Sepherina

Wow! It sounds super busy, and I am glad you are finding some positives in all the busy. Great job too on the PR!

I am sorry Sal. Sending a big hug and love this morning. I hope you can find some peace. Maybe a quick walk with Bronze…or even just pets and some play time? Dogs are really good at helping us combat stress/anxiety.

Why everyone is really here: Maple this morning with her favorite colored ball. She only rips the fabric off the blue ones. They are well loved and bald, and she prefers them over the yellow and red ones.

Quick update before sleep. The last week has been insanely busy. Still making gym days and getting walks in with Maple. Non gym days also include gardening/yard work. We have a lot we are trying to get done. Most of this work counts towards the creative end of my challenge. I also have made time for some side writing for world creation (Gygax challenge). We also have been doing a lot of social time with friends so by evening most nights I am tired and asleep before 10:30 pm. It has made posting here (and tracking meals) hard. I do try to carve out some time during the mornings to read up on all y’all’s posts. You are all doing great things and I am proud of you all. Hope you all have a nice rest tonight and that Wednesday finds you refreshed.

Games like this frustrate me. Sometimes we need to put stuff down and come back to it and this need to “be on “ all the time is a bit insane. Good job though on your lists. You are making great progress forward.

Crossing all the things for you!

I love this idea! We do a creative group meet up once a month as well. We use it more to enjoy our bouncing off ideas (most of us are writers, game designers or film people), and to hold our selves accountable for the personal projects we want to do.

Be careful!

Happy Tuesday everyone! I am sore and tired today but my heart is happy and my soul content. Yesterday was a whirlwind of fun and travel. I hopped on to the highway around 9:30 AM with the hubs, minion #3 and Maple….we didn’t get out of Pittsburgh proper until almost 10:30AM. Our normal hour 45 minute trek to see minion #1 turned into around 3 hours with a stop for Maple. Once there we enjoyed junkie food truck food and then watched the eclipse. Maple solicited free belly rubs from as many people as possible, chased squirrels and birds and generally tried to beg food from anyone. She was the good-est girl despite this being her first time at a very large event (4000 - 5000 people). A side note. After seeing a total eclipse a second time, it is just as stunning and amazing as the first time. I implore anyone to try and see a total eclipse at least once in your life if you can. The experience is worth it. Post eclipse we hung around with minion #1 and had ice cream with her, her boyfriend and room mates, with hopes that most of the traffic would clear in a few hours so we could trek home….Yeah….this didn’t happen as planned. Our trek home was much longer. Total we were on the road 5 hours (it’s about 120 miles from home to minion #1’s university). The entire stretch of the highway was bumper to bumper moving at no more than 25 miles per hour. Past me would have been very annoyed and frustrated at this. But the roads everywhere were clogged and we had anticipated that this may happen. There are some certain joys to spending a long time in the car moving soo slowly. You find happiness when you pass exits that you normally fly by, and you have more time to focus on your surroundings that you just don’t see. One thing that took us by surprise was our ability to hear the frogs as we slowly rolled past their homes. A small detail that we miss in our everyday rush to get somewhere else, but a lovely reminder to live here in the moment now. We only have now. I also now empathize with older drivers. When you spend nearly 4.5 hours going no more than 25 miles per hour, 40 feels really fast, and 60…man you are flying! This packed roadway probably could have served as a good social experiment to get people to slow down when they drive. The speed limit on this highway is 70 miles per hour and most cruise at around 80 mph; however due to the sheer volume of cars on the road the max speed was around 40 in some places and much less than 30 in most. We noticed as we approached Pittsburgh, that the normal tendency of the drivers to fly down 279 South at 65-70 mph (the posted limit is 50 - 55 mph….general rule in Pittsburgh is if you are not going at least 10 mph over…you are too slow…) was non existant, and most stayed within the 45-50 mph range. It was a curiosity to see as well. I hope today you find frogs to sing to you. And if you don’t here is a YouTube video for you to listen to them.

And 2 for 2! Great Job!

Sounds like a perfect reason to stay outside. This is really cool and I hope you have a future scientist in your family. Kids are the best at loving the most amazing things about our world.

Popping on here before the rest of the day gets away from me. We are trekking north to visit minion #1 at college. They are in the totality zone for the eclipse (south of Erie, PA) and we thought we would make a whole day of it. Send good thoughts as we brave crowded roads and silly inpatient drivers. Also the skies are slated to be mostly cloudy (boo…) so lets hope we get at least some clearing by 3ish today. If we don’t it will be disappointing, but we will be spending a good amount with our oldest minion who we only see during college breaks. Yesterday as noted above by the pictures was a very busy and productive day. In total it probably took us 6 hours of work to get this far. I am happy with the work we have done and am really feeling motivated to get the whole job done. As for goals, I made a concerted effort to eat and drink regularly. This garden work fits well into staying fit and creating beauty in my life. It also allowed me to spend time with minion #2, who I rarely see during the week with their college schedule. Family time is the best time. Thanks to Everstorm for the flower/plant suggestions. We have a trellis on the far side of the house (can kinda be seen in the pictures). I think we are going to try for the clematis and rose combination there to give us some more cover. I did decide that I am going to plant a lilac bush out front, near the front porch. They are one of my favorite flowers and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. But seeing the purple yesterday in the pictures above really reminded me that these would be fantastic for that space. As for the cough and congestion, it is slowly fading. I hope by the end of this month I will be clear. Hoping today that you get to peek your head out of the normal daily grind of life and enjoy our lovely planet. If you are going to watch the eclipse make sure to wear proper eye protection and if you don’t have that, don’t look directly at the eclipse.

