I’m starting to think that maybe having a garden is utterly selfish. And crazy expensive. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had to pay for water and I can’t help obsessing about it. Every time I turn on the water to wash dishes, I see greenbacks pouring down the drain. I wait until I’m absolutely desperate to do a load of laundry, and the days of me standing in the shower, hair lifted, drumming water on my back, are long gone. I’m also realizing how much water one little ‘ol person consumes. I live alone and yet when I think about the shower, toilet, kitchen sink, bathroom sink, washing machine AND garden I just can’t believe how much water I use. And what was I thinking, planting things in earth so dry and hard-packed that the tree roots have risen to the surface in hopes of someday feeling rain.

And am I going to eat every single tomato that grows on the vines? I can hope that each of the four plants will ripen at different rates but HOW CAN I EAT FOUR PLANT’S WORTH OF TOMATOES???? Seriously, what was I thinking. My squash plant is wilted by about 2 in the afternoon, long before the hottest hours, and I have to cover it with a slatted deck chair and spritz it with more precious water if I want it to survive the day. I sit out there, in my lovely yard, and watch liquid money dance all over my baby plants while simultaneously usurping what feels like half the world’s clean water supply. I mean, clearly this is my latest neurosis but I’m confronted with it every day. It’s an interesting exercise, having to pay for what I consume. I wonder how many hamburger eaters would be willing to kill, skin, and butcher a cow. I wonder how many hamburger eaters actually think about the life extinguished in the process of creating said hamburger.

I don’t think I’ve broken the fact on this blog that I am now officially a flesh eater. The only thing I can stand is fish, and lighter, whiter fish at that, but I’ve probably eaten something that had a mother every day for a solid month. It was my baker’s fault; he cooked me scallops. But he was also thankful, clearly, openly thankful for every beast that died in order to create sustenance. I’d never met anyone who actually thought about these things, and it certainly goes in the Top Ten Reasons Why My Baker is One of the Coolest Men Ever.

But I digress. Who am I to plant a garden when I’m surrounded by excess? There are hundreds of heirloom tomatoes at the farmer’s market every Friday, and every week I can’t eat the last one or two that I bought the week before. Those will keep appearing, and they are probably grown in soil far better suited to plant life and therefore far less wasteful. Yes, they are a whopping $3.50 a pound, and that certainly sucks, but god knows that by the end of summer I’ll have spent exponentially more on my water bill, and probably shaved years off my life because of all my guilt.

Oh, and these stupid little bugs are eating my basil. Damn bugs! Stay off my favorite herb! (Which, incidentally, needs very little water.)

The skin tags on my face are back, as is my plantar fasciitis and eczema. Man, getting old sucks. Know why I’m feeling older all of a sudden? Because it’s BIRTHDAY MONTH!!! Only fourteen shopping days left!

Well. That was a paltry effort. I’ve been lax in creating birthday months for the past couple of years. It’s June 12 and there has yet to be fun of any kind.

Maybe for my birthday I should ask Mother Nature for summer rains.

I’m at work, but the computer program I need to get anything done is on the fritz. What better time than now to catch up on blogging…

It’s been a roller coaster week, which seems to be par for the course. My boss was awful enough to me to warrant my writing a scathing letter to the HR department, which I wisely didn’t send. Instead, I slept on it (not the letter itself, but the anger) and then sat her down the next day and detailed all of her abuses and told her it wasn’t okay. She apologized egregiously, agreed that her treatment of me was unwarranted, and then also agreed with me when I told her I wasn’t the perfect person for this job. I’m hoping that is a good warm-up for the news I hope to deliver to her early next week.

And that’s the other thing. This new opportunity, that I thought was lost to me because of money, is actually alive and kicking harder than ever. There isn’t a ton of money to be made immediately, but there is a ton of opportunity and challenge and good hard work that could turn into a fantastic financial situation. It could be a risk, but it is a risk I’m now prepared to take. There is one more major hurtle, and if we fly over this one, I’ll be giving my notice here next week and jumping into something completely different come July. I feel great about it, so excited, and I really hope it happens. I know whole-heartedly that it will happen as it should; right now I’m just sitting back and watching the show.

