Catching up with Odds and Ends: Fashion and Fish

I’ve got several draft posts in my folder that I’ve been working on, but they feel more like road blocks to writing than the healthy writing exercises I want them to be. I want to write more interesting posts with more mindful topics: mindful to you in that they’re not so run of the mill, and mindful to me in that I’m working hard on them, becoming a better writer. But, what good are they if they stay in my drafts folder?

I still want to write them, but I want to get the fun, easy stuff out of the way for now. The topics that don’t fit in those outlines but that I keep wanting to tell you about, anyway.

Fashion from Star Trek

Several of you were not just kind in responding to my post about searching for the perfect robe, but some of you offered to help, from Jacqui trying to buy me one during her recent trip in Japan to Shana suggesting she ask her relative to sew me one! Seriously, so, so, so generous. Because of that, I’ll report that I did buy one. It’s far from the perfect garment that I want to wear all the danged time, but you know what: I still want to wear it all the danged time.

It’s lined, which means, hopefully, I will want to wear it in the shoulder seasons as well as this summer, and the pattern and colors are lovely. Two bummers: the fabric is fucking polyester! I emailed with the company a kazillion times on the type they list it as, as, according to them, it’s a superior type of polyester that is not going to pill or snag. Right. But, the 100% silk ones were so expensive I wasn’t even going to look at them. This one is also, of course, a kazillion times too large.

After sending the floor-length one back (read: a foot too long for me), I ended up with a knee-length one, that’s at my mid-calf so okay. And, with those stupidly pretentious velvet-bordered sleeves, I can roll them up once, then then sew tiny stitches in easily, and those turn out to be an okay-length, too. I took the snap off my cheaper robe and sewed it on the wrap at my waist, and with the inner tie as well as the outer tie, it actually stays together and on, yay!

This means I can wear it at entirely inappropriate times. Like, in the morning when I go outside to check on the fish in the pond and the tomatoes on the vine, then end up sitting down under the umbrella.

Thanks to the new giant, bright shed, the neighbors on one side can’t see us in the back, and only the upper-story renters on the other side can see us. (I know because I was recently chatting with one who was moving, and she commented how “cute” we were improving the back yard. Key word here with “moving” because a couple bought the house, which means renters out, uncertainty in.)

In any case, there I sit in my robe, often for way longer than is seemly. And, some nights when we chose to watch TV for an hour before bed, I’ll change into the robe as part of my wind-down routine. Lately I’ve been sleeping so well that I’ll treat myself to an original Star Trek streaming live, which means having the house to myself in the dark, which I love, lounging sleepily in my robe. A triple treat.

Suddenly, the other night while watching Star Trek, I realized where I got this strong, years-long hankering for a wispy outer layer with a leotard underneath. Star Trek Original Series, of course!

I was watching the episode where the future Dr. Katherine Pulaski of Next Gen is the current visiting ambassador’s assistant, blind but no one knows that because her dress is embedded with sensors.

That’s it! Well, not her only, of course. There are seemingly hundreds of lovely women in the Original Series wearing these flowing outer dresses with leotards or other, smaller styles underneath.

There might be a case to be made that only the super-empathic ones wear this costume, that the others have to show more skin whereas the empaths get to emphasize their relation in space to others with flowing gowns. But that’s not for now. My point is made.

I will continue to wear my robe any damn where I want to wear it, and if Captain Kirk (or Pike, or Picard, or Sisko) were to step out from behind a tree, I would collapse in a mock faint to be swept up in any of their arms in an instant.

My Time Outside

Yes, I spend all of my free time in the backyard. Tracy built the first of three new raised beds for me, and the bed we already had I moved to its new spot and planted six tomato plants and a pepper, my first gardening since I moved from West Virginia. They’re all drooping with tomatoes, and our smaller beds of basil and mint are also booming.

We’re learning what was planted in the back yard by the previous owner, who did a great job in some ways. (Mark, thanks for the recommendation to pinch the bee balm a little—that does wonders for its scent!) We’re pulling the invasives that grew in during the summer the house was vacant, and I’m walking my little path several times a day, simply because I love it. I like to think of it as the path, not to Grandma’s house, as in Little Red Riding Hood, but to my house. My path to my house.

It’s only a few yards long, but it’s deep enough behind our few trees that, last night while I was on it, Tracy couldn’t find me.

I’m also adding to the tiny pond, strange item by strange item. We replaced the motor to the water fountain, which I like because it adds sound and movement. A week ago, though, I found laid out for free on the sidewalk (like everything I own, now) this statuette.

I would never have picked her up (look at those pastoral boobs!), but she has a tube running from the base up inside her skirt to the flowers she’s holding, so I brought her home and hooked her up.

Lo and behold, she is fabulous. If I lean her over the pond just so, the water spills from her vessel (God the terrible puns) into the pond at a nice trickle. Best yet is that the trickle makes sound and movement, but it doesn’t disturb the surface, so I can now see the fish unobstructed. The very first day I had her mounted (ack, again), I saw a fish I didn’t even know was in there: a third black one.

The black ones used to be almost impossible to see: they dart about even faster than the orange ones, as if they were even brighter. Plus, I didn’t really pay attention to how many I put in there, not exactly. I know we started with five (they were buy 3, get 1 for free, and we meant to get 4 but the sales person thought we meant we’d buy 4 and get the 5th for free, whatever). Then I know one died because I picked its body out and buried it under the tomatoes. But, we never could see the other four, and I assumed they had all died, and perhaps a raccoon had come in and eaten them. So, I thought we had zero.

I bought ten on our next trip to Petsmart, hoping five would live. Now I think I have 14, no joke.

1 giant mulicolored one that’s the alpha of the pond + 2 mack daddy big ones from the first batch + 1 tiny orange one with a black spot on its head + 7 small orange I can’t distinguish + 3 black ones + 1 dead one I found = 15 damned fish we bought, thinking the pond will support maybe two.

I do believe they enjoy schooling together, and the five we started with weren’t enough to form a school so they stayed hidden. Tracy joked there must be an aquifer under the yard and they lived somewhere under the new shed, but now that they’re all out together, we’ve nixed that theory.

Truthfully, I am worried about them. I sit in my robe watching them for an amazingly long period. They are hypnotizing, for one, and for another, they are very much fun to try to count. But there can’t be enough green things growing in that small space to support 14 living organisms. I’ve read that they secrete a hormone to stop them from growing if the space is too small, but my guess is the big ones will simply eat all the food while the small ones die slowly of starvation. I did watch one starve to death already; I thought it was just too stupid to swim away while I loomed over it, watching. That was the one I found floating on the top of the water one morning.

So, I sneak them grains of brown rice on occasion. Tracy would think that’s prolonging the unnatural balance of life in the pond, and I’m sure he’s right. But, now that I’ve fed them only twice, they come up to the surface when I loom over them—all of them, not just the stupid ones. Even the three black ones! I want them to think of me as a benevolent god, not a cruel one, after all.

I do so enjoy watching them live their lives underwater. They turn on their sides and sometimes upside down to get at the green stuff growing in cracks, and they dart around together in such an interesting way. I wonder, do they know each other well? Do they really think of the one with white on it as their leader? What do they think is happening when I add water to the pond, which I have to do every few days in the heat? What do they think of the new Goddess of Goldfish dribbling water from her voluminous breast?

Well, that’s a very long post, and all I did was go over a couple of topics. I have more up my sleeve. It turns out I do so enjoy writing casual, not-important, unclever stuff. All the clever stuff will just have to stay in my drafts folder.