How do you . . .
2007-07-16, 9:56 a.m.

Day 1058

Saturday morning bike ride derailed by grocery shopping. Shoulda got out sooner. Saturday afternoon ride cancelled due to precipitation. Early Sunday morning? More rainy weather. Late Sunday morning/early afternoon? Corn Hill Arts festival. Nice way to spend a few hours, people watching, listening to music, gawking at all the pottery & paintings. Came away with another bookshelf for the ever expanding collection of cookbooks.

Spent Sunday afternoon doing yard work. Got the front & side mowed, started the back and Eric took over. He�d finished the string trimming, so I started weeding. And weeding, and weeding. Just cleared the veggie garden 2 weeks ago. Had a nice crop of Crabgrass, purslane, spotted spurge and sheeps quarters growing. None of them are cash crops, so of course they grow the best.

This weeks haul was mostly purslane . Hmmm, after reading that, I may have to change my opinion of purslane as a cash crop. Who knew it was edible? Dangit, I just tossed out 20lbs of salad!!

The veggies used to suffer from being browsed by woodchucks. Especially the beans. Finally, this year, after the construction of a fence and my personal woodchuck eradication program (18 and counting, by various methods) I have seen no woodchucks in my yard, nor have I seen any signs of fresh burrowing under my shed or in the neighboring woods. This is good. But the beans? They are not good. Who are the culprit(s) this time? Deer. Probably the same damn deer that ate my arborvitae plants the last 3 winters and browse on my &*$% hosta too. Bastards.

Now, I�ve eliminated all but a few of the arborvitae (tree of life, if you translate from the latin. White Cedar if you like regular names) and planted euonymus (burning bush is one type) and Dwarf Alberta Spruce. But the deer!! Can�t lick this problem. Deer can clear a 6 foot tall fence from a standing start. My little 2.5 foot woodchuck barrier? A joke to them. I can�t trap or shoot deer (legally) in my yard. Plus, I think they come at night, so the odds of me catching them in the garden and scaring them off is very, very low. Scare crow? Lame. Motion detector and a tape loop of barking dogs? Piss off the neighbors.

Now, the deer didn�t do the total annihilation that the woodchucks do. They left the a good chunk of the plants behind. They only sorta grazed the tips a bit. We may still get some beans, just not quite as many. Maybe we can work out a bit of a truce with the deer. Otherwise the solution may be to not plant beans for a few years and see if the deer lose interest.

The title: How do you . . . As I was weeding, almost in a nice meditative state, I was wondering. How do you start the conversation that ends with �I can�t tell you what to do, but I wish you�d try AA for a few years�.

In my near meditative state, I think I realized you can�t start that conversation, you need to fall into it. Even though the words, �I can�t tell you what to do . . .� may be voiced, the second half is still a statement meant to exert control. This is worth talking to my sponsor about. Especially since I told him Thursday I needed to talk to him more and make better use of his knowledge. He�s just so freakin laid back about things and it seems I need someone to push me a bit. Maybe I need to push me. Hmmmmm.

Things with my CL acquaintance are moving along. She�s proposed becoming movie buddies. I haven�t said no. We swapped phone numbers and were emailing about chatting on the phone over lunch. Somehow, CL hinted at meeting vs. talking on the phone. Turns out I have a dental appt. Tuesday afternoon in the town where she works, so we may be getting together for lunch in a diner across the street from my dentist. We�re intending it to be an innocent, get together. We�ll see how that goes. The good thing? There needs to be a hard end to this little rendezvous. She�s got work, I�ve got that appointment. We may not hit it off well. It happens. I�m really just looking for some contact with a sober adult, outside of work that I�m not related to. Well, besides my Al Anon compadres.

Of course, if CL is 5�2� has 3 missing teeth and is 200+ lbs, we have no problems. If she turns out to be more like 5�4� and <150, oh boy. Even 5�9� and 180 � 190 would be dangerous. Have to see if she wants too, or even can swap a photo or two. Heck, she has a cell phone, don�t they all have cameras these days?

One quick thing compliments of PZ over at pharyngula, this is too cool: The $600
iSmoothie .

Better go get some work done. Need to get what�s left of my mind off a few things. Especially that overly fruity, alcohol fueled morning breath I got to whiff this morning. Eeww.

If you use a pop-up blocker, hit "Ctrl" when you click to leave a comment