a long overdue apology/thanks.

i’m kind of an asshole.

one time, i got married (for like a year), and i didn’t even send out thank you notes to my family. and can i just say, that even though the wedding was in 2007, i still feel guilty about it ALL THE TIME. if you’re out there wilson family relatives… i’m so sorry. i burn with shame and regret.

but here i am anyway, being a jerk again.

a few weeks ago, a reader named sue contacted me about the makeup project, because she had scored some free blush she wasn’t going to use. AWESOME. except it took me a few days to answer her, and i felt like a jerk.

AND THEN, she contacted me again… and i got busy and didn’t respond. jerk +1.

AND THEN, she showed up at the swap drop off with makeup… and i wasn’t there to meet her.

AND THEN, she showed up at the swap with a beautiful bounty of makeup bags, and i finally got to say thank you, and  made a jackass out of myself. i believe my exact words were: “i so want to hug you, but i’m worried about invading your personal space”. she excused herself swiftly.

AND THEN, she emailed me again, and i decided that i wanted to thank her by writing a blog post about how awesome she is… and it took me 2 weeks to do it.

so sue… I’M SORRY! i know i’m kind of a jerkwagon, but i didn’t want to let another day go by without thanking you for your incredible gift. sorry i’m so spastic, but it is in no way a reflection on my gratefulness for your generosity.

top 10 reasons why i suck at gardening.

when i first started my garden about a month ago, i was on top of the world. things were growing! i was making life! i would eat salad like a boss all summer long!

almost like sex fantasies, i would imagine myself harvesting shining and plump red tomatoes and pornographically large cucumbers (ron jeremy grade produce). it would be glorious, and things were going so well!

and then, shit started to go wrong:

1. neighborhood cats started digging in my seed areas, killing whole squares of crops (i lost 3 squares of lettuce and one square of carrots).

2. my tomatoes won’t pollinate. the flowers just turn brown and die, and the bees never come. i only have the 4 tomatoes that were already pollinated when i got the plant.

3. my peppers are dying. the little pepper buds are just shriveling and falling off.

4. my cucumber is taking over everything. i find it’s spindly tendrils wrapped around every other plant in the bed- strangling them all slowly. although to its credit, it’s the only thing that’s actually producing any sort of vegetation.

5. my green beans have nothing to climb up, and they are OUT OF CONTROL.

6. my pumpkin just doesn’t look right. it has leaves rotting off and flowers dropping like crazy.

7. my butter lettuce keeps getting ass pounded by the rain and is looking very very sad.

8. i tried last weekend to install some barrier plants to try to keep the cats out (brussels sprouts, cauliflower, & iceberg lettuce), but i don’t think the brussels sprouts are supposed to be yellow.

9. maybe planting 5 heads of iceberg lettuce in one square was a mistake?

10. the basil seems fine, but i don’t eat that much basil.

basically my gardening euphoria has quickly descended into gardening shame and disappointment. maybe i should read a book or something, but i don’t even know where to start. i just feel very overwhelmed and very at sea. i could ask the lovely soul who helped me plant it in the first place, but i don’t want her to be disappointed in me! basically, i am castrated by my lack of knowledge and fear of failure.

i thought that gardening was supposed to be relaxing!  somebody please, FIX IT.

*no, that dead garden picture isn’t mine, but you can check out the “progress” of my garden on my flickr page. i haven’t taken any pictures of the really tragic stuff, but you can picture them in your mind’s eye (don’t forget to make ’em extra shriveled).

resolved.

i was lucky enough to come into a bit of an xmas windfall this year. nothing earth shattering (most of it went to bills and to my saving’s account), BUT i decided to give myself a small allowance to spend on whatever i wanted. DANGEROUS. it could have been anything, or everything… i have a bad habit of burning through cash without really paying attention to where it goes, or really caring too much when it’s gone. i’m all like “oh, that’s was fun”, instead of feeling the intense sense of guilt and shame that keeps most people from getting in financial trouble.

the last year has overall been a good one for my financial evolution. this was the first year in over a decade that i didn’t use my credit cards even once. i also managed to have a savings account with actual money in it for more than 15 minutes. on the other hand, i didn’t pay off my credit cards as much as i would have liked, i didn’t manage to keep the majority of the money in my savings account, and i still didn’t start an HSA.

so for 2011, i have only one resolution. it isn’t to save more, or spend less, pay off the credit cards, or even open an HSA… (although all of those things are certainly worth keeping in mind). my resolution this year is just to PAY ATTENTION. wherever my money travels should take me this year, i would like to be watchful and be thoughtful about every dollar i spend. i’m thinking about leaving my debit card at home, giving myself a cash allowance, being more careful about monitoring my mint account… but it doesn’t really matter what i do, as long as i’m being vigilant.

i decided to lube up my resolution and get started a little early with the aforementioned windfalll. instead of just throwing the money into my checking account and going apeshit on whatever i happened to find first, i sat down and really thought about things that i wanted, needed, and would generally be too cheap or too broke to afford the rest of the year. here is what i came up with:

where did this pig come from?

well, my vacation has finally come to an end. it’s sort of sad, but saying goodbye to the steady diet of bread and cheese (not a lot of vegetarian options in piscataquis county) and lifetime network was an absolute necessity. so i finally dock my bloated ass back in portland, and i’m unpacking all of my various jazz… and this pig rolls out. well, this plastic replica of an antique hog shaped  pin cushion, and its accompanying receipt for $8.99.

um… what? was i on pills or something?

nope. no pills, no demon possessions, no being held at gunpoint… no, something far more sinister was at work here: RETAIL AWKWARDNESS.

