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Our second wedding anniversary passed quietly, but pleasantly. The year has had several ups and downs – but I am proud of us. Instead of letting problems overwhelm us, we’ve closed ranks and worked together.


Tobes was outside work a couple weeks ago, and saw something he liked. Old man on a mobility scooter, his wife with a walker. Wife presumably got tired going uphill; sat on her little walker seat, and husband pushed her up the hill with his mobility scooter. He came home and told me that that’s the kind of marriage he wants to have.


I’ve had a photo printed for my desk at work. It’s from L&V’s wedding last December – Tobermory looks most handsome in his usher’s suit, and I’d chosen a nice dress. It’s a pleasant picture, a pleasant memory, and I like having things like that around in my workspace.


Anniversaries and things always get me thinking. In this case, it was realising that I’m not all that far from thirty, so why on earth am I still using a facewash marketed at acne-ridden teenagers? I’ve switched, and after a fortnight my face is much happier.


I decided that I’m going to start wearing some makeup regularly. I spend a lot more time in user-view than I used to, and I feel a bit more confident if I have some war paint on. I don’t wear too much – eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick which is a shade or two darker than my natural lip color. I can put it on correctly without needing a mirror, even, which is nice. I’ve also ditched all the old or unused makeup. The remainder is corralled in a train case, and I invested a little bit of money in buying some new things in nice grownup brands – eyeliner, foundation, some new shadows, that kind of thing.


The dance performance fell through. Insufficient men.


Operation 2012 hit a roadbump, but has resumed progress. My mother visited for a few days, and with her help the Piles of Crap in the spare room were vanquished. She also springcleaned for me, so things like the skirting boards were washed. It’s lovely, the house is actually maintainably clean now.


With Psycho’s help, we got into the garden over the last few weekends. Four trees are demolished, in piles pending hiring a skip / pending transportation of firewood to his house, and their stumps have been drilled and poisoned. (Then covered so the cats couldn’t get into it.) Thaqui’s side of the house is now accessible, having had all the over hanging branches / plants / bits of tree removed. We really need to get a skip in, so that the section can be cleared of miscellaneous tree, but at least it’s tidily piled now. I even mowed (half) the lawn.


T and I rejuggled the chore allocations, which is helping. He’s now master in charge of laundry – provided it’s pre-sorted into lights and darks (which is a no-brainer with three laundry hampers – light, dark, and delicates, which remain my responsibility), he stays well on top of the laundry, unlike yours truly. In return, vacuuming has become my problem. I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled about the exchange, but it does result in more cleaning being done more often, which is the idea.


As well as the misc gardening, I sewed a new duvet cover, hemmed a too-long pair of jeans, got a lead on replacement bobbins for my long-suffering Bernina – it’s older than I am – and made muffins and mini-crustless-quiches for the workweek.


It was quite a productive weekend, really.




le plant!

Mar. 5th, 2010 11:09 pm
emsk: (Default)
I started out well with the tomatoes and peas this year, but owing to chronic non-interest in holding a hose while the pots got wet, they kind of... died. They grew really well! Apart from the disease that the tomatoes got that I didn't spray for soon enough. And the snails on the peas.

OK, so it wasn't a complete disaster but I unequivocally proved that I shouldn't have the care of anything that can't yell at me when it needs fed. Cats have squeak'o'clock (human? it is the dinnertime? why is plate empty? Squeak?), plants just kind of wither and I notice about a week later.

Realising that this is really a character flaw, rather than a scheduling issue, I decided that I would shortcut the issue with technology.

As of about six p.m., the front garden and my two main pots now have watering hose buried in them (ie, that kind of hose with holes already punched in it). All I have to do is plug in a main hose, wait three to five minutes while reading a book, and turn hose off again. As I am lazy, I am hopeful that I will actually remember to use this option. It cannot get any easier than turning a handle on the hose tap.

