Now, here's an idea

I am not generally into ultimatums. I admit I have never tried one though. Maybe I should take a lesson from this woman's life.

Whose responsibility?

1. The other post-doc at work is not a native English speaker. While I understand how difficult it is to live in a foreign country and not be able to communicate, I struggle between things that I should do for her, and things that are not my responsibility. I was lucky when I lived in China, because my job was to speak English. Here, though, her job is to do science. She came to the lab about six months after me, but has more research experience in our field than I do. I constantly wonder if I should make sure she reads the department emails about when the water is being shut-off in the building for repairs (for example). Or, follow up with an on-campus symposium that was free, but for which you should pre-register. Or, coordinate submitting poster abstracts for said symposium because our boss was out of town. I struggle with this because while English is not her first language, reading emails about these things should be on her to-do list, but I know that she does not always read them. Blissfully unaware is not always a good thing, and I cannot make sure she is keeping track of these non-experiment but somewhat important aspects of work.

2. Being that CF has managed to keep himself alive to 35 years old (almost), I am not inclined to do everything or make decisions for him. Nor do I appreciate the implication that he does things for or because of me (like leaving somewhere at 1 in the morning because I am tired). At some point he needs to stop acting like an early 20-something. He has taken to try to make me make decisions, like should he come to my college reunion weekend or the shower weekend? I told him I want him at both, but know that he can't/won't so he needs to decide. Both are important to me. This past weekend he managed to get in two bachelor parties in Milwaukee: my brother's and a friend's. Apparently Friday night he stayed at the baseball game while the rest of my brother's bachelor party crew went to a bar. We had a text discussion about this (probably because he was alone at a baseball game). I think his decision was weird (and kinda rude). I told him so. His response, "They were pretty toasted already." So? He also would have been toasted had he left on Friday to get there when he originally planned to. Not my problem. (Being that the Brewers are his favorite baseball team, I understand not wanting to leave halfway through, and I would feel the same way at a Red Sox game. I did not know he viewed the weekend as a baseball weekend instead of a bachelor party weekend though.) Then he tells me that my dad indirectly mentioned going to a beer fest the night before the shower in a couple of weeks and did not pay for part of the hotel room. What the hell am I supposed to do with this information? They say men don't want mothers, but really....

Close but no cigar

I may have a scar across my neck, but I consider myself lucky that I do not suffer from morning sickness or migraines like some of my friends. These are just the two I can think of because of my weekend. The lessons I learned:

1. Do not forget to take your birth control. (Particularly you men out there. Hah!) Not because you'll get pregnant and have morning sickness, rather, in the past, I have ended up taking the forgotten pill and the regular pill too close together and wake up throwing up and/or nauseous. Not pleasant.

2. If you have an unbearable headache, just take the meds. Don't try water, caffeine, and alcohol first. If you do, you may end up sleeping for three hours on the couch during the rare Red Sox broadcast (through Big Papi's 300th home run!) only to go to bed and wake up 12 hours later in the morning with a headache.

Off to the medicine cabinet for those meds.

Rain, rain go away

Spark mentioned she does not mind the rain, and I agree to a certain extent. According to my sunflowers, though, we have only received about six inches of growth's worth of sun in the past 6 weeks. That's not much sun.

The good news is that the strawberry plants from my co-worker look like they'll give some fruit! Plus the lilacs are FINALLY blooming in my yard. I have brought a bunch into work and these are on my table (in cute little jars from plum wine my fellow post-doc gave me for my birthday...which I drank...and from which I saved the cute little jars).

When I went out and weeded a bit today, I started running down the wish list of plants for my future home. I have put some thought into this. In no particular order:

• lilacs
• blueberries
• cherry tree (s)
• crab apple tree
• probably a regular apple tree
• pear tree
• raspberries
• sunflowers (if mine blossom this year, they might be my new favorite thing)
• herb garden (after all, rosemary can survive winter, apparently parsley too; chives come pack; my cilantro and dill reseeded themselves - easy!)
• rhubarb

Muffintop

Not that my schedule has had anything taken out, but the birthday party we were going to have for CF on Saturday was postponed (per his request and it was crappy weather for a fire so it will work out). Actually, now that I think about, its postponement just extends the scheduling to the weekend after I get back from Boston. Anyhoo. We postponed it because when we planned it, we did not know that one of the grad students who just graduated from his department is moving to Canadia and planned to meet up a bar after her Pampered Chef party. So we went there instead. But I had already bought groceries. So I was left with lots of sour cream and strawberries (not initially planned for the same thing).

