December 18, 2023 Monday--5am

 Good morning!

Another good, productive week!  (Do you hear me knocking emphatically on wood--lol!)  Been getting Christmas cards but I have never seen ones like this one I got from Janie, have you?  Like an accordion card.  Really pretty!  

I even got a Christmas card made from a real hand-painted piece of artwork, too, from Linda.  She makes a different painting every year for over 30 years, I believe, and then gets her Christmas cards made with copies of the original painting.  

Christmas cards are not dead yet!  Long live snail mail!  Thank you for each and every one I joyfully discover in my mailbox. :)

Monday I colored another birthday card just so I knew I would be covered through the first half of January.  That way I knew I was covered for some 2024 birthday cards for a while so I could work on the pantry without stress.  ;)

Tuesday Keanna came to clean.  She said for insurance reasons she was not allowed to climb up on a stepstool with more than two steps.  So she handed me down what she could reach...which was most of it.

I worked on clearing away and wiping down as much as I could on the table and countertop.

It was still cold enough that we had snow on the patio for a couple of days.

When Dagan dropped off Costco groceries later Tuesday evening he used the taller stool and got down the rest of the really high stuff for me.

Then I had all the lower shelves and wall racks to work on after that.  (Still working on them.)

Wednesday I did laundry, made soup in the crock pot again, and ran the dishwasher a couple of times.  Allie just wanted me to sit down so she could snuggle up on the chair with me--lol!

I got started on the jars.  I had discovered the colorful plastic jar lids a while back on Amazon and it was time to switch the jars over to their new pretty lids.  I started on the wall wire shelves where I keep the majority of them.

Even some of my rice on the bottom shelf got their new lids.

I am parting with boxes of jars!  Already had sent at least one big one (might have been two) off for donations many months ago.

Let's just say I have a lot of jars and I do love my jars.  Been using them for storage since I left home and got bugs in boxes in my cupboard in the second place I rented.  It was jars and Tupperware for me after that--lol!  Most of the Tupperware went by the wayside after a few decades, but the jars remained.

That stack to the left are the bins for my new studio wall unit for the new place.  They just never got moved to the garage.  Next to that is another box of donations topped by my old blue speckled roasting pan.

I am slowly saying farewell to so many things that have been with me for decades.  The jars, though...seem to be harder.  I spent days running jars through the dishwasher and sorting and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to let go of.  I'm mainly keeping a lot of the really old ones and some newer practical ones for storing coffees.  

Allie knew I would work for a while and then rest for a while.  Baby steps.  She'd wait for me sometimes by my chair--lol!  If she didn't give up on me and head for bedroom table crash-time bed...

...or go snooze under her spa lamp--lol!

Thursday Leah picked Liam up from school for a dentist appointment.  It was the day all the kids in his class were making gingerbread houses.  They sent his home with him, though, so he worked on it that night.

He was very proud of it and did quite a good job.  Gramma got sent pictures.

Friday I did laundry again to get to the bath towels and such.  (It is so nice to be able to do the laundry and get it all put away the same day...I know I have said that before but it is those little things I am soooo grateful for...even if I don't do more than one load a day--lol!)  

I swept the patio.  It wasn't a windy day for once so I could put out another scoop of mealworms from this big bag I got with the bird seed from Fleet Farm.  They blow away easily and I wanted to double check because it didn't look like the birds had been eating them--at all!  Highly unusual.  A different brand, extra stinky, and the bag was open when Dagan picked up the order, he said.  No, I wasn't mistaken.  They won't touch them. :(

Saturday I kind of took the day off.  Made some rice, finished off cleaning all the jars, but didn't do too much else on the pantry.

Sunday Leah came over.  She needed to make some gift certificate envelopes for the boys' teachers.  We had talked about it early in the week and I decided to order a plain die from Scrapbook.com.

Also--I have had this grip mat or sticky mat in my cart for months...so I made an order and they arrived by Friday!  Perfect!

Leah came over in the afternoon to work on her four envelopes.  She even cut my two I wanted for Ian and Liam's gift cards (toward a game) for Christmas.  I asked what their favorite colors were at the moment.  Ian's is purple and Liam's is yellow.  (That could change before Christmas--lol!)

Anyways, Leah was die cutting away--snowflakes for the fronts of the teacher's envelopes and some other parts for some cards she needs for the future--birthdays.  So now she has her own red tray for ongoing projects waiting for her in the studio. :)

Then I had her help me with the wire wall racks.  I couldn't get all the rest of the jars up there because the racks were too close together--especially on the left side.  TaDa!  This is really purged for me!!

She was asking me what I was going to use all the empty ones for.  I don't know yet--lol!  But I have always loved my jars.  I loved looking at them before and now with their new colorful lids they make me as happy as when I gaze upon my colorful wall shelves in the studio.  You can easily see the old blue jars.  I also have old Ball, Mason, and Atlas jars.  I suppose you'd have to be a jar person to understand the joy that wall gives me--lol! ;)  

But now that I've been basically on Keto for several years--I don't need all those boxes of jars I have donated and am donating.  I no longer have flours, pastas, lentils, beans, and all the rest to store.  The only thing I have left is all the various rice.  I had to decide if I was actually going to get rid of the rice, too.  When my good cooker died, the cheapie rice cooker replacement used to burn my rice on the bottom of the pan so I had tossed it.  This was a big decision...but I decided to not toss the rice out.  I'll keep rice in my life for now.

