true confessions

It's Friday morning! Time for another Company Girl Coffee. Welcome!

So...I'm exhausted. How about you? This week has been really draggy for me - one of those weeks when I feel like I'm moving underwater or something. My capacity this morning for intelligent, cohesive thought is somewhat limited. What follows is, essentially, a bullet-point list of what runs through my mind as I reflect on the past several days. Like stream of consciousness, but easier to read because it's punctuated.


Our Christmas tree, which has been bare for several days now, finally left our house last night. There is a trail of dried up pine needles showing the way to the car. You can sweep sidewalks, but you can't sweep gravel...

The puppy has decided that maybe she doesn't need to be housetrained after all.

Brian is almost off for his first of 3 weekends away, and I am dreading all that time alone with the dogs going to miss him.

I did all of the Small Things this week. Actually, I've done all of them this month. I'm pretty proud of that. This week's big task was setting up a housekeeping schedule. And I'm happy with mine. With the Small Things every day, the schedule to give me some overall structure, and the Flylady missions, I think I'm pretty well set up in the 'get stuff done around the house' category.

I am currently reading People of the Book. I have been reading it for more than a week, and I'm only about 120 pages in. I love it, but for some reason it is very slow reading for me.

I also finished a pair of socks and started a second. These are for a barter exchange with my college roommate - she bought tickets to a football game for us, and I am in return knitting her two pairs of socks. (I won't mention here that the game was in September and I am just now finishing the first pair. What can I say - I guess I was a little busy in the past few months.) I really liked the first pair I made, but it was a pretty challenging pattern. This second pattern is not as challenging, but the socks are man-socks so they'll be much bigger than I'm used to. The yarn colorway is called Ripe Banana and I love it - it is various shades of yellow with the occasional brown speck.

This weekend: I am looking forward to some down time - lots of knitting and lots of reading. I am also looking forward to some solid hours of making progress in the unpacking and getting settled departments. I don't know about you, but I've got a 2-foot stack of things to be filed/sorted/listed on eBay.

We'll see who wins - the grasshopper or the ant.


I might also let the dogs sleep on the bed with me.


How was your week? Do you have any plans for the weekend, fun or otherwise?

menu planning

Hey guess what! I've started meal planning!

Meal planning is pretty basic - you sit down one day and map out your meals for the upcoming week, or two weeks, or month if you are super-mom (which, hello, I am NOT, on account of not being a mom and also not being super enough to plan meals for a MONTH).

Some folks plan out breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. I am good with just doing dinners, since Brian doesn't eat breakfast much and lunch is usually leftovers (for him) or sandwiches for me (or maybe leftovers too).

Back when I was working and Brian was in school, he did a lot of the cooking and I just tried to make sure we had a little bit of everything on hand. I tried menu planning a few times, but Brian - who has an extreme aversion to rules, lists, schedules, boundaries, etc. a major spontaneity/creativity streak (love you hon!) - was resistant. And since I didn't have the time or energy to do it all myself, we just kinda would wing it most nights.

Well...NO MORE! Now that he's the one working (HA!) and I sit around eating bon bons and watching soap operas all day (DOUBLE HA!) I figured it might be a good idea to bring back the meal plan idea. So I did. I did one for most of last week's dinners, and last night I scribbled one out for this week.

A lot of of the frugal/homemaking blogs I read will make their new meal plan on Sunday, which makes sense especially given the Sunday circulars - wherein they scope for great deals and plan meals around what's cheap this week. I've noticed here in Denver that a lot of stores run their sales Wednesday through Tuesday, AND, with Brian's weekday off being Monday, I have sorta gotten in the habit of my 'weekends' being Sunday/Monday and am naturally inclined for my 'week' to begin on Tuesday - which would include the meal plan. So I'm in this weird little time warp and I haven't bothered to reconcile it. Buying lots of meat when it's cheap has worked well enough in the cheap-stuff department.

Another thing I like about meal plans - it gives me a way to experiment with new recipes. I've got a couple in the pipeline for this week. I think it's a lot of fun to poke through some of the cookbooks we received as wedding gifts to find something new to try. And if I don't feel like looking through books, I'll just make a list of things I already know we like. No harm, no foul.

