quality vs quantity

Peter had to take two weekend calls this month, and unfortunately he got stuck with Saturdays for both of them. (Saturday being the worst because you get up at the crack of dawn, work all day, work all night, come home mid to late morning on Sunday, and then sleep. So much for a day off.) While I was home alone, I decided I really had no excuse to avoid spring cleaning any more, so I spent the day doing that and then watched all 235 minutes of the BBC adaptation of Trollope's He Knew He Was Right (most excellent, by the way).

I'm pretty darn good at entertaining myself and do like my alone time, but these practically-whole-weekend shifts are one of the things that can make being married to a resident hard - and this one was a little more tough because it meant going to church by myself on Easter.

But then after I woke Peter up (he likes that; I'm so much nicer than a rude alarm clock awakening) we had a lovely Sunday afternoon together, not doing much of anything aside from lounging around the living room except a walk with Ginger and some dinner (wait, that happened in the living room too).

Of course more of a weekend to spend together would have been nice - especially for poor Peter for whom no weekend day off means 12 days in a row of waking before 5am - but that's reality. It's much nicer to dwell on enjoying the time we do have together and appreciating it in all our introverted boring homebody glory. His schedule can sometimes be the pits, but I wouldn't trade my hubby and his doctorly self for the world.

(Oh - can't have a post without photos - since I made Easter baskets, I had to fill them.....)

Easter

About two days later... Ginger's "candy" devoured sooner than Peter's - shocking

what I've been waiting for

The 30 for 30 challenges got me all excited about the possibilities of remixing my wardrobe and trying out new styles, but I found it was just not as fun to do when heavy sweaters (or just big fleece blankets) were a necessity for keeping the blood flowing. In the meantime I've been scheming about how to remix some spring items and waiting to get to wear them, like this fun skirt.

Today the planets finally aligned: I had warmth (outdoor temperatures that warmed up the house past where we have the thermostat set, plus warm enough to go tights-less outside) and motivation (a long enough break in the rain that I could actually leave the house and errands that needed doing, so I actually had reason to get dressed...). 

skirt: J.Crew; shirt: J.Crew via consignment shop; necklace: Loft; 

shoes: Kenneth Cole via DSW; watch: Christmas gift from Peter

Now I just need the planets to bring me some summer sun so I can do something about those pasty white legs for the next installments of this skirt!

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Last weekend we used another of my fabulous Enjoy the Arts vouchers to go see the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Music Hall.

front entrance

It's almost the end of their season, so we had to make sure to use the voucher in time. With Peter's schedule/winter inertia/Peter's incredibly bad cough the last time we tried to go, we missed several of the concerts I was more interested in. For this one, I was looking forward to the Beethoven portion of the program at least, but felt a little meh about the Richard Strauss portion - but it turned out to be great.

entrance hall/balcony

It was fun to see the building - we walked around beforehand a bit. Our vouchers were good for seats anywhere (though we couldn't get the tickets till day of performance); the box office guy suggested a balcony section on the side, which actually feels very close to the stage, but you still get a great (profile) view of the whole orchestra.

inside auditorium

We used to go the symphony in college (they have amazing super cheap student tickets in Grand Rapids), so it was fun to be able to do it again on the cheap - made me feel quite pleased that the value of our tickets exceeded the amount I paid for the Enjoy the Arts membership in the first place.

four generations

One of the highlights of my recent visit to Michigan was a chance to hang out with four generations of ladies from my family. For starters, I had lunch with my mom, her mom, and her mom (my great grandma's sister joined us as well).

Then I joined my mom, grandma, and great-great aunt at their CALL (lifelong learning @ Calvin) class on Middlemarch, taught by my college professor/advisor, Professor Holberg.

four generations after class

 

There's a minimum age requirement for participating in CALL classes, which neither my mom nor I meet, so I got a few funny looks and just sat quietly in the back...

But it was SO FUN. I just love reading and talking about British literature - pretty much my favorite class at Calvin was "The British Novel", taught by Professor Holberg and in which we studied Middlemarch - so it was fun to be back in the classroom. Also it was interesting to hear a different age group's interpretation of things (vs. the college-aged students I studied it with).

Seriously makes me want to be an English major all over again. Definitely I'm going to read Middlemarch again.

 

in which Ginger gets wet

It's been raining a ton around here - it rained so much in March that I wondered if the saying in Cincinnati is supposed to be "March showers bring April flowers". We have seen plenty of April flowers as I'd hoped, but yet more showers as well...

Yesterday it poured all morning, which is bad on several levels: (1) the backyard becomes a complete swamp when we get a lot of rain, and I'm afeared of what that's going to do to all the new grass Peter planted as those areas are now small ponds; (2) we get some water in the basement when it rains (though I don't consider this so bad as we have neighbors who get complete basement/garage flooding - we just get a couple small puddles), and (3) Ginger gets all cooped up without her walk.

By about noon it was down to just a sprinkle, so Ginger and I headed out, at which point she discovered an apparently new phenomenon to her: moving water.

Along the edge of the road there was a fast moving river headed down to the storm drains. At first the rushing water kind of spooked Ginger and she jumped back. Then she wanted to chase it (which I allowed only for the length of her leash). Then she watched it inquisitively (furrowed brow and cocked ears) for a bit before batting at it with her paw to try to catch it (photo above). And when that didn't work, she went ahead and tried to bite it. 

Finally she decided the water was her friend, and all she wanted to do was wade and splash (below photo), until I put the kibosh on all that potential wet-dog smell.

 

Okay, maybe you had to be there. Or adore my pup as much as I do. But it was really funny to see her try to catch moving water by clamping her jaws on it.

lately/currently

Lately:

• I made a few Easter craft projects: felt Easter baskets, hydrangea wreath and hydrangea eggs.

