Venus Loci

Twenty-ten didn’t waste any time throwing a few speed bumps my direction.

The troubles began the day before I left for Colorado when I woke with a sore, swollen eye – another eye infection.  And so I flew to Denver last Thursday wearing my glasses.  On Friday a second medical complication required me to spend most of the morning talking with my Doctors in Austin and the pharmacy in Colorado Springs.  Cover your ears boys: my Nuvaring had mysteriously gone missing.  I finally got everything sorted out and a new prescription filled (only to discover two days later that the original hadn’t actually gone missing – oh, the glories of being a woman), and the trip turned out to be a fantastic one in spite of a challenging start.

ummm... not such a great idea afterall.

Promptly upon my return to Austin, my refrigerator broke down.  This resulted in a frantic mid-week evening of picking up a mini-fridge found on Craigslist, ruining the interior of my S2000 with said refrigerator, and relocating all items from broken fridge & freezer to one of two locations: new evil car-destroying mini-fridge or friend Melissa’s freezer.  It was an unexpectedly exhausting evening.  The following morning I broke a glass in the bathroom as I was getting ready for work.   Fifteen minutes later my worst nightmare came true: I set off the recently installed house alarm.  In my week away from home I’d forgotten how to enter the disarm code.  That afternoon I came home from work sick, sick, sick.  Since then I have spent the majority of my weekend in bed, trying to dislodge the styrofoam residing between my ears with sleep, sleep and more sleep.

The worst of all of these events is that I am completely out of sync with my world right now.  I can’t decide if it’s because of the aforementioned events, or if those events were a result of me being out of sync.  The feeling spans back to my house break-in before Christmas, and then spending the holiday alone in Austin.  While my friends were home with their families, I was here.  As soon as they got back, I left town.  Shortly thereafter I busted my eye, had a fridge bust, and got sick (resulting in more hermit at home time void of contact with the outside world).   I’d like to think that I will be back in sync quickly, but I’m staring into another weekend of traveling that is going to keep me from getting settled anytime soon.

My brief glimpse at normalcy came this afternoon when I planted onions.  Onions & lettuce & spinach, oh my!  I made a quick trip to the Natural Gardener to celebrate my getting out of bed and pajamas today.  While I was there I came across Roman Chamomile, which smells wonderful (like apples!).  I have no idea what I’ll use it for, but it’s so lovely that I added it to the herb garden.  The work was gentle and easy since the beds were already prepared.  Being outdoors was absolutely refreshing after being bed-ridden for the last 48 hours.  And raking through the herb garden with my hands to free dead leaves was really wonderful – the release of those scents into the air helped clear my head for a brief and wonderful moment.  I planted two pockets of creeping Jenny where my herb garden meets the original raised bed in the hopes that the creeping Jenny will fill those areas and keep grass & weeds down throughout the new year.

The herb garden - new chamomile is bottom right.

1015 onions - much bigger than last year's sprigs, can't wait to see how they do!

Speaking of onions... while I was outside planting them, Mallary was inside cooking them. The ski goggles make it the perfect photo for this post.

It feels great to have started the garden, and I’m looking forward to  planting carrots & broccoli in the coming weeks.  It still seems bizarre to be planting at this time of year, especially after having spent a week in a snow-covered place.  Since my trip to Colorado I expect to see pockets of melting snow here in Austin as I drive around town, and am still feeling shocked that there isn’t any here at all.  My Yankee blood must be calling to me – I’m even anxious to get to Chicago and experience the cold again.  Plans for a second skiing trip this season are sloshing around in my head as well.  Which leads to the final piece of my “feeling-out-of-sync” puzzle: since when have I missed cold weather and snow?!