on hiatus, indefinitely

I don't think i am ready to close down this blog, but on the other hand i can't keep it up right now either. It is very hard right now to adjust to my mother living with us & all the issues that entails. I don't have the energy to talk about it here, really. And the default topic, the garden, well...as it is no longer my exclusive domain, i am attempting to stay out of it as much as possible, because the alternative seems to be to have a huge argument over every single plant....and that is a lot of arguments. Why bother?

I'm not going to take the blog down & i may come back to it. We'll see.

*hi* i exist

i have to decide what to do with this blog. Obviously i am not keeping it up but OTOH i am clearly not ready to let it drop entirely. I have no idea.

Things here have been back-and-forth, as one would expect. It is a hard transition for me, to have my mother living here. There is a lot of bad stuff that i have tried to let go, but clearly i have been unsuccessful because it comes back to me. At odd moments, too.

My mother is doing much better, mentally. SO much better, in fact, that i worry she has now gone from depressed to manic (well, hypomanic really) and need to discuss with the psychiatrist if this is a result of the meds or what. Nothing can be easy, right?

I was going to try to focus this blog more on the garden. But i feel shut out of the garden, not even that is mine anymore. It used to be my refuge, but my mother is a gardener, and my garden is neglected (HELLO i was away all summer dealing with her crap) & needs reconstruction. So she has taken it over, and this seems to be helping her recovery as well. Which gives her something to DO here, but (as usual) takes away what is mine. So i have nothing to say about the garden -- it has been taken over by someone who can't see, and cuts down a clematis because she thinks it is a weed. Yes, today she cut down Ocean's clematis, not on purpose of course. Not that she even knows that this plant has some significance, either (as i tend to shy away from any-and-all dead-baby topics with this woman, for obvious reasons). The clematis will be fine, it is established enough to take a poorly-timed severe pruning (as long as the roots are OK), though the flowering next year will probably be shitty. It is not the first plant she has mistakenly pulled up, only the first that meant something to me.

Who, me, bitter?

Oh, i am being such a baby. Sure, it's hard to live with someone with mental issues, who denies said mental issues, but i have to suck it up -- things could, honestly, be SO much worse. Now it sounds like i spend time feeling sorry for myself -- i don't, at all. Only occasionally, a wee 'lil bit, i indulge in that. But not too much.

Anyway, i'm rambling.

Happy Birthday C.

in the last remaining minutes of August 31, i will post some pictures from C's 5th birthday (which actually we celebrated on Saturday. Then today my mom tried to explain to her that today was REALLY her REAL birthday...but that didn't go so well...)

Miss C wanted a 'cowgirl birthday party' so Grandma bought her some special boots...

and of course a pony would be THE THING but in the city it isn't so easy (ya, that's my excuse)...so she had to 'settle' for a new bike -- purple & pink with a basket & a horn & tassels & a water bottle & a princess helmet & princess kneepads



and a cake with horses ALL around.



It is hard to believe that it has been 5 years, and that she will be going to kindergarten next week. Happy Birthday C!

a quick update

I tell you, i am very low on sleep these days. Not like first-year-with-twins-deprived, but still low. My problem is that i don't go to bed early, because the only time i have to myself is after C. and my mom go to bed, so i stay up....

Having my mom here in my HOUSE is very difficult for me. Much of the time i cannot even behave reasonably -- i lose my temper, i yell, C. pushes my buttons out of boredom & it's all over. I can't even count the number of times i have just wanted to WALK OUT THAT DOOR. But of course, i can't, because it is not safe for the little kids to be left alone with my mother in 'charge', and so i cannot have such temper tantrums. ARGH. Bad times.

ANYway.

But there is SOME hope here, since the renters did agree to leave so it should only be a few more weeks maximum until my mom can move to the 3rd floor. Not bad, really. I guess i can hack it for a few more weeks.

Actually, the only reason i couldn't is that emotionally i don't see a big difference between her sleeping on one floor or the other. I am having a hard time feeling that things can possibly ever be better here -- though this is evidently a logical fallacy. 'getting through period of transition'+'having own space'= huge difference in personal dynamics. So, who knows, maybe i just need more sleep. Or more hard alcohol.

a sunny update

We are all back together now in Detroit.

