Light?
I went to the library today and picked up a few books for some summer readin':
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Every
A Death in Belmont: Books: Sebastian Junger
American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, O
And here I thought chick lit was calling to me. I do think Freakonomics will not be as heavy as the last two. American Theocracy has been on my list for a while and I've read a few disturbing things in reviews and decided I needed to check it out for myself.
This morning I got the urge for some fried dough. The other day on Paula's Home Cookin' she made these canned biscuit donuts. I happened to have a can of biscuits and what I needed to make a glaze. Krispy Kreme watchout because these donuts were pretty tasty. Pretty much all I did was open the can of biscuits while my oil was heating, I used the cap off of a water bottle to cut out the donut hole, fried my dough, constantly turning the donut in the oil(a few browned pretty fast and were a bit doughy in the middle, not raw, more like al dente), then I dipped them in a glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla and milk. I didn't measure anything for the glaze, just made it up as I went along. Kept adding milk or sugar until it was the consistency I thought it needed to be which was also a guess. Nice late morning treat.
Today has been pretty much a wasted day. No house cleaning and my kitchen floor is pretty sticky, ick, but donuts needed to be made, and the baby across the road needed to be held. Sometimes it's good to spend a little while holding a baby and enjoying his smiles. They are priceless.
No stitching today either. I hate looking for the origin of my mistakes. I need to step back, take a break and start looking again in a couple of days.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
This Morning
Breakfast came straight from the garden. Well, with the exception of the eggs which were Egglands Best. I wish I had taken a pic, but I didn't think about it until I was taking that last little bite. I'll blame it on lack of caffiene. The coffee pot passed away quietly after it's morning brew yesterday. So what was breakfast? A two egg omlette with fresh picked bell pepper, roma tomato, a bit of onion and oh, ham, also not from the garden. I've always suspected that homegrown anything tasted better than store bought but there's something about growing it yourself. It makes it taste just a little sweeter. Since I used bell pepper and tomato from the garden the extra expense of buying Egglands Best eggs was insignificant. Egglands is as close to organic as I can get around here.
I've got a "hitch in my git-a-long" on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I've made a mistake on House #3, the border along the bottom, and can't seem to find where the error originated.
DS#3 and I went to the beach yesterday morning, it was a Monday morning, plenty of beach for all those that show up yet this family decides to camp out right on top of us. I mean talk about invading my space bubble! There were so many places they could have set up but they were so close to me that the shade from their umbrella was on my chair. Yes, we could have moved over a few feet, there was room, but we were there first! I could have understood if it was July 4th or something but we didn't budge and they gave us dirty looks. What is up with that?
To family that's going to be here this weekend, the June grass has arrived but it's not too bad. I'm not sure which direction it's moving, there was none in Pensacola on Sunday so it may be heading towards Ft Walton Beach, I'll sacrifice and go to the beach again today to check it out just for y'all.
I've got a "hitch in my git-a-long" on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I've made a mistake on House #3, the border along the bottom, and can't seem to find where the error originated.
DS#3 and I went to the beach yesterday morning, it was a Monday morning, plenty of beach for all those that show up yet this family decides to camp out right on top of us. I mean talk about invading my space bubble! There were so many places they could have set up but they were so close to me that the shade from their umbrella was on my chair. Yes, we could have moved over a few feet, there was room, but we were there first! I could have understood if it was July 4th or something but we didn't budge and they gave us dirty looks. What is up with that?
To family that's going to be here this weekend, the June grass has arrived but it's not too bad. I'm not sure which direction it's moving, there was none in Pensacola on Sunday so it may be heading towards Ft Walton Beach, I'll sacrifice and go to the beach again today to check it out just for y'all.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Sunday Read-A-Thon
Late yesterday I started reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. The book sent me on an emotional journey I wasn't expecting. I knew from various reviews that the book was going to be a hard read and I expected some tears. I didn't expect a whole panorama of emotions. The book covers not only the relationship between husband and wife, but parents and child, grief, love, not wanting to let go, trying to fix what was already broken but maybe, just maybe, if you research something enough, try to understand it, you can change the outcome. I think that thought, that the outcome could be changed, hit me the hardest. How many times does something we didn't anticipate happen, and we go through events that lead up to that something and wonder if we could indeed have changed events by doing one thing differently? We think that we can control events that effect those that we love but we can't. We can't prevent the act of living and we can't prevent dying.
