square foot gardening

I've been doing some gardening research, and I think for my first gardening experience in the new house, I'll be doing Square Foot Gardening. Easy to handle, compact, and high crop yield! Sounds good to me.

My dad already has seedlings for me, and all I'll need is a 4' x 4' box, and the compost/mulch/vermiculite mix. Oh, and a grid for the top. But I can use string until I find something better, at least for the time being.

I'm so bored with being at work today. 40 more minutes. I want to go home. I'm also sleepy, and just....done with being here. I want to go home and MOVE!

moving and gardening!

Sitting here in my office after reading Heidi's blog is always difficult for me. Her blog is very inspiring - I want to go knit, raise animals, work in my garden, sew a skirt... it's hard to sit here making plan after plan and not be able to go out right now and do it.

I love my job, but I really, really, really wish I could stay at home. I have so much I want to do.

Today after work I'll stop at the dry cleaners, then go home and load up a carload of stuff QUICK style. My friend Grande offered to loan me his minivan, which would make each trip more effective than using my Yaris. So if I can do that, I will.

The dirt in the backyard is really tough and dry, and I think I need to make raised beds for my garden. So today I'll also start looking for free wood...I have a hammer and nails, what else do I need? :P

stuff

I go back and forth between awesome and productive and frustrated and ineffective. I need to stop depending so much on Adam's moods to dictate which direction I go. Marina made some comment before about remembering that I am not in charge of his emotions, and I need to remember that too! I get used to him caring about all the little details, and then I get frustrated when I tell him things that yes - might be way too much detail for most people, but empirically speaking he's wanted to know them - and then he doesn't want to hear it. Grr.

Oh well. Wrote it down, done now. And cable is getting hooked up no matter how frustrating it is for whoever. ;)

We got the keys to the new place last night! I have moved in one carload of stuff, and have another carload with me now to take. I would like to have everything possible moved by Saturday, so that Saturday I can spend working on the garden while I wait for the cable guy. Sunday we'll hopefully get the big stuff moved, so that we can spend the next week cleaning out the old place.

I love moving. And it's a crazy pain. Also, Adam and I will now have a roommate, which will be wonderful (Chris is superb) but add an unknown-for-me element. We shall see!

I haven't picked up knitting in weeks, it feels like. I've been busy.

I went camping in the Sierra Nevada's last weekend - take a look at my blog at sparkpeople.com for a photographed account of that. Also my facebook has all the photos too.

Adam also graduated the police academy...woohoo!

I am not coherant right now, I keep thinking of things I need to do. So that's all for now.

recap of my week

We still haven't heard confirmation from the landlords about when we can actually get the key. I'm really frustrated. We can't exactly start packing til we know when we can move, since we'll just be sitting amidst boxes and boxes. I packed up *some* stuff anyway...took photos off the wall, magnets off the fridge, and packed up my toiletries. I'm proud: I am getting rid of a ton of stuff, too.

Tomorrow is Adam's graduation - which means today they are doing the Pride Run - they wear their class shirts and go for a minimum of 8.5 miles. Yeesh. Then they have a class bbq, and then have "graduation practice" whatever that means. I can't believe the academy is almost done. It seems too good to be true. I hope I'm not laboring under the misconception that I'll get my boyfriend back...he seems to think that the next 6 months of probation at work will be harder. But holy cow, I don't see how that can be. At least it won't be the same kind of hard for me - the academy was all consuming and there were 60 other people to be consumed with. At work, he'll be the new guy, but it'll still be a regular *JOB* - not a lifestyle that I am locked out of.

So tomorrow I'm either driving up with Chris or my mom to Pasadena to be the proudest girlfriend ever. I got him a gift - a pair of Smith and Wesson cuffs, with his name and the date engraved. I hope he likes them. He was talking about how much he needed a second pair of cuffs, and I figured it'd be a nice way to commerorate the occasion too. Useful AND sentimental! Score!

