The last couple of weeks: Gardening and visiting family

Sorry I missed last week's post. We've still been getting back to normal around here after the rounds of illness and Nate's busyness with school. And, honestly... things have been pretty normal, so I don't feel like there's been much to say. Here goes the hum-drum post...

Our garden is growing. The pea plants popped up and look happy. Most of my boxed seeds are fully sprouted (kale, spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, bok choy and carrots). The carrots were the last to come up, but now they have sprouted in abundance. I have a ton of them -- they will need a lot of thinning. My onions did not come up. I mean, like, nothing at all. I think the seed packet was a dud. Last year I got three seed packets of Walla Walla sweet onions, planted two of them, and got nothing. I assumed it was because I planted the seeds too late (aka it was too hot) and they didn't want to come up. Now that I've used the third packet but at the right time (in the cold weather) I feel more confident that I can declare the whole package of seeds to be the cause of the failure, and not something on my end. Whew.

On the downside, this means I have to replant my onion seeds, and just pray that they will be mature before the summer heat comes. (Onions don't like it hot.)

In the greenhouse, cilantro and basil have sprouted. The cabbage starts did nothing. I'm a little disappointed, but since Nate got the garden mostly ready this week, I can now just direct-sow a little row of cabbage. Here's a picture of Nate taking a break from tilling the garden to chat with grandma and Darling:

Tilling was his big project last Monday, on his first day of spring break. He did great -- the garden is pretty much ready to go! Now to figure out how we can keep the weeds down until it's time to actually plant most of the garden (which is not until early June). It would have been nice to wait and till the ground a little closer to the actual planting season, but this was the time Nate had available and so we used it.

Nate also spent some time this week working on building a new "pantry shelf" for the kitchen. We have a little shelf in the corner of our kitchen for foodstuffs...

The design is odd. The original shelf doesn't really fill the space. We happened to have a cheap little homemade bookshelf thing that sorta fit underneath, so we stuck it in the corner. But really, the whole system doesn't make the best use of the space. So we came up with a new design that uses up the whole corner, giving us deeper shelves that are sufficiently tall/short for our needs. (This corner is essentially our pantry space, and it's a bunch of shelves, so we call it the "pantry shelf.") I hoped he would get most of it done this week, but it just didn't work out. We'll keep plugging away in our free time.

Yesterday we went to go see my parents and run some errands. I loaned Nate to my parents for slave labor in the morning (he cut down three trees) while I ran to the church cannery, then in the afternoon after we put the Toddler down for a nap, we went to the temple. My mom made us a pot roast for dinner when we got back. (Yum.) I enjoyed the arrangement; hopefully we can do it again at the end of April and this time go to Ikea in the afternoon. I've been yearning for an Ikea trip. And it's nice to feel like we are helping my parents, who do so much for us!

Today was Easter. Darling wore a lovely white dress with blue flowers. (Yikes, I just realized that I forgot to take a picture and one of my co-workers specifically requested an Easter dress photo -- will have to dress her up and take it tomorrow.) My mom joined us for church, which was really great. She addressed the fun-but-exhausting task of playing with the toddler during the hour of worship service (aka sacrament meeting). My kid was a lot nicer to grandma than she is to me during that hour, even though she was still no picnic today!

After church and Darling's naptime, Nana came to see us. She had an Easter present for our girl: some hand puppets! She made four sets of hand puppets -- four different animals/creatures, with one mommy-sized puppet and one toddler-sized puppet of each. I wish I could take a picture but they are with Darling's toys in her room (and she is asleep). Will have to do that tomorrow, too.

I need to write a post about my goal progress in March, so that will cover some some other recent updates, whenever I get time to write it. I also have several pictures and recipes to share, should I find some time to writing a cooking blog post! I hope everyone had a nice Easter and that all of my local friends were able to enjoy this lovely stretch of spring weather!

No more MIM for him

Nate had his last MIM class yesterday (Saturday). It was the last class of the school term, but more importantly for us, it was his last class for the program. Nate has decided that he is not going to continue pursuing this particular Master's degree. It was a difficult decision for him to reach because he has wanted to get a Master's degree for such a long time, but now that he's gotten a feel for the nature of this program, and with it a better sense of his own strengths/weaknesses and desires, he doesn't feel it's the right program for him.

I'm delighted. While I fully support his desire to get more education, I was also feeling like this program wasn't a good fit for him or for us. It was supposed to be designed for people who work full time -- it was supposed to have a well-paced, manageable course load. Unfortunately it did not live up to the advertisement.

