Pet Peeve

There are several things that bug me from time to time in the work place, but I have to say that I think I have one number-one pet peeve that trumps them all: people who come to work sick. And I mean really sick. People who could barely roll out of bed, but somehow decided it was okay to come to work and spread their germs around to all their coworkers. In some bizarre pseudo-loyalty to the job, they refuse to take a sick day because of the chaos it might cause for their measly selves to not show up for one day, or two, while they wait for the worst of it to pass. Never seeming to realize that the potential of getting all their coworkers sick would cause a great deal more chaos, with the potential for them to have to take sick leave and also with the effects falling ill could have on their home lives.

Today, for example, a coworker who works for the bookstore was helping stock the shelves. She walked over to the desk and grumbled stuffily, "I have a sinus infection and two ear infections." My coworker in the bookstore that day, her cousin, proceeded with my other second-place pet peeve: sympathizing with them for having to be at work in such a state. [WHAT!? They didn't HAVE to come to work!!! That's what SICK LEAVE is for!!!] I said nothing, but backed away and proceeded to have no interaction with this girl, taking note to myself that I ought not go touching the stock today since it was liable to contain the germs from her hands and anything she may have coughed up as she walked around the bookstore. She returned rather quickly to the warehouse. Bullet dodged.

At the end of the day I came downstairs into the bookstore and saw her there again. This time she was behind the desk, "helping" with the closing procedures, putting her germy hands all over everything. I avoided her, and again said nothing to her at all. I put my stuff in a different spot than usual so that she wouldn't come into contact with it. I touched only things that I did not observe her touching (and hoped that she hadn't handled before my arrival).

Go ahead, call me a germaphobe. But keep in mind that I'm having surgery on Tuesday, and if I get sick before then and can't go in, it'll screw up not just my life, but the lives of at least a dozen other people. Also keep in mind that last summer at Sequoia, I was patient number NINE when one of our coworkers decided to come to work sick as a dog and spread that sickness to NINE other coworkers as one by one they all followed suite and chose not to use the sick leave they had stacked away, infecting one coworker after another - and who knows how many visitors! Note also that that sickness stopped when I broke the cycle and chose not to come to work sick. I took at least one sick day - maybe even two. And guess what? Nobody else got that crazy horrible virus after that.

It stands to reason in my mind that only the selfish come to work when they are truly ill, because they don't want to deal with the guilty feeling of calling in sick. Instead they would rather risk infecting their coworkers, their friends, the visiting public, and who knows who else - and never even stop to think that that might be their fault! It is absolutely disgusting to me.

For tonight, I have taken every single immune booster I have in the house. I have been drinking extra water. I have been avoiding sugar. I ate an apple. I will take more immunity-boosting supplements before bed. And in the morning, when I arrive to work in that same space that was this evening occupied and groped over by that sickly foolish girl, I will sanitize the whole workspace as much as I possibly can and use hand sanitizer frequently throughout the day. I will try to be better about not touching my eyes or nose with my hands. I will take more immune-boosting supplements before work, at lunch time, and after work. I will probably not go to the after-party for the derby bout (which I was looking forward to) out of fear that staying up just a hair too late may be what makes me susceptible to this contagion (sleep has proved to have a HUGE role in the strength of my immune system) If there has ever been a time that I can NOT get sick, it's right before this surgery. I don't want anything to mess this up.

I only pray that the sniffling in my nose is still a result of the wildfire smoke in the air, and that the tightness at the back of my throat and the occasional cough is leftover from accidentally inhaling a thick waft of campfire smoke at my evening program last night.

Apples!!!

Yesterday evening I borrowed my next door neighbor's 10-foot (?) ladder and picked a bunch of apples from our apple tree. I think I would've filled a bushel basket if I'd-a had one. It was definitely more than a peck. I chose six apples to give to my neighbor to say thanks for lending his ladder. There's still plenty of apples up there, still, too. Ones that I couldn't get to, and that I figured I'd just leave for later. Either they'll fall off or I'll get creative. I need one of those trash grabbers, that would extend my reach... I'm so excited to have SO MANY apples! I hope they keep well... and I hope they make excellent apple butter, apple jam, and apple sauce. Mom says I need to let them sit for a week or two before I start making things with them.

