Somewhere East of Life

The Retirement Saga
Had a bit of an odd weekend. Saturday I went out to Mom's office to help her clean it out and get everything moved out. It took us 9 hours to finish the process and get her things either packed up to take home, or transferred over to her temporary cubicle for her last 2 weeks. I think her plans for the home stretch there are to finish out projects, clean out her file cabinets (all bazillion of them), and help train the new guy.

Its a rather strange process to begin with. Her boss had the brilliant idea to hire a new guy before she left so she could help train them. Sounds reasonable, right? The only problem was her boss hadn't taken into consideration how that was going to happen. At first, her boss thought to just have her telecommute. But her office and computer were to be given to the new guy. You can't telecommute without having a system to log into, and a general computer wouldn't have her work files available. For that she'd need her work desktop. So, new guy can't have her computer. But since they're giving her office away before she leaves, where will they setup her computer? Plus, she still has billions of files to go through.

So in the end, the offered up a spare cubicle in another department for her to use. Saturday, we also packed up the majority of her files into boxes and took them over to her cubicle so she can go through them in her leisure in her cubicle without bothering the new guy too much.

In all honesty, I don't think she'll telecommute much, except for maybe a day or three when she isn't feeling at her best.

The Gardening Saga
Mom and I finally got time to do some gardening together on Sunday. We still didn't get the side bed planted with our new plants, but at least the majority of the weeds are gone. The bed stretches along the entire side of the house, so it's a bit big. It's also been taken over by lawn grass. At one time we had put newspaper underneath to prevent that, and it worked. But it's since composted.

I'm planning on putting down ground cover. Maybe some creeping thyme, or some royal carpet alyssum. I've got seeds for both, so I may just throw a bunch down and see what comes up. I have some creeping jenny that I know will take over pretty easily too, but that stuff is hard to pull up once it establishes itself somewhere (we had some jump out of a pot by the front porch and work itself into the lawn this last season).

Hopefully over the next day or two I'll get the ferns and columbines planted in there. It is, as ever, a work in progress.

The Tree Saga
On a related note to the retirement, Mom has a ginormous tree in her office she's bringing home tonight. My job is to rearrange the living room (and clean it out a bit) to make room for it. Should be fun. I've got a spot picked out, now I just need to make sure it ccan go in there. Not looking forward to that, but at least I have something to keep me busy for today.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

My mother and I had a relaxing weekend. It was a three day weekend for her due to Memorial Day on Monday. I think she rather needed the rest. The closer she gets to retirement means more and more work for her to finish out her projects before she leaves her position. She's rather exhausted.

We've been trying to clean out all of our storage rooms and get rid of furniture we don't need. It's been a long process though as we've both been up and down health wise. We took a break back in December due to us both being sick all the time. We're better now, and with retirement looming on us, we're trying to work as fast as we can to get it done before she retires. That gives us a month.

So, for this week I've got to finish spring cleaning and rearranging the living room. We're considering a move to Wyoming in a year or so, so for now we're also taking this spring clean as a chance to go through everything we own (room by room) and get rid of the excess as we go. I've set a timeline for the end of the week for the living room as my Mom has a co-workers tall son coming in next Saturday to help us short folks change light bulbs, and also help us move in her oversized plants from her office.

Pfft. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I've got some plants and seeds to get in the ground too since the monsoon has moved on.

So, in summary: my week is going to be super busy. Hope you all are going to have a good week!

Finally feeling like the migraines of hell week is over, so I finally got up to making my mumkin for my front porch.

 

I also got a small bit of candy in case kids come by.

 

Anyone else doing anything particularly special?

...but only because I've got a monster blackberry bush to trim back.

 

Well, its actually my neighbors but its creeped all the way onto my deck now.

 

Loving the colder weather. Finally getting to pull out the heaters and warmer clothes.

 

What's your favorite part of Autumn?

I haven't updated in awhile, but because I've been sick. Not any one thing, just a combination of things that meant hell for a bit.

I'm on the mend now though, and of course that means my dreams last night were a bit weird.

I dreamed about the Russian Embassy. Which is odd, because I know all of two words in Russian (yes, and goodbye) and even only that much from various action films.

I think I had to Russian government types to dinner at my house, and then I lost them (ie stolen away from my rival). So I went all petty revenge on the rival and reported her to the Russian Embassy. Or something.

I don't remember a lot.

o.0 Speaking of dreams, my spring flowers are starting to come up. Including those that I planted late in the season last year (and didn't come up). It's still a bit cold here for even the trees to be budding out, so it was cool to see that.

Anyone else got early spring something-er-others coming up?

Last year our winter season lasted so long that the spring flowers struggled to come up in early June, but by that point it was too late. None of our flowers bloomed last year. I'm afraid the ones that needed to come to seed won't come back up. My Black Knight delphiniums for one. I've had them come back every year for the past... 10 years or so. It may be a first if they don't do it again this year.



The winter was very cold this year, but it's finally starting to warm up again. It's not snowing much anymore, and even gets up to 55 or so some days. Our lilies are coming up really good, as is the bleeding heart. So there is hope we may actually have flowers this year.





Ooh! And I'm wanting to replant my garden in a new design. One of my magazines had offered several garden plans free this year. And yet another one had construction plans for several simple garden accessories (raised tiered flower beds, garden benches, etc.). So we shall see. Anything that can help draw me out of my funk and get me interesting in something (anything) again is a good thing.

Only managed to do an hour of that very thing in the last 2 weeks. My mom and I both have been lax on yard maintenance in general since last fall. One or both of us were sick all the time. Never much energy.

She's till on serious recovery from her bronchitis (zilch for extra energy right now). I don't have much either, and just about everything makes me dizzy. I'm trying though.

I do miss gardening. It always used to be such a peaceful respite for me.

Yesterday I cleaned off my porch and the pots (we've got two on every step leading up to the front door). Today I'm trying for one of the flower gardens.

Hopefully this weekend I can do the back deck. We're going to have to repaint everything this year, from the porch and deck, doors, and trim. Fun!

Okay, off to plug in the music on my Blackberry and set to work. I give me 30 minutes before I whimp out. We shall see!

We've got Spring cleanup in the city right now. The city trash has given us two weeks to get the extra stuff out there. I would have started last week, but my mother and I were both sick.

So. I was all set to go out today. I got my gardening gloves on. I packed my gardening tool bag. I was determined to at least clean one flower bed.

Put one foot out the door into the cold and minutes away from snowing weather and turned right back around.

...

Might have been a good thing in the end. I was feeling rather dizzy all day. I ended up spending my time reorganizing my bookmarks.

Television

On a side note, my Mom and I have taken a break from watching our regular TV shows. On Netflix we've made our way through Miss Marple, are working on Murder She Wrote now, and will be trading off with Touch of Frost soon.

Love murder mystery shows. :D We've got plans to start on Poirot after we're done with Touch of Frost.