Bowl of Hours

So, today was fantastic.  What else is new. :) I keep feeling like maybe I should knock on wood. Like lightening is going to strike.

Darklin went out to price roofing shingles, and found out the whole project is going to cost us a lot less than we thought. Huzzah. Mid-May, we’ll have a new roof.  Thank Gods. It’s really been wearing on me, all the worry over the roof.

Once he got back, Darklin and I headed out to the Belgium Garden Center and blew a hundred bucks on plants and mulch. Cedar mulch. Mmmmm. We stopped at the grocery store to pick up burger fixings, then to get beer, ice, and a top off on the propane tank. We had our first BBQ of the season, and I spent a good two hours digging the herb bed of my dreams. The bed was sort of there, but it had languished for a few years so it was a right royal mess.  I got it dug, aerated, dug in some peat moss, delineated it from the rest of the yard with some bricks, and stood back beaming to admire my handy work.

A shower and a quick nap later, and I’m ready for an evening of reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelaxing.

And iced coffee.

Nom nom.

I still have another small flower bed to prepare out back, the beds under the trees to clean out and prepare for a sprinkling of shade wildflowers of some kind, an altar to build by the triple tree*, and the bed out front to fill with gladioli, violas, and pansies.

Lots to do, but I’m starting earlier than I ever have before, so I feel confident that I’ll get more done this year than last, and even more than the year before last.

Happiness is gardening.

I found an old hat to wear so I don’t die of sun stroke. It’s an ugly thing - kind of looks like something an eighty year old fisherman might wear - and it has the words “HYDRO ONE” emblazoned across the side in red. It’s perfect. Fits perfectly. Keeps the sun off my head and the sweat out of my eyes.

More gardening tomorrow. Leah’s helping. She did a bit of work digging all the clover out of the vegetable patch. I once lent the space to a friend so she could have some gardening space, and she spread clover seed. Something about it being good ground cover, yadda yadda. I don’t like it at all, which is why we didn’t garden in the back last year. I have to dig out about a thousand clumps of clover before I can plant my veggies. But…once it’s done, I’ll have snap peas and carrots, zucchini and yellow squash, and other things.

Once day I’ll learn to can so I can make preserves. For now, though, we’re thinking ‘deep freezer’. With a family of six, we can definitely use one.

I smell like homemade cold press oatmeal soap and extra strength moisturizer.

This makes me insanely happy.

OMG so funny. And I have a crush on the lovely gray haired guy, too. :)

Bobbing on the waves
rusting and barnacled
oasis to resting gulls
in a desert of water

Every quarter of an hour
it announces itself
belching sound in all directions
for miles and miles around

Eyesore. Ear sore.

Lighthouses win
beauty contests
and they, too
have their purpose
but they’re only any good
on the clearest of nights.

When navigating sightless
close to the treachery of rock
only a foghorn will do.

F. Stuart

Will I ever tire of this, I wonder?

I spent the morning working on stuff from The Artist’s Way. I practiced guitar and read blogs. I sat outside in my backyard while the dog ran circles around and around chasing his ball.

I’m sun-kissed from sitting outside with The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael Bugeja for too long without sunscreen, and then adding insult to injury by doing some gardening. I cleaned the bedroom. I had iced coffee. I cooked a meat sauce for hours and hours on simmer on the stove.

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Photo by L. Hennessy

Birds

I’d rather be some
pesky, obnoxious bird -
a grackle, lets say -
than one that merely mimics
the songs of other birds.

I’d rather have dusty feathers
than clipped ones,
rather peck at the dead
than eat white bread.

© F. Stuart

My shoulders are pink, my cheeks are rosy, my back feels good, and I got a lot accomplished today already. My only complaint is that the blister I developed on the middle finger of my left hand is oozing and swollen. Infected, maybe. Gross. Yet, I’m still practicing. I hope I don’t lose a finger to my guitar learning obsession!

Took a long walk, had lunch (French Onion Soup and a side salad - yum!), paid off my (considerable - gulp!) library fines, took out some books, and took the bus home. Then I finished knitting the mate for a pair of gray superwash wool socks that just needed the toe. Now they’re going to go in a drawer, not to be seen again until winter, because I don’t wear socks until sometime in October. :) Oh well. At least they’re done!

I’m feeling pretty good today. Elder Kidlet has been very peaceful. We’ve been joking that we’re going to hire someone to beat the shit out of him once a month so he can beat them back and get all this shit out of his system. He blushes, shrugs, and says he doesn’t know why he gets so riled up about little things, but then, he got kicked out of anger management for using foul language. He has to start over, because it’s mandatory that he do this program or he goes to juvie. Silly kid. Anyway…

(rolls eyes, shakes head)

Aside from the occasional teenage monster flareup, things are good.

How are you?

Some words
are so sweet and so
fragrant
that I can grieve their loss

can hover and buzz
confused as bees
who find saccharine
where flowers should live.

Bees don’t linger long,
and I take my lessons from them
these days.

If that sweet fragrance
on the wind
led me wrong,
well,

I grieve.
And I fly on.

F.Stuart

While the entire weekend was a roller-coaster ride of family time (because when this family is in crisis, we stick like fucking glue, yeah?) and the utter chaos only an out of control teen can invoke. By Sunday night, I was not only exhausted, and not only in a great deal of pain (back spasms, yippee) but I discovered that my muscle relaxants (OTC) had been stolen, too. I melted down. What kind of kid steals his mother’s pain medication? Oh…right. The kind that medicates to deal with an out of control anger problem. Right. Gotcha.

