Tag: gratitude

Thankful End of the week – It’s… been a thing…

LenadyLeave a comment

So, this has been a week. Not a bad week, just… very busy… and mentally taxing. This is actually the first thing I’ve felt up to writing in the last few days, just because I’ve felt so tired by the time I get home and get everything done. There were still some pretty good bright spots thought.

Brownies
It’s a little harder to find treats that are sugar-free, so when one turns out well I’m thrilled. Cue the brownies I this past weekend and which I’m trying out again today. I added chocolate chips to make them extra yummy

Vaccine dose 1!
Finally, the vaccine opened up for teachers and school workers in my area, so I’m sitting here, shoulder definitely sore, but a step closer to not having to worry quite as much about catching coronavirus.

New Music
As usual, I’ve found some new stuff this week and it’s definitely helped me find a happy place.

Sunny Sunday
You don’t realize how much you miss the sun until after a long stretch of dreariness. Last Sunday was absolutely beautiful and the first day I could tell a difference in the light. Things were a little brighter and it drew me out of the house for the first Sunday’s drive I’ve taken in months. It was even warm enough to be comfortable cracking the window for a while to let the fresh air in. There’s a while yet, but Spring’s on its way.

Daffodils
Speaking of, my daffodils were finally peaking up in the yard this week. Nice to see, since my crocuses have long ago been eaten by groundmoles.

Thankful Thursday – A Near-Miss

LenadyLeave a comment

This has been a thoroughly weird week overall. With lots of wait-and-see in regards to the weather and way to many hours spent studying on my part. I’m currently coming out of one of those study sessions and my brain feels a little like jelly right now. Hopefully that will pay off eventually though and the reason for that studying will wind up on this blog. Anyway, enough of the grousing, this week I’m thankful for:

Above-freezing Temperatures
We did NOT get hit by an ice storm. I think that’s the top of my list this week, considering the news coming out of Texas. I spent a good portion of the weekend planning in case we did, so we’ve got some preps going forward now, but I’m happy we didn’t have to use them. It was a bit of a near miss- the freeze cut-off being just about two counties northwest, but the most we had to contend with really were some slick roads in the morning and cram-packed grocery stories on the day in-between storms.

The Blessing of the Thrifting Gods
Cookbooks! and AG clothes patterns! And a pretty new Barbie, with her clothes still on and (mostly) not dirty! I’ve had suck good luck the couple of times I ventures out this week.

Valentine’s Day Candy
More specifically here, the existence of sugar free Valentine’s Day candy.
Well… sugar free candy that’s given to me for Valentine’s Day, but its the same thing. Chocolates are chocolates, whether in a red or normal box.

More Music for My Brain to Binge On
As I said before, I’ve been doing some hard-core brain work, and when that happens I really need brain-candy. Typically in the form of a new song or two to play on repeat for a few hours. These have really done the tricks this week.

New Fanfic
Not my own. My creative brain is stuttering a little at the moment. Thankfully though, my fave fic author ever has been posting stuff again and it’s just left me in a warm happy place, even when there’s angst.

All in all, this week was fairly easy to put together. And how about you? What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday | Using my time…

LenadyLeave a comment

Some Really Good Pancakes
I don’t eat pancakes very often. I love them, but they are thoroughly carby, especially combined with whatever topping (however sugar-free) I add. I broke over, though, on Monday, since I had the time, and pulled out the bisquick, and they were so good! I don’t know if it was where I hadn’t made them in so long, or if I just got lucky this time around, but they were thick and fluffy and good!

Packages
Well, one package at least. The others are still on their way. Still, it’s nice to finally get something I ordered from my Christmas money. Looking forward to finding a recipe to use my adjustable rolling pin on.

Snow day(s)!
We had a good three days off this week because snow kept coming in at night. It was nice to be able to get some stuff done around the house this week. Speaking of…

Decluttering part 1
Finally managed to get at least part of the decluttering bags out of the house. Not as much as I would have liked, but every bit counts in my opinion. Hoping to have another chunk of it out the door next week. Crossing fingers on that.

Organization
Along those same lines, I pulled out some file folders over the past few days and began putting order to some of the resources I’ve used in school for the past few years. I’ve mostly been using digital storage for that, but one still runs into extra copies and such, or printouts that you get from coworkers. Now I’ve just got to figure out where to the store the files.

Thankful Thursday | Battling the Blahs

LenadyLeave a comment

I’ve learned a few things in my time of writing these ‘Thankful Thursday’ posts. First off, they do great things for my mental health. Secondly, they can be difficult as all heck sometimes, especially during the blahs. If there’s any time of the year that I feel the blahs the strongest, it’s January and February. The lack of sun gets to me during this time of year and zaps my energy like nothing else. I guess that just makes this whole exercise all the more necessary.

Vitamin D
It was several years of exhaustion malaise before I finally figured out that, especially in winter, my Vitamin D levels dip pretty low. Last year, was especially bad. Something I’m fighting pretty strongly this year. Supplements help, at least, in these times where the sun dips below the hills almost as soon as I get home in the evenings.

