I don't usually get into all the "girly" things like manicures and pedicures, hair styles, makeup, lots of jewelry, stuff like that. I guess it probably stems from my childhood and feeling strongly that it wasn't okay to be a girl. It was never verbalized by my parents, but my full blood sisters and I have discussed it and we all were aware of it. My dad left when I was five, and I heard later on in years that he always wanted a son. Apparently he got married shortly after his divorce to my mom was final and his new wife gave him the boy he so desired. Unfortunately his son turned out to be something of a disappointment, but at least he got his precious son. That sounds a bit resentful, doesn't it? Logically I have mixed feelings over my father leaving. He has mental problems. I don't know if they were brought on by a lifetime of drugs and alcohol, but I have often thought in spite of the damage done by growing up without a father, it was almost certainly for the best.
I didn't go to church today. My Pathfinder is in the shop since Thursday afternoon. We are having some work done, what is the word, I want to say preemptively, ah yes, that is the word I was looking for. We are having my PF's transmission R&R'd, and I'm not sure what that stands for. I know it's not rest and relaxation. ;-) Anyway, it is the original transmission with 283,000 miles and we're having it rebuilt so it doesn't just decide to peter out on me one day. We are also having it looked at because it rocks back and forth when I go around a curve or go over a bumpy spot on the freeway. It's quite unnerving, but usually easy to remedy. I just take my foot off the gas which slows me down enough to stop the rocking. Sometimes I actually need to put my foot on the brake to slow myself down and out of the rocking. I'm sure it's not good for the vehicle, or me if I end up rocking and rolling myself right over.
I worked in the garden from 8am to 11am. I dug up an area that is 8 feet long and between 18" and 24" wide. It is the new bed for the eggplants, which I will transplant later this evening, around 6pm.
What this area looked like a few weeks ago:
The hole/trench I dug today:
The new bed lined with chicken wire, fortified with composted manure and bonemeal:
It is hard work to dig solidly packed dry dirt, but thankfully it was possible for me to dig this area. For future reference, it is a lot easier to dig an area 2 feet wide with plenty of room on both sides. Because the dirt can be put on both sides easily and then can be moved back into the bed easily enough. Most of the gardening area has been dug up at one time or another, so that makes for a lot easier digging for me since I obviously don't have as much strength as my guys do. But I did notice that I was able to continue on and complete the task. In spite of my back aching nearly the entire time I was working in the garden (I have to take frequent sitting down breaks), it did not completely put me out of action. This means my body is getting stronger, in spite of not having worked out in weeks. I am getting some workout from all the gardening work every weekend. Now seriously if I could just lose some weight. Really. I'm sick of gaining weight and gaining weight. But enough of that.
I asked dh before he left for church this morning if he wouldn't mind getting me a wheelbarrow of composted manure. He had time so that was one less thing I had to do. He also found me some scalloped bricks to line another new bed. This one is going to be a flower bed!
I switched out my shoes before I went out there as my feet were already starting to hurt. Especially the right heel, there is a spot that really messes with me. Actually I was curious to see if just changing out the insert would be enough, so I wore my old left shoe with a new insert and replaced the right shoe altogether. I'm still wearing the Nevados Madison Men's Action Casual shoes. I just got a few more pair on sale from Big 5 Sporting Goods. I think that is why I was able to spend as long as I did out in the garden.
In addition to the bed for the eggplants, I also finished a bed that is 7' long and against the chicken wire, to plant more green beans. I realized today, I am finally getting to a point where I won't need to spend so much time and energy on the garden. It was really a mess when I started back in September. Wow. Back in September. Six months have passed by, and it is finally under control. I just kept at it, one weekend at a time, one little section at a time. I decided today that I want to put up my wedding arch on the outside of the garden and hopefully I can grow something up it. I also am thinking about planting a flower garden on the outside of the garden, on the front end. I would have to fortify under the bed with chicken wire, and would need to have a fence put up to keep the dogs out. Finally, I'd have to line the top with chicken wire while the babies were growing. I think once they were bigger the birds won't find them so tasty. I want to plant sunflowers! I love them. They are so beautiful, and the goats LOVE sunflower seeds. The neatest thing about sunflowers is the way the flower follows the sun. It faces the east in the morning, and as the day goes by it follows the sun until it is facing the west in the evening.
