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Rainy Days

While I believe that rainy days are good for my garden, I would like to see some sun in the next day or two. I went out for a walk with Kweli yesterday morning as a sort of protest. I wanted to start a walking regimen and I’d be damned if the weather was going to screw it up. We had a nice walk but by the time we returned my sneakers were soaked through and Kwe was shaking his head to get the water out of his ears.

Yesterday I went to the store and then came home and cooked. Below are the fruits of my labor:


These are power spheres. They’re made up of dried apricots, dried apples, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, peanut butter, and apple juice. They’re delicious, easy to make, and a great snack.


This is honey wheat banana bread. Courtesy of my beloved bread machine. This particular bread is great with lemon curd or nutella.

This is sun dried tomato hummus. It occurred to me the other day as I bought hummus at the grocery store, that I had a perfectly good Cuisinart at home and that garbanzo beans cost about 88 cents…

After I returned from my conference on Sunday morning, RJ and I went to the Broad Ripple Art Fair. We purchased a piece of student artwork pictured below:


It is by a local artist by the name of Lisa VanMeter and this is the blurb she attached to the painting:

This is a multi-color woodblock print from a single block. The colors were printed in the reduction method on Mulberry paper.

We’re going to hang it in our kitchen where we have some empty wall space. I would like to continue adding the art of local artists to our walls as we continue to put our home together.

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Another benefit to rainy days is that I don’t feel guilty about getting completely caught up in a book. I received Mary Karr’s memoir Lit for Christmas this year and it has been sitting on my coffee table since January. Today I read all three hundred plus pages of it in one sitting. I read Karr’s Cherry and the Liar’s Club and it was her writing that sparked my interest in non-fiction. She came to Butler a few years ago to read from her poetry collection “Sinner’s Welcome” and I got a chance to listen to her read her work.

Her memoir Lit is essentially about her journey into and out of madness. It’s a provocative and haunting read and I’ll have more to say about in a few days when I’ve digested it all…

End of the Semester Therapy

I should have spent today and yesterday prepping for a conference I’m attending tomorrow in Chicago. This is what I did instead:



This is our new patio furniture. I love it. Now I can sit outside with my morning tea or a book or we can eat meals outdoors or…

Here are some more shots from my garden of flowers and shrubs that opened this week. I also discovered a lilly while I was weeding today…

Tomatoes


I had to cut a few Iris earlier this week because of a late frost that came through. Luckily, the rest of the buds hadn’t broken through yet, so they bloomed later this week.

Nimbus isn’t allowed outside and he’s pretty good about staying away from the doors, but he loves to sit in front of the screen and look out while Kweli and I are sitting on the back porch.


These are my Brandywine tomato seeds. I’m so pleased that they’re doing so well. I’ve never started tomato seeds inside before, so I was a little worried. However, these little guys are growing like weeds. I hope I can keep them going long enough to get them in the ground later this summer.

The Other Shoe

It’s been a busy week. I celebrated my 29th birthday last Tuesday. RJ and I went to Meridian, which is a very posh restaurant on the corner of Meridian and Westfield. We had a really nice meal and a quiet celebration. I don’t really have anything inspiring to say in regards to my birthday. I think some people find them cause for introspection but nothing really comes to mind this year.
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National Poetry Month kicked off April 1st. We had the great opportunity of welcoming Kay Ryan through a teleconference at school. I’ve read a little of Ryan’s poetry but it was nice to hear her thoughts about writing and poetry. She shared the poem “The Other Shoe” and the students seemed to enjoy the experience.

The Other Shoe

Oh if it were only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.
if the undropped
didn’t congregate
with the undropped.
But nothing can
stop the mid-air
collision of the
unpaired above us
acquiring density
and weight. We
feel it accumulate.

Kay Ryan
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Our yard is continuing to green. These past couple of day s the temperature has leveled out right around 70, so the buds are really bursting.

These next three pictures are just me having fun with my camera. I always thought it would be fun to be paid to take pictures all day. Maybe in my next life…

Wind

Our porch swing is doing pirouettes outside our living room window, so I think it’s safe to say that a storm may be blowing in. Spring in Indiana is much more “spring like” then what I grew up with in northwestern Pennsylvania which was basically mud. However, we do get a lot of rain and I think we’re at the beginning of that phase now.
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This is a picture of the bookshelf I painted and brought upstairs last weekend. The paint color is Mark Twain’s House Red. I think that’s fitting…


These are my wildflower seeds that I planted in my basil pot when I realized that the basil seeds weren’t going to do anything. Nothing says spring like sprouts…


Finally, I took this picture of Kwe because I think it pretty much sums up Sundays at our house…


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I’ve put together about fifty submissions over the past month to various poetry journals. As per usual, whenever I spend a large quantity of time putting together and submitting my own work, I start to get a little punchy. Needless to say, I was a bit incredulous when I discovered that some journals are charging writers to submit online. The consistent number seems to be $3. Now don’t get me wrong. I have no problem supporting literary journals. I buy them regularly. I pay the contest and reading fees willingly, but paying to submit online? Really? Needless to say, I didn’t pay the $3. Why? Well, because I don’t have to. While I admire the journals who are charging, I have other options. Actually, I have a lot of other options and because I’m still an nameless poet lost in the oblivion that is called submitting, the cranky part of me said “screw this.”

Of course, when I’m feeling really cranky (this usually comes after I’ve read about ten descriptions of journals looking for “surprising poems that wow them”) I feel like throwing in the towel completely. The good thing about this feeling is it is usually fleeting and replaced with an idea for a poem, which is more fun and a lot more constructive.

Spring

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, RJ and I made corned beef and cabbage. It was delicious.

It appears that spring has come to Indiana. It has been in the upper 50’s and sunny all week. When I went out into the yard this afternoon to throw Kweli some ball, this is what I found: