Tomato!

I got my first bitty little tomato today out of my garden! I have a bunch of green ones but this was the first red one. It was all of 1/2" across, and so sweet and yummy. My peppers are also getting fruit, and one of my zucchini plants is producing like crazy (ok, it's made 2, but that's pretty good for my first one!). I love harvesting stuff I grew from seeds! It's so cool.

Idiots

I had to send a sample to a central processing center in Kansas, because I have to prove to the company that I am trained and know how to process the samples for their studies. I sent this sample, on 5 kg of dry ice, on Monday. It arrived in Kansas, and they promptly forwarded it to...Quebec, Canada. Why? Because they are stupid and do not read the shipping labels addressed to them. Now I am trying to track down the person who called me from the pharmaceutical company in Quebec (she didn't give me her contact information, and I didn't catch her name when I spoke to her) and tell her to throw away the sample, not ship it back to us. Ugh. What a pain in the ass. This study is SO not worth it. But that's why they pay me the big bucks (as my dad would say).

I do NOT need this stress right now. My meds have been adjusted to 75mg sertraline instead of 50 (yay, I hope). I am in the process of finding a psychiatrist (since my midwives have about the same amount of expertise as a GP, so they can't do much more for me) and waiting to hear back from my insurance about what they cover regarding mental health care,. I know it will be a $40 copay, but I don't know how many times I have to make the copay, etc. It ain't gonna happen if I have to make a $40 copay twice a month or something, we just can't afford it right now. We actually can't afford anything right now, we already overdrew our checking account with our mortgage payment and we're maxed out on one credit card. We're desperately trying not to use the other cards, since we're trying to get rid of our debt. We actually had PB &J for dinner last night. When I called the bank Tuesday to find out if they could/would lower the rate on one card, they pretty much told me that they can't do anything, and that nobody will help us until we've defaulted on our payments. Nice. So, all you people out there in our shoes, where you know you're heading toward financial trouble, just keep on truckin because no one will help til you're already totally screwed. Awesome.

Irrationality and Zombies in my Head

C had a dream about killing zombies last night. Maybe it was some sort of metaphor for killing the state of my brain.

I forgot to take my meds
Makes for fun today
Irrationality
Hating my head
Looking out through someone else's eyes
Zombies taking over
Killing my sanity
Pendulum of moods
Creates chaos
Makes me want to play with pain
But not really
Klassy people here can't stop swearing/whining/existing
Why can't they grow up
I know I'm not rational
Or all together
I just want to hate them
Without feeling unjustified
GET OUT OF MY HEAD

Container Gardens

Since we live in a townhouse, my garden is confined to our front patio. Over the next several years, I am going to try to optimize my space so I can grow us a substantial amount of food (we'll see how well this actually works). C made me a 4 x 2 x 2 foot planter in which I am attempting to grow the following:
10' tomato plant (climbs, with trellis)
2 zucchini plants
chives
wild spinach
2 regular tomato plants

So far, the spinach has done well, the chives are thriving, the zucchini plants are huge but have so far only produced 1 fruit, and my 10 foot tomato is about 2 feet tall and doesn't seem very happy. I don't think it was meant for this sort of climate. My other tomatoes are doing well and actually starting to grow a couple little fruits, so that's exciting. I had tried to grow some carrots in there too but they all died, I'm not sure what killed them.

I also have (next to my roses) two pots containing 2 pepper plants each (they seem to be getting close to making flowers), a large pot growing sugar snap peas (yum!), one pot with a tomato plant in it, and several potted flowers. The veggies are all doing well, the peas actually grew really well, then seemed to finish their crop, then died, but new pea plants began growing up just next to the old stalks, so there's a whole new crop of peas coming in now. I had no idea they would do that.

I am not sure my garden was started early enough...maybe next year I will try to get everything outside planted by the end of April, since it is now August and my garden seems to be lagging behind those of my friends and family. I did harvest the first zucchini today, though, and I am really looking forward to using it in chicken kabobs for dinner one of the next few days!

