The daffodils, minus the shrub.

I never thought clearing a muddy hillside of weeds and cutting back overgrown shrubs could be this much fun.

January/February in Oregon have felt more like spring than winter.  I’d be singing nyah nyah na nyah nyah to my family back in freezing Indiana, but it’s been pretty mild there, too.  (Until this week, I gather, so maybe I’ll start singing now.)

Anyway, Mom and Dad moved last fall, downsizing from five acres to six.  No, that’s not a typo.  But they had an old house with old house problems, plus too much required upkeep on the garden, the pond, the mowing and weed-whacking.  And that doesn’t count the fences and horse pastures!  So now they live on six acres of mountainside, most of which is deer and woods, in a one-level, doesn’t-need-much modular home.

The amazing thing about this place, though, is the acre and a half of garden.  It’s all landscaped with steps, paths, gazebos and arches, terraced in places with logs, and filled with more plants than you could name.  Amidst the oak and fir trees are masses of lilies, iris, roses, berries, fruit trees, grape arbors, Shasta daisies, honeysuckle, rosemary, and a whole lot we don’t know.  Rich, loamy soil (brought in by the previous gardener) that doesn’t require a pick axe to plant a rose – heaven!

The problem, or delight, is that it’s been abandoned and overgrown for three years.

The metal gazebos are still standing, albeit open-roofed, but the arches have all been pulled over by whatever’s growing up them.  The daisies and iris get identified by huge clumps of dead stalks.  The lily leaves have stayed green all winter, rounded humps that are slimy underneath, with new shoots poking up through the mass.  Spring bulbs, of course, are hibernating and storing energy, so we don’t know what’s going to show up when the seasons shift.

Or so we thought.

Gladiolus in early February!

Misty mornings out with the dogs while Dad’s still asleep, and afternoons in the sun while he’s watching TV – we’re out there most every day cleaning up and making discoveries.  We rake leaves and weeds and find crocus and tulips.  We cut back overgrown perennials like this ugly gray thing Mom calls “Dusty Miller” and find clumps of daffodils.  We pull out tall dead stalks and realize that the leaves coming up underneath are gladiolus.  Glads aren’t supposed to be up in early February!

It reminds me of The Secret Garden, one of my favorite childhood books.  We look at a plant, bend a dead branch and hear it snap, or cut it back and see the green.  I find myself thinking, like Mary, “It’s wick!”

We’ve put one honeysuckle-covered arch back up (at least we think it’s honeysuckle, but it might be clematis or something), and cleaned up the pathway to it and beyond.  And in between throwing Frisbees for the dogs, we’re poking pebbles underneath brick steps to stabilize them so we don’t slid down the mud path those same rambunctious dogs have created.

We haven’t accomplished many of the indoor projects Mom has, but she’ll be wandering through a lush profusion of color all spring and summer.  And we’re having fun together while we do it.

What about you?  Have you ever restored order or made discoveries in an overgrown area?  Created your own “Secret Garden?”  What’s your favorite garden playtime?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I would love diamond earrings or a Hawaiian vacation.  But those are also gifts that are big, one-time events.

And don’t try to pass off the everyday chores as ways he says he loves me.  Yes, I do appreciate that he works hard to support the family, that he takes the garbage out and changes the oil and fixes leaky faucets and washes dishes when I’m busy.  (Hey, we like the traditional division of labor!)

Daily chores are definitely appreciated and do show love, but they don’t make me tingle inside.

What does?

It’s the kiss on the back of my neck while I’m cooking.

It’s him picking up a Snickers bar for me when I send him out for the forgotten Thanksgiving dinner ingredient.

It’s the phone call during a busy workday, just to tell me he’s thinking about me.

It’s his finger tracing down my cheek and the soft look in his eyes as he gives a quick kiss before leaving.

It’s his smile when I smile at the pomegranate he put in my Christmas stocking because I don’t like the traditional tangerines.

There are little things I do for him, too:  notes in his gym bag, bringing home his favorite puzzle magazine, occasional Hershey’s kisses in his lunch, a candlelit dinner, or when I . . . hmm, I’d better stop there.

Little things, but special things.  Things that don’t cost anything, but that show that the quick goodbye kiss isn’t just habit.  Hubby O’Mine, I love you.

What about you?  What little things do you do for your sweetheart?  What does your sweetheart do for you?  Even if we already do little things, we all need more ideas and encouragement, so please add yours to the comments!

