Nightmare Garden Part II

The nightmare of the "Children's Garden" that was my brillant idea continues. Yesterday I thought I had solved the tilling problem by finding a raised be garden kit that was offered (I thought) at Costco. My husband said he would check it out at the store before I ordered it online. Of course that's what we did, and when he got home from work, he told me he didn't see anything like that at the store. So fine, I said I would just order it online. I filled out all the necessary stuff on the online order form hit "send", and guess what? The darn raised garden kit is no longer availabl----SH--T! I have plants that need to get into the ground! This morning, with fresh eyes and new hope, I decided to just make do with something I had seen on the Gardener's Supply Co. website. I showed it to my daughter and she thought that would work and we could put the little teepee thing we were going to do, on the outside of the raised bed. Great, we have a plan! I go to www.gardeners.com to order the two-tier raised bed garden kit. I do all the filling in of blanks and send-----and-----and---NO LONGER AVAILABLE!!!! I just want to pull my freakin' hair out! All I wanted to do was make a couple of gardens, one big one for me, one children's garden to keep my younger kids entertained this summer, that all I wanted. I swear any time I try to do something good, someone or something has to pee all over it! Not being one to give up easily, I again started the search and found a raised garden bed kit from www.willygoat.com. They had something similar--more expensive of course--but nevertheless, something that will suffice. I ordered it and hopefully this nightmare will end with a nice garden. Stay tuned for any updates on this mess.

The Nightmare Garden

Since we have a huge yard; 3 acres, to be exact, I decided I should have a couple of gardens. I got a couple of plans and told my husband that all he needed to do was to let go of the purse strings and let me spend the money I needed to in order to get the gardens going, and to help me with any of the heavy physical work I might need to do. Now, here is the thing about projects like this, my husband and me: I always have the ideas, I always need money and my husband always changes things in some way so that my plans are no longer my plans. This has been the exact same pattern throughout our entire 18 year marriage. I should have known it would be the same thing with regard to this project.
I told my youngest daughter that she could have her own garden and I would have a vegetable/flower garden of my own. I have gathered most of what I need as far as seeds and plants, but now I need to get the beds going, and as usual, my husband is balking at helping me. Since the yard is just grass and weeds (it is a new house/property) the ground needs to be tilled in order to get the garden bed layed out. To make a LONG story a little shorter, we do not have a roto-tiller. My husband was hesitant to make arrangements to rent one because the weather is so unpredictable, and so now I have to come up with some other way to get what I want.
The other morning, my husband woke up all disgusted with me because he "had not slept a wink" because he was worried about tilling up my garden plot. Oh brother, what a terrible thing to waste sleep on! I told him not to worry about it, and once again, I have come up with a solution that cuts out what I wanted, but allows my daughter to have her own garden.
I decided to buy the supplies for a raised garden so that the ground will not have to be tilled. My husband will probably have to purchase some more topsoil, but at least he won't have to worry about the tiller. Today, his assignment is to check out the 8' x 8' raised garden kit that Costco is carrying. I wanted to order it online at www.costco.com, but of course my husband wants to see what it looks like and doesn't want to have to pay shipping. I have high hopes today, but I'll bet by this evening, my husband will come home and say, "I can just buy the hardware and build a raised garden for you--it will be a lot cheaper." And then guess what? My garden will never happen! I'll keep you posted on the outcome. In the meantime, I have strawberry plants and zinnias that are ready to be planted!

Just Not That Into It

I don't know what has gotten into me lately. I just don't want to do the things I usually enjoy doing. My heart just isn't in it. I think the stress of the last year or so is starting to take its toll on me. I used to love to shop, now it's just a chore. I used to not mind so much cleaning the house, now I just can't bring myself to do it. I never really minded doing laundry, but, you guessed it, I just really don't care if I get it done or if it gets folded or not. I just don't care! In looking at what has happened in my life over the last year, it feels like I have been on a spinning ride and all I really wanted was for it to stop. For the last eight months I have been living in a house that doesn't feel like home, a town that has nothing and does nothing for me, and have just sort of been wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what I should be doing and how I can change the way I feel. Everyone says, "Oh, you just need to get out there and meet people!" Well, I have. I have found a church that the girls and I have been attending regularly; I have been volunteering regularly at the elementary school where my youngest children go. I have volunteered at the middle school, I go to the same grocery store regularly, I am trying to replace all the things I used to do and enjoy with things here, but it just isn't the same. I don't like it, and I want to. I really don't want to feel unhappy. I want to say that I like it here. I want to say this is the best move we ever made, but all of that would be a lie. I just am unhappy, plain and simple. I'm not into the traffic jams just to go to Target. I'm just not into being inconvenienced at every turn, I'm just not that into not having one single adult friend other than my husband. It feels awful!

