Report Cards For Everyone

This morning we had a parent/teacher conference with Max. It's amazing how often we are shown how close to the tree our little apple fell. He's doing great in school. His only real short coming is that he's too slow getting his work done. This is a problem that haunted both myself and Philip throughout childhood. I would say that I outgrew this sluggish nature but that Philip still moves as though wading through honey. He would absolutely disagree and shake his head in disbelief that I would make such wild claims against his nature. Such is the way with most good marriages. If you can't disagree about something, what on earth will you have to talk about?!

The dog is still showing signs of thinking my mom's two kitties are furry little dog snacks. She won't calm down around them and insists on chasing them. Honestly, I do feel a little worried. I don't know how to impress on her that it's not OK to run them to ground under the bed. There is just no way we're going to thank her by roasting them over a spit as I suspect she thinks we will do if only she can present them to us suitably dead. There is a chance she just wants to play with them, but what if I let them try to work it out and I'm wrong? I don't worry about my own cat because he stands his ground with her while she frantically hops around excitedly, dodging his vicious blows.

It turns out that the landscape place here only sells soil amendments and that we are supposed to mix our solid clay dirt soil* in with it to help retain moisture. This is all well and good, but this is WAY more work than anticipated. So now the whole process of filling our raised beds has gotten much more complicated. I did, however, manage to finish the potato bed. Since it has to be mulched as the greens grow, it only needed to start off half full anyway. I got all the potatoes planted in one bed. They are pretty close, which is against garden wisdom, but we'll see how they do. I really need a whole bed for just basil if I want to freeze enough pesto to get us through one month of winter.

I can't help but wonder about those crystalline granules you can add to dirt to help retain moisture, what are they made of? Are they really safe to use with vegetables? Could I just add that to the amendment to help it retain moisture? I guess that's cheating and probably not safe garden practices. It seems too much like the kind of modern convenience we will find out ten years from now is responsible for giving frogs an extra set of balls.

My kitchen is dirty 100% of the time now. I clean it and not five minutes later the sink is full to the point that the idea of using the faucet makes me kind of panic. Like, maybe the dirty dishes will swallow me up into their twisted universe in which we are really all just a collection of crumbs, scraps, and fly food. I don't even want to go in there. But I have to go in there. I have to go in there right now. Before I go down to work to sew. I have to brave that ugly room and somehow make it out alive.

Because I still have to convince Max to go to the movies with his Grandma. Max has decided that he doesn't like movie theatres because he doesn't like being around so many people. It scares him, he says. Interesting how crazy that sounds. Like a little burgeoning claustrophobia or agoraphobia. Hmm, now let's see, who in his family might have passed on crazy genes? I'm tellin' ya, it's like he didn't really fall from the tree at all, just decided to hang onto the branch at all costs since that's where it's most comfortable.

I have finally, FINALLY, gone to get myself tested for osteoporosis. The official results are not in yet, but the tech who took my x-rays told me that she could tell from just seeing my x-rays that it doesn't look likely that have it. Yay! Why get tested, you want to know? When I'm merely 37 years old and it doesn't run in my family and I was raised on mega-vitamins, dark leafy greens, and lots of dairy? Because when you break your hip from a low impact fall when you're 35 years old, everyone suspects osteoporosis. Because otherwise they just have to laugh their heads off** that you managed to do what almost no other 35 year olds are capable of achieving: freak accidents that cause you to get 5 fractures in the acetabulum.

And by the way? It hurts worse than anything else on earth. Even child birth. I took nothing more than Ibuprofen because beer works way better at killing the pain than Percoset. However, beware, you WILL gain forty pounds.

You know what else? You will feel like an eighty year old for the rest of your life.

No, wait, that's so negative of me. I've been doing lots of stretches and I have to report that it really is helping a lot. I have yet to order some of the recommendations made by Violet Crumble, but I'm still planning on it. Meantime I'm doing the ones I know are good for my back.

Word of advice? DON'T BREAK YOUR HIP.

*See Dennis, I said SOIL, not dirt. Just for you.