So I Felt A Little Bitchy Today

Another short walk this morning, another dance with heat stroke. I swear.
Do you remember this house? Someone is cleaning it up and as I noted last time I posted a picture of it, it was getting painted. I want so badly to go up on the porch and peek in but I am such a ridiculous rule-follower that the "Posted" sign in the window beside the door is enough to dissuade me. Although the house has been somewhat tended to and the bushes around it have been cut back, it still seems a bit creepy to me but I think that if someone with a good spirit, and a lot of love and porch plants took it over, it could be darling. 

I crossed paths with my across-the-street neighbors when they were coming out of the PO and we stopped to chat for a minute. They couldn't believe I was out walking in this heat. I assured them that it was just a short walk, done simply to "keep things moving." They laughed at that. We're about all the same age. As I told them, the problem is that if I take a walk, I'm done with being outside and can't work in the garden. Today I decided that was NOT going to happen so after I cooled off and had lunch, I took my picking basket out and found a few more green beans, an eggplant that I guess is big enough to pick, another half ton of cherry tomatoes, some field peas and some big tomatoes that were starting to color up. 

Doesn't look like much but that's a deep basket. 
And now the regular sized tomatoes are my new what in hell am I going to do with all these? problem.

I do believe it is time to make a tomato pie. 

Between the cherry tomatoes and the big ones, I have at least six varieties ripe or ripening. I have decided that the tomatoes in the paper bag do not ripen nearly as well as the ones I bring in and just set down in the open air. 

So I did that picking and I knew I should find something to do in the house but I still can't find my pin cushion which is pissing me off. Now, I know I have another pin cushion and I also have more needles (thank you, Linda Sue!) and more pins but I like the other one better. I'm just going to have to suck it up and make use of the less preferred one. 
I've been cranky all day and although it seems like being cranky when you're the only one around isn't really a thing, it is. I can be as cranky to myself as I can be to anyone else. And somehow my crankiness was telling me that I needed to do at least a little more work in the garden and that's all there was to it, just like a shrill housewife telling her husband that there are chores he must attend to so get off your lazy ass!

Not that I would ever, ever say those words to my husband but my inner cranky bitch is not shy to say the words to myself. I really wanted to stake my eggplants because they have fallen over entirely with the fruit laying on the ground. I had a long conversation with Mr. Moon about this yesterday, asking where the loppers were because I wanted to cut some bamboo to use as stakes and he told me where he thought they were and I looked and sure enough, that's where they were. 
Now here's the problem- when I'm working outside in this heat, there is a time limit and after that limit has passed, I am not even functional. I'm not kidding. So I went out and cut a bamboo that had grown up by the back fence and trimmed it and cut it into three pieces. 

Maurice supervising the bamboo cutting.

I'd made some strips to tie the eggplant to the bamboo with and had those in my pocket along with my clippers which I used to trim up the bamboo. 
I got the bamboo cut and the trimmings on the burn pile and by that time I was getting close to the limit I was speaking of. I'm dragging bamboo and carrying those loppers and sweat's pouring off of me and soaking all of my clothes and I realize, even as I'm doing this, that the stakes I'm creating are not tall enough and probably not big enough around. However. This is what I have and this is what I shall use, all the while thinking how Glen would just die if he saw me doing such a pitiful job. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right," is his motto. Let me just add, "Unless you're outside in terrible heat and humidity and you have about a hundredth of a tank of energy left, in which case, if a job's worth doing, just do it and don't let it kill you."

I got my first bamboo stake into the ground and went to tie it with one of the strips of cloth I'd prepared for that purpose and discovered that the fabric of that cloth was hardly better than nothing. It was rotten. I have no idea why. I mean, I made the strips from a napkin that I've probably had for twenty years and bleached two hundred times. 
BUT. I made do because there was no way I was going to walk all the way back to the house, a distance that seemed like five miles despite it only being about a hundred yards or something like that, to make better strips. And I did this three times for three different eggplant plants, only to realize I had FOUR eggplant plants so three are inadequately staked and one is still lying on the ground. 

My goal tomorrow is to remedy this situation. 
I have other goals too but that is the most immediate one. 

I found a nursery label for the eggplants and I think they are called something like, "Little Fingers." 
I know damn well I did not buy four of the same variety of eggplants so I suppose at least one or two were mislabeled.

And at that point, the tank was empty and I was running on reserves. I made my way the five miles back to the house and cooled off again. I wonder how much water I've drunk today? A gallon, probably. 

And I'm still cranky even though it has rained some and is cooler. It's only eighty on the porch instead of ninety which is a huge difference. Of course now it's more humid than ever. I even sat down at the piano and before I knew it, forty-five minutes had passed which was a shock and I enjoyed that and I watched an episode of "Reservation Dogs" while I snapped a few more pole beans which I may or may not can tomorrow. 

So it goes, so it goes. 

I wanted to say that when I write about some of the things that happened to me as a child, I am not necessarily sad. Please don't feel sorry for me. I am not going to say that plenty of other people have had worse, MUCH worse happen to them because my trauma is my trauma. Your trauma is your trauma. There is no contest here about whose was worse. And of course, having said that, I feel that I must rush in and say that compared to others, mine was not so bad. Because that is how we are taught to feel. 
I write about it simply to say that this is what happened to me and this is how it affects me to this day and that I know many of you have been through things that you cope with and deal with in your own way every moment of your life and by god, here we are. 
And isn't that amazing?
I think so. Even when I am cranky, I think so. 

I do believe I will have a lovely bacon and tomato sandwich for supper tonight. I wonder what Mr. Moon will be eating for his dining pleasure. He sent me a picture a little while ago of him and Brenda, the volleyball girl, her parents, and a cousin and his wife and I'd love to post it but...privacy. Take my word that there are some tall people in that picture. 

I've droned on plenty long enough. 

Love...Ms. Moon