Today, I feel so tired that it literally hurts to be awake, and so, even though I slept half the day away, and lounged around during the other half, I am going back to my bedroom, to bask in coolness and soft sheets.

* * *

Zinnias have never been my favorite flower, though I love their name, but I bought two for my garden today anyway, because they were vibrant yellow and I tend to gravitate too much toward blues and purples in my gardening. Punches of vibrant yellow and glowy orange actually make the blues and purples stand out, which is why I bought some marigolds, as well. (Also, marigolds grow fast, so I can stick them in the foot-wide section of unused yard between the end of the lawn and the fence, and they’ll grow up against the side of the shed, and look charming.)

The Zinnias have been planted already, despite the fact that I asked for help with planting. This is because once I got started mucking in the dirt, I didn’t want to stop. And also because it’s a 30-foot long planter box (about 2 feet wide) in front of my house, and that’s a LOT of flowers.

I admit that my flower purchases today might seem a bit over-zealous (that counts as a z-word, really!), but 30 feet is a LOT to plant, when you consider that we’re trying to increase curb appeal to sell the house, and further consider that 30-feet is a LOT of planting space. epecially since the only things I didn’t remove from the box before I started were some foxglove, two rosebushes, and a dwarf grapefruit tree. This last has never borne fruit, but I refuse to remove it, because the previous owners, wacky as they were, planted it in honor of their dead father, and I respect that. After all, we mixed some of my grandparents’ ashes in with our own plantings.

In any case, I’ve planted one of the zinnias, two containers of delphinium, one of cosmos (daisies), one sixpack of marigolds, and three sixpacks of petunias.

I’ll post pictures when the planting is done, and the house looks cute enough.

* * *

On another note. If anyone knows where to find a lemon zester for less than $7.00, I’d really like to know. I’ve been looking for one for AGES.

* * *
This post is my last post for the Alphabytes meme. It was supposed to be all done in June, but I figure finishing it at all is better than not, and some days the muse just doesn’t want to cooperate.

Early this morning, I padded through the house, barefoot and wearing ratty old sweats. My husband was still sleeping, and dogs were out back, basking in the morning sun.

I went out the front door to water the garden box. I set the sprayer on mist, as all the other settings are too strong for the stuff I planted, and communed with the flowers for several minutes, breathing in the clean smell of wet earth and growing things.

In the distance, I could hear the faint sound of church bells, though I don’t know what church. I think we’re too far from St. Leo’s to hear their chimes. Above my head, the birds were singing and twittering, already well into their day, and from another house on the block, I heard organ and panflute music, a not-quite-new-age blend of the two. I think I recognized “Amazing Grace,” which is a favorite song of mine despite any formal religious beliefs, the rest was less distinct – I couldn’t even tell when one song ended and another began.

Still, standing there barefoot, in the cool mist from my garden hose, and the still-soft morning breeze, listening to the chimes and the music, my heart expanded, and I was, for a moment, in a place of perfect peace, and at one with the universe.

All days should begin this way.

* * *

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I had this cool journal entry all planned, and did I manage to get it posted before I got distracted and lost it? You know the answer to that, already.

Instead, brief news: I bought a new domain name. YouMe.Us

There’s nothing there right now, but I think the name is catchy enough. Don’t you?

I had a long conversation with my aunt, over the phone, yesterday. We talked about her book, and the beach, and how she’s far too young to be thinking about marrying men with grandchildren.

We talked about her ex-husband. He was a seminary student when they mat, and he left to marry her. She went on to get her doctorate at Stanford, and he worked in construction, and as a painter to support her. In the 13th year of their marriage, they buried five family members, had a miscarriage, and were building a house – enough to strain any marriage to the breaking point. She mentioned that her one regret is that in severing their marriage, he severed his relationship with me.

I explained to her that I didn’t mind. I have great memories, and if they’re both at peace with each other, that’s what matters.

My favorite memory of him: He taught me how to play with a yo-yo. I was never very good, but he had amazing, strong, brown hands, and he was so patient, explaining the physics behind the winding and unwinding of the string. I never learned the really advanced tricks, but I was passable at a couple.

I miss yo-yos.
I had a Duncan Imperial, and I loved it.
I’ve played with modern yo-yos and I just don’t like them as well.

My wish is that everyone has a chance to spend five minutes learning something silly and innocent, like how to make a yo-yo work.

And now, to bed…

(Oh, wait, you were expecting something about the cello and Yo-yo Ma for this entry, or a reference to curling up in bed watching Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood again, weren’t you. Well…sorry to dissapoint.)

::Yankee Doodle Dandee::

Onesome: Yankee- Hey, this is the 4th of July weekend here in the States; do you have any plans? Fireworks? Watching the Boston Pops? Hiding under the bed with the dog?
I like fireworks, but we seem to always be involved in something major around this time of year. Like, this weekend, we’re working on the outside of the house, preparing to list it for sale in another week or so. Still, my personal observation of Independence Day involves surfing the airwaves for the annual airings of the musicals 1776 and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Twosome: Doodle- Is there any paper safe from you, or are you a doodler? If you are, when are you most likely to doodle and what do you draw?
I have not once ounce of drawing talent, but I doodle anyway. I’m very good at reproducing panels of Calvin and Hobbes comics on poster board, as well (free hand, not tracing). But, yeah, I doodle.

Threesome: Dandee- Or dandy. It’s one of my favorite words. How about you, do you have any favorite words that you like to use, just because you like the way they sound or just because you can?
“Spiffy.” I use that word a lot because when I worked in tech support at Gateway (in another lifetime), someone wrote a letter to the company newsletter complaining about the over-use of the word “cool.” So, I adopted “spiffy.” It’s fun to say, and people don’t expect it. I also like the word “quirky,” because it is, and then there are the ever-popular susurrus and tintinabulation.

