My Rotting Vegetables: A Short History

I feel the need to put all my unwanted vegetable bits in a pile in my yard (or in the neighbor's yard.) I just can't stand the thought of putting something that would otherwise naturally turn to magical dirt into a plastic bag and sending it to a landfill where it would be trapped forever and not be magical.

Our first home, a rented trailer, was in the woods. I could scatter unwanted vegetable bits everywhere and it wouldn't have mattered. So, despite the fact that I wasn't really interested in gardening, I had a fantastic compost pile.

At our second house, also a rental, we had a fenced-in back yard for the dogs. The yard was square and covered in grass and there was no place for a pile of rotting fruits and vegetables. So, when no one was looking, I'd throw my veggie bits in the bushes in the front yard. Sometimes, melon halves from which I'd already dug out all the flesh, just leaving the rind, would roll out from underneath when I threw them into the bushes, and I'd have to jump off the porch and, like, kick the rind back under there. I never noticed any odor, but we did occasionally have bees.

Our current rental also has a fenced-in back yard. It's small, though, and surrounded by abandoned properties, so I just throw veggie bits over the fence into the yard of the house next door where no one lives and there's not even a for-sale sign out front. There was already a pile of leaves and branches and stuff, so it seemed like the perfect place for more rotting vegetation.

Blends right in!

Now it's your turn! Make a pile of rotting vegetables. Or just strew them everywhere. Either way. Not recycling discarded vegetables is just as bad as not recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

A Watery Hole

I got nothin'.

That's why I skipped Monday's scheduled post. I thought it would be bad to skip two out of three posts for the week, though, so here I am.

Joe's nearing the end of his training here in Georgia. We've been living here for eight [wonderful, precious, completely un-taken-for-granted] months. Soon - like in the next two months - he'll be sent to his next duty station. We don't know when he's leaving, and we don't know how long we'll be separated.

Life's been on pause while we've been waiting to find stuff out, so I haven't had anything to talk about. I mostly just play too much LoL and try not to think about things, and that doesn't make for interesting blog posts at all.

Wait, I thought of something! Last weekend, we went Frisbee golfing. I was pretty much exhausted by the third basket, but I was a lil trooper and we finished the course and got this great picture of a watery hole in a tree.

Fish Pose

Today, I'll illustrate Fish Pose.

This is the asana you do after shoulder stand, because shoulder stand builds up a lot of heat in the neck/throat area, and this releases the heat. When you first enter Fish Pose after shoulder stand, you can actually feel the warmth dissipating. It's very interesting.

This version of the pose requires much the same skill level as another pose I've mentioned, Savasana (corpse pose,) which you execute by there on your back and doing nothing. And then falling asleep.

The not-so-easy version of Fish Pose:

The worst part about the second version of Fish Pose is how it magically increases the size of your lower body while making your arm all misshapen and wavy. Plus, it's an ab workout, and really, who likes those?

And no, I don't have a clue what this has to do with fish.

"NO SOLITCITATION," Indeed

There's a sign at the entrance of our neighborhood which says, in capital letters, "NO SOLITCITATION." I think the extra "T" is probably there to add emphasis. The emphasis is completely lost on our visitors, however.

A couple of months ago, the doorbell rang right when I was getting out of the shower. Jack, as usual, started barking and freaking out. I put on my robe and hurried to put away the dog and open the door, because the thought JUST DON'T ANSWER IT for some reason never crossed my mind. Then I stood there with my hair dripping while a guy (who, because of the placement of the front-door window and the bathroom, may have seen me get out of the shower) tried to sell me cable internet service. We already had cable internet and were completely uninterested in switching providers, but I listened anyway and said why yes, that is cheaper than what we're paying, I'll talk to my husband, thank you very much, bye now.

This Tuesday, around 2:00 in the afternoon when we'd been asleep for a couple of hours and still had hours and hours 'til the alarm clock went off, the doorbell rang again. Jack started barking his head off. I for some reason still didn't think JUST DON'T ANSWER IT, so I put on my bathrobe and was looking as fast as I could for the belt to tie it closed when the doorbell rang again. I found the red plaid flannel belt to another robe, tied it around my fuzzy light blue fleece robe, hurried to lock Jack in the bathroom, and answered the door. The cable salesman was back. He was walking away when I opened the door, but turned around (and saw me in the exact same thing I'd been wearing last time he knocked on our door, and having obviously just woken up, so pretty much looking like a total loser for being asleep at 2:00 in the afternoon.) "I saw your car here," he said, "So I wanted to check back with you about the cable offer." So I stood there and smiled and listened to him again and he went away and I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't again and my whole schedule got thrown off.

The next day, I was exhausted, so I thought I'd be able to sleep through the whole day. Then, once we were sound asleep with hours and hours 'til the alarm clock went off, Jack's bark woke us up. He barked a couple of times then decided that the threat had departed and went back to sleep. I, however, could not go back to sleep. I tossed and turned and eventually got out of bed to try to do something useful. I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out from tiredness.

When we opened the front door on our way out to take Joe to work that evening, we found the reason I was denied any significant amount of sleep that day:

First someone was trying to sell me cable, now they were trying to sell me grass. $45 to improve the lawn of a rental I'll be moving out of in the next couple of months sounded like...just a great way to spend money.

I printed out a sign to tape to the front door. We're not going to, but it made me feel better anyway.

Abduction and Yoga

I think I might start abducting people. Just girls around my age, housewives with no jobs who really do not want to be awake at 6:30 in the morning but should be awake, it's important, because aaaany day now our yoga class will probably die from not enough people being in it and I will no longer be getting $5 one-hour private lessons and it will create a hole of sadness in my Tuesdays.

Plotting aside, we did something cool today: A pose called Crane. It was one of those things where I just kinda had to do my best and try not to feel bad about the results.

This is Ms. Yoga Teacher demonstrating the asana:

(P.S.: Her hair doesn't really look like that, and her left hand doesn't really have six fingers.)

And this is me demonstrating the asana:

There was a brief, shining moment - two of them, I think, because I kept trying - where I actually had it right, but that only lasted a couple of seconds before gravity won. Having your knee-skin clinging to your  behind-your-bicep skin = pain.

But don't worry, future abductees, I promise we wouldn't do this asana on your first class! Only super easy ones! And we would have cupcakes!

Beer Plus Meat Equals...

Saturday I found out what happens when you mix this

with this

and it was this:

and it was magical.

Okay, so I was looking for a recipe for pork and green chile stew and I saw a recipe for brisket. I was like hooray that sounds like the best meal ever, let's get the ingredients. So we went to the grocery store because we were out of food anyway, and their smallest chunk of brisket cost $22. WOW THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY! But it was also a lot of meat. So we bought it.

The brisket recipe called for stout beer. The only thing I know about beer is that it's yellow (and even that turned out to be wrong,) so I looked up what brand of stout beer was recommended for cooking, and it was Guinness. So I looked up a picture of Guinness so I'd know what I was looking for.

Then I noticed that the Commissary - get this - does not sell alcohol. Weird, right? But that's okay, because the PX does, I think, as does the gas station on post that's almost within walking distance of the Commissary.

But. The gas station didn't have Guinness. I was in there staring at their small selection of beer for like ten minutes hoping I'd see a stout one. People came and grabbed cases of beer, and this one guy kept walking by like he wanted to get something but I was in the way (even though I totally wasn't.) I didn't see any stout beer. I went out to the car and told Joe that I'd have to make a separate trip to Food Lion and check if they had what I needed, 'cause I didn't want to try to find a substitute. I wanted AUTHENTIC!

Kindly, rather than sending me alone into the cruel world to buy beer when my most extensive experience with alcohol was the bottle of wine he bought for my 21st birthday which I tried super hard to get drunk from but just could not drink because it was nasty so I giggled a lot to make myself feel tipsy, he drove me to Food Lion. As we pulled up, I saw a liquor store in the same parking lot and figured that was our best bet.

