Still here, yo.

Have been working a lot and thinking a lot about… well, all kinds of things. Today’s walk around the track was a bit of a revelation, but in a rather unimportant kind of way, i.e., no epiphanies, just arrivals.

Perhaps something of more substance soon. I’m terrible at keeping blog-related promises.

I’m not one to complain, usually, but really.

painting by Hilma af Klint

Car window left open all night during torrential rain, requiring many “ass towels” (that one’s for Jim) yet resulting in wet butt anyway? Check.

Soggy doctor appointment with slightly weird physician? Check.

Schedule appointment for mole removal? Check.

Change out of new favorite pants due to aforementioned wet butt and hate outfit all day? Check.

Incredibly torrential rain causing water in the basement? Check.

Whack head/see stars while assisting in bailout of basement? Check.

Get next to nothing done at work? Check.

Receive bad news about a friend? Check.

More rain on the way? Check.

I think I’ll go hide with a drink and a book.

It came to my attention yesterday from both good friends and my son (!) that my blog hasn’t been updated in nearly a month. This is mainly because I was feeling (and still do feel) that my blogging is more a familiar refrain of What I’ve Been Doing rather than What I’ve Been Thinking. I guess it’s a place to start.

Though I work full-time year-round, the nature of my work outside the home has shaken out to be an intense 9 months on/3 months kind-of-off situation. Physical preparation for the upcoming farmers’ market season begins, in earnest, in February (though I’m thinking about it all year long, and I’ll be starting even earlier for the 2010 season), and the weeks leading up to the first actual event are, for lack of a better term, completely wackadoo. It is no coincidence, either, that my last blog entry before today was the day before we had ourselves a bit of farmers’ market controversy in Urbana. I spent two and a half weeks sorting that out, and then the season went ahead and started, and things are hopefully settling down. Two solid markets so far; may there be 26 more, with v little rain.

Part of my job involves checking out new produce vendors - the market gardens and small farms who want to sell fruits and vegetables at the Market. [Funny aside - did you know that in Sweden, berries aren’t considered fruits - they’re considered berries? As is “fruits, vegetables, and berries”? Anyway.] Every new applicant gets a visit before they can sell at the Market, and this year every produce vendor, even if I’ve been to their place before, will get a visit from me at some point during the season. I take photos of their places, get the tour, chat for a bit. I get asked a lot of questions about the food and the farmers in my job, so my goal is to have as much information as possible available to consumers about the orchards, fields of sweet corn, acres of tomatoes and potatoes, and berry patches that supply food to many eaters in the C-U area. This means I drive to a lot of places, and occasionally I get lost. Note to self: charge hi-tech gizmo before leaving for 1.5 hour trip on gravel and dirt roads.

A bunch of online friends and I were reminiscing last week about the old days, 9-10 years ago, when we all met on a message board, and we’ve followed along with each other ever since. I sighed aloud about how I loved homeschooling my kids back in the early 00s, how much fun it was when they were younger to be with them like that, and how now - now is so fraught with getting things done, getting ahead (whatever that means), really intense planning, and feeling a bit left behind as my kids grow and embark on their young person lives. One of these friends pointed out to me that when I was home with them, I always had one eye a little bit on the future, and that I’m accomplishing what I’d hoped I’d someday do - the kids are thriving, and I’m doing work that I enjoy and that I feel is important. Ya can’t go back. So… what’s next? I keep thinking grad school is next, but…

Happy late Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I hope your Sunday weather was delicious, that your breakfast wasn’t charred, and that you were able to carve some time out to do whatever the hell you wanted.

When Cody was 4 years old, he wrote me a note for Mother’s Day that read, “You are bunny candy to me.” Easter that year had clearly made an impact.

The phrase entered the B-K family lexicon, of course, so today was Bunny Candy Day. We are not churchgoing folk (I’m much more likely to make the rest of the family observe the Vernal Equinox than anything else this time of year), but we dutifully do the Bunny Candy thing.

