My life was the size of my life.

Yes Itch

Poppin big green antibiotic pills and guzzlin kefir over here!

I got a hot, raised, red infection in my arm instantly after all the manual labor this week, evidence of my delicacy (I used to while away childhood hours imagining I'd been born a British princess). Tuesday, after returning the tidily-swept truck, I showered, diligently soaping and scrubbing the dump-dirt away. Mark and I had consulted each other a few times on the date of our last Tetanus shots ("We're up to date on Tetanus, right?" "Uh, we must be. I think."). I disinfected all the scratches and scrapes on my (tender) forearms too, even applying antibiotic ointment and Bandaids. It was hot, but I wore long sleeves to dinner because my arms looked so bad I was afraid I'd trigger someone.

And yet, I knew yesterday that one scratch was infected, and I did have cellulitis once, which supposedly means I'm at a higher risk of getting it again. So last night I went to urgent care, a little apologetic about the mere spot of infected skin I was sporting.

The first nurse spoke so softly, it seemed like she was deliberately making it hard for me to hear her. "Have you ever used chewing tobacco are you safe at home," she whispered.

I hate the idea of taking antibiotics. Every time I do, I think I'm one step closer to MRSA.*





*don't Google that

My color's green. I'm spring.

Is it just me, or do things feel grim and then grimmer? Looking back at low times, dark times, politically bizarre times now — or times we thought were bad or weird — none of it seems quite so bad. Which makes me nervous about the future.

Mark and I embarked on Phase One of our summer fence project. Monday we tore down the old fence (well, most of it was down already, but we pulled up posts and yanked apart fence sections, and stacked everything tidily in the yard). Tuesday we rented a truck (a moving truck), and we filled that truck with fence and drove that fence to the dump. Eight hundred pounds of fence, give or take. We also threw in some large trash that we'd been hoarding in our basement. Then we drove the truck home and filled it twice more with brush that we'd been hoarding in a corner of our yard. Then we drove those loads to the dump.

The sad thing in this photo is the Big Wheel, not the boat.

Oh, how I hate the dump. Well, I like certain aspects of it, like the areas where like items are stacked, nicely categorized and organized like what you'd expect to find at a Montessori Dump. Hot tubs with hot tubs. Concrete blocks all together, tires neatly assembled, air conditioners with their air conditioner families. But the bulk of it is "mixed," like the above photo, and we were surprised that this is where our fence was meant to go. Also, any brush, plastic, or anything else that happened to ride along in the truck with the fence. Brush and other yard waste that was traveling solo was allowed to go in the "yard waste" pile. Horrifyingly, huge pushing trucks (front loaders? bulldozers? I used to know the names of them all, back when Isaac was a truck aficionado) would loom suddenly up right beside you and abruptly shove all the trash back into the trash mountain when you least expected it. 

The worst thing about the dump was a fox we saw there, slinking around, low to the ground, skinny and sad. Its tail was just so ragged and thin. It made me really sad.

We didn't get all the brush out of here, but we got most of it. Phase Two is erecting the new fence on that side. Phase Three, I regret to tell you, is identical to Phase One except on the other side of the yard.

On the upside, I have been making delicious smoothies with my trusty little mild-mannered blender (matcha, frozen banana, spinach, almond milk, vanilla protein powder yesterday. Frozen banana, peanut butter, cacao powder, vanilla protein powder, almond milk today. I think of this as "the Elvis smoothie" of course). We voted yesterday, and it was busy. I don't remember them loudly calling out your registered political party in the past, but they did yesterday, and I was shocked that there were several Republicans in line in front of me. 

Also on the upside, flowers.

Does anyone not like peonies? We once knew a lady in Kansas who pronounced it "pee OH nee."

She's my girl. My secret life's goal is to get her to love me more than she loves Gus or Mark.