• I've been practicing running outside because I finally signed up for my first 5k race - the Flying Pig in downtown Cincinnati. It happens to be on a weekend during Peter's next vacation, so now we're both in training!

•  My dad has been into making gelato. The latest selection: chocolate + white chocolate.

Currently:

• I'm spending the week in Holland (one of many work-from-home perks: the home office is portable!). I'm loving hanging out with the family, and Ginger is loving having so many people to play tug of war with. And of course a dog companion and extra petting.

• Peter is doing a rotation with thoracic surgery. I gather that he enjoys putting in chest tubes and sometimes having time free to get some reading (medical stuff, of course) done in the afternoons.

• I'm headed to Grand Rapids for lunch with four generations of my matriarchal line: great grandma (and her sister), grandma, mom, me and some other fun stuff. More later!

last of the no jeans!

cardigan: Loft; tee: Target; skirt: gift from mom; boots: Nine West via DSW; necklace: F21

Easing myself back into the world of denim with a denim pencil skirt, since I picked up my jeans from the tailor today. Hurrah (and just in time for the weather to warm up a bit - I no longer have to hide their extreme excess length [I'm a little short] by tucking into boots).

I kind of wanted to change into jeans as soon as I brought them home because (a) it wasn't actually warm enough to go without tights and (b) this skirt has needed some alterations itself for some time, so it's not all that comfortable to wear since it likes to ride up to about my chest when I sit down. (But I'm totally finding a different tailor before taking this to get the waist taken in - I like supporting local businesses, so I walked the jeans down to the local shop, but they seem to specialize in wedding dress alteration, so it took two weeks for them to do a couple hems for me... You can get these things done in an hour at the mall. Sorry, local place.)


But Peter kept me accountable to my final day of no jeans and I left the skirt on.

I will most definitely be wearing jeans tomorrow because I kinda missed them - it was nice to challenge myself to wear something different for a little bit, but I know that the only degree of difficulty involved here was because of the chilly weather. My collection of skirts and sundresses will soon enough become absolutely necessary (I spent the entire winter standing on top of the vent to warm up; come summer I'll be doing the same for the exact opposite reason) and the jeans will get a long rest...

weekend galore

Peter had both days (and Friday night) off this past weekend, which doesn't happen all that often - and this was the second weekend in a row! The weekend before we had done a lot of relaxing (plus car buying, which took up half a day), so this weekend we were up for lots of going out and productivity.

Friday night we finally tried one of the restaurants downtown we were interested in - Via Vite - with one of the other interns and his fiance. It was quite lovely. Then Saturday we got to do some sleeping in and taking Ginger to the park before Peter got a bunch of medical-y reading done and I did some errands.

Sunday we decided to use one of my Enjoy the Arts vouchers to visit the Contemporary Arts Center. But we needed a little lunch after church, so first we went to Nada - another restaurant we've been wanting to try - which is across the street from the museum. It's quite hip, but the food turns out to be really great too... We got the pork belly tacos and the mahi mahi tacos and split them. And raved about them during and after. Wow.

At the museum, I had wanted to see the Keith Haring exhibit, so we spent most of our time looking at that, but it was also great to see the building.

no jeans day 11 - pants & blouse: Loft; trench: Gap; flats: Kenneth Cole via DSW

Then, since it turned out to be such a nice day (predicted mid-sixties and cloudy, reality about 70 and sunny!), we got some ice cream (from Graeter's of course) in Fountain Square and got to bask in the sun, eat ice cream, and see the Reds hit a couple home runs on the big screen in the square.

And then, since there was still plenty of afternoon left and it was so lovely, we let Ginger sniff around and chew on some sticks (a favorite past time) while we did some work in the yard. I got the flower beds all cleaned up while Peter transplanted a big grass from the back to the front, and then he got inspired to deal with our horribly pot-holed and patchy backyard. So when he came home with the supplies I helped him till, spread some seeds, and cover with straw. Here's hoping it works.

It's a good thing the flowers on the kitchen windowsill are so pretty, because the view of the backyard is not - yet!

Sunshine and warm temperatures seriously do wonders for productivity and desire to be out and about! So lovely.

no jeans 8-10 + mirror photos

I've been on a bit of a computer hiatus since Thursday afternoon - since absolutely everything I do for work happens on a computer, I tend to develop some major shoulder/neck tension problems from repeated computer use. It's flared up big time lately, and I got tired enough of the constant pain that I went and got a massage on Thursday afternoon, called in sick for Friday, and then spent the long weekend away from the computer to rest up those poor muscles.

Also, I continued to not wear jeans... Thursday's outfit was a variation of this one, minus the sweater and scarf. Friday, since I wasn't working, seemed a perfect opportunity to take a trip to Ikea with the new car (cargo space!). There's a full-length mirror I've been wanting for a long time, and now I could finally fit it...

Ikea can sometimes be overwhelming with all the possibilities, so I got a bit indecisive once I started wandering around - here I am considering the mirrors and trying to decide if the one I've had my eye on was the right one after all. Luckily for me, my family was driving to Colorado for spring break at the time, so I had a captive audience and could text photos to my mom for opinions. She said it would be great.

 

 tee: Target; skirt: J.Crew; trench: Gap; flats: Steve Madden via DSW

And on Saturday - here is a sneak peek of the mirror in the bedroom. It is great.

 

tee: Target; skirt: Gap; scarf and belt: Old Navy; boots: Nine West via DSW

p.s. my shoulder and neck are feeling a little bit better by now... but this week I need to be really careful to take breaks from the computer and do my stretches, or I might be forced to play hooky all over again!