Who Knows?

Maybe the new look will inspire me to write something.

Crazier things have happened.

* * *

So Close

Day 29.

Each day in August, I have posted on this blog. It hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I guess I hadn't considered the endless fodder that my family generates on a daily basis.

But tonight, with 19 minutes left on the 29th day, I am absolutely wrenching myself away from my book in order to put this post up, so that on Thursday morning, I can say that I did it, I posted every day for one month.

I'm reading Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. I only have a handful of pages left. Unable to put the book down, I've lost sleep and as a result, lost patience with my children. I've neglected my laundry, my house, my offspring. I told my 4 year old I would not read to her tonight, so intent on this book have I been. It has all been worth it.

A fabulous book.

And I leave you with that.

* * *

Help Me Get My Techno Geek On

Got an iphone. Learning to use it. Kind of have a love-hate thing going on with it.

Do any of you bloggers out there mobile blog? Have you tried different blogging apps? What are my options? You know, cuz I jet set a lot, and have my most brilliant ideas when I am carpooling to exotic destinations like soccer practice.

If you blog from your phone, do you like having this ability? Has it proven useful, or just so-so? What do these apps reasonably cost?

An inquiring blogger wants to know.

* * *

Poor Widdle Neglected Blog

Between working on my annual design project, managing eighty-bazillion soccer try-outs, and trying to learn how to use my stupid fancy new iPhone, my poor widdle blog has been sorely neglected.

If anyone is still reading this:

Your visit is important to me! All of my energy is currently busy responding to other demands. Please stand by. Hopefully, there will be something interesting to read in this space soon. Your visit will not be monitored or recorded for quality assurance, but let's hope I write something of quality again someday.

The management thanks you.

* * *

Preserve Your Memories

Post title nod to Simon and Garfunkel

My camera is broken. That beautiful photo above? Public domain, not mine. I've watched many priceless moments come and go this week, moments I definitely would have captured for posterity or my FB status updates. Sadly, those moments will now have to rely on my swiss-cheese brain to stay alive, which pretty much means most of them are doomed.

There is something kind of poignant about relying on memory alone, making a day that much more special because nothing remains to prove that it ever was. Hopefully, I will remember at least a few of the uncaptured yet captivating things we saw today: the wonderful old graveyard we visited...the ornately carved tombstones from the 1800's with entire life stories contained in birth dates and death dates...the lizards and the frog the kids caught (and released)...the grave rubbings we made of flowers, crosses, and birds...my friend Miriam giving Lady E a piggy-back ride, their faces bright with the setting sun as they looked out over the oak covered hills. Oh, and my four year old asleep on a raised grave. That was a sight. My little sweetie, curled up like...well...an angel, snoring away on top of some long gone Italian person's lichen-covered final resting place. It was a shade creepy.

I'm pretty sure that last image will stay with me for a very long time. The others I will try to hold on to, but I fear they will flit away. Thank God for photographs and the worlds they preserve for us. Thank God for blogs, so we can write about those worlds when our cameras are broken.

* * *

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me

I have been tagged by Teacher Mommy to participate in a meme. Can someone tell me what "meme" means? Where it comes from? I've never googled it. If you have, please share!

So, I answer 10 questions and then I tag 6 people to answer the same 10 questions.

1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing it that way; if you are not anonymous do you wish you had started out anonymously so you could be anonymous now?

I do not blog anonymously. Sometimes, I wish I did, because it seems like it might be easier to express myself without upsetting people. But then, writing is not for the feint of heart. If I'm not comfortable writing about it, then I'm either not ready to or I'm being a wuss and should get over myself. Usually, I think I need to work harder to write in way that is true to what I am thinking but respectful to those who might be upset or disagree. Whether or not someone might get upset or might disagree with me should not be a reason to write or not to write. Sadly, for me, it sometimes is. So I'm not anonymous, I sometimes wish I were, but in the end I think it's better this way.

I'm not very good at the courageous writing stuff, but I aspire to be. Baby steps, Bob.

2. Describe one incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

Wow, can it be that I'm not actually stubborn? Because I can't think of anything. Unless you count my ability to ignore my daughters' repeated pleas to "check on" them at night after I've put them to bed. I can listen to wailing and gnashing of teeth without stirring from my comfy chair for a good long time.

Is that stubborn? Or just too exhausted to move? They look an awful lot alike at 9:30 at night.

3. What do you see when you really look at yourself in the face in the mirror?

The best mirror in my house is my 8 year old daughter, whom everyone says is the spittin' image of me. So, when I look at my face reflected in hers, I see beauty, joy, and love. And a heaping helping of silliness. Lucky me!

I try to avoid all other mirrors.

4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?

Homemade sun tea. My kids made some two days ago, on the first decently hot day of the entire summer, and it tasted just like my own childhood. I found myself impatient for it to be ready, and also slightly uncomfortable with the way my kids kept saying "Is the tea ready yet?" They don't have to wait for much in their lives: everything is instantaneous. Sun tea is a delicious antidote.

5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

When I finally figure out how to do this, I'll let you know. I suspect I might spend 70% of the time weeping.

6. Is there something you still want to accomplish in your life? What is it?

Seriously? Still something I want to accomplish? Well, that particular list is long and ever-growing. I'll give you a handful. I would like to get more involved, in some meaningful way, with the Slow Food Movement. I would also like to figure out how to get my laundry put away when it's folded. I would like to write more.

Mostly, someday I would like to sit with my husband someplace beautiful, with a glass of red wine, assured in the knowledge that our five children are happy, peaceful, joyful adults. And to enjoy that glass of wine without talking about a single one of them.

7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the class shy person, or always ditching school?

I was a weird amalgam of smart student, borderline nerd, drama geek, social butterfly, and clueless happy person. But I was blessed with amazing friends, the kind that stay with you for your entire life, and they got me through the good, the bad, the awkward and the socially deadly.

8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what do you see?

I see an orange and white VW van pulling away from a curb, with my family inside of it and a very tall dormitory building rising up behind me. Having just been deposited at UC Santa Barbara for my freshman year of college and watching the family van trundle away, I was suspended smack dab between childhood and adulthood, and I knew it. I remember walking back into my dorm, excited, nervous, young, naive, confident and terrified at the same time. It was awesome.

I then proceeded to have the hands down worst year of my entire life, which I can now say, from the comfortable distance of 20+ years in the future, means that I am one incredibly lucky person.

9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?

I do not find it easy at all to share my true self on my blog, and I often root around in my brain for topics that have to do with other things going on in the world. I am rarely successful because I usually end up thinking that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Sometimes, when I read my own blog, I am a little sickened by the endless focus on me and my family. Like memes for example. Does anyone really care what my favorite summer drink is? I don't even care what my favorite summer drink is.

But at this point in my life, my family is what takes up all my time and all the space in my brain...so my family is what I'm mainly writing about for now.

10. If you had the choice to sit and read or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

I loathe talking on the phone and am not good at it. For starters, there's the fact that a mother on a phone sends an undeniable signal to her children that they can behave horribly. Second, being on the phone always makes me think of all the stuff I'm trying to get done and can't until I am done talking. Third, I never know how to end a conversation, and am usually trying to. I can't count the number of times I hung up the phone and thought "Well, THAT was awkward." Why would I enjoy an activity that highlights my social ineptitude?

So I'll take a book any day of the week.

* * *

And now for the tagging part, the part of a meme that usually keeps me from participating. Feels like a chain letter, and I don't do those either. But I do enjoy reading memes (memi?) when other people do them, and I did participate in this one, so I need to somehow comply with this part, right?

If you have a blog, consider yourself tagged and do this meme. *times 6*

I can't bring myself to tag anyone individually. Please don't revoke my blogging license.

* * *

When the To Do List Gets Too Long, Become a Food Blogger

There are 19 items on my to-do list today. I have done 11 of them. I started the day with five kids, shed two at a day camp, and then picked up three more friends, so I'm at +1 from baseline at the moment. There are many things happening around here, and the 11 shiny undone to-do items are winking at me from yonder on the table. I feel like ignoring them, so I have decided to become a food blogger.

Thank you to Nicole (who gave birth to two of the friends here at the moment) for giving me a lovely idea to try with my fresh-from-the-garden, just-picked radishes. Radishes are ravishing. Here is one of the beauties my kids picked this afternoon:



And here is what I did with it:



Yum. Nicole recommended a good slice of bread (I toasted mine), a little butter, thinly sliced ravishing radishes, and a spray of salt across the top. It was a lovely little pick-me-up, better than the coffee I was scheming about.

