Approach of Winter

 First, a garden update for my records! (These photos were taken November 1).

Second, a fitness update! I was hoping to hit a bodyweight deadlift (160) by my birthday, but in the end it took another month. So far I've only been able to hit a max of 2 reps at 160. I have now officially moved beyond the "Novice" level in overall strength standards in all four compound lifts!

January —> May —> November:

• Squat: 95 —> 95 —> 115
• Deadlift: 125 —> 140 —> 160
• Bench: 75 —> 75 —> 80
• OHP: 55.5 —> 60 —> 65

I'm in week ten of another round of GZCLP and I think I like this better than "Rippler" offshoot I did earlier in the year, and definitely better than the 5/3/1 short program I did after that.

Finally, the sad news: Sara's mom died, one month ago today. I had to go back and check my calendar, because it seems simultaneously impossible that it was only a month ago...and that it's already been a month. It happened so quickly; she checked herself into the hospital on a Thursday, Sara found out on Saturday and was with her on Sunday, and by that night she had dramatically declined, and she was on palliative care by Monday. I went up to St. Francis on Monday afternoon, assuming she would already be gone, but she was still there, albeit already in twilight, under an animal-print blanket that she had brought with her when she checked in to the hospital (along with makeup and jewelry - classic Jesusita!). Her friends Maria and Nellie were there, in addition to Sara and Zach, and it was, honestly, a really warm and loving vibe. At that point it wasn't clear how long it would be, whether she would need to be moved to hospice, etc., so we said goodbye at a certain point and went back to her mom's house. Sara went back and said a quick goodnight to her that evening when visiting hours ended, and then a couple of hours later the hospital called to say she was gone. 

When we walked out to the top floor of the parking garage that evening, it was such a perfect, beautiful late October day. The dark humor in me felt compelled to note that St. Francis would now have been the place where both of her parents died, just like my parents. But I'm so glad she was able to say goodbye, and see and talk with her mom before she was too confused. And the warm feeling in that hospital room was so peaceful. If you have to say goodbye, that's the way to do it. 

Since her mom died, we gathered with her family and friends for a memorial dinner at Butterfly, a Chinese restaurant that had been off-limits to her in recent times because of the sodium. For the first (and last) time in my life, I wore animal print - courtesy of a shirt lent by my colleague Elizabeth! It was another really wonderful, warm experience: meeting other of Susie's friends, her cousin Rafe, seeing Sara's cousins after so many years (Suy not since the wedding, Pedro...high school?) and listening to everyone share toasts in Susie's honor. 

I told Sara, whenever we see them lately I worry that it could be the last time we get to see Oscar. Of course it didn't occur to me, when we went up to West Hartford this summer, that it would be the last time I saw her mom. But I'm so glad we did, and that she was in such good spirits (the way she welcomed Sean like a minor celebrity when he showed up was hilarious). Like my parents, I know her mom will live on not only in stories that Sara and I share, but in the stories and jokes that Sean and I tell, and re-tell, and retell. It's always a bit of a surprise to me to learn that not everyone is like that! The people we love become characters in humorous stories we play out -- most of them with people who are gone, but also my sister, because the jokes are just there. Of course it helps that Sean knew her, the same way it helps that he knew my mom and my grandfather, and that I knew Hubbard. My dad, and his grandfather, are never as fully embodied in these jokes and stories, because the knowledge is one-sided. The same way Sara's dad has always seemed a character in a story to me, because he died before she and I met. 

I don't really have any conclusions here. For me, the best way to honor and remember those I love has always been to tell jokes and stories. For Susie, we will joke about the animal print, forgetting to draw on her eyebrows that one time in high school, telling us to go braless in 8th grade ("ladies, free yourselves!"), her supernatural awareness of changes to the thermostat. I will remember the pernil and the sticky rice. The toile couch, the red armchair, the knick-nacks from her many travels. And, of course, the many days and nights of friendship that centered around that house, one that she opened to her daughter's friends without complaint! Sleep well, Susie dePedro. You were and remain a legend. 

Just an Old Bitch

I turned 40 today! Naturally I took the day off work and I’d like to say I spent it doing something fabulous but we had to have the basement guys come back to fix something with the job that they did on Sean’s birthday, so like him I spent part of my day listening to drills and a jackhammer. Poetic!

But I have also been sitting outside enjoying the finally-seasonable cool air, and stunning blue skies. Behold my mums!

And asters!

An All-Too-Brief Vacation Ends

 Two weeks of time off went by so damn fast! 

