Lately I've been having the sort of cravings that in my younger years would have sent me running to the drugstore for a pregnancy test.

This afternoon I came home from the gym simply starving and concocted the following snack--a small bowl of tapioca (or fish eye stew, as my brother christened it when we were kids) with a spoonful of almond butter stirred in.

Frankly, it looked alarming, not unlike a semi-digested critter a cat might hork up. But oh, man, it tasted wonderful. Oh puh-LEESE. As if you can judge me. Don't pretend you don't have some bizarre, scary food concoctions in your past. We all do. Some us are just more honest than others, eh?

I'm having a hard time making the transition from my winter way of living--procrastination isn't an option, it's my whole lifestyle--to summer where I have a buttload of work to do and it has to be done now. I'm especially feeling the pressure because we only get five weeks, three days and 19 hours of summer up here in Canada, so we can't squander it.

My gardens are starting to wake up and some plants need to be divided and shifted. The thing with most bits of green goodness is that you have a very narrow window in which you can disturb them. After that they throw a snit and will sometimes go so far as to die, just out of pure spite. (Yes, I'm looking at you hosta.)

This window varies wildly, depending on temperature and rainfall. It's been unseasonably warm and wet here which is pushing things on quickly.

To throw some bonus fun into the mix, the spousal unit and I have decided that this, this will finally be the year that we put a big, screened in wraparound porch around the ground floor of the house. Since I have been lobbying for this porch since we first built the house in 1977 (because I have yearned to be able to sleep outside during the summer), I felt some serious elation over the decision.

Long have I dreamt of being lulled to sleep under impossibly starry skies, with just a screen between me and the soft ribbits of the frogs at our pond, the mournful cry of owls, the sweet scents from my gardens wafting over on gentle summer breezes.

Of course, whenever I'd rhapsodize about this stuff the spousal unit would immediately counter with the words "mosquitoes", "black flies", "horseflies", "thunderstorms" and "brutal raccoon fights". Just like a man to impinge on my rich inner life, eh?

Fortunately, I have Mother Nature on my side. The weather is starting to affect the logs in our home. The spousal unit has decided that without a porch to protect it, the house might start to deteriorate over the next decade. It's easy to put new siding on a house, but new logs? Not so easy.

Well, once the initial rush of joy at the porch announcement subsided, that old chestnut "be careful what you wish for, because it might come true" is now coming back to smack me upside the head. Not only do I have my usual gardening chores to deal with, over the next few days I will have to open an enormous new garden bed, and dig up and move several hundred hosta and several hundred day lilies there, because those hosta and daylilies presently reside where the porch will go.

Oh, and the big stone walls I built below the house, back in my 30's when I was strong like bull, smart like ox? Those have to come down and the lovely flat rocks hauled to safety before the backhoe comes in to begin digging foundation trenches.

Over the next few weeks my poor, pretty little gym muscles are going to have to be used and used hard For Actual Work! I know. I'm as appalled by this unexpected turn of events as you are.

Oh, and now for something completely different ... can I have a drumroll, please? Yes, it's the time you've all been waiting, the official announcement of the winner of The Bug Ridden Lollipop.

Now, as my three loyal readers might recall, a few weeks ago I had a bad case of the blues. I begged you to make me laugh, and man oh man but you did. Bless you. Bless every last one of you.

Humour is an incredibly personal thing. You all made me laugh but one story cracked me up big time, Fierce Blue's tale of an escape from infanticide, a disability overcome, and an unexpected reappearance. Thank you, Julia, for sharing with us all Fierce Blue's The Life of Stumpy.

I laughed. I cried. It became a part of me.

Unfortunately, Fierce Blue does not have an e-mail address on her page. I feel rather odd just jumping in on her journal to mention that thanks to Stumpy, I, a total stranger living in a foreign country, want to gift her with a lollipop containing not one but two dead insects. A lollipop I cannot legally send to the U.S.

Fierce Blue, wherever you are, there is a foreign stranger offering you buggy candy over the internet. Stranger. Candy. Internet. Who amongst us would not jump at an offer like that, eh?

--Marn

P.S. -- Keri one of the members of the 500 Mile Posse is raising money for cancer. If it's a cause close to your heart, why not give her a pledge?

Mileage on the Marnometer: 338.85 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers