The new garden

These are my baby plants! Yes, I know the garden looks dry. I watered it after I took the pictures. :) This is a little cucumber plant.


Here are some squash plants. They are either acorn squash or zucchini. My marker blew away when it stormed this weekend.



These are definitely little zucchini plants. They are getting big fast!

Quincy Graduated Preschool!!

Look how big he is!!

*sigh*

After watching two hours of sappy television, I am reminded that relationships are hard. They take work. They don't just miraculously maintain themselves and stay all happy and emotionally healthy. I don't expect sunshine and rainbows and roses all the time. That's not realistic. Perky and smiley once in a while would suffice. It gets old being the only perky one in a relationship.

Also, I have a slight self-destructive streak. I tend to destroy things when they get good. I also have a history of dating people of questionable psychological well-being. Okay, I lived with a psychopath for the better part of a year. It was not a good year.

With all of that, I wonder how anyone is ever certain that the person you love will be around in 30 years. Or even that the person you love is the person you should love. The person who is best for you and are you the best person for them? I mean, how do you know? All through school, I was taught to show my evidence and support my position with facts, but how do you do that with a marriage?

Why is the grass always greener??? Where is this all coming from?? Am I supposed to spend my life questioning my relationship? or should I just have faith that all is well and not worry so much?

Hiatus

I took a long hiatus from writing here. Working as much as I was doing combined with holiday stress and illness to exhaust me.

I've been writing....just not here. I write a lot of lists. :) Grocery lists. Things to do lists. Lists of school systems that are hiring and aren't thousands of miles away from here. I found a few of those by the way and will hopefully be getting some interviews this spring.

I make lists of all the weird things Quincy does. He's started singing songs he hears in the car. He goes crazy when I don't let him pick his own breakfast. He hates to have a toy taken away. Turning off the radio in the car will make him immediately stop whatever annoying this he's doing (last night it was playing with the window). Getting in the tub makes him want to take a bath. See, he's an interesting little boy. He sings Plain White T's, Outkast, and Presidents of the United States of America. He asks me to turn on Relient K in the car.

He asks me every other day to take him to big boy school (kindergarten). He keeps telling me that he plans to learn things all of his life. At five, he has hopes and dreams. He has fantasies about what kind of career he will have (policeman), what kind of cars he will own, where he will live, who he will marry, and how many children he will have. He can articulate these future plans clearly. At five.

I can't tell you my future plans clearly and I am way past five. What do I want to be when I grow up? Where do I want to be? Good questions. I have only vague answers.

I took a recess from writing, but not one from thinking.

Merry Christmas

We've been busy around here all month trying to get ready for the holidays. Quincy found the time to do this:

Currently, There are No Jobs.

That's what the Subfinder system says. It's the thing I go through to get sub jobs so I can have money to pay my student loan payment. More often than not, I hear that sentence above.

As a sub, I am required to work 5 days a month to remain active and able to sign up for jobs. My goal is to work 10 days. That's only 2.5 days a week and you would think it'd be easy to do, but no. Last month, I worked 5.5 days and that was hard to do. I had to go to a school I never go to because it's the most urban of the schools around here. They have lockdowns there regularly due to gang activity and fights. Nothing happened when I was there, but still, it was a stressful day.

Speaking of stress, I am constantly worried about making my student loan payments. I never know if there will be sub jobs from one day to the next. My student loan payments each month are figured based on a loan consolidation that I did a while back. My husband has discovered a new way to consolidate through my loan provider so I am filling out the paperwork for that if I do stay home tomorrow. It's based on income and I would basically be paying $200 a month. That equals out to about 4 days of subbing a month and much less worry.

One problem with subbing is that I already work 35-40 hours at my full-time job so, even though I know I need to work about 3 days a week, I don't want to. I just got home from work about 9 p.m. tonight and that's about average. About once a week, I work later one night. That makes me really not want to get up at 6 a.m. to go to a school.

This is also the last year that Quincy will be home during the day. Next year, he'll be at Kindergarten. *sigh* My baby! in school! every day! I have set a goal to find a job during school hours only by the time he starts next August. Considering how many times I have sent out my resume recently, I am hoping that is doable. There seem to be a lot of jobs around here, but there are also tons of applicants for every position. I try to apply for the ones that say minimal applicants.

Well, it's time to go check Subfinder again.

Biting My Nails

I am pretty much shaking with anxiety tonight. Two things are making me that way.

One--Quincy threw-up late last night, but has been fine since. It was pretty traumatic for me to get woken up out of a deep sleep by the mess I had to clean up. I'm sure it was hard on him, too. He stayed up for 2 hours, watched TV, and then went right back to sleep. Too good to be true, right? I thought so, too. Then, he played all day and was full of energy. Now, he's asleep. He fell asleep around 8:15, just like last night. I'm hoping we don't have a repeat.

