I'm alive. So is DJ.

Man, what a busy spring we're having. Work is... work. Personal lives are humming along, sometimes over full. The class I'm teaching is going along swimmingly; I've enjoyed it so very much and I hope they offer me the opportunity to teach again. Fingers crossed!

In the mean time, we seem to be in the throes of an earlyish spring.

March 26

I've even started plants indoors, like a big kid. Five varieties of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, marigolds and lobeilia and cosmos. Next weekend I think we'll rototill.

Sorry, terrible Blackberry photos.

Early February, Early Mornings

Whooooooooowwww

Its now, what, 4 weeks into this full time working/ part time teaching thing and I am... Tired.

Here's the routine for a week: up at 6:15am every day, shower, to the office by 7:45am. Work through the day till 4:45pm, when I dash out the door to the gym. Exercise for an hour, then home for dinner. After dinner is devoted to working on class lectures and slides.

I've found that I can't lecture without a slide show. Talking about history, especially historic built landscapes is such a visual thing. So lecture preps bounce back and forth between searching for the image I want and fact checking what I want to talk about.

I've probably spent an average of 6-8 hours on every lecture. This is the first time the course is being taught, so I'm totally building it from scratch. And because I wasn't sure what I'd want to change after a few weeks, I didn't plan lectures or slideshows very far in advance. So its a lot of work.

I knew it would be a lot of work. Its work I enjoy, really, but it's been a bit of a relentless grind building this thing. Even something like a lovely surprise weekend from my sister can throw my whole "things to get done and when to do them" schedule off.

And every week I seem to fall into a pattern of totally nailing the Tuesday lecture, walking out feeling on top of the world, and then falling flat on my face for the Thursday lecture. Or vice-versa. Its unnerving and confidence-killing. Nothing to do but get back on the horse though. Especially since I'm getting paid to do this.

DJ has been awesome, absolutely awesome about giving me time to work on class stuff. I've neglected housekeeping, demanded he turn off the light by 9:45pm so I could go to sleep (oh the irony!) and generally demanded that all things fit my schedule. He's made dinners, hung out with the dog and kept the house stocked with toilet paper.

And I have a wonderful sister and friends, did I mention that? I turned 29 on Tuesday. And Harlow turned 2. In advance of the birthday, Gretch drove over from Pullman and Ali drove down from Helena for a Chico Hot Springs afternoon and Livingston Saturday night. We stayed at the Murray Hotel (awesome historic hotel across the street from the train station), had dinner at the rib and Chop house and then did a Livingston bars lap. The most entertaining portion of the evening was walking into the Mint Bar and finding it FULL of hipsters. HIPSTERS. In LIVINGSTON. That.... Was unexpected. With their serious black oversize glasses and serious conversations.

Dusty made a delicious dinner of salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and broccoli for my birthday. I received flowers, cards and phone calls. It was a nice, low key day. Which is my style for birthdays. 


This weekend is packed with getting my poop in a group. Writing the handout for the paper my students have due at the end of the month, prepping this week's lectures, prepping some AOII stuff for the annual Corporation meeting at the end of the month. Budgets, agendas, membership, etc. I'm good at that end of the organizational spectrum, I hope. 


And with that, I think I heard the coffee ding that it's ready. Time to get to work!

A slow Saturday morning...

Wow, what a week. Especially for one only four days long. But I made it; we made it through.

My lectures for class this week were... a push. I can't discuss history without starting at the beginning, which meant the geology of the northern Rocky Mountains. Suddenly on Monday night I'm cramming about igneous and sedimentary rocks. It was a little nuts.

Nonetheless, I achieved what I set out to this week. Gave two decent lectures. Was up at 6:15am each morning, and in the office no later than 8am. Avoided "double dipping"; working on class lectures while at work for the City. Knocked out a couple of important projects at work.

By Friday DJ, and probably the doggie, felt a little abandoned. I barricaded myself into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week to prep lectures and basically ignored them. DJ has been a very supportive husband while I try to teach this class, which I appreciate so very much.

We celebrated the end of a trying week with a great dinner at Over the Tapas; goat cheese-filled croquettes, bacon wrapped steak, lamb sliders and a steak salad. OMG, we may have a contender for new favorite restaurant in Bozeman. The best part was leaving without feeling that we needed to unbutton our pants.

From Tapas we went to Lowes to pick out tile for the fireplace, a project which is finally happening next weekend. I'd still rather tear out our entire mantle and put in built-in bookshelves and a smaller mantle, but I'll compromise on just finishing the damn thing.

Upon arriving home, I poured a whiskey drink and got in bed with a book. DJ watched "Gold Rush" (yeaaaah, the quality of television ranges widely in our house). By 10:00pm the lights were out and I slept wonderfully until 6:30am, when my internal alarm when off. It was nice to snuggle in our warm, comfortable bed for an hour while thinking through gardening plans for 2012.

Now I'm in the office with a cup of coffee. DJ went downtown to meet friends for the Saturday morning coffee date, but I stayed home to enjoy a quiet house. I'm giving myself until noon, after which I'll start working on lectures for the next two weeks.

How was your week?

A snowy drive and time management

Is today Wednesday? I think it is. Right? Yeah. Yeah it is.

Holy cats it's only Wednesday.

