Here goes...

My attempt at getting some freelance work. This is actually a business card prototype - likely the winner in final bracket of 7 - that I'm planning on handing out and pinning up on bulletin boards around town. I like it, I think people will like it and it's hopefully what will get me some work and help pay the bills.

In case you're interested, I work (and have for 13, almost 14, years) in print. I have a wee bit of web experience, but it's nothing to write home about. Compiling a portfolio to put online is on my list of things I need to do, but haven't yet. I'm the first to admit that my skills aren't the greatest, but they've improved vastly over the last 6 or 7 years and I'm always willing to learn and figure out new techniques. I'm quick and try to be original, but take a lot of influence from eras gone by, especially pre-WWII.

So, that's it. My first step into the wonderful world of freelance. My name is out there. Or, rather, my prototype business card is out there. Kind of exciting, yet nauseating all at the same time.

Now what?

Now that I'm officially done working at the paper, I'm feeling slightly rudderless. This is the first time I've been willingly unemployed. No job to move on to in the near future, no prospects (outside of random minimum wage jobs that any carbon-based life form could get), nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing.

There's a timeline I'm trying to stick to to get things on the move. I want to have a whole pile of stuff done by Christmas, but now that I've finally given in and accepted that Christmas is in fact on Friday and not Saturday next week, I don't know if I'll have enough time. Add into the mix the Christmas dinner we're hosting (and cooking) and shopping and family/friend obliagtions... eep.

I'm seriously thinking about making time management/life organization my number on resolution this year. I have an idea of what I need to get done most days, but accomplishing even half of that list is becoming more and more impossible. And it's not like I've taken on a lot of extra work or anything - it's just simple mismanagement of my time. Maddy does not need me right beside her when she's playing anymore; she can play with her toys quite well by herself and I can still see here and talk to her from the kitchen while I do dishes/bake/cook. There is no harm in starting to integrate a little independence into her life at this age. But my time with her is just the tipping point of my time management issues.

I've thought about using an organizer and scheduling my life hour-by-hour, but that just seems like it would suck. And be depressing. No spontaneity, no freedom, no relaxation. But an organizer/day planner is going to have to make it's way into my life as a permanent fixture in the new year, I fear. I used to have a good memory and not need to write everything down; apparently having a child robs you of that ability. Sigh.

But it's nice to be done work. And not be stressed about it anymore. My two weeks weren't as bad as I feared and it was nice to see a lot of people I hadn't seen since I went on leave 15 months ago. I don't see myself ever working out there again, but I will visit. For the most part, there's a lot of good people in my company, but they tend to operate only according to predetermined policies and procedures, which, in turn, makes one want to stab themselves in the eye several times with a red-hot poker when dealing with them.

Onwards and upwards, I guess.

Precipice

With less than 2 days of work to go (Friday is our company Christmas party and an early release from work afternoon), I've managed to keep fairly 'busy' doing 'things' at my not-as-ugly-as-I-remember job. I didn't have much to do with the last issue of the year last week during production and have spent the majority of my 8 days archiving and tidying.

The excitement. It never ends.

This is why tomorrow, I plan on spending my day doing as little actual constructive work as possible. I have one thing that has to be done - a wrap-up/to-do list for my replacement. If all goes according to plan, she'll be the one who's been doing my job for the last few months. And because my company is completely inept when it comes to being proactive about training and management, she's missing big chunks of how the office is actually supposed to run. It doesn't help that the previous manager is/was a moron and that the new one wants as little to do with the non-newspaper side of the office as possible. He (the new boss, who just strikes me as off in a way I can't quite put my finger on) has yet to realize that he's the one who is responsible for everything that goes on in the office and that he is the face of the office. He is expected to attend certain events; he is expected to do things that he is asked to; he has responsibilities that his staff can not, nor should not, do. And then there's his abject opposition to the weather...

Tomorrow is my last real day of work at the paper. I don't know if I'll ever work at another paper, but if I do, it won't be for a while. A long while. I think this job has done what every other newspaper job has threatened to do: change my approach to my career. I like designing. I like editing. I hate writing. I want to design and edit for a living. There are no jobs for designing editors around here, so I have to make one for myself.

My plan tomorrow is to have a cup of coffee (or several) and go through 50 of the world's best design blogs (found via Etsy's Twitter feed). I'm not sure if I'll find inspiration or discouragement by gorging myself on other people's designs, but I think it's a nice way to spend a day, trapped in a sunless office with a boss who barely speaks.

