30 5 / 2012
Page 23 from the forthcoming “Possessions volume 4: The Final Tantrum”. Gurgazon the Unclean demonstrates her reaction to being called “cute”.
Some people ask me if Gurgazon the Unclean is based on my daughter, and often I tell them, somewhat mischievously, that only her hair is. This is a half-truth, that masks a larger truth. The real truth is that Gurgazon is based on every woman I have ever known. Every woman I have ever known has voiced aspirations that have nothing to do with their looks, and have discovered that there are outside influences who will go very far indeed to involve their appearance in the discussion that results.
Gurgazon just wants to initiate armageddon. Why does it matter how adorable she is while she does so?
27 3 / 2012
Week 12: This is my garden path, built from reclaimed bricks from the apartments across the street. I have no idea how many bricks there are, but I know that it took us probably 12 wagonloads to get them moved over to our yard. (Radio flyer-style.) There was much complaining, both from Frank, and from my back.
The path’s pretty well set as far as where it’ll sit, but I have to go through with a ball-peen hammer and knock the rest of the mortar off the bricks and snug them up together in an actual path-type thing. I expect this will be a LOT of work. And I really hope we grabbed enough extra bricks to allow for the extra space between the bricks now. I’m sure I’ll come up with something if I run short. Even if it’s just “here’s some creeping thyme placed strategically…”
24 3 / 2012
Week 11:
Previous weeks have been obliterated by MS issues, and I’ve talked about those. At the moment I’m tired of them.
Moving on! Here’s a step along the way on the front flower garden. This is a big space, referenced there in the top two photos. I lacked the foresight to take a picture from the same angle, because I had no idea I’d be putting in a flower garden!
I’ve put down cardboard, and am in the process of covering that with mulch, to choke out all of the grass. Because I’d already dug the sod up in the beds next to the front step, I already knew how much work it was. This is a MUCH better choice.
I know I’m going to have to deal with grass in the cracks between the cardboard, but I’ve got high hopes about this plan.
24 3 / 2012
Leveling up:
Over the week of my birthday (March 11 is the oldening date), Frank and I worked our butts off refiguring the garden into raised beds. There was one there already that the Joneses had built, so we took it apart, and moved them to the positions in the first photo. Then we built 3 more, and filled them. It was a JOB. But it was also really fun!
And now I have raised beds, which are easier to weed, and a bit kinder to my lackluster energy reserves over the season.
I’ve amended them with a combination of compost and steer manure to begin, but I’ve also got a fantastic fertilizer blend for the course of the season, bought from the Urban Farm Store.
I’ve already put in the peas and the first wave of onions. I waited on the rest of the veggies, because I wasn’t sure about the weather, and then, we totally got snow. At the end of March. I mean, really? (a la Amy Poehler) REALLY, Portland?
Next job for the veggie patch: Planting red leaf clover in the pathway.
23 3 / 2012
I was struck by my own cuteness as a kid when I came across this book on my shelf of kid’s books. (I was trying to protect them from toddler destruction.) So yeah, I’ve had this cheap little paperback version of Jean & Johnny for… 24 years or so? I would put my reading this at right around 10 years old.
I’ve always had a bit of a “THAT’S MY BOOK!” in me, and it looks like it’s been there a while…
-Jilly
Oh yeah. I totally knitted that blanket they’re lying on. One of these days I’ll take a picture of it, too.
19 3 / 2012
These are awesome!
Ben Dewey is looking forward to the return of Game of Thrones so he did a few speedy sketches of his favorite characters. Come see him at Emerald City Comic Con table 222 and you can chat about how, apparently, winter is coming.
www.tragedyseries.tumblr.com
15 3 / 2012
The Tommyknocker rock I found in the middle of the yard.
Oh yeah! This posted and I realized I was going to elaborate on this rock issue. I get busy chasing a super active baby around. I’ve ended up writing a half post and keeping it in drafts until I get back to it, but this one I stuck in the queue…
So, there was approximately a half inch of this sticking up out of the ground, and all the rest of it was underneath. I think I’d run across it in the past because it’s right next to where I keep the compost bin, but didn’t give it a lot of thought because it seemed like just a small rock sticking up.
I’ve been going through lately and adding fill dirt around the yard to smooth out all the bumpiness. It’s an old house, meaning it’s also an old yard, and it most likely hasn’t been graded in years. And yards in Portland are more prone to that sort of bumpiness because it rains so much. If drainage isn’t great, water will pool, and eventually erode in spots. SO ANYWAY.
