My mom is at a pow wow and having a great time.

I’m feeling somewhat better today. Still have a raging headache though. Blech.

I think I’ll go watch my plants grow for a while since it’s so beautiful outside today.

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations.

I, for one, will be anxiously awaiting the announcement of whatever the hell it is they have found. It better be good, if they are going to be so mysterious about it.

Those peppers I posted a photo of just yesterday? Doubled in size this morning. And that Better Boy tomato plant? Grew another three inches. Everything is really taking off! Makes it so exciting to step out on the porch every morning to see what’s changed!

Better go make us some more coffee. We need a kick in the butt something bad this morning. Zero motivation to do anything.

Meanwhile, I am hormonally cranky, have a nasty headache, and am starving. Could everyone just keep it down please?!

And where’s the pizza? I need pizza now.

A few days ago, I think, Obama said that McCain was “losing his bearings.” Naturally, some of McCain’s aides are now barking about how ageist it is to say that.

A person doesn’t have to be old to lose their bearings. It’s not like he said McCain was becoming senile or losing his marbles. Those are the sorts of things I have been saying about him, because he is not the same John McCain I used to know and like … and yes, he does seem to be getting old, not just physically.

Yet the blogosphere and the 24 hour news circuit are alive with people ranting about how rude it is to say that McCain is losing his bearings, because it is a stab at his age. My suggestion is for these folks to learn how to use a dictionary, since they obviously don’t know the meanings of simple words and phrases.

Meanwhile, I will continue to believe that McCain is senile and losing his marbles.

Mom finally sent me the photo she took of me on the porch of the main building in Luckenbach, so I thought I would share.

And as if to thumb their nose at me, those Better Boy tomatoes (I’d been calling them Best Boy, which is wrong) grew a couple of inches in the last 24 hours, and one of them now has blooms on it. I guess I have to let them live.

I’m beginning to consider that I need to think of things to do with a lot of tomatoes, because I am now beginning to suspect I am going to have a lot of tomatoes later this summer.

In other garden news, those two banana peppers are getting bigger! I didn’t even have to use the macro lens on the camera this time!

Three small-town eighth-graders were suspended for not standing at the start of the school day Thursday for the Pledge of Allegiance.

The school district has a rule that even if you don’t say the pledge, you still have to stand. Three students didn’t, and according to one parent never had, and they have now found themselves suspended. I am, of course, opposed to the punishment, not because I am anti-pledge, but I am against mechanical, blind, rote patriotism and forced allegiance. I am not alone in thinking this school is whacked in the head for punishing these students either. There are “numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings dating to the 1940s say that ’students who refuse to participate in the pledge cannot be punished for refusing to participate.’” Sitting would be refusing to participate. I call foul on the punishment.

When the Russians start parading their nuclear weapons and other war toys down their city streets, it would do everyone some good to take notice. They can say it isn’t saber rattling all they want, but some of us are old enough to remember when it was a rather regular occurrence. It was saber rattling then, and it’s saber rattling now.

No, I do not want our airport to be leased out to Australia. Could we possibly, just possibly, maintain control of some of our own infrastructure? It’s bad enough our toll roads are under the control of companies in Spain (and elsewhere). Our airport doesn’t need to be in anyone else’s hands. Their reason for even considering it is that taxpayers aren’t seeing any benefit from the money the airport makes, due to a federal law requiring that money be put back into the airport. Rather than leasing the thing out to some other country, why don’t we try to change the law that is causing the problem in the first place? Oh, yeah … that’s a lot more difficult than just selling out to the highest bidder.

A New York woman who took her family to visit the Maritime Aquarium has filed a $100 claim against the city, saying her child’s shoes, along with the entire outing, were ruined when her 1-year-old stepped in dog feces early last month outside the Maritime Garage.

Shit happens. Yes, occasionally, a human steps in some shit, but I have never known any shit to not wash off of shoes, hands, clothing, or whatever else it gets on. I question why she felt it necessary to throw away her child’s $42 shoes, but then I also question what toddler needs $42 shoes in the first place and why her 1-year-old was wandering around far enough away from her to even have the opportunity to step in shit. Additionally, why would her baby not having shoes on ruin the whole trip. Kids (and adults) do amazingly well without shoes. They aren’t a requirement for walking, sitting, or living. Something tells me this mom has more money than sense.