So instead of canning, I'm keeping busy with bread-baking today. I made pizza yesterday and fed my sourdough starter afterwards. This morning I got the sponge going for my bread. I think I'll make one loaf and turn the rest into rolls. I'm not going to let the sponge proof for very long - I just got it made around 8:30, so I'm thinking by 1 or 2 o'clock I'll make the dough and start letting it rise. Then break it up for the second rising at 2 or 3 and have it in the oven by 3 or 4. That way it's plenty taken care of by the time I have to go to derby at 6 tonight.

I've turned off my couchsurfing again until further notice. I hosted EIGHT people in the last two weeks!!! Crazy... It's definitely a busy time. I had requests from at least six more, too. But I'm prepping for my upcoming surgery next weekend, so I don't want to have any folks around this week. I need to focus on getting the house in tip-top shape so that my friend Jenna will have an enjoyable stay, and so that it won't matter that I do nothing in the way of housework for the first few days afterwards.

Audiobooks have been the order of the day lately. I've barely watched any Netflix at all. I listened to the first book in a series, finished it Sunday night, and downloaded the second book and listened a third of the way through it yesterday. I'll be turning it on again as soon as I'm done with this post. I love a good story. Yesterday I knit the whole time while I was listening. Today I think I'll try to get some housework done, too. I fell behind a bit on my index cards (as I do every week), so I want to get ahead on those again.

It's a smoky-smelling day this morning. Hopefully it "burns off" by noon - if not sooner. The smoke makes my sinuses act up very unpleasantly and it's giving me a little scratch at the back of my throat. :P I'll be glad when these wildfires are out finally. I'll be glad when the rain comes again.

Twenty-two days before Jack comes out of the backcountry and I can talk to him on a landline again. Hopefully the next three weeks fly by quickly.

Until next time!

Chomp!!

That's the noise I heard coming through the open window in my bedroom just after I got out of bed this morning. I peaked through the blinds and saw and elk at my apple tree. Thinking fast, I threw on a dress (in case the beast would require me to go outside to scare it off), grabbed my camera, and opened my blinds...

She was startled. She started to leave on her own as I ran over to the sliding door in the kitchen, pulled aside the binds, and opened it. I stepped out onto the porch and snapped another picture as I yelled, "You trying to eat my apples!? Get out of here!"

I got a respectful trot out of her. She returned to the road. Had she come here before to eat the apples? Had past residents simply gawked and let her go on? At least she wasn't in my garden - Roosevelt Elk are so big that she could've merely stepped over our puny little fence.

My next door neighbor (whose house you can see in the background) has a nice tall ladder - the kind that opens up and balances itself - and said I could borrow it when he gets off work tomorrow so that I can pick my apples. I don't know whether she was eating apples from the ground or actually pulled one off the tree, but I think it's time to harvest anyway. I ate a fallen one the day before yesterday and it tasted ready. I think an elk in my yard eating my apples only strengthens my thought that these apples are ripe for the pickin'.

I think I know what I'll be canning this weekend: apple sauce, apple butter, apple jam....

Until next time!

Creek Constitutional

I tried to find a synonym for walk or hike that started with a 'c' so I could alliterate. Constitutional is apparently a daily walk taken to maintain health. I think I knew this. I think I usually associated it with going to the bathroom, though...

Anyway - here follows some of the photographs I took when my coworker Brad and I hiked down Mill Creek itself last week Tuesday.

Beginning of the creek (or at least where we started).

Along the way.

Creek scene.

Freshwater mussel shell - they're a pretty rose/mauve color inside.

Human evidence... That's Brad in the background.

Howland Hill overpass...

Slug love.

Frog.

A nice river bar.

This tree grows downstream.

Vine Maple 

Live freshwater mussels! 

Chunk of redwood bark - really richly colored.

Fallen giant.

Dark-veined leaf.

Growing on top of history.

This looked to me like a redwood had gone swimming and left its bark hanging on the line... whoops!

The end of the creek! This is where it comes out to join the Smith River. I'm holding a car antenna that I found in the creek. I also found an iPhone in the creek...

Clintonia (?) berry-looking things. I hadn't seen these before.

It's here!

$14,705...

Starting in summer 2012...

Finishing by August 2015...

Technically within 3 years...

The goal was 4 years...

And now the day is finally here...

