Sunday, April 28, 2013

It was 80 today.  Amazing-  last week we had over 5 inches of snow.  It has been a long hard winter for me.  In January I had an intractable sinus infection, possibly pneumonia, possibly influenza - it knocked me flat; I missed 5 days of work and I hardly ever miss work.  Even after I recovered, it took me weeks to have any energy, then in mid-March I got the mother of all kidney-bladder infections.  It took 3 tries before an appropriate antibiotic was found and by then it  had had 10 days to really dig in.  Even after the infection was allegedly cleared, I was still in a lot of pain all the time.  It took a month before I started feeling better.  Literally just about 2-3 days after the pain went away, I broke a tooth, there was an abcess, and I had to have a root canal.  Unfortunately the pain started during a business trip and it was a miserable experience.  The root canal took two tries as the first time it was too painful to complete, so I had more antibiotics and then it was finished a few days later.
I am wiped out.  I have no energy.  It hasn't helped that the winter was unusually long this year and that March/April were amazingly snowy/icy.   I am so looking forward to spring and being able to work in the garden.  I did some clean up work this weekend in the yard, and I browsed a couple of nurseries, but it is still a bit too early to start.
I am grateful to God for helping me through all this illness, for the good fortune I had, and am humbly asking his help in getting myself back in shape. 
 

Monday Feb 25 2013
Amazing..... actually accomplished a little today.
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
So I took a couple of small steps today.  Instead of collapsing in a lazy heap when I got home, I exercised for 30 minutes and spent 15 minutes on organizing.  I also took Cody out to play and spent some time with Raisin and washed the bath rugs.  Plus I did not eat any candy/cookies/cake/sweets today.  Wow !!!
Not sure about the next couple of days as I have appointments after work both days and won't be home until later, but we will see!!   I actually had some self control today.
 

February 24, 2013

I've just had a week's vacation.  Back to work tomorrow.  It is amazing how little I managed to accomplish this past week in terms of cleaning closets, etc, but I did get a little done.  I am vowing to continue daily - 15 minutes a day to straighten up and organize something; and also to exercise 30 minutes a day.  Hope I can make that happen.  

Not feeling great today.  No energy. Probably the heat and 100+ heat index.  Really fighting the urge to eat, eat, eat.  Eat too much sugar and then crash.  Theoretically you are less hungry in summer. Well maybe you are.  Not me.  I want to gorge on a big plate of nachos.   Feel really bloated right now.  Tired too.

July 1st.  Deep into summer now and it feels like it outside. It is very humid today and is supposed to be scorching next week.  And we're on the northern end of it.  The southern parts of the country are really baking.   I read Paul Douglas' weather blog, but he goes on about global warming every day and it becomes depressing.   I don't want to constantly read about it - guess I prefer sticking my head in the sand.   The planet may be warming, but is it completely man's fault? I'm sure we've contributed a lot, but the planet has gone through massive climate change in the past before man existed.  It bothers me to think too much about it because I don't know what I can do to change it.  I saw a bumper sticker today, "Stay Human", and that made me laugh.  Because humans have perpetuated many atrocities on each other and on the earth.  Imploring us to stay that way doesn't necessarily seem like a wise idea.  There are times when I am embarassed to be a human.  Most people don't seem to feel or believe as I do.

But anyway.....  Spent a couple of hours watering this morning.  The yard is really looking beautiful.  I even saw a couple of monarch butterflies this afternoon.  As I said yesterday, I really went for buying flowers that would attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds this year.  I have about 20 trees in my yard, and 40 or so shrubs, and 40 or so flower/perennial plants.  That doesn't include the annuals.  You would think the yard would be crammed to overflowing, right?  It still has huge expanses of grass.  The lot is nearly 1 acre.  I would love to make it native prairie and flower beds, but since I may only be here another couple of years, it doesn't seem worth the expense.  Plus the sprinkler system gets in the way of a lot of digging. 

