Week 14 - Keys and Gardens

After I wonderful weekend where I got tons done, the week should have started well but it didn't work out that way.

When I went to leave for work on Monday, my keys were nowhere to be found. I had used them to drive home on Saturday night and had not left the house on Sunday so they clearly had to be somewhere in the house. This is what I thought as I heard the trash truck dump my can and start crushing the contents. So, I tore apart the house but found no keys. Grabbing my spare car key out of the desk (it had never been used), I headed to work 20 minutes late, stressing about where the keys were the whole way. The end of the day found me tearing the house apart even further but still no keys. I went to bed confident they were somewhere right in front of me and the cleaning lady would find them the next day.

Fast forward to Tuesday night. The cleaning lady hadn't found them so I started searching in less obvious places, figuring I'd gotten distracted while putting something away or something along those lines. No luck. I was totally obsessing about the keys, so much so that I couldn't fall asleep. I even got up in the wee hours to try on the sweatshirt I had worn Saturday night to see if the pockets were shallow enough (they were) that the keys might have fallen out and into the trash and so had been thrown away. Since they key ring was heavy, this fall into the trash would have had to be quiet, which is unlikely, but it's hard to control middle of the night thinking. I was also getting sad, thinking not of the keys but of the mementos I'd lost along with them - the Coney Island merry-go-round ring, my dad's Radio Shack screwdriver and my key ring, which I'd been carrying for decades. Needless to say, I didn't find the keys and got very little sleep so woke up feeling awful to the point of being nauseous but I headed to work to tough it out. I had also decided at that point to give up on the keys so pulled out a new key chain and headed to the locksmith at lunch to have replacements cut. At least Wednesday night I was able to sleep, figuring that now that I'd replaced them, the keys would turn up.

By Wednesday, I started getting flood updates from Carolyn. She lives in Warwick, RI, which is now infamous for being the epicenter of the Rhode Island flood and features the completely flooded mall we've all seen on the news. She had water in her basement and was fighting a losing battle to keep ahead of it with her shop vac, which required her to lug the water up a flight of steps to dump outside because the sewage plant was also flooded so they couldn't use any of their plumbing. She finally found a friend with a pump she could borrow and was able after 2 days to get most of the water out and then set up the newly purchased dehumidifier and fans. Other than being there for moral support, all I could do was feel her pain from afar and be thankful that Nebraska's over abundance of precipitation came in the form of snow. I never thought I’d be thankful for that after the winter we had!

By the end of the week, I'd recouped some of my lost sleep and had moved on to more positive Spring things. I bought myself a hyacinth for Easter and got out my seeds and started planning my garden. I also went outside to survey my veggie beds and immediately decided that it was time to call in the pros. I have a section of the garden that I haven't planted in years plus the grass path, which is ridiculous to have to mow, so figured it was time to find someone with a tiller. A call to my snow blower guy got me the number of a tiller guy and he came on Saturday morning. It was the best $40 I’ve ever spent because he cut down the weed trees and tilled the whole garden in an hour. It would have taken me all day and I would have been wiped. As it worked out, I went out and measured out my new raised bed plots (I’ll have 5 now instead of 4), created one bed for my early crops and got them sowed and watered before supper. I then headed out front to clear out the bed between the sidewalk and street, falling into bed exhausted but feeling good about my progress.

Sunday dawned dreary and chill. After going through the paper and watching my Sunday morning shows, I started cooking. I was due at Nancy’s for heathen Easter (all the Easter yummy food with none of the religion – perfect!) at 4:00 and was bringing lemon meringue pie and scalloped potatoes. I made the pie first (completely from scratch, of course) and then decided to make sugar cookies with the leftover grated lemon rind. Then on to the potatoes, which take about an hour to prepare and then cook for almost 2 hours. I threw in a turkey and wild rice casserole for Dori, who had her baby last week so we’re all cooking for her, and finally had a few minutes to enjoy a cup of tea since the sun had come out and it was gorgeous. I was a bit late to Nancy’s because the potatoes weren’t done (I probably should have waited to bake cookies – oh well) but it was a fun time. We ate all kinds of yummy food and then watched an Eddie Izzard dvd, which was oh so apropos for heathen Easter, don’t you think?

P.S. The pic's from an Easter long, long ago. Weren't we just too cute! I'm the one on the right striking the pose. : )