More Spring Cleaning

Here are my seedlings this morning. I have to laugh at the scale of my "operation" here at Casa LindaCO. That's half broccoli, and then some tomatoes, cantaloupe and pickling cucumbers. I also started some broccoli and tomatoes for the community garden that grows stuff to donate to the food bank. The rest of what I want to plant needs to be direct-sown so we'll do that in about a month.

I'd like to finish this sweater I'm working on before it gets warm, but time is getting short and I can feel the desire to knit starting to slip away like it always does when it gets warm. I'm about half-way done, so it's anyone's guess at this point.

I was listening to a song on my iPod the other day and had the most curious thought. The song was "Useless Desires" by Patty Griffin. The link is for a live version video. For some reason, this song found its way to me the summer of 2006, when I thought (incorrectly) that I was ready to start dating again. I met someone online, and we had a really good rapport, electronically, anyway. I remember it feeling so great, and that perhaps this was it (or maybe IT). After we met, he absolutely lost interest. Perhaps because I was just a wee bit taller? We'll never know, but the despair I felt was a really good lesson about infatuation vs the real thing, and when to let your guard down, that kind of thing.

So I heard this song last week when I was going over data on the computer in the lab, and I had this thought, which was: if I could go back to the Linda of the summer of 2006, I'd tell her that things are going to be OK. I'd tell her the road to finding a partner isn't nearly as linear as she would have hoped, but that we've learned a lot about the important stuff in life so far along the way. And we are strong (most of the time).

Then I thought, how about the future Linda? The five years hence Linda? What sage and sound advice would she return with? My hope is that she'd say I'm currently doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and that things with finding Mr. Right fall into place when they should and in a very natural and fun way. I'm hoping also that she'd rave about what a great thing it turned out to be to get the kick in the pants to move from my current position to the thing she's doing. Meeting people, working in some kind of conservation biology and/or science communication sort of job.

And this all made me smile a bit.