I'm still working on what I'm going to do after Friday. I have a list that I'm working on of what I can do, what I want to do, and what I have to do. I've been tossing around the idea of setting a deadline for myself - if I don't make $X by X day, I have to find a job - but I worry that doing something like that is only going to force me to either produce shit or give up and just get a damn job. I don't want a damn job, I want to work for myself. Problem is, what the hell am I going to do to keep from having to get that damn job?

Garg.

As I head back to work in a couple of weeks (full-time for 2 weeks, part-time {27 hrs/week} after that), I've come across more than one debate on stay-at-home-moms versus working moms.

I plan on being a work-from-home-mom within the year. In the meantime, I will work part-time at my newspaper job while working on building my from-home business up to a point where I can still have a decent (ie. one that allows the bills to be paid) income. My boyfriend will be our daughter's main caregiver while I'm at work, supported by our respective mothers.

I do not, for one second, think I am lazy or inconsiderate of my daughter's future because I don't want to put her into daycare. The decision to not put her into care was an easy one - I never went as a child and turned out fine. Most kids I knew growing up didn't go into care. In fact, I don't think there was a daycare in my hometown until I was well into elementary school. Yes, we did attend nursery school and some of us were sent to relatives' homes to be babysat, but never an 8-hour child care situation where there are 8 kids for every adult.

I plan on putting Maddy into a few activities as she grows up. We want to get her started on swimming lessons soon; I have a few friends with kids around Maddy's age; we have nephews who, while 4-8 years older than Maddy - really like playing with her. I certainly do not plan on locking myself in the house with Maddy while I work from home. I'm not sure if that's the scenario a lot of working moms think of when they hear someone is going to be a SAHM, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Yes, there are days when we don't leave the house. But - and I can't stress this enough - it's not like I'm lying on the couch, eating chocolates while Maddy stumbles around the living room in a dirty diaper with a knife in her hand looking for an open electrical outlet. I have much, much fuller days now that Maddy is in my life. Today alone, I baked 7 loaves of bread, did dishes, portioned out the pears I made for Maddy's breakfast, made some apple-cinnamon pancakes for Maddy, and baked a ham. It is 3:30pm CST right now; I've been up since 6:30am. More often than not, the baking/cooking/cleaning is a typical day; and that does not include feeding, changing, and playing with Maddy, which is a fair amount of time.

I like to be active, and now that Maddy is more independent, I don't worry quite as much about her throwing a fit if I leave the room for a few minutes. I do most of my baking while she's asleep - I don't want to either burn her by accident or end up ruining whatever I'm baking. If I do leave her in the living room - we have this gate which has been a lifesaver - she can see me unless he goes on the other side of the room. And yes, I have been known to use the TV as a temporary sitter while I'm out of the room. I'm not happy about it, but here's how I do it (before I get labeled a bad parent) - Maddy enjoys Sesame Street a lot. Like A LOT. After her breakfast, she gets her face washed, teeth brushed, changed, dressed and I put her in the living room (where all of her toys are), check to see that there's nothing she can hurt herself with within her reach and go back over the gate to the kitchen where I spend 5 minutes doing dishes or tidying up. The entire time I'm in the kitchen, I talk to her - I can hear the TV and will ask her if a favourite character is on or comment on what might be going on. Once I'm done whatever I'm doing, back over the gate, throw a few pillows down on the floor so I can be on her level and play with her until her naptime.

Those 5 minutes I'm not in the room with her? Not the end of the world. At least in my mind. Leaving my daughter with people I don't know from Adam for 8+ hours a day? Big problem.

I may have mentioned it before, but in order for us to send our daughter to day care, I would have to work 2 full-time jobs. One to pay for life, one to pay for the care. So I'd likely be out of the house for at least 10 hours a day (some, probably closer to 15 or 16). What the hell was the point in having her if I was going to work myself to death if I was only going to foist her off on someone else to raise? I did say that we are going to have support from our mothers while I go back to work, but neither of them live here - my mom is 45 minutes away, Keith's is 3 hours away. We can't expect them to quit their jobs and come sit for us whenever we want them to. It's just the way it is.

What's been frosting my ass lately is the working parents/people in general who think that SAHMs or even WFHMs are lazy and are leeches on society. I can guarantee that the vast majority - at least based on my circle of friends - are not leeches. Nor are they lazy. Yes, we do get support from the government, but my $320 a month goes strictly to Maddy. Most parents I know do the same - the child benefits go to the child, no one else. There are a few ne'er-do-wells who have ruined the concept of staying home to raise your children to make them better people for the rest of us (ie. those parents who have kid after kid after kid and don't work as a personal choice). I am quite tired of explaining to people why I want to stay home and raise our daughter over working like a madwoman in order for her to be taught life's lessons by a virtual stranger.