Two--I am subbing tomorrow. Normally, that wouldn't make me nervous. Sometimes I am little apprehensive if it's a subject I've never subbed for before, but that's about the only time I get like that. I was a little worried about Friday when I subbed for a Driver's Ed teacher. Turned out, I had no reason to worry. It was a fun day. Tomorrow, though, I am subbing for a Boy's Wellness teacher. Now, that just means gym, but still, I have no idea what I'll be doing, but I bet I won't be showing a movie all day. I'm not even sure I'll be in a class room!

I'm going to try to relax because I have to get up really early tomorrow. I'll probably post about how the day went later this week.

Plain and Simple Neglect

The last few weeks flew by. First, there was Fall Break, when I planned on getting lots of stuff done, but did nothing. Then, there was last week, which was a repeat of Fall Break. So far, I've managed to get the grocery shopping done this week, but that's about all. In my defense, I came down with some mystery illness last Friday morning and still don't feel totally like myself.

Anyway, that's why I haven't written anything. Well, that, and I spend too much time on Facebook.

I am going through some kind of what-if phase. Like what if I'd done this instead of that when I was 25 and so on. It is pointless, because I always arrive at the conclusion that, yes, life would be different, but I wouldn't have Quincy. I might have other children, but none would be him.

Then, there's the what if something happened and it was just me and Quincy tomorrow. Would I be able to support us with my current jobs? (No. We would have to move.) Where? Who would keep him while I worked? I get all tense thinking that way. I should stop.

Maybe this is some sort of midlife crisis kind of thing or maybe it's just my own neurosis coming through. I don't know.

I do know that a topic of argument around here has been how much my husband has to work to pay bills and how much he hates that. If I made more money, I wouldn't have to listen to it every month. That's probably a huge source of these scenarios that my mind creates.

I spent far too much time daydreaming about change and far too little making any.

Tidbits

I don't have any really unified thoughts that would make a good long post so this will be a bulleted one.

• These last few weeks have been fairly uneventful as far as subbing goes. I've subbed for the same teacher several times so his kids are used to me and I know their names. Nothing really exciting there.

• Tuesday night, there was a job at the high school that is closest to my house so I signed up for it as soon as I saw it. I must not have looked too closely because I went there Wednesday morning thinking it was just a job for that day. When I got there, there was a note on the desk thanking me for subbing for the next three days! I called home and had my husband check and, yes, it was for three days. Ooops. I am still tired from that.

• Speaking of my husband, we are stuck in the discussion about whether to try for another baby. I finally decided that I'd like to, but he thinks that another baby would "ruin his life." So if I were to get pregnant, he would hate me. It's a circular fight and one that I hope we resolve soon.

• Quincy went on his first trip out of town with my husband but without me this weekend. He went to Oak Ridge, TN to visit his grandmother and great-grandparents. I think he had a good time. When he was ready to come home on Saturday afternoon, he went out and got in the car without saying bye. He must have thought that it was time to go.

• While he was in Oak Ridge, he got up very early, like 6 a.m. early. This morning, he woke up around 6:45. I am hoping this doesn't happen again tomorrow.

• I am currently obsessed with The Gourds. I have listened to their version of "Gin and Juice" at least three times today. It's a bluegrass version done with some mandolin. I love it!
  

In Memoriam

I've been reading Tennyson and various other poets thinking about the recent death of my old friend Kris Bristow and the death two years ago of Craig Duvelius. Kris died from a sudden illness and Craig from an accidental overdose. I was reading Howl earlier and was struck by the first few lines of one of my favorite poems of all time.

Excerpt from Howl by Allen Ginsberg:

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking
for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking
in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating
across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw
Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the
scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing
obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
......
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in
the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating
all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns,
wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of 
teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and
tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan
rantings and kind king light of mind,
......
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar
to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills of Empire
State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories
and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails
and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and
nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the
pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of
ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

_______________________________________________________________________________

As you know, the poem itself is very long. Certain lines just strike me today.
Like these:

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a
vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to
Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & 
loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, &
now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each
other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul
illuminated its hair for a second,

________________________________________________________________________________
Obviously, the Denver lines are about Neal Cassady. He's one of my favorites also.

This Week's Adventure

I substitute taught two and a half days this week, which is so far my record this year. Sometimes there aren't any jobs. Sometimes I have lots of stuff to do and can't get to any schools. There are ALWAYS tons of jobs on the days when I have a million things to do. Why is that?

