A lot happened on my very first Mother’s Day. My daughter was Dedicated at church. We had a huge party with dear family and friends. We had portraits done. It was a Mother’s Day I will never forget. The only thing that was missing is that my then-husband forgot to buy me a gift. I was OK with that, but later on I stopped and bought myself a bird feeder I’d had my eye on for a long time.

We had a lot of birds in our backyard in Gainesville, and nearly as many squirrels. I bought one of those weighted birdfeeders that tipped with a squirrel sat on it, but kept the bird food safe from spilling. The feeder kept the squirrels out of the food and provided all of our gorgeous wild birds with enough tasty food to keep them coming back over and over.

When I moved out after my divorce, I somehow forgot to take that feeder with me and I when I recently asked for my ex to being it to me, he informed me that it has “disappeared”. So, I’ve been using a sort of makeshift feeder in my current backyard. It involved a hanging plant, a shepherd’s hook, and a bit of complicated rigging. Unfortunately, it’s not keeping out the squirrels.

I’ve been hunting about on Birdfeeders.com for a replacement bird feeder. I’m thinking that this time I am going to go for bigger and better – even though my old bird feeder kinda’ rocked. This Birdscapes® Squirrel-Be-Gone II™ Feeder is a lot like the one I used to have, but it is a whole lot more decorative and hold more seed. It’s squirrel-proof, adjustable, and looks pretty. It’s pretty much exactly what I had in mind.

So, the only question now is whether or not I should wait until Mother’s Day to buy it for myself. I’m tempted to just go ahead and treat myself to it now, since my birthday is in about a week.

I kept my daughter’s crib bedding. After she was born, I went out and bought bedding with lots of Battenberg lace and embroidered rosebuds. I did the whole room is mostly white, with rosey accents. I guess I hope one day she might be able to use the bedding for one of her own children.

Now, before she was born I bought a set of crib bedding that did end up being used. I have been a huge Babar fan all of my life and I went to al lot of trouble to locate a set of Babar crib bedding. I figured that the liberal use of red and Kelly green would work for either a boy or a girl and we had chose not to find out the gender of the baby before she was born. When Gigi was born, I suppose the red and Kelly green just did not feel right anymore and I boxed up the Babar set.

About a year ago I gave away the crib, bassinette, changing table, swings, and other baby items on Freecycle, along with a lot of Gigi’s clothes and toys that she had outgrown. I offered up the Babar bedding, asking that someone only take it is Babar meant something to them, since I the crib bedding had been to hard to obtain – not to mention expensive. I got a lot of replies, but every single one said they ere just looking for whatever they could find for their babies. So, I chose to hang onto the bedding. I did not want to give it to someone who could very well just toss it out.

And so, I have both sets saved. Maybe I’ll even use them again myself one day.

I wish I could go into greater detail about a neighbor of one of my best friends, but out of common decency I can’t say enough to identify him. My rant here is about the fact that all it takes is one bad neighbor to spoil an entire neighborhood.

My friend lives two houses down from her neighborhood’s resident bully. He has cameras trained on his next-door neighbor’s pool and the park across the street. He has gone door-to-door during HOA elections each time to try and smear everyone running for an office. He has made physical threats to several of his neighbors and regularly attempts to engage people in shouting-matches and the like.

Lately, though, he has escalated. He’s been spraying Roundup on his neighbor’s yards so the grass dies and he is has been seen messing around with newly planted trees in other people’s yards – and they die within days of whatever it is he is doing. Now, it looks like he has poisoned at least two dogs in the cul-de-sac.

There is a lot of proof, just not really the kind the police will take into consideration. He was told by a sheriff, though, that the next time something destructive happened in the area they are going to open up an investigation about him. My friend gets the blood work back on her dog in the morning and if it is positive for poisoning, I image that will b the straw that broke the camel’s back. Let’s hope.

I’ve never had a neighbor THAT bad. I did live next-door to a couple in my last neighborhood who had loud outdoor parties during football games and who also dumped their car ashtrays on neighbor’s sidewalks. They were the type to mow their lawn and skip the mere 6-inch swatch of grass between their property line and my driveway. You know – the kind of people who would rather suffer physical pain than do even the slightest kindness for a neighbor. They were super loud, unbelievably so, but I do not think they every knowingly damaged my property.