My first successful garden was in 1994. Here is my tallest sunflower from that year. It's nearly twice my sister's height, she's 5'4" so it had to be at least 10 feet tall. You can see it's also taller than the edge of the house.
My neighbor had a garden, too. Most of his backyard was a vegetable garden and part of the front yard, too. He was from Cambodia and brought all his seeds with him when he migrated to the United States. He gave me my sunflower seeds that year and I'd fortified my dirt with composted cow manure and blood meal and bone meal and wood ash, like Duane Newcomb says to do in his books for square foot gardening. I remember Chak coming over and just staring at my giant sunflower, for his had ever barely grown to five or six feet. The stalk on this sunflower was bigger around than my wrist, it was a monster sunflower. He was just amazed that I'd used one of his seeds, and grown that huge sunflower.
Here's Kev when he was just five years old, holding a measuring stick against the head of the flower. Not only was the plant massive, but the head was massive, too. I can't read the measuring stick, but it is a yard stick, and the flower head looks to be more than one-third the length. I think the flower measured about 16" across.
Wow. So I'm finally almost through with the hardest part of gardening this year - getting the garden back into condition. That's a good feeling. I will have to take some pictures of how everything looks currently and post them.
So, back to the title of this post... for a few days, I've been thinking about giving myself a pedicure because my toenails are getting awfully long. Like 1/2 inch long and they are starting to curl. NO WAY. I'm so kidding. That's disgusting! But they are probably 1/8th of an inch long, and they push up against my shoes and cause my toes to ache from the toenail being pushed against. And it's hard to cut my toenails because it's hard to reach them for the fatness of me. I learned about a year ago, if I sit outside on the porch, with my feet on the next step, I can easily reach my toenails to clip them!
The pedicure part came in because dh bought me the foot soaking machine thing for Christmas and I wanted to use it. Besides, big ugly curled nails are easier to cut when they have been soaked a while. LOL. Sorry, they are not big and ugly. Here, let me show you a picture:
See and my toenails aren't even that long, are they? Regardless, soaked nails are easier to trim than dry ones. I won't be painting my toenails or anything like that. Hate the smell of fingernail polish, I don't think it's too good for my asthma and I don't think it's good for our nails to be smothered like that.
I have only had one official pedicure, that was for the wedding. Usually I just trim my nails, I don't go through the luxury of soaking my feet first.
My thought in the last few days is it might be something relaxing that I could do for myself, since I seem to have myself stressed out constantly lately. It's very taxing to be stressed out so much. I have been hitting the Kava-Kava almost daily.
So I got quite a lot done in the garden. While I was out there, by myself, with the quiet, well, the chickens are pretty darned loud, all that squawking and clucking about "Look at my egg, it's bigger than yours," "HAWK, HAWK, HAWK, run, there's a hawk!" and "Scram quickly away from the lady, she's MINE, oh ye rapscallion!" The dogs are busy looking for lizards, really busy. And busy guarding gopher holes. Look at how serious LJ is. He stood here for 10 minutes straight, just starting down at this hole:
So now my toes have soaked long enough. I thought I'd relax for a while, soak my footsies since they were hurting seriously bad from being on them for three hours straight, and digging and everything.
Until next time.
P.S. My nail clippers weren't in my purse where I always keep a pair. I also couldn't find dh's pair, which he keeps by the couch near his radio. I looked and looked, and finally I started looking on the floor in front of where dh keeps his and found them. AGH.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Giving Myself a Pedicure
Labels: Gardening, Memory Lane, Relaxing
Friday, November 07, 2008
View From My Garden
I feel like I spend most of my life rushing and running, constantly on the go with things to do every moment. I am trying to consciously take some time where I sit and reflect on the fact that I not having to rush at that moment.
I've been wanting to eat outside for some time, but of course for the last few months it has been too hot. Or too dusty. Or too windy. It was too chilly at breakfast this morning (dh made Pizza Eggs), but at lunch it was very mild out. There was a soft breeze. I washed the glass table that I've wanted to have in my garden area, and moved it into the garden. I brought my lunch out, sat and enjoyed the sunshine and the soft breeze and my lunch.
These are really expensive, so I only buy them once every few months: Benetino's Bistro Sensations: Sausage Chicken Habanero W/Monterey Jack Cheese Meat. I also had some sauerkraut and Zucchini Soup. How do you like my water glass? Yes, that's a quart size jar.
