the Ancient Grumpilo

The heater's rattling away, and if I didn't know that Martin had been out until an hour past dark starting on a new pea bed, I'd half expect snow in the morning, just out of habit.

Overrated things: thriftiness when you feel like celebrating, square-foot gardening and all other super-organized gardening methods, words like "fave" and "most-faved," bloggers who mark each of their photos with massive copyrights, pensive authors on bookjackets, inner pressure to rip out the wild violets in the front flowerbed (they can't help it that they are weeds and the leaves are so shiny and pretty), deadlines of all kinds, feeling cold in springtime, soccer practice three nights a week, rejections containing the phrase "just wasn't right" and that end, "Best of luck," people who complain endlessly on their blogs, . . .ME!

So that's enough from the ancient Grumpilo, who is residing right now in my bladder, grumbling bad talk even though the kids are in bed and my dear one sits beside me looking at photos of an unbelievable garden in Tennessee. I will expel the Grumpilo, fetch myself a cup of chamomile tea, and edit some poems. I wish I could write intricate, transcendent Indian poetry; perhaps that would send the Grumpilo packing forever. But I am not Indian, I'm just plain old pale me, paler still from the Pennsylvania winter. And I am not Greek, either, though I'd like to be, given the chance.

Martin and I sat in the car after work and as I turned the key, he said, "Maybe we should go for gyros," and I had been thinking the EXACT SAME THING (hurrah), so we drove up to the next city with the girls and a bearded man named Costas fixed us up gyros in a tiny restaurant papered with photos of the Greek Isles. Family members and friends dropped in to chat with his wife, a woman with some weight dressed in a low-cut, red dress, with painted eyelashes and such a warm manner that I wanted to be Greek, too, and slice meat on a spit onto pita bread and compare days with my nieces who dropped by on the way home from work. We are not even a tiny percentage Greek, but Elspeth found out she loves stuffed grape leaves.

This blog has no narrative cohesion, I'm afraid. The Grumpilo may be partly to blame. I just glanced despondently over at Martin's laptop and read "Composting Opportunities!" I may eat a banana tonight, and then I, too, could have a composting opportunity. I can hardly wait.

Hope the ancient and cantankerous Grumpilo stays far away from you all tonight.