i guess there's an end in sight after all

tomorrow. 7am.
nervous. excited. apprehensive. quiet. pensive. contemplative.
staring at the ceiling. staring at the floor. staring at the crib.
happy.
nervous again.
quiet.
still quiet.
but i am happy.

creating a new playlist

Sat on the porch this afternoon to watch the leaves fall. The sky was dark grey over the coast range, as expected, with the sun somehow making its way out to highlight our big leaf maple. A squirrel came by and sat on one of the limbs. We looked at each other for a while, and then he went on gathering whatever seeds and nuts he could find to prepare for the winter.

It felt like late in the cross-country season - when you're at a meet somewhere in the Alleghenies. Maybe it's raining, the generally brilliant poplars are sodden and brown, and you've walked the course and and have seen how it's covered in mud. You know you'll soon need to take the warm up suit off and strip down to those ridiculously small shorts and tank top. And though you're dreading the cold, there's enough anticipation in the air to make you excited to run the course. To have dried mud on your calves, soaking wet hair, and burst capillaries - evidence that you can handle whatever comes your way. You can handle it.

bigger fish to fry

I can look back on this gardening year without shame. The tomatoes went crazy, as indeterminate growers are apt to do, and we hurriedly made jars of oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, 17 pints of salsa, and 5 quarts of tomato soup. We'll make tomato sauce soon and at that point, we will have exhausted our repertoire of tomato-based products. We'll get a little late season arugula in October and a grand finale of evergreen huckleberries in November - and by that time, the garden will have run its full course.

I can't help but notice how the life of our garden perfectly corresponds with this life inside of me. Fully preparing the soil, building up the compost - all of that started late last winter. It's a full nine month period of nurturing the plants, sacrificing various offshoots, and watering during the dry summer months. At this time of year, you start to feel the internal anxiety that comes around the equinox - just go on and change already….the clouds want to, the trees want to, the soil is tired and desperately wants to - it's almost palpable. Someone recently referred to New Hampshire as an expectant mother during the month of September - and I couldn't have described it any better. There's an ever present, and growing reminder that this child also wants to move on to something different. I've been marking this whole journey by the leaves, and have a hard time believing that they're done growing, they've had their drunken summer, they're ready to leave their limbs.

To an extent, this autumnal change is exciting. But most of it scares me to the core. At this point, I'm in complete control of our unborn child's logistical life. He goes where I go. He eats what I eat. Maybe he feels my internal awkwardness when placed in a less-than ideal social situation. Maybe he's also uncomfortable when we're camping in the Southern Cascades at 8-1/2 months pregnant and can't seem to find a position suitable for sleeping. Maybe he was exhilarated by taking a bath in the 45-degree Rogue River, some kind of baptism courtesy of Mount Mazama's snowmelt. Maybe he felt as peaceful as I did when seeing Crater Lake for the first time. But we're nearing the end of our shared experience, and there's an anticipatory sense of mourning there.

I promise this won't turn into a baby blog, and there will never be a mention of anyone "going pee pee in the big boy potty" or the like. However, I feel that I wouldn't be being honest with myself if I didn't acknowledge how much the pending birth of this little boy is affecting my life. It is, and I'm simultaneously thrilled and terrified.

cucumpkins

So we planted cucumbers this year. Pickling cucumbers, small little manageable things, ready to lead us into the unknown world of fermentation. We planted them a little too early, perhaps, but placed them appropriately deep into our composted soil, and waited for growth. The first few sprouts looked alarmingly like the remnants of last year's zucchini (known for its tenacity), so Peter spent an afternoon pulling out about 150 "zucchini" starts. Then a few weeks later, the zucchini sprouts came back, so we pulled the starts once more and replanted with newly purchased pickling cucumber seeds. I watered the garden diligently, and everything seemed to be in order this time around. We went on vacation for a week, and when we came back, roughly 25% of the backyard had become this massive squash-like sea of leaves, male/female flowers, and bees a-pollinating like crazy. We had beaten the zucchini, there was no way we weren't getting cucumbers this time around, considering that they were taking over our garden as if it were nothing more than Belgium or some other insignificantly flat/historically overtaken country.

A few weeks later, our neighbors came by, and brought us gifts of spaghetti squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I dumbly stared at them, surprised that they had cucumbers so early, as ours weren't yet producing, despite their sovereign-nation-like size. I dragged said neighbors to the backyard to see if there was anything we were doing wrong, but they assured me that they looked like any old squash; we were sure to have cucumbers soon.

Then, about a week and a half ago, I went outside the water the garden and bent down to inspect the cucumbers. I jumped back - there certainly was something down there, but if it was a cucumber, it had a tumor. A HUGE tumor, a tumor that made me feel itchy, like I needed to disinfect even the soil it lay on. In an ominous sign that I will be a terrible mother, I decided to ignore the garden for the rest of the week, thinking that maybe the tumor would go away. Peter came home from one of his wilderness trips soon thereafter. As is his custom, he immediately went to the backyard to inspect the garden. I trudged back there to join him, ready to feign ignorance and shame at not caring for my cancerous squash. But he was laughing: "Jess, they're pumpkins! We have pumpkins!"