The sump pump project is complete and my basement gym has been restored:

We celebrated Sean’s 40th birthday, first with a blackberry pie from scratch by yours truly (the first pie I’ve made since baking with my mom as a kid, I believe), then with his ND friends at Rossovino, and with his family at 9 East, where Beau was delighted to be allowed to play the giant drum when they sang:

We saw friends, including Denise (and meeting her lovely boyfriend Bob after all these years):

 

My nephews picked up 270 pinecones at $0.05 per cone! Here they are triumphantly waving their earnings:

Charles demonstrated his sass-pants status by informing me that my air-dried curly hair looked like Medusa. While Jen briefly went solo shopping, they demanded snacks and were appalled we had nothing but fruit. Then Leon tried Linda’s crab sauce and loved it (we told him it was called that because crabs are red, haha):

What else…Carla came to visit! We had our trees trimmed! I finally took down the anti bunny fencing on my new garden bed!

Now, just four days of work, and then we go to the Cape for JanFest 2025. I need…another vacation.

A Fitness Note

 

Ever wondered what's inside a 100 lb heavy bag? A metric fuck-ton of clothing scraps, a couple of small sandbags, and a PVC pipe with about 25 lbs of sand in it. 

My punching bag has had awful hard spots for a while, so I wanted to try re-stuffing it. Unfortunately I wasn't able to put nearly enough the amount of force necessary to compress those scraps on the way back in. What's south of the white pipe is what came out after I removed it, and yet when I put back in just that section of material, the damn pipe was sitting six inches above the bag's rim! Long story short, I now have an bag that weighs, oh, 60 lbs or so, plus a PVC pipe and a bag of fabric. It's honestly probably better for me in the long run; there's no reason I need to be hitting a hard-as-shit bag. If it moves around too much, there's a D-ring on the bottom, so I'll tie a weight to it or something. 

I've incorporated boxing back into my workouts pretty regularly now. I started paying for YT Premium so that I could use the boxing workout videos without having to take off my gloves to skip ads, and I just decided to start paying an additional couple of bucks to have access to more workouts from the trainer I follow, Precision Striking. Before the basement cleanout, I finished Week 10 of the GZCLP "The Rippler." It's a 12 week program, but the last two weeks are, I think, deload weeks, so we'll see if I actually finish it out or if I jump to a new program once I have my gym back. I think I might try BBB for Beginners. There are so many interesting looking programs, but I need one that can be done in a home gym without cable or leg machines, and doesn't take 2 hours to complete. Once the school year starts and I start going in to work an hour earlier, I'll have to shift to working out in the evenings when I can, plus Wednesdays and the weekend. 

I started planning out my workout plus hair-washing schedule (it's important, shut up!) in a note on my phone each week. Someone online had the slogan "follow the plan, not the mood," and that has generally worked for me! Even if I'm not feeling it, if I said I was going to do it, I do it. There's still kinks to work out. For example, once upon a time, I worked out fasted (except for the tsp of sugar in my coffee), but once I started lifting more, I needed a banana first or I would run out of energy. If I want to double-up and do some boxing after I lift, though, the banana doesn't seem to be enough, but I'm not sure what more I want to add that early in the AM. My tomatoes and eggs are the post-workout breakfast.

Last week I also started tracking nutrition on Cronometer, which was recommended on Reddit, in part to force some accountability for the role wine plays in my life (sniff), and in part to see how well I'm doing on actual macros. Protein was what I've been trying to pay attention to, and I'm decent there, but lo and behold, I am not good at consuming enough fiber and iron in a given day! That's been very interesting. 

Overall, I feel great about my fitness progress. I was musing over what, if anything, I might get myself for my birthday and found myself debating whether I should get 30lb dumbbells, haha. But my little dumbbell tower is already full, so I'd have to exile the 10s, which admittedly I no longer use. My very weakest lift, like many people's, is lateral raise, and after several years, I'm up to 12s, baby!

July Garden Update

 These loaded in reverse order, but oh well, I'm not rearranging them. First up: not delighted by these mums, which I thought were supposed to bloom in September. Planting them was my first encounter with the boulders that lie beneath the surface of this garden. See the pale-colored monster at the bottom of the frame? Excavated to put those mums in. Must weigh 30 lbs. 

And yet they disappoint me - their color is all bleached, probably from the heat. No, I will not be watering you - it's your second year, put up or shut up. Also, my spacing of this trio was...not great. 

Hyssop and orange mums pair one: doing well, though this hyssop is nowhere near as bushy and busy as the other one. I did a half-hearted chelsea chop to these mums in July.

The bigger hyssop plant and the other mums - these I didn't snip! If they grow too tall I'll just stake them. The bare patch below center will, in the fall, receive a new hydrangea to match the other two.

