Projects and Pea Gravel

It seems that I can’t seem to stop myself from blogging even when I plan on it. So, here I am…blogging again even though I had planned on reducing the frequency a little. Sometimes, it’s just nice to write. I don’t always get time for working on my novels so this is a good way for me to keep the thoughts flowing.

Lately, I’ve been busy trying to make the most of the balmy fall-ish weather and I’ve been working in the garden. I decided a few weeks ago that the very overgrown weed patch in my garden was getting on my nerves. I’ve been trying to slowly get rid of the weedy areas and plant flowers and things. However, weeds grow so fast and I don’t have time to stand out there and yank the blasted things up as soon as they appear. This results in a bit of a jungle. The dogs like the jungle effect as they like to intrepidly hunt in it for wildlife to chase. I, however, did not like the jungle.

It doesn’t help that this area is a bit prone to floods. I think we have a drainage issue in my area and when it rains a lot, I get a lot of puddles. This means that the nice things I plant there tend to die from too much water but the weeds flourish. I thought about a rain garden but we don’t always get very much rain. Here in the Midwest, we tend to have periods of intense rain followed by several weeks of drought.

Thus, my solution was to create a rustic patio in that corner of my garden. I have a firepit that I bought at the beginning of the summer that is waiting to be used. I had intended to use it on my patio after I built my trellis for privacy. Unfortunately, since I planted the clematis that I intended to grow up it too late, I didn’t get as much privacy as I wanted. It’s a little hard to relax outside with Dog Whisperer’s beasts yapping wildly even though I’m doing nothing but sitting still. Also, with the addition of the trampoline, Son of Dog Whisperer has acquired a whole new collection of neighbourhood friends. I’m actually curious to see what his parents think- the gaggle of kids who moved into the house behind them like to come over now. They look a wee bit too old to be hanging around with an 9 year old boy, honestly. One of them is a pre-teen girl and at the risk of sounding like a dowdy spinster, if she was my kid, I certainly wouldn’t let her leave the house dressed like that. Also, the boy who bounces on the trampoline looks to be going on fourteen or fifteen. It’s not my business though other than the fact that while I think a bonding tool like a trampoline is great for the kids, it’s not so good for us neighbours who want a little rest and relaxation after work.

Thus, I decided to build the rustic patio since it was on the opposite side of the yard to Dog Whisperer’s house and allows some modicum of privacy as it’s tucked away in the corner of the garden. I got most of it done in one day- pulling up the worst of the weeds and trapping the rest beneath landscaping fabric. Then I covered it with pea gravel. Lots and lots of pea gravel. Fortunately, Lowes was having a sale on the gravel and I got a great deal. I ended up using 26 bags of it. Each bag weighs 50 lbs. Who needs a gym when you own a house?

I’m proud of the result. I still haven’t finished but the former jungle is now a clean corner of my yard with a rosebush for decoration. My garden gnomes now have a home. I love gnomes although I don’t like those themed ones with college sports teams that have become popular. Give me a good old fashioned grumpy-looking gnome any day.

I want to finish the patio this weekend. I haven’t decided if I want to get more gravel and expand it or take the easy way out and use mulch instead. The result will be the same- a weed free area that won’t need much maintenance. Since it borders my vegetable patch which is already mulched, it would blend nicely. I’m leaning towards the mulch.

Aside from that, all that remains is to lay a base for the firepit and assemble a garden bench that I ordered on clearance from Home Depot. That’s tonight’s project: assembling a bench. While I’d like to think that it’ll be a piece of cake, I’m not fooling myself. I built a wheelbarrow at the beginning of the summer that was supposed to be ‘easy to assemble’. I’ve discovered that ‘easy to assemble’ for the general world means “difficult for Captain Monkeypants.” I’m a creative creature, I like to think. However, let’s just say when it came to the math and science sections of standardized tests, I didn’t do so well. I tried but, well, I’m better suited to humanities and fields that allow some form of creative license.

Still, when the bench is built, I’ll have something to sit on while I enjoy my firepit. The dogs aren’t thrilled at their diminished jungle but they’re intrigued by the gravel. I’m hoping Sookie stops being startled by the gnomes soon. The new patio is part of the track upon which the girls run when they first go outside and I’ve caught her stopping dead in her tracks to acknowledge the gnomes and sniff them warily.

