ipod, sprinklers, & curtains

I never blogged about some of my recent acquisitions. While my friends do the compact, or work on minimizing their "stuff", I just keep on acquiring.

For Mothers Day, I bought myself an Ipod. I've been spending my time figuring out, playing with, and loading songs onto the thing. I do that more than I actually use it to listen!

Clint has been hard at work in most of his free time getting sprinklers set up in my garden. I was so busy bumming because he wouldn't start on the front yard, which needs excavation, that I failed to notice how much work he was putting in to my garden space. As I grow my garden, he has been right behind me, adding sprinklers to make watering a breeze.

The biggest suprise is that he says he enjoys it. A year ago he said, "I'm glad you like your garden, just don't expect me to work in it with you." It didn't bother me; I knew he meant I couldn't expect him to be on hand to do the hard stuff just because I wanted it done. After all, it is my thing, not his. And yet, that's exactly what he's been doing. Half my garden now gets watered with the turn of a valve.

My other recent acquisition is new curtains. I've been wanting to get curtains for my bare windows for years. For a while the minimalist look was great, but I wanted to warm up the space a little, and privacy is nice, too. I chose a claret ret velvet, and I love it; usually I get frozen with these types of decisions because I worry so much about making a mistake, and then spending the next 10 years looking at something I hate. But I think I did good this time; I really like them.

Sometimes Busy is OK

I hate being too busy. I try so hard to keep from overbooking myself. But sometimes, if you don't say yes, a wonderful opportunity might pass you by. If I were better at going with the flow I could make it through the busy times more peacefully. I get stressed when it's busy, I admit it.

Our Memorial Day weekend plans were relatively relaxed. A BBQ at a friend's house on Monday, and an optional dance rehearsal Saturday morning (that I figured we could easily miss). But after some discussion with my husband on the possibility of holding a garage sale Saturday morning or attending a neighborhood campout Friday, I discovered he was worried about and/or feeling the urge to check on things at the cabin.

I suggested we forget the garage sale, and take a trip to the cabin. As long as we left after the dance rehearsal(I was informed by by kids that they strongly preferred to go), and got home in time for Monday's BBQ, it could work. It's only a two day trip, but sometimes those are easier to do, since not so much packing or food planning is involved. He was hesitant to agree to the idea. I think he was worried I was scheduling things too tight, and when I get stressed my family can't bear to be around me. I can't promise that packing & preparing while taking kids back & forth to town for rehearsals won't be stressful. But our weekends are booked for the next 5 weeks, so there really isn't going to be a better time.

Once we get to the cabin, we'll be doing nothing but relaxing. Clint can check on all the things he was worried about, and make sure the cabin is ship-shape. We can do some hiking and exploring with the kids, maybe some biking on the back roads, and I can even sneak in some reading. It sounds pretty good to me!

I need to learn that sometimes busy is OK, too.

Owl Pellets & Dissection

I just got my order from Home Science Tools. We are back on track now for dissection with a new batch of specimens.

I ordered a How to Dissect manual this time, and spent the afternoon reading up on earthworm dissection details. I'm a little nervous about the earthworm dissection. I remember doing it in high school and finding it really boring, mostly because it was so small that it was hard to cut accurately, or to see what I was supposed to see. The manual gave lots of great info; let's hope the real thing will be as interesting to the kids. Of course, it's optional for them; they don't have to participate if they don't want to, so I suppose it could just be Shelby and I figuring the whole thing out.

I ordered a few owl pellets, too. Owls swallow their prey whole, and then regurgitate the bones, teeth and fur as a pellet. Owl pellet dissection is a great way to study the eating habits of birds of prey. It is also a great lesson in skeletal anatomy, since you can piece together and identify the entire skeleton of one or more small creatures.

I'm so glad we're finally getting around to some of these projects. We've been talking about dissection since last summer. I wish I could be a little quicker at responding to my kids' interests. With this kind of a track record, I'll be lucky if they even have the same interest by the time I get around to indulging it! I'll have to work on that.

A Perfect Day

I think I had the best Mother's Day ever!

I spent the morning gardening. While I didn't get to everything I had hoped to accomplish, I'm happy I got to spend 4 hours in my garden. While I was planting, Clint was rototilling more garden space, so now I have even more garden to play in! He also fine tuned the sprinkler system he has been working on, so the sprinklers are much more effective now.

I thought it would be fun to take a bike ride on Mother's Day. We are definitely not on the Compact; we had to buy two new bicycles to go for a ride. Clint found a great deal on a pair of adult Schwinn touring/trail bikes, and we gave them to Shelby and Rhiannon right before our ride. They were so excited, especially Rhiannon. She was trying to be enthusiastic about going on a family bike ride, but was dreading it because her bike so small and uncomfortable for her. So small, in fact, that we passed it down to Tamzin. Shelby's old bike went to Gillian. Since Shelby and Rhiannon's old bikes had been used only rarely, they look like new, so everyone was happy.

I came up with the idea of a bike ride because Tamzin has been teaching herself to ride without training wheels this month, a true accomplishment on our bumpy, uneven gravel parking area. Unfortunately, she left the bike out, and I ran over it with my 'Burb. We discussed repairing it, but since we knew ultimately we needed a bigger bike for Shelby, it seemed logical to have each girl move up a bike. When Clint and I lined up all the bikes to assess the situation, we realized that Shelby's old bike would still be small for Rhiannon, and it would not be long before we would have to think about a new one for her as well. So when he found a great deal, we decided to get two.