She writes about death occuring on "an ordinary day". It was an ordinary day when my grandfather died. I was in 11th grade. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. I had been laying on my bed, working on my term paper, the relationship between Elizabeth Barret and Robert Browning. The phone rang, I didn't answer it, I was 15. Any other day I'd have ran to the phone, but this morning I didn't answer it. My grandmother had called, no one answered, she ran out on her carport screaming, my grandfather had a heart attack. If I had answered the phone, if my dad had gotten across the road sooner, would my grandfather still be alive? How many times has this thought replayed itself in my mind? How many times since March 30, 1980 have I gone over this? Time and time again. There was finally a day when I let it go, when I knew that his dying wasn't my fault, his heart just couldn't do the job any more, but for so long replaying it in my head kept my grandfather close to me. It was my very last connection to his life. That last thread that kept that moment in time attached to my heart.
This passage about marriage brought so much home to me:
We were equally incapable of imagining the reality of life without the other....Marriage is memory, marriage is time. "She didn't know the songs," I recall being told that a friend of mine had said after an attempt to repeat the experience. Marriage is not only time: it is also parodoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I didn't age.
I read this over and over. I kept turning back to that page. I understood those words, her feelings. Sometimes it's hard to believe we've been married 20 yrs. There are moments when I do believe I'm still in my 20s. It's hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I am 40ish. Aren't we still kids? We still tell the same lame jokes to each other and still laugh like it was the first time we said it. We "get" each other. We "know" the songs. How could 20 years have just flown by unnoticed except for some gray in the hair, lines on the face, but aren't those just laugh lines, 20 yrs of stupid jokes?
I can't begin to write about the part of the book where she writes about her daughter. I know the fear of someone not being able to tell you if your kid is going to live or die. My child was only a few days old, but I already knew his songs. Trying to understand what is happening, trying to control it, trying to tell the drs what to do. Wanting to scream, but having to stay calm. My child is 15 now. Every time I look at him, I think back to those days when his life was an unknown. Every breath was a battle, every moment a gift.
The Year of Magical Thinking read it. Be prepared to cry, be prepared to may be be a little disturbed, the emotions that come up to the surface may not be the ones you expect.
She writes about death occuring on "an ordinary day". It was an ordinary day when my grandfather died. I was in 11th grade. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. I had been laying on my bed, working on my term paper, the relationship between Elizabeth Barret and Robert Browning. The phone rang, I didn't answer it, I was 15. Any other day I'd have ran to the phone, but this morning I didn't answer it. My grandmother had called, no one answered, she ran out on her carport screaming, my grandfather had a heart attack. If I had answered the phone, if my dad had gotten across the road sooner, would my grandfather still be alive? How many times has this thought replayed itself in my mind? How many times since March 30, 1980 have I gone over this? Time and time again. There was finally a day when I let it go, when I knew that his dying wasn't my fault, his heart just couldn't do the job any more, but for so long replaying it in my head kept my grandfather close to me. It was my very last connection to his life. That last thread that kept that moment in time attached to my heart.
This passage about marriage brought so much home to me:
We were equally incapable of imagining the reality of life without the other....Marriage is memory, marriage is time. "She didn't know the songs," I recall being told that a friend of mine had said after an attempt to repeat the experience. Marriage is not only time: it is also parodoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I didn't age.
I read this over and over. I kept turning back to that page. I understood those words, her feelings. Sometimes it's hard to believe we've been married 20 yrs. There are moments when I do believe I'm still in my 20s. It's hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I am 40ish. Aren't we still kids? We still tell the same lame jokes to each other and still laugh like it was the first time we said it. We "get" each other. We "know" the songs. How could 20 years have just flown by unnoticed except for some gray in the hair, lines on the face, but aren't those just laugh lines, 20 yrs of stupid jokes?
I can't begin to write about the part of the book where she writes about her daughter. I know the fear of someone not being able to tell you if your kid is going to live or die. My child was only a few days old, but I already knew his songs. Trying to understand what is happening, trying to control it, trying to tell the drs what to do. Wanting to scream, but having to stay calm. My child is 15 now. Every time I look at him, I think back to those days when his life was an unknown. Every breath was a battle, every moment a gift.
The Year of Magical Thinking read it. Be prepared to cry, be prepared to may be be a little disturbed, the emotions that come up to the surface may not be the ones you expect.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Random Saturday, Part C
Here's a picture of DS#3 with my Mammoth Sunflower in the flower bed in front of the house. Sharon, Siobhan-it's bigger now than the other day when I sent the picture of it to y'all, doncha think? Those orange plants are his feet are Cosmos that I planted from seed a few months ago. We need to weed and put some cedar chips in the flower bed. I've started tossing my coffee grounds in the flower bed everyday sort of as a compost kind of thing. Our soil is all sand for the most part with some potting soil I've added over the years mixed in. The soil needs a lot of help. 
Here's a picture of some sunflowers I have growing on the side of the house. These were an experiment and I planted them too close together and didn't weed the area as well as I should have. I plan to do some weeding this weekend and get the area ready for a late summer sunflowerfest. This year is a learning experience for me. Once these bloom and wilt away I will start over and see if I can get it right this time.
