Sub-Irrigated Garden

Well, when we moved to Avondale I had to leave behind my beloved garden beds. I had worked for years to develop rich soil in the gardens on the north and south sides of the house and had some really well developed fruit trees going in back yard. So many plans turned to dust. We're in a rental house now, so I have to be a bit more careful about my approach to permaculture but I can't stand the thought of not growing some of our own food. The kids love it, and there is nothing like going out into the backyard to pick a salad or gather some broccoli for dinner. So I decided to get ambitious and build a large sub-irrigated bed in the back yard to take care of our gardening needs. If you're not familiar with the concept, check out one of my favorite urban gardening sites at http://www.insideurbangreen.org/diy-sub-irrigation/ for a dizzying array of examples and pictures. The basic idea is that you provide a way to water your garden from the bottom up which prevents evaporation and promotes deep root penetration. I think it's an ideal solution for desert gardening. We have a large open area covered in rocks on the west side of the house which I have decided will become the "farm" side of the house. The long term plan is to have two raised sub-irrigated beds as well as our composter and the chicken coops on this side of the house with a little picket-fence to keep out the dogs and toddlers (I'm not sure yet which is more destructive to the garden). Here are a few snapshots, hopefully there will be more as the growing season hits full stride.

This first picture is just after we finished construction. Notice the black fill-pipe in the back corner. This is where we water the garden. Sorry I had to cut my model out of the picture...

This next picture is about a month later after things had really started taking off. The tall plants in the middle are the tomatoes, squash on the left side of the picture and cauliflower on the right side. The foreground is different varieties of peppers and sown in the bare spots are carrots, beets, and spinach.

And a view from the other side (cracked bonsai pots courtesy of the twins). Two large basil plans next to the tomatoes, some cabbage on the left side, eggplant and zucchini on the right side. Next to the basil you see leeks and swiss chard, with various onions, garlic, and scallions filling in the rest. There is quite a bit of loose-leaf lettuce sown in the bare spots and the bonsai-pot-corner now contains a flowering strawberry plant (not-pictured).

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Posted in: gardening,hobbies,home improvement,interests

The end is near

So many things seem like they're coming to an end: school is almost over (can you believe we have a paper due on Dec 29?), our time 'working' at CITD is over, the pregnancy is almost over, the holidays are almost over, and football season is almost over (Go Gators!).  It's crazy to look back and remember this year, it has definitely been the most up and down year I can remember... so much has happened it is almost impossible to believe it was all in 1 year!  Started with Christmas/New Years Eve in Florida, then the two trips in the spring to be with the family as we let Nannie go be with the Lord, then the infertility stuff and the treatments, the layoffs at work, new pastor at church, the pregnancy,  saying goodbye to M&M, having like 10 foster kids in 2 months, J&B moving in and moving out, having A&R move in, the Psych eval and becoming a certified candidate in the UMC, the house being robbed.  Yikes, big year.  On top of that, I have been doing my darndest to stay on top of school and the house and still be involved in the family and the church.  Ttthhhhhhhhhhhhpppppppptttt.  Almost too much to imagine.  

Oh well, I guess that is life.  It's interesting to try and remember what life was like when I was younger, college aged or younger I guess.  I have always felt like I was super busy, like the crush of life was almost too much to bear.  The funny thing is, when I look back I can't believe I wasn't bored out of my mind then!  It's amazing how much pressure a full time job puts on you just from the perspective of time.  Having to get up and squeeze what feels like a full day of 'stuff' into the hours before you go to work and then again in the hours after the kids are in bed is crazy - but it is just you do when you're an adult.  Blargh, it sucks sometimes though.  Sometimes when I just veg out and watch football or a move I feel like I'm wasting so much time; it's so hard to remember that you absolutely must have down time.  

