Morning people get the short end of the stick…

I am a morning person, no doubt about it. Back in April we took a 2-week vacation to Italy. I decided to stay up late (hardly optional when dinner starts at 9:00 pm), and sleep in. Two days after we arrived, I was waking up by 6:00 am everyday. Totally unfair since I was sitting at the dinner table like a zombie at 10:00 pm, just when things start getting lively.

In our apartment complex, we have rules that are understandable but annoying to early morning folks like myself. I can’t start laundry until 7:30 am. That’s LATE for me! I’d like to get started at 6:00 am, and I actually think 6:00 am is reasonable. People have until 10:00 pm to do laundry, and to be fair, I think that’s early too. But the people who complain about the noise are louder than those of us who want to start their day earlier.

Also, since most people stay up later than me, I have to try to fall asleep with TVs blaring and talking and thumping going on. Yet I tiptoe around when I’m up at 6:00 am — I don’t run the dishwasher or garbage disposal (kind of annoying since I make our breakfast and lunches around 6:00 am), and I walk lightly.

I also see it at work, where we have flex time. Those of us who start earlier are in before the majority of people. Then we leave starting around 4:00 pm and get comments like, “oh, must be nice to get to go home now.” Well, yes, it is in fact, considering I was in the office a full three hours before you.

Sometimes we get dismissed early, usually before a holiday weekend. That’s really nice, but by 3:00 pm, many of us have already put in a 7-hour day — 8 if you’re like me and eat at your desk (pathetic but true).

Also — and now I realize I’m starting to vent — people bug me all the time about not staying out late. I’m starting to respond that I’ll stay out late with them after they get up and go biking with me at 7:00 am next Sunday. Grr. My husband still owes me a morning out, after keeping me out until 2:00 am the weekend of his sister’s wedding — at a nightclub, no less. But somehow, expecting him to get up early is unreasonable…

So I just did a quick searching, thinking that it might be interesting to see what percentage of people are morning people. And the majority of results appear to be venting by night people about feeling slighted by morning people. The rest of results appear to be articles about how night people can become morning people.

Well, never having been a night-owl, I wasn’t aware of the difficulties this maligned group has been living with. I’m only being slightly sarcastic. Frankly I feel great understanding for their plight. It is annoying and frustrating to have other people insist that you be a different way. In my case, to stay up late and stay at work later.

I guess we all have problems, but I still don’t see that night people have to abide by as many rules that cramp their style as morning people do. It just seems more acceptable to be a night person.

But then again, if you’re a noisy night person, you might be frustrated by rules saying you can’t play loud music after 10:00 pm.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I have a lot in common and a lot of sympathy for night people. It’s not them I dislike. It’s loud people. And of course, annoying people, but that’s no news.

 

Recycling water filters (oh yeah, and why carry bottled water up to your apartment?)

We’re pretty diligent at home about water bottles. We don’t buy bottled water anymore — the waste is atrocious. Plus, why carry all that water up four flights of stairs? This alone is a great “living in an apartment” tip – water is delivered to your house already! It comes out of the kitchen and bathroom taps!

A year or so ago we bought a soda maker, since we like to drink seltzer water. We have four one-liter bottles we re-fill from our Brita pitcher. We also have about 5 or 6 water bottles of various kinds, that are also filled from the Brita pitcher, and kept in the fridge so we can grab a bottle whenever we want. Works pretty well and we’re happy with the reduced waste.

Then I get this “bite of the day” from www.idealbite.com, which is a pretty fun site providing a tip a day on easy ways to be more environmentally friendly in your daily life. For the past week or so, it’s been all about babies and crap, making me concerned that one of the people who runs the site was pregnant and the site would turn into a “baby and me” site about how children are the future… blah blah blah.

Proving that I desperately need sites like idealbite, I’ve been spending the past couple years happily refilling my resuable bottles–and tossing the Brita filters into the trash when they’re depleted. Duh. Anyway, Brita does not recycle the filters at this point. So the tip of the day is to petition Brita to do so. They’re asking you to sign the petition, and to send them your used Brita filters, which will one day be delivered, along with everyone else’s filters, to the Chlorox Company, which owns Brita. I think that’s a great idea.

So I’m posting this here for my thousands of readers (haha) to do this as well.

 

A lazy weekend

We have a pool at our condo. We don’t use it every weekend but it sure is nice to have. It’s pretty quiet and peaceful. This weekend the weather was so nice, just sitting outside was pleasant. Not bad for August in DC. Of course, it’s been cool enough that the pool water is cold… to me anyway.

I had a lovely time on the balcony this weekend too. The hummingbird activity got pretty frenzied. I’m guessing that another hummingbird was trying to encroach on the resident hummingbird’s territory. It was quite an aerial spectacle watching them. Then even had a little battle right in the balcony area, pretty much right in front of me. I have to say, I was a little startled.

After that, and watching a nuthatch and a downy woodpecker bickering, a butterfly came by and made good use of the petunias. It was lovely and calming after the hubbub of the fighting.

