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odds

Thursday night already.  Early this week I said I was trapped in amber.  More like quicksand.  Time is fickle; my perception of it changes depending on the viewing angle.

Man the wind is really whipping the rain into the windowglass.  It’s cold out too.  Walking to the car after the gym reminded me of when I was a kid and I had a fever.   My mom used to bring me a damp washcloth and I’d fold it in perfect thirds and lay it across my forehead and eyes.  The coolness felt so good.  After physics brought it slowly to match room temperature I’d hold it by the corner and spin it around in violent circles for thirty seconds or so to get it ice-cold again.  That was me tonight walking.  Sweat-soaked like that damp rag and wind-whipped into iciness.  Dang it was chilly.

Let’s skip ahead and write, shall we?

People probably know I love data. Well, I love organized data. Data by itself is, ostensibly, crap. Organized data can tell stories or support facts or win and lose arguments. Statistics. It’s all about statistics.  In one manner or another I’ve written about statistics again and again and again and again and again and again.  Wanna know how important statistics are?  Did you know that the magnitude of computations required to launch an orbiting satellite is about equal to what McDonald’s does in determining how to advertise a new hamburger? OK, I’ll admit I made that last bit up. But it’s OK because 57% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Certainly it would be ignorant to downplay the role of statistics in our lives, they run everything from the stock market to the insurance industry to how much the stamp you use mail a postcard is going to cost you.

I mention my statistics fetish as a lead-in to a link I wanted to share. I don’t do a lot of link-sharing on the blog much anymore. I used to. Back in the early days I would share links all the time. Now I think I’ve gotten somewhat pretentious and I aim to fill an entry with some sort of introspection or interesting novel content. There’s nothing wrong with linking though, I don’t look down on it or anything, I guess the way I treat the blog as an “outlet” has changed. Or I’ve perceived my audience to have changed (those I know about and can safely “count” as somewhat regular readership). Uh-oh I’m writing a paragraph about nothing again. I completely blame the last book I read. A good 50% of it was all internal-monologue asides to the story arc. I better get to the point here…

Here’s a really interesting statistics-filled post on the internet dating site OkCupid’s official blog.

When I was “dating,” which was a very small period in my life, online dating sites weren’t around. I’ve never needed to use one. I don’t have anything against them, I suppose it’s as valid a way to whittle the prospects as any. Heck perhaps it’s even a smarter-than-average way if “average” means going to the bar every Friday and Saturday night. It’s just that since I’ve been with the same woman now for something like seventeen years (yes, really) I’ve never had the opportunity to have to choose to either use, or not, a site like OkCupid. That being the case I’ve never even thought about what a labor it must be to make some of the seemingly simple decisions around how to “market” yourself to a potential mate online.

But think about it… it’s a non-trivial thing. In my mind I liken it somewhat to writing a resume or an annual “self review” at work. Here I have a single sheet of paper and on it I am supposed to give an accurate representation of myself. My skills, my accomplishments, my attitude, my ethic, etc. All of this must be distilled into a very limited amount of space. Same with an online dating profile I’d assume. Here I have this little plot of internet to communicate who I am, what I’m looking for, and why you should be interested in me. Stopping to consider it for a minute I can see why there might be fair amount of apprehension in putting oneself out there.

So back to the OkCupid blog. What a great article! If you didn’t click and read it yet, it’s just talking about the various ways a person’s dating profile picture impacts how “successful” their online dating “return rate” is. They do a great job digging the meaningful and interesting nuggets out of what is likely a mountain of data. Some of the charts are really insightful, and could just as easily (I bet) be applied to how “successful” folks are on any kind of social-media website.  I’ll tell you, when I decide to make the move into the fast-paced world of online social interaction I’m gonna take me one humdinger of a profile picture.

Goodnight.

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three books

I feel like this week is slow.  I’m stuck in amber and it’s a monumental effort just to get from bed to work to bed again in the cycle of day.  Sounds bad but I don’t intend it to.  I like slow.  Gives me time to think; feels like more hours in the day; makes me more productive.

Keaton apparently had some mega-fit, a fit to end all fits if you hear Sharaun tell it, Monday afternoon just before I got home from work.  Sharaun described it as topping the Disneyland tantrum.  That scar is still pink and puckered on my brain.  I was there for the Disneyland tantrum, I can vividly recall the delirium and the madness and the emotion.  I know how bad Disneyland was, I lived it.  And like veterans of America’s so-called “greatest generation” will spit on the ground and call us young folks “soft” and “pampered,” having weathered that tempest of awful behavior I think I know a thing or two about fits and their relative severity.  So for this fit, which I’ll call the grocery store fit, to best that… well, hell… that would certainly be something.

