Just a Few Grievances…
Happy Festivus to all who celebrate! I’ll be pulling out my Festivus mug (yes, I really have one) and airing a few grievances today. Let’s get right into it. I was at Target on Wednesday and saw this: No, no, no! We should NOT be subjected to Valentine’s merchandise on December 20th!!! Halloween in August… okay. Christmas in October… bring it on! But Valentine’s Day in December- absolutely not. It hurt my soul to see that. Second grievance: have I mentioned my daughter is going to ROME? The high school band is going to Rome on December 27th to march in the New Year’s Day parade there. I know- what an incredible experience for her. The thing is, in addition to making cookies and wrapping presents, I’m also following the weather in Rome and trying to make sure my daughter has a warm jacket, an outlet converter, gloves, and all sorts of other things I wouldn’t normally think about right before Christmas. Today I waltzed into my bank to get Euros, which I planned to put in her stocking. Did you know you have to order them? Did I know that??? When my son went to London four years ago, I thought I just walked in and changed dollars to pounds. It takes two business days, so not only would I not have them for Christmas, but we would not even get them by the 27th. Ack! So today I’m sending my husband on a “fun” errand to the mall, where I believe they have a money exchange kiosk (for a small fee, of course) He may have a few grievances of his own to air after that outing. Lastly, I hated Love Actually. Yes, I watched it to fulfill my Friday Christmas Challenge (to watch a Christmas movie I’ve never seen.) Now, I will admit that maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance. I was wrapping presents while I watched it, so I wasn’t giving it my full attention. But I thought the plot lines were cheesy and predictable, and I didn’t care about any of the characters. My husband didn’t really want to watch it. He kept saying things like “Why don’t we watch It’s a Wonderful Life?” I’VE SEEN THAT. “How about Hannah and Her Sisters?” THAT’S NOT A CHRISTMAS MOVIE. Finally he agreed to Love Actually. Then when I suggested turning it off halfway through, he said he wanted to see how it ended. Yes, he liked it! So I guess the evening wasn’t wasted? Plus, I’ve always felt like I missed out on something by not seeing that movie- so at least I have no more Love Actually FOMO. That’s it! We’ll be going out for our Festivus bagels today, wrapping presents, and watching Polar Express. The usual activities for December 23rd. Are you off of work now? – I have to work Festivus morning, but only until 1. Then I don’t work again till Tuesday- the holidays can begin! Do you like Love Actually? – I hope this isn’t going to turn into another “Last Christmas” situation, where everyone likes it but me. Do you have any grievances to air?
Christmas Challenge Check-In #2
Well, I’ve been plugging along at my 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, inspired by Kae. The first several days were… interesting… but the next three days perked up a little. Tuesday- The activity for today was more cookie baking! I made my annual orange-chocolate chip biscotti… They came out great, and I was able to include some with my daughter’s guitar teacher’s present. But when I looked back on my original post, I noticed I said I was also going to make the dough for gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. Oops. Wednesday- Long run with a Christmas playlist! This was GREAT. The weather was amazing (60s, cloudy, breezy) and my playlist was fun. The only weird glitch was that I hurt my ARM. Yes, I managed to injure my arm while running- this is a new one. More on that coming up in the Weekly Rundown. But overall I considered it a success. Thursday-Wrap Christmas presents with kids while watching Christmas movies. Well- we watched an old favorite from when my daughter was little, the Curious George Christmas Movie. And we wrapped the presents we had, which wasn’t a lot. It turns out that their presents to each other and to my husband and me, are all arriving tomorrow and Saturday. Coming up: Friday- By an amazing twist of fate, my daughter AND son will be out of the house for a few hours this evening, so I’m going to finish wrapping the Santa presents! The activity for this day was to watch a Christmas movie I’ve never seen so I’ll see if my husband wants to watch Love, Actually with me. And, I DEFINITELY have to make the dough for the cutout cookies this day. That leaves Festivus and Christmas Eve, and those days a chock-full of activities. Oh, I want time to slow down! I love the days leading up to Christmas so much, and I don’t want it to be over. How’s your Christmas prep going? Have you made cookies this week? Are you done wrapping presents? Header photo by Deidre Schlabs on Unsplash
Christmas Challenge Check-In (I Can Explain…)
Ah. Well, let’s just see how my Christmas Challenge is going. I got the idea from Kae to plan a specific holiday activity for each of the remaining twelve days of Christmas. Let’s just say things didn’t quite go as planned. When I left off it was Friday, and I called that a “Christmas Work Day.” It wasn’t exactly a fun activity, but there were several things I wanted to get done before my son came home; most importantly, finishing the outdoor lights. I had the lights up around the top of the house and in the palm trees, but hadn’t done the bushes yet. The PROBLEM was, Friday was extremely rainy and windy. So windy, in fact, that my lights in the palm trees blew down and were lying on the grass. Not only did I not finish the lights, but the decoration I already had up were UN-DECORATING THEMSELVES. Arg. Saturday. The planned activity today was a family dinner at the table with decorations and twinkle lights. Strike two! My husband got a last-minute gig (this is the life of a musician) so he wasn’t home for dinner. Not only that, but the original plan was for him to pick up my son from the airport while I made