…place your head between your knees… *

For about the fifth or sixth time today, I am finding it necessary to stop and BREATHE. This morning, we met with the accountant who is handling our taxes and the city’s lawsuit against us. He was reassuring in that he’s certain we will not have to appear in court on Monday morning. That was the good news. The bad news is that we screwed up our taxes big time. Apparently in ‘05 we really underestimated how much we owed the city; now we’ll have to pay the amount owed along with penalties and interest and all that great stuff.

I keep repeating to myself my (insane?) mantra: It’s only money. It’s only money. We’ll make more, we’ll use more, we’ll lose more, we’ll not starve, we’ll not be put out of our home. It’s. Only. Money. It is not our health. It is not our art. It is not something that cannot be replaced. It. Is. Only. Money.

This is maybe not the best mantra for someone running a business. Now, back to reconciling accounts.

*
(… and kiss your ass goodbye.)

I’ve been a little reluctant to post a new post after that sweet, sweet letter that D wrote me. I just kept coming back to my blog and re-reading it. I know that I am loved. I will be fine. We’ll get through, it, whatever it may be.

Yet life and its insecurities rage on. I don’t know if it’s safe to write about using illegal drugs on one’s blog, no matter how anonymous it is (and this one’s not all that successful at anonymity!) So I am only going to say this: that if I were to be the sort of gal who enjoys a puff or two of a relaxing kind of smoke from time to time when the kiddos are safely put away on their shelves, then now would be a pretty good time to seek such relaxation.

In fact, D and I are both pretty anxious right now. I hadn’t mentioned this before (probably because of denial, shame, or whatever) but we’re being sued by the lovely city of brotherly love. It’s because apparently our accountant made a mistake on our 2001, or maybe it was our 2002, tax returns. It seems that our city taxes were not filed, or not filed properly.

Since I’m someone whose eyes glaze over and ears seemed stuffed with fluff whenever taxes are discussed, I honestly don’t fully get what happened, or when, or why. I just know that our tax situation requires that a (new) professional accountant deal with it. In order to avoid the $5000 fine and being required to appear at a hearing, the city requires that we file (or re-file, if it was filed) no later than three days before the hearing. If we do, the hearing’s cancelled, the $5000 fine is avoided.

The hearing is August 11. When we’re in upstate NY on vacation. Talking to the accountant’s office today, he said they’d get right to it and work on our taxes. Um… please hurry the fuck up, ok? I mentioned to the clerk I spoke with that there’s this little $5000 fine we’re trying to avoid, and the little lawsuit we’re trying to have dropped… and the best he could say is that they’re going to get started on it right away.

Anxiety much? Now you can understand why I might just be interested in something that might take the edge off. Ease the freak-out a little.

I am also anxious about packing for our vacation (remember my little problem with packing for a ONE NIGHT STAY recently? Well how’s about a two week trip to the middle of nowhere NY where you have to drive 30 miles to get anywhere civilized?) I am perhaps equally anxious about preparing for next year and working as the after school teacher at this wonderful little school. It’s like being pregnant in a way. You get to this point where you suddenly remember OH SHIT! I’M GOING TO GIVE BIRTH! AM I READY FOR THIS?

The fact is I am NOT ready. I am far from ready. I also am not feeling ready for the simple daily life functions of getting my kids up daily, dressed, fed and out the door to go to school on time each day. I am not ready to pay my business bills, either. I really need to do much more, or else face serious consequences.

It’s also 11:52 AM and I am not ready to feed my kids their lunch today. I didn’t get them an adequate breakfast, yet, either, though they both ate something.

And here I am just lolling in anxiety to the point where I wonder if it would be a good idea to take part in some kind of relaxing herbal refreshment (what my pals and I sometimes called it when we were teens).

I need to get my shit together. Perhaps the first thing to do is get dressed and go buy some food. I’ll need some snacks later on if I go with the whole herbal refreshment plan, anyway.

Dear Pann,

Just over a month ago, our 10th anniversary came and went, without either of us taking much notice. Oh sure, we knew it was happening, and we wished each other a happy one, and we received well-wishings from families and friends. But on the actual day of our anniversary, I was traveling home from a business trip, you were recovering from two weeks of running summer camp (with a visit from your nieces in the middle), we were getting ready for the onslaught of OT, summer freelance work, Cammie’s trip, and the kids being home all the time, not to mention Carla’s birthday, and we just didn’t have time to celebrate properly.

I’m hoping we can make up for that during our upcoming vacation. I’m doing my damnedest to tie up loose ends before I go away, so we can really enjoy the vacation when it arrives. I’m hoping we can take some time for ourselves during that trip to celebrate:

• 15 years since we met
• 14 years since our first date
• 13 years of living together
• 10 years of marriage
• 8 years of parenthood
• 2 wonderful children

…along with all the other, more mundane aspects of our lives– too many meals, school drop-offs, loads of laundry, doctor visits, and so forth to count.

After all this time, it’s important to say that I love you more than ever. And I think you and I have gotten better and better at having a life together, and understanding where we each are coming from. Our communication has improved. We’ve gotten better at asking each other for what we want. Not to say that we are perfect– we both have our flaws, and they come out most acutely when we are trying to communicate about our feelings. But we’ve gotten better over the years at figuring out how to do this, and I can only see us continuing to get better.

It’s been exceedingly difficult watching you go through the pain of depression. I wish there was some way I could reach into you and take away your pain. My heart bleeds every time I see you struggling with self-doubt, self-blame, and self-hate. I’m confident in you, I forgive you, and I love you– I wish you could do the same.

Our lives are going to continue to change, and it’s clear that figuring out how to make everything work is going to be an ongoing challenge. But after 10 years of marriage, I know I want to keep facing those challenges with you.

Happy anniversary.

All my love,
Drob

C (making homemade sock puppet toy talk): Sweetie, we have to get married! I’m pregnant!
A (holding other puppet toy, talking for it): It’s okay, you can just have the baby. You’ll see, everything will be alright. You can have a baby first, before you get married.

Memo to self: have that birth control talk with the girls before they turn, what, 10?

I think cooking with a crock is awesome… even though I don’t know what I am doing, things seem to turn out yummy.

(Hey, kids, this isn’t a restaurant. You’re getting what I cooked for dinner and you’re going to like it.)

That approach isn’t all that successful, but hey, if they’re hungry, they’ll eat, right?

De-Clutter: (verb) 1. “to painfully throw away tons of stuff that you thought you should keep for the past fifteen years but turns out you just left in a huge heap in your closet causing you to be unable to find the few things you actually wanted, and then later forgot that you even owned.”

2. “To Take neatly stacked piles of things from closet and spread all over room, causing your skin to crawl and mind to explode and dinner to not get made even though you are really, really, really hungry.”

3. “Reclaiming emptiness from mess.”

I had an anxiety dream about my job that starts in the fall. In my dream, the school year had begun, and I forgot to show up to work. Instead, I tried just picking up my kids and going home. I was greeted by all the kids there at school, who were all hungry and tired from their first day of school. What’s for snack? was the constant refrain. It was then I realized that I was supposed to be their after school teacher.

And I’d kind of forgotten to prepare for that, as I also forgot to show up to the job. I rooted then through the pantry, trying to find some snacks left over from camp. Then I tried to get the kids to do some kind of activity. The hostility from the older kids was intense. They rolled their eyes at me, walked out of the room, snickering behind their hands. It was awful.

When I woke up from this, my heart was beating kind of fast. I realized with a jolt that the summer is halfway gone. What am I doing this summer, I asked myself? My life is so disorganized. I have no structure. I am not taking care of business, and I’m not getting this place ship-shape. I am not planning ahead for the fall.

That dream was a wake-up call. I need to get myself in order. But I feel really stuck, paralyzed. I don’t know what I can do to get out of this feeling of trying to move a mountain. I am just able to get to OT appointments and provide three meals (sometimes just two) to the kids each day.

This is not an easy place to be, mentally. I feel really stuck.