I mean I believe her.  She has no reason to exaggerate.  We have no contest of parenting one-upmanship whereby she’d be chalking up another mark in her column or anything.  So I can only take her on her word – this must have been a humdinger of a fit.  Part of what scares me, though, friends, is that I think we’re still just getting started here.  Disneyland, while still my high-water mark, will no doubt be eclipsed in time by something else; something that much worse in it’s own time.  And then again something else.  And again.  I don’t mean to say that I expect our wonderful daughter’s behavior to be a runaway truck or anything, a white dwarf compacting its way to nova or something… I only mean to say I’d be silly not to expect additional potholes on this road.  Things always seem seem worse in-the-moment and not-so-bad after the blessing of years; maybe I just mean to say that eventually all  passé  “old fits” will in time be replaced  by some nouveau “new fit.”

Sharaun pegged the epicenter, the Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, as a denied ride on the outside of the shopping cart.  Apparently this is a sometimes treat that she grants on some type of special occasion at one certain store… something about a carpeted area where she allows this sort of risky cart-ride if the whim hits.  Wherever that special place is, it’s not the grocery store parking lot and Sharaun told Keaton as much in answer to her request.  Like the tiny sunburst an errant rock makes in your windshield; like the long, thin lateral lines that appear in a snowdrift; a series of tremors at the base of a volcano – Keaton’s initial displeasure was but a harbinger of the coming storm.

OK so again I wasn’t there and I don’t know how bad it really was.  I’m trying to pretend I was though; trying to write like I was or put myself in her place or something.  I think they call it “identifying with your subject.”  Or, I imagine they’d call it something like that in journalism school or creative writing.  We were both there for Disneyland, and Sharaun swears this grocery store thing was worse, so I think I can somewhat accurately place it on the scale in my head.  I just do that and try to write from there, as if I were part of it when it actually went down.  Were I truly present I could likely flesh out this story with personal anecdote or some details about the parking lot or the shopping cart.  Instead I resort to cheap paragraphs about how I’m writing about it having not experienced it.  There; good.

Anyway the storm came and Sharaun called it nearly unbearable.  A screaming, crying throw-down against all things holy the whole trip through the store.  “Everyone was looking,” she moaned, tortured by the retelling.  “I restrained myself,” she said, “But I kept thinking, ‘Oh, if David were here he’d spank her right in front of all these people.'”  Boy, I didn’t realize I’m that heavy-handed.  This Disneyland thing really has marred my reputation. I swear violence is my absolute last option.  My spanking hand does not have a hair trigger.  But still, I fear she may be right in her thoughts.  Worse than Disneyland, and all the more “public” to boot?  Yes sir I may indeed have spanked her right there… although I can already tell you that in the alternate universe where it was me at the grocery store and I did spank her, it didn’t help a lick and, in fact, made things quite worse.

She did, in the end, restrain herself.  She continued her shopping undaunted.  Went right down the list anyway amidst Keaton screaming her head off and thrashing around in the cart.  For that I’m infinitely proud of her.  A small victory maybe, but I like to think at least one or two of those people looking on – even while mortifying her and very likely causing her to question her very mettle as a child-rearer – I like to think at least one or two of them did so as their backs straighten in solidarity.  “You do it, fellow parent.  You don’t take that.  You go right on with your business, go right on shopping.  Do what you need to do and let the kid bawl and whine.  With raised-fist I’m with you.”  I tried to explain this notion to Sharaun but it was lost in the rawness of her embarrassment.  I did tell her though that I was proud of her for not giving up on or rushing her errand because of it all.  And I really am.

Oh and the punishment.  Poor Keaton.  Never before has the toy room simply been “closed.”  I mean, it’s the room with all the toys.  For an almost-four year old what else is there but toys?  I found this all out upon arriving home that night… Keaton’s eyes still red and puffed from tears and Sharaun screwed up tight.  She got three books.  Three books and that’s it.  She didn’t even get to pick them, I’m sure a final rankling indignity in her eyes.  Three books and everything else was sealed off in the toy room, entombed.  The doors stand closed and the light is off and the blinds are drawn.  I heard about the punishment from a huffy Keaton before I heard about the reason for it from Sharaun, she caught me at the door on my way in.  “Wow,” I thought.  Sealing off the toy room… this must be something big.

