Not dead yet

Ahoy there folks!  How's things?

Things are moving along here.  Our parents have been working on details for the Wedding Do this summer so that's definitely happening.  About 125 people coming, local catering, people bringing campers, should be a good time.  The most exciting part to me is that someone else is dealing with most of this.  I hate organizing things.  I'm good at it, but it's definitely not on my list of Things To Do For Fun.  Or At All.  We're going to drive up and then I'll fly back and Jay will stay another week or so to visit more.

In other news, we have FINALLY!!! finished putting up the tile in our shower.  It's so pretty.  We used far more of the slate tile than we originally planned, so we'll only have enough left over to do the entryway floor instead of doing backsplashes around the bathroom.  There's still grouting/sealing/door installation, but the end is in sight!  So exciting!  Here's what it looks like now:

My garden has been in for a couple months and is doing... okay.  Most of the seeds I planted didn't do well, we had some hot dry weather early in the season and they weren't able to get established.  Lately, though, we've had tons of rain, so all the greens are doing well.  Anything that's fruiting/veggie-ing is pretty much on hold though, waiting for more heat.  We're supposed to have more next week so I'm expecting those to start going crazy.  Tomatoes, man, they're going to be where it's at.  I accidentally bought 2 plants, and last year with only one plant producing we had a bazillion.  I predict that pasta and enchiladas and tomato-based everything are going to be popular.  I also unwisely planted a summer squash seed, not really expecting it to come to much.  So 3 guesses which plant is starting to produce already...  Meanwhile, all of my broccoli, kale, zucchini, and the first round of brussels sprouts all died.  None of the funky seeds that my friend from India gave me even came up, except maybe a jalapeno (unless it's a weed.  Which is quite probable in my garden).

Happily, all of the plants that I bought are doing well - tomatoes (have harvested a couple and there are more turning yellow/red now), a red pepper (one pepper on it so far that's starting to turn red), strawberry (runners are starting to take over, we'll see how it holds up through the heat), snap pea (actually, this is now dead, I think one of the cats may have sat on it.  It was doing quite well for a while, I even ate a couple peas off it), chocolate mint (had to pull some out, it was taking over the world).  The much-mauled catnip plant has pulled through (so far).  That one gets rolled on by the cats every couple days, I'm very surprised it's alive.

We went to see a production of the musical Spamalot (based on Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail), it was awesome.  Enough changes from the movie to keep fans interested, and lots of humour in general.  On the same day, we had tickets for the FW Symphony in the Garden (symphony in the botanical gardens where you can bring lawn chairs and adult beverages and a picnic).  It wasn't exactly our type of music (Gershwin), but it was nice weather and we had a good meal, so when they lost power just before the halftime break we left.  Also because it was 9:00 on a Sunday and I'm old people.

Where did that last 6 months go?

Hi people!  If there are any people left.  So I started this post a while ago, and things have since changed, but I'll leave that for my next post.  (Late) update from a couple months ago:

So, things have been going along approximately like normal.  I work in oilfield, so lots of layoffs have happened.  Turns out it's an opportunity to learn things! Because you have to, what with all the people gone and all their work to do!  Unfortunately, now I'm the only one who knows how to do some things.  I pretty much always have a pile of things that I don't have time to do.  I mean, I always used to, but now the pile is even larger and more varied than it used to be.  It'll look good on my resume, or so I tell myself.

To add to the feeling of not getting enough done, this past weekend Jay had ear surgery.  Just like last time, I forgot that I wouldn't have time during the surgery to get things done.  We also completely forgot to get his prescriptions filled beforehand, so I ran out during the surgery to do that.  Added to that, there were minor complications - his IV came out of the vein during surgery and his hand puffed up HUGE so they kept him in for extended recovery.  Good news is there were no lasting issues.  But the surgery unexpectedly took up the entire day, plus we'd been up early which threw off my sleep schedule, so I didn't get a lot done over the remainder of the weekend besides napping and trying to make Jay comfortable-ish.  Jay's anesthesiologist was able to get his wake-up cocktail right though, so Jay didn't have the extended grogginess and nausea that he's had previously, and his recovery since has been going really well (knock on wood).  Plus now I have a house husband for a few days!  Who is recovering and sleepy and can't lift things, so is pretty much useless.  But he's cute, so I'll keep him.

In other news, it's the nicest time of year here in Texas, everything is green.  My garden is doing pretty well now that we've had a bunch of rain - I picked the first 4 beans a couple days ago, there's a tomato growing, and one of my corn plants is a foot tall.  I had to let the arugula I planted in the fall go to seed because it was taking too much effort to pick all the flowers off every day.  The swiss chard I planted last spring is still going strong too.  I started some asparagus this year and it's doing pretty well, I'm excited for next year when I'll be able to harvest some.  I also planted a peach tree, which was my biggest goal for living here (yep, even the dreams are bigger in Texas).

Shower status: it's ongoing.  This is, as always, our biggest issue - if there's no pressing need for it, renovations take forever.  It takes a lot of time because we don't do this very often, and so we don't want to do it, so we put it off, which makes it even harder to get back into working on it.  Did I mention it seems hard?  It's not really, we're just old people, mostly in the knees.  But it is going.  The tile is so pretty.   SO PRETTY.  And it'll be awesome once it's done.  Some day.