Life as I know it – Page 19

May 22, 2011August 30, 2011

That thumb? It’s green again

Today it was finally nice enough outside that I could get our veggie gardens in for the year. I know – 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, warm breeze? Was I in the right place? I figured before Mother Nature had a chance to answer that question and piss on us again I’d better hop to it. (good thing too, for as i type this we’re in the middle of a thunderstorm)

Of course everyone else in the greater Milwaukee area had the same idea, and the garden store was PACKED. But I got everything I needed relatively painlessly and was home an hour later to get to gardening. I got 2 Roma tomato plants, a Boxcar Willie heirloom tomato plant, a Mr. Stripey heirloom tomato plant, a green pepper plant, a red pepper plant, romaine lettuce seeds, sweet basil seeds, purple basil seeds, cilantro seeds (yuck! but R loves it), tomato stakes, some new netting to put around all the gardens so I no longer have to scratch the crap out of my hands trying to weave together all the stupid short pieces of chicken wire I’ve been using the past couple years, and 3 Gerbera daisies for the pot I put on our front walk. R went to Home Depot this afternoon and brought home some more seeds – cucumbers, sweet peas, and more herbs – so I planted those as well as some green bean seeds we had from a year or two ago.

Keep your fingers crossed that my netting works to keep all the vermin out, our seeds germinate, and our vegetable gardens flourish. If they all survive we will have quite the bumper crop! Here are some more pictures I took today to show off my handiwork from this afternoon as well as the color that’s now blossoming from my bulbs.

Here's the cool hummingbird feeder I got at The Fireside

Veggies behind the garage - beans, cucs, peas, peppers, 1 tomato on the left, chives, garlic, and lettuce on right

Veggies behind garage from other end - tomato in foreground on right, lettuce in netting on left

Side of garage - hops in foreground, 3 tomatoes in netting, and me being a shadow nerd

Driveway garden again, much bigger this time

Front - gardens blooming, hanging plant from my bday, pot full of daisies on walk

May 21, 2011May 21, 2011

Back to the roots

R and I watched an awesome documentary tonight, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”. It was about a guy who grew up on a farm in northern Illinois, took over said farm when his father passed, turned the farm into kind of a hippie commune as he actively farmed it in his 20s, went broke and had to sell almost everything at age 30, and his subsequent return to the farm and eventual transformation of it into a CSA. (side note – we joined a CSA last summer. wonderful premise, but unfortunately we were disappointed with ours. so this summer we’re just going to try to get more veggies going in our own gardens and frequent the local farmer’s market)

The movie also showed the sad demise of so many surrounding family farms in the 1980s. Seeing a farmer actually start crying as he spoke of watching the concrete being poured for all the neighborhoods that sprung up on the beautiful farmland brought tears to my eyes. And it got me thinking, as I have so many times before – what’s going to happen to R’s family’s farm when his dad dies?

R grew up on a 400 acre farm about an hour north of Milwaukee. His dad’s parents started it, his dad and aunts grew up on it, and his dad has been farming it ever since he came back from California in his 20s to take over. It used to be an active dairy farm, but now it’s mainly crops. They have a few cows left, but not nearly as many as they did in the milk-producing hey day. There are also some pigs and lambs, but it’s definitely not a meat producer. We occasionally reap the benefits if his dad slaughters a hog, but it’s not like we get all our beef and pork from there. They used to raise chickens, but those are gone as well. His mom still tends a magnificent garden each year, though. And when you’re on a farm, your garden isn’t your little run-of-the-mill thing like we have in the backyard. It’s a garden. I can’t even list how much stuff she grows in there, but the first time I saw it I was like this isn’t a garden, it’s a field!