Newest additions: I wound up ripping out all of the irises in the center garden. The ones I had left untouched looked nasty, and even the ones I'd painstakingly thinned had that terrible leaf spot disease. I knew I couldn't plant the hydrangea now, and I didn't want to have too many bare places, so I went to the native plant store in North Branford. There weren't that many native plants that could tolerate the insanely rocky soil (as in, too many giant rocks underneath to bother removing) and full sun, and weren't white (which I don't prefer), so I wound up with three "Triple Play" phlox, which will hopefully spread and take over more of this zone. I would have liked something a bit more upright, but those need more room to send their roots downward.

On to the new garden bed! Uhhh I really couldn't recall what these are, but I think they're the Prairie Smoke? They're doing good, seem to be later bloomers. 

Rudbeckia, coneflower, and behind it, a late addition of a short Joe Pye Weed, which I'm particularly happy with! And so are the bees. 

The milkweed were covered with small bright orange aphids, which apparently aren't really a threat to the plants. The only other thing they like is butterfly weed, and I belatedly discovered they'd been sucking the life of out the gorgeous orange flowers! I'm trying to Neem them periodically, but there are always pollinators around...

The monarda is spreading nicely, and wow, some of those grasses along the wall exploded in size!

Very tall northern blazing star! No sign they need to be staked up yet. Interested to see what the flowers will be. These irises I'm leaving for now; I cut off all the diseased foliage. If I can't get it under control next year slicing throat motion, even though they're so lovely. 

The coreopsis are...very floppy? Produced a couple of little yellow flowers. I'm not sure about them, but we'll see next year. Below: the hostas in their summer "wtf is this, we're shade plants!" mode. Not pictured, the remains of the hairy beardtongue (again, meh), and the asters in the circle, which are going strong. 

Finally, I have never been an annuals person, and kind of thought of them as a waste of money, but the absolute delight these two-tone petunias give me has made me see the light somewhat! Too bad those planters were shitty resin, despite costing $50 each, and one is already breaking (on the right). Once this season is over we're going to look for fiberglass planters in a "concrete" color. Sean thinks black planters with the black lanterns (currently in storage) are too much black. I disagree, but, compromise! 

Also, next year I'd like to add some more coneflowers to the right of the door to balance the two survivors on the left. 

House Concerns

 As I write this, a crew of guys is jackhammering the concrete in our basement to install a sump pump and perimeter drain. We've never gotten a lot of water in the basement, but we've definitely gotten some, especially in 2021, before I added the downspout extenders, and we've also consistently gotten the efflorescence that is the white stuff leftover from water moving through concrete. One of the things I've been discussing with my therapist is my not-inconsiderable house anxiety: my concern that something will happen or is happening to the house to damage it, that I need to be on guard for. 

Obviously, some amount of attentiveness is important! If I didn't spend multiple hours a week in the basement when I'm working out I would probably not have been as concerned about this, and indeed, we found a few additional "problem zones" once we emptied the basement out in preparation for the work: 

The source of my anxiety isn't hard to discern; this is the nicest place I've ever lived, and I love it so much, so I worry about something happening to it. And generally, my anxiety is assuaged by having A Plan, or more often Some Plans, about how I will handle the various potential threats that I identify. Until I'm able to formulate and act on the plan, I feel squirrely; for example, we noticed we had some sugar ants coming in, which is not terribly concerning, but then I killed a flying carpenter ant in the basement - not good! Then Sean told me he had seen another one dead recently. Red alert! Sean was not as alarmed as I was, but again, house anxiety, I am always ready to be alarmed, while Sean needs to see "clear and present danger." 

I was also annoyed because I did have the exterior of the house sprayed last year,- but apparently that was not adequate deterrence. So I called the (very) old man of Branford Pest Control - plan made and acted upon! A few days later he came out, sprayed inside and out, and told us the same series of stories he'd told me last year. While he was literally on my doorstep spraying, I turned around to see the biggest carpenter ant I've ever seen scamper across my cabinets - ughhhhh but also, vindication! Also I had to kill another flying one that evening. But we haven't seen any more since. 

The pest control, of course, was a bargain at $250, compared to the whopping $10k the sump pump project will cost. And next week, we have a scheduled full day of tree-trimming work, which will cost $2800. So that has put quite a dent in our savings, which is fine - it's what they're for! - but still, deep breaths. We have tree-trimming done every couple of years; the last time they came was when the willow had snapped by the pond (and incidentally, the newborn willow there is a gigantic bush these days), and we have a lot that needs to be done, including taking out one of the cherry trees in front of the house that an arborist had pointed out as on its last legs. Our mountain laurel, too, is half-dead; the aborist said they're not terribly long-lived. But we can't bear to take that one (Laurel Hill Rd!), so we're just going to have them remove the dead boughs for now. Especially since we probably can't replace it with another in the same spot; when it was planted there were a lot more trees in that portion of the front, so it had the shade it prefers, but now it's pretty much in full sun all day, so the arborist said it would be unlikely another would thrive. Sniff! 

