put down the paintbrush

I've got so many questions today. 

Where does paint go?  I mean, I bought a GALLON of paint (in "Baby Buttercup" for those of you who care) for the hallway and the first layer got SUCKED into the wall like I was painting a dry sponge.  We had the walls painted when we built this house...is there some sort of drywall absorption that I don't know about?  Does paint flake off over time and get swept away?  Does paint evaporate?  Did we have bad painters who skimped on the work first time around?

That gallon almost didn't make it through both coats.  I was down to scraping the bottom of the can.

Why do I think painting a room will be no big deal and then it ends up being a TOTAL big deal?  I've spent a day on this and I'm still not done cleaning up and "resetting" the room.  I've got pictures to hang up, a floor to clean and nasty bits of painters tape to scrape off.  And my shoulders hurt.  (Yeah, I totally typed that while using my whiny inner voice--should I have used italics?)  Hu-urt.   That's better.

Where were Opie's kids last night?  And his mother?  That seemed like an uncharacteristic lapse in the flawless continuity I've come to expect from Kurt Sutter.  Ashley Tisdale's guest role makes me applaud her agent.  Brilliant crossover role from Disney, isn't it?  Drama teen queen/fashionista on Disney TV to prostitute on Sons of Anarchy. I do so like Jimmy Smits as Nero.

My manuscript project got rejected.  I've come to expect that, sadly.  And I'm sitting on a really good novel, but I can't get anyone, not even my literary agent, take a look at it.  All this rejection makes it even less appealing to sit down and grind out revisions on my current manuscript.  Writing is desolate stuff, I tell you.

But I'm having another good hair day, I've got leftovers in the fridge so I can skip making dinner tonight and it's kind of nice outside, despite the fog.

Spill it, reader.  What questions do you have? 

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harvest

Every September for as long as I can remember we make at least one trip to the apple orchard up the road to pick our own.  We pull the old Little Tykes wagon through the rows of trees and I always bring my camera to record the annual event.

It's become a tricky business keeping up that tradition when karate, Boy Scouts, cross country, flag football, Awana and homework fill our schedule to overflowing.

But last week, Mr. T's coach cancelled practice because of Homecoming festivities, so we hit the orchard right away after school.

An early heat wave followed by a late frost decimated most of the orchards in Wisconsin.  Many orchards lost 90% of their crop--imagine!

It was probably the hardest we've had to work to fill our bags, but we managed to bring home 53 pounds of Cortland and Jonagold (my personal favorite, next to Braeburn apples).  We're not "an apple a day" kind of people.  We're more like "2-3 apples a day," so 53 pounds will not last for the whole winter.  Thankfully Washington State had a bumper year for apples, so we can supplement our habit with imported apples.

We snuck in our trip in the nick of time because a few days later they closed the orchard for the season.  It's apple crisp, apple bread, apple pie, apples sliced, apples dipped in caramel, apples schmeared with peanut butter, apples chopped into salads, apples baked atop pork chops around here.

We also have our own stuff to harvest back home.  Not apples or pears, though.  Our trees were bare this year.

Pumpkins and gourds?  We have PLENTY.  And sunflower seeds, tomatoes, beets, carrots and onions, too.

That's the bounty from our pumpkin patch that we share with our neighbors.  Five flats full.  Our biggest harvest ever.  And I grew even more in my own garden from the seeds I saved last fall. 

Spill it, reader.  What was your bumper crop this year?

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you dig?

I do.  I spent most of Sunday and yesterday digging in the dirt and I'm going to dig again today.  Last winter I scored a little greenhouse and I started a bunch of seeds I saved from last year's pumpkins, gourds, beans and peppers.   Everything sprouted, which is about the most exciting thing about planting a seed, and because I was SUPER enthusiastic about saving seeds and starting them, I'm drowning in pumpkins and gourds.  (If you're local and want some, let me know.  And HistoryGirl, you too!)  I've never had any luck planting watermelon seeds, but I started some in the greenhouse. I've got high hopes for my watermelon seedlings.

The big bed is tucked in for the season.  It's full of zucchini, gourds, pumpkins, sunflowers, tomatoes and the marigold Mr. T grew for a science project.  The strawberry bed looks promising (finally) and the asparagus is taking root in its second year.  We've enjoyed volunteer lettuce all spring and I've got cilantro coming up nicely by the strawberries.   I'm trugging around seed packets and trowel, transplanting something here, moving something there.  I could spend hours dawdling outside, attacking weeds, watering flowers, deadheading and picking.  Unfortunately, the gardener's busiest time of the year butts up against baseball's busiest time of year so I'm running from dawn until dusk. 