The Thursday Threesome is a regular feature of The Back Porch. Play along!

* * *

I’m tired, and I’ve spent half the night setting up MT on my new server, and getting the blog back in shape, so this entry is really quick.

X-ray vision: We’ve been watching Smallville seasons one and two on DVD, and I love the way the x-ray vision is actually an animated x-ray, and not see-through-anything-but-lead vision.

Xylophones: I had one of the Fisher-Price one’s with the colored keys, and don’t know what happened to it. I miss being able to pick up a mallet and plink and plonk a tune.

The blog doesn’t look any different, I know, but it’s been moved to a spiffy new server with a bigger faster account.

We won’t talk about the extra domain names.

* * *

Water: I never drink enough. I don’t know how other people manage it. One glass and I feel nauseous – water is so heavy and it just sits there in your system. Also, it’s disgusting unless it’s very very cold, but has no ice. I don’t like ice.

Water-wings: Puffy. Orange. Psychological. Anyone who actually thinks those inflatable arm bands keep you from drowning is just cracked (and it says as much on the packaging, albeit in better language). Still, I remember wearing them, with blue plastic swim-fins, balancing on the tips of the fins in the deep end of a friend’s pool, or without the fins, as I frolicked in the cool blue Atlantic during summers when I was a child.

Work: They like the idea of keeping me on as a contract-processor after the move. Yippee. It might serve to be more lucrative. It might not, but at least I’ll have that as a backup.

Wishes: I want to sell the house quickly. I want to move quickly. It’s not /quite/ a seller’s market here, and I’m told it’s a buyer’s market in Texas. This is good. I just wish everything was happening YESTERDAY. (Patience is not one of my virtues this year.)

Water (again): We’re refilling the pool; the grass is wet from the sprinklers, and I’m craving a bubble bath.

* * *

Every family has one: the one relative you only speak of in hushed voices, the one who is a little more off-center than the rest of the clan, even if the rest of the clan is eccentric to start with. In our family, this role was taken by my grandmother’s younger sister, Violet.

I’m told that when Violet was younger, when my mother and her sisters were children, that she was the “cool” aunt. Trips to Asbury Park to stuff themselves on cotton candy and hot dogs were the norm, and you never knew what treasures would emerge from the depths of Aunt Vi’s massive pocketbook (that’s New Jerseyan for “purse”).

By the time I was born, Aunt Vi was no longer young, and though her body had aged – her generous bosom forming a veritable pillow on her chest, her face even rounder, her hair, dry and graying under the blonde – her brain seemed forever sixteen. My grandmother told me that her mother, while on her deathbed, begged her oldest daughter to care for the youngest: Violetta will never grow up. Not the way the rest of you have.

When I was small child, Aunt Vi was a comfort. She was funny and crazy, and sweet. She never went anywhere without a hat (this was a woman who knew how to accessorize), and I think I acquired my love of headwear from her. As I grew older, Violet ceased to be my dear old auntie, and became an annoyance, a burden. Partly, this is due to her criminally insane son, who would throw her out of the house, then take her back in and steal her retirement money, but partly it was her own design. She liked the wandering life, and used to boast that she had everything she ever needed in the trunk of her (ugly, green, enormous) car.

By the time my grandmother was in her mid-eighties, and Aunt Vi was in her mid-seventies, Violet had overstayed her welcome with almost every relative on the east coast. She often begged to come live with my parents, but her own children, and my parents, didn’t want her to drain my grandmother’s resources. My grandmother was in a care home, by then, and there was no way to fund a California home for Vi. Still the older sister worried about the younger. “I want to hear my sister Violet,” my grandmother would say. “I need to know she’s alright.”

It’s only in retrospect that I realize my grandmother knew she’d be leaving us, and wanted to be at peace. It all fits. She died while all of us were out of the country, as if she didn’t want any one of us to deal with it alone, just after hearing that Violet had been sent to a hospital, finally.

Aunt Vi liked to make deals. She played poker, made amazing raviolli, and could whistle so well you’d think it was a flue or panflute playing, and not a human being. She was funny and generous, with what little she had. I like to think that whatever kept her from emotional maturity allowed her hardships not to touch her.

She died the week after my grandmother’s funeral, in January, 2001.

As I wrote this, I realized that my grandmother’s love of the plant known as African Violet, was a tribute to her sister. One bloomed on her bedside all the time. She’d often speak to it, and touch the velvety petals with her long, gentle fingers.

V is for Violet.

* * *

Update: When I said Monday or so? I meant a week from today, not today. Still, plans go forward.

Upheaval: I gave my boss 60-day notice today, and asked to be part of the process of hiring my replacement. I also offered to work on a contract basis, until he found someone, after the move, so he doesn’t have to retain someone on salary. I doubt he’ll go for it, but the idea’s been seeded.

Umbrellas: It’s not raining, or anything, but I was just thinking that I miss the umbrella I had when I was eight. It was clear, except for yellow trim at the ends of the …spokes? struts? Whatever. And the handle was curved, like a cane. I loved that umbrella. It was a bubble-style thing, and I could balance the center point on my head, and not have to hold it, and since it was clear, still see where I was going. It’s an image completely unrelated to anything in my life right now, but it’s a reminder of happy times, as well…splashing through puddles with my friends, as we walked home from the bus stop in wet weather, none of us wearing galoshes because, at eight, we were all much too old for that. (Note: wet keds are not comfortable, especially when worn with even wetter socks.)