That's right: today I made the final pay-off amount for my student loans! Yippee!!

I probably would've gotten this done sooner if it weren't for the life circumstances that came up and consumed by savings, keeping me from making those end-of-season chunk payments like I'd hoped. But another life circumstance did come along to help: Jack wanted to help me pay off my student loans so I would be out of debt (he doesn't have any debt himself) and we could just move forward financially. He made a $600 payment on my account over the winter, and now (as you can see) he made another $600 payment this summer. With that, I was left with $634.69, plus interest. I had just got a little chunk from my separating from the state, so I figured: why not? Why not just pay it all off right now and be done with it!?

No reason.

So this morning I scheduled the final payment. From here on out, I get to start saving my money again.

Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray!

Until next time!

Couchsurfers

I would like to take a moment for a brief testimonial about how awesome couchsurfing.com has been to me this year, but particularly this summer. Over the winter we hosted a handful of passers-through in our humble abode, including Ben and Silja, from Germany, who we really clicked with as couples. Is there a word for couples who are friends? Our time hosting them was so pleasant that we invited them to stay an extra evening, and they accepted! So thoroughly did we all enjoy each others' company.

Then Jack left for the summer, and I found myself alone in a house for the first time. And it's lonely. Grandma Tillie, I really don't know how you do it. I suppose it comes with practice and time, but I find myself feeling so utterly alone at times - and it doesn't help that I'm still working on developing close friendships in this town. Enter couchsurfing. I turned it on after a few weeks of lonesome homemaking, desperate for someone to occupy the same space as me, and that very day - that very hour! - I got a request from Rebecca. She was awesome, uplifting, positive, exciting, and enthusiastically traveling the West Coast as part of a lengthy road trip. Just what the doctor ordered. After her there was Daniel, Marcela, and Bento - a family of three (Bento at just a couple years of age!) who were traveling from Brazil and planning to go all the way down the west coast and into Mexico. They used to run a food truck and Marcela cooked me AMAZING food the two nights that they stayed with me. I nearly didn't host them, because Nikki was in town with her family and staying with me, but they left and I changed my mind and said they could stay after all - the house was too quiet after my nephews were gone. After the Brazilians left, I had a request from Vito, the Australian who works seasonally for parks in Tasmania and with whom I swapped all sorts of philosophical musings around a campfire. As well as some giant grilled pork chops. I initially told him no as well, asking him to use me as a last resort because I had just hosted my sister's family and then this Brazilian family, and I needed a break! But no one else offered to host him, and I couldn't leave a fellow parkie hanging, so I said 'ok' and actually had a very relaxing time with him. Then came Anna, the exuberant Austrian exchange student, trying to see the U.S. before her student visa ran out. She arrived on the bus and put in a solid 12+ miles of hiking and walking around both town and the redwoods while staying with me. Much to both our surprise.

I turned off my host status after that to allow for Jack's visit to be uninterrupted. And then I forgot about couchsurfing amidst my own travels, doctors visits, and a house that seemed impossible to get clean and tidy again. Until this past week.

I decided as part of my happiness project to start hosting again. I turned it on and had a request immediately from Pablo, his brother, and a their friend. Argentinians who would arrive late and could be out in time for me to leave for work in the morning. They were suave, spoke their Spanish with the fluid accent of Argentinians, and I managed to keep up conversation (albeit somewhat haltingly) for maybe half an hour before I decided that 11:30 at night was much too late to try and speak Spanish. In the morning I found my Spanish was even worse... but they bore with me and were out before I left for work without a trace - except for the box of spring rolls they forgot in my freezer.

Tomorrow I'm hosting another threesome - this time three girls from Austria traveling down the west coast. They'll be arriving by bus in the evening. On Saturday I'm scheduled to host Italo, an American with a Peruvian father who lives in Florida but visits San Francisco and the Redwoods every year. He's going to cook me dinner. Huzzah! I've got some Spaniards booked for mid-September and another couple who sent an early request for the end of that month.

In short, I've got my pick of the litter here in Crescent City. Everybody is passing through. I've said no to just as many, if not more, couchsurfers than I've hosted. They don't rub me right in their profile or I just have a bad gut feeling or the timing is just wrong. But every one I've hosted has been great, and provided just the sort of feeling of cooperative space that I desire with my fellow absent from the house. I hope they feel the same.