Two days without toys or TV.  Three books and that’s it.  Yeah I’m proud of my wife.  She’s doing a great job with that girl and I’d be hurting without her consistency.

Goodnight.

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give the whole thing a high-and-tight

Several people lately have told me I should dispense with any hesitations and shave my head. These admonitions are usually accompanied by an insistence that my refusal to do so is because I am somehow loath to admit I’m actually balding. Let me try and address that for the here and now: I am clearly balding; I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Oh and I must admit I’ve been tempted at times to give the whole thing a high-and-tight that’d do a boot camp barber proud, I’ve just never gone the distance. Mostly, I think, because Sharaun has discouraged me. Second-mostly, I think, because I have a really hard time envisioning what I’d look like sans hair. Well, sans all hair, that is. In some way I think shaving the dome would be nothing short of luxury. I could cease worrying about hats in summer and instead slather the entire bald thing with sunscreen. I could throw away the old hairbrush I keep at work for those days when I do a midday gym. I could save money on shampoo. I might look younger. Then again, I might look older.

I had this discussion with a friend of mine from work who was visiting. We run into each other every few months it seems, but when we do I always enjoy our conversations. Ten years ago I worked with this guy before he moved onto a different job at the sawmill, in another sawmill location that is. And no, I think I’ve mentioned before I don’t actually work at a sawmill. In the non-blog world it’s an international technology company; personnel-wise a huge stable of nerds slaving away in front of computers. Anyway he’s had a shaved head for years now, did it sometime after he left where I work and went to work where he works now. He was encouraging me to do so, even while admitting his stubbly head shreds pillowcases.

His argument was compelling, not because his head looked so magnificent or he’s a gifted salesman, but (I think) owing to his current situation. See, this buddy of mine is on the precipice, about to make a large-scale transition in his life. About to leave his career at the sawmill (a quite successful and well-run career thus far, additionally). He’s weeks out from moving into a winery in the desert and taking over lock, stock, and barrel. He and his bald head are trading the shoulder-high cubicle maze and HR reps for days under the sun in the grape rows. Looking at the light in his eyes as we talked varietals, soil conditions, acreage, and supply/demand, I began imagining his head shining under the harsh desert sun as he tallied sugar content in the chardonnay. In every way I romanticized his current lot…

Somehow the allure of working the earth to produce something even Jesus deemed an “upgrade” to water, a substance already molecularly perfect and life-sustaining, transferred onto the discussion of whether or not I should shave my head. So it was that I found myself sitting there contemplating if liberating my skull of its furry covering might not also liberate my soul from its corporate prison. I doubt it… but the subconscious connection was made. Maybe my thinning crown is holding me back from my own desert winery… from my own hours toiling in the hot sun or down in cool dry cellars smelling of oak. How much might I gain by casting away so little? Look… I’ve turned it into a parable.

Yeah, I know, and I’ve written before, I have a good gig at work. It’s not too hard, just stressful; I’m compensated well for what I do and the demand on my time is far from unreasonable. It’s just fashionable to denigrate your job, right?

Maybe if I just shaved my head…

Goodnight.

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a complex athletic choreography

It’s with a similar embarrassed-pride to that conveyed in this entry last year that I begin this Monday entry.

I’ll start at the end and work to the beginning, if that’s OK…

My calves ache. My knees feel a little inflamed, and whatever part of my thigh-muscle (I probably know the name, but it’s funnier, and more in-line with my shtick, to feign ignorance) runs down the back part of my upper legs burns to match the calves. Even the little crescents of muscle at the base of my butt where my legs connect smart. Strange muscle groups; ones I’m not used to receiving feedback from. I mean, I’m better off than I was a year ago… I’m lighter and leaner and continue to take myself out for some exercise on a regular basis. Only thing is, even with a year of doing so I’ve not switched things up much. Sharaun says this is why I’ve stalled-out and am not losing more weight. Maybe she’s right. A year on the elliptical alone does seem a bit of a pigeonholed workout. But even being better off, even after that year, the muscles not worked in my limited workout protest when worked.

