260/265 Woodpile

The King and Queen of Unfinished Projects.

When I said this to Zelda and Travis, he shook his head and said that must make them Prince and Princess. This made me laugh a long time as I thought about it.

This is our mulberry tree. It sat in the middle of our parking pad. For a year. I stacked it by myself along the side of the parking pad. It took a little over an hour. I am such a loser. Why did I wait? Because that's just who I am. That's me all over.

259/365 Admitting Your Real Estate Agent Is A Jerk

I told Bruce what his real estate agent had to say to me. And he nodded like he understood. She's on a three strike plan. She has 2 strikes right now.

I really want him to sell the house. I want new neighbors. I like having neighbors instead of an empty house.

Mary lived there when we moved in, and then that other couple bought it and stayed about a year. Bruce and his wife moved in and now out. I can't believe sometimes how we outlast people.

I have a recording of "Rambling Man" on a disc of field recordings remixed in lovely creepy ways. I listen to that song and think about what I am, really, at heart, and how I fight it. Tame it down to stay where I am.

But his real estate agent IS a jerk.

258/365 Daffodils 2011 Edition

I transplanted most of my bulbs last year. Spread them out and replanted. So I didn't get as many as before. I think they take time to recover from shock like that. These are faithful daffodils. They'll be back.

257/365 Easter took some time

But I'm back. I think. It's been raining for 40 days and nights and my basement floor is wet and I'm stressed out about many things in almost every realm of my life. But I also know that this is the way it is. For me, at least. Many things break all at once and then there is a release and everything falls into place. Happily after all.

The block? What's up? Nothing. We have new mah jongg cards and haven't played. It's too wet to chat on the stoops. I actually ran out to talk with Bruce and Zelda the other day about Bruce's house being on the market. He told stories I'd already heard and filled all the gaps in conversation and I didn't care because it was a neighbor! And I hadn't seen them in forever!

There are many things these days that I don't write about. Again, in all realms of my life. I've developed some filters, but also my readership has grown to the point that I'm uncomfortable spilling my purse all over the table so much. But this blog I can usually say what I want because, what, I'm going to say too much about my garden? About the alley? My kids playing on the swingset?

But nothing is happening. Everything is wet and sleepy. Boring. Sorry. I have some alley pictures....and my potatoes keep growing in the wet wet cool spring air. But otherwise? Nada. Nope. Nothing.

256/365 Barbecue Season Begins

Travis and Zelda put out a general invite: pulled pork with homemade sauce, bring a side dish.

I was all over that.

I made a peach blueberry pie with extra nutmeg and trotted on over. Hot dogs for kids and conversation for me. Stayed long enough that bathtime and bedtime is a rush (I'm in the thick of it right now, in fact, in the eye of that hurricane) but it was perfect. Not my kitchen full of dishes, but more than that: connection with other adults, with friends, just chatting about whatever. Anything. Who cares. Just talk.

And then knock over your wine glass, Bridgett. Ah well. It was almost empty anyway (obviously).

255/365 Won't you be my neighbor?

It's the house tour this weekend.

The house across the street is finally ready for its open house, it's debut. The open house is Sunday and I'm hoping for a response. I'm sure people will wander in, but I'm hoping for a contract.

It won't happen, but a girl can hope.

254/365 Sweet Gum Ball

For my non-midwesterners. Sweetgum trees personified. First, some stock photos.

Sweetgums are gorgeous fall color trees. Bright orange, yellow, purple, red, all on the same tree. The ones in Tower Grove, easily over 100 years old, are on fire every fall. Breathtaking.
Pretty star shaped leaves that have multiple colors. They have a spicy, pleasant smell when torn or crushed. I love the sweetgum outside my front walk--it's a street tree and it shades my front yard. Pretty and big and healthy.

But this is the seed pod it drops. And it drops them, not all at once, not all in a few weeks' time, but constantly:


And this is how things look pretty much all the time if you have a sweetgum tree nearby:Ok, not always that bad, but rake them a bit and you have a huge pile of these sweetgum balls, these absolutely useless pointy hard round things. Step on them, and they slip beneath your feet, making you prone to fall. If you're barefoot, well, you slip and your heel hurts from the points.

So they are everywhere. They get ground down into the yard so they are hard to rake out. They easily germinate, too, so I have all these annoying baby sweetgums all over my planting beds in front. And the sidewalks, as you can see below, become treacherous. This isn't my sweetgum, but Gretchen's--mine is bigger and even more prolific.
But I still love them, even with their flaws. Not every tree can be an ash or a hard maple.

