2/4-8/10 - An ongoing battle....

Three straight days of cold, cold rain was enough to keep me inside to conquer the kind of busy work I'm prone to ignore 'til it's out of control. I managed to put a significant dent in my copy editing duties, plowing through articles on interspecies etiquette and urban sprawl.... I also took on a pile of unpaid bills and an off-balance checkbook while poverty breathed down my neck.

Martha's commands for Thursday included "Take inventory of potting soils and mixes and restock if needed" & "Order metal stakes and labeling supplies for vegetable garden." The weather outside was frightful and I wasn't about to leave the house to mess around in any kind of dirt, and I use scrawled-on recycled plasticware to label my plants, but I did spend much of the evening drooling over my Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog and made a lengthy wish list—here in the South, planting season is right around the corner! Unfortunately that list got taken to the chopping block after my checkbook revelations....

Friday's order #1: "Check burlap covers on boxwoods and repair any tears." Yeah, right—a) I don't have boxwoods, b) If I did, they wouldn't need coverin' in these parts, and c) It's cold & rainy outside! Order #2: "Bake bread." Now that's something I can get behind! Believe it or not, I'd never baked bread on my own before. I'm pretty sure I'd helped my mom with it as a kid, but it wasn't exactly a regular occurrence. I followed the steps in MSL & came out of it with two perfect loaves! The article had a handful of suggested variations on the recipe, but I improvised on my own, using half & half wheat & white flower & adding a little garlic salt & a few pinches of thyme, dill, & tarragon. Charles was so excited about the promise of fresh-baked bread, he picked up a pile of roast beef on his way home, thus sandwiches for dinner. And in light of the measly funds, we bailed on a night out—Charles uploaded random obscure documentaries on Netflix while I swept the floors & folded laundry—very romantic!

More intolerable wet cold on Saturday had me heeding Martha's command to "Scan files and receipts in home office, and shred and recycle papers." My version of this task was to clean off my dresser and weed through the triple-tiered plastic bin of old cards, article clippings, and photos in the bedroom corner while Charles cleared off a shelf in his Mancave to make room for his school books (yes, he has a Mancave—more on this later). While I carefully examined every box & bauble, tossing anything that wasn't valuable, hand-crafted, or irrefutably sentimental, Charles simply held up a cardboard box & swept off the entire contents of his dresser surface and retired to the living room to watch more Netflix. The cardboard box is still sitting under the coffee table.

I eventually got around to making dinner—a cheesy potato casserole layered with seasoned ground venison & served with an arugula salad & edamame & a slice of buttered home-baked bread. In an effort to avoid factory-farmed flesh, we make wild hunted deer a pretty significant part of our diet. No, my husband does not hunt (though I encourage him to take it up eventually as it's a skill that will definitely come in handy when the shit goes down), but there are plenty of gunslingers out there who shoot Bambi for shits & giggles & never get around to claiming their kills from the processor. Each season, we fork over 50 bucks or so & stock up on this unclaimed meat 'til our freezer overflows. I imagine there's an entire culture of sharp-shootin' country boys who subsist on fast food burgers & fries while we city folk dine on free-range venison thanks to their skills.

Much of Sunday was spent fulfilling my Master Gardener duties as I met with a group of townie hipsters who are starting a community garden. Martha commanded a "morning walk with the dogs," so Andromeda rode along with me on an afternoon trip to the fabric store (where I found fringed trim for my naked couch cushions for fifty cents a yard!). On the way back, we stopped at our favorite riverfront park to take a little wander through the woods. With all the recent rain, the river had obviously overflowed its banks & much of the park was a muddy, silty mess. Andi had the good sense to stay out of the mud & instead ran around in the brambly underbrush on the ridge above the pathway.

Back home, Charles was asserting his manhood by cooking ribs to eat while watching the Superbowl. Although he thankfully doesn't give a crap about football, he gets a kick out of the ads, so the game was blasting away while I had a couple of girlfriends stop by to put in their seed orders. Yesterday's cleaning spree had yielded me forty bucks found in a forgotten hiding place, so I replenished my own wish list & had the order placed by midnight....

This morning, before I was able to enjoy another eggy sandwich (this time on fresh baked bread), I awoken to yet another ant invasion. I'd deduced that they were coming from behind the stove where I suspected a bowl of sugar may have spilled when we had some 30 of our closest friends over for black-eyed peas & collards on New Year's night, but saw no evidence of such when we inspected & laid down boric acid & vinegar spray. I refuse to use pesticides—I'd honestly rather ingest an occasional ant than expose myself to poisonous crap (if Anthony Bourdain can do it, so can I!). At this point, I don't know where the hell they're coming from, but they sure as hell love barbeque sauce! Charles' efforts at cleaning up his ribby feast were a bit half-assed & the couple of smears on the drawer fronts & the sticky pan in the sink had the ants out in battalions for an all-you-can-eat-buffet.

I swear there's some mutation on the Y chromosome that leads to domestic retardation! If all the women on the planet suddenly disappeared, I'd give the dudes six weeks before they're grunting naked around a campfire—well maybe the gay guys would keep them in order, but I'd hope they'd have the good sense to hole themselves up in gated communities of orderly, impeccably decorated homes and throw fabulous nightly parties while the straight dudes wallow in piles of their own filth on the outside. As for straight girls like me, we're cursed with this biological urge to cohabitate with such creatures.

This evening I joined a friend in attending a commission meeting a couple counties over where there's a proposal to build a really scary trash incinerator that would belch all sorts of nasty pollutants into some of the most pristine countryside left in the state—ugh! I came home to Charles passed out on the couch as Chris Matthews tore into some hapless Republican on gigantovision. I fed myself with leftovers before heading to the tub with a mug of Sailor Jerry-spiked cinnamon chamomile tea. By the time I got out, Charles had made it to the bed where he was catching up on his schoolwork while sharing a box of Cheez-its with the dog!!! Although I was able to wrestle the snack food away from him, I expect the marauding ants will have sniffed out the crumbs in the sheets by morning....