There’s too much hate in this world. Just sayin’. I am not exempt to this. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just take it down a notch?

Also, I finally remembered to Google “what’s wrong with my oak tree?” and actually found the answer! We actually have a fungi infections, but it is not damaging or treatable (at least not by the homeowner). They just make the tree look less pretty. (If you’re curious, we have Oak leaf blister. The important thing is that we don’t have Oak Wilt, which is bad, bad, bad.) The second weird thing with our tree? Apparently it’s flowering. That’s what that brown, mossy, falling in clumps stuff is. Weird. Not exactly the stuff bouquets are made out of.

Apparently getting little sleep makes me sensitive to sound. One might say “irritable.” Maybe that’s a “duh” statement, but I swear for the first half of the day every noise someone made brought me this much closer to snapping. Again, the White Noise app saved the day.

Last night, I was quite sure that I had lost the 4GB memory card for our camera. I thought I’d brought it to work, but tore apart my purse twice and couldn’t find it. Then I looked around the house, I retraced my steps this morning… nothing. Plus, we couldn’t find the 1GB card either. So, no picture-taking.

And then, this morning, while going through my purse for a third time, there it was. I swear someone was playing a joke on me, because I’d looked in that same spot at least half a dozen times. I’m quite glad that the dorky pictures I took of myself to commemorate my birthday aren’t roaming around there for someone else to mock. No, I will not share. You got enough dorky pictures yesterday.

[Editor's note: before I forget, it's 's birthday today! Happy 29th!]

Going through Google Reader, I’ve come to the conclusion that my weekend did not have nearly enough cake in it. In fact, it had NO cake whatsoever. Granted, this is how I could describe 95% of my weekends, but still. I did, however, have some donuts that ‘s dad brought over, and they were tasty. Regardless, I think I will attempt to have some cake next weekend. (I’m leaning towards cake cake, not cupcakes. I know they’re the same, but they’re not. Who will help me eat a whole cake though?)

I spent a good portion of the weekend weeding, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 hours. In that time, I got 90% of the south gardens (front and back) weeded. I didn’t even touch the north landscaped areas or the ones in front of the house. I had declared war on the weeds, however, and I think I won. I will continue fighting the battle by 1) finishing up the job, and 2) going back out next weekend to remove any stragglers that I missed this weekend. Since I had declared war on the weeds, volunteered to take my turn at mowing the lawn (genius on his part, really, since it means I didn’t ask him to help weed). By Sunday night, we were looking much more respectable.

I did pick up my sewing machine on Friday night, and it is absolutely perfectly clean. Not a speck of dust on it. But, if you remember last Friday’s excited post about getting it back and making up two shirts, you can laugh at me now. The machine made it into my office, but it’s not even plugged in yet. Well, I did have better and more important things to do.

It was a great weekend, despite all the chores and homework (I finally gave up and decided to re-read the book, and attempt to diagram the arguments, so that I can write my paper, which I’ll be doing tonight). I didn’t put on a speck of make-up or turn on my curling iron, so it was a very… informal weekend. I think the only time I left the house was on Saturday when we determined we didn’t have a marinade for dinner (and those 15 minutes at Cub barely qualify as “out of the house,” especially since I didn’t bother to put on a bra or fix my hair or switch out of my sandals).

came over Sunday night for a gift exchange. I had the other half of her wedding gift (a wall decal that reads, “All because two people fell in love”), and she had my birthday present (as well as a thank you for doing stuff for the wedding present, and a few of ‘s things she didn’t want anymore – pictures of those will appear later this week). We talked about nails and honeymoons, and had a lovely stir-fry (I can say that because I made it).

I only watched bits of the World Cup games, which were disappointing. And, it took us two evenings, but we watched Ponyo finally, which was supposed to be great, but we didn’t get it. Oh well.

And that’s about it. Pictures later in the week, because I didn’t have time to take them this morning, and it was already dark last night when I thought of it.

