I'm gonna have the greenest lawn in town!

No, aliens have not confiscated mybrain cells and replaced them with a suburbanite's. See, our landlord included a "you must water your lawn" clause in our rental agreement. He spent about 15 minutes going over it. (You should have been there for the section about signage--political signs are okay, business signs, no. That took at least half an hour.)

Anyway, John has turned into a super water-recycler. He decided he would empty out our baths and put the water on the lawn. That was only a couple of days ago, and already, the lawn in front of our half of the duplex is three shades darker than the anemic stuff by the neighbor's.

I don't know Steve would feel about our littl graywater processing system, but I hope he appreciates that this summer his water bill ought to be a little lower--and his lawn a little greener.

Putting a face on my veggies

At first the subject was "Food With A Face," but since I don't eat foods that actually have faces (i.e. critters), it didn't make sense. What I meant is that I finally got my first box of CSA produce and I got to meet our farmer.

Now, Lyle is not the lovable hippy who first turned me into a CSA nut, back when I was living in Minnesota with my sister. I think he is a recovering New Yorker, and he treats his subscribers with the brusque attitude you imagine when you think "New Yorker." The attitude is essentially "you'll get your vegetables when and where I tell you to get your vegetables, and you'd better like it." I want to take umbrage, but it's pretty hard to complain when you're holding the most beautiful bok choy you've ever touched and the man's giving you instructions on the preparation of Indian Mustard. Which, by the way, is at least as spicy raw as horseradish.

And he stuffed a giant bunch of hot pink wild roses into our produce box just because I said they were pretty.

Yesterday, leaving the farmers' market, my head was spinning. I really wasn't sure what to think about our new grocery set-up. But this afternoon, with the roses on the table and a single purple bloom nodding above the a bunch of chives on the kitchen counter, I feel so smitten I have no room for complaints. And the perfect kale I stirred into our curried vegetables was so tender and tasty, I knew there was no turning back.

My kind of W

I have a confession. I read Vogue. And W. And Teen Vogue. Okay, those are just the fashion magazines that I have subscriptions to. You can put Lucky in my hands, and I’m salivating. Even Town and Country makes me grin.

What is it about me and these magazines? After all, they stand for everything I’m against: consumerism, selfishness, fur. They trade on the frailty of young women’s body images. They substitute journalism for advertising, and worst of all, they are loaded with perfume samples!

But I can’t get enough of them. I can’t get enough of Stella McCartney. Dolce and Gabbana. Alexander McQueen. I can not tear my eyes away from a photograph of Coco Rocha, and if it includes Agyness Deyn, so much the better. (So, so much better.)

On a good day, I like to chalk it up to a love of beauty, art, design. On a bad day—the kind of day I catch myself waxing nostalgic for "America’s Next Top Model," Season 3—I wonder if I’m really the person I think I am.

Then I reach for The Vegetarian Times with a shrug. Everybody’s got their weaknesses. Mine are just a little glossier than I’d like them to be.

Curse of the blogging 'meme'

So Kt got hit with a blogging "meme," which I personally think is a bastardization of the word. The idea was coined by Richard Dawkins and used a lot by one of my favorite philosophers of mind, Daniel Dennett, and really has been used mostly to discuss the parasitical function of religion (i.e., how many religions contain ideas that are actually harmful to the individual organism, but spur along the religion itself--hey, I'm just quoting D.D. from his last visit to Portland, folks). Anyway, I digress. It sounds like I'm supposed to answer the following question:

Why do you blog? Give five answers.

1. Because I am narcissistic and love to subject others to my own rambling thoughts.
2. Because I can vent philosophal thoughts with facing other philosophers--or go back to school.
3. Because it keeps my writing muscles sharp.
4. To share my real thoughts with friends that, because of distance, would probably only get a shallow Christmas-card-level of communication any other way.
5. Because my own handwriting is fairly terrible and I have gotten too lazy to use a paper journal (and hey, it saves paper!).

That's what it's all about

At the museum, there is an area for children to use a computer to take their picture and type a little caption, then print out their document. Today my coworker found one a girl had printed and lost. It said: I am 6 years old. I love my mommy very much. I wish she would come down from heaven so I could see her again.

My little girl is sick and miserable today. I hugged her extra, extra tightly.