Thursday, May 28, 2009

Garden Porn.










Now to sleep.

Trying to maintain consciousness

I have a half hour left on my shift at work and I am trying very, very hard to stay with it. It's been a rather steady sort of busy for me here the last four shifts, 2 over the weekend and 2 over the last two nights.

I had a very surprisingly easy shift the last 12 hours. Came in to a lovely girl who was 10 cm and pushing. When I left yesterday morning, she was here in very early labor and just exhausted. The midwife on offered her the chance for some IV pain medications to help her sleep and after being up for close to 24 hours with no sleep, she decided to try them, a method we call theraputic rest.

She was able to sleep until 10 AM yesterday, when she woke up in active labor and progressed right along. When I came in she had just started pushing. 42 minutes later, she had a baby boy, born en caul, which is considered very lucky. The midwife I was working with always mentions to parents that tradition dictates the Dalai Lama must be born en caul, lucky and blessed indeed.

This was only my third en caul birth ever in 6 years of nursing. Most time doctors will break the bag. Midwives tend to leave it be, but most bags break on their own as the head and water put pressure on them, just like a water ballon, there is a point where it will give way, often times showering us with amniotic fluid.
That's an awfully nice visual to leave you with, isn't it?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Paint. Finally.

I've been trying to get some paint in this house since we moved in. What we have now is a greyish light tan sort of neutral. All well and good when you move in on a Monday and are back to class (me) and work (husband) all day the next day.

However, I am tired of looking at it. So while out running errands yesterday, we stopped by Lowes and picked up some sample colors to test out in our pool room:

Look there, on the wall, next to the dart board, do you see them? What, you need a close up? Ok, here you go:


From left to right we have Hubbell House Rio Grande Mud, Chocolate Cherry and Molera Vaquero red. We are leaning towards Chocolate Cherry, perhaps with an accent wall in one of it's complimentary colors, La Fonda Deep Clay Red or La Fonda Terra Cotta, not pictured. Not even in the house yet.
I can say one thing though, the little sample cans are well worth the $4. We likely would have walked out with a few gallons of the Hubbell House color, put it up and hated it. It is a little pink for our tastes, and it doesn't look that way at all on the paper swatch, of course.
So I hope to be picking up more samples soon, we are talking about painting the bathrooms next.
I hope the names are shorter and more to the point. I liked a blue called Swim. Simple. To the point. Bring it on.

Monday, May 25, 2009

The setup

I will not title this "First Post" or anything else silly, but I will set up who, what and where I am.

I am a nurse, married, mother to three cats and two dogs, living in a suburb of San Diego. We just purchased our home back in October, and I am trying to make it more a home than a house. I am also going through grad school to be a midwife, growing a garden (my first) and trying to expand my cooking horizons. In turn, my husband and I have expanding waistlines.
I truly am using this as a diary for myself, if I pick up readers along the way, yay! If not, I won't cry. I just need a place to track what I am doing and when along with pictures.

What I have for today are current pictures of my garden, and to compare, ones from when I started.

In the beginning, I had a lot of expensive dirt and some child labor to help water it:

Then there were some plants:

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini to start.

Now I have herbs, obviously separate from the veggies:

Giant tomato plants:

Cucumbers:

And zucchini, which I am most concerned for:
Concerned in a good way really, I wasn't sure I'd get to this point. When I set out to grow this garden of mine, I started my seeds indoors, and these ones took off. By the time I had the raised bed in, the seedlings were leggy and just lay on the soil. It was rather sad looking. One of the original four did die, but these three struggled along and over the last two weeks have turned into this. I am only concerned now I will have the traditional issue with summer gardens; more zucchini then I know what to do with.