So yeah, I needed a little distraction; but I can't actually become a food blogger because I can't actually cook much, and I'm not so hot at taking pictures.

OK, I'm going to go try for Items #12 and #13. They're winking the hardest.

* * *

Another Reason Kids and Technology Do Not Mix

Stumbled on this blog today. Had to share this post. Classic.

* * *

Should I Keep It?

So I selected a new template from blogger. Should I keep it?

* * *

Award Love

One of the most wonderful parts of blogging, for me, has been the opportunity to read amazing writing that I'm sure I would not otherwise ever see. Reading the words of my fellow bloggers reassures me that the written word is alive and thriving, not dying on the internet vine as some might have us believe. Equally wonderful has been the warm and enthusiastic responses I've enjoyed from friends and strangers to my own writing. I've always wanted to be a writer; thanks to Blog Land, I get to be.

Yesterday, I received a blog award from Teacher Mommy at Diapers and Dragons (don't worry, links below). She really shouldn't have, because I am long overdue in giving HER one, for a wonderful and creative post of hers from a few weeks ago. But she did anyway, because she's just that devious kind.

All of this got me thinking about how much blogs and blogging have become a part of my life over the past few years. How many of us check our favorite writers every morning? How many of us experience something during the day, and immediately start composing our next post in our heads? How many of us have "met" over the internet, united by nothing more than words that resonate between us? It's pretty awesome.

So today's post is all about celebrating blogging.

First, I finally bestow an award on Teacher Mommy, for her fabulous post If I Were.... For this out-of-the-box take on a traveling meme, I am giving her the Kreativ Blogger Award. (insert applause here.) I especially liked her "If I were a car" response.



Second, I gratefully display the award Teacher Mommy bestowed on me yesterday, for my Laundry Sonnet, which was really fun to write, but which sadly did not result in my laundry getting done.



And third, I encourage each of you to select a post that has recently touched you, made you laugh, think, cry, or finally get off the couch and take some action, and share it with others. Give it an award, or simply write about it on your blog and link to it so that others can read it as well. And then leave me a comment so I can visit your blog and see what you've been reading lately.

I'm so grateful to this blog. And to Teacher Mommy's blog. And to Jen at DiagnosisUrine. And to Viv, a Proud Mom to Many. And to many, many others. Let's share the love.

* * *

Stop Searching For Elmo!

Last year, I wrote a silly post about Elmo, about how I had not realized how controversial Sesame Street actually is. Hadn't considered how Cookie Monster thwarts our every attempt to teach our children good nutrition habits. Hadn't recognized the "partnership" between Ernie and Bert. Hadn't realized that people actually hate Elmo.

In the past few days, however, I've started feeling a certain antipathy towards him myself.

Apparently, the image I grabbed and put on my blog for that post has moved into a position of prominence in the Google Images search. A gazillion and a half people have been clicking on that 6 month old post because they are searching for a picture of Elmo and they land on And I'll Raise You Five.

My stat counter has been going bonkers.

At first, I was elated. Wow! So many visitors! I must be even more eloquent than I imagine! I'm so impressed with myself! (Given another of my antipathies, this one for the exclamation point, that's sayin' somethin'.)

But do these gazillion new people click on anything else? Nope. They probably spend half a second on my blog, long enough for them to think Good Good, anyone and everyone has a blog these days, and this crap is not what I'm searching for, and then they move on. No comments. No piqued interest leading them to other pages, to more compelling posts. No uptick in my small band of followers.

Elmo is not sharing the love. Many, many people search for him, find me, and leave me in their dust. They love him enough to search; they do not love me enough to stay for awhile.

My stat counter is completely unreliable now, since the vast majority of my hits are really hits for Elmo. I can't even get excited about the climb in numbers; Elmo has rendered it meaningless.

Stop searching for Elmo people!

And no, I am NOT linking to that earlier Elmo post, because half of the blog-reading world has already read it and I'm sick to death of it.

* * *

What Ails Me?

