We are getting lots of rain and we need it here in California. There’s a lot of snow in the mountains, which will help the snowpack for spring melt off.

I had a good swim yesterday and the pool was busy but I had a lane to myself for most of my swim and then shared a lane at the end( which is about 45 minutes). Saturdays are hit-and-miss. Sometimes it’s super busy and then sometimes mostly empty. Traffic was light too which was surprising since I thought more snowboarders and skiers would be heading up to Tahoe.

Then when I came home I started the chicken pot pie pressure canned filling. The chicken wasn’t really up to my standards but I thought I was being frugal buying the Safeway deal. I think I’ll skip that next time. It just wasn’t that great. I haven’t tasted the final product but hopefully, it’s ok. But I couldn’t get my pressure canner to not leak (drips) from under the rim and then it wouldn’t come up to pressure. I had to restart 3Xs. Finally, I googled it and someone said to use vegetable oil on the gasket on both sides. That finally did it and the pressure was fine at 15 lbs. It’s quite a learning curve doing this pressure canning. So then this morning I’m pressure-canning organic kidney beans that I got from Azure. I ended up with 7-pint jars. These will be great for soups like minestrone. I did see that All American has the pressure canner that I want back in stock but at $400, I need to wait till January. I just paid the property taxes so we need to regroup from that.

This week it’s the kitchen zone in Flylady and I’ll do that tomorrow or Tuesday. This is a mellow week for me with no appts. I think we’re going to do Costco and get that done well before Christmas. I plan to go to the gym at least once. I wish I could get there more but the cost of gas is an issue with it adding to the cost of the membership.

As usual, Christmas will be minimal with just a few gifts each. We don’t really exchange any gifts with other family members except Heid’s husband which I sent a Point Reyes Cheese selection. Heidi loved charcuterie so I think Richard will like this sampling. Point Reyes cheese is a women-owned cooperative. I’m sure Christmas is going to be difficult for him.

I looked up reservations for Nevada Beach and it looks like this week I’ll try for a spot in early June. Fingers crossed!

I’m about halfway thru reading Gone with the Wind. It’s over 1000 pages. It is so interesting her depiction of the South and life there. It seems it’s very much like looking thru rose-colored glasses that the ‘darkies’ as she calls them, were really people enslaved and owned by other human beings. It’s kind of weird to read it now from a different perspective. So then we watched the first half of the movie last night. It is an amazing cinematography feat especially when Atlanta is burning. I think we’ll watch the other half tonight which picks up after Scarlett is back at Tara.