I love baths. I love bath tubs. I love all of the oils and salts and bubbles and soaps and other implements of bathing. Since I can remember, baths have been a time for me to unwind and relax and I usually really need that by the end of my day.

Since having my daughter, I don’t get the kind of relaxing baths I used to. When she was first born, I bathed her in the tub with me. She would nurse and I would wash her and then her father would come and get her and let me finish my own bath. As she got older, she still liked to take her baths with me and that was fine when we had out big garden tub. However, in this house we just have a standard sized bath tub and when she get sin with me it just feels crowded. My goal is that the next house I have will have room for a massive bath tub, at least a garden tub if not a two-person soaking tub.

My mom was telling me recently that she still loves baths, but is not comfortable getting in and out of them anymore. I was telling her that I think it could be a simple matter of having a walk in tub installed. A walk in tub actually has a door so you can walk right in and out, no climbing required. And, many models have higher seats so you do not have to lower yourself to the ground. I’m such a bath-a-holic that if I ever begin to have mobility issues, I will absolutely be getting a walk in model.

What a treat!

This week we found heirloom tomatoes at Publix. They were a hefty $5 a pound, but we picked one each of the available varieties and will save the seeds. It will be fun to try to grow them.

After all the flavorless hybrids I’ve eaten from the local stores, the heirlooms were such a treat. I cannot tell you how much I miss the tomatoes in my grandmother’s garden up in West Virginia. When I went up a year ago for my other grandmother’s funeral. I ate garden corn, tomatoes, and green beans every day for at least two meals each day. I couldn’t get enough.

I’ve been trying some tomatoes on the back patio and they grow and ripen well, but the birds and squirrels keep beating me to the punch so I have not got any actual mature tomatoes yet this summer. I am going to start moving the plants onto the screened porch to see if that works.

Anyway, here is a snap of the tomatoes. Aren’t they pretty? The varieties are Red Brandywine, Gold Medal and Cherokee Purple. According to the stickers, they were all Florida greenhouse grown.

I grew up just outside of Washington. DC. When I think about flowers and grass and trees, I think of the things you see in a typical mid-Atlantic yard. Moving to Florida meant re-learning everything I knew about gardening and landscaping.

I had to learn how to take care of St. Augustine grass and how to get in there and kill and remove the crabgrass in the winter when the St. Augustine goes dormant. By the way, the trick to that involved a solution of water and powdered Arm & Hammer detergent. I had to relearn what flowers to even bothering putting into the flowerbeds in the hot summer sun. I have to relearn the growing seasons for different garden fruits and vegetables.

I am still trying to get the hang of things. I think I have tomatoes down now, but the squirrels in the yard do not leave them alone long enough after they approach ripeness for me to be 100% sure. Oh, and I figured out False Heather does great in full, hot sun. I might just stick to that for the flower beds.

I’ve been reading a lot of websites with info on yards in hot areas of the United States. I can glean as much information from sites about Albuquerque landscaping as I can from sites that focus on Florida. I know we have some differences, but it really all comes down to leaning how to garden in places where the sun burns up most plants and grasses. I know landscaping in Albuquerque would be a lot easier for me now that I have lived in Florida. (By the way, I chose Albuquerque arbitrarily, as an example of another sunny locale.)

And while I love the citrus here, and the extended growing seasons and the fragrant summer nights, I still miss the bulb flowers and lilacs and softer grasses of the northern yards. I want to walk out in the morning and see the Lily of the Valley flowers growing along the fence, the Morning Glories fading on the trellis and the Bride’s Bouquet blooming on the bushes in the backyard. Although, the USDA website seems to indicate that Bride’s Bouquet actually grows mostly in Florida and Puerto Rico. That’s news to me.

I keep trying to go through my boxes and bins; trying to consolidate and get rid of things I do not want or need. I have an entire bin full of little bridesmaid gifts I collected over years of being in weddings. Some of the gifts never made it in that box; they were jewelry or useful things like books or photographs. However, I have very little need for figurines and overly ornate picture frames and t-shirts with the names of couples who have now divorced anyway.

