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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Heating
The heat is fixed in my classroom!

Doll-repair success
Actually had good luck with the benzoyl peroxide treatment this time around, and got highlighter off of a poor cabbie’s face. Last time I used it it didn’t make as much of a dent, but I tried something a little different this time and the highlighter marks came right off. So I’m gonna have to go back once I have some time during Christmas, and tackle a few stains once again.

Oh Christmas Tree
My favorite part about Christmas has always been the lights- specifically at home that means turning the main lights off in the living room and just letting the glow from the tree softly light everything. It’s so wonderfully warm, and I feel like it soothes me more than just about anything.

No Quarantine
Knock on wood…. we’ve had a few close calls, but even as the cases increase in our area we’ve been lucky enough to avoid being in a quarantine situation again.