Nail Beds and Rock Gardens

Typically, Mainers talk about how we don't have a real spring.  We have mud season.  When I went to school in the Midwest, one of the greatest shocks was what "spring" looked and felt like- days get balmier, greener- trees and flowers bloomed with abandon.  Before the month of June.  I had read about that sort of spring in storybooks, but did not know it actually existed.  Come to think of it, that was the same way I felt about Iowa, until I started living there.

This year the season has been different.  Around about the time we had two back-to-back 80 degree days in early March, and almost no snow in the months before, most of us started to wonder about the prospects of our mud this year.  For a good crop of mud, you need a couple of things: a lot of water deposits, and soil.  We've got the soil.  Not so much with the water, and the overcast skies that keep it from evaporating.

Due to the dry and warm conditions, people who like digging in dirt (rather than mud) were able to get a jump start.  This is why, for the past month or so, I have been dutifully changing into play clothes from my work cloths, and kneeling at the alter of cultivation.  The house is on five acres, and while it has mature perennials putting a good (if overgrown) face on it to the road, the backside is... quite exposed.

To begin with, I dug up a few very narrow strips of sod on the terrace, so I could get my sweet peas in, well in advance of the projected last frost.  A few weeks later, armed with knowledge of the ground, I busted sod for a proper bed, and amended the soil for slightly pickier plants.  At the same time, I was able to harvest a bumper crop of fasteners.  Screws, nails- if you use it to drive two building materials together, I was reaping it.  This is the glory of bedding plants close to the house, you garner all the materials deemed not worth cleaning up after the last roofing/siding project.  When I went back to plant the first succession of glads and seed the zinnia, I was surprised to find that some more nails had sprouted to the surface- proving they too were enjoying this warm weather.  Weren't we all?

Another side effect of the early warm weather was that Dave caught a chronic case of "When Will The Guy Come To Rototill-itis."  He had long since planted the stakes in the ground in anticipation that they would yield a plot of upturned earth.  Day after day... "I'm seriously starting to get pissed off..."  "I don't know if he's going to come..."  "I'm going to have to call..."  I have seen high school girls staring telepathically at their phone exhibit more patience.

And then one day, at the exact moment the pork shoulder was coming out of the smoker, and the broccoli had steamed to the perfection- the Man in the Kubota  pulled in.  Dave came in with the hunk of meat on a baking sheet and a Xmas morning gleam in his eye, announcing this development.

In that moment I resigned myself to overcooked broccoli, and went outside.

So we watched for the next twenty minutes to half an hour as the machine swept over the virgin plot.  I had spent the day digging a new bed along the south face of the barn, so I could keenly appreciate the machine's efficiency in busting sod- though the spade and I get the win for precision.  We also unearthed a G.I. Joe head, so bonus points there.

Since that day, Dave has retrieved our fencing from his old shop, and while it still lacks a gate, we have secured the rest of the perimeter.  In that time, I unearthed my beloved graph paper, and finally created a conversion factor for my foot and the foot comprised of 12 inches.  THE GLORY OF ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY!!!!  What can be more pleasing than putting pencil to graph paper, and realizing your shod foot is approx. .75ft?  Since that evening, I drafted a diagram of beds and rows, simply aching to impose Cartesian order on the plane of our garden plot.

Which is why today I am aching from that imposition.  It turns out, creating geometric order from newly broken ground is slightly more work than imagining it.  And hoes, rakes, and spades are substantially heavier than pencils.  Soil exponentially heavier than paper.  Especially soil with plenty of Densely Clustered Mineral Content (DCMC).  We had been referring to such aberrations as rocks, but the man who did our rototilling pointed out that "real rocks are the ones that go all the way down." 

I also quickly found that the plot did not adhere to the theoretical standards of what it means to be a rectangle.  And, if I wanted to be exacting, I should have been more precise with my conversion factor, perhaps extending it to the the hundred-thousandths place.  Or perhaps used an actual tape measure.  In the end, I fell back on my theater training and improvised.  The result of yesterday's labor is that one quadrant of the garden is properly bedded, and the other three quadrants discernible as quadrants.  I can even still move without undue pain.  At one point I noted that one of the stringy bits connecting my chest to my arm through my armpit had gone a bit funny, but no matter, as it seems to have remained attached.  I switched my hoe-handedness and moved on.

It is spring: the sacrificial field grass burnt to soot has given way to rippling waves of green.  The cherry is in bloom, the apple blossoms on their way.  By summer, an aerial view of our vegetable garden will look like a drawing done by an advanced kindergartner.  Life is good.

 


Update 9/11/13:
Thanks, Google Earth.

The garden last year.  I <3 Big Brother for allowing me to follow up on predictions.