I knew this week would be rough, and it's a doozy. I started setting my alarm for 6:15am this week, and have been in the shower by 6:25am all three days this week. I am not a natural morning person, so this is a big step for me. It's helped me be at the office before 8am, which makes me feel better about getting stuff done.

I need to be particularly careful about tracking my time at work this spring, as I step out every Tuesday and Thursday between 10:30am and 12:30pm to teach. I can't have any accusations of "double dipping" on my time sheet (doing class work while at my work office and calling it work work time).

I think this is a rough week for this. Tuesday morning I had a 3 hour orientation session for new faculty and TA's. The usual "these are the resources available to you and students on campus" and "you must report the following issues even is you just suspect" and "don't ever do this".

Tuesday evening I drove to my favorite city in Montana, Butte, America, to discuss their preservation ordinances with the Preservation Commission.  We were just wrapping up the discussion at about 7pm when a sudden snow squall knocked the lights out. Now you can laugh, but I always have my headlamp in my purse. I use it all the time! And it came in handy last night, when we finished our discussion by the glow of my headlamp.

So I got back into the City's Honda CRV, with all wheel drive, and planned on driving back across the continental divide to Bozeman. Crept down from "Uptown" Butte, onto the interstate and snuggled in behind two logging trucks. I figured I could follow their tail lights, and since they  were loaded down they'd be going slow. I could barely see the end of my headlights.

And then the logging trucks came to a dead stop. On the interstate. I couldn't see around them, so I wasn't sure if the pass was closed? I crept around (I think they stopped to chain up), and no one was in front of them. I happened to be on the phone with my sister at the time (hands-free device), and as I'm creeping up the pass, I remembered the time I drove to Missoula in similar weather, like an asshole. I told my sister I was taking the last exit at the base of the pass and maybe staying in Butte that night. "I have a husband and a doggie who love me at home, I'm not doing something stupid," I told her.

Yes universe, a Kramer actually made a cautious decision due to snowy roads!

I got back into Butte, got gas, and was trying to figure out what to do when the squall died out. I got back on the interstate, with about two inches of snow but no wind, and found myself behind two snowplows about to head east. Perfect.

Now is the part where I lecture to people about being an asshole on a snowy road. You see, at first, it was just the snowplows, then me, then a line of cars behind. Then this Honda apparently thought I was driving too slow of my own accord, so they passed me. I had to hit the brakes to make room for them between me and the snowplows.

And then ANOTHER driver did the same thing. This time in a Dodge truck. Asshat.

Thankfully after that, everyone else seemed to figure out what the deal was, and stayed behind me.

The lesson here? If you're stuck behind a really slow moving vehicle on a mountain pass, consider all the reasons the driver might be going slow. Including the idea that there are two snowplows in front!

I arrived home about 9:30pm, wiped, stressed, and without dinner. And it's only Wednesday, which means I can't sleep in any time soon.

Forward motion

I'm a big believer in the idea that it's okay to complain about something only if you're willing to take the steps to resolve the problem. It just seems like good karma; no grousing if you're going to just tell someone else to fix it for you. 


I've been frustrated with work a lot lately. It's been a weird combination of overwhelmed with things to do yet simultaneously unmotivated by any of it. Let's cut to the chase: I hate the design review component of my job. I dislike the conflict inherent in telling someone they can't do an ugly addition to their historic house. I find my car driving itself to Joe's Parkway for bulk candy when I have to write a staff report; trying to numb the pain with high fructose corn syrup. 


But, it's a part of my job. We have bills to pay. And I had a few realizations about it last week, the biggest being that my position in local government gives me automatic credibility, deserved or not, when I hand over my business card. 


Let's not BS here, there are people in this community who would do my job 100 times better than I have the ability to. There are some excellent cultural resource experts out there. They're just smarter than I am and employed in a field where they don't have to get in a pissing match with an architect about divided light vs. single pane windows. I really do think that I'll look back on this portion of my career in 30 years and be sad about what I could have accomplished rather than eating 23432567 chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. 


Anyway. Along the lines of feeling unfulfilled and knowing that I was the only person wholly responsible for making myself happy, I finally contacted the former chair of the history department at MSU to discuss an idea we'd batted around a few months ago. I've wanted to teach American History, or cultural landscapes or cultural geography or historic preservation or architectural history since... well, the beginning. 


Historic Preservation is inherently an interdisciplinary field, and today I pitched the idea of a seminar for undergraduate students at MSU in Public History. The idea is to use a number of lecturers to discuss how geography, public policy, public administration, history, architecture and landscape architecture come together in the field of historic preservation. To discuss how to understand how a landscape came to be, the laws that might apply, who has a vested interest, and how to interpret or preserve those cultural resources. 


Hopefully students who participate in the course will want to intern for me in the future, thus getting a lot of stuff done for me!


The interim History Department chair was really enthusiastic about the idea. He's going to see how it fits in their course book, and I'm going to create a single page "pitch" that he can shop around in the department and to other departments and students. I'd teach, err coordinate, the seminar in the spring of 2012 as an adjunct faculty member. 


And? Dudes. They'll pay me. Not much, but still. Awesome!

Mornings

I've become a go-go-go-go person. I truly do get more done when I'm busy than when I have an entire day to myself. Something about having deadlines, or being motivated to go to the gym right now or else it won't happen because of this meeting. I thrive, really, under a moderate amount of pressure.

