Walking Backwards

Joe and I had so many plans for this weekend and I've gone and ruined them. To explain, after having Nicholas, I ended up with some sort of weird hip/spine/knee thing and Friday evening it started acting up. I've been incapacitated since. The only way I could lay down without screaming in pain was to take lots of Vicodin. The Vicodin made me nauseous and sleepy, so I spent all day today in bed, writhing in pain, vacillating between feeling sick and being asleep. It has been lame. It's going away though. I stopped taking the pain medicine because the nausea is bothering me worse than anything right now. So I'm boring.

While being boring, I've developed a new love for weekend PBS shows. There are so many fabulous gardening shows on that I always miss because we are out and about doing something. The Victory Garden show featured houses that had showpiece gardens. They were so inspiring that, had I not been laid-up, I might have actually gone outside and done something. Oh, and America's Test Kitchen, I had forgotten my amazement with that show. Their mushroom risotto had me trying to convince Joe that he really did like mushrooms, really.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get out of bed and get some work done around the house. We're out of town next weekend and I really need to start spiffing the place up for the onslaught of houseguests that always accompanies Nicholas' birthday. The influx of grandparents. Of course, if not, there is always public broadcasting.

Dining area in the back of the room. The rug is just a carpet remenant and has gotten a little gross after dealing with my toddler's eating habits. The butterfly print on the wall is actually a hand-painted silk scarf my grandmother left me when she died. She bought it when she lived in Italy in the late seveties. I think it is awesome and hope to get the other ones she left me framed as well and put them on either side of this one.

My bookshelves and all of my weird plants. The pictures above were taken when Nicholas was four months old. I'm hoping to get some new ones soon. The bookshelves also need to be cleared out.

This is the view if you are standing at the windows at the front of the house. I hate that freaking chandelier with a passion. It is only held on by one bolt, too, so it might fall to its death one day. I can only hope. Don't look too closely at the kitchen in the background. I hadn't done the dishes all day.

This is the view you get when you first walk in the front door. It is a lot lighter than it looks. The red wall is a sueded surface, so it looks darker in the picture. The floors are also not that dark color of brown and have a lighter reddish color to them.

This is the view if you walk in the front door and immediately ruen left. Under those two mirrors is where we are planning on putting the elusive sideboard. I'm also about to recover the cushions on the rocking chair (again!) because they are getting a little worn from being the cat's favorite perch.

I know I have already said this, but I'm too lazy to search the archives and it won't hurt to repeat it again. Joe and I have decided that our plan to sell this house and move after we had been here for five years is not feasible. Our house has increased in value to the point where we would not be able to afford it, and to buy a house we could afford would be decreasing our quality of housing. We would either have to move further out from the city or move into a smaller house on the outskirts (where we live now). Admittedly, our house is not ideal, but it's okay and comfortable and a good enough location. It's a little more than we want to spend, mortgage wise, though, and doesn't have the appeal of a funky older house inside the city (ideal for me). So . . . we're here to stay, for a while it seems.

Now, because we have decided to stay here long term, I can finally do some things to make this place mine. Some things like built in bookshelves. I am running into a problem, however. First, we're broke, these things cost money and we just don't have a lot to go around. Second, after years of apartment and house-hopping, our stuff is just not cohesive at all. Very little of it matches and there is no unifying characteristics. None of it seems to fit together. Several friends have recommended we just throw scarves over all of it and call it eclectic, but that just doesn't seem like a good idea or a long term solution. Knowing that we are going to be here long term has opened up a whole new set of possibilities. Like furniture. Third, with a toddler I have restrictions on my time and the amount of effort I can put out. My little boy just can't handle the idea of letting me paint.

So those are my problems. I need motivation and I need inspiration. As someone who hasn't put roots down into a place in a long time, I'm having a hard time figuring out what I'd like to do to make this place home. Really, I want it to reflect my life and Joe's life and Nicholas' life and be a place where we can accomplish what we want to accomplish and be comfortable. I figure that isn't too tall of an order, right? If I can only figure out what that means.

In the mean time, I have started a photo home to to get an idea of what we are beginning with. I've only done the front room so far, because I have to clean as I go and with two boys today, very few areas stay clean for long. Posting coming from Flickr in a few minutes.

This is the most finished room in our house. That way you know I do make an effort sometimes. We are still looking for a side board to go against the wall in this picture, but other than that, not too bad. The rest of the house, though, yikes! The holes in the wall of my bathroom are the worst.

