S-I-C-K

S is for the way you sap my strength

I is for the Ick I feel at length

C is coughs and chills and cherry carbonation 

K is killing more bacteria than I can mention

Sick, stay far away from me...

Love it when you're feeling so out of it you feel like you can parody anything without repercussion and have it make sense. Kudos to anyone who can get which song I chose.

Blood and Water -- Naturally

There's a saying that blood's thicker than water. I don't know if it actually is thicker, but I had an experience lately that made me think about it.

First, if you don't like blood, don't read this.

Second, I apologize in advance to the other party in this blog post. I hope she can forgive me for talking about something that is very personal, and not generally talked about in public. If she reads it and doesn't like it, I might take it down. But I believe the point will come clear, and perhaps she will not be mad.

Awhile ago I was visiting a sister of mine. (She's my blood. We used to tease her that her legs were painted on because she used to ask us to go get water for her when she was thirsty, instead of getting her water for herself:::Blood. Water. Blood was thicker, so we always ended up getting her water for her, even if sometimes it was with some grumbling.)

I was in the middle of my period. Sometimes, accidents happen, and things get bled on. I bled on her sheets. It's the kind of thing that if it has to happen away from home, I suppose it's best to have it happen at a sister's house, because hopefully, she's understanding, and it's slightly less embarrassing to go tell her, "Hey! I'm trying to take care of this problem, but we need to do laundry. Now." than it is to tell a stranger or an acquaintance.

I woke up and rolled over and realized what had happened and inwardly groaned. Great! How embarrassing. I went to tell her what had happened. She was very understanding and wasn't mad at all or impatient. I was really grateful, as I felt a little silly. I told her as much, and she told me a story I had completely forgotten about.

A long time ago, when I was a pretty young teenager, we went to visit somebody. I want to say Aunt M was part of it, but I don't remember that for sure. I do remember I had recently been through puberty, and I was having a rough go of it. (Most people do, so I don't really feel too sorry for myself about it.) My sister was sitting on my lap. My lap was bigger than her lap, and there weren't enough seats, and I was not yet old enough to care about having no leg circulation. She sat on my lap and I put my arms around her, and we chatted with our relatives (or whoever it was) for awhile. It was summertime, because I was wearing shorts.

When she stood up, I realized that she had bled through her clothes onto my lap, and there was a rusty stain on the fabric of my shorts. She must have been perched at the end of my lap, because even though my shorts were pretty long, it was close to the hemline. I remember thinking, "Oh no. How embarrassing for her!" and I wanted to let her know that she needed to change her clothes, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it and embarrass her any more than was absolutely necessary. Mentioning it in front of all our relatives (probably not everybody in the room was female, and it would have greatly mortified me to point it out in mixed company) would have been really rude, I felt, and embarrassed her.

It never occurred to me to get mad or cause a scene. I was just anxious for her to get full understanding of the situation so she could take steps accordingly. So when she stood up, I tugged on her hand to get her attention, pointed to the stain to let her know what had happened, and then rolled the hem of my shorts up in a little cuff in order to cover the stain. It wasn't a natural place for a bloodstain to be, and I didn't want anyone else to notice. For once in my life, I believe I actually acted nonchalant!

She said she was so grateful that I didn't make a big deal of it. I guess I could have squealed and been like, "Eeeew, she bled on me!" and made a fuss. But really...I just rationalized it: Everybody has things about their bodies they can't control. She couldn't control that, and besides, it's not like any damage was done, so I just went about my day and changed my shorts later.

She told me this story as she put hydrogen peroxide on the stain I had just made, and kind of made the point that I could bleed on anything I wanted, because she was really grateful that I hadn't freaked out on that day. It made me think. To me, it wasn't a big deal at all, but to her, she was grateful to be spared mortification.

We need both blood and water. We need people--our "blood"--to take care of us and get us out of sticky wickets, and we need water to get rid of the residue. When we have waterworks, it's our blood who take care of us. When we bleed, it's sometimes the water of acceptance -- which sometimes we do not offer freely enough to our blood -- that we need to flow around us and clean us up.

So, my dear sister, blood and water go together -- naturally. And so next time you ask me for a glass of water, I'll get it for you without complaining. Because I'm your sister -- your blood. And that's just one of the things sisters do for each other.

Flying Geese

The house where I live is directly in the migratory path of several hundred Canadian geese. They honk. Loudly. Madly. Daily. Lots.

