Oh, my stars and garters!

Pluggity plug

 

Ok! I have finished gluing and cutting and trimming and framing and cussing, and now I have eight things that I feel a range of things about, from pride and excitement all the way over to a distinct lack of shame. So that's pretty good, right?

Come down tomorrow afternoon and eat frozen treats and drink a beer and buy some records and see what my friends and I have been up to lately. I mean, if you want; I think it would be pretty great if you did.

Painted bunting

 

It is not rare for a bird to bash up against the giant wall of office windows and end up dead on the roof below, but it is rare for them to be this pretty.

Our resident master naturalist says painted buntings usually stay out of the city; I wish this one had too.

Hell of a night

I glued some paper to some wood. Yep, I did it! And I totally messed it up. So, yep, I did it again! Now I have to trim the edges off very perfectly, so I will wait until tomorrow to do that.

Also I made some goddamn prints, went to the son-of-a-bitching grocery store, and planted some frigging okra. I feel like I was not a complete bozo tonight. That's always a pleasant feeling.

Procrastination: Still the champion!

I am doing that stupid thing where I am stalling on a task, but I need to get it done very soon, so in the meantime I feel like I shouldn't be doing anything but that task. The result is that nothing is getting done at all.

Oh, I managed to fill my evening by going online a lot and watering plants that don't need water and getting sucked into stupid yet awesome cable shows about hippos and chasing the cats around the house while pretending to be a snake and opening and closing the refrigerator a lot and writing stupid blog posts. But basically not a damn thing is getting done over here.

The task I don't want to do happens to be a simple one, just gluing a picture to a block of wood, but even though it's simple it will require some patience and precision. So I should say it would be a simple task if I were a completely different person. Even so, it's not getting done until I sit down and at least try to do it.

I have always been this way when there is something I have to do but don't really want to; clearly I have not learned a goddamn thing through high school and college and many years of working adult life.

Or haven't I? Tell you what: as soon as I finish this post I will either go directly to my desk and get to gluing, or I will accept that this shit just isn't getting done tonight and instead open a beer and watch TV until I go to bed.

There! Either way, it's solved.

Lettuce spray

 

I plan to enlarge the cinder block bed to put in okra and some herbs, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. So the lettuce gets to hang out and go to seed for now. It's kind of pretty, and it's definitely been interesting to watch it grow like an inch every other day. I am really going to miss having a lettuce source a few steps from the back door. 

 

Tomatoes will be a small consolation for that. They are doing pretty well, getting bigger and darker green every day. I don't think they get as much sun as they might like, but they are flowering so they can't be that deprived of light, and anyway there's nowhere else to put them.

The basil is coming up and the marigolds are doing okay, but the jalapenos don't seem to be thriving at all. They have grown a bit but are sort of pale and sparse.

Any ideas? I am never sure if I am over or under tending things. We've had a lot of rain and I've been spraying them with some hippie compost tea seaweed concoction pretty regularly, so I don't think it's an under problem. Maybe I will completely leave them alone week or so and see how that goes.

Yeah, so. I'm pretty much a dullard lately. Working, taking lots of walks, trying to eat better, screwing around in the backyard, trying to pull some stuff together for the art thing next weekend, some hang-outs with friends. It's not great blog fodder, but I'm having a pretty good time.  

Friendly

 Some friends and I are showing art and serving fudgesicles and probably some beer at End of an Ear record store on the afternoon of May 1. I sure would be honored if you came by to see us.

Searchingly yours,

Oh, boy, Typepad added a search function. It's right over there to your left. Yeah, there. Good.

Now that you have found it, you can search for the posts that I never seem to write anymore. Search for dirty words! Search for clean words! Search for every post with the word "cat" in it! Go on. I dare you.

Scribblescrabble

  

It appears I will be half-assing my way through the entire month. 

Look! At these totally cute Wedding Present shirts!

 
Go on! Look at them!

Excellent packaging from an excellent band who played an excellent set last night.

I can't say if the shirts themselves are excellent because we are reluctant to release them from the shrink wrap and try them on.

Mudpit makeovers

The succulent bed I finished this weekend. Way before, before, during, after:
 

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It looks sparse right now, but we wanted to leave room for growth, failure, and new acquisitions.

The mailbox planting filled out a lot faster than we thought it would, although we lost a few things to droughts and freezes, so it's still a little lopsided.

Before, after, way after:

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Finally, here's the path/foundation bed. The original idea was to mask the air conditioning unit, and obviously that's not going too well. But it is nice to have proof that if you move some stuff around and put some things in the ground and get some rain, the plant thing really works sometimes. It just happens far too slowly for my bitchy, impatient heart, is all.

Way before, before, after, way after:

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My dad says I hafta write a post.

'Cause he's sick of looking at the animated beard gif. I guess maybe you are too? (God, Dad. You aren't like the ruler of my life anymore, OKAY? Hey, can I have ten bucks for the mall?)

I've had since Friday off, and I still have a couple more days to go. I've been working on another succulent/cactus bed for the backyard, moving thousands of pounds of rocks and gravel around one cart/trunk/wheelbarrow full at a time, but it's all still a pathetic mess and not in any condition to be photographed and passed off as a blog-worthy "after" picture, so that will have to wait a few days. Or weeks. Or years. I mean, when it's done, it will look nice and I will be glad, but as with everything I do, it will seem as though it really shouldn't have taken nearly as much time and effort as it did.

Whatever; I have no upper body strength and tend to not plan things past the immediate next step, so these things tend to take a while.

Anyway, I've been sort of busy, and sort of tired. Today I woke up sore and lazy, so I did nothing but take (take, take). I took a couple of walks. I took a lady shower.* I took a nap. I took some wine. I took the cat off my lap about 600 times. I took some ibuprofen.

I did make a pork tenderloin and some boxed potatoes, but I did most of the prep work yesterday, so it hardly counts. And that was the extent of my Sunday. Tomorrow: More rocks and dirt. And maybe a print, and possibly some pictures. An animated gif, even. I hear my dad loves 'em.

*Contains most if not all elements: Shampoo, condition, exfoliate with expensive scrubby stuff, apply extra facial wash behind ears, shave legs/pits/thighs/bits, stare out at nothing through the steam for about 10 minutes, touch up shaving on ankles and knees, rinse scalp with cold water for invigoration/shine. The lady shower is pretty much a rainy weekend afternoon phenomenon and would never be confused with an oh shit I'm late but I stink and can't skip this shower, which is pretty much 355 showers out of 365 around here.