The arborist in question was there to discuss treatment for our two giant oak trees, which were really quite savaged by some moth in early spring. They did one fertilizer treatment in early summer and will do another one in the fall. They also recommended pesticide in the spring, but I'm going to hold off another year and see if the same damage recurs; oak trees are so important to so many species, is it worth killing all of them to help the tree itself...? 

On a happier note, one of the giant, hollowed-out stumps in the front yard has a white oak seedling coming up! I'm happy to support its journey, provided the deer don't snack on it. They took nearly all of the lilies in the center garden bed and by the mailbox - just nipped the buds off before they ever got to flower. They've never taken so many before, and not from the circle garden. It was such a bummer; they might not be native, but they're so pretty. Deer repellent is now on my spring house list. 

Oh, and here's a picture of the blasted concrete, and the clay pipe that was apparently originally supposed to help funnel some water away from the foundation:

It might be expensive, it might be the cost of a very nice vacation...but if it improves the long-term health of my house, totally worth it!

Assorted Summer Loveliness

One of the casualties of the invasion of the shed by mice last year was my lovely quilted hammock. I unrolled it and discovered the attached pillow had been savaged for construction material by my adorable little nemeses, so it had to go. In early spring I decided to splurge on an LL Bean rope hammock - which for the cost had better be last long enough to be passed down to the boys. Then I discovered that the metal frame from hammock 1 did not accommodate the greater length of hammock 2. Another tooth-grinding expenditure later, I gave the old frame away on FB and successfully put up the new rope hammock. Not only is the backyard too sunny in the afternoon, we've also learned our neighbor Ken often likes to putter about in his yard while playing classic rock. It would not surprise me if he installed an outside speaker system. It's not blaring, but the nature of our properties is such that the sound simply...carries. And I generally prefer to hear natural sounds outside and not Led Zeppelin. Of course, as I have reminded myself, it could be much worse - could be something beat-heavy, or god forbid, the sound of children's laughter! 

Long story short, I set up the hammock under the Japanese maple in front of the house. It's in a diagonal with our house and Ken's so the sound is blocked by the building. It's very close to the other property line, with the Vietnamese neighbors we've never done more than politely wave to, but they are generally very quiet. And it's so lovely looking up at the sky through the leaves!

I'm not sure that videos embed properly here, but this is a clip of the milkweed patch in full glory in early June, abuzz with bees, milkweed bugs, and various other critters. "Patch" is not doing it full service. Those plants have fully taken over like a 30-foot stretch along the pond. Too bad that the little area I so painstakingly solarized and seeded has generated nothing but a (native) weed called "horseweed." I saw a handful of monarchs, but I'm not sure any laid eggs. Oh well - the milkweeds serve the bugs while they're in bloom, and they smell divine. Of course, you mostly have to let the warm breeze waft the smell to you; it's impossible to actually sniff one because they're so in demand by the insects! 

I managed a picture of Gojira-chan, the smaller of the two snapping turtles we've seen! I've also seen Gojira-san a few times - one of which was while I was in the pond in the boat, and it surfaced nearby to give me the stink-eye, haha. 

 

The SS JTD Sails Her Last

At some point in June, I made my first, and it turns out, last voyage in the SS JTD, aka the rowboat. Sean had gifted me a new pair of matching oars for Christmas, so I was excited to try them out. We haul the boat out of the shed and down to the point, and work on getting the oars into the oarlocks. So far, so good! I grab the cotter pins to lock the oarlocks onto the boat and we're good to go. Except, of course, just using 1 cotter pin turns out to be not enough, and the oarlocks slide right out. After a lot of struggling and swearing, I manage to lock a second pin onto each one cross-wise. Good to go, right? I wasn't on the water for more than a couple of minutes, enjoying the freedom of my matching oars, before I realized that the perpendicular cotter pin was literally grinding a hole through the ancient wood at the right side of the boat. And I couldn't move it. Oh, and it was still leaking slowly, despite all the flexseal I'd previously applied! 