I took a picture of a V of them flying very low a few months ago. I thought, gee, it's amazing how they choose who is the leader, etc.

I walk by a field sometimes. Once, last year, I took some family members walking. There were little greenish brown things everywhere that looked like the aeration cork leavings. Some of them looked like they were growing mold. I was trying to figure out what they were, and we discussed amongst ourselves and came to the determination that what we were looking at were goose droppings. They were EVERYWHERE. You couldn't just walk normally, you had to pick and choose your steps carefully. The rain would come away and wash them, but you just had to think....man. There were a lot of geese here, really recently.

This is important because I had never seen the makers of these two and a half inch long squiggles in all their flock-y glory.

I'm also into quilts. Something I learned this winter is how to make "flying geese" to make piecing easier. An example, courtesy of blockcrazy.com:

The point is to be able to sew the bigger triangles to the smaller triangles, keeping the bigger triangles intact.

Today, I saw the flock. There were about three hundred of them. I was amazed that several people walked by and didn't even notice that they were squawking. I guess that's what happens when you've lived in the flight path for awhile...you don't even notice they're there. But I noticed. I was enthralled. So many birds! (I don't really generally like birds. But en masse, they're pretty cool.) I wanted a picture, so I took one.  You can't really see it here, but their heads are bobbing, and it looked like they were eating grass as fast as they could. It was as if they were honking, "Hurry, hurry, we need to eat." Every once in awhile, they would get really quiet and one geese would honk out the same note in intervals, eight or ten times. Then they'd all get loud again.

Clearly, I was distracted from my walk. Right before I had spied them, I was thinking, "Self, it was very foolish to come out without a coat. You are cold. Maybe you should turn around. Your hands are gonna freeze soon."

Key: green = field; brown spots = tree; grey line = chain link fence, white line = soccer nets, orange = the geometric shape they were making; little black dots = an approximation of a goose (as best as I can do in knockoff Paint with my limited skills and patience.)

They ranged about. This is their progression. It's unnatural, because there was something that happened to instigate steps two and three: I decided since they weren't marine mammals, it was ok to creep a little closer to take a picture. I actually did more than that. I took a video. I didn't post it here because it's a little shaky and I didn't want to make y'all sick. But it was amazing how they just kept eating, but fanning out a little further. I confess, I had never in almost twenty years wanted to run so much as I wanted to run right then. I wanted to see them all flap away because of me. I wanted to see the glory of the huge cloud of them rising up in the air. I do not recall an instance where I ever remember feeling more felt like a wannabe lioness than I did in that moment.

I didn't want to disturb them, though. I didn't know how long they had been there, or how long they usually give themselves breaks for. Cold forgotten, I decided there was still some light left in the sky, and I wanted to observe, so I hid by a tree and sat and watched them for awhile. My hands started to freeze. They honked and honked. I was beginning to inwardly lament my choice: I needed to get some cardio, but I also wanted to be present in case they decided to take off. After about ten minutes of tree-spying, I decided that I could just walk around the field. There is a fence around most of it, so I didn't think they'd feel too threatened. During the time I watched them by the tree, this is how they spread out and contracted.

I walked about and walked about, patiently. I kept waiting for them to take off. Now, it seemed that a few of them were playing...they weren't as earnestly eating. It had been approximately forty minutes since I had originally spied them. On my next rotation, I cautiously approached. I decided I wanted one more picture. This is what they did in response....all facing away from me.

And my inner lioness roared. I knew the geese were tired, but readers, I simply could not help it. I ran at them, full speed ahead. I felt free. I felt wild. I felt large and bold and powerful. This feeling was intensified, as there was a huge thunderclap and I spied three hundred white bands as they lifted their wings, exposing their hind markings, and flew away in two separate groups, wheeling in the sky, honking louder than ever. I was right in the middle of them. The air whooshed around me.

And then, in the space of less than a second, the field looked like this:


I felt awed, triumphant, and, yes, I did feel abashed and guilty soon after for disturbing them. But I don't really regret it. Sorry, geese. I knew I'd probably never have another opportunity like it, and I just wanted so badly to watch their wings beat madly as they all rose up in unison. I will never forget how it looked, or how I felt.

