Scilla me

I have blue pots out front that I planted Scilla in last year. One teensy flower is blooming now and a herd of green stems. I hope I get more blue with all that green. Love those little blue flowers to pieces.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous

So memaw car got out of car hospital after a week. She looks awesome; not only did she recover fully from being run over by the damnfool next door and losing a turnsignal headlight thingie, she got herself one helluva bath. I do not know when I have had this car this clean. She got some gradoo (local patois for gross shit you don't know the origin of or proper removal method for) all over her a while back that wouldn't come off with any solvent from the Auto Zone. Taking her to the carwash just made her a little less gritty. I thought either the pecan sap or the Central Valley funk from when I lived in California had etched the paint. Lemme tell ya; this is one shiny old car. She and I are prissing ourselves up the onramp to go to the fitness center and finally sign up. On public radio comes Clark's Trumpet Voluntary. I recessed to this at my wedding, and it's a gorgeous piece of music. Problem is, hearing it makes me feel like I did at my wedding; so happy when I first turned around, a little nervous when I saw the odd expression on my new husband's face, and devastated by the end of the piece; by the end of the aisle, I could tell he was done. As far as he was concerned, his part was complete. That attitude did not change for the next five and half years that we were married.  Honestly, that rat bastard ruined one of the prettiest pieces of classical music ever for me. I'm just glad we didn't recess to Pachelbel's Canon in D.
I shook that ghost off and cruised on into the fitness center. They signed me up and I padded into the pool area to walk the pool, determined to walk 30 minutes in the water. Ha. As if. I made it about two lengths up and back without getting winded. Slow walking, let me emphasize here. I did spend 35 minutes in the pool. Some of it was walking with my arms going back and forth in the water. Most of it was either walking with my arms on a boogie board TO LEAN ON in the water. Or if that got TOO HARD, floating up and down the lanes with some kicking. Please. Meanwhile there was a steady stream of little old ladies almost twice my age pulling on rubber caps, getting in the lanes next to me, swimming laps and smoking  me. I got smoked by someone's MiMi seven times. Panting the whole way. With a cramp in my right leg. Afterward I spent twenty minutes letting the whirlpool show that leg cramp who was boss. Ha.
The ugly part is where I forgot my brush so when I dried my hair it was way past scary even with a ponytail; then when I got to the drugstore the line was too long to drive through so I said fuckit and went in looking like that. Scared a couple of people out of a year's growth.

Inverse Proportional Ratio

I have never been what you would call good at math or probability or anything. But I am starting to think that there is a new universal law about how many printers you have in your house and how many ink cartridges for those printers and how when those numbers go up the likelihood of your actually getting to print a document from your computer goes down. It is not a cheap natural law to be discovering.

Talking Dog

Object of Affection #2 is a cat-person who is constantly astounded by the amount of language the old lady dog can process. On days when her ears ring she has a lot of trouble but days like today are hilarious and add to my reputation as the eccentric on the block.
 I heard the yowl of a catfight and went to the door thinking I would need to rescue my timid calico from the fierce one next door. The dog came out with me to see what was up. There was a feral tom under the neighbor's truck who had engaged the neighbor's calico, who had fled under another car. The tom yielded to my yelling and scampered for the ditch. Old lady dog had a flash of her old cat herding days and took off after him, barking fiercely until he crossed the gasline. She was trotting back to the house, tail up, triumphant, when the feral tom advanced back over the gasline. I told her, "Go back over there and tell that cat what you really think of him." She turned, took off at a run, and barked him all the way across the ditch and into the bushes behind the apartments beyond.  There was some serious prissing of dog tail after that. Of course she got a dog treat for world's smartest bad cat eliminating dog.  I told OoA#2 and he scoffed a little, then asked her if she had chased a strange cat. "Harf!" was the happy reply. He just shook his head.
 I never have told him about the time she told me she thought she may have mistakenly eaten some astronaut.

Bad choices

So I felt so much better Monday, awesome. Tuesday I set my alarm early to take the ancient memaw wagon to the body shop. It lost an eye when the kid next door ran it over in the driveway and didn't stop because he had his music up so loud he didn't hear the collision. My insides went insane. Google colitis. Add nausea. There. I couldn't figure it out, between the nausea medicine making me sleepy and goofy and my constant bathroom trips. Then the only two variables came up; salad the night before and getting up early. I haven't noticed problems with salad but when I had to get up early for the scope a few weeks ago I felt this bad or worse and thought it was the prep. I have another appointment with the GI guy Tuesday to talk about the news that I thought my insides were better but I had just trained myself to sleep through the disaster. And if I wake up the whole day and the next two are awful. We are going to talk more about rheumatologists, Remicade, and surgery. Because this is not really life, sitting on this couch, thinking about drinking. If going to the pool doesn't get me substantially better in a month I am going to push for the Remicade and I don't care right now if it kills me. They've got epi, I've had it before, they can just give it. If they just refuse the Remicade I will see about the surgery even though I think in the long run it will make things worse. I am no longer a patient, I am once again impatient.  That thing about what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Serious bullshit. What doesn't kill you just pisses you off.

Paper White Persistence

So we had this spell of way-ass cold frozen beyond Yankee foolishness weather. It was completely uncalled for, with lows in the 'teens night after night and water mains breaking all over town. I have this patch of paperwhites way out back that I saved from a demolition site a bazillion years ago and I give them to people who want them. They bloom early because they are in a spot which is usually warm by the ditch. I thought they would be mulch after coming up and getting the hell frozen out of them like that. All the leaves laid down flat like they were done for the year, better luck next year. But a lot of the stems that got flattened by the frost went ahead and bloomed anyway. Their scent is too strong to bring them in the house but they get extra points for perseverance. I just sniffed a few without picking them, maybe I will go and deadhead them when they have bloomed out. The poor bees could use a few pollen sources.

Heavenly Goodness

My sis sent me not one but two boxes of Meyer lemons from the trees in her backyard and that of her neighbor. Imagine having so many of these you have to mail them to people to get rid of them. She juices them and makes marmalade until she is heartily sick of them but there is nothing that smells as good as Meyer lemon in wintertime. Lavender in spring is a close second but you can flat eat a Meyer lemon and you have to do a lot to lavender to eat it, like put it through a bee.