In the last two weeks I've been trying to find ways to actively relax. I don't mean zoning out in front of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, because while that show is mindless, I'm not relaxed afterwards. Not invigorated. Not calmed the fuck down. Instead, I'm wondering why in the love of god all of those women look like aliens? Have you noticed that? Seriously; they scare me.

But I digress.

I went to two yoga classes last week, and learned two important things: 1) I am not bendy; and 2) yoga is kind of hard! My triceps are sore this morning from Saturdays class.

Does it help me relax? hmmm. Kinda. Not in a "wow I see the world in a totally different way" kind of relaxation, but in a "well that was a n ice change of pace from my usual workout."

I've also tried to protect myself by putting limits on when I'll discuss work. My board's holiday party was last night, and two of the members tried to ask me about a business item. The same business item which cranked my shoulders into a knotted mess of frustration on Thursday. I was rude to the board members, throwing up my hands in the stop signal and saying "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this now," and "I spent four hours on this last week and I just can't now. We're having a nice social gathering. Would you like another beer?"

But one of the most important things I do for myself a couple of days a week is give myself some time at home alone with the dog in the morning. I'll spend 45 minutes after DJ leaves to drink my coffee, browse email and blogs, and pet the doggie, who never can have enough attention. Then I hit the gym, the shower and work. I'm lucky to work in an environment that allows flexible hours, so I can roll into the office at 10 am and work until 6 pm without reproach.

Mornings home alone seem to be the only time I get to myself. And I appreciate them more and more.

Days like this

I'm not sure if I ever posted about it, but we ended up dancing to Van Morrison's "Days Like This" at our wedding. It's always been a song that can make me smile, and seemed to fit the laid back attitude we wanted our wedding to have.

I came home last night fired up about work issues, and could feel another one of those nights coming on. I'm still struggling with things at work, frustrated by inability to get stuff done because one issue after another keeps popping up. And then when those issues arise, I can't seem to handle them in an efficient and effective manner that doesn't end up in 45 minute Very Serious conversations with my boss.

It's frustrating.

DJ could sens that I was just going to be pissed about a lot of things last night when I got home. He let me vent without telling me how to handle it. He gave me some space to cool of. He went for a walk in the 8 degrees temperatures with me. And by the time we went to bed I was giggling and laughing. And I slept through the night.

And this morning, I'm reminded that there will be days like this.

Making a difference

I can't exactly figure out when the shift was, but in the last month or so, I seem to be finding a groove at work. After months of discontent, it feels good to be in a place where I'm busy, and happy and excited to be working on the projects on my desk.

My role at work has been seen for the last 10 years as regulatory. The last hurdle someone has to get past to develop their project. Needless to say, if I, or the rules I work under, don't agree with the developer's planned project, things get sticky in  a hurry.

I can't remember now if I was given an official "go-ahead", or just took the initiative on my own, but sometime this fall I ended up on the "putting projects together" end of things. This is, of course, the much more successful end to be on.

Right now I'm writing a handful of grant applications, while also managing another and working to redevlop and redefine my program. I think I have the opportunity to create the job I want out of the job I have. The sense of enthusiasm and interest and engagement I have in my position right now is refreshing.

I want to be known as a woman who gets things done. I don't want to be a hurdle; I want to be a resource. I don't need the credit for it, I just want to make things like redeveloping a historic building happen.

It seems like I'm in the right place, professionally, for now. Add that to being in a good place personally, financially, emotionally, etc. and well, things are pretty damn good now.

So a week out from Thanksgiving, I can tell you I'm thankful to be exactly where I am right now.

Still here

So it's been what, three weeks since my last post. Yikes. I've had a lot going on. Given the staffing changes at my job, and committments I signed up for before the staffing changes, the workweek has been a daily triage of "what must absolutely get done today".

Those weeks have been followed, respectively, by a roadtrip/ houseguests (wonderful, wonderful houseguests!)/ party at our house one weekend, then a roadtrip/ football game/ grandma day/ roadtrip then a one day trip back to Missoula for a funeral.

Yeah. That last one? The one today? That was awful.

But it put things into perspective a bit for me. I drove over and back with two dear friends and sorority sisters of mine. We spent six hours in the car gossiping, eating chocolate covered cinnamon bears, discussing everything from marriages, having babies (and the medical options to do so), mutual friends, personal tragedies and the ovewhelming tragedy before us.

And then I came hope, on a rainy evening in September, to a husband in the garage making home brew, a furry golden retriever who wants nothing more than to cuddle with me, and, well, a life that I really do love. And am grateful for.

I need to spend a little more of my emotional energy finding things to be grateful for. The last three years seem to have been bogged down in work, family, personal and other obligations. I want to work, this fall, on being grateful for those committments. For people and organizations that find my role in them so valuable that they keep asking me to keep coming back.

Today I am grateful for the people in my life.

Malcontent

I avoid writing about my job on here because, well, the internet is rife with people whose blog posts ended up being career limiting.

But here it is 1:06 am and I can't sleep for the turmoil in my head, my heart and my stomach.