Thoughty Lotto

First:  All Teachers Hate Lunch Duty

No.  Don't throw your carrots.  Or if you do, pick them up.  Can you just at least pick them up like a civilized human being before you exit the cafeteria?  Hey, you guys, I don't care how the napkin ended up on the floor, someone take responsibility and throw it away.  Okay, everybody!  If you are talking to people sitting at your table- you do NOT need to yell.  In fact, yelling increases the probability that the duty teachers will hear the inappropriate things you are saying.  If you must be awful, could you please do it sotto voce? 

My new favorite lunch duty game is to look at the noxious cretins and think to myself "what will be the shining moment of humanity in this child's lifetime?  What is the one greatest thing s/he will do that would move someone to tears?"  Because we all have our shiny moments.  They just seldom occur in a school cafeteria.  And not between the ages of 8-13.

Also, I do a lot of making up new lyrics to Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful."  In my version, the title is "Dutiful."  And it is all about how these punks can't bring me down.

Second:  I can't remember this one. 


Third:  I have a ridiculous case of pet pride regarding Pepe.  He is not actually very helpful when planting seeds ("No, my hands are not toys, and though I am digging in the dirt, you are not allowed to..."), but he was helpful holding down the measuring tape for Dave yesterday.  And therefore I will post this video:

 



Pepe doesn't make chore time more efficient, but he makes it more fun.

Fourth: I do remember my third thought, but will pass it off as my fourth thought to make me look more thoughtful than I actually am.  It was about the fate of Maine-based business chains, relative to  their presence in the teeming metropolis of Ellsworth.

Mr. Paperback recently went out of business (statewide, not just in Ellsworth), rendering a lot of fine people jobless.  A victim of Amazon and Audible, it just couldn't compete with the changing tides of literary culture.  Bookworms across the state mourn the loss, but we all know that we were 100% responsible for its demise.

On the other side of the coin, Friendly's in Ellsworth went out of business, and has been converted to a Governor's.  Was a bit wonderful to see a national chain go under and be replaced by a local one.  There was much rejoicing by the region- I ate there last night.  It was packed, but service was quick and thoughtful- and it was Governor's.  You know it.  You love it.  I did mourn the loss of the Muskie Burger- and all of the Namesake burgers in general.  All they had was a LePage burger, and as we all know 61% of Mainer's can' stomach that particular dish.   

I used to play a game about Ellsworth when I was in college- it was called "While You Were in Iowa."  I would watch buildings and business come and go, as if by magic. 

Dreams, Memory, and the Way of Lost Things

I have reached the point of chronic exhaustion, where almost anything that passes into my hands, then passes out of my hands, unremarked by me- and is therefore often misplaced.  To date we have a large bottle of cider vinegar living without a cap since my obsessive egg dying last Sunday.  Wine cap, misplaced as soon as I opened it... why yes, it was screw top.  And for the record, just as The Goats Do Roam, so too does that bloody cap.  Passwords for anything related to the internet, except the biggies I check all the time?  Gone.  They melted away when I wasn't paying attention- with a little merry "vwip" noise.  Thank god for the "forgot password?" link, though it would be good if there was a link that said "always."  I am now putting off updating a password I only just updated five days ago. 

On Tuesday, Dave and I spent ten minutes searching for a set of truck keys... that I had just had in my hand... only to find them in Dave's pants pockets.  Neither of us remembered that I had handed them to him.  It was a consolation to me at least, to be in company.

While I am not usually the most attuned to details, the chronic forgetfulness is always worst when I've been under a lot of stress- I'll do things like forget to turn the oven on when cooking things, or to turn it off afterward... shoes?  Forget it.  I end up stumbling about in a constant "I know I had it at some point..."

For the past two weeks I had been fighting with a light at work, that I would swear I would turn off- my dad taught me to turn off lights when not in use!  And then I would look again, and the damned light would be on.  Day after day.  This light is in the dressing room, the furthest switch from my office in the lighting booth- a floor down and a cavernous theater away.  Normally it is the cantankerous costume volunteer, but she's not been using the space since the Wonka strike.  Finally three days ago I broke down and addressed the ghost the students (more on this some other time) think haunt the theater:

"Listen ghost.  I'm fine that you're here.  I am sure you will outlast me.  But could we pretty please work together?  Seriously, if you have to turn on lights behind my back, could you turn on the ones that are closer to my office?"

The ghost wasn't talking.

Yesterday I got in, and I knew for a F-A-C-T (emphasis on the F-ing) I had turned off the light when I'd left the night before.  I crossed the balcony, climbed down the ladder to the stage, opened the door-
and there was a student and an ed tech, working one-to-one.  It was a comfort to see living human faces behind my struggle, and the Ed Tech was pleased (well, sort of pleased) to see who was constantly turning the lights off on him every time he left the room.  With a plea to please, please turn off the lights when he leaves the space, I left the space- and left the lights on.  Only to spend the rest of the day annoyed when he continued to leave the lights on after he'd left.