So who wants to sneak a peek at this week's dinner plans? I KNEW you did!

Tuesday - potato and leek soup (leek is a new vegetable to us, and soup is usually a safe way to introduce something...yes?) with some of the leftover bread from last week - an assortment of cornbread, biscuits, and featherlights
Wednesday - barbecups, canned corn, and salad (barbecups are something I came across in the Virginia Farmers cookbook we received as a wedding present. It consists of a muffin tin lined with crescent rolls, and then you put ground beef and onions cooked and mixed up in barbecue sauce into the crescent rolls, and you put some shredded cheese on top and bake until the crescent rolls are done. They make little cups full of barbecued beef and it's one of those recipes you can mix up a lot and do whatever you want with.)
Thursday - chicken tetrazzini, with more salad (because if we don't eat our lettuce up front, we don't eat it, and that is sad)
Friday - dinner out. Brian is leaving that evening for the youth group ski retreat, so we're going to get a little something cheap and yummy before the high schoolers descend and I am left alone with the dogs for 52 hours I get a couple of solid days of work on the house  
Saturday - chicken lo mein (something I have wanted to learn to cook for ages and I finally got some noodles! Brian isn't a huge fan so this is a good thing for an alone weekend.
Sunday - leftovers

Monday - pasta, likely spaghetti or macaroni and cheese, and whatever vegetables are about to go bad. Otherwise, Monday is when we'll eat whatever meal I had planned that week but for some reason didn't cook (such as, emergency pizza night, dinner invitation, etc.)

Do you do a weekly meal plan?

Chill.

Tuesday was a bad day for me. It was really one of those days - which you expect - during which the puppy was making me crazy, I'd fallen on the ice twice so I was in pain, and I kept staring at the piles and lists and to-dos, feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed.

Outside, it got cold in Denver. That afternoon some big heavy snow clouds flew in over the mountains and the temps dropped around 10 degrees. Which was just as well because I didn't want to go outside anyway. Brian had meetings all day and into the evening, and by the time it was about 6:30, I had had my fill of dogs and whining and cleaning and not getting things done.

So I had myself a good cry. The angry kind, with the hot, bitter tears, and the feelings of being overwhelmed and underappreciated and just plain exhausted swirling around, the terrible accompanying thoughts going in and out of my mind.

There's nothing like a good cry.

And there's nothing like coming out of a good cry. I let it roll until everything quieted down, and then I decided something had to change. I needed some ME time. Some mental space. A break.

I knew I had about half an hour or so before Brian would be home, so I crated the dogs with some food, turned on some soothing music (Norah Jones, if you must know) and I got comfortable on the couch and read through some gardening books I'd picked up at the library the day before.

There is nothing so hopeful and restorative as looking through gardening books in the dead of winter. And y'all, I made another list.

Two lists, actually.

Of the green thumb things I wanted to try this year. Vegetables and herbs I wanted to grow, namely. And somewhere on that list is also 'find a potted lemon tree.' Because, for some reason, I have my little heart set on having a lemon tree.

When Brian came home, I was in a better frame of mind (though, I must admit, not for long enough to get us through the evening without incident).

Do you ever have days that make you feel like pulling out your hair, tossing everything out the window, and hiding? What do you do to calm yourself down? How do you get past the overwhelm?

coffee, etc.

I have never liked coffee. I have never liked mocha, or coffee-flavored ice cream, or tiramisu. I have always, however, liked coffee shops, and hot teas, and the coffee drinkers these shops serve (Starbucks not included - I get headaches in there for some reason).

On this date two months ago, we packed up our car and our dog (we only had one dog back then) and began our cross-country journey from Richmond, VA, to Denver, CO. Brian had just finished seminary and was about to start work at a church out here. I was facing a new first for me - being a housewife. We got married while he was in school, and I worked to support us. The plan for when we got out here was for me to get everything unpacked and then start bringing in some web-based income from home quickly, as a freelance proofreader and editor (and YES, I am for hire NOW! and YES, I DO edit theses/manuscripts/articles/resumes/blog posts!). Quickly hasn't happened as quickly as I had hoped (see posts tagged Rory) but it is coming, and I imagine that once work starts rolling in, I might spend some time in coffee shops. Especially when the weather gets nice, and I can sit outside with the dogs.

