gardening 4 Comments

A Little Help?

Welcome to my problem spot.

When we moved in, there was a giant, out-of-control forsythia bush bogarting this entire space. Or maybe it was two. Yeah, it was at least two. At any rate, we dug all the bushes up, due to their scraggly beyond-hope nature. This, unfortunately, left a giant dirt pit, devoid of grass. I tried growing herbs and a rosebush here, but they all failed miserably. The rose still lives here, although you can’t see its teeny bare twigs in this picture. (Draw an imaginary line down the edge of the house, and the rose lives about half an inch down from the foundation on that line. Yeah, that bushy thing that looks like just another weed.) I also planted some of Scott’s tiger lilies over on the left, by the fence, and I mulched them today. (You can see the line of red mulch by the fence, barely.)

But OMG, look at the rest!

*puts head in hands*

It looks sunny enough now, but a.) this is just before sunset, and b.) this is still spring. The leaves haven’t come in on that maple tree overhead quite yet.

I can’t dig or roto-till or anything here, really, because our TV coaxial cable runs dangerously close to the surface of the yard. We’d have to be really extra careful if we dug up the dirt, even just to plant grass. I discovered this while I was digging up the area to make it a weed herb garden two years ago.

So, questions. Andrea, if you read this, this is especially for you. Melody, too, but I don’t think you read my blog very much, if at all. (Prove me wrong!) 🙂 Anyone else who’s garden-savvy, go for it. Please.

1.) There are plants coming up that don’t look like standard broadleaf weeds. Should I try to identify these, or just say Fuck It? Some of them look kinda neat, but don’t flower. I wonder if some of my herbs came back (sage in particular)? I do know that some of these are the forsythia trying to make a comeback with its remaining root system. That fucking thing will NOT go away.

2.) WTF should I plant here? Bulbs? Grass? Or mulch it and pretend something should be growing? We don’t have very good luck with grass; we’ve tried growing it in various parts of the front and back yards, and only succeed in killing it with heat and drought in mid-August, while allowing weeds to sprout up mighty fine. And those were in sunny areas. This is very, very shady in summer.

3.) Should I transplant my hybrid tea rose? The foliage keeps coming back (but no buds or blooms), for two springs now, despite the fact that I continually forget to cover it in autumn. It’s shooting up tiny canes and leaves from the crown, and the rest of it is pretty much dead. But the crown is alive, so the rose is alive. Right? So, should I try to move it before it finishes dying, or try to nurse it back to health and strength before I move it, if at all? The place it’s currently living is between partial sun and partial shade, I’d say.

I feel like such a damn failure sometimes. As long as I can Set It And Forget It™, I’m good to go. If forgetting to water for a week will kill a particular plant in a particular spot, well, yeah. That’s how I roll. Although I am thinking about trying a new ghetto irrigation system I read about in You Grow Girl that might work for whatever I try to plant under the overhang this year. We’ll see…

randomness 2 Comments

My Birthday

So, many of you may be wondering, what was my birthday surprise? And what did I do before said 4:00 birthday surprise?

The day started like most Saturdays: with a trip to the Happy Rose Buffet. Aaron and I then went hunting for garage sales, being that it was sunny and gorgeous outside and sales should have been in full swing — but, alas, the few we found were barely worth getting out of the car for.

I did open my present(s) from Aaron, too. He got me the Dune special edition DVD and Logan’s Run on DVD, and also got me a Lane Bryant gift card. Squee!

Around 4:00, there was a knock on the door — and it was Sheryl! @whee! She brought me a birthday card (complete with her own Grim Reaper artwork), Hello Kitty stickers, a gift card to Home Depot (yay, plants!), and the You Grow Girl book I had listed on my Amazon wishlist. We hung out for a couple hours, just talking and shooting the shit, before she had to go get some food and head back to Columbus. That was an awesome surprise. Thank you, Sheryls! (Oh, and your Mom’s seventies golf clubs? Quite the swanky set.)

After Sheryl left, Aaron and I headed out to Wildwood to walk around and enjoy the weather. As we walked down the bike path (we weren’t wearing our walking shoes, and had to stick to the paved areas), we saw about six deer crossing the railroad tracks. That was cool.

Then came dinner. As usual, we waffled on where to go. We’re so indecisive about restaurants. We ended up deciding on Outback Steakhouse, and having the Bloomin’ Onion and the Outback-Style Prime Rib. Mmm. Then we came home and ate some Twinkie-misu for dessert.

Overall, I had a very low-key but pleasant 30th birthday.

I wish I had written in my diary/journal back when I turned 12, though, because I really felt a connection to how I felt back then — kind of like Life was moving faster than I was prepared to go. I distinctly remember making a comment about not wanting to grow up, and I remember my Aunt Sammie finding that preposterous. I was scared, though; in a few months, I’d be going to Junior High, graduating to a new Sunday School class, maybe having my “womanhood” rear its ugly head, and all I wanted to do was watch Dance Party USA and read Star Trek books and hang out with my Mom and her boyfriend.

The irrational fears that are in the back of my mind are a little different now. I’m close to half-done with my life — how fucked up is that?! I haven’t done half the things I wanted to by now, really. And being an agnostic/atheist isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I’ll tell you what. It would make my occasional fear of mortality a little easier to swallow if I thought I’d be seeing my stepdad Tom and my Memaw and my Granny and meeting Aaron’s Mom and all that shit when I die. As it is, death scares the living fuck out of me. Nonexistence is a tough pill to swallow.

