Life, The Universe and Nothing…

Posted on by Jennifer GB

Nothing really new that is, really. Well, not anything greatly big anyway. I can see it’s been some time since I’ve written. I’ve always thought because of my love for journaling I’d do this more often. I journal in a hand written journal and online but I find that my time to do either is nil. Nearly a year ago I got a promotion in my office to be a counselor assistant. My old position of office assistant has yet to be filled so I’m pulling double duty for tasks on a daily basis. They had hired someone but two weeks before her start date, she backed out, so now I’m doing these tasks for the foreseeable future. It’s really super frustrating.

The summer is over all too soon but there were many days of swimming and floating in the pool, BBQ on the firepit hubby made, family and friends visiting and starry nights stared up at with my hubby while sitting in front of a glowing fire pit. Our garden was very abundant in its growing of string beans, tomatoes, peppers and herbs. Sunflowers also grew to dizzying heights of at least 12 to 14 feet. They’re at the point of cutting off and roasting the seeds in the oven. The corn didn’t do as well. It grew the tallest I have ever seen in my life. Hubby is 6’3 and when he stood next to it and raised his arm straight up (8 ft) the corn was a good 2 feet above that. Though it grew tall, the ears were small and not very full. Not sure if it was all the rain in the beginning of the summer or what. Tried growing purple beans but they were not nearly as productive as the green ones. I swear we picked no less than 50 pounds of beans and there are some on there now that are beyond eating due to age. I’m going to let them dry and plant them next year. Lots of jalapeno’s, so much so we are going to try pickling them. Italian oregano regrew from last year as well as the thyme. We also had basil. We tried onions and carrots but they didn’t do well. We waited till mid July to plant the squash and pumpkins trying to avoid some vine boring bug that killed them last year. I think planting them that late has made them not grow as well. Banana squash, baking pumpkins, Hubbard squash all have fruit but not as big as it should be by now. Normally you plant it in May but the bug comes out of the soil shortly after that. I read online some where it said to wait till mid July to plant to avoid those bugs. Next year we will try mid June and see if that avoids the bug but makes the fruit produce better. I found it amusing a pumpkin i had at the stairs by our drive way that rotted some and collapsed before I cleaned it up, must have left behind some seeds and now there is a pumpkin vine growing there tracing up the wrought iron hand rail to the steps and snaking along the lawn. There is one decent size pumpkin already turning orange there. Something was eating the flowers earlier but no longer. Hopefully they grow. We grow these and bake/puree them and give to the dogs with their food for fiber. They love it. So much so they became snobs and wont eat the canned pure pumpkin we gave them when we ran out of what we grew from the previous year. Silly corgis.

I was given my own office at work finally. It is VERY decorated with dozens of pictures of my family and friends on one wall and on top of the filing cabinets, a tapestry on the wall behind me that looks like the forest and on the left of my desk is a cork board with documents I need to reference on a daily basis. There is a waxing/waning moon in a filigree cut out over my door and a tapestry bell pull I made of Iris hanging in the side light window next to the door. Its a very eclectic room. Very cozy and inviting is what people tell me when they came in. I love the privacy and not feeling like I am sitting in a fish bowl any longer. While I don’t have a window, I do have a sky light that straddles the wall between my office and my neighbors and it brightens the room significantly enough I don’t need to have the overhead light on.

NY Sheep and Wool is fast approaching and I am excited about it. I honestly don’t need any yarn (Yes, you heard me)but I enjoy the time with my friends, who are traveling out from western PA and Ohio, walking around, looking at patterns and notions and of course there is always the fair food that is just yummy. The specialty places come out like roasted Brussel sprouts with melted cheese, fried artichokes, lobster rolls, etc. I always pick up new insoles for my hubby’s boots made of sheep’s wool which are excellent for padding and warmth in the winter when his construction jobs keep him in the cold. In March we had a knitting weekend at the friend’s home that lives in Pittsburgh and we went on our own yarn crawl to stores around her town. And we also agreed on a poncho we were all going to make with our own color choice and started it. They are wonderful friends that broadened my knitting knowledge with new stitches and how to color change, lace knit, etc. It was a wonderful bonding weekend and I look forward to spending more time with these ladies in a couple weeks.

I must run, things to do and all. Ill be updating my embroidery blog next. Until next time….

Ciao!

It’s Just One of Those Days…

Posted on by Jennifer GB

Wake up. Go to work. Pick up boys from work. Go home. Sleep. Rinse, repeat.

