See You On The Other Side....

...of 30.




Five days left.

Hope I make it.

If I don't, it's sure been an interesting ride. :)

Love and kisses,

~Kyna

Meh. I'll Get To It Later.

Nobody procrastinates like I can procrastinate.

In fact, I meant to write this post months ago. Somehow I just kept putting it off.

Now that I'm nearing 30 (only 10 days now, yikes!!) I have a lot less opportunity to procrastinate.

When I was younger and unmarried and lived by myself, I could let the dishes pile up for 3 weeks and no one cared. Especially not me. I would use every dish in the cupboard before I would finally force myself to wash them.



Disgusting of me, I know. But you all love me anyway.

I could never get away with that now. Chuck would have a shit-fit, and then I'd be getting divorced.

I still have my 'guilty procrastinations' though.

Like phoning people.

I will put off phoning people until I'm forced to do it. Or until Chuck says, "You're being ridiculous. It's just a phone. Fine. What's the number? Did I mention you're being ridiculous? I'll just phone them for you."

And of course I let him. A good husband'll do that.

My life would be so much easier if phones weren't The Devil.



And laundry. Oh, Laundry! How I loathe thee.



The only reason I tend get away with rarely doing the laundry, is because most of the time I keep my mess of clothes confined to two areas. Piled in the corner on my side of the bed, or piled in my closet. And Chuckles does his own laundry.

Occasionally he will walk by my closet, or have to walk around to my side of the bed to say goodbye in the morning, and I'll hear a very heavy *SIGH*.

That's when I know I can't get away with it much longer.

This time.

What else?

Pulling weeds is another bad one for me.




Not that any gardener ever looks forward to pulling weeds (all right, I'm sure there are a few sickos out there who do enjoy doing this), but I HATE it.

Once the heat really kicks up, you'd need a machete to get through all the weeds in my garden. Because I just can't be arsed.

You know, I went searching for a picture of someone unhappy pulling weeds on the internet, and the bastards are ALL SMILING?? W...T...F.

Today I'm procrastinating on making up the store map. I can't procrastinate with many things at my job, but this is one of them. I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm responsible for placing each month's displays at my store. I have to make up a map and a map key so everyone else can find the displays easily.

Usually takes about two hours of unpaid work at home. It's due next Thursday, but I will be off on vacation. I thought this morning would be the perfect time to get it out of the way.

Get it done early!!

Carpe mapem! Seize the Map!

Right.

I decided to write this blog post to procrastinate a little. Because it's in my nature. It's expected.

"I'll have plenty of time after I post this. Plenty of time!" I reasoned.

Then Chuckles gave me a call to come meet him for lunch and visit yet another huge and beautiful waterfront home (I'm so pissed I didn't bring my camera) he's drywalling in near the beach in Emerald Isle.

Of course I said yes right away. I took off so fast that I left jet trails behind me. The map sitting forgotten and forlorn.

Me? I was anything but forlorn! I had a nice tasty burger, and then went to check out the massive house.

"What do the homeowners do?" I asked Chuck.

"They're eye surgeons," he replied.

Figures. I totally took the wrong career path in school.

I was looking at the time, thinking I should get back home. I told Chuck so.

"Oh. I thought you might want to go out back and check out the private pier and sit by the water for awhile."

Did I mention Chuck is The Devil? (Ok, I think I said phones are The Devil. But Chuck comes close. Look, he has the horns and the tail to prove it!)



Of COURSE I wanted to go down and walk out on the dock. As I was taking the loooooooong trip down to the end of it, I was imagining all of the rich neighbours wearing their monocles, peering out their high windows, yelling and pointing, "Impostor!!"

Of course that didn't happen. But I kept looking over my shoulder just in case.

It was beautiful out today. Sunny and in the 80's.I thought about the time again, and decided I had better head home, because I had to finish the map and then get to work because I close tonight.

I reluctantly left the beautiful house. I could have just stood there all day with a stupid look on my face, sniffing the large amounts of confederate jasmine they had on huge trellises.



I get home and look at the map.

Then I look at the computer.

Then I look at the map.

Then back at the computer.

I just can't go to work this afternoon with a half-finished blog post draft burning a hole in my PC.

So here I am.

Did I mention I have till next Thursday to get the map done?

Blogger is The Devil.

Play It Again, Stevie

I'm not a superstitious person.

Black cat crosses my path?



I reach down and pet it.

Break a mirror?




I'm pissed that I have to go buy a new mirror.

Walk under a ladder?

Hell yes I will. Especially if there's a cute guy up on it wearing shorts.




The shortest path to walk is a straight line, I'm sure as hell not going to take extra steps to walk around a ladder when I can go under it. I'm lazy that way.

The number 13?



I'll get off on the 14th floor and taunt it. I'm not afraid.





Full Moon?



Okay...I believe in that one.



Although the moon is proven to affect tides, scientists say there is no real correlation between the full moon and crazy shit happening.

Well. No offense to scientists, because I'm sure they're much smarter than I am, but I must respectfully disagree.



Anyone who has ever worked in retail believes in the power of the full moon. And if they haven't? Then they probably haven't worked in retail long enough.

Nine moons, er, times out of ten, when I turn to a co-worker and say, "Is it a fucking full moon or something?"

It is.

If you're wondering what's inspired this post, I'll refer you to your handy lunar calendar and you'll see that yesterday was a full moon.

It was the fullest of full moons.

And it was a bastard.

Window Shopping, Schmindow Shopping

It's kind of a meh day outside. And it's my day off.

I'm trying to save money for my birthday, which is in two weeks. We're taking a trip down to Florida to see family.

But I didn't want to sit at home, bored on my day off. The sky has looked too intermittently ominous to risk getting rained on at the beach.

I decided to go window shopping at the garden center. Which is ironic of course, since there are no windows there.

"I'm just going to look," I tell myself. A tiny little angel popped out of thin air onto my right shoulder and nodded his head approvingly.

The tiny little angel (his name was Francis) and I rode all the way out to Carolina Home and Garden. A lovely place owned by locals. Great for window shopping.

When we got there, my debit card hand started getting itchy. Francis started giving me the hairy eyeball.

"I'm just looking, I promise!" I exclaimed. Francis looked like he'd believe it when he saw it.

And then I saw it.



A 'Blue Skies' lilac. I reached down to look at the tag, and a tiny little devil (his name was Boris) popped onto my left shoulder.

He was nodding greedily, and rubbing his hands together. "Buy it!" he said, in a croaky little toad voice.

I looked at Boris. "But I'm saving money for my birthday..."

"C'maaaaaaan," he coaxed. "It's only $16! What's that? Lunch at Quizno's? It's nothing."

Meanwhile, Francis was jumping up and down on my right shoulder, flapping his arms and trying to get my attention. I don't think he could speak, poor thing.

(Then how did I know his name was Francis? Why, he was wearing a little nametag of course!)

Boris poked me in the neck with his little pitchfork.

"Ow!" I shouted. "Okay, okay. Maybe you're right..." I looked guiltily at Francis.

Francis was sitting on the far edge of my shoulder, with his arms crossed. He wouldn't look at me. He was pouting.

Well, that did it. If Francis was going to ignore me, I'd buy the lilac out of spite!

I hesitated. "Boris," I said. "The last time I tried to grow a lilac, it got blight. I had to dig it up. Lilacs don't do that well here in the South."

Boris sighed and rolled his eyes. 'That was a different lilac. It rained for two weeks straight after you planted it. What are the chances of that happening again?" I could see he had his fingers crossed behind his back. "Besides, look at the tag. It says it's the perfect lilac for hotter climates."

I stared at Boris skeptically. Boris stared back. Francis was still giving me the silent treatment (not that he had much choice, because he couldn't talk).

I gave in.

I bought the lilac. And Boris didn't stop there. He somehow magically willed my hands to pick up a pack of white polka-dot plants.

"You only ever find the pink ones," he pointed out. "Don't miss this chance!"




"Well," I said. "Now that I've spent this money, I'm going to make it back somehow. Chuck and I will eat cheaply this week! I'll make Shepherd's Pie. It's cheap and delicious, and we can eat it for three days!"

But Boris messed with my mind again. I stopped at the grocery store on my way back home.

When I took my cart into the meat section, he forced my eyes towards these.



I looked at Francis. He had stopped pouting and was staring at the ribs. He gulped and his halo slowly disappeared. I thought I could see a horn sprouting from his temple, but it could have been a trick of the fluorescent lighting.

"The price!" exclaimed Boris. "Look at the price!"

He sort of sounded like these guys. Could you resist buying them with logic like that??



