As much as things have changed....

I was pretty horrified when I heard about the raid on the Rainbow Lounge. I admit, it is Texas, after all. But still....

40 years after Stonewall and people wonder why we are still out marching and making ourselves visible. The next person to suggest that gay people are looking for "special rights" and not just our basic civil rights is due a good bitch slapping.

Koko Taylor. Aged 80

I just read that the great Koko Taylor has passed away. In my youth she was frequently in the Boston area, often at the old Passim's Coffee House. She was more known to blues fans than the general public, but she was one of the truly great voices in American music. I for one will miss her.

Good News

I had been waiting around for my test results and finally called Dr. Fred to get the news. As it turns out, my test for celiac disease came back negative, so I can gorge myself on bread if I want. On top of that, my cholesterol test showed that my cholesterol level is actually down since the last time I was tested! I guess all this healthy food and exercise is paying off.

So, it would seem that my problem is lactose intolerance which can be controlled. I think this means no more ice cream, but that is a pretty small price to pay. I am not that big a fan of ice cream and I actually prefer sorbet, so this will be a good excuse to start playing with the ice cream maker that C. gave me, seeing what flavors of sorbet I can turn out.

I have been very sporadic in my gardening and I am going to try and get myself on a regular schedule and start making some changes in the garden. I am actually thinking about what I would like to do in the garden again which I take as a good sign. I am hoping that if I can get back into the groove with shoveling dirt and pulling weeds I will start to feel some satisfaction with the whole gardening process again.

I did manage to remember to get a card in the mail to Doris for Mother's Day. I just followed the insulin shock method of card buying. I just went through the cards until I found one that made me start to feel nauseated and caused me to start seeing little black dots swimming in front of my eyes from the level of saccharine in the sentiment. If this doesn't keep me off the shit list for at least a couple of weeks, nothing will.

So, I have the weekend before me. It will involve hitting the gym fairly hard, now that the worst of the spring pollen season is over. I have been slacking off, mostly because my head has been so full of snot that I was sure I would drop a weight on my head if I tried to do anything that would cause my blood to circulate. I also have to head out to the garden and continue with the project I've started and somehow make some time to do things with friends. With any luck it will involve seeing the new X-Men movie. I mean, Hugh Jackman! Do I really need to say anything else?

More Whine?

This has not been a red letter week in Ganomeland. I went into the dentist on Monday to have what was to be my last crown done. Dr. Hunky realized it was time for x-rays. The result is that one of the crowns I had done previously has a cavity under it. The good news is that it is under warranty, so it's not going to add to my dental bill burden. The bad news is that it will eat up some more personal time at work so that I can have this attended to.

We are also having what seems to be a record spring for pollen. At the moment I have no voice or appetite. I am sure that all of my friends are counting their blessings in that I am really not talking much and as it turns out that even when I do try to talk people can only understand about half of what I have to say. Another upside, if you will is that several nights of post-nasal drip have killed my appetite and I've dropped 2 pounds this week.

However, an unfortunate side effect of this is that this weekend marks my friend Wahz 65th birthday. His friends had planned a birthday lunch at one of the snazzier bistros which I was suppose to go to. This morning I realized after my bowl of morning oatmeal was making itself known, that about all I would be able to manage at lunch would be a cup of tea. However, when I called up Wahz to suggest that I go over and just stick my head, in have a cup of tea, and at least show my face, he suggested I stay inside out of the pollen, since he could only understand about half of what I said over the phone.

If this isn't enough, I had to go and see Dr. Fred as well for a check up. In the course of our conversation I said I was feeling fine, though I had been having some mild digestion issues. After asking me about what I'd been eating, he gave the opinion that I have developed lactose intolerance and I go on a 2 week dairy free diet. After a little more questioning on the good doctors part, he has also decided to have me screened for celiac disease.

I really can't help but feel that it is insult added to injury, expecting a Frenchman to give up both cheese AND bread! Dessert I can live without, but a life without bread or pasta is looking very grim indeed. Life without extremely smelly, strong and gooey cheese looks pretty pallid as well.

Did I mention that yesterday around mid day the new temporary crown Dr. Hunky had just put in popped out? It did. I wound up having to leave work early and having my tooth glued back in. This did not get my weekend off to a glowing start.

All in all, I am beginning to feel like the character in the Oscar Wilde story who was described as having "lost his temper and his digestion in India and never found either again".