I'm just like a pile of leaves

I type constantly, all the time, for work and pleasure and boredom and organization, and yet I'm so much worse at it than I was at one time. I have some kind of typing dyslexia lately, constantly switching letters and drawing a blank when I try to figure out if I mean role or roll, bale or bail, peel or peal.

Hey, the Queen's last corgi may have died, but the Queen is not without dogs. In case you were picturing her bereft and dogless, having reached the true end of her life, the end of life with dogs. She's fine.

I wrote this weeks ago, and now there's a beautiful young American woman who's joined the royal family and also her American beagle.**

Also, I read about half of I'll Be Gone in the Dark and it was just too scary for me. I am so much more squeamish and anxious about certain scary things than I used to be. I remember reading a pile of true crime novels when I lived alone in my first solo apartment. I did terrify myself doing it, but I couldn't stop reading. Now I'm old, and I cover my eyes at the gory stuff on TV.

I am also re-reading both Outline and Transit by Rachel Cusk after reading this amazing review of the trilogy by Patricia Lockwood and in anticipation of the third book, Kudos, for which I am waiting in a virtual library line. These are in the category of slow down and read every word books for me. I get in this mode that's better suited to thrillers, gobbling books, sometimes. 

The monologues in the Outline trilogy are controlled trances, like Stevie Nicks at the end of ‘Rhiannon’: you enter the speed and the artifice and the belief of it with her. They seem to have been written compulsively; they certainly read compulsively. There is a relentlessness to them, an onslaught that is like the onslaught of life. Occasionally you find yourself wishing for someone to get up and go to the bathroom, but most of the time you are transported.







**Ahhh weeks and weeks and weeks ago! But still. Her beagle.

One pink, and one white

I'm a lazy gardener. I planted two peonies, probably fifteen years ago, one white and one pink. I made a careless oval of earth, removing sod and turning over soil, which through sheer luck was rich with earthworms. I may have mixed some compost in at some point.

My entire back yard has always been shady, really not allowing enough hours of sunlight for any of the various perennials I've optimistically planted back there.* A couple of years ago, a neighbor cut down a tree (it was our tree, in our yard, and it's funny that he cut it down, but we were grateful to have someone else pay for it and he had a stronger opinion than we did). There's slightly more light on one side of the oval flower bed now! The peony on that side has always been more enthusiastic than the one on the shadier side, and now it's even more so.

I always forget that peonies like to be fed (I think). I research these details and promptly forget. And still, that one peony (along with many flowering companions) seem content. The other peony (and what I started to say is, I always forget which is the white and which is pink until they finally, finally bloom) is less satisfied. It's much smaller, and this year I fear there may be almost no flowers on it.

The thing you always forget about peonies is, ants.



*I've failed at lavender, daisies, coneflower, violets, and more. My successes include lupine, black-eyed Susan, Johnson's blue geranium, various columbines, forget-me-nots, lamb's ears, hosta, lily-of-the-valley, bleeding hearts, sweet woodruff, and others I'm forgetting.

I was an easy baby

A chapter in my family lore: 50 years ago today, Bobby Kennedy was killed, and I (an infant) cried disconsolately all night long.

interesting, and modern

There is probably nothing better in this world than Gus's tail.

So, I think of this as "periodically reminding the dogs that they're domesticated." Also known as walking around the neighborhood in the rain.

• Scooping the poop of someone else's dog is almost as bad as changing the poopy diaper of someone else's baby toddler.
• People who let their dogs poop in the middle of the sidewalk vs. People who voted for Trump*
• I need a word for a summer variation on hygge — when the sky goes dark mid-day and you have to turn on lights and pull out a sweater and maybe make a cup of hot tea. 
• A house in our neighborhood sold recently and today is the closing. We assume a walk-through was going on this morning, and there was an annoying** car parked in front.  

*Clearly you'd prefer to be on a desert island with the first person. You'd constantly be stepping in dog poop (assuming their dog could be on the island too), but then there would be a dog on the island! 

**white BMW

Rabbit rabbit!