As usual, I started my day with a walk. Only one other person there today. She’s a regular who does an exercise class at the community center ( on the steps outside) with our neighbors. They’ve been doing this for quite a few years now. Later this week we’re supposed to get some very cold weather like the low 30s. I really dislike that kind of cold but it is what it is.
Then I worked on putting some Christmas stuff up.
Then I got busy pressure-canning the turkey broth. I noticed some water leaking from the top after I put the gauge on so I had to stop and let it depressurize and then see what the issue was. The gasket must have been slightly off so I reset it and put some olive oil on it to help seal it. For good measure, I went to Amazon and ordered a new gasket. I’m not sure I need the new gasket but at least I’ll have it if this happens again.
We watched Home Alone last night and I thought it was kind of dumb. I had seen it before, so I thought the same thing then too. We’re totally enjoying watching Poirot though. It is really well done. That’s on Prime if you are interested.
A somewhat busy week with my doctor appt and I have a follow up audiology check up. Plus a swim and the gym too.
Everyone got some nice things. I got my son a Pendleton National Park wool blanket from Goodwill Seattle. It’s the Glacier one that is white with color stripes. Very nice and a fraction of the cost new. He also got a used copy of Easton Press” A Tale of Two Cities”. B got a new Leatherman knife since a few years ago when he went to board a plane he had is quite expensive Leatherman in his pocket and they took it away. My daughter got 2 pairs of pruning shears, an Easton Press Grimm Fairy tales and some other stuff including these made in Japan Sound Collection plates… I discovered these by accident about 2 years ago at Goodwill when I found a bowl and fell in love with it. They are quite hard to find and the only place apart from Japan ,I guess, is Ebay.
I got a lovely sweater, a Kitchen Aid hand mixer( I asked for this), and some great gifts from my son, artisan flour, and a scone mix.
All in all a really nice and somewhat minimalist Christmas. It could have been scaled back even a little more but in the end I think it was perfect.
I made a NYT recipe called the Big Lasagna.
This is just the first page of the recipe, there are 2 more pages if you’re interested you can google it. It actually was huge and must have weighed 5 pounds. Lasagna is always our Christmas dinner. Not sure quite when this started but I remember when we were first married making lasagna since it was vegetarian.
It really was delicious.
I took all the Christmas stuff down and put away. I start to feel it looks a little cluttered up after 3 weeks of decorations. So now it’s all tidy and things put back in place.
I’m cooking up the scone mix this morning. It’s a ginger cranberry and it was a nice mix. I’m thinking scones are a nice easy thing to bake so maybe I’ll do this more often. This mix was from the Vermont Store but King Arthur has some lovely ones to choose from.
Our walk was lovely at 6:10am this morning. Still dark, but by 7am we’re getting a nice light and the park is all frosty.( well, it’s frosty before that but then we can see it!).
If you follow FL, we’re in the Living room zone. That was one reason I wanted to put Christmas stuff away. I’ll wash the inside windows and dust everything.
Well, this is the week I go to Sacramento to meet with my oncologist. My first question is going to be” when can I get the Covid vaccine? the second will be when do we start treatment.” 😦 Really, I’d rather start than have myeloma cells multiplying and then risking fractures or worse.
It was a lovely Thanksgiving with the four of us. My brother stayed home as he does work as a machinist around lots of other people. BTW, the company he works for made a number of the very specific pieces the Space -X used to go to the Space Station.Cool!
Update, on Saturday he stopped by for a pan of nut loaf and a plate of turkey with all the trimmings!! He’s a great guy who shares our political views and is outspoken about the corruption of Trump.
I had ordered the Diestel turkey breast and it was delicious. It was pricey, but worth. I have lots of slices left to freeze plus I plan to make a turkey wild rice soup.
Update: I think I’ll freeze the turkey since it’s now Sunday and we’re kinda turkeyed out:(.
