Thursday, March 15, 2007

Surviving

So it's been a while since I posted and I know my masses of readers must think I've died or finally caught illiteracy from the Alabamians with which I've surrounded myself. Neither is true. I've just been..... adjusting. Something about that last stretch of winter always finds me hanging on for dear life. Of course, it feels much less dramatic than that. I find myself surviving, and just that. It's always the same set of symptoms this time of year, a reluctance to bathe, clean the house, cook, get out of bed, do anything really, much less write about how uninspired I feel on my blog. I accidentally wear the same thing to work two days in a row and subsist on sliced cheese. It so happens, actually, that Nathanael has helped me through this particular aspect of winter doldrums by not being too lazy to cook. We've taken to celebrating "Mainstream Mondays" with a piping hot blate of Tuna Helper and an episode of Starwars (we're watching them all in series.) Speaking of the bandwagon, my remedies du jour also include finally reading those damned Harry Potter books which are not bad thankyouverymuch. I started last week and I'm already on book 4. They're just so easy to read. (This does NOT mean however, that they don't include some decent vocabulary words and historical references. They do.)

Yes, escapism abounds these days as life has, with a dull "thud", become boring. I know it will pass, it always does. But it's still hard. One thing does, however, bring me great joy. I could spend hours watching things happen in my garden which has only just recently found itself free of all eyesores except for the mating lawnmowers, one of which belongs to a certain ex-roommate who also left a certain broken down car blocking the view to my english peas. Nevertheless, the mustard greens and lettuce are reaching upwards, alive with deep red and electric green. Spring comes early in Mobile, a pleasure for which we will pay dearly in the muggy heat of August. The peas and sugar snaps are doing their thing in a jolly sort of way, wrapping little tendrils around everything they can reach, including eachother. The crocuses have been this months most exciting surprise, blooming despite the prediction to the contrary by Mobile's newspaper columnist/garden expert guy. I meant to send him a picture to directly contradict what he wrote a couple of weeks ago about them not blooming "down here" but forgot to. They've been so cute, popping out just above the surface of the soil and opening up a violet or creamy white blossom. Above them, the fig branches are pushing forth crinkled, baby-green leaves and tiny, immature fruit. I didn't realize they don't blossom first. Does that mean the fruit is actually a juicy flower bud? If anyone can tell me the answer, they can come pick figs from our three trees this July. If you are really lucky, you can also have some watermelon from the seeds I planted over the weekend. If all goes as planned, their vines will set off across the yard and we won't be able to mow the grass for a couple of months. Should be hilarious.

How's the job going you ask? Ehh. I still sometimes stop and think, "I really have a pretty cool job." but what can I say? I just don't like HAVING a job. I'm over it. No matter how cool the job is, it's more time away from my life than I want to spend. These days I'm rethinking a desire I once had to be a teacher. My current job is teaching me a few things: teaching itself is very hard work, I'm not that bad at it, and I can get into the idea of a summer vacation. Maybe it's all those years as a student, but some part of me keeps expecting Spring Break. For now though, I guess I'll just keep gettin' er done and spending as much time as possible surrounded by vegetables.

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