I know that in the great scheme of things, life will get better. If I have these food allergies, I will change my diet and learn to live with them. I will find some way to do something for Wahz to mark his landmark birthday. The currently sex crazed trees will eventually lie back, light up a cigarette and ask, "Was it good for you?" and life will become about as manageable as anybody's life gets.

For the time being however, I am going to pop another benedryl and feel sorry for myself while I pray for rain to knock some of the pollen out of the air, and start thinking about what life will be like living on a diet that doesn't include wheat.

There's always Thai food!

A Piercing Look

Last summer I was chatting with one of the other gardeners over in the old Fenway Gardens. I had been sweating away for a while and by that point had my shirt off. A mutual friend stopped by. When he saw me he did a double take and said something to the effect that I was ripped. "You should get your nipples pierced!", was his final judgment.

Now as a matter of fact, when I was a much younger and more carefree Ganome and had much more disposable income, I had had my nipples pierced. I had gone about in this happy state for several years. Then I got quite ill and wound up in the hospital for a week. One of the many drawbacks to my hospitalization was that they made me remove all jewelry. By the time I was back home, the piercings had closed up.

As memory serves, the actual piercing process was not a pleasant experience and was not one I felt I wished to repeat. But the idea stuck with me. Over the winter, I was visiting my dentist, Dr. Hunky and we were talking about tattoos and piercings and he evinced some surprise at my undecorated condition. After I got home I contacted and old friend who used to be a piercer to ask her advice on anyone that was reputable around town. She gave me the name of a shop and I sat on the information for a while longer. I was not particularly anxious to relive my past experience, but the idea of having pierced nipples with the novelty of actually having pecs was very tempting.

Finally by the end of the winter, the combination of boredom, tax return money and what must have been a desire to return to my former state of stainless steel decoration won out. I headed off to Chameleon in Harvard Square.

I wound up meeting an nice young fellow named Owen who did the job. It was quick and relatively painless. No one was more surprised than me. You can see the results. I've heard that body piercing is so 1995 and no one has it done anymore. This pleases me no end to hear. It's always better to march along on your own than to follow the crowd. Whatever the case, I feel like I have worked far to hard to develop some actual pecs, so I'm gonna have fun with them.

Maybe it's time to start saving for more tattoos.

Busy Weekend

I've had a productive weekend. Yesterday I spent a few hours at C.'s so he could teach me how to use PhotoShop to clean up some architectural floor plans so they can be used as a digital reference for space at work. It was a perfect day for it. It was cold and if not rainy, gloomy and threatening.

Today I managed to do a couple of loads of laundry, put in some time at the gym, go grocery shopping and get a couple of hours in at the garden. I am now simmering tomato sauce in preparation to assembling a scallop and eggplant parmesan, using the recipe that Brett Stewart posted on his blog. Brett is apparently a man of endless talents, blogger, commentator, humorist, activist and who would have guessed, cook. On top of being hotter than a tin roof in July. Too bad he's taken, or I would have moved to Toronto by now.

I suppose I could make a start on cleaning my apartment as well, however I forgot to hire a bulldozer. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Next weekend is out of the question, since I will be spending Sunday eating Jell-o salad in the bosom of my family. I could have ducked out of this I suppose, but that would have meant abandoning the Niece to face this ordeal alone. While there are those who consider me heartless, not even I could leave the Niece to that fate. Besides, if nothing else our family is amusing in a "god I wish I had a gun so I could shoot myself" kind of way.

I long ago came to the realization that killing my family was not the answer. That would only lead to prison, which would just be another version of my family with the disadvantage that I wouldn't be able to occasionally escape for a quiet walk by myself. No. If I am going to molder, I would prefer to do that in a tasteful urn, not in some prison cell where I would undoubtedly wind up working in the laundry.

The garden is coming along slowly but surely. I have still not been bitten by the gardening bug. I can see what I need to do and I am formulating my plans for the garden, I just am not experiencing the overwhelming enthusiasm that is usually what accompanies spring. Things are starting to turn green, I am getting an idea of what has survived and what will have to be culled. I even moved a couple of plants, yet nothing. However, hope springs eternal. I am hoping that if I keep going through the motions I will eventually become excited about gardening. For the time being all I really want to do is get the chore out of the way and then go and reward myself by doing something simple like treating myself to a cup of take out coffee. Hanging out in the garden is just out of the question.

