So, what's new with me?

The new season of kickball starts today, and we are in the midst of a running experiment. We have been running in the mornings before work, three times a week. Yep, up at 4:45am. It's painful when the alarm goes off, but once I'm out of bed, I'm okay. But just so people don't think that all I do is run and play kickball, I'll divulge a bit more today.

So most people know that we spent every second of last summer remodeling our house. The inside of the house is - for the most part - done at this point, but the exterior is another story.

The siding is probably 30 years old, which is fine. But it has probably been just as long since it's been cleaned. It's also a very 70s blue. We'd like at some point to have it painted a medium grey-green, and possibly add some more decorative elements & wider window trim. In the meantime, however, we will settle for a good cleaning. This, we hope to accomplish by mid-summer. We're hoping it's not stained at this point.

In addition, we will try our hand at fine woodwork. Okay, so more like a relatively simple project that invovles building out the columns at the front porch. At this time they are 4x4 wood posts, which practically dissappear. We plan to build them out to a size closer to 8x8, with wide trim bands at the top & bottom.

We have also been trying to tame this jungle we call landscaping. The trees & shrubs have quite possibly not been pruned for decades, and the sidewalks, driveway, and rock gardens leave just as much to be desired. Oh, but wouldn't we love to impliment an entirely new beautiful plan? Well, in due time. At this point, however, we can only afford to remove. So that's what we've been doing. We started a few weeks ago with severely pruning back a lilac tree, pruning a few low branches from a couple of larger trees, mowing down every last shrub in the front yard, and hacking down a rather annoying tree that was growing out from the foundation of the house, and in front of our south living room window. Dustin also managed to pull up about 20ft of black plastic edging that had been, over the years, buried about 6 inches below the top of the soil. This past week we used an edge-cutter along the driveway and gained about a foot on either side. Used the extra dirt & grass to fill in a mysterious gaping hole in the back yard, and used the good pieces of recovered grass to patch over the top of the dirt. This weekend we did the same thing along the front walk, and filled in some more holes in the front yard with dirt shoveled from an overflowing bed next to the driveway. We also raked up a good portion of the matted, dead grass from the front yard and seeded the bare spots. Next we plan to clear out all of the rock, plastic, and stumps from the front yard. Then replace it with new sod up to the foundation. We will also sod the side yard, which used to consist of weeds and the annoying tree. We will sod a small area along the back of the foundation as well. We will dig out the excess dirt and growth from around the air conditioner in the back yard and transplant some of the rock from the front yard to that area. We still have a problem area along the side of the driveway to deal with, which we have not decided on yet. It is a steep drop, with a retaining wall and gets very little water or sun. It's bare dirt at this point, which is wearing on my non-gardening nerves. I've managed to get all of the really thick weeds out of there, but the small, everyday weeds still persist. My landscaping motto is "No exposed soil."

So once we get this next sodding project taken care of, I will probably buy a few large potted evergreen shrubs to put at the front and back doors. But then, that's it for at least a few years. I know those gardening types are feeling a slight pain in their hearts as I talk about removing everything and sodding up to the foundation. But such is the life of a non-gardener. And such is my budget.

As for the indoors, there are still a few small areas in need of work. There's the "other" spare room, which has yet to be painted or cleared of the construction debris from last summer. Hey, the very definition of "spare" is that which you do not need. We'll get to it when we are good and ready.

There's also the office, which has decidedly become the landing place for anything and everything that we do not immediately need - and Dustin's poker room. We have aquired a free sleeper-sofa for this room, however, which is great... but has been added to the list of projects - recover sofa.

Along with these projects are: hang light fixture in main bath, glue peeling wallpaper in bathroom, new paint in half-bath, sew curtains for living room, locate/frame/hang pictures throughout house, finish sewing pillow covers for living room throw pillows, finish tapestry for master bedroom, hang shelves in bedroom, clean garage, organize sewing supplies, and a huge list of other small projects. All which we would, of course, like to finish this summer.

Getting these things done should be highly possible, considering that we are out of town or busy for every weekend but one, into September. We'll have plenty of spare time.

So if you're wondering if I ever do anything but run and play children's playground games...