Good Love

I wanna know what love is / I want you to show me / 
I wanna feel what love is / I know you can show me / 
Here I go again / Here I go again 

I went to Texas for a glorious week and a half. I had such a good time. There was:

good food :: for Outings, the peach donut was probably my favorite, although the salted caramel shake at the Alamo Draft House is really hard to beat. For Innings, hands down, it was the Beef Book!! Sooooo yummy.
good movies :: I saw A Christmas Story for the first time, and although I'm not sure this can qualify as truly "good," I now get the leg lamp references. I also saw The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, Muppet Christmas Carol,  and Better Off Dead, as well as the Christmas episode of ISWAK. 
good games :: Whoowasit? was my favorite new game. I think I played it five times. (!) We had an entire game marathon, playing classics like Monopoly and Labyrinth, and oldies like Apples to Apples and Ticket to Ride: Europe. I also like Make n Break, and the addition of Enchanted Forest was good, too.
good conversations :: like only sisters can have. Of course, those devolved into random memory remembrances and also a lip sync contest. Which turned into a next-day karaoke contest. Apparently I have more rocker in me than W thought. Hehe. Just remember, W, that the louder I sing, the more comfy I am.
good books :: I read Murphy's Boy on the plane, and it was good. I also read the entirety of James and the Giant Peach to the kids in less than three days. There were also some forgettable books, but we won't mention them here (although one of them was a misbegotten choice of a Dan Brown book), so they will be forgotten.
good love :: I got hundreds of kisses, and hundreds of hugs, and hundreds of "I love you's."
Life really does not get much better than that.

When I was in the car, on the way to the airport, IGPM reached over and just held my hand. It almost made me cry. I thought to myself, "this is what love is. Love is reaching out for another person and knowing that they will welcome your touch...whether they need reassurance, or they are the one doing the reassuring."

He knew he could reach for my hand and that I would let him lace my fingers between my own. He didn't have to say anything. No explanations were necessary. My niece knows she can kiss my cheek any time and I will be happy to receive it. She is confident that if she extends her graceful neck toward me, I will meet her.

Love is mostly knowing that the other person will be there...that they'll meet you in the middle, that they'll reach out to you when you're scared or hurt, that they'll let you reach out to them when they're in a pickle or need some help.

My Christmas present was good love. Can't ask Santa Claus for a much better present than that!!

Gingerbread Fairytales

I went to the lobby of the Sheraton hotel with The Conrad to check out the annual gingerbread "house" show. Every year, the architectural firms in Seattle team up with the chefs at the Sheraton and each firm designs a structure ("house" is too loose a term, here) with the help of a child who has diabetes (or whatever the chosen charity of the year is) to create blueprints for the pastry peeps at the hotel to construct.

This year's theme was "Nursery Rhymes."

There was Jack & the Beanstalk, complete with a green-dyed rice krispy stalk. Of course there weren't any beans in the display (there were Boston Baked Beans in there, too, but I don't think those count). Nothing even remotely healthy! The closest were Cheezits and pretzels. Best thing about this was all the Lego sweet-tart bricks used to make the wall.

There were some kinds of candy I had never seen before. Mostly they were pearlescent cake decorating gadgets that they'd sell at the "decorette" shop by my house. (See Christmas tree decorations on "Hickory Dickory Dock." Yes, those big yellow lumps are not a beehive, but rounds of cheese for the mice rushing up the clock.)

Prize for Most Traditional Looking is "London Bridge is Falling Down." I was tickled by the ingenuity of using gum for bricks for the turrets, but a little dismayed by the lack of originality of using candy rocks as the stonework for the towers.



Prize for Best Use of Nerds was the shoelaces of "The Little Old Lady Who Lived In A Shoe". Candy wallpaper...hmmm....seems like something an Oompa Loompa would enjoy. I think I liked the use of texture in this the best.




Prize for Most Ingenious goes to the "Owl and the Pussycat." Look at those sails. I wish I had been able to get a better picture. It was truly awesome. 


Prize for Most Incredible of the Traditional Style goes to this one, where the dish ran away with the spoon. (at least, I assume that's what's happening. I got so lost in the real "stained glass" windows and all the fancy schmancy decorations that I forgot to note which rhyme this depicted. Does anybody know the name of the candy used on the roof? The stuff that comes in sheets that has sugar on it but is sour like Sour Patch Kids? (Far right, middle of the picture.)





And now, for my favorite of the whole exhibit: the mini marshmallow sheep. Baaa, they're so cute! I wanted to immediately go home and make myself a field full of them.

The Year of the Quilt

2013 was the Year of the Quilt.

Here's how it goes: I had a quilt I started in college. I shelved it for many years, and once I had possession of all my possessions (except the china, which I now have safely in my care) and some room to work in, I decided to finish the quilt. It's a jeans quilt. Only I was kind of short-sighted and put the jeans on the top. It weighs a TON! I was going to put jeans on the back, and had even bought the denim for it, but then I couldn't find the material anywhere. It turns out it's just as well, because otherwise it would weigh four thousand pounds and I would wrench my back out whenever I picked it up to have picnics with it. It is six revolutions of my body tall and six and a half revolutions of my body wide. (That doesn't show in the picture. But it does explain why it's so heavy...) I used ripstop nylon on the back. Not sure this was a wise choice--only time will tell.

I tied it. I spent many nights talking on the phone and using my great long needle and my q-snap quilt frame (thanks, mom) to put it together. I did my first roll-over hem on it. It looks kind of terrible, and if I knew then what I know now about quilting, I never would have done it that way. I'm still not sure that the ties, which I did inside, like turkey tracks, are going to hold up over even sort of any term. But I finished it. It's done. Hurray. I finished it...I don't know....in February, I think. So, from start to finish, it was at least eight years.

February was when I finished sewing all the pieces together for the BFQ, which I posted about earlier. (I took the summer off sewing, due mostly to needing to get vitamin D in me and also due to my living situation, which wasn't spacious enough to permit anything, really, much less quilting. I was so grateful for this last summer, though...many people were very kind to me, including my roommates, who made it until I moved out in October. Hurrah!) I began cutting out pieces for the BFQ when I was in graduate school, and I finished the BFQ in October...maybe November. I don't remember, and I'm too lazy to go back and check. So that was at least seven years that it took me to finish that quilt.

February was also the month that I began in earnest a t-shirt quilt, made of RRW's t-shirts. J came down and we had probably one of the most productive weekends I have ever had. We sewed and talked and cut and sewed some more and planned and laid out and...wow. It was a lot of work. I first talked to J about the quilt on August 7, 2010. Mom, Dad, RRW, J and I were at Wild Ginger, which is to this day one of my favorite restaurants. We were eating blackberry sorbet and I leaned over and told J that one day, if she wanted, I would make a memory quilt for her out of all his t-shirts. (At that point, we knew he didn't have long.) She started to cry and said it was a nice idea. I wasn't actually sure if she would remember, or forget about it, or if it would ever happen, but in February, the wheels started churning.

I never could have finished the BFQ or the memory quilt without my friend Peggy. She has a long-arm quilting machine and graciously let me come over to her house to use it. It was amazing. She is amazingly generous and was very kind and spent hours helping me and giving advice. It turned out better than I ever imagined it could. I finished today. It made me think of how much I love RRW, how much I love J, and how I learned to be generous, in part, because they offered me their generosity. It gave me much satisfaction. From conception to completion, that was just under 3.5 years. From beginning construction til completion, it was ten months. I did not believe it could be done so fast. It was the Fastest quilt ever...except:

I started V's quilt sometime in October. I guess if we're honest, I started it back in graduate school, since that's when I started cutting out pieces. But from the time I decided I was going to make the quilt until the time it was done, it was less than two months. I worked and worked and worked on that thing. I thought I was going to die. I had never machine quilted my own quilt before and I wished with all my heart that I had gone to Peggy's and used her machine. (She is so generous that I do not want to overstep my bounds...I thought three quilts in less than two months was just a little too much to ask.) I finished it just in time to send it off for Christmas. This picture is really horrible, but hopefully you can still see some of the prettiness of the quilt anyway.

2013 had literally more than a thousand hours spent at my sewing machine, probably a hundred hours of pinning, tens of hours ironing, and tens upon tens of minutes unpicking.

I would like to thank J for helping me lay out the BFQ; V, for secretly desiring something I made for her; Mom, for advice on interfacing and hours ironing, Grandma for the gift certificates, Peggy for lending her expertise to me, and to every single person who granted my offer (which were phrased as requests, but were really demands) to look at pictures of what I now consider to be parts of me, because they took so much effort.

I think in order to quilt you have to be a little crazy...the good kind of crazy...the kind where you want to make something beautiful and you just figure out how to get it done. I have so much to learn! I think I'm done with full-on quilts for awhile...but you never know.

New Year and Love Letters

Instead of having "resolutions" for a new year, and writing all things that we want to change, fix, improve on, expunge, erase, create, destroy, and generally sweat away, we should write love letters to ourselves, and celebrate our individuality, our successes, and our unique traits. (That is, unless you are completely egotistical already and every day is an Ode To Myself and My Awesome Greatness. Those people, though few in number, do exist, and they are exempted from this exercise.)

We should express what we like best about ourselves, and write small snippets about what we are grateful we have accomplished; perhaps expound on an incident that really made you pause and think about who you were in that moment and why you were grateful you were on the path you chose. Then, maybe at the end of the letter, putting one thing down that we would love to love even more about ourselves next year might be appropriate. Just one. Not to overwhelm or anything. It can fit anywhere in the last paragraph. No English teacher is going to be critiquing it on a five-paragraph-essay format. No law teacher will question your logic. No critics will publish reviews of the content and give rate you on a four- or five-star basis.

Just write it for yourself.

Do it, and then read it. Write it by hand. Stick it in that annoying place where you put all the papers you aren't ready to deal with yet, so that every time you're fishing through papers, you'll pull it out and read how awesome you are and have a reminder that yes, you do like yourself, and that yes, you have accomplished something in the recent past, and yes, you can express yourself and accept your expressions.

And then next year, do it again.

BFQ

It's finished. Wabi-sabis and all.

Fall Light

I had the good fortune to get off work early one day a couple weeks ago, so I took the time to go to the Japanese Garden. I hadn't been in awhile. Now that I'm a member, I've vowed to go more often.

Here's what I term "the famous tree." I think there are literally hundreds of thousands of shots like this one scattered on the internet. Everybody had the same idea I did...all the people with their DSLRs and lighting tricks and stuff. I did the best I could with my little point-and-shoot and hoped for the best. Not so bad!

It looks kind of like Maleficent attacked it...not gonna lie. But it's incredible.

There was lots of this color in the garden...the orange-red burnt that really screams "Fall!" at you.

 

And there was lots of really intense light when I went...some of these pictures seem so bright, they make your eyes hurt. I wish you could have seen it in person...it was enchanting. But these pictures are unedited...straight from me to you...so soak the light in. I was struck by how cool these pictures look -- a little unconventional. Yes, they might have been more stunning, or more representative of what my eyes actually saw in different light...but they are still unique. Hope you enjoy!

Backyard Trompings

I haven't written in awhile because there have been Goings-On. I have been in the W of the Ashington five of the last six weekends, and frankly, there hasn't really been time.

On one of my excursions up the I-5 corridor, though, I did have time for a Great Tromping. I explored Two Ace's backyard, and played with my camera. It was a lovely misty afternoon.

Some of the leaves on the trees had started to turn colors early, and it made for quite the pretty photo op. (Or at least, I clearly thought so.)

My hand, uprooting a giant tree through the power of perspective.

Conjoined twins!











Me, through a spiderweb working overtime...

The boardwalk, which made me seasick, as sometimes it is literally over bogs (thankfully, the bog was not of the Eternal Stench ilk) and lots of water. I felt kind of squishy as I trundled along, and I admit, I felt a little queasy about 3/4 of the way through and was glad to be back on my land legs again when the walk was over.



Two sorts of flowers: one "colorful," one not. Just because a flower isn't a vibrant shade doesn't mean it's not pretty. Kind of like people who aren't obviously knockouts on the outside aren't the only pretty kind of person.








Loved the green floaties on the water. The light--the reflections, the natural placement of everything...I felt like there was a brush that was just painting everything in front of me and all I could do was just watch.

And finally, these looked a little like furry sloths to me. I thought that it was a little like an animal shedding profusely when I saw tufts of "hair" on the side of the boardwalk. Speaking of animals, check out that spiderweb overlaying the water!

Stickings and Huggings & Rememberings

I went to see Aunt B earlier this month (she's actually my great-aunt) as part of a recent trip to the southern portion of the motherland. (see picture). She truly is GREAT! She is amazing, and definitely qualifies as a Top Tier Auntie. I've written about her before, I think...but with such great people, it never hurts to talk about them again.

Isn't she beautiful?

Her husband's pretty great, too. He used to be a weather guy for the Army, and did air gliding as a hobby. (At least, I think that's what it's called.)

