Onward spaghetti squash!

The Latin name for spaghetti squash is Cucurbita pepo. Which I interpret as koo-kurr-BEE-tah PEE-poh. I find them so pleasingly strange. Clearly part of the squash family in taste and shape, its insides appear run-of-the-mill. But they aren't. They are somehow literally and conceptually one of the most delightfully comforting eats around. Spaghetti. Freakin' spaghetti. Ok, let me emphasize. They are a squash, a vegetable, filled with spaghetti. Which is a pasta, people. A pasta. Crazy? Crazy.

The main reason why I am so excited about spaghetti squash right now is because I just grew one. Well, sorta. It has yet to reach its teenage years, or even its first day of kindergarten. But its infant leaves are big and turgid and lovely. Several weeks ago, Grassfed and I tilled and mulched and tilled and fertilized and tilled and furrowed. We pushed seed after seed into fresh soil, glancing at each other with clueless hope.

I recorded all of our planting in a journal. When I have no idea what I'm doing, it helps me to keep a log of all of my actions so I can then attempt to identify how I screwed up when things go horribly wrong. But thus far, things have not gone horribly wrong. Yes, the parsley and the carrots were slightly developmentally delayed, but they've caught up and poked their heads out. They almost seem to say 'Ok, ok, we're coming, dude. Take a Valium.' And yes, I have recorded the conversation that was had with them in the journal. They have my easygoing personality and Grassfed's strapping good looks.

So far, the coolest thing about having a vegetable garden is not the fact that we can consume the freshest produce around. It's putting your hands in the soil next to someone who has farming in their blood. You figure, Something has to grow. Didn't your father make a living from this? You must have learned something. It also helps that this person who is tamping down the rows next to me is tall and gives good bear hugs.

Real Housewife of El Cerrito

There are people in this world that are so good at doing laundry that it would make you want to cry. It’s so much more complicated than darks and lights. The mere idea of darks and lights only scratches the surface. I am not one of these people. I don’t hate on laundry, it just doesn’t make me happy. There are people in this world that live and die for glass without spots, flawlessly gleaming floors, the perfect room with the perfect placing of the perfect rug.

On some days, I find myself unrecognizable. I get up early and stay up late. This should provide me with so many hours to create so many things, about which I can feel so much pride, so much accomplishment, and so much satisfaction. But it doesn’t. It seems that all it provides me the time to do is put away dishes and refill a dishwasher, throw in a load of darks and then an hour later, throw in a load of whites, bake something for someone somewhere or for no one in particular. Sometimes I wash the kitchen table or rid the duvet cover of cat hair. Sometimes I try to take a nap and end up doing nothing instead. I ask myself why this is what I have come to do.

I think about all of the things I did to get here. That seemed like a job in itself. Cancelling things. Scheduling things. Meeting deadlines. Purchasing plane tickets. Having a yard sale. Putting the shit that didn’t sell at the yard sale out on the curb just to get rid of it. Making sure I have everyone’s address who I would like to see or talk to again throughout the course of my life. Getting rid of my car yet still finding a ride to all of the places that I need to drop something off or pick something up.

I’ve changed. I don’t know how to use my time anymore. I don’t know how to fill it up with things that make me feel good. I know how to go to the grocery store and pick up things on a list. I know how to go to the hardware store and pick up things on a list. I know how to follow a recipe. I know how to alienate myself. From whence did these skills come?

If you think about it ever so slightly, all we have in this world is time. It pains me to think so slightly. Mostly because it’s nearly embarrassing to think about all of the things I haven’t done.

I pulled weeds for three hours recently and that made me feel so great I wanted to run to the top of the hill and yell down to the rest of the bay area, “HELLOOOOOO! I GARDENED KINDA!”

I baked a cake for a friend’s birthday last weekend and fashioned a pastry bag out of a Ziploc with a hole in the corner to decorate it and, in a feeble place in my mind, it was so beautiful that I looked on Craig’s List to see if anyone was hiring bakers.

I like assignments. I like deadlines. I like a purpose larger than my home can hold. I never thought I would say or even think this but I like having a job. I’m aware of how ill-formed work culture is in this country but I think that there is a place out there where I can be happy working. Perhaps I only feel this way at the moment because I’m so bored that my work and myself are just begging to be judged by someone.

There’s some quote out there about how boredom is simply a result of not being smart enough to fill your time. That’s not exactly how it goes but it only takes me a moment to know that that’s not the reason why I’m writing this or even feeling this. Part of me is lost somewhere. Maybe I left it behind as I flew over a bunch of places like Cleveland to get here. I will never be sure. But I need to stop sitting. I need to at least lean on something or saunter somewhere. If I don’t, I could end up on the planet’s saddest, emptiest, but most intriguing corner: reality television.

Or worse yet, I'll start saying things like, "I can only be me. And only I can be me."