I give a lot of stuff away using Freecycle, but often I feel like my time is too precious to even bother with listing the items and communicating with someone to come pick them things up – especially when half the time they either don’t show up or cancel. So, several boxes of things are going over the local Goodwill when I leave in a few minutes to see mom at the hospital.

Holy cow, I wish I could be in the non-packrat mood more often! Now, I need to take this attitude over to the storage facility and get rid of some of the bigger items. It would sure be nice to be able to rent a smaller unit.

I wrote last week about how I made labels for my daughter’s dresser drawers. I printed a picture of the items in the drawers, along with words like shirts, pants, socks, etc. What I am doing is using a tool that will help her as she learns to read.

If you look around most kindergarten classes, you will see that the teachers have labeled as many items as possible. This is to help he students make a connection between the item that they already know the word for and the word for that item.

My next plan for labeling things here at the house it to buy a Dymo label maker. I have been meaning to neatly label all of my plastic storage bins out in the garage and in my storage unit. And now, I really want to go around the house and make little labels for ordinary items like the doors, beds, closets, toys, etc. I want to give my daughter the opportunity to make the connection between words and everyday items.

Plus, it’s that time of year again where I need to put Color labels on all of Gigi’s things with her name so that her lunchbox and other school supplies do not get mixed up with other children’s things at school. Having a label maker will sure beat printing out words on regular paper and taping the home-made labels to items.

If you were to ask me what my favorite bodily sense is, I would say scent. I love the way the world smells, most of the time. Better yet, I love filling my own world with delightful smells. I love the smell of rain (it is pouring rain outside my window right now and I just opened it a crack so that the smell of the wet earth would waft inside), ripe blackberries, my daughter’s clean hair, orange blossoms, and so many other smells. Scent is the one thing that can launch me into vivid memories.

When I cook a meal, I pay careful attention the aromatic elements. I choose my lotions and shampoos and soaps carefully, for both quality and scent. I am choosy about my perfumes, preferring Champagne by Yves Saint Laurent. I even make sure my laundry smells a particular way – roses and violets. A house that smells pleasant is a sign of how much you care about your environment.

I recently tried the Renuzit TriScents scented oil air freshener. Between you and me, this is ideal for me. I am actually that person who changes the oil cartridges in my other air freshener systems back and forth, before they actually run out. I like variety and I get in the mood for one type of scent or another and I take charge and just switch it out.

This particular TriScents rotates through some of my favorite Renuzit fragrances: Waterfall Mist, After the Rain (my absolute favorite), and Pure Breeze. They call it the Morning Meadow Collection. I love these scents, because they’re crisp, clean and natural smelling. What happens in the unit, when plugged into an electric outlet, cycles through the fragrances in 45 minute intervals. It’s divine, honestly!

(I even kept the little blue, green and yellow lids that came on the oil containers just so I can have them here at my desk to add a little yumminess to my office!)

My dad has a sweet, little black cat named Marty. He was allowed to keep this cat, which he found as a starving kitten along the side of the road leading to their property, as long as he would agree that Marty would be an outdoor cat.

Let’s just say that Marty is barely skimming the edges of being an outdoor cat. Barely.

My dad lets him in to eat. He lets him in to drink water. He lets him in to get pet and wander around every so often. At night, dad puts Marty in the garage, supposedly so the foxes won’t eat him. Marty has a cat condo in the garage, and toys and access to canned food. He is more comfortable than most cats I can think of right now.

I’m allergic to cats, so I can attest that Marty is outside enough to keep the house pretty much dander free. So, perhaps we can slide on over and call Marty an outdoor cat. But, yes, just barely.

I miss being in the same house as someone who is handy around the house. My ex was a total loss when it came to even the simplest household repairs and yard tasks. I did as much as I could on my own, but my own skills are limited to gardening and decorating.

I’ve been at my dad’s house near Washington. DC for the last week and it has been fun to just poke around in his work room off of the garage. He has all sorts of air tools and gadgets. He even has this little wall where he has nailed baby food jar lids to pegboard, so he can just screw the jars onto the lids and they will be all nicely stored up on the wall. He puts nails and screws and little things in those jars, all neatly sorted. He actually used to use that trick when I was growing up, as well.

I have to keep reminding myself that the next time I get married (IF I choose to even bother), I want that man to be handy around the house.

