I have written 2 very long posts with personals and lost both of them, but I will try this one more time. I don't know how to create a document in Word and then transfer it to here, so I will just try again.

Lisa: It is so great to see you posting more lately. I know your heart is broken, though, and I am still keeping you in my prayers. 💜 So are you not working anywhere now? The reason I am asking is that it occurred to me that maybe not working was a blessing in disguise for you so that you could spend more time with your mom in her final days. Please know that we are here for you and that you don't always have to put on a strong front for us if you are hurting. Take the time you need to grieve... and share your feelings here if you want to. We just want your heart to feel happy again! 💜

Holly: Wow, you are one bada$$ strong woman to conquer all of that grueling yard work! I am majorly impressed! So happy to hear that your weather has been nice enough to work out in your yard. Good for you for taking advantage of it. I am SO super excited for you to be finished working for your big meanie winter boss!!! Can't wait for you to be able to ride to work on your motorcycle this summer! Great job on the consistent workouts! Keep up the great work!

catinhat, Coop, & Lisa: I am right there with all of you on procrastinating. It is one of my worst and most frustrating vices. For me, it is often my perfectionism which holds me back. If I think I can't get the task done perfectly, then why even try? I know it is totally self-defeating and far from actually being perfect, but that is the biggest root of the issue for me. It becomes a vicious cycle, too. I try not to beat up on myself too much for it, though, because I know it only makes matters worse. Let's make an effort to all work on NOT procrastinating so much and we can share our big and small victories here. We can encourage each other to "just do it!"

EasySpirit: Where are you? I am sending you big hugs and as you battle your chocolate cravings. Please feel free to share your "down" times with us, too. I can tell that you are a strong person, but we are here to support you in any way that we can.

Fi: I sure hope that intense and constant pain is not preventing you from posting right now. Hope all is well and that maybe you've been able to get out and drive again! Please post when you feel up to it and let us know how you are.

Waving hello to everyone else! Hope things are going well with everyone! Don't forget to post about both your UPS & DOWNS when you can. It is always nice to hear from everyone!

catinhat: I am so happy to hear that you have accomplished more and lost a little weight since you started posting here. Perhaps writing about things and venting a little is helping. Keep it up! I enjoy reading your posts. I hope everything will work out okay for you with your job. It is difficult to be in limbo and not know where things stand. I love hearing about your farm life and especially about your animals. I am a SERIOUS animal lover!!! Hope you were able to do the yoga dvd you got from the library! Let us know how it goes.

Such great energy here!!

Yes, I also hope that Fi is not experiencing terrible pain. We are thinking of you!

warning, next is all garden stuff

catinhat, we don't grow much for edibles, just the thrill of being able to do it but last year I had great luck with one Boston Marrow Squash, one plant yielded a 30 pound monster and a couple smaller ones. I processed them into pies for a fundraiser; and froze the remaining flesh-innards (always weird for me to call a vegetable's innards 'flesh')

We love sunflowers and want to do more of them..we do a small herb garden in containers for the deck..I usually have one large patch of nastirsiums (sp?) on the lawn; I tend my two large mint patches well because I pick stems/leaves and bring them to work , to use daily as dessert platter garnish (same with the nastirusiums) And I want to try to make tea from dried mint leaves. Tried Gem Marigolds last year, and in late summer, they took off and gave me hundreds of tiny little gorgeous blooms that I also used as platter decorations, they looked like confetti and made me so happy.

Oh yeah we do some tomatoes, don't have a ton of luck with regular size but do have good luck with cherry tomato types, and they make it so I eat tomatoes every day, good for me

And I'm so excited about my 3 rhubarb plants!! bought them from a local hardware store's garden center in June; they were in tiny 3" pots. Well the location I picked must have been great, it was on the edge of lawn where 20+ years of leaves had been accumulated; so very rich soil and I added MooDoo (bag of dried cow manure) to the planting holes. Well those plants TOOK OFF and got huge, but I read NOT to pick ANY leaves the first year!! So hard not to. So this year I can start to carefully pick a few leaves each week. I will bring them to work and use for desserts. There is also rhubarb at where I work, but I wanted my own too.

So I want to add another couple rhubarb plants; and I had saved seeds from my Monster Squash, and we planted them about a month ago,, under lights, and those seedlings are about 6" high now!

Oh and pansies in containers on the deck, I also pick them daily in summer to bring to work as garnishes.

Our season is so short, I think that is why I embrace the growing so much. And I don't really mind cutting the grass, or using the weedwhacker, because it looks so nice afterwards.

Procrastination ...I have been putting a few things off...I need to make another eye doctor appt, I had one last August, needed new prescription for contacts, but somehow, my communication with the doctor did not work and I can not see that great...it is not that my vision changed suddenly, as soon as I got the new prescription I could tell it was not correct for me, but didn't want to think my $$$ were wasted! so tried to make them work. Difficult to see at night ( think that's an aging thing anyway) but when I can't see that great down the road during the day, that is not good (speed limit sign says 555? I dont' think so ) SO I have to go through the whole process again.

other thing, I received a recall notice on a minor thing on my car, but need to make an appt. for that.

OK now that I spoke of those things, I've been procrastinating on, they aren't that bad are they

I am very glad I have been able to do some type of movement/exercise almost every day, i also feel accountablle to come here and tell of it, so that is good.

Only TEN MORE DAYS til I'm done with the winter job I can deal with that.

have a good day!!

VermontMom, your post made me feel so happy! First, before I forget, what is the 'winter job'??

