I’m experimenting with open moss containers, we’ll see how they work. It’s actualy pretty simple to make a mossarium that looks awesome on day one. We’ll see how it looks on day thirty.
August 2010
on staying put
It was sort of an exciting offer “Hey if you want to get one of those Jet Blue All You Can Jet passes and go around the country going to meetups, I’ll spring for the ticket.” And I almost said yes before I even thought about it, because traveling is fun and meeting up with people is fun and it’s lovely out and there have been a few people on my “to visit” list for an embarassingly long time.
And then I slept on it, the awesome sleep I have when it’s just the right temperature outside and I am sleeping with my favorite pillow and my room is all nice and dark the way I like it. And woke up thinking that being gone for a good chunk of a month meant less of that. And I asked a few people, all of whom gave me answers that I’d characterize as cautiously supportive, and I slept on it again. And I decided to stay put. Which is a little strange since I usually opt for squeezing more stuff into my days not less. But I think I was maybe not giving enough weight to the things already on my plate including
- Working on the second draft of my book, due in October
- School starting, and with it, my drop-in time
- A few little projects I’ve been thinking about
- How much I love Vermont and my apartment in it
- Reconnecting with friends who I’ve seen less of than I’d like
- My exercise plan, casually abandoned while I was writing, now back on the priority list
- A freezerful of blueberries that won’t be getting any fresher
- Keeping my houseplants alive
- Another essay I’m writing for a book friends are publishing
- My full-time MetaFilter job
- Family & boyfriend time which I’ve been enjoying a lot of this summer
- Reading hardcover books which I never do when I’m travelling
That’s just the top of the head list, I’m sure there are more things. I’ll go back and look at this list when I’m stuck in the September doldrums and wishing I were elsewhere. If that happens. Which I bet it won’t.
real summer
This is the first summer in a while that I can remember having a real summer. That is, doing a bunch of outdoorsy stuff with friends and neighbors and feeling busy in that “Wow there is a lot of fun stuff to do” way and spending very little time inside under the fluorescent lights.
Actually this morning I am inside because I got a sunburn picking blueberries. This is such a better thing to complain about than impending word counts or deadlines or what have you. I am still in the glow of no longer having a book to write, as much as I enjoyed the writing of it. I was in Florida last week and it was 102, so I can pretty much handle whatever Vermont can dish out. Other highlights from the last week include a beach meetup, seeing my sister’s boyfriend play baseball at Fenway Park (a totally different place when there are only 200 people there), the aforementioned blueberry picking, some random hiking and seeing a lightning storm from the plane at sufficient distance that it was cool not scary. My new-to-me car has been road tested and I have three pounds of blueberries in the fridge.
I also had food from these countries: Peru, Cuba, France, Finland, Thailand, Greece and the good old US of A. Yes this was not in Vermont. The plan for the next week, besides a quickie trip to Indianapolis, is exercise. Last week I actually ran a mile outside, for the first time ever. My time was something in the 13 minute range which means room for a ton of improvement.
I went to four different libraries when I was in Florida. This one was just a few blocks from the Barefoot Mailman motel which was my quirky hangout in Lantana Florida. Nothing fancy but cool and quiet and a good place for resting before heading back out into the summer activities.