It doesn’t take much to entertain me. I’ve learned a good deal about why lately, too, and why things like the hummingbirds duking it out, and things thumping in the building startle me so much. I am apparently a highly sensitive person. More on that as I learn more about it myself.

I will try to find a photo of the butterfly I had visiting. It was pretty nice.

 

House guests

Living in a rather small apartment makes having house guests difficult sometimes. We only have one bedroom, which we relinquish to our guests so they can be more comfortable. Our master bedroom only has a half-bath, though, so everyone has to bathe in the one full bath. It gets crowded.

Yesterday we had my husband’s grandparents and their 12 year-old grandson, all from Germany and not speaking English, and my husband’s mother, who does speak English (thankfully). I got to sleep in the aerobed in the office, which is where I always am when we have guests in the master bedroom. I need a room to get away to, particularly since I go to bed early.

Of course, my husband, being a typical man, thinks of nothing ahead of time, like where FOUR people will sleep, whether there are clean sheets and pillows for everyone, or clean towels. Thankfully, he married well. What really bugged me about him this morning is that he wouldn’t get up, and I had to go to work, but I had to say goodbye to the grandparents, as they’re returning to Germany today. I had nowhere to go, with every room taken up by sleeping Germans, so I ended up just standing in the office over him (it’s a small office), for like 15 minutes, waiting.

Finally I managed to get him up so he could translate my goodbye.

I guess what would be nice in the future is for him to recognize that having guests is a lot of work on my part, and the planning often starts a week ahead of time, if I need to do meal planning and grocery shopping. I don’t think that will happen, though. Also, if he could get up at a reasonable hour (like, when everyone else is up), that would be helpful. Haha… hahaha… I didn’t sleep much last night, I guess I’m delusional.

 

Our new succulents

A couple weeks ago we went to Brookside Gardens to see a National Capital Cactus & Succulent Society show. We have a very sunny windowsill on which cacti and succulents thrive, so we’ve gotten interested in them, and since the event was free, we figured we couldn’t go wrong.

We were right. It was awesome, very interesting, and the people answered every question we had and helped us identify our own cacti. We bought them at Ikea because they were cute. They quickly moved on to large. One of them keeps pushing itself out of its pot. I’ll repot it next year.

Here are the plants we bought, I took photos so that we could track their progress. They are VERY happy in the windowsill.

The plants on our windowsill, August 2008

 

Hummingbirds and hawks

When I first set out to learn how to blog (such as it is), it was dedicated solely to birds. I’m not a fanatic, but I enjoy bird-watching. I enjoy feeding them too, so they come to me. When we were thinking about buying our condo, I thought long and hard about it in light of one rule: no bird feeders on balconies.

Obviously I decided I could live with that, but it didn’t last long. I decided that since I had leftover seed, I’d put out small amounts in a little holder–not even a real feeder–and see what happened. After a few days, the birds discovered it, including sparrows, mourning doves, and starlings. (Everytime I think about starlings I say the word in my head with the same disgust and contempt that the sheriff in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves says “Celts.”)

I decided regular seed wouldn’t do, if it attracted all those big, messy birds. So I looked into what birds eat and decided to put down only shelled peanuts, which little birds like chickadees, tufted titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches like. It’s worked, those are my three biggest visitors. I do get sparrows and the occasional mourning doves. But the chickadees, titmice, and nuthatches are the most common, along with, depending on the season, juncos, cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers, and more.

This year for the first time I hung a hummingbird feeder. I’ve wanted one for ages but didn’t want to deal with cleaning it and stuff. This year it suddenly didn’t seem like a big deal, and it hasn’t been. The biggest problem is that our community has a huge problem with ants, and I know hanging sugar-water isn’t helping, but truthfully the measures I’ve taken to prevent the ants from invading my petunias and installing their aphid colonies have been largely successful, and so the hummingbird feeder hangs in the petunias.

There’s a family of ruby-throated hummingbirds nearby. For those who may not know, ruby-throats are the only hummingbirds I’d see here in DC-area, so identification isn’t difficult. I’ve seen both the male and female and at least one juvenile. For all I know there could be two families but I’ve never seen two together at a time.

Hummingbirds are very bold little things. For their size, maybe their flying abilities make them more confident. They’re the only birds that can fly backwards. That and their small size make them pretty agile. They’ve definitely adopted my feeder and I like to think that the few ants who make it up here add a little protein to their diets.

So a couple nifty little stories about my hummingbirds: yesterday as I sat on the balcony, one of the hummingbirds, I think one of the young’uns, came and inspected me. It hummed around about a foot away from my face, darting around to look at me from different angles. Since I don’t look anything like a tubular flower, I can only think that it was just curious about this big creature always sitting around near its feeder.

A few days ago I left work early (by like a 1/2 hour, big whoop), and sat on the balcony with my wine and book. The book didn’t last long because the hummingbirds got busy, and at the same time, a sharp-shinned hawk showed up on my other side, with HIS dinner (a lot less appealing, given that they eat mostly small birds). I have to say, watching the smallest bird and one of the biggest birds (in our area, anyway) eating their dinners at the same time was kind of cool.

