Artsy Fartsy

Friday: My smarty-pants mom was inducted into the Nursing Hall of Fame, oops, I mean the Honor Society of Nursing. No secret handshake required.

Saturday: I went for a nice solo ride on the Cyclone. Of course there are no pictures because I am destined to never have my picture taken while riding a motorcycle. Then Keith and Kim came over to ride little dirtbikes and act like fools with us.

Sunday: We celebrated my grandmother’s 90th birthday (go GG!) and then Luke, Roland and Molly went for a kayack ride while I rode along the river on Kim’s dirtbike to take pictures.

It was quite a weekend. Molly’s still sleeping it off, Luke’s still picking dirt out of his ear from a short flight off the dirt bike, we both have sore right legs from all the kickstarting, Luke’s all bruised, and I have a nasty blood blister. It was awesome.

Want to see my new garden bed? I know you do. Here it is. Above is a baby Lupine. I love those flowers. They’re a little persnickety. They grow well in the wild in ditches alongside the road in New Hampshire, but I can’t seem to get them to grow in my gardens. Below is a shot of the whole bed. I’m still working in filling it up. This used to be a bare patch in the yard. Well, the whole yard is really a bare patch. We’ve been holding off on planting grass until we figure out where the garden beds and the deck are going to be. This one is located over the septic tank. Nice, huh? The lids need to be accessible on occasion so that’s what the slate pieces are for. They’re marking the location of the lids so we can get to them the next time the tank needs to be pumped. But enough about that. Look how pretty it’s going to be.

And this little cutie is the start of my new herb garden. It’s an oregano plant. I also have sage, oregano, rosemary, patchouli, and soon I’ll have thyme and a few other herbs. Ahhh… spring makes me happy.

After a long weekend of too much work and too little sleep, I decided to take Monday and Tuesday off to refresh and relax. It was blissful. I could wake up whenever I wanted to, I didn’t have to check voicemail or answer constant emails. I didn’t even have to get dressed. It was just what I needed.

It was absolutely gorgeous both days, warm and sunny and perfect. Luke and I worked together outside. I started putting in a new flower bed, I moved plants around, I went out shopping and wandered around a nursery picking out new plants, I played in the dirt all day. It was fabulous.

It was also wonderful to spend time with Luke during the day. Both days he came home from work around 9:30 in the morning, we had breakfast, then went out to play. He went to bed around 4pm and slept until he had to get up for work. We had a great two days and yesterday afternoon I felt refreshed and relaxed and happy. Then Luke went to bed. Continue reading Refreshed/Depressed…

Yesterday was Alex’s second birthday and, as I mentioned before, I was in charge of the cake. I was planning to make a yummy sheet cake recipe I had and then draw Clifford the Big Red Dog on it with icing. Here’s how it went down:

This is the “before” - the naked Texas Sheet Cake.

Here’s the “during”…

And here’s the “after”. I had planned to use black icing to make the outlines, but I forgot to buy it. Oops. So I had to pick the brown sprinkles from a container of rainbow sprinkles. My sister thought I was showing off, I was just trying to fix my screw-up!

And here’s the birthday boy enjoying his second piece. I caught him sliiiiding it ever so gently off the table. Sneaky little thing.

Happy birthday little man!

At the moment, my job is trying to kill me and I’m doing my best to survive. Since I have no time to write a proper post, I thought I’d just give you a few little snippets.

So work, as I’ve said, is hell. I have to work tomorrow and then the hell should mostly be over.

Molly and I are sort of adjusting to sleeping without Luke at night. She’s going from spreading out on his side of the bed back to attempting to take over whatever space I’m occupying and oftentimes sleeping on top of me. Just like old times.

I finished my book club book from back in January, I think. It was cute, I’ll write about it later. I started a new book that Amanda gave me, then forgot it at work and started one that my mom gave me at home. Both interesting, both completely different. Continue reading Snippets…

A few years ago when my sister was having her babies, it seemed like everyone was having boys. Now there’s a sudden abundance of girls on the way which pleases me to no end. Girl babies mean pink, pink and more pink! I bought my local yarn shop out of pink yarn and I’ve been crafting up a pink storm. This here is a peek at my latest pink production. Since some of the mommies with girls on the way read this blog, I can’t tell you what it is or who it’s for, I just thought I’d tease you with a little sneak peek.

One of the recent changes resulting from Luke working third shift is my new ability to watch whatever I want on TV without comments or complaints from the peanut gallery. Luke now falls asleep on the couch around 8 and sleeps until 10:30 when he has to get ready for work. This leaves me to watch decorating shows on HGTV or whatever crap is on E! or even Dancing with the Stars, like I did last night. And to my sister and my mom and Paula - I get it now.

Those ladies have loved Dancing with the Stars from the beginning. My mom and sister even went to see the traveling DwtS when it came to Mohegan Sun this year. Never having seen it because Luke refused to watch it, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

Last night I was flipping channels, listening to Luke quietly snore next to me, and I landed on DwtS. Some lady in a purple backless dress was dancing with a man in a see-through shirt - interesting. They were cute and I was trying to guess which one was the star. The man’s name was something strange like Maksim. I think he must be the dancer, but either way, I was suddenly sucked in. Continue reading Converted…

If you’ve ever been in my back yard, you know that this is definitely not how it’s supposed to look.  I woke up this morning and almost fell over when I saw the new pond behind the house.   This is a picture taken from the door on the back of the house, so the viewpoint of the camera is the outside wall of the house.  That’s how close the water is right now.  Our property borders the Hop River and we expect a certain amout of spring flooding, but when the river comes knocking on the back door, I get a little scared.

In my quest to change and streamline, well, everything in 2007, I have decided to not only change my website, but also to change blogs. I’m combining the online portfolio and pretty pictures of my website and the chatty blogging capability of my blogger blog into one happy (and free) new blog over at WordPress. Go check it out.

The new address is: http://lgaumond.wordpress.com and hopefully over the weekend the change will be complete and you will be able to get there by also typing in www.lisagaumond.com.

I’ve been playing with it for about a week now, customizing and trying out the new features. I posted a few entries, too, to see how it worked. I’ve been talking to no one, according to my stat counter, so head on over there and make me feel better. I think you’ll like it. You can still comment, and I hope you do. The comment link is at the top of the message instead of at the bottom, but it works just the same. Let me know what you think.

The two scariest words from my PDA: Fatal Error

The next scariest thing: dead, blank screen (pictured above)

If you know me, you know that I can’t live without my PDA. It is my external brain. The only way I can remember all of my passwords. The place where my banking and loan information is calculated. The place where I play Atari Retro games when I’m bored. The place where way too much information is stored. Remember last summer when I lost it off the back of my motorcycle? That was scary. Well it survived that scare and now: Fatal Error. I keep getting the evil warning. I keep syncing as much as possible so I don’t lose any information.

Last night at the chiropractors, scheduling an appointment in my calendar, I received the dreaded fatal error. This morning turning it on - same thing. Tonight reconciling my bank account, I got the DBS (dead, blank screen). I had to reset it, but I wonder just how many times one can reset their PDA before it loses it’s memory. I’m scared. I guess it’s time to shop the Palm website for a replacement.