R’s brothers both still live in the area of the farm and have helped their dad with the farming and chores their whole lives. R was much more sports-oriented in high school and then went away to college, so his days as a farm hand ended years ago. We have talked seriously, though, about maybe someday moving back to the farm and starting a rural life for our little family. He has a plot of land on the farm that consists of roughly 40 acres, and it’s beautifully situated on the river that runs through their land. He has said how he’d love to build a little cabin up there for a weekend house or something like that, but we’ve also discussed relocating up there to start a hops farm. These are all just pipe dreams right now, but it’s something that I know would free his spirit and take him back to his roots.

Every time we start talking about this I can’t help but ask myself, would I really be good on a farm? To tell you the truth, I actually think I would. I obviously have never done farm chores (save the one time i helped pick stones in a field, but that doesn’t really count since i got to drive the tractor the whole time), but I absolutely love being able to spend days outside and see and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I think that’s one reason I’ve taken so well to gardening. Yes, I know gardening and full-on farming can hardly be compared, but I’m just saying I think I can picture myself in that setting.

And if we were to someday move to the farm, like I said, we think it would be to do hops farming. There is currently a rental house on the farm land that we could remodel and fix up to live in, then we could dedicate just a little plot to the hops. This is an enormous undertaking, and one that would take years to bring to fruition, but the more we talk about it, and especially when I see documentaries like the one we watched tonight, the more I can see it happening someday.

I’ve always said I never want to live up there, and I still have a hard time picturing myself living in Sheboygan Falls, but a rural life would be pretty great. It takes less than an hour to get there from Milwaukee, so we could still come down here whenever we needed pretty easily. And if I’m perfectly honest with myself, what’s the big thing we do around here now? It’s not like we’re going to the museums or theaters every night, or even out to eat. I would miss our friends most of all, but then I’d just have to come down for girls’ nights that much more often. Plus with all that land, we could have everyone up for cook-outs and camping and visits whenever they could come.

Having seemingly endless property like that to roam and explore would be wonderful for the kids too. Assuming D has a brother and/or sister someday, but even if it ends up just being her, having acres and acres of nature as your backyard is something amazing that there’s just no way she’ll get here. And instilling in her the importance of respecting and nurturing the Earth by experiencing that daily would be pretty cool. Obviously we could teach her that from the city (i grew up in the city and learned that lesson at a very young age), but being able to play in the wild blue yonder every day I think would help her appreciate that firsthand.

(another side note – we’ve also contemplated moving to a more rural area just north of where we live now, not going all the way up to the farm. that one is much easier for me to accept. i already love it there, and if we really wanted to get hops farming started, R could get up to the farm as often as he needed more easily than from where we live right now. and as long as need be, i could keep my current job because that move wouldn’t make my commute impossible, whereas moving to the farm would)

R thinks his oldest brother will probably take over the farm after his dad. I know his family has expressed interest in actually living there in the farm house after R’s parents, which would be fantastic. While watching the documentary tonight I just started worrying that no one would want to take on the full responsibility of the farm after their dad and all that spectacular land would end up being sold like so many of Farmer John’s neighbors’ farms. That’s what always spurs me to ask myself, “Could we do it?” “Would I be willing to sacrifice our city life to save the farm if we had to?” And I think that answer is yes. Because if I saw concrete being poured over all that precious black soil, I would cry too.

May 16, 2011August 28, 2014

A closer walk

This weekend we took R’s parents to The Fireside, a dinner theater about an hour from our house, to see “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline”. I’d never been to nor really heard about this place, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, but it was outstanding. Your show ticket includes a meal beforehand, and ours consisted of cream of watercress soup and their homemade bread to start; a breaded chicken breast, 3-4 ribs, a steamed veggie medley, and scalloped potatoes for the entree; and panna cotta with berries and a little pecan pie bite for dessert. It had a very supper club-type feel, but the food was delicious.

And the show? Phenomenal. The theater has a very unique floor plan – think of something similar to how a boxing ring is situated, but on a much smaller scale. It’s designed so the stage is in the middle at basically floor-level, with seating on all four sides plus 2 rows of balcony seats. The rows have plenty of leg room, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a bad seat in the house. It was a layout like I’d never seen, but it worked perfectly. The actors ran to/from the stage from the aisles within the seating area, as well as rising up through the movable floor in the stage itself.