As one can imagine, this already put me in a bad mood, and it was not improved by the difficulty of actually maneuvering the boat to do what I wanted to do: attack the invasive reeds growing out from the little island in on the far side of the pond. In a perfect world, I would love to go onto the little island, but I'm not sure I'm going to get there. If you go around the back side of the pond, onto Ken's property, the island is like 10 feet from the shore (we measured). Definitely too far to jump or put a board, and from my minimal explorations with Joe I think the depth drops pretty fast there, so it's not a wading over situation. When we first moved in, the "channel" to one side of the island did not have reeds in it, but now they've fully grown in to block it off. Doesn't seem to be bother the fish or the frogs any, but it bugs me! Anyway, unless I get ahold of a temporary bridge, attacking from the water is the only way I can try to manage them. It's hard to get the boat in close enough to cut the reeds while working 2 oars, and without an anchor, everything you do makes the boat move - generally, away from where you want it to go. I did manage to cut a portion of the front side of the island, but then I called it a day and we hauled her ashore. The other thing that sucks about using the rowboat for this purpose (especially with the leaking!) is that in bringing the cut reeds back to shore for disposal, the boat gets absolutely grimy and needs to be washed out. But of course we're way too far from the house to use the hose. I brought down some water in a bucket, and as I was contemplating this creaky wooden boat, with its leaking and now with its brand-new hole in the side...I decided I was done. Finito! There had to be a better solution, and this boat was not the one. 

Amazingly, through the power of the Branford "Buy Nothing" group, I had that boat gone in less than 2 hours from when I made this decision. A woman from Stony Creek showed up with a Tahoe and we loaded that sucker in the back. She said her kids would be happy to work on it. I kept the nice new oars, haha. By chance, we just reconnected today when I had something else to give away, and she sent me a lovely photograph of her three adult kids happily rowing about - and it turns out they've got a real pond, not our comparatively tiny puddle! So that made me double happy: first that I managed to get rid of it at no effort or cost to myself (because if no one wanted it, I was contemplating hiring someone to take it to the dump), and then that it was being genuinely used and appreciated. It seems to have belonged to the house's original owners and pond-creators, Don and Betty, so I'm glad it's getting some new life.

Also, we have so much room in the shed now!

And what about the reed project? After some perusal, I bought an inflatable boat, which I have not yet tried, because it promptly got too hot for me to care. Updates to that coming at some point...!

Garden Check-In

 For my own future reference, i decided to take some garden status pictures today!

Hairy beardtongue; 4/5 are doing okay under the watchful eye of the Great Turtle.

Coreopsis: same, 1 of 5 is not thriving but the others are okay. In front, we had 3 salvias but only 2 returned this year. 

Center garden, where I planted three dark red mums last summer. They're doing well, though I clearly kind of planted them in the middle of a daffodil clump.

These were a pair of orangey-yellow mums, with a hyssop plant behind them. Also accidentally planted these amid some daffodils!

Just a note to myself that there's a decent bare spot here that something else could be added. 

The thinned-out irises are doing okay. They're still getting the nasty spots, but nowhere near as badly as their un-thinned fellows. They're also a bit happier than the newly-planted ones by the house which are all flopping over. 

Reminder to myself that the three daylily (?) plants behind the irises are not looking great, and they have lots of those fern weeds grown into them, plus one has poison ivy recurring. Possibly pull these and replace? 

The other set of mums/hyssop planted in the late summer. I realize now I forgot to photograph the set of 5 asters that are on the other side of the stump; like all of the plugs, out of five there's one runt but the others are doing okay. 

New perennial bed coming along nicely! I'm not expecting anything to bloom this year, though there are some buds on one of the monarda plants closest to the camera.

The un-thinned section of irises - full of weeds, tons of the nasty spots. If I thin these in the fall, I think I'll get red of the dull red ones in the center altogether. 

I stuffed five northern blazing star plugs in between the hosta and the first few irises. They're okay, although they've got some brown leaf spots.

The rest of the thinned-out irises. I don't think they're really loving it here, since they're all flopped over. I think I might have planted them too deeply, and definitely need to scoop mulch away from them. But there might also just be too many. Only 1 is putting up a bloom so far. 

The milkweed patch by the pond! 

The area with darker soil is where I painstakingly weeded and solarized all last summer, then spread wildflower seeds. Yup, it's mostly weeds coming up, along with a healthy dose of milkweed. I tried! (Never again - it's milkweed's land now.)

The willow tree that cracked in half and fell a couple of years ago is coming back gangbusters from its own stump! So glad we didn't bother trying to plant one. 

Trying to take pictures of the water's surface with my phone camera never works. But there are so many goldfish in there! And they love to hang out right on the surface, too. We saw the heron the other day, but he was immediately harassed by the songbirds since it's nesting season.