Sigh

I've started a few posts in the last few days but won't publish them. They're mostly whiney vents and don't really keep anything moving forward.

If you haven't watched Meet the Robinsons you need to do so. I barely tolerated all but the last ten minutes of the movie, saw the ending and now can't wait to go back and watch it again. Anyway, "keep moving forward" is from the movie.

Bottom line is that it's been a hard year and the last month has been the hardest. Things are not "done." I am drowning in the chaos. I'm going to try for this post to be positive, although my mind is working pretty randomly right now so I don't know how this will turn out.

I've decided I want to go to Nundle. Someday. I've been in or through 28 of the states in the US but have never been out of our borders (Tijuana doesn't count.) With a Japanese DIL I'm confident that I will make that dream come true. Someday. DH lived all over the world as the son of an Air Force Chaplain. He says he's lived in strange places like Japan, French Morocco and Texas. Anyway, we both (coming from completely opposite positions in the world of travel) believe in the importance of travel. However, as a family living for most of the boys' childhoods on one teacher's salary we simply couldn't afford expensive family trips, so we signed the boys up for youth tours. Fortunately, they were four years apart in school so when the oldest had had his trips (German-Speaking Europe, Australia's east coast and European capitals; later he spent his first semester of college in Nepal and India) we could have a break before sending his younger brother (European capitals, Australia/New Zealand, and in his freshman college year he did two weeks in Brazil to study the samba.) I've always wanted to visit Japan, but otherwise was not interested in international travel until I started surfing the stitchery blogs. I think I'd like to do a tour of Europe now with Stitchery as a theme (English, French and Dutch shops for sure). I asked B--- once which, of all the places he'd seen, was a "do it before you die, Mom" destination and he didn't hesitate to recommend Paris (for which, apparently, I first need to lose 150 pounds.) As the boys returned from their trips and shared what they'd done (a process that took years to drag out of them) the most appealing from a tourist standpoint was Australia, but it's only been recently that I've really wanted to see it for myself. So, someday I want to sign up for this retreat in Nundle. Dang, it really looks like fun!

For truly mindless fun get a Webkinz pet.

I have about $145 worth of bedding flowers to plant this week. Naturally, it's the hottest weekend of the season but I'm still happily anticipating getting everything in. My SIL called DH on Mother's Day for directions to the most fabulous nursery in our area because they had called her to tell her they had a shipment of apricot foxglove in. I was on my way out the door and would drive right by the nursery so stopped by to say hello and ended up getting a ponypac of apricot foxgloves AND...

Let's see. Santa Barbara daisies (a creeping thing), viola, cosmos, a miniature pentstemon, a dark purple salvia and a gold basketflower.


Full-size pentstemon, Rocky Mountain Columbine, delphinium and heliotrope for the fairy garden. The apricot foxglove will go there, too. I figure to kill the dephinium and foxglove because good intentions do not keep the plants watered. The others may make it. Wave petunias in the most gorgeous pink for the front courtyard bed (to one side of the pond) with more heliotrope and pentstemmon. On the other side of the pond the purple salvia, blanketflower and daisies with some little yellow thing that the nurserywoman assured me was a treasure. Pink Gerbera Daisies, verbena and that little petunia-looking thing that I can never remember the name of will go in the back garden with a coreopsis and blue salvia where the plumbago groundcover is spreading. The miniature pentstemon is destined for that spot as well.

The first volunteer sweet peas have bloomed which is promising for the early summer. If I can get my son to deadhead them for me while I'm on vacation I might have them all summer and be able to harvest seed again.

I started on the pond last week and it was an adventure. I had purchased a yellow iris which (horrors!) had a cattail in it. Three years later the cattails are choking out my lily (with no sign of the yellow iris). The whole collection had to come out and, of course, their roots were intertwined with each other AND two rocks and three bricks that had fallen into the pond.

While shopping for last weekend's "bash" I managed to buy myself some gifts. The Hanes outlet store in our local outlet center was loaded with ginormous bras and I was like the proverbial kid in the candy store. Got the most gorgeous pink bra and gift cards for Mom and Sis. Went to Borders for a gift card and bought myself the new Nora Roberts. Have to re-read Blood Brothers (first in the trilogy) to refresh my memory on the characters before reading The Hollow. Went to Costco and bought His Dark Materials. Had listened to the audio of The Golden Compass and enjoyed it so much was hoping to get the other two books in audio but couldn't find them. May have to (gasp) actually read these, too. Maybe I'll put them on my birthday list.

Here is my progress on something.

It's a small project by Windy Willows and I'm loving the fabric (I have a ton of this green fiddler cloth) and the variegated floss. Just wish I had more oomph.

Finally, my most recent visit to the cardio office (will this never end?) was fine. Got to meet the tight-assed nurse practitioner. Almost an hour later I had him confessing his sins and actually grinning. Just a talent I have. I quit the Lipitor after the pain (which started as leg pain that woke me up at night and gradually progressed to every joint in my body) so we're starting something else. Another motivation to exercise; he thinks if I lose some weight and exercise I will not only lower my heart rate but will probably be able to drop the cholesterol drugs.

There, that wasn't so bad. Tomorrow I tackle the chaos again but this was nice therapy.