dinner. Now I had to pick up my son- which I was happy to do- but timing-wise it just wasn’t conducive to a family dinner (even if we wanted to do it without my husband.) The kids and I ended up eating re-heated curry in the living room that night. Sunday- make cookies. Okay, nothing could go wrong THIS time, right??? I specifically wanted to make these Festive and Easy Rum Balls to include in the gift for my daughter’s flute teacher. No judgments here, but let’s just say I really felt like she and her husband would enjoy a boozy cookie. I made them! The problem was, I got a text from the flute teacher saying she was sick and couldn’t make the lesson on Monday. Oh, great! This means we won’t see her till January. The kids were intrigued and excited to try the rum balls, so I let them… and they hated them. My daughter said they taste like nail polish remover, and my son said they taste like a delicious cookie that someone ruined by pouring alcohol all over. Now I will say… the recipe says the alcohol mellows after 24 hours, and the kids tried them the day I made them. But for now I have a batch of rum balls in the freezer and I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. LUCKILY I also made peanut butter balls! I used this recipe and everyone likes those, phew. By Sunday the wind had died down and I was able to get the lights back up into the palm trees- but no lights in the bushes still. At this point I’m wondering if that’s going to happen this year. Monday’s activity was starting the Christmas puzzle- and I did it! The problem is, I was the only one who worked on it. I’m hoping if I leave it out others will join in, but so far the only thing that’s happened is my husband complained that it hurts his back to have the puzzle on the coffee table like that. We’ll see how this goes… And here we are on Tuesday. The activity for today is more cookie baking (didn’t I just do that??) Well, it would be a great day to make my annual Christmas biscotti. My daughter has a guitar lesson tomorrow, and I can add biscotti to her teacher’s present (along with the rum balls he’ll obviously be getting.) Biscotti is kind of a pain to make, but it’s worth it. These have orange zest and chocolate chips… yum. Also on tap for today is making the Christmas playlist for my long run tomorrow! I’m getting exited about that. I’m hoping these Christmas Challenges become more successful as the days go on- I would hate to look back on this as the “12 Days of Christmas Debacles.” Next check-in coming soon! How is your week going? Header photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
Weekly Rundown- There Were Glitches
Oh, hello! It’s time for another Weekly Rundown- thanks as always to Kim and Deborah for hosting. This week did not go smoothly; I guess I was due for some bumps in the road. Let’s just see how it played out. Monday It all started with an innocent 4 mile run. About halfway in I started to feel a pain in my RIGHT foot. This is not to be confused with my “difficult foot,” the left one. This is so boring, but a couple years ago I had a dozen shockwave treatments on the left foot and ended up getting orthotics because of something my podiatrist called “lateral column syndrome.” On this run I felt the exact same thing in my right foot, and needless to say, I wasn’t happy about it. For the rest of the day, I could feel a mild discomfort in that foot. I’m worried. Tuesday Gym day. I skipped the sled because I didn’t want to risk aggravating my foot. I did squats and then focused more on upper body- bench press, rows, reverse flys, and abs. Sigh. Wednesday Ah, tough decision. It was supposed to be a 10 mile run, but I wanted to rest my foot. So I went to the gym and did 30 minutes on the bike and then an hour on the stair climber. Wow, I really hated this. I kept thinking about my trail and the big grassy field I like to run in… and instead I was stuck inside the gym. I got through it with the help of a couple podcasts. Of course, Sally McRae would say I should have done it without any screens or headphones- no distractions at all, to build my mental strength. Um… no, thanks. I’ll build mental strength some other way. Thursday Okay, time to test out the foot. I walked for a mile and then ran for 3… it seemed okay. I’m still worried about it though. Friday UGH. I had an absolutely terrible night of sleep. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, and then when I finally did fall asleep, my cat somehow got into the bedroom and started meowing loudly. (MUFFIN. I wrote a whole post about you during NaBloPoMo and this is how you repay me???) I seriously probably got about three hours of sleep, and I felt like absolute crap in the morning. I had no choice but to get up at 5:30 anyway, because I had to get my daughter up and ready for school. Since I was up I figured I might as well do a workout, so I did strength at home. Runners touch, squats- getting very low with a 35 pound dumbbell- Bulgarian split squats and dead bugs. I felt a little better afterwards, but I was still dragging all day. Saturday Okay, another run- 5 miles and the foot felt fine. Phew. But it was a windy and rainy run, so no photos. At night, my son came home!!! Go figure- on an extremely windy and rainy day, his flight landed precisely on time. When does that ever happen??? Anyway… let the celebrating begin! Sunday Off. Sleeping in, and I really need it. It was an exhausting week of poor sleep and worrying about my foot. But things are looking up, and after eight hours of sleep I’ll get up and make gingerbread waffles. Other than baking cookies, it’ll be a low-key day of rest. Next week is a big week, with a long run planned for Wednesday. I hate the fact that I even have to think about my foot- let’s go back to the good old days when all I had to worry about was the weather, and how to keep my Tailwind cold! Well… fingers crossed. How was your week? Did you have any unexpected glitches? Are you ready for Christmas? – I’m getting there. By December 24th I WILL be ready!