When I was doing the Friday Fill-Ins earlier, I really wanted to write that I was looking forward to picking up my sewing machine tonight, but I knew that was highly unlikely since I dropped it off last Friday and they told me two weeks. Strangely, I had a feeling that I would get it tonight, though I had no reason to think this and I’m not prone to premonitions.

But the shop called 15 minutes ago to let me know I can come pick it up tonight.

So, there you have it.

Last night I cut out two shirts (might as well get clothing prepped to be sewn even if I can’t actually do the sewing), and I was planning on cutting out a pair of capris tonight (I hadn’t thought past tonight, but I have quite a few things matched up that I could prep).  How exciting that I can sew up the shirts tonight (or sometime this weekend)! They’re very simple, just a front and back piece, so two side seams, shoulder seams, and some hemming. Plus, they’re knit, so no need to go to the extra work of French seams or anything complicated.

What else do I get excited about? Pretty blue cars (I really need to get over that – there are so many more important aspects of a car), chocolate, the new Starbucks Frappuccino that I can get in decaf (I can’t tell if they’re just not as good as they used to be, or if, since giving up caffeine nearly two years ago, my tastes have changed that much – they’re still tasty, but not as good as I remember them), jeans Friday, flip-flops, Dairy Queen Blizzards, watching my garden grow, fitting into my pants (perhaps in contradiction with some earlier mentions), my nephews, sunshine (it’s been a very rainy June), the cute animal pictures sends me during class each week, 3:45 pm (I’m off at 3:50)….

What silly things make you happy?

To make up for the recent lack of pictures, I have two (2!) posts today that are chock full of pictures.

I managed to snag these just before I left for work this morning. (I drove, because I have class tonight, which gives me a little more leeway than the bus schedule permits.)

This is the new garden area this year, and it's where most of the action is. It's probably too small for all of this stuff, but we'll see what happens.

Lavender. It was at the farmer's market, and I couldn't resist. In the master picture above, it's in the bottom right corner.

Rosemary. Looks a lot like the lavender, doesn't it? This plant is right next to the deck, because supposedly rosemary deters mosquitoes, and I hope to landscape (gardenscape? plantscape?) the whole area with a variety of plants that will make mosquitoes flee.

Carrots. These are some of the oldest plants, since they were started indoors and transplanted. They're still not that big, but I can wait. I looove fresh-from-the-garden carrots.

I might not be a stellar photographer yet (judicious cropping and deleting of photos might lead you to believe otherwise), but check out the water droplets on the carrots above! If you go to the large version, you can actually see a reflection in them!

Tomatoes. I don't know why they're growing sideways. Perhaps towards the light? They are much smaller than the ones we had last year, because these were started from seed. Kinda cute with the furry stems.

On the bottom, there are two batches of lettuce, planted three weeks apart. At the top are the cucumber plants (which had a blossom last week!) and the tiny carrots. At the edge of the picture at the bottom, you can almost see the cilantro (left) and lavender (right). Ignore the grass - I didn't have any way to edge this garden.

I was relatively certain that that these were peas, until I did some research on the plants below, and now I'm not sure. They're either peppers, peas, or Brussels sprouts. I didn't leave myself a map when I seeded. In the end, it won't matter - it will be fairly obvious once they start to produce.

I really thought these were the Brussels sprouts (which I would have to thin out considerably), but when I looked at pictures of them at this stage of growth online, they look nothing like this. So, peas? Peppers? I looked at pictures of those, too, and they don't look like this. What did I plant? Or, is this a weed? Time will tell.

My squash patch is coming along nicely. I've lost one of the five varieties, and have no idea which one (again, no map), some come fall I may be very sad about what we're missing. There's always next year, and the chance that the missing ones are just slow starters. These were from seed, and only planted three weeks ago.

Close-up of one of the squash plants. Lovely furry stems.

Last year, Prince Charming planted some Lamb's Ear under the tree. It did well, obviously, and has grown significantly this year already.