While my mom was in the mental ward, her house was actually sold! The buyers accepted the inspection reports & all is fine there. They also asked to move up the closing so we are closing next week!

So mom was let go on Tuesday, the movers came on Wednesday, we drove to Pittsburgh Wed. night & saw the gl.auc.oma specialist on Thursday, then came back here. This morning i am at the office, trying to catch up on 3-months of email & work. Well, not that bad but really i have done NOTHING all summer.

So, yeah. Seemingly against all odds -- in a week it worked out, the mess that dh & i have been juggling all summer.

And mom says "Why did i do that? If i had just held on a few more days, it would all have worked out..."

But of course this is nonsense, like most of what she says. Hello, people don't try to kill themselves because they have to sell their house & move. People try to kill themselves because they have long-standing, deep-seated issues as well as major trauma & pain in their lives. Which does not just GO AWAY when a few practical matters are ironed out.

Kathy asked what the care plan for her is. They have her on some strong meds, which seem to be helping quite well. We have set up therapy & a psychiatrist for her here. I will try to work it out so that i can get therapy too, and i am seriously considering going on antidepressants NOW, before the winter knocks me on my ass. I am dealing with all this fine right now -- very efficiently, no problem. But that is how i am -- good in a crisis & a mess afterward. Last winter was a disaster for me, i don't need another like that. And having her live with us now is going to be an absolutely constant stress factor.

Speaking of which --dh has made great progress with the garage...guest house i mean. I will have to put pics up in the next few days. The exterior is largely done (except for some paint). We will finish the interior into a living space for my mom. But that takes time...as of yet the time scale is not clear nor what we will do with her in the meantime. I want to kick out the tenants & move her to the 3rd floor but of course we have no legal right to do that, so we will just have to see if we can work something out.

bad times for kate

I have been offline for awhile. I took my mom home, came back to Detroit, came back to PA for her eye surgery. Then i stayed for a few days & came back home...only to talk to a detective two days later, who told me that my mom had been found unconscious by the side of the road. Apparently she had taken all the pills she had in the house.

Luckily, there weren't THAT many pills available due to the fact that when we tried to refill her scripts a few days before, there was some insurance snafu & we didn't want to pay out-of-pocket. So it wasn't enough to do real damage, but it was an honest-to-God suicide attempt. Which leaves me where? Still in shock, basically. Because though she was depressed & i was worried all summer, lately i thought she had been much better. So i guess i was wrong.

Anyway, she is still in the inpatient psychiatric ward & will be there for a few more days. When she gets out she is just going to come live with me in Detroit. She doesn't like it, she wants to stay here, but it really isn't an option for her to be alone anymore. And in any case, there is good news -- looks like this time we have really sold her house, and closing is in a month. So there is no reason she couldn't just come up now.

My facebook updates say she is the hospital due to a bad reaction to her meds, or something like that....nice whitewash, eh? But i had to write some bits of the real story somewhere. I may continue to write more about her here, and i might not. Not sure yet. I would much rather just blather on about my stupid garden.

A cute T story

before i forget it....

So last time i was at my mom's i had A. and the twins. On the way back we stopped at some truck stop. I left A with the boys to go to the ladies' room -- they were in front of the candy counter & i said "everybody can pick ONE thing. And only ONE thing."

When i get back, they are no longer at the candy counter but are in some aisle filled with large bags of stuff. T comes up to me with a big bag of Chex mix and proudly says "I pick Chex!" M comes up with a large bag of marshmallows and says "I pick dis!"

"you put them up to this, didn't you, A?" i said. "The Chex is okay because we can all share that but those marshmallows are going back. Pick something else."

So i took T with me while A & M went to make another choice. We wandered around....until he saw a big glass case at the front counter. Then T dropped his bag, ran to the case, pointed and said very clearly,"No Chex! I pick truck!!"

This will teach me to tell them they can pick "one thing".

pick, wash, eat

I know the veggie garden has to go because i haven't managed to keep it up ANY of the years i have had it. This year, in fact, it didn't get planted at all. There are some tomatoes that S. got me and a bunch of volunteers from previous years. Which is kind of pathetic. Still, i think vegetable gardens are great for kids so it makes me sad to think of it going.

T loves vegetables & fruits, and has learned this year to go in there & pick what he can find. "Pick, wash, eat" was what i tried to teach them & it seems to be working. At least since they need my help with the washing process they are less likely to eat green tomatoes & grubs & rocks.

Things you never thought you would say in a calm voice -- "No, we don't eat grubs. Grubs are yucky."

At any rate, C wants an apple tree, so i figure once we get a new fence on the east side (it never ends!) we can espalier an apple tree there. So they can pick, wash, and eat apples at least.

updates without pictures are worthless

but i can't find my goddamn USB cable so i fear we will be without pictures for some time.

In any case, on Tuesday i had some guys help me for half the day & we started what i will call "The Great Garden Reconstruction of '09". Only started, of course, because it was half-a-day. So this reconstruction will take a good long while, i believe.

But they re-formed the rose bed & i planted about half of the roses back in it. The others will go in the new bed on the side, if they live that long. Then the guys turned over one new bed in the front & moved boxwood hedge around it. The vegetable garden will be history soon :( and the boxwood hedging that was around will form the hedging of the front flower beds. I put in a few plants (like, um, 3) in the front but it is fairly random -- i have no idea as of yet what shape these beds will take. I only know i want them to be all old/antique varieties of flowers, and very structured. No floppy stuff laying about everywhere. Also the fact that there is a boxwood hedge implies i need taller varieties, no itty-bitties. I am thinking i will plant them with bulbs & some perennials this fall, and fill in properly next spring.

It would be better with photos, i know.

in the trenches?

C: Let's go play in the backyard! Come on, babies!

Me: What are you going to play, World War I???

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As far as the roses...no, he didn't bulldoze them but OTOH he did not lovingly transplant them either. They look like this:
Thrown in a corner, in a pile of dirt.

Still alive, though. We hope.

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I have been a very bad blogger of late. My excuse is that this current mess with my mother takes an incredible amount of time & energy -- and it isn't a bad excuse either. For example, i went to take the pic of the roses while on hold with some doctor's office & at the same time talking to the fellow who was putting in the sewer line to the garage...so yeah. A little crazy.

Yet i did indeed have a vacation -- i left dh with the mother/kids & went to a conference in London, & while overseas also took the opportunity to visit some of the continent...and of course could not resist the temptation to meet rosepetal. It was wonderful to see her, and i will not say too much more because (1) she promises to blog about it and (2) i am lazy & it is almost midnight & i am leaving to take my mom back home again early tomorrow morning.

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but hopefully i will only be there for a few days, and then will be back. And in the meantime, my backyard will be done, and stop looking like a war zone, yes? Hope springs eternal....

ways to be a bad husband #1

When your wife is off at a conference in Europe, you email her the following picture:



with the subject line "Sorry about your roses".

Which, indeed, USED to be located right in that pile of dirt that has a trench running right through it....

I'm guessing this is some kind of payback for my leaving him with my mom & all the kids while i am here?

summer solstice

me: It's almost bedtime.

C: But MOM! It is LIGHT out!

me: C, today is summer solstice. It is the longest day of the year, Midsummer's Eve. It is a magic night. Do you know -- if you go out in the garden this evening and pick flowers, and put them under your pillow while you sleep, you will dream about the man that you will marry.

C: Marry? The man that i will get married to?

me: yep

C: I don't want to get married. That sounds like a bad dream to me!

home again

Well, today is M&T's second birthday, so i came home. Technically, yesterday was the birthday -- i am writing this at after midnight....and they were asleep before i got home so they didn't see me anyway. S. watched them today -- i know she remembered to wish them happy birthday! She even made them a cake, you see, while they slept:
they are roses from the garden, it is so pretty! and C. picked out all the bugs...their actual party, with cake & presents, will be on saturday.

The news from the last few days at my mom's is, well, cautiously optimistic. The benefits people finally worked out their bureaucratic SNAFUs and determined that she could retire with full benefits after all, at any time. So she retired. Well, she will technically retire at the end of this month, but she is home, on vacation days, until then. She turned in her keys and left. Part of the paperwork is completed...the rest (disability claims etc.) remains to be done.

Work on her house was finished, and the contractors paid (a complicated procedure , apparently....) . We got an offer on the house! And it is a very good offer. It is conditional on the sale of the buyer's house & on the inspections so it is not like we are done here -- lots of things could go wrong -- but it is very positive.

My mother's anxiety & depression over the loss of her vision (& other things) had gotten so bad that she is basically nonfunctional...and even she realized that & FINALLY agreed to take meds. She is now on Xan.ax & Cel.exa . I am hopeful that when the AD's kick in she will be able to deal better....

Oh, and we cleaned out most of the basement too!

So, all that is a very positive & hopeful update -- and indeed i am myself surprised at how much was accomplished in the 5 days i was there. It would be nice if there was an upward trend from now on.

But i do not expect that. The timing was BAD. We worked out the retirement paperwork earlier in the week -- but that final step of going to the office, saying goodbye, and turning in the keys....that did not happen until this morning. It was most painful to my mother...she did NOT want to retire...and then shortly thereafter, i left town. And, by the way, Saturday is HER 65th birthday as well. She will be all alone as we celebrate M&T up here.

Of course she had the option to come with me, but as usual she did not want to go. I invited many times so that she knew she was welcome, but i did not press her because i honestly do not know that it would be better for her to be here. An ordinary weekend, okay, but a weekend with a 2-year-old-twins birthday party? This is the sort of thing she can not STAND....all the noise & screaming & a bunch of people in the house. The last thing i need is her believing that she could not handle moving up here with us, god only knows what crazy alternative plan she would come up with.

Anyway, i have friends checking up on her over the weekend, that's about the best i can do, short of staying there with her while my kids & hubby fend for themselves. Which i can not do in any case, because it would set a very bad precedent. I do believe she will be just fine...but....i worry.

and back again

Home a week and i never managed to make a post with content...and now i have to go back. But i am going back for less-than-a-week and by myself (no kids). So you know i won't be staying for long.

I did manage to have Miss C. draw a name for the giveaway and Catherine wins! Which was not a setup, honestly! The real trick is to see if i can manage to make the dishcloth...with my mom's issues i have been basically too tired & dispirited to do much of anything in the knitting department...but i will try ;)

herringbone

Check out the new walkway...not 100% done yet, but the pavers are cut & laid anyway. The dh says it has so far taken him about 25 hours of work...which i think doesn't include digging it out (he paid someone else to do that). He needs to finish putting the metal thingie on the edge & sand in between the bricks.

Oh, and for good measure here is a picture of the garage:


It doesn't perhaps look that impressive yet but it is much improved. Note the scaffolding all through Nicolas' garden. The masonary is all done now & the windows are on order. They are supposed to start putting on the roof on monday.

Home, temporarily

I couldn't take it at my mom's anymore, so we came home for a week or so. I don't have time for a long post now. Dh has been busy renovating the garage &laying a beautiful herringbone walkway. Thus, the inside of the house is rather a disaster, and all my baggage/dirty laundry didn't help. So i gotta go clean first, and blog later.


Oh, last chance to sign up for my giveaway...we will draw names tomorrow, so i can make the dishcloth before going back to my mother's...sigh.

another quick update

At this point, my mom has been officially diagnosed as legally blind, & then some. That is to say, she makes the cutoff with plenty of room to spare. We saw a specialist in Pittsburgh who hopes to prevent further damage if she cooperates, ha ha. She has lost 95% ofher vision in one eye, 90% in the other. Hey,yeah, that IS what happens when you have a degenerative disease that you decide to treat at home with yoga and garlic. She is still going to work, and thank god because she would drive me crazy if she were at home all the time, and then there would be two of us insane. Seriously she calmed down a little after her diagnosis, but it (calmness) only lasted a few days. Most days it is anxiety central. I have no friends here or other adults to talk to because my mother doesn't count & it is wierdly hard to meet ppl on playgrounds & stuff, it is a very unfriendly town. The babies sleep, but wake up crying at night. When they cry, my mother wakes up as well and cannot sleep again. If she takes her sleep meds it makes her more anxious and paranoid during the day. If she does not sleep she is maybe worse. The house is not even listed yet. I am getting very very worn down.

