Omorka's Lair

The squash have come up! Yay!

Now I have to thin them. I hate thinning plants. The entire school is supposed to read _Seedfolks_ next week as part of National Library Week, and in it one of the characters refuses to thin her carrots because it reminds her too much of what happened in the concentration camps. While I'm not that bad off, I do dislike bringing a life up from the ground only to pluck it again. Maybe next year I'll just plant them at the spacing they're supposed to be after thinning and hope enough come up . . .

I'm just too thrilled to have a garden. Bugs are still chewing on the basil, but it's growing rapidly enough I figure there's enough for me and them, too. The tomatoes are growing so fast they're a bit leggy. The mints are all quite happy, as are the parsleys. The sage is definitely dead, which is a shame, but it's the only one I've lost. I almost feel as if I'm being too hopeful, that even the green thumb I remember from my childhood can't be this good. Harvest is so far away.

That's part of the problem with thinning. I have no problem aspecting the Dark Goddess in her own time, with reaping the harvest ripe. It's taking these little seedling lives that chafes me, aspecting Her in the Spring, in the Light half of the year. I don't even really mind losing the sage, as that wasn't me, even if it was caused by bad planning on my part. But how can I uproot these little green things that I set there?

Maybe I can plant them in a vacant space somewhere. I don't know where, though. I'll have to be awfully careful pulling them if I'm going to do that.

I ran into something odd in the kitchen today. Back around Yule, I made two batches of cookies that needed to be rolled in powdered sugar. I wasn't sure whether I was going to make more, so I saved the used sugar. Apparently I marked the bag "Cookie Sugar" so I'd know what it was, and then in smaller letters added "not anthrax."

Gods. I don't usually engage in such black humor. I wonder why I did that? Then again, I'm the one who proudly booked a flight home for Thanksgiving in late September.

I understand the Harvest. It's part and parcel of who I am. Weeding is a little harder, but not too hard. But pruning and thinning I just can't do.

In less philosophical news, this week has been Logistics Hell. One car or the other has been in the shop all week, so the MIL and the Spouse and I have all been carpooling again. Moreover, the mechanic they use has been spectacularly clueless about getting anything fixed and about schedules for doing so. I am beginning to wonder if we will have transportation for Beltane on Thursday. It would really, truly suck to have to miss a gathering because the car is broken. The Spouse has made grumbling noises about renting a car for that weekend if we have to, but I really don't want to deal with the frustration and expense of that, especially on top of the expense of taking the car to a more clueful mechanic to actually get it fixed (which I think we will have to do eventually, even if he manages to kludge something together for right now).

Work this week has been stressful, although perhaps no more than average. I had two parent conferences, both early morning ones. The parents were late for one, and I left my umbrella at the other. Fortunately, in both cases the parents were mostly free of NMKS (Not My Kid Syndrome). My team has been completely dragging its feet over the exam questions, and the two members of the team who turned their stuff in to me both turned it in on hardcopy instead of as a file - and of course, neither of them saved their files, so I'll have to type it all in again. (*Grrrr* . . . I hate my tech-retarded colleagues sometimes.) We also had our last AP conference of the year. I've signed up for a lot of GT training over the summer, and I'm planning on going to an AP seminar and CAMT as well. I have decided that I'm _not_ volunteering to do anything else over the summer, since I need some time off somewhere, but we'll see if that resolution holds up to any decisions to do vertical team planning.

Naturally, carpooling with the MIL, the Spouse and I haven't been very social this week. We did have dinner with MW&JT, which was nice, but I'm afraid I cut that short by zonking out on them (sorry, guys). If things go well tomorrow, we might see them then for gaming; I'll probably see PB, and maybe the Raven and greeneyedpagan (if they're not completely tied up with CMA stuff) at Bagels tomorrow. I really feel bad about not spending more time with people, but even when we have transport, everyone else seems so busy. MW, in particular, has papers to write, and I feel guilty suggesting we do social stuff with her when I know she needs the time for other things. And once she's free, I'll be in end-of-school rampdown and running as fast as I can just to catch up with myself. (See also previous comment about exams.) I won't really have serious social time to spend until June, and then JG and family will be in town to visit. Argh. Scheduling sucks.

I've been trying to take some of the "Which X are you?" tests, but an awful lot of those sites either don't like Netscape or don't like me - the below was the only one I could get into. Such a pain. Ah, well. I want a "What Mahou Tsukai Tai! character are you" quiz, and since one doesn't currently exist, perhaps I shall have to make one up.

I went CD shopping with the Spouse last sunday, which I really shouldn't have done - I bought stuff. It's amazing what I'll buy for $6 if it was originally priced at $14 and there's one song on it I know I like. On the other hand, I think I'm glad I got the Seal album, and I haven't listened to a lot of the others, so perhaps I will feel better about spending the money after I hear them all. Certainly I needed the two full-priced albums I got (a Def Leppard best-of and Weird Al's _Even Worse_). At the very least, it's ammunition to use against the upstairs neighbor, who thinks Whitney Houston is the greatest thing since sliced bread.