A Fungal Affair

My housemates and I have planted a garden.

Townhouses in DC don't offer much yard space, but we have a modest little plot with just enough room for trash bins, a rangy rosebush, and a tired box garden that had clearly seen nothing but neglect before our arrival.

We ripped out the dried up tomato plants, tilled and mulched and etc, and sprinkled some seeds. Now we're nurturing carrots, beets, peas, arugula, spinach, basil, daisies, and marigolds. I've never successfully grown anything from seed before, but I would say we've seen raging success.

You may notice (or not, the pic is kinda small) that the beets refuse to be nurtured. No matter, I don't like 'em anyway -- instead, tonight I had a lovely arugula salad for dinner. Yummo.

You know what else we're growing? Mushrooms. You know where we're growing them? In our kitchen wall.

Situation: DC has experienced some heavy rains recently. (Welcome to spring. Yay thunder!) I had water issues occasionally in my old cave-like apartment, but have since then moved to a posh lil townhouse. Unfortunately, our new house has not proved exactly, um, waterproof? Let's just say an evening of games and guests turned into a frantic dash for towels and pots to catch drips.

The water damage is especially obvious in our kitchen, which was pretty terrible to begin with. Envision narsty pink wallpaper from the 60's, cobwebs that have fused to the surface in the humidity, grease stains splashed randomly here and there, and pink formica countertops with permament stains on them. Classy. Now add peeling narsty pink wallpaper to the mix, with dark blotches of water damage. KLASSY.

A contractor came to fix the leak. A few days later we noticed some wires poking out from behind the peeling-back wallpaper. Must be leftover from the contractor, I mused idly, grabbing an apple as I rushed out the door. Whatever, deal with it later. I kind of purposefully ignored the fact that wires poking out from a random pink wall with no outlets in it made no sense whatsoever.

Wires, amiright?!

Later that day, my housemate: "So, are those wires...or, something growing?"
Me: "Wires. They're definitely wires."
Her: "Are you sure?"
Me: "...Yes." *Leaves room abruptly.*

Upon closer inspection, they're not wires. They're mushrooms. Or fungi of some kind. And while I do love our garden, I don't want it that conveniently located. I prefer my veggies to grow outside. 

Landlord is on it, though. He's great. And I think when our back wall gets replaced, we'll be able to replace all the wallpaper. Win? I think so.

How to prepare for a disaster

Most of you know by now that DC got off fairly light from Hurricane Sandy. New York and New Jersey weren't so lucky, and I'm still praying for recovery efforts there.

Hurricane Sandy was the first time I had the potential to be in a real natural disaster. Out in Montana we don't have much beyond forest fires or the occasional flood, and my home there is on high ground so floods wouldn't affect us anyway. Michigan occasionally gets tornadoes, but nothing serious ever happened while I was there.

As such, I had absolutely no experience upon which to draw for preparations for Hurricane Sandy. I should have read useful sites like this one, but alas. I did not.

Instead I went to the grocery store with a friend. We wandered vaguely around, picking up items and then putting them down again -- you need a stove to heat up canned soup, you need milk in order to eat cereal, you need a fridge to store pudding. None of those things work without power. I finally settled on some tins of canned fruit, along with some other odds n ends. For some reason I thought it'd be great to buy mango Jello. Post-hurricane treat?

Despite people tripping over themselves for it, I simply couldn't bring myself to buy water. For one thing, the price had been jacked up. For another, water seems like such a ridiculous thing to spend money on when you can get it, for free, right out of the tap.

A few girls in my college dorms bought bottled water because they said the tap water "tasted funny"...

Some families in developing countries walk for hours to get potable water; I wasn't gonna waste my limited college funds on bottled water because the tap water, while perfectly drinkable, "tasted funny."

Since my roomie was of the same opinion, we got creative.

We emptied out old cider jugs and filled those with tap water. Same with old honey jars. I happen to save the *cough cough* occasional wine bottle, so we filled a couple of those up to the brim. In all, we probably had at least 5 gallons of water. Ahem hem, WATER, not wine. And definitely not whiskey. Or bourbon. No beer either. In fact, there was no consumption of alcohol at all during the storm. None whatsoever.

I felt pretty proud of myself.

In the end, all the water wasn't necessary. Very few areas in the District lost power -- although we did have some pretty intense rain and wind (I was sure to park my car on a street with no huge trees; dealing with an insurance claim for weather damage would be just about the last straw with my car). 

I hope any of you reading this, if you were affected by the storm, are safe and sound.

Apparently DC doesn't "DO" winter

I have a problem.

I’m a country girl. I love my quiet town and my mountains and my long, cold winters.  I love bundling up in big, poofy layers and throwing myself down upon the snow in the pasture to just stare up at the frosty stars. I love weather that is so cold you have to wear a scarf beneath your ski goggles or your face will fall off.

Me and the Madre, properly outfitted for a REAL winter.

Back in Montana, winter crawls in to stay somewhere around Nov. 1. For example, it was 30 degrees back home today. And that was the high. Yes, our falls are both spectacular and spectacularly short. This has conditioned me to be ready and eager for winter at an early date.