It’s an hour after noon on Sunday and the weather here is simply fantastic. Brilliant. The best we’ve had in weeks. Not a cloud in the blue sky and the sun is strong enough that the chill air doesn’t cut hard enough to push you back indoors. It’s the kind of “winter” day that makes you pine for springtime; the kind of weather that settles under your skin and itches as you hide from it inside the house. I’m in the garage. I’ve backed the car out into the driveway to clear one side and I’ve got the iPod playing through the speakers. I’m wearing a pair of “workout” shorts, a t-shirt, some tennis shoes and a hat to keep the sweat out of my eyes. In each hand I’ve got the ends of a blue jumprope and I’m whirring the thing over my head as I bounce on the balls of my feet. The “rope” is dark blue and made of soft plastic and the middle section is scuffed badly. I’m counting. Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. I”m trying as hard as I possibly can to establish a rhythm while remembering to breathe. I have considerable trouble with each.

It’s getting late on Saturday afternoon and the shadows in the yard are getting longer and darker. There was some real sunlight today for the first time in a long time, but big white clouds billowed in before long and made the air seem cooler for no sunlight. I’m slicked in sweat anyway, and my eyes are dry and burn from the cold air. My throat hurts from sucking wind and my head is throbbing a bit. I imagine my brain swollen just a little too large for my skull, too tightly packed. I’m counting. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Crap. One, two, three, four. Damn. One, two, three…

Mid-afternoon Saturday and I’m jumping too high, I can feel my knees bend and it’s taking much too much effort to get off the ground. Doing it wrong is still hard work and I’m sweating. Those guys in the gym looked like they were almost bouncing on their toes. If you didn’t see them from the waist down you might think that’s what they were doing. I need to shoot for that kind of “bounce jump,” something that won’t be like doing hurdles in addition to trying to time this infernal spin-jump spin-jump combo. What finally clicked for me was the sound of the plastic rope smacking the ground as it came around. I started timing my tiny jumps to that sound, just a split-second afterward. From there I just realized it’s all just a continuum. I can time the jump to the sound, to the position of my hand in its rotation, to a beat, to my breathing, to anything. I can get two or three successful jumps in a row now. Small but it’s huge to me.

Saturday before noon. Just got back from taking Keaton to dance class and I’m standing in the garage. Just standing. I’m swinging a blue jump-rope from ground behind me, over my head, and to the ground in front of me. Over and over again; back to front. I’m not jumping; I’m just trying to be coordinated enough to whip the thing around my head consistently without smacking myself in the neck, getting it tangled, or having the resulting arc bulge out on one side and catch my hip on the other. I can’t explain why this is so difficult for me. I have no sense of muscle-timing, I think it’s why I’m so bad at sports. I have to think incredibly hard to get my body to do something; what might be innate to someone else is a complex athletic choreography for me. I can’t even begin to try jumping this thing until I can reliably swing it around my head and back, so I’ll start there.

Sharaun’s still got all the women from church over at the house so I can’t head home yet. Keaton and I stop at a sports equipment store so I can pick up a jump-rope. Her bun has fallen out and has turned into a ponytail. I have to carry her through the parking lot because the asphalt is still damp from yesterday’s rain and it’ll soak right through her thin slippers. They have a bigger selection of jump-ropes than I’d anticipated but in the end I just go with whatever’s cheapest. It’s synthetic with black plastic handles, probably made in China or Taiwan. I choose the blue one over green and purple options. Five bucks. Not bad, I guess, but I can’t help thinking a piece of cut rope taped on either end would probably have been cheaper. I buy it anyway because I’ve only got a few days to figure this out.

You have no idea the flood of good feelings I have walking into the coffee shop with Keaton next to me. It’s early Saturday morning and she’s all decked-out for dance. Pink tights, black leotard, pink ballet slippers with little bows tied in the thin lace-things, and a black knit “bun cover” in her hair. The bun cover has little jewels on it and I did the bun myself. Gave her a ponytail to begin with, twisted it around into a lump and pinned it with a pin I found in the bathroom. She looks all thin and tall, like girls do when they’re becoming whatever comes after “toddler.” Little girls, I suppose… but to me the period is marked by that lanky look. Because it’s just her and I people look and smile. I get the feeling that it’s a rare thing, a dad and his little girl out for dance. I see other dads at class so I know it’s not true, but people still look like they admire it or maybe they’re remembering a time past or it just makes them smile. Either way holding her little hand I feel proud, of her and myself.

Maybe I can get a rope and practice over the weekend. With three days to learn I should at least be able to look reasonable come Tuesday.

