not my blue and purple flowers

The flowering tree in the back corner, where we buried Koshka, appears to have come down somehow. Either yesterday's storm, or just its weakened state from the hell summer last year. I don't know. But it is laying across most of the back yard. I'm upset. I liked it and I don't know how to replace it and the yard work and god damn it all I am still coughing so hard.

today everything just feels wrong.

We are starting to get more rain and wind from the hurricane in the gulf. So far away, and so close.

wednesday is wet and sad

If Rachel Zoe is supposed to be some incredible fashionable lady, then why is she always wearing a giant shapeless sack anytime I see her commercials on Bravo? Really?

I have recovered some over the loss of the tree/bush in the back yard. I am reasonably sure it was some kind of rose of sharon, with very blue/purple flowers. It was really lovely. Sadness. When the weather eventually clears up we will have to do a lot of yard work. The rosemary bush is out of control.

Maybe next year I will plant a pomegranate tree. I'm so bad with plants though. Still, the flowering pear in the front yard seems to be doing okay. The marigolds continue to grow and bloom. The blue argentum have died though. Plants confuse me.

I feel like I should tell you that I read a collection of zombie short stories today, including one by Max Brooks that was unutterably sad. There were some genuinely creepy stories, so much that I scared myself and actually spent ten minutes hiding in the bathroom this morning, wondering if there was a zombie in my house. Or something, maybe not a zombie, but I heard a noise damn it.

The advantage of a small house is that I am reasonably able to survey the entire place at once.

I should also tell you about how I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in one day. I put off reading this for ages, because every time I saw the title I would think "Oh is that going to be some gross pro-eating disorder book? ick." Then there was the author's name, which made me think of Joan Collins and Suzanne Somers and just sort of reinforced the idea that it was some crappy book. But all those things were wrong, wrong, wrong.

The book has the sort of idea of Battle Royale involving teenagers picked to fight to the death for the entertainment of others in this terrible post apocalyptic North America. But I found myself genuinely interested in the characters, in the world, in the slowly evolving child's point of view of history and events and hunger and death and survival. It is surprising and good. I feel bad for judging the book entirely on my imagination for so long, but at least now I only have to wait a month for the third book in the series to come out, so I can rip through them again.