I am well aware that I may end up working outside of home for longer than the next year. I am not going to put my family at risk of losing their home just to fulfill a dream I have. I have no problem (now, at least) of pushing things back a few months or even another year if it means we stay out of the poorhouse. I'm not that naive, but I would like it if people would stop looking down their damn noses at me when I say I want to stay home rather than working in an office while my daughter is growing up. Just because other people couldn't do it - or wouldn't do it - should have no bearing on me and my situation, but in this day and age of lightning-fast commentary, everyone has an opinion and thinks that it's the only right one.

Sunday morning

First off, two (re)finds of the day:

1000 Awesome Things - I haven't had a chance to go through the entire site, but just based on the first page, I can definitely say it's awesome. Came across the link at PostSecret.

FOUND Magazine - I remember spending an entire afternoon at one of my design jobs going through this site, reading other people's shopping lists and love notes and just random bits of paper. I often wonder what other people think of notes that I've dropped while shopping or walking, and if one of them will end up on this site one day.

It's an untypical Sunday around our house. Keith is off to the big city for the celebration of a family friend who is dying of cancer so Maddy and I will hang out with my mom for the afternoon. In reality, my mom will play with Maddy - or chase her, as she's started to walk lately - while I clean the house in anticipation of Keith's parents' visit this week.

Typically, Sundays are relaxing days. I try to keep the TV off for as long as I can when Maddy's up so she can play with her toys (or me) instead of getting distracted by the picture box. Today, with my mom here, the TV will likely be on more than I want, but it happens and I'm not going to get upset by it.

Another reason I've been trying the more music-less TV scheme is Maddy's attrocious sleep patterns. She sleeps fairly well during the day, 2 naps, usually 1.5-2 hours each. It's the overnight sleep that's the issue... well, still the issue, even after 10 months. There's so many back issues with her sleep that I just don't want to go into, but we've been working with her for a few months now to get her to sleep through the night. I have had success twice - only 2 times in 3 months has she slept straight from the time we put her down at 9pm and stayed asleep until 6am.

Her usual sleep pattern through the night is bed at 9pm, awake at 12 or 1 and up, fussing, crying or attempting to play until 2 or 3 and then co-sleeping with me until 6am. I'm done with co-sleeping; it's gotten to where she sleeps and I don't. I go back to work in 3 weeks. Co-sleeping has to end and it has to be now.

We tried the cry it out method to little success. I mean, it has worked in some ways - she went from sleeping in 45 minute stretches to 3 or so hours and being able to fall asleep in her crib rather than us holding her, but otherwise it was a pretty big failure. I don't take blame for it, nor do I blame Maddy, but I do place a fair share of blame on the public health nurses we had when she was born. (For more of a background on this, see this post.) With me going back to work so soon, I've become so frustrated with her and her inability to sleep at night that I've passed the job of 'fixing' her sleep off to Keith. I don't recommend this method to everyone, but in our case, and only our case, in my opinion, his method worked - he let her cry. For an hour. He was 10 feet away, in a different room, but he let her settle herself and she slept. I had a hard time waking her up this morning, in fact. But she slept. And that's the main thing.

Do I think we've messed her up by doing this? Hell no. I think she'd have much bigger problems if we let her sleep issues continue (and I'd have problems, too, with the sleep deprivation I've had for 10 months and going back to work and driving back and forth to work, but this is about Maddy), and we had discussed what we would do at length. I love her to pieces and would not hurt her on purpose. I think she feels the same way about her dad and I, too - she's still the same kid she was yesterday, with the exception of the walking. I don't think there will be any long-term ramifications from letting her cry herself to sleep. I refuse to be a helicopter parent and want her to be as independent as possible at this age. I will be there when she needs me, but she needs to start being her own little person, too.

Fall? What fall?

Summer's over.

Officially.

Crap. We didn't even get a fall this year. Straight from gross heat 10 days ago to snow. Fantastic.

It's also officially 2 months until I go back to work. I'm reconsidering my pledge to not go back for more than the required 2 weeks. My boss quit (today was her last day) and her departure is making me think really long and hard about leaving for good. I may just try to make a deal with my new editor to work part-time when I go back. The money's almost worth it, but there's still a lot of other things to take into consideration, too.