I made strawberry sour cream muffins. Go figure. Only, instead of following the recipe exactly, I used 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup honey, strawberries instead of blueberries, some vanilla, some spices, a little less flour than it calls for and a heaping tablespoon of flax seed and some gelatin (trying to get those nails growing better). I also made the recommended 12 muffins, so the cups were nice and full with big muffin tops.

A happy problem

One reason that the idea of moving before June 1st was particularly scary is that I only have ONE WEEKEND during which it would be possible to move. In fact, I had started writing off work that I desperately need to do to write my first post-doc paper (YAY!) to find a new home and say screw-it and hire movers to move me during the week. The reason this is a happy problem is the stuff that is going on that made my potential moving window so narrow.

This weekend I am at a local research symposium from Friday late afternoon through 5:00 on Saturday (and I am sure that it will go late), but I could win money in the poster contest. That night we are having an early (35th) birthday party for CF. So I drive home, grab any stuff I need to bring to his place, and drive to his place with probably no more than an hour before people will show up. I also need to make a cake before then. Sunday is some year-end department event for his department.

The following weekend is my only "free" weekend. And by "free", I mean I will likely work one if not two days in lab now that I am not moving because the Thursday after that I head back East to try to see everyone. Like everyone. This is the happiest problem in the sense that there are so many people I want to see that I am going to have a tough time squeezing it all in?! If I were to write a list of all my friends there who I hope to see, it would be long. LONG. And that makes me happy.

The first weekend is my 10-year college reunion, so seeing college friends will happen there. Then up to Boston to make the rounds. If you are reading, I may be couch jumping to make sure I see you all, FYI. :-) CF comes Thursday for the second weekend out there - few days at my sister's getting ready for and helping with a Jack and Jill shower for my brother and his fiancee. Then a 12 hour drive back to the Midwest only to get up the next morning and head to work. (Yup, I am driving out. The convenience of packing my car and having my car while I am out is way cheaper and  more convenient than flying and either renting a car or coordinating how to get around.)

Wish me luck.


[And with that, I apparently give you my 600th post!]

Off the hook

CF dodged a bullet, and apparently he did not really take it that seriously.

As of the end of this month, I will have been here 18 months (plus ~ 1 1/2 weeks, but who is counting?). Time is easy to keep track of when you are a renter. I thought six months ago, that I would move. That did not happen. My six-month extension to my lease is up May 31st, and I had not heard from nor contacted my management "company", hereafter known as MC. (It is a husband/wife company, hence the quotes. I feel the need to explain because my father recently harassed me, in a totally loving way of course, about my use of quotes, which I feel is quite infrequent and completely intentional when I do it. But I digress.) I have been looking at apartments and houses for the past two months, occasionally sending one to CF.

I found a three bedroom with land. On a lake. With a dishwasher. For $1600/month. He did not respond to the email.

Anyway, while I think living in the area where I do that my next move should certainly be to live on a lake, I started getting anxious when I heard my MC's message that they wanted to show the apartment Monday, and I could be moving in three weeks. (With the things I have this month, it would more likely have been in two weeks?!) I guess that they only bother contacting you when your lease is coming up if they think you might stay?

I called CF to let him  know. He just kept pushing the won't-they-just-let-you-go-month-to-month thing. I tried to explain that sometimes that is not possible; I would call them back; I just wanted him to know that I may need to move.

After a quick cry on my way home, I left my MC a message. When they called me back, I discovered they thought I was leaving the area based on our previous conversation about the now expiring six month extension; I had first dibs on staying and they were happy to have me do so; and it is just another $20/month because I can essentially leave whenever with month-to-month. [Insert big sigh of relief.]

I called CF to let him know he was off the hook. That is actually what I said: "You are off the hook. But just so you know, you aren't off the hook indefinitely." He was all nonchalant about it. Said he didn't see any reason they wouldn't go month-to-month. I told him (sarcastically) that I was glad I was the only one who had worried about it and also glad he wasn't worried about me. We quickly got off the phone so he can feign the appearance of working on stats. Whatev.

Off to finish my beer and string cheese dinner. Healthy, I know, but I got myself all worked up about possibly (and at the time I thought likely) moving in three weeks. I was not hungry when I got home. The good news is that my sunburn was not in vain and I will be able to enjoy the gardening I did over the weekend!

