It LIVES!!

This little guy has me SO excited!

When we moved to Wester, the previous owners left us a perfect little garden spot.  The fence was half-a$$ed and the patch was weedy, but it could have been a going concern with a whole lot of little work.  Instead, we ignored it and it became a shoddily fenced patch of the lushest weeds in west Texas.  Go us!

Eventually, T took down the shoddy fence and made some noise about putting up a 'quality' fence.  Then... nothing.  We had a second summer of super luxe weeds and lots of vicious stickers.  And Holly adopted the area for her bathroom.  Super!

This year, I was determined to get that garden in. My grandmother (who lived in Wester) always gardened in raised beds, so I had vague notions that I would do that, too.  She used cinder blocks.  Sounded good to me, but the rest of it was still a hazy mess in my mind.  The whole thing might have stalled out right there if I hadn't serendipitously run out of things to read on my blog reader one afternoon.

I read all the way to end of a post I might normally have skimmed and stumbled onto a website about square foot gardening.  I clicked through and started reading about the methodology and was immediately sold.  No amending soil!  No rows to hoe!  High yield in a small space!  Sign me up!  (Seriously, it's like a gardening cult.  I am totally gung-ho brain-washed.)

Sounds simple, right?  And it would have been... if my darling husband hadn't been involved.  There is no simple task that the man can't make more difficult in the name of 'quality.'  My plan was to set up my cinder blocks up in the nice flat garden area and get to work.  T insisted that the blocks had to be set down into the ground or they would just wiggle all around.  Sigh.

Once we got the blocks set, it was just add Mel's Mix (a soil alternative) and go, right?  That would work if I didn't have two giant shovel-pawed-digger-dogs, but I didn't see the point in planting the garden only to have my dogs destroy it in a nanosecond.  I needed a fence. 

I got the stuff for a two-foot fence and started pounding posts.  Little did I know that I would hit bedrock a mere four inches under soil.  T didn't believe me and just pounded them harder.  And bent the lightweight posts all to hell.  Not only that, but when they hit the rock, they bent under and formed a hook so they were impossible to remove.  Yay!  We actually had to buy a post puller to get them out of the rock.

Next, we bought heavy-duty keep-the-cows-in-the-pasture fence posts.  I left the pounding up to T.  They are very tall.  Maybe I'll dress them up with bird houses somewhere down the line.  But they hold up the fencing!  And keep out the dogs!  So they are great!

The fence still needs a little work.  The big plastic lattice will be cut down into a small-ish gate.  The composter will be moved all the way up into the front corner for easier access.  I think I'll leave the gloves.  Adds a touch of class, no?

But this guy?  Is what it is all about!  So excited!

UPDATED:  I now have multiple sprouts!  So far, pumpkin, cucumber, and basil have come up from seed.  My mint and strawberry transplants are doing well, too.  Squee!

New 'Do

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Farmhouse Table Idea

I was at Tractor Supply the other day looking for garden supplies.  While I was there, this little beauty caught my eye:

 

My first thought was that it would make a fun mini-pool for the kids and when they were done, I could use the water for the garden.  (The garden is a whole other post.  SO excited!)  Captain Killjoy (aka: T) said it would make the water too hot for the kids and would never work, blah, blah, I'm-no-fun blah.  So I sadly walked away.

Earlier, I had been discussing my future kitchen/dining room plans with my sisters.  (You can read about that here.)  I am planning to build a banquette along the long wall of my dining room.  My current table is an antique Duncan Phyfe.  Every child-inflicted nick and gouge kills me, so I want to replace it with something a little more kid friendly.  I figure if I start out with something distressed, kid-damage will just be enhancing it, right?  Like adding patina. 

So a farmhouse table seemed like the way to go.  I found an Ana White plan I really liked here.  The chunky legs were what sold me.  I thought it gave it a modern edge despite the rustic materials.  When I told my sisters about it, they pointed out that a classic farm table would be a real knee-banger for whoever was sitting on the banquette, and a pedestal would be way better.  They were totally right, of course.  But how would I build a pedestal that didn't look totally DIY?

Enter the galvanized stock tank.  I think it could make a totally cool table base.  It is only 24 inches tall, so I would have to come up with five to six more inches to make it standard height, but I think I could cover that with a wooden base and the height of the tabletop itself.  If I was feeling particularly ambitious, I could even punch holes in the sides and put a light inside.  How cool would that be? 

T thinks it would be too rustic and wouldn't go with the rest of our house.  I think the contemporary eclectic style of our decor could handle it.  What do you think?

Mother's Day

Once upon a time, in a small west Texas town, a princess was born.  Nelda was everything a princess should be: very smart, very sweet, and very beautiful.  She loved school and while maintaining excellent grades, she worked on the yearbook, sang in the choir, was in a social club and was a cheerleader. 

After high school, Nelda was off to college.  She attended for two and a half years before a financial crunch forced her to leave.  Then in true fairy tale style, she married her high school sweetheart, Jack, and set off for a life of adventure.

She spent the next 30 years as an Air Force wife and mother to three daughters, moving more than 16 times and on three continents.  Her most exotic stay was Seoul, Korea, but her favorite was Naples, Italy.

At the age of 40, the princess embarked on yet another adventure:  she returned to college to finish her education.  Her studies brought her to life in a whole new way.  She loved everything about her college experience: learning new things, helping people, pursuing her interests.  She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in speech pathology.  It was a high point in an already lovely life.

Eventually, the princess and her prince retired from their life of adventure and moved to a small town in southern Texas where they proceeded to live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, every fairy tale has to have a villain and this one is no exception.  In 2004, Nelda was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.  She was tragically young and within a few short years went from a vibrant princess to a mere shell of her former self.  First memory, then language, then mobility fell victim to this horrible disease.