Still, it was a solid win for my embattled memory.

Which brings me to dreams- Last night was miserable for sleep, to the point where I got out of bed to listen to a book and on-line window shop until I exhausted my eyes with gross consumerism (wallsconce, flush mount, mission style... clear selection, new tab, new store, that's not my Etsy password?  Reset... this is guaranteed to wear me down).  Dave, privy to my shitty sleep, didn't wake me when he went to go fishing today.  This left me open to Oversleeping Dreams.  Not the kind where you dream you oversleep, but the sort of odd, vivid dreams that come with the territory of missing your normal wake-up. 

And I dreamed about my grandmother.  I was with her in the nursing home, and we were talking- and it grew slowly apparent to me, that while she was talking in the bright, and simple way I've become accustomed to, as if she were always reading a picture book to a child-

She wasn't repeating herself.

At all. 

No thirty second loop of short-term memory, no filler syllables sung for the sake of sound.  Sentences.  Sense.  We were conversing.  About death, of course.  I don't recall specifics of the conversation, just the sense of wonder at her cogency- and that when I spoke in return, I was afraid doing so would break the spell.  But we talked, brightly, simply, with no repetition from memory lapses.  This, I remember.

Egg Update

So this morning, while I was innocently cruising the internet for home goods I don't really need or even necessarily want (e.g. chaval mirror jewelry armoire), Dave asks the the following question:

"Can I use your eggs to make egg salad?"







"What?"

"Can I use your eggs to make egg salad?"




.... I try to come to grips with the horror...


                       ..... a mass cracking.....


....all those eggs....  those beautiful eggs.... really, he wants to make egg salad with them?



"No!"

"What?"

"You can't just use them all at once!"

"Really?"

"YES!"

"Are you serious?"

"You can't just use them all at once to make an egg salad."

"I don't get you."


So he wandered off into kitchen to make his breakfast, talking nonsense talk about eggs rotting in the fridge to fester, and then having found a juicy rhyming word, went off into silly song land where he sang made up lyrics to made up tunes while making toast, and frying non-Easter eggs. 

Watch it, Punk.

Walking to the high school today I saw something blowing along by the door to the back corridor- at first I thought it was a bird, then I got closer, and thought it was a crumpled up bag or piece of paper, and inwardly started cursing the Kids These Days- incidentally, as I write this Kids are burning rubber outside my house... but I digress.  I was mentally cursing kids.  If you work with them, this will happen from time to time.  

Then I stepped even closer, and lo and behold, it was a dried hydrangea head.  Which is a much lovelier object.  And I prefer to think of plants being the miscreants for once.  It's nice to change it up, and shake my fist: "You damned grass!  Git off my lawn!!!"

Just saying.

The Problem with Easter Eggs

You try to eat an egg that depicts an Alien dancing with his feet in a gas cloud, and his heart in a galaxy.

Okay, assuming said alien has a sex, feet, and a heart.

But you see my point?

The only solution I could come up with was to invest in a hundred dye kits now that Easter is over and the prices will go down, and then dye every egg that comes into the house.  That way I would become numb to the quirky charms of each dyed egg.  Also, I'd probably be less painstaking in the dying process.

Of course, now that there are children entering my life via friends and family, it made me think "what would happen if you grew up in a house where dying all the eggs, all the time was the norm?"

What, indeed?

Also thanks to Easter, I have discovered that I have limited patience (read: none) for basket weaving, but infinite patience when it comes to dying eggs.  Finally, for those of you who followed previous bogs (Ahem.  Blogs.), I inadvertently gave up Lent for Lent, life having gone so crazy with work, closing on the house, moving, and Dave's health issues, that I barely knew what day it was- never mind if it was Fatty or Ashy, or Palmy.  Easter made a dent because corporations can make money out of it, so it was harder to miss.  Plus, Willy Wonka had closed and I started getting my weekends back.

In closing, I suppose I should point out that Dave will probably save the day and eat the damned eggs without agonizing over them for aesthetic reasons.  Someday soon, I will open the fridge to see that the Alien Man Dancing has danced his way home to the heart of the universe.

Yes, that is what I will tell myself.

The Day in Journaling

Started with a theme

Which I just kept revisiting...

Shadow Boxing

I was happy to be stood up today.  A group was contemplating renting the theater, and were due in this afternoon to look at the space.  After further consideration, they decided it was too far, and left me a voicemail letting me know that they were going to go with another venue.  I am constantly lame about having my ringer off, so I missed the message.  After meeting with some of the staff at the high school, I went back to the theater to await their arrival.