When I moved in, the yard was almost bare.  The backyard had a large birch tree and a smaller tree that is reddish and has droopy leaves.   It had 4 potentillas in the front, along with two junipers, an ash tree, 2 spirea and another tree that I don't know its name.  On the sides -  one side - 3 spirea.  On the other side, 3 nishiki willow and a coppertina nine-bark.   All put in by the builder, I'm sure.  And a lonely apple tree in the back. 

I added two russian  olives, a maple with bi-colored leaves, a burr oak, a larch, a blue spruce, and two flowering plums, two siberian evergreen somethings, an austrian pine or spruce, rose bushes (started out with grandifloras and teas, and went to shrub roses after they did not survive the winters.  Sage, perennial salvia, catmint.  Several colors of yarrow.  Two colors of butterfly weed.  Wildflower patch that has been a source of amusement and confusion.  First year it had beautiful red poppies.  This year it had a lot of wild phlox that were beautiful.  It also has stuff that I have no idea what it is.  I planted astilbe, monarda, day lilies including prairie blue eyes and a beautiful dark red one.  Creeping phlox. Liatris.  Coneflower.  High bush cranberry, service berry, sand cherry, barberry.  Shrub maple and more service berry. Lots of lilacs.  The back part that leads to the little lake  was predominantly goldenrod and milkweed when I moved in.   This year it has been overtaken by something vile that I have not been able to identify, as well as an obnoxious vine that is strangling things.  Need to do a lot of clean up in the fall!  Want to plant more milkweed to encourage the monarchs.  Also there are some trees - unknown - and I think - elderberry bushes, although they bloom but do not fruit.  I do love my yard.
This year I planted impatiens under the deck stairs and some coleus too.  I bought some 1/2 whiskey barrels at Home Depot and planted annuals in them.  Coleus, geranium, alyssum, petunias, lantana, verbena, marigold, zinnia, salvia.  They are doing great !!  Maybe next year I will spend less on buying made up baskets and keep making my own. They really have come out beautifully, and except for the metal one that had no drain holes and almost everything drowned in the heavy rains - are doing well.  I had never designed my own before and it has gone pretty well.  I thought to put the taller ones at back and the creeping ones at the front.  The petunias are going so great guns that they are covering up some of the others, but all in all it's been a great experiment.

I do love all the birds;  bluejays, cardinals, goldfinches, house finches, swallows, doves, robins, chipping sparrows, downy and hairy woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, crows, mallard ducks, wood ducks, starlings, grackles; as well as the occasional visitors- flicker, red-bellied woodpecker, owls, baltimore orioles, cedar wax wings, hawks.  out on the lake there are geese,  egrets, and the occasional heron.  The wood ducks call sounds somewhat like a loon; I thought it was loons at first, but it's not.

High summer, but already the days are getting shorter.  You can't really tell yet. It is still light in the sky at 9:45 pm, but we are 10 days past the solstice and heading towards late summer and fall.

"Fall is coming.  You can feel it in the air in the early mornings, that chill, the presage of cold to come.  The days are still hot, August sunshine ruling, but in the morning you can tell that summer is slowly loosening her grip.   Not that I mind, to me, autumn is the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" (Keats); like the author whose name always escapes me (he wrote Milagro Beanfield war and less well know, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn), I live for fall.  A few beautiful weeks every year of aspens' golden fire on evergreen mountains, a bite in the air, and, to me, not impending death and decay, but a great change in the air, a time when all things are possible.  Is it a coincidence that every major relationship I've had was begun in the fall?  I look towards the future and wonder where I shall ultimately live- a secluded house in southwestern Colorado?  an adobe home in a New Mexico canyon? (this is the one I most frequently see, that seems most real)  Wherever, hopefully it will have a view of autumn's fire.

The morning walks are beautiful now.  The vacant fields have turned to yellow and brown, and as the sun comes up, they glow with a golden light, against the still dark mountains.  Truly, "purple mountains majesty" and "amber fields", just as in America the Beautiful.  The sun picks out a few spots in the mountains and illuminates them first.  While we are still in shadow, I see dappled gold and green in the foothills.  All too soon, the sun is over the horizon and the day's heat begins.  Yet, I am poised, waiting.  I know the most beautiful time of the year waits, just over the horizon."

