Best Kind of Chaos Ever

The most amazing, wonderful, and exciting thing happened this past Saturday - my bestest, darlingest, dearest, sweetest, and most importantly SMELLIEST friend ever had her second child at 3 in the afternoon or so. I got a call around 8, with a voicemail that *I* got at about 9.30: "Door, it's me, I know it's really early but my blood pressure was too high, so we're having the baby at 10.30. BYE". That's how she is, all the big details that beg elaboration - such as, "I'm totally fine and so is baby, we're just being cautious because I have the shittiest pregnancies known to humankind" - and I got to have a giant stone of freaked in my belly all day. Normally I wouldn't, but BFFFF has the worst luck with health and preggo-ness. For instance, last month? She passed two kidney stones. While pregnant. The size of pencil erasers. GOOD TIMES.

Anyhow, everyone gets to come home tomorrow, and I get to watch my cutiepatootie little almost-niece, Sassypants while baby gets settled in (and mama and Dad get a nap, one hopes). I've got chocolate chips and cookie makings, a Tinkerbell movie for Sassy and Sae, and 35 different kinds of nail polish. I'm excited! A fun girl's day, hopefully she will be excited to do cool big girl stuff and be jazzed on her new job as Big Sister. I love little Sassypants mucho, and have really sucked about seeing her (and her dear mama) lately.

Tonight, I am returning the meal-making favor BFFFF bestowed on me Post-BusyBee birth. She brought me all kinds of stuff, made sure to take pics because I'm miserable at it, and kept me company and thus sane.
I've made a Southwestern sort of casserole with corn tortillas, beef, bell peppers, tomato, corn, and mild chili sauce. It's topped with cheese, homemade cornbread, and a smidge more cheese :) I <3 cheese. I've also made two pumpkin bread loaves - one with chocolate chips, and one without because some ladies are big weirdos who hate chocolate but they just had a ridiculously cute baby, so I will indulge them in their deranged tastes. I'm also making a bolognese bake, but I'm most excited to make BFFFF her long-awaited chicken carbonara. She had to be really good on a really strict diet during her pregnancy, and she asked me to make my version of America's Test Kitchen's "lite" (bahahahaaaaaaaa) chicken carbonara as soon as she could cut loose a little! I love cooking for people a ridiculously huge amount.

I thought I would post a tiny bit - I'm so busy I haven't even painted much, but I need to focus on writing at least! I need an outlet! Even if it is to squee and talk about food and happy junk. Nice for a change of pace for this poor old blog!

Makin hay, with a side of bacon

This weekend, we had appropriate-to-the-Northern-Hemisphere temps for June, sun and everything! It was a marvel. We spent a good chunk gardening outside (Husbandman is mad for weeding, thankfully, I just like to tidy... compulsively), but squeezed in some wandering time too. We took a nice drive into town and had an awesome lunch of chicken gyros and humus that we shared with Sae. We did a tiny bit of thrifting, but that was cut short by a colossal Toddler Shit Fit. Squidge was off camping with a friend for the weekend, so we were able to deal with tantrums and naps this weekend a bit more smoothly. Mostly mine, but Jellybean had a few impressive fits, herself!

We also drove out to a local nursery, Thompson's, and browsed around. We're on the quest for an affordable camellia - I think we're SOL, but it's fun to hunt around and enjoy all of the plants. Plus, nursery workers are awesome people. I love plant folks. While we didn't find our lusted-after Yuletide camellia, we did find a couple of cheap mint plants and some ridiculously cheap veggie starts. We went home with a morroccan mint, an apple mint, three sugar pie pumpkins, and what Prof Husbandman thought were more pumpkins... but were in fact, UFO summer squash! BWAHAHA.
See, it's funny because I've been forbidden to have more than one zuke plant, which I do already, and most cucurbit (see: pumpkin, squashes, cuke) starts look pretty much the same at the secondary leaf growth stage.
I grew up around plant dorks, I blame them.

Our backyard seen from upstairs, south-facing of course. Apples and veg at the back.

So far this year, we've weeded, pruned all of the apple trees (7 in all, one giant old gravenstien that you don't see here - that one took three full days to prune up), made a veggie bed kind of shaped like a mirror image of Oklahoma, a triangularish ornamental bed, and the Old Man is making a bed out front. That one is weird, kind of a berm of clippings and compost and lawn clods, he claims he's going to put japanese maples and magnolias atop it. Odd man, that one. I have no idea why he wants to do it that way, but it keeps him off the streets, so I ain't complainin'.

Here's a labeled view of our veggies. I neglected to capture the Pumpkin Panhandle off to the left, but we have some. YAY.

click to make with the big

Here is our new ornamental bed, again with labels. Aside from the buddleia and the columbine, I have no permanent plans here. I really look forward to the now-tiny butterfly bush to grow into its full 8 foot purple glory of honey-drenched-smelling deliciousness. I can just imagine, a warm summer day, the buddleia in full bloom casting a nice shadow over the kitchen, windows of the house open, then a breeze hits and everything smells like it's covered in powdery honey pixie dust. Loooooooooooove.

clicky clicky click

Otherwise, for now, I am enjoying these...

peonies, my absolute fave

delicate indigo Japanese irises, hooray!

