Like a good neighbor

I've been mulching. I'm really not exactly sure why, but it seems to be the neighborly thing to do. My neighbors, C and R, are very industrious with home maintenance, and they reward good behavior (MINE) when I show inklings of industriousness too!

I think it's because C and R are retired educators. You learn about positive reinforcement in teacher school, right?

So we split a truckload of mulch that was delivered yesterday. Because they are both retired, they had distributed most of their half during the day. I shoveled and carted and spread most of mine last night after work and like a ding-dong, didn't go out in the cool morning like I'd planned to finish the job. Oh no. I much prefer to go out in the sweatiest part of the day so that I have to take breaks every 4 minutes and feel like I'm going to pass out. Because Saturday mornings are for lounging in bed with coffee and books and a cat nestled by my side.

Last night's reward was a gin and tonic. I don't think I've had a gin and tonic since ... sometime in college maybe? I am detecting a pattern, though, with the rewards.

Like a few weeks ago I finally decided to trim the shrubberies. They were getting quite ridiculous so one evening after work I decided to spend a couple of hours trimming. I was doing just fine until I nicked the extension cord with the trimmers. Oops. But before I did that, C came out and jubilantly handed me an ice cold Killian's Red. I'm not really a beer drinker, but that was the best beer I've had ever. Then a few days later I finished the job, filling about seven yard waste bags and two barrels with clippings. I think perhaps I did not trim last year? Yikes. I seem to recall really scalping the shrubberies the year before so I took a year off. Yeah, that's it. My reward the night I finished the trimming was going out for ice cream!

Hey! I should do this home maintenance stuff more often!

Come to think of it ... following other rare episodes of my trimming, raking, painting and other similar activities, I've been treated to root beer floats, Coney dogs, wine, macaroni and cheese, more wine, ice cream ... yes, there's definitely a pattern.

The big project I need to do this summer - besides cleaning up and selling Dad's house - is painting the exterior of my house. C and R are VERY excited about the prospect of me doing this. Especially the side that faces their house. And especially if I hire their artist son to do part of the job. So I'm planning to go get the paint this weekend. And maybe do the prep work on an "easy" area like the front porch so I can feel like I've accomplished something. And maybe, just maybe, I'll even paint a little there, too. I guess my first step is to do some measurements so I can figure out how much paint to buy. And, um, drag myself up off the sofa. Maybe I should do that first.

I'm kind of excited that I'm finally getting to this rather monumental (or at least it is to me) project - it's one I'd put on the five-year list, even though it could have used it when we first moved here. Other projects were prioritized ahead of this one. So technically, I'm on schedule, and I have done little bits of the painting - like the front of the garage and the trim around one bank of windows and the entryway. But when I talk about taking actual steps toward doing this painting thing, you cannot imagine the JOY on the neighbors' faces. It's pretty peely in (lots of) places, but I didn't really think it was that bad.

All righty then. I guess I'd better muster up the energy to get back out there and finish spreading the mulch so I can move on to ... something else.

Wish me luck!

Happy birthday to me

It's gonna be really tough to stay focused at work today. Even though my 44-year-old bones are feeling their age more and more, I'm like a four-year-old when it comes to my birthday.

Mother Nature greeted me this morning with balmy breezes, blue skies and ... hello, sunshine! It's always beautiful on my birthday. I can't remember a year when the weather was yucky on May 20, though there must have been one or two. Will someone please check the Almanac?

Birthdays at our office mean lunch and silly cards and treats - so we're ordering in from Fralia's and there will be Culver's frozen custard. Mmmmmmmmm .... Proposal? What proposal? Deadlines? Huh?

And tonight Kay is taking me to Taboon in Flint for Middle Eastern food - halfway between here and Ann Arbor - so Lizz and Kelly can meet us!

Whenever I think of Taboon, I think of the first time I went there with Midori a few years ago. We had to take Lizz to a meeting and didn't want to drive all the way back to Saginaw and then back again, so Midori and I decided to stay in the area and go shopping and then to lunch at this place I'd heard about from a friend at work. Midori kept saying, "In Japanese, Taboon maybe means something." And I'd say, "What does it mean?" And she'd rearrange the words and try to say it again ... it was like the Abbott and Costello "Who's on first?" skit. I finally got it: Taboon means MAYBE in Japanese.

OK. Guess you had to be there.

Have a lovely day ... I hope the sun is smiling on you wherever you are!

Thphbtttphbttttphbttt

Yep. I'm taking a yoga class at the Y. I'm guessing one of my classmates OD'd on the fiber today considering the sounds that emanated from her general area.

Not that I would ever produce such noises. Heavens no.

Of course, as I concentrate on breathing the right way, clenching my butt muscles just so, tightening my abdominals, stretching and balancing and trying not to fall over like a roly-poly bug, I can't really be responsible for what might escape unbidden from the nether regions.

Several years ago, when Lizz was a little girl, I took a few of the community ed yoga classes. Unlike the Y, we didn't have soothing music playing in the background, so the effervescent rat-a-tat-tats reverberated around the room from at least half a dozen bottoms positioned up against the walls. That's my most enduring memory of those classes.

Aside from the inevitable, perfectly acceptable, equal-opportunity gas bubbles, I really like that our class has people of all abilities and skill levels. I can admire the ladies who execute a perfect Warrior II pose without snorting and grunting like a warthog (like, um, some people) and nobody chuckles when I do my roly-poly bug imitation.

Namaste.

Warning: Lazy day ahead. Intervention may be needed.

It's entirely possible this is not going to be a terribly productive day. I had such high hopes, but it's still gloomy and cold and drizzly out, and then there's the whole lack of sleep thing this week, plus the new Anne Lamott book I just picked up at the library and the Season 1 Gilmore Girls DVD I got from Netflix. And the very furry and always cuddle-ready Claudette. All signs are pointing toward vegetative behavior.

For some odd reason, I haven't been sleeping well this week. Thursday night was the worst. I woke up at 3 a.m. and then again at 5 and 6. When I dragged my butt out of bed at 7:10 (I've calculated this allows me ample time to roll out of bed, drink at least one cup of coffee while reading Misty's blog, shower and dress and get out the door with wet hair by about 7:47), I fed Claudette and then stood in the kitchen for a few minutes trying to decide if disrupted sleep was a good enough excuse to call in. If I went back to bed for even an hour, I told myself, that could make a world of difference. But self, I thought, we might go to lunch today.

I'm a sucker for lunch.

So I continued on with the morning routine and would have made it to the office on time if I hadn't stopped at the bank first. I punched in at 8:03. Not bad. The day just sort of plodded along. The rainy weather called for ordering in Chinese food for lunch. (My rule is that it has to be cold or rainy to have Chinese food. If it's warm and sunny, we have to do something else. I don't know what they do on China on sunny days.)

Uh oh. Claudette is getting into extreme snuggle position. Alert! Alert!

After work yesterday, the youth and youthful of our church hosted an intergenerational Wii night. So even though I would have loved to have gone home and crawled under the covers, I scurried to the church to put out my trays of veggies and fresh fruit to counteract the inevitable chips and cheese puffs others would be bringing. We had around 22 people - not bad for our first time and just the bare minimum of promotion and planning. We played golf, Guitar Hero, bowling, Whack-a-Mole, badminton, some sort of dancing revolution thing, volleyball and more. I enjoyed singing Beatles songs at the top of my lungs with Jacob.

When I got home a little after 11, I was tingly with the prospect of blissful, uninterrupted sleep and sleeping in a tiny bit, AND then maybe a late afternoon nap. But first, a little reading of Imperfect Birds, and then sleep, glorious sleep.

Apparently, Mother Nature decided to throw a tsunami at mid-Michigan during the night and I was awakened around 4 a.m. to the tinkly sound of bells in the dining room telling me that the wind had blown the windows open.

Stop looking at me, Claudette. I'm going to get up any minute now. Just one more cup of coffee.

So, I hauled my sleepy self up, thumped into the dining room to shut the windows and then shoved the table up against them so they'd stay put. This throws the dining room's Feng Shui off balance but it does the trick. Checked the living room and library windows and then went back to bed. If you scroll back up and look at the photo of the library, you can sort of see the design of the windows. I love them even though they open inward and very inconveniently blow open during tsunamis and are NOT energy-efficient and the peely paint collects in the window wells and they need to be scraped and sanded and painted again. I don't love that. But these windows have character.