Man, getting to the gym in the beginning was hard enough to overcome for me and I can still stay in my own little world there. A class, some kind of social workout where I’m supposed to be keeping up and doing what everyone else is doing and not making a fool of myself… that’s something else all together. In my normal world I’d never do this, but for some reason I’m excited to try. It’s just that jumping-rope thing that’s got me worried. Sit-ups, pull-ups, stadiums, I even think I can make a passable uppercut or straight punch to the bag without looking wretched. But jumping-rope? All that timing and spinning and whatnot, that sounds hard. Not at all up my alley. I’m worried about the jumping-rope part; I really am.

Thursday morning at work and I’m talking to to a buddy who’s signed up for a “boxing fitness” class offered at work. It’s over at the gym every Tuesday and Friday from 4:15pm to 5pm (canceled this week because the instructor is sick). I know the guy who’s teaching it, works at the sawmill but is a spare-time boxing enthusiast, I think he may have punched around some local amateur circuit or maybe still does. I met him through Ben and Anthony some ten years ago and he used to sit near enough when I worked one floor down from where I am now. The class is basically circuit training. Hitting the bag, sit-ups, push-ups, medicine ball passes, and jumping rope. A but-whooping three-quarter hour endurance race. My buddy convinces me to sign up, I keep thinking back to Sharaun telling me I need to “switch it up” to get the weight loss going again.

“Yeah. A boxing class.”

“A boxing class?”

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she’d do if the sun exploded

Just beginning to write and it’s 11pm. It’s an ambitious topic so I have doubts I can finish.

Back in the late eighties, the days when I wasn’t much more than a pimple-stricken hair-trigger-hard-on of a lad, all the hottest girls wore something called Malibu Musk. I am convinced that marketing studies were done for this product. Focus groups made up of newly-minted teenage boys. A demographic wholly unfamiliar with anything sexual yet for whom hormones are suddenly richly in bloom. Confused teenage boys who begin to look at the bra and panties section of mom’s JC Penney catalog in a whole new way. If I can liken this group of sexually-adrift proto-men to felines, then I posit that Malibu Musk was chemically engineered to be their catnip.

I would smell this intoxicating dollar store toilet-water on those girls in their babydoll dresses and stirrup pants and LA Gear shoes. They’d brush past me, Trapper Keepers clutched tight and filled science notes where future last-names were tested out in margins, and that scent would waft my way. This stuff was aerosol from the Gods. Gifted to earth-bound females so they could in complete innocence short-circuit developing male brains. One whiff and the neural pathways were immediately re-wired, cortex to gonads, an even swap for driver’s seat.

I fell in love with most girls in middle school. It’s really easy to do. Happens to boys often in those years. I would sit in class and visually move from chair to chair down the rows, stopping to contemplate each girl in turn. Would I take that one? No? What about if the sun exploded and I had eight minutes to live and she said it was on? What about in that case? Yeah, she’d do if the sun exploded. I hope all guys did this. Man I sure did. I had mental relations with all manner of girls when the imaginary sun exploded. Girls who wore Malibu Musk were it, though. The tops. You had the Musk and you had my heart; no supernova required. I’m yours.

I can’t even remember now what it smelled like. Probably candy. Something sweet and simple. Breezy. Maybe something guys of an age would like; Now and Laters or Skittles. Later in high school the Gods struck again with that insidious pear-smelling stuff from Victoria’s Secret. Ubiquitous on attractive girls of the early nineties it was Malibu Musk reborn into a higher caste, having left behind its lowly former instantiation and been reborn. Oh but it still titillated just the same, still lured and taunted and floated you along by the nose like the pies in windows do in cartoons.

Apparently they still sell the stuff; I should get some for Sharaun as a joke. A joke that I’ll implore her to humor me in, that is.

…

Turns out I lowballed it. I couldn’t concentrate to write. Sharaun had the TV on so I threw on the headphones and listened to something abstract to keep my attention on the laptop. I don’t know, maybe I did it justice. I wanted to write about Malibu Musk.

Goodnight.

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crack eggs like julia child

Happy Wednesday.  Week’s half-gone already.

After dinner tonight Keaton was asking for dessert.  Not that we do dessert as a regular thing, but she pretty much asks about it after each dinner.  Most times we just remind her that not every dinner is followed by something sweet.  Tonight I suggested we make cookies.  Keaton helped me dump in and mix the ingredients and then run the beater to blend it all together into a mushy dough.  She busied herself licking the beaters while I dolloped out the dough.  Afterward she used a fork to score them for baking (peanut butter chocolate this time around).  They came out OK… sort of overly salty and not very sweet.  Next time I’d adjust the recipe in both regards.  At least we had a good time.