I've started doing a bit of designing every day this week. With my return to work coming up and Christmas and winter, not to mention Maddy's ever-increasing development and the start of her realizing her independence, I'm finding myself wondering what I'm going to do to keep the cabin fever at bay. I think I've narrowed what I want to do to bring in some extra money (besides work) down to either a small stationery 'business' (I don't want to use that word necessarily, but it's the only one I can come up with right now) or an attempt to make little bits of jewelry and other small handicrafts. I'm probably going to set up an Etsy store to get my potential work out to the masses, but at this point, I'm still figuring things out. But I am much farther along than I was a week ago. Even pulled out the smelly laptop to do some work this week. Made me realize how craptacularly slow it really is, but handy nonetheless.

Fingers crossed I can keep up the small amount of momentum that I've got going for me.

---

I used a technique on the lily photo I found on Dooce.com. I love the look of Heather's photos and am always looking for new ways to make my pictures look just a little different than the original.

Also, should anyone pop by and deride me for supporting Dooce, stuff it. I like what Heather writes, but don't always agree with her. She seems like the type of person I'd probably be friends with if she lived on the edge of the Canadian prairies. In fact, I think I have a friend just like her and her personality (and sheer outrageousness) is what makes her (my friend) bloody awesome. So take your little junior high bitchfest somewhere else. I'm beyond caring what you have to say :)

Perhaps it's time to stop bitching and start doing

I'm still battling with time, for the most part, to get my act together and start doing something. There's a constantly growing list in my head of things I want to do in the next few months. In just over 3 months, I have to go back to work and my 'free' time will vanish. The plus to that (besides a better paycheque) is that I only have to go back for 2 weeks. After that, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I want to take the last couple of weeks of the year off, for both personal and career-related reasons (mainly, who the hell hires anyone at Christmas?); but come the new year, I'll probably have to find another job, hopefully one that lets me work part-time.

I wonder, sometimes, if I'm avoiding doing anything on purpose. I've always blamed 'fill-in-the-blank block' for preventing me from doing anything outside of what people may consider my normal habits. But really, who cares? If I'm doing something I enjoy, why should anyone else have the right to judge me? I guess in extreme cases (ie. criminal), my actions could be judged, but for the most part, it's my creative acts that I'm most worried about.

The kicker? I'm a graphic designer by trade. Also a semi-non-amateur (make sense?) writer. Yet, those are the two things I'm most worried about others passing judgment on.

Time to get over that hurdle. And fast.

---

Here's a sign of how much of a procrastinator I am. My iMac 'broke' a couple of weeks ago. I fixed it (thank god) and managed to salvage most of my files via backups. I have yet to create a single playlist in iTunes. Not even one for my daughter. Plain sad, if you ask me.

Life

Things have been crazy lately - Keith gone for a week, Maddy growing so fast, my computer dying twice, doctor's appointments, yardwork... so, of course, I've put off a few things, like this blog.

Every time I think I should post something, 'life' happens. Right now, we're dealing with our daughter's sleep issues by using the Ferber method to help both her and us get a good night of sleep for the first time in almost 8 months. There's also the ongoing battle to organize the laundry room, our filing system and our finances. I'm still working on a plan to make some extra money this winter so I don't have to work full-time. And yet, life continues to roll on.

I have a pile of coupons that have to be clipped for our monthly shopping expedition next week, there's a pile of envelopes sitting beside my computer waiting to be opened (no bills, though, thankfully), and I know there's a million other things that I have to do to try to stay sane. Yet, I keep putting a lot of that stuff off, leaving me feeling very overwhelmed.

And no matter how many times I try to get organized, I fail. I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge about how to organize properly or if it's just laziness and cutting corners, but something has to be done so things aren't constantly being put aside, to do another day.

Perhaps today's the day I get organized. A girl can dream, can't she?

Moderately overwhelmed

It's been a busy week with my sister visiting and a public health nurse appointment for our daughter and bloodwork for me and Keith going out of town. And now it's Saturday evening, Maddy's having her last nap of the day and I'm puttering about, trying to keep my slowly-eroding momentum going so I can stay up until 9pm or so.

I hate being this tired and exhausted. It seems like it will never end, that I'll never have energy again. I'm fed up with wanting to sleep - not nap - at 3pm every day. I don't remember the last time I slept for more than 3 hours at a time - it may have been a year ago. Long story, short - I'm on meds that aren't working and I don't know if they ever will.

But on a much (hopefully) happier note, I'm in the process of figuring out how I can legitimately stay at home with our daughter once I (hopefully) quit my job come December. Realistically, I will still probably work, but it will be part-time. There is no way, logistically, for me to work full-time - if I were to get a full-time job, I would have to get 2 because I'd have to pay for daycare. Keith's shifts are such that don't allow for one parent to be home taking care of Maddy while the other works. It just won't work. I did not have Maddy to let someone else raise her, at a cost to our family, both financially and personally.

