January is One of My Favorite Months

Happy New Year, friends!

Thank you for kind words last week. We are all more or less better, now. Although my energy is still flagging. To give some reference, pre-whatever-this-was, I walked about 3 miles a day, everyday. I'm trying to build back up to that mark. For now, I'm trying to catch up on other stuff and am walking half what I used to.

This morning: 

• I made another batch of laundry soap and did laundry
• did a quick clean-out of the fridge (throwing away several containers of moldy leftovers) 
• made a large pot of rice and another of lentils then pre-made some single servings of lunch with those plus some veggies 
• opened all mail that had piled up in the past 2 weeks (I did pay bills when I received them, though), 
• started making dinner (tuna casserole, beet salad and honey-mustard carrots) 
• began the clean-up of my office (where I tossed all boxes when we received packages in December.

We have put off our family Christmas celebration one more week. Some of us were still symptomatic this past weekend. We really don't want to spread this to our son and daughter-in-law. So, in 2022, my family will be celebrating Christmas Day twice! My husband has been joking that if we keep postponing, I won't have any Christmas shopping, gift-wrapping or holiday decorating to do next fall. There are some season and time-sensitive gifts under the tree. So I I think we'll try our best to celebrate this coming Saturday.

It's now 1 PM, and my lunch break is over. Time for me to return to the enormous pile of laundry, get out the vacuum cleaner, and work on the clean-up of my office some more. One of the things I love about January is I actually have time to do things like straighten my office/sewing & craft area/back-up pantry. Those boxes that contained stuff we ordered in December? I'm using some of them as sorting bins for my organizing.

I hope you're all having a wonderful first Monday of the new year. Happy New Year!

It's a Beautiful Day to Get Out of Bed . . .

. . . after a merry sick-mas.

Our family had been working so hard to stay well for the last couple of years. But sickness found us anyways. It snuck into our household and picked us off one by one. By Christmas morning, it was clear we shouldn't be hosting other family members that day. So, we're looking at a Christmas 2.0 for this coming Saturday. Hopefully we'll all be well and so will my son and daughter-in-law. The sweethearts that they are, they brought over a stew for us on Christmas night, leaving it on the doorstep to keep them safe from us.

On the positive side, the illness we all have had or have now is very mild. Both of my daughters and I have commented that this is the mildest cold we've ever had. The most difficult aspect has been the extreme fatigue. I stayed in pjs from Christmas Eve through Monday morning. But now I feel up to being my busy self, with long, periodic breaks. We don't know if this is Omicron or a cold. But we're all recovering mostly quickly.

As you can see in the photo, we didn't need the fake snow on the window after all. About 10 inches fell in our area from Saturday night through Sunday evening. It's beautiful. I wasn't planning on going anywhere anyways. And I can enjoy its loveliness through a window from the comfort of my bed. 

I had planned for this to be an easier week for myself, buying some sandwich meat, sliced cheese, and a loaf of sandwich bread, plus making a big pot of soup (which I froze), for easy dinners. It has turned out to be especially helpful, seeing that I really don't feel like doing more than I have to right now. 

I hope you all had a merry Christmas. I'll let you all know how our Christmas 2.0 turns out after next Saturday.

Back to my cup of tea and a nap . . .