One Girl Revolution

Before I head off to exercise and do some more tidying, I just want to put out a PSA for any/all gardeners to avoid ContainerSeeds.com.

If you're just tuning in, the basic background for the debacle goes like this - since getting out on my own, I've wanted to experiment with growing some of my own fruits and vegetables. I tried talking to some co-workers about buying into a communal plot sponsored by the city, but not enough people were interested to make it viable. I figured that that was okay and set about looking into container gardening. I have a balcony and a front entryway that get sun in the morning/early afternoon and afternoon/early evening respectively, and I figured that I could try my luck with some smaller plants. However, my knowledge about such things was (and still is) lacking. I knew there were some plants that would not produce fruit in containers, and I wanted to avoid making that mistake. I started searching for sites that had advice for apartment dwellers and what seeds worked best, and I came across a place that recommended this little website.

At the time, ContainerSeeds.com seemed like a godsend. Here was a comprehensive site that listed a wide variety of seeds, all suited for containers or small areas, as well as some basic advice and descriptions. I started getting really excited, making lists of the plants I wanted to grow and plotting out the various ways I could fit them all into my limited space. I was also pleased with their prices - a dollar less than some of the other places! - as well as some varieties that I couldn't find on other sites. (Runnerless strawberries that produce fruit all summer? Who knew?) The site seemed a little simple, but there was an address, e-mail and telephone number, and they accepted PayPal. With the exception of one pack of seeds, I ordered my entire tiny garden from ContainerSeeds.com at the end of March. I knew it would be tight, but I figured that if I got the seeds started in April, I might be able to have some stuff ready for Boy when he arrived the first week of June. I placed my seed orders and waited eagerly.

I got one package of seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds within a week. They even sent a packet of bonus seeds as a thank you! (Incidentally, if anyone needs some Yellow Scallop Squash seeds, let me know.) The other seeds hadn't arrived yet, but I wasn't unduly worried. The PayPal payment had gone through, the site said that items were shipped one they got their payment, and I expected my seeds within a few days.

After a week, I called to check on things. I hadn't received the normal PayPal notification saying the seeds had shipped. The person who answered the phone on the other end sounded rather young. And busy. Perhaps confused about why anyone would want to call about something like a business transaction. Still, they assured me that they went to the Post Office "just yesterday," and that my seeds should arrive soon, "within days," in fact.

Another week passed.

This afternoon, I sent them an e-mail asking about the status of my order. I was polite, stating that I just wanted to make sure my order had gone through. I gave them my PayPal order confirmation number, as well as my address. I didn't expect an answer today, but something didn't seem right, for some reason. Every other online transaction I've ever had has been settled quickly and easily, with no problems. I decided to do a quick search to see if anyone else had ever had problems with the company. It's something I should have done long before ordering with them.

I have no reason to believe that I will ever be seeing my seeds. Nor will I be seeing my money back.

In the end though, it's not the money I'm pissed about. The fact of the matter is, I'm pissed that now, the garden won't happen. It was about more than lettuce and sweet peppers and strawberries and all the rest. It sounds foolish, but...

I'm in America. My boyfriend's in Ireland. We see each other twice a year, 10 days at a time, if we're lucky. The rest of the time, we're confined to AIM and Skype. We can't kiss each other, we can't hold each other, and we can't see each other. I would never give up on us - I love him far too much to break it off on account of something as silly as distance. But that doesn't mean that it isn't painfully, crushingly hard. We talk about our future together, but sometimes it's a future that seems so intangible and far away that it's hard to see it as real. During the twenty days a year we have together, we try to catch up with all the things we can't do. It's laughably routine for most couples, but it's something we don't have. Even going to the store is a cherished act for us. It's how we touch the future, even if just for a fleeting moment.