That has pretty much what my life has been for some time now and I am not that upset about it. It has been calm and quiet. Everyone is well, everyone seems relatively happy. There have been various things like I got a promotion at work which came with a descent pay raise. My student loans were forgiven and the relief that has given me to know I don’t have that debt hanging over my head anymore is wonderful! I believe my husband feels the same way. Office life is pretty good. New job has its stressful days but its the workload that can be stressing, not the work itself. I’ve become pretty good at “leaving it at the office” and not bringing it home. Took me a while to realize that there are no merit based raises and that I didn’t need to do all the things because the percentage raise I would get is the same from year to year whether I was doing excellent or just satisfactory.

I have done something I thought I would never do: I applied to graduate school for a Masters in Science for Rehabilitation Counseling. There is a scholarship that will pay for all the tuition through the state. I talked to several friends who I am very close to and asked their advice on going back to college and pretty much all of them said a free Master’s degree is not something you turn down. The pay increase to become a counselor is something like 20K + a year more than I am making now. I had my interview for entrance into the program the other day. I feel like I totally botched it but my coworkers who are currently in the program said I didn’t and were very comforting. I was pretty upset. I have some really great coworkers. A couple of them wrote recommendation letters for me for my application. They are very reassuring and have offered to help me with schooling and my studies.

Its Friday, work is nearly done and the weekend is upon us. Its time to start the garden and ill be buying many bags of dirt and fertilizer to get it going. Its time to plant peas and lettuce. More later. Im determined to blog more about my boring and every day life. But right now, its about time to leave and there is a glass of Cardbordeaux sangria in my very near future. Ciao!

How is it almost July already?!

Posted on by Jennifer GB

2021 has been crazy but not nearly as bad as 2020 was. So, to catch up my readers (all, like 5 of you, LOL) my entire family has been fully vaccinated. My boys went to school virtually the entire year because I sure as hell didn’t want to expose my oldest. who has thus far had clean scans from his cancer four years ago, to COVID. While I would say virtual learning wasn’t better than being in school, the two of them past with only one (my youngest) failing math that requires four weeks in summer school to make up. I’m not chastising him too much because, well, I sucked horrifically at math in high school so, I get it. My oldest graduated high school this year. (OMFG WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE!!??) A week before graduation, they lifted the two tickets per student limit for graduation and opened it to anyone and everyone and made it one big NORMAL graduation ceremony with kids sitting next to one another and no “6 feet apart” (of course masks if you hadn’t been vaccinated). I cried. A lot. My sister and Mom…cried..a lot. He is so happy and proud and went around showing everyone his class ring. Have you ever seen that commercial of the mother watching her son grow up and stating through each scene “if he xxx, it’ll be a miracle” and at the end of it he’s graduating high school and she says, with a tear in her eye “its a miracle”.. Yea. I said that. I live streamed his graduation for those that couldn’t be there and you can probably hear me say that on it, LOL! Five years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer I was fearful I would not see this day. I’m not overly religious but I thank God everyday that he has come through that and I thank all those that prayed through their various religions for him to beat this. It was so touching and heartwarming friends and strangers were praying for him. I’m getting choked up about it now again remembering. One more year and he will be considered cured and be placed in survivorship status and just monitor for side effects of the treatments. And if you are the praying type, I’ll take any prayers you wish to offer on his behalf to make sure he has no return of cancer or side effects. (I thank you in advance)

Work is work. Working remote three days a week, but that goes to two days starting next week and unless something changes, back to in the office fully in August, which I am not happy about. I like working remote. Anyway, still an assistant to a visually impaired woman (who I adore) but apparently my memory issues from a previous car accident make it difficult to remember all the nuances of information I have to remember to enter into the computers when entering plans for her. Bad review last quarter with the threat of letting me go if I cant get the knack of it. That, was a lot of stress for me. I kept it together during the day and when I got home I broke down to hubby who told me not to sweat it. If it comes to that, we’d be just fine. This is why I love this man…one of the many reasons anyway. If it comes to that, I am going to take this as a sign that office work is not my niche. I’ll figure something out. Its not great pay anyway, which you’d think with a state job it would be better. Maybe I’ll take the plunge and do my art fulltime. We shall see. Why can’t I just win the lottery?? This would solve a large portion of my problems. LOL!

We have done a lot of work on our yard. Hubby has gotten the terracing bug and working with stone creating walls and putting levels in our yard and a pond (not quite done yet). We have a larger garden this year. The smaller garden that we started with last year has peas, radishes, lettuce, carrots (which failed but for three, can’t figure out why either) and some stray tomatoes that came up from seeds that had fallen last year. The larger garden has about 8 tomato plants, corn, beans, a couple different kinds of peppers, basil and cilantro. We did ornamental gardening too. Planted a Bartlett pear tree, fig tree, 5 strawberry plants, Japanese kousa dogwood, vanilla/strawberry hydrangea, a couple more lilacs, four rose bushes, a blue rhododendron, another regular hydrangea and a climbing hydrangea near our one fence. I also scattered moon flower seeds around my yard to see how they come up, which probably won’t be till next year but here’s hoping they take in those dingy corners of the yard that have a lot of rock.

