What a Week

In preparation for my husband’s departure, the impending hurricane, and my trip to California we spent last weekend doing a lot of projects around the house.

On Saturday while my husband attempted to seal off our upper back porch from Frankenstorm’s doom, I worked on clearing out our garden plots. The final harvest included some turnips, rainbow carrots, small bell peppers, a zillion more jalapenos and two giant tomatoes that had been hiding out under all the wild branches. There was also some rhubarb that didn’t make it into the photo (but it did make it into a tasty crisp a few nights later).

Despite my husband’s best efforts, a ton of water still made it into our back porch during the storm which was frustrating. We collected as much as we could (upwards of 20 gallons), but know that there was plenty missed. We are optimistic about tearing down and rebuilding the back porches during spring 2013… let’s hope there are no more super windy rain storms between now and then!

Despite the water, we survived the storm with no other damages, maintaining power and internet throughout. I even got a hurricane haircut Monday morning (parking was great thanks to the lack of parking enforcement and the fact that no one else was out) and a mani/pedi on Tuesday once things had calmed down a bit. Those opportunities to leave the house saved me from feeling too stir crazy. Although now that I am thinking about it there was some damage to our wine rack (and my brother and sister-in-laws wine rack as well) as we went through 5 bottles in 2 days thanks to impromptu family dinners.

But for the time being the storm and house projects are behind me as I enjoy a visit to the sunny West Coast while winter sets in on DC. Looking forward to being “home” for a few weeks.

I’m back!

It has been seven weeks since my last post. In that time I have meant to write about a variety of things: our garden plot, the refinished front door project, our backyard, traveling to California, cooking, and dog talk. Despite my best intentions to write 2 or 3 posts per week, work has been unbelievably busy  and each time my calendar has alerted me that it is time to write a post I have to admit that I’ve simply hit “ignore.”

But yesterday as I finished up the dishes and was reflecting on how I was also in my third load of laundry and had prepared dinner (and was working AND it was only 2:30), I thought to myself “Self, it is time to get back into blogging!”

So here’s a mini update about all the things I have been meaning to share recently.

Gardening:
I’ve been paying about as much attention to our community garden plot as I have to this blog…so I can’t report too much there. I know our sage plant is totally out of control (at this point it has probably taken over the entire 4×12 foot area). Hopefully I’ll make it over this weekend and will be able to collect a few bell peppers if the bugs/birds haven’t gotten them yet. I know we also have three or four leeks, but I am not sure if they are ready to be harvested. Since there is no room in the fridge for them, hopefully they can stay at the garden a bit longer.

In our backyard plot we added red potatoes and some blueberry bushes at the end of September. We’ve had a pretty good harvest of green beans, radishes and arugula since planting, but some nasty black and orange bugs came along and killed our thriving cucumber plant. Our chive and cilantro plants still seem to be coming along so I am hoping that they will take root before it is too chilly. It also looks like a good number of leeks are growing for use in the spring.

Front Door Refinishing:
While my in-laws were here for a weekend in September, my husband asked my father-in-law to refinish our front door. It now looks beautiful, but it meant spending three relatively chilly days and nights without a front door, which was interesting. Thankfully we still had the screens on our gate so we were able to keep bugs out at the very least. I have to admit that I was disappointed my security squeak—the super loud annoying noise that the door made every time it was opened and closed—disappeared when the door was reinstalled.

Traveling:
The first weekend of October we were in California to attend the sixth and seventh weddings of 2011. Along with visiting family, we took a wine tasting day trip to Amador County and spent a few nights in Santa Cruz. Now I can safely say that we are weddinged out! Thankfully we won’t be comparing cakes and dancing like fools again until 2012, but we will be heading back to California during the holidays.

Cooking:
As you know from earlier posts, I have to brag when I make dinner. Well, my husband is currently on work travel so I have been making dinner every night. If I want to eat I have to cook, so I suppose that I can’t really brag too much about that. But I have been doing my best to choose relatively healthy options like lentil & spinach soup, tabouleh & hummus, and black bean soup. It seems that Mother Nature has decided it is indeed fall, but despite having entered full-blown baking season I feel like I should wait for a reason other than wanting to eat a treat before I bake. Apple cake is definitely in the near future though.

