that's not my blog!

Today is Stellina's 3rd birthday!! I went to the toy store today with BieberBear (who came out of the experience with a new toy helicopter, the lucky dog) and we got Stellina a card, Cloudette, and That's not my... coloring book! which I kind of want for myself. So she will get her presents on Thursday when I take her to camp and then I get to hang out with Space Monkey. I guess I am invited to her birthday party on Sunday but it is in Alexandria and it will have many 3-year-olds, so as much as I love Stellina I do not want to add to the chaos. I am thinking about it.

it is also Cleo's birthday (that's a link to Cleo's mom's blog which she hasn't updated in a while, because um... parenting is really hard work) and it is weird to me that I remember being so excited for Cleo's birth and I have seen lots of pictures of her and I still have never met her, but since Stellina is the exact same age, I actually remember the day of Stellina's birth long before I ever knew Stellina.

We had some squash plants but then I weeded around them and it turns out that the weeds were giving them shade and holding water in the soil, so now the squash plants are dead. RIP Squash plants. I do not think that this year we will have a water pipe burst to rescue the squashes, but ... who really knows. I am not super great at keeping plants alive. Over the span of my life, I have about a 75% success rate at keeping plants alive. I'm sorry, squash. Requiescat in pace.

Today is Thursday

and I am cold.

I understand it is the case that I have not blogged in a long time. It is now October. It gets cold at night and often during the day it is not all that warm.

One of our biggest squashes is moldy?? Not rotting, moldy on the surface. I discovered this with no time to deal with it today, so I will deal with it tomorrow.

I have been listening to wayyyy too much pop music, but I did get to see the New Pornographers again on Sunday!

I was pretty disappointed by 30 Rock's live show last week, but I found the west coast show much more entertaining. Kelsey Grammer is guest on tonight's show!

I have almost finished my November budget! My finances are in pretty decent order, as it turns out.

For how short my attention span is, I can't stand flipping channels.

I keep having dreams that I wake up and my hair is long again.

Now that it is cold, Rhett is cranky again, and Zoe is cuddly except she keeps trying to escape.

Nine days until the Rally to Restore Sanity!

These are things that I know.

Hello Little Sproutlets!

DC WASA came and fixed our water leak, and dug up the front yard. I got an email from a Roommate NorCal while I was in NYC last Friday about how the Squash Monster was okay. I came home that night and looked at the squash all dug up and hanging out on the dirt and wondered what Roommate NorCal had been smoking. Squash Monster pretty much not okay.

Then on Monday, DC WASA came back and brought us "topsoil" and so I skipped ballet class and all other previous obligations and attempted some hack gardening. I was too lazy to go get mosquito spray at Rite Aid (which is two blocks away, so maybe I was just too broke), and it was about 90 degrees, and remember that our lawn had been a pond and we have the lovely shelter of a ginormo Squash Monster. The next day I started to count my bites, got to 15, realized I was halfway down my first leg, and gave up. Anyway I dove into the plant and cut off the parts that were very clearly dead and rearranged the bits that looked like they might be okay still. I dug a hole and put the okra plant in the ground with a tomato cage around it, and took off all the dead leaves which was all of them, and harvested the 6 inch okra dudes, because no one in my house pays attention to stuff like that. Then I dug some weirdly placed trenches and poured in some flower seeds just to see what would happen.

Because we don't have a giant water leak any more, OR a spigot at the front of our house, I have now assumed the responsibility of massive watering duty. This means filling up a huuuge bucket at the spigot in the back of our house and then hauling it through the house to the front, where then I fill up the watering can and water twice a day.

Here is the status on plants at our house.

Squash Monster: ALIVE! Flowers blooming! I think I saw one fruit today that might still be growing, but I would be super surprised if we got any fruits. It's still nice to know that it is alive.

Okra: Almost certainly dead. I'm gonna give it until I go home next week to rehabilitate, and if it's not alive and doing things by then, that is okay. No one knows how to harvest okras on time anyway.

Flowers: sproutingggggg! I do not particularly care if we get real flowers or not, I just want to have plants in the yard because right now we have dirt and a sickly squash and a dead okra. I have sproutlets, and they are alive.

Soon my bike will have yellow housings for brake and derailleur cables, and it will look so fly. I have been going on and on about yellow housings for so long that the bike shop [personified] just got sick of me talking about it and ordered them. when that happens my bike will be looking fly like this but I have yellow water bottle cages (and a black saddle) so even fly-er than that one.

Squashtopus

I am not very good at posting because my August got insane crazy, as my Augusts seem to trend!

Here is a funny thing.

Once upon a time in June, we thought our squash plant was going to die.


Now it is trying to eat the house. And the neighbors' house. and the dead tree, and the fence, and the everything ever.

Yes, that is one single plant. A SINGLE PLANT. ONE. JUST ONE SQUASH PLANT. it's gone all hydroponic on our asses.