Soo happy and proud of you! You deserve a trophy for all your hard work!

OMG. That sounds incredibly good. I am sucker for fried chicken and waffles. Yes please!

Popping on this morning to say that I am loving all the comedy stuff!

After: We were unable to finish the one side as there is a cloth ground cover with plastic under it. It is covered by at least 3-4 inches of soil and there are also 3 mini bushes that need to come out. Next week project along with edging out the actual beds and taking out the tree.

Before we got started: the first photo is the massive mess of 5 bushes I took out last weekend. They were at least 6-7 feet high. The other is the other half of the house.

It does! I love the clematis with the roses. The colors just pop! I have considered doing a white and black but that purple is just gorgeous. Thank you! I have a bunch of space to play with so there will be some fun in all this.

Our region is 6b in the USA. Frost dates are between late October and mid May and we tend to get more ice than snow. Probably doesn’t get colder than 30 below zero in the winter and can get into the high 90’s low 100’s in August. This will be a full Sun space as well. We “can” grow fig trees if they are well insulated south facing wall and wrapped for winter. It can also be fairly humid during the spring and summer months.

Sending good thoughts your way for tomorrow’s insanity. I hope everyone will remain calm and safe, and that you will be able to enjoy some of the festivities of the eclipse.

I have been very busy the last several days Thursday was an upper body day at the gym. It was exhausting and I took it easy. The goal was to get back into the routine of lifting after having a few weeks off. Friday was a rest day and I did get Maple out for an early afternoon walk. We then had someone come in and give us an estimate to replace half the windows in our house. The price was really competitive and the company has a great reputation, so we pulled the trigger on that. My kitchen dreams are on hold longer, but new windows are more important. At some point we will have to do the rest of the windows, but that is probably a next year problem. The weather here is true Pittsburgh spring. We seldom get several dry days in a row during April. This past week has been exceptionally bad (enough that segments of downtown are flooded.) But Sat and Sun it has been dry enough to get some garden work done. Yesterday I made the trip to the local garden store for mulch and a few tools we need for the new beds. I spent most of the later afternoon clearing the yard of sticks and then cleared out the beds on the one side of the house before spreading mulch. It looks much nicer and hopefully will keep the weeds at bay. At some point I actually want to lay gravel/rock here as it is a perpetually damp area of the yard. I do have a few small box shrubs that we need to remove….I think that will be a next Saturday project if the weather holds. Today is the bigger job. The prior owner of our house planted ONLY box shrubs, evergreens, one holly bush, and a clumping of 3 rhododendrons(the only color we have) . Between that and the yard, the entire landscaping is green. I hate it, so everything is being taken out (rhododendrons and holly is staying) and colorful things are being put in. Last weekend in my fit of sickness, I finished tearing out 4 of the massive shrubs. They had grown into one massive blob of green, and the entire mass was probably 15 feet long and 12 feet high. Today we are taking out the last of the green (2 more smaller shrubs and 3 evergreens). After this is done, I have 3-5 blueberry bushes to transplant into these spaces and a mass of strawberry plants to move as well. We will mulch the rest of the space until my seedlings are ready to go in to the ground in mid late May and some landscaping stones that we are laying down to divide the space into manageable beds (5 - 10ft by 4 ft beds). I am not doing this alone, as my 19 year old minion has volunteered to help (they have a green thumb) and Maple will help by either digging new holes in the yard or finding some random stick to drag around. We are trying really hard to get the majority of this work done before April 20th as this is when the city has their “yard refuse” pickup day where we can put all this crap out on the curb for them to compost. I am taking suggestions for any climbing roses or other fun plants to replace the ugly mass of bushes I took out last weekend.. The siding on our home is a light yellow, but we have a beautiful red brick porch. I am struggling to find something that I love that will work with these two colors. The space is big , between 8-10 feet in length and 12-15 feet high. I hope the weather holds for everyone today and that you get a lovely spot of sunshine for a nap. Cause Sunny Sunday naps are the best naps.

It is still lingering but mostly confined to the first hour in the morning. Thanks for asking and looking in on me.

That is wonderful news!

This is a really good recipe. You could probably reduce the amount of pork used or omit it all together. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014362-pork-and-beans-with-garlic-and-greens

I love old costume jewelry! It soo much more interesting than some of the stuff we see now days in the stores. Slow is good and I love hearing about the view. It has been like this on and off here in Pittsburgh as well (and lots of rain )