An itch I'm trying not to scratch

I look like I got into a hardcore wrasslin' match with a poison ivy plant.

Oh wait ... I did.

Never in my life have I had to endure this ridiculousness. Ever. All my years of wandering through wooded areas with friends, going horseback riding through thick grasses and playing in areas you'd think poison ivy would grow, and where do I pick up this itchy, scratchy rash?

The flower bed at Future Home.

We be jammin'

I'm getting closer and closer to being a Flower Child. At least in my head that's where I'm headed.

In reality — because let's face it, I rarely live in the real world even though it's nice to visit — I'm following in my mom footsteps. Where am I headed with this? Preservation.

No, not preserving mankind or anything like that, but, like, actual preserves. Jams. Jellies. Home canned make-my-mouth-water salsa and stewed tomatoes. Growing up we did stewed tomatoes every year for as long as I can remember. We worked all summer in the garden growing a variety of tomato species — roma, beefsteak, whatever — along with bell peppers and onions so we'd have enough for stewed tomatoes and fresh eating.

All I want for Mother's Day is ...

My life right now is all about scheduling. And I'm sucking at it. Badly.

The only thing I have set in stone every week is the Bean's creative movement class on Tuesdays, but soon enough that will come to an end and we'll be doing the summer thing. I assume the "summer thing" will be much like our "spring" and "fall" and "winter" things ... a whole lot of what the eff are we doing today.

At least we're finally getting bedtime back. Forget prime time television with the Boy — I'm stuck sitting on the stairs outside the girls' bedroom usually from 8 to 9 p.m. At least they're in their own beds and sleeping most of the night again. Though the normal bedtime for them means an earlier wake up call. I suppose I can handle getting up at 6:30 some mornings if it means an hour or two of quiet at night to collect my thoughts. I usually don't get to do that during the day unless it's in three-minute increments interrupted by screaming because someone turned the TV off, took a toy or dumped Bailey's water dish.

Living better? Challenge accepted

Did you know there's something called referring spam? I don't understand the whole of it, but from my experience so far it makes it look like you have a ton of pageviews when really NO ONE is looking at it. My ego burst when I realized that, no, it's very unlikely that so many people in Russia and Germany would give a shit what I'm writing about and all these "pageviews" I was suddenly getting were probably due to this random website that kept showing up as a traffic source.

Fuck you referring spam. Instead of 600-plus pageviews, I probably have something closer to like 300. I'm guessing. I hope it's more than that, but truly have no idea because there are rarely comments and I have a grand total of three public followers.

I'm done letting something as ridiculous as pageviews get me down, because that's exactly what happened. Considering my livelihood once came from a byline, I have a tendency to thrive on and feed off of the knowledge someone is reading what I write.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I feel better.

Crazy lady with a green thumb

Composter- 1, Gardener- 0

I was so excited about my new composter. Who am I kidding? I'm still excited despite having to shovel decomposing vegetable matter off the concrete slab we call a porch when the door flew open and popped off spewing the contents. I'm slightly surprised the neighbors didn't call over to ask what that smell was — because it was wretched.

So now the goal is going to be to move this mammoth tumbler from where it is to somewhere else once the weather breaks and the ground is a little less spongy.

My spring time "to do" list is slowly growing. As I write this, I can think of at least three things I want to be doing outside. First and foremost, playing with the kids. A close, very close, second is getting the garden tilled and expanded. Third, I want go crazy fixing the flower bed out front, but I'm not nearly as excited about that because I'm self conscious about people seeing my gardening tactics. They're fairly stealthy and not an exact science, and on occasion naughty words fly out of my face and I hear my older child repeating them later in the day. It's not a pretty sight.