I'm planning to put a second garden bed in this weekend. Several different types of lettuce came up:
And a few others, but I'm not sure which ones. I order the Pinetree Lettuce Mix which contains all the sweet looseleaf lettuces that Pinetree sells, plus more, so sometimes it is hard to identify what has come up. It makes for such a colorful salad, I just love the mixture they put together.My seed order included a $2 off coupon, if I order by the end of the year. I am going to try to remember to get my tomato and eggplant seeds ordered.
I think I'll harvest some lettuce and make a salad to go with tonight's dinner. After I milk. We changed to afternoon milking a couple of weeks ago.
Until next time.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Hooded Baby Sweater Update 6/15/07
Labels: FlyLady, knitting, Relaxing
I've made some good progress in the past couple of weeks. I'm on the last piece that needs to be knitted, the hood. I've cast on 95 and have completed five rows so far.
Ds2 did a House Blessing on Thursday, wow, the house looked great when we got home last night. The kitchen was clean, including the counters wiped, the stove wiped, dishes done and the floor swept and mopped. He also tidied up the living room, cleaned the little chicks cage and vacuumed the livingroom floor. It was really a blessing to me as I already feel the pressure is off for this weekend. I got up this morning, milked in my new milking parlor, came in processed the milk and still managed to spend an hour in the kitchen. It was already pretty clean, but last night's dishes needed to be done, and I had to put a gallon of milk in the freezer and change out my kefir grain's milk. I spent about an hour and then I was able to sit down and relax for a while and knit on the hooded baby sweater.
Ds2 and I are going to his eye appointment at 2:15pm today. It is also the PERFECT RUSE to do Father's Day shopping. Dh wants a table saw and some coveralls. We are going to come home the back way and leave the presents at our neighbor's house (the neighbor lives in another state and we watch their home throughout the year). Tomorrow when dh and I go into town to do errands and dh goes to his appointment, ds2 will go over to the neighbor's house and bring the presents home and hide them.
I'm going to have to post some pictures of my new milking parlor. It is actually what we used to call the milking shed, since it had boxes stored in it. It was so dusty though and there was almost no room for milking so I hadn't been using it in the past few months. But now that the flies are back I can't milk right out in the open because they are just too obnoxious. I actually have an air conditioning unit in my milking parlor now. It is not completely finished yet. I still need to paint the floor and we have to install the counter and hook up the water to the sink.
I think I'm going to take a short nap.
Until next time.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Sleep Mask
Kind of looks like a bikini top, eh? It's not, it's a sleep mask I made for myself. See, dh loves to sleep with the television on. Sometimes he'll mute the thing, but the light still flickers. I used to have a remote control on my side of the bed but someone removed the batteries and I've never gotten it set up again to turn the television off. So usually I have to get up, walk around the bed and turn the thing off. I bought the material several weeks ago, and over the weekend I finally had the opportunity to spend some time with my wonderful sewing machine (which I have never blogged about, but hope to someday soon). I found a pattern on the Internet, but I modified it and made it bigger and wider. I bought one foot worth of this cute kitty material, and one foot of dark blue flannel, which is the inside panel. I measured the material for the strap, but forgot to include more material so that it would bunch slightly, so the elastic could be stretched. But it fits my head perfectly.
I had a chance to try it a couple nights in a row. It works pretty good to keep out the flickering lights!
Until next time.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Nice Day Relaxing
Labels: Herd Queen Productions, Relaxing
I had a pretty nice day today. I'm trying to get off this computer, so I can take a hot bath. I've been taking baths lately... I mean, as opposed to showering. I usually shower. I rarely bathe. But I find I want to bathe more when the weather turns chilly. Which is probably not the best thing to do, since it seems to dry out one's skin, soaking in hot water.
Let's see, what did I do today. I cleaned up in the kitchen and made enchiladas for dinner. Oh and I made a double batch of egg custard. That didn't work out too good. It took longer to bake, but I finally got it done.
I pulled a few weeds from the garden. Since I am working with dh tomorrow, I'm hoping to spend some time weeding on Monday.
I got a few rows done on the baby sweater.
I'm having a lot of fun working on my new Cafe Press shop. I've added two Christmas designs today. I have more to add and will as I find time!
I just wanted to touch base here.
Until next time.
