Writing

Right after I returned from Spain, in mid-September, my boss handed me a big professional growth opportunity - writing a grant proposal. I had asked for more chances like this, but of course I should be careful what I wish for. I have had to suspend my work-life balance for the past two months and put in some very long days. Writing a proposal is only partly about writing. It's also about working with your partners to come up with the best ideas, figuring out how to demonstrate that you can do everything you say you will do, making a budget, and following many, many rules. (That part is a bit like doing your taxes; there's a 300-page guide from the National Science Foundation on what people must to do correctly ask for, and then spend, their money on science.) 

The end is nearly in sight. The deadline is Wednesday, and NSF only extends deadlines in the case of natural disasters, something that is a blessing right now as I just want to submit it. Preparing far in advance meant that we could polish and tweak and make it the very best, but I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving break. I *will* most pointedly not sit in front of the computer, I *will* eat healthy food again, and I *will* get more exercise than I have since September. And six months from now, I will find out if they decided that our idea was worth funding. 

Modern Me

Every day, when I go into work, I look like this.

Sometimes I also look like this. I mean, I don't always look this terrific, but it's what I look like with hairspray and a good photo filter.

That means that no one at work has ever seen me in anything other than a 40's or 50's vintage professional wardrobe, and they have never seen my hair unless it was pincurled or worn in an period-appropriate up-do.

Thus, the inspiration for my Halloween costume - me in 2019.

Skinny jeans, a cowl-necked tunic, ballet flats, long hair, and hipster large glasses. I had to buy every single part of this costume, because I only own vintage-inspired clothing. (Important exception: Star Fleet uniform pajamas.) All day long, people were doing double-takes. Several coworkers walked by me at my desk, then turned around to and came back because they thought someone else was using my office. It was great to make so many people laugh, but I'm very glad to be back home and in my comfy, wide-legged pants.

Again, with the thinking

It seemed like it was about time for one of my biannual retreats. This time, I rented a tiny house at the southernmost tip of Maryland, which looked over St. Mary's River.

Photo credit: From the hosts of the site

I've use these retreats to take stock of my life - usually to assess my goals or how I spend my time. The rules are no media (Internet, phone, music, podcasts), and minimal books and interaction with people. Although I was very strict on my first retreat about not talking to people, I'm finding that I it's not as critical now, since each retreat is a check-in on my last visit with my brain. I also try to spend a fair amount of time outside, as I can't just sit and think all day without a few breaks.

I knew that the forecast called for rain on Sunday, so I managed a four-mile hike and a three-mile kayak trip. It was my first solo kayak trip, but I had read quite a bit about what precautions to take when you are on your own. The most dangerous moment was when I questioned whether to bring my phone while packing. I didn't want to drop it into the briny deep. but luckily I brought it along as it turned out that I consulted it extensively to figure out where I was going. Those inlets all look alike!

The focus this weekend was money/work. I worked through much of the book "Your Money or Your Life" which is a classic from the 1990's that inspired many of the current FI (Financial Independence) writers. The book is a bit hippie and a bit sexist but also packed full of good ideas. I had already completed many of the "steps" it requires - I have tracked every expenditure since 2011, and know my "real hourly wage" (i.e. how much I make for each hour of work, after subtracting off the extra time and money for commuting, buying work clothes and lunches, etc.). I'm actually pretty okay with where my spending is.  I think my spending largely aligns with my values, and I save quite a bit.

I did realize that I don't like how many things I buy in my clothes/household/DIY category. I suspect that these things are not strictly necessary and the manufacturing of them eats up resources quickly. So I decided that through the end of 2019 I will not purchase anything new. Exceptions are consumables and gifts (other people shouldn't suffer for my crazy ideas). If possible, I will make or borrow what I need, but I'm fine buying used. On the drive home, I literally pulled into a parking lot before I realized that I wasn't allowed to buy anything in the store I had driven to, so I clearly have some re-learning to do. 

Bathroom Construction

I'm woefully behind on everything in my life that is not work or sleep. And honestly, I'm lacking a bit in the sleep department. I have temporarily relaxed my very firm work-life balance rule for the chance to take more of a lead on writing a grant proposal. It's a great professional opportunity and I'm learning a ton, but it does mean I haven't been doing much else for the past month.

