Who Needs Yard Crashers?!

When we moved into our house it had been empty for two years.  The yard was a mess and overgrown with ivy all around the house.  I spent the first summer pulling out ivy.  I”m still trying to keep it from taking over in certain areas.  The creeping myrtle is trying to take over, too.

There is forsythia in several locations.  I’ve spent a lot of time pruning that back or removing it altogether.

I love the tall lilac bushes along the back fence.  The smell sets off my allergies, so I don’t bring the blooms into the house, but they are lovely and the bushes (trees?) hide some of the rear neighbor’s white fence.  I’d rather be fenced in with green stuff.

The oddest thing was along the bedroom side of the house.  Just a couple of feet in from the property line the old owner had installed 5 segments of stockade fencing.  It doesn’t connect to anything at either end.  The best that we could figure out was that it was to block the view to the bedroom windows from the neighbor’s family room.  There was a sad rose bush right about a mid length.  Between it and the neighbor’s chain link fence were privet or boxwood hedges.  Many of these were dying.

The sections were doing a really good job of trying to rot in the dirt as they hadn’t been installed up enough to prevent rot.  So we eventually pulled the sections down, leaving the posts which are in decent shape.

The stockade fence has since been replaced with lengths of vinyl lattice supported by lengths of 1 x 3 that were salvaged from other odd projects that came with the house.  What we did do was install them from the tops of the posts, leaving a 1 foot gap at the bottom.  Grass and weeds filled in where the boxwoods had been.  I’m working on eliminating the weeds and establishing more grass.

We finally attacked our side of the lattice area and did something that we had wanted to do for a while.  There is now a garden edged with stones salvaged from a raised bed that we are eliminating.  We’ve planted two blue berry bushes and transplanted a rose bush from another area that is about to be torn up.  We are hoping that it takes to the transplant.  If not we’ll get a climbing rose for that location.  We need a few more plants for the garden area, but the tilling and edging and prepwork have been done.

More stone edges a newly mulched area along the side of the house in order to make mowing easier, protect the poor remaining part of the thorn bush, and protect the grounding wires and siding (yes, I know it needs a paint job) from the weed whacker and lawn mower.  The stone gives it a more finished look.

I am hoping that the thorn bush fills back in.  It was huge and died a rather ugly death, except for that one stem.  That stem even had flowers this spring.

The side yard looks much more finished now.   M’Lord plans to build an arbor archway at the narrow area between the lattice and the forsythia.

It’s a slow process, but the yard is shaping up.

Now the “Patio” is a whole other story.

Pedaling

I don’t remember learning to ride a bike.  I don’t remember my first bike.  I remember the pink one with the banana seat.  I remember the big old blue bike with twin baskets on the back.  It was a single gear bike.  But it got me around town and to school.

In grammar school I began to save up my birthday and Christmas money.  When I had enough my Dad and I went to the local Bike Shop and ordered my first new bike.  It was a red ten speed.  A boy’s ten speed.  My Dad preferred the strength of the boys frame.   So I learned to start by putting my one foot in the pedal toe clip, pushing off, and swinging my other leg over the back of the bike.

Once I grew too tall for that bike, I bought a blue ten speed.  Boys frame again.

I rode all over the local area.  I rode to work at the day camp that I worked at during the summers.  I rode in all seasons.  My Dad belonged to a bicycle touring club and I would sometimes go on lower level rides with the group.  We even did a couple of bike camping trips with the Club.

Then I went away to college and worked full time during the summers.  My blue bike sat in the garage.  Finally, Dad asked if he could donate it to a group that refurbishes bikes for kids who can’t afford them.  We donated my bike.

7 years ago M’Lord and I bought our house in a great area for local biking, including being near a canal with a walking/biking path where the old tow path was.   So we bought bikes.  This time I actually bought a girls frame.  My silver Cannondale is a 15 speed hybrid that I can ride on or off road.  No typical ten speed curved handle bars and skinny seat.  It has shock absorbers and wide tires.   I rode around locally.  But I was out of shape and then got pregnant.  The bike sat in the shed for most of the last 6 years.  I’d go out for a short ride every once in a while.  But the bike mostly sat in the shed.  M’Lord, on the other hand, uses his much more often than I have, including riding 17 miles each way to and from work at times.

This year I started to mix running with my walking, at the suggestion of my OB, to get my heart more fit.  I asked M’Lord what it would take to get my bike back into working order.  He thought that I’d need new tires, new cables, and some other work.