I have lost the ability to see my crazy life as humorous. Hopefully, this is temporary. I read other blogs, and laugh at the antics, or the craziness, or the stinkbugs, and I think: "Wow, my pink eye, barf, broken appliances, broken bones, flooded garage, and garden-that-needs-a-radical-transformation-before-our-annual-garden-tour-in-3-weeks could be funny too! Why can't I find the funny? Why, instead, do I feel the need to bury the details of this miserable happy life so far from view that they all might just disappear if I wish hard enough?" I think this is why I haven't been blogging. I start to write, and then I hit the delete button very hard about 200 times, curse at the computer, curse at the laundry, and go feed people instead. Because I can always count on someone needing to be fed, or wiped (as in as I type this right now).

But as Spring Break limps to a close, and I'm both more than ready for the kids to go back to school AND not ready because uniforms aren't clean and backpacks from 10 days ago still hold lunch boxes from 10 days ago (one smells extremely citrus-y), I would like to get back to this blog.

So, as Spring Break limps to a close, I will limp back to my blog...hoping to find the funny, and the sweet, and the beautiful.

Right now, I am going to go out in the rain, to clean toys off our lawn, so that Rick can re-seed it and put down a layer of soil. This must happen in the rain, because we have to have each and every day of the next three weeks bring us closer to a show-ready garden; rain cannot stand in our way. If I find anything funny while I'm out there, I'll be sure to write about it.

* * *

The Reason I May Be Boring You to Tears

It's February 1, 2010.

Let the games begin.

In this case, by "games," what I actually mean is "the insane amount of work I do between January 15 and March 15 of each year."

I am a freelance editor/writer and graphic designer, in addition to helping my husband run his -- our -- garden design company. Every year, we participate in a tour of local native plant gardens; the tour takes place the first Sunday in May. We are extraordinarily busy during February, March, and April, preparing 3-5 gardens for the tour, ours included.

With my graphic design hat on, each year I produce the booklet that every registrant of the tour receives. It's usually around 100 pages, contains tons of useful native plant information, and features a garden description page for each of the 50 or so gardens on the tour. I love this project: it is both my biggest and my most enjoyable paying gig of the year. It's also the most work, and right now is crunch time. It's due at the printer sometime around March 10th or so...so by March 15th, I will have put this baby to bed.

These two Herculean efforts -- the tour booklet as well as the garden prepartions -- join the juggling act already in progress that constitutes my life as a wife, mom, freelancer, small-business owner, and last, but God help me not least, person.

Guess what is suffering the most? My beloved writing outlet: this blog. I have few brain cells left to respond to my favorite NPR stories, relate hilarious kid-anecdotes, muse on parenting, or try my hand at something resembling real writing.

I hope you stick with me for the next month and a half.

A blog I read and enjoy has a link on the left hand side that reads: "Regular writing; occasional brilliance." I like this. I need to work on the regular part. This may not be the month to devote myself to that effort, but it's where I hope to be when the dust settles and I just have the usual too much to do instead of the certifiably insane too much to do.

So for the next month and change, I will try to keep up, with both reading blogs I like (and commenting) and writing for my own. But if I seem to have disappeard, or if I'm here but boring, remember that I will try to return when the games come to a close.

* * *

De-Lurk, Early and Often

Today is National Delurking Day.

So get with the program, peeps. Comment.

Early, often, politely or not.

There's a reason why Nike makes more money than God: Just do it.

Scroll through my posts; I'm sure you'll find something to say. It need not be something nice, although nice is...nice. The important thing is to join the party and add your voice to the mix.

Thanks ever so much!

* * *

Time for a Stretch

Thank you Viv for this award!

In return, I am charged with being grateful.

Wow.

Isn't that kind of antithetical to all the bitching and complaining I usually do?

Only some of it ends up on this blog, but the rest of my dissatisfaction with life is strewn liberally across my kitchen, where I spend so much of my time, and I'll have a job clearing it all to the side to find those gems of gratitude buried around here somewhere.

It is a well documented truth that the only motivation strong enough to make me clean my house is the threat of visitors. Now it seems the same is true of my head and heart: the only thing motivating me to clean them up today is the prospect of visitors to this blog. That plus the gauntlet thrown down by this Happy 101 Award.

So, thanks to Viv, I will now search my head and heart to find 10 things that I am grateful for, that make me happy. (I considered using spots 1-5 for each of my five kids. But that's a little bit of cheating right there, plus, they're driving me nuts, so it wouldn't have been incredibly heart felt. They are up too early, and they are clamoring for food, wii-time, and valentines print outs. The three little ones are giving me approximately -1 centimeter of space in which to move. Why is that the under 10 set does not understand the concept of personal space? Or perhaps they understand but do not care?)

