Life of Wry

God. It’s been forever since I’ve blogged. Well over a month, like maybe closer to nearly two! Honestly, this feels just awful. With each passing day, I’ve felt shittier and shittier about it. Mostly because I like it. It grounds me. Without a daily check in on the day I feel a bit untethered.

I’ve been meaning, daily, to get back to it, to feel whole again. Not blogging has been so .. weird. The sorta-guilt’s been killin’ me.

Funnily, but not surprisingly, not a soul has noticed, nor said anything about it. Which confirms for me that my, uh, readership is not a readership at all. This is a-ok with me! I promise. Recall, I threatened a while back (well, hardly a threat) that I was going to take my blog offline. I don’t write this blog for the, uh, readership. I do this solely for me.. and a teeny tiny piece of a reason is for future Peter. I am hell bent on uploading photos and shaping — no, sharing — a narrative that gives him a glimpse of his life, his parents, the community from whence he came… because I know, on some level, that it will be meaningful to him at some point. Everyone’s life should be memorialized somehow.. no? And if it’s my job to do that for Peter, it’s a job I relish with all my heart (and neuroses).

I also have a bit of the document-sickness. My need to document everything is one of my most prized neuroses. That will be the subject of a later blog post. (One day, about a month ago, I made a list of all the things in life I document. A list.. isn’t that rich? I am an incorrigible list maker. Lists are my biggest crutch in life. All I can say about that is: could be worse. But the list, oh my god, was so long and hilarious (to me). I am a true documenting weirdo.)

Anyway. My plan is to resume daily posting. And, as I can, Ima gonna backfill lost days. Because, again: me. Documenting Weirdo.

Starting easy (though, wow, I’ve got a lot to say.. it’s been a full and crazy couple months here and thereabouts)… here goes:

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This past weekend, Jim and I uplifted and caged our tomatoes. About two months late, so it was a gawdawful job. By the end, Jim’s hands were stained dark green (and smelled oh so earthy) and I was a sweaty mess (this, after I told Jim I did NOT want to cage tomatoes at 5pm on a 100+ degree afternoon in the direct, unshaded sunlight of our highly reflective patio AFTER I’d already worked out and showered. (We both got what seem like tomato rashes on our arms.. though that’s faded now.) But we did it then anyway. Jim said I didn’t need to help. But I did (need to). It was def a two-person job.

We lost a lot of tomatoes along the way, cut off huge limbs full of future tomatoes, and may be smothering what remains. But… they look a bit better and we now have passage between the raised beds (so overgrown the tomato bushes had become!). We left some limbs uncaged, too… which is fine; they are spilling over parts of the beds that face the back fence, or are very out of the way, so are free to grow at will.

Some pics:

Four tomato plants — two cherries and two normal sized (early girl and beefsteak, I believe). You have to look hard to see the cages, but they are there. Some spillover shall be tolerated!

Is that crazy?

They sort of freak me out… like living inside the Jack and Beanstalk fairy tale. The whole garden sorta scares me in that regard. But that’s a blog post for another day.