My mom died on Good Friday, just six months after my dad.  Sister L and I were with her.  She went quietly and, as far as we could tell, without pain.  It was hard to lose the husk of what used to be my mother, but also a relief.

She is now free to laugh and sing and dance in my heart.  I love you, Mom. 
Happy Mother's Day.

 

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The Circle of Life Can Bite Me

With all the unrelenting SAD of losing my dad last fall, the fact that my mom has advanced Alzheimer's has kind of flown under the radar.  We moved her from south Texas to Ginormousville where she would be close to Sister L.  She had a series of small strokes and ended up in the hospital.  Disappointingly, her condition deteriorated to where she could no longer live in an assisted living situation and we* found her a nursing home specializing in dementia care.

This seemed to be a much better fit for her care than assisted living.  They took care of all the less glamorous portions of patient care at no extra charge and we no longer had to have the round the clock sitters to prevent injury from falls.  As an added bonus, her new home was right around the block from Sister L, so she has been able to check in on her all the time.

For a (short) while, all seemed to be well.  Was she was moving around less?  Maybe... well, yes.  Was she was talking/babbling less?  Okay, also yes.  Had her appetite had decreased?  Possibly.  Again, yes. 

Maybe all wasn't well. 

The reports this week have not been good.  She has lost all interest in eating.  She hasn't taken anything orally since Sister L coaxed some apple juice into her over the weekend.  She has a DNR, so feeding tubes are out of the question - and prolonging her life in this condition would not be a kindness. 

So maybe it is her time.  She would HATE being in the state she is in.  She had a lovely life.  Was married 50 years.  Raised three daughters.  Blah, blah, blabity suck, suck, suckage.  I hate this.

In theory, I am prepared for her loss in a way that I was not prepared for my dad's sudden and somewhat unexpected death.  Mom left the building long ago.  What remains is just a shell.  But now that her time is upon me, I am not prepared at all.




*By 'we' I mean Sister L.  She did all of the hard work of finding nice places for mom to live.  For this, her sisters are eternally grateful.

Do Not See

T's awesome parents came into town tonight specifically so T and I could have a date night.  (I lucked out in the in-law department, huh?)  Cutting edge trend setters that we are, we decided to go to dinner and a movie.  It was T's turn to choose the move.  He chose Your Highness.

Worst. movie. ever.

I think I may have actually lost I.Q. points for having seen this movie.  I am wishing I could Clorox my brain.  I feel kind of dirty.  It was unbelievably, cringingly, almost cartoonishly bad.  We thought that the total cheese-fest at the beginning of the movie was just to set the scene.  Nope.  It was the whole movie.

T figured that since Natalie Portman was in it, the movie had to be decent.  He loves her.  I mean, the woman has an Oscar, right?  After this movie, she might have to give it back. 

There was so much superfluous swearing that even my potty-mouthed-sailor of a husband thought it was excessive.  Pretty much every scene had some kind of penis reference in it.  Most of it with a guy/guy twist.  Danny McBride seemed to be playing a character written for Jack Black - and doing it poorly.  I am amazed that he was able to keep a straight face.  All in all, it felt like the film was edited by a bunch of pimply-faced, hormonal junior high school boys.

The only thing that kept us in our seats was the $9.50 each we had blown on tickets.

On the up side, Grandma took care of bedtime and I got to spend a little (low) quality time with the hubs.  That was worth the price of admission!

Parenting Fail Times Two

And now for the eleventy-billionth installment on my parenting inadequacies:

Fail 1 - Somehow I have turned into the crazy, over-scheduling parent I swore I would never be.  I decided that two activities per week outside of school was plenty.  Then swimming lessons started.

That's not an activity, I think to myself.  It's water safety!  Sign 'em up!  (Why  I, a swim instructor, need swim lessons for my kids in an entirely different post.)  So I signed them both up for lessons.

Then soccer season happened.  The practices were scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays - the same days as swimming lessons.  Blah.  For the first time ever, I wasn't going to be able to cover the kids' schedules on my own.  Three out of four weeks per month this is no big deal.  T will grumble, but step up and do half of the ferrying.  My awesome sister-wives friends have stepped up to help me during the week he is working nights. 

During March, Z was sick for the first week of lessons, so I postponed her lessons until April.  Tuesday was Z's first day for swim lessons.  Soccer practice is from \
6:15 to 7:00.  Swim lessons start at 7:10 across town.  I figured we'd leave practice at 6:50 and make it easily.  No sweat, right?

Um, wrong.

The moms on our new team are big fun.  I was taking shirt orders and chitty-chatting and completely lost track of time.  By the time I checked my watch, it was 7:15.  Holy cow!  I jumped up, grabbed our stuff and ran(!) to the car.  I made poor Z change into her swimsuit in the car.  A difficult feat with a seat belt on!

By the time we got to the Y and fought the crazy parking, it was 7:33.  As we skidded into the pool area the little teen-aged head lifeguard looked a me and said, "Really?"  Z was unphased.  She jumped in for the last five minutes of class and was happy as a clam.  When class was over the teacher said, very kindly, "You do know when class starts, right?"

I hung my head and mumbled something about scrimmages and doing better next time.

Nothing like teenaged disdain to make you feel like a stellar parent!

Fail 2 - Chica got a sewing machine recently and we have been making coordinating dresses for the girls.  I just finished the second one and Z was super excited to wear it to school.  When she put it on, I noticed that the arm holes seemed a little big.  She's in kindergarten, I think to myself.  How big a deal could it be?

At 11:15 I get a call from the school.  "Mrs. C?  Z's dress doesn't meet the dress code.  You need to bring her a t-shirt to wear under it or a change of clothes." 

FAIL.