OK, back to the task at hand. S-T-R-E-E-E-E-E-E-T-C-H!

1. I am grateful for my parents. They are really wonderful to my children and very supportive to Rick and me. They host sleepovers, take the kids to movies, do art with them, ride bicycles with them (bicycles they purchased!), and come to their sporting events. Plus, every year on my birthday, they renew my subscription to The New Yorker. Which is good because I spend so much time doing mind-numbingly mundane tasks that without a little high-brow content to read, I think my brain would have been mush a long, long time ago. Thanks for keeping me smart, mom and dad!

2. I am grateful for the very wide circle of friends Rick and I have. We have been showered with so many kindnesses, so much generosity, and so much plain old love, that no matter how stressful and difficult things may get while raising five children and working multiple jobs, I am forced to recognize that life is good, the world is full of beauty, and that people are truly wonderful. We are blessed.

3. I am grateful to the writers and actors of the show Friday Night Lights. They make me happy, after they rip my heart out with their story lines. What a great show.

4. I am grateful to the writer of the blog pantrymd.com. Check her out. She gave me the idea for kale chips, which my kids actually fight over. Kale. They can't get enough. That makes me incredibly happy, and gives me hope that these kids might just turn out to be successful, happy adults.

5. Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

6. I am grateful for the internet, just like Viv, because it connects me to so many people and interesting ideas, and because I love to blog. Stay-at-home-parenting can be so isolating. The internet gives us that white picket fence of yesteryear -- a place to lean and chat with neighbors. (Thank you to my friend Gabriele for that image!)

7. I am grateful for the jobs Rick and I have. Work is a good thing, especially given that we are both self-employed.

8. I am grateful for hot showers, and I don't get nearly enough of them.

9. I am grateful for sour dough french bread.

10. I am grateful to Viv, for giving me this exercise to do. My mind and heart really needed the workout.

As for the passing it on part. Funny, I always enjoy getting these awards and the invitations to write about something, but I am entirely uncomfortable with sending them. So I guess I will instead invite everyone to consider what makes them happy and do a little posty-posting about it. Take the Happy 101 image from the top of this post, and join the party.

* * *

My Favorite Gravy of Thanksgiving Weekend 2009

I spend a surprising amount of time thinking about the things I need to teach my kids. Ya' know, the big and little things that make a life, like how to do laundry, how to clean your ears, how the crusty bits of homemade mac-n-cheese are the best, and how to fold socks.

Today, I read a blog that I just adored about exactly this: the things you want and must teach your children well.

Read this now. You'll love it. You might even, as I did, learn something about vagisil that you did not know. You will likely find a new blog to follow as well.

Thanks Momo!

* * *

To Ad or Not To Ad

I am trying to decide whether or not to join Blogher, or Adsense, or one of those types of networks and start posting ads on this site. I haven't so far, because I figure that my five or so faithful readers (a) wouldn't like it and (b) wouldn't really be a very effective target market for any advertisers.

Oh, and (c) because I'm lazy and haven't really bothered to investigate or think very much about this issue.

What are the pros and cons? Would I have more readers? Would the ads annoy people, including me?

So much to think about. I think I'll go have a piece of pie instead.

If you have any thoughts one way or the other, if you have ads on your own blog or not, please share your experiences.

Coming next: I will post my apple pie recipe. It's not rocket science people, it's sugar and apples. And pears.

* * *

Don't Report Me

Although I am definitely guilty of Blog Neglect, I am throwing myself at your mercy and begging you not to call BPS on me. Blog Protective Services. Those people could revoke my blog-ental rights and possibly even remove my blog from my home!

Look, I know I can do better, be better. Give me another chance. Send me to some classes or training or something. Don't make me talk to a judge, who sees too many cases of Blog Neglect to give bloggers like me a fair shake.

I am better than this. Please let me prove it.

Signed,

A blogger with the firm resolve to, you know, actually blog. Sometime soon. When work slows down. Or the kids grow up and move out. Or the earth moves under my feet. Or I just make the damn time.

