Fall finds a way

I was bemoaning the fact that we haven't been doing many of our fall traditions this year and it was making me sad. 

But then the kids said things like:

"You know Mom, even though we didn't go to that one festival, the leaves still changed anyway. And aren't they so pretty?"

"Remember that perfect day last week? A little breeze and 65 and sunny with big puffy clouds?"

"I love how Fall means you wear shorts one day and need a scarf the next." (This can be true most of the year in Illinois LOL)

Or

"I loved seeing the combine harvester on the drive home last weekend."

"You make the best applesauce ever, Mom." (They really did say that.  I'm not just lying or bragging.  I don't know if it is the BEST,  but I'm glad they love it!)

"Our scarecrows are way better than skulls, don't you think?"

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And it made me feel much better. 

But still, I'm going to do my best to make it out to more of our fall favorite things next year.  I need as much fall love as possible in my weather basket to make it through winter!!!!

Daybook: October 27, 2012

I have been awfully quiet on this blog in the past few months.  For lots of reasons.  Partly because I've been busy.  Partly because I just haven't felt like writing here.  Partly because our lives are different than it used to be in a lot of ways.  But I want to start back.  I miss it. 

So as a way to ease back in, I am doing a daybook. 

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I am thankful for… I've been able to get two full-time technical writing contracts since June.  It has been nice to work in the field that I got my degree in, and to make some good money for the first time in years. 

At work… My first contract was producing some process documentation and job aids for a client.  My current contract is creating a SharePoint site and creating templates and rebranding numerous documents for a client.  And I'm working with a recruiter to get a long-term contract.  With benefits. 

From the kitchen… Pizza and cinnamon sticks. 

I am wearing… my Halloween costume.  :)  We are going to a Halloween Party tonight.  Mr. Simple is going as Gregory House, M.D., and I'm going as a patient. 

I am creating… some salsa.  And some strawberry jam.  I don't even have close to enough jam for this year.  :(

I am going… to a swim meet next weekend.  We are in the midst of the busiest part of the school year period of swim meets.  We have had a meet every two weeks since the beginning of September.  But if they are travel meets, they are within 45 minutes, so nothing too dreadful.

I am reading…The Kitchen House.  I'm a little over half way done.  It was the October book for my book club and I didn't finish it before our book club meeting, but I do want to finish it.  And I want to finish it before I move on to our November book. 

I am hoping… that I get a long-term contract, although it will require revamp our family's schedule, and I already have a hard time getting things done some days. 

I am hearing… the kids are playing with legos and the nerf gun downstairs.  In the last year, they do a lot more things together.  I guess Super doesn't seem like such a "baby" anymore.  I guess, probably because he isn't.  He just turned 8 in September.  You can't even call an 8 year old a "little" kid. Sigh.

Around the house… my house is really cluttered.  How does that happen? My kids go to school all day.  I work from home.  But yet, every flat surface in my house is covered.  I haven't vacuumed for at least a week.  I have been keeping up on laundry and dishes. But everything else? Not so much. 

One of my favorite things… is Fall.  I wish I could bottle it up and open it on a cold, miserable winter day, when it has been cold and miserable for weeks.  Or on a hot, miserable summer day, when it has been hot and miserable for weeks.  If I could have my perfect weather, it would just be Fall all year round. 

Just so I don't have just one post for August

It has been a busy summer.  Busier than most since I started working in mid-May, although my contract is set to end after tomorrow, so I may have some free time coming up soon. 

It has been nice to be working full-time again.  Especially money-wise.  And it has been nice to be working in my field again.

But it has been really hard too.  It is hard to get the grocery shopping done.  And the laundry, and the dishes.  And the garden has been neglected. And now it is preserving season, and I've only done a little bit so far because I'm so swamped with work.  I didn't see my kids much this summer. 

School started last week, and so far things are going well.  Super is in 2nd grade, Jelly Bean is in 5th, and Flower is in 7th.  They all like their teachers and have classes with their friends.  I think that this is the best start to a school year that we have ever had.

Both Super and Jelly Bean are on a competitive swim team this year and that keeps our evenings busy.  Flower is doing piano, and they are all in Youth Choir again.  Oh, and Flower has Drama Club and Team Quest (scholastic club) again. 

Mr. Simple is still painting, although he recently applied for a full time job in his previous field.  We are sort of hoping that he gets it.  I'm looking for another contract or a full-time job.  It would be great if I could get a part-time contract again, but I don't see that happening.

I have a birthday type of post (it was my birthday on the 27th!) but it isn't done yet.  Maybe next week. 

You've got a friend?

When I was a child, I was the type of kid who got along with everyone, but only had a couple close friends.  When I was a teenager, I still got along with everyone, but I rarely did anything outside of school with anyone but the 9 other people in my group of friends.  I went to school, and mostly hung out with my roommates, but we weren't really "close" friends, and we would always lose touch after the year was over.  I started working and again, I got along with others, but I never did anything with anyone outside of work.  I got married.  And then mostly did things with Mr. Simple. 

I do have about 175 friends on Facebook.  People that I've known from past jobs. People that I've met in the past 10 years. People from childhood. 

But, at least 50 of the people on Facebook that I am friends with, I have NEVER met in person.  Most of them, I "met" online many, many years ago.  It was early 1998, and I had just had my first miscarriage.  I didn't know anyone in "real life" who had gone through a miscarriage, besides my mother, and so I went searching to find if there was anyone out there.  And there was.  And the women that I met under sad circumstances then, well, we have watched each other's lives over the past 14 years as we had more children, got divorced, had medical problems, had spouses die, etc.  I've asked for advice and given advice over the years.  My friendship with these women has been/is very important to me. 

But then there is my real life. 

I've gone in waves with "real life" friends.  When I had my first child, but I was working full-time, I had very few friends.  When I started teaching preschool in the morning, and had my afternoons "free", it made my schedule much more flexible.  I could do the park, I could do playdates, I could do the museum, etc.  I had more friends, but it was often just women who had kids the same ages as mine. 

But my kids started growing up.  We were homeschooling and I didn't see other moms at school. I was doing daycare, and couldn't really get out to other activities.  So my circle of "moms with kids" friends grew smaller.  Last year, my kids all went back to public school and so I do have some women that I've met because of that, but only one or two that I've done things outside of school, and that was because my child had been friends with their child since Kindergarten, etc.

Also, for most of my life, I was very involved at church.  And there were many opportunities at the church we attended to be with adults, particularly women. I enjoyed talking to these women about all sorts of things - church things, kid things, fashion things LOL I had a large-ish group of women from church that I would do things with outside of church - baby showers, girls night out, movies, that sort of thing. I had been hanging out with some of them for over 10 years.

And then, we decided recently, for reasons that I will NOT be going into on this blog, to stop attending this church. And it has been difficult, at best, to maintain friendships with these women, if for no other reason, because I am not attending many of the same activities as they are anymore.  So my circle of "women from church" friends has greatly diminished. We are attending another church, and the people at the new church are nice and friendly, but there has only been one woman who I have really talked to at any point outside of church. 

When I was doing preschool and daycare, there were plenty of days that talking to the parents would be my only form of adult conversation that I had that day, outside of conversations with my husband. But then I decided to quit last March so that I could focus on my Simply Living In The City business and my freelance writing and training business.

And now, I meet people through my Simply Living In The City business, and that is great, especially since I love talking about Simple stuff and hearing about how other people are trying to live that way, but for the most part, it has not led to any sort of friendships that involved getting together outside of a Simply Living In The City class or whatever. 

I meet people through my freelance writing and training jobs, and that is nice too.  But when it is at home/offsite work, it is really difficult to have much interaction. And when it is at a client site, well, work is busy, and I just have never felt comfortable in establishing friendships with work colleagues outside of work anyway.  So I don't have (and never really have had) friendships with people that I met at work. 

Which means, right now, I have very, very few "real life" friends.  At least the kind that you could say "Hey, I don't have anything going on tonight, do you want to go to a movie?" or "Let's take the kids to the pool today" sort of friends.  Or "I just need to vent about something" sort of friends. 

I know that friendship, in general changes, over the years.  As an adult, with children, with work, with a spouse, etc., time to do things with friends is usually quite limited.  That is true for me, and most people that are around my age.  I know that your relationship with your family is and should be more important than your relationship with friends. 

But sometimes - well, to be really honest, I'm on a roll, so I might as well keep going LOL - Often, I miss having "real life" friends.  I miss the days of going to movies, going to dinner.  I miss the days of hanging out with our kids at the park, at the pool.  I miss talking about church. I miss talking about parenting.  I miss talking about fashion.  I miss just talking out loud about life to someone besides my husband.

And trust me, there are times when Mr. Simple really wishes I had someone to talk to about life besides him.  :)

My blog gets so neglected in the summer

And I'd go on about why it gets neglected, but if you have read my blog for any length of time, or if you know me at all, then you know that my children are on the summer parks and rec swim team.  And taking the kids to practice and meets for swim team takes up a big bulk of my time in the summer. 

And if that wasn't enough, Flower just finished up acting the summer parks and rec outdoor production of Les Miserables.  She tried out in May and got a part in the Children's Ensemble.  She LOVED it.  She did a great job - in fact everyone in the production did a great job.  They started practice in Mid May and then started performing the last weekend of June and the first two weekends in July.  There would have been 12 performances, but we have been suffering through a dreadful heat wave/drought and the performance had to be cancelled on one night, so they "only" ended up having 11 performances. 

AND, Jelly Bean was also doing long course events for her competitive swim team, which included a few travel meets.  And she was also practicing with this team about 16 hours a week, in addition to the 4 hours a week practicing with her summer team. 

Oh, and I got a different job!  I was contacted in mid June by a contracting company who wanted to hire me on an 8 week contract to do technical writing.  So still working full-time, but a) I have the flexibility to work from home a couple days a week b) the pay is much better and c) it is doing something that I enjoy MUCH better than what I was doing before. 

But today, we finished summer swim team with a WIN at swim team conference, and Flower finished up her play last weekend.  I'm still working for another month, but like I said, I have more flexibility than I did earlier in the summer. 

So things SHOULD be calming down.  We will see what happens.  It seems like I will say something like that and then, poof, I'll be crazy busy for some reason. But in theory, I should be calming down and I can devote more time to the blog.  Let's see if that actually happens :)

You'd think that I would have an empty house

It seems like every year - heck, every other month, I get rid of a bunch of stuff. As in multiple bags of stuff.  Most of it I either give or sell, but some of it (especially some from a certain couple of girls' room) is just actual trash.  Well, maybe some of it is recycling.  But not anything that I can actually sell or give away.  I've had several garage sales. 

But yet, it never seems to ever really end.  We just did some a lot of rearranging of furniture around here - a bed from Super's room went down to the girls' room and was turned into a funky tween couch.  The art shelf was taken out of the dining room and put in the family room.  The old kitchen table was moved out of the girls room (we put it there for them to use as a desk, but it mostly just became a place to put stuff that they didn't want to put away LOL) and brought into the family room, and the old card table was put in the garage.  The second TV from the family was moved to the studio because we are going to use the bed, etc. in the studio as a guest room instead of my room.  We bought a new to us dresser for the girls, and moved one of their old dressers into the studio.  We bought a new tall bookcase for the girls' room and moved the two small ones to Super's room. 

And so by doing all that rearranging, we got rid of a lot of stuff.

And then, I'm finally selling the rest of the things that I still had from when I was still running Montgomery Academy.  So things that I had put in one of the storage closet had to be gone through, taken pictures of, post pictures, etc. and then mailed. 

And by doing all that, I got rid of a lot of stuff. 

Oh, and a couple months ago, I went through all my papers and books that I accumulated in college and got rid of most of it. 

You would seriously think that I should live in an empty house by now.  I'm not sentimental.  I don't hold on to things unless they are functional.  I am much more brutal about things than the rest of my family, but yet, it isn't like the rest of them should be on Hoarders or anything. 

But yet, I'm sure that come this time next month, I'll have a trunk full of things to take to Goodwill and a full recycling container and a full trash container. I'm starting to think that maybe someone sneaks into my house and drops off stuff so that I never actually get to the end of it.

I'm kidding.  Mostly :)

July 2012 - What is my garden up to?

I'll try and post some pictures here later today, but I at least wanted to get the report done (because if I don't do it now, it probably won't get done!)

Well, the herb garden is doing well.  I haven't had time to do much to take care of it, and there are tons of herbs that I really need to harvest, but I don't have time to do anything with them - most of them I dry - and so there just out there growing away.  I'm not sure I can remember all of the herbs I've got out there, but here's most of them - stevia, cilantro, parsley, tarragon, thyme (used this as a ground cover along the border, and this is growing like gangbusters!) basil, lemon verbena, dill, sage, rosemary, lavender, oregano, spearmint, peppermint, chocolate mint, marjoram, sage, and chives. 

On the north side of the house, I planted a three zucchini plants, and it looks like I might get zucchini off all of them this year.  There are two zucchinis on one plant that are about a day from being ready to pick.  I also planted a perennial flower garden on this side.  It is doing o.k.  It has been crazy hot for weeks now, and hardly any rain, and I only water a couple of days a week.  Next year, I'm doing drip irrigation, but for now, it is just the sprinkler, and so the flowers in particular aren't doing great.  But I'm hoping for the best.  There are 6 plants in the bed now, and I plan on adding 4-6 more in the bed next year.

Along the fence on the north side, I have two containers - one has two butternut squash plants with lattice behind it for it to climb, and then the other container has two melon plants with lattice behind it to climb.  The squash is doing o.k., slow but steady growth.  The melon, well, it might be dead.  I haven't looked in the past few days, but it isn't growing really.  I think I planted them too early and then it got too hot, etc. 

The four boxes along the west end are doing o.k.  Box 1 has onion and garlic.  I have garlic flowers coming up now, and so I will probably cut the scapes and make some garlic scape pesto this weekend.  The onions are plugging along.  Box 2 has some lettuce left in it that we need to eat up this week, and some HUGE swiss chard, celery, and 8 cucumber plants that are growing horizontally on garden netting.  I think I might actually get cucumbers this year! I planted marigolds or some kind of flowers by any of the plants that flowered, and I think that helped to bring in the pollinators, etc.  Box 3 has peppers and tomatoes.  I have small tomatoes on the plants, and I have banana peppers ready to pick.  The green peppers are slowly but surely growing.  Box 4 has green beans.  I'm not sure what is going on there.  I've got leaves, but I haven't seen blossoms or any indication of beans.  I planted them well over a month ago. 

The strawberry patch had some strawberries in it this year, but I didn't get as much as I'd hoped.  I probably got a quart total.  But about half of them are the everlasting kind, so hopefully I'll get another quart in the fall. 

I'm planning on a fall garden this year - at the very least, I'm doing broccoli, peas, and spinach. 

I've got BIG plans for the garden next year.  I'm putting in 4 new beds - one for potatoes, one for cabbage and broccoli, one for greens (this one may actually be a cold frame instead of just a raised bed), and one for blueberries.  I'm also moving the peas to a different area and putting netting or fencing in between the rows instead of doing bamboo teepees in one of the boxes.  I'm also planning on planting more peas in general next year.  I'm planting grapes and a pear, an apple, and cherry tree next year. Oh, and asparagus.  I totally meant to plant it this year, but the spring just got away from me.  As always LOL, I plan on doing better with successive planting and getting a spring, summer, and fall crop out of as many of the beds as possible.  I'm also putting in a drip irrigation system. 

I'm super tempted to start a front yard garden too, but I think I'll wait another year after that.  Check with the HOA and the city over the next year, and get all those ducks in a row before I do it.  However, if nothing else, I do plan on adding some more perennial and native plants in the front yard.