Image: motifake.com

Why do I do this?  Middle of the day, late at night . . . Minesweeper sucks me in.  It’s not totally mindless, but I play it when I can’t think any more, or just don’t want to think about hard situations any more.  Unfortunately, I also play it when I can’t figure out what to write, when I don’t want to make phone calls or balance my checkbook or clear off my desk.  And after my usual check-email-one-last-time-before-bed routine, do I actually go to bed?  No, I play yet another game or three or ten of Minesweeper.

Now, it’s not that I love Minesweeper so much.  It bugs me to have a thinking game that begins with random clicks and getting blown up over and over just to get the board started.  I’d much rather play Mahjongg or Freecell or a few others.  But a couple weeks ago my computer started requiring double-clicks in games instead of single.  It wreaks havoc with my carpal tunnel issues, and Minesweeper seems the only game left for me.

I guess that would be okay, but Minesweeper has this evil issue built in.  Hubby o’ Mine calls it the “50-50-90 choice.”  You play carefully, get through the whole 99 squares except for the last two.  You have a 50-50 chance of choosing the one without the bomb.  And a 90% chance that whichever one you pick will be the wrong one.   And for me, it seems to be more like “50-50-100,” ‘cuz I always pick the wrong one.

The degree of evilness should be the same on any minesweeper game, right?  Oh, no, that would be too nice.  Different games from different programmers have different difficulty levels, even at Expert.  The particular one I play (it has a game board large enough that I can actually see what I’m clicking) likes to put at least four 50/50/90 choices in the game.  So what are the chances that I’ll actually win?  And what do I do when I don’t win?

Play another game, of course.

Sigh.

What’s your favorite game to procrastinate?  What chores are you avoiding?  And does anybody have tricks to stop after three games?

Same son taking my car because his was in the shop, leaving me stuck at home – Boo!

I don’t like being stuck at home.  It cramps my style.  Can’t buy groceries, go to the gym, pop out for a last-minute errand.   I feel . . . um . . . tied down.

On the other hand, I get a tremendous amount of work done.

This trip to my parents’ isn’t just a quickie, and I not only had to figure out what I was taking, but tie up a lot of loose ends as well.  And, being the ever so brilliant procrastinator that I am, I had a lot of loose ends to tie up!

My to-do list in the last week included such things as:

• Plant daffodils & tulips (Hey, I was busy in October! And even if they don’t bloom this spring, they at least won’t rot in the garage in the summer.)
• Hang my children’s senior pictures.  (Many others to hang later, but these have been sitting in position on the stairway for at least two months now.)
• Send invoices for writing/consulting work last summer.  (At least the business client is also a friend!)
• Find answers to sister’s last-minute genealogy questions and sort through papers and certificates to decide what to bring.
• Find the final-edit notes for the last chapters of my middle grade time-travel novel to take with me.  (I last looked at these in Ireland, and that was a year ago!  Definitely time to get it sent out.)
• Finish the current quilt block, get the next packet, and get the squares cut.  (My daughter and I will have to send them back and forth by mail, but I’d like to keep it going.)
• Re-color the rest of the bathroom grout.  (Not difficult, just tedious, and I didn’t want to leave it for Hubby o’Mine since he’s done most of the renovation work anyway.)
• Buy groceries.  And more groceries.  And even more groceries.  (Two guys batching it for a couple of months doesn’t usually mean good things for the food budget.)

There was more, but just these would have sent me over the edge in the normal scheme of things.  However, being stuck at home with no car meant I actually had a somewhat relaxed evening and a good night’s sleep last night!  Of course, I did not get the kitchen scrubbed or Hubby’s shirts ironed, but hey, they’re capable grown ups, right?

I can’t be the only one out there doing crazy stuff to get ready for a trip.  What’s on your to-do list before you travel?  What odd, procrastinated chores do you insist on getting done?  Let us know in the comments.

I’m at the airport now, waiting for my flight to be called.  I’ll be in Oregon tonight!  Will post this tomorrow.

Summer 2010, Kinsale. Dad zooms around the house with a walker.

My father is dying.

We’ve known this for a while, but it’s been a long time coming.  He has a rare, incurable neurological disease called Multiple Systems Atrophy, which shuts down various systems in his body and is shrinking his cerebellum and brain stem.  It takes years to diagnose, while the doctors treat symptoms and then start ruling out the more common horrifying illnesses.  For a prognosis, we were left trying to count back and see when his balance problems started.  Patients with MSA can live another 6-10 years, but if you don’t know when it started, how do you count?