Anyway…

I wandered into the kitchen at around 1:30 a.m. to get a glass of water, only to discover that there was a huge pile of meat on the counter, waiting to be separated into freezer bags. I almost cried, but I got it done with the exception of one roast that I tossed in the fridge to finish divvying up tomorrow. I gripped the counter with white knuckles for a while when my back spasmed. When I finally felt like I could move without crying, and maybe sleep without my heart pounding right the fuck out of my chest, I crawled in to bed only to discover teh Spousal Unit snoring like a fucking chain saw and the kitties playing kitty hockey and kitty tag under the bed. Hardwood floors turn pitter patter into thumpety thump.

I didn’t sleep much.

I rolled out of bed at 8:05 a.m. when the dog went completely ballistic over gods know what, and made a pot of coffee. I recorded the first half of the podcast. I drank more coffee. I went to get a hair cut (short! Think Jamie-Lee Curtis with a bit more length on top) and after getting all coiffed, and getting a bite to eat, I found myself feeling quite spry in the back area. I walked home - about a mile and a half - in the sunny, Spring weather. Made an iced-coffee. Recorded the second half of the podcast, and had another iced-coffee. (I’m still a little wired!)

Then I divvy’d up the roast. Got two roasts, one bag of stew beef and another bag of fajita strips out of it. For twenty bucks. Go me!

While I was divvying up the roast, the Elder Kidlet (source of recent ARRGH) asked if I needed help with making dinner. At first, I braced myself. I wanted to say no. I wanted to say ‘get the fuck out of my kitchen’. See, he called me the c-word, and his step-dad a ‘fucking hindu’ and a ‘cocksucker’ just the other day, so I wasn’t feeling all that kindly toward him. But something in me moved out of the way. Something big and powerful and ugly and mean and pissed off in me just took off running. And I let him help. And he actually helped.

Dinner was delicious (pot roast, au jus, potatoes roasted with lemon and oregano, broccoli cooked just ’till tender, green beans, and sliced tomatoes - yum!). The kids (all of them) wandered off to peacefully do whatever they were doing. Darklin asked me to go to Chapters with him, and though I hesitated, because, let’s remember, Elder Kidlet did a pretty good job of smashing up the basement just a few days ago, I decided to go. Because HELLO???? MY HUSBAND ASKED ME TO GO OUT WITH HIM! ON A MONDAY!

So I went. :)

We had coffee. We talked (atheist vs. pantheist/theist/witch - it was the perfect combination of snarky and loving and fun). He insisted he didn’t need ’spirituality’ in his life, and then picked up a book called The Spiritual Atheist. I didn’t mention this apparent contradiction, and he didn’t sneer at me when I picked up “The Study of Witchcraft” by Deborah Lipp. The clerk gave us a funny look, just as he did last time we were there when Darklin picked up “The Skeptic” magazine, and I picked up The Temple of High Blah Blah by Christopher Penczak (Blah blah only because I can’t actually remember the title - I kind of like his books. Do Not Laugh At Me!).

It was a brilliant day and I’m counting my blessings.

It’s Monday, which means I am BLISSFULLY ALONE.

This weekend gave me gray hairs. And heart palpitations. And an ulcer.

But this morning, I had my coffee, recorded the first half of Episode 9, and went to get my hair cut. I had a nice, long, leisurely stroll back, and I’m about to record the second half of Episode 9. The only squeezy (as in, I wanted to squeeze someone REALLY TIGHT…maybe about the neck, eh?) moment was when I discovered that one of my children made off with my iPod’s headphones. Not the iPod. Just the headphones.

Fricken kids.

But, I’m not letting it get to me. I’m breathing. I’m ready to finish up Episode 9. And then I’m going to practice despite the blood blister on the middle finger of my left hand.  Ouch!

Stop looking at my haggard face and look at my blood blister!

:-)

Laundry day. Everyone is doing their own thing between putting in loads of laundry. I’m about to get out my new guitar (purchased on Friday as a joint gift for Darklin and I. We agreed to get one for Christmas, but we just didn’t have the money until recently). My fingers are blistered, but there’s only one way to get the callouses needed to play and that’s to keep playing despite the searing pain in my fingertips.

Things have been fairly peaceful with an undercurrent of egg shell. The Elder Kidlet is a pain in my ass, and the younger Kidlet is responding to the tension by adding drama of his own. The Middle Kidlet keeps offering me hugs. He’s the most enlightened of us all, I think.

Monday, EK is going in to school to talk to the principal about the fact that he has been skipping his English class *every single morning*. They may suspend or expel him. I have no idea. But I’m not going in with him - he’ll have to advocate for himself this time - and I’m not going to ask them to keep him if they choose to expel him. I’ve already gone to bat for him and he’s taken the grace I’ve offered and tossed it in my face, so it’s tough love time. He still lives here, but for all intents and purposes, he’s on his own in terms of navigating the very difficult waters he’s created for himself.

I have to record a show today. I’m not exactly sure what it will be about, but I know it will be something about the importance of having a foundational practice of some kind. I hope to get that done later this afternoon.

But for now, it’s me and Evangeline until my fingers bleed.