A variety of things I am fretting about

I would like a garden this summer. I think it would be a good activity for Claire and I to take on, I would certainly like the satisfaction of growing some food, and most of all I would like a never ending supply of delicious tomatoes to feast on for months and months and months.

But...I don't really know anything about a garden. I have been reading a lot about gardening in Texas and Elizabeth has been tutoring me but...it feels like a lot of effort to go from a plain old back yard to a legit garden. I mean, I'll probably have to...dig...and...other things? I think? And then the hot, awful, cruel, Texas summer sun will probably kill everything and oh man, I would be SO PISSED.

That's what gardening is, right? Just waiting to get your heart broken by tomatoes?

***

Charlotte has had the sniffles for two weeks and while it is just the sniffles and no fever or cough or anything else (she sleeps and eats fiiiiiiine) part of me thinks that two weeks of sniffles is too much and she needs to go to the doctor, just to see. 

But. I kind of don't want to pay $150 to go to the doctor with our crappy health insurance if my gut says it's nothing but the sniffles. This is the shit-getting-real part of having crappy health insurance (which is a new adventure for us and I owe you a post on this topic) and it's so frustrating to be weighing cost versus health. Ideally, money would be no object when it comes to the health of my preshus baybeee but this is not the reality I live in.

Obviously, if she was very ill I would spend every last dime we had to help her, but this is The Sniffles. I cannot afford to spend $150 on every bout of The Sniffles With No Fever Or Other Indicators (I would be there every third day, OMG) and so I have to pick and choose in a weird game that doesn't really benefit anyone involved. SIGH. 

(FRET.)

***

When I had a cubicle job I was really good at prioritizing things and getting shit done. But now I find that it often takes me several hours in the morning to just pony up the energy to talk myself into leaving the house. The children are so DEMANDING in the morning. If would be helpful if they ran a similar schedule, but they don't. Charlotte is up first and she must be fed, changed, played with. Then Claire gets dressed and wants to eat. Somewhere in there I am supposed to take a shower and dress myself and probably the baby wants to eat again and needs another diaper and she has very likely barfed on herself which means ANOTHER outfit. And it's barely 830 in the morning.

There are toys everywhere, almost instantly upon sunrise, and leaving the house feels sometimes like I am leaving the scene of a domestic crime.

The Home That Needs Cleaning Very Badly, Even Though The Housekeeper Came Four Days Ago.

The Home Where They Don't Do The Dishes Every Night.

The Home With Wet Laundry Still In The Washing Machine From Last Night.

The Home With Scattered Disorganized Piles In Some Corners That Everyone Has Good Intentions To Sort Through Very Soon

The Home With Breakfast Dishes Still On The Table.

I feel guilty leaving a messy house. (As if someone is going to see it before I get back? No. I don't know.) Even though I recognize it's a battle of attrition keeping up after the two of them and their wake of destruction and wants and needs and tantrums, I like the idea of having a clean house and having everything kind of...In Its Place when I leave for the day to run errands. It feels very full-circle and neat and tidy when I manage this.

This is a really dumb idea, I know, but it's sometimes paralyzing. There are days when I think, "We'll go run that errand when I get the kitchen clean!" and then it's suddenly 1pm and children are napping and...crap nothing is getting done today.

Stupid kitchen.

***

We are supposed to have booked the Miles Bankrupt vacation by now, but we haven't because I can't seem to muster the energy to decide where to go. I can't even find the courage to enter a three-character airport code into AA.com to see what seats are available to where because booking travel is probably one of the top three things I hate the most about the internet. (This is humorous considering I worked for a very notable online travel agency for SIX YEARS.)

It's just such a pain and exercise in denial. No seats! No good times! No good dates! Oh, seats! NOT TOGETHER AGHHHH. It is this way because we are using miles and not even the good kind of highly transferable credit card miles, no, we're using Aadvantage miles, which are the worst miles of all, on the crappiest airline where everyone is mean and has a bad attitude.

Anyway. I think we are going to go to Kauai or the Big Island. We had been thinking Caribbean but I think I just don't want to go there for a variety of reasons that have to do with hurricanes, bad food, too many connections, and (possibly incorrect) preconceived notions I have as a result of a cruise several years ago.

See? I have a mostly free vacation just waiting for me and I manage to make it so difficult I can't even TRY to book it.

This is a special kind of talent I have. God must have a very specific plan for me.

Comments

[Jen]

That entire second section? About the cleaning? Could have written the exact same thing. Seriously. Right down to the breakfast dishes, the laundry, and the PILES. At some point during every day, my house is mostly picked up. At every other time? I feel like there is clutter everywhere. I wish I had some great suggestion, but mostly just wanted to say I GET IT.

