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Continued from earlier, when I told you about the courtship and wedding preparation in honor of this, the second anniversary of my marriage to the most wonderful man in the world.
It had seemed until the week of the wedding like everything was under control and we were on track to have a lovely, low-key event.
Buckle up, because the universe had other ideas.
Continue readingTwo years ago today, I stood in front of a small gathering of friends and family and married the best man I’ve ever known. It was a breathtakingly beautiful moment in a total clusterfuck of a day.
About a month ago, knowing that this anniversary was approaching, I set out to write the story of our wedding, for posterity. The truth is that despite planning the event for one year and ten days, and it being a deliberately simple affair, factors beyond our control led to the thing being an almost total disaster. I’ve already started to gloss over parts of it in my memory in the course of trying to preserve only good feelings about the day, so it’s lucky I chose this year instead of two or three from now to set it all down.
But because the disaster of our wedding day began before the day itself, I’m going to have to go back a bit.
Continue readingHoly mackerel, I know some truly wonderful people!
Two weeks ago, I saw this cute post from Guylty, a friend and fellow blogger of the Richard Armitage fandom persuasion. She has gotten into crafting some really impressive projects in the last few years and one of her latest masterpieces are these tiny, tiny book earrings.
Little Hobbit books!
Naturally I was charmed, given my special relationship with The Hobbit and also my lifelong love of miniature treasures, and I told her so. To my surprise and delight, she offered to send them to me as a much-needed pick-me-up. Heck yes! I’ve actually been thinking of them every day since she made the offer, wondering how quickly they could get here.
Can you believe they’re here already, all the way from Dublin?!
I always check the mail while I’m waiting for the hot water to boil for my late-morning tea, so this was a lovely little diversion to be able to sit down with at Saturday breakfast.
Inside I found this assortment of goodies. A really nice handmade Richard Armitage/Shakespeare postcard, the long-expected Hobbit earrings, and… something else? What could it be?
Another handmade envelope, this one intriguingly tiny. The postcard hinted at an additional surprise treat to make up for the fact that she’d had to reveal the secret of the Hobbit earrings by asking for my address. I love Guylty’s imagination, so I was keenly interested to see what lay inside this “extra surprise” envelope.
OMG! OMG OMG OMG! SHE MADE MINI BOOK EARRINGS OUT OF MY BOOKS THAT I WROTE!!! AND THEY LOOK SO GOOD!
I was so excited that I rushed upstairs to show my husband and promptly fumbled them all over the floor with my ecstatic hands. I LOVE THEM! Looks like I know now what I’m wearing at my book launch party! XD
THANK YOU SO MUCH, Guylty! You are creative, fun, extraordinarily talented, and a good friend! This delivery definitely gave my mood a lift! What great medicine for my soul.
And the rest of you should definitely go check out more of her adorable creations (with I assume more always to come)!
I’m wearing the Hobbit earrings right now, by the way. ❤
I was given this orchid plant last October, as an anniversary present from my wonderful partner in crime. It had a number of exquisite blooms on it at the time, which started thinning and getting ready to fall right around Christmas. The last of them hung on until mid/late-January. I derived much joy from them in that time.
After the last flower fell, the flower spike itself soon began to wither. That, I concluded with fond regret, was apparently that.
But…
The leaves of the plant still looked so shiny and deeply, vibrantly green. While the plant was brought into our home in order to provide a view of the orchid flowers which I love so much, I do also love leaves on their own merit. And these quite obviously still had some life in them. It seemed a shame to give up on them.
So I cut back the dead flower spike and continued to water the plant as normal through the winter.
In the spring, I noticed that while the plant was still chugging along, it was looking a little droopy. I’m basically an utter novice where it comes to plants, coming as I do from the desert where nothing grows unless it wants to, but it seemed to me that maybe it was overwatered? I cut down to two ice cubes a week from the recommended three. The plant rallied.
But then I noticed it was suffering another ailment: the leaves were drying and cracking. It was getting too much direct sun in the spot I’d been keeping it in. Oops. I wiped the leaves down with a wet towel and moved it again.
In the early days of summer, I made an observation that gave me a tiny thrill of satisfaction: new leaves! There were new leaves coming in! I was managing not only to not kill the plant, but to give it enough love to let it grow!
