Here for your viewing pleasure we have, courtesy of E, a Butt Apple.  (Pomme de Butte sounds fancier.)  (Also a pretty fancy tat.)  We are a unique family.

E also alertly observed the sudden mysterious disappearance of all the booze.  What you see here is all non-A.

I got busy in the garden, finishing out the replanting of the first section.  Even after tilling and hoeing, the ground was so baked I couldn’t get the stakes into it!  I added a Portuguese kale, a mini pak choi, broccoli, and mixed Asian greens, all of it cold-hardy.  Naturally the temps returned to 90s for the week!  E was out there attempting to clean up the green swamp of a pool.

The hot peppers are still going strong—cayenne, jalapeños, and poblanos, mainly.  Bells are another one I can’t seem to grow.  Yet I did manage a few eggplants.

To read these posts, you’d never know there are genocides, assassinations, mass shootings, deportations, and racist fascism going on all around us daily.  Just to name a few.  I try to leave the atrocities to the “experts”.  If this were “The Expanse”, I’d be Prax.  I hope I’d be as courageous as he had to be when it came down to his own family and friends.  I’d be The Praxigatrix.

I barely made it out to the garden today, except to water, and here’s why: I was assigned the significant job of purging essentially all booze from Avdi’s house.  I won’t go into details, but you can probably guess.  No, it’s not me, because all the booze is now living at my apartment!  Oh whatever will I do??  Ironically, I’m unable to drink very much any more!  Ahaha.  I have to smuggle drinks for Avdi in a flask!  It’s like Prohibition!

But seriously, it’s kind of sad for Avdi to have to adjust even more aspects of his lifestyle to keep his household safe and secure.  What happens elsewhere is another matter, but at home he must take responsibility for his kids’ health and behavior.  It also affects other aspects, like limiting Avdi’s freedom to go out for the evening, e.g., with me tonight, or any time.  It amounts to a curfew.  Even less escape or time out.  The price you pay for having kids.

As it turned out, we did get to go out and check out another new-to-us place in Tower Grove South, a smash burger and drinks joint, where we sat out on the pleasant patio.  It was very relaxed and casual, with excellent burgers and drinks.  There are lots of other taverns and eateries around, for another evening.  We just had time to rush over to Costco for kid meds and foods that kids with various eating disorders will eat.  It’s always like Little India and Asia over there late in the evening, which I love to see.

Now I’m back in my apartment, with a pantry filled with booze instead of food!

I was a weeding machine yesterday, trying to reclaim the veg garden from the jungle and give it a second life.  I made some headway.  It’s amazing what you’ll find down there.  Much like my brain.

I wonder if that’s how Avdi feels every day, struggling to keep the kids weed-free (STS) and alive.  See, it’s all one big metaphor.

I threw in a photo of some actual jungle plants soon to be relocated indoors, mostly to my apartment collection.

If you can get through a MO summer a.k.a. hell, you are rewarded with the wonders of MO pre-fall.  Perfect for working outside and reclaiming the veg garden for another season!

It seems that’s my new evil plan.  I’m planting a whole salad of various cool-weather lettuces and hardy fall/winter greens in the half I tilled.  As the other half finishes out, I’ll replant it, as well.  I’ve also been replanting herbs here and there.  I’m weeding as I go, and later on I’ll dump piles of leaves etc. on everything and till it under.

Things in the household are not as idyllic.  The kids seem to have cycles of being self-destructive and giving Avdi grief, like whac-a-mole.  Just as one gets somewhat sorted, another one erupts.  So he’s not doing so well.  I try to just help manage the physical household, and then stay outside (but available) where it’s safer!

Somehow I threw my back out, so once the drugs kick in, I’ll go over there and do it again.

A while back I resolved to try to write in this journal as often as possible, not because I necessarily had anything to say, but to keep up my writing skills, such as they are, and to keep a personal log of this insignificant life for mostly myself.  If anyone else tagged along, all the better!

I try to keep a balance of being my real self, however boring and unsophisticated, and keeping in mind any others, present and future, who might gain some good from reading along.  Once in a while, the vile political forces destroying our world compel me to rant and rave a little, mostly from helplessness to do anything effective to help stop it.  Sometimes my own petty worries creep in to my narrative and I release pressure.  Mostly I just drone on and on about my favorite therapy and metaphor, gardening, with amateur illustrations!  Or what’s going on with the family I moved here to be with and hopefully contribute to.

Underneath it all, I’m working out my remorse and regrets over my confused, misspent past by trying my hardest to make up for it now, while I still have time.  I finally believe my son has forgiven my absence and failures as a mother, but I may never forgive myself.  I no longer try to blame everyone else and circumstances for my poor choices and decisions.  I just try to be my best self and mother/grandmother/friend now, however late.  Sometimes I’m still clueless how exactly to do that, but anyway, I’m fortunate to be here now.

And that’s why I keep this journal, as a record of one insignificant life amidst a backdrop of world insanity, and good people attempting to live in it and make it better.  You don’t get to choose your world, but you do get to decide every day to keep on living, growing, and refusing to be hopeless or apathetic.  That’s me in a nutshell.  Peripheral and ancillary, but determined!  (How you like them big words?!)

Thank you for your indulgence!  I now return you to the usual ramblings.

I got back in the traces, or harness, or whatever you call it, today.  I planted some new cilantro seed.  I tried again to hoe the concrete posing as garden soil, and discovered it really is like an impenetrable clay slab  just below the surface.  The hoe just bounces off it.  So I gave in and got out the rototiller, and managed to break it up into fragments and finally a thin layer of dust over the solid clay floor.  No wonder everything has such a hard time thriving and producing.  But I won’t be deterred.

More challenging than that is not being able to eat or drink normally because of my crater.  I didn’t even stay to eat the dinner I prepared for the family.  And I didn’t accompany them to one of my favorite places, Global Foods, but for a different reason–no money for food.  Man I’m pathetic!!  But the weather was perfectly gorgeous for working and walking, so I did accomplish something.

So now I have this open bloody excavation in my mouth.  I’m not allowed to drink alcohol for 7-10 days (the horror), or really bad things will happen.  Also I can’t eat most foods, only ones I don’t have.  Maybe I’ll finally lose weight.  I have another dental hygiene routine I get to add  to all the others.  I need a drink!  Just kvetching.  I still think modern dentistry is amazing, but not amusing sober.

Here is SlimeGuy.  It’s also how I feel before the dental drugs wear off.  ‘Nuff said on that subject.

I’m not supposed to do anything “normal” today, so here are yesterday’s attempts at focussing.  Can’t look a gift phone cam in the mouth.  Just like you can’t look in my mouth right now, not that you’d want to.

Yesterday I worked on cleaning up half the veg garden, including pulling this nice pile of green onions and leeks.

I’ve learned from sources who know that the reason MO soil turns out to be like cracked concrete, no matter how much organic material or water you add, is the same reason there are so many brick buildings—clay.  Lots and lots of clay.  It’s baked!  I can’t even hack a hoe into it.  So it’s not just me, it’s everyone.  Somehow I don’t feel better.

Sometimes I find myself outside the loop of the family’s ongoing emotional roller coaster.  I hate to see Avdi going through so much turmoil, but feel inadequate to help, even if I knew the details.  Just “being there” doesn’t seem very effective, but it’s all I can do sometimes, so I show up.  Later, I leave, feeling like a shadow.  I know it’s not about me.  So I’ll continue to show up and be there, and hope it makes a difference.

On a lighter note, something tells me Halloween is up next, at least going by the neighbors!

Y had friends from camp over for a sleepover, and guess who slept?  They did!  I, as resident “grownup”, couldn’t!  Go figure.  But that’s OK.  I’m glad Y has like-minded friends to hang out with.  At one point, they were all quietly doing crafts and singing in the office.  That was worth the disorder left behind.

As for me, here’s how I amuse myself: a magical lightshow in the night garden.  I can’t get enough of it.  Also, the butterflies are almost in focus now!  This year’s garden really was a butterfly/hummer/pollinator/bird magnet.  Also the rabbit with little bunnies help me weed.  So one mission accomplished, at least.

Today, labor day, I slept in at home and indulged myself with a tiny food delivery–including the luxury of cheap booze!  I labored for it.