My own boss, who is still young and a little on the self-important side sometimes, bless his heart, is possibly getting fired next week. He doesn't see it that way, but he has less experience than I do...and my husband thinks that the writing is on the wall too. I have mixed feelings about this. This job is one I started in December, and it's been somewhat overwhelming all along, but the added income has been a blessing. I've told myself 'that's why it's called 'work''. I guess we'll just see what happens. Hubby and I can manage without it financially, and it would free me up if it goes away....but I don't hate it, nor do I have bad feelings toward my boss. This is just one of those things where he isn't seeing the bigger picture, and he's not in a position to say/do some things he's saying...and doing. Time will tell.

My garden used to be big, VermontMom, but then the deer came. There were a lot of wildfires in Colorado over the past decade, and a lot of displaced wildlife ended up in places it was not normally seen....so now, we have deer out on the open prairie. Since there is not a lot for them to browse (they don't eat grass, they are browsers), they really go after people's gardens out here.

My growing season is short too, and I have my best luck with smaller tomatoes too! (I love currant tomatoes, and I'm looking for seed right now for the variety I had before.) I have a fenced garden now, with a 'topper' to protect from deer (and hail). It's all DIY, and looks better once there are plants in it to distract from my fencing skills. I grow a lot of the same things you do. Potatoes do well here, so I grow 'fancier' ones, like blue ones and fingerling, and I grow a lot of lettuce, spinach, greens, kale, peas, etc. Green beans do well and I love love love them, so I grow enough for us to eat, plus some to can for winter. My garden last year was a little less than 8x12 - we called it the dog run garden. I took down some fencing near my hens (used to be a holding pen for whatever needed holding - turkeys, the dog, a bossy rooster, etc.) and this year, my garden is about 12x30. I'm super excited! It gets too cold here at night for tomatoes and peppers and such, but corn does OK, so I might put a small block of those in one corner - just big enough for pollination. My daughter loves birds and wants to be an ornithologist when she grows up, so I rai.se mammoth sunflowers for her, and we save the heads for the birds in winter. Pumpkins do well here, but take over, so I have a separate place I put them all by themselves, and I think I'll do that again this year. All around the perimeter, I grow herbs on the outside, because the deer/rabbits don't bother them. I've got lots of different things, some for pretty, some to cook with.

Oh goodness...can you tell I love my garden?

Just FYI: It doesn't look like anyone started a new thread for April, so I will do that now. Please join us on the Ups & Downs April 2016 thread!

I have lost four long posts in the past few days, so I have decided to try a series of small ones.

Kathleen, I am praying for you and your son. Your recovery is amazing. I know how you feel about your son and the new girlfriend - happy that he is happy, but so, so, so worried that this girl will break up with him and things will be worse than ever. All you can do is support him, advocate for him with his doctors/meds and hope for the best.
Believe me, I know this sounds easier than it is.

Holly, this past winter is the best I remember on the Cape. Unfortunately, because of something similar to PTSD from the previous nightmare of a winter, I really did not appreciate it. I have always enjoyed the first few snowfalls of the season. This year the first flakes put me into panic mode. I was petrified it would be a case of two horrible ones in a row. When is your summer job starting?

Fi, I hope you are okay. If you are able, please drop a short note to let us know how you are. I am thinking of you; you have always been an inspiration to me - how you ever stopped those (*&^%) cookies is beyond me at this point with my sugar issue.

Lisa, time helps ease the sorrow of losing your mother. Mine has been gone for 6+ years, and I still want to ask her a question, or tell her I saw someone she knows, or something similar, every now and then. But the feeling is quite different - not raw like the first year.

On procrastination - I was one of the worst procrastinators possible.

I now do a few things routinely to help. I meet a group of people at the YMCA five mornings a week, and I walk the beach with neighbors early Sunday mornings. This accountability forces me to exercise regularly. When I get home from exercising, I set my timer for 30 minutes. I put my exercise clothes and towel in the laundry room and start a load of wash; I make my bed; load the dishwasher from breakfast; set the coffee pot (still prefer drip to pods do correspondence- answer emails, write out greeting cards, phone to make appointments, whatever. After the timer goes off, I bring the trash into the garage and walk the dog. That is such a routine that it is like a game of Beat The Clock that I play with myself. When I get back from the walk, I put the wash in the dryer or my indoor drying racks. This routine gives me a great sense of accomplishment.

Another thing I do is keep lists. I have a pad of paper and pen in my kitchen, on my desk, on my nightstand and in my car cup holder. As soon as I think of something I need to do I write it down. That relieves the anxiety of worrying whether I will remember to do it or not. Once it is on one of my lists, I know I will get to it. Today's list was email recipe to neighbor, buy cream of tartar, postage stamps, birthday card for nieces. Once I do something on a list, I cross it off. About once a week I combine all the lists onto the one on my desk and start new ones. This might sound OCD, but it works for me.

My weight is 156. I cannot seem to stay away from chocolate and ice cream. I start every day thinking I will be fine, and I am not. On Thursday I threw out all remaining Easter candy; on Friday I ate the mini chocolate chips I had leftover from a dessert recipe that I was planning to use in cookies later this Spring. Today I am hoping to make it through with no sugar. Not only do I eat too much, but sugar seems to trigger my appetite so I eat more of everything. It is a battle that I seem to be losing. I was down to 147 last Fall, so I am disgusted with myself, to put it mildly. I am fighting tears when I struggle into my clothes. I cannot imagine how bad it would be if not for the exercise.