In other non-cop related news I've been trying to go to a bunch of group classes at the gym this week - my goal was 4 different classes: step, spin, aqua and turbo kickboxing. However, I only made it to two different ones: turbokickboxing and step. I did attempt to go to spin, but they were full! Aqua I didn't go to because my elbow was hurt and I didn't want to push it. However, I liked both TKB and Step a lot and I'm going back to the Step class today.

I'm done with 1 of Rosie's striped kneesocks, and have about 4 stripes done on the 2nd one, and then lost steam. I've got to get that back out again at some point. They're not really difficult, and they're actually really fun to knit. I just put it in my art supply room, and then the entrance to that room keeps getting stacked high with boxes and junk and it's actually physically hard to get in there! heehee. So I should make a foraging expedition and get them out.

I've been feeling like I'm getting sick for the past week, and I was so glad to be in bed by 9:30pm last night. I don't feel better today, but I don't feel worse either, which is good.

That's all from me, for now. I wish we had the go ahead on the house!

the house that Roya wants

Since Adam was about 11 years old, he lived next door to Chris and David. As they got older, he has lived with or next door to at least one of them - with the ONLY break from that being the 4 months he lived with ME in Alaska, and a couple of months ONE street over from them when we got back. As soon as possible we moved into the house in back of theirs. We call Chris "Uncle Chris" because he is Joey to our Chandler/Monica - he is already Uncle Chris to our dogs, and one day when we get married and have kids, he'll have a Joey room in our house and will be Uncle Chris for real. For the last year we've enjoyed an excellent living situation - bbq's between the houses, dessert sharing, movie watching, brunch-going, etc. It's been so nice to have our really close friends as our closest neighbors.

Then David decided to move. He'll be living about 1.5 hours northeast of us as of next week. Chris suddenly can't afford the double rent, so he was thinking of moving too. Our situation will be drastically uncool as soon as neighbors move into our front house. The driveway is tight. It was okay with friends...not so great with strangers.

I almost cried when Adam told me, and as he put it, he was "seriously bummed out." He really has lived with one or both of them for most of his life. Chris is pretty damn introverted also and I couldn't see him spending too much of his time out of his home, whever he moved to.

We decided then to start looking for a new place - Adam will be working far away, we could split the difference, maybe find something cheap to save money, etc. I don't remember who suggested it, but we jokingly said Chris should just move in with us. Then we "joked" about it with Chris, and Sunday the three of us spent a good portion of the day driving around looking at houses.

We found the house I want. It's a 3 bedroom, right between the two freeways the three of us need. It has a HUMONGOUS backyard - HUGE HUGE HUGE, with fruit trees and a work-in-able two car garage and a covered patio and tons of grass and a big giant garden plot already created with grape vines!

And - it's one street over from my family!!! I want it. I want it so badly. I have managed to talk Adam and Chris into the merits of this house, and tonight we go to meet with the rental company and...it is now time to start crossing fingers.

It's such a family house. It's in the neighborhood I grew up in, for crying out loud. It's a house we could stay at for a long time to come. Chris could really be Uncle Chris. Hell, there's even a shed he could have. ;)

Anyways. That's tonight. So I'm hoping and wishing, etc.

In other news - I went to CSULB for the Human Services graduation today... yay Cousin Becky and Intern Nancy and Friends Karen, Dawn, Kristin, Sophia and more! Yay for seeing KJ and Susan and go Beach!

I finished 1 of the Pippi kneestockings and it fits Rosie! I'm 3 stripes in on the second one! Here's to finishing a project!

knitting and my dogs...again!

I am slowly trying to go through my things and either find old projects to work on instead of buying new ones. I have sooo many half finished projects - 4 or 5 pairs of socks, gloves, scarves, beanies, latch hook rugs, cross stitch, oh man. So the other day I was just craving doing tiny clicking bamboo needle knitting, and I found a pair of knee length striped socks that weren't even half done - only about 3 inches of one leg was done! It's perfect. I've been working on it just for a day now, and I've already quadrupled the amount I had, and it's neat because I am obviously such a better knitter now than I was 5 years ago when I started.