I haven't found my coffee shop here in Denver yet, but that's ok. Moving was expensive, and Christmas was expensive, and Eli had to have four digits worth of dental surgery, and all three of those things happened within about 6 weeks of each other, and I am still working on amassing a winter wardrobe (it is 0 degrees outside according to my thermometer) and we just plum don't have play money right now.

I've got plenty to keep me busy, though. Designing a website, for one. Setting up our home, for another. And then there are the dogs, who need feeding, and grooming, and training (lots of training) and walks and potty breaks outside (where it is 0 degrees) every 10 minutes or so, and cuddles and pets and ice cubes.

Busy hasn't proven to be quite the wonderful thing for me, though. I am lucky if I talk to a non-family member more than once a day (I'm counting librarians and grocery checkout people in that number) and, while I am fairly introverted, I am also very lonely right now. I send lengthy responses to 'hey what's up' emails; I linger on the phone a little too long; and the mail man (whose name is Jim) might be the closest friend I've made out here so far. Don't get me wrong - I have made some wonderful friends at church and I know those relationships will grow, but we rocketed right into the holidays when we got here, and everyone was busy doing holiday things. There was lots of good cheer to go around, but a shortage of the 'let's get together this week' kind of thing. So I have found myself doing a little bit of that one thing I thought I would never do, or need to do: finding community online.

One of my very very favorite blogs is called Home Sanctuary. I can't say enough good things about it, and I imagine that a large portion of folks who are reading these words came here because of Rachel Anne and Home Sanctuary. I've only recently begun commenting and reading the blogs of other visitors to Home Sanctuary, but I am so encouraged by linking with other women like me. And, I feel a little less lonely.

WELCOME! to any visiting Company Girls. And to my friends who are reading - please leave a comment and let me know you were here. I could use a little wave, some friendly words, and maybe your best joke on hand :)

In the meantime - I have some new girlfriends to call and some little get-togethers to try to set up. I hope you have a great day today and a good weekend ahead. Happy Friday!!

a little (p)update

Rory, aka Rory-Bear, aka Miss Priss, aka Little Miss, aka Stinky Butt, aka Stinker, had a vet checkup on Monday. She passed with flying colors, and we really like the vet. She listens to us, she isn't pushy about drugs or shots, and she really loves our pups.

Back to Rory. She has doubled her weight and she's outgrowing her crate. She is extremely leggy and is more sure-footed every day.

She is also mostly housetrained, though things get a little iffy in the afternoon, when we are all tired of each other.

We have started going on long walks, which has been good for me, probably good for Eli, and of negligible impact on Rory and her wild puppy energy but she seems to like them. We've been to the library and back - about a mile each way, which will be a regular venture in the future. On days when the weather is bad we just walk a half-mile loop around the apartment complex a couple times. As soon as the weather stops threatening to dump ten tons of snow on our heads, we're going to check out a dog-friendly shop in a shopping area a little over a mile away. (This complex will probably end up a regular destination of ours - along with the dog shop, it has a Chinese place, a grocery store, an Einsteins, and a few other places that contain treats for HUMANS.) I am currently strategizing how to tie the dogs up outside while I duck into non-dog-friendly places, like the library and the grocery store. Rory would probably be ok, other than barking at everybody and begging for attention, but Eli might go berserko and hurt somebody. Maybe I need to take a sign that says 'do not pet the papillon.'

Rory's current favorite things to do include ringing the outside bell any time she wants to go outside, chewing on bottles, and going with Eli to Home Depot. She's picked up a new habit of barking at other dogs when they're at a distance, which does not thrill me, but we are working on that. She is very friendly and loves meeting new people and animals. The trips to Home Depot are especially good for Eli - he is more inclined to calm down around people there than he is outside, for some reason. When we were there on Tuesday, Eli even approached a cashier looking for pets! A first for him!! Rory has been very good for Eli, and now the big task is to prevent Eli from teaching Rory bad habits.

