Interior/Exterior

I'm watching two spiders in the corner of my office fighting. Er, either that or it's some courting/mating ritual. I'll let you know when the female viciously devours the male. Or when I go get the vacuum and suck them both up.

It happens occasionally, I wake up with a headache and various other neck-related pains. Sometimes I think it's related to a build-up of lack of sleep over the past few days, sometimes I think it's just poor positioning through the night, and sometimes I think it's biorhythm-related to monthly and weekly and daily cycles and all that. Today's head-and-neckache might well be a combination of all three. Suffice it to say, it is one of the least encouraging things, waking up with a headache. I was all expecting well-restedness and sleeping in and leisurely getting up; instead I get a headache driving me out of bed and searching for the ibuprofen.

Not like I should complain too terribly much. Medicine makes it feel better, good enough to function properly at least.

And there is a fair amount I was hoping to do today, mostly boring around-the-house stuff. I need to marinate some chicken, pick up objects lying around on some carpeted areas (we're getting the carpets cleaned tomorrow), and work on the baseboards in the room I just painted. Investigation has lead me to find our stash of paint from when the house was built, so I believe I've found the right match for the light color on the baseboards and thus don't have to worry about going out and attempting to find a match; I can get right to the touch up. I really must go back and scrub all the baseboards first, which is an extra step I'm not too keen on, but so it goes. Also, I'm slightly nervous about doing the baseboards in this newly-painted room, because I know as soon as my dad sees how fast I get it done he will surely direct me to the rest of the baseboards in the house. THAT is a project that could take me several days.

The large and easily-attained success of the room-painting project has lead me quickly to think about other rooms in the house that I might be interested in painting. My own room tempted me briefly, but honestly all I do in that room is sleep; if I am looking at the walls I'm doin' it wrong. And in most cases, the color we have right now on the wall seems perfectly acceptable. But there IS a bathroom on the first floor, poor decor-neglected first floor bathroom, that I think would be a great candidate for painting. It's QUITE a small room, so it would probably get painted even faster than the bedroom, and it really needs some love. As it is it doesn't even have a towel-rack on the wall. Now THAT sounds like something I ought to figure out how to install!

Beyond all this I do need to find time to start winterizing the landscaping. The gardening report from my efforts this year is pretty miserable: cucumber and zucchini plants died a horrible powdery mildewy death, the tomatoes don't taste right, and the blueberry bushes aren't producing berries. The only positive thing that came of it all was the set of four small watermelons that I managed to grow successfully. This probably means next year I need to heavily condition the soil before starting to grow again; Faithful Readers will recall the abysmal test results of my soil nutrient levels. I will need to continue to acidify the soil around the blueberry and raspberry plants, and figure out what to replace several dead plants with (this whole too-much-water-not-enough-water thing is driving me nuts). Also, I again lost most of my potted herbs. I don't quite know what does it, whether I just miss a day or two of watering and that's it? Or if I should be giving the plants more nutrients more often.

What I'm sure this all comes down to is I just don't put as much effort into the plants as I ought, but there is only so much effort I can expend in a single day. I love the way a well-landscaped yard looks, but if it's not something I enjoy doing over a long time commitment, then perhaps I should scale back. Of course, I might enjoy it more if I don't make stupid mistakes like buying all my plants from a nursery that obviously had a powdery mildew infection on most things and thus lose most of my crop before harvest. Ah well, failure contributes to future success.

Current Tea: Blackberry Green
Current Project: House stuff