However…when I got home from grocery shopping this morning I found him out back with my bike upside down.  He’d checked and refilled the tires and given it a basic tune up.  We fixed the seat height as I rode around the yard a few times.  It seems to be fine.

So after lunch I put on my bike shorts and took a 3.6 mile ride around the neighborhood.  My knees were not happy about the ride, which means the seat needs adjustment, but I did alright. I just have to remember which ways the hand grips turn to shift up and down again.  Half of my shifts were in the wrong direction, which is not fun while trying to go uphill after years of not using my legs that way.

While my legs will be sore tomorrow.  I got out on the bike and can now mix my cardio workouts between running/walking and biking.

Either way, my legs will not be happy with me for a while.

 

I’ve Lost…

…the ability to get both the Cub and myself out of the house on time in the morning.

For 3 1/2 years, two mornings a week, The Cub and I would get up at 6:30 am and cuddle on the couch while he watched Disney or Nick Jr.  At 6:50 I would get up, get dressed, pack my lunch, get him dressed, feed him breakfast, and get us both out of the door by 7:23.  I’d drop The Cub off at the sitter’s house and be on my way to work by 7:30.

As M’Lord can go into work later in the morning, now that The Cub began kindergarten, M’Lord drops him off at school on those two mornings a week and then heads in to work.

Today through Thursday M’Lord is in FL on a business trip.  So, for the first time since August, I had to get both myself and The Cub up, dressed, and packed and out the door by 7:25.  We didn’t make it.  We left at 7:31.  I dropped him off at a friend’s house, so that she would walk him to school with her kindergartener, and was finally on the way to work at 7:36, about 10 minutes later than I usually leave for work on my own now.  Time of arrival at work…8:15, about 10 minutes later than usual.

Maybe I’ll get my timing back on Thursday?

The Cub is 6

The Cub is six.  He’s been six since February 20th.

I’ve tried to remember to write about how and what The Cub is doing a few times a year.  During the first two years I would right letters to him.  There were also the two years of calendars that you can set the months and dates from the child’s birth and make little notes about milestones.  Then I moved to typing posts about 4 times a year.  Then it sort of moved to twice.  Now I’m trying to do it at his birthday.  You can see how well I’ve done this year.  Though, I will say, I was waiting until after his Parent Teacher conference so that I could include that information.

So…physically he is healthy, energetic, blue eyed and blonde.  At his well visit he weighed 48 lbs and was 47 inches tall.  A pound an inch.  75th percentile height and 50th weight.  Tall and slender, like his daddy and uncles.  Sight and hearing are great.

As for school…he’s reading at almost a 3rd grade level.  He’s in kindergarten.  His teacher is working with him on comprehension and has him help other kids in his class work on sight words.  “This is my easiest meeting” is a direct quote from his teacher.  We were trying to figure out which piece of artwork might be his and she suggested that we look for the neatest printing and best spelling.  I was happy to hear that they really take time to figure out which teacher in the next grade will be best for each child.  His teacher said that she is going to work on placing him with a teacher that will challenge him.  The Cub is also the one student from her class that she would expect to test into 2nd grade math next year.  She also said that, depending on how many advanced readers there are that they might make a small group of them that move between the teachers together to work on more advanced books.  So we’ll see what happens in the fall.  “He’s a bright kid.  And he’ll always be that way.”  And he gets along with his classmates and has friends that he regularly plays with on the playground.

And at home…he loves to play with Legos and Cars and cars and still likes to play with his Thomas trains.  The Cub loves to climb on his Daddy.  He’s still a hugger and can cry easily when tired.  He’s a mostly good kid.   But he’s six, which means that he doesn’t remember to watch what he might knock over when he’s running or bouncing.

Legos.  There are Legos all over the house.  The Cub is really creative with his random parts and pieces.  He loves to build vehicles that come from shows that he watches or books that he reads.  But he’s also really good with sets.  We can give him a set and the only thing that he’ll need help with is putting on the stickers.  Or finding a piece that might have rolled off.  He follows the directions on his own.

Computer and video games…because he can read he doesn’t need help with directions.   He’ll find a new game and figure it out without much help at all.  Right now he’s really into the Lego site games like Builder’s Island.  And he can drive his own car on Mario Kart now.  I used to steer and he’d fire the stuff and control the gas.  Now he plays on his own.

This week the school district held an art show.  Two of The Cub’s pieces were on display.  We are going to frame the penguins and I’ll “pot” the self portrait “Flower”.