Ain't Nobody Happy

Do you ever feel like you just can't do right by your kids and husband? I swear, everytime I try to make plans for my family to do something fun together, a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works. For example, my oldest daughter's school is putting on a stage production of "Willy Wonka" this weekend. The school has been working on it for the whole year, practically, and high school musicals are just fun to go to, so I had her buy tickets. In addition to this, I was trying to be nice and had my eight year old invite one of her friends to go along with us. We invited her friend to ride the bus home, go to the show, and just spend the night since it was probably going to be late when the thing ended. So, all the plans were set, we purchased the tickets (all $70.00 worth) last week and everyone was up for going. Monday, the mother of the little girl that was going with us called and wanted to change the plans we had made because she wanted her daughter to come home after the show--okay--she was still to ride the bus home and go to the show with us. By Wednesday, the mom calls back and cancels the whole thing. Now I am stuck with a ten dollar ticket that was going to be wasted. I asked my second oldest daughter if she had a friend who might want to go, and she called a girl, but she couldn't go. Fine! I was starting to get a little ticked. Yesterday, my second oldest said another one of her friends would like to go. Yeah! We call, I talk to the mom and make arrangements for her daughter to go with us. Finally, it looks like at least I will not have wasted $10.00, so things were looking up. Here we are today, the day of the show and it is 3:30 and my dear, darling husband calls and tells me he might not be able to get away in time to go to the show with us. I'm back to wasting the $10.00 again! I swear I will never try to arrange a fun time for my family. All it does is stress me out, waste my money and "ain't nobody happy!" It just isn't worth it >:(

Holy Cow! That Was a Long Ball Game!

Did you hear about the Padres game that lasted a whopping 22 innings! Yikes! The game didn't end until almost 1:30 in the morning! I wonder how many fans stuck around to see what the outcome was. The Colorado Rockies ended up winning the game with a score of 2-1. I think I would have packed it in at about the 11th inning. What a major case of bench butt the remaining fans would have if they stayed! I can usually make it for the nine innings of a game, but much more than that, and I lose interest.

AAA Motor Club

I just did something that I rarely do--I just purchased a membership in the AAA Motor Club. It doesn't sound like such a big deal, but since we have moved away from Indiana, and everyone and everything that is familiar to me, I have felt like I just don't have a safety net to catch me if something would happen. When we lived in Indiana, we lived close to my sister, my husband worked only about 1o minutes away from our home, and we had easy access to mechanics, tow trucks, hospitals, gas stations, and all those things that we don't really seem to think about very often, but when we need them, we really need them! Anyway, now that we have moved to "Green Acre Ville" as I like to refer to it, I have no way of getting help should something happen while I am driving around this awful area. I decided to stop fretting about it, and just went ahead and purchased the Plus Membership from AAA from their online site--without consulting my husband first! WooHoo! How daring of me. Anyway, I feel better and hopefully it will help me make my decision about whether to drive my 2000 Chevy Suburban with 150,000 miles on it, or to drive my husband's 2007 Huyndai Santa Fe back to Indiana this summer. Having the security of the AAA Motor Club makes me feel a lot more confident. Also, if I decide that the 600+ mile trip home is too much for me and the four monkies that will be accompanying me, then I can always use my AAA membership to purchase discounted Amtrak train tickets back to Indiana. It's all good--I've got it covered!

Lessons Learned-Attack of the Hostile Bloggers!

"Save the Humans!"
Anyone else see the twisted humor in this?


Yesterday I wrote an entry at another blogsite that was more a social experiment than an actual opinion piece about global warming. What I thought would start a lively debate degraded into name calling and personal attacks toward me because I had the audacity to say that maybe global warming could be a good thing in which we humans shouldn't intervene. The entry was mostly written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but a few fellow bloggers didn't see any humor in it. So, as one of the bloggers informed me, I am not a scientist who studies the earth, I'm not a biologist, climatologist, meteorologist, oceanographer, or anything like that. I am, however, a social scientist, and my experiment with human reaction to a polar opposite opinion proved to be quite interesting and I learned a few lessons from those attacking bloggers.