I’m quite pleased with my patio. It has made me wish just a little that I had a partner, preferably a man who can lift bags of gravel easier than me, to assist me but there is definitely a feeling of accomplishment in doing something like that myself. Hopefully, when it’s done, I’ll have an additional place to sit outside, away from bouncing, screaming children and yipping dogs. I’m quite looking forward to the crisper evenings so that I can light a fire outside, have a cup of tea and enjoy the autumn evenings.

I’m just a little fed up of pea gravel.Maybe it is time to switch to mulch.

Happy Wednesday!

Busy Project Days

I'd say that I can't believe the weekend is over already but, really, I can. I can't say I haven't used every minute of it either because...I feel like I have.

My busiest weekends always end up seeming to be the ones where I don't have anything planned. My original intention was to get the tiling on my Tuscan room floor done. However, due to the unexpected expense of a termite extermination as well as having to buy a new lawnmower, the floor tiles were a little else on which to splurge.

Besides, Saturday ended up being a rainy, gloomy day and I needed to have a sunny, warm day on which to tile so the pups could be outside and I could put all the stuff currently on the floor of the Tuscan room outside so I'd be able to work. In the end, I had a very pleasant indoor sort of Saturday in which the pups laid around being lazy while i cleaned. I did some reading. I watched some movies. It wasn't the most productive day but I don't feel like it was a wasted laze. I needed that laze quite badly.

Sunday was quite the opposite. I decided to make it Project Day. I ended up building a nice trellis on the edge of my patio so that I could sit and have a bit of peace from the yappy dogs next door. I also made a neat little garden around the trellis so I can plant some honeysuckle and have it grow to give me complete privacy. During the trellis project, I realized that in order to move all the sod that I'd dug up to make room for the trellis, I really needed a wheelbarrow.

This is something that's been on my list of things to get since I moved in. So, I went to buy a wheelbarrow from Lowes. It turns out that wheelbarrows don't always come assembled. I did not know this. The particular wheelbarrow I wanted (read: The most inexpensive) was all sold out of the assembled model so I ended up buying it in three parts: The buckety part, the handles and the wheel and assembly stuff.

I thought, "Oh, it's a wheelbarrow...how hard can it be to build?" And I loaded the pieces up in my car and headed home.

Silly Captain Monkeypants. Considering I have trouble with even the simplest instructions from IKEA, I should have realized it'd never be easy. Building a wheelbarrow is quite complicated. There are cross bracy thingys, handles and all sorts of nuts and bolts. Long story short...I was successful. In between the taking all the parts out of the box and being successful is a series of rather rude words that I shouted a few times, a couple of minor injuries to my fingers and several "oops, I did that backwards" moments.

Still, I have a wheelbarrow. I also have a trellis. I have no honeysuckle because Lowes didn't have any. I will have some soon. I also have two very tired pups. They decided the best course of action for themselves while I went about my project business was to run around outside the whole time. Now they're sleepy. I am too, for that matter. I'm also a little sore.

However, in the long run, I'm very pleased with my day since it was absolutely perfect outside- sunny, warm and breezy. I find that on weekends with days like this, it makes the thought of Monday much more bearable.

Also, I'm tired enough that my brain has shut down and doesn't have the energy to be disappointed that I have to work tomorrow which definitely helps with the Monday thing. It also means that my blog will be a little shorter than some of my waffles because, well, forming cohesive sentences is getting harder by the minute.

Which, really, is how I usually begin Mondays anyway so I'm in good shape.

Happy Monday!

Project Distraction

Today has been a beautiful day. For the first time since November, the thermometer crept up to 70 degrees. The sun shone, the breeze warmed and, overall, it was a beautiful spring day.

This, of course, made it hard to work. I don't even have a window but I was a little restless. It didn't help that our office has a lot of sports-loving men and with today being the start of March Madness, they were a little distracted by basketball to focus. Add the fact that it was St. Patricks' Day to the mix and, well, it was a very low-key day in the office.

I even managed to sneak out early. I wanted to get home and give the pups a chance to enjoy the weather. I always feel bad if they're cooped up inside on a nice day. I also got to come home and do a little prep work for my current DIY project- I did the edging of my room today. All that's left is to grab a roller and do the rest of it.

