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{ Wednesday, July 27, 2005 }

Random Thoughts on a Wednesday

 
Hi. Gin and tonic: plural; with dinner: mostly ignored.



Jelly

On the way home from dinner, Steady and I were discussing his lunch. Because I pack his lunch every day to keep him away from the super-tasty-but-WILL-kill-you Demon French Fry, and so I want to know how he felt about his lunch everyday because my lunch packing skills are what's keeping him from Killer Hamburgers and Demon French Fries.

He mentioned that the peanut butter and jelly sandwhich that is part of his daily lunch (because my boyfriend thrives on order he eats the same thing every day) has too much jelly.

We then had a conversation in which he learned that before I found the jelly that he brought to this relationship (unopened from his last apartment), I hadn't ever interacted with store-bought jelly before.

So, the jelly I am used to is the normal kind that comes in a Mason Jar and is made by someone sweating buckets over a giant vat of fresh fruit or vegetables (see also: tomato jelly or pepper jelly, neither of which I have ever actually eaten in abundance but which my mother did make annually) in late summer. It spreads.

The jelly that my boyfriend brought into this household is like Jell-o that's a tiny bit runny and it's made with Splenda. There is nothing about it that in any way causes a person licking it off her fingers to think of fruit even tangentially.

And now I ask you, which it the more "normal" jelly? The homemade kind in the sticky Mason jar with the chunks in it or the kind that comes from the store and it like goopy Jell-o? What are you more familiar with?




Busy

There are currently 39 items on my "To Accomplish" list on my desk at work. While I was driving home, I left myself several voicemails and added four more items. That is all I am going to say about that or the current lack of updates.




Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, How does your garden grow?

I've decided to attempt to grow vegetables in this apartment. We have great light from a pair of windows in the corner of the living room. Last night I went out and bought some pots and seeds. Then I planted some things.

I also FINALLY transpotted the poor sad little flowers I brought home from chris's wedding my my backpack. They fell over in the backseat of the rental car and lost most of their dirt, and then they left some more in my backpack during the plane ride. So, I'd been basically soaking their sad little dirt encrusted roots in water on a near-daily basis for the last... uh... month. They look much happier in a larger pot with some actual potting soil.

(chris, now that I'm a bit invested in if they live or die, how much light and water do these things want? Do you have any idea what they are named? One was a vaguely woody plant with white flowers and the other is dainty and has pink flowers and now they share a pot so they'd better have similar needs.)

Right, so, vegetables in the apartment. I bought trough-y, window box-y pots and planted mint, cat grass and some herb that escapes me now in the one I am more confident will be a success, because, hi, it's grass and mint and those are basically like growing weeds inside your apartment.

The other one is more ambitious. It has green peppers, green beans and some sort of leaf lettuce. None of which were hard for me to grow outside in the suburbs when I was ten and it's possible that my mother did most of the work, but still... inside might be trickier.

The leftover seeds that I bought because seeds are cheap are tomatoes and carrots. I vaguely remember a lengthy discussion somewhere in my childhood in which my mother explained the concept of "volunteer tomatoes" vs "tomato seeds" and why the volunteers will grow and the seeds will not. So, not too much hope for that.

I have a suspicion (hi, Mom, you can comment if you're reading and tell me if I'm right or not. I mean, obviously, you can comment on anything here, this is the internet and it is open to the public, but I'd like to know if I'm right or not.) that the volunteer tomatoes may have started as some transplanted tomatoes from my grandmother or the next-door neighbors which makes me think I might have spent my childhood rejecting an heirloom vegetable.

So, we'll see how this goes with the easy ones first.

I have another question... people who have planted vegetables before... the seed packets had instructions on them regarding lots of things like the depth of the plants and when to harvest the vegetables... lots of useful things really. They also said things like "plant seeds two per inch".

How serious is that instruction? Cause, you know, some of those seeds are like pin heads and I feel like if the plants are generating tiny tiny seeds that means they are making A LOT of them which then means not many of them will grow and you should put the seeds in densely. It might also mean that the seeds spread well in the wild and thus should be planted far apart. But honestly, who has the patience to count those teeny tiny seeds? And how do you dispense them with that precision without spilling them?

The beans I gave some room, because those seeds are larger and can be easily handled with my clutsy fingers. The rest? Are much more densely planted. Did I fuck up? Are any of them going to grow?




Current Events

In other news, real news, it turns out that a year ago I moved from a fat, unhealthy, toothless place to a very dangerous, uneducated place.

Arizona leads the nation in overall crime rate, overall property-crime rate and motor-vehicle theft, according to a new report.

The state is second in larceny rates, fourth in burglary rates and fifth in homicide rates.


(that's from the "very dangerous" link)

Once again, Arizona's high school dropout rate is the worst in the nation, though this time we share last place with Louisiana.

For the fourth year in a row, Arizona ranks last among the states for its percentage of teens, ages 16 to 19, who have dropped out of school.


("uneducated")

On almost every health measure, Kentuckians fare poorly, second worst nationally for cancer deaths, fifth worst for cardiovascular deaths and seventh worst for obesity, according to the paper, which published a special eight-page section on the state's poor health.


("fat, unhealthy")

The "toothless" article didn't give me any easy blocks to quote, sorry.

When I showed all of this to CanadaDave, he asked which situation I would prefer. I think the unhealthy, toothless people are preferable to the rapists, murders and car thieves, really. It's a lot easier to protect yourself from the Demon French Fry than, you know, someone who's gotta a gun.




I think that's all I had tonight. I don't know. I need to stop typing though cause I have to pee.

posted by mary ann 9:13 PM


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