Tuesday evening we started the practical portion of our lab work. I really ended up feeling stupid, so this week am going in to every available open lab. The final exam is not going to be too difficult, but the lab portion may just do me in. We basically get a group of rocks and have to identify them and identify distinguishing characteristics that they possess. For instance, one station will have a group a four rocks. You have to identify whether or not they are metamorphic, igneous, or sedimentary. Then you have to identify what rocks they are. Then you have to figure out what relation they have to one another and what place each has in the rock cycle. Now, the problem is that they all look like just rocks. They all look the same to me. I am much better with written analysis than I am with the in-your-hand variety. Yet another reason why I am not cut out to be a scientist.

This weekend's Baker's Dozen (just a couple of days late):

1. I had to wake up super early on a Saturday to take my geology field trip.

2. Joe and I set three alarms because I was terrified of sleeping through the first one (or two). If I missed the field-trip, I fail the class.

3. I brought some snack food, but forgot my lunch. The girl who sat behind me had extra rice crispy treats, though.

4. Every stop we made, I picked up rocks for Nicholas. He did not seem to interested in them when I got home, but I found that he had put them in his treasure basket later.

5. When Nicholas and Joe came to pick me up in the evening, Nicholas got to meet my classmates and transformed into a shy little wallflower.

6. Sunday morning I woke up and realized that if Joe didn't go to the store, we would have nothing for lunch for our friends who were coming over at noon.

7. Joe has finally picked out an acceptable avocado.

8. I was able to pawn off some of Nicholas' outgrown baby stuff that isn't going into his quilt. Seanna took our Boppy covers and some receiving blankets and some stuff I can't remember. I do need to put some of it to the side for the upcoming garage sale.

9. Lily knocked over my bead storage case when I accidentally closed her in the closet. Joe and I spent an hour cleaning up hundreds of tiny little beads. I am about to give up beading if I have to deal with this again.

10. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning

11. My compulsive list-maker self is coming out again and I have started making lists of projects to complete over the summer. I might publish those project ideas with links to instructions later if I get bored.

12. Several of the sites I visit have been talking about the mail exchanges they have been participating in and I am realizing how much I've been missing it. So, I started looking for exchange partners. Anyone interested? (Kay? Wanna be my penpal again :)?)

13. Finished knitting the red scarf for my sister-in-law's Christmas gift (one down, six to go) [I forgot my camera when I went on my field trip, sorry]

Listening to morning radio broadcasts is very odd. Whenever I drive Nicholas to school or we're out in the morning running errands, I usually listen to the news. Yesterday, I didn't want to here about the great tragedies of our world and instead tuned into a local morning show on the station where I listen to 80s music during the lunch hour. It was so strange. Morning radio shows are just a group of people talking about there day and what is going on in their lives. The minutiae of what they are interested in is supposed to keep listeners glued to their dials. And the strange thing is that it worked for a little bit. I don't know what they do, but they had me interested in formula 1 racing for about five minutes. It is my voyeuristic nature I suppose. It is what leads me to eavesdrop on other's conversations in elevators and in restaurants. Realizing what I was doing, I changed the tuner to classical music before I became too involved and started stalking these people to find out what happens the rest of their day.

[Nicholas would like to do some writing]
tyruufujhuufuryrtptiutytftrtry
vhb
hfffffyyry
gytrrrrrtr
hhtyty
yjryryyyyyet
yetetetrttetrt
ffgegeg
ytyytyytyruu
gjhfygu

While I haven't been on the computer much today and the television has also been off the majority of the time, I've decided to put off TV turnoff week until the week after finals. Gah, I feel so guilty, but I need the mindlessness of it after hours of studying and, as bad as this sounds, I need the temporary child distraction (although that lasts a max of twenty minutes now-a-days, but those minutes are like gold because my son has gotten, um, a little needy). Also, with our schedule free of other obligations, we'll be able to do a lot more fun outdoorsy type things. I think I may take him bowling, too. I don't think it would be fair to either of us right now to take away two of his distractions and become even more involved with school at the same time. Stay-tuned for further developments . . .

The reason I was off of the computer so much today, other than the desperate need to study, was because I was in my car for god-awful amounts of time. I took Nicholas to school, ran errands, picked Nico up, took him up to pick up Joe for lunch, took Nico to therapy, tried the grocery store with a tired baby and ended up having to leave with no groceries, and so much I'm forgetting. The worst part about it all was I kept coming up with these ideas of what I'd like to write about, but I wasn't near a computer. So now that I am near one I'm drawing a blank.