I've been fighting a case of workplace discontent all summer. I chalked it up to stress over wedding planning, boring projects and  the uncertainty of my employer's budget. My antsy-ness had to do with not moving for the first time in 10 years, surely. The wondering of my mind to the "should I pursue a PhD in History" question was due to some kind of boredom, right? My dismay at some workplace shenannigans always ebbed and flowed, and this was an ebb.

Well, fuck, I'm sure I'm mixing my metaphors here, but the tide went out today and I don't see it flowing back in for a while.

Due to budget constraints, a coworker of mine is taking on additonal responsibilities (and the corresponding budget allocation) while another is reducing hours to three-quarter-time. And while I know everyone on my team will pitch in, I can't help but feel many of their current applications/ projects will fall to me.

Some of the current projects walking in the door are retreads of projects other planners handled in 2007 or 2008. Others are the new big uglies that deal with tearing great old buildings down.

I'm savvy enough to know already which are loosing causes. Yet I can't ignore my moral concience, my professional ethics, to support a project that destroys what I believe in. In adhereing to my principles I'm setting myself up for a massive whalloping in a televised public forum. Big public black eyes, potentially delivered from the people I work for.

So yeah, I've got that going for me.

I know it's not kosher to complain about a job right now. And I'm grateful, truely I am, that my coworkers are taking on new roles and accepting reduced hours in an effort to keep our department staffed at the bare bones level it is now. I work with a great team of people, and we can't afford to lose anyone.

But. But... the reorganization of responsibilities seems to rob me of the history and preservation projects that feed my soul and keep me coming back. I'm afraid all of my time will now be spent in project review; a segment of my job I've always tolerated because the same job let me do fun stuff like write walking tours of historic districts.

And this makes my stomach hurt. This isn't the job I want. I find no joy in dickering over vinyl vs. wood interior/ metal clad exterior windows. I don't like being stuck between my duty to execute the community's goals and vision in terms of keeping great old buildings and the community's need for the economic stimulous that comes with any project right now. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I just don't know... exactly what price did the devil name for my soul here?

Ten on Tuesday

This is going to be a short, yet unbelieveably rambly post. Hey, it's Tuesday... let's do it this way:

1. The last Wednesday I posted, waaayyyyy back in June, ended with golf ball sized hail, which caused MAJOR damage to our vehicles. Major. Like I thought I'd drive home and find windows out of our 9 month old house (none were, thankfully). So, two insurance claims and nearly $10k in checks later... I'm still not sure what our plan is to repair our damaged vehicles.
2. El Weddingo happened! and went beautifully! It was warm, but overcast to not boiling. Really, it went really, really well. I will recap it more later. It includes things like great times with girlfriends, unexpectedly over the top flowers, yelling obscentities at my dad... good times people.
3. We've been home a week. I still haven't totally unpacked the wedding tubs. Motivation has left my body, almost entirely.
4. I'm pondering a major change at work, both in how the program I work with runs, and if I even want to continue in this career field. No big plans, yet; I guess I need to let the stress of the last few months settle.
5. We have finished landscaping the yard! Soil pep went into the beds last weekend, and I planted the last of the perennials on Sunday night. As well as about a million Iris splits from my friend Shannon!
6. The hail did major damage to my veggie garden. MAJOR. Like I'm not even sure if the onions are going to make it. I'm kind of at a farming fail right now.
7. There is a possibility of a Mexican honeymoon in November.
8. Maybe the lake again next weekend.
9. Major developments for my parents.
10. Finally! I'm excited to start actually decorating our house now that every. single. penny doesn't have to go to El Weddingo!

I'm back!

Wednesday, quick-like

I'm super busy getting work stuff delegated, making final to-do wedding lists, and otherwise survivng on a stress diet of popcorn, coffee and jelly bellies; oh and red wine last night. So, quick like, here's what's on my mind right now: stalking weather.com and accuweather.com. Here's what accuweather.com says for the week before the wedding:

Remember that my bachelorette party is on Thursday! About 15 friends are coming together to enjoy a day on the dock and behind a boat pulled by Mikey, who will also be the bartender. Tubing, skiing, wakeboarding, and having fun, HELL YES 93 degrees!

And for the wedding? The day that we're dragging 150 people to BFE North Idaho to hang out at my parent's house?

Again, 93 degrees, hot and sunny! Reminders to self: drink water, lots of it. Sunscreen, and put some on DJ too. Drink more water. Stay in the shade where possible.

I'm super pumped, today, about the weather. Is three kegs enough for 8 hours of drinking for 150 people (including the Friday Pig Roast and Saturday Cocktail Hour and Reception) when it's 93 degrees out? Is this a math problem?

Two week sprint

Man, a whole week since my last post. And I didn't even do a Friday farming update! Dissapointing.

Sadly, it's been one of those weeks around here, and will continue to be for the next two weeks. Last week was prepping for a big work project, dealing with projects, presenting to boards. This week is executing work projects, fufilling a Mullan Road commitment (dork), trying to not lose my shit wedding planning (55 days?), and what else... prepping for going to the lake a week from Friday (WOHOO!).

The good news is that I spend two hours on Sunday afternoon going over wedding stuff with Dusty's mom and Erin, our day of coordinator for the wedding. Everything *seems* to be on track. Except for the part where I wanted to lose weight... might those two margaritas have had something to do with that?

