04.16.09

life in the slow lane

Posted in shit happening at 4:04 am by ben

It has come to my attention that as a blogger I have become more of a slacker than I am in my offline life.  That’s really frickin’ impressive considering I’m pretty efficient at getting out of doing shit.  Just ask my husband… who incidentally is back doing housework again.  Yay!  Soon he will be going back to work and then with my luck I’ll probably miss the yappy, needy bugger.  Actually the last couple of weeks have been pretty good.  He is feeling much better, he’s quite a decent housewife and sometimes I actually find myself enjoying having him home so much.  I might actually love him… or it might be Stockholm Syndrome.

I’ve started a few posts over the past month and nothing is coming out right or somehow I don’t finish a post and then it feels too late to go back to it later.  I am wondering if I should just give up the blog all together.  The whole process just isn’t the same anymore and I guess it hasn’t in a while.  I want to write, I miss writing but I think my muse is all hopped up some downer shit and his elevator isn’t going to the top floor… hell I am not sure it’s even getting out of the basement.  My muse needs an intervention.  I don’t know what would rekindle blogging for me, or if anything could at this point.  The good (or bad) news is that I am not alone.  As I travel through the blogs of my friends it seems that most of them (you) have lost the mojo too.  Maybe we’ve just ridden this old nag into the dust.  Maybe it’s all been said.  I just don’t know.  If I had any kind of motivation I’d be fleshing out some of the story ideas that keep knocking around in my melon and trying to get seriously creative but my inner slug can always find easier things to do.

Speaking of production avoidances and melons, it’s gardening time!  Boy oh boy this post is getting more exciting with every paragraph.  I am a total garden geek.  Trixie was watching me transplant my tomatoes into larger pots and said “You are a regular Lorne Greene.”  I told her if she hung out with me enough I’d turn her into a regular Nancy Green.  We are so lame.  

I am totally the geek girl of gardening.  I don’t surf porn (often) I surf for gardening ideas.  I look up companion planting (which surprisingly is not about burying your spouse), raised bed ideas, zonal planting suggestions and tips on how to be more Mary Mary quite contrary.  I get totally dorky about it too.  I cut and paste the bits of articles that I want to remember and I save them all.  If I knew how to make charts and diagrams I’d probably do that too, instead I sketch out plans and planting maps.  Maybe I should just do a gardening blog, then when people can’t sleep they can come here and my posts will be like tranquilizers.  Gardening is relaxing.

I am even more intoxicated by the scent of fresh dirt this year since it’s been such a long-ass winter.  The snow is almost gone now, there are just a few piles left around the yard where apparently the sun does not shine.  Yes, apparently I do live in the asshole of the world.  We haven’t had any particularly balmy days yet but we have had some vitamin D and I have been getting out and soaking it up as much as possible.  I have cleaned up most of my flower beds, I planted a few things outside (garlic, marigolds and sunflowers, peas etc.) and I started the stuff that needs a longer growing season (tomatoes, peppers, melons, snapdragons etc.) in mini greenhouses in my living room.  OK, I’m putting myself to sleep now.

Moving on.

Our mayor died.  He was only 39 years old, a father of two young children and a man who had great hopes and plans for our town.  He was in India visiting his family when he had a massive heart attack.  I’ve known him since elementary school, he was a good man.  Very sad.  

If I wrote obituaries they’d be really short.

Trix and the family came home from their vacation in California.  I am over my bitterness, there is no point in the petty jealousy especially since it only hurts me and doesn’t punish them at all.  The kids were happy to see us and Harry bought himself and my husband matching t-shirts that say “Drinks well with others.”  I think the shirts should say “Drinks well with each other.”  Though neither of them is opposed to drinking alone either.  

Trix and Harry have their house up for sale, they’ve decided they want to buy an acre and move out to the boonies next to us which means we will no longer have a place to work.  Maybe we’ll retire.  Ha, not fucking likely.  We’ve talked about our options but we’re not going to get too worried about it until their house sells.  I just know I don’t want to move into a salon, there is too much bullshit and office politics that we currently don’t have or want.  We like working in our little bubble.

We went to the Nickelback/ Seether concert last week.  Seether was awesome, Shaun Morgan is amazing.  His voice just does it for me.  At one point he took the stage with Nickelback where he sang a Trent Reznor song that gave me goosebumps on my goosebumps.  I would see them again in a heartbeat.  I have however lost some love for Nickelback recently when it was pointed out to me that Chad (the lead singer) is a bit of a douche.  I don’t know why so many of the affluent and prominent have to be such assholes.  When did wealth give one a license to park one’s head up one’s rectum?!.  I wish it didn’t make me feel differently about their music but it does.  Now just for the record I don’t ever want anyone to tell me that Johnny Rzeznik is a dick.  If he is I am happy living in denial because i don’t want to know anything that will ruin him for me.  Goo Goo Dolls have a new disc coming out in June so I have already notified my comrades that they are the next concert I will be seeing… alone if necessary.  Wow, I think I had an HFO just thinking about it.

