Category: Blog

The Hits Keep Coming

Blog, Garden

My obtuse–but hopefully entertainingly colorful–post back in November, The Gut-Punches of Life, gets an addendum.

We took another series of punches-to-the-face starting in January, but we’re in recovery now. Things might even be looking up. Which, yes, makes us increasingly nervous.

Next month marks 2 years since [redacted].

I’m just fucking tired. Tired of all the responsibility. Tired of making things work. Tired of pushing forward day after fucking day.

Almost tired enough to punt the garden this year. Even tho I already have several dozen seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, various flowers and herbs). I thought once I had the seeds started and they had sprouted I would feel better. But all it did was add to the load.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy is pulling me forward, tho. I’ve slowly been getting the garden infrastructure re-assembled. I’ll have the irrigation set up soon. I’ll scatter sunflowers and wildflowers around the front lawn. Get the lawn mowed (around the wildflowers, of course). And get the seedlings transplanted.

I’m not promising to do any other planting this year, tho. Maybe I’ll feel more in the spirit of things come the middle of May.

I love my garden. I love fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. I love seeing the bees and wasps and butterflies buzzing around the zinnias and marigolds and sunflowers. I enjoy the challenge of trying new plants.

But this year it just feels like one more thing on my list that I have to take care of, and I’m tired.

<deep breath>

I’ll survive. The garden will … maybe not thrive, but at least grow and be pretty, and we can have BLTs with homegrown tomatoes on homemade bread come July. Something to look forward to.

And that’s what I think I need more of: Things to look forward to.

-David

My GenX Childhood: More “Caged” than “Free Range”

Blog

I wish my childhood was described by the popular GenX memes going around.

Yes, my siblings and I (there was a crew of us) were sent outside for reasons that boiled down to “I said so,” even on hot summer days that bordered on unlivable. Yes, we drank from the water hose, and, yes, we spent a lot of time unsupervised. We more or less raised each other through the 80s. But the only time we got to spend with friends was at school or church, we weren’t technically “latchkey,” seldom had to cook our meals, and we were never “free range.”

There were 7 of us, born in batches across nearly 17 years. Two children (a boy and a girl), a five year gap, two more children (boy, boy), a three year gap, then three more children (girl, boy, boy) spaced at oddly regular two-year intervals. We were born up and down the East Coast and as far west as Texas, an unlikely collection of Southerners and Yankees and whatever it is comes out of Texas. 😉

Yes, my parents were religious. No, they weren’t Catholic. And, yes, my father was in the military, tho he was out before I (the 3rd child) was born.

The two oldest children bailed on the rest of us as soon as they could, so they don’t really enter into this. Plus, they’re technically Boomers. 😉

After the loss of free babysitting from my oldest sister, it became quite common for the rest of us to be:

  • Schlepped every-fucking-where as a group; and
  • Left at home for extended periods on a near-daily basis.

Sometimes, we managed to be both hauled around and abandoned simultaneously. First packed into the family car (station wagon, van, whatever we had that was running at the time), then abandoned in the parking lot of a Safeway or Atwoods or some other store while the folks did their shopping inside. We learned to bring books. And to crack the windows.

We spent a lot of time unsupervised at home in the summers. Dad had a (perpetually failing) small business, and Mom went to work with him. They would generally come back for lunch, then leave again. You’d think we could’ve slept in during those summers, but … no. Everyone got up for breakfast at the same time. Mom & Dad would take off. And then …

(more…)

I Built a Shelf

Blog

Seen here, posed on the bench I built last week. With bonus black cat.

The design is a bit different because it’s made to fit *into* a space in my walk-in closet, amidst the built-in shelves already there (installed by a previous owner). The shelf is, therefore, 31 7/8 inches wide, 60 inches tall, and 11 3/4 inches deep. I only put backboard on a couple shelves because (a) where it’s going to be “installed” has almost no horizontal wiggle room, (b) I decided to use up some scraps that fit almost perfectly, and (c) I didn’t want to wrestle a full sheet of 1/4 inch plywood from where it’s currently ensconced.

I bought the supplies and started building this shelf back in February, but it suffered delays.

The first delay was the onset of gardening season. The second delay was working on a project with my son. The third delay was losing my job.

But now it is done.

-David

I Built a Bench

Blog, Garden

An outdoor bench, to be specific, for my backyard garden.

Last week I realized I had accumulated enough scrap and leftover pressure-treated (PT) lumber that I could build a simple bench. The scraps and leftovers were of varying ages and silvering, some going back to 2023, I think, when I built my garden shed. And they’ve just been accumulating in the backyard. Idle lumber is the devil’s tinderbox, maybe?

The original design was all 2x4s, but I had a left over 2×6 from … something? So I adapted.

I won’t build this design again. It’s one I found on the web after a bit of searching, and it looked OK. But now that I’ve built it, I don’t like how the back supports are put together. Also, the back is too short for me (6′ 2″) to sit comfortably for very long. Should I decide I need another bench for my garden, I’ll dig deeper. Or design my own.

Still, it was fun to spin up the miter saw and build something new, on an impulse.

-David