A Brief Inventory

I won't say that it necessarily indicates a lack of housekeeping skills on my part, but here's an inventory of what's on my living room coffee table this morning.

• 14 magazines


• A pile of loose notebook paper


• A spiral bound notebook


• A popsicle stick


• a plastic zipper bag filled with colored pencils


• Assorted loose colored pencils


• An electric pencil sharpener


• A hand pencil sharpener


• A glass egg roughly the size of a quail egg


• two remote controls


• A Nintendo DSi


• a blue "gertie"inflated ball


• two pairs of reading glasses, one of which has only one leg


• two strings of mardi gras beads


• A Weight Watchers cookbook


• A folded cloth napkin. Possibly clean. Or not.


• A Webelos Scouts neckerchief


• A bottle of hand lotion


• A bendy straw


• A deck of cards


• Three "Gogos" stickers


• A tin collectors box full of "Gogos"


• Three envelopes of mystery mail


• A plastic box containing almost exactly 10 pounds of marbles


• nail clippers


• A stack of coasters (these, ironically, are at the farthest possible distance from anywhere a person might reasonably be expected to set down a drink)


• A blue paper notice alerting me that the city will be turning off my water from 10 to 2 today for water line repairs


• Two packets of vegetable seeds (corn and okra)


• Instruction booklet for the Cox television system installed several months ago


• A laminated card with a passcode on it to some math website for Grayson


• A manga comic book


• Two paperbacks: one children's, one adults


• A letter from Grayson to his friend in Houston, unposted


• A box of "pop-its" snappers


• An opened package of "pop-its" snappers, leaking sawdust


• A rock


• The plastic cover to a Capri Sun straw


• Two CD cases for audio books: One adult, one children


• A 4 x 4 sample of knitting


• A Blasters album (vinyl) in its sleeve (thanks Michael!)


• A cd with collected songs by James McMurtry (thanks Konrad!)


• A Calvin and Hobbes book


• A large picture book of archaeological findings


• A Yu-gi-Oh card


• A Boomerang gift card (cool!)


• a torn piece of the back cover of a pocket folder, stuck to the table surface with some sticky substance


• My netbook (until I picked it up to post this)


• Three candles in class containers (These actually belong here)


• One candle, still in wrapping (this does not)


• A wooden box filled with glass beads


• A Swiss army knife


• scattered pencil shavings


• A glass holiday coaster that is meant to hold a photograph but doesn't have one in it


• A half-full box of colored pencils


• An emory board for foot calluses (in my defense, I was not using it to sand down my feet in the living room, I was using it to shorten my acrylic nails so I could use my hands again)

That's it. It's possible that some excavation could reveal further treasures, but that's all for now.

You can draw your own conclusions.

Spring Springs

I spent a lot of Spring Break feeling less than springy. The weather was iffy most of the time, and yet I still suffered from the sore throat and nasal issues associated with the spring allergy season. I'm pretty sure that all the red cedar in Oklahoma pollinated that week.

I was also a little blue because I didn't have my kiddo with me much. From Friday through Wednesday he was with my folks at Lake Texoma, and from Thursday through Sunday he was with his dad. It's funny how I can transition from "oh boy! Time all to myself!" to "I want my boy back!" so quickly. I did get an overnight at the lake on Tuesday night, however, and the weather was cooperating pretty well.

The big news for G about the lake is driving the golf cart. I have to admit, it's a pretty fun little thing to drive around. But this time, for the first time, Grayson was able to really and truly drive all on his own. Nobody needed to remind him about keeping his speed steady or not slamming on the brakes or oversteering. My dad said it was like all the lessons and coaching came together and clicked, and he was driving like a champ. I was so proud of him, and it was clear he was proud of himself.

I keep saying it, but it keeps being true... my boy is growing up. I'm not sure how to feel about this. Of course I want him to grow up and mature and be an independent, responsible person, but who will sit in my lap when he's grown up? My lap likes that.
It makes me understand how it is that otherwise perfectly normal adult humans go absolutely goofy over their grandchildren.

