Category Archives: doing it wrong

I thought I’d take a lap through the yard and take a few dead garden photos before doing some long neglected clean up work.

Then it started raining. I don’t mind a drizzle. But then it rained harder so I ran in the house.

These are the only two photos I took.

We need raking out front, in the back, and along both sides of the house. So much raking. I still haven’t mixed in the compost. I’m sure there are still potatoes out there.

Earlier this week we ate a butternut squash I grew and it was fantastic. There are still a few little tomatoes on the window sill trying to get ripe. That’s the garden report.

I almost completely failed NaNoWriMo. I always have a hard time getting started. I’m still writing everything out of order so I don’t have a great feel for my word count. This is my best guess.

I can’t tell you how long I fiddled with the cropping on this. The original photo was from a goofy angle and I couldn’t figure out what would be the least distressing to look at for people who don’t like looking at crooked photos.

My Auntie gave me the paper doll a long time ago and during that 15 minute period a few years ago when I was trying to be more creative I put her in a frame and she lives at the office now. I’m sure I got the idea from a blog or Etsy shop.

That’s November. Back to my once a week posting and hopefully a word count update on the last writing project.

My favorite sweater for the past many years has been the Pendleton cardigan. I have worn 3 out. I have at least 4 in my closet right now. I wear a sweater almost every day of my life because I am cold when it’s cold outside and I am cold when it is air conditioned inside. My favorites are the merino wool because they are thin but still warm.

I haven’t had great luck with my cardigans the last few years. It seems like the colors were icky or the color I wanted was sold out. This year, I started early and I went to the new downtown store in October to get myself a new sweater. I did not have a good experience.

The new store is smaller and there were at least 4 people working there and they all seemed to be really busy doing something that involved avoiding customer service. When I asked about the cardigans they told me I needed to look at a catalog.

I stomped off in a huff.

Eventually, I commenced with a clicking exercise and searched around for cardigans online and found Woolovers. (wool overs or woo lovers?)

Check out all the colors!.

I almost bought 4 sweaters on the first go but I got nervous about the sizes. I bought a trial black sweater since my black cardigan is the one I had to retire. (For work use. It’s still fine to wear at home.) It just got here and it’s perfect. More sweaters to come.

I very occasionally look at Craigslist ads for recreation. Don’t do this. It’s such a waste of time and no good will come of it.

One of my favorite ones was someone looking for a housekeeper. They wanted deep cleaning every single day–they had a whole list. You had to move furniture and climb under things and dust on top of things. Every day. Plus help with childcare, cooking, cleaning and errands and I think it was a flat rate like $400 a week. You could smell the crazy just from reading the ad. You knew these people were never going to be happy with whatever their worker did. I was afraid for anyone who answered the ad.

There was another one for a short term roommate and I get that when you’re looking for someone to live in your home, you have to have some rules. But this person had a very short time period, like three months, and limits on what you could bring into the house and when you could use the kitchen. You had to be quiet and not park your car close by and on and on with the rules. And the rent was above market. I wonder if anyone answered.

You can tell I’m running out of steam. Two more posts.

• The proper way to use the video on a phone which includes sideways not narrow ways and not whipping it back and forth when showing the scene.
• Titling electronic documents in some meaningful way which includes re-titling documents from the scanner.
• Using relevant email subject lines.
• Running a meeting which includes how to act in a meeting.
• Correct usage of I, me, and myself.

If there are skills you’d like to add, please leave a comment. I will be sure to see it in the next 2-3 weeks.

This rose has been blooming in the front yard for the past week. All the other roses are long gone. I appreciate its sturdy optimism. I should have snipped it and brought it in the house the moment I saw it. But it’s hanging on out there bright and shiny for everyone.

It used to be that if you left a comment, I would get it in my email. That’s no longer happening. I checked the settings and nothing has changed so maybe my email is filtering out my own messages. I couldn’t figure it out in the 5 minutes I allotted for problem solving that, so for now while I will eventually see your comment, it might take awhile.

I can’t wait until we’ve come full circle and it’s cool and edgy to name your business using real words. This place could be called Happy Juice Bar, or Aunt June’s Delicious Juice Drinks, or Pacific Northwest Juice and Beverage Co.

This is from when Kira and I made little pies and then baked them into cupcakes.

On more than one occasion my mother-in-law described a borscht recipe that she used to make. I have only made vegetarian borscht and none of my cookbooks had a borscht recipe so I set out to find a recipe online so I could make it for her.

This lifestyle blogging thing is out of control. I can’t tell you how many recipes I found that consisted of long homey tales of mom-ery and family lore with dozens of photos of the same bowl of soup, sometimes close up, sometimes from far away, sometimes with a gauzy filter.

Then the recipe itself was about 40 photos with every conceivable step illustrated as if seeing a photo of a cutting board and onions being scrapped into a pot is necessary. And every single blog has a giant popover so you can sign up for Beautiful Nourishing Wellness Mommy’s newsletter because who doesn’t wish for even more email? Especially with gauzy photos.

I ended up using a combination of recipes and the outcome was disappointing. We all ate it. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great either.