Whew

It's not like nothin's been going on around here. I didn't take FOUR days off because life was boring. I've just been so darn busy. And although I think I've thrown out the "no excuses" line before, I have to return to it. I feel guilty when I don't write for a couple days! But guilty in a good way. Criminetly (and I am not even looking that up), this is my JOB!!!!! This is part of my four freakin hours a day of creative endeavor. By the way, endeavor means..."your best shot" which I love. No judgement, no hype...just the best you can do.
I went to the farmers market this morning. These are little drops of sunshine, aka, yellow tomatoes. They are so good to just put in a strainer and eat all day long. Walk thru the kitchen, pop a tomato, walk back thru the kitchen, pop a tomato. I also bought homemade pasta, green salsa, chicken/spinach tamales, yellow squash and bread. I love it there. I was walking around smiling like a dork, so happy to be around all those fresh vegetables, and outside with blue sky, and random people-chatter around me but not pointed at me. I started to think of all the places I'll never go to again. Not in bad way, just how there are places where you think, wow, I really liked ________ and I'll probably never be in that place again. I was thinking about my parents independent living facility in Fountain Hills, Arizona. I LOVED that place. Jay and I used to go down there two weekends a month. We'd stay right there in their smallish apartment in this fairly large building where everyone except the two of us were at least seventy years old. Man, I miss that place. We'd go down to the big dining room and sit at tables for six and other people were always wanting to join us because there was a CHILD at the table. Jay was about 5 and the star of the show. There was all this courtesy and friendliness, and there were scads of grandmas and grandpas. We'd eat things like poached salmon with a caper cream sauce or chicken with garlic mashed potatoes. Everyone got the same thing. A hundred people, no choices, eat what's in front of you. And it was always good. The softest, yummiest dinner rolls I've ever had. Then, outside there was this huge Olympic sized swimming pool that no one would ever be in except Jay and me. It was clean and not too cold and we'd hang out by this big pool for a couple hours during the day. My dad would be sitting in his big chair back in their living room watching the Diamondbacks or the Cubs, and my mom would be putting clothes away or sitting by the pool watching little Jay bob about. And today I was just thinking how I'll never go back there. Of course, I know that it wouldn't be the same anyway. I'd probably get weepy and Jay would be embarrassed, and obviously my parents wouldn't be there...and so I'd end up frustrated at Jay for not holding my hand and the whole thing would be a big tension knot :) And I guess I do still get to go back to that place.....it just lives in my head now.


This is Archie's nose. He is trying to escape. There is a place he never wants to be again and it's in the fenced in side yard. Archie wants to be peeing on the nice smooth cool kitchen floor. He wants to be gnawing on my leather sandal, with a slight low growly sound erupting when Stan comes near. Speaking of Stan, here he is modeling my latest hat. Hats available soon on hatsbyjill.com. Just kidding. I always try and do creative things to make money but they pretty much never work. So, I'm just making them for the sake of making them. And so I can take pictures of dogs wearing them.

You're probably on vegetable overload but here's a stillgreen Mr Stripey tomato. If we can just have about 30 days of sun, he'll stripe up pretty good. I'm making zucchini bread tomorrow, and veggie soup tomorrow night. Okay, okay, further veggie talk suspended for this evening.

Well, I feel much better now. Writing always makes me feel better even though I often dread sitting down to do it. Weird. I'm going to attempt to put links on this post to send you to Arcosanti (last Monday's field trip) and to the urban trail system (last Friday's bike riding field trip), if I can figure out the link thing. Reason for my celebatory glass of wine this evening?! Jay starts school in three days!!! whoo-hoo!