Monday was an awesome sub day. I had Sophomores in an English class at a school that is only about 20 minutes from here. The kids were pretty good and the teacher had two inclusion classes so I had help some of the day. The only thing that I didn't like was that it was one of those days where the teacher had left me a movie to start each class on. That means that all five classes watched the first 50 or so minutes of the same movie all day long. I rented the movie tonight so I can see something beyond the first half.

On Tuesday, I subbed at the school I used to teach at. I always expect that to be a negative experience, but it hasn't been so far. People I wasn't even friends with when I taught there are nice to me. It's kind of weird. Anyway, this was a Sophomore English class, too and she also had two inclusion classes. The difference was that she only had three English classes and the other two were Yearbook. The Yearbook classes are pretty much self-sufficient so that was fun.

On Wednesday, I subbed at the middle school directly behind our house. I had to be there at 7:05 a.m. because the teacher had bus duty. It was a five minute commute maybe. I loved that! I subbed for a Chorus/Music class. I only had two classes really and, while they were harder to deal with than the high school students, it was still a good day. These were 8th grade classes mostly and they just did not want to get quiet. The half class that I had were 7th graders and they were great kids. I usually like 7th grade better than 8th so it didn't surprise me any.

That was my week minus the dental experience. I hope next week is just as good!

The Dangers of Google Dentistry

I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago and, while he was poking around in my mouth, he found a cavity in the side of a tooth that wasn't even showing up on x-ray. It was under a filling. "Lovely," I thought.

I got home and I started thinking about how if it didn't show on the x-ray, then there was no way to know how big it was without just going ahead and filling it, right? I didn't really think anymore about it at that point.

Fast-forward to last Friday when my tooth began to hurt off and on. I asked my dad, who has had four root canals, what it feels like if you need one. He said that it would hurt a lot. It was kind of a dull ache and it seemed to only hurt at the end of my day. I took some Tylenol and thought that would take care of it. I had an appointment to get it filled on September 8 after all.

Well, it hurt all weekend. It hurt all Monday while I subbed for a Sophomore English class. It hurt Tuesday when I subbed for another Sophomore English class. I called the dentist's office Tuesday afternoon and asked if they could squeeze me in, soon. Then, I went home and googled "root canal" and "root canal symptoms." What I saw scared me because I had some of the symptoms.

I went into the dentist's today well informed and scared to death. He gave me two shots of novocaine and started drilling. He drilled off and on for over twenty minutes. I thought that drilling the old filling off would take a while and I was right. After those twenty-plus minutes of starting and stopping, he pronounced it a run-of-the-mill cavity and not even that big of a filling.

I should maybe not google these things. I scared myself a lot. At least, I didn't look at the pictures though!

Craziness

These last few weeks have been just full of crazy stuff going on.

On the job front, I need to go test for the Department of Human Services position sometime soon. It's a full -time position and the test is fairly simple. It's even on computer! It's just a matter of finding the time to drive to Nashville and do it. In the meantime, I am back to substitute teaching, which I thought would be enough to keep me busy. It's not. I am lucky to get two days a week, but school did just start. I am still at Domino's thirty hours a week. It makes getting up for school awesome. Really.

My fifth anniversary is coming up on Saturday. Some kind person in my husband's band booked a show for that night so I'm going to that. Quincy is spending the night with my parents, but I won't really get to spend any more time with my hubby because of the show. I guarantee he'll be home around 4 a.m. and I have to open at Domino's Sunday morning.

Other than that. an old friend of mine died Saturday, August 15th. It was completely unexpected. I used to see him all the time on my Facebook chat list and Yahoo chat list and it's sad not to. I was never able to spend much time with him because all of his get-togethers took place while I was working. I'm always working. The funeral was perfect for him. It was the first funeral I have been to for someone I wasn't related to.

That's about all that's going on right now. Just busy, busy, busy!

The Rest of the Garden!

Okay, I posted pics of what came out of my garden for today. Here's some pics of the garden and what's still in it.


These are the cucumber plants and some of cucumbers still in the garden.



Here's the bigger view of the cucumbers. They have really spread out.



These are the zucchini plants. They have gotten pretty tall and are starting to crowd the tomatoes.


Here's one of the zucchinis growing. There are a few more beginning to grow, but none of them are big yet.



These are the tomatoes and some of the pepper plants. You can see them, but there are about ten tomatoes of various size growing. They are still all green at this point.


This is one of my green pepper plants and the mini green pepper that is growing. There are a few others on the second plant.



Pardon my hand in this picture. This is the tabasco pepper plant. It has an amazing amount of peppers on it. I don't know what we're going to do with all of them.



This is the really big cayenne pepper plant. It was the first one planted and is much bigger than the other two.