I have a lot to catch you up on! Wedding planning, landscaping (we planted 32 perennials last weekend), dog, work, life, etc. And sadly, I have no good photos for today. Sorry charlies. Only Harlow, sitting out in the evening sunshine. She looks so tired!

Holy busy Batman!

Hey! I haven't posted in a week; sorry for being MIA! Actually, I was in Utah hiking last week (faked you out with the auto-posts, huh?). It was a great trip, and I'll post more about it shortly. In the meantime, I've got a staff report due today on a project that got increasingly complicated as I went through the staff report. Add that to 8 pissed off neighbors, and I've got myself a shitstorm here folks! Here's what's going on in my world:

• Farming: EFF. We're under a winter storm warning tonight. It snowed yesterday. And the day before that. My crocus blooms are dissapearing (gophers?), the tulips look warped, the hyacinths struggling, and the daffodils trying to pop. Kinda. The sugar snap peas I transplanted are holding up (but not growing), and none of the sweet peas I planted outside have sprouted. The onion sets are holding up too. We'll see. My inside starts are doing okay.
• Wedding: DOUBLE EFF!!! Holy shitballs EFF. I've got to get my arse in gear on that. It's like 8 weeks away! Specifically, we need to figure out flowers, food, and wedding bands this week.
• AOII: Graduation is on Sunday, so they chapter I advise for is going through the end of the year crazies and getting ready to move out of the house. This ='s more work for me!
• Puppy: Survived a week at Ava's while we hiked it out in Utah. She's still getting used to being at home, and with the weird weather yesterday ended up peeing inside three times. Damn. But I wouldn't really want to sink my little butt down in the frozen snow either...

In the meantime-- here's a Bob and Joyce wedding photo, of her boquet. My friend Joslyn, who is also our flower arranger, tells me that stephanosis (the little bell flowers shooting out of the boquet) are super expensive to include, as they have to be broken from the stem and then staked and wired into a boquet. And is that a tulip? Where did they get tulips in October? I think my grandmother still has that watch, and I've never seen Gramps wear his wedding band. My mom told me it broke into two pieces sometime in the 60's. I'll have to ask her what color her nail polish was!

Bid-nesss

I seriously, really, no really really feel like I need to take the rest of the week off from work to get my life in order. After traveling all last weekend for a FANTASTIC wedding shower (photos soon!), a trip which was 1,100 miles and 18 hours of driving, I'm beat. I need to do laundry. I need to call zappos and see why they haven't processed my return order. I need to check the design of my wedding band and see exactly how much broker we're going to be.

Thankfully, DJ checked the IRS website last night, and you're able to find out when the eff your refund will hit the bank account. Because I was going to try to call today. On tax day. I'm certain that would be plesant. But I was worried; we're getting the first time homebuyer tax credit back and our bank accounts are not totally barren... just kinda lonely. Anyway, refund, tomorrow! WOo- to the hoo!

I also need to follow up on wedding stuff. Version 5 of the newsletter is 5 days over due. I need to call the restaurant. Because I have to hound them to get me information about simple things, like maybe pricing out dinner menu items? Yeah... we're getting married in 80-something days, we should pull that together. See also: budgeting?

Spending time in Harrison on Monday and Tuesday definately reinforced how much I love that place. And that it's a small town, where business is still best conducted face to face. I'm an email girl. Phone if absolutely necessary. I find that in my line of work, it's best of have written proof of what you said, so that it can't be construed in another way. In Harrison though, it's all face to face. The mayor thought she was marrying us; I'd left her numerous messages last fall, and she never called me back to confirm so we asked a friend of DJ's. I saw her on Monday and she asked about the ceremony... um lady, call me back in October!

DJ's mom is having a hard time getting some of the details ironed out for the Friday welcome Pig Roast (welcoming the guests, not a pig). I went into City Hall to get things ironed out and they totally had her on the calendar and were planning on it... they just hadn't told her that. Communication...

Anyway, one of the fun things I did in Harrison on Monday was introduce myself to the guy who owns the Wild Boar Inn, one of the bed and breakfasts in Harrison where DJ's dad and a few of our friends are staying. IT's a GREAT place! The guy has slowly rehabbed this 1917 house, and I'm totally hiring him to do ours someday. He's also providing the transportation the day of our wedding. Check this bad boy out (So pretty!)

Sadly, my boss needs me at work, so all of the things on my to-do list like transplanting the strawberry plants, planting the garlic my aunt gave me, writing thank-you notes for shower gifts, finishing the retaining wall in the garden, puttering in the yard, working on wedding-related crafts, and generally getting shit done will have to wait until the weekend!

Also: the winter snow we got here on Monday, what the hell was that?

March 26 Friday Farming Update

Man, I neglected this blog this week! It's been one of those weeks, where work is all I can seem to do, think about and dream about. Yuck.

I'm planning on doing some farming prep this weekend. We're in that almost spring phase of weather in Montana. Rain fell as I drove home last night at 9:15 pm from a meeting, but this morning a skiff od crunchy snow sits on the ground.

As proof that being a farmer in Montana takes resolve:

Crocus

Tulip

Daffodil?

Hyacinth

We have no firm plans for the weekend, so I plan to work around the house. There is the usual "clean the bathrooms" and "file paperwork" list, but I've also added "farming prep" to the list! This weekend I want to:

Friday:

Swing by a local nursery on the way home and check:

• the price of asparagus and onion sets
• the price of bare root plants (trees, shrubs, raspberry bush)
• the price of soil pep, which is a kind of bark I plan to use in the flower beds (see all of the little green sprouts in the photos? WEEDS)
• what they reccomend adding to the gardening patch to amend the soil. Peat moss? a 10-10-10 fertilizer

Saturday:

• start some vegetables indoors (corn, zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, sweet peas, snap peas)
• (depending on snow/ weather the night before) amend garden soil as needed, rake out, and seed spinach, carrots and shallots
• fertilize bulbs
• firm up plans for bushes, trees, and remaining landscaping

I also sent in the paperwork this morning to participate in the City of Bozeman's tree cost share program for trees. For $50, the Forestry Department subsidizes tree planting in the boulevards (City property), as long as the homeowner agrees to care for and maintain the tree. The best part? They even plant it for you!

Since we don't have enough distance separation between our sewer lines and the other utilities, we can only fit one boulevard tree in (boo). I chose a Brandon Elm tree because of it's yellow leaves in the fall, and it's mature height of 85 feet. I'd like the trees in the front (southern) yard to eventually shade the house, and the Brandon Elm will grow high enough to do this well.

Brandon Elm in the summer.

Brandon Elm in the fall.

Happy Friday!

Traction

For some reason November was kind of a rough month for me. I couldn't seem to get an traction to get anything done, and I hate that. I like productive days where I can go home at the end of the day and feel like I Got. Shit. Done. You know?


Part of it was moving into a new house. It's overwhelming to look around and come up with an endless list of to-do's. Most pressing is the need to get a paperwork system devised, and a bills and office organization. I've (mostly) kept on top of everything, but honestly, I'm just not a great details thinker. I'm a better big picture person.

Which is why the AudioBook CD that I'd borrowed from the library for our Oregon trip in September went unreturned. I moved it twice, but apparently didn't have time to return it (despite going to the Library a handful of times in the last three months for work related stuff). It caught my attention on Tuesday morning when I received an emailed version of a letter from a collections agency regarding my overdue book and associated fine... Yep. Turned over to collections for a $10 late book fine.

I immediately returned the book and paid the fine, but still, I'm embarrassed about it. Embarrassed that somewhere between trying to juggle everything I let that ball drop. And such an easy one too!

I feel like part of being a grown up is having your business life in order. Marriage is, after all, a non-profit union for the joint protection of assets, isn't it? Our union isn't a fully complete one; we're still working towards a semi-merged financial system. There will be glitches along the way, but I'm mostly concerned that I will screw it up on my end. We've got a joint checking account, and for the first time in my life I'm actually writing stuff down in the register to account for every penny. I don't want to let DJ down on our shared assets.

Work has been busy, as usual, and I seem to be embroiled no less than three projects where the neighbors acidic relationships with each other just suck the life out of any forward progress on the projects. It's hard to stay focused on being a good public servant when you're receiving nasty-grams from people who accuse you of being unethical and an advocate for projects you didn't want to support but the Boss said you had to. Tough to recover from.

And I can't help but be super overwhelmed with Wedding stuff. I think it would have helped to find time for me, my mom and DJ's mom to sit down and think through the whole vision of the event. I have it basically all planned out in my head, but I haven't communicated it very well to anyone... And I was starting to lose sleep over how behind on the whole thing I felt. To the point that I actually took the entire day off on Tuesday (save for a late evening board meeting) to work on wedding stuff. All day long. No TV. Little facebook. Just me and focus! I knew I needed to work on it all day Tuesday for my sanity, and felt like I should be honest with my boss and not burn 8 hours of work time working on private stuff.

I feel substantially better today about where the wedding stuff is at. There were some setbacks, like calling the restaurant where the reception is going to be and finding the phone has been disconnected and they're closed for the season until the end of March. . But I mostly finished the Save the Date Pamphlets (still to do: final edits, drop them off to be printed), and worked on a sort of stream of consciousness wedding thoughts outline (sorry DJ, not everything fits into a spreadsheet!), as well as a checklist of tasks.

I'm going to start working on a monthly email to be sent to the 'rents and siblings on the 10th of each month leading up to the wedding, as a way to keep everyone informed. I plan to talk about what we've gotten done so far, assign tasks to be completed that month, and give an overview of where we are in the whole process. Can you think of anything else I should add?

The good news is that after spending 10 straight hours on wedding yesterday, I do feel better about it. And I actually had some forward momentum to get all of the random crap on m desk at work taken care of. It feels good to be productive and on top of things.

Finding the Silver Lining

Whew, what a hectic last 10 days. Lecture and Cemetery tour with the Preservation Board, moving, Preservation Awards last night. It’s fun to put on events like that, but darn, they really suck all of your attention. I actually came into work this morning kind of at a loss as for where to start!

This weekend includes a stint at Gift Corral on Saturday during their open house, which will be kind of fun and festive. I’ve barely worked there this fall, but asked them to keep me in mind for their bigger days. Truthfully, I wanted to totally quit in September, but I just couldn’t desert them going into the holiday season. I’ll work a handful of shifts through Christmas, and then I’m donezo.

