GYST Day Three

Get Your Shit Together Report

Day Three

I had some wonderful friends over for a first annual "crafty hour" at which no one crafted a single thing.  We just ate and talked and had a delicious new cocktail from DAC, which, if I understand the story correctly, was supposed to be a Moscow Mule, but went wrong somewhere in Outer Mongolia.  Whatever it was, it was yummy.

So, nothing crossed off the list unless you count keeping dear friends nearby as something you put on a list.  

Maybe I should!

21 Days of Get Your Shit Together

They're starting another 21-day challenge at my gym today.  You sign up, you commit to workout and to eat well, and you track your progress.  As the single most competitive person alive, I fall victim to these challenges all the time.  I either out-compete everyone and get super shapely for those 21 days and then reward myself for the next 30.  Or, more often, I set totally unrealistic goals for myself and then fail epically to meet them.  Sound familiar?  Who, me?

But it's January, and I ate so much bread and drank so much wine in France and Germany that when we got back, I swore I wouldn't even want them anymore.  Tell that to the cereal and toast I had for breakfast this morning.  So, I'm challenging.  I'm challenging at the gym, and I'm challenging myself, too.  Most of the people I live with will also tell you that I'm challenging. 

Here's the plan:

Much of what was going on in this picture was a to-do list of all the projects, piddly and not, that I have lined up.  Many of them are small, some of them are easy, all of them are achievable. See that composition book there?  That's THE LIST as it looks today.  THE LIST changes and evolves, as you might imagine, as things are completed (a/k/a I write in pencil so I can erase things that I don't want to do).  THE LIST includes things as small as e-mail the landscape guy about the weevils in the agaves and things as large as 

stain and recover the new (old) chairs for the dining room.  That I bought in 2010.  Whatevs.

So, in addition to the godforsaken challenge at the gym, I am setting myself a 21-Day Get Your Shit Together challenge.  I will purposefully engage in one of the projects on this list every day, reminding myself that not all projects will be completed every day.  So, instead of The Project, I will have the projects.  

AND I am resolving to blog about it. Everyday.  For 21 days.  I've been hot and cold on these pages lately.  Excusable?  Yes.  Understandable?  Yes.  It's all okay, but I do love this blog, and I believe in what I'm trying to do here, so I need to back up my belief with some commitment.  They say it takes 21 days to make a habit.  

We'll see.

Austerity, Day 1

I had a wonderful weekend.  G and I took a little girls' trip down to Houston.  S was booked all weekend with band trips, and T was still working on our new, architecturally-rendered (if by architecturally rendered you mean using the free Google app to design and measure and then pretty much making it up from there) shed, so I thought I'd go see my mom, who I haven't seen since June (!), and dad.

Any trip to see my parents necessarily involves the ingestion of a fair amount of alcohol.  Usually because we're enjoying each other's company.  Occasionally because we're driving each other crazy.  Regardless, my people come from a long line of people who enjoy a glass of the grape. Or the barley.  Or potato.  Or juniper.  Or whatever, really.  And we're really good at it.  Because we practice.

Anyway, I had an absolutely super time with my folks, saw some great, old friends from high school.  And ate.  Ate at all my favorite Houston places that I don't ever get to go to anymore. Ate road food on the way home. And I ate all the things I never let myself eat anymore, project-wise and health-wise. And that's when the party was over.  Because, today . . .

I. Feel. Like. Shit.

I can't do it.  I can't eat like that for three whole days, and I certainly can't drink like that.  So, since we've already delved into fiscal austerity, I've decided to take the plunge into nutritional austerity.  It's like my very own episode of Hoarders or Intervention.  Except I'm not saving others.  I'm saving myself.  Well, that, and I have no tattoos and all my teeth, but otherwise, just like that.  No alcohol.  No carbonation.  No nighttime gluten.  Seven days.

Pray for me.

In the Hood

I was at the corner convenience store yesterday, getting my daily Diet Coke.  In front of me at the register was a man buying not one but TWO forty-ounce Fosters Lagers and a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

As I went out to the car, I noticed that he was wearing a t-shirt that said "Innovative Business Solutions."  Indeed.

You can't make that shit up.

Starting Over

Right before I left in July, I pulled almost everything out of the garden.  Everything.  It was horrifying.  Some of the tomato plants had new fruit budding.  It was awful.  I had worked so hard for that garden, and it physically hurt to pull everything out (that might also be because there are steel edges to the fencing I used for my tomato cages and I cut myself about 235 times).  I left one bed for the housesitter to manage, but she wasn't all that interested in the jalapeños, so when I got back, I had a bumper crop.  Which I canned.  Which is all I did all of June, too.

After I pulled everything out, I tilled up the beds, pulled off the square-foot grid strings and covered everything in a blanket of hay and hoped for the best.  It felt really good in cathartic, sweaty kind of way, but it was really sad, too.  As my brother-in-law reminds me, Stephen King says this about writing:  You have to "kill your darlings." In writing and in gardening, I guess.

So, this week, I started over.  It seems almost unimaginable that everything I did last spring now has to be repeated for fall.  I drove to the Natural Gardener in the 105 degree heat and bagged my own compost.  Needless to say, there was no Tomato Larry that day - it was EMPTY in the bag-your-own-lot.  Because I am insane.

I pulled off all the hay, tilled in all the new compost and started some beans and tomatoes.  Which is exactly where I was at the end of March last year.  And I'm okay with that.  Like laundry and dishes and most other things in life, there's always something more to be done.  My challenge is to do it with a lighter heart.  And without cussing.  Still working on that one.

I had to hit the ground running this week to get the fall garden in, but I was ready.  Tomatoes and beans went in this week.  And this time, I actually did some planning for successive crops like onions, garlic, leeks, cauliflower and broccoli.  So, I know where I'm going as it begins to get cooler.

