The Listing Habit I get from my Mother.

My first day off in a week and a half! I'm not quite organized enough in my head to sit down and write you all something cohesive, but I miss chatting with you when the internet decides to only work sometimes. I will write you points.

A. The garden has recovered and is enjoying New York spring. Lettuce, sunflowers, and radishes (thanks for the seeds, Aunt Karen) are up and the tomatoes and peppers are in and doing well.

B. The job at the bakery is great, but the owner encourages snacking and I'm going to have to control myself better than I have been.

C. Being tired and hungry when I get home from work at 9pm has lead to some pretty destructive food habits. All I have been craving is fresh, tasty stir fry, skewers of chicken satay, and giant salads topped with juicy grilled chicken, but all I have been eating are bags of chips and pints of Ben and Jerry's. I've never been one to believe that strict diets are healthful, but mine needs serious whipping into shape. I want to modify my diet to fit with my work schedule, or I will not fit into my summer wardrobe.

D. I also need to get more physical activity. With the DVR on the TV, I've got a week's worth of Yoga programs stored and I like them, but I need to do the cardio and weight training too.

E. I have a very persistant internal edit button. I know the edit button is just there to keep me safe from criticism and to keep me from hurting other people, but sometimes I really really hate knowing I'm restricting myself all because I fear external reaction. Nowhere do I feel the Button's hulking presence more than when I'm trying to write for this blog. I started and stopped this post at least a dozen times, worried that anything I said would be boring and unamusing and uninsightful and that I would dissapoint people if it wasn't perfect.

The complete, unfortunate truth is that I'm not perfect. I really need to work on the self-delusion that if I'm not, I don't deserve to be loved and cared for. You who read this blog either care about me and will keep reading regardless of what I do or do not say, or you actually like what I say when I'm being genuinely myself, or you don't read my blog. No one has everleft me a critical comment or writen a dissapointed e-mail but even if they had, I suppose none of what anyone else says or does can change who I am or how I feel about myself anyway- that's all up to me. So all I can do is say what I'm thinking, and work on my Stuff (as Havi says), and not put my own issues on anyone else's shoulders.

F. I knew that if I started with the little stuff and kept writing, that the stuff I actually wanted to articulate would come spilling out. That's how it works. It's my process. All my good papers in college happened that way.

G. August is going to be a big month for me. I have a little start up money now and I'm going to establish my Fiberworks here in Fly Creek Valley. I'll be selling handdyed yarn and authoring patterns. I'm planning to open an online store front through Etsy, that great purveyor of the modern artist and the handcrafter in August, so stay tuned for all the news about little Midwestern Kate building a fiber company.

Locavore

Well, it looks like the late frost did in most of the seedlings I had planted- the cosmos, cucumbers, and cabbage were all done for. Luckily, I think all the broccoli will make it and the parsley (which I covered with pots from the kitchen) wasn't even phased. The moral of the story is listen to the freaking frost warning and cover the freaking plants.

I should have scraped together enough coverings to try to save them, but I honestly thought that cucumbers and cabbage would be hardy enough to survive a little frost. They survived Abigail The Anti-Plant Cat's repeated attempts to kill them by knocking over their planter tray and spilling dirt and baby plants everywhere. What's a little frost compared to a 7 lb ball of fur and teeth? Alas, it was one trauma too many and they are lost.

The seeds are coming up though and in another few weeks we'll have lettuce and radishes for the table. I'm planning a local food party to celebrate Midsummer, and backyard garden salad should definitely be on that menu. The goal is to only serve yummy foods raised or produced within a 100 mile radius, the closer to me the better. I doubt that it will be an inexpensive meal, especially considering I want it to be a small dinner party, but it's something I've wanted to do since moving out here, and I really hope it comes together.

Of course I'd like to serve local meat. I wonder how expensive a good beef roast would be? Should I stick with cheaper chicken? Or go adventurous and get some lamb or rabbit? All these options (and more!) are available at the Cooperstown farmer's market, well within my radius.

My guess is that unless I can find some nearby farmer who grows wheat, I'm going to be severely handicapped by a lack of flour. Given this roadblock I could either use another starch (potato maybe?) or give myself the leeway to follow 1850 rules and let myself use store bought staples. What do you all think? Is that cheating?

dust buster

We bought a new vacuum cleaner.

I had very little to do with the purchase, really. Since Brett brought a vacuum with him when we moved out here, it was pretty much his call. While I was away in the Midwest, it was determined that this minor appliance would no longer make the cut. It was a fairly sad piece of equipment; the brushes didn't really spin and there wasn't much in the way of suction, but it had worked well enough we thought. But that week, Brett called me and said that we would just have to get a new one.

Which, as you might imagine, did not make me terribly happy.

