This year, once again, I am walking in the MS Walk as part of my friend Amy's team. Amy is one of my oldest friends; she was diagnosed 5 years ago now.

If you can, please donate to our team.

I wonder if I want a tumblr, but I hear that it is hard to navigate your own stuff on those. I'd mostly use it for RL projects -- things like process notes/pics for my garden, occasional snaps of my kids, that kind of thing. It would be fairly important to be able to see everything tagged "garden" or "family" without jumping through a zillion hoops.

Maybe I should just make a new blog on the wordpress install we have on our personal server?

Hey local women,

If any of you need new work-or-dressy clothes, my sister Molly works at the Shadyside White House Black Market, and does appointments. So if you've ever wanted to try personal shopping/appointment shopping, let me know & I'll give you her details! (she says its easiest to call her directly, but I don't want to post her cell unlocked here. You can also contact the store at 412-687-3647 and request an appointment with Molly Valentine, and your contact info, and she'll call you back.)

I've been finally really really for real writing out the plans for my garden. I have drafts of various beds taped to the wall of my pantry now, and a final plan for Bed A. Bed A is really two beds (plus a third, but the third does not count because it is very simple: it has a maple tree in it, and I'm underplanting that with blue hosta and that is all). These two beds run from the side of the porch to the side door of the house, from half-sun to mostly-shade.

When we moved in last fall, I brought with me divisions of some plants from the old house -- anything with sentimental value, like the phlox mecurtin gave me and the blazing star from our old kitty's grave -- plus things I loved and didn't want to let go. I just shoved it all in empty spots of the yard so it would live, and so I could watch the garden this year and see what was already there.

A lot of what's there is staying, but changing location. For example: there was a forest of peonies in Bed A, but they were too far back in the shade and didn't do well. There are lots of hosta all over, including in full-sun beds, where they get burnt up and washed out; they're all moving to at least half-shade. There are some quite nice roses, but not where I would have put roses at all -- they're lining a path, and I like roses more in the background. That kind of thing.

Bed A will be: irises, peonies, and perennial sage in the sunniest part; daylilies behind that, fading into astilbe, phlox, and hosta, with a Limelight hydrangea anchoring the bed.

Bed B is a half-sun to full-sun bed across a footpath from Bed A; it will be daylilies, bee balm, blazing star, roses, and clematis.

Bed C is a half-sun to full-sun bed across the main path from Bed B. It's much more up in the air, partly because more of the extant infrastructure (two small trees, the peonies, and a clump of decorative grass) is staying, and I haven't figured out quite what I want to work in around that yet. More daylilies, move the roses, blazing star, clematis? It's all tentative. The flag irises are going; I do not like flag irises but they are a good plant for streams, and we have one of those in the back -- so they're just shifting back there. I like them better in their natural place.

The last bit in the front of the house (look, we bought this place partially for the yard; you don't get a lot of double lots in the city but this has one) is the memorial garden for my aunt and grandmother. That one is dictated more by what my Aunt Pat and Grandma liked, and of course it's influenced the plans for the rest of the garden because I want it to be harmonious. I think it'll be lovely when it's done (probably the final pieces will go in next fall, and then it'll take a few years to grow in and fill out -- so by the time my toddler is in kindergarten, most likely). It runs from mostly-sun at the front to mostly-shade at the back.

Aunt Pat's corner: yellow rose, white rose, pink hydrangeas, clematis. (She was always trying to grow hydrangea, and planted roses for her children.)
Grandma: stone triskele, thyme path + triskele filling, white musk rose, clematis, possibly more hydrangea (the last gift I got from her, the Christmas five days after she died, was a gold triskele; my mom says she had a huge old musk rose out back and loved the New Jersey "hydrangea trail").
Unfilled areas: phlox (to tie into the shade part of Bed A).

My goal for this fall is just to get Bed A done. I need to pick up some more phlox, astilbe, and sage for it; everything else I have. I've already moved the irises and peonies, and made a start on the daylily arrangements; there's at least another two hours of work there. Getting the Limelight in place and moving all the hosta will probably take another three hours of work. If I keep my wits about me it'll be finished and mulched before October...

On our way back from vacation, we stopped in Matamoras, PA, and stayed in The Cleanest Hampton Inn Ever. (Seriously. It was extremely clean, and I've paid more for much worse rooms many a time. Hampton Inns needs to give these folks some awards.)

We chose that location so that we could go to Dingman's Falls, in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I'd heard for years how pretty the Delaware Water Gap is, and we wanted a place that we could let a 2 year old run around -- we'd forgotten our carry pack, so we couldn't do more challenging trails. Dingman's Falls supposedly had a flat boardwalk to the falls, and was not far off our main route, so it was the winner!

In case any of you pass that way and need a travel break, I'm going to do a pretty complete review...

Facilities
There's a visitor center, which has some educational displays and whatnot, and I really liked it. There was a little streambed tank, with worms and minnows and so on in it, which my kid loved. There are animal pelts displayed inside, and I know some people don't like that, so be aware.

Outdoors, there is a set of pit toilets, with individual rooms with locking doors. They are clean and well-maintained, with hand sanitizer dispensers in each room. The rooms are large enough to change clothes in, if you need to do so.

There is a drinking fountain between the visitor center and the toilets, and on the side, low down, is a spigot. I don't know what it's FOR, exactly, but I hate hand sanitizer, and hand sanitizer is no good at removing mud from toddlers, so it came in pretty handy.