* * *

Awe-Summ

Thank you, Teacher Mommy, for bestowing upon me the following award:


That, in itself, is pretty awe-summ. So here are the rules:

1. List 7 things that make me Awe-Summm
2. Pass the award onto 7 bloggers that I love.
3. Tag those bloggers to let them know they are now Queens too, and link back to the Queen who tagged you.

Soooooooooooo. Seven Things. Hmmmm.

One. My hands, which I use each day to make meals for my family and which I manage to control each day, such that I do not strangle said family when they do not eat the meals I make for them.

Two. My voice, which can be surprisingly loud and also surprisingly sweet. I am especially thankful for the loud part, because I can bring a room full of savages to a halt with a well-placed bellow.

Three. My kids make me awe-summ because each day they provide me with countless chances to do what seems impossible, and no matter how much I suck at that on any given day, on the very next day I get to have a whole passel of new chances too be awe-sum to them. How awe-summ is that?

Four. My ability to go without sleep. Also a curse, which may, in fact, kill me someday, but for now it comes in quite handily.

Five. My guacamole. Nothing is quite so satisfying as hearing your child say that no one makes better guacamole than mom. (It is damn good, truth be told.)

Six. My friends, because they bring me out of myself and keep me from wallowing in a little shallow pit of isolation, loneliness, and woe. I'm actually kind of funny around the right people, which always makes me grateful for their existence.

Seven. I made it through 7 awe-summ things, which I didn't think I could do, which is, after all, awe-summ.

As for this tagging business. Now that's the part that really stumps me. I am not all that keen on the idea of passing on the love in quite this fashion. Soooooooooooo, instead, please take a look at my side bar, under the heading "Have you read these?" and visit these blogs. They are all more than awesome.

Thank you for indulging this list.

* * *

Of Garden Apples and Maternal Neurosis

We have a wonderful apple tree in our backyard, and this year it is producing well: the apples are incredible, sweet and sour at the same time (just enough sour), crispy and juicy, and the kids are loving them. It's a special variety called Anna Israel from a nursery called Trees of Antiquity (looking for a rare tree? Try them!).

Today, Elizabeth asked me for "a garden apple." This struck me as so adorable: she knows the difference between a store-bought apple and a home-picked one, and she knows which one she prefers. It was lovely to be able to step out into the warm day, pluck the ripe apples from the tree, retrieve a few that had already fallen, and slice them up for lunch. Here they are:

Warm from the sun, nothing beats a garden apple.

While picking apples, I thought about how this was just the perfect kind of thing for someone's blog. Someone else's blog. Someone who takes beautiful food and cooking photos; someone whose garden is always in picture perfect condition, whose kitchen is always ready for whipping up amazing dishes, and whose personal style is classic and comfortable. Someone who walks the walk and talks the talk when it comes to slow, local food.

That someone is most definitely not me. I, like my kitchen, am always a wreck, never prepared for meals, dashing around like a looney trying to get decent food into people's stomachs, wishing I had more time and skill to cook good food, with local and organic ingredients. I look at people's blogs, with pictures of the scones they whipped up that morning, with the vibrant reds, yellows and oranges of the bell peppers that went into their enchiladas, and I know: They must have better lives than I do. They must really have things together. I bet their kids even eat that delicious looking food, without spilling anything, without complaint, and with pleases and thank-yous sprinkled throughout.

The recipes, which the uber-bloggers always include, sound easy. So I try them, and the food comes out OK, but the process is total chaos and angst for mama. I cannot document the cooking process, cannot photograph my kitchen while I'm cooking: it's a horror show.

But then: a glimmer. Hey, I can stage a photo as well as the next blogger, can't I? I can zoom in on one little corner of the kitchen and crop out any sign of reality, right?

A friend of mine gave me a lovely plaque that I keep on a built-in in my kitchen. It and its wise message have lately been obscured by a trophy hospital (where broken trophies wait for krazy glue), a few thomas trains, some phone equipment, and a couple of cracked picture frames. So I simply moved the junk out of the way, swiped the surface with a baby wipe, and placed the garden apples just so.



Ignore that bit of electrical cord that didn't quite get tucked into the drawer. Instead, read the warm words of "The Real To Do List," imagine the curve of a garden apple nestled in your hand, and think of me, slicing apples to Mozart and handing them to angelic, grateful, loving children.

I am empowered. Armed with a blog and photoshop, I can crop the neurosis right out of my life.

* * *