Jack of All Trades

 In which our Heroine falls in Love (again). 

          I have a new love.  I know I’ve already exhausted the topic, but I am quite ardent about my little seedlings.  In a recent conversation with my mother, I was documenting my various successes as novice gardener.  I was astonished to hear her claim no love for planting seedlings.  Now, I can clearly remember her making a very successful go at corn and carrot seedlings in our garden, but I can’t recall much more about the small plants.  Nevertheless, I nearly dropped the phone at her casual pronouncement.  Not like seedlings?  What’s not to love?

          Thus far in my short gardening career, I can find no greater joy than in buying cheap seed packets (or procuring them for free from family and neighbors), planting them carefully, and then nurturing them along.  Each seedling is a fragile little thing, and I’ll admit that there is great disappointment when they sometimes fail, but to see even one thrive is immensely satisfying.  Something in my chest goes all gloppy and mushy when I spot a new sprout.  I can’t wait to see them grow, grow, grow.  There is a possibility that seeing a mature plant produce fruit will be even better—and if so, then I can’t wait!

          I think I’ve missed my calling in life.  I’ve officially announced to Jon that moving to a place with flat land and ample sunlight would be acceptable—especially if he provides me with a humongous greenhouse.  (Wouldn’t it be great to do this all year long?)  His answer was typical.  It went something like this, “Sounds good… I’ll look into it.” I’m pretty certain that he filed my imaginary huge greenhouse next door to my large art studio, complete with pottery wheel and kiln, which is located somewhere near my personal publishing house, my dairy house (so I can make expensive cheeses at home—no busty dairy maids included), the museum dedicated to my favorite artists and named after yours truly, where I will engage in curatorial ecstasies, oh—and my consummate future collection of the odd instrument, to be played at pending “creativity soirees,” (basically, a big, well-catered party based solely on my favorite themes, which may occasionally change from time to time).  Am I really asking for so much?

"Next Blog" II

In which our Heroine contemplates her Binary Existence, still. 

                Okay, I’m back for the second time today.  I just hit the “Next Blog” button, and here’s what I got: “dreams can come true… and look I have a cute dog…;” 3 family with kids blogs, one is LDS; two political blogs anti-Obama; a Disney artist who is into art and tech from the 1960s (atomic age); only one minister and his family blog; one teenager who has nothing better to do than write stupid things about teenage actors;  a scary blog that I only saw for a spit second as it had a link on the side labeled “queer art.”  Shouldn’t have put the tag about the ponies…  Make from this what you will, but it proves my point—we are not in control of our own lives on the internet, people!!!

"Next Blog"

In which our Heroine contemplates her Binary Existence. 

1.       At the top of my blog page you’ll see a few words: “Next Blog.”  If you click on it (after you’re done thoroughly enjoying my own blog first, of course, you’ll find that blogspot will send you off on a chain of other blogs.  The first time I did this, it was just after I’d written my first post.  The blogs it sent me to were haphazard, and totally unrelated.  I was pushed from someone’s jet ski memoirs to a quilting bee, then to a regular “look at my kids, aren’t they adorable!” blog.  The kids were cute, but what did they have to do with me or with jet skis?  Aren’t the fabled and tasteless cookies of the internet supposed to send me to places similar to my own interests so I will buy countless amounts of unneeded items from those other places?  Because of this conundrum, I find myself often checking to see what google blogspot throws my way.  Several times, I’ve found myself in a line-up of LDS family reunion posts.  Once, I somehow managed to hit the British punk-rock scene, mixed with comic book dweebiness.  After posting my creative therapy artwork I found that I’d attracted some very cool crafting blogs—not kitchy at all, but genuinely cool.  Another time, directly after the Hitler post, I hit upon a bunch of Evangelical or very Christian and very conservative/my grandfather-founded-the-KKK sites.  I was chilled after reading through a few of these and I began to despair.  How must I appear to the binary world? 

2.       I like to check my stats frequently.  I am always astonished to see whose looking from what country and what their search terms are that apparently lead to me.  I’ve tried to look for my own blog on google, just to see how easy it was to find—and its not.  You really have to use obvious stuff.  Until I wrote my full name in the title of a post, I had a hard time finding my blog by using my very name.  AND YET… Sometime yesterday, some pervert (I assume) in Italy did a search on “wetting herself.”  Due to a friend’s silly and totally innocent comment a few days ago, my blog somehow floated to the top of the dung heap of the internet.  I’m scared to hit the “Next Blog” button.  To remedy this onslaught of icky-ness, I will now post this and use totally unrelated, but nice terminology as tags (see below).

3.       Meanwhile, I will remain uselessly and utterly paranoid about my situation—but not paralyzed, I assure you.  It just makes you wonder.  Is it myself that I actually have to fear?  Because I really had nuclear bombs and the FBI pegged…