Spring Break

About damn time.  It’s 2:00 on the Friday of our university’s Spring Break and I’m getting ready to Go Enjoy It!!!  Yeah, babbbeeeee!!!

You’d think that we professors would get to enjoy a little break from school.  But you’d think wrong!  I have worked my booty off this week.  And finally, at 2:00, although I have more work I can do, I’m going to take the afternoon off and do some chores. 

It is an absolutely gorgeous day in the mid 70’s and we’re going to do some plantin’ and some paintin’ this weekend and I need to go get prepped for this.  We will be updating the master bathroom and you can check here for our progress.  Right now, you can only see the hideous colors from yesteryear.  That is, unfortunately, not going to be changed, because we cannot afford it!  But we’re going to try to make the rest of it work with a new coat of paint and some kicky accessories. 

We’re also going to finish putting in our pink Lenten roses in the shade garden (that now I’m worried is not shady enough) and plant three (or more!) blueberry bushes!!  The asparagus continues to grow, and I’m documenting this year’s landscaping and gardening, here.  Why?  Well, because I can.  And it’s nice to see how everything changes.  The strawberry plants have flowers on them, too, so we may get berries this year.  Yippee!!!  Can I just say, once again, God Bless Perennials.  It is a buttload easier to plant once and then reap for years than to plant and plant and plant and plant and freakin’ plant again. 

OK. Off to be free to be me before I go pick up the little guy and smooch him on the head. 

1:49:46 PM    

Hope Springs Eternal

That’s what I think every time I look out at my garden.  I forget how I let the thing go to hell in a weedy hand basket last summer and I vow that this time, this year, I’ll keep on top of everything and we’ll have much better harvest with many fewer weeds.

Of course, I’m getting older and that sort of rosy viewed look at the world is not as compelling as it once was.  But still.  I think things will be better.

For one thing, we’ve scaled down this year’s garden a great deal.  I’m only planting lettuce, garden peas, chard, runner beans, leeks, radishes, beets, okra, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.  (Sadly, that’s a lot, lot less than I planted last year).  I’m also planting some sunflowers and a cutting flower garden to take up space and make it pretty. 

For another thing, the asparagus and strawberry beds from last year have already been put in so now we just have to weed them and enjoy them.  And yes, there’s already a 3 foot asparaguy out there that needs to be trimmed back.  I think that this year, I can harvest lightly and then next year, we might be able to eat a meal or two of them.  After that, I think they are ready to be fully snacked upon. 

This afternoon, I planted the first row of lettuce and the first row of garden peas.  I’ll replant more in a week or so to help draw out their season.  The problem is that I already know that I have to replant seeds every couple of weeks, but then I get lazy and we end up with a lot of unplanted seeds and one big crop of food, like salads every day for two weeks and then nothing. 

Well, fine.  Whatever.  I think the actual important part is the planting and how it makes me feel hopeful.  It makes me believe that everything is going to be fine this year and it’s all going to get easier.  It’s a lie I tell myself, but in the spring, it’s such a beautiful one. 

And for those of you outside the south or who are soon to be moving to the south, let me tell you how beautiful things are getting around here.  The trees are blooming, the tulips are up, and within a few weeks the dogwoods and azaleas are going to shout out their love.  There is nothing in this world better than the spring in the south.  It’s really, really hard not to be hopeful when there’s so much of this natural joy around us.

And on a darker note, I’d like to say that if my unexplained fatigue at this exact instance is any indication of how sick I’ve been feeling and that I don’t know what it’s like to feel healthy, then I agree.  You are right.  I am sick and I don’t know what healthy is.  I can’t imagine not feeling as exhausted as I normally do.  When am I supposed to start feeling better?  Anybody want to make a bet? 

4:01:50 PM    

Hello World

How the hell am I going to do this?  How am I going to work, be a decent mother and have some sort of life?  I am beginning to question whether all three of those options are even remotely possible.

Well, that is not entirely true.  If I can combine “life” with “mother” then it works.  For instance, I’m now taking my jog stroller to Conor’s school and after I pick him up, we go on a run around the neighborhood.  I’m not sure that counts as quality time, but it’s at least together time.  And then when we come home and I water around the parched landscaping, I’m counting that as a Horticulture Lesson.

