Spare tires aren't just for cars

What has happened to me?! I knew I had gained about 8 pounds this winter/spring, and I was chalking it up to a few things

• not making it to exercise class every week
• having popcorn and ice cream every night
• eating too much granola
• my body's natural reaction to a poorly insulated house with no heat upstairs.

So it was no surprise that my pants felt tight. But then I realized that they are only tight at the waistband. Not in the hips. Not in the butt.

Everything looks exactly the same except that I have the mythical "spare tire" action happening around my waist. Let's hope the 150 crunches I did last night do something to correct this.

It's a miracle!

I was just out in my yard when-- get this!-- C brought my pot back. Clean.

The return was followed up with the question, "You don't happen to have a can of tomato soup, do you?" I said, no, we don't eat much tomato soup in the spring.

It's only now that I wonder whether answering in the affirmative would have meant also reloaning him my pot.

My new best friend

Remember the other day when my neighbor C came over to borrow a pot? Well, I never got my pot back, but the story didn't end there.

Friday, we had our friends Josh and Sarah over for dinner, and as we were finishing Sarah's amazing strawberry rhubarb pie, there was a knock at the kitchen door. It was C, all dressed up in a shirt and tie, asking if I might have time the next day to help him practice his sales presentation for a new job. I agree to do it Saturday evening at 7:30. He seemed so earnest, and it reminded me of when my brother was selling home security systems.

So, Saturday, we go about our business, attending a little league game with the sole purpose of having hot dogs and slush puppies, and then launching the rocket Sebastian has been working on Chez Flapdoodle. We come home and I decide I don't really feel like cooking and we still have some gift certificates from my mother, so I grab my purse and make for the door. And there is C wondering if we could do the presentation a little early. Like, now. A half hour? Fine, come on in.

So, of course, he's selling knives. The most sanitary, ergonomically-designed, sharpest knives known to man. He also has a pair of shears that can turn a penny into a corkscrew. It is all terribly thrilling, and then he hits us with the price. Close to a thousand dollars a set. Yeah, no thanks. I would love a nice knife. I truly would. But now is not the time for spending that kind of cash on something I don't need.

I managed to get out of it all thanks to the remnants of the giant pit in my yard. For it is true that I have no extra money right now due to that broken sewer pipe. So Jeremy and I gave him lots of encouragement and sent him on his way. He's a nice kid and I hope this works out for him, even though I know it probably won't. In a town of 12,000 people, how many sets of knives do you think you can sell?

Sunday, I'm out working in the yard when C walks by dressed in his presentation finest. He's just made a $700 sale, probably because they took pity on him for slicing off the tip of his thumb during the demonstration. Can't wait for the next update from my new best friend.

Not totally slacking

I know that my percentages on the knitting projects have been completely stagnant, and there hasn't been any info about the picnic quilt or anything else. Things have been quite busy around here what with broken pipes and volunteering and gardening and stripping wallpaper, so the crafting has fallen by the wayside.

But I just couldn't take the fabric draped over my chair in the laundry room, all cut and ready for sewing Dorian's second pair of pants. So the other night I finally bit the bullet and got started. And then Thursday I finally finished them:

That's Dorian's special pose. Ask him to pose for a picture and that's what you get. Go ahead. Try it for yourself.
I know it is hard to see the pattern. You can click on the picture to get a closer look. This time I added a large side pocket. And when Dorian saw it, he decided he needed two. That is not happening. I am done with this project. Done. Check it off the ever-expanding list.
And then yesterday, I just couldn't wait to try one of the radishes. This one is purple, but we also have red and white. I know it is small, but I am impatient. I did get 4 slices out of it so we could all try and it was the juiciest radish I've ever had. And just the right amount of spice.

I also planted the garden on Friday. Here's what we've got growing:

• snow peas
• carrots
• parsley
• basil
• Swiss chard
• pickling cucumbers
• lipstick peppers (red and sweet)
• jet star tomatoes (red)
• Mr. Stripey tomatoes (yellow with pink stripes)
• chocolate cherry tomatoes
• sun gold cherry tomatoes
• green grape tomatoes
• dusky eggplant
• Easter egg radishes
• red and green lettuces

I also planted some mint and some oregano. And there are blooms on the black raspberry canes... Oh, it is so hard to wait...

Your Friday time waster

Looking for something to do to avoid work, or avoid looking for work? Well, I've got a winner for ya, thanks to good ol' Clockwatcher who has clearly abandoned her blog for the bigger timesuck of Facebook.

So, go here and try not to shoot coffee out of your nose. And make sure you keep going back and back into the older entries because you wouldn't want to miss gems like this or this. Or especially this.

Hey, Good Lookin'... Whatcha got cookin'?

As I was outside this morning with Dorian and Davy Bavy, my teenage neighbor approached.

"Um, hi. Do you have a pot I could, um, borrow?"

"You mean, for cooking?"

"Yeah. The handle fell off of mine."

Somehow, I decided it would be unneighborly to deny the request while simultaneously wondering why there is not another pot in their house, and went inside to fetch the pot I would be least likely to miss should it never return. That would have been the pot that Kathrin gave me after a camping trip some 11 years ago. Unfortunately, that pot was in the sink and full of yogurty water. I may be foolish enough to lend him a pot, but I'm not foolish enough to waste time washing it first. So I grabbed the second oldest and handed it over.

I did manage to find out his name, but I hold no illusions that I will ever get my pot back from Mr. C. Nor am I sure I want it back, because for all I know with the recent activity back there, he's cookin' up some meth with it.

That house is mysterious as it appears from the outside to be about as large as 3 rooms in my house, yet also appears to house 3x as many people. There are definitely 2 teenagers + a girlfriend, 1 four year old and an adult. But there is also a revolving door policy and suspicious trips from the house which result in a return 5 minutes later with a backpack they didn't leave with. I didn't grow up in Baltimore for nothing and I know something's up, and I can guess that my pot is not the only "pot" in that house.

One less thing for me to whine about

My throat is sore, so I must be finished with puppet show filled nature programs for the year. Those kids were cracked out today and I had to holler quite a bit. But they know more about honeybees than they did when I got there today, so my work is done.

And by "work", I mean doing the waggle dance.

Sebastian's teacher even gave me the backhanded compliment of telling the kids that I had done so well, she might even let me do more of the programs next year. (She only opted to have me do 4 of the 7.) Can't wait!