[Steph]

The last line made me laugh out loud. :)

[beth]

1) Get Holly to plan your trip. She'll love it.
2) If your buying nursery baby plants, make sure you plant them deep - cover up several inches of the stem. Buy a drip hose and a faucet timer with your tomatoes. It will save your sanity. Toms love sun as long as they have enough water. Set it for a few minutes at dusk and dawn, not in the middle of the day. Good luck!

[Mama Bub]

I'm supposed to be planning a trip too, and I just can't make myself do it. My husband said he would like to go to Hawaii or New England! In the summer, or maybe spring break. With the kids, or maybe just the two of us!

SO MANY VARIABLES.

[Lacey]

Yes yes yes on the cleaning section. I was only on maternity leave for 12 weeks and I used the whole newborn as an excuse not to do anything, but, this is actually more accurate. She just slept and I COULD have gotten other things done, but unless I was ready to go the second she popped off the boob, it didn't happen!

Oh, and hi! I'm a fellow Blather-er. :)

[obabe]

1. i know nothing about gardening and yet? were about to have our fourth one! i go the easy route- in late april/early may, i go to home depot and pick out seedlings (NOT seeds). have husband drag home a ton of bags of soil and one that comes with plant fertilizer in it. have him get the dirt "ready" and then i stick the plants in and water. boom. garden! except im in chicago and you are in very very very hot summer texas...id do some googling. but it is super fun for the kids to pick their cucumbers and strawberries right off the plants for dinner! and the tomatoes? OMG we had so many tomatoes!!! i bet you could start soon. maybe just buy one plant this season as a trial?
2. the sniffles- maybe allergies instead of a cold? do you have any target/walgreens clinics- is that cheaper? i have good insurance and it would still take alot for me to drag my kid to the doctor for just sniffles!
3. this suggestion may get me shot, b/c im already drooling over my maternity leave and subsequent lack of need to wake up early, but perhaps if you scheduled your early morning roughly as though you had to leave the house/get to work/day care etc? like, i try to be showered before the kids wake up, etc....
5.travel- at least you are only booking a domestic miles ticket. if you do it for an international ticket you have to DO IT ON THE PHONE. we booked a five person, four different advantage accounts, including some gifting and purchasing of miles, international trip with stopover. the stress of those calls alone nearly made me cancel the trip. and the TIME it took was RIDICULOUS.
i think that was long enough for now :-)

[HereWeGoAJen]

I'm going to do a container garden on the back patio this year. We'll see.

I don't like to leave the house with things messy either. For one thing, it's nicer to come home tired to a clean house. But I have also gotten more stressed about it when I left the house all messy once and then ended up in the hospital before coming home. I had the feeling before, but now I am like "SEE, JUSTIFIED."

[Jesabes]

I hate booking travel. My husband does all that. I signed up for PJs@TJs, then realized I'd have to make my own travel arrangements. I almost backed out over having to book my own plane ticket. STUPID. (I did eventually make all the arrangements myself.) Now I have to gear up for NOLA in November.

[Erica]

Our version of gardening in Texas involves buying a crap load of pepper plants around March, watering them once in a while, then composting them when they freeze in November. It is low effort. It is also not particularly useful.

I get stressed leaving a messy house, too.

[Lorraine]

My mom swears by this one rule: (in Houston mind you, Dallas weather should be similar?)Get your tomato plants (the little ones, don't bother with seeds) in the ground by St. Patrick's Day and you'll get a big crop for summer, you may even be able to get another late summer crop in after the spring tomatoes are gone.

[Natalie]

I kill any living plant that I look at....except tomatoes! Container gardening is easy, and you don't really have to dig. I put my tomatoes in old half wine barrels, sometimes two to a barrel. Water very well other day. They love heat and sunlight, so they'll be awesome in TX.

[Pippi]

My daughter had the sniffles constantly and then we took dairy out of her diet and they disappeared magically. If you've introduced dairy to her recently it might be worth a try. It takes a week or two to get out of the system, though. My daughter's cleared up around 18 months so it wasn't long term. We drank lots of coconut milk in the meantime.

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

I so badly want a garden. We even have a little cordoned off Dirt Space in the backyard that just SCREAMS "I Want to Be a Garden." And yet I feel the same way you do: so much work, so much potential heartache. Because what if nothing grows? What if things grow and then die? What about deer/rabbits/bugs/other blight I know nothing about?