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Garden Planning

By / February 6, 2005 / 12 Comments

For the past 4-5 years my primary gardening interest has been flowers. I wanted to grow pretty things. With the budget much tighter this year I am very interested in growing things that I can feed to my family. I am so interested that I plan to dig up a section of lawn to create a vegetable bed. This will mean lots more outside work this summer. I’m not against that. Since snow is due today and will put a damper on actual yard work, I’m spending lots of energy trying to plan. I have to figure out what to plant, when to plant it, how often to plant it, and how to take care of what got planted.

I’ll definitely plant:
Roma Tomatos
Onions
Anaheim chilis
Snap beans
Sweet peas
Chives
Basil
Sage
sunflowers
Savory

I’m considering planting:
I favor summer squash, Howard favors pumpkins
turnips
lettuce
chamomile
dill
marjoram
thyme
elephant garlic

One of the things I’m most excited about is the grape cuttings a Schlock fan has promised to send for Howard and My birthday gifts. I’ve figured out where I want to put them, but I’m a little reluctant to actually dig up the spot until the cuttings actually arrive. Of course since the ground is currently frozen it is probably moot.

I want spring and it’s only the first week of February.

Spring!

By / February 4, 2005 / 4 Comments

Well, not really spring. But today was one of those gloriously sunny and warm winter days that make me start thinking happy spring thoughts. Such days are always followed by cold and snow and sadness that spring isn’t actually here yet. At least today’s weather allowed me to get outside and do some mental Yard-work-to-be-done triage. I’ve now got a list of things to do in February. Another list for March. A third list for April. I’m not going to think beyond April yet because the May, June, July lists are likely to be full of unaccomplished February, March, and April items.

Howard was bitten by the spring-weather bug too. He went disc golfing.

Snow is due Sunday afternoon. Sigh.

Self Discipline

By / February 3, 2005

For the past couple of weeks Howard and I have been staying up too late almost every night re-watching CSI season 2. For the past couple of weeks my diet/exercise reigimen has been non-existent. I suspect that the first is a causative factor in the second. I need to be getting more sleep. I function much better when I’m not tired all day every day.

Sadly what this means is that I need to be exercising more self-discipline. I need to be getting up ontime each morning instead of hitting snooze until the last possible moment. I need to not touch my computer until the kids are off to school. Then I need to not “wander through” and check email 8 times a day. I don’t get that much mail and every time I sit down, I end up clicking on things just for the sake of clicking. I need to not read until the day’s work is done. I need to go to bed at bedtime even if it means no CSI for the evening.

“A place for everything and everything in its place” applies to time as well as things.

Journal Rambling

By / February 1, 2005 / 6 Comments

Every so often I click to check my LiveJournal UserInfo page.  At the top is a list of Friends.  Mostly it is full of relatives and close friends, but a few are people that I first met here and with whom I have had the opportunity to have a second point of contact. 

Also on the page is my Friend Of list.  I sometimes look at that ever-growing list and wonder who are these people who have decided that my journal is worth reading regularly.  On days when I’m feeling bored or clicky I sometimes browse through their journals to try to find out.  I did that just this past week.  I found that I’m not the only one with DVD player woes.  I found a fascinating discussion on the need for community in religion.  Perhaps the most surprising thing was the discovery that there are people who have me listed as a friend and don’t also have Howard listed.  This means that there are people here reading this entry who didn’t come via Schlock. I’ve had people tell me that my rambles were enjoyable, but somehow I still felt that whatever small fame I attained here was still mostly reflected glory.  Now I have proof that at least some of it was my very own little light.

One of the things I found in my journal rambles was a Writer’s Challenge.  This person challenged: “Describe a room so that the person who owns it is described without actually being present.”  That interested me so much that I decided to take up the challenge.

…

Journal RamblingRead More »

Sickness of assorted flavors

By / January 30, 2005

Today Kiki has a miserable earache. Link and Gleek have sniffles and coughs. Patches has a perma-drip nose. I elected to keep all the assorted germs home from church. It was pretty obvious that they weren’t feeling well because after breakfast I sent everyone back to bed and they didn’t argue about it.

I’m also suffering from the same cold that the kids are. I was pretty useless yesterday. Today I treated the fatigue with Caffeine. By the time Howard got home from church I had the entire kitchen spotless. Now the caffeine has worn off and I’m tired again. I need to declare naptime for Patches and maybe get one myself.

Birthday– The day after

By / January 28, 2005 / 10 Comments

My birthday is over for another year. I’ve successfully reached 32 years old and I’m headed for 33. This is good because I certainly wouldn’t want to go backwards and give up all the stuff I’ve learned.