Seems that Mondays are when I do the running around. Making a lot of stops with my two gals in tow is tiring under the best of circumstances. Doing so in 90 degree summer humid heat is really tiring. And doing so after a long (very fun!) weekend at the beach is really, really, tiring.

No wonder I am sitting here feeling utterly wiped out. We picked up our CSA delivery today, and oh my! What lovely freshness! What beautiful produce. At long last, the tree fruits are hitting their stride. We received five pounds of peaches and two pounds of little sweet plums this week. Tomatoes are in, and we have two beautiful pints of assorted cherry / grape tomatoes along with four generous slicing tomatoes.

The squash are here and threating to take over the fridge. Good thing I managed to make Carla into a squash lover, simply by not calling the stuff “squash”. She refers to them by fancier names. For example, she’s OK with eating courgettes but definately not zucchini. She loves Crookneck but not so much plain yellow squash. She’ll eat Straightneck, too. She was very hesitant to eat PattyPans but came around once she realized they taste just like crookneck.

Marketing. I tell you, it’s all in the marketing!

So my fridge is stuffed to the brink with all these great veggies (lots of lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans, new potatoes) and so I need to plan for some good cooking. My own garden looks like it’s coming along at last, too, with some cukes, lots of basil, some purple green beans, and tomatoes are getting started.

Unfortunately, it’s so hot down in the kitchen that it really puts a damper on my excitement about cooking. I mean, who wants to be in the kitchen when it’s 90 degrees out? We have no air conditioning in the kitchen, you see. As a matter of fact, our kitchen is my least favorite part of our home. I fantasize about fixing it up someday, but it’s a big, big project. It needs a total overhaul. Walls need to be taken down. Floor needs to be replaced. Ceiling, lighting, cabinets, everything should be replaced.

We just don’t have the dough right now to hire a contractor for something huge like that; and we’re not handy ourselves.

So for now, I just make do with what we’ve got. And what I’ve got a is a lot of squash. Er, courgettes and crookneck, I mean. Yum.

I think I have some kind of freakish aversion to packing. Unpacking, too. I just do not like it. I avoid it.

That is why, here I am, after midnight, without any clothes packed or organized, and maybe not even clean. And we’re hoping to leave for the shore First Thing After Breakfast tomorrow.

Part of the problem stems from not knowing what I want to wear. That alone can keep me stalling for hours. The other problem is when clothes aren’t washed and ready to be packed anyway. A huge pile of laundry in the hallway suggests it’s not very promising.

Plus the car is a mess (again!?) The only good thing about that is that most of the stuff in there is quite useful. I mean, other than the garbage. I can usually find a spare pair of undies for one of the kids should they happen to need it, by rooting around in the clothing in the car.

I just don’t like being disorganized, but at the same time, I am really mired by the messes that are in the way. They just stop me, in my tracks. I do something else instead.

I was actually extremely active today, which is weird because it was so damn hot. Not the kind of day where you feel like being out and about a lot, but we were.

Carla’s new filling has been bothering her, so we were off to the dentist this morning to have it adjusted. She did incredibly well, making only a few pathetic whines when the dentist used a noisy tool to reduce the size of the filling. Noises scare her, but she was brave and it was over pretty fast.

After the dentist, we headed to do some grocery shopping, and then brought it home and put it away. By then it was time to head to Annie’s occupational therapy. Annie did great work, as they always say at OT, and it’s true that she is a very cooperative kid. She throws a heavy ball, does animal walks, scoots on a scooter on her belly, and draws and cuts in the ways she is supposed to. We are trying to get her to increase her strength and use her hand muscles so that she can write more effectively. I wonder sometimes if it’s really going to be relevant in her future — how she hold the pen. But the therapy is covered by insurance, and much of it is fun, and she doesn’t seem to mind it, so I figure it may help. And it’s certainly not harmful.

