If Lin were sitting here writing this post, he’d tell you the moment those words come out of my mouth, preceded by or accompanied with uncontrollable giggles and hand waving, it usually means I’ve been riding a train of thought, and it came to a silly end. Actually, the resultant end is usually a somewhat sane thought and not really worth busting a gut laughing about. It’s the journey my brain took getting there that amuses me to the point of breathlessness. I am easily amused … obviously.

I was being forced to watch an engineering program about the Apache helicopter for about the hundredth time, so my mind wandered. I will now try to recreate the thought process necessary for me to move from thinking about what an awesome and scary piece of machinery the Apache helicopter is to the statement “I need a yoga tent.”

Oh, and I am not proofreading this monster, at least not until tomorrow.
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I’m bored and hungry. No one is entertaining me or feeding me. Do I have to do everything myself?!

See, I knew it was changing colors this morning. It’s changed even more while I wasn’t staring at it today! Any day now it will be red, and I will be eating it.

Here’s a bonus photo of one of the blossoms on my TAM Jalapeños [TAM = Texas A&M — that’s where it was developed]. The flowers are so pretty, and I can’t wait to see what they taste like! From what I have read, they are high producers, and with three of them, maybe we’ll be overrun with (mild) hot peppers too. Tomatoes and jalapeños, can you say salsa? Yes!

I’d have loved to sit out on the porch longer, but it’s just too darn hot. 92°F at 4:20 pm, and it isn’t even June yet. This summer is going to be a scorcher! I’m not looking forward to the extreme heat or the extreme electric bills. My plants are well suited for the hot weather, so they are going to love it, but I’m going to have to re-adapt to sweating while sitting still. Can’t afford to run the AC all day every day!

Even though the rest of the day is going to be one big waste, as soon as the pain pill kicks in, I have had an incredibly productive day! The bathroom and living room both look great, if one ignores the facts that my bathroom, even when clean, never looks great and that there is an ever-present stack of boxes in the living room corner. I’ve learned to ignore both of these facts over the years.

Of course, the kitchen and den are both utter wrecks, but hey … I got a lot done today! Tomorrow is another day, and Lin has to help me with the den anyway. Three-quarters of that mess is entirely his. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole for fear of moving something he has deemed important to have right where it is. I learned that lesson the hard way.

I’m giving myself a gold star and popping a pill. It’s time to go watch tomatoes ripen. It’s a slow and somewhat tedious job, but someone has to do it, right?

I knew when I got up this morning my teeth were going to be a bother. I waited a while to determine if they were going to be an ibuprofen-sized bother or a codeine-sized bother. I decided ibuprofen would do the job, which it did for about an hour. Now I have to wait to take the codeine, and I really need the big pill today. Grrr.

Been keeping myself busy to take my mind off of it. I totally scrubbed down the bathroom, walls, floors, and everything (but the shower - the chemicals were driving me crazy at that point). Waxed the floor in the hall too. At least that bit is done for now. I’d like to dig into scrubbing down the kitchen today too, but I’m thinking I may not have enough motivation or energy left. Really needs to be done though, but once I take the big pill, I will probably be useless for today and tomorrow.

So much to get done before Mom arrives Monday evening. I know I don’t have to go crazy with the cleaning. She is my mom, she knows me and my limited housekeeping skills pretty well, and she also knows I haven’t exactly been able to keep up with the house since this tooth thing started, but still, I’d like the house to at least be somewhat clean and organized. I mean, there’s a dust bunny the size of a small kitten wafting around in the living room for heaven’s sake!

Speaking of kittens, the cats have been out of their minds since I started scrubbing down the bathroom. How dare I put their litter box out in the hall for an hour?! Don’t I know they can’t possibly use it when it’s in the hall? That seemed to set them off, and they just won’t settle down. I guess I seriously upset their little daily routines. And Ronin has apparently decided that anything set on the now-empty kitchen table has been put there just for him to do with as he pleases. I can’t set anything on it, even for a second, without him licking, chewing, or eating it.

