Tomatoes: a Review

My whole life, everyone who cares has always asserted FORCEFULLY that homegrown tomatoes, vine-ripened and freshly harvested, are INFINITELY SUPERIOR to store tomatoes and that store tomatoes are trash. I have always agreed that store tomatoes are not awesome. Too...tomato-ey? Anyway, the other evening we harvested our first tomato from our garden and diced it up to put in a pasta salad. It was much lovelier to cut into than a store tomato, and we didn't harvest it until it was actually ripe. Those store tomatoes that say,"vine-ripened" are totally lying, since they're not ever actually ripe. Anyway, it was actually edible. I don't really like tomatoes, since they taste so tomato-ey and not as fruity. But this one from our garden was almost fruity and that nasty pungent tomato flavor was mellowed into a tastier, riper, and more-fruity taste. So, in the end, I agree that store tomatoes stink and home-grown and vine-ripened tomatoes are much, much better. But I'm still not to that tomato-activist point of saying that you can just go out and pick the tomato off the vine and eat it like an apple. THAT'S too much for now, but I did like our ripe garden tomato.

TV Show Review

So I don't really watch TV that much. Seth and I like to catch the occasional season of Survivor and I like the first few weeks of American Idol. Also we never miss The Office. But honestly, not that much tv. So my brother- and sister-in-law told me about this show: WipeOut. Just hearing them describe it, I was CRAZY to watch it. I LOVE stuff like that. And so I watched it, after missing it several weeks in a row. Can I just say, I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!

Bloopers and Practical Jokes was funny; Funniest Home Videos was funnier. People falling down is so hilarious, I can barely keep myself from laughing just thinking about it. So the premise of this show wipeout, is to put people on an impossible obstacle course and see how much they fall down. Then you take the winners from that and put them on harder impossible physical challenges. The Sweeper event puts contestants on poles and then just runs a pole around to sweep them off while they're trying to jump it. The first time I tuned in, there was a guy trying to get past the boxing-glove wall, where you have to cling to the wall and try to get by but with boxing-gloves punching out at you, all up and down, at random times. I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard.

Then this last week they did the sort of "best of" show, which was great because there were just clips of wipe-out after wipe-out and each one would be more hilarious than the last. They have these big huge rubber balls and you have to try to jump on or run across them all, but of course they only had footage of one guy ever being able to do it. And he had to be the first one of the day, because after you fall in, you are all muddy and that gets on the big rubber balls and makes them slipperier.

In summary, this is a really great show. They have a lady-reporter down by the track and she doesn't even try to hide her laughter. Clearly this show is all about getting fabulous footage of people falling down, bonking off of huge rubber balls, getting boxed in the gut at random times, and in general being super-hilarious. Two thumbs up!!! tuesday nights on ABC

Holy Horticulture, Batman!

Here's my garden now. Those there, up front, are the tomato plants. I had to give up on raising my tomatoes from seed this year and just go buy these. Luckily they were on clearance or the price of each little plantling would have given me a stroke. THAT'S the last thing I need this summer, eh? Then there's a row of dud beans, then a row of half-duds and half-awesome beans. Then another row of tomatoes, of a different variety. Thanks, Dot and Jay for your cast-off tomato cages from last year. My dad laughed at how big they were when he saw them, but I feel that our little 'maters are doing them justice. Behind the second tomato-row are two rows of corn, with vigorous pole-beans climbing every stalk. And behind THAT you can see some extremely bushy beans. They are going crazy and this next couple weeks - hopefully - will see me canning some huge bean-harvests in my pressure cooker/canner. Thanks for that, Will and Jodi! You guys are great!

Then in this here picture you can see my poor sad little pea row, staked up with string and branch chunks right from our dead backyard trees. Then an enormous, bushy cucumber row. I plan to use that harvest to make little pickles, and maybe some big pickles. I got the gallon-size pickle chips from Sam's Club and the kids are kind of going crazy on them, so maybe I'll use my P-Chef crinkle cutter to do up some fancy old pickle chips. That's a big maybe. Anyway, beyond my little green garden stool you can see the king of the garden: my enormous, outrageous, novelty, competition-size pumpkin vines. Just vines, so far. With plenty of flowers. Every day that I can, I go out and poke around looking for a little gourd to appear but so far, it's just a bunch of flowers. Soon, little gourds, soon. You'll have to come soon in order to be ready and hilariously large by Fall. Then next to the big old pumpkin vines are some smaller but equally vigorous Butternut Squash vines. They have flowers too and no gourds. But it's just super-cool to have something growing so dang well in my garden, where nothing but rocks and debris were flourishing when we moved in.

Seriously, when we moved in, this was a nasty dump-hole. My mother-in-law came to help turn over the soil and get the garden ready, but first we had to move a box of busted-up mirror tiles, two of those concrete-based poles for mounting what? satellite dishes?, a long strip of galvanized flashing, lumber scraps, and literally TONS of landscaping rocks that were a couple inches deep under the deadish grass. I still have more of those to pick out for next year's optimistic, expanded garden. Plus all the stuff we un-buried while rock-picking, like lots of pennies, old batteries, matchbox cars, two bbq grates, some pavers, busted bricks, and more plywood scraps. And pens. Plenty of pens. And toys. Little mini toys.

