I’ve been listening to Devo while running. The current generation has Disney furdom to cause early sexual dysfunction, sorry, awakening, we had Devo and Videodrome. A friend got me onto the idea of a 5K in April and I think I am shooting for that now. I should be up to a 5K well before the day.

So yeah, running again. Something weird there too. I’ve never been able to run without cramping and stitches. Now, miraculously, I have nothing. I can’t run very far or fast yet, but cramps will no longer stop me. I always admired distance runners for being able to get past that, and it didn’t occur to me that some people don’t experience this, or rarely. Now I feel like I could run forever. I feel like I have more lung capacity than I used to as well.

Speaking of which…it’s been a year since I got really sick. There’s not much to say about that, except that I am doing the right things now to the best of my ability, and I feel about ten years younger. Except I think I didn’t really feel this great when I was 27. I have more hair. I’ve cut it into a shortish bob now that the shaved bits have grown out and it spends most of its time sticking up now, like a crazy person’s hair. I easily have twice as much hair coming in than I did for years. It was getting quite thin and flat. I also have this sprout of silver coming in at my part near my face. I am getting older and younger at the same time.

Franny and P. are totally on board with our continued dietary changes. At this point, it’s not really changes, it’s the new normal now. I may have mentioned this but P.’s lost about 10-15 pounds without much effort (other than not eating things that disagree with him) over the past year. Franny has also slimmed down. For the past few years she would come back from her father’s house with a bloated stomach that was noticeable on a growing kid with a slim frame. But she just looks less bloated overall. As we all do.

I’m struggling with Strudel. Or maybe I should say she’s struggling with herself. She keeps coming to me with mysterious lesions/rashes and other issues. For a while I wracked my brain to figure out where she was getting “poisoned” and then I’ve discovered it’s mostly self-inflicted. I’ve been finding corn syrup-based candy wrappers in her laundry and last night she was in her room eating a “Baby Bottle Pop” before dinner. It wasn’t acceptable to eat random candy before dinner before we realized we had dietary restrictions, so I’m not sure what crack she was smoking.

Fortunately, corn is not even close to an anaphylactic shock situation, but it does cause a lot of disruption. She gets sores/rashes, joint pain, anger and mood problems, and almost the worst thing is the sleeplessness it induces. She and I can both be up til 3 a.m., hearts pounding, if we have any, so I can’t imagine the kind of night she had last night after eating a whole container of candy. I know she’s getting less than eight hours of sleep right now–she seems out of it, has dark circles under her eyes, looks terrible. Her attitude has been kind of weird, and we were puzzling over that, too. We’re a very sarcastic, jokey house, but she’s been curt and smartaleky beyond that.

I don’t know what to do, besides talk to her about how I think she’s affecting her health. We have “safe” dessert and/or chips on the weekends. Last weekend I made a big pan of chi chi dango with baking chocolate added so it tasted like brownies. On Monday I made a special pan of cherry crumble bars since my sister and I have started Twin Peaks again (it is February, after all, and she wants to compete in the trivia contest at the fest this summer). I don’t think it’s a case of crunchy granola perfect eating all day every day oppression. I think I’m just going to have to wait for her to decide what’s important. Kids like consuming copious amounts of sugar, and there is a convenience store a couple of blocks from her school. I get it. In the meantime, I need to brace myself for a tired, cranky kid.

I have about 4 grillion pictures that I would like to post, and I will, I just decided to pagebarf today since it’s been a while. Time’s been flying. I’m experiencing a lot of really nice domestic moments. That sounds so fucking stupid. But I am mostly enjoying myself now all of the time. P. sometimes sees me for the first time on any given day in the afternoon and says, “You look happy,” and I am, for no reason really.

I made an eight-course meal for Valentine’s Day for my family. (I have pictures of that as well.) It came off very well, but I was knackered. I am embarrassed to say I cooked for eight hours, because how is that fun, really? But it was. I thought it was going to take half the time it did. I made small portions but even so we were like the sad dog who steals a pie and then lays around howling afterwards. I was literally on the floor rolling around. I don’t overeat like I used to, so that was a weird night.

