My 1st Lettuce Harvest

Fwd: My 1st Lettuce Harvest, originally uploaded by daniinnc_2000.

Despite the mishap I had with planting my lettuce, I still managed to get some of the seeds to grow. Thursday, I finally had enough to put on a sandwich. ABM was not impressed, but I was excited to finally be eating my very first harvest. After all those years of wondering what it would be like to eat food that I grew myself, I finally got to experience it.

I now see the wisdom of successive lettuce plantings. It took a month for me to get my little handful of lettuce. If I want to eat salad on a regular basis, then I need to plant a new crop each week. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding a place to put more lettuce. I may try using disposable lasagna pans.

I also noticed on Thursday that two of my tomato plants have started to flower. They are the two that looked the healthiest to me, so I am not surprised that they are flowering first. I wonder how long it takes to get tomatoes after the blossoming starts.

As for the rest of the garden, it seems to be going well. I can look down from DJ's upstairs window now and see green instead of just a tacky brown patch. Well, except for the melon bed which only has the watermelon plant thriving in it. My other melon seeds didn't seem to take. C'est la vie. I'm trying to think of this as a long-term project instead of just a one-time thing.

Sickness and Schedules

A summer cold has descended upon my household, making four out of six of us miserable. The funny thing is that we all woke up sick at the same time. Usually one of us gets sick and it sets off a chain reaction of the second kid getting sick just as the first one is getting better. I'm not used to all of us getting sick together. Perhaps it will be over quick.

It is unfortunate that we are all sick today because we have stuff to do. M has her final band concert tonight and the other kids are in a church musical tonight. How are they going to play and sing when they have stuffy noses and chest congestion? Once we get through this day, I may let them all play hooky from school tomorrow.

I feel bad that we can't attend both functions, but I imagine parents with more that one kid go through this a lot. Our situation has an additional wrinkle because I don't drive, so ABM and I can't split duties. Luckily, we have the MIL who can attend M's function while we go to the other one. This is only going to get worse as the kids get older and more involved in things, isn't it?

Sunday in New York (1963)

I was going to make this post a review of the movie Sunday in New York. However, after reading a friend's post about doppelgangers, I realized that I didn't want to write a review. What I really want to do is express what this kind of movie meant to me as a kid.

As impossible as it seems, my teenage self back in the 1980s thought that I would grow up to live the kind of life I saw in early-1960s movies like this one. I wanted to live in a world where the streets were filled with men wearing suits and hats and women wearing perfectly fitted dresses. In my dreams, I would live in a chic studio apartment and have friends over for cocktails and witty conversation. Almost every night I would be going out to dinner or attending a show.

Part of me still wants that life, but my current life has the possibility of living up to another fantasy. The gardening, earth mother, bake-my-own bread fantasy. I got the kids and the garden. Just bring on the flowing skirts and the yeast!

Sock Wars III is over for me

Sock Wars III, originally uploaded by daniinnc_2000.

So I have been beaten in Sock Wars. My Detonator socks arrived on Tuesday. I knew that I wouldn't last long, but I figured I should at least try. When a week went by, I nursed a brief glimmer of hope. After I got my socks, I emailed my assassin to let her know that she got me. It turns out that I wasn't her original target. She beat my assassin and then had to knit my socks. This means that these people are knitting way faster than I thought!

These socks were a great fit and I loved them, but I sacrificed and gave them to the MIL. Why? Because she has worn the last two pairs I made her until they were nothing but string. I was supposed to make her a new pair two years' ago. Yes, that's me, the bad daughter-in-law. So I figured the least I could do was give up this pair.

According to my assassin, the yarn used for these sock was Trekking XXL. I knew it wasn't the recommended Tofutsies because it didn't feel like dental floss. C1 fell in love with the color changes and wants a pair for herself. She's a knitter so now is as good a time as any for her to learn how to knit socks. I don't think I will spend the $17 for Trekking XXL. Lion Brand has Magic Stripes for half that price.

Even though I got knocked out early, Sock Wars III has encouraged me to try other knit-alongs. I've been knitting for long enough that I should be taking more chances and trying new things. More on that later.

TipNut.com (What's in my Google Reader?)

My Google Reader is loaded down with feeds. Since it is free and doesn't involve cluttering my bedside table with books, I subscribe to any blog that intrigues me. However, I don't get around to reading all of those feeds every day. As I type this, I am subscribed to 73 blogs with 333 unread entries. Out of that 73 there are about five blogs that I check every single day. TipNut is one of them.

TipNut is an aggregation blog, which is a blog whose primary purpose is to share links to posts on other blogs. I don't know if that is the official term, but that is what I call it. TipNut's particular niche is household hints. I've seen other blogs that offer household hints, but I like the feel of TipNut. The page design is clean and easy for my weak eyes to read. Also, the author doesn't just link to the article; the post on TipNut also has comments about how to make the particular tip work better.

The true appeal of TipNut for me as a person with a retro bent is the old-fashioned feeling. For instance, TipNut has many posts about homemade cleansers but they aren't presented in a modern "green" fashion. I get the feeling that author uses these recipes to simplify life and do things the way our grandmothers would have done them. Adding to that impression are the vintage patterns for items like laundry bags and embroidered dish towels. If you are a person who is trying to create a cozy environment for your family, you would do well to make TipNut a daily read.

Turning Into an Earth Mother

My original gardening plan has gotten bigger and bigger, probably because I keep trying to find reasons to be out in the garden. I started off thinking I was just going to plant four vegetables in containers: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and basil. Since my last gardening post, I've added cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, green onions, chives, squash, zucchini, banana peppers, and jalapenos. Another change is that the bulk of them are in the garden bed that I wasn't planning to use until fall. I decided that I would rather use my bed for free rather than sink money into more containers.

I knew that I would enjoy planning the garden because I have been dreaming of one for years. What I didn't expect was that I would like digging around in the dirt. I like shoveling the soil and the compost onto the beds. I even like standing outside and just looking at the plants. I'm thinking about putting a chair out there so I can sit and read.

Spending time in the garden has changed my whole feeling about the outside of the house. I treat the yard like another room now. I make the kids go out and pick up trash just as if they were straightening up their bedrooms. I'm more aware of how it must look to the neighbors when I have junk all over the porch and the lawn. Won't ABM be surprised when he comes home to a clean yard?




The funny thing is that the garden itself isn't even that pretty. The planks are left over from a play structure that ABM built for the kids about six years' ago. He tore the rest of it down when it got rickety but didn't feel like pulling up the bottom part that was secured to the ground. So I have a plot that resembles raised beds with all my plants squeezed in there haphazardly. Not a lovely sight, but I'm happy with it just the same.

Once

Once I was someone's daughter
With stars in my eyes and a dream in my heart.
I was full of promise then.

Once I was someone's lover
With a sexy laugh and a knowing glance.
I was full of seductiveness then.

Once I was someone's mother
With a child suckling at my breast
I was full of purpose then.

Now I am none of these things.
Promise squandered,
Seductiveness smothered,
Purpose stolen.
What am I full of, then?

Dani M. Sanders, 2008

Strange Allergy

ABM went out of town Monday on business, and I have been sneezing ever since he left. Could I be allergic to the empty space in my bed? Besides the sneezing, I feel like all the energy left my body when he walked out the door. All I want to do is stay in bed all day and watch sappy movies.