What else is new?

Last weekend we went to my cousin Jess’s for poker night.  We aren’t usually extended an invite but apparently his friends weren’t available that weekend.  The buy-in was only ten dollars which makes for a pretty cheap night of entertainment.  If you lost all your chips before ten PM you could buy back in and five of us took advantage of that opportunity which put 120$ in the pot.  My husband (who plays super slowly like he’s been huffing paint) was ahead most of the night and I really thought he was going to walk away with it but then he had a couple of bad hands (or good hands that didn’t go his way) and his ‘fortune’ was suddenly smaller than mine.  The last three in the game were me, Heiny and ALF (not his real name but he is definitely not from this planet).  ALF took my husband out (and not for dinner and a movie) and then there were two.  I’m still a rookie at this game compared to these people so not only was I surprised that I made it to the end, I was flabbergasted when I won.  ALF as second place got his buy-in back so I still walked away with a hundred bucks which actually made it a lucrative night out.  The only drawback to the evening was that I get such nervous anxiety playing the game that I drank a bottle and a half of wine which left my tongue feeling like it was growing cacti the next morning.  If I was that bad with people I know, I’d be in real trouble in Vegas.

Wow, I said a lot considering I had nothing to say.  

A giggle for the road?

Trixie’s son John got a guitar for Christmas and her husband Harry just bought himself one as well.  I told them when they move out here my husband can get a drum kit and we can jam.  Trix tapped her hand against her hip and said “Ben can sing and I’ll play the jamboree!”

17 Comments »

  1. klandeztin said,

    I hope you never stop writing. If you do, I will hunt you down and throw keyboard keys at you! LOL

  2. Chica said,

    Oops that previous comment was me. :)

  3. KingOfAnkh said,

    Well you did seem to have enough blogging fodder there for about seven posts, you just condensed it all into one, so you have plenty to write about. Keep going, you know you want to!

  4. Rox said,

    Um, even if I had to wait for six months for a post from you, it would be worth it!

    So, wanna come landscape my yard? Seriously, we have a lot of work to do this spring and I need some expert advice. I’m a yard ‘tard. :-) I’ve been wandering around the place with my winter boots still, mucking in the wet stuff and just waiting for the May Long Weekend!

    I’m glad Heiny isn’t driving you totally batshit crazy! Congrats on the Poker winnings! Woohoo!

    I gotta say, I smiled a little in my heart to know you lost a little love for Nickelback! Okay, I smiled a lot!

  5. LOTGK said,

    Your secret is now out….. :)

    • ben said,

      Patrick, I spill all of my secrets here, which one do you mean in particular?

  6. LOTGK said,

    Not you Ben, another certain someone who posted twice in a row. :)

    • ben said,

      Oh, lol, I thought that too and still never put it together :)

  7. Melissa said,

    You did have a lot to say! I’ve been in the same frame of mind with not writing much of anything. I hope you have a great weekend! Audrey and I are going to see the new movie 17 Again with Zac Efron. I can’t wait, a theater full of tween girls and raging hormones….

  8. Faith said,

    I *loved* this post. I don’t need stories to be entertained.. I just like hearing how you’re doing. I’m even entertained by your love of gardening. Teach me!! I just finally got my orchid from last year to sprout a shoot again, and I’m so happy about that I could cry. So I kinda share your excitement, even if I don’t have a backyard to really go crazy with.

  9. frombirthtodeath said,

    Don’t worry about not writing much. My has turned into a big suck and I just don’t want to write about it because it seems I can’t stop thinking about it. I’d rather not write when I’m in this frame of mind. So I don’t.

  10. frombirthtodeath said,

    PS. I looked up your town on google maps and my guess was pretty close – if you can count 550km north east as close.

  11. frombirthtodeath said,

    Ha! I tire too easily to be a stalker. Unless “stalker” is just a shorter description for “talking shit”, which HB says I do in abundance.

  12. Bitzky said,

    But this was a very proper post! And entertaining as well.

    Heart attack at 39? That’s a shame :(

    I am an anti-gardener. Plants die just from being in the same room with me :(

  13. Steve said,

    If you’re bored, come landscape my place. It’s hideous.

  14. Wow, I’ve missed your writing! Glad to see things are going okay for you ben! ttys – take care!


Leave a Comment