Catch-up.

I've been trying for over a week to post some pics of the bushes we planted around our house last weekend, but Blogger simply refuses to cooperate. Is anyone else having Blooger issues lately?

I guess you get what you pay for, with Blogger. Pppppbt.

I came to a breaking point last week and decided I couldn't deal with my part-time LSS job anymore, for a variety of reasons that I can't get into on a public blog, but might, after I've quit once and for all. I gave my notice today and hope to be out by Easter at the very latest.

When that happens, I'll be overhauling my blog, my home, and my life. That's the plan, anyway!

This week, however, it's work, work, work. I'll keep trying to post those pics, I know everyone is breathless with the desire to see our shrubberies!

Trees.

Oh, what a change a week makes! Here are our flowering backyard trees now. So gorgeous.

If anyone can tell me what these trees are, I'd be most grateful. They're taller than almost any flowering tree I've ever seen, except for the sour cherry we used to have in the front yard when I was growing up.

Isn't our yard heavenly? I can't wait till the trees at the back leaf out, because then it will just be stunning. I have so many things I want to try in this yard...landscaping, and little pretty spots scattered about, flower beds and tchotchkes...it'll take years to get to it all.

The yard is full of birds right now, fluttering around, building nests and screeching at each other. I think some mourning doves are nesting in the magnolia beside my deck. This yard is my favorite thing about the house...I hope we can make it live up to all its potential!

A few layouts.

I had the most fabulous weekend...I scrapped all day Saturday and most of Sundayafternoon. It was heavenly. I can't remember the last time I made a page just for myself.

Anyway, here's the highlights of what I did. I started with my most recent photos and worked backwards towards the beginning of this year:

Todd's birthday:

My viola/pansy pictures that I posted here last week:

Todd's striper fishing pictures from early February:

And pages about Natalie and Marissa from our January visit there:

Off to work now. It's over 80 degrees here today--amazing!

Blog challenge.

I already wrote my post for today, but there's a blog challenge at Two Peas today, and I wanted to do it, for once.

1. List the people from your past who you would like to reconnect with through Email.( if only you could find them...)

I can only think of one, and that's Brent Shrum from college. Well, there are a few people from high school I'm curious about, but...eh. I know I could track Brent down if I really wanted to...he's a reporter for a paper in Montana. I guess I need to make the effort!

2. List the companies you wish you owned.

I wish I owned Land's End because my first Owner's Decree would be to supply me with a hundred pairs of petite yoga pants in every color of the rainbow. Then I'd put them to work on petite jeans. Not "petite" as in five inches too long for my short legs.

(Can you tell I had a bad jeans-buying experience this week?)

3. List the things you do to defy aging.

I act as immature as possible. *smirk*
I sing along with the radio a lot...make up words for the fun of it...don't mess around with my face too much, as far as my skin goes...drink lots of water...color my gray hair when I remember...play with kids...
I guess there's a difference between aging mentally and aging physically--I don't want to do either one, but the mental part is the only thing I can do anything about.
(Things I should do to defy aging: learn a foreign language, walk, lift weights, eat more veggies, get good at crossword puzzles...)

4. List what you do to snap out of a bad mood.

Play music loudly and do some cleaning and/or organizing.

Welcome, spring?

If I had any doubt spring was here, today would definitely prove it to my satisfaction. It's sunny and in the seventies and just beautiful.

Here's the trees outside my upstairs deck, blooming their little hearts out. I have to find out what all these trees in the yard are--I hate feeling so ignorant about my surroundings!

Another sign of spring--I delved into my box o' flip-flops today for the first time. Last summer I bought so many pairs of flip-flops that I had to also buy a big Sterilite tote to store them all when cold weather came. Can't wait to get more flip-flops this year! I even took a picture of some of them last summer, planning to do a layout about my newfound love. I never did, but maybe I need to!

So when I took out the flip-flops and stuck my pitiful winter-pale feet into them, I realized that the next thing that needed to happen was a pedicure. So I went and got me one this afternoon.

Here's my toes--still pale, but at least colorful:

Now I guess I need to break out the spring clothes. I hate that part of spring. All those clothes that you were almost too fat to wear at the end of summer, and told yourself you'd lose enough weight over the winter so that they'd look good next year...yeah, right. Who loses weight in the wintertime?

And spring reveals your figure flaws that you'd semi-hidden under jeans and sweaters all winter long and pretended weren't there. Ugh.

And spring also means new clothes shopping--for me, anyway. All that too-tight stuff has to go, and you're shopping for roomier capris, like maybe circus-fat-lady style. Do they make 'em that big?

Hm. I definitely have mixed feelings about spring.

In other news, I got a call from Borders that a CD I ordered came in, so I dropped by and picked that up. This was a weird thing...I found out about Pandora Radio a couple weeks ago, which is a free site where you type in an artist or song name, and the site generates a "radio station" with artists that share traits with that original artist.

So one of the first artists I entered was the Beatles, of course, and I was puttering around listening to the various songs that popped up, and this amazing-sounding song came on. I rushed over to see what it was, and it was called "The Weakest Shade of Blue" by the Pernice Brothers. Never heard of them in my life, but I checked out their albums and made a mental note to try and get the one with that song on it.

A couple nights later, we were watching yet another Gilmore Girls DVD, and this snippet of a song played over the beginning of a scene. It was that song! And it sounded just as amazing. So I went and got the CD--had to special order it and everything.

The album is Yours, Mine and Ours by the Pernice Brothers...I'm listening to it right now and really enjoying it. Great for a spring day.

Saturday night catch-up.

I wanted to post a few pics of some of the stuff I got last weekend, but I can't find the camera battery. So here are some pictures already on the memory card...I plan to make a layout with these and call it "The Power of Sun."

This is a mixed pot I bought from my favorite nursery, the Flower Pot, last October. The owner was very proud of these pots, because he'd mixed two violas and a pansy with some sage and thyme--all plants that would make it well through our mild winter. The combination was really different.




I had the pot on our north-facing, shaded porch all winter, and it did okay...then we moved to this house and the pot went onto the south-facing porch in full sunshine almost every day--and it just exploded with flowers. What a pleasure to have flowers growing at the front door in January and February!






I know this will post funky with all the different pictures, but I can cross my fingers anyway.

In other news, we've had a couple scary health events in my family lately. My grandma fell and broke her hip a week ago while vacuuming. She'll be 86 in May, so it's a serious thing. However, the doctors were very optimistic, got her right into surgery, and she's already up walking with a walker and doing physical therapy. Because she's stayed active, her chances of healing were greatly improved.(note to self: get off butt and start exercising!)

She'll be in a skilled nursing facility for another week or two, but so far so good. She and Grandpa have had a hard couple years, but they are so determined to live on their own for as long as they can. It's hard, but I can't really blame them.

And Todd's sister Lisa called today to say that our niece Anna had also been in the hospital for a couple nights this week. Seems that she's had an allergic reaction to something--they're not sure what, but she erupted in a horrible rash after getting an antibiotic shot for a lingering ear infection. She came home today, but they're still waiting for the rash to subside. And it looks like she'll be getting some pinpricks with an allergy panel in a few weeks. Poor baby--she's only 20 months old!

I am recovering this weekend from my second D&C in eight months...I was actually looking forward to it this time, because I knew it would involve a nice nap, a day on the couch, and those great heated blankies the nurses put on you. I was really looking forward to the heated blankies! I felt great yesterday after a day of sleep, and I felt okay today, too, but tonight my tummy hurts a little. Nothing too bad, though.

I stupidly agreed to do another last-minute project for the Fiskars insert, knowing full well I was having surgery this weekend, but I think I got it mostly done today, so that's a relief. Tomorrow I want to get it approved if the Fiskars girls are checking their e-mail this weekend, and type up all my instructions and supply lists so everything can go in the mail Monday so as to arrive Wednesday.

Every week I think, this will be the week when life goes back to normal and I can relax a little, but I think normal may be gone...at least the normal I used to have. We're still working on the house in dribs and drabs--Todd moved the living room around for me last week after a prolonged whine on my part, and it looks much better. The huge TV is in a corner now, where it doesn't dominate the room as much. The couch is now angled across the living room to face the TV. It fills the long narrow room a little better, I think, and now maybe I am ready to start hanging all these pictures and shelves that are clogging the floors!

That's all for now.