The out of doors

I have some work I need to do, but have taken advantage of the high 60s and sunny weather we are FINALLY getting. Yesterday, CF and I finally went for a bike ride (~15.5 miles, actually). I think this is the first time I have ridden a bike since the summer of 2003 when I went to visit my friend in Africa, not counting the test rides on the driveway after CF gave me the bike for my birthday. I think he probably rides a little faster than we did yesterday, but that is fine. My legs are fine, my butt hurts a little, my hands were red when we finished but are fine now, and despite putting on spf 70 sunscreen, my arms are burned. It was my first real sun exposure of the year, but still.

Today, I came back home to do more garden stuff. I have new neighbors as of a couple days ago, and they totally cleaned out the flower bed on their side of the duplex and started planting flowers! I decided I should not half-ass the planting of my fire pit, so I put sunscreen on that burn and headed out back. I don't have a before picture of the fire pit, but this one has it in the foreground. There were uneven bricks, some broken cinder blocks, fire remnants, and weeds.

I had started half-assing it by planting some sunflower seeds and starting some marigolds in the house that I planned to plant around the edge without cleaning out the pit. The marigolds did well, and I may have planted them a bit early outside, but I am impatient. This picture is from about a week after I started them. They had two sets of real leaves today before I planted them.

 

So I dug through the weeds and around the sunflowers that were already coming up. Threw out all the melted metal that was in there, got rid of the cinder blocks (they're behind the shed), made the circle a little smaller, and put the bricks back! Then I planted a few more sunflower seeds and marigolds around the edge. OH, and I found an acorn that was sprouting when I cleaned up the stones below, so I planted it in the middle of the pit.(My lease says no fires allowed in there, so I figured red and yellow flowers would look nice.)

This is the raised bed behind the house. Last year I planted tomatoes, squash, lettuce, marigolds, and herbs. There wasn't enough sun for the veggies. The stones in the foreground were all full of grass and starting to sink into the dirt, so I pulled them out, pulled the grass, laid down some newspaper to prevent grass/weeds from coming back quickly, and put the stones back. I only did the left half because the part closest to the house was fine (and I am just a renter). In the flower bed, a lot of the green is perennials that a former tenant planted. They are WAY behind on flowering with the cold damp spring we had. I have planted spinach and lettuce back here that are coming up. They don't mind shady, so they grew well back here last year. You can't tell in the picture, but my chives came back, my parsley lived all winter under the snow and is perking up and growing, and the cilantro and dill reseeded themselves.

The seedlings are all over, so I gently pulled up a bunch of cilantro and planted it together. I will have to do this with the dill after the plants are a little bigger.

In the front, I decided pulling up all the mini clover in the top of this photo was not worth it, but did use my dandelion puller to get all of those and other pesky ugly weeds. I planted sunflowers here that are coming up (I suppose I really should have labeled pictures, but trust me...or click to enlarge and play the find-the-plants game), and a rosemary plant in the foreground. One of my friends showed me how much rosemary they had at their house that the previous owner had planted. It had become a ground cover and smelled great as she was cutting it all back while we visited. I am leaving the little label next to in in the event that later tenants will use it. Hopefully it will survive winters - I got a plant that already had strong woody stems.

A coworker gave me a bag of small strawberry plants. I did just plop them in the ground in front with some coffee grounds and I keep them watered. The dirt is rather clay-y, so who knows if the plants will survive. One has flowers that are open though! Again, not the best picture, but here are three of the ten I planted. I gave the rest to CF for his garden.

There were some other random things I noticed while outside, like the little pine cones growing on the tree in the back.

And some mushrooms.

Any one have any gardens started?

Hairball

A few weeks ago, I noticed my upright vacuum was not vacuuming so much. In fact, with the sun streaming in the window, I could see dust puffing out from the front of the vacuum as I moved it. I was glad it was warm enough (then) to have the windows open. (Tonight we have a frost warning. On May fourth, really?)

I took the handle apart to check for blockages but saw nothing.

I started vacuuming again today, figuring what little it sucked up would help. Nope.

I looked at the bottom and the spinner thing was clean.

I look deeper in and see cat hair. No surprise. This one makes a lot of hair.

I grabbed a screwdriver, unplugged the vacuum (safety first!), took the bottom off, and discovered the problem.

At some point, I apparently thought it was a good idea to vacuum newspaper, which then got stuck and didn't let any cat hair by. After putting the vacuum back together, my floor is much nicer now.