Last week, I was feeling so good about getting myself back on track. Faced with the deadline of my yoga Groupon, I actually hit the studio every damn day for a week (minus Easter). And on Friday night, J and I tried a new ktv place for the first time in years, joined by K + D. In the past, our ktv spot was a Japanese joint in Cupertino. This time, we opted for a Taiwanese-owned place with lots of food options (instead of just snacks and drinks like the old place). What a pleasant surprise! Sadly, the audio system didn’t work wonders on my voice the same way that ktv place in Tokyo did and the queuing system was a bit confusing, but overall, we had a blast! And holy crap: K is really good! I have a lot of friends who are fans of karaoke, but homegirl can do hardcore rap! I have NO IDEA how she knows all the words and is able to keep up with the pacing, but it’s pretty damn amazing to witness. I keep telling her she needs to enter some karaoke contests, for realz… I’m gonna be her agent! Bubs and I did have a realization Friday night that we need to update our song list. I mean, K + D are mid-80s babies but shit, who knew music from the 80s and 90s was so damn repetitive and lingering? Those chorus lines drag on and on!!!

In other news, on Saturday, G + J came to town with baby O. Yup, the Houseboat was the site of TWO babies (and six adults), as J + J also came over with baby H. I have said it before: holy crap the babies are nonstop action, and J and I didn’t even have to do anything! But it’s just the constant movement and monitoring… J and I were so wiped that night. Still, we had a great time catching up with our buds. The two baby boys got along (we captured some nice photos), and it was nice to just chillax on the Houseboat: cook dinner and lounge on the patio outside. We couldn’t have asked for better weather this weekend.

On Saturday, my gardeners were also over all day, getting going on Operation Front Yard. They tore everything up, added a shit ton of fresh soil/amendment, regraded/tilled, and started laying out my plan. To be honest, I’d been dragging ass on this front yard do-over for nearly 3 years… mostly bc J and I know nothing about plants and we really just had no fucking clue what we were doing. But my bud J kicked things off with that watercolor sketch and then I got some ideas from Pinterest and finally assembled a design board. With a few trips to the nursery, I started feeling better: it wasn’t really as hard as I had anticipated. I pretty much just needed full/part sun plants that were also drought tolerant, and surprisingly, the nursery is already arranged in a logical way where the plants are categorized similarly. So I’ve definitely deviated from the design board, but as my gardener has laid things out with spray paint and brought us sample flagstone and gravel to help envision everything, I’m finally feeling excited that this shit is going to happen. I’m kinda bummed that we missed the county landscape rebate program (the county ran out of funds), but at this point, I just can’t wait to see how everything comes together. Two more Saturdays and we should cross that finish line! Yippee!