Time was, when a girl had a crush on a boy, she sent him a note in class. Today, as at least one local school district has learned, she might use her cell phone to take a naked picture of herself and send the photo to him. The Pioneer Central School District over the past two months has discovered three cases of teenage girls — ages 13 to 16 — electronically sending nude photos to male classmates.

And how did the school authorities discover the nude photos? They “came to light when school officials confiscated students’ cell phones for other disciplinary reasons.” They took the phone because the students were using them during class or at school, which is apparently forbidden, but that does not explain what gave the school the right to then poke through the things on the cell phone. Kids with cell phones need to read the manual and learn how to use the security features. It is entirely possible to keep anyone but yourself from nosing around in your cell phone. Just don’t give them the password. They’ll be expelled or suspended anyway, thanks to our lovely zero-tolerance policies, but they might as well keep their private data private. And as far as kids sending nude pics to each other, I have to ask why adults today continue to think that today’s kids invented teen sexuality and believe that kids haven’t always been sexual creatures?

And now for a bit of trivia! Did you know the male platypus has venomous spikes on their hind feet? I certainly didn’t, but now I know, and so do you.

I then moved on to the end of the flowerbed that Lin had started removing the grass and weeds from. I cleaned it up some more and planted a whole bunch of old seeds there: sunflowers, marigolds, and two others whose names I can’t recall. These seeds are really old and past their use-by date. I have no idea if anything will actually come up. I’ll just water it and keep the weeds out, and we’ll see what happens. Something is bound to come up.

Then the stupid rabbits will probably eat it.

I might try again under that tree tomorrow, depending on how I feel. I’m all hormonal, crampy and unhappy, and chopping around, even the little I did, didn’t make that any better. In fact, my neck is killing me from the chopping and pulling. My back isn’t too happy either. But I really want something other than Bermuda Grass under that tree, and I have a bunch more seeds, both old and new, to use up. I want some more flowers in my yard!

Puttering in the yard was the only thing of note I did all day.

Tomorrow I’d like to putter in the yard some more and do an hour in the Box Room, now that the trash bin is empty again. I can finally throw more stuff away! Yippee!

This is a different plant from the one I posted the photo of the other day. This Sugar Snack tomato had no tomatoes at all on it yesterday morning, and by yesterday evening, it had tiny tomatoes popping out all over the place … and more blooms!

I have no idea how long it takes these cherry tomatoes to ripen. I have never grown cherry tomatoes before. All I know is I am so impatient to eat one!

Grow tiny tomatoes! Grow!

I’d read a chapter of my book, and then take a break from the sitting still to hover over the plants like a doting mother. Every time I did that, I noticed a new tiny tomato on one of the plants. When I noticed the first one, I thought maybe I had just not noticed it before. By the time I saw a second new tomato that hadn’t been there earlier in the day, I’d already been staring at those plants for so long, there was no mistaking the fact I was seeing a new tomato where there had been no tomato just an hour before. It was crazy!

All three Sugar Snack plants have four or more little tomatoes on them, and more flowers popping out almost as I watch. Also, Mr. Stripey just gets more and more blooms every day too. While Mr. Stripey is large enough to be getting tomatoes, I do worry that I should have removed the blooms off the Sugar Snacks to let them get a little larger first. They are all still so small. It’s a little late now. I guess whatever happens … happens.

To be honest, I have been regretting getting all those extra plants. Or rather, I have been regretting getting all those plants from the place I got them. The quality of the seedlings was somewhat poor, but I hadn’t seen the TAMU jalepenos anywhere else, and every other place was totally out of any sort of cherry tomatoes. I really didn’t need any of them though, and I should have just stuck to the original plan to have the two Earthboxes with a couple of plants in them.