253/365 Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose

I sat on the gangway steps between Big Ed's house and Zelda's. Our kids, and Auggie and his sister Kendall, were playing Red Light Green Light. A version I didn't know--it involved a walking-only yellow light option. Noah kept "slipping" on the concrete every time a caller said red light. Sure. Fiona got sent back. Daisy and Kendall got sent back. Daisy and Kendall had minor temper tantrums down by the parked cars. No one really won.

Then they switched to duck-duck-goose, the circle game where a caller walks around the circle, tapping each participant's head and saying "duck". Duck, duck, duck, duck, and then finally taps a head and says "goose!" The goose has to get up and chase the caller around the circle, trying to tag her, and if he can't, he becomes the new caller. If he can, the old caller goes into the middle (alternately called many things--we always called it the mush pot but the kids here, I think, were referring to it somehow as where a roast goose would go. Can't recall the name if they gave it one). The game is simple and is best played with an entire kindergarten's worth of children, enough to really get up and run and tag. With 7 kids sitting knee-to-knee, it didn't work as well.

At one point Daisy wound up falling down the hill onto the sidewalk, in perhaps the most dramatic pratfall in the history of drama. Arguments ensued about who had been tagged. Fiona cut through the middle to tag Bree. Auggie threw grass in Daisy's face.

It was the worst duck-duck-goose game I'd ever witnessed. I gave my girls 5 minutes. Time to go inside.

"But moooooooooom," Fiona whined. "It's so nice out!"

"Too bad. It'll be nice at midnight but we won't be outside then, either." Gah, I'm such a MOM.

252/365 Alley Clean Up

Operation Brightside has an annual spring blitz throughout the city of St. Louis. Operation Brightside is a "Cleaning and Greening" organization which I didn't realize, until searching for them just now, is St. Louis-only. So I should stop talking about it to out-of-towners like they'll understand.

Anyway, each spring they have a clean-up. The yard waste dumpsters get emptied and the streets and alleyways are supposed to get a good freshening up. This is done completely volunteer, each block handling it themselves. We've always done an alley clean up, ever since I moved here, which made me think, for the longest time, that Barb Brunwin was my block captain--I thought blocks were centered around an alley, not around a street block. Anyway, long time ago and now I'm technically a semi-retired block captain myself over on this side (although Zelda and Travis give me a run for my money on that front).

Usually we start early and go out and move dumpsters and sweep out. Cut down fence weeds and pick up trash. This year we rolled out a little after 9 in the morning and gave it a go. Some years we'll go up into everyone's parking area and really clean it out. This year, not really. I did go over Dawn and Judd's, next door, and I did my own, but not the folks behind me (pictured here with Auggie):Weeds by the old ashpit base, leaves and detritus here and there, but eh. Haven't even met those folks and they are the famous "tent" neighbors who pitched the tent through the summer last year. Bizarre.

The alley was paved several years ago, against our wishes--we liked the brick--but now that it is paved, I have to admit, it's much easier to keep clean. Oh well. (note: blue dumpster! Single stream recycling!!)
It's also a bulk-trash-pick-up date, so I had Mike go through the basement and find stuff to get rid of. Oftentimes, trucks drive up and down the alley looking for usable items and scrap to sell. They read the Operation Brightside fliers, too.So we shoveled and raked and then I stacked all the firewood in a more sensible arrangement that will allow us to park in back again (yay).Tomorrow: front yard.

251/365 Spring Uniform

Back to the overalls with no shirt Depression-era dust bowl boy outfit.

250/365 Can't get enough of this spring

249/365 Prop E

Proposition E passed yesterday.

Last fall, a robber baron who lives in our town (ok, he's not a robber baron but that's how I feel about these ultra-conservative rich folk who are trying to further ruin my state, my city, my nation) funded an amendment to the state constitution that was tagged "Let the voters decide." It was utter anti-tax bullshit. It was aimed at destroying the earnings tax in Kansas City and St. Louis--a 1% tax on the incomes of those who live in the city limits or who commute to work in the city limits but live elsewhere. It is 30% of our city's funding.

Yeah, there are probably better ways to handle 30% of the city budget. It would be nice if the city and county merged, for instance, and it would also be nice if we all held hands on the hill and shared a coke and sung a song.

