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I went to a garden party/ To reminisce with my old friends

I'm getting antsy to start trying to do gardening. We got this hydrangea at our housewarming party, and I want to find a place for it outside:



It was doing fine for a while, then some of its leaves got a bit crunchy. I hope I can get it to survive until I'm able to get it outside.

Jake and I went to Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria on Valentine's Day. I've started some flower seeds in little pots. I chose penstemon digitalis, because the description I read said that the plants attract bees and hummingbirds. The seeds are super small. I could barely even see them as I put them in the pots. I'm afraid nothing is going to come up. Jake chose a plant called liatris spicata. I really need to learn the common names of these things. Go Google! Okay, the common name of mine is "beard tongue" and Jake's is "blazing star".

I also have a bunch of seed packets of vegetables, but haven't tried to start any of them yet. I have 2 kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of peppers, lettuce, mesclun, and cucumber. I'm not sure how much I should try to start. On the one hand, I don't want to start trying to grow too many things at once and become overwhelmed. On the other, I want to make sure that I'm successful at growing something (even if it is just one thing) and the more things I try, the more likely it is that something will work out.

Oh, and I got flowers from Jake on V-day. I just told one of my coworkers that I can't remember the last time I got flowers, so this was cool. He also bought the vase for me on etsy. Here are pictures:

25 Random Things About Me

Okay, I'm doing this "25 Things" deal because I've seen so many people on facebook do it. I'm not going to "tag" anyone, but I do enjoy reading other people's lists. So, if you haven't made one and want to, go ahead and do it. I'll probably sit and read it and enjoy it.

Here goes:

1. I was the only girl in my grade school class from Kindergarten through 3rd grade and then again from 6th through 8th grade.

2. My sister and I shared a bedroom until I was in 5th grade. We would talk to each other until late into the night sometimes. I remember we would make plans to live next to each other when we grew up and have dinners and barbeques over at each other's houses.

3. I have two best friends with whom I have been close since high school. Maria lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Lelani currently lives in Wisconsin not far from where we grew up, though she did go to college in Pennsylvania and also lived in Vermont for a while.

4. I have lived in the following cities: Princeton, WI; Madison, WI; Eau Claire, WI; Arlington, VA; and Alexandria, VA.

5. I love the show "Seinfeld". I know they call it the show about nothing, but at the same time I still find a way to relate it to everything.

6. I like drinking bloody marys. I like it when they basically show up as a meal in a glass along with a beer chaser. That seems to happen back in Wisconsin. I don't see them presented quite the same way in DC.

7. I grew up in the Midwest, but for some reason, thought of myself as being more aligned with the ideology of people on the West Coast. I wound up living on the East Coast.

8. When I was growing up, my parents competed in an annual trivia contest that played on a local radio station. It was 21 hours of trivia and my dad would collect books from libraries all around to have on hand to look up answers and call in. This was back in the day before everyone had the internet. I'd look forward to it every February. It was practically another holiday to me...one where we'd get to stay up all night and eat Twizzlers and Chex Mix.

9. During my junior and senior years of college I lived in an apartment with 5 other girls. It was a really weird apartment. I think it was some sort of office that got converted into an apartment. We had an "Exit" sign that lit up our living room.

10. I taught myself how to play the guitar when I was 13. I'd been playing trumpet since I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I thought for a while that I wanted to have a career related to music. When I was 16, I took private trumpet lessons with a professor in Oshkosh, because my high school band teacher thought I should. Then the professor kicked me out of the lessons because I wasn't practicing as much as he wanted me to and because my musical ability wasn't improving as quickly as he wanted.

11. I like cooking, and I want to get better at baking.

12. Before I got married/engaged, I didn't want an engagement ring. I told Jake to get me something practical. Then, I backtracked and said that if Jake wanted to give me an engagement ring to show that we were engaged, he could. I think I confused him so much that he wound up giving me a ring, a trip to NYC, and a laptop as engagement gifts.

13. I gave Lelani a cheap gaudy ring from Claire's when I asked her to be my maid of honor. It was over a candlelit dinner of Domino's pizza.

14. When I die, I really don't want to be embalmed.

15. When the war in Iraq broke out, I was on vacation in Paris. There were huge protests there.

16. When I was little, I threw up in the movie theater while watching the Disney movie Cinderella.

17. I once went trick-or-treating with two friends on Labor Day. I think we seriously confused an old lady.

18. I wish I were better at speaking Spanish. I took four semesters in college. I understand a lot of what people say to me when they speak in Spanish, but I am never confident enough to actually keep a conversation going.

19. I never liked watching sports all that much until I went to Badger football and hockey games in college. I still don't like watching any sporting events as much as I liked watching those games in person with the crowd chants and the band playing.

20. I tend to be an early riser. I always got up on the weekends before my college roommates. I always beat Jake out of bed, too.

21. When I lived in Madison, I was a participant in a study about emotional regulation. I had to go in for 3 MRIs and get shown a series of images. I got paid a few hundred dollars.