So, thank goodness something good is happening in the garden, and hopefully lots of it will result in harvested vegetables. And none of the vegetables will be malignant!

My First Cancer Flowers

Eric came down and said, "There's a guy at the door with flowers." So within 18 hours of posting my new medical situation online, my brother and sister-in-law, Will and Jodi, had these flowers delivered to me. I was sobbing and sobbing for two reasons, one good and one not as good. First, because it was so unexpected and so dang awesome and so soon. But second, because Cancer Flowers! I have Cancer! so the children were lined up, one, two, three, asking what was wrong and was I ok. I had to calm it down and explain to them as nonchalantly and lovingly as possible, how sometimes the cells that we're made of go bad, and I had some bad ones in my neck , but not to worry, because the doctors are all over it, taking care of it and after a little while, there won't be anything to worry about, children!

Thanks, Jodi and Will! YOU guys are awesome!

I Have Cancer

Great, huh? I have Papillary Thyroid Cancer. I had the biopsy yesterday afternoon, which sort of stunk. It wasn't as uncomfortable as dental work, but my tumor is so big they had to use six needles instead of four. The numbing was nice, but it left my neck super sore. It's still sore tonight. The doctor used a cool voice-recognition ultrasound machine while he poked into my neck.

So today I get a call, right when I'm drifting off to sleep at naptime, of course, and the nurse is all personable and nice and then the doctor gets on and he's all nice-able and then he's all, well, I don't like to have to tell you that it's Papillary Thyroid Cancer. And he kept on talking, about how if you have to have cancer, it's a pretty good, slow-growing type to get and the survival rates are pretty good. I guess if you have to drop bad news on people all the time, you learn that there's not much they're going to want to say when you tell them they have cancer and you should just keep going. It is scary, though, to hear someone telling you your survival chances and realize you could DIE. Left untreated of course.

My treatment will probably include surgery to remove if not all, then most of my thyroid gland plus the big old tumor on my neck. Most likely we'll do this after the baby comes at the end of the year. There's a chance I could have to get radioactive iodine treatment, depending what the surgeon thinks of my tumor. The good news is that my lymph nodes are clean, according to the ultrasounds. So they can stay.

Bless this baby's heart, this pregnancy is about to break my camel's back. One thing after another and now I have cancer. I guess I'm the same as I was yesterday; it's just scary mostly when you say,"I have cancer" or talk about chemo or other cancer treatment things. The chances are slim that it will metastasize to other organs. But then the chances were slim that it was cancer, too, like only 10% or so and here I am. Just like me, when I tell people they pretty much don't know what to say. Huh, they're thinking. That sucks. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking, too.

In other news, Seth got a raise today. YESSS!! Now I can afford to pay for my Synthroid prescription I'll probably have to take for the rest of my life!!! But seriously, thank you, Martin and Vejvoda. We super-ultra appreciate it.

The Baby's Turning Out Pretty Good

...for all the dang trouble he's causing. It was anemia, not enough progesterone, and blood diseases at the beginning, and then now he's trying to get out half-baked. (explicit pregnant talk follows. Be forewarned) I had my cervix measured and it was pretty short. My measurements with Russell were all four something and the baseline with this new guy was two something and then I went to the Perinatologist last week and the first thing he says after, "I'm doctor so-and-so," was "See this number right here? That's not a good number." I knew that, because it was 1.7 something and that's the smallest number I've seen EVER. So he already had the nurses out trying to schedule me for surgery the next day.

So dang it. I had the cerclage the next day which is a stitch to keep things all tightened up like your Uncle Scrooge's Purse Strings, and it would be fairly simple if you didn't have to get a dang, stinkin' spinal to have it. So Seth and I were at the hospital all the next day and finally five hours after I had the spinal, I could feel enough to walk to the potty and do my pee-wee, so they let me go home. I had the same surgery to keep my fatty-baby Jules in, except that when I was all dressed and ready to go home and had done my pee-wee and everything, I was sitting in a wheel-chair waiting for my mom and...I barfed. First I asked for a cracker which helped a little bit, but then I barfed it up. Plus the force from that caused me to pee my pants. So I just got in the dang car and went home anyway, since it was a drizzly day and who cares. I just had surgery and I wanted to go to bed.

But no barfing with this guy. The catch was I had to be on bedrest for a week afterward, until the doctor could look and make sure it was all healed and working. I didn't know what we were going to do with the other three big kids. Seth's mom asked if we needed her to come up and help and of course we said YES so she came up the next day. And then all these ward-members started showing up at our house with meals and videos and also taking the children for fun times. I just started crying every time, after the first couple. With Jules I had to BEG for help and that was just a miniature trickle of help with one tiny kid. so Cherry Creek Ward Rules!!! Of course the baby's fine. It's just me trying to keep him in until he's fully-cooked and delicious like a little plumpy warm cinnamon roll.

The Jam Turned Out Pretty Good

So awhile back I wrote about how I was going to make jam from the dehydrated peaches and "we'll see how it turns out." So this is how it turned out. I just sort of made up the "dried" part of the recipe, so I think the all-peach ones on the right are super-saturated with peach. The ones on the left are strawberry-peach that I made with the leftover strawberries from my date with my daughter Julesie. We actually already opened and ate one of them and they were incredibly delicious. Today I got raspberries on sale and will mash them up as soon as I can get off my bum and make them into fabulous jam.