Anyway, Dad’s been declining fairly significantly over the last year, and the last few months even more so.  After visiting twice last year (they live in Oregon, I live in Indiana), I’ve known we’d probably lose him soon, and I was finally okay with that.  He’s quite ready to go, and with a deep faith in the Gospel and the Plan of Salvation, he and I know where he’s going and the joy and family reunion waiting for him there.  And as his quality of life has dropped, he is quite ready to be done with this body.

Through all of this, my stalwart mother has been his sole caregiver, and we worry about her as much as Dad.  She’s strong and tough, but she is 76 and has hip problems that she won’t do anything about as long as he still needs her.  We’ve tried to get home health care in, and they came for OT and PT and speech therapy to help with his swallowing, but once the additional devices were set up, that was it.  Mom and Dad get too much in Social Security to qualify for Medicaid, and Medicare won’t cover home health aides unless he needs skilled nursing.  Which isn’t usually necessary for MSA patients until maybe the very end.  Hospice help would be great, but there’s no predictable end to this disease, so that wasn’t a resource either.

Ballintubber Abbey, summer 2010. We borrowed a wheelchair for traveling.

We kids even talked about gathering our resources to pay for an aide, but Mom scotched that idea very quickly.  She could take care of it, and we weren’t to use our money for that!  (You can tell where I get my stubbornness from.)

So why was I blindsided when I found out that Dad’s doctor had put him in hospice last month?  We know we’re going to lose him, and Mom will get the help she needs, so it’s nothing but good, right?

And yet I spent the next two days with my brain on a roller coaster ride. If you had asked me, I couldn’t have told you how I felt.  I couldn’t turn off the worries and what-ifs.  I functioned, but I couldn’t concentrate on much.  Christmas shopping?  Oh, yeah, I guess.  Wash the dishes?  May as well.  Bake treats for the neighbors?  Gee, do I really have to?  Losing Dad, and worrying about how Mom was going to get through this, were the last things on my mind at night, and the first thoughts I woke up to in the morning.

At the time, I wouldn’t have said I was sad,  but looking back, sorrow was a big part of it.  Sorrow that it’s definitely happening, sorrow for what Mom has to go through.

Happier times: 50th Anniversary, 2007. The only problem then was veering "off course" when we walked down the road.

Now that I’ve adjusted to the idea, I’m doing a bit better.  Still a whirlwind of arrangements, though.  We kids had planned on going out for his birthday in mid-January.  I’m the only sibling with grown kids and a portable job (another reason I love writing, and I bless the inventor of the laptop!) and I was going to stay for two weeks.  But when Dad had a few really rough days at Christmas, Mom voice showed her to be at the ragged edge.  Sure, the physical help is there, but she’s losing the love of her life.  Who cares if they had 54 years together – she wants more!  So I’ve withdrawn from my college semester and I can stay as long as needed.

I wish I could give them extra time, or wind the clock back and take this horrid disease away completely, but I can’t.  My job now is to ease Dad’s transition and support Mom through it.  And while the hospice announcement was a surprise, I will be eternally grateful for the program and the wonderful people who help.

Here’s the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker, played on a “glass harp,” a set of crystal bowls.  Absolutely gorgeous!

What’s your preference:  a few tasteful Christmas lights, or going all out with plastic Santas and blow-up snowmen?  Here’s an awesome alternative:

And because I love flash mobs, the unexpected beginnings, the looks on people’s faces, and especially thinking about how it must have made them smile all day long, here’s the Hallelujah Chorus in a food court.  It’s almost five minutes long, so if that’s too much, watch a bit and then go to the next one – Ding Dong Merrily On High, which even has a bit of Irish dance in it!

Merry Christmas from my house to yours!

Where does my Irish Nativity Set go?

It’s the 15^th of December and I’m still trying to put Christmas decorations up.  Final exams don’t help, plus the fact that some much-needed surfaces are still covered by unpacked-but-not-put-away stuff that I’m not sure where to put in this new house.  Actually, it’s not a new house, just new to us.  But the layout is different, and sometimes frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong – I mostly love the house.  It’s filled with skylights and many large windows, but that doesn’t leave much wall space for hanging things.  Where do I put the Christmas wall quilt from my sister-in-law?  Where do I put the large wall hanging of Bethlehem that I made years ago? Or my Joy-Joy-Joy forest animal cross-stitch?