Soon after we got together, we started talking about our future together, our "years from now." I mentioned that I'd always wanted a food garden. He told me that his family once had such a garden, and that he loved it, but that it was eventually ripped out to make way for a pathway. We promised each other that when we were finally together, we would have a garden - the one I never had, and the one that he had lost. It was my hope that on this trip, we could have just a little bit of that. I wanted him to walk out to my patio and see baby lettuces, small sweet peppers, tomatoes, funny little carrots. Most of all, I wanted him to see strawberries. He calls them fancy fruit. They've been my favorites since I was a toddler. I wanted to pluck one off its stem and pop it in his mouth, let him taste it, all sweet and ripe. I wanted to sit out there with him and look at the plants, and tell him that this was just a beginning. Our own little hanging garden that would someday become the one we both wanted.

That won't happen now. I'll order new seeds and start them up, but the plants will still be too young in early June for us to enjoy. It's mostly my fault - for waiting, for being drawn in by a cheap price, for not doing my homework - and I'm furious at both myself and the company. But mostly, I'm sad. I had grand plans, and now they've all collapsed. Even if I do get the seeds eventually, it'll still be too late. So for now, I just sit here typing and crying. There will be no garden.

And even though I know there will be someday, I can't help but feel that the future just slipped out of my hands.

It's been sort of an up and down day, I suppose. I got a bookshelf and a little end table, and that's always nice. Thing is, they're both in flat pack boxes. That brings the number of furniture items in flat pack to three - I have a file cabinet/table I bought at Target a while back that needs assembling, too.

I already know that I can't put them together myself. Much as I like to fantasize about building things, it's definitely one of the areas in which I have neither skill nor talent. My mom can do it, as can my dad, but me...not so much. Even with instructions, it's extremely frustrating for me; I know even trying will result in swearing and scattered pieces, and I really don't want that.

However, this does leave me in a spot - how do I use the stuff if I can't put it together? I could wait until the parents make a trip up here, but I'd rather not - it could be a while before they make it, and in the meantime, I have boxes everywhere. There's always the next door neighbor, but I hate asking him to do things - he's already helped me hang my curtains and pick up the bookshelf, since the box was too big for my car. He also carried it in for me. It feels a bit crap to go back over - again - and ask him for help - again. He's a nice guy, and I don't want to take advantage of him.

So, to sum up - new furniture is good, but only when it's assembled. Which it isn't.

And now, the background image for my journal has disappeared. Dammit.

I think it's time for bed.

There's more soap what's been made. I think I may have spoken about these earlier, but now they're up on the site and ready for purchase.

First, we have Black Magic Woman, a soap based on one of my body scrub recipes. Coffee. Brown sugar. Baking cocoa. Oh yes.

The next two are soaps named for Led Zeppelin songs - Heartbreaker and Dancing Days. Trust me when I say they both smell incredible.

Shipping prices have gone up by 50 cents, as it's apparently $1.60 to send one bar of soap in a small envelope. Still, that's 10 cents you guys don't have to pay, and that's always nice.

I want to give 10 percent of my earnings from this and other online sales (including the books I'm selling on Amazon) to jumpinjessflash for her breast cancer walk campaign. There's a link to her campaign on my links list, if you want to donate. And if you want to know what books I'm selling, let me know.

In other news, greed is winning out. Hopefully we can do something about it.

I've been a little tense today, so let me just take a moment here to loosen up the neck muscles here before I say WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?

What is this? This is a problem? I'm supposed to be concerned about this? Did I miss some kind of memo? Is this the new thing I'm supposed to be frantic and worried about, in addition to my weight and my build and my skin and my hair and my scent (or lack thereof)? Who brought this executive order down, huh?

Ok, a few things here - no one cuts that up. No one tells me that I need to reshape that. That's staying put, sorry. No, no, no. And if that makes me freakish and ugly, then I don't care. I. Don't. Care. Because unless I have some sort of bizarre, freakish, horrifying and disfiguring accident that just so happens to strike that particular area (and I have no frickin' idea how that would happen), that's not getting sliced and diced. Sorry, no.

