School Pictures

I have this weird phobia about getting my picture taken.  I'm not going to get into it too much because it's difficult to explain and I'm tired.  Let's just say I don't like being in pictures.  I hate posing for them, I hate seeing myself in them.  All the time.  Even my own mother and close friends have admitted I am not photogenic.  "Um, yeah... you look better than this in real life..." they mutter.  I don't know what it is about me, every physical flaw (and there are a lot) seem to be magnified a hundred fold in pictures.  Or maybe I really do look like that.  But anyway.

I'm not sure when I started developing this phobia but I do recall when I was 10 or 11 I told my mother I didn't see the point to having these awful school portraits taken of me year after year.  I told her she could save money by not ordering them, and I wouldn't have to sit and pose for them.  I could just tell the photographer when he waved to me standing on line that it was my turn, "No thanks.  My parents aren't going to buy your pictures so I'm just going to go stand over there."  My mother's response was, "I need them to give the police if you get kidnapped."

After that, until I got to high school, year after year I dutifully sat on the stool and smiled a feeble smile, picturing the picture that was being taken at that moment in newspapers and fliers stuck to lamp posts.  "Have you seen this girl?" it would say.  I pictured the interior of the van that would whisk me away to some horrible dank location.  I imagined it rusty and cold and unlined.  I wondered what it felt like to be trapped inside the trunk of a car.  I once saw on an episode of Charlie's Angels where a clever woman was able to push through to the back seat after being thrown into a trunk.  I wondered if I could do that.  I wondered if they would duct tape my mouth, or if they would use a strip of cloth.  Would I be able to find a way to cut through the rope while the baddies were eating dinner?  All these scenarios of what I knew kidnapping to be from watching tv ran through my head as the photographer peered through his camera and told me to smile.

It is with this in mind that I snapped these photos of my baby cucumbers this morning.  We noticed that now the culprit is stealing them younger and younger, catching on to the fact that my mother is snipping them before they get a chance to fully mature and, of course, be stolen.  (This is another reason I don't buy my neighbor's "critter" explanation - btw the cukes in the next plot are doing just fine so don't give me that.)  "Have you seen these cucumbers?" is not something I can ask after the asshole steals them.  It really, really sucks that we have such lovely promising things in my tiny plot and after all that hard work we (my mother) put into it, some fucking asshole has to take them.

Thievery

Every time there is a promising cucumber that will be perfect for the picking in another day, it's gone before it has a chance.  This was the case last year with my eggplants.

There's a plot next to mine that's also growing cukes but don't have theirs climbing sticks - theirs are just on the ground, growing in weird shapes.  They seem to be left alone.  All of mine that are the best and visible get snipped away.  Frustrated, I wrote a post on my gardening club's message board asking if anyone else experienced vegetable theft.  I said I hate to think it but it's either that or those squirrels are damn good with scissors.

The one reply I got was short and dismissive.  The writer said I'd be surprised how razor sharp claws are and how critters dug up someone else's bulbs so cleanly that it looked like a human did it with a trowel.  Oh really?  I didn't know critters could weed too.  Let me explain.

The weed situation is out of control in my corner of the garden.  We weeded diligently in the beginning but my mother realized she should leave it alone because the tall weeds on the side of the cucumbers worked as camouflage and hid the good cucumbers growing.  For a while it was working, until one day she noticed someone had cleared all the weeds on that side of the garden and also helped themselves to the best of my cucumbers.  The dismissive lady's suggestion: "I don't know what to tell you except look into wire netting?"  Yeah right.

In other news, I'm wondering if I should move this blog to Posterous.  It seems easier to maintain and I hate the fact that I am no longer able to post photos easily as I once had through flickr.  Now if I want to post a photo I have to use Picasa and it sucks.  Why did flickr get rid of its jpg link?  I don't know what the technical term for it is but it no longer lets me post photos here directly from it.  Since I'm on a different computer and don't have the photos on my hard drive, I have to download it from flickr then upload to Picasa then download it here.  Ugh.  It's so inconvenient.  Posterous, here I come.  Maybe.  I have to look into it more.

Tiny Plot's Bounty in Action

What's the fun in gardening if I can't enjoy the fruits of my labor?  Flowers are pretty to look at but I'm more interested in eating the effort.  Since I don't have a balcony or a back yard in which I can grill delicious beef ribs, I broiled some of my mother's excellent galbi and used the perilla, mint, and lettuce from the tiny plot to eat ssam.  That's ssam as in farm, not ssam as in ham.

Ironic then, that today came about trying to be free from these people:




Meat still sizzling:

Mint just picked, piled high above baby lettuce:

Basil bounty, washed and just before being turned into pesto:

Excess mint means Moroccan mint tea.  Refreshing.