I like having projects. It's so much fun to plan what I'm going to do and then start doing it. I do have a tendency to procrastinate. I have the idea for something and then I don't do much about it for a while. Eventually, however, if I want to really do it...I do it.

I think I get that from my dad. He's a project kind of man. He has big ideas for home improvement and he likes to do it himself. He's pretty good at it too.

The only thing is...he often doesn't quite finish. For example, I still remember how, back in England, he built my mum a lot of new kitchen cabinets. The only thing is he didn't put doors on them. For months, we had no cupboard doors. I think he finally got around to it a few months later.

Another one is the house he and my mum live in now. He began to redo the siding. Currently, the house has two different colours of siding because he never quite finished that.

He's currently redoing their office and remodeling so that my parents' bedroom is bigger. He ripped up the floor and...it stayed like that for a couple of months. Now, fortunately, he's back involved in that project so the room is getting finished. My fingers are crossed that he actually does finish it and doesn't, say, leave the ceiling undone. I think he still has yet to build a window sill for the window he replaced before winter began.

I admire my dad and his ability to do practically anything. I try to be like that but, alas, I'm a bit of a clumsy monkeypants and, often, when I do something that is rather finicky and involves great detail, I tend to get sloppy and bored because it's just too time consuming for me.

Still, I think I did inherit his love of projects. My only fear is that maybe I inherited the inability to quite finish them. I look around my house. I did get my cranberry walls painted when I moved in but the baseboards still look as natty as they did when I moved in and I haven't done anything about it. I did replace one of the lightswitch covers to be more ornate but there's still another one I haven't done yet.

So, you can see my fear. I'm currently repainting a room in which I'd also like to redo the floors and rearrange it a bit. I'm afraid I won't get that far. Don't get me wrong, I want to get that far I just...well, like my dad, I get distracted easily by other projects. This is why when I start to clean the kitchen, I suddenly find that I'm taking an inventory and alphabetizing my spice cupboard. True story. I have an excellently organized spice collection and a list on the cabinet door to which I can refer if I want to check I have something I need for a recipe.

Still, I do believe there's such a thing as mind over matter. Thus, if I know I'm prone to not finishing things, I must make sure that I DO in fact finish them. It's possible. I'm looking forward to finishing the painting this weekend. I like closure which is another reason I shouldn't have a problem finishing something.

I just need to make sure that something more fun doesn't get in the way like, for example, landscaping my front yard.

It is looking a bit bedraggled.

Just kidding.

I hope.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Fighting Ennui....

I'm very glad it's Friday tomorrow. I know I say that every week but this, by far, has been the longest work week in a while.

The problem is that while I no longer feel seething resentment towards my job, it's also stopped being as busy and hectic as it has been for the past two months. I have a project I'm working on and I like it. It's just...boring. I don't mind having the project to work on during downtime and slower periods but it's the kind of project that when you work on it for eight hours a day, you start imagining different ways to beat yourself repeatedly in the head.

I've been working on this project for three days without any other projects rearing their heads to give me a welcome distraction. Yesterday, I honestly felt I was going to split in two with insanity and start running through the office, waving my hands above my head and speaking gibberish. I felt as though I were trapped in a cage and there was no escape.

Of course, the end of the day came and I did escape. It was fine until today. I didn't feel so insanely trapped today but I felt the waves of ennui start to sink in and I found myself finding ways to distract myself.

I can't surf the internet like I used to before we became a CORPORATION. When we were a not-for-profit, owned by the university, we had freedom. These days, they log our internet useage and block a lot of sites. Last week, I googled for an answer to a Microsoft Access/SQL query question that I had. I clicked on one of the sites that came up and I was given a blank screen with "This site has been blocked because it contains pornographic content."

I found myself having the urge to shove myself back from my desk, stand up and put my hands in the air and yell, "I'M SORRY! I WASN'T LOOKING FOR PORN, I PROMISE!"

Apparently, I'm not the only one. Two other coworkers have had the same experience when searching the internet for a work-related issue/question and they, too, had the same response.