For example: I decided to take a break while the scrubbing bubbles did their work to have some salsa and chips. I poured the salsa into a bowl, noticed my mug-o-water was too empty to get me through a bowl of salsa, set down the bowl, took two steps to the sink to refill the mug, and in that limited amount of time Ronin learned more than he probably wanted to know about salsa. He hadn’t yet licked it when I turned around, so I made the usual cat-shooing noises. This never works with him when he really wants to lick something. Oh sure, he’ll back his head off a bit and look right at me, but his long tongue continues to stretch toward the object of its current affection out of the corner of his mouth. It’d be funny, if his non-stop licking of everything on the planet wasn’t so annoying. I saw his tongue touch the salsa, and if he hadn’t been fired up before, he most certainly was after. Methinks he may leave bowls of salsa alone in the future, but it’s possible he won’t. He doesn’t seem to learn anything from past experiences.

Currently, Ronin is dipping his favorite crocheted toy in their water bowl and batting it around the kitchen floor. Yes, Ronin, I know the kitchen floor needs to be swept and mopped. I’m getting to it! Jeez, can’t a person take a little break? Slave-driver!

And Myu? Little Miss Sweetness and Light? She’s been tearing around the house like a wild thing and knocking things off of shelves. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I have been hearing entirely too much noise from the living room. There’s no telling what mess I will find when I get to that room. If I had to guess, I’d say it will involve balls of yarn, magazines, and my small stuffed animal collection.

Oh, the joy of owning two young and crazy cats!

I still have two hours before I can take a big pill for the pain, so I think I better get back to distracting myself with housework. Then I am going to fix myself a nice big mug of Southern Pecan coffee with cream, go sit on the porch, and watch my plants grow … if I can manage to stay awake long enough to make it to the porch, that is.

Mr. Stripey is all abloom this week and covered with crazy amounts of future tomatoes!

Also, that very first Sugar Snack cherry tomato that popped out a few weeks ago is very slowly and almost imperceptibly beginning to change from bright green to subtle orange, which is sure to be followed by bright red and me picking it and eating it. I should probably cut it in half and share it with Lin, being as it is the first tomato that will ripen, but I doubt that will happen.

I will go out that fateful morning to tend to the plants, I will discover its beautiful ripeness, and I will not be able to resist plucking it and popping it into my mouth. To the farmer go the first born veggies, right? Besides, if the current crop of cherry tomatoes hanging around on my still somewhat young plants is any indication, there are going to be more than enough cherry tomatoes for all my friends and family to absolutely glut themselves on the tiny red gems.

I … cannot … wait!

And boy do I love my camera. It lets me get right in there on top of something!

When I mention to anyone in Austin that we live near Rundberg and Lamar, jaws drop and people express horror, dismay, and pity. Poor us, living in a war zone! “How can you stand to live there?! Aren’t you scare?!” No. We aren’t. Our neighborhood crime statistics are no more horrifying than any other neighborhood … even the wealthy ones. There are, in fact, much worse places to live, as far as crime goes, and they aren’t all in the inner city. Our neighborhood has gotten a bad rap, and it’s the news media that has done it.

For example, a woman was found dead in her truck Wednesday morning. Killed by someone in some way they aren’t revealing. I saw it on the local TV news (several channels), I heard about it on the local radio (several channels), and I read about it in the newspaper. Every last report, aside from a few that actually mentioned the street name and nothing else, reported it as being near Rundberg and Lamar. In actuality, I would describe the location as being near Lamar and 183. Sure, that’s just down the road from us, but it’s a whole different world … an entirely different neighborhood.

