Operation Pink Herring

With silver bells and cockle shells and a healthy dose of competive spirit

I was just joking about winning an imaginary gardening competition, but it turns out you actually CAN win at gardening, and guess what, internet?  You are looking at the recipient of the Most Improved Garden Plot prize, a very official and prestigious prize awarded via a confusingly worded mass email from the Head Gardener.  I'm waiting to hear if we get get a blue ribbon to hang on our plot marker or what, but I'm sure there will, at the very least, be a solid gold trophy and some serious bragging rights involved. 

I was afraid this entire hobby going to burn hot and fast and end in heartbreak when I failed to coax a single green leaf from our clumpy, neglected soil, but so far it's still fun. (Joel is not quite as delighted as I am, since the novelty of gardening wore off for him around the time he learned to walk.) My first crop of cucumbers failed and there are some sort of bugs nibbling away at my broccoli plants, but still!  Things are growing!  And I'm 90% positive that most of them are not weeds!

 

These, for instance, I'm positive are carrots.  Finally.  At first carrots sort of look like grass and you might be tempted to accidentally weed them. Just, you know, FYI.

The one trick that's been invaluable is starting seeds indoors.  The hippie magazine that gave me the idea and instructions was suggesting you should do it in order to start when it was still too cold to plant outside.  I, however, find the trick very useful because if it's growing in your pot inside, you can be pretty damn sure it's lettuce, and not a lettucy-looking weed impostor.  Everything looks pretty similar when it's a millimeter tall.

So I've been doing that, making little pots of out newspaper and keeping them in an old litterbox for easy transportation.  When it's going to be cold out overnight, I can bring my preshus baby plants inside for safekeeping.  And when they get big enough to go out in the soil, I can just plant the entire little pot.  Genius, these hippie magazines!  Joel bought me a subscription.

Of course, the magazine didn't give any instructions about how to deal with the separation anxiety.  I told these tiny cucumbers to call me if it got too cold and I'd come and pick them up, no questions asked.  And I reminded them that if that stupid rabbit comes sniffing around they're not to talk to him, under any circumstances.  No plant of mine is going to go hanging around with rabbits.  Do you think they're OK?  Maybe I should go and check on them.  

I find it fascinating to watch my plants grow and I'm repeatedly amazed that a tiny seed can become a plant and produce edible substances. Here's my broccoli at two weeks, four weeks and six weeks.  Aren't they the best little growers you've ever seen?  (Man, when I have a baby you had all better run for cover, because let me tell you: I honestly do think this little broccoli is the smartest, biggest, most handsome broccoli on the whole block.)

Yesterday was a big day in Gardenland, as it saw the first ever harvest in our award-winning garden.  That's our award-winning lettuce, which I used to make some award-winning salads and put on some award-winning burgers last night. 

And that one colander full of lettuce makes the entire week I spent pulling weeds and wishing I had a pet Clydesdale totally worth it. 

April 1:

May 23: 

TMI, perhaps

When people talk about jobs and offices in general they seem to focus only on the actual work stuff: title, responsibilities, salary, etc.  That's all important, sure, but I think that things like general office culture and the suckiness of the commute are just as vital to overall job satisfaction.  If you could make a boatload of money saving baby dolphins from cancer, that would be super, right?  But what if you had to sit in traffic for three hours each morning and then sit in a basement office with cinderblock walls for eight more hours?  People tend to discount things like working in the basement and never seeing the light of day EVER, but these things can make you pretty miserable even if you do spend all your office energy saving dolphins and curing cancer. Uh, I assume.  

So, my new job (and I swear, after this I will officially stop talking about it) is pretty great except for one big problem: the bathroom situation.  At my old office we had a giant ladies' room, with three banks of toilets, two rows of sinks and a freaking COUCH. I never took advantage of the couch (I'm not really sure what it was for... napping?  Relaxing with a cup of coffee?), but I liked knowing that it was there.  I also liked the ability to easily head for the other side of the bathroom if, say, I entered as the same time as my supervisor. 

There was also another smaller bathroom at the other end of the hall that had soft lighting and a little vestibule and a vase with silk flowers on the counter.  This was referred to as The Nice Bathroom.  I hardly ever used it because it was about fifteen steps farther away than The Regular Bathroom and I am lazy. 

I never thought that the thing I'd miss most about my old job was the bathrooms, but after three weeks of using the teeny tiny (you have to turn to the side to squeeze by if someone's coming out when you're coming in) three-stall facility shared by the entire department (OMG) here, let me tell you: I REALLY miss those bathrooms.  You see, I suffer from a serious medical condition known as Stage Fright.  I absolutely cannot pee when I can see the shoes of my boss's boss's boss six inches away from my own.  And that's even worse, because then I'm sitting there silently and they probably think I'm in there to do something other than pee, when really I'm silently chanting LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE I HAVE TO PEE.  And then there's the awkwardness of making conversation over the sink.  What do you say?  "So... come here often?" "Have a nice time in there?" 

The whole situation makes me extremely anxious, so much so that I went to a different floor to use their bathroom at one point last week. Yes. 

It seems like a silly gripe, but I really like coffee and coffee makes me pee seventeen times a day.  I don't want to get caught slinking off to the other floor's bathroom and become That Girl Who Pees In Secret.  I also really, really don't want to pee next to my boss.  It seems the only choice is to give up fluids entirely.  I'm sure that's healthy.  

I've got a tendency to gripe about the many ways men have things easier than women. Hair dyeing, leg shaving, period having; I'll take all of it because oh my god can you imagine: URINALS. All of a sudden I'm grateful to be the one who gets stuck with childbirth.