I wrote that on August 22, 1993.  Almost 20 years ago.  I think it is good.  I have always wanted to write, but I don't.   Can I make myself write for 30 minutes a day?  I want to try.  I have ambushed myself too many years-  too busy with work, relationships, pets, worried about someone reading it and thinking badly of me, if I speak the truth.   But - 20 years have gone by and I need to try.
When I wrote that, I was living in Aurora, CO and was married. I can still picture the morning walks I mentioned and the fields I would walk by, heading west.   Now I live in Minnesota.  I am single.
Three years ago I bought a house on a tiny lake.  I love Minnesota.  I love my house and especially my yard and the lake.  I am fortunate to have a good job that pays well.  I also am fortunate to own a piece of land in Wyoming.  I love the west and want to move back there, but after 12 years in Minnesota, I know that I will also miss living in the midwest and miss the gardening I can do.  It won't be possible in Wyoming- not in the same way.   My yard here has the best soil I have ever had.  Stick something in the ground and it grows.  I love birds and living on the Mississippi flyway has been a delight.  My yard is full of birds, and with the perennials I planted this year, I am trying to attract bees and butterflies too.  The plants are doing well but haven't seen too many of the critters yet.

I wonder if I have it in me to be a writer.  Sometimes I feel like the laziest person on earth. Is it true?
I am very motivated at work. I work hard, arrive early, don't goof off or waste time, work through lunch, stay late when needed.  But in my heart of hearts, I wish I was independently wealthy or had a rich husband, so that I didn't have to work.  I would love to not work !  And I tend to be very lazy at home.  I can sleep half the weekend, I can lounge around reading and surfing the internet and never do the cleaning, laundry or errands.  I love to read- it is probably my favorite activity.  And I want to write.  Not sure what though.  Essays, I guess, or personal experiences.  I love fiction but have no drive to create it.  I can't imagine how novelists do it.  I've been re-reading Stephen King's, "On Writing" and trying to take it in, although he is definitely tilted towards writing fiction.   I do read a lot, but I need to practice if I am going to write.  I think things in my head all the time; when I am driving, or playing with the dog, or cleaning, there will be all these thoughts pouring through my head.  But when I sit down at the computer I feel very stilted writing.  I get all "tell" and no "show."
So, I want to try to write for 30 minutes a day- anything that comes to my mind at first - and see if I can find my voice and get some things down. 
I'm wishing myself luck.  I have a habit of starting, doing one or two entries, and then stopping for months.  Why am I so disciplined at work and so out of control at home (re: writing, cleaning, being organized, eating, exercising?) 

January 3, 2012

Well, hey hey look who managed to write two days in a row.  Back to work today and it was a hectic day.  Lots of problems and  a lot I have to get done in the next couple of weeks.  I remember how I used to work 12 hour days a few years ago- I don't have that energy any more.  Old age? Out of shape? or my low hemoglobin?  I thought I could do something good by becoming a regular blood donor and it's made my hemoglobin too low to donate.  I've tried taking iron supplements but it hasn't helped. Looking online, I saw that if you take acid blockers - which I do - then that can keep the iron from being absorbed. However without them, then I have heartburn. I should go to my doctor and sort this out but it is hard to do because I feel so fat and out of control.  Last year I managed to lose 20 lbs and I've gained it all back.  Sigh.  Emotional eater and life just seems more and more stressful.  I present a calm face to the world for the most part, and then cry driving to work or in the middle of the night.  WTF?  Why does the screen keep freezing up?  What kind of blog site is this where I can't type at a normal rate of speed? 
Feelings of guilt and inadequacy.  Worry about work.  Guilt about my family, my parents, my lack of capacity for intimate relationships.  WTF is wrong with this screen?  Keeps freezing.  Being introverted. Worry about relationship.   Lots of crap inside and hopefully I can get it out this year.