In fact, my parents had a visit planned in early October which I almost cancelled because I couldn't imagine spending two weekend days not working . But I didn't and it turned out great. We were able to celebrate the "End of other people helping me with bathroom construction," which, you'll note, is not exactly the same as saying the bathroom is done.

I now have a shower that is mainly waterproof on three sides. We glued up the shower surround and designed a curtain rod that would work on a sloped ceiling. What's left is caulking the edges and making a customized shower curtain and then I'll have a working shower. In theory, this is something that I can do myself, but I already hit a design challenge significant enough that I'm going to have to do a long-distance consultation with my father.

 My father figured out a way to secure all three sides simultaneously while the glue dries.

We needed to put up waterproof material on the ceiling, and you had to wait for the adhesive to get tacky. This is my mother and I literally watching paint glue dry on a Saturday night.

So, I'm not done but the end is within shouting distance.

Bruges

I returned home and plunged into the typical post-vacation frenzy: mow the embarrassingly tall lawn, do the laundry, buy some food, pick up the cat. But if I don't capture the final days of my trip, I'll forget too much.

This is the famous globe-trotting family I visited. My brother and his family decided to quit their jobs and travel for a year. They happened to be in Europe this fall, so we arranged to meet in Bruges, Belgium. You can read all about their adventures here.

I have never been to Belgium. I was delighted that they had chosen a city in the Flemish-speaking part of the country, because my knowledge of German at least helps me read a bit, whereas I am completely lost with French.

We only had two days together, so we focused on the essentials: fries, beer, chocolate, and waffles. No one was up for eating mussels. I made the mistake of calling them French fries at one point, but I was gently (yet firmly) corrected by the Belgians that the term was not appreciated. Simply "fries" was enough.

This picture captures the most peaceful half hour I had on my entire vacation. Bruges is a small, picturesque medieval town. It is extremely popular with the tourists, and we watched them stream out of the train station each day, traveling from the nearby Brussels. The streets were jam packed. On Sunday morning, before all the day trippers arrived, I wandered around looking for a bakery. The only people out were a few bicyclists and the Jehovah's witnesses. It was silent and beautiful and I could finally imagine what it might have been like to live there hundreds of years ago.

My sister-in-law is not a big drinker, but she was willing to help out with my beer tasting. I liked everything we had, while she stuck to the lambic fruit beers. She was pleased to learn that they are also available in the US, so I think it likely that we'll indulge again in the future.

Me, happy in a beer store, but sad to be leaving Europe and my family.

Philosophy

Uncle de-I sent me this article, which is worth a read if you like learning a bit about physics. (Don't worry, there's not a single equation.) I agree completely with the author. As a community, physicists have decided it is not part of the discipline to understand why quantum mechanics is the way it is. Instead, it is just our job to use the equations. In fact, this view is so pervasive that it wasn't until I took a philosophy of quantum mechanics course (in the philosophy department, not physics, of course) that I even became aware of the fact that we don't discuss the meaning of quantum mechanics. That is, it never even occurred to me until that moment that discussing what wave functions, observers, or reality are were questions that people could ask. I guess that's why we travel to other cultures, be those places China or the world of philosophy - we suddenly realize that things we accept as fundamentally and unequivocally true are actually just assumptions.

Perspectives

Since living in a country is different than visiting it, one of my research techniques to investigate the possibility of living in Spain was to ask everyone I met what they loved and hated about Madrid. I was particularly interested in the opinions of people from other places, whether inside or outside Spain. I don't agree with all the opinions below, but they are also super useful for considering the pros and cons of a city. It would be in interesting thought exercise to ask the same question about America, to know whether I would choose to live there if I had considered it dispassionately.