But that whole can of worms is for another day.

I've mentioned previously that I was starting to get into crafts lately. Well, I'm seriously - like, dead - thinking of making this interest in crafts a sort-of, half-assed, maybe-kinda line of income. I know it's incredibly risky, but it's not like I've already quit my job and sunk what little savings I have into this idea. It's something that I'm going to work on, taking time and money into consideration, before I make an absolute final decision. Should I actually do this - this attempt to sell what I think people might want for knick-knacks - I want to do it right. And successfully.

So that's where I've been for a while. My mind's been full and would love a break from everything for a bit, but life just won't let me. May as well put it to good use, I guess.

Sabbath

Ah, Sunday.

These days, it's just another day, taking care of our daughter, trying to keep some kind of semblance of normalcy.

I remember when I was younger where Sundays were actual distinguishable days from the rest of the week. Even with Sunday shopping becoming prevalent when I was a teenager, Sundays just had a different feel than the rest of the week. Perhaps it was because there was nothing on TV so we were forced to find something else to do, like read or - heaven forbid! - clean our rooms. Maybe it was because Sunday meant the last day before school started again for another week.

I liked Sundays as a kid. Sundays were much more relaxed and more often than not, meant a trip to our grandparents'. If we didn't go to our grandparents, we stayed home, and depending on our age, went to the school playground half a block away. If the weather wasn't cooperating, we stayed in our rooms and played or read our newly checked-out library books. Sunday dinner usually meant a roast with gravy, followed by The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC. Bath and bed shortly after, depending on our age.

These days, I can't distinguish Sunday from any other day other than the fact that Sesame Street isn't on at the usual 8am for our daughter to watch. Well, that and the fact that most - not all - stores aren't open until noon and close at either 5 or 6pm, but we rarely shop on Sundays anyway.

I want to return to the old days, where Sundays were different from the rest of the week. Where we could relax and not feel guilty about it. Not a day people use to catch up on the chores they've put off during the week. I guess, for lack of a better argument, I'm advocating using Sunday as a day of rest, as in, of all things, the Bible. I'm one of the last people to advocate for anything referenced in the Bible, but I guess anything is possible.

My plans for today include playing with our daughter, going for a walk and relaxing as much as one can with a 7-month old. It's a decent day out today (19ºC today, perhaps some showers later) so we should probably take advantage of it, rather than just wasting yet another day inside staring at a screen.

Looking ahead

I'm currently a graphic designer at a small community newspaper. Or at least, I am a graphic designer (and assistant editor, blargh) at a newspaper when I'm not on maternity leave. I haven't actually been at my job for 11 months. I've only been on mat leave for 9 months. I had 3 months of sick leave before my mat leave started thanks to an absolutely crazy blood pressure issue (also known as pre-eclampsia, which I was never officially diagnosed with, but things were getting scary for a bit there).

Anyhoo... my point is I don't want to be a graphic designer (or editor) anymore. I like graphic design, I really do. I find design to be quite facinating and even though I have no 'formal' training (13+ years of hands-on learning and experience), I've grown to appreciate various forms of design and still find myself dissecting ads and graphic works on occasion. I used to visit Notcot.org and the CDR on a daily basis, but since I've been off work, it's more often than not that I forget about them until I've gone through every other site that I regularly visit.

So what do I plan on doing to make a living? Well, for the short term, I plan to return to my job after my mat leave and then quit after fulfilling the required amount of time I have to (it's a stupid set up - I think it's 2 weeks, but if I don't go back at all, I owe them all the 'top up' pay they paid me while I was on my leave. Stupid...). After that, I'm going to likely be working, again, at a local family restaurant that I've been working at for 11 years, off and on. I like it there, my bosses are fabulous and I'm pretty sure I can just step in and pick up where I left off (after learning about the new quirky menu).

I'm planning on attending the culinary school here next fall as well. I've already been accepted once - for this fall - but can't attend because I'm still on leave and I don't think it would work for this year. My finances aren't ready and there's the child care issue, not to mention the fact I have to go back to work in December for the aforementioned reason. So I've pushed it off until next year. The good part of this is I now know roughly how much it will cost for everything, including the non-tuition part, so I can start figuring out how I'm paying for it.

Why culinary school? Why not? I like to cook. I like to bake. I've been cooking since I was a little kid - I used to make denvers for breakfast when I was 7 or 8, using the plug-in frying pan. I've been baking since I was in Brownies. I'm addicted to the Food Network. It's kind of like gardening - you know you're accomplishing something. Everyone needs to eat, so why not provide that service for them?