Mr. G really wants to help plant, so I'm holding off on beans and peas and the rest of the sunflowers until he has free time.   But the tiny seeds, like beets and spinach, I'll plant myself.

Sunday, after a fair amount of earth-moving, I treated myself to one of these:


It was fruity and a bit tart, a good summer beer by New Belgium Brewing.  Plus the label couldn't be cuter.  You know what it tasted like?  Another.

Spill it, reader.  You dig?

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if you give a green girl a paint chip

She'll decide to paint her living room walls.

The point where two colors meet is where a giant shark bares its teeth.

Which will in turn make the kitchen walls look shabby. So she'll get those painted, too. And she'll add in new hardware, rugs and a picture.

New rug on super-clean floor. She might eat off of that floor later.

Then she'll notice how grungy her floors look against the freshly painted walls, so she'll begin scrubbing the grout (on her hands and knees like a scullery maid from Downton Abbey) with a bucket of soapy water and a brush. Her shoulders will ache but her heart will swell with pride as her efforts make the floor look brand new once more. But now the bathroom tiles look grungy, so the Green Girl feels compelled to scrub that grout as well.

Damn, that's some clean grout. Damn, do her shoulders ache.

Does it stop here?

No, it does not.

The door of her freshly painted kitchen leads to the laundry room. Now the Green Girl realizes that her laundry room looks dismal--it needs another coat of paint, the edge by the ceiling was never done properly, really the whole room should get emptied out and re-set.

She ran out of paint and quit mid-project about 2 years ago. The shame of it.

She'll need more hooks.

Estimated Dust Bunny Population: 4,243

And maybe a bench with storage.

All she thinks is "What a mess" every time she walks through this room.

Some of this stuff needs to disappear. She wonders if there's a hitman service for clutter--some kind of mafia that could come in and clean house--eliminate this for a fee so she doesn't have to get her hands dirty.

The grout and the rugs are crying out for soap and water.

And she wonders, if she finishes the laundry room, where will it lead her next?
Spill it, reader. What project did you start only to find it never seemed to end?

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add 2nd degree black belt to Green Girl's official title

I passed my difficult test. Friday involved a lot of getting tossed to the mat unceremoniously while reviewing self-defense. (LI has a penchant for throws.) Then I bowled a 409, not bad for starting the season. I had two crappy games and ended with a 179 which salvaged my average for the night--including a Turkey!

Saturday was blustery, and after sitting outside watching Mr. B and Mr. G play flag football (2 touchdowns for Mr. G--the first two times he had his hands on the ball!), I geared up to run my final 3 miles. You could blame the chill in the air or the wind for dragging down run times, but I feel okay about my 26:47. Not bad for a gal who was never built for speed. I'd have liked to run more in the 26:30 range, but you can't have everything.

The test was long and reasonably difficult. My basic combos were good, but the spinning/jumping ones were crap. I pounded the mitt work, felt good about my open hand forms and LI and I rocked the escrima form. In fact, we walked off the floor after finishing, causing Mr. O to laugh at our confidence that we passed it on the first try. Our bo staff form looked pretty decent, too. He limited our weapons self-defense to just the gun, which was a bummer since we had our moves all planned out for each one--and I feel best about my self-defense with a stick. I wasn't sad, though. Getting tossed on the ground again wasn't real high on my list. In general self-defense the black belt instructors could attack us any way. People always seem to prefer to do a bear hug grab on me from behind--and lift me off the ground. It may have something to do with my size (or lack of--I'm only 5'3"). Anyway, Mr. O grabbed me first and when he lifted me up, I heard everything along my spinal column crackle and pop. Later, Mr. P Sr. grabbed me with such force he nearly knocked the wind out of me. That portion of the test contributed to my overall soreness through today. The good news is I finally got my wind back and used my inhaler for the last time on Monday--I was starting to feel like Mikey in The Goonies, puffing away on it every couple hours.

We ended with the usual fitness test stuff, including a pyramid drill involving 1:15 of jumping jacks, then dips, then push ups, then mountain climbers, then sit ups, repeated again for 45 seconds each. It looks like nothing much when you type it out like this, but my shoulders were burning. At the end of the test it's tradition for parents to come out on the floor and cheer their candidates on during the pyramid drill. My friend Nicole's husband stood in for me, shouting out encouragement so I wasn't all alone in a sea of people. It was sweet--and another mom occasionally called over to me, "You can do it, Ms. W!" Mr. O presented me with my final star (you get stars to sew on your pants--the karate equivalent of merit badges in Scouts) while the parents handed stars to the kids.