For context, here’s a picture to show you how big they are.

And, the hydrangea is blooming! Neither blue nor pink (it's supposed to be blue if we got the soil acidic enough, or pink if we chose to go the other route - magic hydrangeas), so I'm not sure what to do.

I hope your gardens are growing as well as ours (or better)! It has rained the entire month of June so far (OK, 2 days of sun out of the first 15), which has helped the plants, but I think they need some sun now.

…because I really don’t want to spend my time weeding.   The rain has certainly helped all my veggie plants grow, but the weeds, they’re growing too. Apparently rain doesn’t discriminate.

Friday night I dropped my sewing machine off for a yearly maintenance check (it was free). Two weeks, she said, until it comes back. Two weeks? Gee I’m glad I did this now and not later in the… month (well, I had to do it before the 29th).  So definitely no sewing for a bit.

Saturday we went car shopping. It was not nearly as bad as it could have been, but I could think of better ways to spend a rainy afternoon. We did get it mostly decided what make/model I want to get; now we just have to find one that has the right amenities (as in, one that doesn’t have stuff I don’t want/need and therefore don’t want to pay for).

Afterward, since it was right next door, we went to Joe Senser’s for a late lunch. We showed up just as the Americans and Brits were being led out onto the field for their first World Cup game. So, we stood around for quite awhile before we could be seated, but that is to be expected at a sports bar. We had fabulous burgers to fill us up as we watched the first half (we watched the second half at home, and were probably the only people that left the restaurant for the 2+ hours the World Cup was airing).

We spent a lot of time over the weekend waiting for the humidity to drop so we could work on our painting projects. now has the grill all repainted, and will be reassembling it this week once the replacement parts arrive. I also have most of the painting of my nightstand done! Just one more coat on top (I think), and one more on the drawer. I was going to get the second coat done last night, but I kind of forgot in all the goings-on. Oh, it’s not like we were busy. I worked on my paper, we ate dinner, we ordered groceries, we went to Target… boring stuff. But, we are both sick, and chores + sick = forgetful. (You won’t find that on the SAT, but it’s true nonetheless.) So, tonight it is. A trip to PaperSource might happen tonight too, if I get myself together.

It’s one of those days where my job is not fun. I think that’s safe to say, even if I have friended a co-worker on Facebook and posted this blog in my profile. Everybody has days where their job isn’t fun. I kind of debated not coming in today, on account of feeling sick, but I didn’t really feel sick enough to justify it. Then once I got here and sat in front of my computer, I was regretting that decision. I could barely keep my eyes open the first hour I was here. Thankfully, I’ve woken up a bit, but I think the Theraflu has worn off and I need to take some more before I annoy my co-workers by constantly clearing my throat. (OK, to be fair, there’s a lot of throat-clearing that happens here, so nobody will notice mine. But I still feel bad about being the source of potentially annoying noise.)

When is sick, he isn’t hungry. At all. I get hungry when I’m sick, but I have sick mouth, and nothing ever seems like it will taste good. Do you get sick mouth? Blech. I felt better this morning than I had the previous two, so hopefully this will be out of my system soon.

June is “difficult shopping for loved ones” month. Not difficult people, just difficult to shop for. There’s a big difference. I am feeling uninspired, and that’s bad, since anything online needs to be ordered by tomorrow to be safe.

In case you were wondering what to get me for my birthday* (it’s next Thursday, you know), I would like a bird feeder. I’m telling everyone in the hopes that I’ll get several, or at least one. I wanted one last year and didn’t get one, so I’m crossing my fingers for this year. That and gardening gloves that fit my man-sized hands. has been nice enough to throw a party for and myself this year (our birthdays might just be an excuse to have a party, but I wouldn’t blame her for that). We’re having dinner together first – what wine goes well with Italian? All of them? That’s what I thought.

*OK, I don’t really expect or need any birthday presents. I could easily buy myself a bird feeder. But, it was something to talk about.