And there's the point that, upon graduation, I should - in theory - make more than I do/did at the restaurant. However, my plans for after graduation may not bring in much more than I make/made when I do work at the restaurant.

I don't want to work in a restaurant ever again after graduation. I would much rather be on my own, catering or doing specialty cooking. I don't want to get bogged down working for someone else and their ideas. Essentially, I'm going to school to learn more about cooking than trying to get a better position at the local steakhouse or a ski resort (which is where a good chunk of the grads from this program end up).

I have a couple of ideas. I want to be an almost-boutique dainty-maker. I want to be able to provide my services to people who can't (or are afraid to) cook for their loved ones for special occasions. I have no idea how to get to either of these points, even upon graduation, but give me enough time, and I'll have researched both ideas to death. And hopefully come up with a game plan.

I guess in the end, I'll still be doing a bit of design, even if it is with food. Stick with what you know, I guess ;)

This is what I have to look forward to?

I don't think 10 year old boys are supposed to mock their moms in public.

Heck, I'm 32 and I'm not allowed to mock my mom in public without risking a quick whack with her purse.

Eep.

Also, playing with rakes? As swords? Yeah, no.

And this is a prime example of why discipline is a good thing. It makes me wonder what parents who refuse to discipline (and I don't mean beat - I mean discipline, actual lesson learning) think when they let their kids do whatever they damn well please and then have consequences like hospital visits or the cops showing up, holding little Tommy or Susy by the collar. It boggles the mind.

But to each their own, apparently. Perhaps one day our daughter will be a well-educated lawyer, prosecuting these little hellions. One can dream :)

Perpetually digging dirt from under my nails

I've always been a fan of gardening. I haven't had the chance to seriously garden for quite a few years - the last time I had the room to plant anything substantial was when I lived with my sister and her now-husband 4 or 5 years ago. Even then, it wasn't anything scientific or dramatic - I tend to think more practically when planning a garden. I'm not a frou-frou flower type; I like my veggies. There's actual progress when you plant vegetable seeds and raise them to maturity. With flowers, they grow, they bloom, they die.

We moved into our current house last summer, at about this time of year. When we looked at the house, there was almost nothing in the gardens. More weeds than actual flowers, the rose bushes had been left to their own devices, just general mayhem. I knew I had my work cut out for me this spring when the snow melted (finally... it was late April before it was all gone) - I wanted a vegetable garden, a flower garden, and to get the 4 or 5 rose bushes we had under control.

Like I said, I'm not entirely scientific about gardening. Heck, I'm barely competent. I know that you should always plant vegetables you eat together, together. So I did. I also had to keep in mind where the best sun was, and once we cut down a tree infested with mountain pine beetle, we had a lot of newly available sun. The vegetable garden runs east-west, about 45 feet in length, 6 feet wide. Before I even started planting anything, I had to weed and move and destroy what the previous owners had left for us. I ended up leaving a rose bush, a Bachelor's Button plant (that'd be the one up above, with the bee) and a Sedum plant. The latter two I plan on moving in the fall once everything starts dying off. But the weeding. God, the weeding. And the overabundance of crabapple tree sprouts threatening to take over my garden from our neighbours' yard. Grr.

So I started my year digging up old plants - including many, many, many lilies, tulips and daisies - and transplanting many of them to our perennial garden. Well, our current perennial garden - I have grand plans for this fall and next summer, but I'll get to that in a second. I had no idea what a lot of the plants were that I was dealing with and still don't, to be honest. I have 5 different varieties of ferns in the perennial garden. I just water everything equally and keep an eye on anything I'm unfamiliar with and try to figure out what to do if they start dying. Books and the internet (and the local horticultrual line run by the local university) are wonderful things.

I had no great intentions for my vegetable garden this year. I knew that there was a veggie garden planted previously - row stakes for spinach and carrots were still in the garden - but I knew it'd be a challenge to actually grow anything in my garden because of the random crabapple tree shoots, wall o'daisies and the 'is it a weed or a flower?' game. But I managed to get a fair bit planted, including:
-zucchini
-tomatoes
-2 kinds of cherry tomatoes
-green peppers
-yellow onions
-green bush beans
-yellow bush beans
-peas
And then there's the carrots, lettuce and radishes.

