Oh Hostile World?

A poem by WWII fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr., and famously quoted by Ronald Regan in response to the Challenger explosion charachterizes the bond of earth as "surly."

Surly, according to Dictionary.com:

sur·ly   /ˈsɜrli/ [sur-lee]
–adjective, -li·er, -li·est.
1. churlishly rude or bad-tempered: a surly waiter.
2. unfriendly or hostile; menacingly irritable: a surly old lion.
3. dark or dismal; menacing; threatening: a surly sky.


Excuse Mr. Gillespie and Regan, but I beg to differ. Have you looked out your window today? Or ever?

Please, tell me what is hostile about this:



And unfriendly about this:



And dark and dismal?



You may yearn to slip the "surly bonds of Earth" to "touch the face of God," gentlemen. In the meantime, I'll be down here frolicking in all of the hostile, unfriendly, dark and dismal beauty of this planet.

I Am an "Urban Farmer"

It may or may not be a well-known fact that I fully plan on burning out on corporate America in the next 5 - 10 years, quitting my job, buying a ridiculous amount of land in some fertile area of the world, and starting a dairy farm.

Before this manure-covered, manual-labor dream can come true, I have to test my chops at farming as best I can living in a major metropolitan area. Baby steps, right? The problem is, I am not very good at doing things in baby steps.

So here is the result:



Look! These will be carrots one day!



These are beets. I don't even eat beets on a regular basis.



This is my herb garden, resplendent with oregano, two types of sage, thyme, Italian parsley, and rosemary



Cauliflower! Broccoli! Leeks! Shallots!



Onions (Cippolini and Sweet!)! Garlic! Chives! Red Russian Kale! Peas!



Here is a closeup of the peas, which have tripled in size since I bought them as baby shoots 2 weeks ago. This is called Oregon Giant. And yes, I bought this variety because it made me think of my 6'6" lumberjack-esque boyfriend who is from (guess!) Oregon.

Not pictured: the three types of lettuce are still too small of shoots to be worth photographing, the cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, sweet peppers and cucumbers that are in a "grow operation" in my basement because it is too cold to move them outside, and spinach that just poked out of the soil about two days ago. I have no idea where I plan on planting the rest of the things that need planting.

Now, if I haven't bored you out of your mind yet with my lists of veggies, you may be wondering "Why wine barrels? Why not plant your urban crops directly in the ground, dear Jenn?"

Two Reasons:

One:



And Two:



And as much as I love 'em, I don't want to eat their piss.

So we'll see how I manage to keep these all alive throughout the summer. If it's a go, I'm one step closer to overalls and butter churns.

we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

I was perusing my lady friend Danielle's blog today and came across this little gem in her post about jealousy. Enthralled, I decided to click the link and start reading the article. Like the average digital media comsumer, I began to bore and start skimming the article after line 5, until I was stopped in my tracks by this:

we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

Ugh. Fuck. Thanks, internet, for calling me out again. I like to blame my poor friendship skills on a busy career, busy social life, or development of hobbies that primarily require solitude. But the plain fact of the matter is, I'm forgetful, lazy, or a dreadful mixture of both. I don't text, email, write, Facebook post, etc. as often as I should (read: ever).

And while I still love and cherish all of my friendships, I do not make the proper investment of time and effort into them, and often they fall by the wayside. There are a sacred few who make it through my strainer of apathy:

1.) The Similarly Apathetic: This is the friend who doesn't have the time, effort or mental capacity to pick up the phone either. She feels my pain, and doesn't take my lack of communication personally. A gem.

2.) The Over Communicator: This is the friend who doesn't allow me to be lazy about my outbound communication, simply because she doesn't give me the opportunity to be lazy about it. She will call several times in the course of a week, never daunted by the lack of a return call. In the repeated absence of a return phone call, she will text something shocking about her personal life that will warrant a phone call within the next 12 hours. Eventually, even someone as awful at the phone as I will pick up the phone and grudingly punch in numbers and hit "send." This is the kind of person I need all my friends to be. Unfortunately, only my very best friends will send me "I just had the hottest sex" via text message on a regular basis.

3.) The Social Networker: This is the friend who doesn’t communicate one-on-one with me per se, but one-on-hundreds with the world. I am always aware of her comings and goings and innermost thoughts because she blogs, posts, tweets, broadcasts the fuck out of them on a regular basis. I get to be an amused bystander and comment or "like" at will, without necessarily needing to make the mental and emotional investment of a phone call. This works very nicely for me over here in my (lazy) corner of the world. I want her news to come to me, I can't be bothered to go find it.

But the problem with this is many of these relationships are one-sided. I'm not involved in them deeply enough to even classify them as relationships. They are agreeable ignorings, guilt-induced replies, or casual observations. In none of the above scenarios am I invested enough to make certain I am making an effort. And so it seems that I am just not all that interested in saving my closest relationships. The ones I have now are by no means my longest-lasting or deepest connections, but they're convenient. And so I revel in my day-to-day, without much of a glance backward (except for this overly verbose blog post).

I wish I could say I'll promise to change, but that's just too much of a commitment to make.