Pile on all the challenges of these last six weeks, and you can see why I would prefer he didn't sign up for another term. Granted, I probably won't get sick THREE TIMES in the next couple of months, so it probably would be a bit more bearable. Still. We like having the man around the house once in awhile, and work and church already take him away from us quite a lot. Maybe this summer, when Nate starts working part time, I will feel differently. For now though.... HOORAY!

While Nate was at class yesterday, I took our daughter to visit his parents. Darling enjoyed reading books, coloring, and chasing after their hoard of chickens. She also got to pick up some of the chicken eggs and look at the baby chicks.

Back on our own farm, we've got some sprouts popping up in the planter's boxes. My bok choy, lettuce, kale, and spinach are all up. The chard, carrots, and onions are still hiding under the dirt. As are the peas that I planted this week. My mom agreed to grow pumpkins for us this year, which will save a LOT of garden space. With all the extra space, I'm thinking I might grow even more corn (it's good chicken food) and maybe more tomatoes (so I can can stuff), and then maybe a bit of newer, experimental plants, like black beans and quinoa

Darling has been helping us out with gardening:

I am nearly recovered from the latest round of illness. Ditto Baby Girl. We both have a bit of a persistent runny nose but are otherwise cured. Err, except for the more sore diapered bottom in the world, poor kid. We've been battling the redness for weeks now, then finally about a week ago her skin just got raw and sore down around her bottom. It has been a horrible week in that regard -- every diaper change means screaming, crying, and getting kicked. I don't blame her (although I do try to dodge the kicks). Hopefully we can see the pediatrician tomorrow, maybe get some stronger medicine. This makes me grateful we haven't had any issues with diaper rash before -- such drama!

2013 Goals: February Recap

I think it will help me make progress with my goals if I occasionally have to give an update. I originally promised to check in at least once each quarter, but more frequent (as often as monthly) updates would be better motivation. So I'll make some notes here and there as I have time, and then publish this post when it's ready!

(...It only took a week to get this written...)


Goal 1: Be Positive
January started out rocky with me falling into negative habits after only a couple of weeks. Then February gave me a bunch of challenges between everyone in the family getting sick illness and Nate being gone a lot for his MIM classes... and I did good! Not great, but better. Nate has been good at reminding me to be positive and vice versa. My mom is also kinda participating in this goal, which is great.

My one confession: I did kinda yell at a driver the other day when I was riding my bike. It wasn't the most uplifting thing to do. But she ran a red light in front of me while talking on her cell phone, and since her window was open I thought it an appropriate opportunity to remind her to HANG UP AND DRIVE. Wouldn't you like to have a bicyclist yell that in your face as you almost run her over? In my defense, she kinda deserved it.

I haven't made any progress on identifying places in the house where I could hang "be positive" reminders. I'll find them this month, since we're done being sick. (Ha, ha. I must have written that sentence before the baby and I came down with colds, again. We're both pretty sick right now.)


Goal 2: Scripture Study (15 mins every day)
I started out strong this year, continuing the full-steam-ahead progress I made in 2012. But then I dropped the ball for most of February because of the aforementioned illnesses and absence. I've been better the past couple of weeks, but still not totally consistent, and not studying for a full 15 minutes. Really, I've just been reading, and only for 5-10 minutes. But at least I'm back on track, if a little behind. I'm making progress on the D&C, still ambitiously hoping to finish it this month. (We'll see.)


Goals 3&4: Blog once a week. Write recipe recaps.
Goal 3 has gone quite well, if you look at the numbers. We're at the 10th week of the year and I have 13 posts done (not counting recipe recaps). I've missed a week or two -- during the "everyone's sick" time in February -- but I'm totally comfortable with the "write weekly" goal, and rockin' it.

Recipe recaps, not so much. I wrote three. I loved them, but they took a long time. And time has been scarce. I think I'll have more luck starting next month (in April) of making this a habit. I'm thinking about changing this goal just a bit. Instead of listing all my recipes each week and making notes, I could try to recap just one recipe each week. In my ideal world I'd still like to write a recap each night and then publish the week's worth at the end of the week, but that's just too ambitious for right now. My apologies to the handful of you who were loving the big, long cooking posts.


Goal 5: Turn my 2012 blog posts into a book (and order a printed copy). 
I haven't even started, haven't really even thought about it. I have the whole year to get this done, and will worry about it later. Maybe... I don't know... next month?... I will get started. I would still prefer to get this done before the summer, but it's not a high priority.


Goal 6: Bike to work every day
There was one week in February when I drove to work a couple of days. It is very hard to bike when I am recovering from a cold because my nose is still runny, so I didn't even try. I think that's completely justified and so I'm going to claim 100% success on this goal so far.