After an hour of OT, we headed over to the swim club, and to my garden. With this hot weather, I knew my plants would be thirsty as heck, so while the girls frolicked and swam in the pool, I sweated like crazy under the sun in the garden. I am delighted to report that there are jalapeno peppers, purple greenbeans, itty bitty tomatoes, itty bitty eggplants, and a wee little pumpkin! There is also hope that maybe the bunnies won’t eat all of it before I get to! A few more cucumbers are growing nicely, and the pumpkin vines are lovely even if we don’t get a 100 pound pumpkin out of the deal.

After the swim club, we went shopping! And to McDonald’s to use the bathroom, which prompted my kids to beg for food (oh yeah, food! Right! Sure!) and of course an LPS toy with the happy meal. I convinced them to only get one happy meal, this way they’d not get two of the same toy again. (which is so boring!)

After McD’s, we headed home. It was a lot of stuff to do.

So you see, I had no time to pack. All day. And now, I’m kinda wiped out. But I’ll swing into action at any moment. Just you wait and see!

This year I had extra ambition and rented two plots in the community garden, rather than just one. And they are bigger plots than last year, because when we tilled at the beginning of the season, we tilled right into the path. This is the path along the edge of the fence, so it’s no big deal.

I’d estimate our patch is about 23 feet by 12 feet. Big! Very Big! There is still one big bed that is basically empty. I put in tomato seeds, way late into the season. But who knows? Maybe these little seedlings will grow and give us a late harvest.

My free time to plan and organize this big garden was pretty limited this spring and early summer, and we got off to a late start.

So now that we are into July, I’m feeling a bit impatient and also frustrated by both insect damage and rabbits who seem to like bean plants, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and more. We are free of damage from deer this year, as far as we can tell. The new fence seems to keep them out. How else could I explain the fact that there are actually tomatoes on the vines?

We must have been invaded by rabbits last year, too, but because there was so much deer activity, we blamed it all on them. Now I know that bunnies are brutal.

Today I went to the garden to harvest my first cucumber, knowing it should be about ripe. I found that about half of it was left; the rest clearly chewed away by Peter Rabbit. There are three more still growing on the vine, within a few days they should be ready to harvest. I sure hope that the bunnies will chance to leave them be.

Bunnies also are responsible for chomping down little bean plants all throughout our garden, all except one little patch in my plot, where I am starting to see some little tiny purple green beans. (Purple green beans, you say? Are they purple or are they green? Well, they are a lovely shade of purple right now, but if you steam them, they turn green.)

Meanwhile, insects have eaten every bit of leaf off of the sunflower plants in our plot. Just really left nothing but stem, and the little buds at the top where the flowers will be.

I have several tomatillo plants that are coming up nice and fast. They are a quick growing item. I haven’t seen yet any signs of blooming. Part of me keeps wondering: gee, are these really tomatillo plants or just some clever weed that grew here instead?

My tomatoes are blooming, and a few have little baby tomatoes on the vine, and that’s encouraging. I’ve got a crookneck squash plant with blossoms. I’ve got great looking basil, and a few marigolds to brighten up the place. My cayenne pepper plant has peppers, and so does my jalapeno plant. I’ve got a few eggplants that aren’t blooming yet, but are growing taller and looking more promising. And carrots that seem to be growing, though slowly, their little curly tops visible by the pepper plants.

So there is a lot of life happening in my garden — many varieties of veggies, and clearly it’s going to offer me something for my trouble. It’s really pretty hard work maintaining a garden. I really appreciate how much work it is to grow your own food.

I keep thinking: WHAT DID THE INDIANS DO? About pests like insects, deer and bunnies. They probably did something smart like trap the little bunnies and deer and eat them. That is not something I can reasonably do at the swim club.

Meanwhile, the pumpkin plants are looking fiesty and strong (let’s hope vine borers don’t attack them) and the watermelon plants are just getting started. I can tell you, though, in another plot I saw a baby melon that a rabbit had gnawed in half. EVIL RABBITS! If you touch mine, I really will KILL YOU! Ok, maybe not really.

I think I will invest in another fence to deter the rabbits further. Maybe even put in a Hav-a-heart trap. And then eat the rabbits after I club them to death.

Kidding.

I think.