I decided to try something different this year with the carrots, lettuce and radishes. Because of the tree sprouts, I lost a fair bit - about a quarter - of useable land for my garden. So I planted the carrots, lettuce and radishes in containers. With little to no success. I starved the first batch of carrots and lettuce I planted; one of the first batches of radishes were growing fine and then started to drown. The other batch just didn't grow at all. Lesson learned - don't do this again. The cherry tomatoes, on the other hand... oh, sweet success.

I had tried growing cherry tomatoes directly in the ground before. No luck. So I tried them in containers - 3 plants to each 3-foot long container. I chose 2 different varieties this year as I had in the past and oh, wow... I don't know if they're officially cross-breeding, but the amount of fruit (and it is a fruit) they two plants have been producing is more than impressive. The two plants I have this year aren't nearly as high as the ones I grew in the first year I tried this - this year, they're maybe 4 feet high; first time, almost 7 feet. But the summer is not over... yet. As I've done with all my flowering veggies (which seems to be most of them), I've tried to keep some flowers in the general area for what pollination I can get. But this year's been slow for bees and other pollinating insects... and then there's the zucchini.

My poor zucchini. I've never grown zucchini before, but I did successfully grow pumpkins 13 years ago. And zucchini is perfect for baby food. And chocolate zucchini cake... mmm. So I started the zucchini in the house in late March so it would be ready for planting in May (or June, as was the case this year). Everything looked okay; some of the plants were a little weaker looking than others, but they all survived. They started flowering and perking up and growing... and then there were no little zucchinis anywhere. I tried to figure out what was wrong and the only thing I've been able to come up with is I have a whole bunch of male plants. No female plants at all. None. So this morning, in an act of desperation, I went out, armed with a dozen Q-tips, and pollinated my zucchini. We'll see if anything comes of my very desperate attempt to salvage my zucchini in a few weeks.

As for everything else, I have a couple of peppers, some peas (yay!), half a dozen tomatoes (beef steak) and close to a dozen yellow onions. The beans are still flowering, and if they're anything like the peas, they will be sprouting in the next few days and I'll be surprised when I see how big they've gotten. I'm hoping for a moderate harvest this year and if the weather cooperates - 10 days from now, the forecast high is 37C... crap - I should be able to use a fair bit of it for food for my daughter. And then I'll step back and figure out what to do next year to make the garden even better. We also plan on having the garden roto-tilled to try to take care of the tree shoot issue. I have no idea what else to do about them, beyond cutting the neighbour's tree down and that's not going to happen.

As for the flower gardens - the perennial strip garden in the back, the small garden on the north side, the garden under our picture window in the front of the house and the jungle on the south side - I have plans. I want to get more perennials, but have to deal with the south side jungle first. We have oodles of lilies and tulips, that while beautiful, are a bit overdone in such a small space. I plan on digging up the whole garden (14'x2' or so) and saving some of the bulbs. I'm going to try to find someone to trade bulbs with before just dumping them either in the garbage or trying to fit them into another garden.

I plan on taking up the lawn that's on that side of the house as well. We have a row of lilacs and caraganas between the lawn and the sidewalk that
provide some shade, but not a lot, depending on the day... and there's also a dogwood and an overwhelming vine at the west end of that stretch, too. I've been doing a bit of light research into English gardens to see if I could possibly do something like that in that space (14'x6-7'). But no final plans yet, outside of 'must remove everything there now'. I want something soothing and approachable, not something that is so overwhelming and frightening that no one wants to approach it.

We - or at least I, as this is my grand plan - are going to make some stepping stones, including one for our daughter along the same lines as those plaster casts parents do of their children's hands at a young age. I want to encourage her to get interested in gardening at an early age and totally plan on letting her have a small garden when she expresses interest. She's only 7 months old, so I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of years. We also have our rain barrell on that side of the house, too, which my dad wants to move in order to take advantage of both downspouts on the south side of the house. Rain barrels? Best ideas, ever.

But we plan on staying in this house for a bit so we've got some time to get everything done. There's also the vine we want to train in the patio. And the rose bushes I have to rescue and possibly move. And the potential hedge that will double as a fence in the front yard. And how I'm going to keep my lavender from being overrun by thistles. Sigh. I find gardening quite therapeutic, but also quite painful as I'm stupid and always forget to bend with my knees, so I end up paying for half an hour of gardening for a week. But it's nice to know that in the end, you grew something. Even if it's just a simple little flower, you still grew it. Makes one feel slightly omnipotent, really :)

My camera's a Nikon CoolPix P80.

Streamlining

I tend to procrastinate about almost everything in my life, with the exception of my daughter, who won't let me procrastinate when it comes to her. And as such, I'm already falling into a nasty rut with this particular blog in terms of frequency of posting. As in, I'm not that frequent about it.

