Junipers: Post Script Part 2

Please go back and read part one if you haven't already. This is part two of the saga.

I flip the lever, get hit in the face with a burst of water from the sprinkler, and try to run to avoid taking another slam of water. Unfortunately, I didn't take a couple of things into consideration.

One: I'm on an incline. The yard goes up where I'm standing which (I guess) is why the original owner had junipers there instead of sod to begin with.

Two: The ground is very uneven.

Instead of agilely running away from the water like I planned, I literally face plant on my first step. Thank God for my privacy fence so none of my neighbors got to see that inelegant landing.

Now the real fun begins. My Apple Watch is pinging an "SOS: Hard Fall Detected" message and wants to call for help!

NO! NO! NO!

I don't need any help. I'm fine. Muddy. Wet from the sprinkler. But fine.

And I can't get that stupid thing to stop. I'm to the point where I'm trying to Google how to turn that damn thing off before it calls 9-1-1.

It took (what felt like) forever, but I finally got it to stop.

Now, I'm plotting because the last thing I want is a repeat of this experience. I debate the old hoses, the heavy rubber ones stored in my garage, but I really don't want to lug them around. The answer is clearly to buy a second 100 foot expandable hose because the two of them attached to each other should solve the issue.

From what I read, there are other issues with water pressure and stuff, but I'll take that trade off to prevent another night of getting soaked with water, Apple Watch freaking out about a little face plant, and doing a load of (unexpected) laundry because everything I'm wearing is covered in mud.

This HOPEFULLY concludes the story of the junipers, but I haven't used my second section of hose yet.

Junipers: Post Script

The new section of sod (of course) needs more watering than the sod that's been in for a while. Also, water in Georgia is ridiculously expensive! I literally pay more for one month of watering x3.5 than I do for three months of watering when I lived in Minnesota.

But the landscaper took the sprinkling time down to half an hour from an hour (AN HOUR! GAH!) and told me to sprinkle the new sod more.

So I bought a lightweight, 100 foot house. It's one of those expandable ones. I do have rubber hoses, but they're so heavy and it's hard to haul them around.

And this is the beginning of the saga.

First, I nearly bought a fifty-foot hose because surely I wouldn't need a full 100 feet. But I most definitely did need 100 feet. I wish I'd known what expandable hoses are like before I bought the hose. Alas, I figured 100 feet is 100 feet. I do not believe this to be true. I believe it is only 100 feet while the water is running through it.

Which leads me to point two. Without water running through the hose, making it expand, it does not reach the new sod and I was unable to position the sprinkler I also bought. So I had to turn the lever at the head of the hose to the off position, turn on the water, and then, after the hose expanded, position it.

Point three. After getting the sprinkler positioned, I had to turn that lever at the head of the hose back on. We all know what happened then, right?

Water hit me in the face.

But wait! There's More! Stay tuned for Part 2. 

I Chose Poorly

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty I had choosing one of my good notebooks for (some kind of) a journal. I wish I was still dithering because I chose so poorly.

I had this great navy blue, hardcover notebook with silver stars on the front. Perfect, I thought. It even had gorgeous holographic stars on the page edges. It was so beautiful. I was agog. Beautiful edges, navy blue so it will stay clean-looking. What more could I ask for?

Choice made, I began adding the journaling stickers I've been buying for several years to the pages.

It wasn't until I had a number of weeks in that I noticed that the pages were getting lumpy because I was putting the stickers in the same places. Seven days in a week, across two spreads, giving myself enough room to write.

I didn't expect this because it's the thick, 160 GSM paper. Although maybe I should have known? It's just that I primarily use Tomoe River Paper, which is very thin and I have to be very careful with stickers. I expected thicker paper would have easier results.

I decided I'd live with the lumpy.

What made my choice of notebook such a poor one is that the stickers wrecked the smoothness of the page edges. Now there were gaps. Small gaps, but still gaps. Which means that gorgeous holograph is muted. Mostly gone.

I should have picked a notebook with regular edges, but it's far too late now.

I have learned a valuable lesson. 

The Notebook Dilemma

I swore (SWORE!) that I wasn't going to save my good notebooks. That I bought them to use them and that's exactly what I was going to do.

I also have quite a collection of journaling stickers and I thought what if I took an A5 notebook, used my journaling stickers and created something with that?

And then I ran into the notebook issue.

I have a lot of nice, hardcover notebooks. I want to use the one with the lavender pages. Oh, but I can't use lavender paper because it might clash with my journaling stickers. Those are all different colors and I don't want the paper color to hold me back.

What if I used the new notebook with the books? No, I don't want to use that one. I'm saving that for something different. Maybe a reading journal.

Me to me: You haven't completed a reading journal yet. Including the one you started this year and did nothing except the title page and some challenge pages.

Okay, but not the books notebook.

What about the dragon notebook?

Oh, no, I can't use the dragon notebook. That one is too special and I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this idea of mine.

What about the black notebook with the pattern?

Yeah, well, that one has page numbers and little marks to let you know where the center of the dot grid is. I'd really like to save that one because I can't replace it and I'm not sure what I'm--

What about the new notebook with the floral design?

Um?

The notebook with the southwest design?

And here I sit. No notebook chosen because I can't decide.

2027 Writing Planner Update

I did a second spread in this planner I intend to use for 2027. It's as amateur-looking as the first spread, but I've decided I'm having fun with it.

It's nice to have a creative outlet that doesn't involve words. It's a great way to get my head in a creative space without any pressure and to allow my thoughts to wander. Plot problem? Let's decorate a page and let the subconscious work on it while I decorate paper.

Yes, I'm really bad at art. I'll never be good enough to be happy with what I produce, but as long as I can let that go and be satisfied with the process, I think it's a win.

I repurposed a 2026 planner that I didn't use. It allows me to use stickers, not only to re-date the calendar, but to decorate the blank pages behind it. I'll never be a bullet journal person for my personal planner, but this planner set up? It's really a bullet journal in an old Erin Condren planner. This let's me revisit a process I thought would be fun, but just didn't work for my day-to-day life. Since my writing planning is minimal, this works for me.

Oh, and it also lets me use my Tombow marker collection, which has mostly been underutilized.

This is my latest attempt at decorating. The spread is for July 2027.

Title page with seagulls at the beach. I used the image on the sticker box and just taped it down.

My 2026 calendar set up for 2027. Since it was originally a Sunday start and I prefer Monday start, I really only need to change the day labels for the dates to be correct, but I wasn't passing up the chance to use colorful date squares.

 

This is the monthly dashboard layout. I'm not really using that this year, so it'll probably just sit blank, but who knows?

 

July 1st is a Thursday, so the first spread only needed four days. There are eight check boxes. Each represents 250 words. To check all of them off, I need to write 2000 words. The box at the bottom of the page is to record my total word count for the day.

 

These four spreads allowed me to create a scene with markers and stickers. Many of the ideas came from the Hubman and Chubgirl YouTube channel, but since I'm using my planner for a different purpose than most people are, I frequently diverged.

 

 Here, I used the journaling card and some washi sticker strips to decorate the final page of the month.