It was the second time I'd been in a liquor store. (The first time, I was buying brandy for Tiramisu.) Both times I felt like at any moment, someone was going to point and whisper about me or shoot me because the store was being robbed. Oddly, neither happened either time.

(NOTE: Okay, so I'm kinda clueless about booze. When I was growing up, my parents had a bottle of wine in the over-the-fridge cabinet for like 20 years, and then 4 of a 6-pack of wine coolers in the fridge for 2 years, and maybe some beer once when they had friends over. I didn't even know that alcohol's widely consumed until I worked as a waitress and people were ordering drinks regularly.)

Anyway. Found the Guinness, went to the checkout counter. A middle-age Japanese guy with a gray afro and a frown rang up our purchase. While Joe paid for it (and the guy didn't even ask for ID,) I read a printed-out taped-up paper sign that informed me that it's illegal for liquor stores to give away cups of ice. I had to think about that one for a few seconds before I got it.

We went home and unloaded groceries, then I made sauce with beer, put the brisket in the crockpot, and played League of Legends with Joe. The windows were open and the sun was shining in and you could smell dinner. Hours later, there was the glorious meat.

My Mostly Happy State of Not-As-Good-As

An Army woman came to yoga class once. After class, me and her and the teacher were chatting as we packed up. Actually, it was mostly just those two chatting, because Ms. Yoga Teacher had been in the Army and so they were talking about Army stuff. I just listened and felt like a pampered and pointless lapdog wife. On the way out of class, the Army woman asked me if I was thinking about enlisting. "Nah," I said, "I'm more the stay at home and have babies type." You know, ambitious.

Most of the time, over 99% of the time, taking care of the home front and writing and doing some light long-distance office work makes me really happy. Except when I'm around a big group of Army people, everyone in uniform and talking and laughing and comfortable, and I'm in my normal clothes feeling awkward with my arms crossed. Or when I'm talking to a woman who joined up at 18 and put in six good years of hard work and now does civilian work while she supports her spouse. These are ladies who have husbands, homes, kids, careers, and can run for ten miles without stopping. I'm the girl who, when I was 17 or 18 and it was time to choose a career, took one look at all the college admission paperwork and instead chose hurry-up-and-get-married-and-have-kids. Also, I can run a quarter of a mile. On a good day.

So. A lot of Army women are pretty awesome, compared to me. But a couple of years ago, I thought that most college girls were pretty awesome, compared to me, and I felt like I was wasting my life 'cause I didn't live in a dorm and have things to study and finals to take. I know there'll always be people who make me feel like a failure.

What matters, I guess, is that I'm pretty awesome compared to who I was six months ago. Then, I just cleaned a lot and paid bills. These days, I clean a lot, pay bills, and "practice writing."

Slightly depressing, but that's all I have today. We're low on groceries, so I have to get creative, and dinnertime approacheth fastly!

Art and Crab Legs

Today I will tell you about art.

Entitled "Life"

This man is sad because he just spent two hours of his life which he will never get back taping newspapers to the inside of his bedroom closet.

Untitled (Portrait of Two Alabama Children) circa 1845

What's the little one pointing at? The world will never know. Maybe it was a kitty. Because little girls like kitties.

"Young Girl With Cat," 1867

They like them so much that they will cling to even an uncomfortable and trying-to-escape kitty.

"Charleston Bride," 1948

I wonder if Charleston Bride's husband was a good man. I wonder if they stayed poor. I wonder if they stayed together, if they were happy, if they laughed with each other.

This picture...I have no idea. Joe said the man's upset because he wanted the chair to be on the ceiling but it's not.

My camera just couldn't capture this one properly. It was enormous. That's why I had Joe stand next to it, so you could see how big the painting is. The artist used the length to communicate a sense of movement. I was impressed.

"Nkisi," 2001 (Charcoal on wood with found object)

I think this portrait is well-done, considering it was drawn on some boards. I don't, however, understand the "found object." I personally would never use a hairbrush made of rusty nails. But maybe that guy did, and that's why he looks angry and has no hair.