And Dave and I have now started shift parenting and work.  One of us leaves early for work, the other takes the baby in “late” and comes home “late.”  The early bird leaves work early to pick the baby up out of daycare early-ish. 

But there’s not a lot of wiggle room in my day for other activities that mean something to me—like witty blogging.  It’s not that I don’t think about you, Internet.  It’s not like I don’t have something funny to say about life around here.  I’m just too damn busy to do it. 

Nonetheless, this is not a “Goodbye, sweet blogging world.”  It’s a “Well, F*ck.  I am DAMN busy.” 

So here are some abbreviated insights that at one point in my blogging life would have warranted a full entry.  And there is more cussing than usual because that’s the mood I’m in.

*Gardening is a bitch.  I know, I know.  It’s the journey, not the destination.  Well, screw that.  I want to Arrive Somewhere in my gardening and landscaping.  I want to check something off my list.  1)  Kill ivy.  2)  Water plants.  3)  Make sure scraggly shrubbery in front are not so scraggly. 3)  Weed landscaping beds.  4)  Decide when to replace scraggly shrubbery with neighborhood-typical English boxwood shrubbery.  6)  Weed garden.  7)  Harvest rotting vegetables from garden.  8)  Move dying daylilies out of shade into full sun.  9)  Smack husband for not agreeing that finding the right sunny spot for daylilies IS a life or death decision.  Well, of all of those, I can check off #9.  The rest are on my never ending To Do list outside.

*Getting Pregnant.  Yes, the first T in TTC is a lot of fun.  And there’s been more T in the last two months than there’s been in the last year.  And yes, that does help with the stress level.  But why does every month have to be different with my body???  It’s had years, YEARS, to figure this out.  Why does it have to fuck with me with 3 positive OPKs this month (2 were, in retrospect, false positives), and a slow temperature rise after ovulation thus freaking me the heck out that I’m having an anovulatory cycle when I’m TTC and does that mean I am approaching perimenopause and how is that possible when I’m still breastfeeding????

*Enjoying Motherhood (Disgustingly cute alert):  We’ve been going on family dates lately.  Two weeks ago, we took Conor on a trolley ride in Charlotte.  (fun)  We also discovered that Reid’s Grocery in Uptown Charlotte is encased in a musical building.  That means that if you touch the multicolored lit panels all the way around the building, they will make sounds.  Essentially, you can play the building all the way around the block.  That is fun.  And for a baby, hell, that’s just one more new thing in this world that’s cool.

But that’s not the cute part.  The cute part was last weekend when we went to dinner with another family and on the walk back from the restaurant, Conor and the other little boy kept reaching out of their strollers to grasp each other’s hand.  I thought I was going to die.  We moms struggled to keep the strollers aligned so we wouldn’t break their hand holding which is hard on a narrow sidewalk.  But I could not stand the cuteness of two babies who met each other in utero liking each other so much they spontaneously wanted to hold hands.  That is too much. 

OK.  Back to work.  My blog break leaves me behind.  But my mind was going to explode if I didn’t write down what is going on in my way too tightly wound up head.  

10:25:14 AM    

Mommy, me, me, me, me!!!

There was a time when I was jealous that Dave could put Conor to sleep and I couldn’t.  We called it “closing the deal.”  I would nurse and rock and nurse and rock, but Conor wouldn’t quiet down enough to put him in the crib.  I’d call Dave over the baby monitor and he’d come in, we’d tag off, and within 3 minutes the child would be down for the night.

No longer.

Now, I rock and nurse and rock and nurse which doesn’t take as long as it did once we realized that a walk around the block in the jog stroller helps calm the little one down.  I can easily get him into the crib.  For about 10 seconds.  Then he cries, and I rock and nurse and rock and nurse, and he goes down.  Protesting.  I call in Dave and they rock and cry and rock and cry until the baby’s cries escalate into screaming.  And then I’m back on duty as the one who rocks and nurses for just a few minutes and he is completely down. 

I miss the good old days.  The next time Dave becomes the favorite parent, I am so not going to be jealous.  I’m going to dance around the house in a long flowing skirt making an offering to the parent gods for giving me a few nights off. 

The Garden

I confess that I did not find the newspapers as weed killing mulch to be cute enough.  I used up the rest of our "real" mulch yesterday covering up the paper and some renegade weeds.  Next year, if we have a garden, and we’re going to have to do something in that space, I’m using real mulch in between plants and around the seeded areas.  Since the office looks directly over the garden space, it has to be cute.   