I'm so absolutely excited about this, purely for the aesthetic reason of putting them on the front porch come October. I guess the pumpkin seeds must have found their way into our compost after last year's pumpkin party….and then they were placed into our garden along with the rest of the compost, and - here's the thing - NO MATTER WHAT WE DID, they were going to grow. We planted new seeds over them twice, and they grew. We likewise ripped out their first sprouts two times, and still they grew. We're reaping the consequences of last year's actions. We wanted tiny pickling cucumbers. But we will receive 20-pound pumpkins. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

if the apocalypse comes, there will be beans.

28 pints, to be exact.
from our garden, nonetheless.
I'm not ashamed to say it: I'm damn proud of myself.

and there's nothing you can do about it

Lately, I've been thinking about the following things, which are not at all related:

- Several years ago, I was a camp counselor. I was with a bunch of campers one night and overheard them talking about bathrooms. The prettiest girl in the group said, "I've never pooped. Well, maybe only...like twice or something." I'm not sure why I love that story so much, but it's awesome.

- We picked berries yesterday: 18 pounds of strawberries, 15 pounds of raspberries, and 8 pounds of blueberries. Should be enough to get us through the year. While we were in the fields, a thunderstorm came through. It was exhilarating....like we needed to hurry up and get the harvest done before the rains came. I'm currently eating a big bowl of raspberries and blueberries in milk - just like how grandma taught us.

- Went to tutor my Iraqi family. No one answered the door, so I peeked in their front window. There had been a fire in the kitchen; the stove was gone, the wall was torn out, and the ceiling was just barely hanging on.... I've texted them, called them, sent them messages on facebook - and have no idea where they are. It always ends like this. When I tutored the Somali family, they just disappeared one day. When Dad went to tutor his Cuban student, he found that he had just up and moved to Richmond. I was kind of prepared to show up one day and find them gone - but it doesn't make it any less unsettling.

- We just got back from Colorado. The Rocky Mountain sun is like the arrogant older brother to the Northwest's watery, milquetoast of a sun. I kind of felt like I didn't know what to do with it, how to relate to it. In fact, most of Colorado made me feel that way, in terms of the land. There are so many mountains, so many ranges; it's intimidating, at best. How can I possibly get to know such a place, with so many elevation changes, with tundra and desert and technical climbing and dry wild flowers? I can't imagine that there's room in my mind to even be able to claim another place as my own.

But when I think about it, I was intimidated by the deepest gorges, widest rivers, and greenest greens when I moved to Oregon. Everything was a superlative, and it took me years to come to terms with that. I still don't feel like I have a right to Oregon; it's not mine to adulterize or manipulate. However, I wonder if my little boy will feel the same way about Douglas Firs as I do about Tulip Poplars? He'll easily tell the difference in ferns, like I can tell the difference in southern accents. If we live in Oregon, this is all part of what he'll be given, along with our rhododendron, our berry season, and our harshly divided topography. My lot was cast at birth, and I was given the Appalachians. Others are given the Great Lakes, farms on the plains, the Adirondacks, or the Atlantic shore. I'd assume we all feel that no one else can understand the connection that we have to our given place, location, land. Maybe even when I take my little boy to Virginia and he comes running up from the pond with frogs in his pockets and knees stained red from the clay - even then, he won't understand that land the way that I do. But he'll know Oregon (or Colorado or Montana or wherever we end up) in such an intimate manner that he may have a hard time explaining it to me. And I'll understand that he just can't find the right words. Because here's this dead horse which I've been beating for paragraphs and letters and years, and still am no closer to actually saying what it is that I want to say.

On cleaning out the closet...

Have been toying with the idea of getting rid of this thing, and may get around to doing it sooner or later. The only thing holding me back is the fact that it's been around since 2004. Once something has existed for a while, I have a hard time disposing of it because of the sheer fact that it's old.

Like the other day, I came across a website that I had created as a 15-year-old. It's full of cutesy misspelled letters, is entitled Jessica's House O' Patootles, and has a dizzying use of capitalization throughout. The main content focuses on cows, corn, and punk/ska. In short, it's just awful. Before getting too embarrassed, I read through the website guestbook, and found equally stupid messages from people whom I currently consider to be successful and interesting. I guess even the most hip among us were 15 years old and typed words like "KewL" at some point in our lives. All of this is to say - I can't delete this old webpage because it's been around forever. But then, that isn't because I haven't tried - apparently I'm no longer considered the website administrator, so this puppy is going to collect internet dust until who knows when.

Along these lines, when I was young, someone gave me a Jesus action figure as a present. Always the type A personality, I was organizing my closet for fun at some point in elementary school and came across said action figure, which I never played with anymore. But what could I do with it? I didn't know much about faith, but did know that it was probably a sin to throw Jesus in the trashcan. So it sat in my closet for several more years. Then it was time to pack up and move to college. Action Figure Jesus is still in the back of the closet. And I can't get rid of this thing, because it's STILL Jesus, so in the closet he stayed. A few more years and I've finished college and am getting ready to move all of my belongings to Oregon - and I again found Action Figure Jesus hiding in the closet. Developing that sinking since of obligation, I placed him in a dresser drawer, and he (He?) came with us to Oregon and has sat in our damp basement for upwards of five years. And the thing is - HE'S STILL in that dresser drawer. It's like this terrible curse, because you can never throw Jesus-themed anything away without feeling like an awful person. If you want to make someone feel obligated for life, just give them a Jesus-themed teapot and watch them suffer.