I can remember one thing I wanted to rant about was how Goodwill has transformed into a place where thrifting has died. I tried to go by there to pick up some summer clothes for Nico, but they've switched to a new pricing scheme where all clothing of a certain group is a certain price and now special half-off days. Toddler pants were $3.99 a pair. All of them, even the one's that had started to fall apart. The selection was so poor, too. I had a couple of books picked out, but after finding out their prices I walked out of the building with nothing. I am so saddened that I have been priced out of Goodwill. Of course, that is probably because I found items there that were cheaper, new, from Target. I've heard good things about ebay shopping, so that is where I go next.

I am up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Yuck! Actually, I'm sure that once the exhaustion wears off that I will be excited. Today I am going on a field trip for my geology class and right now I'm waiting for Joe to get the baby ready to drop me off at school. We're going all over the Texas Hill country to look at different geological formations and to take a guess at their origins. I must be insane to be excited to spend my precious Saturday like this, but I am. I think that swinging by the coffee shop is going to make me a little more chipper, though. Should probably leave a little early . . .

Today marks the start of the wind-down to final exams. I told my friend Annie to start bringing Baby H by an hour earlier each day so she can study since all we're doing is sitting around in our underwear watching television and eating pancakes anyway. Hopefully she'll get some studying done. Yesterday I spent five hours studying. All morning when Nicholas was in school I was down the street in the library with all my notes spread out over a huge table. When Nicholas went to bed my dining room table was taken over. I have an exam this evening, a field trip with a thirty page project book on Saturday, and then my three comprehensive exams at the beginning of May. As you can imagine, my blog entries are going to be pretty boring the next couple of weeks. After all, the fifteen minute break I give myself every two hours is spent on the internet surfing blogs to peer into lives that are by far more interesting than mine right now.

Mentioning blogs that I have been spending time at lately, I have become fascinated with 'craft' blogs. I love looking at what people have made and spent their time on. I am amazed at the talent of some of the people out there. The most amazing part is that the majority of the blogs I read are those of women with small children. I can barely keep up with my laundry and these women are creating works of art. I suppose I'm being greedy and falling into that trap that a lot of mothers do, the idea that we should be able to do it all. I imagine these women don't go to college or take care of other people's children AND make gorgeous quilts in less time than it took me to cut up the pieces of mine. I think that they have focused their energy on what is most important to them and spend their precious free-time on that. As for myself, I seem to have scattered interests and spend my time hopping from one project to another. I might get more done if I stop doing that.

Blogger is about to have its scheduled outing so I'm just going to share this great fabric I found while out thrift store shopping today. I don't know what to do with it yet, but I think its great. Only 99 cents for two curtain panels, too. I'll probably end up using it to make throw pillows for our guest room, but it has so much potential.



Also, I finally added a picture to this weekend's Baker's Dozen. I'll eventually get the pictures up to Flikr, but right now I'm still running with a skeleton crew in this here computer.

This year I totally failed at Joe's birthday. I had school that night and spent the entire day watching baby H. I also had just returned from our trip to Tennessee two days before. So this year I really have to make Joe's father's day really special. I know it is two months away, but I figured with how much I bombed his birthday I should do something that will probably take some time. I was thinking of going to one of those paint-your-own ceramics places and having Nicholas and I make him something, but I have no idea what he would like and I don't think there is much there he could use. The standard personalized coffee mug isn't going to fit the bill because the man is an anomaly that doesn't drink coffee. We're also incredibly broke right now, so no expensive vacations or sports cars. Another thing I'm considering is having a portrait of Nicholas and I framed nicely, but I always feel that giving someone a picture of yourself is just weird. Any suggestions of father's day gifts that went over well are welcome. Also, any ways of getting my husband to pick some hobbies that aren't quite as expensive or unattainable will be greeted with cheers and pats on the back. Every site I looked at for gift suggestions is really lame.

Less than a week now until national Tv Turnoff week (see this site for details). This year we're upping the ante a little bit by turning off not only our television, but also limiting our computer time as well. Since Joe is going to be secondary on-call person next week, I can't really set a time limit for him, but I'm only going to allow myself an hour of computer time after the baby has gone to bed each day and I'm probably going to cut Nico off completely. We'll see how that works. For now, I need to get into the planning stage of "what to do all day with no media stimulus". We'll probably go to the children's museum and the mall to wander around and the park, but I'm hoping to find something new for us to do this year. They print a family activity calendar for Austin that I need to get my hands on. I don't think taking Nico to the movies would be quite in the spirit of things. Hmmmmmm, must plan.

