Twittertail

"You're always so busy! You better slow down! You do too much. [Businesslike] You got a house to keep up, you got your business, you got a husband, [chucklingly] you got them three babies to take care of, you got a garden to work in, you got them flower beds in the front, you got jobs in the church.... [heavily] You know you do too much. [prophetically] You better slow down! [hotly] I want you to slow down and get some rest, and stop doing so much. You hear?"

My rebuttal to Gram:
(1) I don't do too much. Really, it seems like I never get anything done.
(2) I don't have any babies. I have an indoor dog, an outdoor cat, and a backyard bantam. I don't recall giving birth to any of these creatures.
(3) I do have a husband, a very nice one, and he's taken over the late-summer gardening duties.
(4) I grow lavender and sedum in the front yard, or rather, they grow themselves. You couldn't hope to find two more tenacious and tolerant plants. Go ahead, try them in your own neglected spaces and you'll see what I mean.
(5) As for church, I do a little visiting and a little teaching here and there, and I try to organize a yearly history of our congregation. I wouldn't call that burdensome.
(6) Okay, maybe if I could actually do everything I would like to, I would be doing too much, but as I've already said, I feel like an underachiever.
(7) Every time I close my eyes, even just for a nap, I fall immediately into dreams—vivid, kinetic stuff. I've often been known to wake up exhausted after my forays into Slumberland. I think I might get more actual rest when I'm awake and moving.

Hey, wait. This is my blog. Shouldn't the very first words of the very first post be my own, not my grandmother's? Hmm. Well, maybe it isn't so strange to want to let her have her say to start with; I'm very aware these days that she urgently needs to have a voice. Besides, she was here on the planet before I was, and her efforts, I'm sure, have helped mold me into the loving, striving, yet richly dysfunctional adult I am today.

I'm sure I will talk more of my grandmother later. I will talk of both my grandmothers before my words run out. I've got a lot of words.

I've also got a lot of recipes. I made something tasty for dinner (or supper, in Gramspeak) this evening: a revised version of Tomatican from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. (Check out the Moosewood cookbooks if you have any tastebuds at all.)

Geo's Improvised Tomatican 

Sauté together, until onion softens:
1 gigantic onion, sliced thinly
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 healthy blat of extra-virgin olive oil 

Add and continue to sauté till beans are thawed and steaming (adding a little water, if needed):
2 teaspoons dried ground cumin
1 lb. bag frozen baby lima beans 

Add, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes (or till vegies are as tender as you wish):
several handfuls of fresh, coarsely chopped tomatoes
2 cups frozen corn
salt 

Serve this over quinoa (1 cup grain + 2 cups water brought to a boil, covered, then simmered for 15 minutes or till water is all cooked away) and top with grated cheddar cheese. If your tomatoes are yellow like mine were, this is an especially summery, cheerful dish. Yum.

On a less sunshiney note, our car died on me today. The timing was amazing, though, so I couldn't let myself complain; Gram and I had spent a long morning hunting and gathering at Wal-Mart (her choice, not mine), and it wasn't till after I'd safely deposited her home and helped her put her groceries away that the old Trooper stopped trooping. I had literally made it no farther than out of her parking lot and into the street when it went kaput. I managed to slowly coax it into the parking lot in front of Shirley's Bakery, and on an empty stomach but with a deep determination to shun sugar, I braved the allurements of bear claw and butterhorn and used Shirley's phone to call home. Rob and Bryce showed up before too long and we got the Trooper home again. I'm so grateful this didn't happen while I was out with Gram. I don't know which would have puddled first: the grandmother or her Pict-Sweet frozen corn. The other thing I'm grateful for is the use of Joh and Andy's car while they're out of the country for nine weeks (gosh, starting today, how about that?). It might send Rob and I both clear over the edge to be carless at this point. I don't know what we're going to do about our deteriorating transportation situation, but... well, I can't think about that right now.

I finally came up with a new design for our web page this evening. I've been banging my head against this project for so long, and at last a very simple inspiration has come, one that I think will evolve nicely. What a relief. I believe many things will be able to go forward again once I get us past the outdated web page obstacle.

This blog is already getting quite long, and I'm just on day one. I've done online journalling before, but this is my first time blogging. Will I be truncated if I'm too loquacious?

Oh, yes—a "twittertail" is somebody who is all-over-the-place busy. You know the kind: can't keep still, makes you tired and nervous just watching. It's generally a mixed term: 80% exasperation and 20% affection. My grandmother has called me this before, in an attempt to work some bootless discipline on me, but it's never done any good. Anyway, I'm not a twittertail. It is one of my favorite words, however.

Would you like to learn how to draw your very own twitter bird?

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep!