Mulish & Co.

My Fantabulous Life

I took a few days off, you know, to let fifty sink in. The best part of my birthday week is that Michael always takes the week off from work; the entire week! We get to stay up late and sleep in together. Basically, the same thing that we always do but I don't have to leave him at noon and come back to an empty house in the evening.

I've been using my time to see what Photoshop Elements is all about. You need a morning or an afternoon to devote to it because it makes time dissolves and before you know it your stomach is inquiring about your next meal. It's amazing all the ways that a photo can be manipulated. It makes me wary to ever trust a photo again.

It makes me wonder about perception and about how we see the world. Never as it is, no doubt. More likely, we see what we are conditioned to see, what we want to see even. Do we see the best or the worst in people? What do we see when we look in the mirror? What if we could see nothing? Like Slip, my dog who navigates the hallway by lightly bumping the walls, like a bull through a chute.

I see a "me" that no one else can see. Some days I'm a failure, some days I'm a success. Some days I'm a hamster on a wheel chasing after who knows what? Life's most recent revelation has been that I need to be kinder to myself so I can be kinder to the world. I wish I could hug my six-year old self and tell her that she is loved and matters and she will make a difference however big or small. One of the cruelest and most profound things (in that it haunted me lifelong) was an employer's remark when I was all of twenty. 

"You know you're expendable, don't you?"

I've always suffered the George Bailey syndrome when it comes to the larger world. In my own little world I feel grounded and purposeful. Maybe that's why I cling to it so. In the larger world I feel small and am ready to flee at the drop of a hat. And what would it matter?

I am taking the 100 Days Of LovingKindness Challenge. I thought, "Oh, I can do that", then I realized that 100 days was more than three months and I began to get a little worried that I wouldn't be able to do 100 consecutive days of meditation. I go easy on myself. I usually sit for 25 minutes. I've found that I can almost sit cross-legged 8 months after my knee surgery.

So far, I've learned that my mind will scamper off countless times and that I have to rein it in again and again. I've discovered that I can tune out the sound of a snoring beagle; that I am the kind of person who will ask daily, "What's the point?", I've found that I am the kind of person who wants desperately to see progress, who earnestly applies herself even if she doesn't see the aforementioned progress. I trust. I doubt. I persevere. I go forth unguided. I laugh at myself. But most importantly, I rock!

Fantabulous Fifty, you are due to arrive tomorrow. I've tidied up a little and unlatched the door. Come on in!

 

Untethered

I felt completely untethered and undone and asked myself,

"Am I doing this right?"

 

Sharing. It Makes You Feel All Warm and Fuzzy Inside.

 

I came across two things over the weekend that I think are worth passing along to those who flirt with words. The first is a response by Elizabeth Gilbert to the curmudgeonly Philip Roth and the second is a Charlie Rose interview with writer George Saunders.

I'll be straight up and say that I was not a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert's mega-hit Eat, Pray, Love. I got cramps in my eyeballs from rolling them so much. A few years later she gave a TED talk and I could no longer be so dismissive. I really liked what she had to say and fell in love with her views on creativity. The response to Philip Roth is a little bit of a continuation of the TED talk. It is addressed to the fortunate few who write. It is full of gratitude for her vocation.

The George Saunders interview started a little slow for me. I've never read anything that he's written but Michael has. He's a good one for finding little gems online and sharing them with me. For example, turning me on to Pina Bausch, the modern dancer and choreographer who passed away at 68, just five days after receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer. We watched a Wim Wenders documentary about her last night. The dancing was amazing - the documentary just so-so.

Back to the Saunders interview. I stuck with it and by the end all I wanted to do was call him up and say, "George! Let's have dinner, let's talk." He seems like the nicest, most unpretentious individual ever. I downloaded a sample of his most recent book Tenth of December to my kindle after watching the interview.

That was my weekend in a nutshell. Surfing the web so you don't have to!

 

This is my relationship with Michael. It's true, he does most of the work.

Patience: Torture or Virtue? I Think We All Know The Answer To That

I don't know what it is that makes me feel like I am waking to an hourglass newly turned, the sand falling eagerly to the lower chamber. I'm sure coffee doesn't help to slow me down any but, I went for two days without it and felt as if I'd been hit by a truck - my head and body ached. I was slow and sluggish. A steady infusion of caffeine fixed that mess but I do feel like I am constantly running out of time.

To exacerbate things, the asparagus refuses to wait for me. I've been telling myself that it's time to rake the straw from the top of its bed. I halfway convinced myself that the asparagus would abstain from poking its head through the surface of the soil until I'd done so. It didn't, of course, it came through anyways. Then I raced to rake the straw away. I did it before I flew off to the vet clinic yesterday to put in my 6+ hours (it's not much but it feels like an eternity).

Do I get to eat the asparagus this year? I planted them as one year-old crowns last year. In my mind, that makes them two years old this year. I don't understand the waiting for three years before harvesting asparagus. I recently read, and was reassured, that it is okay to harvest the year after planting. This is contrary to everything that I've read before but I like it. Thank you, Ohio!

