Plottings of Muddy Proportions

Haa Haa it's SPRING!!! Dirt dirt dirt....Big plans like i do every year but this, year is different. I have to do this for us to eat.

• 2 kinds of tomatoes, brandywine and Roma
• zucchini
• peppers, jalapeno, different bells, and banana
• herbs, lots of them! sage,chives,oregano,basil,thyme,rosemary
• lavender
• leaf lettuce
• 2 kinds of peas, Oregon sugar pod, and early sweet?
• watermelon,sugar baby (small ones)
• cantaloupe
• pumpkin, small pie pumpkins
• marigolds
• nasturtiums
• flower vines, several kinds
• corn
• green beans, tendergreen (bush)
• broccoli
• megs sunflowers of course
• larkspur
• catnip
• strawberries, everbearing-8-10 roots
• going to get cucumber, ? carrots, stargazer lilies, and much much more

An old co--worker and friend is going to till the grounds. In the meantime, i have a lot of seeds started in the house to be ready to go. Della, however, twice has attacked and scattered the lavender & all the peppers seeds. i have a plan to fix her wagon. The front yard is being rearranged and dug up for flowers and maybe a peony bush. Matt is going to till a strip down the back of the house so i don't have to try and kill grass or make raised beds. This is not just to make it pretty and me happy. It will keep grass down and away from the underpinning. There is plans for bulbs around air conditioner as well to make it easier to tend the yard without having to go around it and the wires from the pole that are right next to it. I want bird feeders but the yard is treeless so i am scratching my head for the simplest and most economical way to go about it. I am off to plan out plots.

a stroke of luck!

Stress is harmful. Duh, right. Somehow i ended up back in the er one night after work. They admitted me. I couldn't or wouldn't believe i had suffered a mini-stroke. I could logically brush off most of the symptoms, except the face. Half of my face went numb, like as in Novocain numb. If i hadn't been with myself all day i would have thought i had been at the dentist. Now that was hard to brush under the rug. Okay so where do we go from here.

1. We stay on course. I have lost 51 pounds so far. Spring, garden plans, hiking trails and general spring fever is around the corner. So staying active won't be a problem and staying active leaves little time to worry. If i have come this far with my health and let that area of my life slip, other thing will come crashing down as well.

2. Stand up, raise your right hand and repeat after me, "So what! Oh well! NO! Whatever (with a smile)!, It's no big deal!" Now children anoint your backs with olive oil. From now on whenever crap, stuff, sneak attacks and stress, come at you, apply one of the previous phrases and watch it roll off your back!!!

3. I've opened my eyes to the beautiful friends/family i have at church and work. Thanks for the spa/nature walk day. It was just the best, girls! I am not in this alone, nor am i going through anything new. This is a well worn path that many have walked before me and many will come after me. Our money related stress isn't necessarily new to us, or anyone else for that matter, it just seems like right now the stakes are higher. Ed will find work and we will get back on track. We have been through a lot in 20 years. This to shall pass.

4. PRAYER!! not just the sitting down and chatting with Daddy prayers. I mean the knees on the rug facing West, nose to the floor, dressed in burlap kind of prayers!

5. Laugh dammit! Thanks to Tammy and Rachel at work my sides are in constant pain and i nearly need depends, but i feel so much better! Well until we get into trouble with Pam that is!! Meg helps me be silly, again. Tell dumb jokes that are so dumb they are funny. Blow straw papers at the pastor on Wednesday night church suppers. Cut a big cheese around any boy age eight to eighteen (or Rachel) ! Sneak attack any available family member with a belly fart! Race to the house! Life really is too short... If dad is right and reincarnation is real then i am coming back as a house cat! I know my dogs are completely spoiled but you have to admit the cats live longer and have that " i really don't give shit, now just where is my dinner!" attitude.

I think that i am lucky i got a break to stop and reevaluate. It could have turned out worse. Doc Bill said this is just a warning that my body was giving me. Slow down and change things or ...
i will and i am changing.

~sandbar~

I have caught my breath as i stand here wading off shore from the sandbar. I was beached unexpectedly last week I have spent the last few days angrily sulking with my feet the sand blaming all my troubles on the lizards that crawled over me. Peanut butter, cursed peanut butter. Not the ordinary sticky stuff from the jar either, i am talking about the Christmas confections peanut butter fudge and buckeye balls. I innocently sampled one, to be kind the the giver/cook never meaning to bite another one. I have used this tactic before. It kills the curiosity as well as being kind to the giver. I was not prepared. I was ambushed. Is there some chemical drug that is produced when you mix powdered sugar and peanut butter? I think there is, i need therapy. I was drawn back to the container like a powerless addict, more than a several times i must confess. I tried breaking off small nibblets rather than eating whole pieces of fudge. It didn't matter because i eventually ate the whole piece i was breaking from in the first place! Guilt and anger follow the binge. Mostly, I believe because i didn't see the temptation coming. i was blindsided. I am prepared to do battle with a known temptation. After anger comes defeat, sulking, and general "i-don't-care-isms". Eating habits weren't good, not horrible but definitely NOT good. The scale burps and the sand bar is comfortable. It is hard swimming against the tide.

Megan to the rescue! She pep-talked and i had a good look at my paperclips. Such long trails of them hanging from the frig. So for the rest of the day i have been wadding a little in the water off shore of the sandbar. I am rested and smarter than when i landed here. Ready to swim off and face the tide again. Swimming against this tide of weight gain is not easy but i am determined to make it to shore.

Our prayers were answered. Ginger was perfectly healed Wednesday. Eddie and i held her after she hugged us goodbye and we let her go. I imagine her and Fawn are having a good laugh and shaking thier head over us silly "human-pets". They surely did their best to train and raise us right.