The hose buried into the pots has a normal hose (ie, no holes) connected out the base. Said hose feeds through the garden (full of camellias and busy lizzie that I am unable to kill, even if I want to), plugs into a three-way water splitter, which I can plug into the tap by the spa pool. The hose in the front garden, all I have to do is unroll two metres of hose from the big long hose on the front tap between the garage doors, and plug it into the bit I left poking up from the buried hose in the garden behind a hebe.

I also purchased more hebes, in the hopefully not vain hope that some of them will survive my inept brown-fingered gardening techniques. And marigolds, as the cats don't tend to dig up and shit where the marigolds are planted.

Admittedly, a lack of cat shit will more likely be attributable to the entire CONTAINER of cat repellent I also dug through the front garden.

Hey, I live in hope, alright?

Originally published at spinneretta.com.
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emsk: (Default)
It's been a busy few weeks. I had a week of night shifts, which was horrible; the usual revolving run of visitors; a run to my hometown to take my mother to a dental specialist at the major town between our respective homes (go go driving 1000km in 24 hours); discovered that my new babyproofing system appears to be making my backside expand at an exponential rate - I'm giving it another month for my system to adjust, then going back to the doctor to complain - on the other hand, I appear to have pulled my head out of the route to depression that I was heading towards, I've shaken the abandonment issues when Tobermory isn't there when I wake up panicking at o'dark'hundred, and I actually have energy instead of crippling tireds.

The peas are still battling the snails, and mostly losing despite all that chemical warfare can do to assist. The tomatoes are now battling the size of the tomato pot, and growing most valiantly. The strawberries don't appear to be growing anything except leaves (most vexing) but on the other hand, they're not dead. The cats are still growing; Tigra is now 3.2kgs at nine months old, Boomer is 5.2kgs at ten months old. BIG BUGGER.

I bought two swimsuits. One via TradeMe, via which means I bought a swimsuit that retails for $208 for $55. The other? Well, I picked Auckland's most recent AMAZINGLY shitty weather, when it was cold and wet and horrid, and went shopping. Walked into a store which I know primarily supplies bikinis to skinny minnies, started browsing. The female shop assistant wandered over, asked what I was after, and turned up five minutes after that with twelve things for me to try on.

The amusing bit? The tankini I eventually bought was half price.

The spa pool is repaired, it needed a new pump. I've broken in the new swimsuit (twice), and it was wonderful when Tobermory's friends from the UK visited this weekend.

I feel sorry for my beloved. Having his oldest / closest friends around has made him homesick in a way I don't remember him being before. There's nothing I can do, either, other than hug and sympathize. The move to New Zealand was good for him, in many many ways, and obviously I think it's a good thing because, well, we're together. But it's the people he misses. His friends. He's a social animal, and he left so many friends, good friends, behind...

Originally published at Spinneretta.
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I went back to the garden centre today, to buy another pot, more soil, etc etc. It turned out on further inspection that the chillies I'd given up for lost have not in fact completely died; they merely suffered during the winter, and to my surprise have regenerated this spring.

So, now I have three pots; one for peas, one for tomatoes, one for the chillies which will hopefully produce useful volumes this year. Plus stakes, vegetable growing potting mix (mostly appears to contain sheep poo) and so on. I also bought no less than THREE different types of insect and bug killers, so that I can hopefully vanquish whichever little buggers decimated the herbs that previously inhabited the newly planted tomato pot. Along with plant food, so hopefully they actually grow and produce useful amounts of edible things!

I also bought nemesias for the front garden. They're lovely little bell-like flowers that I remember having in profusion ...

Oh god, I'm turning into my mother.

Originally published at spinneretta.com.
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emsk: (Default)

I finished building a lid for the herb garden today. Now, I can simply open a conveniently hinged box, and get at my herbs and the strawberries.

It took a couple of errors, and one extra trip to the hardware store for an appropriate length of screw; but it's done! And I did it MYSELF! And it honestly doesn't look too terrible.

I am rather pleased.

Originally published at spinneretta.com.
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