This weekend's Bakers Dozen (special Easter edition)

1. Saturday morning I tried to sleep in, but was cruelly reminded by my loving husband that I had to up in a timely fashion because we had things to do. I should not have stayed awake until 1am watching bad television.

2. For lunch Saturday I sliced and macerated strawberries, cubed cantaloupe, cut and boiled potatoes for potato salad, marinated chicken, and mixed up bean burgers.

3. My dad got in early Saturday and we got talk, talk, talk. My dad and I are like a couple of old ladies together.

4. I finished filling all 36 of the little plastic Easter eggs we had with chocolate. 36 because we were having the hunt at a friend's house, so there had to be enough to go around.

5. Dinner and Easter egg hunt with friend and her son went well. The eggs didn't get spilt evenly (20 to 16), but they both seemed satisfied.

6. For the three year-old set, dinner is forgotten in light of the new found chocolate.

7. Joe works all night Saturday until 9 in the morning on Sunday. He loses some of his Easter spirit and we decide to skip going to the UU church.

8. While waiting for Joe to rise from the dead, I prep all of the ingredients for the potluck dinner we are going to in the afternoon hours. We're bringing mashed sweet potatoes and something to grill. I fill a giant bucked with peeled and sliced sweet potatoes. It turns out not to be enough.

9. Yet another Easter egg hunt, this time with Nico and baby H. Twenty-four eggs for two boys. Nicholas helps baby H fill his basket when it doesn't seem like he is getting enough.

10. I get a little too tipsy after two glasses of wine and three beers (in my defense it was over 5 hours).

11. Joe and brother-in-law Jon have to load the car and start it to get me to leave. I was having fun and we were with great friends.

12. Texas transforms to summer in the space of a weekend and the thermostat reads 97 degrees when I checked it on Sunday.

13. My computer still has not responded to my entreaties for it to work just long enough for me to get the software transferred to Joe's computer. I'm picking up a disk from Walgreens instead, but it is going to take awhile. Instead, just imagine Nico with a basket full of eggs looking cute.

****Edited to add picture!!!****

It seems that by teaching my son the basics of how to use a computer, I have introduced a new, insidious form of computer virus into my life. My computer now will only run for a few minutes and then lock up. Resident computer experts say it is because my software has become unstable due to dirty shutdowns, installing new software, and playing eighteen flash games at once. My only choice right now is to reinstall my operating system and hope that there is no hardware damage. I do have another computer waiting to be set-up that I've been holding off on because who has the time, but it has its operating system and is ready to go. I just have years worth of stuff saved on this thing. I need to figure out how to get all of my pictures and files and bookmarks over to the other computer. I should have made backup disks of everything, but I'm lazy. I should have been making them considering that this computer is seven years old and that seven years old is like ninety in people years. Hrm, I'm going to have to get creative. Now to find something that is an acceptable distraction from dealing with these things.

Happy Easter to all, we are celebrating later this afternoon because Joe was working last night from 2am until 9 this morning . I don't think he is going to be up to being the easter bunny or doing it with a smile. We went to visit some friends last night and did an easter egg hunt with them. Nicholas' basket is waiting in the closet until Joe gets out of bed. I also don't want to bring it out because Nico needs to eat breakfast before devouring any chocolate, but I know Joe wants to see Nicholas' face when he opens it. We got him the coolest little toys from a local toy shop. Later today, we have easter dinner with a group of friends in Kyle, about 45 minutes away. I hope every has fun and finds all the plastic candy filled eggs they desire. I'll post pictures of the cuteness (hopefully I can get the camera to work on Joe's machine) when I do the Baker's Dozen tonight.

Well, yesterday was not quite as productive as planned. Amazingly, the reason that I didn't get much done was not that I ended up on the couch eating chips and reading a books, but because my roller derby meeting lasted a really, really long time. I left the house around 11 to swing Joe's lunch by before the meeting and I didn't get home until almost 4. By that time I just got to brush my hair and my teeth and get all my stuff ready for school before running out the door. So my house is still messy and my dad is coming up this weekend and we are having friends over for dinner. They are just going to have to accept the fact that I don't have time for silly things like laundry and if they open the shower curtain, they got the view they deserved for snooping :). And, right now Joe is laying on the bed because he feels sick and I just want to kick him because doesn't he understand that I don't have time for him to be sick. I have an agenda and it does not have room for him being sick. This will be the third weekend in a row where he will not do anything around the house. Two weeks ago he had his vasectomy, last week we had my sister-in-law's wedding, and now this. Gar, I guess I just don't have any sympathy left.