This weekend’s primary focus is to finish moving into our house and put stuff away. Generally do some nesting, and be able to park both vehicles in the garage by Sunday. I also intend to cook and bake, a LOT. Gotta break that kitchen in. DJ’s been in Helena for an Engineering Conference (dude, you thought my History conferences were dorky?), and he’ll be back tonight. I’m trying to decide what delicious home-cooked thing to make for dinner… Cornish game hens, maybe?

Sunday evening also begins the actual wedding-planning. Finally my mind isn’t cluttered with paint colors, trim accents, and any other number of housebuilding-related things! Now to clutter it with Blessed Event-related things.

As we start to get settled in, I can’t help but think of my parents and how much I miss having my family in Bozeman. Last weekend both of them mentioned considering moving back to Bozeman some day in the next three to five years, which we’d both love. We both sometimes struggle with living so far away from our families in Washington, and have had lengthy discussions about moving further west to be nearer them. I’m no fool; grandma’s eight and twelve hours away with small children certainly makes things hard.

Maybe it’s something about fall in Montana, the way the light changes and the atmosphere or something, but I get a little melancholy this time of year. Especially when I think of my parents and the upheaval that has been their life for the last two and a half years. I could rave on and on for days about how I really feel about the athletic director that fired my dad. Posts full of vitriol and bitterness, but really, who wants to read that? I do have pieces of it written down somewhere; often I just need to get it out before I verbally vomit all over DJ and sour a nice evening with the acidic feelings I have towards certain people in the athletic department and president’s office.

I think I want what everyone wants; for their parents to feel safe, financially secure, and happy together. My mom and dad are a good team. And in their mid-50’s, they’re starting over again for the third time in their life. The second and third times they’ve started over have been due to a firing by MSU.

Undoubtedly, none of us thought they’d be in this position ten years ago this week when dad’s EWU team played MSU in Bozeman. After that trip, MSU began courting dad to become their coach, and the rest is a lengthy, now-painful history for me to discuss. Suffice to say, I miss my mom and dad, I miss the life they and we had here, and I miss the excitement of it. Mostly though, I want to be done with this bitterness towards MSU. I want to let go of the chip on my shoulder. And I want my parents to be back on SOME track. Any track at this point.

Maybe there will be resolution this winter. Maybe it will be after the January trial. But do not mistake me, they’d give any amount of money back to just be back where we were on May 15, 2007.

In the meantime, I have to find the silver lining. Since he wasn’t coaching, dad was able to be here this weekend and install all of the drawer hardware in our house. Every time I open the kitchen drawers, I think of him.

Doin’ it, doin’ it, and doin’ it well

I’ve got to interrupt what has been a wholly “Housebuilding” blog to revert to a personal item.

When I was a kid I imagined working in a field that I loved, doing something productive that helped make people’s lives better. Not nursing, or teaching, or another profession where workers really do save lives so blatantly, but instead one that might be more subtle. I wanted to do something that people appreciated; that at the end of the day they said “Courtney’s done something good for this community.”

Naive much?

In college I ended up a history major instead of in architecture because I was intimidated by the math required for architecture. And I loved my history classes. I considered becoming a history professor (and still do); what could be more fun than waking some freshman from their stupor of classroom boredom than enlivening their academic career with the great stories of history? Because that’s all history really is for me; a collection of great stories.

Telling those stories requires books, but also places. I know I sound immensely dorky, but the best historical sites I’ve visited are unstaged. There were no period actors at Fort Laramie, or the Point of Rocks segment of the Mullan Road. These are places a person can visit and make their own impressions of, and I love that.

My history degree parleyed into a Master’s in Historic Preservation principally because I think places like this are so valuable. And I believe I have the breadth of vision to understand that both high brow mansions and low brow shotgun shacks are important. I ended up in my current position because in the American system of historic preservation the most “teeth” for historic preservation is at the local level; where local governments can pass resolutions and ordinances dictating how extensively (or sometimes not) they want their historic resources protected.

The local level is where the trenches are. It takes hard work and management of the political capital a program gains in order to further the cause. Especially in a state like Montana, whose gun totin’ property rights advocates come out of the woodwork, particularly in a local election year like this one.

I’m aware of the political repercussions of my job. Frankly, usually the “deciders” have decided if they are going to prohibit demolition of extensive alteration of a building before I’ve had a chance to weigh in (sometimes I wonder why “they” pay two historic preservation professionals if they’re not going to listen to our professional opinion). My best recourse is to try to get something FOR historic preservation out of an approval of say, a demolition. I butt my head against this rock sometimes on a daily basis. And sometimes it feels like there is no going forward or back; I can’t “win” either way.

I’m not afraid of objecting, strenuously if necessary for the right cause. I’m not afraid of the political fallout, and I’m not afraid of the stakes. But it ebbs away at my confidence when I believe I’m not doing a very good job managing that objection so as to prevent damage to the program I take pride in.

I would never term myself a perfectionist. I’m a good “Big Picture” thinking, but don’t always think through (or follow through on) the details. I know this about myself, and despite self awareness it’s extraordinarily frustrating when I catch a loose end later that I should have tied up months before. But I am a good “Big Picture” person. I see where things could go, either way, and have to fight off the pessimism and look for the positive outcome sometimes. I have worked to train myself to find the compromise in a situation, where all get some of what they want, but some don’t get all they wanted.

