It's Friday - you know the drill

I have a lot of roses blooming right now. My irises have also really popped. And, of course, there's Boomer. First a shot of him ready to go after the frisbee, then when he's all done playing.

It's Friday - so it's Photos!

Leading off with Boomer this week. He wanted to get under the picnic table and this was the ony route available. The last photo is one of my rosebuds - getting ready to pop. There are about a dozen buds on that one bush. The white flower is on my rhododendron and I have no idea what the little purple bells are. I'll have to do some research. Can you see the bug on one of the blossoms? Love my camera!

Happiness is....

....a finished object. My stole - see below.

Frost and Frisbee

I woke up this morning, took the recycling out and what did I see? FROST! Frost on the grass. What's up with that. It's the middle of May. A is off on his golfing trip. Boomer and I are surviving, but I think that Boomer is seriously depressed. How do you explain to a dog that his human is coming back for him. He has his happy moments though - like yesterday. After I got done mowing the lawn, I brought the dog out and we played some Frisbee. He has really taken to that game. He doesn't quite get the rules though. He usually does not catch it. He'll pick it up off the ground and, true to his terrier breeding, he'll first try to shake the Frisbee and break it's neck. He is a hunting dog you know. Then, and this must be the bulldog part, he runs away with it. He forgets the part where the dog is supposed to bring his catch to his master. Sooner or later he'll bring it back and I get to throw it again. We sometimes get in a good rhythm of catch and release. Eventually, he gets tired and either just sits down where he is with the Frisbee, or takes it and heads under the picnic table, which he has adopted as his outdoor den. I enjoy playing Frisbee with him because he's so happy and enjoys it - and because it wears him out!

Friday Photos

Some garden pictures - our lilac bush and one of the azaleas. We have two new azaleas - out in front of the house. We took out the shrubs - well A took them out, I just helped cart them away. We plan to put hydrangeas there as well. I put a before picture in there so you can see how it used to look. And of course - a Boomer picture. He likes to hang out under the picnic table. It's his "outdoor den"! Soon - pictures of my finished stole. I finished it Wednesday night. I finished another one - a moebius stole - that I had been working on during my lunch hours. Now, starting one of the blankets for the twins that were just born.

Happiness is..

...playing frisbee in your own backyard. Boomer's not the best frisbee player. He rarely catches it on the fly and he has a tendency to keep it and run around for a while before letting you throw it again. But, he has fun playing and running around his yard. And I do too.

Those pit in your stomach moments

I've been having a lot of them lately - you know what I mean. You get that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's when you spend more than you intended on something, but don't realize until it's too late to back out. Or when you realize you forgot to pay an important bill or you forgot to do something important at work. How about when you think you hear a noise in the middle of the night - were you just dreaming or was it real. I just plow through them and try to stay calm - but damn - I feel like I've been having a lot of these moments lately. That, and I seem to keep falling up the stairs. What's up with that! I did it once as a 6 or 7 year old and needed 5 stitches in my lip. So far, no major injuries, but it's annoying that I've become a bit of a klutz. Okay - I've always had a slight tendency towards klutziness - walking into the corners of desks, etc - but why all the sudden this falling up the stairs? I think it's weird.
Anyway, I'm just about done with the two knitting projects I have going. Next it's onto baby blankets. I need to knit 3 of them. And yay! for me - I get to go with the color family I want on all of them. I have one pattern picked out and the yarn ready to go. The other two are for identical twins, so I'm debating whether to use the same color and two different patterns, same pattern and different colors or different colors and different patterns. There has to be some distinction - can't do the same color and same pattern. They each need something of their own.

Friday Photos

The usual - garden pics and Boomer. Next week I should have finished pictures of my stole!

Sometimes when you least expect it....and peonies

I wanted to blog about two things today - hence the odd title. I'm starting with the peonies. This is part of my learning crusade. So - did you know that peonies can be yellow! I did not. I thought they only came in shades of white and the pink family. They are name for Paeon, who was a student of the Greek god of medicine, who became jealous of Paeon and turned him into a flower! The peony is a traditional symbol in China and is the state flower of Indiana. Peonies are fragrant and attract ants because of the nectar on the outside of the blooms. Peonies are creatures of habit - good for a CT girl like me. (CT is the land of steady habits and that fits me to a T.) They do not like to be moved and may not bloom for several years if you move them, but once comfortable with their new surroundings, they will bloom every year. The blooms are heavy for the stalk, so they need support. And after the blooms die, you do have a nice shrubby looking plant for the balance of the year. In the language of flowers, peonies have the meaning of shame or bashfulness. That's because nymphs are alleged to have hidden in the many folds of the blossom. I have several peony plants in my garden. Some were planted by previous owners along the neighbors fence. I planted some in our garden the year we moved in. I've been surprised this spring by the plants that are popping up! I had quite given up on some of them, but it now looks like I have 4 or 5 in my garden!

So - the other topic. Sometimes when you least expect it, something comes up and bites you in the butt. This morning, on facebook, one of my friends sent me Happy Mother's Day wishes. Yup. to me. the infertile. the barren one. I'm pretty sure she knows that A & I don't have kids. Her husband is also in R-1. We've been at plenty of functions together - most notably the Christmas Party, where we clearly did not have children. So, I don't know why she sent it. Maybe she just sent it to everyone on her friends list. Nice way to start the day. I blocked the application so that no one else can unwittingly do the same thing.

To end on a good note, a friend of mine who struggled to conceive is happily pregnant and recently found out the sex of her little one. I have been waiting anxiously to hear, so that I could go buy some yarn for the gift I want to knit for her. I was hoping for for it to go a certain way, because there are a couple of colors I have just fallen in love with - and I got my way! Now if only A's fellow firefighter and his wife would have their twins so that I know what colors to go with for them. I have such ideas!

too much alone time

That's what I'm getting lately - too much alone time. A was away for a week at the Fire Dept Instructors Conference. Then he came back and was teaching a lot, including a trip to Scranton to teach this past weekend. Tonight, I looked at the calendar and saw his golf trip to Myrtle Beach that starts next week. I knew about it, but I thought it was just a weekend. It's more like a week. I was about to feed the dog when I saw it. I just stood there and cried. Poor dog didn't know what to do. It's not like I haven't gone away for a week and left A at home. But I've never been gone this much - and not all at once within a four week period. When you add his normal work tours in there, I think we'll have had less than 10 days together over the last month. I didn't know it was going to be this bad when he said he wanted to do these trips - as if I he would have accepted me saying no to them anyway. I miss him when he's gone. It's lonely. And for me, unlike for him when I'm gone, there's the dog. It all falls on me. So I'm a little pissed too. He'll be away, having fun. I'll be home alone, missing him, needing to put aside what I want to do because I have to be responsible for the dog - entertaining him, feeding him, walking him. And then there's needing to do everything around the house while he's gone. It's hard enough that I normally end up doing more of the household chores - but it really weighs on me when he's gone and I can't even rely on him for simple things like taking out the recycling. So, I cried tonight because I know what's ahead of me over the next two weeks.

Friday Photos

Some pictures from the garden and of course, one of Boomer - he's dutifully following A around the yard. I've got a bunch more that I think I'll load up in the next few days. I was playing with the long lens and close up shots.