So, to add to the randomness, I'll talk about a movie I watched last night (between 2am and 5am while I was up suffering from a terrible sick stomach), "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."  First of all, it wasn't a great movie.  I think the gross out jokes have been done better and with more finesse but whatever.  It did get a lot better towards the end and I'll give it a thumbs up because I've been a sappy romantic of late.  As I was laying on the couch after the movie ended (trying not to poop my pants), I realized that the movie sort of touched me because it was similar to the story of how I fell in love with Aimee.  I know this is crazy, but I sort of had my own Sarah Marshall (though not nearly as attractive or wealthy as Veronica Mars and much, much taller).  I realized this when I heard the line in the movie where one of the guys described his relationship with Sarah Marshall as 'time served' or something like that.  I was totally whipped by my ex and it took her throwing me away to really free myself from her.  When I was recovering but still in love I met Aimee and she was totally the 'cool Hawaiian chick' from the movie.  Like the characters in the movie, we just sort of accidentally fell in love with each other and before I knew it I couldn't imagine life without her.  I'm not really sure what my Vampire puppet opera was but I'm sure I could come up with something if I tried really hard.  Either way, in the end I found my Aimee and there couldn't be anyone better for me :)  

Alright, have to go read about Indian immigrants - I can't wait to be done with school!

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Posted in: church,family,florida,foster care,friends,hobbies,home improvement,pregnancy,school,work

Last night

Was strange. All of my friends were either at a bachelor or bachelorette party. I was home alone with the kids. Strangely, I was totally ok with that. I scored some free carpet at Mercedes' school and hopefully it will be enough do our storage room turned get away room. One thing I love about being at home alone with the kiddos is cooking for them. I know Aimee's palate and it is just a wee bit on the shy side, but I can pretty much try anything with the kids. I thawed out some cube steak and made a quick marinade of soy sauce (thanks Jonathan!), garlic, onion, white wine vinegar, basil, and just a hint of cumin. I boiled some potatoes and mashed them with milk, garlic, and butter. I also steamed some green beans and served them up with olive oil, salt, and black pepper. The steak I sautéed in half butter and half vegetable oil (and maybe just a liiiiitle bacon fat for flavor). It was delicious. I love cooking for the girls. They are brutally honest. They will both wrinkle up their little faces if they don't like something and push it away. The other night Mariah was actually gagging while she was eating asparagus. I think it's cool that they are being exposed to vegetables like asparagus, okra, collard greens, brussels sprouts, and just about every kind of bean you can think of. It will be good for them later in life I think. Anyways, they loved dinner last night, Mercedes had two helpings of meat and cleaned her plate. You know you've done the vegetables right when they wipe them out within the first few minutes of dinner. Even Mariah plowed through her meal... something quite rare if you can believe it. Then the girls took a shower together, something they love to do, and we got ready for bed. There was no crying and we said our prayers and sang for a few minutes, then Mar rolled over and went right to sleep (Hallelujah!) All in all, it was an easy night to have them alone. Then I pretty much watched tv (American Idol!) and texted the night away.

The only hard part about the night was really the sleeping part. It is so hard to sleep without Aimee. I tried sleeping in our bed because I knew I needed a good nights sleep and it was miserable. I woke up like every hour and kept hearing noises. I have bad dreams when Aimee isn't here too... mostly snakes though there is the ever present 'I can't see' dream that I have had since childhood. Last night it was rattlesnakes in the garage at my parents house and then also in a swamp chasing me. Who knew they could climb trees. I did have fun bashing in their heads with a baseball bat in my parents garage, but I paid for it later. I really wish I knew what it was about snakes that terrifies me. I mean, they make me physically ill when I see them move and they haunt my dreams continuously... this is not normal behavior. Also, Mariah is funny because she talks in her sleep. Sometimes, she will let out one really loud yell and then just go back to sleep. She did this last night. It freaked me out. Normally she doesn't wake me up at night, Aimee just gets up with her. I think I can normally sleep through it because I know Aimee is solid when it comes to getting up with the baby. I should be clear, I didn't get up with her, I just woke up when she screamed. I laid there and she fell back to sleep...so I didn't get up :)

Anyways, pray we have a good morning, Mar if finishing her breathing treatment and we have to get ready and get to school. Peace!

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Posted in: family,friends,home improvement,interests

And my pool

And I can't sign off without commenting on my pool. We had to drain our pool this weekend - it was a disaster. I should have drained it last year but it is such a hassle. The water in Phoenix is so hard that over time it's like you're swimming in chalk. It just about becomes impossible to maintain the chemistry in the pool. So, we drained it. It was stressful. I think our main drain is seriously clogged ( I have never noticed any water movement down there) and so I had to rent a drain pump from Home Depot. Holy crap that thing was awesome! The downer was, of course, that the discharge hose from the pump didn't come close to fitting into our cute little sewer clean out pipe and even if it had I don't think it could have handled the flow. So, I went into my alley, located a manhole cover, and popped it out. Down goes the hose, on goes the pump, away goes the water. I was seriously stressed out about it because my neighbor on one side is a cop and the one behind me has gotten on me about pool water and trash and stuff...so I didn't want to piss him off. All things considered, it was pretty cool watching it drain away. When it finished, Aimee and I spent a few hours (late at night) cleaning the surface and pressure washing away the scum that accumulates over the years. We were really hoping we might find someone to resurface it for us but the bank said NO THANK YOU when we looked into getting some money. I guess we're in a recession and a housing crunch. I can't wait until things cool off and people get back on their feet...it's going to be hard for us to sell this house unless we can do some things like resurface the pool and what not. Anyways, it was empty and clean and we decided to just fill it back up this evening after getting some CRAZY quotes to resurface. So, as we speak I have two hoses spilling forth into the depths and hopefully tomorrow night it will be full. What a freaking crazy week. At least now the pool will be nice and clean and we can start having some parties :)

I also got some cute pictures of Aimee sweeping the pool. She is the coolest wife ever!

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Posted in: home improvement,real estate

Another day another ...

sick stomach. Really, what the heck is wrong with me? I guess I should go to the doctor at some point since I have a sick stomach every day. Is it normal to have guess all the time? By all the time I mean I could literally pass gas at any moment during the day, every day. And every time I eat something other than rice and plain white chicken I get a sick stomach. Is this out of the ordinary? I think that I have a serious problem trusting doctors since every doctor I have ever been has told me that there is nothing they can do to fix what is wrong. Oh, and for like 10 years I had the same doctor and he always told me that my problem was I was too fat. Didn't matter why I went to the doctor: allergies - you're too fat, sprained ankle - you're too fat, back spasms - you're too fat, and of course chronic stomach ailment - you're too fat. I know I'm too fat. I've been too fat since I was in 9th grade. This is what happens when you are skin and bones until you're 12. Everyone in your family forces you to eat. A lot. It doesn't help that my family is from the south and we had gravy with every meal. And, of course, my dad grew up in rural Montana at the tail end of the depression so we were an 'eat everything on your plate' kind of family. But I don't think I'm so fat that it's the cause of my every illness. Seriously, when I would get strep throat Dr. Salazar (Oh MIMA, how I miss thee...NOT) would tell me I was too fat.

Anyways, that was not at all the reason I decided to blog tonight. What I really wanted to say was that we got the window framed in and drywalled. It kicks ass. I think that room is going to be amazing. I am going to put in a solar-tube type skylight and throw some recessed light cans up in the ceiling for night time 'mood lighting'. It will be a great 'media room' and I think a bonus when we go to sell the house. Also, it was highly necessary if we were ever going to wall in the carport. Along those lines I hired a guy off of Craigslist to do help with the job and it was fun working with him. It reminded me of the 3(!) years we spent remodeling our house in Florida and our kick-ass neighbor Curtis who taught me just about everything I know when it comes to construction. Dean was super cool and we had a lot of time to chit-chat while the mud was drying. His wife was dilated and contracting last night but he came anyway and today she still hadn't given birth. I told him about my schooling (hey, it came up) and that I was hoping to be a pastor and he thought that was super cool. He asked me a lot of questions and it made me realize that to a lot of people that's A Really Big Deal, I forget that some people really have a thing about clergy and the way they treat them. He told me when he left tonight that it had been a real pleasure to work with me and it was great to have clients that were friendly and cared about him. Of course we talked a bit about Scottsdale people (heh sorry if the shoe fits) and what it's like to work for them. hhhhhhh (that was me cleaning a bit of grease or something off of my 'h' key).

Well, off to bed, I'll do my best to get some pics up of the finished wall and maybe a few pics of it in the process. I told Dean (the guy from Craigslist) that I would pray for his wife and their baby and I certainly will, it seemed to really mean a lot to him. Still no word on the medical testing, hopefully there is nothing really scary going on or they would have called me. I'm probably still just too fat.

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Posted in: family,home improvement,interests

Crazy day

Well, today was an interesting day.  Lots happened, it's hard to believe it was only one day's worth of stuff.  First off, my truck was still not working this morning so I just rode the bus.  I found out that they no longer take the tickets I have so I almost didn't get to ride.  Luckily, I had a buck twenty-five and could ride it to work.  I called and bitched out the customer service people and they didn't care. I probably have $30 worth of those darn tickets (thanks Matt).  I wrote the customer service email address and explained why I think it's ridiculous that they won't trade them out at all for the new tickets.  We'll see how that pans out.  

When I got to work I had to give a demo of the project I've been working on to my new manager and the director of our group.  It was kind of a big deal and I was a little nervous but it went well (no crashes and no obvious bugs during the demo).  Aimee got really sick so I had to come home instead of going to church for a meeting (sorry Gena).  I had a bright idea about my truck and went out and just fixed it.  Straight up fixed.  Amen.  I can't believe I didn't see the problem earlier but I'm just glad it's fixed.  I had to go drop off Aimee's homework and pick up some lumber because the guy is coming tomorrow to fill in the window in the living room.  Fun Times!

Meanwhile, I was a little bored at work at the end of the day since I'm in the middle of few different tasks and didn't want to start something new.  So I just randomly decided to search for this guy I used to know on the internet.  A little background; when I was in junior high I had a pretty tight group of friends.  Well, this one guy had to move to Ohio all of the sudden with his family and it was like BAM he was gone.  I was never able to really keep in touch with him and my friends and I always wondered what happened with him.  When I was in college and discovered the web I thought for sure this guy would be on there.  So I searched and searched but couldn't find him.  Every year I got a bug in me and searched for him but never turned anything up.  Well for some reason today my google juice was flowing and I found a posting on a linux user group by a guy with the right name and I just emailed him.  BINGO!  It was crazy, I emailed all of my old group of friends his info and we played catch up.

Now I just have to figure out how I'm gonna get all the rest of the stuff done that I was planning on doing tonight!  

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Posted in: family,florida,friends,home improvement,work

Well...poop

So this has been an all around depressing day. I have been unable to get my truck fixed. For some reason the alternator is just not charging the battery, even though the fine technicians at Pep Boys put it on the machine and verified it. I am pretty sure I am just going to tell them to suck it tomorrow and buy a new one. So, I was messing around with batteries and wiring and what not and I came across a stuck bolt. This bold happened to be a corroded terminal stud that was in my spare battery. So I grabbed my vise grips after having been unsuccessful at getting it off with any wrench (and rounding it off in the process) and start to really put some torque on it. Yay it came loose! Unfortunately, when it came loose my vise grips spun around and made contact with the other terminal of the battery. Fire ensued, the grips got so hot that my hand it burnt up pretty good, and I felt the ole familiar grip of direct current coursing through my arm. Luckily, it was only one arm or it probably would have stopped my heart. The funny thing about DC, and I say that for this reason alone T. Edison can screw off, is that once it gets you it doesn't let go. The reason that AC makes you feel twitchy (like when you get physical therapy and they put those neat little pads on your leg and crank up the juice) is the constant reversal of current causes your muscles to fire in rapid succession thereby giving you an opportunity to 'let go'. The beautiful thing about DC is that when it grabs you, such as when you are foolish enough to bar a vise grip across a 12 volt battery's terminals, it doesn't let go.

