gardening, photos Leave a comment

Daffodils, April 2013

Daffodils, April 2013

[Taken 9 April 2013]

These daffodils were some of the first flowers to show their heads last Spring. There are also some pink hyacinth popping up in the background.This is the flower bed right next to our back door, under the kitchen window.

The conspicuously bare branches near the pink hyacinth belong to the Japanese maple and the butterfly bush. (The butterfly bush took so long to come back to life — early summer, as I recall — that I wondered if it was actually dead.)

Same with the clematis — it’s just out of frame to the right, but it was just a dead-looking plant on a tall metal trellis for most of the Spring. Once it finally came out of dormancy and bloomed, I discovered that it’s the kind that blooms in June and repeat flowers, and needs to be cut back to 12″ every now and then (as my former landscaping guy recommended).

But the clematis is a post for another day. For now, the countdown begins: only 11 more weeks until I see some color in my yard again!

randomness Leave a comment

Some Old-School Blog Kvetching

Today I decided that I don’t write tweets about mundane shit like dragging ass all day.

That’s what my blog is for.

Despite a 14oz iced Via this morning and a tall skinny latte after lunch, I was spectacularly tired all day. My Sleep Cycle app tells me that I was in bed for almost 8 hours last night, with “sleep quality” of 82% — so, not awesome, but not horrible, despite being awakened at 4:30am by my son’s half-asleep cries.

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock graph

(Side note: I always feel like a giant ass or an uncaring parent, but I don’t go to him unless he’s obviously awake and possibly hurt or in danger of crying so much he’ll throw up. If I leave him alone, he’ll go back to sleep within five minutes. If I go in there, I’ll wake him completely and it’ll take 20 minutes to get him back down.)

At any rate, even though I did fix some broken stuff at work today, Friday feels like a wash. I’ve been fighting to concentrate all day, and been in a shitty mood from being so tired.

I’m guessing PMS has something to do with all this.

I also started tracking my mood throughout the day, using an app called Happiness. It wasn’t free, but it cost less than the latte I bought today. It asks how I am at random points in the day, and I can rate how “Happy” or “Not So Good” I feel, plus tag reasons why (or write an actual journal entry if I so choose). In the day or so I’ve been using it, I’ve already discovered trends, obvious though they already were. Being tired brings me down. Interacting positively with my co-workers and being helpful makes me happy. Nature makes me happy. My son (when he’s not being difficult) makes me happy.

So, the idea is to live an examined life, to figure out what makes me happy and to maximize those things, and try to minimize the things that make me feel not so good (like being tired). One day of data is not enough to spot trends, but I’m hoping to do so in time.

Part of me says this is the stupidest thing ever. Tracking my happiness? Really? But the atheist/humanist in me points out that happiness in life IS ALL WE HAVE. Engendering happiness in ourselves and in others is quite possibly THE most important thing.

I think I just discovered my motto for 2014.

My Motto For 2014