Home Posts tagged "real life" (Page 2)

Tag: real life

Ten Things I Learned On My Spring Vacation

I’m back from vacation! Did you miss me? (Don’t answer that.) If you’re anything like me, coming back to real life is always hard, although it’s also good to be home. And if you’re anything like me, you love to overthink analyze everything. So here goes: Things I Have Learned About Myself On Vacation. 1. When I’m on vacation, I really just want to go on leisurely walks…explore neighborhoods to find delicious restaurants and fun coffee shops…nap/lounge around…rinse and repeat. This is also true on long weekends at home, or even longer staycations–except of course it’s cheaper to do it at home. 2. But it’s nice to be away from all the “shoulds” of home, and my ongoing mental to-do list. 3. I always think I’m going to get lots of writing done. This is a lie, especially if seeing/visiting family is involved. (I miss my folks and want to spend tons of time with them when I can. Thank goodness I’m an introvert and need recharge time, and thank goodness they’re all fine with that.) The only time it ever happens is if the vacation is designated as a writing retreat and nothing else. Even then, 4 or 5 solid hours a day is my limit. Otherwise, it’s 1 or 2 hours, tops. 4. Maybe that’s okay. After all, a person needs some time off from the little niggling voice in the back of the brain that says “You should be writing!” 5. My mattress is clearly too soft,…

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The Summer of Not Gardening

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that my spouse and I have been doing a vegetable garden since we bought a house in 2012. In this climate, that means working the soil and sowing seeds in late April or early May, a mad scramble to buy and plant seedlings at the end of May or into June depending on the tenderness of the plant, and weeding and watering and harvesting up to the end of September or early October. Turns out that’s a lot of work. I was excited to finally have a house where I could garden, and I dragged my spouse into being excited too. But…problems abounded. We had too big a garden for our time and energy levels; there were hungry squirrels in the area who like to take one bite out of each ripe tomato; and the killer–an infestation of weeds that spread by underground roots and could never be completely eradicated. So this summer, we covered over the vegetable bed with landscape fabric and mulch, and let it lie fallow for a year while (we hope) suppressing the weeds to some extent. We thought we would buy some potted vegetables. We bought rosemary, which got used a little, and one cherry tomato plant, which was sickly all summer and produced very few tomatoes–just enough to keep the squirrels fed. One day I was out on our back deck, writing, and a squirrel picked the only ripe tomato and sat there…

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