Okay, this is not really about marijuana. Though I have nothing against marijuana. In fact, I'm one of those sedate middle class non-using women who think it ought to be perfectly legal to grow it, smoke it, give it to your aunt for mother's day - whatever. And everybody who knows me casually would fall out of their chairs with shock if I ever said so. I never smoked it because I react wierdly to perscription medications....I certainly wasn't going to smoke something some 14 year old told me was "good shit"

But I did get high one time.

It was at a Bob Dylan concert, which took place at a small theatre all you Baltimore readers remember: Painters Mill. The guy I was with and I were probably the only people in the entire place who weren't smoking. Dylan gave an awesome performance in which he looked like he was actually alive and I could understand almost all of what he was saying. The other time I saw him ( the Ex is a huge fan. No kidding, he's like a leading expert on Bob Dylan. He could teach a class) he performed for two hours and the only thing I could make out was "pump don't work cause the vandal took the handle."

Anyway, at one point you could hardly see the stage for the smoke. I realized that the chronic pain in my back was completely gone, and, for the first time in years, I was able to sit in a seat comfortably and listen to the music. I wasn't so worried about work, school, birth, death, and all the other stuff that routinely runs through the train tracks of my mind, often wrecking and de-railing.

In much the same way this blog entry has derailed.

The point is that I guess I was high, and when my Ex pointed that out to me, I said, "Oh? Really? Wow. What's so bad about this? Everybody here is so calm and laid back. If you ask me they ought to find some way to put it in the water." The next day I showed up for work and hung my coat in the back room and went on about the business of trying to sell ladies dresses. My co-workers were all giving me wide eyed, intense looks. My boss kept sideling up to me and asking me if everything was all right. Honestly, she was acting so wierd I was afraid she had the hots for me sexually or something. At the end of the shift I went back to get my coat, which I had taken to the show and WOW did it reek! And now you have my entire illegal drug experience.

What I want to rant about, though, are flower pots. I bought some herbs at an upscale garden shop over the weekend. I know, I know, I shouldn't be going anywhere near an upscale garden shop in my financial health, but the plants were not that much more expensive and are of hugely higher quality. Herbs - now culinary herbs, here- are practically an investment, especailly as much as I use when I cook. Not one of these plants was spindly, dried out, or root bound. I'm impressed.

But it's still too cold in Maryland to put anything outside. We just had snow two days ago, which is nothing in Massachusetts, though everyone here was cranky about it. So I decided to re-pot them and keep them in the kitchen and then slowly acclamate them to the slowly warming weather with more and more time on the back porch. Plus, the mint has to stay in a container, because it's what they call, in the gardening world a Thug. It will take over any patch of earth it can get onto.

The Hub found me all of these flower pots. But they have NO DRAINAGE HOLES IN THE BOTTOM! Ugh! You cannot grow a plant in a pot that doesn't have any drainage. The roots will rot, the plant will die, there is just no point. Why the frig do people make pots without holes in the bottom? Is it a cost issue? How much could it possibly cost to stick a hole in the bottom of a ceramic or terra cotta pot? How much time could it possibly consume? Are we talking about the man hours to make or break a company here? Why do people put stuff on the market that cannot be used for it's intended purpose?!

So now I have newspapers and potting soil all over the kitchen, two useless pots, and two rosemary plants with no place to call home. "Rosemary, that's for remembrance" - then why can't garden centers remember to get pots with holes?! I've been running all over the house looking narrowly at any container not already in use, opening drawers, encountering bad memories ( i.e. my walker) in the attic, disturbing the cat in the basement.

They say gardening is supposed to be relaxing. So far, it's not.