Loose Ends

Loose ends being where I'm at.

Summer's over. The vegetable garden's winding down, so I'm in that odd moment of not having to fuss over taking care of anything outside (unless there's a frost warning, of which we've had three in the last week), but not needing to rake (much, yet) or weed or otherwise, you know, tend. I do have bags of bulbs standing by that I could certainly plant. And I fully intend to. However, I have this idiotic thing with bulbs. I love them, I love the promise they hold, and I love buying them and fantasizing about drifts of daffodils and bundles of crocus and stands of tulips. And I bring them home and put them... somewhere, meaning to get them in the ground promptly-ish, and then suddenly it's November and hard frost and whooosh! There goes my vision of spring.

I did put by (what an awesome concept and phrase that is) a dozen half-pints of freezer pickles. I served some at a neighborhood cookout, and people said complimentary things about them which they may even have said out of truth and not just kindness. I'm going to try my hand at green cherry tomato dill pickles, too. But I'm still hopeful that some of the little guys may ripen, so I'm holding off. (I've heard you can ripen green tomatoes in a box of newspaper kept in a cool, dark place, but I really don't need additional fruit fly infestations elsewhere in the house. The few that keep cropping up in the kitchen are more than sufficient, thankyouverymuch.)

But I haven't made anything in a while -- crafted, created, not cooked -- and it's got me feeling unsettled. I tried to start a crocheted wrap thingy last night, but I'm not digging it. I want to make a poncho for Sarah, but nothing's inspiring me yet. Honestly, I need to just pick a thing, anything, so I can pull my feet out of the sucking mud hole of inertia. It's a crappy place to be, and it's dragging me down.

I haven't only been sitting on my duff watching Buffy reruns, however. In my ongoing war against stuff, I went through my clothes, and bagged up an entire trash bag of items I will never wear again. And I've made some minor forays into the scary mire that is Sarah's playroom. What is it with four year olds and their need to hold onto every damn baby toy they've ever known? But I've cruelly ignored her piercing bids for continued ownership and wrested mangled shape sorters and abandoned puzzle pieces from her desperate grasp, dumping them in a box bound for... well, I don't want to send them to the landfill, but they're pretty useless. Free box on the sidewalk, I suppose. Ew, no. Salvation Army and let them sort it out? Yes, indeedy!

The question remains, however, of what to DO. What to make. How to make better use of my time. How, to be frank, to fill my days. Crafting aside, I suspect this isn't actually going to be an easy issue to resolve. Stay tuned...