Looks Like The Guest Room Upstairs

Really.  I don't think there are many rooms like this, but I could be wrong.

I am working too much I think.  Had a lovely walk in the woods today with Riley and my friend. Then G and I worked on the pile of dirt the snow plow dumped on the street edge of the property. I did most of it but G helped.

Reading a good book--Broken Harbor by Tana French.

My seedlings are doing very well in the styrofoam "hot box"--with one pot of tomato seeds germinating in just 30 hours.  The flat leaf parsley isn't doing anything.  I may need to try again. Right now I have five pots of seeds under lights and five in the box.

I need an extra day off this week and I might be able to get the carrots, kohlrabi and onions into the garden.  Do you think I could actually manage to get an extra day off????  Didn't think so.

Overwhelmed With Post It's

This would be a horrible idea.  All those notes to one's self dangling overhead.  Unless of course they are notes of love and devotion overhead for a birthday or anniversary.

I have a list on the pantry door.  A long list. Which is bad enough. Some of it is things to do and some of it is things to think about.  I have an additional list of recipes to make or just think about.  My appointment with my doctor is on May 6th and I am FAR away from the number we agreed on.  I am seriously trying but I think I will have to ask for help.  Either a program or a medicine.

I eat mostly yogurt with fruit (from the freezer and my garden) or a salad with some kind of protein.  Right now it's a green salad with carrots and no dressing and pile of crock pot BBQ'ed pork. I sometimes have tuna salad with the plain greens and carrot. I now have a recipe for curried chickpeas that I can use for the protein but a commenter on the Simple Veganista blog said she made the curried recipe with a can of tuna.  I also love the plain greens with chicken salad.  No carbs.

I think my problem is not eating when I actually feel hungry.  It's not time to eat, or I am too busy to eat or I have nothing proper to eat when I get hungry.  Then I just eat (random) things and never feel satisfied. I need to eat sitting down.  Slowly.  I just wish it worked out that way at work.  But it doesn't.  I was halfway through my yogurt with peaches and raspberries when the truck arrived yesterday and then failed to make myself a proper salad when it was time to eat at home.  So the day was a fail.  Breakfast is working just fine.

And my knee has started to hurt like it did last Spring.  No swelling yet.  I have the pad stuck to the side of my foot and I am using this roller thing my daughter got from the running store.  You roll it over tight muscles (which are tender so it isn't a pleasant feeling until you stop) and you feel better. She used it for ankle tendon issues and foot pain.  I rolled it over my back (and G's) and then up and down the back of my right knee.  It feels better this morning.  I think it's the abrupt return to the cement greenhouse floors and the uneven gravel in the perennial yard.  And I'm getting older and older and doing the same amount of physical labor.  I was 60 when I started this job and now I am 68.5.  And this year I have all the work at home to do as well.  I have limited my exposure to work (how fun is that?) to 3.5 days.  So, I go to work 4 days a week but get to leave early on one of those days.  Two hours early.  The maximum time I am sitting on those four days is 15 to 30 minutes.  The rest of the time I am standing, walking, bending or hauling things around.  Why am I so fat?????

I brought a foam Omaha Steaks cooler box from work (the dumpster) and inserted my seed starting mat into the bottom and my pots of seeds.  G says it's too warm.  But I think it might be "just right" with the lid a bit off to the side.  The pink zinnias (8 of the seeds) have germinated already but not much else.  Seeds need heat to germinate quickly.  Especially the tomato seeds.

I have seeds (new to me) named for two WWII dictators.  One from Italy (Mussolini) and one variety from Romania.  Collected by Italians coming to America and the other from an oil contractor bringing a ripe tomato home from Romania.  Both are supposed to be very delicious. Tomato growing is never boring.

The house across the street from me is now up for sale.  The advertisement had 36 photos of the rooms in the house.  It all looks so "artificial" (and gorgeous) but I hope nice people come to look and buy.  My neighbor can no longer afford to live across the street from me.  A combination of employment issues, poor health and rising property taxes.

I Wish I Had Tomorrow Off

I got used to having Sunday and Monday off.  And now I have to go to work on Monday.  Poo.

The Fairy Garden I made as a sample sold just as I was going to get it to show to the people in my vegetable gardening class.  So, after class, I had to build another one.  Quickly.

Three people showed up to build a fairy garden and one of them was seven years old with the attention span of a gnat.  Her sharp little voice was more than I could stand but I just counted to ten and kept saying "not yet" as she tried doing things out of order.  Later I realized the older woman with her was so much worse.  At that point, the seven year old had run off to look for a "fairy" and was unavailable for me to appreciate.  All three gardens looked very nice.

I then used the extra container to make a second "sample" for anyone wanting a fairy garden.  I used up the entire bag of mosses Riley and I collected and all the bark and twigs and most of the acorns and caps (the seven year old wanted her fairy to have a complete set of dinner plates).  No one made a fairy banner but I think the seven year old might have liked it--if she had stayed around more.  But--searching for fairies is difficult work.

Today, G and I went to Patty's house to help prune her grapes.  When we got there it was warm but the chill arrived mid-way.  It was hard getting G to "not over do" in the physical work.  He was supposed to sit in the lawn chair and supervise.  I circled some of the vines in a box for future grape vine wreath making.  The remainder of the vines got clipped--by me-- into an easily moved pile of same size pieces.  About 3 feet tall.