With two new bikes and four happy kids, we were off to Chamna Natural Preserve for a ride. It took two gas guzzling vehicles to get us there, one for the bikes and one for the kids, so it wasn't a low consumption day by any means, but then, few days with a family of six are, I suppose.

What a great place Chamna is! I can't believe I haven't been there before. We rode around on some of the hiking trails first, but that was rough for Tamzin. Then we checked out the biking trail. We didn't go far, because Tamzin was hot and tired by then, and getting a little frustrated with the hills. But the older girls were in heaven! They raced up and down the hills, over and over again. They had no idea bike riding could be so fun. In all the years that they've ridden, they've never had the opportunity to experience that feeling of freedom and speed on a bike. In our location, riding on the road is unsafe for younger kids. They've always been confined to the yard, so they've never experienced a "wind in your hair" kind of ride.

Because we weren't sure what to expect at Chamna, we had agreed that if it was not suitable for riding, we would pack the bikes up and drive to Howard Amon, where we knew the trails would be great for a ride. So after playing on the hills a bit, we headed to the park. Of course, we were all hot by then, so stopping at Atomic Ale for cold beer and root beer floats seemed like the perfect cool down treat. After that, it was off to the park.

Howard Amon was a perfect place to ride. The trail was so flat and smooth that Tamzin was riding like a pro in no time. The older girls loved it because they could ride on ahead and then circle back and join us again, or stop and rest and wait for us to catch up. There were lots of other residents out enjoying they day, and most smiled and expressed a greeting, which made the ride even more fun. We stopped to play on the play equipment and examine the progress of the new rock climbing feature, and then we headed to Pizza Hut for a cheap and easy Book It coupon dinner. No prep time, no dishes.

We got home just before dark. I had just enough time to more one more plant before putting the kids to bed. A perfect day.

Oh, but boy, is my butt sore!

One Less Want

There's a lot to be said for delayed gratification. I've been wanting a notebook computer for over a year now. It would be so convenient to be able to do my office work while I'm waiting for the kids at all of their various classes. Multi-tasking, you know. Can't waste a single moment.

I guess being constantly behind and overwhelmed got me thinking this way.

But I'm not quite so behind these days, and I have to say, it's awfully nice to just sit and read, or take care of an errand or two, on my "chauffeuring" days. Buying a notebook computer would make me feel like I had to choose work over reading a book, the way I do most of the time at home. I don't think it's worth it.

I feel like I've just saved a thousand dollars.

But I still want an Ipod.

Here Piggy Piggy!

I bought a specimen set last fall. Shelby is studying Biology, and we thought a "lab" in dissection would be interesting. You can buy lots of different creatures, preserved in formaldehyde and then sealed in plastic. They are cheaper if you buy a set, instead of purchasing individual specimens. It makes sense, too, because a well rounded dissection study would include multiple classes of creatures. The set we picked out had around 10 specimens, and included a worm, a clam, a frog, a small fish, and a fetal pig. We were most excited about the pig, although we took a good look at the sample pig photo online to make sure we wouldn't be too squeamish to handle it when the time came.

We were a little disappointed when the specimens came. The bag was quite small for so many specimens, and while the plastic was clear, there was an opaque layer between the specimens and the plastic, so we could only prod the bag lightly and try to envision the contents. Opening the bag was out of the question, because we were in the middle of other projects we needed to finish before moving on to dissection.

The instructions said the specimens would keep up to a year in their plastic packaging, and even longer if frozen, so I didn't worry too much about not being able to get to it right away. Then life got busy, and we got sidetracked, and the dissections never happened.

The other day I realized we finally have the time to work on the dissections, and went to find the specimens, but they weren't there. They sat on the floor of my office for 6 months, until one day I started thinking I should find a better place to keep them.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what better place I decided upon. All logical guesses have been dead ends. I've searched my office, cleaned both freezers and my closet, still no pig. Where in the world would I have decided was a good place to keep specimens? Because while I clearly remember thinking about moving them---on several occasions---I simply cannot remember actually doing anything with them!

I can always order a new set. They weren't that expensive. But I hate the thought of coming across the old set later, when I'm not expecting it. So much for my organizational skills.

In My Garden

I love my garden. It makes me feel good just to be out in the sun, and fresh air, with my hands in the soil.

I confess I don't plant only natives, nor do I limit myself to drought tolerant plants. I just plant anything I can find, and am attracted to, that can take the heat, cold and aridity of this climate.

I love to nuture perennials and watch them grow to overtake their space, until they can be divided to make even more plants, that I can plant in new places in my garden. I enjoy moving and replanting whenever a specimen seems to be telling me it would be happier in another part of the garden. I love crawling around on my hands and knees pulling out the weeds and saying hello at eye level to the plants.

I love to listen to the birds and other outdoor sounds. I love to watch the robins who follow me so closely as I garden, and the quail who scold me from a distance. Sometimes I put on my Shuffle and sing out loud myself as I build paths or spread mulch. I have to make myself come in at the end of a gardening day. Dinner is always late. I can't let myself garden every day, or I would never get anything else done. Maybe I'm compulsive, but once I'm out there, I just want to keep working.