveling it out again into our garden, loading a good bit of the scrap metal sitting around our property back into the trailer, and unloading it all at the junk yard(!). Granted, most of the work was done by Fuzzy, so he's more sore than I am. Still. It's been busy and semi-productive.

We're working on planting a fence (formerly the deck rail) around the garden and cleaning up the bird area a little. Fuzzy planted assorted seeds around bird garden and this is Planting Weekend, so we should have plantlets all in the veggie garden and more seedlets near the birds soon! Need to find mulch somewhere, though. We didn't get as much for the scrap metal as we'd have liked and i'm not sure we'll be able to rent a chipper. (Oh, we also need potting soil, Fuzz. Maybe. I think the bags were $6 a piece and we probably should have two of them, though one to start would be fine.)

I've been slacking on communication. Have had things I'd wanted to post but not time to do it, and not brainspace to do it when i do find, and hesitation because it's probably silly anyway. Which shouldn't be an issue.

Placeholder for impending navelgazing, philosophizing and generally uninteresting drivel. Maybe I'll remember what it was some day.

Today I register as a Democrat. Sigh.

LJ-land is active again!

People are talkative, generally in good moods, and have interesting things to say. It must nearly be spring!

Welcome back to the world, everyone. (Not that those four or five of you who post frequently during the winter aren't appreciated. Because you are.)