Rayne Today

Sometimes words simply won't do. Nope, not at all.

I'm just now getting around to catching up on things that I had to set aside in order to get the family packed up and out of town for a couple of weeks. Since I'm going to YearlyKos, the kids are going to stay with their grandparents; we're spending quality time together here in the Great White North before I go to the convention, and I'll decompress with them here after the convention and before we head back home. But that means the garden has been left untended, or left in the care of my husband who will be traveling quite a bit during these two weeks. The kids took these snaps just before we left town; we are very curious about the changes we will see when we arrive back home. Besides an avalanche of zucchini and tomatoes, what else do you think will happen? This is the first zucchini, now much larger than a nine-year-old's hand, ready for picking. But the kids forgot it; hubby says he picked them and tossed them because he didn't know what to do with the...

Been too busy for the last week, couldn't think straight. So busy that it even interrupted my sleep; I'd wake up, realizing that I'd been thinking about my "To Do" list in my dreams, adding items and scratching off others. At least twice I had to write things down in the middle of the night after waking up thinking about them. But now the travel is behind me, most of my "To Do" list has been done (save for a few niggling chores that followed me). And I've actually had my toes in the sand. Hope wherever you are, that you are also able to park yourself in a reclining position with a beverage of your choice and unwind for the weekend. I think we could all use one right about now.

Yeah, me too, I wanted to become something more than an angry American, nauseated every day by what I read and saw at work in government. I'd recently started blogging, but it wasn't enough. I needed results, something more than yelling into the void every day over a hot keyboard. As days went by I felt more and more isolated, alone, freakish, and horribly frustrated by the perception my country was sliding rapidly down a slippery, ugly slope towards something I couldn't label. I'd read about a campaign that intrigued me, some guy out east that had a straightforward and pragmatic way of looking at matters and addressing them, a guy who actually had some chops at doing what needed to be done. He'd balanced a budget for more than a decade, while providing healthcare to all senior citizens and children in his state – and he did not believe we had solid intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Damn, I thought, I want some of THAT. Where do I sign up? Mind you, I...

The garden is damp this morning; I won't have to water it today with the rain we are getting. But I'm not certain if it's a good thing. Look at how full everything has gotten over the last couple of weeks, tomatoes ready to burst out of the bed and beans looking in the garage window. The next batch of radishes -- two separate plantings -- are already up and beginning to fill in the place where the previous crop had been pulled. Oops, crabgrass in the bed...I guess I'd better weed again when the rain stops. A sign of things to come: Hungarian peppers are already coming in, these about 6 inches long and nearly ready to pick. There are about a dozen of them in the pepper bed. My daughter is pleading to pick a lilac pepper, but I won't let her; it still has green shoulders. And oops again, more crabgrass. More weeding. But look here, the zukelear threat. The first tiny zucchini with its blossom attached, about an inch and a half long. There are more coming along,...

I wish I'd taken pictures throughout the day of the electronic detritus spread across my kitchen table and family room floor, bits and pieces of a PlayStation 2 spread between multiple cell phones in various states of operation, more phone handsets and a desktop and laptop in operation. What an irradiating, irritating mess. Nobody warned me about this when I became a mom. My son's little buddy who came and stayed overnight last night managed to trip on the PS2 remote cable, pulling the PS2 onto the floor. My son and his buddy didn't fess up right away, telling me only that the buddy's game DVD was stuck in the PS2. I figured it was not a big deal, that we'd handle it when I got around to it. Unfortunately, the PS2 is community property, a joint present from "Santa" to both my son and his older sister. And the older sister was PISSED OFF. She showed me the damage after the friend left this morning, explained that the machine might be shot because it la...