I live a boring life, in case you haven’t deduced that yet.

 

Another thing that sets us apart from the norm…

We don’t have children. We don’t plan to. Some say it’s selfish not to. Whatever. It astounds me that some people think the only way to contribute positively to the world is to have children. Really? You think your little gifts from God are contributing positively to the world? Whose world? I can promise you their impact on mine is nothing but negative so far. And I’m pretty sure that we’d all have been better of without those who become child molesters and serial killers.

We are minorities. Almost all our old friends are reproducing. The only ones we still really like are the ones who don’t think their kids are the second coming. But mostly, we’re making new friends who also do not have children. We have more gay friends, come to think of it.

I almost feel like I’m part of a little subculture, and I guess that’s true. Going into middle age and growing old without children and the prospect of grandchildren isn’t that common, certainly not the norm. However, I would like to point out that we, along with our childless friends, aren’t idle when it comes to improving the world. In fact, many of us do a great deal of volunteer work, some of which even consists of educating and enriching the lives of children. Just not our own.

People also amaze me in how they feel so comfortable in asking about our reproductive plans. “Aren’t you going to have children?” “It’s about time to get started, don’t you think?” I’ve decided that from now on, my answer will be, said sadly, “Oh, we can’t have children. I’m barren.” Maybe they’ll think twice next time they make those types of inquiries.

Anyway, we enjoy our neices and nephews. It’s especially fun being the cool ones. My sister in particular, who was always the cooler one, really hates that her kids think I’m cooler than she is. I am, too. Most of the parents I know seem older and less cool than their childless counterparts.

 

Ants and other unwelcomes

One of the problems of apartment living is bugs. Bugs are everywhere of course, but in your own detached home you can fairly easily control them. In an apartment, you’ve got someone else next door, and they may not have the same ideas of cleanliness.

We are on the fourth floor. Ants have trails going up the building supports. I don’t see trails on our end of the building, but no matter — ants have invaded and are very persistent. Last year they invaded my balcony, and I also had a huge aphid problem in my petunias. A little research yielded the interesting fact that ants “farm” aphid colonies. They collect the excretions of aphids, which is sweet and is called “honeydew.” In return, they take care of the aphids, even moving them to a new plant to help them find new homes. And a good cold winter doesn’t help things — the ants will actually store the aphid eggs over winter, and then carry them back to the farm come spring. Which is all very fascinating, but all the same, I don’t want them — or aphids — on my balcony. The aphids sucked the life out of last year’s petunias (literally).

This year I’ve been much more aggressive in combatting the aphids and the ants. Although I hate to use pesticides, nothing else has worked. I am very careful using them — only in certain areas, early in the morning when drifting spray won’t be hitting pedestrians or other people out on other balconies. I remove all the bird feeders and water and wash and replace them. It’s quite a chore. Then I have to vacate the balcony for a day while the smell subsides. It works for awhile, though. And as a result, the aphids, while they are there, are so far not thriving.

I’ll be writing management — again — to ask them to deal with the huge ant colonies. I’ll also be asking them why they can’t give more than a day’s notice for the condo association meetings. Really, this has to be about holding one whenever the “in” crowd decides they can make it, and giving everyone else no notice, thereby cutting down on the chances of the “in” crowded being outted. But that’s all another story.

 

The joys of living on top of people

We’ve been living in a condo for two years now. Although I’ve lived in many apartments in the past, it’s now that I am a settled homeowner that I am feeling the difference between me and single-family home dwellers, aka just about the rest of America.

Then there’s the whole “green” movement. I really hate the word “green” applied to environmentalism, conservation, etc., anymore, but I can’t think of a better one that people will get. So I have to get used to “green.” I’m no expert by any stretch, and any of my comments here will likely be read by anti-greens as being holier than thou, while true greens will chastise me for my wastefulness.

The truth is I would love to be more environmentally responsible, and I’m doing my best to reduce my impact on the earth. Then again, there are some constraints to modern living that make it difficult at times. I look at is as this: there’s a whole spectrum of living green. From someone who lives in a hut in the wilderness and hunts and grows their own food and is completely self-sufficient to someone who flies the world at the drop of a hat, tossing their empty water bottles out the window, never deigning to walk or take public transportation (given the choice, they’d hire their own private jet). You get the point. Almost all of us fall somewhere in between.

Where that in-between falls is where the argument lies. I bring my own bags to the grocery store and re-fill reusable water bottles. I also drive to work and run the water too much.

I’m doing my best and getting better. As for the apartment side of things. If I can reduce my consumption, that means less stuff to carry up four floors and less trash to carry down. And then there’s the apartment side not related to the environment… not having a yard, shared laundry facilities, neighbors that go bump in the night. It’s a whole different way to live, and I’ve found it’s hard sometimes to find the answers I need. Like how do you get rid of ants when management isn’t taking care of the problem at the source. How do you compost if you only have a balcony? Why is this such a big year for fungus gnats? Okay, that last problem is probably one people who living houses have too.

This blog is also about cactus and succulent growing, why bonsai is so difficult for me, birds, nutrition, diet, and anything else I feel like writing about.