So there I stood, gazing down at a burning rubber insulator willing myself to let go yet somehow unable to. I managed to come out of my state of shock long enough to punch my right arm with my left arm and knock it loose from the wrench. This was about the time that Aimee came out to see me in agony. I then punched off the vice grips, hopefully preventing the destruction of the battery and the burning down of my house. Interestingly enough, at that same time the guy coming to give us an estimate for an air conditioning (HAH - A/C, how appropriate) vent in our laundry room rolled up. He probably thought I was crazy, as I walked over to shake his hand and introduce myself. My heart was beating about 12093803948203984 beats per second and I'm sure I had a little bit of the crazy eye going. It was a good estimate and he could have done it today but we had to leave the house.

Then we went to the doctor.

Then I had to hurry home and, thinking I had fixed my truck I drove over to pick up some furniture this family at the church was giving us for the kids bedroom. Very cute stuff, very nice furniture. On the way, I kept my eye on the voltmeter and sure enough, about 5 minutes from church it started dropping down really low. The alternator wasn't charging. Some really funny things happen when the voltage starts dropping. For one, when it hit about 9 volts, the speedometer would start pulsing up and down as I slowed...it was strange. It was fine as I was driving but as I braked it would bounce up and down. Kind of funny actually. Then at about 8 volts, the engine started lugging a little bit and the door locks started locking and unlocking on their own. I can only imagine that the computer was freaking out. Heh heh, kind of funny.

So I made it to church and pulled into the parking lot. I called Aimes and had her bring me the spare battery and my tools and the charger and eventually after she got there I got it switched out and tried to readjust the wiring and what not hoping that something was just loose. It looks like it might have worked as the truck stayed charged while I was driving home with the load of furniture. I hope so, I am tired of working on it. I was really wishing that Rooster was around, not really so he could fix it but just so I could shoot the sh*t with him while I fumbled around with things. I'll talk more about it later, but I really miss Rooster lately. We had a really good time together while we were in Florida the first time. I think we might have bonded again after a few years of not being too close. Anyways, I'm home now and put the kids in bed. Aimee has had a rough few weeks and the last few days have been hard so I told her to go out and have some fun tonight. I think she is hanging out with Emily and maybe Brittany.

Hopefully my day tomorrow will be better, but I don't know...Tuesdays suck and I have a lot of work to do tonight for school. Pray for me!

Oh, about the doctor. I found out that I'm effed up and we probably won't be able to have a baby because of me. You think of a way that someone's sperm can be deficient and I gotcha covered!  

On a lighter note, right after the doctor told me that, she told me I need to get a bunch of blood work done and see a urologist to make sure I don't have cancer or some other condition which could kill me.  At least I wasn't ONLY worried about not being able to ever have kids! Yay!

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Posted in: family,friends,home improvement,interests

Well, what a night

Ok. So, it started out nicely. Aimee made a nice dinner for us, Mercedes was being a good girl, and Mariah greeted me at the front door with, "I pee-pee my chonies." Welcome to suburbia. It went down hill from there though. Mariah was a bisnatch during dinner and wouldn't eat her vegetables. She was pretty much doing the 'wrong thing' all during dinner time and then she was invading Merc's bathtime. Argh. It's annoying to me how little kids can just go from screaming their lungs out and shaking in a fit of righteous anger to being cute and making fart noises in the shower. By and by, Mariah is 2.5 years old and can take a shower pretty much by herself. That's some bad-ass parenting if you ask me. Yes, I said shower. Anyways, then we get a call to come get some sweet bedroom furniture for the kids and I go jump in the truck to pick it up. Click click clickity click. Dead battery. What the f. My truck is a constant source of frustration for me, I am so conflicted about whether to keep it or sell it and by something newer. Argh. So I'm charging the battery and waiting and I figured I'd just vent a little on here. Feels good, actually. In other news, I have been on the ball lately about some projects around the house we have been putting off. I have someone coming tomorrow to write me an estimate about closing in our huge window in the living room, got a guy coming to check out the laundry/telecom room on Monday and give me an estimate about running a/c in there. And finally, I got a price to blow insulation into the parts of the house that are sorely lacking. It's crazy, I've been putting these things off even though I know they need doing and I have been dreading doing them myself...and it turns out they're all like $250 - $350 bucks each. I am just going to do it and get it over with and we can get on with the business of enjoying our house.

Off to check the status of the truck battery, LATER!

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Posted in: family,home improvement