Feb 2021 recap: All I think about is cars and spring
Hello friends!
Golly, I really can't believe we already wrapped up 2 months into 2021! Now there that we're in March, I'm eagerly anticipating:
☀️ Longer sunny days and a return to hiking and paddleboarding
🍓The PNW spring and getting my garden up and running. Last year I grew everything on sale at Home Depot and youtubed how to raise them as I went. It wasn't very fruitful but it helped me find what I like or what's low ROI. I worked for a month in the heat tending to little turnips making sure they didn't get woody and what - I visit the farmers market and realize I can buy even better turnips for $5! This year, I'm planning on a strawberry patch (a nod to Bellevue's past in the strawberry growing industry), an herb garden (highest ROI plants), a cut flower garden (highest joy plants), and focusing on tomatoes and peas (biggest delta between fresh and store bought).
We also started an orchard with a handful of bare root trees. It's a long term play - they'll be producing fruit for us in 3-4 years. I'm just an Animal Crossing LARPer. 🦝
Froggie’s arrival - we're anticipating his arrival mid-April! My parents are also coming up to meet him.
Maybe even a respite from COVID and seeing friends again.
With so much on the horizon, I'm resisting the desire to plow through the current moment. I'm always in hurry to get on to the next big thing. High school self wanted to be in college. College self wanted a job and new grad self couldn't wait to be an experienced engineer. Looking back, they were all the good old days. When I think back, the official moments that the transitions - "graduation" or "first kiss" or "first day working" aren't what I crave to relive. I remember them in a sterile way - a photograph of a memory. Those moments feel external. It's the internal moments when hopes I didn't even know I had tip over to reality that feel vivid today. I long to return to a hot summer playing Pokemon in the local park and my first taste for really feeling belonging with my peers. My fondest college memory is a walk down Riverside park finally feeling at peace being alone after an anxious freshman year in NYC. I felt successful in my role as a manager when I realized the team I supported was the team I always wanted to be on.
Beginning of Feb, I had what should be an official moment. I started a seven month pause from work by stringing together an assortment of leaves. It's not quite a 7 month vacation since Froggie will arrive in April but I've never taken such a long personal time. I'm about a month in and the main thing that jumps out is the weird rabbit holes I have time to go down now.
👩🏻🔧 Car detailing: I'm not too sure what happened but I've gotten really into car maintenance. Maybe the folks talking about the brainwashing power of YouTube are totally right and I should be glad it's something as innocent as car detailing. My oh my, people who are into cars are really into cars. My car's a Civic and it's not too exciting to detail a Civic [0]. Pretty luckily, we actually had a yellow Miata sitting around in CA. I had it shipped up, changed all the fluids, did a full interior detail, hand washed, clay bar'ed [1], paint corrected (uggghhh, I can see my mistakes now), and put a ceramic coating on it! For anyone else that might finding how to wash a car riveting (I’m entirely serious), AMMONYC is my favorite car detailing YouTube. Special thank you to Khurram who has convincingly answered "Of course you can" to any car project I've thought about.
Side note: Harrumf, everyone thinks its JP hobby. We went to Autozone to buy last minute chemicals and the sales reps only talked to him, even though I outlined the projects and asked all the questions. Ahem, the pregnant lady is clearly running the car show here!! Don't worry on Froggie’s behalf. I did the actual work with a super intense p100 woodworking mask on outdoors. Meanwhile, poor JP is worried that the neighbors think he's abusing me when I'm the one forcing him to do all the (literal) heavy lifting. 😈 JP: "If I knew what I was signing up for, I would have called the local shops for quotes first" [2]
👗 Sewing: My parents helped me dig up on sewing machine from...middle school. I am on a velvet decorative pillow phase now but have a slate of projects with increasing difficulty lined up: waxed canvas tote bag, sleeping robe, travel slippers, and a dress. The dress will have to wait for my postpartum measurements.
Lest anyone accuse me of being a dilettante, the old hobbies are still around too. Chugging along with Spanish - I'm halfway through the Duolingo course with about 2k words learned (thank you Abdul for all the language learning advice) and here's my latest watercolor - in honor of Ox year. Actually, this is based off a real hairy coo I met in Scotland winter of 2012 and fed slices of bread too.
Thanks,
Kathy
[0] I did feel guilty short changing the trusty Civic that has been with me for a decade and never broken down. We decided to give it the full treatment as well. 🥰
[1] 🤯This step was magic to me. The car looked clean and then I sprayed a whole bottle of IronX on the car (b/c these are 10 year old outdoor cars) and watched the car bleed rivers of red (the IronX turns red when it binds to the iron contamination) and then spent 3 hours rubbing the clay bar all over the car. Holy 🐮, got rid of 90% of the imperfections in the coat and the car has never been so smooth and silky.
[2] I think to have hired people as through and diligent as myself, it probably would have been a solid 2k+ package…PER CAR! (not quite apples to apples, the pros do a fancier ceramic coat that’s IV cured with more layers)