You Need a Carrot to Get In

I have been an emotional wreck lately…first there was the cyst issue, and we lost a close family friend last week. His kidneys were donated to a man and a woman. Out of loss comes new life. A good person recently wrote to me, "Interesting how regenerative life is. One flower or tree dies and another takes its place." If you are not an organ donor, please arrange to be one.

But the news on this front is not all heartbreaking. My seed packets have arrived (huzzah!) I have finished the most formidable of my remaining grants for the season (double huzzah!!) And I continue to meet with amazing book clubs full of intelligent, generous, inspiring women. (Thanks to all of them!!) Tonight I met with a fantastic crew at the Appleton Barnes & Noble…as we laughed over the anecdote in the book involving a male character experimenting with a strategically-placed carrot during an episode of self-…uh, well you get the picture, a burly man approached. He was wearing one of those hats with the sheepskin earflaps and rapist glasses.



“You guys look like you’re having way too much fun!” he commented. “No guys allowed?”

“You need a carrot to get in,” someone said under her breath, and we all laughed harder. The poor guy wandered away, confused.

I continue my quest for health improvement, with mixed results. I was experiencing a strange and irritating pain on the right side of my face on Saturday, and I figured it might be vitamin toxicity (I’m taking more supplements than you can shake a stick at. Well, you COULD shake a stick at them, but nothing would happen.) I skipped my daily dose on Sunday, but I haven’t learned my “Our Bodies Are Not Science Experiments, Young Lady!” lesson. Tonight I ate a bunch of bean soup, salad, and a Garden burger before meeting with the book club, so I prepared my digestive system with a bunch of probiotics & enzymes to avoid gassing the members of the book club to death. And now my stomach feels like I swallowed a small, stone garden gnome.

Also, I said I had an embarrassing story for you. (Other than my fart prevention initiatives.) This involves our garage door handles. Here’s a photo of them:

See that silvery metal poking through? A giant chip of the black paint fell off last fall. I told J that we needn’t worry, I saved the chip so we could glue it back on. I was so proud of myself for not only finding the chip, but having the wherewithal to pick it up before I drove over it so we could reattach it. Brilliant!

J, however, had a different reaction. “You don’t GLUE a paint chip back on! You repaint it, you goof!”

Oh yeah.

(And it gets weirder. J just asked me from the other room: "Are you listening to HORNS?" Me, already laughing: "No! What??!!" J: "It sounds like you're listening to The Farmer in the Dell on trumpets.")

I can only end with this: