"Mysterious 2"

There were quite a few white apricots left over from the last food giveaway.  I took them home and canned them.  Since some people seem to hoard my pint-sized canning jars, I had to put the apricots in quarts.  I dislike doing quarts as it takes more hot water and everyone eating my bounty is a single person.  A quart of anything is a lot for 1 person.  Whatever.  The apricots went into the quarts and my single people snatched them up.

I also canned some papayas, but that meant I had to do 2 batches of canning.  When I took the jars of apricots out of the hot water, the water level dropped when I put in fewer jars of papaya.  Again, whatever.  I was hot and tired.  I just wanted to finish the steam bath I was getting on the hottest day of the year.  The jars looked sealed when I was done.  Since I'd run out of room in the kitchen, I put them in the outside sunroom to cool.

A couple of days later, I decided the sunroom was probably too hot for the jars.  I brought them inside and ignored them for a few days.  After a while, a not quite unpleasant and mysterious odor seemed to be in the kitchen and I couldn't find the source.  I also got invaded by carpenter ants.  Now, I'm betting you see the connections in this story.  I didn't.  I went on an increasingly frantic ant murdering spree until I picked up a jar of papaya and saw it was swarmed with ants.  The lid had popped off and there was an interesting, bubbling science experiment inside.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, compost fermenting papaya, wash everything... there were still ants.  I was losing my mind about then.  I finally found a second jar had exploded papaya all over the crowded table, the chair, the floor... There might've been some cussing.  Sooo, lesson for the week as stated by one of my apricot recipients, "Don't experiment with the rules of canning!"  Excellent lesson.  I'm hoping the ants died from botulism.

Properly canned papaya and apricots

On a happier note, I've been painting more flowers.  Bro2 said my other flower painting made him think of chakras, so I did this painting with that in mind.  Per Google, chakras are "(in Indian thought) each of the centers of spiritual power in the human body".  You can think of that as energy flowing through your body.  When all is healthy and good, it flows in a direct line bottom to top and you radiate joy.

You may have noticed some people aren't radiating joy.  They probably have a blocked chakra(s) and ought to meditate on the blockage.  Chakras are like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Each chakra is color coded.  From bottom to top:

root (red) - safety, stability

sacral (orange) - joy, sensuality, emotion

solar plexus (yellow) - will, power

heart (green) - relationship, love

throat (blue) - expression, communication

3rd eye (purple) - clarity, wisdom

crown (white) - transcendence

I have to wonder where black carpenter ants fit into the pretty chakra rainbow?  My flower has quite a bit of white in it though, so maybe I've transcended my cussing ant murdering spree?

Just in case

"Neighbor"

Let me tell you a ghost story.  Well, sort of a ghost story?  I don't really know what to call it.  One of those what-the-hell-I-don't-understand events.

Let me back up.  I had the nosiest neighbor.  She was friendly.  Too damned friendly.  Before you judge me, you have to understand that she sat in her lawn chair, feet from my back door, waiting to pounce on me while blasting country music.  Not the better kinds of CW.  I had to listen to endless twangy repetitions of how the wife left and took the truck and dog but left the kids.  God, I hate country music.

I put up a 12' long privacy fence, just enough to block her direct view of my back door.  She moved her chair 12'.  I added more fence.  She moved her chair back a bit more -- but the "music" originated from the same place.  She just turned up the volume.  I blasted some rock in return.  One time, I was scantily clad while painting the inside of a bedroom window, and she literally shoved half her body through the open window to talk to me.  Do you understand wet paint, bedroom, get out of my house???

It didn't help that she had a large, vicious dog.  She was a hoarder.  She didn't clean.  She wasn't a beauty, and her horribly rotten teeth didn't help.  Sometimes I felt drunk from the wafting beer fumes coming over the property line.  I hate the smell of beer too.

For all of that, sometimes I fell for her friendliness.  Her nosiness was universal, so she told me the dirt on everyone on the street.  She told me all the dirt on herself for that matter, so I doubt she'd care about me talking about her now.  She had a brain tumor removed when she was younger.  Maybe they took out the part that dictates boundaries?  Whatever.  For the most part, we got along well enough.  I just kept adding fence.

One night, the paramedics came and I saw them wheel her out on a gurney.  She sat up and argued with the paramedics before they put her in the ambulance and took her away.  I didn't see her again.  I wondered what happened, but I didn't want to go over to the filthy house to find out.  I might've felt obligated to sit in that house and make nice, and I have bad history of being forced to sit in a different filthy house.  Back then, it was with a certifiably crazy old woman.  I couldn't make myself do the neighborly thing again.