Goal 7: Dessert after dinner, not after 8pm
Ha. I forgot this was a goal. Fail.


Goal 8: Technology off by 9pm, lights out by 9:30pm
Not so good. I started the year out doing good, turning off the tech by 9pm every night, but then when I got sick I reached for the comfort of Netflix and Hulu and cuddled my technology up to bedtime. (Then promptly had trouble getting to sleep, no surprise.) I've been pretty good about bedtime at 9:30, with a couple of misses when I was cleaning the house and one miss when I was watching a really engaging episode of I don't even remember what show. (It wasn't worth it.) There's room to improve.


Goal 9: Blitz journal (daily recap) each day
Success. Kinda. I haven't actually been doing it every single day, but I have one written for each day. In other words, I often do two days at once. It's not my ideal but it works okay. I also find myself sometimes writing notes throughout the day, rather than doing it all at the end of the day. Overall it's going well and I have a complete record, even if it's not been a smooth process.


Goal 10: Grow a garden.
Progress! There are four planter's boxes set up around the back yard. Just this afternoon I went out and filled them with "salad ingredient" seeds (lettuce, kale, carrots, onions, spinach, etc.). I also have a plan for starting some of my seeds in the greenhouse, and a plan for how to lay out the garden (although the plan needs to be updated). It's still too early to do more than these tasks, but I'm on track for a successful growing season.


Goal 11:  Do some canning.
Too early to actually do this, but I've been preparing. I'm buying one set of jars each month, so I now have a dozen quart jars, a dozen pint jars, and a dozen half-pint jars. I have a few jars from my grandma, mom, and MIL. I have plastic lids for freezing jars. I have a list of supplies still to buy (water bath, Tattler lids... pressure canner?). I have a list of things I want to can. There's more planning and prep work to do; I'm loving it.


Goal 12: So some creative writing
I made some progress on this goal. I have a rough outline for a brand new novel. I have detailed outlines for three of the scenes. I have half of the opening scene written. There's nearly 9,000 words between all of those pieces, which is a great start. At the end of the month, I anticipate having more weekend time to write, so I will keep working. If I have two free hours and ideas in my head, I can bust out 2,000+ words in a sitting. After this term of Nate's classes, when I have free Saturday mornings to write, I think it would be reasonable to expect myself to put in 2,000 words each week. I want to do much, much more... but I'll start with that and see how it plays out.


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There's my update for January and February. Overall I feel like I am making progress and I feel confident that I will be successful in accomplishing my goals this year. Thanks to all of you for your support!

Dig up the yard, y'all!

Yard work, yard work, yay yay yay!

We are really making progress on our yard. I'm exited. When we are all done with it, there will be a lot less weeding and maintenance to do. It will look beautiful and we won't have to slave in the yard. Oh! It's going to be sooooo nice!

The former owners of my parent's new house really loved to garden. A little bit too much, as it happens. Whenever they planted something, they seemed to have decided that more is better, and they planted 10 of them. This is true of plants and bushes and trees. It's a good thing my mom is retired because she spends hours every week just trying to trim and maintain the yard.

The benefit to us has been some new gardening supplies and plants, especially a pair of beautiful maple trees! One of them has green and yellow leaves with gorgeous, coral-colored bark. The other has rich, green bark and bright red leaves. We drove up to see my parents on Saturday (3/2) and dug up the two trees. By we I unfortunately mean Nate, who did all of the laborious digging. I helped him bag the roots and we threw the trees in the truck. We went home, where Nate promptly tilled up a long swath of weeds and we put our new beauties in the ground. The area is now covered in a thick layer of hazelnut shells to keep down the weeds.

Earlier in the week I set up and filled some planter's boxes by the location for the new trees. The boxes will hold "salad fixings" like lettuce, spinach, kale, and carrots. There's a big box for onions farther back on the lawn. (The main garden area will have everything else, like squash and pumpkins and tomatoes and corn and beans and... you get the idea.)

The one disappointment this weekend? I drove all the way out (30 minutes) to the place where we get our bags of hazelnut shells, picked up 15 bags, only to discover when I got home that we were about 5 bags short of covering the whole weeded/prepared area. So next weekend or at least some time this month, I again have to make that hour-long trek to buy more shells. Or else I have to look at the incomplete dirt and fight back the weeds -- that's not appealing! Hopefully Nate's parents will be available to watch my daughter for a little while so I can make a trip. They live about halfway between our house and the hazelnut place, which is convenient.

