Random updates

1. I've been a little scattered lately, my weekends thrown off by the fact that the boy has been traveling for work a ton. Like, half of last month he was gone. So instead of getting my projects together, we're staying in bed until noon on weekends so we can catch each other up on our weeks. I think we finally decided that we're not going to build the deck this summer. It seems to make more sense to wait until we paint the house. Why would we paint the house when it looks so awesome in back? Yeah, I don't know.

2. We booked a trip to Amsterdam in the fall! THE ONE IN EUROPE, oh my god. I think we're going to hit Paris and Cinque Terre but please feel free to chime in with your favorite cities/sites/activities. I've never been to Europe and I can't wait to embarrass Greg by yelling loudly, "The LOOV-ruh! I liked Disneyland better!"

3. There has been no movement on anything tree-related with my next door neighbor. She cancelled our sit-down with the neighbor from around the corner and I haven't heard a word since. Greg and I wave and yell "hi!" every time we see her and we're going to keep doing that, pretending that nothing is wrong. And no one came to rip out her tree, so that's good. We may never know what was really going on.

4. I found this recipe for washing sheets that's supposed to make them very soft. It involves washing them in vinegar with very little detergent. I'm a big fan (it doesn't make your sheets smell like vinegar, I promise) but Greg has not been convinced. Then when Portlandia shot at our house they filmed a scene in our bedroom and Fred Armisen had to climb into our bed. As he got situated he murmured, "These sheets are really soft." If that's not the laundry equivalent of a double-blind randomized trial, I don't know what is. I think we can safely say that I WAS RIGHT.

5. My friends throw a county fair every year, held at the Kenton firehouse. There are competitions for ribbons in lots of categories from butter sculpture to pie making. I won a blue ribbon two years ago in pie making (blueberry sour cream) but this year I didn't even place (banana cream, shame on you). I'm not gonna lie, I'm competitive enough that this was a bummer. Luckily I hedged my bets and entered some of the lillies from the yard in the "gardening: flowers" category where I tied for first in a category with three entries.

I feel a tiny bit robbed because I used spent penstemon seed pods and how cool is that?

I shouldn't have to share my honor with some stupid zinnias (which really were beautiful). Greg guessed within one number how many items were in a sand jar, which garnered him some beads! We're both winners!

6. I installed a sliding screen door off the bedroom. It doesn't open or close smoothly, but hooray for fresh air in the bedroom. A cool night breeze is just the thing when you're drinking your wine and watching The Bachelorette together. Oh god, did I write that out loud?

7. The boy requested that I plant some orange tulips in the yard. I was going to plant "Sensual Touch" bulbs but I decided that it would be more embarrassing to order him "Orange Princess" bulbs. Do you like our princess bulbs? Greg picked out these pretty princess bulbs!

Because I'm not a totally horrible girlfriend, I also ordered him some Bastogne bulbs. Bastogne is featured prominently in Band of Brothers, which he loves. This has nothing to do with the fact that I think they're gorgeous and he never asked for red bulbs in the first place. I'm just being thoughtful.

8. My sister is coming up this month to visit and take photos of the garden. She is a fancy-pants photographer and she's going to document the yard better than I can. You know what would've been a great idea? Watering the lawn so it won't be all brown when she's here with her fancy-pants camera. Hopefully she can just photoshop that out.

Hope you're enjoying your summer!