Miscellany

I love homemade bread, I really do. I have always made it by hand, never having owned a bread machine, so most of the time it's too time consuming for me to make. Today, though, I looked for a quick bread for sandwiches, found a recipe, and tried it. It was a very simple white bread, quick to make, but *something* seemed off about it. I don't know if it's because it's been so long since I've had white bread, or because of the salt I inadvertently left out. I'll probably try again over the weekend, if I'm not too burned out from Thanksgiving day cooking.

I sent the boys out to do the 'chicken work' because both the boys and the chickens need some free range time every day. EVERY day. When it was nicer out, we would spend hours outside. The boys would play, the chickens would scratch, I would harvest or pull weeds, and then I'd let the boys water when needed. I MISS that already. It's only November, so I have a long way to go before I'm going to enjoy my time outside.

K (age 5) was so sweet today. He gave me Bionicle lessons, where he teaches me how to build a Bionicle that he has created. "Do you have time?...I like to teach you things I know" So adorable.

It's hard to find a blog I feel like I want to read. On a regular basis. It seems like there's a lot of 'You follow me and I follow you' stuff, and that's not really what I'm looking for. I want to write stuff that people want to read for the sake of reading it, I don't want to accumulate followers that don't really care to read what I write. And I don't want to follow someone that has a blog I am not interested in, either. So. It's HARD.

I'm not going to blog about anything in particular, that's the thing. I want to JOURNAL. Right now, anyway. I have no niche or area of expertise I want to write about. I don't want to feel like I can only write about certain things. I want to write about what I want, whatever is rattling around in my head. Probably no one would want to read that.

.................

Unwanted Things, Complaints

I had to take my daughter to a doctor's appointment today. It was surprisingly un-traumatic. One bus, and when we got there the wait was not really long at all. *Maybe* 15 minutes past our appointment time. (It is a little sad when someone is happy about only having to wait 15 minutes past the appointment time, but there it is). I was annoyed by someone in the waiting room, because I was not at all in the mood to be friendly and chatty. I was knitting furiously and trying not to worry about what was going on with my kid. A large number of people don't seem to understand that not everyone likes to engage in chitchat with complete strangers while they are counting stitches and rows and focusing on the task at hand. There was a lot of questions about what I was knitting, what I had knit in the past, what I planned on knitting in the future, and then some discussion about the merits of the music of Boy George. How that came up I can't quite recall. All of my attempts at politely not talking were in vain, because the chatter kept coming. I nodded and smiled, and came very close to just saying "I am in a fit of panic and also a little despair, I would like to NOT talk" but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Lesson learned: ear buds should be worn in situations such as that. I was already stressing, and the fact that he would not pick up on the fact that I didn't want to talk made my anxiety way worse. I couldn't leave! I had to stay there and wait for DD's name to be called, and he just would not shut up.

Normally I am a friendly person, but I have been feeling out of sorts, and I was extra stressed due to DD's issue. A doctor's office is one of those places people should not have to engage in idle chatter. Because sometimes people are there because they are going through some serious shit.

Unwanted Advice I Have Been Unceremoniously Given

1. Said abruptly, upon meeting my extremely shy 5 year old for the second time: "Um, YEAH. You need to get him checked out. Something is WRONG with him. I'm not saying bad wrong, but I know shy kids, and that isn't shyness."

2. "You can't handle those dogs, I mean, PITBULLS. You're such a small woman!"

3. "Take the kitten to the shelter to be euthanized."

4. "Really, you should not be a vegetarian. It's UNHEALTHY. We evolved to eat MEAT. Have a steak."

Solitude

I like to say I am a realist, but I think that's kind of a lie. Because sometimes I am disappointed in someone and it crushes me. A realist would not suffer so.

So, I've been crushed. And I'm seeing things in a negative light. So I'm staying home. I'm not going out to things I used to always want to go to, I'm not chatting with anyone via Facebook messaging, I'm not texting, I am Keeping To Myself. I'll do this for a while, and then I'll be my regular self, I suppose. It's a cycle! I tell a lot of lies when I get like this, because very few people understand that sometimes people just need to withdraw, and be in their own heads for a while. I exaggerate illnesses, have imaginary jobs, doctor/dentist appointments, and also become extraordinarily busy, always with lots of apologies. It's easier to do that than to say "Being in my head really sucks right now. My life is falling apart, and I don't like to TALK about things, I just want to be alone." That solitude, even though I'm getting it by being dishonest, is really good for me. It's a replenishing, restorative thing. I need it regularly. 

Solitude. I love to be alone. I dream about getting on a bus/plane/train and traveling somewhere alone, to be completely alone in a city I don't know. Without the influence of other people, without the responsibility of home and family and pets, I could be Myself. It seems like it would be a beautiful thing, that solitude in an unknown place. 