Negatives

• Less customer service/ more bureaucracy - People are polite in the shops, but I can agree that no one runs up to help you, and several people said that it is hard to get responses from the government, landlords, etc. I think I would need to take my experience of Miami's "island time" and multiply it by a hundred to be prepared for this.
• The weather - Actually, the person who made this complaint is from San Diego, where the climate is nearly perfect, and I suspect he has unreasonable expectations for the rest of the world. The temperatures closely match what I am used to in DC, but it is much, much drier.
• People are not very polite - It is true that no one apologizes when they run into you or step on your toes, and I have heard that the same extends to businesses when they make an error. Canadians have a reputation for excessively apologizing, but I'm realizing the stereotype probably applies to Americans too.
• Poor economy - The unemployment rate is quite high here - 15% compared to the U.S.'s 4%. This also results in lower prices, so it's a great place to spend money but not a great place to earn it.

Positives

• The nightlife is excellent - Nightlife isn't quite the right word for this. I'm sure the clubs and theaters are great, but what I mean is that people enjoy their time outside of work. Every evening the restaurants and bars are packed with people just spending time with their friends and family.
• Public transportation - It's outstanding. I almost never waited more than 5 minutes for a bus or train, although holidays and weekends take longer, and the prices are half that of DC. The trains are often packed, but I'd rather stand and get somewhere quickly.
• People are generally welcoming of outsiders. It's easy to make friends with expats, but it seems like you can also integrate into the Spanish society, as long as you can speak the language.
• People enjoy their food and drink. This is definitely a change from the US, where I often feel like we are eating as quickly as possible so we can get the next thing done. I am partially left out, though, since I won't eat the many ham or seafood dishes on offer.

Segovia

Just to prove that I haven't been spending ALL my time conjugating verbs or drinking beer with other students (although, admittedly, that has been a lot of my time), here are some tourist-type things I saw.

 I went to Segovia on the weekend, which is a short train/bus trip from Madrid. It's most famous for it's well-preserved Roman aqueduct. This brought water from the nearby mountains. Now that I have installed plumbing and understand that the pipes can be neither to steep nor too shallow, I am doubly-impressed that they could maintain a one-degree angle for so many kilometers.

I climbed a tower to take a great picture. There were lots of tourists, but it wasn't outrageous. Coming in September has been a nice compromise to avoid most of the heat and tourists of summer.

According to the brochure, this is the last Gothic cathedral that was built in Spain. Gothic certainly looks more cheerful when it's yellow stone and not gray.

Vacation reflections

When I spend a lot of time speaking a language other than English, I swing between feeling proud of my progress and horrified at how poorly I'm doing. On the first day I had to introduce myself and I did just find until I had to explain what level Spanish I speak, and then I slipped into a bit of German without realizing it. And today we reviewed verb tenses, where I counted that I know about six verb tenses, and that means I only have about 11 more to go. There's lots to keep me humble here.

On the other hand, it has been much easier to slip back into the routine since this is my second time in Madrid. I already had my favorite grocery store bookmarked on Google maps, and I already know that I want to spend lots of time at my favorite park but can skip much of the other tourist stuff this time around.

Along with enjoying myself, I'm also trying to start evaluating what I'd like to do when I'm done working. Would I like to live in Spain? Is that even possible, visa-wise?  I've been spending more time talking to locals and other travelers, quizzing them on their experiences in this city. One longer-term resident said he hates the weather, but my Internet research says that the average monthly temperatures are almost exactly the same in Madrid and DC, and it's less humid here. I have disliked the lack of A/C in my rental apartment, but I have been assured that its not hard to find a longer-term rental with A/C, so that doesn't seem like a deal-breaker for me. I do find it hard to adapt to the Spanish schedule of very late nights, but if I didn't have to wake up early for morning classes, I think I could adapt.

Wherever I end up, I apparently need to prioritize natural light. I expect that at some point I will sell my house and move into a small apartment, whether it is in downtown DC or in Madrid. The apartment I rented here is clean and in a walkable area, but because the only windows look onto a narrow courtyard with walls reaching four stories high, I can't tell whether it is day or night in the apartment and I dread spending time there. It's good to learn about this personal requirement now, when I have a two-week lease rather than a two-year lease. Also, 170 square feet (19 square meters) is a really tiny space, but I think I could manage this if I could choose appropriately sized furniture. (Pro tip: don't put in so much furniture that you can't close the bedroom or bathroom doors.) 