He’s getting more adventurous with eating, which is good, trying more different foods and declaring that he likes them.  Like his mommy, he’s not big on raw tomatoes.  But, like his Daddy, he’s decided that he likes salmon.

Emotionally he is still a bit of a cryer, but not as much as in the past years.  He’s getting better at using his words to tell another kid that he doesn’t want to play something or doesn’t like being hit or tackled, or whatever it is at the time.  Progress.

He’s doing just fine and I’m glad that he’s mine.

Practice…

…does not make perfect, but it can produce some pretty images.

It is spring.  Spring sprung early.  So I am trying to remember to take my Pentax out with me so that I can practice my photography skills and use more of the camera’s features.

It is usually set on aperture priority, so the next step is to work on all manual and play with shutter speed.  I fought getting digital camera for a long time.  But my favorite benefit to digital is not wasting film.  I can take the “same” photo with a variety of settings, download the images to my laptop, and see what has come of them so quickly.  And not worry about wasting film or waiting for developing.  So I can pick an aperture setting and change the shutter speed.  Or vice versa.  And just play and see what I can get the camera to do.  Today I threw in some manual focus work, too, as I could not get the autofocus to focus on what I wanted it to.

A few weeks ago the crocuses were still out.

Two weeks ago the magnolia, in the yard of a house that we pass on the way to and from school, was all abloom.

So were the cherry blossom trees at the playground.

Mom’s wisteria were all abuzz with bumbles this week.

And the willow trees, at the winery that M’Lord and I had a date lunch at today, were playing with the water.

A professional photographer I will never be.  But I do like to play with a camera.

A Slayer of Socks

I am hard on socks.

I like socks.  Especially in cooler months.

I don’t like to wear shoes or sneakers without socks.  Sandals are fine, but I can’t stand flipflops.

I have lots of socks.

I have to have lots of socks…

…because I kill socks.

Size 6 1/2 is not a big foot.  So I don’t stretch them out or need larger, longer socks.  In fact, the heels of many socks end up farther up the back of my heel and ankle then actually on my heel.  And, though it happens, heel holes rarely happen in my socks.

The feeling of a sharp nail edge rubbing on a toe, a sock, or sheets, is very annoying, so nail trimming is a regular occurrence.  So no holes in the toes.

Occasionally the elastic at the top will dry out, rendering the socks useless unless you like them bunched around the ankles.

No holes in the toes.  Few holes in the heels.  No stretched out socks.  What is left?

I wear out the area under the balls of my feet.  White cotton crew socks, hiking socks, cute cotton socks with cats or Kermit or snowflakes on them, argyle knee socks…I wear out the area under the ball of my foot.  Not just a small hole but a large worn and thin area.  And this happens fairly frequently.  And not evenly between the two matching socks.

So frequently that M’Lord gave me about a dozen new pairs of cute cotton socks for Christmas.  Which is good because about that many pairs ended up in the trash this winter.  One more wearing and today’s pair will probably be heading for the trash, too.

Those aren’t flour spots.  They are areas where you can see right through to my skin.  This is an odd one in that the heel is wearing through, too.

We don’t darn socks anymore.  Socks are inexpensive and colorful.  Keeping all of the colors to match all of the sock colors would be impossible.  Darning was much more practical, and necessary, when stockings and socks were black, brown, or white, and each person only had a few pairs.  And they were thicker.  The repair seam would not bother the bottom of the foot.  One of the family heirlooms that I’ve been given is a double darning egg, used to shape the heel or toe when repairing those few pairs of stockings.

But the holes that appear in my socks are too big for darning.  They require a good sized patch.

White crew socks, bought by the multipack, can be paired up with other white crew socks who have lost their mates to death by my feet.  But unless I buy two matching pairs of cute socks, I end up with a drawer full of odd, though cute, cotton socks.  The Cub needs only so many sock puppets.

But I need more socks.

Moving Those Feet…

…and legs…and getting fit.

Breathe.

I am a healthy weight for my height.  I surprised my OBGYN by not gaining any weight this past year.  But I am not fit.  I can walk.  I can walk a few miles without my legs and hips thinking of rebelling.  But anything requiring cardio fitness is tough.  I am not cardiovascularly fit.

During grammar school summers I belonged to the town swim team.  I could swim laps for a good long while.  I also owned a bike, a boys 10 speed, and rode around town, which was rather hilly, regularly.  My father belonged to a bike club and would often lead rides on Sundays.  If they were lower level rides I was able to go with them.

In high school I marched, and twirled a flag while I was at it.  We’d practice for hours.