My house oozes character.

I woke up at least two other times after the windows and then slept until 10:17. I hadn't meant to sleep that late, geez.

All righty. The bells are ringing. I'm peeling back the covers. Wish me luck.

Losing gracefully

Well, we made through about six rounds in the Bee. The losing word this year?

Imprescriptible

Seriously. It's not in my dictionary. Spell check doesn't recognize it. I had to Google it when we got back to the office.

Still, it seemed easy enough to sound out. The team huddled for a moment to discuss strategy. I just needed to say each letter slowly and carefully.

I forgot the "s" - though I was certain I'd said it in my head.

And I think I may have said "able." But all I remember saying is, "Crap!" right into the microphone when I heard the groans and judge Johnny Burke's buzzer.

Oh well. Money was raised for the Imagination Library (most importantly), we had a good time and the Writers' Block got some new fashion accessories!

How do you spell ... ?

Today's the fifth annual Spelling Bee for Literacy, and the Writers' Block will be competing - decked out in our fancy new foam blockhead hats.

This little guy was one of our table centerpieces our first year. He's been gathering dust in my office for five years.

I'm sure we'll lose again, but it's all for a good cause.

Check back tomorrow to see how we did.

Have a bee-you-tee-ful day!

Write on

Hi out there. Has everyone given up on me?

I'm sorry. I've been suffering from a huge case of writer's block. And also total slovenliness.

I've known for some time I needed a kick in the pants to not only get back into the swing, but to really work on honing my skills. So I joined a writing group a few weeks ago. It meets on Sundays at 10 a.m. every three weeks. That means that on the days we meet, I don't go to church. I could go to the 8:00 service, but so far have failed at getting up early enough to do that and complete my writing assignment.

Uh, yeah. Writing assignment. I'm doing this voluntarily.

When I sit down to work on whatever I'm going to share with the group, I realize how out of practice I am. Most of the writers in our group are stretching their creative muscles with fiction writing. Every attempt I've made at fiction seems contrived ... and just plain yucky. So I go back to the twisted chronicles of my reality.

So that's some of what I've been doing.

While I did finally vacuum and dust and clean the downstairs bathroom and haul a bunch of boxes of stuff to Goodwill yesterday, I've been avoiding all manner of outdoor home maintenance, much to the chagrin of my neighbors. Why, oh why, did I decide to become a homeowner???? Will someone please tell me? (Last weekend's big accomplishments were finally hauling the Christmas tree to the basement and replacing the light bulb above the back door. Woo-hoo!)

Slowly but surely, after an especially extra-long winter, things are beginning to move. And while I won't promise to post daily - at least not just yet - I'll try to check in here at least a few times a week. I hope you'll join me.

I live for lunch

... and dinner and breakfast and brunch ...

I've known for some time that I'm one of those "live to eat" people, rather than "eat to live" people. For me, it's not just food as sustenance, but food as experience ... and most of all, fellowship opportunity.

My favorite part of the work day is going to lunch. The call starts going around the office around 9:30 or 10 some days to find out who's "in" on going out. I like to postpone the leaving as long as possible, otherwise the afternoon is sooooooo long. But I'm nearly always up for the outing.

Lunch is when we get to know each other and learn about one another's real lives, outside of the work environment. Our favorite place serves mounds of hot tortilla chips and vats of fresh salsa, over which we've shared all kinds of tidbits about our lives. It's the perfect lunch-time establishment, where the service is amazingly fast, the food is delicious, the price is right, and we get maximum time to refresh and refuel before heading back to the salt mines.

So, you're probably wondering about Mr. Potato Head over there. Isn't he cool? Misty brought him in one day and I had fun rearranging his face (I guess all the parts are back in the right spot here). This photo of Mr. P reminds me of how sedentary I was for almost 4 months. And now I have to make up for it. So I joined the Y. And now, even though I'd rather stay in bed sipping coffee and reading? I'm going to drag my butt over to the church and see if I can help with cleanup day. (So much more fun than cleaning my own house, which has reached new levels of grossness.)

Who knows? Maybe we'll eat lunch together, too.