Breakfast in Frankfurt

Frankfurt doesn't have a great reputation in Germany - it's seen as very modern and boring, as if you had plucked Wall Street out of New York but didn't take any of the interesting art, fashion, or immigrant culture with it. As a result, I have never bothered to visit. But my flight to Europe was a direct hop from DC to Frankfurt, so I decided to stay a day before heading to Madrid.

I can see how the city gets this reputation. There are lots of skyscrapers, which are unusual in Germany but common here because most of the old city was destroyed during WW II. I did a walking tour and saw the outside of the stock market and Goethe's birthplace, a treat for someone with a German Literature BA, but there wasn't a lot else that grabbed my attention. My hotel was near the train station, which is a neighborhood filled with trash and graffiti. But it's also quite international - there were loads of different ethnic foods and immigrants, and I saw no less than four festivals yesterday, featuring the Indian community, wine, China, and basketball. If you know me, you can guess that I sped through Basketball Fest but tarried at Indien Fest.

In any case, it's been great to be in Germany again. It's a reminder how easy things are when you know the language and culture - which should encourage me to keep practicing Spanish. And I got to eat a German breakfast, which was 50% of why I visited and was 100% worthwhile. I pretty much chose my hotel based on the reviews of its breakfast.The big spread of cheese, breads, boiled eggs, and yogurt is not easy to replicate in the US, but this morning's repast will inspire me to keep trying.

Packed

Like I did last year, I'm taking two weeks to pretend I live the life of a retired American in Madrid. Everything is ready to go: the bathroom DIY work is mostly done and cleaned up; the loaner cat has been delivered (however unwillingly) to his vacation caregivers, and I managed to limit everything that I'm bringing to 10kg in they-fit-under-the-seat carry-on bags. The only thing that's not ready is my brain. I haven't been practicing my Spanish regularly in the past few months and I fear I will be caught quite unprepared on Monday morning in my first class. But last year the teachers were quite nice and I shall simply have to study very hard.

August travels

It has been a month of weekend trips for me. While I only took off a single day from work, I managed to cram in three terrific trips. As mentioned earlier, I visited my parents and Ohio friends at the start of the month. My father, lover of old motorcycles and old cars (and old tractors, old phonographs, old waffle irons...) drove me to the airport in style. I told him that wearing a scarf made me feel like a 1940's movie star.

Each summer I go to the beach once with my friend E and her kids. Her husband despises the beach, so this arrangement lets us both get some sun-and-sand time while splitting the driving. Every year we marvel at how the kids get older, the car trip gets easier, and the waves less scary. (#3 is directly related to #1, of course.) This year I also took two beach day trips on my own, which let me perfect my beach lunch (tomato and mozzarella salad, with German rye bread) and test a new beach with a reduced entrance fee.

Last weekend, my friend C invited me to visit her parents' weekend cottage in rural Virginia. The cottage looks out on a three-mile wide river near the point where it enters Chesapeake Bay, so there were lots of beautiful views and wading in salt water (while keep a careful eye out for jellyfish because I am a wimp). I hadn't  previously met any of the other people there, but they were all kindred spirits because we are in the same financial planning community. Some of them hang out on a forum, so it was cool to meet people that I previously only vaguely knew of virtually. Drinking gin-and-tonics with interesting, fun people while looking out over the water is pretty much the perfect thing to do.

Vitamins

I'm not saying the garden is winning, but it might be a photo finish. This is the time of year when I'm acutely aware of how easy it is to pop a seed in the ground in April and not consider the consequences in August. On the other hand, I am eating like a queen right now, and I hope I will appreciate all this frozen and dried produce come January.

And see those beautiful figs? That's more than I've ever harvested in a year, and there are more on the tree. My long-term plan of buying a house so I could plant fruit and asparagus has really paid off.

Weekend in the country

In the English novels I read, the gentry are always spending a weekend at Lord So-and-So's country house. There will be hunts, drinks on the terrace, perhaps some whist.

I participated in the modern-day equivalent this weekend. I had decided to avoid my parents' annual pig roast and visit early, and since they have a huge house I invited all my local friends. Three couples, two kids, and my aunt were there, and most stayed the whole weekend. We filled every bed and used the RV as a guest suite.