And where I'm going right now is bush beans and tomatoes.  I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Keep it green, y'all!

Sins Revisited

My kid is learning to drive.  Now, I don't look like I could possibly have a child getting ready to be a licensed driver, what with my perfectly unblemished skin and girlish figure, but I do.  And it's been much easier than I thought it would be.

For me, I mean.  There is nothing better than letting your kid drive you around.  I can text with impunity, eat my breakfast on the way to school, read the newspaper, and (you people who have younger kids might want to sit down for this) drink beer when I'm at friend's house.  Or my mother-in-law's house.  Or really anywhere I damn well please because I HAVE A DESIGNATED DRIVER.  I keep hearing these parents whine and lament about being sad about having a driver, fearful that they'll be in an accident, bereft at the thought of their babies growing up.

Fuck that.  Here are the keys.  Be careful.  Your car payment is to take your sister anywhere she wants to go.  Your insurance is taking the dogs to the vet.  Your gas money is running any paltry errand I can think of.  Godspeed.  Fly, be free.

I'm not sure that it's been quite as easy for her.  You see, I tend to be just a teeny bit controlling.  I'm sure you can't tell.  And I tend to handle that by yelling "STOP!STOP!STOP!" over and over whether it's an emergency or not.  I'm trying really hard not to, but,  I'm not going to lie, I'm struggling.  And some of my passenger-seat psycho behavior I don't even know I'm doing.  For example, when she first started driving, she claimed that I do a hissing inhale every time she takes a curve too fast (or maybe not even too fast, maybe any curve, who's to say?).  Now, most of the time, I'm not even aware that I'm making this sound.  And up until about three weeks ago, I would have denied that I was doing it.

Until. . . .

Until three weeks ago, when my mom came to town.  Now, I'm 44 years old.  I got a hardship license at 15 and have been driving a car since I was 13.  I haven't had a wreck since I was in my mid-20's and in that one I was a passenger.  I haven't had a ticket since my mid-30's.  I don't reverse well.  I am an excellent parallel parker.  I think speed limits are more guidelines than hard and fast rules, and my neighbor just told me last night that he "knows who stops at the neighborhood four-way stop and who doesn't."  But all in all, I'm a pretty safe driver.

So, my mom and S and I were in the car, headed to pick up G from school.  On our route was a 90-degree left curve in a 50 mph zone.  I took that curve at a relatively judicious 35-40 mph and smoothly entered the curve, accelerating at the apex of the curve, just like my daddy taught me.  And at the moment I was executing this epic driving maneuver, my mom grabbed the "oh shit" handle and made this hissing inhale noise.

Busted.  And the worst part was that G wasn't even in the car at the time, so I could show her that it wasn't my fault.

I can't help it.  It's genetic.

Garden Party

Another big day at Casa O. today.  I’ve been slaving and slaving away on my pest control project home-canning garden for weeks, and it was time to show it off.  I don’t get to see my teacher friends nearly enough, and all the kids were off school, so DAC and I decided on a garden party. 

It was so nice to take a break from mind-numbing drudgery home gardening and enjoy the day.  We had homemade lemonade, both child and adult versions, toll house chocolate chip cookies, and sand tarts from the 1968 Houston Junior League Cookbook. The little girls hung in there for the front yard portion of the tour, then bagged to hang with the big kids on the back porch.  I'm pretty sure it had something to do with cookies.  Or chihuahuas.  I'm not sure.  I'm willing to consider the possibility that my gardening successes and failures are not all that riveting to the 7 and 9 year--old set.  Or maybe to anyone.  Wait. What?

"I'll give you $3 if you'll be in my picture."

I am rereading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle again (thanks, MWM) and continue to be amazed at her dedication to feeding her family from her own garden and community.  And God bless her.  But good heavens, how in the hell did she do it?   I.  Am.  Absolutely.  Exhausted.  Self-help books talk a lot about mindfulness and being in the moment.  Enjoying nature, accepting that you cannot change what is, look around at the beauty around you.  Fuck that.  I'm sweaty, stinky, rashy, bloody from cuts and scrapes, and so sore from digging and hauling that I can't turn my head to the right. 

But today was a different kind of moment.  It was a lovely, lovely day.  There was a nice breeze under the trees.  There were good friends.  There was vodka.  It was so nice to just sit.  And visit with a dear, special, wonderful friend.  The big girls love running around with the little girls: they had cookies on the couch, a game of Sketch-It, and made bracelets, which left plenty of quiet time for the mamas.  A good deal all around.

And I am really, really proud of how it all came out.  The garden does look nice.  There is actual, real fruit (actually vegetable) on the plants.  That's a baby jalapeno.  I'm a mom!  Those are tomatillos blooming behind it.  All the more special was to have a friend to share it with.  And it was nice to feel like there wasn't anything else I needed to do or anywhere else I needed to go.  Those are the moments that make the sweat, the stink, the blood, and the rashes worth it. 

Things were just perfect until it was time to leave.  T made the terrible error of asking DAC what she and the girls were having for dinner.  "Well, since we’re not on the project, oh, sorry, we’ll probably pick up something on the way home."  G visibly paled when C said "let's go to Schlotzsky's."  A long discussion ensued about why we were on the project and what it meant for us.  Considerable attention was paid to the loopholes by C, who is smart as a whip, and only just a little bit concerned that her mama might want to go on the project, too.  Loopholes only make it worse.  Then, the sweet, little family bade their goodbyes and rolled off into the twilight.  And my kids had leftovers.  Which is just fine.

And, no, I didn't just finish the last of the sand tarts.

Why do you ask?