I looked again at Francis. He shrugged and gave me an 'If you can't beat em, join 'em' sort of look.

As much as I love Shepherd's Pie, that's now going to have to wait till tomorrow. I'm now making Memphis-style baby back ribs, and my famous bacon-collard greens for dinner.

I couldn't resist. The devil AND the angel made me do it.

Francis and Boris are chopping onions as we speak...

Like a Pig Rooting for Truffles

I'm SO sore.

My back aches. My legs ache.

I'm hobbling around like John Wayne moseys through a pair of batwing saloon doors.

Looks way less cool when I do it. Pilgrim.



Why am I hurting?

I'm an idiot. But I'm an ambitious idiot!

Last week, I decided I wanted to grow pumpkins. I've always wanted to grow pumpkins. I figured it would be difficult.

Then I saw many of my garden blogging friends with posts about the pumpkins they were growing. They made it look easy, so I decided to give it a go this year.

Even this baby grew one.




The only drawback to growing pumpkins as I far as I could see, was that one needs a shit ton of room. My whole yard is room.

I think we have a third of an acre? I have a memory like a goldfish, so I could be wrong. We have a lot of yard and no fence.

I'm so excited (but not quite 'Royal Wedding excited)! I hope I don't cock it up. But I figure all I put into it was $2 for a pack of seeds.

Oh. And a lot of sweat. I dug a very large patch of earth all by myself. With a spade. Not a tiller.

You don't understand what a great feat this is. I have zero upper-body strength.

I'm like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.



Chuck and I usually rent a heavy-duty tiller because our ground is such a bitch to dig up.

MY impatient Canadian ass decided on a Sunday (when the rental place is closed) that it was tired of waiting and wanted the pumpkin patch IMMEDIATELY.

In one short week, I have been rewarded. My pumpkins are sprouting.

My friends say that I should have them looked at by a doctor.



My sunflowers are doing very nicely as well. I dug that sunflower bed up myself about a month ago. Once again, all by hand.






And if that wasn't enough vertebral punishment, yesterday I got a wild hair and decided to make a new garden out front.




I'm terrible at estimation when it comes to measurements.



Especially curved measurements, and I wanted a curvy garden with curvy stone edging. What can I say? I'm a curvy sort of girl.

I actually surprised myself by guessing the right number of edging stones I'd need. But of course I bought the wrong number of curvy and straight ones. I laid them all out as soon as I got home in the shape I wanted, and it was totally not working.

I usually buy this type of stuff at Lowe's Home Improvement, and it takes me about 40 minutes to drive there and back from my house.

I discovered my mistake AFTER I was already covered in dirt. A thick layer of dirt. Sunscreen and sweat-matted dirt. There was no way I was making that 40-minute drive AND going into Lowe's covered in greasy freaking dirt. But I wanted to finish my garden that day.

I could only think of one option.

I put out the Chuck Signal.



Shit. Wrong one. But all that digging does make a curvy girl hungry...

Anyway, after I asked my lovely, wonderful, amazing husband to save me by stopping by Lowe's for the right stones on his way home from work(I might have cried if he'd said no), I got down to business.

That little area started to look a lot bigger once I started digging. It probably took me two hours of digging to make the garden as big as I wanted. With the scorching sun beating down on my back. I might have gotten it done faster if I didn't have to take breaks to prevent heatstroke.






And I found out there were a whoooooooole mess o' wolf spiders making homes in that little patch of dirt.

Pissed off Mama-Wolf spiders.



Ten years ago, if I saw a spider like that within 20 feet of me, I'd have been running away screaming, garden abandoned. Funny what you can get used to.

Don't get me wrong, if one of those fuckers happened to scamper across any patch of bare skin I might possess, my screams would have been heard in Nepal.



When Chuckles got home, I was finally able to put in my edging stones. I made this garden mainly as a feature for my new gardenia, but I also bought a couple of daylilies, gomphrena, and petunias to fill it out a little till I decide what to really do with it.

When it was all finished, I was really proud of myself. I worked so hard, and I did it all by myself.

Well, 97% by myself. When I was attempting to place the edging, Chuck was hovering around and eyeing me as if he wanted to take them out of my hands and do it himself.

"What?" I asked. "Am I not doing this right?"

"Well....maybe if you move that one there...And tamp that one down a little...And put some more dirt under that one..." he said, sipping his beer.