Baby H is sick today, so it is just me and Nicholas today. I am going to take this rare opportunity to try and get going on my house and my homework and my craft projects, having the motivation of only one child to keep the chemicals away from. I also have a roller derby meeting today for our new league, that will be fun. It is all moms and the practices and games are going to be kid friendly. I'll be getting in some exercise and getting to roller skate with some cool mamas, yay for all that! My goals to accomplish for today are as follows (I'll update later to let you know how far I really got):

- Clean stove top and soak drip pans (I roasted chilies and they're gross)

- Clean guest bathroom and master bathroom

- Deep water veggie garden and new trees, try to resuscitate lavender on porch that needs to be planted)

- Do 4 loads of laundry

- Call to schedule pest-control treatment, well-child check, and haircut

- Call Travis and figure out what we're doing this weekend

- Call to schedule tours of preschools

- Finish filling easter eggs

- Make lunch and deliver to Joe (he forgot his lunch and has no cash)

- RollerGirl meeting

- Go buy party store and have Nico pick a theme for his party

- Make dinner

- School tonight

The trip to Houston was fun, but tiring, which is why I am only now getting to write about it. Most of the family was involved in wedding set-up and the like, so we just hung around the house waiting to be told what to do. Most of our time was spent hanging out with one of Joe's brothers and his wife. It wasn't going too badly until they brought up religion. Damn them. They're Jehovah's Witnesses and I really don't like talking about anything except for the most superficial subjects with them. It wasn't too bad, but I had to keep myself from telling them that I thought they were crazy. I go through life holding on to the belief that we all have different ideas and opinions and none of them are more or less right than the other. That is why they are beliefs, we believe them to be true based on what seems right to us and is in sync with our life experiences. Well, they basically sat there and told me that none of my beliefs have any basis or that they're poorly researched or that they make no sense when looked at in a linear fashion. I was good and just kept my comments restricted to why I felt the way I did about what I believe. I did not once criticize them. I just hope we don't have to spend that much time with them alone again. I have a mean temper sometimes.

After the last few weeks of being so gun-ho about getting my house in order, I'm starting to lose steam. I have a very dirty house today since I haven't been home enough to clean it, but I can't bring myself to get it all done. I'm half-tempted to hire someone to come in and give the house a good top to bottom scrub so I can just concentrate on decluttereing, but I don't think we can sacrifice the money. We have an awfully busy schedule for the next month and are expecting at least two sets of houseguests at various times. I should probably have something for them to sleep on and clean the dirty baby scum from the guest bath. I think the fact that Nicholas is emotionally unstable right now is also hindering my house-cleaning progress (yeah, that's it). I just want to run to the computer and hide. On the drive home we had our first hint that this was going to be a bad day to get anything done:


Nicholas: "Mommy, you need to drive"

Me: "Honey, it's a red light. I have to wait until all of the other cars stop going and the light turns green otherwise we'll be in an accident. I don't want to be in an accident, you might get hurt and I'd be sad if that happened."

N: (starting to cry and exclaiming in a high-pitched whine) "Mommy, I want to be in an accident! Now go!! I want an accident!!!!!"


Crazy day. I hope it gets better, but who knows. Nico is freaking out right now because the batteries on his Elefun game are dead and we don't have any others. I think it might be time for a nap for us all.

Change that, he is now freaking out because he can't find the number one in his number puzzle.

Nicholas just walked up to me and said:
"Mommy, we need to read some of your books. Read it to me"

What he held out:
"Beyond Good and Evil" by Nietzsche

I knew I did that boy wrong when I bought him "A Child's Book of Machiavelli" (as a joke, a joke). No wonder he is having problems at school.

Today was one of those days where, by the end of it, you can't believe how much stuff went on. I sat down to write about it and I had totally forgotten that this morning, THIS morning, I went on a great walk with a friend and got to catch up and feel like a person again. But more about that later, I should start at the beginning.

Nicholas woke up this morning and told me that he felt sick, that his stomach felt "full of food", even though he hadn't had breakfast and Joe told me he didn't eat his dinner the night before. I asked him if he was sick and he told me yes and then I asked if he wanted to stay home from school and he said yes (this boy loves school, so I think he would be honest). He had also missed school on Monday because he threw-up in the car on the way to drop Joe off at work (I can't believe that parenting has made this such a non-issue). I figured that keeping him home was the best idea even though I had plans that morning, he was just going to have to suck it up and come along. In my defense, he has been acting like his usual self after about ten in the morning and this evening he was running around like a crazy man. I guess he has morning sickness.