Accessibility
"Flat boardwalk" is not precisely correct. It has one longish uphill, and part of the trail is hardpacked gravel. That said, the lower part of the trail is most likely accessible to people in wheelchairs. We saw one woman with a cane managing it, and it's definitely fine for strollers. If you are using a manual wheelchair and are wheeling yourself rather than being pushed, you will probably want to wear gloves, even if you don't normally -- the area is quite damp and even though the trail is elevated and scrupulously maintained, your hands will probably get gunked up if you skip gloves.

The top of the falls can only be reached through an extremely steep and narrow staircase:


This is the very first part of the staircase. It gets worse later on.

It is very beautiful up there but I would not suggest that anyone without full use of at least 3 limbs, 2 of them legs, and a fully-operational cardiovascular system try it. Also, don't take any children under 5 up there unless you are capable of carrying them a good portion of the way and you have enough adults/older kids with you to run interference with the railings -- it is perfectly possible for a small child to climb between the railings and fall over the edge.

The visitor center and toilets seemed to me to be fully wheelchair accessible, and the toilets had enough room for someone to be in there with you to help you if you need it.

Working/assistance dogs are permitted (but no other dogs).

Scenery

( Flippin' gorgeous. )

Overall: A+ would visit again.

Last night thwomp sent a link to a 2007 advice column by Carolyn Hax about what stay-at-home parents actually do all day.


( for-example, going to the park. )
So when a parent of a small child tells you they went to the park that day, they did not have a leisurely stroll down to the swings. It was like WALKING INTO MORDOR.

No, wait, Mordor was more like my house this morning.
( Goddammit, Mordor, get outta my house )
If there hadn't been a heat advisory I would have gone to the park. The park would have been MUCH BETTER, I think you agree.

So there you are. If you ever wonder what, exactly, stay-at-home parents do all day, it pretty frequently looks something like that. And yes, as the advice column says, it's a lifestyle choice and it has its rewards, but it is a lot of goddamn work, and much of the work is...not what I would call fun.

I love my kid, but I think parents who claim they don't want access to on-demand cryogenic freezing of children are liars. (Come on, cryogenic freezing technology people. I just want to freeze him for a day or two, catch up on my sleep, watch a movie. How hard can this be? Get on it.)

I grew up in a singing household -- my mother sang all time, and we were always singing along to the radio or the record player/tape player/CD player, and then we went to camp and there are So. Many. Camp. Songs.

So I sing to my kid, all kinds of things. "Sumer is icumen in" and "Mercedes Benz" and lots of things in-between. Lately, he's been asking for songs about boats, so after getting bored of "Row Row Row Your Boat" (and not wanting to sing him "A Boy & A Girl In a Little Canoe", which has gross gender stuff in it), I sang him what I could remember of "The Titanic" this morning.

This afternoon, I went to look up the lyrics I couldn't remember, and of course it's a folk song with about 30 million versions, none of the ones I could find being the one I know. I did manage to finally piece it together, though.

Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue.
And they said it was a ship that the sea would ne'er pass through.
It was on its maiden trip when an iceberg hit that ship.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Chorus:
It was sad, so sad.
It was sad, so sad.
It was sad when the great ship went down (to the bottom of the see-ee-ee-ea....)
(Uncles and aunts, little children lost their pants.)
It was sad when the great ship went down.

They were nearing England's shore, 'bout a thousand miles or more,
When the rich refused to associate with the poor.
So they locked 'em down below, where they were the first to go.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Repeat chorus, w. variation:
(Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives)

Little children wept and cried, as the waves rolled o'er the side
And the band on deck played "Lord with Me Abide"
The coward and the brave, all went to a watery grave
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Repeat first chorus

Oh the moral of this story, as you can plainly see
Is to wear a life preserver when you go out to sea
For the Lord's Almighty Hand said that ship would never land*
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Repeat second chorus

Ker-plunk
It sunk
Like junk.

* I'm probably going to change this line, since we are atheists. "For the ocean's mighty hand" scans, so I'll probably use that. There's an extant variation that uses "Mother Nature", but I don't like it.

It's a song that requires two singers, since one person has to do the "see-ee-ee-ea" while the other sings the "uncles & aunts"/"husbands & wives" line. Sorry, kiddo; I can only do one part.

A big "Thanks!!" to everyone who donated to the MS Walk -- for my walk, or for anyone else's. The walk was yesterday, on a beautiful hot sunny day, and my team was about 10 adults and 12 kids. I think it's the largest team we've ever had.

So, I'm a slow runner, always have been, and that's fine; I'm not trying to win any races. I am trying to push myself, though, so I decided to try to cut 2 minutes off my usual mile time. I usually run either 2 miles or a 5k, but I decided that one run a week, I'd run a mile, on an easy route, and walk home from the mile mark. So: leave it on the field, just run my tail off for that mile.

So I've done that a few times. I'm consistently falling about a half-block short of the mile when the timer for the goal time goes off. And here's the thing: I'm not out of breath when it goes off, my legs aren't blocks of lead, I am still plenty capable of continuing -- so I'm not pushing myself. I'm not leaving it on the field.

But at the time, as I am running, I feel like I am. I think I'm pushing and working really hard. My head is getting in my way.

Anyone have any idea how I can get it out of the way? I already know I'm going to up the bpms of my running mix, because I tend to run in time with it, so perhaps the faster beat will drag my along with it.

I've been in class all day, and it was a marvelous class, but I'm only now catching up and -- ah, no. Not Diana Wynne Jones!

I never read her work when I was in the nominal target audience; I started reading it as an adult, because I tend to find YA fantasy more interesting, creative, and all-around pleasant to read than I do "adult" fantasy. (I am, in fact, about a third of the way through Enchanted Glass right now, and before that I read The Pinhoe Egg, and before that House of Many Ways.)

Sad now.

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