"Do you want to do this for me or something?" I puffed, sweating my ass off. Covered in dirt.

"No, no! I'm too tired," he said. "But maybe move that one there a little..." Another sip of beer.

I think he finally had enough of watching me place them 'wrong' and helped place a couple of the stones, no matter how tired he was from work. I mulched and it was all done.

I didn't get enough mulch though (of course). I got more today.

I think it looks damn good. Jazzes up the place.














Here are some quick looks at other random things in my yard that I couldn't cleverly fit into the above:

My vegetable garden. A cherry tomato, a bush cucumber, and a cayenne pepper. Aren't those drywall buckets glamourous?



My Japanese Maple (dwarf Bloodgood). When I bought it for $12 late last fall, it was a sad sight. The garden center had it out in way too much sun, and it was all scorched.

Looks a damn sight better now.





My English lavender. I usually kill this crap every year. It dies over the winter.

This year, it not only lived, but re-flowered. It's the small victories!




And this is my favourite! I love this caladium. It was an impulse buy today when I was getting more mulch. I want to buy another red pot to put it in. For now I just have it propped up behind my hosta. Sexy!



I think I'm going to take a rest from all this 'extreme gardening' nonsense for awhile.

I'll be 30 in three weeks.

My old bones just can't take it anymore.

Itch? I Don't Feel Itchy...

Chuck and I have been married for 5 years today.

This is a picture from our wedding day. Definitely NOT the Royal Wedding.




No Prime Minister, no fanfare, no money, no wedding dress...


No crazy hats.





Just in case there are a few of you who are new and don't know, we got married soon after Chuck had a lung removal due to cancer. Our wedding was the day before his second round of chemo [the reason for the cue-ball look]. And 4 days before I was supposed to go back to Canada.

"Chuck, I don't really want to leave."

"I don't want you to leave either."

"You want to get married?"

"Ok."

What a proposal eh? I didn't even get down on one knee.

Our wedding day was not glamourous.

We got married at the Jacksonville courthouse soon after it opened up for the day.

We only had two witnesses, Chuck's daughter Lindsay and her cousin Steffen (Chuck's ex-wife's nephew, which is sort of amusing :P )

We exchanged vows and rings that we picked up at Target.

Chuck took us out for breakfast at Cracker Barrel afterwards.

We went to a park in Jacksonville to take these pictures. I didn't have the money to buy a new dress, so I had to squeeze myself into one that was too small for me. Oh well. I still think I looked nice.



One crazy thing I remember was that when we pulled up to the park, there was a tall, huge birdhouse. There was a little bird that had strangled itself on a bit of string, and was dangling from the platform of the birdhouse. Isn't that macabre??

I hoped that wouldn't be a bad omen. O_O

We topped everything off with dinner for two at Red Lobster. I probably could have sprung for a dress if we didn't have dinner at Red Lobster.

But you know me. I'd rather eat than have a new dress.

Our wedding day was not traditional. But we had fun! The marriage is important, not the wedding.

Unless you're Prince William and Kate Middleton. ;)



But wait!!

Before you congratulate me...

Apparently, Chuck and I should be getting divorced!

Wtf?

Apparently, there is a phenomenon called the Five-Year-Itch.

Can't these people add?? It's supposed to be 7 years! 7, damn you!



Well, I don't feel itchy. And I haven't seen Chuck scratching. Much.

He let me post pictures of him in a tiara, for God's sake. I think that means he still loves me?

Shit! I just caught myself scratching my ankle! Is that where it starts? From the ground up?

*peeks at ankle*

Whew! It's just a bug bite. Maybe we'll be ok for the next few years...

Do you know what I think the keys are to a long and happy marriage? Speaking from my loooooooooooooong 5 years of experience?

1. Start out with the hard parts first. Not recommending that any of you start it off with cancer, but something else equally difficult. If you can get through that? The rest is gravy.

2. Separate bank accounts. We may fight, but it's never about money.

3. Go out on dates. (I meant with each other, you lechers!) Seriously, make time for yourselves. Go on a picnic. See a movie. Go to dinner. Have sex in the afternoon. Hell, go canoeing together. Have sex in your canoe. Whatever.

4. Be honest with each other. Honesty creates trust. Lies get you divorced.

5. Shit. I can't think of another one. I really don't know what else keeps us married. Being poor maybe?

It's cheaper to keep her. ;)

Especially if she's crazy.