I spend a fair amount of 'free time' online. That'd be time where I'm not feeding, playing with or just hanging out with my daughter. My time online is spent checking the same sites over and over and over again, usually a couple of times - each - in 10 or 15 minutes. Shockingly, things rarely change when I'm away from those sites, even for a few moments.

So, I am, right now, going to attempt to post here, on this blog, at least once a day. Even if this place becomes a massive link dump, at least I'm doing something.

Right?

I'll try to keep things from getting to dry or mundane, but I tend to be dry and mundane in real life, so it might be a bit of a stretch.

That said, here's a lovely, wonderful site to get lost in on a Saturday afternoon.

Trimming back

For the majority of my adult life, I've been 'working poor' - barely keeping my head above the poverty line, whatever that may be. I learned a hard lesson when I was 22 - you can't run from your debts. Especially when your parents co-sign for the loans.

And now with a house and a 6-month old baby and absolutely no desire to return to my moderately well-paying job come December, I've been hunting down ways to make things in our life a little lighter on the pocketbook.

For me, it's hard. I have a very set income right now (thanks to EI) so what I get is pretty much already gone by the time I even get 'paid'. Ninety-five percent of my 'bills'? Personal debt. It sucks. Massively. But I do have a car and I am, in theory, building credit history. And we have the house, which is a massive step beyond renting. Especially in a city where rents have skyrocketed and it would be impossible for us to find anything with a small child that would be half-decent and pest-free.

For my partner, he's got personal debts, too - student loans. And he takes care of most of the hosuehold bills, too, because he's got the better income. Always has, and likely always will.

Even with a precarious juggling act every month when it comes to paycheques and bills, I still feel like we could be doing a lot more to cut back. Like I've mentioned before, I'm trying to cut back on the grocery bill by making our own bread (which tends to start at $2 a loaf, and that's the low-end stuff). I have a garden, which is doing okay for it's first year; most of what comes out of that garden will be used for my daughter's food - I absolutely refuse to buy pre-made baby food for her. I want to know exactly what's going into her body and it saves money. It also takes a grand total of 1 hour every couple of weeks to do up a couple of ice cube trays of fruit. But I digress... I know there are other things we can cut back on. The only question is - do we have the willpower to do it?

The local message board here has been rife with comments about the standard of living here and how people can save money. There are the obvious suggestions - walk instead of driving, get rid of your cable, don't buy name-brand products... but when you've been doing things like that for 10-15 years, it's hard to change the habits.

So the search goes on. When the time comes, I will have to go back to work. I'm hoping to keep a part-time schedule so we don't have to put our daughter into child care, because that would mean me getting a second job, leaving me no time with my family and someone else raising our child - not exactly the ideal situation. What I need to do between now and the time I do have to go back to work - that'd 4.5 months from now - is figure out how people do live on 1.5 incomes. And still enjoy life.

I think the lottery's looking mighty good right now...

Where were we?

After a lengthy absence, I'm back to blogging. At least at this location - I had another blog at a different address, but teh subscription to that lapsed a couple of years ago and I didn't see the ened to either move everything to this address or carry on, for that matter. And now, with what some may think is an absolute lack of time to do anything beyond necessary day-to-day duties, I've decided to start blogging again. Let's see how long this keeps up, shall we?

I'm not exactly sure who is going to be reading this - I don't know if anyone has a subscription to this blog, but I do remember several spam emails a few years ago about this blog and 'subscribers', so we'll see if they happen to pop up again. I'm sure I'll start to see people I know/have known come around sooner or later (hello Mikey!) but for now, this is probably going to be an exercise in what appears to be futility. And frankly, I don't give a rat's ass.

There's no specific theme for this blog. Off the top of my head, the only things I can forsee not discussing in my rather round-about way are nuclear physics, NASCAR and philosophy (and only because I don't understand it). But I've been wrong about thigs before and it wouldn't surprise me if I'm wrong about excluding those particular topics (imagine all 3 in one post! oooooh!).

Yeah, the place looks like shit right now. I've got a six month old baby. Suffer. There are small blocks of time during the day where I do as much as I can to keep life flowing along. Things get skipped or pushed to another day all the time. Again, suffer.

So, yeah, that's about it. I'll post random bits of this and that and see how it goes. I think this will end up being a more cathartic exercise for me than an entertaining one for you, which is good, because I haven't worked or written seriously in almost a year. I feel like that part of my brain has started to melt and if I don't do something (ie. blog), I'll go nuts. So here goes...