Three years ago, Paul and I moved into our cute little Cape Cod in Poughkeepsie.

There were so many things that needed to be done … taking down horrendous wallpaper, painting over horrible primer-grade white paint, installing air conditioning, and more recently, remodeling our kitchen.

All of that left little time and money to improve the outside of the house, although we did have one tree taken down (leaving 8 mature growth trees on the property), and Paul has diligently fertilized the lawn, which has made for a greatly improved look to the house.

Last fall, we laid out planting beds around the house, and had a nice delivery of beautiful black mulch to fill them. Now, with spring arrived, Luis and I made a trip to Manza Farm in Montgomery, NY, to pick up the plants!

Over a couple of weekends we’ve added to the beds, and it’s really looking great! If you’d like, keep up with the progress on our photo gallery.

Here’s a rundown of everything in the beds:

1. Dwarf Alberta spruce - no blooms, sun to shade
2. Tete-a-tete daffodil - early spring bloom, full sun to part shade
3. Elijah Blue fescue (Festuca ovina glauca ‘Elijah Blue’) - no bloom, full sun
4. Purple fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides setaceum ‘Rubrum’) - plumes mid-summer to frost, full sun
5. Becky Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum ‘Becky’) - mid-summer to frost bloom, sun to part shade
6. Hyacinth in blue/purple - spring bloom, part sun
7. Tulips in purple, yellow, and a couple of special ones in red/yellow - spring bloom, part sun
8. Knockout rose in blood red - summer bloom, part sun
9. Moonbeam tickseed coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’) - summer bloom, full sun
10. Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’) - mid-summer to frost bloom, full sun
11. Cabaret maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Cabaret’) - plumes fall to winter, full sun
12. Moonlight Scotchbroom (Cytisus scoparius ‘Moonlight’) - late spring bloom, full sun
13. Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus’) - mid- to late summer bloom, full sun
14. Impatiens in violet and white - spring to fall bloom, part sun or shade
15. Blue star juniper (Juniperus squamata ‘Blue Star’) - no bloom, sun or part shade
16. Littleleaf boxwood (Buxus ‘Wintergreen’) - no bloom, tolerates sun and shade
17. Tamukeyama laceleaf maple (Acer palmatum diss. ‘Tamukeyama’) - no bloom, tolerates sun and shade
18. Endless Summer original hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Bailmer’) - summer bloom, partial shade … blooms pink in alkaline soil, blue in acidic soil (what happens in neutral soil?)
19. French hybrid lilac in purple - blooms late spring through fall, part sun to shade

I found out today that my grandmother has brain cancer.

She went into the hospital on Tuesday after having a small seizure, and we’ve been waiting all week to find out what’s what.

It had seemed it was contained to a small tumor, and we had hoped that it would be benign, but the doctors this morning said that they believe it’s malignant.

My grandmother is 82 years old, and I’m not sure how well she’ll tolerate a battery of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

I don’t know how to feel.

I seriously think the Girl Scouts of America are the source of the obesity problem in this country.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that camping and visiting nursing homes is important and valuable development experience for young girls across the country.

But the cookies!

I don’t even really like food that much. As far as food goes, I really consume out of necessity. Sure, I have my favorite foods and all, but if I’m occupied with something I can go for hours without stopping for snack.

Girl Scout cookies, however, are laced with something addictive.

I can eat an entire sleeve of Thin Mints in one sitting.

Worse still, I could eat an entire box of Samoas. Oh, Samoas, my favorite of all time.

That’s 1200 calories, for the Samoas. And 64 grams of fat (or roughly 96% of my recommended daily intake). And those “healthy” Thin Mints aren’t much better: 675 calories and a mere 32 grams of fat.

I swear, there are no more in the house.

Because I ate them.

All.

So yesterday afternoon, my handsome little puggy Jake went over to the vet. No big deal, really … he needed an update on his distemper vaccine.

He was so excited! For starters, he loves to ride in the car, and secondly he loves everyone at the vet. (Okay, in reality, he loves everyone everywhere. He’s a very social creature.)

Paul is very thorough, and made a point of asking the vet if there are any potential side effects from the vaccine. The doctor said if anything, his head would swell and turn red … and that it would be “pretty obvious.” If after an hour, he hadn’t reacted, he’d be in the clear.

Sounds good.

Around 5, Paul and I left for the gym. We met up with Luis, took a ride class, and then Paul went food shopping while Luis and I went to Target. Pretty boring story.

Until Paul got home, and called me to tell me that Jake was drooling all over the place, and couldn’t stop.

Thank goodness for overnight emergency vet clinics.

After a short (and mildly panicked, on my part) wait, Jake was diagnosed with a likely allergic reaction to the vaccine. After a quick shot of Benadryl and one more of cortisone (which he took without so much as a whimper, my brave baby!), we took him home to relax. The funny thing is, even as he’s drooling all over the place, he was still wagging his tail and sniffing everyone he could!

And this morning, he’s all good. A little sleepy, but that’s pretty much a normal Tuesday for my puggy.

That’s not my most original title; in fact, I stole it from the title of a book I just finished reading.

If you haven’t read Why Do Men Have Nipples?, I wouldn’t bother.

It’s really a rehash of all the content you’ve heard before, and in many cases the authors don’t answer the “questions you’d only ask a doctor after your third martini” but instead fall back on the standard reasons it’s too hard to answer them anyway.

Answers include things like “This one isn’t all that clear” (page 125), “sometimes there just aren’t medical explanations for things” (page 154) and “the research in this arena has only been conducted recently” (page 196). If you don’t know the answer, come on guys … just say so.

As for the simulated “instant messaging” conversations scattered throughout the book in everyone’s favorite monospaced type, give me a break. They don’t ring true, and they don’t even ring funny. (And whoever did the typesetting for the book should really be out of a job.)

If anybody’s dying to read it, let me know and maybe I’ll send you my copy.

If you’re the type of person who allows yourself to feel rejected or abandoned, you basically spend your life handing out baseball bats to people, and waiting for them to beat you about the head with them.

Maybe time to stop handing out the bats?

My good friend Jay pointed me to this blog called zenhabits a while ago, and I absolutely love this post because it’s so true. How do you go with the flow, and keep yourself from losing control? In 12 steps, of course!

My favorite one is #4 … “get perspective.”

This is almost always my problem, in that I overreact (no way, really? me? overreact?) to things that are really not that big a deal.

Leo writes, “A week from now, a year from now, this little incident won’t matter a single whit.” Ha! Most of the stuff I go nuts about won’t matter ten minutes from now.

So, I need to learn to zoom out. We’ll all be happier!

Could someone please explain to me why I’m here:

instead of here:

Did you ever have one of those days where you just woke up, and for whatever reason, just felt cranky?

I slept okay.

Nothing happened.

I’m just … annoyed. Irritated? Angry?

(I’m sure other people have these mornings too.)

And I spent the 45 minutes of my drive to Somers telling myself to either figure out what was making me angry, find a reason to be happy and pleasant despite feeling annoyed, or (ideally) both.

No such luck.

Almost everyone I know is sick or has been sick in the past two weeks.

I’ve heard of the cold, the flu, the stomach virus … eww.

Since last weekend, I’ve been sniffly and sneezy and sore-throaty myself. Paul’s a little sniffly too, but swears he does not have a cold.

I think I’m almost done with mine though; I can actually speak for more than five minutes today without losing my voice.

So now of course it’s Luis’s turn. He woke up this morning not feeling too well, and I’m pretty sure he’s got the stomach variety. I just brought him some tea, and he’s napping in bed trying not to throw up.

It’s time for spring.