She is more than twice Eli's size now. Her paws are becoming massive, her muscles are developing, and her head is starting to square off and become less 'puppy with a long nose' and more 'border collie under construction.' Sometimes we think her eyes are turning green, but then they'll be blue again. Could be lighting, or could be actual changes in color. We'll know which, eventually.

And for those of you suffering from Eli withdrawal, here's a cute picture of him sleeping.

New Year, So What

I generally stick to a MWF post schedule - generally - but I haven't posted in almost a week. Each time I've sat here, determined to write something to share with y'all, I get nothing. And it's my fault.

You see, everybody else out there is posting their resolutions goals for the new year (and calling them goals, eschewing the outmoded notion of 'new year's resolutions' for some strange reason). And while that's all well and good for them, I'm not there yet. I don't really know what my concrete goals are. Which makes me feel like I have nothing to say, this first week of January.

But I do know what I want, in a vague and unattainable but easily shaped and mapped out way. And it's not confined to a calendar year. The start date isn't January 1 and the cutoff isn't December 31. I'm talking an overhaul on my (our) modus operandi.  I want less so that I can have more. This is something I worked toward last year as we prepared to move, and have continued to do as I unpack all of our belongings and decide what stays and what goes.


What does that mean? Here are some of my thoughts.

I want less stuff, to have more space to live. Lower spending to have higher savings and maybe a house toward the end of the year. Less time wasted (hello, Google Reader) to give way to more time spent on things that matter (like reading, and drumming up some freelance work, and knitting, and walking the dogs an hour or so each day). Less time being 'busy' at home, where I am alone and isolated, and more time being OUT, doing things, seeing people, making friends.

Less pee in the carpet, so the smell is less bad, so that I can invite [more] people over. Rory, I'm looking at you.

I think my overall approach to this new year - this new life in Colorado, really - is to simply. Take a look around, boil everything down to the essentials, and free up the time, the space, the resources and the brain power, to do the things that really matter to us. We have so much stuff, so much going on, so many to-dos. How much of it actually matters? And what is it preventing us from having, or doing, or spending time on?

People. Eli and Rory. Giving. Becoming more self-reliant. Getting outdoors. Traveling around this new state of ours. For me, having high-quality yarn is big. As is learning how to grow things. And spending a lot of quiet time, learning who I am and letting Ashley come through, rather than studying up on how I 'should' be or look or do or decorate. (Brian might add sub-zero sleeping bags and trips to the lake and these things called Yak Tracks.)

I really want to get rid of the white noise in our lives, so to speak. Make more room for people, not stuff, as my sister-in-law aptly put it. That's what I want this year.

What about you?

aquacrestgate

Is it just me, or do you get a secret thrill when you use up a container of bath product?

Shampoo, conditioner, face wash, tooth paste...it's all the same. I anticipate The End for a week. I look forward to it. The sense of accomplishment, the fun of a brand new container, the relief of knowing I don't have to use this particular product again for a while - or the mild anxiety of wondering whether the next one will work as well.  I love the whole experience.  It's strange, but I do.  It doesn't take much to entertain me.

So imagine my frustration when I realized that I am currently using the neverending tube of toothpaste. It's a tube of Aquafresh Extreme Clean and I don't know if i love it or hate it. Clean feeling after using?  Check. Clean feeling lasting quite a while, which gives me jollies?  Check.  But this stuff has a really strong, really 'cold' effect. Which was great back a few months when I opened it - and would probably be great in the summer.  But right now, here in Denver, where the cold tap water is approx. 32.5 degrees, my teeth go into thermal shock every time I brush and then rinse. It's like brushing with a snowball and rinsing with ice water. The sensation is painfully, paralyzingly cold.

But I have been SOCLOSE to finishing this tube that I just stuck with it. Because I'm stubborn like that.

And for a week now, twice a day, I have gleefully thought to myself, 'THIS is the time the tube will run out.' Seriously, I have had my next tube selected and waiting in my drawer for days.  And ever time I go to squeeze, there is more toothpaste in there. It keeps coming. My agony continues. The end may never come.

Have you ever been faced with something that you are desperate to replace but it just won't run out? (Doesn't that make you MAD?)