I’ve been adding dirt slowly so that I don’t kill the grass underneath by choking it out, and I came across this rock and tried to pull it out of the ground. This didn’t work at all, and I eventually grabbed the shovel, and the end result was this huge freaking rock!
It’s probably a foot and a half long, and 8-10 inches around. And the entire rock was buried, but for a small rounded corner sticking up about a half inch.
This existence of this rock buried so thoroughly leads me to believe the yard hasn’t ever been graded. Or some kid in the 50’s thought it would be funny to bury it. A forever mystery!
—Jilly
14 3 / 2012
Having birthdays and such.
You know, I just turned 34. It’s fucking WEIRD how it feels to age. I never really feel out of touch, but I know that I am so completely NOT IN TOUCH with the youth culture. Somehow I don’t care, which is a blessing, particularly when I see so many 30-somes living their lives in desperate fear of being dubbed uncool. I’ve just been letting it all wash past me in waves of blissful ignorance. I know that where I’m at in my life and my job, I just don’t have the energy to chase the cool, and I am perfectly okay with that. I’m so much more consumed with chasing a free moment to crochet something or, heaven forbid, take a bath, that it just doesn’t mean anything to me.
Getting to that point was a slow process of becoming who I am as an adult, I think. A gradual erosion of all of those little bitty fears, until I’ve come out smooth and weathered like sea glass. Don’t think that means there aren’t still major issues hiding on the inside. They’re just much more ingrained, like “will I be just like my mother?” and “what kind of mother will I be?” Those’re the striations in that sea glass.
Back to the aging thing. Here’s what’s really weird to me on an objective level: I still think of myself as young. I think of myself as a girl, but by all logic, I really can’t call myself a “girl” anymore, right? No matter what Tori might think about it. I’ve got a daughter, and I’m looking head on at what is pretty clearly, actually middle age. I am actually a woman. And I’ve learned many of those lessons. There were a lot of them.
I’m not afraid of being a woman rather than a girl, I just can’t comprehend that’s it’s actually happened to me. Maybe that means it hasn’t? (Heh. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?) This seems like a sort of arrested development. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there are so few rites of passage in our lives anymore. Maybe it’s because I still can’t get my mother to respect me as though I’m an adult. Or maybe I’m regressing! It’s entirely possible that my MS diagnosis at 19 completely stunted my emotional maturity. Anyway, I’m getting much too caught up in this question, because it’s got enough layers underneath for at least a full season of In Treatment.
The other thing that’s funny about aging, at least as it happens to me, is that those things that happen that make you so upset you can never really look back at them without feeling shame, well, those mellow with time. But so do the joys, and that’s the thing I’m grieving over these days, I think. I want to learn to keep the joys. I’m even willing to keep the shameful things forever, even at nearly full-strength shame levels if it meant I got to keep the joys, too. This is far more important to me now that I have a daughter than it’s ever been before. I don’t want to lose the heartswell I get whenever she does something amazing. Although in saying that, I think that I’ve probably done my husband a disservice over the past 11 years, in not holding those moments between us as precious enough, because I didn’t realize that when trying to forget the bad things, the joys we’d shared together would get lost, too. And I regret that a great deal. When you start running from things, you wind up running from everything.
The other thing that bothers me: why don’t they make the shoes I liked when I was a teenager anymore? Just bring back grunge, already. We had comfortable shoes back then.
That was literally 20 years ago, too. See? It’s weird!
Oh well! I’m gonna keep my red hair and leopard print, I think. Beatrice will just have to learn to live with the embarrassment.
—Jilly
12 3 / 2012
So some things happened.
All of them having to do with my having multiple sclerosis for the last 15 years, but still attempting to live as though I don’t. Spent approximately 3 weeks of the last 6 in bed, and the rest was spent trying to catch up on work and laundry.
I am better-ish now. Anyway, I’m pushing on and starting my veggies soon, so I might as well get on with business. (Note the attitude I referenced above. Maybe the ONLY way to live with MS for a long period of time is just to continue on as best as I can without getting too angry.)
I’ve been imagining my life as a series of clips from the best movies ever—this is something I do frequently, apparently, and it’s a new realization about myself—I have to go with Monty Python on this one.
I looked MS in the eye and said “All right. We’ll call it a draw.”
—Jilly
