Weekends And A Discovery

Good Monday morning friends. I am writing this from my car dealership in Knoxville where I am getting my oil changed and my tires rotated. Who gets their oil changed at 7:00 AM on a Monday morning? Me that’s who. It’s quiet and I’m usually the first one here. I love it!!!

My maintenance required light and tire rotation has been coming on for a little bit. I knew I was due an oil change and tire rotation but just kept putting it off until after Christmas.

So here I am at the Nissan dealership at 7:15 AM to get this taken care of. Mark and I have a trip to Nashville this week for a routine checkup for Mark at Vanderbilt. That is about a four hour drive each way for us. I wanted to get the maintenance taken care of before we went. You know I am a procrastinator, nuff said. I had to leave my house at 6:15 to get here when they opened. I scheduled online before I left the house.

So I am sitting in the dealership waiting for my car. It’s not so bad I have coffee, snacks a huge TV, and about an hour of uninterrupted knitting. Heck I may just move in!!!!

Back to the weekend. You know from my previous blog post that I always pick a word for the year. I am not a big one for making New Year’s resolutions but I always pick a word for the year. My word for this year was discovery. I discovered something really important this weekend. It’s something I already knew but it really hit home over the weekend. It is SLEEP. My weekend was very strange because my sleeping was all jacked up.

It started Friday night when I couldn’t sleep. This threw me into feeling tired all day on Saturday. Mark and I went to the Assisted Living Village, where his mom is, for a visit and to take some supplies. I also took down all of her Christmas decorations and put up a Valentine wreath on her door. We got back home around 5:00. I had been reading a great book so I decided to lie down on the bed to read for a little bit. So delicious. You see where this is going right? I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 9:00 PM!!!! I couldn’t believe it. My Saturday night was gone! I know I am not a social Diva with lots to do on Saturday night but I do love my Saturday nights doing whatever I want. I felt like it was wasted. Now if I had been really smart I would have just gone back to bed for the night. But no. I got up and started watching a couple of movies. I had some snacks. I finally went back to bed at 2:30 AM. I then overslept and didn’t get up until 7:30 AM on Sunday morning. People that is really late for me. I felt terrible. My body felt out of sync all day. I drank coffee and it didn’t help. The only thing that remotely brought me back to life was walking the babies outside in the crisp winter air. There is something to be said about getting outside and enjoying nature. Especially when you are in a FUNK!!!

Look at my Molly girl she is getting old you can see the white on her muzzle.

Scruffy always up for a walk and an adventure.

This is Molly and Scruffy together. It is really hard to get a pic of them together.

So I guess my first word and discovery for the year is to remind myself just how much sleep I need. Thank you very much. After the walk with the fur babies I started feeling a little more like myself. I made sure I went to bed early and drank plenty of fluids, that really seems to help no matter what, and I am sort of kind of feeling back to the old me. Good or bad or whatever.

How has your New Year been going? No matter what always remember.

Love your day your way!!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy Thursday and Happy New Year!!!! How is your new year going so far??? I was off from work yesterday for New Year’s Day and that was really nice. My sister always cooks a big dinner for anyone who wants to come and eat. I went over to eat with her and her husband and some of my nieces and nephews. We had lots of food and fun. I baked bread last night and took two loaves of it to work, I try to get it out of the house so I won’t eat all of it. My co-workers made pretty short work of it.

I am always a little sad on January 1st. It is my mama’s birthday. She passed away in 2003 so she has been gone for awhile but I always remember what fun we would have on her birthday. We would gather the sisters and any nieces and nephews who wanted to go, and we would go out to dinner and see a movie. She loved doing that. She was such a special mama, the best in the world as far as I am concerned. She was also my best friend and someone who always believed in me no matter what.

This is my mama when she was about 16 years old.