Here's my tomato container garden:
Close up of one of the Better Boy plants:
Close up of one of the Roma plants:
Here's our watermelon patch such that it is. It has 4 watermelon plants and 2 zucchini plants:
Here's one of the watermelon plants with a few blooms:
Thought I had a picture of one of the zucchini plants but Blogger has been acting up today so I'll just say that I had planned to vine the zucchini plants up the shepherds' hooks you see on each side of the watermelon patch. And yes, you are correct more sunflowers surrounding the watermelon patch. I figured if the watermelons didn't work out maybe the sunflowers would. We also have some pumpkin sprouts started. Next year I'm going to Square Foot garden on the side of my house where the tomatoes and sunflowers are now. I think I make it look it pretty. Yes our grass is dead, we're in the middle of a drought. We need a little bit of rain every day for a month and maybe things would turn green again.
Thanks for the comments on my HOHRH. I can't wait to get it finished!
Here's a picture of some sunflowers I have growing on the side of the house. These were an experiment and I planted them too close together and didn't weed the area as well as I should have. I plan to do some weeding this weekend and get the area ready for a late summer sunflowerfest. This year is a learning experience for me. Once these bloom and wilt away I will start over and see if I can get it right this time.
Here's my tomato container garden:
Close up of one of the Better Boy plants:
Close up of one of the Roma plants:
Here's our watermelon patch such that it is. It has 4 watermelon plants and 2 zucchini plants:
Here's one of the watermelon plants with a few blooms:
Thought I had a picture of one of the zucchini plants but Blogger has been acting up today so I'll just say that I had planned to vine the zucchini plants up the shepherds' hooks you see on each side of the watermelon patch. And yes, you are correct more sunflowers surrounding the watermelon patch. I figured if the watermelons didn't work out maybe the sunflowers would. We also have some pumpkin sprouts started. Next year I'm going to Square Foot garden on the side of my house where the tomatoes and sunflowers are now. I think I make it look it pretty. Yes our grass is dead, we're in the middle of a drought. We need a little bit of rain every day for a month and maybe things would turn green again.
Thanks for the comments on my HOHRH. I can't wait to get it finished!
Random Saturday, Part Deux
With the boys home I can't seem to complete a thought. So today's random post will be in parts, who knows how many. Even though I have a laptop and don't have to fight for computer time, finding time to write is almost impossible these days.
Current Movie Guilty Pleasures:
The Perfect Man with Heather Locklear, Hilary Duff and most importantly, Big himself, Chris Noth. Yes, there are a couple of ridiculous scenes that make me cringe but all in all it's a cute, mindless kind of movie that I seem to watch every time I run across it on cable. It's worth watching once if only for the Styx concert scene.
Another movie I watch every time I run across it on cable is Kung Fu Hustle. I have no idea why I absolutely love this movie but I do. The story is good and so are the actors. The first time I saw it I came in somewhere in the middle and nothing made sense, so the next time I caught it at the very beginning and have now watched it about 6 times. I like it more every time I watch it.
I'm currently reading Labyrinth and it's moving kind of slow. I normally read books in one or two days if they suck me in but this one so far hasn't drawn me into the story. I mean I'm there with the characters but not lost in the story. Last year I read The Historian in just under 48 hours, but Labyrinth, well, I can't decide if I just don't care about the characters or what my problems with the story are. When reading The Historian I would look up from the book and forget where I was, with Labyrinth, when I set the book down I have to go back and read a few pages to remind me what happened when I pick the book up again.
I'm beginning to think my brain is fried with the kids home and I need to focus on some chic lit. I picked up Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle at the library a few days ago and it might be more my speed these days.
Things I've learned over the past week:
1) I really need to quit watching the news. Seriously I hear a commentator from one news channel on another channel and I know their voice. That's just sick.
2) Who needs a safe deposit box, just send important papers to your Congressman. They will be safe there, even if they're subpoenaed.
3)If I hear one more press conference on Hurricane Preparedness I'm going to stab myself in the eye with a fork. If people don't "get it" by now they aren't going to get it ever. I can say this, I'm on the coast, well three miles inland. I learned many hard lessons after Hurricane Ivan. I thought I was prepared, I wasn't. When Hurricane Dennis hit we went to Publix after they reopened for something to do, not because we needed anything. That was a great feeling. I've detemined that other than water and believe me buy what you think you'll need and then buy more because you really will need more than you think, buy your cup o noodle, and make sure you have some gas in the garage. What happens down here now is that as soon as a storm is brewing there's a run on gas stations because we were cut off after Ivan. The one lesson everyone seemed to learn was fill up their tanks and every other empty container in their house. I'm hoping to get a generator and one of those large 5 day ice chests-neither is a necessity but let me tell ya a fan is a gift in the 100 degree temps after a storm passes. Other than that I think we're set. I add a little extra food to the shopping list here and there but we've got a lot of MREs and a substantial amount of water in the garage so I think we're good to go.
