Average Jane

Average Jane, Gardener

This winter I decided that this is the year I'm going to try vegetable gardening again. I gave it a shot in the mid-'90s when we bought our house, but gave up after a couple of years of struggling with poor soil and terrible crop yields.

To deal with the soil issue, my plan was to build a raised bed in as sunny a backyard spot as I could find. There would be up-front expense and labor to construct the bed and fill it with soil. Then I would plant my selected crops, figure out how to best protect them from the many woodland creatures that traverse our yard, and make sure to schedule plenty of time for watering and weeding.

Then I saw a message that my city's community garden is offering free garden plots for the growing season.

The community garden is less than a mile from my house and I drive by it every day. It features 50-square-foot raised beds with concrete sides, and I'm pretty sure the city provides the water. If I went that route, all I would have to do is use my own tools (which I already have), buy my own seeds and/or seedlings, and swing by often to weed and eventually harvest.

The critter issue shouldn't be quite as bad as it would be at my house because the community garden is at a busy intersection close to an interstate. I would hope that the local fauna wouldn't be reckless enough to spend much time bothering everyone's tomatoes there.

I signed up and I've been assigned plot #1.

So now I need to think seriously about what vegetables I want to grow and how best to arrange them. There's a community planting day scheduled in the next couple of weeks, so I'll make sure to get my diagrams drawn and my seeds and plants purchased by then.

Just for my own convenience, I think I'll revive my herb garden this year as well. I have an area near my front door that still has some volunteer chives and thyme from years past. It just needs a little clearing and tilling to be a viable place to plant herbs again.

If all goes well, I should have a nice, long season of my favorite vegetables: tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, radishes, squash, etc. I know it'll take some work, but I think it'll be well worth it!

Photo credit: Downing Street

Average Jane Welcomes Spring

We went from snow to warm, gorgeous weather in a week. That's the Midwest for you. I'm thrilled with the temperature change, but I can't quite make myself peel off the plastic that's covering our bedroom window. It's only March and it wouldn't be unheard of to have another ice storm before spring gets really serious.

Let me get the big news out of way first: I'm staying at my job after all. So a huge weight has been lifted and now I can get back to doing what I do without the distraction of having to job hunt.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who has helped, supported and encouraged me over the past five months. I cannot begin to thank you enough for keeping me optimistic.

Last night I celebrated by lighting two big sparklers I'd been saving and dancing around the yard with them. That was fun.

Earlier in the evening I attended a city council meeting in a nearby town to help support a friend who was there to address the council. She had obtained the council members' travel expense records via the Freedom of Information Act and prepared a damning presentation about the amount this small city spends on lavish restaurants, limousines and four- and five-star hotels.

I was incredibly impressed at the amount of work she had done to go on public record to try to change the way her city does business. It made me think I should be paying a lot more attention to the local politics of my own town.

For now, I'm just going to work on getting back to normal. I need to get our tax paperwork out the door and figure out a household budget that will allow for some much-needed savings but also, I hope, restore a few expenses we cut out over the past months. (House cleaning!)

Happy Spring!

Photo credit: Darren Brooker

Why Average Jane Loves Social Media

Because a rhetorical question asked idly on a given afternoon...

Can produce the same joke answer from two people hundreds of miles away from each other:

Nice to know that my Twitter followers share my juvenile sense of humor. Maybe it's a sign I should get this t-shirt after all.

Average Jane's Weekend

It's a beautiful, sunny day out and I feel better than I have in weeks. Let the weekend begin!

I'd say it really began last night. Before I left work, my husband told me that one of our friends wanted to meet us for dinner at our favorite Americanized Chinese restaurant. My husband and I split a gigantic appetizer platter, complete with an open flame for warming our beef-on-a-stick and then split an entree. I was stuffed when we left.

After that, we watched a DVD of The Expendables, which was just crying out to be given the Rifftrax treatment. As I watched it, I kept finding myself saying things like, "The political system on that island is so compromised, it seems unfair to be killing off their entire military." So much for suspension of disbelief.

I wrapped up the evening by finishing The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman. It was my pick for one of my book clubs this month and I chose it based on several positive online reviews I'd read. I found the book interesting and engrossing, but never quite warmed up to the protagonist. However, that doesn't mean I won't read the sequel when it comes out. I'm looking forward to hearing what my fellow book clubbers thought.

Today I'll be participating in a pre-St. Patrick's Day parade with The Animal Rescue Alliance (T.A.R.A.). I don't know if I'll be walking a dog, passing out flyers, etc., but I guess I'll find out. This evening, my husband and I have decided we're going to hang out at home, have burritos for dinner and catch up on our TV watching from last week.

Tomorrow I'm doing my regular volunteer shift taking care of the adoptable cats at Petco, then going to my aunt's birthday brunch with my sister and nephew.

That doesn't even count the housework, work work and other activities I'll be interspersing among the fun stuff.

Have a great weekend! I'll post any good photos I take on Monday.

Help Average Jane Help Babies

I'm all signed up to do the March for Babies walk again. This year I'm on the Social Media Club of Kansas City team and we're hoping to raise a total of $5,000 to help ensure that all babies are born healthy.

To inspire you to donate, I've posted an adorable photo of my niece as a baby. She will soon be turning 11 and was robustly healthy from the beginning, but many babies aren't so fortunate.

I've set a personal fundraising goal of $300. I raised that amount easily a couple of years ago and you guys did most of the donating, so here's your chance to help out once again. I know money is tight, but even $5 would be much appreciated.

If you're in the Kansas City area and you'd like to walk with my team, we'd love to have you. Just click the link in the first paragraph and register.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Average Jane Out Loud

This morning I spoke on a radio show panel for Central Standard, a show at Kansas City NPR-affiliate KCUR. Host Jabulani Leffall interviewed a group of bloggers that included Tony Botello of Tony's Kansas City, Jeff Haught (Bull E. Vard) of KC Beer Blog, Brent Toellner of Toeller Tells It and KC Dog Blog, May Evans of May's Machete and me.

Tony's interview took up the first half hour and the rest of us took turns speaking for the second half hour. You can listen to a podcast of the show here.

We talked about why we blog, what we blog about and what we thought about our own blogs' future. I have very little idea what I said, but it seemed acceptable at the time.

It was really quite a relaxed experience, particularly in light of the fact that I already knew all of my fellow panelists. (This was the first time I'd met Tony Botello, but his intervew was separate from ours.)

On our way out, it was hinted that they were considering making blogger panels a regular show feature, so we'll see where that leads.

Photo credit: Michael Sauers

Average Jane Improves Her Driving Mood

As I've mentioned many times before, I'm a big hard rock and metal fan. For years I've kept my radio on music stations or blasted nü-metal CDs on my way to and from work and everywhere else I've gone.

I don't know if it's the gloomy weather or all of the other things that are making me struggle to keep a positive outlook on life right now, but I've suddenly lost my tolerance for grim, minor-key ranting during my commute.

Fortunately, one of my local radio stations has recently changed to an all-comedy format, so now I have a much less road-rage-inducing form of in-car entertainment.

The station mainly plays little snippets of stand-up acts with a few SNL shorts and other satire bits interspersed. They don't limit themselves to the past couple of decades either; I've even heard some of Bob Newhart's classic one-sided phone conversation routines. Of course, not everything they play fits my sense of humor, but the material is curated pretty well.

It took about a week before I heard a repeat, which I thought was a pretty good sign. My only criticism is that the station's signal is weak and breaks up at random locations and under overpasses.

It feels almost therapeutic to laugh most of the time I'm in the car. Right now I need all the happy energy I can get.

Photo credit: Pete

Average Jane Loses Another Weekend

I started feeling poorly on Friday afternoon and ended up leaving work early and taking my misery home. It turned out I was suffering from my all-time favorite ailment, food poisoning. You can tell it's my favorite because I get it ALL THE TIME.*

This was a particularly nasty case** and it laid me out for the rest of the day and night and well into the next day. I managed to emerge with a face full of broken capillaries and the inability to drag myself out of bed or form a coherent thought for nearly two days.