Yesterday on our walk, 2 unusual things happened. We started out by the pond and a black cat jumped out of the blackberry bushes. One of his eyes was closed so we were concerned it was hurt. it was very friendly so we picked it up and drove home. I woke my daughter who tried to look at it but it squeezed under the kitchen counter. So we went back and walked in the park. On our last round we saw ‘granny’ goose( the last domestic goose at the park) limping. Her one leg had been injured. We were worried for her. I messaged ARD and told them and they said call animal control, which I didn’t do. This morning ‘granny ‘ wasn’t there so either she got taken by animal control or a coyote got her. Sad. At one time there was a flock of 20 geese and they were always fun to watch.
Back to the cat. So eventually it came out and wasn’t hungry and it looked like it was someone’s pet. And the eye wasn’t injured, as we thought, it didn’t have a right eye. B put it out on Nextdoor neighbor and within the hour some said it was our local hardware stores pet cat. So B took it home to the store. But it made us all realize how much we miss having a cat/cats.
Not much on the agenda for today. I may wander out to the barn and get the other Christmas boxes down to see if I want to use anything more. I’ve made a wreath with bay leaves for the front door. It has nice dark green branches/leaves so it looks Christmassy. I’ll probably go cut some cedar and pine branches also to make a centerpiece for the table.
Sunday morning:
off for our walk at 6am. It’s still somewhat dark and then it’s predawn. This time has worked out well. We’ve only crossed the jerk dog walker once so that’s a huge plus.
We still don’t have rain in the forecast but it’s cold in the morning( like high 30’s). I got an email alert from PGE saying we would have a high electric bill. I figured it would be since we use the space heaters off and on. Well, we may have to cut back on when we use them like maybe only in the mornings. This house doesn’t have any central AC/heat so we use the wood stove and then in the bedrooms small space heaters. I’m not surprised since we get this every year a few months of very high electric. I probably should just put that in the annual bills column. Yeah, I think I’ll do that. 3/4 months of high PGE which would be @ $1,000.
I don’t plan on making Tartine today so that will lighten my morning. I’ll get out my starter tomorrow for Tuesday/ Wednesday bread.
This week Flylady has 2 zones, the living room and the entry ways. My front room is fairly easy as it’s pretty minimal. It doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes to do the zone. I do wipe the tops of the Easton press as they are gold gild and do get dusty. I also do the windows and the mirror. We have a large Heywood Wakefield mirror in this room near the dining table. The entryways start on Tuesday which is Dec. 1. I’ve already changed out the seasonal decor to Christmas/ Winter. One thing minimalism has taught me is to use as much natural things for decorations hence the bay laurel wreath. Plus, I can keep that up all winter not just Christmas. I do change the outside twinkly lights from orange(fall) to blue( winter). We keep lights up year round as we don’t have outside lights so we put the twinklies on a timer to come on at dark till around 11pm and then again in the morning around 5:30 till 7am. It just helps with outside lighting.
We got a bumper crop of lemons from our one dwarf tree. This one of 2 bowls of lemons. I will slice and freeze some. Great for adding to water and then I thought I might look preserved lemon. Someone years ago, gave me a ball jar of preserved lemons and they were excellent on/cooked with chicken. Anyone have a recipe they use?
We’re getting a nice soaking of rain today , and tahoe is getting snow!!! Yeah! I’m sure all the ski resorts are very happy.
we walked ING rain and it was nice. Not a pounding rain just a nice gentle rain.
Today, I’m sorting thru Christmas lists. Mostly done. We’re giving money to our son, as he buys everything himself. My daughter is getting an electric guitar. Our budget for her $250, so she’ll,have to ante up the balance. We’ll add in some from my $ and dads $ as there’s nothing we need or really want. Plus we just spent $600 on gravel for our driveway, so merry Christmas !!
We don’t have much family. A brother I give $ to and my sister a few little gifts. That’s it. No parents etc.
we don’t really gift and friends . When I was at the library I gave some little things as gifts like homemade jams etc, but that’s it. So our holidays are pretty stress free. We also love to celebrate Hanukkha ( no we’re not Jewish, but atheists) but I love lighting the candles and the meaning of the lights.
