SoapZone Community Message Board

I mentioned in the weekend PP that I'd tried steel cut oats for the first time and accidentally left the last bit out on the stove and then thought they tasted funny but ate a few bites anyways. I mentioned I was waiting around to see if I'd get sick--I normally have an iron stomach--and I didn't have to wait long. For several hours on Saturday, I was miserable and was, ah, experiencing intestinal distress from both ends. And then I was fine by dinner time. Lesson learned!

Then early yesterday, before I silenced my phone for church, I got a text from bff asking me to go to the Holden Arboretum for a "craft show" Sunday afternoon. Several years ago, I asked SZ if they ever did something they didn't really want to do just because the person asking them *really* wanted to do it and I was surprised when pretty much everyone replied with some variation of "nope, if I don't want to do some kind of social activity, I don't do it". I have occasionally gone somewhere I didn't want to go or saw a movie I didn't want to see or ate at a restaurant I really don't like because someone I *do* like really wanted to do so and didn't want to do so solo. Yesterday was one of those times. Holden Arboretum is a beautiful place with ponds, lakes, forests, gorgeously landscaped gardens, all with walking paths in and around the area...I'm utterly "meh" about the place. I also think that charging $19 for the mere privilege of being there is outrageous, especially since we have so many fabulous FREE green spaces (and if you love flowers, I recommend the FREE Rockefeller Park Greenhouse in Cleveland)...but bff REALLY wanted to go, so I sucked it up and went. It was nice seeing the various gardens in bloom--the area behind the visitor's center always has something spectacular blossoming and the rhododendron garden was alive with vibrantly colored flowers--and it was nice seeing bff enjoy the walk around the grounds so much but the craft show was disappointingly small and had nothing I was interested in, and it was unseasonably warm yesterday (and warmer still today and tomorrow...I'm feeling a Cassie-level--Cassie from SZ, not the Cassie from the Diddy video--grumbling about the weather coming on).

On the plus side, a neighbor gifted me a tomato plant in a pot (which I will return in the fall). I'm happy about the prospect of fresh tomatoes later this summer but already convinced that if I don't manage to somehow kill the poor little plant, the wildlife will. I found an article online--"11 animals that will eat your tomatoes or tomato plants"--and noted with dismay that I've seen them ALL in our yard at one time or another. The neighbor who gave me the plant is one of those gardeners who's supremely proud of his garden (and yard in general). I've tended to his garden a couple times while he and his wife were on vacation and was given more instructions that the average babysitter or pet sitter, so I'm a little concerned I will either kill the plant outright or something will eat it or the plant will yield nothing and the neighbor will be, well, not exactly upset that he wasted one of his "babies" on me but maybe a little judgmental?