One Week

It’s very surreal – but I have one week left. Just one. Five more days. I’ve started to clean out my office a little, which feels very strange. Actually, all of this feels strange – as if it’s just something I’ve imagined, that won’t really happen.

But it will. Friday, I will be writing memos and trying to get things into the hands of others, signed, sealed, and delivered. I will be going to a happy hour that night with my friends from my office that I’ve made over the years, and then…well, I know there are some people with whom I’ll keep in touch, because there are some people here with whom I’m friends outside of work – people that we’ve had to our house, who came to our wedding. But realistically speaking, there are probably a lot of people that I won’t really see again, except through coincidence. That’s how life goes, as you move through the phases of it.

Special K and I had a good weekend, both relaxing and productive. In a moment of weakness, we went to Home Depot’s garden center on Saturday, which was way too much fun. We then went to cook and have dinner with my parents and some family friends – the theme of the night was Indian food, so we had chicken tikka masala, northern Indian lamb curry, bengain bartha (spicy braised eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes), and rice pudding with cardamom, dried cherries, and dried currants. It was a gooooood night, especially because we started out with Indian-style bread stuffed with either potatoes or cauliflower, both spicy and flavorful. K left a little early because he and his brother were going to go see POD downtown. Well, unfortunately they got there to find that the show was sold out. Even more unfortunately, the battery on my phone died when K tried to call me to tell me this.

Whoops.

Fortunately, J and his girlfriend drove K home. One small problem there being that I had both sets of keys, since we had taken his car.

Double whoops.

I went to check my phone when I hadn’t heard from him around about the time that the show should have let out. Then I realized that it was dead, and called his cell. When he picked up and I didn’t hear and club noise in the background, I knew that there had been a problem. And by the way, it was 11:30 by this time.

I left, rather unceremoniously (but not too quickly to take some leftovers with me), and sped off for home. I arrived, and my seemingly endlessly patient and good-natured husband was there, as were J and A (who thankfully had nowhere else to be and waited with K), and everyone came in and we sat around for a bit, chatting.

Yesterday morning we were both working at church, so it was an early morning. We came home in the afternoon, and I set about gardening. I’ve got to figure out what to do about those freaking raccoons that were my undoing last year – but for now there’s nothing on the plants that should tempt them, like tomatoes, so I have a little more time to figure this out. Some of my herbs managed to survive the winter and are either fine (thyme), or looking as though they may be resuscitated without too much pain and effort (oregano, marjoram, rosemary, mint). I have a sage plant that I’ve been rehabbing in the kitchen that I’ll bring outside when it’s a bit warmer, and basil – well, basil is a wimpy plant, so I’ll be planting basil and cilantro last. But we also planted tomatoes again, some strawberry plants, marigolds, which are good for bees (I’m actually not allergic to honey bees, it’s wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets – besides, bees are dying out and are hugely important, so I’m all for creating some habitat in my backyard so they can continue to pollinate), some other pretty perennials, and a crapload of pansies. I don’t think it really occurred to me that when we bought a flat of pansies (only $6.99!) that we were buying forty plants. So after four large bags of potting soil and using every container we found in the potting shed, in addition to the couple that we had purchased, we managed to find a home for every plant we had brought home, all but one – a sad little plant that hadn’t wanted to come out of the flat, so I managed to rip off more than half of its roots by accident. K did his impression of a dying pansy (which is apparently somewhat akin to a fish that has been pulled out of water), and then I felt terrible. And then he laughed at me. Punk.

In the meantime, K had been cleaning out our back porch (long overdue) and tidying up the yard (also long overdue), so by the time we both were done with our day at 9 pm last night, we actually had a lot to show for it. There was a huge sense of accomplishment that came with all of that, actually – we’ve got a few containers in front of the house with pretty things, we’ve got pretty things in the backyard, we’ve got things that we’ll be able to use in the kitchen that are on the way, and I’ve learned from some of my mistakes of last year. I think K wants to try his hand at growing hot peppers this summer, so that will also be fun. Now let’s hope that we’re really past the danger of frost, or I will be very, very sad.

We’re both big geeks. But I’m the bigger one, because I’m not a bad-ass drummer.