On the other hand my work out is going much better these days. Not that I have made any real gains in my routine, but I seem to be redeveloping my enthusiasm for pushing myself. I am back to setting goals for myself and even if I don't reach them, it won't be for a lack of effort on my part.

So, perhaps there is hope. Maybe if I just stick with the garden through this rather joyless period, I will be able to start enjoying the activity again. I've even set some goals, so who knows?

Back in the garden

Yesterday was a nice day here in Boston. If a bit on the cloudy side, it was warm and pleasant. I went to the gym and after that ran a couple of errands. One of my errands was to get my garden renewal into the post. I have pretty mixed feelings about this. Last year was not much fun in the old garden with one thing and another.

After I had finished my errands, I grabbed a cup of coffee for the walk home and coming across a city bench I sat down, enjoyed my steaming cup of caffeinated goodness along with the warmth and watched the city go by. After a few minutes I pulled out my phone and gave my friend C. a call and suggested we get out and enjoy the weather. C. suggested we go to a wonderful little pastry shop called Athan's, where one small pastry provides you with a days worth of calories. We went, we ate, we schmoozed. We probably also gained about 5 lbs each just by inhaling in the place.

By the time I got home, I still had the afternoon ahead of me. Having sent in the money to the garden society I felt like I ought to make at least a gesture in the direction of getting my garden in order. I had done virtually no clean up last fall, so there was plenty to be done. I also wanted to do a serious pruning on the climbing rose that was the basis of my problems with the garden society last summer.

I walked over to the gardens, grabbed a wheel barrow and then trundled off to my plot. Needless to say, I hadn't been able to find my garden gloves, so my pruning experience was a bit like throwing myself into a pit of angry cats. One of the attractions for me of the "New Dawn" rose, aside from the pretty cream and pink blooms is the fact that it has thorns that could take the hide off an elephant.

One and a half wheelbarrow loads of rose canes later and I was ready to do some more clean up. Montauk daisy, dried up and sad herbaceous peony, Annabelle hydrangea and cone flowers, all got much needed haircuts. I then began cleaning up leaves and willow wands that had dropped into the garden.

This also gave me a chance to inspect the spring bulbs I had bedded last fall. There are some noticeable bald spots in the biggest tulip bed. Evidence of the depredations made by the local rodent population over the winter. Still, I ought to get a fairly decent display and I am less resentful over the loss since I had anticipated this and purchased bargain bulbs. Others may wish to risk expensive Dutch bulbs, I however learned my lesson years ago and have opted for Darwin tulips. They are cheap. They will bloom for years unlike their showy Dutch cousins, which should be treated as annuals and as I stated are also cheap. If you are going to wind up feeding the voles, squirrels and rats, you are not obligated to serve them the equivalent of a meal from a four star restaurant.

I had hoped that all this labor would work its magic and I would start to feel the enthusiasm for gardening that comes with spring and the appearance of leaf buds and of plants starting to poke up through the earth. There is nothing like the quickening of spring to renew you.

So far, I'm not feeling it. I filled up the wheelbarrow with garden waste. I inspected plants for signs of life and evidence that they have made it through another New England winter. I just couldn't feel that rush of excitement over the number of buds set on the viburnum or disappointment at how poorly my rhododendron had fared.

I am working on plans for changes in my little plot. I am going to try a less is more approach to the garden. Clearing out things I am not in love with. I will be changing the way some of the beds are laid out. I am even girding my loins to make some changes in the topography of the garden, but there is a something missing.

Some of this may have to do with the fact that a lot of the social aspect of gardening has disappeared for me. I very much doubt I will be spending time hanging out with my fellow gardeners this year. What with one thing and another I feel like I really should start keeping that part of my life at arms length. When I go out to get my hands dirty I should be concentrating on communing with my plants. I really don't feel like getting into any future situations that lead to ill will. Goodness knows that on one particularly memorable occasion I was let know in a most definite manner that one gardener would consider his world a better place if I kept any comments and opinions to myself unless they are on the topic of gardening and I suspect then only if they are solicited and of a technical nature.

So, as things stand I am going to try and concentrate my gardening efforts to clearing out any unwanted plant life, reshaping beds and trying to make sure I do my gardening in the earlier hours of the day and leave the rest of the day to my betters. This will I hope leave me more time to hit the beach this summer. The beach has it's own appeal and I hope it will allow me to cultivate not only flowers but also a good all over tan. After all, there is a clothing optional beach just a quick T ride away.