It’s lucky for the potted tomatoes that the Sugar Snacks have attracted my attention with tomatoes, because all those plantings have been growing so little and looking so poorly, no matter what I do for them, I had begun considering taking them out of the pots and sticking them in the front flowerbed … to be left to their own survival devices. Then I could use those pots for something a little more productive, like the cucumbers I have yet to get started. I may still put some of those tomato plants out to pasture in the flowerbed, but they all earned another week or two of being doted on, thanks to the appearance of some tiny tomatoes.

The Best Boy plants are probably cheering on the Sugar Snacks wildly. I was very close to just ripping them out of their pots and tossing them two days ago. They refuse to grow, they continue to look awful, and I hold out little hope they will ever produce even one tomato. Since I didn’t buy them, they were extras others couldn’t use and were going to toss, I don’t have to feel guilt about abandoning them to the flowerbed or just throwing them away. I never wanted the Best Boys anyway, but it’s hard to say no to little old ladies when they want to give you something. But I am willing to give them a little more time now, thanks to the Sugar Snacks … and being too lazy to dig holes in the flowerbed and move plants. It’s hot as hell out there today.

So, aside from having an encounter with Annoying Boy, I had a blast all afternoon reading and watching my plants grow, and boy are they doing just that! I wish I could do that every afternoon, but alas, I don’t have that much leisure time. Somebody has to do the housework around here and feed the inhabitants. I do think I will plan my day tomorrow to allow for more time sitting on the porch watching plants grow and reading. It made for a wonderful day.

It’s long, so it’s going behind the cut.

Yesterday I pondered my new outlook on the obnoxiousness of people who drive large trucks and take up two spaces in parking lots. Sometimes, a new perspective, from the other side of the fence, does put a whole new spin on the story, and I conceded that not all, likely not even most, of the people who drive large trucks and take up two spaces in parking lots are not, in fact, assholes. Not for parking like crap anyway. Unless they are driving a gas-guzzling monster of a vehicle when they really don’t have to do so … and driving them so poorly while still maintaining what I call the Hummer Attitude. Those people are still assholes.

Tonight’s middle-aged point-of-view change involves people and lawns.

Those cranky “older” people who have issues with people, young people in particular, getting on their lawns? It has nothing to do with lawns. Not all the Get-Off-My-Lawn crowd are aware of the root cause of their obsession with keeping people from messing up their lawn isn’t the fact they have a beautiful lawn and they are obsessive about it (or that they are crazy), but it’s true. Those cranky “older” people putting up signs to warn people to “stay off the grass” or “keep off lawn” or even in extreme cases yelling at people to “Get off my lawn!” are really having issues about trespassing, property lines, and neighbors that annoy them. Like I said, they may not be consciously aware of this. I am.

I had an Annoying Boy experience today in the front yard while I was puttering around watching my plants grow. There isn’t too much to say about it, because every encounter with him is about the same. They are all annoying and aggravating, only the topics of conversation and time of day vary. In fact, the only thing about the entire event worth mentioning is that Annoying Boy said something that made me intensely uncomfortable and somewhat intimidated. My perception of him has slid even further toward Dangerous and Evil. In fact, it is now well into the red end of the scale, and I do not want him anywhere near me ever again … and I also do not want him anywhere on my property.

It wasn’t anything horrible enough to make an immediate fuss about, but after I escaped into the house, my first thoughts were how to make my front yard a fortress. There are two ways to do this: put up a big fence or landscape in such a way you can be fussy about people crashing through it or walking on it. I don’t want to sit on my front porch and stare at a big fence. I like being able to see out into the world, and I don’t care if the world looks back, so long as they don’t look too closely and don’t take photos. Therefore, my only option is to become that cranky older lady screaming at people to get off her immaculate lawn and don’t pick the flowers! We don’t have one of those yet in my neighborhood. I think we need one. It’ll give the kids stories to tell their grandchildren.

Of course, landscaping the front yard to make it as beautiful and inaccessible as possible is not the most economical or maybe even the best solution to the fact I do not want Annoying Boy anywhere near me ever again. Someone is going to have to talk to someone from the other side of the property line about it, but I am not sure who should do it or what should be said. I’ve been running simulations of the event in my head all evening, and thus far, the event and the end result never seems to be positive.