Yeah, well, i've been through worse.

I would write more but my spacebar is entirely gone (T. broke it off a while ago, actually, but i was making do for awhile) & rubbing my finger against this little sensor all the time is crazy annoying.

update

Well, i am still at my mom's, and looks like i will probably be here for most of the summer.  I have all 3 little kids with me now.  There is no internet so i get on maybe once a week or less at the grocery store with free wifi.  Of course you get what you pay for and the free wifi drops me every 45 seconds, it's almost not even worth the trouble.  

My mother is not doing very well, psychologically.  I fear a breakdown is imminent but hope that it may be staved off because she finally agreed to go to counselling.  We still haven't listed the house because she is not 'ready' though honestly we ought to just push to get this over with.  I spent the first week getting estimates on repair work but i am sure we will just list it as-is and hope for the best.  I am sure the result will be that someone will buy it, reno & flip it -- probably destroying the house & the landscape in the process.  But i am not sure anymore that i really care.  Over the first week the number of problems that came to light with this house were, well, surprising....though not surprising really, because when someone lives somewhere for 25 years without heating it in the winter and without doing almost any basic house maintainance...oy.  Really when i think about it, the house is in great shape considering what it has been through.

So, well, maybe i can move back to my family in a few months.  Sigh. 

off to my mom's...and a giveaway!

My mother gets steadily worse. She saw an actual doctor yesterday, who told her she is the end stage of glauc.oma and her eyesight is basically not gonna get better. Which comes as no surprise to anyone but my mom. Because, of course, denial is a wonderful thing. We are planning to have her come live with us, still not sure of the timetable. We won't be sure of much for awhile, i think.

I'm leaving tomorrow for my mom's house (no internet, no TV). Miss C. is being dropped off at my MIL's, the boys are going with me. I'll be there for 10 days or so, trying to assess the situation & get things started. Find a realtor, figure out how to prep her house for market (it's NOT in good condition), tidy up the mess of stuff she has in the house(which is actually not that bad, really, considering), figure out if/how/when she can get disability. We'll see.

In the meantime, i am inspired by Catherine and have decided to have a giveaway. My giveaway is that the winner will receive a hand-knitted dishcloth of their chosen color & pattern.
Really there are patterns online for just about any dishcloth you can imagine -- i have recently done a coffee cup and a heart but you can find armadillos or transformers or Homer Simpson or whatever! If you don't know what you want i will let C. choose for you, but in that case be prepared for a pink unicorn or some such atrocity. Just leave a comment to this post with your choice, and i will pick someone randomly when i get back! (and yes i will ship internationally -- it's a dishcloth, i'll just slide it in an envelope...)

garden pics, beginning of May

This is a crazy picture of a fully-opened 'Mount Tacoma' tulip in the full sun. With some iris foliage in the background just to confuse.
'Mount Tacoma' tulips with the solo red one.
These are a species tulip from Turkey, i think, that i got from White Flower Farm 2 years ago.
I forget which these are but i suspect it is their last year anyway. I started a few years ago with about 10, but these are the only ones that appeared this year.
These ones that Chloe picked out a few years ago are returning well enough though.
Bleeding hearts with various tulips in the background.

May 5th

May 5th was Nicolas' due date, which no longer bothers me...though i do notice it. This year there is a lot going on so i didn't even manage to post something here.

On his birthday, i started knitting a burial gown to donate to EGF. It took me a few days -- longer than expected because i had some issues with the pattern (extremely simple though so sometimes i don't know what i was thinking...anyway). I finished it 6 weeks ago, then...except for the buttons, i didn't have any tiny buttons appropriate for a preemie gown. So, you know, i move slow...by the time i got buttons and all...i finally sewed on the buttons on May 5th. Which wasn't meant to be symbolic or anything, i just had a final exam to proctor & did it during that. Colors are a bit nontraditional but oh well. The yarn is pretty -- it is bamboo so it is shiny & soft like silk, but a bit more affordable than silk!

a few more from end-of-April

I don't remember buying these pink tulips. But they are clearly a choice of Miss C's.
Bleeding heart closeup.
Epimedium in full bloom. Totally can't photograph this plant.
Bleeding hearts & tulip 'Mount Tacoma'.

best-laid plans

C: "Mommy, WHY is there one red tulip RIGHT THERE surrounded by all those white flowers??"