Also, who thinks about this? Honestly? What woman devotes significant portions of their thought process to that sort of thing? Because that CANNOT be a snap decision, which means that there are women in this world running around devoting enough of their brain cells to this that it's forming a thought which morphs into a desire that is strong enough to be articulated verbally to medical professionals who are then willing to agree to this madness and perform the procedure. There's toxins in our food, plastics in our oceans, melting glaciers up north, parched soil down south, banal and idiotic fare bombarding our airwaves, and women are spending their time on that? No wonder we're fucked. And again, if my lack of gut-wrenching anxiety about what I look like there means I'm less of a woman, then cut my hair and call me Ziggy, because guess what? I have shit to do. I don't have time to dedicate to this moronathon. I'm busy.

Oh lord, I quit. If this is what our society is all about these days, then I'm done even trying to fit in. Because it's not worth the effort to ride the Giant Downward Spiral Into God-Knows-What.

Ok - I'm getting some coffee and getting some work done. If I think about this any longer, my brain will probably explode.

I am currently trying very, very hard not to let my perfectionist, workaholic tendencies take over.

The situation for the Rental Refugees has gone from Bad to Far Worse, and I was hoping to pen a rant. A wonderful, snarky rant full of vinegar and bile, a rant of epic proportions that incorporated classism, inequality, humiliation of unnamed villains and metaphorically raised fists. It was to have been a thing of beauty.

And it was to be completed tonight.

Instead, I helped clean up a kitchen mishap, looked for a new job, and talked to my Boy. Which would normally have made for an okay evening, excluding the kitchen, but it didn't. Because I had a rant to write.

I feel a curious mix of responsibility and guilt. Because I'm working toward my goals, but I'm letting down a friend by not getting her story out there. And now it's too late and I'm too sleepy to write anything of quality. Put part of me still wants to try, because really, it can't be that hard to get by on five and a half hours of sleep, can it?

Now I know how our dog feels when he keeps chewing on something, despite our repeated commands to drop it.

Aw, hell's bells.

I still don't care what it takes, though. theycallmeboy and I will be together.

theycallmeboy made a post talking about how he's slowly but surely conquering Guitar Hero. The last time I played that game was when he was here, and I got really frustrated with myself for screwing up. Which is ridiculous, I know, but it happened regardless. And while lots of people would think it strange ("It's just a game! Don't be so hard on yourself!"), I think I've figured out why I get so easily frustrated with not only that game, but the process of learning instruments in general.

Naturally, it has to do with synesthesia.

Though you wouldn't know it these days, I am a trained singer. I took voice lessons in junior high and high school, sang in competitions, sang in Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus for two years (and wouldn't you know, my old high school choir directors are running the show there now), and had a bizarre ability to get all those teachers to do double takes when they asked me to sing something. I don't know why - I don't have a particularly huge range or what I would consider a remarkable voice, but they liked me quite a bit. It came as a shock to everyone when I didn't major in music or vocal performance.

The thing is, singing has always come very easily to me. It can be challenging at times, but I've never, ever called singing difficult. It usually takes me only a couple of times to figure out a melody, the singer's pitch, their delivery, and all the rest. It's only recently that I figured out that my synesthesia has a lot to do it - I know what "color" is called for in a song, and I adjust my voice accordingly. I "sing" in whatever shade is needed, be it purple or green or red or yellow or whatever. And some colors are more challenging than others, but none are impossible. To this day, I have no idea what my own voice looks like - instead, I use my voice like a paintbrush and palate. I have endless colors and strokes and techniques at my immediate disposal, no matter what. Perhaps that's why singing isn't a normal experience for me; instead, it seems to straddle the physical and spiritual. I don't pay attention to the physical processes of singing, though I know how to control them as needed. (A lot of time, I won't realize that I'm getting too intense until my throat starts hurting - and then it takes me a few minutes to figure out why.) Like the synesthesia itself, I can't explain it. It just happens.

