Moon-lines and Apple-pathways

Last night I had a dream that I got a job in a whorehouse. I've been stressing out lately about not having a full-time job, and how I'm going to be able to afford to go back to school, and blah blah blah, and what does my subconscious give me? "Hey, you could always be a whore!" Thanks, brain: that was extremely helpful.

( I am totally not qualified to be a whore. Or a hairdresser. )

My mother and I are now swinging into full-scale GARDENING MODE, and this was our kickoff weekend. We went to Block's (a nursery with the best prices and selection on flats of annuals) and Detroit's Eastern Market to buy flowers, veggies, and herbs. Also, my perennial herb garden that I planted last summer is coming back, and looking gorgeous! (Minus a few comrades who didn't survive the winter. R.I.P. golden oregano, variegated sage, lemongrass, lemon verbena, and two lavendars.)

Here are some photos of what we've got going on. I whittled it down to the best pics, and spared you about a dozen views of my teeny tiny herb garden!



( Cut for OBSCENE GARDEN PORN! XXXX )

All righty, in order to preserve people's flists and not bum everybody out, I'm going to post the majority of this entry behind a cut. I'm in a confessional mood, which is rare, so hold tight.

Everyone else, enjoy this picture of a sunflower I took today:



( If you're still with me... )

I'm finding it incredibly difficult to write like myself at the moment. I don't have the clearest idea of what I write like in my purest, most unadulterated form (apparently I say things like "most unadulterated"), but I do constantly find myself wishing I wrote more like this person, or that person, or that famous author.

I read an incredibly beautiful story full of rich sensory experiences, and I want to include more vivid descriptions in my writing. I read a story that's elegant in its simplicity, and I want to adopt my own style to be more clean and concise. I read something funny, I want to be funny; I read something tragic, I want to be tragic. It goes on: more intellectual, more literary, more allegorical, more accessible, etc. etc. etc.

It's odd, this internet life where I pretend to be a writer.

(Just in case you missed the title of this post, I wanted to reiterate that what follows will contain some rather graphic descriptions of blood and gore; not slasher-movie bad, obviously, but as someone who grew up with a blood phobia, I know I would have appreciated being warned.)

So I just finished hosing blood and the remains of my mother's amputated fingertip off of our garage door.

Let me say that again: my mother amputated the tip of her finger in our garage door! Yes!

Last night our power went out, so when she left for her job this morning she had to open and close the garage door manually. When she was closing it again, she managed to get the tip of her finger pinched in the door. I was still in bed, and so woke up to screams of, "I THINK I NEED TO GO THE HOSPITAL!" I hastily dressed and drove her out to the ER.

My mom takes blood thinners for a heart condition, and so she bled EVERYWHERE. Fortunately, there were no more pressing injuries ahead of us at the ER, so she was taken back to a room fairly quickly. The worst part was that every person who entered her room (probably about 10 total) opened with, "OMG, what happened?!" and my mother got to relive the embarassing and agonizing story over and over again.

The best part was that there was a TV in the room, and so when the hand doctor (what is the name for that?) came in to operate on her finger we got to watch Martha Stewart throughout the procedure. I was fine and not squeamish at all until he started snipping at the bone (he had to remove the finger down to the top knuckle) and I had to pretend that the crunching noise I heard was someone exhuberantly enjoying a bag of potato chips, and not the man chopping at my mother's finger bone with what looked like a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

I'm glad I called into work early and told them I wouldn't be able to make, as naturally we were there all day, and I wasn't in the mood to teach math to whiny children afterwards.

All in all it went pretty well, and now I can affectionately refer to my mother as "stumpy", just in time for the family reunion and my brother's wedding!