waste my life

It's another stay-home-sick-from-work day. To keep my mind off the reason I'm sick, I've been immersing myself in learning the song I Will Waste My Life (by the lovely Misty Edwards) on piano and guitar. This involves a lot of going between Rhapsody on the computer (quickly running out of my 25 free listens per month!) and whatever the instrument of the moment is. And a lot of googling. It's easy to find the guitar chords for pretty much anything, but this song isn't even played on guitar-- it's a beautiful piano piece. And it's impossible to find the sheet music. So I'm having to figure it out. So today I have so ironically wasted my day on a song called Waste My Life. Every once in awhile I mix things up by throwing in a few rounds of How He Loves Us (by John Mark McMillan, recently re-released by David Crowder). It's always a crowd-pleaser. If by "crowd" you mean "an empty house and a lazy black lab."


In other noteworthy acts of productivity...I have been putting off calling DirecTV to cancel our movie channel package (it was free for 3 months and I have no plans of paying for it now) for like weeks. Flashbacks of horrible Comcast experiences keep me from picking up the phone. But I had no other excuses today so I did it and guess what. Four minutes and thirteen seconds. That was the entire phone call from please press 1 for English to thanks for calling, have a great day! Four minutes?? That's IT? I didn't have to pull out all my hair, listen to horrible hold music, or lose my religion? DirecTV, I love you.


Since that was such a positive experience it encouraged me to make two other phone calls of necessity: the library (renewing books, yay!) and the doctor (going to see her...yay?). I have an appointment for next week now to discuss this infertility thing...hopefully it will be a positive experience that will soon result in more positive experiences. Here's to hoping, anyway.

But let's on to the real reason you people came here today: pictures of my yard. I know, it's what you live for. ME TOO. First you need to see my azaleas. On the one hand I feel like I can't take much credit for them since they were here when we moved in. But they were completely grown over by weeds/grass (they weren't in a bed, that's an addition we made) since they were just planted on the side of the house. And our neighbors across the street say they never remember seeing them bloom like this before. So that makes me think that I have had at least a little something to do with them and I will now take all the credit for their beauty. And aren't they just perfect??


They're very tropical looking, in my opinion. OK, next on the list of things you need to see is the garden. Remember when we planted it? It was the day before Easter, so like April 3rd or something. Here's what it looked like that day.

And here's what it looked like last weekend, April 17th-ish.

Those huge things taking up the front left-hand corner? That would be the squash. It is...big. And if you'd like to take a few of these plants off my hands, feel free-- I've heard it will grow better if it's thinned out a little, so I am looking for a new home for at least a few of the little plants. Please! Before they take over my house! And get ready, cause in a few months I have a hunch I will be begging you for any and all squash recipes you've ever used/heard of/thought of/Googled.

And finally, the first true fruit of our labor: a strawberry. Last night we picked the little guy in the middle (his two neighbors need another day or 2) and Matt and I shared it and it was DELICIOUS!! And I'm not just saying that cause I raised it. It was so good! :) So I can't wait to have many more just like it!

Oh, and in NOT so uplifting news...we rented Precious last night. Um, now THAT was not uplifting in the least. It was good. But...disturbing. I had gone to the Red Box looking to rent The Blind Side (which was out) because I wanted to be inspired. This was what I ended up with and I was not so much inspired, but that's okay. It was still a really good movie. Also, Red Box is a really good invention and I wish I'd been the one to think of it.

Speaking of inventions, Matt had a great idea. We're going to invent (and by that I mean, I will talk about it here and never think about it again) a Yard-ba. It's like a Roomba, only it will travel around your yard mowing, finding weeds/shooting them with a laser to kill them/sucking them up. It may also have ant-killing abilities as well, we're not sure on that yet. Isn't that a great idea? We figured since they would probably be getting stolen a lot, we would also equip them with On Star ("now locating your stolen Yardba..."). I bet you think we are real ditzes based on the things I mention us talking about on this blog. I promise that we also talk about really deep and intelligent things...it's just those are not exciting at all for anyone else to read about. Um, or maybe we actually DON'T talk about anything that's not super lame. I guess you'll never really know.

Well, I think I've efficiently wasted another hour of my day now. In the time it's taken me to write this blog I have also managed to spill my brand-new bag of pretzels not just once but twice. As in, bag falls off the desk onto the floor, spilling pretzels everywhere. And while most dogs would find this to be a dream come true situation (free pretzels!), my dog is MUCH too terrified of the loud noise the pretzels made when colliding with the hard floors. In fact, as I said "come on Lola! Eat!!" and made gestures to the pretzels, she stood frozen in fear. Me??? Eat those loud scary things?? Ha! I actually had to pick them up off the floor and feed them to her. Is that lame or what? She is so spoiled. (Note: and then I threw the rest of the pretzels away. I said, "I am NOT hand-feeding you 85 pretzels! Maybe next til you will grow a pair and eat them off the floor like a normal dog!")

That's all, folks. I can only hope your rainy Tuesday has been as well-spent (hahahaha) as mine. Am I the only one who spends her sick days being torn between getting rest and getting things done? Do share.