I could talk about a million reasons that a cordless vacuum cleaner would make my life easier. Certainly, there is the fact that it would be more energy efficient. In this day and age of questionable oil dependence, saving energy anywhere I can is a plus.

But, might I also add that I am sick and tired of getting tangled up in the vacuum cord? I loathe giving it a little tug, just knowing the cord should stretch more, only to find the cord has become snagged under the leg of the recliner or is in the process of knocking over a potted plant in the living room. It’s not as annoying as trying to mow the lawn with our electric lawn mower, but it is an astonishingly close second. I know, if I run over the cord with the Dirt Devil, I am not going to slice it in two, but I have made my fair share of ungraceful falls across the dining room.

Dirt Devil has a new AccuCharge Stick Vac and a Hand Vac that not only uses 70% less energy, but also give me sweet visions of flitting around the house CORD FREE to banish the dust from my life. Well, the dust and the cookie crumbs and the sand tracked in for the yard and a host of other dirty little things. The appliances are Energy Star approved, too.

I’ve done some pretty asinine things to avoid the whole corded vacuuming thing. I sweep things into little piles before vacuuming. I clean the floorboards and along the walls by hand with a wet cloth. I go to great lengths for more than just the luxury of moving about without that cord tripping me, I am also always thinking about ways to keep our power bill low. I live in Florida, for goodness sake. We run the air conditioner more than I would like. That eats up a majority of the electric budget, so keeping other usages low is always on the back of my mind.

And, yes, no more silly pratfalls.

Will I ever finish being packed away in storage? I have a massive storage unit filled to the brim with furniture and household goods. I have that I can with me, but most of what I won is packed away. In all reality, I have moved so much over the years that I feel like I was always in some stage of unpacking. The last three times I moved, I still had boxed fully packed from prior moves.

When I can, I go through boxes and sift through my things, trying to pare down what I own. In all actuality, it’s not that much, but I certainly could not move in the night if I had to. Today I found a box of cables. I actually wanted a plain old cable TV cable so I could extend a line from the cable in my room to where I actually want to have the TV this summer (no TV in the bedroom during the school year, thank you very much). What I found was a box that quite evidently belonged to my ex husband. The first clue was the CAT5e cable on top of the pile. It must be a box left over from when he was trying to start a small business with his friend Fernando.

Should I be a sweetheart and give the box of techie stuff back to him? ( I probably won’t.)

I fully believe that how well you sleep has more to do with your mattress than anything else.

Years and years ago, right after I graduated from college, I got a second-hand mattress from a friend that was 100% foam. It was just this massive, thick slab of fairly firm foam. I slept so well. In fact, on days when I was tired, I would be in the car driving home and just have these longing feelings for my bed.

When I moved to DC, I was unsure where I would be living and I actually did end up sleeping on a friend’s couch for a year. Before all that, I got rid of most of my belongings. I gave my mattress to a married couple I was friends with. They had a terrible mattress. When I would see them after that, they would gloat a little about how well they were sleeping.

To this day, I miss that foam mattress. Now, I have a pillow top. I’m sleeping on a single right now, but I have an even better pillow top in storage. It’s a King and won’t really fit where I am living right now, but I’ve learned my lesson. When you have an awesome mattress, don’t just give the thing away!

Of course, if I find a fully foam mattress I like and can afford in the near future, that King I have in storage in up for grabs.

Solar lights are popular everywhere, but I can hardly imagine a place where they as effective and naturally useful as the subtropical regions of Florida, where I happen to live. I get a lot of sun. A LOT of sun. And, I know the difference. I lived for a while south of Pittsburgh, where the entire winter was overcast and wet. Even when I lived in North Florida, there just were not as many sunny days as I have here. Plus, I pretty much lived in the woods then. I had solar lights, but they did not charge that well.

Now, though, the solar lights I use in the flowerbeds and up the walk are flat out amazing. Not only are they completely self sufficient, they just feel right. Do you know what I mean? I am taking some of the sunshine that my yard enjoys during the day and allowing my yard to enjoy it at night, effectively.

And, it’s not just about lights that actually illuminate the paths in my yard or the driveway; I also found this very cool color-changing solar globe. It has a hidden solar panel and you can set it to rotate through 10 colors. You can even float it in your pool or a garden pond. It beats tiki torches hands down for ambiance.