Anyway, with messages like that when searching for Microsoft Access information, it does add a certain level of control over us humble employees because you never know when you're accidentally going to find a site that contains pornographic content.

So, because my time to surf is limited/curtailed, I'm having to find other ways to amuse myself when I simply can't work on My Project any longer. My Blackberry comes in handy. I can access the internet on there. I've noticed that several coworkers are bringing in their little mini laptops to surf/do web-stuff. I could do that except my Dell Mini currently lacks memory and if I try to do anything, it crashes and refuses to let me. I need a new memory stick for it. It's on the 'to buy' list when I become a wealthy woman.

Since that's not likely to happen in the near future, I have to do away with the Dell Mini idea and rely on the Blackberry. This is a fine way to surf the web except it's quite hard to be subtle with it. Of course, I often walk in on my boss when he's playing with his phone under his desk. I don't quite know why he plays with his phone by holding under his desk so we can't see it since, you know, he is the BOSS. However, I have to admit, a couple of times I've walked in and he has his hands under the desk and he's fidgeting and, well....it looks like he's doing something else. Use your imagination. If it goes to the right place, you should be getting a "this site contains pornographic content" type of message.

Anyways...my other way of amusing myself is through our time-tracking system. It's a newfangled device my boss and fellow programmer modified that pops up every 20 minutes and says "So [Captain Monkeypants], What are you doing now?"

It's supposed to be a way for our boss to see how much of our time we devote to the different areas of our job. We enter in issues that we're working on or, in my case, components of the software I'm testing or documenting.

Except, my boss should have known not to put a program on the computer that says "so, [Captain Monkeypants], what are you doing now?" Because, I tell it. Oh, yes, I do.

Most of my coworkers enter in mundane things like "testing issue X" or "Working on documentation for X software."

Not me. I tell the software, named Time Buddy, exactly what I'm doing at that time. Not every day but, on days like today when my brain is leaking out of my ears with ennui, I do.

Today's entries contained things such as "Hi, Time Buddy! I'm currently pondering why they just posted a placard featuring a picture of a fire extinguisher above the real fire extinguisher because, well, it's baffling me. Also, I'm working on X".

And, "Time Buddy, you are very glad you don't have ears because they're currently sawing so much that my teeth are hurting and it turns out they're sawing to make a hole to put up a placard that features a picture of the fire extinguisher. Also, I'm still working on X."

I use Time Buddy as my outlet. Today, I told it that I was annoyed because it always asks me what I'm doing but I never get to ask it a question. I said "Knock Knock, Time Buddy!"

Time Buddy, obviously, did not answer.

I feel bad for my boss if he ever logs into the web site to where my entries on Time Buddy are fed. Some days, I seem like a normal employee and other days... I have days like today. Sometime,s I tell Time Buddy what I'm currently drinking- usually coffee, tea or a soft drink. Sometimes, I share the music I'm listening to on my iPod. Sometimes, I tell it that I just walked down the hallway in a zombie pose- arms outstretched and a lurching gait- which is, actually true for the record. No one noticed. It felt right, somehow. I did feel like a zombie. I walked like a zombie today.

I don't think my boss is likely to read my Time Buddy entries. If he does, I think he'll probably be rather entertained. I did warn him that I could be quite literal so if Time Buddy asks me "what I'm doing now," I will tell Time Buddy.

It's not like I don't tell it the work I'm doing. I also share some of the other things that I have going on because I'm big on multi-tasking. For example, if it comes up while I'm eating my rather naughty once-a-week breakfast of a Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuit, I'll tell Time Buddy what my thoughts on the sandwich are. Note to anyone- don't leave a Chick-Fil-A breakfast sandwich wrapped up in it's foil package for long because the heat from the chicken tends to steam the biscuit and make it go soggy.

Time Buddy knows this because, well, I told Time Buddy. It was bothering me and, well, Time Buddy did ask what I was doing then. Since I was internally grumbling as to the dampness of my breakfast sandwich, I made sure that Time Buddy knew it.

I have a feeling my ennui may stretch through tomorrow. I think tomorrow, I will continue my overly-honest answer to Time Buddy's question.

Hey, if it doesn't want to know what I'm doing at that moment, it shouldn't ask...right?

Happy Friday and have a good weekend!