Lazy Couch Evenings
Still, as I’ve said, my energy levels during this time of the year suck. Pulling up something to watch with hubby and just vegging on the couch is a highlight of my evenings at this point.

New Old Cookbooks
I don’t run across the Time Life Foods of the World series all that often. Not as often, at least, as some of the other cooking series I’ve seen out there. Still, it’s one of my favorites. What can I say, food documentaries have instilled a love for the crossroads of food and travel. I lucked out the other day at Goodwill and picked up four of the hardcovers and one of the spiral bound recipe books.

Paper Snowflakes
I pull out the same old ones every winter to stick on my window, and try to cut out a few new ones. I’ve always loved how you never really know how one’s going to look until you unfold it.

Nice Pens
As much as I love the scritchy-scratchy sound of pencil on paper, I love a good pen- the sort that just flow without effort, like their floating across the page. There’s something calming in watching the ink form lines on the page.


Thankful Thursday | Late again…

LenadyLeave a comment

Snow
So it only amounted to a coating, essentially, because it was just above freezing all day, but it snowed for hours the other day. I vaguely wondered if I should have written this as being thankful for the giant window in my living room instead, since it let me stare at it all morning, but really it was the snow I was focused on rather than the window that let me look out…. eh, I’ll call this one a toss-up or a two-for deal.

Surprise four day weekend
so I try not to add in ‘I got off of work’ to these lists, because it feels simultaniously like complaining about work, but an unexpected additional two days off I think is worth noting.

Sara Bareilles
Sara Bareilles isn’t typically an artist I can binge on. Her music is gorgeous, but very often I just can’t quite get hooked in enough to listen to her albums all the way through. Sometimes, however, I find a particular song and it’s all I can listen to for hours, it seems.

Fanfiction
Familiar characters and storylines, lovely (and sometimes horrifying) fandom tropes… Sometimes you just have to let yourself binge fic.

Leftovers
One of the best part about eating out is having enough to eat on the next day. Especially when its several hours ’til dinner but you feel half-starved.

Thankful Thursday | Help, I want to get off this ride

LenadyLeave a comment

Well, this has been a week, hasn’t it everyone? I don’t know about you, but I feel like the world’s been spinning topsy-turvy and just won’t stop. It’s important, however, I think, to not dwell beyond what’s helpful.

Self-Awareness
I’ve learned, through the years, that my brain will soak in all the negativity its offered if I’m not careful. Doomscrolling is so hard to turn away from sometimes, but I know it’s not good for me. So I’ve made sure to try to step away when I notice myself lingering a little too long. Not easy, but definitely healthier.

Lord of the Rings
So, I haven’t hit the slower parts of the book yet- Hubby’s warned me about a few spots ahead of time- but so far I’m enjoying reading a bit at a time in the evening. It’s been my ‘I need to step away from the computer now’ tool.

New music
Well, this has become a nearly weekly thing at this point… but I’ve been listening to these on repeat for the past few days.

Honestly not sure if I just hadn’t run across “Patricia” before, or if it just didn’t resonate as much for some reason…

A Clear Living Room
I’m awful at cleaning up after Christmas. I hold off on putting up the tree as long as I can, largely because its such a headache. It is nice, however, having a larger amount of sunlight coming in the window after I finally stuff the thing back in its box. Plus, the living room is small enough that the absence of the tree really makes a difference.

Softness
Just… the existence of softness. Soft pajamas, soft blankets, soft songs, soft words. Pillows and couches and fluffy stories that wrap you up as surely as a hug.

Thankful Thursday | I forgot…

LenadyLeave a comment

It’s been… well, it’s been a week. I honestly didn’t feel like writing this up after the whole mess, but I figured if there’s a good time to write one of these posts it’s when things aren’t that great. There’s a lot of stress in the world right now, and I’m not going to say too much about it, because this is supposed to be my happy place, but nevertheless I’m thankful for-

Voices of Reason
We need them now, more than ever.

Soft blankets
When the world is out of control, sometimes you just need to curl into a ball and wrap up in a layer of warm and snuggly.

Ballet
On a happier note, I fell down a bit of a fine arts rabbit hole the other day. Having a character whose a dancer, every now and then I wonder into the dancing side of youtube, but somehow I hadn’t landed on the full ballet performances before. Weirdly surprised at how much I remembered from the first part of Swan Lake, which my dad had a video of when I was a kid.

A Clean(er) House
I took the last bit of time from Christmas Break to tackle the mess that is our house. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it feels a little easier to breathe without the clutter.

Frosted Tips
We had more snow. Not like the amount we had around Christmas. Really just a little more than a coating, but for some reason this batch was very persistent in clinging to the tree-tops, so the mountains had this silver-white gleam this morning that’s still clinging to the very highest trees, even as the snow has began to mix with rain.

Thankful Thursday | Music, Music and More Music

LenadyLeave a comment

Semi-Normal Christmas
Christmas was, understandably, different this year. Celebrating with parents got put off by a couple of days, but we still managed to spend a few hours together, so there was at least a bit of normalcy. With how this year has been overall, I’m thankful for any level of that.

New Cookie Recipe
Spending Christmas at the house did give me a chance to try out a new shape cookie recipe, which was fun. It’d been a couple of years since I’ve pulled out my Christmas cookie cutters.