Well I'd better get to sleep - I've got to spend some time tidying up the house and doing laundry in the morning so things are ready for my couchsurfers tomorrow night!

Until next time!

Busybody

This is going to be a photo-driven post.

A single day's harvest that wen into a delicious (if not a bit too spicy for me) 5-serving meal.

My cherry tomatoes are scary big!

Seriously - look at their height in comparison with the size of the screen door! (I chopped a bunch off both my larger tomato plants after taking these photos.)

The miniature eggplant plant has the prettiest flowers...

... and produces the cutest little purple jewels!

Spinach seedling!

Arugula seedling! (I collected these seeds myself from the bolted stalks I tore up a few weeks ago, so I'm extra pleased to see them growing. Now if only the similarly collected cilantro would start to grow...)

A healthy carrot with very green roma tomatoes behind - these tomatoes just started to change color in the last 24 hours - there's hope for them to ripen yet!

Bok Choy "Toy Choy" sprout - I just planted these last week.

My Walla Walla Sweets had all gone limp, which literature says means they're ready to harvest... but sadly all very small. I pulled up a semi-limp cluster of red onions, too, but left the rest in the ground as that was clearly too early.

Cherry tomatoes from my garden, wilted greens from my CSA box, and bacon, nuts and cheese from the grocery store. Plus a blackberry dressing made from the cupful of blackberries I picked coming through to my side of the neighbor's fence. Yum!

One of my happiness project action items: surprise Jack. I decided this week that would be a poem, although he probably would prefer new bandanas like he asked for... I'll have to get those out to him next week, though. For all I know he'll get them at the same time, anyhow.

Another happiness project item: bake something every week. Today was a twist on the classic chocolate chip cookie recipe - I halved the sugars, swapped out 1/3 c of flour for coconut flour, swapped out the shortening for coconut oil, added a couple T of cocoa powder, 1/3 c of grated coconut, and 2/3 c of quick oats. The result is pure deliciousness and very satisfying.

My zucchini plant has produced many beautiful flowers this summer. Unfortunately every fruit has been snipped off by something or someone before it could reach anything close to maturity. :/ But I keep hoping! At least the winter squashes are putting on good little fruits.

Potato plants - in need of more dirt, which I unfortunately don't have at the moment. I will try to get some and cover them over again before they start to bloom. Beneath, you can see the tops of beet sprouts - so glad they came up this time!

Well that's all for now - I have to eat and bike to work!

Until next time!

It's a long summer.

Jack and I talked on the phone last night and we both agreed - this is getting harder. We're in the end of the race, as it were, with just a month and 2/3 to go before the normal end of season. But that doesn't include a possible extension.

In view of that, and in combination with having just received a copy of "The Happiness Project" in the mail thanks to a B&N gift card from my mother-in-law, I have decided that it's time to start a happiness project. This may turn out to be more of a happiness boot camp. I'm doing it for at least two weeks, and then we'll see from there. My overall goals include: developing happiness-boosting routines, adjusting my attitude, keeping the house clean, cultivating my friendships, getting out of the house more, and creating and exploring. I put five "action items" under each header (seven under "Create + Explore"), and those include everything from having breakfast outside in bare feet to playing jazz music whenever I do the dishes, and from playing one hymn on the piano every day to standing up straight and smiling in the silent moments. I even including "take a deep breath and count down from 3 before answering an August visitor" on there. Yesterday was day 1, and I didn't do everything, but I did most of them, so that was good.

I've successfully reinstated my index card program, after being totally incapable of tracking down the missing cards (I have a sneaking suspicion Jack may have thrown them out), I figured out what they were and made them so that I have a full set again. Hopefully this means that by the time my friend Jenna comes over the beginning of September I will have a clean house in which to host her.

I'll let you know how all of this goes.