I’ve been noticing a trend lately to associate any crime that happens in some huge circle, with Lamar and Rundberg at the center, as happening in the Lamar and Rundberg area. It is beginning to piss me off. Stop equating everything that happens in North Austin with my neighborhood and its major intersection!!! I did the research on crime in Austin when we started looking for a house to buy. We were living in a neighborhood where I was often scared to walk out my front door at night due to the crime and gang activity, and I wanted to be certain we wouldn’t be moving from one war zone to another. I wanted to feel safe, and there was a time when I could have spouted off detailed crime statistics for just about every neighborhood in Austin proper. What I found during my research was that the area immediately around Lamar and Rundberg was less crime-ridden than the one we were living in and was at least on par with most of Austin proper. It was not and is not a war zone.

This area has exactly three crime issues which statistically rank slightly higher (and I do mean slightly higher) than other parts of Austin: prostitutes, drug dealers (who also tend to be the pimps), and the occasional vehicle break-in (caused, no doubt, by druggies needing money for the dealers). Certainly, there are the occasional serious crimes, but they are as few and far between as they are anywhere else in this town … or any other. So why the bad rap for Lamar and Rundberg? Why do we get fingered for any crime that happens in North Austin? It’s maddening.

I am not afraid to leave my house at any hour of the day or night. I am not afraid to be out and about in this area at any hour of the day or night. I have never once felt afraid of my surroundings, and it isn’t because I am blind to danger or foolish enough to believe it can’t happen to me. Cities are dangerous places, and I am well aware that bad things can happen to me at the hands of others. I did not feel this sense of security in our old neighborhood. I was constantly on edge, looking over my shoulder, and expecting something awful to happen to me or someone I cared about. And what neighborhood was that? 78704, which was becoming so trendy while we were house hunting we couldn’t afford to buy a house there. Now it’s one of the must-be-living-in trendy hipster zip codes, and no normal person can afford to live there. And the crime in that neighborhood? Just as high as it’s ever been, yet it’s Lamar and Rundberg that’s always considered the city’s war zone and the most horrible place a person could possibly choose to live.

Well … kiss my ass.

IRS employees at the Austin Accounts Management center on the south side of town have been protesting and picketing their employer recently. From what I have gathered from reading and hearing about it here and there, they seem to have some a good reason to due to shabby treatment by the IRS. Two days ago, ten minutes after they began their picket line, Homeland Security police were called in to shoo them away, which they attempted by demanding the union members get a permit to protest.

Very interesting. Having spent some portion of my life protesting and picketing, I know it used to be true that Americans, and perhaps even more so union members, had the right to assemble in public and air grievances without needing permits. Knowing what I know about the USA today, I suppose they have to apply for a permit so a Free Speech Zone can be set up a few miles away for you to hold your protest where no one will be bothered by the grievance airing. It is a sad fact the United States is no longer the country I grew up in, and free speech and the freedom of assembly is a mere shade of what it used to be.

Snagged for posterity, a screen capture from the accompanying video of the Homeland Security truck … in case I need it for later reference. I didn’t know we had Homeland Security forces lurking around town, but there they are, plain as day.

Two new studies of children growing up in poor, inner-city Cincinnati neighborhoods seem to have shown proof that “childhood exposure to lead is linked to a significant loss of critical brain matter and to an increased risk of criminal behavior.”

Researchers followed hundreds of children from the womb into their 20s and found an average loss of 1.2 percent in the volume of gray matter in the brain by the time they reached adulthood.

That sounds minor, but researchers at the University of Cincinnati said the losses were concentrated in brain regions responsible for critical “executive” functions, such as impulse control, emotional regulation, judgment and the anticipation of consequences. That squares with previous research linking childhood lead exposure to behavioral problems. The research found that the losses were greater - 1.7 percent - among males.

I’d say they’ve discovered some interesting findings, and maybe we all need to be a little more concerned about removing lead from our surroundings. It’s not just criminal behavior that childhood exposure to lead might be responsible for either.

Although children now generally have lower lead exposure than those in the 1980s, when these Cincinnati youths grew up, Dietrich said, “we have seen effects of lead below 5 micrograms [per deciliter].” They include attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and conduct and cognition disorders. The federal “action” standard for medical concern remains 10 micrograms.