spent the evening tending the garden. expanded the trellis for the snap peas, planted round 2 of broccoli and swiss chard, and did damage control on my herb box which suffered the wrath of the clogged gutter above. i really gotta call maintenance about that.

in true tradition, the hummingbird scared the crap outta me last night, which happens every year. i'll be sitting on my patio minding my own business, then i hear this huge buzz and i'm all OMG HUGE FREAKING BUG and i freak and scare the little guy off. at least i now know that he's benefiting from my flowers.

i think i have a new neighbor. said neighbor keeps leaving food out for the damn animals and they've now picked up on it. fortunately, i have boog well trained to know that if he sees any animal in the yard that is not one of our kitties, to run back inside right away. every time i see one of the critters nosing around in the backyard, i scare them off.

this season's cast of characters so far:

fatass the raccoon, who is prety much hopeless anyway because he relies on the dumpsters for food. so sad.
the skunk. haven't named him yet. he is out by the sparrow tree every evening and just after the sun rises.
the occasional possum
the woodpecker
the hawk
the hummingbird
the @)$(#@%$ geese that come up from the pond in the valley below
and the deer, although the herd seems to be a little small this year and less fequent. their path is still in the grass in the yard, though.

i did not get to bike last night because of a stupid situation that is now, in retrospect, comedic. fortunately limbik saved me with coors light. the next two days are filled with biking goodness, thursday i'm doing recon with another member of the adventure group to scope out new, rigorous ways through the metroparks for the group.

also, thank you for the email addresses yesterday, i obvs did not email you all but i got the testing i needed. blackberries are sometimes stupid.

got up at 6 this morning, became a cleaning dynamo and fully cleaned the littermaid and ferret cage, and the apartment is all clean, save for 2 tables, and now i do not feel like doing them. the sun is out, my patio door is open, and the blinds are pushed away. dropping off boog to stay with his grammie, dropping of a few loads of clothes and toys to goodwill, and then heading to a small gathering of my adventure group people.

i'd be out on the parkway today, but i have essentially worked out 8 days in a row as of yesterday. today is a rest day, save the cleaning binge.

i have, once again, revamped my eating habits. i have massive carb issues and my body shows it. i am no longer consuming grains and starches except post workout. i am significantly less bloated, have more energy [hello 6am saturday], and am less moody. this is not low carb - i am getting my necessary carb intake through vegetables. people seem to forget that veggies are indeed carbs. and that some fats are good for you and necessary.

this is my 3rd or 4th day of this and i have noticed a small butt reduction. i am pleased.

i also am babbling. enjoy your day. go outside.

boog and i had a really good week last week. in addition to the hiking, he helped me with prepping the box garden for this year. i cut the crap out of my finger, but as takarosa said, blood must be shed for a good harvest. my seeds are sprouting, and will start flower seeds next week. i have also started a small indoor herb garden.

sunday we did another hike - probably 4 miles this time - in hinckley with my new BFF, amy, who i met through my adventure group. so, yeah, i lugged my 39 lb child on my back another 4 miles. actually, he probably walked for about a half a mile, but pooped out quickly because he was excitedly running the entire time. yes, he peed on a tree again, he thinks this is the coolest thing ever now. in fact, he loved it so much that he chugged his juice so he could do it again.


here is boog at the end of our hike with amy's dog.


i am a big fan of the little things. i mean, i appreciate when something big that requires effort is done for me, but i absolutely adore the little details, especially ones that people would usually miss. last night as i was putting boog's stuff away, i noticed he had been playing with his pixos. he usually just takes em and makes straight lines, but last night he actually took one of the patterns and replicated it all by himself. for those of you familiar with pixos, it was the cherries. granted, he made the cherries yellow, but goddamn he follwed the pattern to the letter. i called him over and asked if he did that all by himself [like there's some pixo-helping entity infiltrating our apartment or something], and he gave me an emphatic "yeah!" he never called attention to his work - its like, he made it and then went about the rest of his business. i was so proud and impressed by this lilttle design of stuck together water filled plastic balls that it made my heart swell. i was so proud of him. i sprayed an additional coating of water on it to ensure they stick together, and that is going right into his memory chest.


things like that, yeah.


i turn 36 in 16 days. i am not sure what i am going to do with myself.

i have two hummingbirds. one is regular north american hummingbird colored, and the other one is black with a red throat. i sware. he's the goth one. they always catch me off guard when i'm out on my patio having a cigarette and they come in for the kill on my hibiscus and i think they're really a huge scary bug.

i have never seen a hummingbird sitting in a tree before. cute little buggers.

speaking of smokes, the vaporizer on my njoy is defective, they are sending me a replacement. operation njoy is on hold until this part comes in.


oh, and panny - i saw a monarch yesterday. i think i only see them when there's a major change imminent in my life. i'm kind of worried to find out what this change is.

the other random thought is that i am rather uhm, yearning for that sole, serious adult connection in my life and i seem to be subconsciously sabotaging opportunity in that department. which, sucks for me. then i have to beat these feelings very hard with a large and scary stick until they retreat back into the deep recesses of my mind because if i don't, i will lose whatever little sanity i have. i have to keep life going, you know.

so HEY! remember a few weeks ago when i was all OMG EXCITED because i discovered the raspberry bush in my backyard and i dove right into it collecting as much as i could, once again demonstrating my lack of concept of personal safety?

you wanna know what else is out there? do you REALLY?