I put aside the Juliana project for the time being. It's kind of mindless, what with needing to knit 3 feet of the same damn thing, but on the other hand, you also can't tune out completely or you'll wreck the pattern. So it's something I will resign myself to being an ongoing slow project that I will take with me to conferences and things where it's either knit that or knit nothing.

Yesterday was karate - my stomach was hurting so I didn't feel like I was paying good attention, or giving it my all, strength wise - so I tried to concentrate on technique. We did an exercise where we kicked through rebreakable boards - with two of them together instead of just one. My right snap kick is by far my strongest, and the first three were easy, but that darn brown rebreakable board gets me every time. I will work on this! I will also work on my side kicks and my hooking heel, so that when my next belt test comes along I'll be ready.

My puppy got her rabies shots last weekend, and has had enough cycles of her other shots so that I can start taking her places soon! I can't wait! I've been dying to get her on a leash so we can go walk through Central Park and go to the beach and stuff!!! She's such a sweetheart - she has two very distinct moods. There's the Crazy Eyes mood where here eyes roll back in her head and her teeth come out and she rolls around on her back trying to get her pearly whites on anything that will stay still. You have to watch your ankles when she is in that mood. Her other mood is her sweet, calm, loving mood where she follows me around throughout the house as I putter, and when I take a shower she comes and lies down on the shower step and when I do dishes she lies down on my feet! I love this dog. I can't believe how much I love this dog!

The big dog keeps chewing a hotspot on his back so he now officially has been CONED. This means you have to watch out because he doesn't know how wide or painful he is when he tries to brush by you. This also means I need to separate the two dogs because Juno likes to grab onto Rommel's cone and pull. Juno gets the backyard during the day (Rommel has the advantage of more years of house breaking) and Rommel gets the backyard at night (Rommel doesn't struggle with separation anxiety).

Let's see..what else... Adam graduates in...22 days! The week before he graduates, some of his academy friends, their husbands and wives, and me, will be going out to a fancy dinner. He told me a week ago that I need to decide what I am wearing SOON because he doesn't want to deal with my last minute what-to-wear panicking that I always do for every holiday or event. Hah. He knows me too well.

I've been doing a sparkpeople Sweatsuit to Swimsuit Challenge, and I am pleased to report that I haven't missed a day in 2 weeks! Coach Nicole's Cardio Blast DVD with 6 ten minute workouts have saved me so many times - when it's late and I don't feel like going to the gym and I don't even feel like doign 30 whole minutes of working out, I tell myself I am just going to do 1 ten minute segment, and invariably I end up doing more!

I feel like there is so much more I want to talk about, but really I'm just pining for my knitting and my puppy. My knitting is sitting on my desk next to me, and it's so hard not to do that, but I really need to go back to work. Ah! I am so glad this weekend is a three day weekend!

oh hey, my little sister is having her Gold Award Ceremony this weekend! HOW AMAZING IS THAT? REALLY AMAZING, that's what!

askew ouch

Finished the Askew tank top and I'm SO frustrated. It's beautiful, but I think I blocked the back the wrong direction, and so it's curling up and it's REALLY SHORT and maybe I just don't understand blocking... but it's tiny! It's so low in the front if I want it to cover my stomach at all, that my boobs basically pop out of the top and the straps don't reach the whole way, and.... arrrgh. I was so excited at the thought of actually making something for myself to WEAR!

So I don't know what to do. I could a)leave it the way it is and find a short-torsoed, busty, skinny person who wants it, b) take off the back and see if I can reblock it and see if that makes a difference in its wearability, or c) make another one and adjust the pattern myself so that there's just more to it!

I don't know. Knitters? Help?