...as I wait for my coffee to brew and my toast to toast:
A little brown bunny, hopping on the moss between my cottage and the chainlink fence between my yard and next door, stopping and nibbling on the little shoots that are coming out now because it's spring.
When I got a haircut last week, I was asking the (middle-aged) (white) (townie) barber if he ever had tried the kombucha from a local store, and he was like, "You like that stuff?".
He then explained that he's tried it, but he just can't stand the vinegary taste.
"Well, what's your opinion on pickles?", I was like.
"I don't like them either," he was like, and then he noted that that's always been the case, but it's gotten especially bad after Covid.
"My son likes cucumbers," he was like, "But you start to cut them up now, and you got to get me out of the room."
He then was like, too, "And my old lady has this cucumber melon stuff she likes to spray around, I used to be able to deal with that, but not anymore."
Like a month ago, I was chopping up some vegetables on my one kitchen counter and some water from the washed vegetables accumulated on the board and then spilled on the counter, and though I desultorily wiped it up, I really didn't use soap or anything, and then the next day there were a ton of ants out there, where the water had spilled.
So, I began killing them and wiping down that area with soap, but they kept always being there, and sometimes would move into the upper cupboards there, to explore, too.
And, I noticed that sometimes they'd duck down to where the counter had moved away from the wall and broken the caulk, so I let my landlord know that, and I asked him to caulk there like he had done on the other side of the kitchen.
First, he explained that there's always ants around here this time of year.
Second, he asked if I had tried poison.
"I would," I was like, "But I try to avoid that as much as possible around food and where I keep my dishes."
So, he caulked, and, what do you know, the ants there mostly disappeared, and now have shifted back to appearing occasionally on the other side of the kitchen.
Like midway through last summer, I noticed that the local library near me has a free seed library where you can grab seeds and plant them and give some back on the honor system eventually, although they also have a sign up specifying that it's okay if you don't.
So, I grabbed like three packs of sunflower seeds, and I tried firing them in the ground around my cottage.
But, it was late in the season, and I was kind of not all that serious about it, and nothing came up.
But, I saved the seed packets and googled on what else I could do, and so now I've been sprouting them indoors to try that this year, to give them a head start before I go put them outdoors when the weather is warm enough at night for them to survive and grow.
Like, I put a paper napkin out on a plate, and then some seeds on top of that, and then another napkin on top of all of that, so that the seeds are sandwiched between the paper napkins.
And, I moisten it all and try to keep it moist, and I try to keep it in the sun as much as I can, like by my one south window during the earlier part of the day, and by a west window afterwards.
Some of the seeds sprouted, too, so I put a second napkin section on the other half of the plate, and began some more there, too.
I want a lot ready to go so I can experiment with where they'll thrive, in case I can't get it right at first.
Seeds sprouting really is a mysterious thing. You can see where religion comes from, and parables. They're just like there, and then one day, there's life. It's all very mysterious.
With my bad seasonal allergies this year, I'm also getting really really low energy.
Like, on my days off, it takes me a few hours in the morning really to get enough energy together to go get ready for the day.
And, when I had two days off in a row, it took me all the way until the second day to be able to muster the energy to go give myself a super-close shave (something that I do every 2-3 days so my KN95 masks fit tight, so that I don't risk unnecessary Covid exposure with customers at the restaurant).
A part of me almost thinks that this is what depression must be like.
A few months ago, it was a beautiful afternoon and I was sitting out on the front porch reading and one of the college kids who lives upstairs in the front house came out (the dom one in that weird dom-sub thing that once happened between him and the other one), and we said hello.
And, I asked him how he was doing, and he paused and looked out and then was like, "I wish there was a word for it, when your depression is so bad that even good weather doesn't affect your mood."