They told me the story of how they met. Aunt B was just 17 and Uncle D wasn't much older - maybe 20 or so. Aunt B went to a fireside with her friend, who knew Uncle D, so they all sat together, but the friend had to get up to play the piano. Aunt B says that she was sharing a hymnal with Uncle D, and he stuck her finger with a straight pin to get her attention as a flirty measure. Aunt B didn't like that very much, so she took the pin and stuck him right back. And, as she laughingly says, they've been stuck together ever since. She did say that the older folks used to grumble and scratch their heads a bit at the young folks' behavior, because her friend, who lived close to Uncle D, soon began "going with" a boy who lived near her. As there was a ten mile difference between B and D, and consequently between B's friend and D's friend, it baffled the elders why the youngsters insisted on trotting back and forth so many miles, when they could just switch the couples and eliminate all that fuel use, instead. But none of the four parties thought that was a good idea. They were practicing "cleaving unto" each other even though they hadn't gotten married yet. (Aunt B's friend did marry the neighbor boy, though, and they've all been happy ever since.) 

Aunt B is the kind of person I want to be. She's open and loving, and will hug me as many times as I want. All I have to do is ask. (Sometimes, she even asks me for a hug. :) Uncle D has assured me many times that his wife's life-force fuel is hugs. Forget food. She just wants as many huggles as she can get! So I try to provide her with a lot when I see her.) She's always interested in what I'm doing, and she always tells me I'm pretty, and she always tells me something new. She has many treasures (old, really cool things) and lots of stories to go with them, and will freely share.

She doesn't remember things quite like she used to -- when we went to visit, it was clear she knew who I was, and who I belonged to, but she didn't remember my name. She was really cute about it, though, and asked me, "And what do your friends call you when you're not at home?" I was thinking how getting older is harder, in so many ways...and how shocking it would be to not remember things. For example, what if a child of yours passed away, and you couldn't remember? Anytime anybody brought it up, it would be impossible to not feel a pang of heartwrench at the thought as a wave of fresh pain occupied your mind. And then you wouldn't remember, again, and so you'd have to feel the pain over and over.

Maybe I'm wrong, and there's a mercy in the forgetfulness -- that you don't have to carry the grief, but the emotion of the loss (or, I guess, the happiness) doesn't carry as much weight because you're not as connected to it. I can't decide which is worse -- to not be able to feel the loss of things you miss, or to not have the burden of re-living the pain of loss with every mention of it. I wonder if your brain gets dulled to it in time. Someone else will have to tell me that.

In the meantime, I'm remembering the hope of sticking together and the hugging, and that will have to be enough til I find my sticker and get another hug from Aunt B.

First Day of School

Mom used to take us shopping downtown at the zicmee. We were lucky girls; we went to Nordstrom to get our shoes, GAP to get our jeans, and to the food court for lunch in between. There was just one shopping day a year. Of course, that doesn't count all the time we spent looking at catalogs from Lands' End and LLBean. But in terms of physical shopping, Mom took us a few weeks before and we had our shopping day and bought our new school shoes, and pants, and that was it. There was usually a separate trip for school supplies - we had a $5 budget, and after that, anything else we wanted, we had to pay for out of our allowances. (Back then, $5 went a bit further than it does now.)

If I were still in public school, today would be my first day back.

If I were Kathleen Kelly, I would make Joe Fox deliver on his promise to buy me a "bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils."

Somehow, today I am remembering something that happened more than twenty years ago. (!)

Mom bought me a big pink/magenta tote bag. It was huge. It was supposed to be my school bag. I have no idea what in the world I could possibly have put in there to fill it up. Heck, you could have put ME in there and still been able to zip it up. I don't know what possessed me to ask for it. It was made of nylon and had black handles.

This year, I was to start Kindergarten, so I wanted to be extra super specially prepared. I had been waiting for this moment - the moment where I could be like everybody else in their school-going glory - for so long! (I used to invent "homework" for myself so I wouldn't be left out when my older sibs were doing theirs. Yep. I was one of those kids.)  Mom had taken me shopping and I had bought new shoes. I wanted to keep them pristine for the beginning of school, so I elected not to wear them. But then I had some wavering thoughts, and I wanted to wear them beforehand, and I couldn't find them. It wasn't long before the week before school approached and we were doing our back-to-school breakfast routine...but still, no K-shoes were to be found.

These shoes were black canvas Keds and had polka dots of color on them. It was the late 80s gone bad: purple, yellow, orange, green, turquoise dots spotted the landscape. I couldn't find them, and I couldn't find them, and I couldn't find them...and then, the Saturday before school started, I had gotten desperate, and I was beginning to wonder where those shoes could have gone. By this time, it wasn't just that I wanted to wear the shoes, I was beginning to worry about the Wrath of Mom, as well, if I couldn't come up with them.

