Frenzied Daddy

I had a conversation about a year ago with my boss; he wanted to know why I had “blown off” an entire day of work, with plenty of high priority projects in the queue. It was one of those days where I was supposed to get a million things done for work, for home, for other projects, and I hadn’t been taking my brain drugs and had, in fact, spent the entire day reading a book.

I don’t do it often, especially when I’m taking my drugs, but I’d be lying if I said I was perfect.

I had retreated from the high stress world of everything I was supposed to do into some easier world. Like spending my day watching Oprah and One Life to Live. It’s hard not to do that yesterday, today and tomorrow — I have work to get done and a full time job to find, but books are seductive and easy. I’ve reread a couple of Linnea Sinclair Romance-Science Fiction novels, but really, I’m trying hard to stay productive.

The TT and I put in a small raised bed with tomatoes, peas and radishes.

The DQ has the same problem. She’s been hiding in books rather than doing her “boring” homework (some Outdoor School vocabulary books, her normal geography, that sort of stuff). On the one hand, it’s great that she’s reading (it’s fan-tastic that she likes reading), and she is even supposed to read 1000 pages every quarter of school (part of her grade depends on it). On the other, it’s frustrating to have to punish her for not doing her homework.

Both of us have a similar problem; hiding in the books to avoid work/homework. How would you suggest I teach her to focus on her homework?

Frenzied Daddy, you’ve mauled the grass, butchered the roses, defoliated an entire microecosystem… What are you doing now?

Drinking my coffee and going back to work! I’m listening to small is the new bigby Seth Godin and plugging away on some audio stuff for CelleCast. I’m also trying to figure out how to make another site not have to be read from a subdir ( like www.example.com/blog ). Once those few tasks are complete, I can focus on some other ideas for making a buck online

This FreeLance Switch article on why one should work with smaller jobs ( and getting paid more frequently than monthly ) rung a bell for me. I love working with FileFront but with the size of some of our bills, I’ve got to keep working these side jobs. One of them does pay monthly, but also quickly; I send out invoices and they write a check usually that same day and mail it out. That’s ok, most of my bills come in at regular intervals.

I prefer the checks because Paypal takes a small but noticable cut out of the amount, and it would take the same amount of time to transfer my money from paypal as it would to have the check mailed.

Hope your weekend is fun, relaxing and productive!

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”

Are yummy delicious blueberries still considered healthful when baked with …brown sugar, oats and butter and served with vanilla ice cream?

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood; a beautiful day to be neighbors. It’s the second year since we moved in eleven years ago that I mowed the back yard in March. I found grass, blackberries, and dog poo. Lots and lots of dog poo.

We also planted flowers- some little yellow ones and some pansies and some strawberries. Just a few to make it a little more sunny in the yard. Something about bright yellow-orange flowers appeals to me and makes me feel summery. Like marigolds. I planted marigolds in a little patch when we lived in Fort Richardson and took them to my teacher. I also love sunflowers; their silly size makes me giddy and their yellow glow makes me warm.

Dandelions, however, I’m not too fond of

With weeds and bugs, and bits of mugs.
bountiful tomatos and flowering potatoes,
with beans, spinach, and nettle-itch.
That’s how our garden grows.

I don’t consider myself much of a gardener. I just plonk the plants in the dirt, throw some water at em, and wonder later why they don’t have any fruit. But I have been doing this garden-thing for about five years now, and I have to admit, maybe I’m getting the hang of it.

For instance, on the paper route, one of my customers has a small raised bed, and I walked past it last week and said “Hey guy, you let your red sails go to seed.” As if I knew! Well- I’ve let my lettuce go to seed often enough to recognise what it looks like, and red sails seems to be the most common kind of red leaf lettuce grown ’round these parts.

When I plant, I hate having to weed- and my response to that is usually just to plant closer together. However, this year I put grass clippings on the dirt around the zucchini plants (no seeds in the grass) to “mulch” the dirt. Last weekend, I happened to be delivering the Sunday Paper and it was light enough for me to see a customer’s tomato plants. They had put brown hay – or maybe dead grass – around the base of their tomato plants. Not much, just some. Which reminded me of the description of mulching I had read in one of my gardening books: that if you mulch with green mulch (ie fresh grass trimmings), the mulch sucks nitrogen out of the dirt, and when the mulch turns brown the nitrogen goes back in- also the organic material is good for the dirt. So I could put some more grass clippings around the tomato plants and the cukes, et cetera, but I probably want to use the brown grass left on the patio from last week’s mowing.

I don’t consider myself much of a gardener- but I’m getting there Maybe someday I’ll actually have strawberries the cutworms (caterpillars) don’t eat.

No, these aren’t martians; they’re artichokes, and they’re six feet tall! Delicious, and nutritious, and weird looking.
This is the third year for this particular set of ‘chokes, and each year they produce more.

This little tomato is a “Thai Pink” – I think it’s a cherry type of tomato. It’s growing fast, and already has flowers. It’s only been in the garden one week!