I did some research to find an affordable rice cooker early in the week.  America's Test Kitchen and the like.  There were some fancy ones for closer to $200--uffda!  But the highest rated lower cost one was this Aroma for $39.99.  My Black and Decker that drove me crazy was $29.99.

I made rice yesterday and it worked like a charm!  Whoohoo!  So far so good.  I just have to make sure I don't eat a lot of it.  Really full of carbs...but so good!  Rice is staying with me.  At least until I have used up all that rice in the pantry.  Then I can decide if I want to buy more rice--lol! 

Oh, and Leah is returning the big bag of mealworms to Fleet Farm for me.  Bless her!  :) 

After everything had pretty much melted outside, we had a little bit of snow again.  Can't remember if that was Thursday or Friday during the night.

Oh, also--since my square glass folding table was more or less confiscated by the new humidifier...because the instructions said it had to be two feet off the ground on a flat surface...and I found I was using that folding table almost every day...I ordered another one.  It has ended up holding the birthday cards for me--maybe until I'm done in the pantry.

The humidifier.  Well, since it heats up the water and has a mist spraying out the top--it is yet another humidifier that is leaving white dust on stuff.  Not as badly as the sonic one I bought once that I had to return, but it will be annoying.  At least it is just for this winter.  Dagan and Leah have a humidifier built into their HVAC system, I believe.  Nice!

Can you see the accumulating white stuff on the side of the new file cabinet? 

Overnight it covered this wastebasket liner.  It is definitely attracted to certain types of metal and plastic.  Do any of you have humidifier dust accumulate at your place?

I forgot to show you the photos that came with the McFamily Christmas card this year. 

Leah wanted to order new Christmas stockings this year and she asked if I would like one for myself, too.  They're getting one for Blink so Allie will get one, too!  We'll have all of us for next year!  Sweet!

I didn't tell her, but I've never had a Christmas stocking.  We never did that at my house growing up.  No Christmas morning routine.  On Christmas Eve Day we used to drive from Fridley to Cokato (Minnesota) to spend the day with my dad's parents...where we usually got new pajamas. After an early dinner we left for home.  That night we opened presents and us kids stayed up as late as we could playing with new toys.  Christmas Day we all slept in.  Just a quiet day is all I remember.  Christmas Eve was the big day at our house growing up.  Was only different the years Grandma and Grandpa had moved to Denver, Colorado and we drove over there to stay over Christmas.  But I still do not remember that we had stockings there, either.

Now I will have a stocking that says Gramma on it.  I need to wrap my head around that--lol!

Funny.  I made sure Dagan had one, though, and it got filled with small toys and treats on Christmas morning.  One year I forgot!  Dagan was about eight.  He woke up, was shocked his stocking was flat and empty, so began to quietly search and search and search throughout the entire apartment to find where I had hidden the stocking stuffers.  He just could not find them.  Finally he gingerly woke me up--more concerned that Santa might actually be real than anything else--ROFL!  I said--"Oh no!  I'm so sorry!  I fell asleep and forgot!"  "I knew it!  I knew it!"  He was hopping about--absolutely delighted to find out for sure it was me and not Santa.  (I had hidden them inside a crock pot in the back of a kitchen cupboard.)  We laughed and laughed that Christmas Day about his empty stocking.  We still laugh about it to this day if the subject comes up.

Isn't it funny how we clearly remember the Christmas morning the stocking was empty and barely remember all the other mornings when it was full.  Isn't that how it goes--lol!  I just remember his favorite toy was to get a matchbox car in his stocking.  I always tried to get him more than one if I could.  We always had good times together.

Well, when I next talk to you it will be Christmas Day!!  I hope you have a wonderful time with friends and or family.  Some of you will be like me...on your own over the holidays.  I have been for many years.  

That will be changing when I move, too, to some extent.  McFamily goes every other year to spend Christmas with Dagan's Dad's side of the family.  So they won't be home this year regardless.  I don't know exactly how things will go when I live there...for holidays and birthdays...with my ex and his wife being there.  It will be quite interesting and uncomfortable, I'm sure.  At least at first.  Maybe it will get better over time?  One can hope, right?  

But for this year--same as usual.  A me and the cat Christmas.  The cat has changed over the years.  This year it is Me and Allie.  But I will watch It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...as I have done for decades.  Only difference these days is I don't have to find my VHS copies or my DVDs...they are both on streaming now.  Nice!  It's just such a happy time for me.  A time for love and kindness--peace and joy--all the best we humans can be, I pray for. :)

I am curious...do you open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or both?  Or do you have none to actually open?  I've had many Christmases as an adult without any presents to open on Christmas Eve.  But I was just as happy and love the season just as much.  (Harder without snow, though--so I hope we get some soon!)  To those of you who celebrate it--Merry Christmas! :)