When I got back from my trip, Brett had already done a bunch of research online and pretty much already picked out a model that he liked. We trekked down to the Big Box Store in Oneonta. Feeling a little out of the loop and a little poor, I made some reluctant noises and annoyed faces and I insisted on looking at each of the vacuums they had in stock. The one he liked had a HEPA filter, a pet hair attatchement, a little tornado bucket instead of a bag- it's one serious cleaning tool. Still feeling a little pinched about the price, I eventually agreed with Brett that the one he picked looked best and we stuck it in the cart and headed to check out.

And you know what? He was completely right.

The thing is amazing!

Seriously, I've never been this psyched about an appliance before. We pushed it around the living room and filled the bucket multiple times on the first sweep. We kept pulling the bucket out and looking at it and every time we were shocked at how much dirt we had been living in. It even picked up all the cat fur in the big shaggy carpet upstairs, something the old vacuum never even came close to doing.

The only problem I can see is that being this thrilled and entertained by a freaking vacuum cleaner must mean I'm getting old...

Library

Today, Penelope Knits comes to you from the Village of Cooperstown Library porch where the paint may be peeling from the eight magnificent Corinthian columns, but the air smells of lilacs and a group of ladies sits and knits. No kidding! I showed up after walking around town for a little and having lunch with Brett at the park by the lake and lo and behold there was a group of knitting ladies, chatting about shawl patterns and sharing the local gossip.

I know I should go over and say hi, find out if they're a regular group or what, but I'm shy. What if they think I'm intruding? I'll have to tell you later what I decided to do.

In excellent employment news, I start working at the local bakery tomorrow! Now I have enough regular jobs that I think I should be able to catch my finances up and feel pretty comfortable by the end of the summer. And I know I've committed to the grocery store at least for a while since they've spent all this time training me to work in the office, but I feel like I could quit there come September when (hopefully) I'll be full time employed at the bakery. How awesome!

To make things even more excellent, I pretty much owe the opportunity to the girlfriend of one of Brett's co-workers. She is very friendly and a sci-fi geek like me. I think we're going to get along great.

I'm so happy about this turn of events I could giggle. From complete homesick misery to joy in one week!

Welcome Back

A few quick points:

1. I had an EXCELLENT trip home to Illinois, in which I traveled a total of 1116.4 miles (according to Google Maps) by car around the Midwest and about 1800 miles by plane to and from the Midwest.

2. We've had frost warnings here the last two nights. I planted broccoli, cabbage, cucumber, parsley, and cosmo seedlings a few days ago, hoping that they would be able to survive cool temperatures, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't need to deal with frost. (A danger which was supposed to be over three weeks ago here in the middle of NY, by the way!)

3. I've got lots of patterns in the works over here and I can't wait to have a spare month of bright warm summer days to just sit on a blanket in the sunny back yard, letting the scent of apple blossoms waft over me and and let my creative self go nuts. A girl can dream, right?

To the KC Socks

Dear Socks,

I think I was seduced by the first blush of your heady color work, your strong deep blue, your fanboy charm. All I know is I had to have you.

Now, we both know, the bloom is off the rose and you sit, languishing in my work basket. Believe me, nothing about you has changed. You're still the wonderful, charming socks you were back when I first cast you on. I know we have some issues to address, like getting your color work and your patterning to be a little easier for me to deal with. But I've been so focused on work I haven't really been paying enough attention to you. I've let us drift apart.

It's not you, it's me.

Tell you what, I'll take you with me tomorrow on the plane (and bring a self addressed envelope to send you home in if they won't let me carry you on). We can spend the whole week together and really reconnect. Won't that be nice?

Love,
Kate

Leaving on a Jet Plane

It got cold here again. Boo.

But Wednesday night (if all goes well) I'll be on a plane headed back to the Midwest for my brother's college graduation. And to help set up my Mom's quilt show. And help LilBrudder move into his new apartment. And Mother's Day is kind of an added bonus. It'll be a big trip.

I'm looking forward to being home, but travel always makes me nervous, and air travel especially so. Not that I'm afraid to fly, but I don't enjoy all the ways the whole thing can go wrong. I'm already rehearsing everything that I could screw up so that I can make sue to leave early enough to have time to spare just in case. I've already decided not to take the computer, cause I don't want to hassle with it through security. I always forget to dump my water bottle, or take my keys out of my pocket or something as I'm trying to rush to get my stuff in the buckets and not hold up everyone else in the line. I worry too much about disappointing or inconveniencing these random strangers in line and let the worry of it screw up nights of sleep before hand. Lame, yeah?

Albany is a small airport, though. The last time I was there, it took up maybe 15 minutes to get from the door to the gate, but that was at 3 in the morning and this time I'll be on the latest flight I could get and it'll probably be busier, and I'm limited as to when we can leave by work. I'll have about 45 minutes to get to the gate, which should be enough (barring me screwing up), but I'd feel better with another half an hour. I'm actually nervous that I'll miss my flight.