The mailman was often lackadaisical about getting the mail to the right houses, and I got something that looked important for the next-door neighbor's husband.  I handed it over the fence and asked about his wife.  He said she'd died.  I expressed my sympathies, adding, "I didn't think it looked good when they took her away, but since she was arguing with the paramedics I thought maybe she was going to pull through."

He looked at me very oddly and said, "She was already dead when they got here.  I'd been out for the day, and found her dead on the floor when I got home."

To completely change the topic, let me continue my seasonal rant about wildlife.  My dog set off the skunk twice, but thankfully wasn't sprayed.  My pear trees are dripping with fruit, and the damned squirrels are picking them, nibbling a bit, then knocking more pears off the trees to nibble some more.  They do the same thing to the tomatoes.  Why can't they just take one and finish it??  I wish the groundhog would kill the squirrels, then commit suicide.  I made giant balls out of grapevines, and they seem to be working against the deer because they don't like to get their legs tangled up.  I think I'll make more deer balls.  The first of the garden's bounty is starting to come in and I've gotten the canning stuff out again.  Enjoy some summer pics...

Plums, cherry/plum/rhubarb, bread and butter pickles

Squirrel damage

Hoping that I'll get to eat at least some of the pears?

Turnips

Ripe tomatoes which are kind of a green pink brown.  No idea of the variety.
I kept seeds from a salad I enjoyed a couple of years ago.

Jane, this pic's for you :)

My 17-year-old puppy refused to pose by the deer balls to let me show you their size.

"Stuffed"

I have an excellent memory for certain things.  I can describe Grandma's kitchen in vivid detail.  The more I mentally step into that kitchen, the more things I'll remember, like the ceramic Donald Duck planter on the scalloped corner shelf filled with spare change.  3 kinds of Chex cereal in the white cabinet.  The shamrock and the jade tree on the window sill.  The smell of good food.  Grandpa chuckling.

Sorting apples

Since I have good recall, it's easy for me to believe I'm in control of my subconscious.  I have issues, (who doesn't?) but I know where they come from and try to deal with them accordingly.

I worked at an ice cream store when I was a teenager.  One evening I suddenly faced a boy whom I hadn't seen for a while.  He went white and stammered an apology.  "Yeah, okay.  What kind of ice cream do you want?"  I was busy and needed to keep up with orders.  I didn't know what he was apologizing for, but some part of me was sizzling.  That felt uncomfortable, so I stuffed the feelings and doubt deep inside.

Bad apple

More time went by, and I watched a tv show about teenaged violence.  I suddenly understood that apology so easily, it was like I'd never repressed getting attacked by my guy "friends" because I'd turned one of them down.  Andrew hadn't helped them, but he hadn't helped me either.  He just watched me knock a guy out and stun another while the rest piled on me until another friend came roaring to my rescue.

I wonder when there's news stories about repressed memories.  Clearly, it happens.  I lived it.  Yet, too often it seems like people are making things up, or following the misguided directions of a therapist.  I began to doubt my reclamation of this memory, so I asked witnesses if it really happened.  It did.  Drat.  I wished it was a bad dream.

But, if we know what we've experienced, we can work on it.  Refusing to think of something doesn't make it go away.  It affects our lives.  Not talking about something because it makes other people uncomfortable is trading their temporary comfort for a more permanent disability within ourselves.  Reclaiming my memory and giving myself permission to talk about it gives me power over my own life and decisions.  In a backwards way, I live more consciously now because I stuffed those memories then.

I make better friends now, and I value them.  John (and Mom) gave me organic apples from their trees.  Thanks!  I've been happily canning applesauce and gave some of it to other friends.  My brother asked for apple cupcakes, big cupcakes, like muffins at the coffee shop with crystallized sugar on top.  I threw in a couple of past prime bananas too.  I'd show you a picture, but they were ALL gone in one night.  I seriously don't know how he managed to digest that many apples without severe stomach distress.  The ladies at work suggested they'd like apple cake too.

Itsy bitsy 4 oz. single serve canning jars

I don't know if we have to experience the bad in life to appreciate the good, but I remind myself the good people in our lives make life sweet -- and the applesauce sweeter too.

This is why I have to get apples from others.
Sorry for the photo quality, it was taken through my kitchen window
and the window screen.  This is just 2 of a large flock of the varmints.

The snowman has a stuffed head.  This is another tower of cookies I made for Mrs. Fields.

"An unexamined life is not worth living." ~ Socrates