You Grow Girl™

This morning I started reading "Oaxaca Journal" by Oliver Sacks. I have read only the first chapter, but I am already excited to continue. I am amazed at how well it is written. That seems ridiculous since it is a published book, but my own journals are so messy and lazy, I can't fully comprehend actually writing a journal worth reading. I write only as much as I need to remember the situation. I rely on my memory to do the rest. I have a pretty good memory for certain kinds of details -- especially visual. I've been spoiled by writing on the computer and find my own handwriting to be messy, inarticulate and slow. I often can't keep up with my thoughts and that hinders my ability to write when I'm not at my computer. I have been to Oaxaca twice, and both of my own journals are mostly comprised of bits of paper -- mainly packaging with interesting design or stuff found on the street, photographs (usually polaroids), one or two stories, and a bunch of lists of things seen. I rarely write whole, fully articulated entries. Reading this book is causing me to regret my own laziness. I like to write at night and perhaps I don't have time to write because I am too busy living! If you can call watching endless hours of bad Mexican variety shows or reading 80's era pulp novels from the hotel lobby "living".

I brought my pineapple sage inside the other day. It was doing well the first few days, but now it is looking like hell. Oddly enough it is flowering. The flowers look great (nice, firey red spikes), but the foliage is droopy and yellowing. I think I left it out just a bit too long and it is suffering a bit of shock. I may have to just cut it all back and see what happens from there. It is really too bad because despite the cumbersome size, it is nice to have such a smell-erific plant indoors during the winter when everything is devoid of smell.

Another stage in winter preparation has been nearly completed. I spent a few hours on Thanksgiving Day pulling tomato plants out of containers, potting up cold-sensitive plants that had to come inside for the winter months, and my most hated task; washing emptied pots. Blech!