It felt quite luxurious to offer all my friends a free place to stay and delicious meals. (Thanks for making that possible, Mom and Dad!). It's also a luxury to sit on the back porch, drinking beer, celebrating all my friends' lives (babies and tenure and grants received), and without ever having to consider what I should be repairing right now. The only downside, compared to the country weekends I read about, was that the maid was not reliable and not once did the butler show his face. Apparently it's hard to get good help in Homerville.

Success

Two weeks ago I had the misfortune of having my car and bicycle break in the same week. I schlepped the bike to the bike shop and paid to have the tire replaced. I then took the car to the mechanic, because I have always vowed that I will not do car repairs. I just have to draw the line on repairs somewhere, and some number of years ago I decided I would focus on home DIY and leave the car to others.

Until I heard that it would cost $700 to repair my window, that is. The motor had quit working, so the window would go down, but not back up. My father convinced me that I could do it, and he was right! I allowed two hours to do what the Internet said was a 45-minute job, and it was just about perfect. The power window goes up and down, I managed to have no leftover parts, and I am brimming with new-mechanic confidence. Oh, and I saved almost $600, so this was a total win.

Yahrzeit

Six years ago today, Andrew died. Today I mourn him, the brevity of his life, and the loss of the person I was, someone who laughed more and took life for granted.

Mud

I'm still here. And I'm still mudding the bathroom. It turns out I hate this job, and my mother has offered to pay to send me to mudding school if I ever have to do this again, because she said that's cheaper than therapy. I will admit that I've been tracking how much I've spent on rewards to bribe myself to do this; if it's cheaper to hire someone next time, I will. 

My work is made a bit better by my new bathroom construction buddy. His name is Maxwell (aka James Clerk Maxwell, which is pretty much a perfect physicist name) and I have the privilege of taking care of him while my friends S&N&Sons are on vacation. He is enormous fun, and I am reminded why I love kitten-sitting and why I never intend to adopt my own. I'll be eating my dinner, when suddenly he's up on the table with me, trying to help himself. Or I'll read a book in bed, and suddenly he's there attacking my hand as I turn a page. On the other hand, not much beats the cuteness of a kitten falling asleep on your arm.

Unfortunately, Wesley hates the kitten, so my roommate and I have spent the week doing complicated cat-introductions, alternating them in rooms, letting them see each other through a window, etc. I'd like them to be able to share a house, or Wesley will have a tough time when I take a vacation in September and stay with Maxwell. 

New Bathroom, Part 42

Since Thanksgiving, I've had an almost-usable bathroom. See how pretty it is below? Working lights, a functioning sink, toilet, and bathtub, with pretty green drywall walls.

Okay, so I'll admit that drywall is not actually that pretty, and it is not a long-term wall solution. For those of you who don't know how houses are built in the US, you may be surprised to learn (as I was) that walls are basically made of dust. After you build a wooden frame for your walls, you attach drywall, which is basically sheets of powdery material held together with a paper backing. If the drywall ever gets wet, it completely disintegrates, which is one of many reasons why flood damage is can be so serious. 

You keep the drywall dry by applying a water-resistant coating (aka paint) on it, but before you do that you have to mud the seams. This means applying a plaster-like substance to the edges and smoothing it to be pretty. I turns out I hate this job. Even with friends helping me get started, I did not want to do it. And if you look at the picture below, you might partially see why. My semi-functional bathroom is now gone so I can make better seams.

I decided this job was better done quickly, so I used my mad project-manager skills to create a 10-day plan involving a task breakdown and (most importantly) rewards for each step. Hopefully I'll have good "after" photos in about a week and a half.

In completely other news, let me distract you from construction debris with this beautiful garden picture. Everything is colorful and blooming!

NYC

The July Fourth holiday meant a four-day weekend for me, so I decided to visit my good friends M and J, who live in New York City with their daughter, J2. I've been to the city enough that I've seen the regular tourist stuff like the Statue if Liberty and the Empire State building, so I decided to let the "free or very cheap" lists guide me this time.

The very best activity was a tour of the Grand Central Terminal, telling the history of the building when it was a beautiful, turn-of-the century train station, which fell into dirty disrepair as the car replaced trains, and it was used by the homeless and full of crime. It was almost torn down on the 70's, when the case to remove its landmark status went all the way to the Supreme Court. Recently they spent millions of dollars to remove the decades of accumulated cigarette tar and make it beautiful and profitable again.

