How does it feel when you’re out on your own?*

We interrupt this extended hiatus to bring you…

… Connor’s first day of school. As you can see, he was totally ready:

I, however, was less prepared for the separation. I chose to deal with it by staying awake worrying for the entire night before, leading me to make this face at ass o’clock this morning:

He loved it, of course. Can’t wait ’til Tuesday.

*The GooGoo Dolls

Hello time bomb, I’m ready to go off.*

I know, I know. I haven’t been updating. And I’m going to continue in that vein, because I am trying hard to focus on stuff outside of my head. There was big drama a week and a half ago, and while not all of it was directly caused by me, you could say fairly that the underlying cause of it was the depression that’s been swallowing me slowly since some time in October.

I’m trying to repair the damage — to my marriage, my relationship with my kid, my home, and myself. I need to get out of my headspace for a while and focus on reality. I have spent months obsessing and analyzing and thinking and seething and resenting and despairing, and I don’t know how to fix it except to push it away and get on with life as if it’s not there.

I’ll be back around when it’s safe for me to do this thinking thing, this words thing. In the meantime, I’m almost always on Twitter if you feel a burning need to keep up.

Time to let reality sink in.

*Matthew Good Band

Hobbies. Kind of.

I'm trying out Plinky this week, because I just noticed that it's been two full weeks eleven days (I can’t count, hurp derp) since I updated. I'm sort of butting heads with writer's block right now, so I figured I'd let someone else come up with topics and I'd just ramble on and add some pictures. Uh, enjoy!

I don't really ever de-stress, as it were. I do a few things seasonally to shut my brain down for a while, but I've never been any good at relaxing.

During spring and summer, of course, I garden. I garden pretty much unceasingly, dawn to dusk, even though there's not all that much to actually do in my few pots or the garden box. Sometimes, "gardening" looks a lot like "sitting on a chair outside, sipping a soda and gazing at the plants." I grow mainly tomatoes, because the smell and feel of them triggers a sort of sense memory of happiness — my great-grandmother grew tons of tomatoes, and I spent entire summers in her back yard, with nothing to do but be a kid. (I also grow them because they taste good, of course.) I guess I really shut my brain down by sniffing and fondling a few plants each summer, but I call it gardening in order to come across as slightly sane.

In fall and winter it's harder. I cook often in the cooler months, and I enjoy it enough to edit a food blog and talk kitchen tools and herbs for hours, but it's not really a de-stressor. It's a distraction, maybe, and sometimes it's a comfort — but really it's a way to pass the time and nourish my family until the sun gets stronger and the leaves turn green. It's a way to feel competent, too; I'm so often overwhelmed by raising a kid and keeping a house and paying the bills that it's nice to have one normal thing I can manage. But it's not particularly relaxing.

The closest I come to relaxing in the house is when I read. I read pretty much all the time (all the time that I'm not actively raising the kid or washing the dishes, anyway), and I figured out years ago that it's a defense mechanism. I read things online, I read library books, I read newspapers, I read magazine clippings. I read cereal boxes and shampoo bottles and the packaging from Connor's toys. I read like breathing, and between that and my garden I do all right. Even if I don't ever actually relax.

Big Box of Garden!

So, that happened. I thought the big box was a lost cause, but my mom totally saved it at the last minute (meaning yesterday) by providing good soil and cow poop to fill it up. I planted this afternoon, and I’ll be adding more tomatoes next week — as well as planting cucumbers in a huge plastic tub, as I did last year. This is going to be awesome; if you want to keep up, this year’s garden album is here, and I seem to write/photograph garden stuff a lot on Twitter.

Damn, I’m excited. Last year’s paltry little container garden went from this to this with a side of this; this year’s garden has 32 cubic feet of high-quality amended soil in which to spread. My goal is to grow a 5-ft tomato plant and/or harvest over 200 tomatoes by summer’s end. Oh, and to spend every single summer morning with dirt under my fingernails. Mmmm.

As an aside, how cool is it that last year’s planting and this year’s planting occurred exactly a year and a day apart? And also, how lame is it that my grass is patchy, my old pots are scattered about, and Connor’s “baby” playset is still lurking dustily about? Sigh. Next step: cleaning up my damn yard.

Shoulda listened when you called my name.*

041009_shouldalistened3, originally uploaded by sarawr_again.

I cut off all my hair.

Again.

I don’t think I like this cut at all, but everything for the sake of posterity. In the meantime, I’m going to hide in my house until it grows about three inches. See you in summer. (You know, if you were someone in real life.)

* The GooGoo Dolls.

Making The Effort

Making The Effort, originally uploaded by sarawr_again.

I looked like this at a kid’s birthday party last night. It was nice and all, but damn, I remember now why I gave up on all that blowdryer/makeup/jewelry/coordinating outfits crap years ago.

Posted for posterity, so that someday I can look back and think, “I don’t need to brush my hair today, I did it once in 2009.”

