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If You’re Bored Then You’re Boring

Just having one of those evenings where nothing I’d planned to do sounds good. I had a whole to-do list figured out: balance my checkbook, post a blog entry from some notes I’d typed out earlier, epilate my legs, some other stuff. Instead, all I want to do is play on my phone and stuff my face.

Last week was weird. My son was home from pre-k with a fever, so I worked from home on Tuesday, took a personal day Wednesday, then worked from home again on Friday, with my husband rocking “Daddy Days” with Connor for the remainder of the week. I didn’t plan my meals well, didn’t get much activity or even any time outside. At today’s Weight Watchers weigh-in, I’d gained just over a pound in two weeks.

I told my leader I wasn’t that worried. That was kind of a lie, since I continue to be worried about my lack of judgement and self-control in the moment. Tired, cranky, depressed, thrown off, worried, stressed — all those lead to food.

When I’m in the right mental space, I know what to do. When I’m feeling shitty, I still know what I should do, but I sincerely don’t care in that moment. It’s not All Or Nothing thinking — I don’t go down a crazy rabbit hole all night or all week because I screwed up — but it is self-sabotage of a sort.

I don’t fit in my clothes right anymore. I feel jiggly and frumpy and blah, even though I currently weigh 32 pounds less than when I started Weight Watchers, and over 70 pounds less than when I got married 14 years ago.

I had reached the point of feeling a certain kind of awesome, back before I gained this ten pounds back over a year and a half, and I need to recapture that awesomeness somehow. It’s not going to happen during this week of birthday cakes and fancy dinners (and I’m fine with that — birthdays only come once a year), but I think my present to myself for my 41st birthday will be to Treat Myself Right.

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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: April 2017

Technically, Bloom Day was two days ago, but better late than never, yes? I actually did get out to take these photos on the 15th, but didn’t get around to posting them until tonight.

Here in my NW Ohio Zone 6 garden, spring seems to be a good week or two ahead of schedule. One day last week, all the spring bulbs decided it was time to bloom. (I mean that, too — I left for work at 8am to tightly closed daffodil buds and came home at 5pm to a yard full of nodding yellow heads.)

I don’t know what all these varieties are, as they came with the house when we moved in some four years back, but here they are:

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day: April 2017 Continue reading →

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Strawberry Blossoms

I brought my strawberry bucket into my unheated sunroom last fall to overwinter. These beauties must be enjoying the greenhouse effect of the windows, as they’re already in bloom, just as the daffodils and hyacinths and cherry blossoms are doing their thing outside.

I did a little research to learn whether strawberry plants need pollinators, and the answer is — not really? The dark yellow bits need to come into contact with the light yellow center, whether by wind or other means. One gardener wrote that he usually rubs two blooms together, but that some people use a paintbrush to get the pollen where it needs to go.

After I took this photo, I pollinated the blossom by kind of pushing the pollen into place with my fingers. The next day, the petals were dropping and the center part was getting ready to strawberry itself.

Might be an extra bit of work on my part, but if I keep the strawberry bucket in the sunroom, I won’t have to worry about birds eating my damn berries.