The first night was so bad that I considered going to the emergency room for an IV. However, a friend suggested I get a bottle of Pedialyte to drink and it ended up helping enough that I managed to take an ibuprofen for all of the head-to-toe pain I was in and actually get to sleep.

On Saturday morning I started out with dry toast and Pedialyte and managed to graduate to half a sub sandwich and some Sprite by evening. Even though I felt better, I was still so tired and lacking in motivation that I never actually accomplished anything all day long. Needless to say, I canceled all of my social plans.

I spent Sunday catching up on all of the work I'd missed the previous two days. So now it's Monday again and, for the second week in a row, I feel as though I haven't really had a weekend.

I'll bet you had a lot more fun this weekend than I did. What did you do?

*Actually, I probably do get it more often than most people. One of the many delightful side-effects of taking acid reflux medication is an increased susceptibility to food poisoning.

**No, I'm not sure where I got it. I'd had a lot of restaurant meals over the previous 24 hours and it could have been any of them.

Something to Think About from Average Jane

By now you've probably seen the story about the dog that survived an attempt to euthanize him. This kind of thing is not completely unheard of -- a similar story made the rounds in 2006.

In both instances, people came out of the woodwork wanting to adopt the "miracle dog."

Well I have some news for those people: you can accomplish the very same "miracle" any day of the week just by visiting an animal shelter and taking your pick.

Sure, it's amazing when an animal defies the odds and manages to escape certain death. But what about the other 3,999,999 dogs and cats that are euthanized every year in the United States? Is an uncanny resistance to poison your only criterion for choosing a pet? It shouldn't be.

If you want a dog or cat and can provide it a good home, don't wait around for something extraordinary to happen. Go to your local shelter and meet the animals. If you feel strongly about adopting from a no-kill organization, that's great: you'll be freeing up space for them to pull animals from local kill shelters.

It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where every homeless pet got the kind of news coverage that would prompt hundreds of people to want to take them home. In the real world, we have no choice but to go looking for each special pet on our own.

Average Jane Looks Ahead

I have now been fruitlessly job hunting for four full months. I've been extraordinarily fortunate to have had my tenure with my current company extended through the end of March, but I'm starting to come to grips with the idea that I will not be moving seamlessly from one job to another.

However, I keep stumbling across opportunities to do social media consulting of various kinds on a contract basis. So although I swore I was never going to freelance or start my own business again, that may very well be what ends up happening.

The last time I went out on my own, I learned a few things about myself as a sole proprietor. One is that I am terrible about keeping my books and paying my quarterly income tax. This time around, I would have to make a special point of enlisting my accountant from the get-go so she can help me do my recordkeeping and tell me how big a check to write every three months.

Another business owner flaw I encountered the last time around was a lack of focus in my offerings. However, social media didn't even exist at the time and I've been doing a lot more specializing since then, so I think I can put together a logical and concise package of services to market myself.

Step one of that marketing plan will be a new blog that I'll use to discuss some of the things I've learned about social media marketing over the past four years. I'll share the link once the first post goes up.

My biggest worry about having two self-employed people in our household is that we won't be able to afford the health insurance we need. My husband and I both have pre-existing conditions galore, treated with a smörgåsbord of prescription medications. Even now, our out-of-pocket medical costs are so high that I contributed the maximum to last year's FSA.

On the other hand, I know that if I work hard and follow up on every lead, I could actually come out ahead. It's scary, but it can be done.

I cannot say enough good things about everyone who has been giving me job leads, references, LinkedIn recommendations and freelance offers. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and appreciate every effort you've made to give me a hand.

Although I'm not completely sure what the future will hold, I'm headed toward something new one way or another. I might as well decide now that it's going to be awesome.

Photo credit: Paul Joseph