I’ve long had a dream to live on a farm, totally old-school style the way my great grandmother lived her entire life. The circumstances of my life have prevented that, but today I took the first step towards my dream. It’s a tiny step, sure, but it’s more than what I’ve done in the past.

This might not look like much, but that right there is our humble beginnings of a garden. Planted are two beefsteak tomato plants, two red bell pepper plants, and a big container of cucumber plants. Let’s hope I don’t kill them all. Next year I want to start earlier and plant a whole bunch more stuff. Ideally, I’d like to have potatoes, yams, red & green bell peppers, hot peppers of some sort, cucumbers, carrots, and corn at the very least next season. But, let’s just see how this season goes first.

I also signed up to participate in the One Local Summer challenge which began this week. I didn’t have a full meal that consisted of all local food, unfortunately. I hope to do that as the summer goes on. Funds are tight, though, so it will just depend on how much local chicken/turkey costs. I need to do some more research. The start of this challenge came up on me faster than expected. Summer isn’t for another few weeks, after all. :-)

In my dream world, I’d have chickens and all sorts of foods from the garden that I cultivate and can, thereby keeping our kitchen stocked with extremely local food. The idea of knowing exactly what is in the majority of my food, where it all comes from, and the cost savings alone are enough to make me salivate without even beginning to take into account how delicious all of it would be. Maybe some day.

Here’s to a fruitful harvest!

Growing up, we always had wall-to-wall carpeting in our house. With the exception of the kitchen/dining room combo, the two bathrooms, and the garage, our entire house was carpeted. Then when I was 9, I became best friends with someone whose entire house was hardwood floors. They weren’t the cleanliest people, and so I grew up thinking that having hardwood floors meant that whenever you walked around in bare feet, you’d get stuff stuck to your soles. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized my friend’s parents were slobs and that having hardwood floors doesn’t necessarily equal getting heebed out every time you walk around sock- and shoe-less.

A few years ago, we had family members who required us to take our shoes off every time we entered - they didn’t want us tracking in stuff all over the house. It kind of annoyed me because it wasn’t a rule I grew up with, and it certainly wasn’t one we enforced at our own house. I figured cleaning the floors were just part and parcel of household tasks and they were being a bit pretentious by not allowing us to keep our shoes on.

Fast forward to today. The majority of our main floor is hardwood and tile, our living room being the only exception. Yesterday the boys swept all of the floors - there was quite a bit of debris. And today? Today, in the fifteen minutes between the time I got out of the shower and got dressed, my feet felt like they did when I was a young girl at my friend’s house. I was so grossed out that I swept before I left for work, even though I was running late. I swept up all of this:

How gross, huh? So now I’m rethinking my stance on mandatory shoe removal in the foyer. We are obviously tracking in way more dirt than I thought we ever could. And I definitely don’t want to sweep every single day this winter. By the way, isn’t my snowman cute? It’s a holiday Wallflower from Bath & Body Works.

So what say you? Is asking everyone who enters to take their shoes off pretentious or practical? I’m thinking even if it is pretentious, we might be enforcing the rule anyway. Who wants to spend all winter sweeping and vacuuming? Not me, that’s for sure.

I used to blog regularly, even prolifically and now I’m sporadic at best. Getting a new position at work has really taken a toll on my blogging! Hopefully you all still love me. And with feed readers, it’s not so annoying when people don’t update since you only read when there is an update. The rest of the time you (mostly) forget about me. Right?

So I’m still doing the vegetarian/vegan thing. I had eggs last week, but this week I’ve decided to take them out, which makes me a full-fledged vegan. I have a lot of people ask me what exactly do I eat since there are so many things I don’t have on my food plan. I’m thinking of compiling a food plan/cookbook for the vegetarian/vegan/sugar-free/flour-free/wheat-free lifestyle into a PDF document and selling it for a few bucks on my blogs. What do you think?

Today I had a pelvic and transvaginal ultrasound. Good times. My bladder was so full, the ultrasound technician thanked me. Aren’t I a good girl? I remember when I was pregnant, I used to get berated for not drinking enough when I went in for the ultrasounds. I’m surprised I didn’t explode all over the bed, though - that was so uncomfortable. And of course all I could think of was dirty stuff like the 2girls1cup video. I thought to myself that I could do a 1girl2cups video there in the ultrasound bathroom, I had to pee so much when I was finally allowed. I wonder how many people lose it before getting to the toilet? I bet it’s a pretty significant number. That statistic needs to be on a game show like Card Sharks (remember that show?!). I think that would have been a great question: What percentage of women don’t make it to the toilet after an ultrasound is over and end up peeing all over themselves as they race to the bathroom in their hospital gown with the back open? I’m going to go with 43%, Bill.

The whole reason I went in was to see if there’s something that’s causing me to have the break through bleeding every month. The tech said she didn’t see anything obvious, but would send the results to my doctor and he’ll call me. Ironically, the transvaginal ultrasound wand thingie has triggered some bleeding - I hope it’s not too intense. I’m so tired of bleeding all the damn time. Rob said between me bleeding, and the PMS, he gets 5 good days out of me a month. HA! That’s an exaggeration. I think.

We totally transformed our living room this past week. Here are a few pictures. Tell me what you think in the comments!

Hope you had a swell Monday. Mine was pretty okay, all things considered.

Wah. I am the worst sick person - I turn into such a whiny baby and I’m just generally miserable and I act 3 years old. I can feel a head cold or something coming on. I’ve got the post-nasal drip, headache and body aches and just general malaise. I get so indignant, too, reasoning that I eat so healthy and take care of myself so I should never succumb to any type of sickness. I should be immune, damn it.

Tomorrow morning we’re having a new couch delivered. I think I may just stay home sick to be here for the delivery and then just take it easy for the day. Wait until you see this couch - it’s so gorgeous! Chocolate brown sectional with microfiber on top and leather on bottom, four recliners, two storage areas and two cup holders = never getting off the couch again.

And tonight, a miracle was performed in our house. You see, the old sectional needed to go downstairs, but it is a very large, unwieldy piece - even though it’s in three sections. Rob and Aric swore they wouldn’t be able to get it downstairs because the staircase is narrow. I knew it would be a pain in the ass, but also had faith that they’d find a way to make it work. I kept saying, “Positive thinking!” And they kept thinking, “Shut the hell up before we fit this couch where the sun don’t shine.” That’s okay, though. You know why? You already know, don’t you? Of course you know that our old sectional is the proud centerpiece of our basement rec area now. It wasn’t easy, and there is spackling to be done - but hey, the couch is down there and we’re all ready for our new piece to take its rightful place in my family room.

This weekend we also have to finish painting the basement. It’s going to be all bright and shiny down there! Time to throw a party. Want to come?

Now maybe I can use my positive thinking powers to will this cold out of my system.

There’s one of my little signs on one of my new shelves that I told you about yesterday. And here’s all the shelves farther away.

What did I tell you? Adorable, no?

You can see all of the pictures on my Flickr if you so desire.