The storyline of the show revolved around an old-time radio dj playing through Patsy Cline’s records, detailing her life as he went. Throughout each segment the actors sang her songs, and the woman who played Patsy herself was amazing. Her voice gave you chills she was that good and that spot-on to Patsy Cline’s voice. I never knew she had such a tragic life, dying at age 30 in a plane crash, just as her career was finally taking off.

If you’ve never been to The Fireside, I highly recommend it. We were definitely some of the youngest there – a number of 40+ year anniversaries and 90+ birthdays were being celebrated – and the whole place has kind of a Branson, MO, vibe (i’ve actually never been there either, but this is kind of how i’d picture it), but the talent they attract is unbelievable and well worth navigating through the sea of bus tours that visit daily. They have a Scrooge Christmas show playing next year that R and I both thought looked really good.

Plus their gift shops aren’t half-bad. I’m definitely not big on gift shop trinkets and junk, but I actually got a beautiful new hummingbird feeder (totally random, yes) and a little something for D. I mean seriously, how could I pass these up??

May 11, 2011May 11, 2011

Take me out to the ball game

Last night was D’s first Brewers game, and she had a ball! We seriously could not have ordered a more well-behaved baby for the evening. I picked her up early from daycare so I could get home, bathe her, and get a quick jog** in before we went, and thankfully she cooperated and napped for an hour right before we left. We got to the stadium at 5:30 and didn’t leave until just before 10:30, which is a good 2-3 hours past her bedtime, but she was awake and happy the entire time. I figured her 6 teeth weren’t quite sufficient to handle a brat, so I fed her some delicious jars of turkey and mixed veggie dinner and peas and rice (both organic, kudos to Roundy’s) while R fired up the grill. She was all done and ready to soak in all the tailgating action by the time the adult food was ready, so that worked out perfectly.

We had ridiculous seats – 4th row, directly behind the Brewers on-deck circle, which made for some great viewing pleasure. R snagged a Fielder-foul-tipped ball that was tossed into our section by one of the bat boys, so he graciously gave that to D as a souvenir of her first game. And then I prevented her from putting it immediately into her mouth to try and lick off all that good diamond dirt. 🙂 Shockingly enough, I caught another one later in the game, which I gave to our friend S. No need to be greedy. It was cute, too – R took D over to the guest relations booth shortly after we got there, and they printed up a little “My First Brewers Game” certificate for her. It wasn’t anything fancy, we just fill in her name and date and stuff, but still a nice gesture for the littlest Brewers fans on their first appearances.

It was an awesome night all around. Good weather, the roof was open (which made for some chilly wind by the end of the night, but better than rain), great friends were able to join us, the Brewers won, and little D once more made us so proud with her smiley, happy, easy-going spirit. She had made friends with everyone in the seats around us by the time we left. R joked on the way home that maybe we should just stop at one – D is so good we have to have used up all our good fortune in this kid. Will all of the bad stuff we’ve so far avoided with her be channeled into the next one if we give her a sibling? Or is she just saving it all up for the teenage years? Oh please god, not option #2!

The only lowlight of the night came at the end of the game – we were hoping to get a picture of D with R’s cousin who plays for the Brewers on the field, but he didn’t come over our way after the team victory handshake. R was pretty bummed, because he thought his cuz for sure saw us a couple times during the game, so I felt bad for him – I knew how much he wanted that picture of little D on the field with a Brewer to cap off her first game. Hopefully sometime this season we’ll be able to get one to make up for it.

I had to snap a picture to document D’s first baseball game, but it was on my phone so it’s not the highest quality. R took many, many more on his good camera, so I’ll have to get some of those up here once they’re uploaded.

Go Brew Crew!

**run stats – 1.44 miles, 11:23, 7:55 pace. holy smokin’ fast! i’m not going to count that as my normal pace because it’s a really short route and i was in a hurry last night, knowing we had to leave shortly after i got done. i am encouraged, though. i’m going to try a 5k route later this week, so i’m sure that will be more along the lines of my 9:00+ pace.

May 10, 2011

I guess honesty really is the best policy

Last week I took a couple rings into a local jeweler to have them rhodium plated again, as the white gold was fading to yellow. Then I got an amazing ring for a combo anniversary/birthday present from R, so we took that in to the same jeweler to have appraised. He bought it online, so we just wanted to make sure it was genuine and he wasn’t getting ripped off with a piece of glass costume jewelry. I decided to have them appraise my wedding band while they were at it, since it was one of the rings I’d dropped off to have plated and we never did receive an appraisal from the store at which we originally bought it. So in all they had a nice little chunk of business from me – 3 rhodium platings and 2 appraisals.

When I picked them up at the end of last week they just gave me one lump sum total, which I assumed covered everything. I didn’t pay much attention in the store, because I was just more anxious to get the rings back and see if my new one was real or not. When I left, however, I started thinking that the amount they charged me was much lower than I was expecting. Like $225 lower. Hmm, did they forget something? I checked my receipt when I got home, and sure enough, it only had the 2 appraisals on it.

Now I’ll admit, usually when I get a bank error in my favor I run with it – how often do you get stuff for free? Um, never. But this one nagged at me. That was a lot of money for them to just not charge. R said maybe they threw in the platings since we were having the appraisals done too, but I said no way, that’s too much to just be gratis. By this time the jeweler was closed, so I would have to go back the next day if I was going to say something. What to do, what to do?

The following morning I almost forgot all about it. Funny how sleeping on something can really diminish the “severity”, if you will. But I still felt really guilty not fessing up about such a large error. So I went back to the jeweler that afternoon on my way to my pedicure (which was awesome, btw! complimentary mimosa and second glass of champagne has that effect on me) and told them that I didn’t think they had charged me for any of the rhodium plating for the rings I had in with them earlier in the week. The saleswoman actually remembered me and thanked me very much for my honesty. She then went into the back to discuss with her coworkers while I browsed through the cases and made a mental wish list. 🙂

When she came back out she had a new receipt with her, and my charge was another $100 (the first charge was only $100 – $50 for each of the 2 appraisals). Ok, still less than I was expecting originally, but I’ll take it this time. They knew I had 3 rings in to be plated, but this new receipt only showed a charge for one, so I chalked it up to them appreciating my honesty and giving me a break on the total amount this time around.

It’s funny, because the whole time I was debating what to do on this one in my head, I kept returning to the thought that if D were in this same scenario, what would I want her to do? Tell the truth. Then how could I possibly do anything but that? So you see my friends, the moral of the story is true – honesty is the best policy. And who knows, it may just get you out of $125 in jewelry charges. 😉

Oh, and that amazing ring mentioned above? It was real all right. Yahoo!! Here it is, and R ended up getting it for an absolute steal based on the appraised value. Please excuse my gross-looking hand. For some reason it appears to have missed the memo that I only turned 32 this week and decided to age to about 80 years old instead.

May 9, 2011May 9, 2011

When I’m tired, personal hygiene is the first thing to go

Sounds gross, I know, but it’s true. And I don’t mean like I don’t put on deodorant or change my underwear for weeks at a time or anything like that, but when I’m really tired, simple toiletry tasks just annoy me.

Take, for example, today. I was bone tired and not feeling that great all day, so by the time I picked up D, had her first parent teacher conference (yes, in daycare! silly, but it was actually pretty cute. don’t worry, she’s never been sent to the principal’s office 😉 ), and got home after work, the last thing I really felt like doing was getting in the shower. However, I didn’t shower yesterday, so today I was due. Ever since D was born I’ve adopted a one-day-on, one-day-off showering routine. Sorry, I know some of you super cleanies are thinking, “Oh my god, she doesn’t bathe daily? That’s disgusting!” But when D was a newborn, getting a shower in every other day was a victory. And if I don’t workout and get all sweaty in a particular day, I really don’t get that dirty or stinky. And since my good heavy sweat-inducing workouts have been few and far between since that glorious day last August (i’m working on that, i promise!), I’ve just continued my every-other-day schedule. As far as I see it, why waste time and resources showering if I don’t really need to?

However, if I try to go more than a day in between showers, my hair starts to look like I’ve been working next to a deep fryer too long. I can sometimes stretch it to 2 days, but then I need to start getting creative with the hairdo so as not to look like a total greaser, and that’s the absolute most even I can stand. That usually happens when a weekend is involved, too. I try not to subject my coworkers to such atrocities.

Another one that I can get lazy about is brushing my teeth before bed. I’m really pretty good about oral care, so again, if this happens it’s usually on the weekend – we often watch movies on weekend nights, during which I have a tendency to fall asleep, so when I wake up to stumble into bed the last thing I feel like doing is waking up more to clean my teeth. It all depends on which I want less – to brush and floss, or wake up with little furry coats on my teeth. Honestly, sometimes my teeth just seem cold and get to wear the little coats. And hey, they haven’t fallen out yet.

Washing my face before bed? Another thing that starts to take on “chore” status for me sometimes. I never skip this entirely though, because my skin is oily so it needs to be cleansed in some fashion. If I haven’t worn makeup that day, I might just use a facial cleansing cloth or a cotton pad with toner instead of a full-on washing. And those also tend to be weekend days. Hmm… maybe it’s just weekends when I get hygienically lazy.

So now that I’ve revealed some more of my dirty little secrets (ha! get it? dirty? i’m hilarious), I totally won’t be offended if everyone goes running for the exits in horror. I promise, though, I’m really not that revolting – I did take a shower today, after all. 🙂

May 9, 2011May 9, 2011

Happy birthday to me!

Well, it was yesterday, but I was too tired by the time I went to bed to hop on here and tell you all about my day. 🙂

Amazingly enough, I survived turning 32 without the sky falling or the world ending, so I guess it’s not that bad. And I had an absolutely wonderful day, just what I wanted. It started off with R getting up with D so I could sleep in until 8:15. Ahh, that was heavenly. He surprised me with pancakes for breakfast, which were warmly waiting in the oven. Delish! A sweet card and gift were on the dining room table, too. R had a beautiful wooden picture frame made that reads “Happy First Mother’s Day” across the top and “Jocelyn and Della Jolee, May 8, 2011” across the bottom. I love it! We took a really cute picture of me and D to put in it yesterday, so I can’t wait to display it on my desk at work. D went down for her morning nap shortly after 9:30, so we made it family nap time. R put some nice chill Allman Brothers music on the speakers in the living room, perfect sleeping tunes, and we both dozed for a while to take advantage of D’s nap time.

The sun was shining and it was relatively warm, so we walked up to the little grocery store in our neighborhood around noon once we were all up and dressed. R humored me and we took the long way, so we got some nice exercise in for the day too. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with D, R smoking ribs for dinner (ribs aren’t usually my favorite meal because i hate messing with the bones, but he made these so fantastically that the bones pulled right out with not an ounce of meat left on them. i’ve never had ribs that good before!), and pretty much just hanging around to enjoy a lazy Sunday.

After dinner came the best part. Last week R said he’d make me a cake for my birthday, even a multi-layer one, so I requested red velvet and funfetti with chocolate icing. He is such a doll! It turned out splendidly, as does everything he makes, so that was just the perfect ending to a perfect day.

It was so special having my very first Mother’s Day on my birthday. And celebrating with my little family was the most magnificent way to spend it. Thank you, R and D, I love you!