"Georgia Marsh," 1984

"Georgia Marsh." See the tall grass swaying in the gentle sunlight? The dark murky water? The turtles on the log? Neither do I. Abstract art irritates me. Why does this artist make thousands of dollars?

How about this one? I know it's small. But so...evocative. I made it a few years ago. It's entitled "My Feelings on the War in Iraq."

I'll start the bidding at $2,500.


After the art, we went to a place to eat: Rhinehart's Oyster Bar. We found it on our phones and the GPS. It had great reviews and we were in the mood for seafood and I didn't know what "dive bar" meant, so we went. A few minutes after walking in, we were standing next to a crowded bar on an unfinished cement floor, smelling urine and waiting for someone to seat us or to otherwise acknowledge our existence. We kept looking at each other and whispering about whether we wanted to go somewhere else. But we didn't leave, because it got good reviews and because it was an adventure.

That guy to the far right of the picture where you can only see half of his face and his arm, that's Joe's friend who was with us. The crab legs served on bucket lids in the lower left-hand corner of the picture was Joe's dinner that it took him until 20 minutes after Friend & I were done with our dinners to finish. We're eating at a picnic table indoors off paper plates, and our drinks came in plastic Solo cups.

The tables and the walls (and the parts of the ceiling that people could reach) were absolutely covered with doodles and stuff like "Summer <3 Clay - Us against the world!" and more art. Once, Stephen King wrote something about how he sees a lot of graffiti and how some of it's funny or actually thought-provoking. I thought about that and kept my eyes peeled for deeper meaning as I looked around. The only thing that was even close to being well-thought-out was "I'm out like a fat kid in dodgeball," which didn't strike me as funny or thought-provoking or even interesting.

The music was loud (but muffled just enough by the cinderblock wall next to us,) the toilets leaked, and it was scary in the bathroom, but the food was great. Probably worth another visit. With a Sharpie.

"Do My Parents Know You're Here?"

In March 2007, I was 19 (and also 20) and living with my infinitely patient parents after I'd had a brief adventure in being married to the wrong person. I couldn't drive because I earnestly believed everyone on the road would die if I tried to operate a vehicle. I was going to a tech college to become a computer repairperson. My grades were beginning to fail because I was beginning to devote every waking moment to talking to or thinking about my boyfriend, Joe. I only saw him every other weekend, though, when he drove the six hours' round trip to visit me.

That year, my birthday fell on a Tuesday. Joe and I had plans to see each other on the following weekend. Tuesday started out like a normal day; my dad drove me to school that morning, I got my daily good-morning e-mail from Joe ("Happy birthday! I miss you baby and I can't wait to see you in 4 days, 5 if you're looking for pity and drama,") and I very quietly got texts during class about what he was doing at work.

Usually I stayed at the school until my dad picked me up on his way home from work, but that day, my mom picked me up early since it was a special occasion. Ten minutes from home, we stopped at a gas station and my mom called the house to ask if anyone wanted anything. I don't know what they wanted, but I wanted a blue slushy, so I got one. Then we went home.

I kicked off my shoes in the kitchen and was just hanging out, slurping, texting still-at-work Joe about how awesome my mom was for bringing me home early. "You should probably go put your shoes in your room," my mom said, "so Cedar doesn't get them." The dog had grown a pesky fondness for my footwear. I had to go in there anyway to let my birds out of their cages for the afternoon. So I picked up my shoes and carried them off.

When I opened my bedroom door, I was shrieking at the birds to let them know I was there (and also because I'm obnoxious) - and I stopped mid-shriek. The room was lit by soft candlelight. Rose petals were everywhere. And there was Joe, awkward and smiling. He got down on one knee, presented a ring, and asked me to marry him.

I was overjoyed and shocked. So I dropped to my knees too, to hug him more easily, and whispered, "Yes!....do my parents know you're here?"