Morning! And other things.

nnnggghhh, originally uploaded by sarawr_again.

Oh, hello. I jumped feet-first into work this morning and forgot to make coffee. Also, I didn’t really sleep well, because our new neighbors are apparently close and intimate relatives of the Asshole Neighbors. Double your late-night thumping bass, double your fun, am I right?

I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but my mom is here for a visit and work’s been all crazy and also, I think I might be dead. Never fear, though; there are some cute Connor pictures over at Flickr. I am going to make coffee soon, and shower, and eat something, and try to be a human being. Tomorrow I hope to return to my regularly scheduled somewhat consistent sporadic and unamusing form. Huzzah!

All that exposition for one lousy picture.

When I was pregnant, I made many carefully reasoned parenting choices, most of which flew right out the window as soon as Connor went external. One of the big ones was that I wasn’t going to let him watch TV, play video games, or use a computer until he was 7. I thought that was a good age, a solid age — old enough to understand time limits and content restrictions, but young enough to avoid porn; old enough to have established the habit of playing outside, but young enough to benefit from all that hand-eye coordination stuff; old enough to operate these devices safely and sanely, but young enough that he wouldn’t mind a ten-year-old Compaq.

Then he was born, and Michael’s mom started him with TV pretty much instantly. At first it was Baby Einstein, of which I grudgingly approved. He didn’t care about the tube much when he was very small, but as he got older he started taking more notice — and he became able to verbalize his wishes. “Doo-da-box!” he’d crow, 18 months old and already asking to watch these horrifying creatures. At two, he insisted on “Lil’ Einsseins, puh-lee-zuh,” emphasizing the please until it was almost unrecognizable (as if that alone would break my iron will). Now he’s well-acquainted with a wide variety of shows even though we don’t have a TV, corrupted by his grandmother’s love of the tube and my eventual lack of caring.

ADD, schmay-DD, I shrug. He has to have something to distract him from the smack withdrawals his tragic Louboutin addiction making gigantic messes while Mama’s trying to get paid, right? I’ve held firm on the no-computers and no-video games rules, though. I figured that this was the sort of compromise most rational adults make when they butt heads with reality. I mean, I’m not heartless — okay, kid, have all the TV you want at Momo’s house, but at home all you get is the occasional DVD and you certainly don’t need other screens. Play with toys! Here’s some Play-Doh! Let’s go outside! All well and good, and he’s never had a problem with this system.

Until.

Until I started working, at home, on the computer. He is now fascinated by what I might be doing on here at any given moment, and he will interrogate me mercilessly, a tiny Torquemada: “Whatcha doin’, Mommy? Are you doin’ ShaSha? Are you doin’ your work, or are you doin’ somethin’ else? What page can you click on to see somethin’ else? Are you going to play some music? Do you have any games on that computer?” On and on it goes, and the precision of some of his questions makes me suspect that he is having computer time at his grandparents’ house.

Tonight we had a lot of fun before bed. He sat in my lap and said, “I will be cold, I will be cold!” at which point I was to cross my eyes, make duck lips, and produce the weirdest sound I could. We did this over and over, laughing like loons, my little Inquisitor and me — him covered in hydrocortisone-smeared bug bites, me with sloppy hair and bleachy hands from a day of cleaning. After a while he started casting flirtatious glances at the computer. “What… well… don’t you think you need to do ShaSha right now?” he asked. “I could watch you, right here on your lap. I will be very quiet, and you can do some more ShaSha work. That’s a great idea!”

He needs to work on his subtlety a little. I got the hint loud and clear, and right then? I gave up. The kid is interested, the kid is bright, and damnit, the kid is not going to learn about computers from his grandparents. That’s my area, thank you very much. I opened up Checkbox-a-Sketch, shook the mouse around a little, and Connor’s eyes lit up. He me to draw numbers, he asked me to write his name, he had me draw every single member of the Cars cast, and finally… he asked to do it himself.

Kid’s a natural. What the hell was I worried about, again?

At last.

I have finally begun posting my garden pictures from the last mumblemumble months. I didn’t get them all posted by ANY means, but there are enough up now to give you a good idea of what I’ve got. (Lovin’, baby. It’s what I got.) Of course, since I took these pictures — two days ago — a billion more tomatoes have started blushing, the cucurbits (squash and cukes alike) have doubled in size, and my herbs have done their usual post-harvest exploding. I’m going to try to keep posting these as fake updates throughout the rest of the week, but to be honest, I’m a little afraid.

Hello, friends. Why don’t you throw me some topics? I feel a little lame writing about nothing but work, work, the garden, work, work, and the kid. I will even take a few more pictures if they MUST accompany a post, but you better have a darn good topic.

When I am an old woman I shall wear bikinis.

It’s Friday, and I don’t feel like posting, and I am sitting here wondering what I can possibly do, and then I see this:

My problems are solved. Helen Mirren, I salute you. I also aim to be you, because I firmly believe there is nobody more fabulous than you are.

Enjoy, darlings.