On Disenchantment, and Thinking Too Much

Maybe I am too socially aware to be any fun, I guess. Because while the majority of my friends are childless, and have more money than me, I have very little money and three children. So when I look at the neighborhood, it doesn't look as good to me. Bars and restaurants that are super adorable and have appeal, for sure, but they are irrelevant to the neighborhood that they're in. The cute little shops that carry handmade jewelry and quirky stuff and art, hey that's great, but they're irrelevant and financially inaccessible to the neighborhood they're in. It's a mostly black neighborhood, most people are *just* barely getting by and they have children. None of us are buying $7 craft beers six in a night or interested in buying $150 handmade necklaces. We want to have things we need, things we can afford, and somewhere to take our kids. ALL of me is feeling more than a little disgusted at the college age hipsters coming in from the more affluent areas and hanging out in my neighborhood getting drunk on the weekends. At white people coming into a black neighborhood and opening businesses very few people in the neighborhood have money for, and even fewer have an interest in. At the artists living in the better neighborhoods but coming here and calling themselves '(Street Name) People'. Because they're NOT. They don't LIVE here. The people in my neighborhood have been dismissed. And I find it terribly sad.

I see this neighborhood on the way to gentrification. But what are people who are poor to do? We can't open businesses, we are too busy just getting by. Or maybe there's a lack of education and motivation and whatever else is needed to get something going. It's a huge thing. People do have the right to open businesses and find their own way to make money, and they have to go somewhere, but it just BOTHERS me that they are so.....irrelevant to the people that live near them. And these people are thinking that they are doing a good thing for the neighborhood. 

Maybe lack of money has made me bitter. I LOVED this neighborhood when I moved here. But the more people who came to my door to get me to sign petitions for their bars, and when what was supposed to be a 'community garden' really turned into somewhere for people to grow things to sell ended up with a privacy fence and none of use ever seeing the people who worked there....well, I just don't see any of this being good for the people who LIVE here. I know the issue is more complex than what I understand, economics and all, but this is what I think......

On the Garden, Thoughts On Next Year

2013 Tomatoes

The final fall clean up of the garden has been done. I pretty much have a clean slate for next year. NEXT YEAR I will have plans and won't cram so much stuff into such a small space. I stand on the balcony and look at the yard, and think about what will go where. I know what I want, but it's maybe more than I have room for. I will have a garden journal. That's important. I need to know what's where. I was frustrated by a particular tomato plant all summer, and almost too late realized those tomatoes were supposed to stay green because they were the Granny Smith tomatoes I had been gifted. Things need to be accessible, because so much of the garden turned into a great big mass of growing things and I sometimes had a hard time finding stuff.

I'd like to preserve things next year, can tomatoes and stuff. If I can get things going well enough, it would be nice to have some to sell, too. There are restaurants around here that buy stuff grown by people locally. I sold some of my sun chokes for $5 a pound to the bakery that does Saturday brunch. THAT made me happy. But mostly, I want to be able to preserve things. I had the very best of intentions at the beginning of the gardening season, but I didn't get the yield I wanted, I lost my motivation, I had bug problems. I meant to freeze all of those herbs, but then things got really hectic with working 12 hours a day for 4 days and when I went to harvest, everything had gone to seed. So, you know, I must plan better, do what I can when I can. Pay more attention to things. 

 Now that there is nothing left growing, I feel anxious for the spring to get here, so I can fill the little pots with dirt and start the seeds. I liked working outside, pulling weeds and growing things and the feeling that I had after being outside all day, working in the dirt, seeing the insects that had taken up residence among my plants. I loved to go outside and pick vegetables and realize that night we would not need anything from the store. That everything I put on the table came from my very own back yard. And the herbal teas, made from raspberry and blackberry leaves and the mints I grew myself, that was lovely. So already, I am looking forward to spring. 

On Urban Exploration

I went with a friend to this great old building that used to be a paper factory to take some pictures. We parked on the street and walked a block or so to go around the back of the building into the building. There are seven or eight floors, and of course the rooftop. We explored, looking at all the graffiti, the views from different windows, the light coming in through broken glass windows, spray paint cans scattered everywhere. The gates to the elevator shafts were broken, and looking down them? Scary!

I LIKE the urban decay pictures. I find them infinitely more interesting than the pretty pictures, but I do take those too. Here, though, are some pictures of things you would never see, because they are in a building you would not want to go into. But I did! There are a lot of other places I want to go to, but it isn't really easy to get someone to want to go with me. I would not go alone, just in case.

From the street, you can see inside other buildings, whole rooms left behind. You can see the appliances, beds, miscellany left behind. Pictures of that? Yes.....

On Blogging Again

I haven't blogged in such a long time. I haven't written anything at all in forever. For a while it bothered me, because it had been such an easy thing for me to do, to just write. And I wrote anything. Then it stopped. I found myself completely unable to even write a simple blog post.

I write in my head. I would ride the train and write TERRIBLE poetry in my head. I have a dozen ideas for short stories floating around, bits and pieces of them I can't get to mesh together. But they're there. And the bad poetry! The simple act of typing or writing something was just this great big impossible thing.

And that went on for years. Really. Years.

Whatever caused it is done now, and I am ready to say things again. Even if they aren't important in the grand scheme of things, even if no one cares or reads what I have to say,or they do and they never want to listen to me again, I have things to say and I have to say them.

It won't always be important things, or pleasant things, but they will be things I think and maybe don't want to say. Here, I will be real and honest and not feel like I have to put a positive spin on things, or keep quiet for the sake of peace. I will not be worried about being embarrassed or feeling weird.....

I always wanted to blog and be able to share it with my friends. I wanted to write about what ever I wanted and be able to feel comfortable. But that's just not me. I like the freedom of anonymity.