Instruments, though, are a completely different mess altogether. They're far from effortless - you have to dedicate yourself to an instrument to do well at it. And while I can dedicate myself to crafts like writing - practicing and learning from past performance and constantly refining a technique - I can't do the same with instruments. Music is intuitive for me, and intuitive doesn't translate into instruments so well, with the exception of the handful of prodigies we've been blessed with over the years. When I try instruments, I get immediately frustrated because what should be effortless is now difficult and clumsy. Fingers move the wrong way, stumbling or moving too slowly or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And of course, sour notes mean sour, clashing colors. I know how it's supposed to sound, and I could make it sound that way if only the physical would cooperate. And I have no time to wait around, drilling over and over until it does. It should just come - no waiting, no excuses. I mean, if I can sing it, why can't I play it?

I don't mind working hard, but some things should just come easily. For me, music is one of them. That's why I envy musicians so much - I don't know how, but they make it work!

Then again, I don't understand when people say that singing is hard. So maybe it goes both ways.

I think I can officially no longer have refined sugars. Well, I take that back - I can have refined sugars, but only in limited quantities over a moderate stretch of time. It's not a weight thing, but instead a health and well-being thing. I've noticed that too much sugar all at once leaves me feeling like crap anymore, especially when it comes to pop. For a while now, I've been avoiding diet pop (or any drink containing artificial sweeteners, for that matter) because it seems to generate some bizarre side effects - namely, a sickly sweet, lingering taste that nothing - NOTHING - will get rid of. I can drink water or unsweetened tea, I can eat, I can even brush my teeth, but the taste persists through it all. That was fine - I could live with that. I'd rather have my body process sugar and deal with the extra calories than have it process some chemical compound and have it turn into god knows what in my body.

But now it seems that that whole sweet, lingering taste thing has extended into normal pop as well. I had some regular Coke with lunch today and I'm still tasting sweet on my tongue. And it's really god damn annoying. That's not to mention the latest phenomenon with cake, cookies, ice cream, or anything else sweet and sugary. I don't have much of this stuff to begin with, and I can still have some with no ill effects, but my threshold for overindulgence seems to have really, really shortened over the past few years. I started noticing it when I started exercising on a regular basis, but it's become really evident ever since I started making small changes to my diet, like eating organic, drinking herbal teas instead of pop or Crystal Light-style drinks when I wanted a beverage that wasn't water or coffee, and having small amounts of dark chocolate when I get a craving as opposed to milk chocolate. (I'll still indulge in the occasional pop or milk chocolate goodie, but only once every few months, and not much at that.) I know I still have a lot of work to do in the nutrition department, but I guess I never realized how incredibly shitty processed foods can make you* feel. No wonder I was a waddling ball of dough in college.**

Now, this is probably all for the best, since my attempts at a somewhat healthier lifestyle has helped me feel better overall. I'm happy about that - it gives me more energy to go out and do all the stuff I need to do and like to do. And it'll hopefully be good for my long-term health as well - Type II Diabetes and heart disease run in my family, and I really don't like the idea of taking pills, learning to inject myself with needles, or saying goodbye to limbs.

But at the same time, I'm a little pissed. I mean, I like Coke. I'm not one of those people who buys it by the 12-pack, but you'd think that I'd be able to have a can once every two months and not feel like my tongue has a thin layer of gauze on it and The Taste of Sweet lingering in my mouth for hours at a time. Really, what gives?

And what's with this itching that won't go away? My skin just feels like it's been dipped in pollen or dust or tiny, tiny bugs or something. My skin isn't dry or irritated, just consistently, persistently itchy. I'm taking a homeopathic remedy for it, so hopefully that'll kick in soon. Because if it doesn't, I may just go crazy. God dammit.




*Just to clarify - that's a hypothetical you, not aimed at anyone in particular. This isn't an, "OMG you guys need to eat better because you'll feel so awesome!" entry, because you're all adults and can make your own decisions. This is more a, "Dammit, why didn't I figure this shit out sooner?" entry.

**Yes, I was. Yes, really. Not one of my finest hours. Got the degree, don't need pictures to prove it. I'm thinking bonfire. Yes, really. That bad. There were witnesses.