Saturday, June 28, 2008

Oh yeah...

And the Supremes decided we do have habeas corpus after all.

HUGE RELIEF.

Hey, George: I got yer noncombatant status right HERE.

Being an uncle rocks

I am going to keep this short, short, short. All I am going to say is: for the moment, the custody battle is resolved. It was looking like it might go ugly, but certain realities got it resolved, and...my nephew's daughter is coming home to live with us. In fact, she's already here.

When my nephew's marriage broke up, and his wife left with his daughter, it was a blow to him but also to me. Despite some flaws around here, I had gotten used to thinking of this house as a family, and wanted it very badly to continue. I missed my great-niece like crazy. She's a bundle of fun, smart and willful, and the opportunity to help bring another little person through childhood and into adulthood was wonderful and exciting. Then, suddenly, gone. Now she's back, none the worse for wear, and things feel right again. Maybe her mother isn't here, but at least the house feels like a family again.

I feel sorry for his wife. I do. I can't think of anything more wrenching than a mother letting go of her child. That really bothers me, and I wish circumstances were different so we could all exist in the same space. We can't, though, and what we have now is the next-best thing for everyone involved.

This is a substitute for all the political crap I could be writing, by the way. Right now nothing of any great importance is happening politically (except for the Supremes deciding that rich candidates have special rights poor candidates don't), and there was something about gun rights, and someone called Barack Obama "John Kerry with a tan," and a few other things, but you know, that all gets hashed out endlessly in the blogosphere. If I have a unique viewpoint on that, I'll let you know, but in the meantime, this is just the latest news from Scotsylvania.

Has it really been eleven days??

Monday, June 16, 2008

I wish I didn't have to blame fibromyalgia

I've written a little on it before, this fibromyalgia thing. It's a weird, sneaky disorder. Sometimes it leaves you alone sometimes it wallops you, and sometimes it's just, well, more subtle. Take the exhaustion that comes from it. It's so everpresent that sometimes I don't notice when it's getting worse. I knew it was making a comeback after about three weeks of leaving me (mostly) alone; in the last two days there were two "attacks" (the ones that mimic low blood sugar episodes), but they were weak.

Last night I slept about ten and a half hours. That alone tells me just how tired and sore I was, especially since my sleep was restless. But after I woke up, made my coffee, sat at the computer for a while, and got ready for a job interview this afternoon...I fell asleep again. I was just plain worn out. The exhaustion came over me and I couldn't stay awake.

I wish there were a better reason for this. I wish I had been outside working all day yesterday, or that I had been compulsively been working on some sort of project, or that I had gone on a tear of cleaning up my house. But none of that is true. Exhaustion just hit me. There's little way to explain to people who don't suffer from this the emotions that come from this: regret, guilt, anger, frustration, sadness, depression, and no small amount of shame. Shame, that is, because I still feel responsible for having this. I still feel it's something I should just be able to overcome, that all I need is a swift kick in the pants, that somehow this is a result of choices I have made and not forces beyond my control. It's hard not to feel that I've failed my responsibilities rather than having been overwhelmed with one of the most invisible, crafty disorders in the world.

It seems that it might be better if it actually came with some obvious physical deformity, because then people would know you're not faking. As it is, you suspect that's what people think, because you wonder that yourself. Am I faking? What's wrong with me? Even in the middle of its worst, you somehow suspect you're just being a pansy. But believe me, when those attacks hit, I know better.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Latina in the Cialis ad?

Freakin' GORGEOUS. (Remember, I'm middle-aged.) I'm in lust. But what's the deal with Cialis takers sitting in bathtubs in meadows? It shows up more than once in their ads. They mash, they canoodle, then they sit in tubs in the middle of nowhere.

WHAT ABOUT THE MOSQUITOES?!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Sitting in the garden on a near-perfect day

I only say near-perfect because there's no such thing as perfect. It's pretty close right now, though. Boo said earlier how wonderful it is, and it is. 77 right now, a little breezy, hardly a cloud in the sky.

The last few days have kept me from really doing anything in the garden. I was out of town for four days, in which we got torrents of rain...and when I came back it was hot and muggy enough that I wussed out on weeding. Well, that got the best of me, for sure, because the weeds out there are MANY. As in, much. Mucho. Lots. Well, they were, at least, until I weeded, and now it's not so bad. I love my scuffle hoe. :)

The excellent thing is that my early-planting experiment, which some of you may remember (with the Wall-o-Waters and the homemade milk-jug and pop-bottle greenhouses) has astounding results. Here it is June 10th in Zone 5b, and those tomatoes are already as high as my hips and blossoming! (And I am 6 feet tall.) The tomatoes set out normally are about a foot and a half high. Guess what I'll be doing with ALL my tomatoes next year. :)

Had some casualties, though. Not a single dill seed produced. Culprits? Birds, I think. They seemed really pleased with my dill patch once it was planted. Some of my patty-pan squash didn't come up, and the same with muskmelons and cucumbers. Short story: planted them in mid-May, and while we didn't get a frost, we had two weeks of wet, cold weather. I checked the seeds near the end of the month. Rotted in the ground. Same with the herbs I planted. Not much of anything. So...a quick trip to the nursery (Vite up in Michigan), a little resowing, and there are now some muskmelons, cucumbers, and patty-pans, as well as rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram...and a couple ornamental peppers by the front door on the porch.

The potato experiment (tires and trash can) is a mixed bag, though. The trash can taters are thriving like crazy, but the one stack of tires? Not so much. I think I just finally overextended them. I filled in dirt one last time and the plants never came up again. Maybe I'll put some squash or something in there, too--hate to see something like that go to waste. The other two tater tire projects, though, are also thriving--only two tires high. Maybe I'll even get a couple of taters.

2 waves of poppies, coral belles are incredible, and the, uh, let's call them "native grasses" are doing just fine.

Tomatoes by June! It's not just a hope, it's a rallying cry!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Just a quick note while I am doing things other than blogging

Have you ever noticed that when John McCain smiles, he looks like he's following someone else's instructions on how to do it?

Look, everybody else was all over the Clinton/Obama thing like flies on rice. Or something.