I love doing with her.  Not just being or being-around but actually cooperating, teaming up, collaborating.  It’s surprising how much she knows and how decent she is at things like following instructions.  It’s in these instances when I tend to appreciate how much she’s grown up in her just-about-four years.  I can remember her helping me in the garden a while back and that she was too worried about getting dirt in her shoes to really enjoy it.  Now she cracks eggs Julia Child.

I’ve had this plan or idea or maybe notion… I’ve told Sharaun about it.  Keaton’s going to be four in a month and I think she’s old enough to go on a solo back-country hiking overnighter with her dad.  Well, not truly “solo” in that case I suppose, but meaning that she and I could have a daddy/daughter trip into the wilderness together.  I’ve been doing some trail scouting (online, since there’s currently snow in most of the places I’m checking), looking for a short hike in and out with relatively small change in elevation.  Despite wanting it to be short enough for her to hack, I’d also want it to afford us a chance to really get away into the open wilderness.

Last summer she aced the Happy Isles to Vernal Falls footbridge climb with Sharaun – so I know she’s got some stamina.  I’m thinking something along the same lines, around a mile or less in country and then an overnight campout in the backpacking tent.  A campfire with some good camp-food and marshmallows.  Maybe some books to read or a lesson on constellations or just listening to the wildlife before bed.  We could bum around the following day checking out nature, trying to identify the plants and trees by name or inventing our own names for land features (oh man I’m a nerd when it comes to this stuff).  Then break camp and head back down.

As adventures go, I think she’d rate this highly – and taking her out to show her God’s beauty in natural form is ultimately appealing to me.  Gonna do it for sure; already been hyping her on it for when the weather gets nice.

Goodnight.

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green thumbs & cold bones

The sun came out for part of the day on Saturday.  And despite the still mostly-overcast sky and cold temperature I got a kind of daylight religion and hatched a plan to get outside.

I took the sandwich sized Ziplock baggie from my dresser, the one I put all my loose change into, up to the coin-counting machine at the supermarket across the street.  $70 dollars later and I had a gift card to the local  hardware superstore.  This coin-conversion process always feels like “free money” to me.  Or at least infinitely more spendable money, I suppose.  I drove up the road to the hardware store (we live in the thick of it, I tell you) and made my purchases: new fill materials for the garden, a few large plastic planter pots, some grape vine starters, some blueberry starters.  Yeah… free project money for a half-sunny day.

Back at home I worked a long strip of rocky dirt above our current planter box.  All the recent rain made for light work loosening things up a bit and removing the largest of the upturned rocks.  I dug four holes about seven feet apart and planted the grape starters in a row.  A couple different table varieties, for eating, not winemaking.  With the earth so soft I went ahead and used the breaker-bar to dig holes for the trellis wire posts on either end of my new grape row.  I didn’t string wires yet as there’s no vine growth from the wood at this point, but I made it easy enough to do once (and if) the things take on the hillside.  I’m going to put a small set of steps near the corner of the yard by the garden box so it’s easier to step up onto the hill behind the retaining wall and care for the plants.  I was pretty proud at my use of space.

I filled two of the plastic planter buckets with equal parts peat, vermiculite, and compost.  Watered them down good and put the blueberries in to start.  I put them in the backyard on the porch to either side of the sliding glass doors.  Near enough that I can easily tap into the drip lines that run to the planters under the windows there but I didn’t actually hook up the water yet as it’s rainy enough now and I was getting cold down to the bone being outside so long.  I put the other planter over by the existing garden box and filled it with the same mix.  In this I’ll plant random small things like herbs or whatnot, maybe flowers to bring pollinators, but for now I’m trying garlic.

Lastly I pulled out all the dead and decaying vegetable matter from the garden box itself.  Stuffed it into the green waste bin and gave the box a raking to turn the dirt over.  Since my fill material is nearly two-thirds organic I have to refresh it quite a bit after every growing season.  I didn’t fill the thing back up and work it around though, because I’m not ready to plant yet and there’s no reason for the bed to be super fertile and ready if I’m not using it.  It’ll just be a destination for weeds and I don’t need that.

Man it was a good day working outside.  Sunday muscles were sore from pitching the breaker-bar and dragging the rake and hefting 50lbs bags of compost.  My grip was all off and I could feel all those tendons or strings or strands of tissue ache as I flexed my hands into fists.  I like that feeling; makes me feel like I did something productive.

Now it’s a waiting game.  The fruit is always the payoff.

Goodnight.