1. Sarcasm, satire and humor should never be used when discussing something as emotionally charged as global warming.


2. If you start a blogument (blog-argument) you should have thick skin and a cold heart.


3. Blogs don't necessarily make good petri dishes for social experiments.


4. I am an enemy of the planet but I recycle, use those ghastly flourescent light bulbs, catch rainwater to water my garden, have reduced my household water consumption and have changed my driving habits in order to use less gasoline--yes! I am the enemy because apparently these things don't make any different and I am stupid for doing them.


5. If you want to persuade someone to come around to your way of thinking, it isn't a good idea to call them stupid, ignorant, arrogant, or haughty. You are almost guaranteed to push the person farther away.


6. For all the arguing and name calling that went on throughout the day yesterday, not one of the passionate name callers offered any economomically feasible solution to the problem of global warming, which seems to be the same thing that happens when the debate is taken up on a much larger scale.



So, even though I was dragged through the mud by these very opinionated bloggers, I have come to a very important conclusion about global warming, and it is this: Nothing will ever change until and unless the richer and more powerful countries (not just the United States!) of this world decide to work together to change the way their countries do things, little ol' me just ain't gonna make a difference!

Olympic Boycott on the Horizon?

Since I was just a little girl, I have loved watching the Olympics. There is just something exciting about many countries of the world coming together peacefully to compete against each other. I am just old enough to have a very dim, but frightening memory of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. I remember watching the grainy images of people crawling on the ground, and I remember my parents were concerned about the Jewish American athletes; especially Mark Spitz. I am definitely old enough to remember the 1980 Olympics that the United States decided to boycott. I was fourteen, and looking forward to the spectacle and pomp of the event that was to take place in Moscow, but because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, our country did not participate. It was a bitter disappointment. So here we are, in 2008, awaiting the Games again, and I am wondering if that same sort of disappointment is in store for us again. Already with the trouble the flame is having getting through London, and now the extinguishing of the torch several times in Paris, it seems like there might be a foreshadowing of what we are in store for this summer. China was perhaps a poor choice of countries to host the big event, but we can't go back and have a do-over. With the behavior in Tibet, I'm not at all certain that the United States should participate. With all the unrest, could a 2008 boycott of the Olympics be on the horizon?

Thomas Beatie, the Pregnant Man

Today on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Thomas Beatie and his wife will be discussing their unusual situation. When the news of a pregnant man first came out last week, I thought it was some sort of strange phenomenon. When I heard the full report that the guy who is pregnant had actually been born female, I was a little disappointed. Not so much a miracle, but just a strange bit of human interest that wasn't all that surprising once I thought about it. It is still difficult for me to understand why this fellow didn't go all the way with his sex change; seems rather ambivalent to me. Before Thomas Beatie changed genders, he was a very attractive woman named Tracy who was even a beauty pageant contestant. The urge to change genders, in this case, seems very mixed up to me. The other thing that I have a hard time understanding is Mr. Beatie's wife, Nancy. She looks like an older woman to me (but I never read what her actual age is)and looks like any other woman. The relationship between the couple must be something very (for lack of a better word) special. Perhaps there is more to the couple than sexual attraction, or perhaps Mrs. Beatie is also sexually ambivalent. This is the sort of thing that I usually just say, "there is someone for everyone" and hopefully the couple will have a happy, healthy, and fulfilled life together with their soon to be born daughter. I don't usually watch Oprah, but today might be the one show to watch.

Plane, Train, or Automobile-Summer Vacation Trips

I am trying to plan my family's summer activities and I keep hearing that gasoline prices may climb as high as $5.00 per gallon during the summer months. With that in mind, my husband and I decided that instead of driving to Florida in June, we will (all six of us) be flying to Orlando. It seemed cheaper, not to mention faster, so that trip is settled. The other summer activity was for me to go back to Indiana to visit friends and family during the month of July. I would be going there with the four girls, but my husband would stay behind because he has to work, of course. Driving the 600+ miles with four girls seems a little daunting to me, so I decided to check into other modes of transportation options. I don't think flying will work for us again, because the cost is too much to fly into either Fort Wayne International or South Bend. My next option is to take the train. There is an Amtrak station not far from where we live and a station in Elkhart, where my parents live. For all five of us to travel, I think the total cost for regular coach seats is around $413.00 roundtrip. I have only travelled by train a couple of times and then it was only from Elkhart or Fort Wayne to Chicago. I also don't know how the girls would do on the train--it makes me a little nervous. So, for now, I'm just watching the gas prices (rise) and as they do here in Virginia, "biding my time."