There are so many “causes” I want to help along. I want the sorority to grow and have a property they are proud of, and debt free of. I learned so much about myself from my time inside the brick walls of AOII that I want other girls to have that opportunity without having the burdens of a mortgage and declining membership that we sometimes had. And as a historic preservation professional, I believe I can help them manage a historic building. And as a good public speaker, I believe down the road I can help them raise the funds needed for an endowment and trust to maintain and upgrade the building.

Sometimes though, I’m afraid that the time I give the organization gets eaten away by the day-to-day management issues that I am not interested it. And that my involvement might not be very productive. That my failure to follow through on getting something checked for repairs before it breaks ends up in a more expensive replacement.

I also really want historic preservation in Bozeman to have a life and vitality that is valued by all members of the community. Regardless of if it is through local government or a local non-profit, I want the general cause to be successful. And I work 40-55 hours a week doing my best to make it successful (despite the fact that I’m not the decision maker). I have outlines and roadmaps for how the program could evolve. But I hate getting dragged down into discussions over whether my design review of a project was inadequate because I didn’t notice that the porch posts were more “rustic” than the house’s 1930’s “style”. Damn. I know things like this matter, but my attention to detail (and willingness to nitpick an application so toughly) just aren’t up to snuff, I guess.

I could go on and on in areas I don’t feel adequate in. I often sacrifice my relationship with friends in favor of my job. Frequently my relationship with DJ bears the brunt of my frustration with myself; I just have to put in more time, and as it did last Friday, that means DJ is home by himself while I work till 10pm on a Friday night. That sucks for me and it sucks for him.

The kicker though, is that I rarely come home at 10pm on a Friday night satisfied with what I’ve spent the last kajillion hours working on. I think it could be better. I think I’ve not done enough. Or I think I have done enough, but someone the next week tells me that I really haven’t.

I feel overstretched, inadequate and generally unimpressive. I want to do my job well. And more than that, I want to leave my job satisfied that what I’m doing is good for the community. I want to create and leave a lasting imprint. I want to feel satisfied with my work at the end of the day and that I've created soemthing I should be proud of.

Sometimes I think I just want to be a quilter.

Saturday Sloth

Wowzer, what a week! Today is the first Saturday that DJ and I have at home and unencumbered with stuff to do since… I can’t remember when. Maybe sometime in April? Today we’ve agreed to devote to doing as little as possible. That couch has a serious date with my ass in the near future, likely during the Texas- Texas Tech game. The only times I will move from it are to lean forward for more nachos!

This week was hectic. I have a project going on at work that is an absolute time-suck. It just eats up not only my available hours but a lot of my mental energy. I’m earning it on this one; for the fee I think I’m making about $.08 an hour.

On top of that, we’re in crunch time for house stuff. The bids for cabinets, granite, tile, flooring and etc. are in and we’ve got to make some decisions about what to spend our money on. DJ and I were wrestling with how to afford the granite we want in light of the cabinets we want and the flooring we want, and it just didn’t seem like there was anywhere obvious to cut. We could cut something, or downgrade it, but it only saved us about $50. For that much…. Ehh.

Then one of the guys we work with, who has built his own house, suggested we do the tile work ourselves. He’s got a book, and some of the saws, etc. needed. We mentioned it to our general contractor, who then suggested that his dad is a tile guy who could at the very least get us started and set us on our way. So, it looks like in order to cut the bill for tiling the front entryway from $1,100 we are going to do the work ourselves and save about $400.

I’m sure we’ll end up at Home Depot or Lowe’s this weekend perusing tile selections. You’ve already seen the entryway tile, and we need to pick a subway tile for the kitchen backsplash. We’re also thinking about tiling the bathrooms upstairs too… I mean, if we’re going to get all the stuff out, why not?

Additionally, the builder suggested that if $400 is a big deal to us (um, yes, yes it does), we might consider cleaning the place ourselves instead of hiring a cleaning crew. Heck yes man! I inherited from my mother and grandmother an exceeding sense of when something is clean. We are living in an apartment built by the same builder constructing our house. Nice little place, but their version of “clean enough to move into” is not mine. It was little things, like wood shavings in the cabinets, etc. Had I really cared or had the time when we moved in three weeks ago, I probably would have cleaned the apartment first.

So I can save myself $400 and the hassle of cleaning the house twice by just doing it ourselves. I’ll take that! Now to see if my mom can come help…

(Hopefully we will clean during a weekend with a good football game on the radio. When I was a kid mom would always deep-clean the house on the weekends dad had away football games. The three of us would wipe down baseboards and scrub windows as a way to keep ourselves occupied while listening to a nerve-wracking game.)

With all of this in mind, here are the most recent photos of the house!

The west wall of the downstairs has gone from this...

...to this! Sheetrocked. See the fireplace to the bottom left of the photo?

The kitchen island is framed up.

This is the window in the dining room. It faces east and I love how much light it lets in!

Hey! A front door! I walked through our front door for the first time today.

Standing in the kitchenn looking through the dining room to the living room.

We went with a concrete front porch, since it'll be so exposed to the sun and weather. I'm excited about how good it looks!

The west elevation of the house. In addition to sheetrocking, they roofed this week!