Getting Back On Track

Ever notice how the longer you're away from your regular routine, the harder it is to get back into it?  That's what's happening to me now ...

I spent almost four weeks coughing to the point where I could only sleep, at most, an hour at a time.  Now, even though the cough has eased off considerably, I'm finding it really difficult to get to sleep.  Consequently, once I do finally fall asleep  -  usually somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning  -  I have a tendency to either sleep until noon, or wake up early and then have a long nap in the afternoon.  I need to get back on track in keeping (more or less) "office hours" ... I also need to re-book all the workshops I missed, and get the job search up and running again.

The switch to Daylight Saving time this past weekend didn't help much, either; my body keeps insisting it's an hour earlier than it really is.  It always takes me at least four days to make the mental and physical adjustment; oddly, though, it doesn't take any time at all to adjust to putting the clocks back in the fall.  Of course, then I can just roll over and sleep for another hour  -  and as a person who's chronically short on sleep anyway, that doesn't hurt a bit!

I'm happy to report zero food wasted this past week!  There was one sad-looking forgotten apple in the back of the veggie drawer, but the guinea pigs leaped on it and it was gone in about three minutes, so not really wasted at all.

The work on my new room  -  shifting, weeding, organizing  -  is still going quite slowly.  Even though I'm not coughing much any more, I still get tired awfully fast.  I can work steadily for about half an hour, and then I have to stop and rest; if I don't, pretty soon I have to stop to cough for ten minutes.  Baby steps.  It will be finished before the end of the month.  Most of the furniture is in, the computer gets moved tomorrow, and the last bookcase goes in next week.  After that, it's down to organizing, and making the curtains.  And I already have two big bags of donations ready to go the next time we're headed that way.

It snowed this morning!  I was, naturally, utterly disgusted.  But by early afternoon it had stopped and pretty much all melted, so we were able to do the Costco run for the things that are (according to my price book) better value for the money at Costco than anywhere else in our area: milk, coffee, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and toilet paper.  Big Guy pouted a little when I said "No" to a $20 beef roast, until I reminded him that he had insisted we should eat out of the freezer instead of buying more meat until at least one of us is back to work.  Frugal win for me!

Big Guy spent yesterday pruning the huge old evergreens along the west side of the house.  Now we have a lot more daylight in the yard, and more light in the house.  He was worried that the sunshine might make the yard and the house too warm in the summer, so I reminded him that in the summer the sun follows a different path in the sky and we'd still have plenty of shade.

I was checking some of my old posts earlier today, and ran across something that may have appeared to be a big contradiction, so I'd like to clarify the house-heating situation at present.
When there is no tenant downstairs, we heat with the wood stove, since we only need to keep the main floor heated.  When there is a tenant, we use the furnace, since there is only electric baseboard heat in the bedroom of the suite.  And since we'd like to have the suite occupied all the time  -  after all, that's why it's there  -  we invested in the new furnace.  I'm happy to report that since its installation our gas bill has dropped by almost 35 %.  Combine that with the almost 45 % savings on the annual water and sewer bill since we had the (free) meter installed, and the huge drop in the gas bill we saw when we had the tankless on-demand water heater put in, and you can see why I'm not as unhappy about the cost of home ownership as I used to be!  Now, if we could only agree on what style of double-glazed window to put in the living room ...

I've given P the go-ahead to plant whatever she likes in the raised bed along the west side of the yard, and she has all kinds of alien-looking flowers and ornamental grasses planned.  Considering how little of what we've planted there in the past actually came into the house (as opposed to being eaten by the local wildlife), it's not really a loss for us.  My plan for this spring is to hang planters all along the chain-link fencing, with chicken-wire cages to keep the squirrels out of my herbs.  Fresh vegetables will be dirt cheap all summer at the farmers' markets, so I can buy and freeze enough to last a long time without going over budget.  Now, here's hoping the sun will shine the whole time our fruit trees are blooming!

Kicking It Up

October, in retrospect, was a pretty lazy month for me.  For whatever reason, I had no energy and no motivation; I just couldn't seem to get myself going.  I'd look around at all the things that needed doing, and all the things I wanted to do, and then fritter away the time on things that didn't really need to be done just so I could fool myself into thinking I was actually accomplishing something.

It wasn't until Hallowe'en was almost upon us that I managed to pull myself out of that rut ... actually, to be honest, it was Big Guy who got behind me and shoved me out (without knowing that's what he was doing).  I'd pretty much decided to skip the whole Hallowe'en thing this year  -  no pumpkins, no candy handouts, just me and a good book on the sofa.  But when I got home from work Friday night, he proudly showed me the three gorgeous pumpkins he'd scored on his way home that afternoon, and at that point  could hardly say "That's nice, dear, but I'm not doing anything with them" ... So out came the stencils and paring knives, and by Monday afternoon there were three fairly decent jack-o-lanterns on the front porch waiting to have their candles lit, and a big bowl of (nice but cheap-on-sale) candy to hand out.