I’m curious - what are some great utterances by the children in yr life that have stuck around over time, becoming part of the house vernacular?

Still unable to shake off the last 8 years, I occasionally feel as though I’m living in an alternate reality:

[Sorry about the largeness of the photo. It’s from Reuters and I couldn’t figure out how to reduce it. Anyway.]

From the Telegraph in the UK:

Some of the food grown in the garden will be served to the Obamas and to White House staff and guests. Some will be donated to a local soup kitchen.

I’m surprisingly emo about this.

I came home from CHGO a couple of weeks ago absolutely craving Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.

This was due, completely, to two separate occurrences happening within half an hour of each other while we were hanging out on North Avenue. The first was walking past a bar whose doors and windows were wide open, “Long Time Gone” barreling from the speakers. I couldn’t believe how good it sounded, how everything was appropriate for the sound - the weather, the people we were with, everything fit. The second was the arrival of a friend, not fifteen minutes later, at the Double Door with a Reckless Records bag enveloping what at first seemed disappointing (one measly record for the record collector?), but, ah! The record inside was a copy of the Crosby & Nash record from 1973 - the one with “Immigration Man”, possibly my favorite song from when I was about 5 years old.

I came home from the city the following day, needing, absolutely, to hear all of it. If you live where I live, and you need to hear something that you don’t own, and you’re me, you call Stelt. STAT.

Everyone I knew back when we lived and worked in Chicago (except for Jim, who had lived in Champaign previously and had known him for years already) was respectfully terrified of Stelt. He was the buyer at the best record store in downstate Illinois, a 6′6″ pro-wrestlery-looking guy, older than us, TOTALLY INCAPABLE of suffering fools gladly. The first time we met was in the record store on the U of I campus in Champaign in 1995, when Jim took me “record shopping”. I feigned indifference as I shopped the racks. CDs. Lots of vinyl. As far as anyone knew in town, Jim was still with his ex-girlfriend, so I was under a bit of extra scrutiny. Who is THAT? He seemed unimpressed, as was his way. I was relieved to emerge into the bright sun into the anonymity of summertime campus.

In April 1996, I found myself at one of Townes Van Zandt’s final shows with… Stelt. He had asked who was up for it and I rose to the challenge, so I met him at the Old Town School of Folk Music, where we witnessed the obvious end of Townes’ career that night. We totally bonded over it. Friends forever!

Jim & Cody & I moved to Urbana a few months later. Stelt helped us move into our apartment (he lived around the corner) and eventually, Stelt and I had a radio show on WEFT for several years called Out of Our Heads (I came in after his original co-host, Barry, left to teach at FSU). Before there was podcasting, Stelt and I sat in his living room, smoking and listening to records, and wished we could broadcast the listening sessions we were having right from the living room rather than haul ourselves to the station. He remains my go-to guy for music. He’d be yours, too - he has the most WICKED record collection in probably the entire midwest. And even though we moved, he moved too, and he’s still around the corner.

When I went by Stelt’s to tell him of my CSN&Y dilemma, he stopped preparing his dinner and rummaged around in one of his rooms, waving the CSN&Y CD box set issued by Atlantic in the early 1990s when he came out. “This isn’t everything,” he said, “but it’s probably everything you need right now.”

He was SO RIGHT. The box is a Greatest Hits-ish situation, BUT!! also appeals to the collector, the nerd, and the girl who grew up with parents who listened to a lot of CSN&Y by way of live stuff and outtakes for some of the better-known songs (”Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, which I am listening to right now, OH YES), plus plenty of solo or offshoot projects and covers. I kept it for two weeks before popping over to his house to give it back and ask him to give me something else to listen to, because I knew he would.