POISON IVY.


i have never, ever had poison ivy before in my life. however, thanks to my camping experience i know how to treat it. so that's hwat i'm doing now. but holy hell did it show up in the most amusing places.

dumbass me thought she grabbed her bike shorts on the way out the door. no, it ended up being two shirts, so i could not go biking today. the amount of anger i feel about this is incredibly overwhelming. no, really. i was *pissed*. a phone convo with wraptboy helped me calm down. so boog and i went to the pool.


i have a chimpunk having its way with my garden. things are being put into place to prevent him from tearing more shit up. however, if i see his cute little furry face again, i will grab him by the tail and bash him against the wall until his cranial contents are nothing but a bloody stain against the brick.


....you think i'm kidding.


i will now perpetuate my woes of feeling fat today by going with boog to get ice cream. at least we're walking.

i have determined that i do not mind biking in the rain as much as i thought i did. especially when its shit like this.

I HAVE ATTRACTED A HUMMINGBIRD. omg i am so happy. he came flying by my head while i was out on the patio having a cigarette. he is black and red. now if my hibiscus would just get some blooms back we'd be in business.


today i hope that i give as much good energy to my friends as much as i get good energy from them. i have received so, so much in the last week that i worry that i dont give enough back. i hope i do.

a bunny has joined the cast of Things That Hang Out In My Backyard. s/he is out there every single time i look out the window. of course, the cats are all faces pressed up against the glass like =^O.O^=.

baby squirrel is the size of a chipmunk now.

aaaaaand i seem to have a field mouse living under the wood parts of my patio. i am convinced its apple despite the fact that reality suggests he either died in the snow or got eaten by the hawk.

so, yeah, i hit the road with a bunch of harleys last night. that was completely random. but this is how my life is as of late.

my flowers have just *taken off* thanks to the heat, humidity, and rain over the past few days. i have plants that are 24" tall now. i do have a green thumb, but i am very much not an expert in gardening. i dont even know if i want to be. like, the flowers i planted i dont even remember the names of, i just picked some packets of flowers i thought looked pretty and were able to handle full sun. that's pretty much my mentality of it all. i DO have a cute little hibiscus on my patio table because we have cute hummingbirds around these parts. i also have the african violets that i got for my first mothers day, which was the day after boog was born so i was still in the hospital. so, that plant is as old as boog. heh. this is kind of a tradition - my mom has a plant that she received in the hospital when my sister was born. it is now 33 years old and friggin huge and she wields it in this huge pot that sits on a roller cart. we call it jabba the hutt. but i digress - the boog plant is still in my office because i cannot keep plants in the house due to my plant munching cats. he needs to be out in this awesome heat and humidity.

geez, i keep going on tangents. garden people: some kind of natural slug repellent advice would be most appreciated.

i feel generally positive about my life right now. this is good. it's not an over the top giddy feeling, which usually ends with some kind of severe low afterwards. this is just a mellow, pleasant good feeling. i hope it stays for a while.

so i just moved my garden YET AGAIN because this was happening when it rained thanks to a clogged gutter:



yes, that is niagra goddamn falls pouring its fury right on top of my poor plants.

i moved it a few feet over and butted it up right against the building. filled it with more soil, and hopefully my green beans and zucchini dont die on me. 240 lbs of dirt moved YET AGAIN BY MYSELF. i now need to call maintenance and let them know, also to tell them that i will be planting grass seed where it was previously so they will not spank me.

remind me to not look at houses right now. i found one that would have been perfect, but there's no way in hell i can do that any time soon, not until i get bills paid. maybe another year or so. it will happen, just not now.

i dont know what partying shenanigans my mother and boog were up to last night, but here it is 11:30 and boog is still sleeping.

i am not complaining. heh.

he did have a pretty huge day yesterday, though. he decided that 4:30 am would be a good time to wake up, then jeremy took him to the rainforest at the zoo, with the ulterior motive of some geocaching. boog is now in possession of a little plastic fish in a baggie. there's a ton of them around here, we need to do that more.

my mom told me that it scares her how smart boog is. i told her its because he was breastfed. heh.

today i need to go to home depot and get me some wood for my box garden. does anyone know if they will make cuts for you? obvs i am lacking any power tools. i spose i could either go to the lanes or ask jeremy's dad, but that would require human contact.

for some stupid reason, i got into a major head funk earlier this afternoon, pretty much right before my mother showed up. it was so mentally debilitating that i had to really, really put some effort into put myself into a reasonable headspace lest i ruin the holiday.

the only parallel i can draw about this is via a cartoon from the tom and jerry peeps. there's a scene in one of them featuring a curtained stage, and as it rises you see a totally curvy, hot, va va va voom female body revealed. once it reaches the neck, however, there's a total ugly hag face that sends the main character into screaming fits and rapidly exiting stage right in little puffs of dust.

that is my brain right now. my brain and reality often clash, and sadly reality is a bit less flexible and nasty. i am finding myself having do deal with a few issues because big bad reality has my brain's arm twisted behind its back and screaming "THIS IS IT, BITCH" in its ear.

and it's shit i don't want to accept, because it is shit that makes me very sad with sparse chunks of self loathing and defeat.

i am unsure of what to do. i took the temporary solution of working out tonight.


spring has officially arrived with the meanderings of one really, really large raccoon in my backyard. there are raccoon noseprints on my patio door glass, and i can hear him whooping it up in the woods as i type this.

i have named him shithead.

this was the final reading for ********SNOW RULER WATCH 2008********.


so i was outside the patio door when a teeny field mouse emerged from the snow. of course i freaked out, because that 1" long mouse could have easily devoured my head in one bite. i can't even imagine what that poor thing has had to dig through to get to my door. i found a shoebox, put a towel inside along with a piece of bread and a strawberry. then i wrapped up a bunch of uncooked rice in a bandana and microwaved it for a bit and put it in as well. he's hanging out by my door now.

and, of course, the cats are royally freaking out.




i could probably be doing something more productive.

the previous one was taken an hour ago. jesus.

sure is pretty out there this morning.

so tonight i'm working out, and usually this leaves me near the patio door. the blinds are open just a wee bit so i can see outside. all of a sudden i notice a large-ish body of fur pressing against the glass, distinctively cray-colored. i'm all, shit, cray somehow got out again, so i get up and put my hand on the door to open it, and that's when i see the long rat tail.

these possums need to stop impersonating cray.

gimpy deer is outside right now munching on birdseed. her leg will be fucked up for the rest of her days i am sure, but she seems to be putting more weight on her leg from the previous time i saw her.

this is my joy for today.

i had a brief mental blowout this past week. i'm recovering, but still not up to full capacity. right now i'm at the point where i have the feeling that the entire planet hates me. i'll survive.

boog and i have established the tradition of the No Pants Pancake Breakfast on the saturday mornings that i have him. today's flavor was strawberry yogurt.

my deer stopped by again today, the baby with the broken leg is still alive, however its looking incredibly swollen and unusable. i just emailed a local wildlife refuge. it is doubtful that anything can be done here, but at least i feel better now.


my sister is getting hitched. i am so incredibly happy for her that i cried a little.

uh, thats all i got. i think i might do some baking today.

one of the deer babies has a broken leg. i mean, its still walking, but limping.

do i call animal control for this? i would hate to see it suffer. i mean, what would i tell them considering they're making their way through the woods right now?

this



prompted me to make this



which is one of them mccormick crock pot seasoning thingers, a crapload of chicken, tomatoes, onions, and spinach. i put spinach in everything now, its become my staple food. my crock pot bit the dust, though, so i just threw it in a regular pot.

i found barilla plus in the store and it's pretty damn good. also, healthier. a bit pricey but i dont eat pasta very often.

says the person who had pesto yesterday. heh.

trivia: one of these pictures was taken with my digital camera, the other with my phone. guess correctly and you get...uh, something.

my little light is back in the house. in the few hours he's been here, he's eaten 3 pieces of cheese, a banana, a bowl of grapes, and some pasta. he hasn't forgotten about his sesame street video so we watched it about 2985698326 times already. i almost got him distracted by cars, but he got bored halfway through and changed the dvd.

he drew me a picture and hung it on the fridge with a mag-a-net, as he calls it. he also likes to spontaneously give me a hug and say with a sigh: "mommy! i love you."

stray limpy kitty is hanging around my door today. i gave him more food and set out a box with a blanket in it, as its cold and rainy. it looks like he's got an injury, as there's a patch of fur missing by his tail. i am going to try to capture him and see if i can't get him to a no kill shelter, but i dont hold a lot of confidence in this as i'm not really good at catching animals.

i totally hate drinking on saturday nights now because it makes me all tired and wonky on sunday and then i dont feel like cleaning anything, and i feel like i didnt have a weekend at all. christ, i'm getting old.