Long time, no blog....
Boy, I was full of energy and words when I first joined LiveJournal. And seemed like I had more time. But for me time = energy. When I don't have the energy, I don't seem to have the time.
The last month has been....hectic and...well...hectic. Work is busy and we had a bunch of weird maintenance/tenant issues that I had trouble rolling with. Home stuff is busy...mostly with planning stuff which can be fun and can be not so much fun. I have a family reunion here the first weekend in August, my 30-year high school reunion is the 15th of August and we're hoping our remodeling starts shortly after that.
Gardening is in full swing which means lots of work. We got it all planted. Whew! Now it's been lots of weeding. And NOW...harvesting is getting very close. Which is the rewards of gardening but also means way more work than before. When the blackberries come on, it can mean at least an hour, sometimes two, of picking each week. When the beans come on, it can mean an hour of picking, sometimes two, each week. And then there's everything else. Plus, once harvested, we have to do something with everything. Clean it, cook it, process it, can it, freeze it, give it away....there's SOMETHING that has to be done with it. I can get very miserly about giving away produce that I spent so much time picking, especially when sometimes it feels like people act like they're doing ME a favor by taking it off my hands. I'm sure that's not what people think but when I get cranky, it's how I feel. Fresh produce is great. I love how it tastes and it's very rewarding to have gotten from our very own garden patch. But it's so much work sometimes that we wonder if we wouldn't be better off just buying it. Especially by the end of the season when I'm sick to death of the work and of having my kitchen piled high with produce. Because of course we don't have one or two zucchini plants, or two or three pepper plants or eggplants, or tomato plants, etc. etc. We have at least 12 zucchini plants, nearly 30 tomato plants, probably 15 eggplants, 30 pepper plants (anaheim, poblano, bell), and so on. So we have way more than we could ever really eat just the two of us. It's probably ridiculous and yet we do it year after year.
The remodeling plans are coming together and we're so hoping that when the final bid numbers come in, we won't have to ixnay too many of what we want. Sometimes I can't believe we're even trying to do what we're trying to do. But I'll be so terribly sad if we can't do it. We currently have a small bungalow that's basically 2 bedrooms/1 bath and 1156 sf. If we can do the addition as we want, we'll end up with 4 bedrooms/2-1/2 bath and about 1900 sf. Plus our kitchen will be enlarged and I'll finally get a dishwasher after all these long years. Ambitious, definitely.
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