My mother-in-law is slipping away from us. We spent time visiting with her in a nursing home this weekend; she was discharged from the hospital the weekend before last but could not go home because her needs for care exceeded anything my father-in-law could provide. It's a Parkinson's-like condition with continuing deterioration, although the rate of decline exceeds what might be expected in most Parkinson's patients. In the course of a year she has gone from being able to provide most of her own care to being immobile from time to time, from speaking small sentences to virtually not at all, from recognizing everyone and being able to participate in small ways in conversations to being withdrawn, disinterested and unable to recognize even her own children. It's very hard to watch, and it's caused a few heated discussions between my spouse and me. And between my parents, too; having shared some of the details with them, they've discussed the situation and foun...

(Bloody Blogger won't let me put in a title, sorry, will have to come back and fix this later.) [Fixed!] Quality of seeds show here in produce; this was a cheap pack, and the fruits are all over the map in size and color. We've planted a new batch this week with a higher quality seed and a new variety. Just wait until you see them! The Brandywine tomatoes are blooming like crazy; I love that the blossoms telegraph the fruit to come with the complexity of their doubled blooms. And look, little tiny blossoms beginning to form on the zucchini plants. Fair warning to the neighbors, it won't be long before you find zukes on your stoops.

I never would have thought I'd feel this way; I thought I'd be glad to be shet of it, especially since I've been in this new house for two years last month. But I'm mourning the sale of my old house; I left it only minutes before I had to go sign off the title. It was the first real estate my spouse and I bought together; we moved in the day after our wedding. Both my babies came home from the hospital to this house. I've scrubbed and painted every inch of this place. I've canned vegetables from its garden, run through the sprinkler with my kids over its lawn, sat in the dark shade of its trees at night listening to crickets, laughed at the squirrels that scampered in its trees, lain in bed listening to blizzard winds whipping snow over the roof and chimney deep in winter. But I think that is the reason it's so hard to say goodbye. I'm thoroughly enmeshed and entwined in this place, every plant put there by my will or left by my choice, the carpet my...

From Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation : An anecdote that Benjamin rush, the Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, liked to tell in his old age makes the point memorably. On July 4, 1776, just after the Continental Congress had finished making its revisions of the Declaration and sent it off to the printer for publication, Rush overheard a conversation between Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry," said Harrison, "when we are alll hung for what we are doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead." Rush recalled the comment "procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted." On this day we celebrate truly great Americans who with a stroke of...

The table is set -- and impeachment is very much on it. We are ready and waiting. Your turn to serve, please. Thank you, ~Rayne

Quite simply, this is what happened today: Bush displayed his contempt for the law by throwing over a jury's verdict. In the face of these facts: -- A jury of peers found Scooter Libby guilty; -- A Republican judge issued Libby a sentence within the guidelines range; -- Three more judges affirmed that sentence; President Bush decided to toss it all and commute Libby's sentence. I hope there's more outrage about this than about Paris Hilton's excursion home for cupcakes after a couple days in jail before she returned to complete her sentence. I hope the American public sees the injustice in Hilton serving more time than a man who lied under oath and made false statements to both a grand jury and FBI agents multiple times. And I hope the American people realize the commutation of Libby's sentence was likely a crime in itself, further obstructing justice that Libby already obstructed mightily himself; I hope they realize that the criminal launch of the Iraq War lies be...

I used to have a 40 foot by 20 foot garden plot at my old house. There was never a time that I lacked for room, could grow almost anything I wanted. But the lot at our newer home is configured in such a way that it would be difficult to have a garden that size. I elected instead to have a smaller kitchen garden in an area that is not only convenient to the kitchen, but using a narrow strip of land only 20 feet long by 6 feet wide. The soil is almost all clay, too, like rock as soon as it dries; I had to think of a way to amend the soil at reasonable cost and reduce the need for rototilling since the plot is so small and next to the house. So raised beds it was, three of them measuring 4 foot wide by 6 foot deep. It made the overall amount of planted area smaller, but far easier to maintain. the only real work was putting in the beds, which going forward can be tilled by hand. I wish I'd done a better job of photographing the progress; you are missing what a weed patch this ...