Dog Talk:
My husband and I have been talking for months (years really) about getting a dog. Recently he mentioned — wait, I think this is a story for a whole other post…I’ll try not to wait for seven more weeks to write it!

Woe is my Internet

For the past five days, I have spent the majority of my time sans internet. Because of this, I have also spent what feels like half of my life on the phone with Verizon telling them for the 837th time what my call back number is and the model of my modem. I mean, don’t they keep this information in your file? After four days and 8 phone calls — one which lasted for 43 minutes (seriously, I am not being an exagaraptor about the calls), I was finally able to schedule an appointment for today.

I was shocked when the technician (who was here about 2 months ago and replaced the line from the house to the phone box) arrived only 20 minutes into my 4 hour block of possible appointment time. When he departed, all seemed well. He had had the speed of my internet service increased (because for some reason the last moron reduced the speed) and thought that would solve the problem. And it totally did. For an hour.

When I called Verizon again, the company was able to locate the same technician (who may become my new BFF) and sent him back over. An hour later and the internet is back up and running. This time he said that the rain actually highlighted what he thinks was the larger issue all along — the cable connecting our phone box to the pole in the alley was incredibly damaged. When he climbed up to take a closer look he found that it was so corroded the cable crumbled when he touched it. This week has been incredibly windy and he thought the outages (and occasional returns) of my online capabilities had been caused by which way the wind was blowing.

Working from home without the internet has been a struggle. During the past four days, I have worked at my in-law’s kitchen counter, a friend’s couch and another friend’s dining room table. While I am grateful that so many people are willing to loan me their homes as a temporary office, I would be overjoyed if the technician’s work this afternoon meant my internet problem was actually solved. Not only could I actually get some work done in a timely fashion, but I would no longer need to spend half of my life on hold with Verizon which, not surprisingly, I have have grown quite tired of.

I’m trying to be optimistic, but after the past year of really rough service, we’ll see. The one upside of spending a good part of today stuck at home without internet meant I cleaned the bathroom, washed dishes, did a load of laundry and worked through some of the clutter in the office and downstairs. But now that I am back online it’s time to get to work. Sorry housework, you’re back on hold.

We’re Off! And We’re Back.

I started this post over a week ago before we left for Costa Rica … Now that we are back, I finally have time to finish  it:

March was a whirlwind – I worked like crazy (which was great), spent nearly the entire month with a sinus infection (much less great) and we attended two weddings (also great). As the month wound down, we didn’t. On Thursday, March 31 we were off to Costa Rica for the fourth wedding of the year. I was excited about my first trip to Latin America, even if it was a whirlwind in and of itself — we were only there for 6 days and that included time traveling to and from.

With so much to see and so little time to fit it all in, we spent a good portion of the trip on the go, which was interesting considering that 3 of the 6 people in the car get motion sick. Combine that with the fact that sometimes the roads aren’t  anything but rocks, dirt and gravel and things really got interesting. But we all survived and managed to see a some beautiful places in Costa Rica — Arenal Volcano, Nosara (the beach town where the wedding was held), and the Los Angeles Cloud Forest. Each part of the country was vastly different in climate and foliage ranging from forest to dry valley to jungle. We did squeeze in some additional activities between driving and the wedding including a morning nature walk in Arenal, a zip line tour in Nosara, and a night walk in Los Angeles. Somehow we also found time to eat lots of delicious food including gallo pinto — the traditional black bean and rice combination typically served at breakfast — as well as fresh fish, shrimp and a variety of other tasty treats.

There were howler monkeys who happily served as our alarm clocks, lots of interesting birds, lizards and plants to look at, and the mysterious scorpion that showed up on my father-in-law’s arm at the beginning of our night tour. Ah, memories.

I loved the the warm, mostly sunny weather, although I must admit it made coming back to 40 degree DC quite unpleasant. And now that we are home, it’s time to return to our regular routines whether we want to or not. Those 6 days without dishes, laundry or cleaning were pretty amazing, but the real world — and our dirty travel clothes — beckon.

The “Perfect” Day

At the end of the day yesterday, I thought, “Self, this was a perfect day!” I immediately started to wonder why I used the word perfect. And why was I addressing myself in my thoughts? But I digress.