He did, of course - he gave me several CDs to listen to. Rodriguez (completely insane, it’s so good). Lovetones. The new Tindersticks (which is colossally great). The Tallest Man on Earth (Swedish and in CHGO tomorrow night, I believe) He always does that, because he’s Stelt and he’s awesome and he wants you to go ahead, take all day if you have to, but listen to this and explain it to me. He’s an excellent friend, fun to hang out with, has the best taste in TV in addition to music, and is a B-K family treasure. And now, thank GOD, he writes about music every so often here.

Happy birthday, Uncle Stelty.

My kids are growing up right in front of me.

The older one makes movies that make me wonder what its really like to be in high school in 2009 and he talks of going REALLY far away as soon as possible. Unlike when I was sixteen, his talk isn’t teenage wishful thinking. He has a year left of high school and, if he gets into the language immersion program he applied to, even less than that. He’s already been places I’ve never been. He knows, so much better than I at that age, what he wants - or what he thinks he wants. (Does one ever really know?)

The younger one is unrecognizable to me: On the soccer field, the tentative kid that danced and skipped around the action while exhorting her teammates a couple of years ago is suddenly jetting her body up and down the field with graceful gangle and excellent footwork. She submits her writing to competitions and gets recognized. Next up: belting it out in the school musical. She is tall and lovely. Compassionate. Excellent manners.

While a lot of this comes as a relief (they’re growing up well), it’s also terrifying (now what?). I’m just nodding my assent that yes, there is work to be done and no, it has little or nothing to do with the kids. They have their own lives.

I noticed yesterday that the radishes, peas, and spinach I planted a couple weeks ago are up. Tomatoes, peppers, and herbs are going in the basement. I guess there’ll be another garden season after all.

::gets up, stretches::

While I waited for the bleach to do its thing to the roots of my hair, I started two flats of seeds - nothing fancy this year. There are a few different heirloom tomatoes, a couple peppers, basil and Italian parsley… and that’s it. I’ll direct sow everything else. The people at Seed Savers must be wondering what happened to me and my huge order this year, but that’s just the way things shook out (sorry, Seed Savers). While I’m very excited to get outside for Play In The Dirt 2009, I’ll admit to feeling sort of dull and uninspired when it comes to growing things right now. The garden is a mess at the moment, due to uncooperative weather at times when I can get out there, and last spring’s incident with a neighbor’s dog has affected me more than I realized. I’ll get back out there, I know, but for now… plain old tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.

The flats were done at about the same time as my hair. I looked at the clock but decided it was too late to bring you my latest idea, which is to get some music from my friend Stelt once a week and reflect on it here. It can be something I’ve heard before, something I’ve never heard before, something rock, something prog, something jammy, whatever. Bob has the best record collection in downstate Illinois, easily; he was my radio show partner for at least 5 years and was the only person I was worried about when Jim and I started hanging out 14 years ago, because he seemed like a bit of a tough customer. Of course, he’s now one of my dearest friends. I have a photo of him holding Lilly when she was a couple of days old - he’s 6′6″ and she looked about the size of a loaf of bread in his hands.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago when things were kind of crappy after AWSM CHGO WKND, he lent me the CSN&Y box set Atlantic did years ago and it totally helped me shake it off. I’ll be writing about that first.

Now I’m looking at the clock and am thinking I’m up past my old lady bedtime. xo

… for inspiration:

I think the first photo, the prairie burn, speaks loudest to me today. So does this quote from the article linked above:

The hardest thing about restoring a prairie for us is controlling the weeds that come up when you plant the prairie,” says Barnhart. “The weeds can sometimes be 100 times bigger than the prairie plants you are trying to establish, and it is very frustrating.”

Yep. I can totally relate.

I’m on a cleaning jag (and have only 50 minutes before I go skate), but I thought I’d pause to share…

… a photo of my 10 year-old kid meeting a one day-old kid today at Prairie Fruits Farm:

… and my 16 year-old’s TSOOL soundcheck video from 13 March. The sound is terrible because the poor little mic on his D90 couldn’t handle the noise, but the visuals are what’s important. He may re-use the footage, setting it to pre-recorded music:

To the kitchen!