Then came college.  Then a full time job.  My fitness level went downhill quickly, despite tromping, in work boots, around building construction sites with no, or really slow so we used the stairs, elevators.

Then I was introduced to Country Line Dancing.  I love country music, so it was a natural segue after a bad break up.  I started going regularly on Friday nights.  That morphed into 3 nights a week.  I could dance for hours, many dances in a row with no break, including some good fast ones.

Eventually my husband and I bought a house that was much farther away from the club than our apartment had been.  So we started going maybe twice a month.  We also bought bicycles.  I used mine occasionally, but my stamina was in the minor leagues.  Hills killed me.

Then came pregnancy, The Cub, and the need to pay a babysitter if we want to go out.  So no more dancing or biking for a long while.  I would go out for walks, but not on a good, steady schedule.

This fall I began to take longer routes home from or to school than the short, straight there route that I take with The Cub.  I was moving more, at least.  And I do walk at a fast pace.  I timed several of the walk routes so that I knew how much earlier I would need to leave in order to do the longer walk and not be late for pick up.

But I need to get my cardio fitness level up.  My bike needs a tune up and new tires and tubes, at least.  That costs a bit.  But running shoes combined with a small Christmas Bonus could do the trick.  So I did that.  I bought running shoes.

The winter weather has been on and off good for running, but I’ve gone out a few times on week-ends or during the week.  This week, though, I changed my pattern.  Instead of walking the Cub to school, heading home, doing some chores, then heading out to exercise, or walking the longer routes to or from the school, I dressed for running for the walk to school.  Both today and Wednesday were warm enough that my lungs wouldn’t scream at me for running in the cold.  So I walked/jogged home.  Wednesday was a 1.1 mile route.  This morning I took a 1.5 mile route, and actually ran the first .59 mile of it before needing to walk for a bit.  Then I alternated for the rest of the route.  But I did it.

My goal is to work up to just about 3 miles of walk/jog.  We live on a 2 mile loop road.  Miss our house and you’ll pass it again in 2 miles.  Many people in the area use it for walking/running routes.  There are two loop roads off of my loop road that will add .95 miles to the route.  That will put me up to a 5K.

There is one thing about my body that bothers me while running…my butt bounces.  I’m not chesty, so a good sports bra is plenty.  But my butt bounces.  I can feel it.  Ugh.

But to celebrate the good run part and that the spring weather is coming, today I am wearing a skirt.

Books to Save

Borrowed from The Broke and the Bookish….

My Top Ten Books to Save If My House Were Abducted By Aliens (Or any other disaster struck)

I love to read.  But I’ve purged many books that were not favorites or that I would not read again so that someone else may have the pleasure of reading them.  So there aren’t lots of books in the house.  But the ones that I would want to take with me if I had the time to grab them, after The Cub, the server, the fire box, the computers, our wedding albums, and my purse, would be…

1.  My hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables that I bought at an antique fair, 25th pressing dated 1910.  It still has a paper glued to the front page indicating that “Esther Louise Pickwick Owns This Book”.  I love that some of the pictures have tissue paper pages in front of them still.

2 thru 5.  I’m counting the various series as one book each:  The box of books from the attic.  It contains about 20 Cherry Ames series books, several Bobbsey Twins series books, a couple of Raggedy Ann and Andy books, and a few others.  The Cherry Ames books were my mother’s and are now mine, and I have read them many times.  The others were mine as a child and were all also read over and over again.

6 and 7.  Peanuts Treasury and Peanuts Classics.  Again, these were mine and I read through them many times.  Now I am waiting for the Cub to be able to start enjoying Peanuts.

8. The Annotated Alice and Through the Looking Glass.  This copy of Alice in Wonderland is full of footnotes and explanations of Carroll’s words, phrases, etc.  A very interesting read.  I’d thought that I’d lost it for several years, but found it again a few years ago.  It’s paperback and rather dogeared, but it is one of my favorites.

9.  My recipe binder.  There are several family recipes in there among the printed from the internet and torn out of magazines recipes and I wouldn’t want to lose them.

10.  Hush Little Baby, by Sylvia Long.  It’s the copy that I read to The Cub from.  And I love that it changed all of the buying to other activities.  I still sing it to him at times.

An odd group, but there it is.

A Bookworm…

I love to read.  We read to Liam every night and, many days, in the afternoon.  He is in Kindergarten and is testing at an almost 3rd grade reading level.  Our job is to work on comprehension with him.  So I do a lot of reading.  But…

…I seem to have lost the ability to just sit or lie down and read for a good long while.  My books.  Ones that I want to read.  And I don’t always do my own good job of absorbing what I am reading.  I find myself going back over a page because I don’t remember any of what I just read.

