Ups and Downs

What a long, strange day this has been.

I am on new team at work that, to save you the boredom of the details, will be consuming every free minute of my time for the next couple of months. It's exciting work, don't get me wrong - I'm looking forward to the challenge. But why does it seem that everything comes all at the same time? It seems like there will be a lull in the action then BANG - let's try to do everything humanly possible within an unreasonable amount of time! Is it to keep us challenged so we keep pushing ourselves to do better? Or is it something beyond our control that is produced to keep us from getting stale and bored? We always get through "it" but "it" never seems easy at the time. I was at a training class today on Managing Transition - how timely. I learned a lot today and hope I can learn how to apply the theory to my own situations.

It was a productive day at work and a beautiful day outside (an "up"), yet a sad day too (a "down"). One of the ladies I work with lost her father today after a long illness. I haven't quite figured out how to console this co-worker as I know there are no words that can take away that pain. All we can do is offer our help and our hearts.

Have a safe and happy Easter weekend.

New Beginnings

Spring is in the air! You can almost smell the flowers blooming and the fresh cut grass. The warmer days remind me that I'm way behind in getting ready for Spring. All that prep work in the yard, cleaning out beds, getting fresh mulch, pruning and planning. I still haven't decided what to do in the front yard since we leveled it last year - so for now, good ol' green turf will do just fine. But I'd love a shade tree of some sort because our house faces west and the front of it just cooks in the summer afternoon sun.

The pond is doing well. However, I await pollen season with mixed emotions. Love that everything is coming back to life but hate the green coating on everything - and it always wreaks havoc with my pond. Last year it turned so dark and black that I couldn't see fish or anything. I have started the maintenance treatment a little early this year in hopes that we don't have the same problem. Fishes are doing fine - growing nicely. The two larger koi have about doubled in size since last July when I introduced them to the water. The comets and shubunkins are doing nicely too. I can't wait for the spring pond plants to come in at Animal Jungle....the pond looks so bare right now.

Zippy is finally adjusting to being the only one in the house (at least of the four-legged variety). He's not quite as clingy as he was the first two weeks and seems to be settling down a bit. We are too for that matter.