Old Work

Looking for an old apartment where I used to live, I happened across two articles that I'd written for the magazine Travel Weekly 20 years ago! The first one was about renting a houseboat on Lake Mead and the other one is about Las Vegas for kids. 

The digital format seems to have erased a bunch of the punctuation, which is weird.

The biggest thing I remember about writing these was that Travel Weekly paid $.25 per word for their articles ($.43 in today's money), which was easily 4 or 5 times what other outlets were willing to shell out. I remember being so giddy when one of the articles was about 900 words, because that was an absolute fortune to me, and the most I'd ever made writing at the time. 

I've gotten paid more for other pursuits since then, but writing about traveling to Las Vegas was my favorite thing I've done. Local bank commercials and sports reality show pilots weren't nearly as enjoyable for me.

I wanted to save these links, so I am posting here. Thanks for being my diary, journal!

Why do I keep turning down work?!

As you know, we need moolah! 

Twice within the past month, I have been offered work. Paid work!

And twice I have turned it down.

WHY?

I literally applied for that job at the library. I'm not afraid of work. Believe it or not, I've worked before!

Technically, this wasn't a job; it was a volunteer thing. But I worked!

But I didn't take either of these opportunities because I realized that I really just don't have time for a steady gig right now.

The first one was something that I could have done from home, but it would have required many hours of intense concentration, and it's a challenge to get that in my house. D has a room, Mal has a room, James has an office. I do have a bedroom, but I share it with James and it's kind of open for business when anyone wants to hang out. I don't really have a space where I can put up a "do not disturb" sign and get things done. So I had to turn down the opportunity for a gig in the writing field. I just wasn't confident that I could give it my best.

Then the other one was something here in town, walkable like the library, but would require a couple of full days per week. It was flexible; I could pick what days worked for me. But we have things almost every day of the week and, ironically, I've lined up even more stuff over the summer when Mal's friends are often out of pocket, and when some things like open gym take a break until the fall. He's still young enough that I need to be around at least somewhat during the day. And James's schedule is so random that we can't plan for me to work when he's off; we never know what that will be until a couple of weeks in advance.

I guess this means we're not desperate yet? I do have three mystery shops tomorrow, which is the most I've had in one day in YEARS. We'll get three free meals, and then there are actually shopper fees on top of that. That used to be the norm, but I guess the market is such that companies can basically say, "You'll eat this free food and you'll be freaking grateful!" until they can't get jobs scheduled and are willing to throw more money at it. 

I am also doing gimmicky things like opening a new credit card to get a bunch of on-board cash for the cruise so we save $300 on gratuities. It's not income, but it prevents outgo, so that's kind of the same thing, right? And it's not taxable! Huzzah! My credit score is suffering a bit, but it will rebound.

Adventures in gardening

I do not have a green thumb. I have never been able to grow stuff. But through trial and error, I have some mostly successful plants in our house, and a variety of trees and shrubs in the yard. These have come alongside many failures.

For instance, right now I have several pears growing out on the pear tree I planted in 2021. But we got 4 different apple trees that died one at a time (there have to be two for them to cross-pollinate) until after a few years, we gave up.

I also have a fig tree, Texas chaste tree, and mountain laurel that all seem to be thriving. However, the lavender that was doing so great in the pot that I needed to move it just did not like being planted in the ground. Same with a different really pretty purple plant that refused to root in the yard. Who nows why.

My philosophy is "If you can make it, great. If you require too much input from me, you're not the plant for this environment."

I have grown everything so far from sapling. I also killed a tiny pecan tree I put in the ground, and have never been able to get lantana to take. But my neighbor gave me honeysuckle that I expect to more than double in size every few months, just based on how it's been going since it warmed up. 

This is my first foray into seed-sprouting. I have so many seeds in my freezer, waiting until the "right" time to plant them. One is my favorite pride of Barbados, but I'm so scared I'll mess it up that I haven't yet made an attempt.

However, we were recently out and about the Hill Country and I saw a beautiful Goldenball Leadtree that had an embarrassment of dry seed pods hanging off of it. I took one and brought it home.

James did a lot of internet sleuthing for me, and we decided that the best way to set up for success was scuffing the seeds a bit in one area to thin out the shell, soaking them on a damp sponge in a plastic bag over night, then planting them one per trough in a cardboard egg carton.

I put 9 seeds in on Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday morning, we had a sprout! I got overly-eager and put that sprout in a pot, but it stopped growing and I accidentally broke it so we'll count that as a successful sprout that got deaded due to human error.

Yesterday, Wednesday, four more had come up.

Having learned my lesson, I left those alone and this is what they looked like this morning, Thursday.

I'm going to leave these until they grow "true" leaves and then just cut the trough off and plant the whole thing in a pot instead of trying to extricate the sprout. At that point, we'll leave it outside at night to get it used to nature. Then we'll see how it goes from there.

Later, I'll put them in pretty big pots and leave them outside to plant in the ground early next spring. This is what I did with the Texas chaste tree my neighbor gave me, and it worked a lot better than putting such a small tree into the ground like I did with the pecan.

I'm hoping to get one good tree in the ground from these seeds, and I'm pretty hopeful at least one will survive. What James read online was that we could expect 1/4 to sprout, but for us, 6/9 sprouted! (And, yes, we have 5/9 now because of me.)

I've learned to ask online before I try to buy pots, because lots of people have pots sitting around they're willing to part with. Can't wait to see what happens with our babies!