I don’t like this.

I grew up reading.  There was no internet.  We were allowed a certain amount of TV time per day.  I didn’t have a large circle of friends and was often home.  So I read.  And re-read.  Nancy Drew.  Anne of Green Gables.  The Happy Hollisters.  Honey Bunch.  Cherry Ames (as my Mom is a nurse and still has a good amount of the series).  The Secret Garden.  They were all comfort to me and were read over and over.

I could read for hours.

For the record, I hated reading for school – being told what to read and how many pages and having to remember the right things to pass the test on the book.  There were only a couple of books from high school that stuck with me for some reason.

In college I would lose track of time when I should have been studying because I would be reading.  Somewhere in that time period I discovered science fiction/fantasy and began to work my way through those kinds of series.

I could lie on my dorm bed and read for hours.

After college I moved home, started to work, and, again, spent a lot of time at the library and the newly opened Barnes & Noble, finding books to read.  What a wonder B&N was when it first opened.  So many books.  The place is still dangerous to me, though I try to stick with borrowing from the library to keep the spending down.  For now, most of my B&N purchases are for The Cub.  Henry Huggins will soon be joining Bunnicula on his shelf.

For 7 years I commuted to work on the train or the bus.  I got a lot of reading done on the rides home.  Danielle Steele was a big one for me at that time.  Then I switched to a company that was more local and I drove to work.  There went the commuter reading time.  But I still read at home and discovered Nora Roberts and JD Robb.

But somewhere in the past 10 years or so I’ve lost the ability to just sit and read.  Blogs and online articles and magazines are easy.  Short bits of reading that do not take too long.  If I find something that I like I can print it out or fold the page and go back to it.  Recipes pile up to be sorted and possibly made, or put into the recycling bin if I later decided that making them will never happen.  And I can always find it again if I search hard enough.

But a book.  A good book with some depth.  Not a basic formula romance.  That has become a challenge.

My brain wanders to the chore list, the grocery list, the errands list, the “Did I forget to send that form to school with The Cub?” list, the work list.  It loses touch with what I am trying to read and absorb.  I take books out from the library that catch my eye and return them without reading them.  And if they aren’t new books I have 6 weeks in which to get them read.  If I try to read while The Cub is at school I feel guilty, thinking that I should be doing chores or errands so that I can hang out with him when he gets home.  And I find myself zoning out in front of HGTV or FoodTV or some such station, or the internet, after he has gone to bed, instead of picking up one of those library books that caught my attention enough for me to bring it home.

Tonight I am going to work on reading, and absorbing what it is that I have read.  Time to walk away from the laptop and not turn the TV on.  Time to read more of the book that I liked enough the first time that I took it out of the library but didn’t finish that I took it out again and am almost to the end of those 6 weeks.

Here goes.

Wish me Good Reading.

A Use for Dice

I volunteer twice a month in my son’s kindergarten classroom.  Afternoons are math time, so I spend the first hour working with the kids to make sure that they are getting through their work, occasionally refereeing when there is a dispute if they are working in pairs or groups.  About a month ago his teacher gave some of the kids 12 sided dice and some 8 sided, depending on their math abilities, for a “math game”.  One of the kids asked if there were dice with more sides.  She answered that more sides than 12 would be very much like a ball.  After the teacher told me what she needed me to do I mentioned that there are 20 sided dice.  M’Lord, and I on occasion, plays Dungeons & Dragons and other dice based role playing games regularly, so we have lots of dice in the house.  A standard set of dice contains one 4 sided, one 6 sided, one 8 sided, two 10 sided (to roll a percentage), one 12 sided, and one 20 sided.

That night I asked M’Lord if he had any incomplete or old sets that he’d be willing to donate to the classroom.  The next day he gave The Cub a container of about 100 dice of various side counts, including at least eleven 20 sided dice, to give to his teacher.  She was thrilled.   Today I went in for the first time since that day and she was using the 20 sided dice for the math game.  I was really glad to see that she was able to use them.  I commented on them and she said that the other three K teachers have all asked to borrow the 12 and 20 sided dice.  So now we are going to ask M’Lord’s gaming buddies if they have spare or incomplete sets to donate so that there are more to share.

Dice can be ordered in bags of just one size, so if I can’t get more donations I may just order a bag of 20 sided and donate them to the school so that each of the teachers can have some in their own classrooms.

What a great new use for an odd set of something.