Finally, by Sunday I was over my cold and/or allergy bout enough to get outside. The weather, after dithering a bit during the first part of the week, seemed to decide to settle on spring after all, and Sunday was gorgeous. I went out to "just look" at the plants in the nursery and came home with the back of my car full of flowers, veggies and herb plants, ready to go into the garden.

I know I'm running a risk, planting this early, but I just couldn't help myself. After days indoors, and a really nasty winter, I needed some DIRT. So I spent the afternoon digging and weeding, raking and planting, happy as a toad in the garden. Now almost all my veggies (with the exception of the squash) are in, and I'm watching the nighttime temperatures carefully each day to see if I need to run outside and snuggle any tomatoes to keep them warm through the night. I'll do what I have to do. I need gardening!

Strangely, my gardening bug coincided over the break with a sudden and irresistible need to get Girlie, so I went out and got a new set of acrylic nails put on. I realize that this is the height of folly at this time of year, because fake nails and gardening just do not go together. But I did it, I just needed a little pretty in my life. So now I'm out in the garden in my gloves, trying to turn over a new section of brutal Oklahoma clay full of die-hard bermuda grass runners... without peeling off a fingernail. Noone ever said pretty was smart, sadly. So far so good, however. I've managed not to rip my nails off, and the garden did get turned and planted.

I wish I had a picture of my own Big Mama I could post here. I'll have to look for one and scan it in. Every time I plant my garden I think of her. She kept an enormous garden in the yard of her house when I was growing up, and she worked it all herself until she was well into her 90s. I can see her in my mind's eye, in the pocketed pinafore apron and sunbonnet that my mom made for her every year, leaning on her hoe handle and picking off tomato worms or turning over a bed of potatoes or filling a basket with okra pods. I wish she could see me now. I wish she could tell me what to do about the vine borers that get my squash every year, and how to get my onions to grow like hers did: fat and sweet and delicious. I feel close to her when I have my hands in the dirt, and I miss her, then, too.

I laugh and tell Bob that I'm the person to know when the grid goes down, because I'll still be able to grow us food. It's not really true, though. I'm one of those bumbling urban gardeners who produces the $65 tomato every year: putting way more money and sweat into the garden than I probably receive in actual produce. I lose my squash plants to vine borers by the end of June and my tomatoes to spider mites or flower-end-rot by July. By the end of the season I've pretty much given up on about all but my peppers and mint, and am just hoping for better results next year. Most of my successes are accidental: like the crop of cucumbers I put in -- in JULY -- two years ago that took off and scrambled over my whole front flower bed, shooting out so many footlong cukes that I took to giving them to everyone I knew. Or the grape tomato a few years ago that shaded out or strangled everything around it, but showered me with sweet, delicious thumb-sized tomatoes all summer long. Last year I had an explosion of lettuce, next to a crop of radishes that were all tops and no bottoms.

We'll see what surprises I get this year.

In Which I Am Roundly Rejected by a Weiner Dog

As I was one of the ones staying in Norman during Spring Break, I gladly agreed to be the pet-watcher both for Bob's cat Jpeg and for Michael's weinee-dog, Daisy. It's an easy gig: just show up once a day, check the food and water supplies, and provide a little human companionship.

Well, it was easy for Jpeg, at least. But Jpeg knows me. Iarrive, he comes running, I let him in, let him out, top up the food and water bowls, a rub on the noggin and I'm out. Daisy, not so much.

Daisy, the sweet little weiner dog, morphs into Devil Dog from Hell.


She. does. not. like. me.

She dislikes me so much that she actually ran up into the windowsill by the front door and pooped. That's how much she doesn't like me. That's a lot of dislike. She dislikes me so much that just two days into it I got relieved of my pet-sitting duties after Michael heard her growling over the phone when he called to see how we were getting on together.

Who would think a tiny little weiner dog could pack so much rejection?