React Channels
okay, so this may be a weird thing, but it’s just honestly cool, but for finding some new music (especially classic music) as well as seeing the first time a person experiences a new band or artist. Got to share at least a bit of that same feeling.

New music
Not surprising, right? This is kinda a running thing by now. I ran across a couple of groups this past week (not through one of the previously mentioned youtube channels) and I’ve gone on a bit of a music binge. Wrecked havoc on my sleep (evidently rock and up-tempo music ’round midnight isn’t conducive to falling asleep) but it’s worth it.

Glam rock? Heck yeah!

I honestly have no idea why I haven’t fallen down the Haim rabbit hole before now. Especially since one of their song’s been on one of my writing playlist for years now. And they’re just so good.

Queen
Well, between Good Omens and the react channels I’ve fallen head over heals for queen again. I spent hours upon hours in high school listening to their best of albums, and I’ve spent still more hours watching live performances and finding new songs and just generally being a queen fangirl.

Thankful Thursday | Cinnamon and Sunrise

LenadyLeave a comment

Happy Christmas Eve! I hope everyone’s holidays are wonderful, and wishing you well, whether you celebrate anything ’round this time of year or not. Understandably, this week’s list is gonna be a little holiday focused.

Christmas Break
As of last Friday I am officially on Christmas Break- being as lazy as I can be and thoroughly enjoying it. After the chaos that was the end of this semester… well, I think everyone needed a break after that.

Happy Accidents
Okay, so I’m not quite as rose-colored as Bob Ross, but sometimes a mistake can be almost worth it, especially when the results are still edible. Turns out, when making fantasy fudge, using half the amount of sugar won’t mess up the candy that much. Me and Mom discovered that it will, however, leave you with buttery fingers. and perhaps a smaller amount of fudge than usual. Fortunately, it left us with a good laugh as well.

Cinnamon Rolls
Specifically, sugar-free cinnamon rolls that I can actually eat. I ran across a recipe the other day in which you use crescent roll dough to make easy cinnamon rolls and it worked great. Certainly better than the basic canned cinnamon rolls I used to eat so much as a kid- more like the grands cinnamon rolls, though not quite as bit. But anyway, now when I have a cinnamon roll craving I can indulge, at least a bit.

Old Christmas Specials
As much as I love Christmas movies, I think what I enjoy even more are the older made-for-tv specials that I used to watch when I was a kid. My parents, early on, bought a VCR to record stuff off tv for me and we had a healthy collection of holiday tv specials. Even in the summer I would sit down and marathon those. It’s a little hard to drag out the boxes of tapes these days, and most of them haven’t been converted over, so I love it when I run across one of those stories.

Solstice Sunrise
Okay, so it was technically the day after solstice, but that’s when the days are supposed to start getting longer anyway. I’ve tried, for years getting up to watch the sunrise around the winter solstice, but it’s always overcast. Whether because of normal cloud cover or the fog that so often sits in the valleys, even in the winter. This year, though, the sky was perfectly clear. It was dang cold, but it was nice to see the sun peaking up over the mountains.

Thankful Thursday | Off-kilter, but okay?

LenadyLeave a comment

So, it’s the end of the semester. Anyone who works in a school will be able to tell you that there’s a certain brand of strangeness and exhaustion that comes along with that. Everything’s off-kilter, and the schedule’s all out of whack for one reason or another, and it’s that final press to get everything done that has to be done. Maybe that’s the reason this was harder this week… and why it didn’t get written at all last week.

Timely Music Discoveries
Sometimes it seems like the right song just falls into your lap, without really knowing you need it to begin with. This song seems kinda like one of those for me right now. I feel like I’ve been hanging onto a lot lately. At the end of the year I’m trying to pick apart what to cast off. This year there’s a lot.

Heating Pads
A few years ago my mother-in-law gave me this weird cinnamon-scented microwavable heating pad, and though I pulled it out every so often, the scent always got to me. I guess after a while that’s faded, or something, because it doesn’t bother me like it used to, and I’ve found myself tugging it out more and more recently. It’s nice to have something warm when the heating’s gone out in the classroom, or you have a stray ache or two.

A Golden Duo
Okay, so it’s not completely gold, in my opinion, since not all of my skills are gilded, but I completed a go-round of the Esperanto Duolingo tree. Technically two, since I got every skill to level two before moving onto the next, and I’m halfway through the third level as well, since I’d already started re-doing some of the earlier skills.

Fairy Lights
It always winds up surprising me, come this time of the year, just how quickly the darkness sets in. I mean, lots of people have to deal with that in the winter, but living in between a bunch of mountains really exacerbates that. These days, I’m lucky to see the edge of the sun peak up over the hills once or twice on the way to work, and by the time I get home in the evenings it’s already dipping down out of sight. I haven’t fought it so much as leaned into it this year, switching off the main light in the living room most days in favor of the soft glow created by the tree lights.

Christmas Shopping: Complete!
For the first time in I can’t remember when I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done with plenty of time to spare. A lot of people wouldn’t consider less than ten days til Christmas ‘plenty of time’ but comparatively I’m did great this year.