Health…gained weight. COVID was not kind and I, like everyone else, baked ALL THE BREAD! Worried about my current state of health I had all that special fasting bloodwork done and while one thing was slightly elevated (thank goodness that was all!), they just stated to make lifestyle changes and get more exercise. So…I’m doing just that. I’ve started doing more, watching what i eat, logging all that goes into my mouth and counting calories. I’m also working out in smaller time bits instead of one chunk of time. I am finding I’m doing more exercise that way and its less boring to do it in ten to fifteen minutes segments than 45 mins to an hour in one shot. I hate exercising. Boring as fuck to me so breaking it up and doing different things helps me still get movement in. One of the things I do is every time I go down to the basement to do a load of laundry, I jump on the bike for ten minutes. Usually gets me about two miles in that time.

Family life is great. Hubby and I couldn’t be happier. Still haven’t gotten our honeymoon yet (five years married this past May) but eventually we’ll save up the money to do it. I’d really like to revisit Italy especially since I just heard they are opening the tunnels under it for the first time for the public to view.

Still knitting socks. Cross stitching things too as that seems to have become a re-budding interest. SCA events are starting back up after over a year hiatus of them being canceled due to COVID. I went to a friend’s elevation for Chivalry a few weeks ago and it was glorious to be in garb again and hug friends I hadn’t seen in ages. The best comment a friend made as he approached me for a hug was “this is going to be awkward” because he planned on hugging long. I laughed, but not awkward at all and it made me so happy. Of course, about 2/3s of my garb was tight due to weight gain but there was a lot of laughter because EVERYONE was saying the same thing “this was the only thing that fit me”. No one cared. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was happy. I missed that so much. I look forward to the normalcy again, which I know is still a ways off. But, its a start.

Alright..back to work. Ciao!

Another January Day…

Posted on by Jennifer GB

So I went to a class at the employment center yesterday on Civil Service jobs. Got some good information and came home and read it over last night with a cup of spiked coffee (Bailey’s if you’re wondering). When I got up this morning I looked up the clerical jobs that I was interested in taking tests for to find out today is the last day to apply to take the test. DANG! Thank you powers that be for lighting a fire under my ass. So i spent near an hour filling out three applications, locating my college transcripts and finding my payment history from unemployment so I have proof and can have the test fees waived. I think I’m developing carpal tunnel, lol! I know this path of employment may take a while so I will look for something local till hopefully one of these positions pop up and I am sent a canvasing letter. I have another class at the job center on Government jobs at 1:30 so I figure I’ll run and drop these off before than do my grocery shopping afterwards.

The kids have off this week due to some state testing they didn’t have to take so I am having some fun time with them. I think tomorrow we’ll go see Doolittle at the theaters. There are actually a few movies I’d like to go see: Jumanji 2, Little Women, Underwater…to name a couple. I am a bit of a horror movie girl. Nothing gory like Saw or the like, more like psychological or ghost type movies. Paranormal Activity had alternate endings that had me dashing down the unlit hallway at my previous house and jumping into bed. Yes, go ahead…chuckle. Sometimes I’m a wuss.

We have some snow here on the ground that fell on Saturday last. The below freezing temps have kept it from melting. I am longing for Spring and the warmer temps. Hubby and I have this plan to create a garden off the patio. We have become obsessed with this youtube channel of young asian woman in the South Western Province of China who lives with her grandparents and creates all this food from scratch. Also making household items as well. But I mean, she gets duck eggs from an outside source, has a chicken on her farm sit on them and hatch them. She then raises the ducks so she has the duck eggs to make this recipe. A lot of her videos are spanned over time. Making traditional ink from the soot of tung oil (that one I believe took 2 years). Her most recent one was growing cotton so she could harvest it and make a new mattress cover for her Grandmother. She did the same thing with silk worms and made a comforter and pajamas for her. Anyway the garden she has is huge and gorgeous covered in many varieties of vegetables and flower. We have plans to set up a smaller more modest version of hers. I’m like an addict and get notified whenever she uploads a new video and rush over to watch it. I’ve spread my addiction to other friends too.
( If you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A) I have been researching what is good to grow in our zone, which is 6. I’m going to start collecting seeds and soon will start small indoor mini green houses to get them to sprout.

Well, gotta run these apps down to the county office before the class. Ciao!