These are small banana peppers that are growing on the biggest plant. I have no idea why it's bigger than the other eight plants. They all have some tiny banana peppers on them. I don't know what we'll do with all these either. Pickle them?



Last picture! One of the nine jalapeno plants and some of the peppers. There are about 15 more growing.

Today's Harvest

Here's everything picked from the garden today:


Cayenne peppers. jalapeno peppers, and tabasco peppers



Also, one cucumber. There's about four more that will be ready to pick tomorrow.

Two good-sized zucchinis, too.

That Month went Fast!

On July 24, Quincy and I left for Edisto Island, SC. That's it in the picture above.

The week before we left was a flurry of preparation--shopping, packing, running around like crazy getting stuff done. We got all packed and left on time though. I got poked and smacked and, sometimes, punched on the way down there.

It was vacation, but I spent lots of time on the phone with my husband checking to make sure my garden got watered and the dog got walked. I was worried!

I have lots of pictures to bore y'all with. Quincy at the beach. Quincy in the pool. Fort Sumter. An alligator at the Charleston Aquarium. Yay! Stuff to look forward to.

In the meantime, I rode in the middle of the backseat of my parents' truck all the way back. The drive took 12 hours and my right shoulder/neck may never be the same. As soon as I don't hurt anymore, there'll be a long Edisto post. Also, a garden post.

Oh, and I am now on the job list for interviews for one job with the State of Tennessee and going to test to get on the eligible list for another soon. So all is well on the job front!

I've been wronged!

We let Quincy play out in the backyard often. Today, he wanted out to work on his garden. He planted grass in it yesterday and thought it needed something done to it.

Anyway, he decided that they grass needed trimmed so he borrowed my scissors that were out there and went to work.

Meanwhile, in the house, I was eating my lunch while my husband washed the dishes in the kitchen and watched Quincy out the window. He looked away for a moment, only a moment. I heard him say, "Oh, no!" That got my attention.

He opened the back door really quick and yelled at Quincy, "Why did you do that?" In the meantime, I ran to the door to see what disaster had happened.

I have had one cherry tomato plant in my garden this summer. This past week, it got eight little green tomatoes on it. I've been pretty excited about having eight tomatoes at once.

Quincy cut it down with the scissors. His reason? "I don't think I like tomato plants"

There'll be pictures tomorrow.

What does this say about me?

I realized the other day that it's a good thing I'm married because I have questionable taste in men. I mean, I find myself attracted to guys who would be good fling material, but not relationship material.

I got lucky with my husband. I mean, sure, he annoys me sometimes and we have the same fight over and over, but he has redeeming qualities. He is amazingly responsible with money and with things like life insurance. He cleans the house because I am often completely exhausted when I am home. He does the dishes because, well, I don't.

Would another guy do that? Maybe.

Would guys I think are attractive (ie. good for a roll in the hay)? Probably not.

I wonder sometimes if I am good relationship material. I mean, I'm almost always in a good mood. I usually have a smile for anyone. I like to push to get the necessary tasks done so I have free time to sit on my ass. This would be why I make lists. That way, things get done. The whole sitting on my ass a lot thing does not make me a great catch though. It does mean that I probably know what is happening on my favorite TV show at any given time. Oh, and I read a lot of books. A lot. Really.

The Gardening Bug Bit Quincy!

Or maybe he just really, really likes mud! When he was almost a year old, if he got mud on his hands he would stare at it and then cry until we washed him off. Now, he loves to make mud. He loves to play in it.

He says that he's gardening. What do you think? It looks like playing to me!


Notice the mud puddle below him in this one and the pic below this. He made that with the hose.




He also got a little wet while messing with the hose.


He's checking out his feet here.


This is after playing in the mud the next day. Doesn't he look proud?


And his feet again! He took a much-needed shower after this!

I am an angry 4 year old boy!

That's an apt description of my child.

He's mad because we won't buy him this toy or that toy. He's mad because I won't stop at McDonald's at 9 o'clock at night. He's mad because Wubbzy isn't on all the time, or we made him leave the playground or sit down and eat lunch or told him to stop spitting. Whatever we have done, he's angry.

He spent the last week in Florida with my parents. They frequently heard, "I'm mad," and ,"I'm angry." He had to be carried out of a toy store because they took him in just to look. Last night, my mom would not let him have a steak knife at the restaurant they were at and he pitched a fit. He told me that he understood that the knife could hurt him but that "Grandma was supposed to share her knifes."

When he gets mad, he spits. Unless he's angry because we're trying to leave the playground, then he runs away. Once caught, he yells, screams, and kicks his feet. It's awesome.

My sister thinks he needs to go to some sort of anger management/behavioral class. My friends with 4 year olds tell me that this is mostly in the realm of normal behavior. Is it? Any suggestions?