Thanks, Katrina.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Things that go bump in the night...
All right. Technically, it wasn't night yet and it didn't go bump. But still. John went in bathroom. Water in the sink turned on. He looked. Water in the sink turned off. He came out.
Umm...yeah.
Next!
ps - this had better not have anything to do with the fact that I was homesick and looking up stuff about the Jersey Devil. No, I don't mean the hockey team. Nah. Probably more to do with all the work we've been doing around the house, and the fact that the kids are gone.
Umm...yeah.
Next!
ps - this had better not have anything to do with the fact that I was homesick and looking up stuff about the Jersey Devil. No, I don't mean the hockey team. Nah. Probably more to do with all the work we've been doing around the house, and the fact that the kids are gone.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Some days you get the job, and some days the job gets you.
It's not always great being a one woman show. True, I do make a lousy employee, always thinking for myself and nonsense like that. And it's God's own truth that I hate being told what to do, even if it's what I would have done anyway. I like to stand or fall on my own, you know? I make as much money as I want, for the most part, between April and November - work as much or as little as I want to, then cruise through the rest of the winter...somehow. It does get a little dicey sometimes, but there's always a way to make things work. Not always absolutely on the up and up, maybe, but I prefer to think of it as fiscal creativity.
Then there are weeks like this one, where it rains every blessed day (and I loathe working in the rain - snow I don't care about, but I hate the sloshing around and mud everywhere and water constantly dripping in my face) and everything I come in contact with has thorns. I mean, come on. There are hundreds of plants to choose from, even up here in the frosty zone 4b, so why, WHY plant something with stupid thorns?? Especially the little bitty thorns that you can't even see, so you have to wait for them to FESTER and then eject themselves from your thumb.
(Incidentally, a synonym for fester is suppurate - to fill with pus. Kind of makes you wonder what on earth the motel folks were thinking when they named their chain.)
Roses are okay, despite the thorns. I guess. I'm not a rose person. People are, for the most part, either rabid rosarians or they just Aren't Rose People. No one really has a rose or two in with everything else. (Okay, I do - but they were there when I bought the house, and I just haven't gotten around to either selling or killing them yet.) But barberries! And flowering quinces! And giant "ornamental" thistles! Gah!
And customers who hire you for a full day to overhaul their garden, then come out at 10:00 and tell you that since "you charge *how* much?" you and your helper should really be going in about an hour. Yeah.
Or the one that asks you to draw up a plan for a new garden, and you spend all weekend doing just that, and calling around to check prices and availability and generally being a good little design person. And the client studies your design, then says no, that isn't really what they had in mind but thanks anyway. And three years later you just happen to drive past and see that they installed your design, tree for tree, themselves. We live and learn, I guess.
But on the good days, you spend all day doing gentle gardening (as opposed to eight hours with a pickax or a chainsaw, which also happens - on not-so-good days) as soft breezes blow and you get a nice tan and get to be the only 53 year old woman you know with visible triceps. Glug down some water, smile at the world and think "I actually get paid to do this."
This week, too, I saw both the smallest and I think the largest toads I've ever seen. The small one was maybe 3/8 of an inch long, the other day, in a garden. Quick li'l bugger. The large one was almost as big as my hand. He was sitting on the side of the road, and I never would have seen him if I hadn't scared him with the sound of the "big money Dodge" and seen him do that hunker down thing that frogs and toads do. I got out and helped him to the other side, to a safe place. That was today, and despite the wretched clay and rock "soil" we were working in, despite the rain, despite the crazy leave-early woman, that big toad alone was worth the price of admission.
So, yeah. Owl Hill and Owl Hill Organics. An independent contractor, up on the Hill.
Then there are weeks like this one, where it rains every blessed day (and I loathe working in the rain - snow I don't care about, but I hate the sloshing around and mud everywhere and water constantly dripping in my face) and everything I come in contact with has thorns. I mean, come on. There are hundreds of plants to choose from, even up here in the frosty zone 4b, so why, WHY plant something with stupid thorns?? Especially the little bitty thorns that you can't even see, so you have to wait for them to FESTER and then eject themselves from your thumb.
(Incidentally, a synonym for fester is suppurate - to fill with pus. Kind of makes you wonder what on earth the motel folks were thinking when they named their chain.)
Roses are okay, despite the thorns. I guess. I'm not a rose person. People are, for the most part, either rabid rosarians or they just Aren't Rose People. No one really has a rose or two in with everything else. (Okay, I do - but they were there when I bought the house, and I just haven't gotten around to either selling or killing them yet.) But barberries! And flowering quinces! And giant "ornamental" thistles! Gah!
And customers who hire you for a full day to overhaul their garden, then come out at 10:00 and tell you that since "you charge *how* much?" you and your helper should really be going in about an hour. Yeah.
Or the one that asks you to draw up a plan for a new garden, and you spend all weekend doing just that, and calling around to check prices and availability and generally being a good little design person. And the client studies your design, then says no, that isn't really what they had in mind but thanks anyway. And three years later you just happen to drive past and see that they installed your design, tree for tree, themselves. We live and learn, I guess.
But on the good days, you spend all day doing gentle gardening (as opposed to eight hours with a pickax or a chainsaw, which also happens - on not-so-good days) as soft breezes blow and you get a nice tan and get to be the only 53 year old woman you know with visible triceps. Glug down some water, smile at the world and think "I actually get paid to do this."
This week, too, I saw both the smallest and I think the largest toads I've ever seen. The small one was maybe 3/8 of an inch long, the other day, in a garden. Quick li'l bugger. The large one was almost as big as my hand. He was sitting on the side of the road, and I never would have seen him if I hadn't scared him with the sound of the "big money Dodge" and seen him do that hunker down thing that frogs and toads do. I got out and helped him to the other side, to a safe place. That was today, and despite the wretched clay and rock "soil" we were working in, despite the rain, despite the crazy leave-early woman, that big toad alone was worth the price of admission.
So, yeah. Owl Hill and Owl Hill Organics. An independent contractor, up on the Hill.
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