They did. Everyone knew except me. He and I had been talking about getting married, and I knew he was working on getting a ring made, but I honestly wasn't expecting a proposal. And from his e-mail and texts, I had no idea he'd actually driven three hours that morning to be at my house, hadn't even been at work that day.

So. That is why my lips are blue in our engagement photo.

A Ten-Year-Old Cake

In two days it's my birthday. I'll be 24. I think this is the first year a birthday has kinda worried me. Your thoughts (obviously) change as those years grow on you. At some point, you just start thinking, "Hmm...why didn't I do anything useful this year?" or "I've been alive almost a QUARTER of a CENTURY!*" and other times "How can I possibly have 15 babies between now and the time my ovaries dry up?"

*Disclaimer: If you've been alive for longer than a QUARTER of a CENTURY, that doesn't mean I'm calling you old. This is the biggest part of a century I've taken up so far, and that's just one of those things you notice.

But you know what thought never changes? "YAYIGETCAKE!!!"

This year, as my birthday field trip, I chose a local art museum. Why yes, I know that sounds boring. But it will be fun because Joe is an artiste. That means when he looks at a painting, he sees more than just a picture; he sees whether it's a good picture (and, you know, artisty details like lighting.) And when it's not a good picture, he can tell me what's wrong with it. Like if the anatomical proportions of the lady picking the flowers are a bit wrong, like, her forearm is longer than her entire leg. That kind of thing. Stuff I'd never notice. Then we can stare at her forearm and laugh at it in a quiet, museum-appropriate way. SO FUN. After that, the plan is to find a restaurant we've never been to and see if they have good food.

There's a lot of chain e-mails/survey-things that ask the question, "Where were you ten years ago?" and so here's a picture of me ten years ago.

Wearing a flowery vine circlet thing that I made (and in the background is my brother, also ten years ago.)

That's a box of cassette tapes on the wall. And yeah, me and my little sister shared a computer. Though I seem to remember monopolizing it.

Ah, the days before every kid had their own desktop PC, laptop, and cell phone. Before any of us discovered texting.

And...can't forget...THE CAKE!

It was a book. With a giant edible kitten icing statue on it. Awesome.

(P.S.: If you're one of the people who think March 6 = buy a present, but don't want to pay shipping...donate? Don't worry, this one didn't come door-to-door, and has been thoroughly researched.)

I Didn't Fall This Time!

You guessed it, Tuesday was another yoga day! Are you beginning to see a pattern?

This time, there were two people in class, like last week. Hopefully, since there keeps being more than one person, that means the class isn't about to be canceled. Which, apparently, it almost was, but Ms. Yoga Teacher saved the class from extinction JUST FOR ME! (Or maybe she just likes doing yoga at 6:30 on Tuesday mornings, and I need to write a 500-word essay entitled The World Does Not Actually Revolve Around Jessi. But, like I said, I don't really do fiction.)

We didn't try anything unusual yesterday, so I didn't fall over. But still, I had fun. Honestly, before I left for the gym, the only thing I was in the mood for was sleep and Dove dark chocolate. Completely uninterested in leaving the house. So I didn't do very well in class. Physically, I was unbalanced and shaky, and mentally, I was...unbalanced and shaky. But! I went, I tried, and I was happy to be there.

And you know how when you're taking lessons for something, you're supposed to practice at home what you're paying them to teach you? Well, I did practice yoga this past weekend. Once. So now, including that one time I wandered around the house for 15 minutes and practiced for 5, I've practiced twice. I've always been a fantastic student when it comes to practicing things at home, right, mom? Remember the hours and hours I spent practicing piano, voice, and guitar? No? Weird.

The practice was good and gave me a sense of accomplishment. Later, when I was showing off my skillz to Joe, he wanted to try Headstand against the wall, too. I showed him the proper way to do it (well...proper as I remembered it, anyway,) gave him some warnings about neck injuries, and off he went! And did it! Hooray! We're lucky we didn't kick holes in the wall! I'd draw a picture for you, but there's a disaster I need to go take care of.

Laundry mountain. It's erupting.