22. I have a scar on my left arm from donating plasma for money while I was in college.

23. I hated swimming lessons as a kid. I remember my mom bribed me into going to my swim lessons one summer by telling me that if I went to all the lessons, she would buy me Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo.

24. I don't remember the day my sister was born, but I remember the day my brother was born. My great-grandpa had died recently, and we were cleaning out his house. My parents left for lunch and didn't come back. My grandparents took us over to their house and we watched the Miss America pageant on tv. My dad showed up in the middle of night to wake us up and say, "It's a boy!"

25. I never got a traffic ticket until I moved out East. Then, I got two in one year. One was for an illegal U-turn here in Virginia, and the other was because I was going too slow in the left lane of the highway while in New Jersey.

Happy New Year!

Here are a few things I want to do in 2009

1. Start my own garden: I'll have to get to this this spring sometime.

2. Attempt to bike to work when I can: I'll wait until the days are a bit longer and warmer to do this. Hopefully, I can work out a way to do this a couple of times a week. I'm also hoping that it won't take me that much longer than waiting around for the bus, etc.

3. Shoot a gun: I know this is a weird one for me to have on here, but I want to know what it is like to do it once at least. Maria, do you think we can plan to go shoot clay pigeons over Thanksgiving? If not, I'll have to find a range to go to so I can try it out. I think doing it in Wisco with Maria would be more fun as well as cheaper, though.

4. Learn to can: I think I'll try to get to this sometime this summer.

5. Get a dog: I think Jake and I will start looking in February.

A couple of these might replace items on my big list (which has an ending date of July 14th...yikes!). I'm actually not doing too bad overall. I didn't really expect I'd wind up doing 100% of what I wrote on that list, anyway. I wonder if I should make another big list once my anniversary is done or not. It is fun to look back and see that I have done a lot of things in the last year and a half or so; however, I don't know quite how I want to define the next phase of my life. If I had to guess, I would think the next couple years will be spent: a) settling into our house, making it efficient and sustainable and b) enjoying fun activities before actually having a family. Also, I purposefully didn't write anything too specific for career goals on my current (big) list, but I wonder if I should think about coming up with a new direction for the next list. I've furthermore been kicking around the idea of doing some sort of service vacation...like going to another country for a couple of months to build schools or something (anyone have suggestions on good programs to go through? I doubt I could commit to a year like you did, Emily, but I think I could make a month or two work). I need to find ways to make myself feel useful. My job definitely doesn't make me feel useful. I did start volunteering once a month with The Reading Connection, but I think I need more than that.

The ideas for this next list are all very vague, I know, but at least my first few goals above to start the New Year are more specific and time-bound. These other thoughts are just seeds of goals for another list, if I wind up doing one. What do people think? Should I write another one? Should I do a list recap this summer to talk about the highlights of completing items on the current list?

Survey Question of the Day

What's your favorite Christmas movie?

Should Candy's next holiday be an open road adventure or a return to "home"?

So, I thought about writing out day-by-day everything that we did in Costa Rica, but I'm feeling a bit lazy. The highlights were: learning scuba diving, doing a canopy tour, relaxing in the hot springs, and getting a massage at the spa. It was a lot of fun and made me really wish I could spend like an entire year in another country. I wish I had more opportunities to practice speaking Spanish and it would be nice to have a different sort of experience.

Here's a picture of Jake and me, near Volcan Arenal:



Here's a link to Jake's photo albums of our trip, for anyone who's interested.

I feel as though there is always a tension between wanting to be out on the open road, doing new things, and wanting to have the comfort of a place to call "home". What wins out? Sometimes I think I shouldn't get too comfortable because then I won't grow enough as a person, but on the other hand, it's nice to feel like there's somewhere I belong. I'm not sure how long it will take to make our house feel like "home", or if it ever will feel like it. I find myself still calling Princeton "home" now and again, and I wonder if there will ever be a point where I don't call it home. When does that happen? Does it ever happen?

This weekend, we actually spent some time sitting around the house. I feel like I haven't had a chance to do that since we moved in. It's been kind of nice. I still sort of want to just have a day where I sit in my pajamas the whole day long and just relax around the house, I think that might make it feel like I'm breaking the place in.

Jake and I leave for Wisconsin on Saturday. We're flying into Milwaukee and plan to have Jake's parents pick us up. We'll stay with them the first night and see if we can borrow a car from them. think we'll take our time getting to my parents' on Sunday, just to avoid any conflicts over going to church (like we did last year). We'll stay with my parents until sometime on the 25th, and then see Jake's family until we leave on the 28th. I'm not sure what we're going to do each day exactly, or which friends and family I need to pop in to see while I'm there. Maria won't be around this year, so that'll be a bummer. I want to go see Lelani and Jon so that I can meet Memphis, so that is definitely on the list.

Yay...suck it, Jenny McCarthy.

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