Plant question: I have never grown gourds before and plan to try them on my weedy hillside. It is very steep. If I am lazy and plant them on the bottom, will they ramble their way upward, or will they just spill onto the driveway? And harvesting is going to be super difficult due to the steepness. So another question is are they ripe at the same time? In which case I could just cut the vines at the base and yank the whole thing down.

But gosh darnit, I'm having gourds this year!

will they just spill onto the driveway

They will go with gravity, not against it, in all likelihood. I would plant near the top of the rise.

My mother's psych and her GP are in disagreement about her meds, and I'm just wanting to climb under my desk and hide.

... and one of my more promising job leads just came up zip. Fuckity.

Yay for the good news, Dana.

And Consuela, I'm sorry to hear you are having such a rotten week.

Noooooo!

Oh fine.

Now the next question to ponder is whether I invest in enough Roundup to salt-the-earth before planting, or see if the gourds can smother everything. Probably poison is the way to go.

ION, the loaner a friend gave me is being called in (she needs to cover her life insurance, which is a requirement of the divorce agreement in case either her or her ex drops dead and the kids are taken care of. So, my rent check already bounced, so hey, why the heck not. Let's not tempt fate killing her this month. I need a better paying job. Lesson learned: don't borrow money from friends who are just as poor as you. She feels like an ass for asking. I just feel like a failure. But hey! At least my bail will cover any court fees next Tuesday, and my dad's credit card is on file for any additional attorney fees. Now I just need to make sure my landlady isn't annoyed with me and get an advance on my paycheck because I have negative two hundred dollars to survive the next week and change.

Me and friend were discussing the futility of our positions. We are both doing what we love, but it isn't a living wage. One basically needs to be a bored trophy wife with a sugar daddy who works on Wall Street in order to survive working where we do. And the only way out is to get a job at the top of our respective areas, which means more administrative responsibilities, which means not doing what we love (me gardening, her teaching). If I could stomach spending 75% of my job doing that and working 60 hour weeks (which is less awful when it's not physical).

I joke that my next career is going to be at the transfer station, where I can drive back hoes and watch porn with the guys and have a pension.

Julie,

you have a lot of skills. Any way you can charge for that for wealthy people? I paid someone $$ to consult on the landscaping/foilage for the house I used to own. I am a complete gardening idiot.

Couldn't you organize a gardening birthday party for adults or kids? I am sure these are dumb ideas and you could do better, but if you have extra time, I think you could charge decent $$ and still do what you love.

Sheeit.

I just got (almost) handed to the new director. But...and I don't say this lightly, there's no one within months of being able to do what I do for my current primary boss, and we already have enough of a reputation issue with the tech people on my application being more and more watered down (the business considers it photocopy degradation--the first replacement was pretty good, and everything got done, even if it took a shade longer--but now that we're at a copy-of-a-copy stage, it's incompetent city). No matter what I want to do for a living, if I do it here, I can't in good conscience walk away from them

And I told my manager just that--we're having trouble delivering, and I'm not going to make that worse--in fact I offered to train up to be the IIS SME, since no developer will do it. I'm just tired of having to be cosigned all the time, and work with a developer who a) never signs anything and b) will cut me out of any loop if she can.

This way, I'd officially get to tell her what to do.

Thank god I have tomorrow off. I get a day to think and not have to look anyone in the face.

The thing is that my job is just so physically draining that I'm usually a zombie at the end of the day. Consulting actually takes more brainpower than I usually have to spare, even on a weekend.

I was doing okay with rentals at work (where I get to sit on my butt at work and get paid $25/hr and also catch up on deskwork for my primary job), but we've been closed to the public two winters in a row and it's finally caught up with me. Most of the rich people hereabouts are quite happy to open their wallets to the legitimate landscaping firms. I did pick up an extra 200 doing flower arrangements, but consults make me skeevy (1: because I just don't have the brain power after a work week and 2: because I feel guilty about charging people for talking to them), and doing maintenance afterhours is exhausting. Mostly it's been old ladies looking for weeding help that contact me. Flower arranging makes me happy, but also makes me feel guilty about how much I have to charge.

I know I'm my own worst enemy, in terms of hesitance and not being the energizer bunny.

At least my electric bill isn't 250 a month anymore (until winter comes again, darn you electric heating!).

I got a commssion for a natural dried wreath, and even that had me in cold sweats about how much the materials and time cost came out to. It's just two different worlds, that I feel like I'm burning a bridge by giving them the price. But I don't have overhead.

Ugh. Manager is out of town, so the weekly conference call has been half bitching session. Which is fine, but they're two hours behind me, and I'm hungry. And now the meeting is running long, mostly because of the bitching.

I feel guilty about charging people for talking to them

You shouldn't. They are paying you for your expertise, which does have a lot of value.

but also makes me feel guilty about how much I have to charge.

Again, don't feel guilty. You have stated you are having issues making ends meet. You can set how much you want to charge to make it worthwhile for you. If they don't want to pay it then they can make the decision not to hire you.

I see this quite a bit, people don't want to assign monetary value to their work. You shouldn't be afraid of doing this, or feel guilty about it.

In my field, I know that my personal hourly and daily rates are not cheap. In some cases they can be up with what a lawyer will charge per hour. Some people decide not to use me because of that, but the folks that do hire me are happy with my work, my attention to detail, and the resources that I can bring to bear on a project. I can do all of those things because I am charging a rate that makes it possible.

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox on this one. It's a thing for me.

Timelies all!

I'm sorry, Suela.

Great news about your mom, Dana.