Today I took J's recommendation to experience the quintissential summer New Yorker summer excursion and went to Coney Island. It was fun to see the beach and amusement parks made famous in the first half of the previous century, although I made a serious tactical error in not eating before I arrived. For the record, there are NO vegetables in Coney Island.

The next neighborhood over, Brighton Beach, is known as a Russian enclave. I had an excellent dinner of Georgian cheese bread and beet salad, and now I'm enjoying a enormous German beer at a bar while the other patrons watch soccer. Alas, I can't tell who is playing because I don't read Cyrillic.

I am really glad I visited.

Garden mysteries

Gardening is my default activity in the summer. After work or on the weekends, it's the first thing I start doing, and I'll always do it before home repair or sewing or practicing Spanish (but I do make time for laundry and Star Trek. I'm not a heathen.) As a result, my gardens are looking great. June's combo of rain and warm weather means that everything is growing like mad, but most plants aren't fruiting yet, so there's not actually much to eat yet.

Every year, you get a few "volunteer" plants, which are the name for plants that were unexpected results of last year's crops self-seeding. Since these seeds are often blown around, and I rotate crops, things come up in unexpected places. This year I not only have volunteers, I have mysteries. I've encountered several plants that don't seem to be weeds - you can usually recognize weeds because when you have one, you have a hundred. These mysteries are compounded by the fact that my mother did some of my planting, and it's possible that she put in things but didn't tell me.

I've got my eye on three mystery plants.

I have three of these plants. They are about two feet high, with huge, round leaves on a single stem. They are in a bed that housed watermelon, zinnias, and garlic last year, but they are definitely not one of those.

 I have a single specimen of this plant, which is about 18" high, with thin, wispy leaves, and several stems towering above a base of smaller stems.

This plant is the most puzzling. It is in the exact location where I planted an echinacea root this spring. Echinacea are small round plants, less than two feet high, with purpely-red blossoms. Instead, I have an enormous, meter-high plant with white-purple furled flowers. I highly suspect that the garden company sold me the wrong root. It's like planting a pumpkin seed and getting a tomato.

My informal garden advising committee is my last hope. If they can't identify the plants before they go to seed, then I may have to kill them, because because that's when a weed is not just an unwanted plant but a menace.

So long, San Francisco (at least temporarily)

In May, I visited my brother and his family, but I had so much fun I never got around to posting, so this is a retrospective piece. My annual visits to the Bay area are something I look forward to, but my brother and his family will be traveling for the next year, so this was a chance to see them and say a temporary good-bye to SF. I love hanging out in the city and soaking up the wearing-a-hoodie, using-a-scooter, coder vibe, which is so different than the suit-wearing, policy wonk culture in DC.

We made stuffed-crust pizza. It was my first try, and my advice to myself for next time: you can't use too much cheese.

My niece is as tall as me. She is clearly not done growing, so very soon I will be the shortest family member, at least until the next generation has kids.

K presented a poster about for her class interview-a-scientist project. She prepared excellent questions and then recorded and transcribed the interview. From my research, I know how mind-numbing it can be to transcribe conversations.

I took a day trip to Angel Island, which involved the subway, a tram, and a ferry ride.

Angel Island was once used to process immigrants, aka the Ellis Island of the West. Because of anti-Chinese legislation, potential Chinese immigrants could spend weeks or ever months in the barracks, waiting to found out if they would be permitted to enter the US. Some of them carved poetry about loneliness and home on the walls.

It was a pretty sobering reminder of how things used to be, and tragically, how thing still are for many people trying to immigrate to the US.

They have a tough exercise routine at my brother's house.  A medium-sized boy clings to you, and you try to do everything you can to remove him. I managed one session, plus one session of my brother's "Oh, you are bored? Let's do as many sit-ups and push-ups as we can!" routine.

Loaner cat

When both of my pets died this spring, I was sad not only because they were gone, but also because I'm not planning to have any pets for a while. I want to be able to travel more easily in about five years, and any pets I adopt would still be around then. I miss having animals in my life, but lobbying my friends to get pets didn't work.