Back to the “perfect” day. My husband didn’t bring me breakfast in bed, nor did we spend our day lounging by the beach or our evening with glasses of wine in front of a beautiful fireplace. In fact, nothing about my reaction to yesterday had to do with my marriage (sorry honey!) and it definitely didn’t have to do with relaxing. Still, after reflecting on things, I am considering it a pretty amazing day—even if it isn’t for any of the reasons people might typically assume.

Business in 2011 has been incredibly busy, which is a great blessing. But because of this I have spent most days racing from one project to another to ensure I get everything done by their respective deadlines. However, yesterday felt like it was the first day in which I not only managed to do everything on my work agenda, but I managed to do it ahead of schedule. In fact, things were going so smoothly, I was even able to get ahead, which I always love. I made a few project calls, wrote two press releases, started and finished a program layout and still had time to wash, fold and put away four loads of laundry, clean the bathroom, wash a few dishes and set the table for the dinner we were hosting.

And it was all done before 5 pm.

That’s where my feelings about the perfectness of the day really come into play. Working from home makes me feel inherently more responsible for taking care of the day to day tasks related to the house, but typically I don’t have the time in my day to do much, if any, cleaning. The fact that yesterday wasn’t just a successful work day, but was also a successful household day made me feel a serious sense of accomplishment.

Now I can honestly say that I am ready for the weekend. And I don’t even have to do any laundry during it!

No Sick Leave for the Self-Employed

Despite my best efforts to avoid getting sick — I got my flu shot, I work from home and I rarely use public transportation these days — I caught a cold last weekend. The timing really couldn’t have been worse and for once I can blame my husband. The man who “never” gets sick caught a cold last week and kindly shared it with me.

It was very odd being the caretaker since usually I am the one who has turned into some sort of snot-filled, barely functioning disaster. However, as my husband’s cold progressed and I stayed healthy, I thought maybe I would beat the odds and for once, not get sick myself. Ha! Think again. On Sunday I woke up with a sore throat and we both spent the day napping, watching TV and reading. We never left the house and barely moved from the bed. It would have been kind of awesome if we hadn’t felt like crap.

But I digress, the point of this post is to note that thanks to working from home, I have found it is pretty much impossible to take a sick day. Particularly a few days prior to a vacation that will make me inaccessible to my clients for the next two weeks. As my own boss, it’s kind of tragic to tell myself that I don’t have the time to take a sick day!

So here I sit at my desk, surrounded by snotty tissues, a glass of water and a mug of lukewarm tea, trying to power through. Even during the quiet times in my day I feel guilty napping since the house is a disaster and it needs some serious cleaning before we leave on our trip.

But for now, I am trying to take things one step at a time. Which means I need to find a packet of kleenex and then head off to a meeting where I will do everything in my power not to infect my client. Before long I’ll be home again and can hopefully find a way to squeeze in a nap.

Impending Arrival

Today I am in serious housewife mode in an attempt to make sure our humble abode doesn’t scare my in-laws when they arrive this evening. I was planning to do the usual tidying — putting away the shoes littering our main level, hanging up my husband’s discarded suit jackets which are currently on the backs of a number of our chairs and making sure the dining room table was cleared off — however Mother Nature offered me a chance to do some additional cleaning.

It’s been raining like mad all morning. Add a few strong gusts of wind and welcome to my wet living room and bedroom. While I realize it is kind of my fault for not closing the windows this morning, that doesn’t make it any less annoying! Having puddles of water behind my love seat and across my bedroom floor is definitely never ideal. However now that I have the windows shut and the water wiped up, I am realizing the cleaning bonus. Not only is the hardwood floor free of puddles, it is also free of dust, dirt and hair!

There is still a lot on today’s agenda. I have to do a few loads of laundry and make sure the living room and dining room look presentable. At the moment both rooms look like very large (and very unorganized) sorting piles for mail, newspapers and discarded socks. Thankfully I still have all afternoon and things are surprisingly quiet on the project front today for the first time in weeks. Now it’s time to get back to the chores.

Finding the Time

Because I work from home, I feel like it is part of my day to take care of things around here. I mean, just like anyone else I typically don’t work for 8 hours straight, so I may as well put that “wasted” time to use by cleaning the kitchen floor or blanching green beans, right?