Current Movie Guilty Pleasures:
The Perfect Man with Heather Locklear, Hilary Duff and most importantly, Big himself, Chris Noth. Yes, there are a couple of ridiculous scenes that make me cringe but all in all it's a cute, mindless kind of movie that I seem to watch every time I run across it on cable. It's worth watching once if only for the Styx concert scene.
Another movie I watch every time I run across it on cable is Kung Fu Hustle. I have no idea why I absolutely love this movie but I do. The story is good and so are the actors. The first time I saw it I came in somewhere in the middle and nothing made sense, so the next time I caught it at the very beginning and have now watched it about 6 times. I like it more every time I watch it.
I'm currently reading Labyrinth and it's moving kind of slow. I normally read books in one or two days if they suck me in but this one so far hasn't drawn me into the story. I mean I'm there with the characters but not lost in the story. Last year I read The Historian in just under 48 hours, but Labyrinth, well, I can't decide if I just don't care about the characters or what my problems with the story are. When reading The Historian I would look up from the book and forget where I was, with Labyrinth, when I set the book down I have to go back and read a few pages to remind me what happened when I pick the book up again.
I'm beginning to think my brain is fried with the kids home and I need to focus on some chic lit. I picked up Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle at the library a few days ago and it might be more my speed these days.
Things I've learned over the past week:
1) I really need to quit watching the news. Seriously I hear a commentator from one news channel on another channel and I know their voice. That's just sick.
2) Who needs a safe deposit box, just send important papers to your Congressman. They will be safe there, even if they're subpoenaed.
3)If I hear one more press conference on Hurricane Preparedness I'm going to stab myself in the eye with a fork. If people don't "get it" by now they aren't going to get it ever. I can say this, I'm on the coast, well three miles inland. I learned many hard lessons after Hurricane Ivan. I thought I was prepared, I wasn't. When Hurricane Dennis hit we went to Publix after they reopened for something to do, not because we needed anything. That was a great feeling. I've detemined that other than water and believe me buy what you think you'll need and then buy more because you really will need more than you think, buy your cup o noodle, and make sure you have some gas in the garage. What happens down here now is that as soon as a storm is brewing there's a run on gas stations because we were cut off after Ivan. The one lesson everyone seemed to learn was fill up their tanks and every other empty container in their house. I'm hoping to get a generator and one of those large 5 day ice chests-neither is a necessity but let me tell ya a fan is a gift in the 100 degree temps after a storm passes. Other than that I think we're set. I add a little extra food to the shopping list here and there but we've got a lot of MREs and a substantial amount of water in the garage so I think we're good to go.
Random Saturday
Stitching Update: House #2 from Houses of Hawk Run Hollow has been completed*:
And for my friend Sharon-here's a pic of my piece to date:
And for my friend Sharon-here's a pic of my piece to date:
I'm making decent progress on House #3.
On the gardening front, watermelons are vining, as is the zucchini. My four tomato plants are also doing well. The bell pepper is wilting away, I think I'm going to move my plant over to the side of the house where I have my tomatoes. My basil went to seed. I'm so dumb. I thought the flowers at the top of the plant were pretty. DORK! My friend gave me a rooted basil plant so I'm going to take my original plant, plant it somewhere that doesn't get as much sun as the front porch and see if I can bring it back, my new basil plant will go in that pot and will also join the tomatoes on the side of the house. I'm planning on starting some lettuce-yes it's late for that down here but I think it might do ok in a shady part of the back yard. I can try anyway. I'll take some pics later today and one of the 10 yr old next to my Mammoth Sunflower stalk. It hasn't bloomed yet.
Some thoughts on kids and summer vacation, first of all it's nice to know that I'm not the only one with kids who get bored. If I ever bugged my parents the way my kids relentlessly bug me about being bored I'd have been mowing, cleaning, washing, etc. So kids, "My name is not Julie and I'm not your cruise director!" There are tons of books, video games, DVDs, ancient videos, entertain yourselves. They look at me like I'm speaking some foreign language when I say, "Read a book." Good grief I spent most of my life avoiding my parents and hiding out in my room, my kids, they are "close talkers". Don't they know they aren't supposed to want to hang out with me(ok what they really want is mom to drive them around, ditch me at the mall, and hand out money like it grows on the tree in the backyard--so technically they don't want to "hang out" with me).
*Just noticed that the pic I posted of House #2 is not the pic of the completed block....I'll repost that later today.....
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