Yes, I know, I’m only 30. But when I’m PMSing and being all funky before bed, weird shit goes through my head sometimes. And poor Aaron didn’t know what to make of the fact that I was all weepy on my birthday, when he was trying to be all Happy Birthday for me. And then he got all sweet and said that we were going to grow old together and use the next generation of Viagra so he can “knock my cobwebs out,” which was sweet in its own Aaron-ish way, and made me weepy all over again. (Poor boy just can’t win.)

I’m feeling much better now, though. It really was just PMS, I think. That, and remembering some crazy dream I had a few months ago where I thought that Aaron and I were going to die. That freaked my shit out. But maybe I’ll share that one later.

weight loss 4 Comments

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #14

Well, I forgot to weight myself before going ballistic on Chinese buffet and Outback for my birthday. When I weighed myself this morning, though, it showed that I’d gained two one and a half pounds since my last weigh-in. I’m OK with that; I’m guessing that everything will average itself back out in a couple of days.

I only managed to do one day of my PUSH workout this week, although I did enjoy the one time I did it. DVD #2 has me working with the resistance bands, finally, and I was definitely feeling it two days later. I feel like this is where I should have started to begin with, fitness-level-wise, but doing a month of more basic exercises to get me used to exercising was a good idea.

I’ve been continuing to eat whole wheat English muffins with natural PB (or sugar-free honey) for breakfast, although my snackies have been more sporadic. I get all into what I’m doing at work, and before I know it, it’s almost time for lunch. Oops. Oh, well. Lunch has been salad greens with canned chicken or turkey, sugar-free sweet relish, and salad dressing. OMG, I’d forgotten how much zing relish can add to stuff. Mmm. I’ve been being bad for dinner lately, though, and been making pasta salads — again, with the yummy relish and canned meats. I’ll turn my shit around for this coming week, though.

I’ve also been continuing my daily lunchtime walks, of course. Today I bought some special-for-work sneakers for walking, so I won’t wear out my nice work shoes (and so I can wear some of my cuter but more fragile shoes to work).

Oh, and I’m officially a “real” size 18 now, I think. I bought some new clothes at Lane Bryant today (thanks, Aaron, for the gift card!), and the size 20 dress pants I tried on were way bigger than I needed. I swapped them out for 18’s and didn’t try them on until I got home. They’re actually a little smaller than I’d like, but maybe I’m used to having some breathing room in my pants these days. At any rate, yay for smaller cute clothes.

(BTW, Sheryl? I feel SO LOST in Lane Bryant without you there to guide me to teh cuteness. Aaron’s a good sport, and wanders around behind me like I usually wander around behind you. Except I don’t know where I’m going, either.)

Still haven’t measured myself. I really need to do that. Blah.

podcasting

Podcast

Have all the components of a 20-minute show recorded, despite my less-than-optimal sickly voice. Have music bed and ID bumper selected. Have list of links to include in show notes. Have “April 21st” in intro to podcast #10. Have it half-edited together.

Have to go to bed. Can’t stay up another half-hour to complete the editing and post the show notes. My clamoring public will just have to wait another day, and pick up the new episode in the Monday morning rush (when my stats invariably jump by 50 listeners or so).

So tired. Ugh. Time to go to bed.

the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

Twinkie-misu, Year #2

Work was surprisingly pleasant today, really. No one felt like being terribly productive, so we were all chatty and friendly and social instead of being isolated and, well, productive. And the boss was on vacation this week, so he wasn’t around to scatter us back to work, like he tends to do. That always makes for an enjoyable Friday.

Also, I guess I inadvertently advertised my birthday at this week’s department meeting. Usually, our department holds a monthly potluck in celebration of all the birthdays in that month. I haven’t been participating lately, though, due to my diet, and I had assumed that the person who usually organizes the potlucks had taken notice of that, and was intentionally skipping April for my benefit. At the department meeting, though, she said that she’s organizing a building-wide potluck for Relay For Life instead. I piped up and mentioned that I’d thought maybe it was because I was the only April birthday. 🙂

So, today, a few people came into my cube bearing chips and salsa and cheese dip and 2-liters of pop — oh, yeah, and an African violet. (Very pretty pale silky flowers, BTW, in contrast to my dark velvety-flowered one at home.) On top of that, Scott made Twinkie tiramisu for my birthday, for a second year in a row. Mmm, so good!

Of course, since my cube was where the food was, everybody in the department (almost) made it into my corner of the world for some chatter. I learned some interesting facts about my co-workers and their backgrounds, and got more comfortable with some of them that I don’t usually talk with. That made for an unusually talkative day for me, and a very relaxing day-before-my-birthday at work.

I ended up bringing a good deal of Twinkie-misu home with me, with Scott’s blessing, and even brought home the rest of the chips and dips for good measure. Twinkie-misu gets me so high… Twinkies (soaked in espresso) and coffee ice cream and whipped cream and fudge sauce… yummy, but wow.   o.O

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. I’m still trying to downplay it… but I know that at least one other person is involved, from what Aaron let slip. So, something’s happening, at some point. I’ll be pleased with whatever it is, I’m sure.