However, I'm pleased to introduce my loaner cat, Wesley! I turns out that you can just go to the library and check cats out, although you can't renew because there's always a wait list. I jest, of course. Wesley normally lives with my brother and sister-in-law, and since they are planning to take their two lovely children and travel for a year, Wesley needed a temporary home. He only arrived on Monday, so he's still in the "Where the hell did I end up?" phase, warily watching me, but he'll occasionally let me pet him, and he has already staked out his favorite chair for naps.

Garden love

I've been delinquent in posting, without any real excuse. To help fill the gap, here's a photo of something that's currently bringing me a lot of happiness - my garden.

The picture doesn't do it justice. So many things are blooming: lavender, pansies, dianthus (carnations), roses, day lilies, foxglove, and moss roses. The lavender is a big mass of purple and green, lazily swarming with happy bees. Most mornings before work I go out and pull a handful of weeds, sometimes just to have an excuse to look at all the lovely plants and admire them.

Camping

The annual physicist* camping trip has come and gone and was declared a rousing success. It only rained once, and so for the first time in 6 years of camping, I didn't immediately come home and hang my tent out to dry. The kids are getting older, which means they can play more with each other, and greater numbers of parents can sleep through the night and be (somewhat) well-rested when the kids and birds wake up at 6am. Because of our "one family contributes one communal meal" system, we all ate delicious food. And we got to spend time together, doing math and singing and eating s'mores, which is the most important thing of all.


*We have one adult non-physicist and his biological and technical distinctiveness has been added to our own.**
**Borg reference.

Cleaning

Tonight I was mopping my kitchen floor, something I do about once every three months, and I got to thinking about how different my cleaning philosophy is compared to how I was raised. When I was growing up, one of my chores was to wash the kitchen floor, something that took at least an hour. My mother taught me that the proper way to wash a floor was on your hands and knees with a scrubbing brush. I even remember a time, before she worked outside the home and the kids were too young to help much with chores, when she used an index card system for tracking monthly, weekly, and annual chores. I recall that this reminded one to wash the windows and to apply lemon oil to the furniture.

I don't mean to imply that my mother is an obsessive cleaner. We were never chastised for making a mess (although we probably had to clean it up) and our house looked like everyone else's. But I'm quite aware of how cleaning standards change - on the 1940's radio programs I listen to, they are forever advertising waxes and polishes for floors, furniture, and cars. I think the combination of modern finishes and the lack of a full-time homemaker spelled the end of polishes.

Nowadays I never spend more than 90 minutes per week cleaning, if you don't include dishes or laundry. I attribute this to my patented three-part system: have no children, own as few belongings as possible, and lower your standards. No one ever spills juice on my floors, and I never have to pick up before vacuuming. That gives me an hour vacuum the whole house and clean two bathrooms, and then I do whatever else I notice. My house probably isn't perfect, but it's good enough and then I have lots of time for all the other fun things in life, like gardening and sitting by the firebowl with friends.

A new garden

At some point during my dismal spring I decided to put in a new garden. I've often considered planting a cottage garden, which is usually a big mass of colorful, overlapping flowering perennials. I have never done it because it takes years for such a garden to establish. But this year, I thought, if it takes two years to grow and then looks good during the third year when I move, at least I'll have enjoyed one year. And since my future plans are indeterminate, it's entirely possible that I'll be living in this house and enjoying the garden for years to come.

I engaged an advisory board, made up of three friend/relatives who care about gardening. And by "engaged", I mean that I pelted them with emails, drawings of the space, and links to plants. Here's what we've come up with so far.

In early March, when the garden was just a dream.

I spent two long weekends digging, with the help of my roommate.

My father, who always prefers to use machines, helped me rent a tiller to dig some more.

My mother spent an entire day considering exactly where the plants should go and labeling empty spaces with markers. I then purchased six carloads of mulch and compost, and shoveled for a long time. 

This is what it looks like right now! It's a big space, sparsely filled with 6" tall plants. But give it a lot of water and two years to grow, and I think it will be beautiful. I'll be sure to post updates throughout the summer.