Today put on my new ear rings and sang Les Miserables at the top of my voice while stowing away puzzles and books and DVDs and new kitchen implements. Thus all the gifts have been scattered to their appropriate locations. At first I was a little saddened by this disbursment of my birthday celebration, but then I realized that every time I come across ANY of the things that were given to me yesterday I’ll get to relive some of the joy I felt yesterday. Having little dollops of joy spread through the house isn’t a bad thing.

Howard gave me all the names that are associated with the gifts so that I can write Thank You notes. There was only one name I recognized (Thanks bbullock). I probably know some of the rest by their online names, but most of them were simply Schlock fans who have never been near this journal. They were sending me presents in appreciation for the work that Howard does on Schlock. It makes me feel good to know that Howard is creating something that touches so many people. It makes me feel good to support that effort. In all, today is a happy place to be.

Train of thought

By / January 28, 2005 / 15 Comments

This morning while eating his breakfast Howard looked up at me and said:
“We need to rent Fiddler on the Roof so that we can yell ‘The Gripping Hand!’ at Reb Tevya.”
“What?”
“In the movie Reb Tevya says ‘on one hand, on the other hand, on the other hand’ we need to yell ‘The Gripping Hand’ at him.”

Howard’s train of thought runs through some very odd places.

Of Purple Rabbits

By / January 27, 2005 / 3 Comments

I chased a purple rabbit through a hole in my backyard hedge this morning.  It was an odd experience because my backyard has never before had a hedge and usually the only signs of wildlife are deposits left by the neighbor’s dog.  Yet this morning both the rabbit and the hedge were there.

Beyond the hedge was a world filled with fairies, unicorns, centaurs, children lost on islands, and a secret valley full of bird-winged people.  The very landscape was strange; lush valleys sat high atop volcanos, and a river ran with liquid rubies.  It was completely unearthly … and totally familiar.  I used to live in such places before my mind filled with grades and SATs and mortgages and diapers and laundry.

I’d come home to a place I thought no longer existed.  All the strange and beautiful residents of those lands looked at me.  Eyes of every shade and shape studied me; asked me where I have been; wondered why I had abandoned them.

The answers I have to give are solid, reasonable.  They sit heavy in my hands, and their very solidity fades the worlds and people, who attenuate so far that the merest whisper of wind could blow them away.  Quickly I shift my solid reasons to one hand and reach out with the other to grasp at the mist.  I realize now that I need both.  I need to be able to fly on the wings of story and I need a solid place to land.  I’d forgotten, but as he did so long ago for my six-year-old self, that purple rabbit has led me through the hedge and taught me to fly.

 

Today is Lewis Carrol’s birthday, so many people are journaling Down the Rabbit Hole.  I wanted to join the fun.  The story above makes more sense if you know that the very first story I ever wrote was entitled “The Purple Rabbit”.

Happy Birthday to Me!

By / January 27, 2005 / 10 Comments

This year I had my birthday pretty much planned before the end of December. I was going to have a small dessert and maybe one gift and we would do the singing and candles and all would be happy. A couple of weeks ago Howard and schlock fans significantly changed that plan. Over the last two weeks we’ve been getting almost daily packages. Howard won’t let me open them, he’s been hoarding them away in his office and Kiki has been wrapping them. It got to the point where another package would arrive and Kiki would happily groan “Another present!” and run off to wrap it.

So I made a new plan. I planned that today would pass fairly normally and then after dinner we’d have dessert and candles, then we’d take the pile of presents and I’d have the kids help me unwrap them all. That plan is still in effect except the “today would pass normally” part. This morning I found a present in my email box. Rowyn made 6 pictures for me to use as LJ icons. Then to ensure that I was able to utilize them all she gave me a paid Livejournal account. It is one of those wonderful gifts that I didn’t even know I wanted, but I’m incredibly happy to have. Now I need to write appropriate journal entries so that I can use all of them. Thank you Rowyn!

Also a big “Thank you!” to everyone out there who sent me presents. I don’t even know who you all are yet because Howard won’t let me look at the names until present time.

Sister Emily’s Lightship

By / January 26, 2005 / 2 Comments

I just finished reading Sister Emily’s Lightship by Jane Yolen.  I
highly recommend it.  It is full of short stories.  Some are
fantastic retellings of fairytales, some are wonderful stories for
kids, some are dark and disturbing, one is downright dirty, but all of
them are powerful and none of them can be easily ignored.