My baker is alive and well in the woods of Montana, even though a silence of less than 48 hours caused me to doubt him completely. Which is telling about me, not about him. I was prepared to feel full-scale abandoned. I was talking to my mom and I said, “He hasn’t called” and she said, “He will, of course he will. He won’t just not call you ever again,” to which I replied, “Uh, mom, it’s happened before.” I was thinking yesterday about the capability we humans have of abandoning the people we love. I know I’ve done it. I’ve moved from places and never looked back, even when former friends or lovers reached out to me. It is actual work to stay in touch with some of my friends back in New York. It’s not true of everyone- there is a fair number of people whose contact is welcome and easy- but there are those that I see on my caller I.D. and I turn off the ringer and figure I’ll get back to them eventually. Staying in contact with people is hard. Loving people not right in front of you is hard. It is so damn easy to pack the car and leave without saying goodbye.

I’m trying to be better about all of this, trying to stay in contact with all the people I love. It’s certainly becoming easier as I get older and realize how few people mean the world to me. I’m hanging on tighter than I used to. Maybe it’s why I called my baker and left him a ridiculous message about us and staying in touch and generally freaking out a little bit. Or, gosh, maybe it’s because the last man I loved truly stopped calling me quite suddenly, and that was essentially how he ended the relationship. And that all other inklings of hope of love that I’ve had in the last several years fizzled out before they ever had a chance to blossom. But, y’know, whatever. I’m doing the best I can. And I certainly can’t expect the people who love me to stay in touch if I am crummy at it as well.

Right now, though, I feel great about all of this. I feel as though this job could be the start of something big, and that my friendship with my baker has strengthened me immeasurably. It is fascinating to be in a situation that causes me to look at myself as if I was outside of myself, and to take stock of what I see. It seems to be the only way to create change and healing. It also makes me horribly embarrassed sometimes, to see myself from the outside. Embarrassed and ashamed and humbled. But again, I guess I’m just doing the best I can.

I planted a garden today. My yard is just awful, in a way, filled with dried goopy grass and, I found out, a million tree roots, and it seems as though nothing wants to grow. So I spent a few hours tilling a 5 X 5 spot, splitting the dried earth and snapping the roots. I have a humungous tree in my yard, one that no one yet has been able to identify, and the root system stretches past my yard and into my neighbor’s. Every time I snapped a root, I smiled sheepishly up into the towering tree. “We have to coexist here, and you seem to have plenty of space,” I thought. “Why don’t you give me just this little patch?” So after several long hours of hard labor, I now have four different kinds of heirloom tomatoes, two kinds of squash, butterleaf lettuce, sage, basil, parsley, chives, and dill. They are half in the ground and half in planters and I dearly hope they don’t die.

I am sitting in my new writing studio, composing my first blog ever from my new home. The late afternoon sun is gilding the leaves on the trees that surround this property and Fezzik, my 12-year-old cat, is sitting in the window. He hasn’t stopped purring since he moved here, except for when strangers have entered the house and he’s run under the bed. I’m pretty sure he’s purring under there, too. My mom was here all day yesterday and this morning and she helped me plot out the garden. The most perfect breeze is blowing into my house, I have a garden and a cat and a family and yet I’ve been so sad today.

I’ve not ever been good at sitting with grief, but today I’m wondering why I have to. Isn’t is possible to just see that what you had was wonderful, and to know that someday it will all be good yet again? I guess two big blows in one week- one financial and the other emotional- is ample reason to not feel ducky. And tomorrow I will go stand up for myself in the most diplomatic but powerful way possible, and there is a slim chance in hell that the job will still work out. Doubtful, but I guess it’s possible.

I called my baker today and left him a message that was much braver than I feel right now. Here is what I’d really like to tell him:

I planted a garden today that you will never see. You will never cook for me from this garden. That is so strange, that you were here, and you will never be here in this spot again. When you were here, the valley seemed larger, somehow. You pushed the mountains and stretched the valley until it felt vast, and wonderful, and filled with things to see. Even my new home expanded, big enough to fit the two of us. Now that you are gone, the mountains have returned to close me in. I almost want you to stop calling me, because in the hours between I start to get my life back and then you call and it halts my momentum. I am not heartbroken, or devastated, or even very sad, really. I just loved having you around. It’s so quiet without you here.

You will move on, quickly even. Believe me. You may be enlightened beyond your years but I have almost a decade of actual living on you and I know far better what will happen. You will move on and I will move on and we will both find people better suited to us. You even know this is true. You will find a woman with a little more bohemian left in her, and I will find a man who would be willing to plant a garden because he’ll be around long enough to see it bear fruit. We were in no way perfect for each other, but we were good for each other. There is every chance our paths will cross again- god knows we’ve been in enough places at the same time before even meeting. But until then, get the hell out of here, out of this country, and go find what you are looking for. I know you won’t forget me.

And, ladies and gentlemen, hopefully that closes the blogging chapter entitled “The Baker”. Next week, look for “What To Do When Offered Far Less Money Than You’re Worth”. I’m hoping that’s the blog I’ll be able to write, as opposed to “What NOT To Do…” Also, “Is DIRECTV Worth It When All You Do Is Listen To Music On Your TV?” and other scintillating topics. At least I won’t be whining about my former man.

In a stunning twist of fate, the new opportunity was thrilling, engaging, and excellent, and also, ultimately, incredibly short on funds. I’ve not yet given up complete hope, and have another meeting on Monday, but the money I was offered was so far from the mark that I hardly was able to keep my composure. And now I realize that one of the only reasons I’ve been able to handle the job I have now was the prospect of leaving as soon as this bigger, better thing finally worked itself out. I’m suddenly now thrown back into the sea of possibility (and that’s looking at it positively) of what else I might do with my time here. I do not want to stay at my present job for very long- where I am belittled, and ordered around, and talked down to. Oh yeah, and where I don’t make enough money to live. I feel abandoned a little bit, by both my man and this possibility, and it makes for a crummy day.

I know I need to move on from both, even as I still work through both, but it’s hard when you feel like… well. I feel like I deserve some good stuff to happen to me. Let me rephrase that. I feel as though I’ve put in a hell of a lot of work and I would like to see some results, on sort of a grander scale. I am so willing to work so hard and sometimes it feels as though I’m just wading through sticky mud.

In fact, sometimes I just don’t know what more I can do. I don’t know if I can try any harder, or work any harder, or wish any harder, or believe any more deeply.

I had the great delight and utter misfortune of seeing The Latest Catastrophe Flick starring The Latest Actor You Haven’t Seen In a Long Time and Here’s Why. It’s that “Day After Tomorrow” or “Yesterday’s Gone” or “Tomorrow is Never Today” or whatever movie. I’m not going to spoil it for you, because that is by definition IMPOSSIBLE, but I will agree that the special effects are pretty forking cool. However, in a tent, post-apocolyptic, having just lost his best friend (oh, the agony), Dennis Quaid actually says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. It depends on if we learn from our mistakes.” Looks down, shakes his head, pauses pregnantly. “I only hope I learn from mine.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. But I was captivated when tornadoes destroyed Los Angeles.

My man drove for 20 hours STRAIGHT yesterday. He didn’t stop until he was in Montana at his friend’s campground. Apparently he threw his sleeping bag pad onto the ground and fell asleep right next to his Jeep. He’s been very good, called me ten times at least already, but he’s gone. And not really mine anymore.

It’s been a torturously boring day at work, filled with sludge and dredge, oily and smelly and slow. However, I have a big fat meeting tonight, with a big fat opportunity, and I hope it knocks loudly.

My advice to you: eating popcorn and M & M’s for dinner is BAD NEWS. I promise.

My love is gone

His boots no longer by my door

He left at dawn

And as I slept I felt him go

Returns no more

I will not watch the ocean

Although, in his case, it would be Birkenstocks rather than boots, and the ocean is the gravel that covers my driveway. He’s not gone yet, not until tomorrow morning, but I don’t think either of us are really looking forward to tonight, our “last” night together. He still insists it is just the beginning. I know better. He knows I know better.

What is it like, being 23 years old? What does it mean to wake up each morning having lived only 23 years? When I was 23, I had just met Wayne, just graduated from college, and had no clear idea who I was. I moved to Chicago, did a bunch of terrible shows and a couple great shows. I flew to Kansas City about twelve times that year on Southwest Airlines. (Can’t imagine life before Jet Blue.) I called my brother Sean so many times because I was so terribly lost, and befuddled by my own actions. God. 23. I can’t even imagine.

Well. I’m curious to see how I feel tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and how exactly I will move on. My stomach is in knots.