So, November is a little tight on the budget. With ynab, i was almost a month ahead ,now its more like 2 weeks. Most of it is the extra medical bills and Invisalign payments of $500. But with this check everythings covered till mid month. Also, we have property taxes due. I had wanted to start overpaying on the Santa Fe, but that will have to wait till December or even January.
I know the medical will be done this month and my one cc that has the last Invisalign payment will be paid. After that the Invisalign will be more like $200 a month or less. It was the first $2000 they wanted fairly quickly.
Also, christmas money will be available and the extra is our property taxes I put in there. It was a great way to budget it since you can’t withdraw from your Santa fund. i will definitely do that next year.
B hopefully will get one more bonus this year but I don’t want to count on anything since his last one paid for the tree removal.
It always seems money is needed for something and honestly its a little scary thinking of retirement. But I shall preserver as always.
On to my doctors appointment. Geez, since I got the Pomalyst much later than I expected and just started yesterday , thats day 1. So the cycle is 21 days. that puts me at November 17 to finish and my appt. is November 18. So that is so not going to work as I won’t even had a blood test yet. So the complication is the following week is thanksgiving and the week after is too long away and my husbands out of town anyway. So, I did the best I could and my appt. is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. And I need to have the Zometa IV. So, its kinda a drag as sometimes I never know how I will feel from the Zometa. But its the best of all scenarios.
Anyway, Ive been busy washing the couch covers and switched the white for the tan for winter. Plus I did get thru a few magazines to give to the thrift store.Plus there’s a little pile of other stuff to go.
Whoa, I’ve gone way over on Christmas. This shouldn’t be a surprise because I always do, I love getting presents and decorations. But I’m not sure of the final numbers yet as my son has not ordered his PC yet. But I was adding in everything ( like my new danskos), and then decided that was really clothing I needed was not really for christmas. So I’m going to do anot her tally . This is the time of year I usually add extra stuff in, so it’s not really Christmas but could be considered as such. So, I think next year I’m going to try and have $1500 for everything.
i recalculated and I think with the $1000 Santa fund, the extra was @$500. So that’s what I’m figuring. This is when we buy sweats, jammies, slippers , etc. so I need to figure that in to clothing and Christmas.
well, this was suppose to be posted yesterday, but here it is.
Well, we dodged the bullet on the wind. But all areas around us including San Francisco got hit very hard with extreme high winds. We had some wind but not bad. So, I’m relieved. I saw on our local news that a huge ponderosa fell on a house and split it in two. Thankfully no one was home. So it can really happen.Â
I’m pretty much ready for thanksgiving. Just need a few items and I’ll go early Sunday morning to get those . We have both turkey and a vegetarian option of nut and cheese loaf. It’s very yummy with veg gravy. I keep it very simple and have everything done by Wednesday, except the turkey.
I’m working on doing a months menu . I want to have rotating meals every six weeks. I’m trying to get what we eat regularly like, baked potato night, or soup night down and refine it a little more. Plus eat eat out of our freezer when I have stuff.Â
I’m going to box up some dishes this weekend that we never use. They’re pretty ( desert rose which is Franciscan ware. ) it’s vintage and pretty but I’m into our white dishes so….. It’s taking up cabinet space , so I’m going to put it away and then decide what to do with it later. I’m thinking my daughter would like them but they may not be her style.Â
Also, I want to get out the Christmas stuff. I’ll start decorating right after thanksgiving. I already have our menorah out for hanukkha . Remember, I’m not religious but I do love light candles and what things represent. No, I’ve never been Jewish, just like the candle lighting. Oh, and the donuts and latkes.
well, it’s off to work at the best little library ever.
I've been married for nearly 15 years to a wonderful husband and I'm a mom to three great kids ages 12, 11 and 9. Oh, and I just happen to have cancer. Multiple Myeloma is a cancer of the blood that is currently incurable but IS considered highly treatable! My goal is to make people laugh, cry or feel a little less alone whether you are a mom, cancer patient or BOTH!
Tahoe Girl 