The "let the voters decide" amendment was aimed at "out-state" voters. It banned cities from starting new earnings taxes--I'm not sure frankly if any cities were planning on starting them--and had this benign "oh, the people who live in KC and STL should be able to decide for themselves if they want the earnings tax, so they should be forced to hold a vote on it every 5 years to retain it."

Thing is, we already had the right, in our city's charter, to challenge the earnings tax. But we hadn't. Lots of sheep out in mid-Missouri didn't like the fear of earnings taxes and thought all us benighted city folk oughtta take charge of our own lives. It passed overwhelmingly throughout the state, although it failed in STL and KC. Which said something, I think. I think it said that all us benighted city folk don't need a bunch of anti-government folks in Rolla and Joplin to tell us what to do neither.

It's not that I like taxes, and I don't think many people do. But I like having a police force and a fire department and street cleaning and trash pick up and I think that people who spend their days here in town like knowing that if their office building catches on fire, the fire department will come and put out the fire and not charge them for the privilege.

And maybe one day we can phase out the tax, but we need to have a plan in place to replace those funds.

One plan was a higher sales tax, which of course is regressive and I'm opposed to that on those grounds alone. Another plan was higher property taxes, which isn't regressive like sales tax but would still smack most middle-class St. Louisans pretty hard. My property tax, compared to the earnings tax we pay for Mike, well, let me say that if one went away and the other quadrupled, which was the estimation by the mayor's office, well, we'd come out the losers in that plan. Really.

It seemed like a crystal clear decision to me. And, actually, to 90% of the voters in the city yesterday.

Well then.

We'll see what comes in the next 5 years. And then vote again.

248/365 Emergency Room

I read it on facebook the next day. Cecily had to take her son Micah to the ER (he was fine in the end) and Mason had to meet her there, take off work. It was the middle of the night so she had Lark and Eva with her. I read this and thought of the night Fiona's temperature spiked and we had to go to Cardinal Glennon, dropping Baby Daisy off at my parents' house around the corner.

Cecily's father lives out of town and her mom has died. Mason's parents also live elsewhere. Siblings across the country (not even sure if Mason has any). Nobody.

Except us neighbors between these sycamores. Really.

It reminded me of when Zelda got so sick a few Januarys ago. Travis called and had me come and sit in their living room and he took her to the hospital. I watched their cable TV and hoped for the best. Obviously, it all worked out, but she was sick. Sure, they could have taken their kids to either his or her parents, but Travis knew he'd be coming home and then you have to disrupt them twice and they were already a mess because mom is so sick.

And when someone is so sick, you aren't the best parent or spouse. You are focused and worried and that's when it's time for someone to just step in, not in a weird overpowering way, but just in the background, and let kids sleep.

I told Cecily this, that if there is a next time (and there always is a next time), to call. Really. Anytime of day or night. We're here and I have no trouble walking across the street to sit and wait. I actually might welcome the peace.

Jen chimed in immediately with the same offer. Zelda's not on facebook but I'm sure she would have too. Any of us would for Cecily. But Cecily isn't the type to ask--just not in her nature--so I brought up examples of how others have done this for me (Maeve's seizure in January '09) and how I've done this for others.

Really, it's nothing. If I'm willing to lend out my 30 foot ladder or borrow hedge trimmers or a smoker (meat smoker), it isn't a stretch at all to help in a crisis. Call me.

247/365 Spring Evening

Sophia's dancing in those pictures where she looks a bit twisted, fyi. Could not have been prettier last night. Alas, thunderstorms have brought us back to a more seasonable 49 degree high.

246/365 Game of Catch

It seemed the thing to do after church on Sunday. Fiona found her glove, Eliza had an extra for Daisy, and Bree and Noah were the ones who got it started in the first place. Travis and Zelda enjoyed the weather on the porch. Billy tried so hard to get the "ball? bah? ball?" and Fiona found another one for him to play with. Then the girls got bored and went to play at Eliza's, and Travis came down to the sidewalk to toss with Noah. I kept waiting for the thud to hit one of the cars, but it never happened.

245/365 Spring is Pink

The magnolia tree, the red brick houses (many of my neighbors' houses are not red brick in front--brown brick, white stone, even my house is a higher quality of red brick in front--but the backs are all red brick, standard issue), and of course the sunset. Pink, pink, pink.
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244/365 Thwit

Archery in the springtime. You should see my back fence.