In other news, an intense desire for this camera has gripped my soul - the Canon G15. I sent a tweet out to Canon suggesting that they entrust me with one of their fine cameras but they must be shy as they did not reply. That's okay. I'll strategize. The longing will build character and make me more resourceful somehow.

Well, it looks like the sand in the hourglass has almost filled the bottom chamber. Off I go, into the rain, into the world.

Nursery List

Things to pick up from the nursery:

1. Savory, thyme & oregano to replace brittle twiglets that were killed by last frost.
2. Plant food for lime tree. I'm gonna feed it like I'm raising geese for foie-gras.
3. Red La Soda potataoes. I will not give up on my potato tower method of cultivation.
4. Seeds for orange bell pepper. They're vitamin packed!
5. Bone meal for new batch of beets. This is an experiment.

That's it. My garden challenge to myself this year is to see how far out into the warm months I can grow lettuce. I purchased lettony lettuce seeds from High Mowing and planted a few in a tray on Monday along with more Red Sails. I think the Red Sails prefers the cool months so this may be the last hurrah for those. The lettony is new to me.

Most of the things in my garden this year will be things that I failed at miserably and am determined to have success at. One of those things would be peppers. I have decided on orange bells and anchos ths year. That's it. In the past, I have grown beautiful plants but no fruit. If there was any  fruit to speak of it was shrunken and tiny and existed merely to mock me. This is the year that I show the peppers who's boss.

The potatoes may be a whole different ballgame this year since they will be spuds instead of sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are a different animal altogether. I learned the hard way that you do NOT tower sweet potatoes. The traditional day to plant spuds around here is Valentines Day, February 14th.

I haven't talked about the tomatoes yet, I feel there is still plenty of time to mull over a plan of action regarding the red devils. I flirted with the idea of canning this morning while I was cleaning out the coop. I have big ideas while I clean out the coop, the way I do when I'm in the shower. It's a solitary meditative activity and can be relaxing in a weird way. For the record, Dorothy agreed with everything I said.

Outside The Center

It seems to me that anytime I've tried to introduce structure or routine into my life, I am thrown off-kilter. I lean too far over and am thrown from my axis and flung far, far out and away into a world completely unfamiliar to me and then I have to find my way home again. This is how I've felt for weeks now.

I keep looking for the familiar that will lead me back to where I want to be: a familiar food, a patch of soil, a voice. I really haven't felt like myself lately, that's the bottom line. I try to listen closely to the world around me. I thought I heard the butter requesting I cut it into pats. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure it was just an OCD moment.

Michael did not seem to see the value of pre-patted butter.

I did manage to finish two books. I also started two types of lettuce seeds. I took the dog to the vet so she could remove two hemangiomas. It took two days of pain medication before he was himself again. I do see the patterns of life (clearly the number "2" plays a large part) but I can't seem to align with them. I feel a little outside of myself, a little like I'm seven again and waiting to jump into the swinging rope and shout the count but I keep hesitating for fear I'll get all tangled up and have to start at the beginning again which could be okay. The important thing is to take the leap, right? So here's to leaping and getting back into the swing of things!

All The Goodbyes

"Good day to you," she said.

I woke this morning somber, after having immersed myself with thoughts of people who no longer populate my life; in particular, a client who's passing I only learned of yesterday. She was a fiercely independent and brilliant woman. Through an incidental remark made by a current customer, I learned that she was now the steward of the deceased woman's pets.

We marvel at these coincidences. We believe they land at random on our shoulders like bulbous drops of rain - our faces tiny and distorted, looking back at ourselves from the domed surface. If we stood a little to the left we'd have an entirely different experience. We weave fine and intricate nets and cast them out to fall where they may.

One fish slipped from my net a year or so ago. A curious one that fought to survive through mimicry. It was a smothering tactic and I needed desperately to extricate myself. The beautiful beast lay injured, violently thrashing on the shore. It's body heaved, for air or tears I'll never know. I turned away as it slid silently back under the watery waves.

I felt weighed down by these thoughts and only with difficulty did I rise from my bed. Standing at the stove I silently noted the differences between the new tea kettle and the old.

Michael asked me last night before I drifted off to sleep if I was happy with the new one.

"It's not the one I really want but it will do."

"Which tea kettle would you rather have?"

I had no energy to describe tea kettles before drifting off to sleep.

"If I described it to you, it would sound like any other tea kettle. It would sound ordinary. But it's fire orange and you can't go wrong with that."

My enamel blue kettle grew old. Its spine and speech impaired it sits, still serviceable, on the back burner. I felt embarrassed remembering how I'd cursed it when the handle - its exoskeleton - fell off in my hand. And then its lip clunked onto the stovetop. It's nothing that can be fixed. It's aging like me, like all of us, and I was ashamed for being angry with it. A tea kettle. Imagine that. All of the coffee and all of the tea and all of the warmth that poured out of the thing and I cursed at it.

Now I am feeling sheepish and unwilling to toss it away. Is this how we become eccentric? Will I be an old woman with a kettle on every burner? I can imagine being found still in my chair, a dog sitting vigil while a quartet of kettles bellow the sad lament of bagpipes.