We left the house around nine and went to Whole Foods to meet our friend and her six month-old. We sat on the patio and split a muffin and then walked down to Town Lake where we strolled around in the shade and looked at the water and had pleasant conversation. After we said our goodbyes, Nico and I went shopping at WF for all of his healthy snacks for the next month. We bought freeze-dried strawberries and bananas and mangoes, organic fruit breakfast bars, organic apple, grape, and carrot juice boxes, yogurt, Pirate Booty, and a ton of frozen snack-food-type-things. It is actually fun shopping when no one is there, when the crowds haven't swarmed yet.

After all that I took Nicholas with me on all of my errands and we finished off the afternoon with Starbucks coffee and scones. I had the coffee, Nicholas had a scone. It was a great day until Joe called from the bike shop and I had to wake Nico up so we could go pick up daddy. Joe's other vehicle has given up the ghost, it seems. I then took the boys to finish off some shopping we had to get done in preparation for my SIL's wedding this weekend (her gift, Nicholas needs new pants, etc.). Busy day.

Days like today make me look forward to this summer with hope instead of dread. Since I am going to be out of school and Nicholas is going to be out of school, we are going to be in each other's company a bit more often. And because I'm not going to have my three mornings a week to get things done, he is going to have to be able to do it all with me. After today, I have hope that not only is it going to be tolerable, it might, dare I say it, be enjoyable. I bite my tongue now, because come the summer, everything could change.

I have just eaten three Tofutti Cuties (vanilla, I've never tried the chocolate). This is after I had spinach and artichoke hummus on pita chips and falafel for dinner. Prior to that I ate a peanut butter ClifBar in the car on the way home from school. Because I was being good, I washed it down with a DIET coke. I think I have a tapeworm or my stomach has become a vortex into another dimension. I hope it is the latter. Please let me stop eating now, though, because I hate going to the grocery store and I am quickly running out of food.

BEST PANTS EVER:



I have to keep reminding myself that, yes, I am in fact wearing "socially-acceptable" pants and not going out amongst the masses in my pajamas again. I am having a hard time resisting the urge to go to Target and buy several in varying colors.

I haven't been posting lately because I am in some sort of manic phase and am just running with that in hopes that some things that need to get done get done around the house. I'm thinking that it might be going around, some sort of spring fever, because a lot of the other blogs I read haven't been posting much. So, a bulleted list of what I accomplished this weekend before I move on, because I am so impressed with myself:

- Baked three loaves of banana bread, made a huge pot of green chili stew, and a crockpot full of shredded chicken taco filling for Joe's lunches this week.

- Had friends over for dinner Saturday night, so big cooking there. I also made some cheese pizzas for the kiddos because I didn't think they'd eat curry.

- Painted Nicholas' two toy boxes with chalkboard paint. They turned out really well, but I don't like how much chalk dust they produce in Nicholas' bedroom. Nico likes them, though.

- Did seven, yes SEVEN, loads of laundry. I washed all of our bedding and towels and put up the winter versions for the summer ones, since it is summer here now after all.

- Started piecing the backing for my quilt. I'm hoping to have it done before Nicholas' school year ends so that I can have one of his classmate's mothers help me put it all together.

- Planted my vegetable garden. Three types of tomatoes, serrano peppers, anaheim peppers, zucchini, oregano, lavender, and pineapple mint. I still have to get the containers going with carrots and radishes and lettuces. There is also the herb garden to set up . . . .

- I weeded the front beds and started to put down mulch. I tore down the three holly bushes in the front yard that were huge and diseased and blocking my front window. I then took an hour and a half to tear up the remains and put them in lawn bags.

- I planted my Meyer lemon tree in the corner by my veggie garden. During the digging of the hole it was going into, I took out more gigantic rocks than I took out soil. Fun.

- Went to Home Depot twice for all the plants and mulch and laundry detergent and dryer sheets and I picked up paint for the guest room. You know, to do in my spare time.

- Made a grocery store run on Saturday during the busiest time of day. That was a bad idea, but I got most of my shopping done for the week.

The most amazing part of this whole weekend was that I did most of this while keeping Nicholas in check and attending to all of the day-to-day things because Joe was on the couch recovering from his vasectomy procedure. Yes, he got it done. Yes, we feel weird about it and I'll probably talk more about it later. No second thoughts, just kind of feeling "what do we do now". Our lives are now a little more settled. Our family is now complete and I have yet to fully figure out how I feel about that.