7 dithering takes

One

Every week, for the last four, I have thought, by Thursday afternoon, 'this has been an exceptionally hard week'. And then I go on to the next week and think it again. At what point does it stop being an exception and just count as regular hard and you just stop fussing about it? It's possible I've reached that point. Some hard things this week included our Red Car completely dying in the middle of Conklin Ave and Matt insisting that I sit in it and steer as he gently “nudged” it back into our parking lot. Also, succumbing to general discouragement and bad temper and chucking a school day because of everything just combining itself into many layered evil. And last, as I was finally staking up my tomatoes ahead of a sudden thunderstorm, realizing that Marigold was shouting and flapping about something real, and that was a small budgie or parakeet, irridecsent and luminous green and gold, crouching under a bush, looking very unhappy. Matt quietly picked up the dog and I crept forward and talked to it for a long while, and then suddenly, on a powerful gust of wind, it spread its wings and flew off into the storm.

Two

I am up against another birthday this weekend. Romulus is turning 8. His birthday list included a toy night, clay, paint, two Lego sets, and a “creeper”, “whatever that is” I muttered to myself all afternoon as I wandered dismally around Walmart (it's more satisfying to call it Waremart somehow, and that's what I'll be calling it from now on) wishing that I really knew what the toys really looked like. I finally called Matt and asked to speak to Alouicious who advised me on the merits of different kinds of Legos, who believed that Romulus would be very well satisfied with a Minecraft foam iron sword and who was able to help me, over the phone, to identify what the creeper was and how to find it. Shocker, it's more minecraft. Boy, I wish I was in the video game industry. The amount of money someone must be raking in with these primitive graphics and air of general graininess. I bet I could have done that if I'd stuck it out in any computer class ever.

Three

The day I chucked the school work, the day of the budgie and the car, I gave up for a while and lay outside and read, just a tiny bit. I wanted to read only one, but I read both, because Matt has said we all must. And it isn't bad, it's just not nearly so marvelous as the other.

Life's difficulties, you might know, as some have said, are often eased by hot milky drinks such as ovaltine. I didn't feel like ovaltine so I drank a lot of tea, feeling that the children's summer cold is coming at me like a slow moving but inevitable train.

Four

Matt coped with the general badness by aquiring a new large allotment of black mulch and mollifying me with some new plants, some things I've already forgotten the names of, and a second apple tree. Here's a bad picture of it.

Five

The garden is lush, verdant, overabundant, requiring attention and wonder. My poor tomatoes, lying on the ground, steaming in the sun.

I hammered stakes for a while and applied some string and then wandered away to beat back beetles.

I sort of liked the stakes better, lying there in the sun.

Six

I finally made it through all the spam. I discovered some very nice comments which had never been published, which are now. Going to not abandon the spam comments to the pit and to the grave. Even going to get in and respond myself to real and lovely commenters, not letting the great tide of internet spam stupidity to overwhelm me. Surely I will. I am resolved. Just as I am resolved to floss my teeth every day, instead of halfway half the days. But I feel slow and stupid, like this ugly dog, who lay down next to me today in this very posture. Who can tell him from the mulch?

Seven

I tried to post on the very bad day but it was eaten by some evil force. I had tried to post a very nice song and write about it. But when it all disappeared in blamed God's providence. I'm trying again, here, and hoping that you all have a beautiful weekend.