I would also really like to grow strawberries next year, and hopefully will have better success with sunflowers than this year. Mine are all scraggly and sad, I think I will have to plant them in the ground and not in a pot. I might eventually take some pictures of my garden plants, when they aren't wilty from the heat, to post here.

A Whole Bunch of Random

There are so many facets to what I want to write now... I guess I will just go and see where the words take me.

I was reading the blog of a Nestie who has lost 3 babies, all in the first trimester, but babies nonetheless. I am so grateful I have never been through that, and so devastated for her.

I know it isn't the same, but I still mourn what could have been. When I was 17, C and I had a condom break at the wrong time of the month, and I went to a local clinic with sliding scale pay and got Plan B. I feel in my heart that I prevented a pregnancy, I could feel her presence even in the few days between her conception and what would have been implantation. She was in my dreams, and for many months and a few years after that, I would find myself thinking about how far pregnant I would have been, how old she would be, what she would look like. I wonder what it would be like to have a 7 year old and J at the same time. Would I have gone to college and graduate school? Where would C and I be now? I guess it's probably time to let her go, since she never "really" existed...and maybe she will come back to me someday.

I keep hoping, desperately I fear, that this mental state is temporary. I keep praying that it is only PPD, because that goes away. Right? I want it to go away. As time passes, though, I think it isn't temporary. I am going to be like this forever, and there's nothing I can do about it. I can take my meds, I can go see my midwives for follow up appointments, I could go see a shrink. It doesn't matter. I will always be a mess, I will always have heart palpitations, panic attacks, OCD, depression. I wish it would just leave me alone. I want to feel comfortable in my skin again, all the time, not just occasionally. I can't stop this. I can't control this. I hate this. I shouldn't be allowed to feel this way, I have a good life. I have a husband that loves me, a wonderful baby, a wonderful family, two wonderful dogs. What is wrong with me?

There's a game someone at work found that we've all been playing. It is fantastically addictive. The goal is to make a disease to wipe out the entire planet. It is called Pandemic 2, if anyone cares to attempt it. It's on website called Crazy Monkey Games. Good times.

I've taken my first (little) step toward getting certified to teach middle school science. I found the CO state website detailing the requirements, and printed out a page that lists the coursework I need to have taken. Now all I need to do is go though my transcripts to fill it out, and see where I am deficient. I think all I need is a physics class and 2 environmental science/astronomy/geology or something like that classes (though my honors thesis was in ecology, it doesn't count because I didn't actually take any courses specific to that field), which I *should* be able to get paid for by my work since we get a $2000 a year tuition reimbursement for things related to our job. I think I can swing it right... So maybe starting next Spring I can start working on it! I want to stay at my current job till we have baby #2 though, since by Oct of 2010 I will be able to take 12 weeks of paid leave.

Why middle school science and not high school? I have a number of reasons. One, a good friend of mine used to teach middle school. She had originally planned to teach high school, but she discovered that in high school you teach subjects; in middle school, you teach students. I want to teach students. My own middle school sucked. We were treated like criminals, all of us. I want to show my students that even though everything seems crazy (since really, adolescence is about as crazy as it gets), they can succeed and there are adults that can show them some respect and that care. I want to be the one to plant that little seed of "Oh, so that's how that works." Also, I have taught college students. I found them incredibly depressing to teach, because they are idiots. Not all of them are, but by and large I was disappointed in the entitlement they seemed to feel, the fact that most of my students couldn't write a sentence to save their lives. The few "stars" I had did not compensate for the many others that made me sad for the future of the world. High schoolers are too close to college kids, I think I would be disappointed in them, too. Middle schoolers are intelligent enough to understand a lot of things, but not so far gone that I would feel that my attempts to impart knowledge were futile. We will just have to see what happens with this!

Here are some roses in my garden.


I call this one "Imperfection."