Unavoidable fact: I live in the city.  No frosty stars or heaps of snow here (excluding Snowpocalypse 2010). And, hmm, it's kind-of still really warm.

Actually, today – the middle of freaking November, might I point out – the temperature reached a high of 70 degrees. 

What is this, Florida?

I realize that most of my friends are ecstatic with this weather, but I’m still in shock. It reminds me of the time I spent studying abroad in Jordan – no snow.  No real cold. (May I remind you, DC, Jordan is a DESERT. I should not be making this comparison right now.) No blatant commercialism to tempt your credit cards as the holidays approached.  I lived in a mostly Muslim country, meaning the run-up to Christmas didn’t exist, because the majority of the country didn’t celebrate Christmas.  Returning to the States on the 19^th was like getting physically assaulted by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Why this analogy matters:

DON’T YOU PEOPLE CELEBRATE WINTER???!?!?

Seriously, I’ve been wearing my jean jacket to work lately. My unlined, thinly-layered, should-not-be-a-winter-coat jean jacket.  Sometimes, I don’t even zip it. I took my scarf off yesterday because it was too hot. Not cool! Literally!

Last week the DC weather gods sent me a teaser – we received a schizophrenic snow/slush/rain mix that was sufficiently white and sticky. Sufficiently white and sticky, that is, to send Aftan skipping up and down the street clapping her hands and crowing about how much she loves winter. It wasn’t obnoxious at all.

But since that promising start, nada. No snow. No frost. No clouds. Again I ask, only with way more incredulity, what is this, Florida?! 

When I fly back to Montana for the holidays, I don’t want to feel like I’ve been physically assaulted by Frosty the Snowman. Work with me here, DC. Send me some real snowflakes. Holla atcha homegirl.  [I was going to spell that “gurl”, but then I just…couldn’t.]

Pardon the hiatus. Vacation.

I went home to Montana for a few weeks. And I gleefully did not even THINK about this blog. Well, that's not exactly true, I thought about in the sense of how much I loved not having to think about it. Does that make sense? Whatever.

Anywhooos...home was filled with family, water skiing, eating, hiking, horses, sailing, eating, basically all the things that make life wonderful. Allow me to make you jealous with the following pictures:

A view from within my favorite National park...Glacier

Saw this bear walking across and then along the road. So,
naturally, I snatched the camera out of my dad's hand
and leaned out the car window to get as close as possible.  

The Sis and I hiking a mountain near our house.
Not bragging here, it literally is a mtn. One of the
Rockies. Sadly dogs had to be leashed. It's a
National Parks thing.

Dad and I canoeing with the pooch. She hates cameras,
seems to think they're gonna suck out her soul or something,
but she was still for this shot.

Doesn't my home rock? I can't believe I'm out here living in this cramped metropolis when I could be back there. (And that, my friends, is the short version of the life-crisis I had upon returning to the city...trust me, you don't want details.)

Also, let me share a quick list of the things I saw in the middle of the road on my drive to the Montana airport at 3 am: One skunk (alive), two flirting deer (the buck was at least a 5x5 [that means his antlers had 5 points on each side, which made me hanker for a gun]), a coyote, a herd of at least 6 buck, ranging from spikes (look it up) to another 10 point (aka 5x5), a skunk (dead), and someone on a horse herding another horse in front of him with a dog trotting alongside.

Yeah. I love Montana.

Apparently, DC suffered through a hurricane and an earthquake while I was away. Darn. Missed 'em.

High temp + humidity = sticky gross

One of the biggest adjustments to life in DC was the humidity.  As I stepped out of the Baltimore airport, it settled upon me with about as much welcome as a sodden black wool blanket in the middle of a desert.

Hold the phone, A, you say.  (I envision you saying this in a Shrek-like Irish accent.) You actually DID live in a desert. Jordan had to have been hotter than DC, right?

Well, yes. Yes it was.  But it was a DRY heat.  I never bothered with the whole Celsius-Fahrenheit conversion thingie, so I can’t quote you exact temperatures, but I am sure that Jordan had a dry heat.

 Here, the humidity gives the heat an extra set of boxing  gloves.  And maybe a few sharp rings underneath, with  a quick shot of steroids, just in case.  Make it really  hurt.  Actually, that’s too sudden an analogy – humidity  is like a huge boxer sitting on your chest, slowly  squeezing the breath out of your lungs.

Some say I exaggerate (it makes for better reading).  But I challenge you: come to DC this week.  A slow heat wave is crawling across the eastern United States, scaring people indoors and giving our AC units heart palpitations.

The forecast is for triple-digit temperatures, with scanty clouds and high humidity.  101 degrees, they say, but it feels like 115.  (115!!!)  That’s the new catch-phrase: “feels like.”  84 degrees; “feels like” 95.  101; “feels like” 115.  Gee, it’s warm; “feels like” death on a stick.

This is the image that Google gave me for
"death on a stick." Wanted to share. Smoking kills.

In short, this Friday will be really hot.
“Feels like” GOODLORDGETMEOUTOFHERE.