8:53:31 AM    

Welcome Home or I Love You, I Missed You, and Now I’m going to Pee on your Stuff 

Duncan was a love bunny all day yesterday.  He followed me around the house, pawed at my leg while I wrote and wanted to sit in my lap while I worked.  Considering that usually Duncan spends the day asleep on the bed, I was impressed just by his following me from room to room.

Then, in the late afternoon, I saw him squatting over my shoe.  Knowing his tendency to leave unwanted presents, I called the Collie Cops who nosed him off that spot.  Later, however, we found Dave’s backpack where Duncan had decided to leave his welcome home gift. 

When it was just Dave and Duncan, Duncan’s welcome home ritual was to love, love, love on Dave and then bite him hard on the hand.  Now that it’s Dave, Anita, Conor, Patches, Scarlett and Simba, it’s love, love, love and pee.  I guess I’d rather have him pee than try to bite the baby, but still.  It’s weird.  Duncan is a weird old cat. 

Teeth Aplenty

Well, Fang is about to be Fang no longer.  His front two teeth, in their right spots, have finally started to come out.  They have been visible for well over a week and since last Friday we could actually see them through the blister of skin that was bubbling up over them.  This morning, I finally felt the left one.  Yes, our poor guy has been pushing out 4 teeth at once.  That has got to hurt. 

Isn't he cute chillin in his ride?  He loves riding around like that!

English Peas

We had our first real meal of English Peas from the garden last night.  Yummmmmm.  Those were dang tasty.  For lunch, I’m going to make a salad with some of our over enthusiastic lettuce.  I’m also hoping on going running in the late morning.  My runs have finally started to progress.  Yesterday was the first good run I’ve had since the Charlotte (Half) Marathon in January 2004.  That’s a long time ago.  And it wasn’t even close to that distance.  Nonetheless, it didn’t suck, and I’ll take that in a run right now. 

Off to work. 

8:44:34 AM    

Update around the House

The garden is really getting going.  We’ve had quite a few dinners and lunches with the lettuce.  We planted the “heatwave” lettuce variety from Cook’s Garden, which is basically just regular green leaf lettuce.  It’s not as exciting as last year’s lettuce variety, but I’ll take it anyway.  Monday night, we had our first Swiss chard sausage and bean stew.  The absolute best thing about having chard in the garden is being able to put as much as I want in that stew.  I need to pick our English garden peas today for our first meal of those.  So far, the pole beans, beets, cannelloni beans, black-eyed peas, tomatoes, peppers and most of the eggplants are doing well.  I’m not thrilled with either the arugula or the watercress.  Both are a bit too game-y.  The strawberry bed is growing and the asparagus looks healthy. 

The paper as mulch is working well as long as there is no huge wind.  Then we’ve got paper flying all over the yard.  I have to add a bit more out there in places which have already disintegrated, but I like it.  It’s kind of ugly though.  That’s the only real problem with lining one’s garden like a birdcage. 

We finally got our encore azaleas over the weekend.  We’re nervous about planting them because they need good draining soil.  We really want them to grow well because the kind we ordered grow up five feet up and out 4 feet, and they would do a good job at screening the shed in our neighbor’s yard.  I had to tackle some ivy though in the trees around where we planted them to give them some more sun. 

There’s always something to do in the yard and garden.  That’s the amazing part.  I can sit here and think of 10 things I could do this morning, but I want to work on my research.  Next year, if there’s a new one on the way, the garden is going to be much, much less. 

Food Strike

Our little monkey pig has started on a bit of a food strike.  Whereas before, he’d eat anything we’d set in front of him, now we’re getting a tight lipped shaking of the head no for everything that isn’t Cheerios.  My call is that we offer it to him and if he doesn’t eat, we stop.  He’ll eat when he’s hungry.  However, I don’t want to keep offering Cheerios to get him to eat instead of real food.  We’re going to have to find something for them to give him at school other than the Cheerios.  I may be sending rice cakes and other healthier finger food to him.  We keep hearing that food refusal is a sign that he’s learning how to assert his independence and sense of self.  It’s hard not to worry though that he’s not eating enough food.

8:36:58 AM