Me: "Well, it is like the purposeful mistake in an Amish quilt -- the red tulip serves to remind us to be humble. We can try for perfection with all our might, but truly we can never achieve it. And though through our labor we can create something beautiful, God has created the beauty that is all around us....and is the source of it all."

She looked at me quite oddly after this explanation, but i thought it less mundane than saying "i think the wrong color bulb got into the package."

3rd/4th week of April

Thalia daffodils blooming beautifully.
I got some annuals -- the african daisies were available early (marketed as cold-hardy, who knew?) so i put them in. Usually i only get these around the end of May.

Nicolas' garden & tree
'White Emperor' tulips & bleeding hearts
It looks to be filling out nicely this year.

2nd/3rd week of April

pictures from several weeks ago...
Things are starting to bloom out....
'White Emperor' tulips are just starting to open
these ones are the kaufmania tulips
white bleeding hearts are ready to bud out:
border starting to bloom:
pink primrose:

update, such as it is

I actually do have more garden pictures but they are still on the camera & i don't have the energy to take them off & all. So that does not speak well of my mental state, i suppose. The garden is very pretty this year. Maybe i can try to get those pics up here....

It is finals week here, so at least the end of the semester is in sight. Dh & i have been fighting, about the same issues as for the last 16 years...seems like some things never change. My mother's situation has changed -- her eyesight is now very bad (glaucoma) and it is not clear how much longer she will be able to live alone. I am going to visit her at the end of next week & try to clarify how we can plan to proceed.

Anyway, sorry for the lackluster. The thing with my mother could end up being rather a mess so i have a bit on my mind.

well, finally we have a little real spring.

Today it was actually beautiful weather. We are supposed to have several more days of it, too. So finally i am getting a little bloom, not much yet but something anyway.

These are the early tulips in Nicolas' garden. They were actually fully opened today but by the time i got out there to take a pic, they had closed.

Finally figured out the name of this blue stuff, it is Glory-of-the-snow, or Chionodoxa. These came with the house. There is actually a white variety, i will be looking for that to plant for next year. I had thought that it must be quite invasive, because several houses around here have it all through the lawns. But my clump hasn't gotten any larger in the last 5 years, so i guess not. Maybe the ones i see have been like that for 50-odd years, who knows?



Finally some daffodils have opened. This is 'Ice Follies'.
h
Tulip 'Johann Strauss', the same as in the previous post. They close for the evening.



a peony leafs out


My first volunteer -- a johnny-jump up! In the "lawn". I have to do something about that "lawn".

garden pics

Well, i finally got out into the garden today -- cleaned out a bit, pruned the roses & boxwoods, took some pictures. Not much is blooming -- it is a lull in Nicolas' garden. I have been trying to fix this lull for the last few years to no avail. Usually at least the daffodils will have started by now, but i didn't even see any buds.

OK, i shouldn't say nothing is blooming. Technically, his tree is blooming-- you can see the pussy willows are all covered with pollen, and bees. There are so many bees this year, it is amazing! I am very glad to see them all, perhaps this colony collapse disorder that they have been talking about has stopped.

This is one of the white bleeding heart plants i put in last year. There is something so pretty about the vivid green of the new foliage.
Peony is starting to come up.
There are a few things blooming in the other gardens, though. Here is the hellebore, blooming for Lent as advertised.
It seems a lot darker this year, than in years past. Also, 3 of its seedlings have survived and are blooming-size, though it looks like they will not bloom this year. I am going to move them around when i redo the gardens.

First tulips -- Johann Strauss as usual. I have many fewer this year, i blame the damned squirrels. I had planted some new, white Kaufmannia tulips in Nicolas' garden & you can see the buds but they aren't up yet. Maybe soon?

I uncovered this Epimedium by mistake, and then covered it back up again. It is a beautiful color...we ought not see that one fora few weeks, i think.

Well, not the best selection of photos but at least it is something. I am hoping there will be more soon.