Jess Riley's Blog, page 12

Check out These Chicks!

Aren't they adorable? I would have loved to have picked one or two up for some photos, but every time I came near they tried to escape through the bars of the cage (note the pile-up in the upper lefthand corner), and I figured they'd appreciate a more low-key experience. I wish I could say they were mine, but they belong to my parents. I will, however, be eating their eggs. Which is quite possibly the creepiest sentence I have ever typed.



Ah, when it rains, it indeed pours. Life has been crazy...

Books & Bugs

Things have been quiet on the blog because guess what? I'm FINALLY working on a new novel! My day job is currently like a triathlete pausing briefly to change from swim to biking gear, and while the wet suit is stuck to its thighs, I'm taking full advantage of the break to write my guts out.

I am also battling a massive aphid infestation on my rugosa roses. More specifically, on their beautiful buds, which I'm not about to lose to a bunch of little creeps without exoskeletons. Yesterday I ord...

Wake me when I can laugh about it...

Our furnace died yesterday. It's been giving us grief annually, usually kicking it in around January or February, and this time we just decided to replace it. To the tune of $3,300.

Hello, trip to Ireland! I mean good-bye, trip to Ireland!

The silver lining is, it's May (albeit a May that feels closer to early March), and there are state and federal tax breaks and rebates to help offset some of this. Also, more positives! The silver lining is not made of mercury. It is made of tin...

Ain't That a Bish!

Every year, I start a few of my seedlings waaaaaaay too early. Exhibit A--a delicata squash blossom in my portable greenhouse. It looks sad because it's thinking, "Where are the bees? Where are the bees? How can the bees get in here to help me do my thang?!"

Exhibit B: the redwoods of tomatoes, squishing up against the roof of the greenhouse.

I had to plant a few of the tomatoes in containers already, because they I simply ran out of room for them. So I succumbed to the gimmicky "Wall-O-Water" ...

The Daily Cute

Yesterday was a windy garbage day, so there were papers from spilled trash cans blowing around the neighborhood. Some poor kid's homework went from backpack to fridge to garbage can (perhaps surpassing the fridge) and ended up...yep, here on my blog, because sometimes I'm a bad person.

As you can see, Hannah did very well on her recent spelling test (Lesson 28 with a smiley face), receiving both a "bravo" and a darling little frog sticker. Unfortunately, her teacher missed a mistake on number ...

Happy Earth Day, Y'all!

Someone at work asked me what I plan to do to celebrate Earth Day, and I really didn't know how to answer. "Giant tire fire in my front yard?"

Actually, I said, "The usual?"

See, I've got the piggy-tail lightbulbs, and I bring my own canvas bags to the grocery store. I compost food scraps—in fact, two weeks ago, I lifted the lid of my compost tumbler to find GALLONS of sweet-smelling black earth! I eat mostly vegetarian stuff I make myself (sometimes not so successfully), I drive a dinky little...

Keister Easter

Last Thursday J called to tell me the bottle of orange juice he brought from home to work was suspiciously lukewarm. I immediately dismissed him, because I am prone to knee-jerk, emotional, snap judgements before having all the facts. Sometimes.

Or maybe it was because our fridge was brand-spanking new in January, so how in holy hell could there be something wrong with it already???

Well, a day later, when I opened the door to find the eggs sweating & fanning themselves while sitting under thos...

GM: Great Malarkey, General Mayhem, Getting Medieval, and....

I was saddened to read that this winter, over half of the Monarch butterfly population overwintering in Mexico died from severe storms. This summer will be the third summer in which I raise Monarchs from egg to butterfly—I've even got teeny milkweed seedlings under lights upstairs right now, eagerly awaiting their future date with hungry Monarch caterpillars.

But what if there aren't enough Monarchs to come back??

Now, severe storms will happen (increasingly so these days, it...

Giving me Crap

So everyone I know is pregnant. Well, not really, but so many women close to me are expecting that my uterus is sweating profusely and tugging at her collar. More on this later, unless I've driven you, understandably gagging, away from this blog forever.

(Sidebar: my dog is lying on the bed watching The Golden Girls right now…I love that furry beast. Ah! Her patience is rewarded! A commercial for Purina One just aired.)

Yesterday I got to spend time with my two year-old nephew, who...

Mainstreaming Myself

Well, I have to admit, the other night I took a break from watching arcane, eccentric little shows like Ghosthunters and Gordon Ramsay's The F Word and watched American Idol in full, for the very first time. And I liked it. We also watched Minute to Win It, which got a little more tedious with every fail.

(Oh look, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse just drove past my house! In a mini-van...still, it was totally him.)

When I'm not zoning out in front of the boob tube late at night...