Today I feel as though I am fighting against the world. I woke up in a wonderful, well-rested, and happy place. I am moving along nicely on my deep cleaning of the house, taking at a pace I am comfortable with. It was not to messy to begin with, so I don’t have a lot of pressure about it. I feel like everywhere I turn is a minor malfunction in my day or cynical advice or bad news, and yet…I maintain, however lonely it feels to be the only one smiling. Soon I will pick up my son, and he will be smiling, and I won’t be lonely in my happiness. Even he is being a pain in my behind today. He forgot his homework this morning, and I have to take it to him at school. Oh well… gives me an excuse to check out his latest LegoClub project. For those of you who do not know what lego club is…check it out! It is really a very cool engineering program for kids on a middle and high school level. They use robotic legos to problem solve and design, and then go to a competition once a year at our local college. I don’t know if it is always held at a college, but it is a national program. Here is the address http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll it is a pretty sweet program for any child that has an engineering mind. They learn how to do things like build and operate the robots that go looking for people in major catastrophes. The problem solve and trouble shoot, and each year there is a theme, such as transportation, and I think this year it was skin. They learn about the theme in their activities. For example, my son’s theme was transportation last year, and they spent the year problem solving ways to fix the road near their school that desperately needs to be redone. They talked about alternate transportation such as biking, walking, and the bus. He learns a LOT!
I am a sucker for the Michael’s two dollar grab bags. I love popping in there and picking up a couple every once in a while. They are always so brimming full of random craft goodies….yes, a sucker I am! Today I bought five….and you guessed it, choc full of craft goodies! A lot of the stuff is seasonal, like Valentines right after Valentines, and Christmas right after Christmas, you get the point, but usually there is a pretty decent assortment. Non-holiday seasons seem to be the best for just good old craft supplies.
I feel like everywhere I go today I have to patiently smile through tiny challenges. I had a good time with my client this morning, but, I almost got stuck there. My husband accidentally took my good set of keys with him on the road. The car FOB I have for the spare set has a short in it, and when I try to arm or disarm my alarm, I have to push the dang button for anywhere from five to five hundred times to get it to work. My car is too smart for its own good, and not very new. The two factors cause problems. It automatically arms the alarm thirty seconds after you get out and close the driver side door, whether I lock it or not. The car will not start if the alarm has not been disarmed with the remote, and if you disarm the alarm under the hood the car won’t start. Without that remote I am not even a little bit certain I will be able to get in and start my car. Yesterday and today are the only days I should have to go anywhere, and he mailed the keys yesterday, so they should be here tomorrow. What a pain in the behind! “Patience, my child”…I can hear it ringing in my ears like a cathedral bell!
My friend asked me a question about my upcoming plans for a change. I barely got halfway through my first thought, before she interrupted to tell me details about how it’s not going to work. It was slightly frustrating, because she has no idea what I was going to say, but I just smiled through it. “I have a lot of faith” is not a comment she would have truly grasped the meaning of. So far, I have found that when God wants me to have something, no matter how hard anyone else tells me it is going to be to get, it works out easy as pie, so if I am right, and this is what he wants for us, then what is there to worry about? He will lead the way…I know it is true “blind” faith, however, I have seen the hand of God work in ways that I could not begin to explain, without you all thinking I am nuts! I had the privilege of hearing someone say, “you can’t see the wind but you know it exists”, one time…that sums it up nicely for me.
I picked up the first of my cool season veggies today, and I look forward to trying out my greenhouse for the first springtime run. It did awesome last fall. I was done with the garden bug long before the greenhouse was done producing. This year I can plan for it and I am pretty stinkin excited! Last week I did the inventory of seeds left over, and I don’t need to buy much this year, but I always do anyway. I am thinking of asking the landlord if we can put some bee boxes out back…I am not sure if he would let us or not. He is kind of an old fashioned guy, not at all sold on all “that organic crap”. Last year I tried growing stuff in tires. It worked great. He spent a long time one day telling me how I was doing it all wrong, they wouldn’t grow that way, and on and on and on about all my newfangled ideas. I was irritated, but he just a grumpy, ancient man…what am I supposed to say, so I smiled, and was happily, the first gardener I know personally to harvest watermelons out of my Montana garden! Ha take that you grumpy old man. The answer, smother him with veggies…that ought to teach him to tell me I am going to fail! The best part was a couple weeks later when my husband was working with his son, and they got to talking about gardening, and he told hubby that his dad had been telling him about someone growing veggies in tires at our place, and how great it was going! As rewarding as that was…why was he so negative to me? Anyway, this week I am going to plant my cool season starts, and I am incredibly excited about that. I have a plan for my brassica’s. I have not had the means to use floating row covers, but today I had an epiphany about one of my raised beds that htis would work good in! WoooHoooo bring on the brassica’s. Last year the cabbage worms got almost all of them! At the end of the season last year, I scored a bucketload of free planters on freecycle. A local landscaper didn’t know what to do with them all. I am looking forward to my container garden more than ever this year!
Well, on that note, I am going to clean out the greenhouse. You all have a great evening!
Countryside Daydreamer 