Saturday, April 27, 2013

How I triumphed over the universe

Friday....

I took it into my head to do some gardening today.  I know you're not technically supposed to plant most things outside until Mother's Day, but this is as long as I could hold off.  I had my breakfast,



English muffin with an egg, deli turkey, and tomatoes plus an orange

and once I had seen Emily and Will off I started to get working in the garden.  I had help, of course.  She actually did a great job for awhile,



then she got bored and pretended to wash my car with a rock. 


Now I have something to match the unicorn damage on the other side.  Oh who am I kidding, my car is covered with scratches.  Strangely enough though, I don't think I am to blame for any of them.

Anyway, the weed problem in my front gardens had gotten so dire I decided to try the newspaper trick.  I weeded out the tallest ones, then laid newspaper over everything except for what I want to poke through and wet it all down so it wouldn't blow away.

Garden full 'o trash

Mulch makes everything look better.

Hey look!  A real garden!

I'm really hoping this will help with the weeding because ugh.  No one likes to weed.

I felt like I had more gardening in me, so I headed down to Thanksgiving Farm (where we do our CSA in the summer) and got some petunias and other pretty things to put in containers.


One of the great things about this place (other than their massive selection) is that Charlotte spends so much time here that she can basically just run free and I know she will be able to find her way back.  She usually behaves herself very well, and I've only had to purchase one item due to her breaking it in the years we've been coming here (a pretty sweet ceramic alligator pond decoration).


After that, lunch was definitely required.

Tuna salad sandwich with tomatoes and greens
Then it was back out to the garden.  At one point I realized I needed more mulch and decided to go get more at Lowes so I could just get this whole project finished today.  That's when I realized Maxx was missing :-(  I called, clapped, whistled, clanked the treat container, all to no avail.  Charlotte heard me searching at some point and told me that she had seen Maxx run out the front door and down the street.  I didn't know how this could've happened since I was out front the whole time but I heaved a big sigh and hopped in the car to go look for the jerk.  

After we didn't find him anywhere in the neighborhood, I decided just to go to Lowes anyway.  I called Animal Control and left a message letting them know that he was lost but had a microchip and hoped someone would come across him.  I hoped he didn't get hit by a car, but the vindictive part of me kinda also hoped that he'd have to spend some time locked in a pen at Animal Control because it would serve the escaping sonofab!tch right.

While at Lowes, I got a call from my mom saying she was on the way to Emily's school to pick her up because she had been injured on the monkey bars and the school couldn't get in touch with Will or I.  Zuh?  For awhile I was upset because I thought I had missed the call while I was on the phone with Animal  Control trying to track down my idiot dog, but it turned out neither Will nor I even had a missed call in our call logs.  I'm going to go ahead and blame the cyber attacks my mom claims were happening today, because I heard about other instances of land lines not being able to reach cell phones today too.  I charged out of Lowes without my mulch to go meet my mom and my injured daughter.

Anyway, thanks to Gemmy our drama queen made it home...


she was fine and probably could've stayed at school but it's tough to judge in cases like this, plus there was only an hour or so left in the school day and it was a Friday.  But with her over-dramatized neck injury a few weeks ago and now this she certainly is setting me up for one of those "My daughter actually WAS injured but I ignored it because she's cried wolf so many times before" incidences.

Oh, and when I got home I found Maxx in the garage.  That dog NEVER stops barking if he's not around people, but chose to remain perfectly silent while I was calling him and clapping and whistling and jangling the treat jar.  I maintain that he is a jerk.  Also I should've checked in the garage earlier.  Also Charlotte is a little liar.

My snack called for a bunch of things I didn't have (grapes, walnuts) so I just had this bowl of berries instead.


I was desperate to show the universe who was boss and finish my freakin' gardening project today despite all the stuff that was happening, so I loaded the kids in the car and drove to Giant to buy their last 4 bags of mulch.  I could've used some more, but my back was about done right around when the mulch ran out so it's all good.  Now our gardens look nice again for the first time in years!

The whole front garden used to look like that overgrown bit by the paper bag that I haven't gotten to yet

It looks like respectable people live here!
Once I finished the gardens I staggered inside and started on my dinner.  It called for the rest of the noodle salad leftover from the other day, which was awful after sitting in the fridge for a couple days.

Eww

 I also had my nut snack :-)

Almonds and pecans
 When poor Will got home ready to eat dinner right away and then start mowing, I realized I probably should've been working on preparing something already (oops) so I peeled my stiff body out of my chair and started steaming some frozen shrimp.  They actually cooked up quickly and well even though I dumped them into the pot straight out of the freezer.


I also gestured weakly towards the leftover quinoa and veggies in the fridge so he could round out his dinner.  I am a great wife.  But even though I had neglected to pick up the dog poop from the backyard or do anything other than throw some frozen shrimp in the direction of the stove, he gallantly poured me a beer and went out to do my chore for me.  I love that man!

The beer he brought me was an interesting Allagash that I had picked up at Dawson's Market in Rockville the last time I was down there.  Wild yeast and ageing in wine barrels made it very fruity, I enjoyed it very much!

Charlotte trying to charm me into giving her some beer
I also decided that since I had finished 7 full days of this Clean Eating menu plan, I deserved a treat!  My favorite dessert.

Chocolate chips, peanuts, raisins
The problem was, I also ended up eating an extra PB&J when Charlotte asked for one and then wandered away for awhile :-/  I couldn't resist.  It was really tasty and satisfying though, so I'm trying to look at it as a treat and not a failure.  It didn't send me into an uncontrollable binge or anything like that.

A Flying Dog Hefeweizen rounded out my eats for the day. 



 I enjoyed it while watching a movie with Will after the girls were in bed.  We started watching Prometheus, which we had from Netflix, but after about 15 minute the disc jammed and we couldn't get it to work :-(  We also had the new Spiderman so we started that instead.  I never even saw Peter Parker put on his Spiderman costume because it was super-boring and I just zonked.  I need to take over the Netflix list for awhile.







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