The Status of Things

This morning, I knew I was a few days overdue going out and picking tomatoes. I really had no idea, though. This was this morning's haul. I was just hoping to pick enough for dinner (shrimp tomato pasta) and to make some homemade salsa this afternoon. Clearly, there was no reason to fear.


This is our one (1!) tomato plant. For some reason, it grew out instead of up. There are nine stakes holding it northward and while picking this morning, I realized we could use a couple more. I never dreamed when we planted this tiny $4 plant that it would overtake the entire flower bed (covering parsley, oregano and onions!). It's more than paid for itself and I'm quite prepared for all tomato plants next year to shrivel and die.

After giving birth to twins (Sammy and Frump), I've been slowly making over my wardrobe. The baby weight is CLEARLY around to stay for awhile, so I've been channeling my inner Stacy and Clinton and trying to get rid of the mom wardrobe. I always did love skirts for everyday (since I don't do shorts) and I'm slowly getting a pretty decent stash of them. Most of them I can dress up or down, which is great. In fact, I'm wearing one today, along with a tshirt and some ballet slippers. It so changed my mood even though all I was doing was running to the farmer's market! One of my goals this winter is to figure out how to make a simple a-line skirt. If I can master that...

I was reading through my blogs last night while Isaac and I were watching The IT Crowd (so stinking funny) and one had a link to this website. I think I'm in love! I bought a couple of structured jackets on clearance. I hope they are as beautiful as they look on-line! One of them, I think, will go nicely with my new shoes:


Music for your weekend:

(alive, pearl jam - mmmmm, eddie vedder...)

Creative Goals

Ok. Instead of whining every three or four months (different words, same tune), I've decided to look to my sister as an example. She logged her self improvements for better or worse as a way of being accountable to friends and family who support her. If I TRULY want this time to be different and I TRULY want to make strides in my career and I TRULY want to stop wasting time watching What Not To Wear and get some writing done and I TRULY want to take this blog into a more creative vein, it only makes sense to specifically outline goals and check in periodically on how I'm doing. So you all are invited to hold me accountable. Or ignore me. Or whatever...

Projects currently being worked on:
1. Novel #1: This novel I started about...16? years ago. Before I was married the first time. It's my baby. I don't know that it will ever see the light of day, but after watching 500 Days of Summer this weekend, I feel renewed. I'm very protective over it and will fold into a heap at the sight of any criticism of it, but still. This is a NEED to get done, no matter what. For my soul.

2. Novel #2: I just started this one a couple of months ago and have massaged a treatment and the first chapter into something I think will go somewhere lovely. I'm really loving it so far and I have a goal (this is the scary part!) of having a first draft done by the end of the year. This is the part where I start justifying why that will never happen and why I should never have said that and excuse, excuse, excuse. YIKES. On a happier note, lbs read the first page and liked it. She should feel privileged because I rarely let anyone see works in progress. But her opinion meant a lot.

3. I have a David Sedaris type longer essay in the works. Scratch that. I don't like David Sedaris. Make that a Chuck Klosterman type essay. I love it and am really excited about getting to the point of shopping it around. We'll say that will happen by my birthday next year.

4. I also have a couple of ideas brewing to get me back in the magazine game, which is my first love. Hmmm. Maybe this should really be goal #1. I think publishing in a magazine again would do wonders for my slump. Goal will be to have two publishable articles farmed out by...let's say Thanksgiving.

Again, I just never realized how difficult it would be to get back into a writing groove post Sammy. I think I assumed it would be a little difficult, but I just never imagined. And, for my mental health, I simply cannot wait the two more years for Sammy to be in school. So, here we go!

Music to Make Goals By:

(kon kan, i beg your pardon)

Happiness for Others

I have none. Well, in general I have more than enough, but today? I have none. Yesterday, as I was reading blogs, I encountered person after person with a publishing deal, a magazine spread that turned into a contract, etc. I have no happiness for this. I know that makes me a terrible person, but I just CAN'T muster the feeling up.

Before Sammy, I was doing ok, not great, but ok. I had started building up a decent clip file from local stuff to national stuff. I worked both, free and paid, as a writer to get my name out there. But I haven't done anything, really, since the year Sammy was born. I really hate that and HATE that I only have myself to blame. I complained for years that kids would get in the way of my career, but had taken a LONG time to develop some ways to make that not the case. And yet? I crashed and burned and fell into my "kid in the way of career" mantra head first. And now, digging myself out is proving to be so much more difficult than I ever imagined. And I don't know why.

Have I let the criticisms of my writing burrow too deeply? (probably) Am I using Sammy as an excuse to play the martyr? (can't hate anything more than that!) Something else I'm overlooking? (possibly)

This, however, I know. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines. I'm tired of spending all my happy on other people's good news. I'm a writer and I should be writing, not hiding from the seminars and groups and the people who want to encourage me, but I shun. I hereby declare them all to be 'unshunned' in my life. I feel I'm standing at the beginning of happiness for me. No more hiding and excuses. It's there for the taking if I really do want it.

tuesday music:

(david gray, this year's love)

What Late Night Facebook Surfing Really Looks Like (or why you really should have gone to bed earlier...)

Finishing up your project for the evening, you close one tab and open another to check facebook. Nothing really going on, so you start looking up people you've lost touch with. Several strike outs so you look for "him"...and find him. As you sit two feet from your loving husband, you see the man that got away. You scowl, maybe look for someone else, but your curiosity overtakes you. You find him again and click on his friends, hoping for a little luck to ferret out clues to his wife you've never seen. It's surprisingly easy. You click her profile and...stare. Stunned, even. So much for him holding out for a blond bombshell. It's not that she isn't lovely, it's just that she's cute. But average. And, wait. She looks a lot like you did when you knew him. She looks amazingly like you. Same hair. Same lack of boobs. Her nose is a little bigger and her eyes are impossibly big, but she's mostly in your league. You know, the league he said he'd never settle for, always aspiring for more (and, truthfully, usually getting it). But he...settled? On someone else? Huh. And then, that's it. You close the tab, a lot bewildered, a little bemused and tired. You and your husband head up to bed. Worse for the knowledge or the same?

**Please note that all parties are mostly ficticious and should be taken as such. Except for the lack of boobs. Those are entirely too real.**

Music for your Monday:

(jason mraz, i'm yours)

500 Days of Summer

Isaac and I went to see 500 Days of Summer last night. What a fantastic movie. It was just...one of the best I've seen in a long time. I would gladly watch it again and again.


A couple rows up from us was an older couple. She had completely white hair, he was grey; I'm thinking early 70s, maybe. About 1/2 hour into the movie, they left. I wondered why the whole way home. Did they not know what they were going to see? I don't think so; the particular movie theater we went to is the local 'indie' theater and only one screen...you kind of have to know what you are getting into with it! I'm just so curious, though.