Unfortunately,  I have found myself remarkably busy with work for, well, the last few months. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, because a freelancer can’t complain about having too much work. And it’s like more the right amount of work as opposed to too much, but it is certainly hampering my homemaker style. Considering that I honestly never had any, I am not sure why I am feeling guilty about it.

Today is the first day in as long as I can remember that my calendar is somewhat clear and it is basically by accident. Yesterday I managed to finalize some projects that I intended to devote today to, leaving myself the time to do the laundry, wash dishes and freeze turkey meat. I know, excitement abounds.

Working from home presents an interesting situation. I mean, you are still working, but it is harder for people (and sometimes myself included) to see it that way. I hear tales about how late I sleep in (typically I am at my desk by 7:30), wearing pajamas all day (okay, I often wear athletic attire all day, but I do get dressed!) and all the spare time I have (which tends to amount to the 20 minutes I spend writing a blog post every few days).

I am grateful that I have a schedule with flexibility, but as I sat at my desk feeling totally unmotivated one day last week, I had to force myself to get moving. That’s the thing about freelancing, if I didn’t finish a project it simply wouldn’t get done, which probably wouldn’t work in the long run as a business model.

Although I do my best to integrate household chores into my daily routine, sometimes they get done and sometimes they don’t because I have to put actual work first. But for once, today is a catch up day for the house instead. Kitchen, get ready because here I come!

Working on the Weekend

There are many wonderful things about owning a house. It’s a blessing to have a place my husband and I can call our own and have the space to host friends and family. However, having a house isn’t always the relaxing refuge that I’d like it to be. It seems that no matter what our intentions are each weekend, we always spend a good chunk of Saturday and Sunday doing a million things around and for the house.

This is apparently one of the great joys of home ownership — that there is always something to be done. Last weekend we tried to keep the household projects to a minimum, just cleaning the floors, taking out the trash and tidying up the kitchen, but the long “to do” list kept playing over and over in my mind, even though I desperately wanted to just read travel books and hang out with my husband.

Along with all the traditional household issues that everyone has to take care of, we wanted a house that we could fix up. Considering the condition of many of the places we saw when we were house hunting, we did end up with a great situation. The house is totally livable, so it wasn’t like we were under a lot of pressure to do massive home renovations right away, but there are so many changes  — both large and small — that we’d like to get to eventually.

However, it is hard to find the motivation for undertaking these tasks after working all week, combined with my husband’s early morning rowing habit and our numerous evening commitments. We tend to take good strides forward with our list when my in-laws visit (since they are doing the majority of the work, thanks guys!). Luckily for us, they are returning at the end of September. And yes, an updated list of projects is already underway.

I keep thinking “Oh, I can’t wait until we are done and everything is just the way we’d like it to be,” but I know that such a time is unlikely to ever come. At least not any during the next decade. At the very least I can certainly say that owning a house makes every day an adventure, even if it isn’t exactly the kind you were hoping for like finding ants making the trek from the porch window into the garbage can or uncovering a fungus growing in the front yard that looks like a lobster claw. Not even kidding.

A Little Bit of Bragging

Some pretty amazing things have happened the last few days. Okay, maybe not “amazing” per se, but very housewife-like things that don’t happen every day.

For example, last week I willingly made dinner not one, but two nights in a row! My husband has been really swamped with work, so I thought I would surprise him by skipping jazzercise one night and having dinner ready for him when he got home. He was certainly surprised and we both enjoyed the pork with garlic sauce and green beans that I prepared.

I was also overjoyed to find out that it was super double coupon week at the store. Yes, I know you are all tired of hearing my coupon talk, but I can’t keep this one to myself: I spent $43.91 at the grocery store and saved … wait for it … $43.69! I know, I was impressed too.

There has also been more than the normal amount of baking going on in the house, which is less than ideal since it is hot all the sudden. Molasses bars, two loaves of cinnamon bread and quiche were all prepared during the past few days. Maybe quiche doesn’t count as baking, but it has a crust and goes in the oven, so today I say it does.

Now if I can only do the dishes, fold the laundry from last weekend and tidy up the entire house before my in-laws arrive sometime today I’ll feel like super woman. But let’s be honest, I’ll probably settle for doing the dishes and cleaning off the table. A girl has to do her actual work, too!