Turned on the lights.

Threw open the doors.

Waited.

Puttered around, put stuff away...

Opened up my journal, started writing in my very rusty schoolgirl French, for shits and giggles.  Arreted by le principal.  He was struck by the fact I had all the lights on, and an empty stool center stage.  We parled.  He left, I went back to journaling- at this point it was some 40 minutes after the ETA, but I was happy to be in the theater when it was quiet.  Went back to my ecriving. 

And then a face peeked in.  It was the most elusive type- the early teen boy type.  I spoke in a low voice and didn't make any sudden moves.  "Hey."

Yep, I'm that good with words.

As an opening it worked.  The next thing I know one boy has taken the stage- filling the vacuum created by the bright lights and solo seat.  Another boy had sidled in, eyes on the stage, but sticking to the audience.

Soon the boy on stage was playing with his shadows- two strong silhouettes from two different sources.  The boy in the audience was making suggestions.  Enter two more boys, house left, drawn immediately to the stage.  Three boys + one stage + one stool = stage combat scene.  That's just the math of middle school.  I quickly managed to break it up (since unschooled, it was more like "combat"), and taught the first lesson of stage combat: "take care of your partner."  Soon I had them shadow fighting- nice safe distance, but satisfyingly rowdy and kick-ass.  This was followed by the other major tenet of acting: that it is not enough to act, you must react.

So I stepped in, to show them the responsibility of selling the punches was as much on the punchee: "Tyson, punch my shadow!"

Eventually they headed off to the sports practice they'd been waiting for- "we play sports- so and so (other boy in their class) is the actor..." The lights, the stool, and the stage said different.

Here's An Old One

A post that traveled through time (from January!) and space (from Letters from the Saltbox!) to land here, as a reminder:

Here's a New One

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is solitude.”

Okay, I lied.  There's nothing new under the sun, or on this blog.  So it's an old one- a bit from Wordsworth that a kindly NYT reader included in their response to this essay.  And it brings up my favorite life theme: Hey hurrying world, step off so I can putter around at home, in my slippers and/or muck boots, working on curious little projects as though I was an adult being home-schooled.

Point being, I am drooping.  I have been parted from my better self.

But since the hurrying world is not going to get less hurried, and I need to regain backbone, vim, and vigor, I guess I will need to find a way to spiff up my soul.  And so I will resolve to embrace the alarm set for Crazy O'Clock in the Morning, when I can soldier through a more regimented to-do list in gracious solitude.

Finally, a question for future self: are you feeling better?  Less droopy?  I hope so.  I thought maybe if we made the move, you would be better able to pull our shit together.  Also, remember when (and if) you are scraping and painting 246, that back in January you were daydreaming about doing just that as a vacation activity.  That you looked on it as a blessed leisure activity.

So quit whining.

Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

Being new at a job is awful.  For the directorship at the Performing Arts Center, there was no real training, just a passing of the keys.  The keys had a good luck fish on the chain, which then broke off somewhere in mid-October.  I should have reattached the damned thing.  You would think a theater-type would attend to lucky charms, but I blithely let it go: I accept good luck with a glad heart, but do not curry its favor.

Fish or no, I just had to approach this job at a dead run, because the ground beneath me was always moving, demand to demand.  Facilities, productions, volunteers, partnerships, financing, planning, publicity, residencies, programming... seating charts and emergency exits oh my!  This on the plate of a woman who would happily spend her days up to her armpits in herring and lobster, daydreaming up musical theater numbers to film for YouTube about scrubbing scuzzy lobster buoys.  A woman who loves Alexander Graham Bell for his searching mind, big heart and brilliance, but hates the telephone- and occasionally email- with a passion.  I hate being tied to desks, telephones, or time lines I didn't make up myself and can't remake to suit circumstances when they change.  That was one of the beauties of Isle au Haut!

For the record, I have only managed a few things with anything like aplomb, but have had to approach the whole shebang with an internal cry of "onward and upward, Amen!"  Breathe in- just make it through the year- breathe out- you can always quit after the newness has worn off- breathe in- if you aren't a good fit- breathe out- but you won't know- breathe in- until you make it through this year- breathe out.

So I have made it though 3/4 of the year, breathing erratically and with a wicked stitch in my side.

But 3/4.  That's waltz time.  I like a good waltz.

I now have two more big musicals notched in the lipstick case on which I engrave my director's resume (I never expected to have a director's resume at all).  And I now know that I need to move away from Major Musicals and toward Many Smaller Projects, where my heart lies.  Not that I will get away from the work and expense of musicals altogether, but if I can pull together a show choir, it will ease the burden of having to produce student musicals every semester, or even every year. 

This year I learn, next year, I own. 

(I hope... I dream...)