In the meantime, the garden continues to produce (another action item: "eat something from the garden every day"). Green beans are coming, even on the tiniest bean bushes. My little eggplants are starting to develop (I had the first one in a stir fry last week). The spinach I planted appears to be coming up, along with the beets, and I'm really getting excited about the garden again. The strawberry is sending out runners and I'm directing them down the side of the garden. I think if they stay on the edge they'll make a nice, tasty border. Granted, that means critters might take a shine to them, too, but it just seems easier to keep the berries out of the way over there than to have them run rampant over the middle of the garden (which was where they were headed). Speaking of running rampant, my tomatoes are downright spooky in how wide they've grown. The roma, being weighed down with unripe fruit, has started to spill down across the carrots and is headed for the brassicas... It's almost as if the more I cut it back, the more it decides to grow. The cherry tomato is as tall as I am, and is stretching up the siding and over in front of the screen door. It'd probably come in the house if I let it! But I can't complain a bit about all the delicious goodies coming out of my garden - this is certainly the time of year that it's truly fun to have a vegetable garden.

Most of this harvest went into dinner last week: beans, peas, celery, cherry tomatoes, basil, eggplant, and even some kale (not pictured). The oregano is drying, and the rosemary I used later in the week.

I weeded a big section from the raspberries to the strawberries to the eggplant to the pepper plant to the end of the beans this morning. The weedy middle of the garden is almost entirely gone now - I've just got one 2x3 or 4 foot section left. I think I may get some of that weed-free fabric and tack it along the bottom of the fence, since I have a lot of difficulty with the creepers and crabgrasses coming through from the lawn and I think that would help significantly. I'll have to go to the store and price that out next paycheck. If I could get a cheap, narrow roll of the stuff, I'd probably be good to go.

Anyhow, I'd better keep moving. I've got a lot on my list for today. The lawn has to get mowed after 3 weeks off - not because the grass grew, but because the dandelions are at least a foot tall!

Until next time!

The Abundance of Summer

I decided to change up my blog - it's been awhile, and I was thinking something super ocean/summery, so there you go.

It's been an amazingly busy season in terms of the abundance of my garden. Not to mention my busy life of work, derby, and trying to maintain some sort of social life + housekeeping.

Yeah, housekeeping... I'm trying to catch up on that...

Today I woke up at 6 and, with a list of activities ready to go from the night before, I set about putting up all sorts of foods in the kitchen. Really, I was just picking up where I left off last night, when I picked all the peas in my garden, shucked them all and, tasting one from each pod, sorted them into one jar's worth of sugary peas and one jar's worth of starchy peas. These were, naturally, pressure canned and stowed away for a rainy day. Anyway, back to this morning: I managed to crank out two half-pints of blackberry jam (blackberries from my Community Supported Agriculture weekly box), one pint of pickled beets (beets from my CSA box), two quarter-pints of pickled ginger, and four half-pints of secret sauce (the main ingredient from my CSA box). And all this by 10 o'clock.

Ta-dah!

I went to my Monday knitting group and finished the second sleeve of my wedding cardigan - just the edging to go! - then came home and...

... wasted the rest of the afternoon on the computer.

Ok, and did a TON of dishes - because I also made my own cream corn from scratch (super easy and DELICIOUS!) last week, along with my latest divergence from the classic "clove cookies" recipe, and a chocolate zucchini cake-turned-mini-muffins (these were for a going-away party/potluck for one of our derby girls who is moving to Portland).

Delicious cream corn - corn courtesy of my CSA box.

Clove cookies! These were sweetened only with honey... maybe a little too much honey.

I also managed to get the laundry done today (and put away the clean laundry that I'd neglected in the dryer for the last couple weeks... oops...). And now it's 6 o'clock again. I told myself no Netflix until after 9pm today, so there's still a chance I may get some more things done. Like picking dandelions.

Seriously. That's on my list. I want to make dandelion wine and I picked half an oat container full of the flowers last weekend (and froze them), but I need to fill the container, and I'll be mowing the lawn this weekend, so I'd better get it done today or tomorrow.

Other things on the agenda for this weekend?

- weeding my flower garden (I seemed to have forgotten about it, but suddenly there's weeds growing there when it hasn't really been bothered all summer)

- mowing the lawn

- watering my veggie garden, weeding another section of it, and planting bok choy and green onions (my beets are starting to come up!!)

- an outdoor derby practice (the county fair is going on this week, so we're not using the fairgrounds facility until it's over)

- using my new vacuum cleaner for the first time, even though I've had it for a week or two now...

- getting totally on top of housecleaning so that I can start hosting couchsurfers again!!

Ok, that sounds like a pretty tall order, and I think I've psyched myself up to start getting busy again. So here I go!

Until next time!