Back In

So I made it back inside safe and sound and dry...except for the sweat. The wind challenged me to a battle on the way home. I won! All in all, it was a good run. Glad I got outside, and getting out made me realize that where running is concerned, it's easier to stay out once you get out. Kind of like blogging, I guess. It's easier to not blog, and the longer between bouts of blogging, the easier it is to avoid it all together. On the flip side, once you start, well...

Advice: If You're Going to Get Out, Get Out Now

My therapist friend likes to say, "It's easier to stay out than to get out." This might be true this morning. I hope not. I don't like being cold and wet.

9:31 a.m. severe storm warning. On and off bouts of rain drops.

I had it set in my mind to run outside this morning, and I just can't shake it, so I'm off! I'll report back in about an hour. If I don't, that means I've been struck by lightning or stranded in some neighborhood by flying and falling trees. I'm thinking Dan Pope doesn't know his weather like Mark Eubank. I miss that old Eubank.

Tomato, Tomahto...

Several weeks ago, I decided to call the whole thing off, this tomato planting bit.  Sure, there's nothing like tomatoes fresh from the garden, but there's also nothing like tending to a garden all summer either.  Plus, with all the rain and my running project, I haven't really had time to prep the soil, buy the plants, dig the holes, stake the stems....excuses, excuses.

So, I was resolved that there would be no home grown tomatoes for me this season.  But then I went off and bought decoy tomatoes at the grocery store.  You know, the tomatoes that look like they are vine ripened because they are still on the vine, and because they are still on the vine, they smell like tomatoes fresh from the vine?  Of course, when I brought these decoy tomatoes home and cut into them, I discovered their true nature:  grocery store tomatoes.  I suspect they were refrigerated at some point on their journey from hard green lumps on a vine in a vat in the back of a van to hard red clumps on a vine on my kitchen counter awaiting slicing.  Nothing disappoints like a bad tomato.

On the bright side, this bad tomato was a reality check for me and my garden.  I realized the work and water are worth the reward.  Plus, if I didn't plant tomatoes, I would have an utterly empty garden bed nagging at me every time I glanced out my kitchen window, and I don't respond well to nagging.  Yesterday, I finally got the tomatoes in...staked and all!  Summer has officially begun.

Still Small Voices

I'm posting this tiny thought 

to reassure myself that I'm still out here.  

I need the reminder 

because the blogging voices 

that sometimes run around in my mind 

like children on a sugar high 

have all suddenly become 

very still and silent.

Smiles

Mother Teresa said, "Peace begins with a smile."  

Siddhartha finally found that a smile is the manifestation of nirvana.  

I didn't know Mother Teresa or Siddhartha, but I knew a woman who was a nurse--both by nature and profession, and she spent at least the last 12 years of her life practicing patience, being present, finding beauty in absolutely everything, and trusting in the order of the Universe. Yesterday, I learned that one month ago today, she lost her fight with cancer and died peacefully with a smile on her face.  

...Cause He's the Tax Man!

In the first grade, my teacher posed a question to the class about what each of our parents did for work:  Doctor, plumber, farmer...when it was my turn I said, "My dad does taxes."  The teacher laughed.  I didn't understand.  I still don't understand.  Taxes aren't funny, and my dad IS an accountant.

 Two days ago he called concerned that he hadn't yet seen our tax documents for 2008.  He wondered if we had used someone else.  What?  That's crazy!  My dad is an accountant.  I would never dream of trusting this delicate issue to the mind of another number cruncher.  Since my first grade career day experience, as far as I'm concerned, my father is the only accountant in the entire world who matters.  He's absolutely the best, most honest, meticulous, intelligent man in the accounting world.  Today is his super bowl, and I know he'll be running that adding maching until the clock strikes midnight.  

Good luck, Dad, and don't worry...ever the procastinator, I've filed an extension.  Our government is democratic afterall.

A Work in Progress

Quote of the Day

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

Thomas A. Edison 

"First" being the key word here.  Before there were 30 flats (900 individual plants) of thyme sitting in my front yard, there was discontent.  Of course, the discontent happened long before the thyme.  Discontent happened about two years ago when I realized I was breaking up with the lawn.  I didn't love it.  It didn't love me.  We really had nothing in common.  When we first got together, the lawn was a novelty to me, and I was determined to make this work.  

Other homeowners--people who have a deep and lasting love for their own lawns--tried to warn me that this relationship was futile.  Outsiders could see that we were just too different from each other, the lawn and me.  The most glaring difference is my concern for water conservation.  I'm stingy with the water.   Running the sprinklers feels like a sin, and I become overwhelmed with pangs of guilt when I hear the system kick on after the sun sets on warm summer evenings.  The lawn...well, it doesn't really care that we live in a desert.  It's thirsty all the time--a habit I couldn't convince it to break.  That's what tore us apart--that and it's need for synthetic treatments to keep the bugs and weeds at bay. I like birds and clean ground water too much to abide by these filthy habits. 

The old bitter, lawn, was too crippled to pick itself up and walk away on its own, so I tried killing it...softly...with words, and song, and lack of water, and that's when I discovered just how tenacious this thing is.  For all it's weaknesses, it really has a will to survive. It doesn't want to work in my yard on my terms, but it also doesn't want to go away.  It's like Bartelby the Scrivener.   I ask it to please stop growing, please stop taking up space on my property, please pick up your old useless roots and vacate the premises.  It replies, "I'd prefer not to." 

Well, I had to move on.  I couldn't lie to myself anymore, and I stopped pretending with the lawn a long time before I boxed up most of his stuff and sent it to the landfill.  He's still trying to come around.  It's ridiculous!  Can't he see I love thyme now?  I've always loved thyme.  We're soul mates, I believe.  This is why there are 30 flats of red flowering thyme waiting to move into the earth around my house.  It's progress.  Progress born from discontent.