I can’t talk to his mom about it. She’s a wild card with a hair-trigger temper and anger issues, and I have no idea what the hell may or may not offend her in some way. I do not want to have the same sorts of situations with her that other neighbors have had. I do try to avoid having any police presence at all in my life. It’s also the sort of drama that is just best avoided at all costs. So, me talking to her is right out.

Talking to the husband about it would, for me, be uncomfortable. I believe I could be adult enough to do it, and I also believe the husband is adult enough to have that sort of conversation, but I am a weenie. I don’t really know him that well, though we do have somewhat easy conversation when the opportunity arises about once a month or so. I do know the wife rules him with an iron fist, and it seems he never wins an argument, so it’s hard to determine whether he would take it well if I said “Your step-son spooks me right out, and could you keep him away from me at all times? Thank you very much.”

Discussing it with Annoying Boy at all is a useless proposition. I have already tried doing that subtly and then not so subtly. Nothing much came of it. A few weeks of peace and quiet.

So that leaves me with having to talk to Lin about it and convincing him to talk to the husband about it. That seems like such a 1950’s sort of thing to do: having the husbands working out the inter-family problems with the neighbors. But what am I supposed to do? I am a small, puny pacifist, and all three of them are the sort of people with whom I have to take their quick tempers, high aggression levels, and tendency to do violence to others while in a rage into account. I don’t know what sets them off, at least not well enough to be able to predetermine their reaction to something, but I have seen what happens once they react badly. I don’t want to be an active participant in anything like that … ever. Not only would it be unpleasant, I am not entirely certain what my own reaction to being in such a situation would be.

I have run simulations in my head, but a definitive answer on that has not been forthcoming. I hope I would be able to maintain my senses, not give into the emotion of the moment, remain calm, and deal with the matter in an adult manner, such as being a calming influence or calling the cops, but I am human and imperfect. I do have buttons that can be pushed, lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and I do not lack for a hair-trigger on my own overly hot temper. Just because it takes a whole lot longer for anything to get close to the buttons and triggers doesn’t mean I don’t have a snapping point. I can’t say for certain, but I believe these people are just insane enough to do something in the heat of the moment to push me right past it.

OK, enough with the neighbor situation, back to tonight’s topic of a middle-aged point-of-view change involving people and lawns.

Not all those cranky older people who want you to stay off their lawns aren’t really all that obsessed with having an immaculate lawn. They are just claiming their right to have their property viewed and respected as belonging to someone else and not as a public park, and their right to have a buffer between themselves and other people … who they may or may not have issues with. It’s also possible the people they originally wanted to avoid having near them have long ago died or moved away, and they got stuck with the attitude. I am going to try to avoid falling into that trap, should the day ever come when Annoying Boy is no longer living within bicycle range of my home. In the meantime, I am going to start planning how to landscape the front yard to be as inhospitable to random visitors as possible, while still being beautiful and enjoyable for us and those we invite into it.

Yup. I don’t think there’s going to be a talking solution to the Annoying Boy problem. None with a positive outcome anyway. But I want to feel safe, secure and happy in my own yard. If that means I have to become Crazy Lawn Woman, so be it.

If I had my way, I’d turn the whole front yard into one big sand and rock Zen garden, and every morning I’d go out, meditate, and rake new patterns into it … and then scream at anyone who disturbed my precious sand waves. That isn’t a very Zen-like thing to do, but it would be an excellent excuse to scream at people to stay off of it. I don’t have a husband who would go for that particular option, so I will probably have to make do with fast-growing hedges on the property lines. For the best, really. I imagine it would only take about a week for my sand and rock Zen garden to be more like the largest kitty litter box in the world than a Zen garden, considering the ever-increasing number of roaming cats we have around here. I don’t even know if Annoying Boy could be taught any better than a stray cat to not mess up the sand. I’m pretty sure a non-stop hedgerow would at least slow him down … when it eventually got thick and tall enough.

Well, anyway, today was great except for the whole Annoying Boy situation which needs to be resolved in one way or another as soon as possible. I’ll tell you about the great stuff in the morning. I promise. It’s really great!

“What the autistic 12-year-old can’t express verbally or in social interaction he can show through his carefully cut out geometric shapes assembled into characters in a paper collage.”