That satisfaction turned to giddy excitement one day when I saw something else happening to the orchid plant. A small green tendril of some kind was poking out from between the leaves. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined that the plant might flower again under my care, so I thought this was probably a new bit of root. Still exciting, because it would mean life. But to be sure, I asked the internet. The internet told me that I would be able to tell a root from a flower spike by the shape on the end. The end of an orchid flower spike, apparently, has sort of a mitten-y shape.
WELL GUESS WHAT!
I dug out a stake and began coaxing that bad boy into an upward trajectory. As a complete and total flower novice I was surprised that apparently orchids try to grow straight out sideways, but I rolled with it. Every day, I would check its progress like a proud parent marking her child’s growth on the wall. It was a big day when I noticed what looked like the first bud forming. We eventually got six.
The house next door to mine has been empty for the last two years and something of a jungle has grown up on the property, swallowing the crumbling structure whole. I didn’t mind because it blocked the view and also, some wild Rose of Sharon hibiscus sprang up in the space between that property and mine. Lovely. The overgrowth was so intense that it actually blocked the morning light from coming directly in the northeast windows in my dining room, instead giving us nice diffuse sunlight on the dining table.
Because time and perfect lighting stand still for no man, the bank finally sent someone around to chop down the jungle and try to get that house ready for sale. Suddenly the orchid plant was getting blasted with direct sunlight first thing in the morning and the new buds started to sag. I had to scramble to find a new home for it where it was getting light, but not too much. Now it’s hanging out on the other side of the house in the living room, with all of the books.
I was a little worried about those sagging buds that had gotten the full sun blast, but they kept getting bigger and looking more and more like they were about to burst.
And then, yesterday,
How long would it take to see that turn into a flower, I wondered? I have no idea what I’m doing here. This has all just been a happy failure into success. But look what I woke up to this morning.
Maybe it seems silly to you that I would go on and on about one little orchid plant that has sprouted a single flower a year after it was given to me. And maybe it is silly. But maybe, also, this is about more than a plant. Maybe this is also about all of those years I spent dying in the desert where nothing grows unless it wants to, and how I don’t live there anymore because I escaped through epic struggle that didn’t end even after I made it to Pennsylvania.
Maybe it’s about salvaging life when it looks like that life is over. Maybe it’s about perseverance even where there’s no reason to think anything will come of it. Maybe it’s about changing the narratives we’ve come to accept about ourselves — “Oh, I can’t grow anything. I have a black thumb. Ha ha.” — and understanding that sometimes it’s personal growth and sometimes it’s about the environment we’re trying to survive in. Sometimes we just need to leave the desert.
In any case, here’s a pretty flower that I grew.
My orchid is about to bloom.
Speaking as someone with a pretty long and storied history of killing every plant under my care, this is enormous.
I’m working hard on getting Trajelon formatted for printing, but there’s this adorable little goblin lurking behind my desk chair.
He says, “Mom no pet keyboard. Mom pet Hento.”
I hope you all understand that I must comply.
It’s that time of year again when I shill my photography, neatly assembled for you in calendar form.
I’ve fallen completely in love with Pittsburgh, so of course that had to be this year’s theme.
Buy it, please. It’s pretty. Give a starving artist a little Christmas cash.
My very first present of the season has been delivered by Amazon’s robotic elves, and it is no disappointment.
There is nothing else to do with this note/ gift but to conclude that my friends are pretty great.
The good news is that autumn is here and I got some incredible photos at the park this week, and I’m loving the hell out of getting to actually watch the season change.
The bad news is that I paid for those photos with a nasty fall resulting in some pretty severe road pizza.
So let’s look at these pretty photos of Pittsburgh in autumn while I gargle this hot salt water and apply a fresh coat of antiseptic to what used to be my face.
the last shot before I quite literally face-planted
Totally worth it.
It wasn’t a chocolate cake, strictly speaking, but I gave it some chocolate assistance and it filled the role with aplomb.
This is my hair.
This is my hair on Pittsburgh humidity.
I have lots of questions.
Sometimes the universe affirms you on a bar napkin. I’m not too high and mighty for it.
You okay?
For the record, no. No it is not 0 degrees in Mesa, AZ on November 2nd, and it never has been. Especially not while it’s apparently 70 degrees 30 miles away in Phoenix.
That five-tornado forecast, though.
Which never happens.
you get to see my ugly old mug
Autistic Wordpainter 