PNewL PNewS
The Art of Digging Up Rocks
Where I live, one does not dig holes, one digs up rocks and collectively they reveal the hole. I suspect I’ve said this before—my neighbor used to say, you can’t stick a knitting needle in this dirt without hitting a rock. Sound familiar?
The problem is, when I first hit a rock, I do not know if it is marble-size or coffee table-size. It’s all part of the fun and adventure.
Everywhere I have created a hole, there is a pile of rocks…sometimes I create a border with the rocks but that is ineffective and hard to mow around. In one area, I gathered them into a quasi-artsy display, a rock garden of sorts but the earth is absorbing them and these giant (to me) rocks are disappearing. One of these rocks was so heavy, I pinched a nerve in my shoulder moving it. And now, it’s half submerged. I moved others to a stepping stone walk to the outdoor shower. This spring, ants have apparently moved in between the rocks and dug up dirt beneath them and they too are sinking (the rocks, not the ants. The ants will survive us all, along with all the other bugs). These projects obviously need some work and more regular attention.
Every spring I have these moments of grandeur when I think I will plant trees and bushes and plants and bulbs. These all involve holes which involve dealing with rocks
I am not a gardener, but I do aspire to my yard looking…better. (There was a meme on social media that read, You are not a bad gardener—the plant just didn’t try hard enough. Words to live by.)
It may seem that I have spent enough time writing about my yard—and if you saw it, you’d think it should look better.
Things I am Learning
& Miscellaneous Observations
• Since I returned from away, Buster has been a bit of a challenge. He’s eaten three candy bar/gifts + candy sushi, nine mini Kind bars + half a bag of dates (unpitted), part of a bag of dry beans and three bananas. He knocks over and inspects the paper recycling almost every time I leave the house without him. Sigh. Beth said something like we would never accept the behavior in our human friends that we accept daily in our pets. Indeed.
• In a small corner of my life, I read scholarship applications and rank them. It’s a humbling experience. I keep wondering what it would be like to be so smart and athletic and successful at such a young age. When one’s report card (do they still call it that?) is covered in 95-100s, how do they feel when they get an 89…or an 83? Those scores break my heart for them—but I would have been pleased to see those on my report card…
• In three years, I will have been writing the PNewS for half my life. This is the kind of thing that comes to mind as I walk Buster. (It was a more complicated story problem than I would have imagined. Math never was my strong suit.)
• I finally uploaded my last tax document. I was trying to figure out why this is such a traumatic (I tried to decide if that word was overkill, but really it isn't) experience, filing my tax documents. It is a seriously fraught time for me—this year in particular. (The accountancy firm merged with another and this is its first tax season under the new name and management--I hope that's why it's been so challenging.) For me, there're authority figure issues, not feeling capable, frustration with others I am waiting on who don't exhibit any responsibility or urgency, and then the exposure of my private business to my accountant and her staff. I have spent a stupid amount of time this year trying to get the link to their "vault." Why does it always feel like this is the first time people have done this stuff? [Editor’s note: It’s over, I survived another tax season. Hopefully it won’t come up again til next year!]
• Recently I read the following quote, written by a young person. There is so much here I find charming, I had to share: “I know that if I continue to be motivated to learn and better myself, …and keep reading books and being curious, I will be on track to be seventy years old, sitting on my pleather couch, reading a book about gardening.”
• I'm reading a book by one of the people who I'll take a class from at the writer's retreat. It's about the importance of everyone having a physical address. (I thought about my homestay in San Jose Costa Rica--I remember my house was described as near a bike repair shop that didn't exist anymore.) It's fascinating. They mapped a neighborhood in the slums of Kolkata and gave them addresses that are more like GPS coordinates and it was really effective in making people feel like they belonged, were part of something bigger PLUS people can get services they can't get without an address. There are people in government in all our states whose job it is to assign addresses. One guy in West Virginia had to name thousands of streets. He said it was exhausting. Who knew?
• And another tidbit from Diedre Mask’s book “The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power”: In England in the 1700s, 90% of men were named John, Edward, William, Henry, Charles, James, Richard and Robert. Sounds like my elementary school class. (BTW, Diedre was wonderful—I want her to be my new best friend.)
• Sometimes when I am sending an email or posting on social media, I think, that would be a good pnewsy kinda thing so I copy and paste it into the file that becomes the next edition. Sometimes it’s interesting. Ofttimes it’s not.
• I have a friend whose father used to ask deep probing questions every time I saw him. The first time I met him, at a barbecue, I was a deer in the headlights. After that, I would prepare myself not to look quite so boggled. As I continue to ponder how different people’s brains work, I was reminded of these interactions which I came to enjoy: what’s he going to ask this time?!?! That’s the way his brain works and I love that about him.
My brain? I was walking Buster this fine cool morning and had an AHA! moment about car paint. There are new cars that have a different look to them because of the paint—it looks matte but it’s actually…well, more like gel nail polish. It’s kind of thickly one dimensional. I watched a vlogbrothers YouTube video the other day and Hank was ranting about this too! And he did the research. Turns out (and I kinda figured) the new paint doesn’t contain the shiny bits that make my (nine-year old!) car look different from new cars.
• I went through all my credit card statements to gather up information for taxes. I find it a kind of
retrospective of the year. In some ways I am very frugal, in other ways, not so much. Some months I wonder what I ate, sometimes I feel like I must have spent half the month in the grocery store. And often I think, what are you going to do with all that yarn?
• Back in the early days of the PNewS, it was a hard copy, on paper. I asked folks to send stamps. I went to Office Depot and steeled myself for the lengthy process of getting front-back copies without jamming up the machine. I taped the copies together and mailed them. Once I got a notice from the post office that “mail like mine” needed to be secured better. I taped more. Then it was a website—I learned to write code--which wound up unsupported by the provider. At that point, I started attaching a PDF copy. That reminds me of a friend who said she couldn’t read it because her download was so slow. Now it is a blog. It’s been a long winding road—wonder what’s next.
• In a jet lag haze post-overnight flight to Reykjavik, I decided pho and a beer could be the perfect meal for a solo traveler—good for me, filling, tasty and takes forever to eat. I would like to hang out in cafes and restaurants like others do but I eat fast and boom, it’s time to go. The first really nice meal I ate out early on in my travel career, I finished in less than 20 minutes (that’s from when I sat down to when I got up). I am not a good lingerer.
• Recently, I moved a mirror in my house because it was behind where I sit for Zooms (only took me four years of Zooms with glare behind me to deal with it!). Now I come across the mirror in its new location and am surprised, and I miss it in its old location where I could do a just-before-I-walk-out-the-door check in on hair and oh I don’t know…to check if there is toothpaste on my shirt? I am such a creature of habit.
• A woman I met at the writer’s retreat recommended a podcast/blog that focuses on memoir. As with all mailing lists, I paid attention in the beginning and now I scan and delete, and eventually I will unsubscribe. This one caught my attention: “What if the smallest almost forgotten moments were the ones that shaped us most?” I thought, well, that sounds like the PNewL PNewS.
“At 51, believe it or not, or believe it and pity me if you are young and swift, I still don’t know, truly know ‘what I want to be.’…But in that profuse upstairs delicatessen of mine I’m as open to every wild possibility as I was at 13, although even I know that the chances of acting them out diminish with each heartbeat.” Seymour Krim
Editor’s note: I have written a bit about my recent trip to Iceland and it is a separate beast. I’ll post it to the blog when I get to it.