And the nativity sets – where do I put the multitude of nativity sets? I’ve always had a couple, but I love them and I started collecting more.  One is a gorgeous cast bronze from Genesis (Irish-made) that sat on the mantel against a white background in our house in County Cork.  Now it’s on an extra-long mantel against a two-story stone fireplace, and it’s dwarfed.  It deserves pride of place, so where do I put it?  And the other Irish set?  And the regular set?  And the miniature polystone Nativity that the kids used to rearrange?  And that’s not to mention the one-piece types.  Sigh.

No ornaments yet, but at least it has lights!

The tree is easy to figure out: it goes exactly where the previous homeowners told me they put theirs.  We bought their leather sectional, pulled the center piece out, spread the two large pieces farther apart, and put the tree in between, just like they said.  But, hmm, that doesn’t look right.  Switch the sofa pieces.  Nope.  Put back together but on the other side of the room.  Nope.  Put them together near the tree, with the rocker and glider on the other side.  Okay, that works, but also highlights the need for a coffee table.  (Does that mean I have a good reason to go furniture shopping?)

Now I’m down to treasured knick-knacks that need a place to sit, and some of the usual spots have vanished.  We had to buy new TVs when we returned, and of course they’re flat panel – nice to watch, but no lovely top surface to set things on!  The basket of pine cones and shiny red & gold ornaments can sit on the stone hearth, but it’s too uneven for anything else.  What about the set of snow angels, the Christmas Elf, a sleigh, the nutcrackers . . . you get the idea.

Not only that, but I hope some of you checked out Samantha Warren’s blog, who started this whole thing with a Blog Scavenger Hunt for her birthday.  I found several new bloggers I liked, and I even won a prize one day!  As a participating blog, I couldn’t play on the days my blog was featured, so I wasn’t eligible to win the Kindle Mini, but some lucky person did.

Speaking of which, the winner of Susan Wiggs’ The Goodbye Quilt here is Megan Morris.  She’s an American married to an Irishman and living in Co Cork, Ireland (but I can ship the book to her family in the States).  Her blog is The Adventures of Medic Meg and Andy Pets.  Congratulations, Megan!

I’ll leave you with a YouTube video of a favorite pianist of mine: Jon Schmidt.  Enjoy the music!

Just a reminder before I get back to my regular blog schedule:  Tonight (12/10/11) at 11:59 pm is the cutoff for entries to win in the book giveaway.

The prize?  A copy of The Goodbye Quilt, an awesome mother/daughter novel by Susan Wiggs.  It’s a heartwarming read for anyone who has or every will have a daughter grow up and go off to college, and it even includes instructions to make a memory quilt!

How to earn entries?  Comment on a blog post (one entry), subscribe to this blog (2 entries), or post a link to JenniferJensen.com on your own blog (2 entries), FaceBook page (1 entry), or Twitter (1 entry).  See my original Scavenger Hunt blog post for the rest of the nitty-gritty details (like US address only, shipping arrangements, etc.).

Good luck, and I promise some more Christmas and regular-life posts coming soon.

***Note: If you’re looking for answers to Stephanie Warren’s Blog Scavenger Hunt and can’t find them here, be sure to click on the Jen’s Writing Desk tab.

Myndi Shaffer had a lovely read about holiday traditions and cream cheese sugars cookies.

And when you’re done with that, you’ll want the recipe!  So here’s the direct link to that.  Enjoy eating!

Have you ever watched a show with someone living a primitive life for a few months? Known (or heard about) someone who gave up chocolate for a year?  What could you live without?  And what happened when Tim O’Brien had Six Days Unplugged.

To tickle your funny bone, here’s a laugh riot over creative non-swearing, from Jenny Hansen.

And one more from Tim O’Brien:  Jimi Hendrix & Devil Dogs to the Rescue.  What can I say – just read it!

That’s all for now – look for more at the end of the week.  Perhaps you’ll find a favorite blogger you just can’t live without.

DON’T FORGET:  Subscribe to this blog (enter email over on right) anytime this week for a chance to win Susan Wigg’s The Goodbye Quilt.  Subscribe to Jen’s Writing Desk for a chance to with Stephen King’s On Writing.  Link to my blogs for extra chances.  Details here.