Here'a a picture (I wish I had a good "before" picture of the yard but I don't, sorry!):

This shows our lovely new trees and the hard work we accomplished. You can see on the right side of the picture where the shells stop and we need to add a few more bags. We also want to add more shells in the back of the yard, over on the right by the water barrel. On the left, behind the greenhouse, is the main garden area. We have to till up that section of grass this year -- that will not be fun -- so we can expand the garden. And we need to add grass seed in the main yard to fill in a few places. But it's really coming along!!!

Good news at work

I got good news at work this week. It came to me in such a way that I thought it was going to be bad news, or that maybe I was in trouble, but turns out the uber boss was just really excited to tell me the good news: My position and I are doing a little shuffle, moving to a different manager and changing my duties a little bit.

I arrived at the office on Tuesday morning, about five minutes before my official start time (as per usual). I bicycle to work, so I need to change my clothes as part of my morning routine. But I don't usually "get dressed" until after I've been in the office for about 15 minutes -- partly because the janitorial staff just happens to clean the bathrooms on my floor at exactly the same time I arrive for the day, and partly because it just takes that long to get the computer started, check emails, put my things away, etc.

So I arrived five minutes early and was in the process of doing my usual unpacking/starting computer/saying good mornings, when one of the managers came over....

"I know you don't know this, but you have a meeting with the uber boss right now."

I looked down at my cycling clothes. I had taken off the bulky outer rain-proof layer, which leaves me in skin-tight thermals from chin to wrist to ankles. It's not exactly the kind of thing one wears to a meeting with the uber boss. Nevermind the tousled (not attractively) hair and lack of face paint, or the twinge of sweat smell...

"Uhm, can I go change first?"

"Well... it's just going to be a really quick meeting?"

He said this very apologetically. I could tell he wanted to just say yes, I could go change. But instead he said, "We'll be in his office. See you in a minute."

I sighed, collected a notepad, fished out my glasses, and walked across our floor to his corner office. The uber boss made some joke about me being in trouble, then teased me that I don't keep a close enough eye on my meeting schedule, and basically put me on edge. As if I wasn't already outrageously uncomfortable.

But then he dropped the good news. The Big Change. I couldn't believe my ears, it was like I had won the lottery. Almost. I even get to move cubicles.

So now you're probably wondering, gosh, does Brooke hate her current boss that much? Are her cube neighbors that bad? The answers are no and no. You might know that my current boss and I got off to a bit of a rocky start two years ago, when I was promoted into my current position. But we smoothed that all out pretty quickly and it's been a great working relationship since then.

Really, the reason I'm so excited is that I'm going somewhere that makes me feel like I belong. I feel like I'm going home. In my current place (under my current boss), I am the odd man... er, woman... out. My immediate boss manages seven other people, all of whom are men, their average age is probably about 45, and they all work on various aspects of building and maintaining our website. They are great people, but me and what I do at work -- totally different from them. I do research and analyze data. I think at one point, back when my position was originally created, the person in my job actually did some computer programming and published data to the website. But me? I just make a list of changes and give it to one of the programmers.

Two years ago, before I was promoted into my current position, I did a wide variety of research and analysis. I worked with a team of people. It was a very collaborative, give-and-take environment. I really liked my boss, my (physical) location in the office, and what I was doing. And now I am RETURNING to that group. I get to be back with my old team, working under my old boss, and doing a slightly broader set of things compared with what I work on right now. In fact, one of the duties I don't like to do right now, I get to do less of it! The uber boss asked me to scale back on the thing that I don't even like doing so that I could make time to do some new things. How great is that?

But wait, it gets even better (is that possible?). You'll probably recall that I interviewed for a promotion a couple of months ago, and I was one of the top candidates. In my final interview, when the panel (including the uber boss) asked me why I was interested in the promotion, I said several things: I want to work with a team again, because currently I do a lot of stuff on my own; I want to do a greater variety/diversity of things; I want to do some new things; I want to travel a little more; I want to build up my skills and have more chances to learn new things.

A couple of days after I got This Good News, it hit me. Wham. Even though I didn't get that promotion a couple of months ago, the uber boss heard what I was saying in my interview. He heard it, and took it to heart, and he's doing something about it. How cool is that? This change might not come with a higher salary, but it does give me so many of those other benefits that I was seeking. Bonus for my business, the changes will make us more efficient and more productive, too. What a blessing all around.

So really, the best thing to come of this change is being reminded of how much the uber boss cares. He cares about us worker bees, as people, and when we have an idea or a complaint, he is really, truly listening. I'm not saying he's perfect or that we always get what we want, but he's not deaf and he's not blind, and he DOES want us to be happy. How cool is that? It seems so rare that people have a great boss, but I do. It really makes me feel blessed!



(Thanks Graham.)