The ShellyBeach

Oh man, it’s been a grievously long time since I last provided my readers with pictures of mulch and squirrels and talk of Lady Rockets and whatnot! Two weeks! Ugh.

I was working nights that whole time, basically, so cut me some slack.

Once the mulching got started, it was hard to stop until it was done. Brian did more than his share of mulch lifting and spreading, while I planted some new plants. He did the side bed and the beds in the backyard (though admittedly, they still had some actual mulch from last year, since they didn’t get the free neighbor “mulch”).

Here’s the first bed I ever put in, with two different kinds of ferns plus hydrangeas:

This year’s new addition is this round bed around the sassafras tree, populated with many standy-uppy ferns from Bossman and some phlox from Menards:

As you can see, the ferns did not survive their multiple car trips and transplantation all that well, but I’m remaining hopeful that they perk up soon.

While we’re at it with the yard pictures, here are some pictures of the patio bed from a couple weeks ago. Springtime + perennials (also worth noting: other than red geraniums in the pots on the patio step, I have no will or patience for annuals) is the most fun to watch:

I lost a couple of plants over the winter. One of them was a foxglove plant (digitalis! for the pharmaphriends). Upon researching foxglove, I found that foxglove is a biennial, rather than a perennial, so it usually only lives 2 years – the first is kind of a set-up year, and the second is the flowering year (so it is certainly in its second year when it looks fancy at the store). It is possible, if you plant a “stand” of foxglove, that new plants will come back every year, since there’s enough pollination and natural re-seeding and other botany things to continue the life cycle of the plants indefinitely. So that was sort of an expected loss, but still a bummer. One weird thing about my foxglove plant is that the leaves stayed green through the winter and into the spring, and THEN they turned brown and died. I planted another foxglove plant in the side bed at the end of last year, and it actually looks to be doing quite well this year…I don’t think it was flowering when I bought it in the fall (Fall is for planting!).

The side bed also got spruced up with fresh mulch, and most everything came back (one of our “starter” mail-order hostas – I think Captain Kirk variety did not come back):

I bought a hydrangea and planted it in front of the hose cart. The hydrangea is small right now, but I’m hoping it will grow grow grow and eventually hide the hose cart when you look from the yard. We’ll see how that works out, I guess:

In other yard news, the hummingbird feeders are up, and we’ve both seen hummingbirds flying, but neither Brian nor me have seen them drinking sweet sweet sugar water. We still have at least 2 babby squirrels around and lots of adults. They enjoy free corn.

I had to work in Cincinnati the week before last. I drove down Sunday night, checked in the hotel and took a napper. I had to be at the cyclotron pharmacy at midnight, and I was mostly there for my pharmacist initials. Whatever. It was kind of fun, since my normal work has required extra thinking and time lately, since nobody is overly familiar with the new program yet, and in Cincinnati I was just signing things, checking the typed orders against faxes, and wipe testing pigs. Also, the tech there is probably the best NPT I’ve ever been around, and he also does standup on the weekends. I have no idea if his standup is good, but he was conversationally funny…I think I LOLed like 80% of our downtime. I showed him the video of “my new daddy” and he had me in stitches.

I’ve been to Cincinnati a few times over the years since I got done at XU, and when you’re there for a weekend (or even a long weekend), it’s hard to see random peeps that you don’t necessarily keep in touch with but would like to see every now and then. Luckily for me, I was able to set up relatively last minute playdates for myself most of the evenings I was there (possibly at the expense of sleep). I should have taken pictures of my peeps, or at least their children/furbabies, but I didn’t. Oh well.

Monday, I saw my loves Mary and family. The kids were excited to see me and kept me laughing. Tuesday, I went to Erin’s house and we had dinner at Allyn’s restaurant, where the turkey chili was sweet and delicious and the “blackened turkey burger” was probably just a hamburger (and my stomach did not like it). Wednesday, I traveled into Kentucky to go to Amy’s house for dinner and some hanging out. Thursday, I met Big Rach at an Indian restaurant in Oakley, and then I drove up to Dayton to watch the Office series finale with Ryan and his lovely wife and companion animals.

I keep in touch with Mary pretty well, but the others – not so much. I hadn’t seen Amy since graduation (though as a CHILD OF DIVORCE, she was helpful via email during the thing with parents – especially around holidays). I’m not even sure anymore what all happened between her and Big Steph and me…but I am sure I wasn’t in a hurry to deal with them again for a long time, and they definitely weren’t in a hurry to deal with me (I could come up with bits and pieces of what went down, if I had to, but I would choose not to. Perception and fuzzy recollection versus what really happened would not be in my favor…plus we’re all totally different, improved people now, and that was what seems to be several lifetimes ago – and I hope they feel the same). I hadn’t seen Big Rach in probably 6 or 7 years. We were estranged for a long time after Big Steph and I lived with her and Big Kate junior year and decided they were the ultimate in wet blankets trying to keep us down. I know we were bitches to them…but time fixes most things, I think, and I’m thankful for that. For all the changing and growing (and forgetting) that we’ve all done, we are the same enough to pick up as old friends. It was fantastic to see everyone happy in their lives with husbands and kids and jobs they seem to love.

While I was at Amy’s, I got the following pictures from Brian:

In addition to the many types of wildlife we have been trying to lure into our yard, we also had/have a sneaky snake. Excitement.

I came back last Friday morning after stopping at Ikea, and I probably should have napped somewhere before coming home…but luckily, I didn’t die driving home exhausted. I had to work last weekend here (boooooooo), but Bossman took call Friday night. I hadn’t worked a night using the new system yet since the GO LIVE night where there were so many people there that I spent hours putting tape on QC pigs so that the bar code labels would peel off more easily…so anyway, I had to figure out how to compound using the new system on the fly, which was kind of fun. I had Monday off, but who cares since I had to work nights this week starting Monday night. I thought it was kind of fun to see how well I could do with planning in the new system, so the night shifts went pretty quick. The exciting thing is that now I’m on staycation!

Also, when I was at Ikea, I finally bought the long curtains that I’d been eyeing for our bedroom with the half-circle window. I’m not going to go into all the money or time I’ve spent or problems that this project caused, but I think the end result is pretty great and conducive to sleep.

Curtains open:

Curtains closed:

(Luckily during the course of this project, my dad happened to stop by, so he helped whip this project into shape…)

Also, while my dad was here, he helped me hang my framed jersey finally:

Even though I was gone to Cincinnati when this happened, someone thought to take pictures for my bulletin board (Bossman’s Syncorversary):

So that’s what’s been up around here. Lots of night shifts and discombobulation.