As soon as the pink monstrosity of a bag -- also the only pink accessory I have ever owned -- had been procured, I had carefully filled it with my school supplies long ago and hung it up on my hook in the closet, mostly to keep it from being poached by other family members. Now, as I was preparing to add the finishing touches of School Supplydom, I took the bag off the peg, because I'd organized my pencil box and wanted to put it in, so I would be ready, steady for the big day.

The bag wasn't empty though. Nope. I had, in my infinite planning mode, picked out exactly what I was going to wear to school on my first day, probably the very day that my new shoes were purchased, and had, in my squirreliness, stowed it carefully away in order to "reserve" the outfit for the monumental occasion. (Not being in charge of the laundry schedule, I probably had concluded that it would be best to be on the safe side and just not try to put it through any cycles until the Big Day had arrived.) I'm sure I pretended I was Anne of Green Gables and laid out  every combination of clothing I owned on my bed, and likely had my sisters help me pick what to wear.

I had rolled each piece of my outfit up carefully into little tubes, and shoved my socks inside my shoes. Why rolling, you ask? We had been instructed by Aunt E that the *only* way to pack things was to roll them up, because it preserved space and kept things from getting too wrinkly. She was sage (she had been to London!!), and besides, she was part of the Best Auntie duo, and so her word was practically gospel truth, bordering on law. There were my favorite pants! I rejoiced. I had completely forgotten that I had "reserved" the outfit, and I practically wept for relief, knowing that I had a good outfit and that I wouldn't have to go tell Mom I had lost my shoes.

I immediately put the outfit on, to try it on one last time, to make sure it had the magic a first day would need; but it will be completely unsurprising to more than a few of you to learn that, upon being tried on, my brand new shoes fit just a little too tight for comfort.

Of course, I wore them anyway! After all, a girl must have new shoes for the first day of school.

Berry Casual Analogy

I was blackberrying with some girl friends on Sunday. We were talking about dating. Apparently dating is a big thing, since it occupies much of the mindspace of many I know.

These girls, I should say, are beautiful. Strong. Good-natured. Intelligent. Opinionated!! Self-assured. I was pondering matchmaking for some people I know and as I was picking berries (which are really weeds here) I was thinking, gosh, why haven't they been "picked" yet?!?

So. Here goes. But instead of telling you the analogy, I'm just going to tell you that it is an analogy, and then tell you about blackberry bushes, and let the brambles speak for me. 


Plant Blackground
Blackberry plants are thorny. It's very easy to get snagged and snared and ripped and cut and punctured and slivered and get hung up on a thorn when you're trying to escape.

Maturity Cycle
Blackberry bushes have fruit at all stages on one branch. It's not impossible or improbable for there to be a blossom, a little nub where the fruit is just starting to grow, a little green berry, a greenish reddish berry, a red berry, a reddish purplish berry, a purple berry, a blackberry not quite ripe enough to pick, a blackberry ready to be plucked, berries that are mush, and berries that have simply come to maturity and then shriveled up from all the attention of the sun. (It should be noted that shriveled blackberries are not as in high demand as shriveled grapes.)

Determining Ripeness
Sometimes, a picker might think that a blackberry is ready at the almost-ripe stage. After all, then the berry is black. But the berry is still a little tart. So you need to decide: is it better to have a tart berry or a berry that is maybe just a tad bit past the primo stage of ripeness -- a little messy, but with flavor that bursts in your mouth?

Harvest
After all, once you pick a berry, it's picked. So:
Is your basket full of tart berries?
Ripe ones?
Maybe you  accidentally dropped  a few of them on the ground while making the transfer to your basket, and it's regrettable?
Past-ripes?

Harvesting Purpose
I suppose what type of berry you're looking for depends on the purpose of your picking:
Are you picking for jam?
Pie?
Do you only want the biggest berries, for re-sale value?
Do you pluck the shriveled ones hoping that the plant will regenerate and bear berries again so you'll get a more bountiful harvest?
Or do you just watch other blackberry pickers as they wander up and down the side of the road, partaking of nature's delights?

Post-Harvest
Are you ever in search of the biggest, most flavorful, most attractive berry, so you eat them until you're sick to your stomach and swear off blackberries for awhile?
Or do you know when to stop eating/picking, and savor the sweet flavor of the last berry?