Now we are home.  Riley threw up his supper. And I was ever so pleased he did so on the plain wooden floor and not on the beige carpet.  I found the new shoe laces I had misplaced.  I have 8 containers of seeds planted and sitting on top of the heating pad (one made for plants) and feel like I am actually "getting somewhere".  G has a large quantity of "seed tape" made up for carrots and kohlrabi.  We use toilet paper and flour and water paste.  Beets next time.  I have already planted my peas.  I did not get to pick up the tree limbs and branches off the front lawn.  I had wanted to get that done today.  It'll have to wait.

And This Is What I Have Been Doing......

Teaching Classes.  Working.  Being Nurse Joanne.  Not Cooking.  Walking The Dog.

All this activity has also increased my weight. Yeah.  Go figure how that works.

On Tuesday I taught two classes after being at work from open to 3 pm.  My day lasted exactly 12 hours and then I got to go home and change the dressing on G's "zipper" which has opened due to an allergic reaction to the stitches.  It's healing and the surgeon's office is happy with my work.

G is actually doing very well.  He sits in the sunshine most afternoons and gets his dose of vitamin D from the sun, sleeps well, is reading his book at a good clip, and even did a bit of repair work on his webbed lawn chair when it self destructed the other day.  In between, he is driving himself to a multitude of doctor's appointments and tomorrow is his first day at Cardio Rehab.

The photo up top is of a Fairy Garden.   Saturday I am teaching Small Space Gardening at 10 am and Build a Fairy Garden at 2 pm.  I am so looking forward to this class.  Right now I only have one person signed up but, hopefully, the little "demo" garden I made up today will interest somebody else.

On my walk with Riley after work (my days are long), in the woods, (which has finally shed about 75% of it's snow cover), I collected lots of bark, moss and lichens.  Two handsful and a pile more between my arm and shoulder.  Tomorrow (my day off) Riley and I will be digging up moss for the class.  I like a Fairy Garden to look "woodsy".  Like the fairy just left home to go looking for an acorn cap to use as her dinner plate.  The Borrowers books were big favorites of mine.  All those tiny things they "borrowed" from the house for their little house.  Matchboxes for beds, etc.

Which brings me round to my weight.  Way more than I thought it would be.  I am feeling quite defeated as I haven't really been eating badly since March 4th.  I think I had salads in the hospital cafeteria most days.  Not much for dinner.  Always bran flakes for breakfast.  Most days it's yogurt and fruit for lunch and a salad for dinner.  Treats are limited to popcorn or a Dairy Queen cone. I'm going to "think" it's water retention and hope for better things tomorrow.  But my ring isn't tight.

And that's what is going on here.  It's all good.  I do have to collect all the sticks and twigs off the lawn (front and back) and then G might show me how to use the gas powered brush to get all the sand off the lawn out by the street.  Orphan Black is coming back on this week.  The Americans is getting very dark and it was nice to see Joss back on Person of Interest which has rating problems due to all the boring Samaritan story line which seems endless.  And Shaw is gone.  Presumed dead.  All the best shows end up doing something to kill the ratings.  Even Elementary.

Happy Easter Everyone

Nothing I like better than polka dot rabbits.  Well, carrots are pretty good, too.

I worked today.  And no one cooked dinner.  So we went to Chinese and G had a big bowl of hot and sour soup.  He is always feeling cold these days.  It could be the meds that are slowing his heart rate or it could just be a lack of exercise.  He walks but mostly he sits and reads or sleeps.  He starts cardio rehab later in the month.

I am back to work.  Three and one half days.  I find I enjoy having 3 days off.  This week two of them were in a row and that was very nice indeed.  I set those two days aside for doing the taxes but I only needed five hours on the first day.  So, the second day was like a holiday.

I wish I had planned ahead and cut some branches to force in the house.  I have a lovely collection of eggs and rabbits from my years in Germany and loved having an Easter Tree to decorate the house back then.  I always forget to do the same here in the US of A.  Why?  Holidays were so much easier to plan for in Germany.  The shops had plenty of tiny eggs and rabbits for sale.  Not candy and toys.
I don't even know what is traditional to eat on Easter in Germany.  Or I have forgotten.  Marimo will you remind me????

Next year.  Remind me.  I need a calendar for 2016 to write notes into.  Like the past me reminding the future me of important dates.  I remember doing that one December.  Writing in the new year calendar where I had put the new lights and decorations I had purchased in the after holiday sales.
And, true to form--by the next December I had forgotten about them.  Great to see the reminder.

Now---I need to find a 2016 calendar.

Doing Our Taxes

Kicking and Screaming.  I always leave this to the last and then it takes all of three or four hours and I bang my forehead on the desk and yell "why did I wait?".  And here we are again.

My excuse this year is G's heart.  Not that I didn't have the time (I didn't) but that he hadn't installed the updated tax program before having the heart attack.

This is my story and I'll stick to it.

Another page in the history of our marriage.  I am forever a procrastinator.  Writing this is procrastination.  Picking dead, dry leaves off a fern, that was also.  Oddly enough, I do some things when procrastinating that would be the things not being done by others who procrastinate.  I do laundry, wash dishes, change bedding, take down and wash heavy large curtain panels, wash windows, vacuum, weed the garden etc etc.  Those things don't bother me.  I will even iron huge baskets full of shirts.  And starch them.  No problem.

Taxes?  Problem.  Paying Bills?  Problem.  Car Servicing? Problem.  Driver's License Renewal? Problem.  My own doctor's appointments?  Problem.  Appointments At the Bank?  Problem. Learning New Computer Software?  Forget about it.

And that's the post for today.  I have to stop now or lose whatever slight momentum I have to actually get the taxes done today.  OMG.