So today I'm cooking and pureeing the pumpkins, and toasting the seeds.  I think by the time I'm done I'll have at least two dozen pints of pumpkin in the freezer, and the toasted seeds will be a nice snack later when my friend D arrives for our usual Saturday video night.

I've started my Christmas planning too  -  this year will be my first time hosting the annual pre-Christmas family-and-friends open house, so in addition to my usual notebook lists of things to do and to shop for, there's a new page for party menu planning.  It's always nibbles and dessert-ish things, not a full meal, since people come and go throughout the day.  So far I'm planning to have:

spanakopita wedges
smoked salmon with dill mayo on baguette rounds
vegetable gyoza (maybe)
cheeses and cold cuts, with French bread and butter
edamame
the usual assortment of pickles and olives
shortbread, gingerbread, and sugar cookies
pumpkin tarts
mince tarts
lemon pound cake
coffee, tea, soft drinks


And I won't be spending as much as you might think.  Our local supermarket deli sells trays of cheese and cold cut "ends" for cheap; Costco has excellent, affordable gyoza, edamame, and pre-made spanakopita in the freezer section; our neighbour trades us his home-smoked salmon (fabulous stuff!) for firewood (which we get free), and I'll spread the baking out over several evenings after work.  No booze, since people will be driving.

Our tree won't be up yet, but I can do some nice decorating with fresh greenery from our own trees and the ivy I'll have to cut back by then anyway, and my stash of holiday-scented candles.  Fir swags along the mantel, bowls of fresh pine cones and shiny glass ornaments, and bouquets of candy canes in my crystal snifters ... quick easy decorating that will be almost completely free ... the only bought elements will be the candy canes, which we get every year anyway to hang on the tree  Oh, and a fire going in the woodstove, with the doors folded back so all can enjoy it.

I guess the best way to describe October might be to say that it was kind of a "burnout" month for me.  Or possibly a short-lived episode of depression  -  which I've never been diagnosed with, though it does run in my family.  I didn't feel depressed, really, so much as just really tired.  And I did have a low-grade sinus thing going on all month ... So, depression?  Virus?  Overwork?  I don't know, and probably never will  -  I'm just glad it's over!

Can't Buy Me Love

I've been seeing Christmas commercials on television for a couple of weeks now, and Christmas advertising everywhere.  Come on, people, can't you let us get through Hallowe'en first?  Isn't life hectic enough, doesn't time already go by fast enough?

When our daughters were children, we had a yearly ritual.  During the last week of November we'd make up a big calendar covering the first 24 days of December.  We'd plan one getting-ready-for-Christmas thing to do together every day.  Shopping trips, wrapping sessions, sending cards, baking, decorating one room at a time ... twenty-four days of fun, togetherness, and anticipation.  The to-do for Christmas Eve was always "hang stockings, make cocoa, and watch 'White Christmas' " .

But now ... they're all adults, with jobs and lives of their own.  The pre-Christmas calendar has become a list in my notebook, the decorating and baking are what I do in the evenings after work, the cards get done on my lunch hour at work.  Shopping is done in one marathon trip through Metrotown, made only slightly bearable by the close proximity of my Mom's place; I shop till I can't stand another minute of crowds and noise, go up to her place to deposit bags and swill coffee, and get my second wind before heading back to the mall for round two.

For the record  -  I'm not shopping just for gifts.  Most of my gift accumulating actually happens throughout the year, when I finish making someone's gift, or see something I can afford that I know someone would really enjoy.  This trip is also when I pick up all the baking supplies, cards and stamps, extra groceries for the family get-together and Christmas dinner, whatever craft/knitting/sewing supplies I need, last-minute stocking-stuffers and thank-you gifts, and whatever else is on the regular shopping list for the next two or three weeks.  It happens either the last weekend in November or the first weekend in December, and its ultimate purpose is to make sure I don't have to shop for anything else (except milk and fresh produce) until after Boxing Day.  (It's also the first time I will buy mandarin oranges; to me, they're Christmas oranges, and I refuse to eat them before December.  I'm just odd that way.)

And it's not just Christmas.  It's Easter, Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparents' Day, Secretaries' Day, Bosses' Day ... I'm sure I've left some out.  It's all the artificially created, overinflated "holidays" whose only real purpose these days is to be used by retailers to encourage / persuade / guilt-trip us into spending money on things.  To convince us that overspending is the only way to show someone we appreciate them.  To make us all believe that true love can be measured only by how many dollars we lay out.

What's the best present you ever received?  I'd bet anything it wasn't the most expensive present you ever got, but the one that warmed your heart with how much love went into something that was truly, uniquely you  -  the one that made you realize how much the giver cared for you and thought about you.

So here's something to think about ... when you're shopping for Christmas gifts this year, are you thinking about how much to spend on each person?  Or about how best to show them you love them, you listen to them, you pay attention to what they like or don't like?  Do you want them to measure your love in dollars and cents, or in time and thought and caring?