Six Weeks of Winter

Well, it’s February 17th. According to Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day, there’s yet more winter to endure. God knows when the snow’s actually going to melt… possibly sometime in mid to late March. There’s so much snow in our backyard that you can’t step on the bottom stair of the deck. Hubby estimates there’s still about three feet worth of snow in the yard.

I’ve been keeping up with my Sentence-a-Day 5 year journal— last year was a wash because I was so depressed and absentminded that I mostly forgot the journal existed. I’ve made it a pretty good habit though of writing a summary of the day’s events every night, with the exception of the weekends lately because I have been so preoccupied. I’ve managed to catch up to today’s entry though, very exciting: I vacuumed and steam mopped the kitchen floor. Sounds mundane, but actually a big deal considering I haven’t been keeping up with the deep cleaning of the house at all. Well, my ADHD meds have fully kicked in after several months of taking them consistently, and I actually have the motivation to do things like daily cleaning. I’ve really been enjoying it especially since I remembered I actually have cleaning appliances that I’ve previously bought. My steam mop is well equipped with Amazon-purchased additional mop covers so I have no excuse when it comes to keeping the tile clean. For the hardwood I’ve been using the new cordless wet/dry vacuum that we bought recently and it is definitely worthy of the hype. (I never could have imagined growing up that I’d make it to my thirties, blogging about how much I enjoy cleaning. Depressed, anxious teenage me literally didn’t have the brains to process this far into the future.) Anyway, I still have a few things I’d like to do: I still need to de-clutter the bedroom, vacuum the carpet, then shampoo it with the first cleaning appliance I spent real coin on: my carpet cleaner. Thank the gods that this house has carpet or else I would have had to get rid of it. In the grander scheme of things, I think that my obsession with buying cleaning technology while I was depressed stemmed from this notion that one day I’d be well enough to want to clean. I even wanted to clean back then, but I just couldn’t bring myself to get out of the fog I was in. That season is over, but I feel confident that if it comes again, I’ll be well equipped to manage. It’s the little things in life.

We’ve turned half of the bedroom into two office spaces for me since this room is so big and we have other plans for the bedroom I previously used as my office. I now have two battle stations— one with a wall mounted monitor and a small glass desk for my work, and another opposite the first where my brand new tower sits. It’s pretty and white. Hubby finally got to upgrade and build a new PC for himself which is always good news for me: I gladly accept his hand-me-downs. So far I have Linux Mint installed as well as Windows 10, which I mostly have been using for Steam. The Mint distro was just for fun, but I might program with it one day if I ever get the urge to actually do so outside of my day job. Hubby had the idea of moving my white tower and monitor to my makeup corner, to which I’m not opposed since it’s kind of difficult to maneuver into my side of the bed. I might do that this weekend, though I’m dreading cleaning out the makeup corner. Should technically be easy since I need to get rid of everything that’s expired anyway. We also mounted our old TV in the bedroom since we got a bigger TV for the living room. We’re still working on mounting that one— hubs already mounted two screens and that was hard enough. We’ve also finally started using a media PC downstairs. I might still get the Apple TV 4K for downstairs but I do like using a keyboard when we’re watching TV downstairs. Plus it’s around $150 so I’m not exactly excited about spending more money.

Life lately has been a a work-week routine of errands like groceries, dinner, Star Trek: Voyager, and various other chores. Generally we do our grocery shopping on Tuesdays, but since we’ve been shopping at Costco for bulk groceries I have been liking finishing up our grocery shopping on Sundays then meal prepping or at least planning out what we’re going to cook for the week. Thursdays are usually Pizza Night—we live in Connecticut, the Pizza State, and I’m pretty sure I’d be exiled if I didn’t have pizza once a week at the very least. Friday nights are reserved for Date Night, during which we have been enjoying going out to a chain restaurant like IHOP (my fave) or similar followed by some window shopping or actual shopping from time to time. I’m really proud of our financial management lately though since we have committed this year to paying off all our credit cards and loans before the end of the year. We have one payment left on our car which we bought brand new in 2019, so that’ll be another weight off our shoulders soon. With our last slew of big purchases for the first half of the year, I honestly don’t have anything in mind that I really want. Call me materialistic if you will, but planning and saving up for big purchases keeps me motivated to continue. Probably next year (or Christmas/my birthday) I will want to buy a cheese making machine (Fromaggio) and an indoor smoker (the GE Indoor Smoker). Poor hubs is resigned to his fate that I want all the kitchen things. Not to mention all the KitchenAid attachments… the possibilities are endless.

Stuff to look forward to: spring cleaning and putting away the winter clothes, finally tackling my office and my makeup corner, friend dates and group outings, and hopefully, actual spring soon. I miss my roses. Once we get our finances completely squared away I also have to get quotes to repair/refinish our antique dining set and sand/stain our hardwood floors. Not looking forward to those expenses or moving all our furniture out of the room, especially knowing I’ll have to keep the cats out of the room for at least a day. I do want to paint the living/dining room and the upstairs hallway but that’ll have to wait until spring so I can do so safely with the windows open. The color is Maison Blanche, which is perfect for our little home.

I’ve also been baking! I made two cheesecakes— one for practice (aka cheesecake for the house), and one for my friend’s party. That went over really well and everyone loved it. I’m also getting into bread baking, but it’s so cold that even my oven’s proofing button isn’t completely accurate. I do have a bread proofing box on my wish list, so that’ll happen eventually. I made some baguettes and a boule which didn’t rise as much as I had hoped, so they came out chewy like cake instead of airy like actual bread. The crust came out fab both times though. Hubs says it reminds him of his childhood in Paris. Once the weather warms up or when I have the bread proofing box I’ll be baking more bread.

Anyway, that’s all that’s on my mind for now. Bye! ☺️