I drove home tested and passed, tired and wired. Naturally, after all that excitement and exertion I slept like crap and Sunday was another Very Long Day out in the wind in the south end zone at Lambeau. What I wanted was to drink a lot of ale, take a hot shower and laze about in bed watching nothingmuch on TV. What really happened: I drank 2 pints of ale, spent quality time with Team Testosterone after returning home, stayed dressed and headed out at 8:00 Sunday night to teach some people how to manage/use a website.

So, except for the Brewers, we're all winners after the weekend in Wisconsin.

I'm going to try and score a video of that escrima form so you can check out my legendary awesomeness. Until then, stay tuned all week for Anarchy Club, A Tale of Yeti Sightings in the Back 40 and A Funny Conversation About Circumcision.

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of daffodils and dirt piles

My name is Green Girl and I have a daffodil addiction. I add a new variety each year, about 450 daffodils bloom here in the springtime. My fantasy is to have 30 varieties, thousands of yellow flowers in the spring, and the way these bulbs naturalize, it's not too far-fetched a fantasy. I dug up a few patches last fall that hadn't bloomed and discovered they'd multiplied exponentially, so I divided and moved things around, adding 75 bulbs to new spots. This fall I'll purchase another new variety (or two) and divide some more crowded clusters. Behold! Daffodilpaloza!
The peach insides of these creamy flowers are unique,

but I especially like the dark yellow insides of these jonquils. So cheerful.

Standard all-yellow and pale yellow,

delicate rims of dark yellow in the center,

and peach-colored with double-ruffled inside petals. Definitely the most unusual and showiest.

The sustained warmth made my front bed explode overnight. I swear I could have sat on the porch and watched them grow, the hostas burst through the soil, the tulips budded from scrawny green stems.

A little forsythia brightens up the beds, too.

Formerly this bed was my original vegetable garden when we built. Then it became a strawberry patch when the berries overtook things. Then I got a bright idea to amend the soil with dirt from the creek bed, which brought in enough stinging nettle to burn the Taliban into submission. I've since moved all the strawberries out to their own spot in the potager and will plant this with vegetables once again--peas, green beans, tomatoes and peppers.

This mess is the potager--memorize it well, friends. When you see it again it will be greatly altered in appearance.

Signs of industry are everywhere this time of year.

The dirt calls to me. Can I help myself? I dig dirt.

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green girl, black belt

Saturday afternoon Mr. D brought Team Testosterone out for my 3-mile run--the final 3 miles on the journey to my black belt. Their cheers ringing in my ears (alongside Donna Summer's), I ran my best time ever--27:11. Team Testosterone ran with me for the final half mile. My pack keeping pace with me, I crossed the finish line while they enthusiastically hollered "Good job, Mom!" A total Kodak moment. If anyone got a picture of it, I sure hope they give me a copy.

Then it was back to the dojo for 3 hours of testing--combos, mitt work, forms, weapons, self-defense. Team Testosterone couldn't stay because we had people coming from Iowa, but my good friend Nicole and her family dropped in to watch a while which was encouraging. I had a terrible cold settled in my upper respiratory system, so my voice was hoarse and I kept sucking on cough drops to take the edge off. The Qualification Test wasn't as exhausting as Extreme Day, but I felt pretty wrung out by the end of it all.

I and listened to my instructor ask the candidates if we really believed in ourselves. It took much self control not to crack up during her "respect your body, don't use drugs or tobbacco" speech. (I listened to Nancy Reagan when I was a child so I knew to just say no.) I bit my cheeks when she had the parents join their kids on the floor and urge them through the final stretch of physical endurance (obviously I had no parents there, so a teenaged 2nd degree boy took over for me).

Kids were crying, a couple were screaming--emotions ran high for the under 18 crowd but I didn't feel pushed mentally or emotionally like the kids did. It was only physically challenging for me and I was prepared. I didn't puke out, cry, sob or quit. I aced the test (except for combination No. 9--I kept getting dizzy and did a sloppy job on the back round-tornado-spin kick-punch) because I trained for it and knew my stuff. I earned every fiber of the fabric in that black belt. And when I actually receive it on November 7th, I'll post a picture of it tied around my waist.

When I returned home at 5:45, Mr. D had a beer poured and waiting for me for me. The people from Iowa had stopped in Madison and bought me a 6-pack of Fat Squirrel Ale which was a darn fine thing. We had a lovely visit before they left for their motel in Green Bay (with their Packer tickets in hand!) and I was showered and in bed by 8:00, flush with success and cough syrup.

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A Sand Story

Once upon a time there were 3 little boys who had a sandbox that needed more sand.

Because their mother loves them very much (and hates to hear them whine), she called the Sand People and had a load dropped off.

Now their mother has to haul the sand down to the sandbox by wheelbarrow for the rest of the week (she calculates that to be about 35 trips, give or take). That is, unless they manage to decimate the pile before she gets it moved to the back yard ...

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