The next day I did what I think of as “pre-gardening”–cleaning up some of my pots and getting things ready for spring flowers. I brought some mint home because this winter has been so freaking mild. P. was more athletic and planted a persimmon and dwarf crab apple with Strudel’s help. We are slowly chipping away at the trees we don’t really like. There’s an ornamental cherry in the front bed next to the sidewalk that was allowed to grow out of control. Eventually we will cut it down as the crab apple gets bigger. I had P. take out a holly tree out front that was doing not much except providing sharp things for us to step on in the summer as we weed the roses or pick blueberries and raspberries. I like a lot of the established flowering ornamentals, like rhodies, that this house came with, but a lot of trees and bushes, I say if it doesn’t make any fruit, PULL IT.

So the minifarm is coming along. I am down to seven chickens, now, sadly. I was in the kitchen cooking on Monday afternoon and I went out to get some sage leaves and saw that Goethe was staring at something in the corner of the yard. She turned her head as I approached and her eyes were like saucers. I looked beyond her and saw a pile of feathers kind of exploded, and then Death Ray laying in the middle. I didn’t think she’d come to a bad end wandering the yard alone, because it is a pretty standard-sized lot in a residential part of the city, and she always squeezed through the fence by dusk to put herself away with the other chooks who cannot fit through the fence.

The only thing I can think of that happened is that a raccoon came out in broad daylight and attacked her, but got spooked before taking her off. She was a Silkie, and very tiny. She had a bit of blood at the back of her neck, which I assume was broken. It was hard to tell because she had stiffened so her neck didn’t flop. The dogs followed me out after I spent a couple of minutes looking up into the firs and bushes to see if I could spot a horrible little face, and I realized they hadn’t been out or involved at all. They were smelling, smelling, smelling the ground all around where Death Ray was. Horace chased the chickens when he was small, but I trained him not to, and Edith pretty much followed suit. The chickens are not afraid of the dogs. The chickens pretty much ignore them, as they do my cats.

I turned my head to look in the pen where the remaining chickens are and it was quiet and there was not a chicken in sight. Shit! Would there be more deaths? Would they be chased off somewhere over the fence into the neighborhood? It was so weird, because I had heard absolutely nothing and I was in the kitchen right off the patio. I found most of the chickens cowering in the corner of their pen and Molokai was hiding in the coop. So something weird certainly went down.

Death Ray lived through so much bullshit and this was her third house. She was part of my first batch, the first summer I got chickens again after my divorce, when we lived in the duplex by the Zoo (2008). I never dreamed she would have made it this long. On one hand I am glad that she enjoyed her “retirement” out on the lawn where the younger, stronger chickens could not peck at her, but I know it caused her demise. If they were all in a clump I don’t think a raccoon would have messed with her.

I’m finally going to start my beehive this weekend–I decided on a set of plans. P. says he will help me build it, which is a relief, but he doesn’t want to take point on it as a project. I totally understand that feeling–he’s still got the basement coming along slowly but steadily for someone who works full time. It’s a lot easier now that I am well 99% of the time and he doesn’t have to drop everything and take over making dinner or run an errand that I was supposed to do.

I’m excited about this because I’ve wanted a hive for a long time and we haven’t worked on a little project like this since we built the coop together. When it’s done, I’m going to order a batch of bees and they should be here in April. I am read up on Seattle law about where hives can be sited and whatnot so I don’t think the neighbors can formally complain. We are not putting it close to anyone, because I don’t want to provoke anyone, anyway. My street was closed recently for construction and I parked in front of the neighbor’s house behind me, and she came out and yelled at me for parking on the street in front of her house (parking is not tight in this neighborhood, nor does she have a lot of visitors). I was holding Nordstrom bags and wearing interview clothes, not flipping a switchblade or something. I told her I was her neighbor and that both streets next to my house were closed and her response was to slam the door. I shrugged and moved the car–it’s not worth it. So it’s good to know I am surrounded by old cranks!

My last bit of news is that I cannot stand being miserable doing what I am doing anymore, nor can I see spending the next ten years complaining about it (and as I bragged recently my student loans are paid off after ten years), so I am in progress with making a career change. It should happen pretty quickly, in the next 2-3 months, but I don’t want to say what I am up to til then. Nothing earthshattering! I just need to do something new. And now I can, because my brain and body is working…I don’t need to be trapped behind a desk for all time. Hooray!