Sprouted

Living in my apartment building we don't have a piece of land to claim as our own. No backyard nor front-yard. No area for a blow-up swimming pool or lawn chairs. Barbecues are strictly forbidden and of course having a spot to dig up and plant a garden is a concept out of this world.

Until you meet my neighbor.

My neighbor Sprout (I'm calling her Sprout which is a fun play on her name) came by one day and asked for my bunny poop. Knowing Sprout this wasn't an unreasonable request. I said sure thing and before she knew it she had more than she expected. She told me she was using it as fertilizer for some plants but what I didn't know was that she was planning a creative outdoor experiment.

A Truck-Bed Garden.

She had cleverly turned the bed of her truck into a garden full of flowers and tomato plants, lovingly fertilized by Peanut and Pickle.

I took this pic during the part of the day when it has full sun but it is shaded for other portions too. She takes them out to water and rotates their positions.

I gave her another box of bunny poop for some friends that have seen how great her Truck-Bed Garden is growing. I think it is ingenious and it makes me smile every time I walk by.

Making your situation work for you. Growing despite the challenges.

I'm so proud and inspired to have her as a neighbor.

I'm With Not Stupid

For my birthday Jen got us tickets to "The Last Summer On Earth" tour with K.T Tunstall, Better Than Ezra, and Barenaked Ladies. Total 90's throwback to college and our days as roommates. We even had ZIMA.

Jen was most excited to see BTE where as I had already seen BNL a number of times and when people ask me "What is the best concert you have seen" I always say Barenaked Ladies. I was curious to see how they would be without Steven Page, also now that I'm not in my twenties.

I won't lie, it wasn't the same. But neither are we.

Jen would catch me watching the crowd as much or more than the stage. Watching people relive those mileposts that songs mark in our lives. I was imagining what the songs meant to them. Did they once play them on their portable CD players that plugged into their tape players in their cars with windows that had handles on them on their way to work/college? Did they lose their virginity to them? A few rows in front of us a former hippie and his son were dancing together. Did this Dad play these songs for his son in the car when he took him for drives to get him to sleep? Who knows, but I love all the possibilities.

Couples were dancing together. Badly. I can safely posit that 85% of the population has no rhythm, thankfully this doesn't stop them from daring to dance in public. A single father had his six year old daughter with him and they both danced and danced the whole time. This still makes me smile.

I smiled so much my face hurt. We giggled. We sang. I took video of Kevin Griffin of BTE singing "Tiny Dancer" but what you can hear is a lot of me singing in the background. We made friends with all the people sitting around us. It never fails, someone thinks they know me from somewhere. They stare at me, get this look on their face "Don't I know you?" I said "Most people think they do." She bolted up straighter "ARE YOU FAMOUS?" Then it's talk, giggles, nostalgia, mileposts.


A person's soundtrack is forever evolving. It is as alive as you make it. Jen and I aren't twenty anymore, even if we giggle like it. We still have the same inside jokes and are making new ones everyday.

We sing, we laugh, we smile. We make mileposts.

Just Me Being Anti-Social

Things To Do When You Aren't On Social Media

1.   Clean bunny cages.

2.   Read an article on Dian Fossey from a two year old magazine.

3.   Delete 1,800 emails.

4.   Unsubscribe to a bunch of emails in the attempt to stop the need to delete again.

5.   Know you will do it again. Again.

6.   Binge watch Killing Eve.

7.   Discover Dietland.

8.   Take the garbage out four times.

9.   Buy skirts at the D.I. 

10. Organize paperwork.

11. Make popcorn for dinner.

12. Update your computer for HOURS!

13. Make a list of all the cleaning you are avoiding.

14. Read another two year old magazine from the stack.

15. Play a CD you haven't played in over 15 years.

16. Eat Chinese food with your parents.

17. Remember why you don't watch movies with your parents.

18. Have a mama bird dive bomb you for coming too close to her nest.

19. Text your friend about tea, books, and bowel movements.

20. Snuggle Bunnies.

Would You Like GIFs With That?

I do well with assignments. Specially if they are given to me from someone else. I feel the need to perform and not let down the other person. I rise to it. Expectations and all that. Strange and exciting thing is, I have given myself one. It is a much easier thing to let yourself down than someone else. The negative self talk, the excuses you load up inside your head. It's old hat. Pro level at this stage of life. Which is why I think I haven't been writing on either of my blogs for such an extended period of time. So, in an attempt to remedy my absence on my blogs and cure what I have come to see as my "Junk Food Expression" on the big four social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, I am taking AT LEAST a two week break.

There will have to be a bit of a cheat in that when I post a blog it rolls over to both Facebook and Twitter. But during my first two weeks I won't be responding to any comments made on those sites, which is how most of you view it. I have been told that logging in to the blog, commenting, following, outside of Facebook and Twitter is a hassle, so I'm content to focus on creating. Which is what I haven't been doing. Mind you, I adore memes. GIFs bring me more joy than they probably rightly should. But I need to start sharing fewer memes and get back to sharing me.

I am writing inside my head, all day long. Then I talk myself out of it. "Eh, that's already been said, but better." "People are tired of hearing about that, stop whining." "That's not big enough." No. No. No. No.

I'm saying yes to myself. Assignment me. It could be a bunch of photos one day. But they will be here, not on Instagram. Maybe a poem. Maybe all the ideas I have squashed down so far they are buried underneath the piles of No.

I will still be using Messenger and Text. I enjoy Feedly for the other blogs I follow. I'm hoping that if I stop the mindless time suck scrolling (which I use as a distraction when I'm in pain, which is often) I'll focus on content that inspires me to not only be a better me, but better to others.

I'm excited and now the challenge is out there.

Good for me.