on the long ride home from greenville, we made multiple stops at antique malls, thrift stores, and junk shops, all of which turned out to be a bust.  we must have done the 2 minute tour of disappointment at least 7 or 8 times, slipping out the side doors while other customers distracted the shopkeepers from our lack of buying. in and out like some sort of dirty double entendre that i’m too tired to make right now. but somewhere near abbot (maine’s #1 town- at least alphabetically), we stopped into a tiny little antique shop and everything changed.

despite what it declared on the exterior signage, it was really more or a junk shop than anything. a combination of crappy reproductions, aging craft projects, and other dusty sub-garage sale knickknacks. about 30 seconds indicated that it was time to leave, but one unfortunate feature of this store was a large rascal-bound elderly proprietor sitting right next to the front door. oh, and no other customers. at one point i heard a door slam and thought that i might be saved by the distraction of other incoming suckers, but it was only the equally elderly husband of the proprietor, coming in to hover in another part of the shop. there was no escape!

maybe it’s just me, but sometimes when i’m in a kind of depressing store that i can tell isn’t weathering the economy very well, i am overcome with horrible guilt for not buying anything. even when the merchandise is utter (often utterly overpriced) garbage, i still somehow find myself looking harder, digging deeper into bins, trying to find anything that might be worthy bringing home. when the sad eyed shopkeeper is there to stare me down (on a rascal, by the front door no less!), i am powerless. it’s almost like i’m paying a price of the trinket to escape the awkward sadness.

when i saw the pig pincushion sitting on the shelf, i saw my ticket to get out of that store sans bad feelings.  am i the only crazy person who does this? furthermore, is anyone out there in the market for a pig pincushion?

12 minutes, 2 am.

my sleep schedule is all f-ed up. i slept for 12 hours last night, and now it’s almost 2 am, and i’m still not sleeping- despite needing to be at work and functional in a mere 6 hours. so i thought i’d take this last 12 minutes before the clock strikes 2 to poop out a quickie post- just to say that i did. i present to you, my weekend in spending- in 12 minutes or less (or possibly slightly more):

there was a 40% off everything sale at the gap outlet in freeport. i erroneously assumed it would be better than the old navy 30% off everything sale… what i learned is that they didn’t have much to offer in the markdown area, and everything else was near regular gap prices. despite the angel voice whispering in my ear “that’s how they get you!”, the devil voice still spent $80 on a pair of jeans, a dress, a sweater, and a pair of shorts. well, it is supposed to be 84 degrees on tuesday…

j crew on the other hand had a decent sale rack that was take an additional 30% off all markdowns. score. bought a fat concealing flowy top and and a shiny gold belt that i decided couldn’t possibly be leather… but probably is. feeling heavy vegetarian guilt, but too attached to belt to find out for sure.

wacky mac should have been free at shaw’s this week… except that i couldn’t find it anywhere. is there no wacky mac in the state of maine, or am i just looking in the wrong place?! *seethes with frustration* no major grocery deals scored this week.

i fully attempted to buy a $3.97 copy of maid in manhattan at bullmoose today, but shame was too great. me being uncool isn’t really a secret, but bullmoose always makes me wish i was hipper than i am. or at least wish that walmart carried $3.97 copies of maid in manhattan.

now that i’ve learned that dairy queen has butterscotch dip, it was another 2-DQ weekend. i’ve been to every DQ in the area at least once, and i’ve noticed that the pricing is not standard. westbrook DQ- i don’t care if you do have a brazier (your fries suck BTW), time to nudge those ice cream prices DOWN. the topsham dairy queen is making you look bad.

the shame of the parental hand out.

i am one of 5 children (all girls in fact). growing up, this meant hardcore hand-me downs, crowded bathrooms, that my guidance counselor didn’t know my name (4 of us were in high school at the same time), and that when i graduated from high school (save for birthday gifts and helping pay for college), the hand-out money completely dried up. when you have that many kids, being both equitable and economical is tantamount. which isn’t to say that my parents are not loving and generous people.  it just means that my mom hasn’t slipped me a twenty since i was 17, and i’m ok with that. at this point in my life, i think it would actually be really weird and awkward.

and speaking of weird and awkward, here come the future in-laws! actually, i really love them. when i was married before, i always used to fantasize that my current in-laws were actually my now future in-laws (um… still sleep deprived- does that make sense?).  anyway, they’re great, but they are professional level money slippers. last week, we took them to po’ boys and pickles to thank them for being generally wonderful and generous of both their time and their money while we’ve been fixing up the ole condo (future-dad built us the most amazing dvd shelf). because when you really love someone, you say it with sticky toffee pudding.  anyhow, we basically had to wrestle them to the ground just to get them to let us pay. but THEN, they slipped the boyfriend a couple of twenties while i was in the bathroom! no matter what we do to try and show our gratitude, they immediately undo it as soon as i leave the room (they boyfriend is weak when it comes to free money).

so here’s today’s major dilemma: as you might already know, we need to materialize $3750 by june 1st to pay for our share of a new roof. we have the money, but it seriously depletes our savings cushion in a way that is both scary and uncomfortable. so obviously, we’re a bit stressed about it. the future-rents know about this, and of course at easter dinner…. out comes the checkbook. had there not been a giant ham there, i would have strongly considered throwing myself across the table to knock it out of their hands.  in hindsight, ham pants would have probably been a better option than taking the cash. it’s not enough to cover the whole thing, but it makes a SERIOUS DENT. which is great, but i feel really terrible about taking it, especially when i know we can afford to pay for it on our own. in my head, we’re grown-ups and we should sort out our financial issues together- not together with his parents.  there’s no way in hell that i can convince him to give it back. so now what? how do i say thank you? how do i not feel like i will always owe them something? how do i get them to stop!? am i being a complete spaz? should i just take the money and not give it another thought?