Monday, June 2, 2008

WANTED: Motivation; Cure for Malaise

It's been a while since we made significant progress on the house itself. I could blame it on the "so much going on" excuse-- family in town, my sister's graduation, cleaning for the family in town, hemming and hawing over the possibility of an investment property (one of the considerations for that one being that it might slow down our "progress" on our house; psh), signing up for the library summer reading program, summer camps for the kiddo. It's felt a little like Sisyphus around these parts, which also means I'm not too motivated to post about what little is getting done here. Do I deserve a cookie for doing laundry? Dishes? Dinner? We're the kind of people who sort of let it go all week and play catch up over the weekend in between "well-deserved" breaks. I think we need a change of lifestyle.

I have bought 3 new strawberry plants that are doing well, and I've continued my quest to keep the yard free of too many dog holes. We've put our new fence posts in concrete and sawed the dog ears to the right height. Our tomatoes are super:


See? Blooms! Tomato basil mozzarella sandwiches, here I come...

And our basil is providing us with the loveliest pesto ever (a little trick I've learned? sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts-- considering the fact that we always have parmesan, oil, garlic, pasta, bread and now basil on hand, a bag of salted roasted sunflower seeds, at $1.83, makes several rounds of pesto-- we're talking 60¢ meals here).


But I can't say much is going on around the house besides that. All I want to do is sit on the patio next to my citronella torch and read. I like hot weather. It's been great. And on days like yesterday, with a cool breeze, I just don't want to do anything. We worked on the house every weekend for 8 months. And we figure we've deserved a break. The last few weekends have had more than their fair share of beer on the porch. But we have to get back to work. We HAVE to. And it's so hard to motivate. So hard to get things in order, ducks in a row and all that.

Where's that fire under our asses I was looking for a few weeks ago?

5 comments:

Midwest Bicycle Company said...

I'm with you... I haven't worked on the house in months. I've been working, riding my road bike, spending time with the wife, and just generally avoiding anything related to house repair or renovation. I'm a bad house blogger...

Larry

min hus said...

Sometimes you just gotta take a break. Your mojo will come back, and until then, enjoy your time off, it sounds like you've more than earned it.

Jennifer said...

The garden is the house, too... and those will make lovely sandwiches later this summer! Basil and tomato with mozzarella... YUM!

I go through periods of nothing... just finished a big one, actually! Hopefully we can keep things going through summer, though.

Jennifer said...

Something (that I am not happy with it) came and ate all of my tomato leaves, basil leaves & most of my peppers! It started in on our green beans but apparently it could only eat so much in one night. Yours look great - I think maybe I need to consider making a similar item to hang my tomatoes. When I read your post a while back about it I thought "too much work, I'll just put 'em in the ground and stake 'em as they grow". What a fool I was!!

Amalie said...

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

Jen-- we had caterpillars (I think) nibbling on the basil and canna lily leaves, but they've had light appetites. I did, however, notice this morning that the other tomato plat is mysteriously missing blooms. Now, whether that was a casualty of the rain storms or birds remains to be seen...