June! You are off to a wonderful start. Every now and then I'm discouraged with what feels like too-slow or absolutely NO progress on the house and yard, but then the sun hits the front of the house, and I forget that stupid bullshit and enjoy the cute little bungalow for what it is right now.

Yeah buddy

I mean, what's not to like? Weeds happen. All this hard work is paying off, and it no longer looks like meth heads are using this as a cook house. We are making a difference. It IS getting better. We ARE working our asses off.

And my husband IS an excellent gardener (all of the shaping and weeded prettiness there is aaaaaaaaaaaall him). Life is most definitely good!

blog-o numer-o un-o (of 2008-o)

Ok, so I have been harassed for updates. See, I was going to, but then I was fucking around on the intarwubs - mostly looking for embarrassing pictures of people I know - and found...a thing. This thing was an adoptee-seeking-birthmama/dad thing. And it was this dude, born when my mom had her first kid, in Oregon, looking FOR my mama. AMAZING. I hyperventilated. I cried and got shaky and felt like my chest was going to swing open. So I did the logical thing and called Ma, flapping and squeeing and crying and freaking. I think I scared her.
So, she and I both shoot off emails to the address the site had provided. I am a horrifically impatient person, so I search myspace, friendster, facebook, your mom's house and tibet for this guy. Nooooo luck. Ok, well, still pretty neat. I stay up late playing Neverwinternights and bashing goblins until I stop shaking enough to go to bed ( I am sure four cups of coffee helped there... ).
Next morning, I am back on line, looking up phone numbers and people searches and gps locations. I get crazy impatient. Example: If Manwife misses calling me on his walk home, I cry into his voice mail about how I think hobos have flayed him and are wearing pretty Manwife suits around downtown. Then he comes home and eyes me oddly while beating me away from him to go hide for a while. I have a wild imagination. With hobos. And buffalo bill.

where was I?

oh, ok. so I get the bright idea to type in the email address i had into myspace's email finder thing. I figure, dude is pretty much in my generation, he MUST have something. I mean, come on.
And he does.
Well, his wifelady does. I feel a little voyeuristic, and peek in her pictures. OMFG. Dude has my mom's eyes, nose, chin, smile, WOW. No question. I see they have three kids, and omg, their daughter has the same pretty hazel almond shaped eyes as Ma and Bro. Amazing and wonderful.
I tap out a tentative and polite email asking if I could please get a hold of the guy. Pretty quickly, my sister-in-law (oh that is so cool to say!) replies and says, oh wow, we were trying to get a hold of you but gmail doesn't like verizon mail and keeps spitting the letters we send out! Agh, technology. Well, ok. Shortly thereafter I get an email from my big brother and I am still beyond the moon. I think he and Ma have talked more, but I have talked a good deal with SIL, who is so lovely and sweet. They both are, and I really am very relieved. I think everyone will get along nicely, which is kind of secondary...or tertiary...or entirely besides the point at the moment..! What an amazing couple of days!

Otherwise, I am still married, still hanging out at home - collaging, cooking, teaching Squidge to draw shapes and letters - still being a pain in the ass. Manwife and I have been playing NWN online with our buddy Joop (I am brynito, hit me up if you play and wanna go kill some shit and quest). It's a lot of fun, better than sitting around arguing with Squidge or having Manwife play one game while I'm on another. We are having intarweb issues, we see each other as offline when we play at the same time, which is hella lame. I say lots of cusses about it. Trying to figure out how to do a network connection or something. This may be easier if I get a laptop and do wireless networking, mayhap. My antiquated piece of shit has issues keeping up with the boys, que bummer.
Let's see...not much else to report, just connecting with old friends who are nice and not mean drunks to me, and others that are misguided but still nice, and doing brunch. I DO BRUNCH, it's a kick in the pants. Of course, we brunch at the crunchiest place around - local eggs and bacon and snausages and tatoes and java, mostly nice organic stuff and tahini and home fries with black beans and tarragon and salsa. Yum! And the local coffee roasters around here can't be beat - go find moka joe's and buy some!!

I am mostly just hanging out being flabbergasted and elated and grateful. I think if anyone deserved the cosmos aligning in their favor and heaping karmic rewards on them, it is my mother. I mean, the nice life with YB and having Squidge/Gooneybird around is great, and having a new son-in-law who is awesome and loved by all is nice too, but I was always worried this would never come to any sort of...resolution...?...I don't know the right word. But whatever it is, it's turned out in the best, most joyful and fabulous way possible. If I could meet my brother's adopted mom and dad, I would kiss them right on the mouth for keeping him safe and happy and letting him know my mom was out there and she loved him still. I really could.

The world is very strange and wonderful, I think you just have to look for it and choose it to be so.