I don’t know if it’s because it is a new year and a new decade, but I have never been so glad to see a new one. I will say that 2019 was good. but a lot of things happened that were not great!!! The same with the entire decade. I am still here plugging along and for that of course I am grateful. But a lot of things happened not just in 2019 but during the last ten years as well. Mark had the kidney transplant in 2011 if you haven’t read that part of my blog you can catch up with it here and here. I feel like donating a kidney to my husband was a miracle for me and for him. To be able to do that for him was the best thing in the world to me. But during the last few years I have lost three of my siblings, a brother in law and my father in law. I also lost my beloved Patches. That is life I suppose but that’s a lot of loss. My precious Scruffy and Kitty Kitty came into our lives. I did do some amazing traveling in the last few years and that was fantastic. Going to places I have never been before is so exciting to me. That brings me to my word for the year.

Every year I try to pick a new word to focus on for the year. Last year my word was “Try”. I did try a lot of new things. At times I pushed myself beyond my comfort level. But this year my new word is “Discover”. I want to discover a lot of things this year. I’m going to try to keep a journal or list of things so that I can remember them all at the end of the year. Just thinking about discovering new things is very exciting and gets my heart racing. I think the loss of several of my loved ones in the past ten years has made me more aware of life. This is our life to live. Live it and make it the best you possibly can. So this year I will see what there is to “Discover”.

Happy New Year and always remember,

Love your day your way!!!

Weekends

Happy Monday, How was your weekend? Did you get to do anything fun?

I had another long weekend. Well actually I only went back to work today after being off since Christmas Day. Let me tell you when I woke up at 5:00 AM I did not want to get up. What happened to all my days off? They go by so fast!!!

All of my Christmas decorations are still in place. My husband doesn’t believe in taking any of the decorations down until after the new year. After Christmas I am usually over it and ready to get the house back in order. I hate to tell you this but I saw some Valentine cushions at T. J. Maxx right before Christmas and I bought some. I put them up and I won’t get them out until after all the Christmas decorations come down. There was also some heart shaped dishes that I resisted but may have to go back and get. Just saying. But I just love Valentine’s Day. Me and my husband don’t really celebrate or anything but I love the color red and all of the decorations and I love hearts. I have tons of heart earrings and heart necklaces. I am always drawn to hearts. And I just love love. It is happy!!!! Well usually. I know Valentine’s Day can be sad too but I believe it is what you make it. I have many many many Valentine’s of all shapes and sizes, hint, many of them have four legs. HA!!!

My fingerless gloves. Not the best picture but I do love them.

Winter has a beauty all its own.

Scruffy loves his walks.

Winter sunset

I did have a good weekend. I was still nursing the back pain from the fall on Christmas Eve. I guess some rest and relaxation is what I needed. I stayed at home most of the weekend with some knitting and reading and watching movies. I DVRd the Little Women movie with Catherine Hepburn playing Jo. I also want to see the new one and see how they compare. I have the book and have read most of it but I need to reread and finish it.

I knitted some fingerless gloves over the weekend and had some long walks with Scruffy. It has been very warm here. It was about 70 degrees here yesterday and windy. Not like winter at all. Come on winter show yourself!!!! I’m probably going to regret saying that.

I am reading a knitting book my husband got me for Christmas, Knitting in America

https://www.amazon.com › Knitting-America-Patterns-Profiles-Americas

and Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. They are both awesome!!! Liane Moriarty is one of my favorite authors I have read several of her books.

Have a wonderful week and a happy New Year and always remember

Love your day your way!!!

And So It Was Christmas

Well as it always does Christmas came with a flurry of last minute shopping, baking, wrapping and snapping. Lol. I’m sure you know what I mean. It seems like by the time Christmas is here I am a frazzled mess. How does this happen? I don’t mean for it to but it does. Every. Single. Year. I think I made ten trips to the grocery store this past week. I wrapped presents and arranged get togethers and I loved all of that. And then it was over. Just like that. And I feel so free and liberated. Who needs a present? nobody? How many peanut butter balls do I need? zero. How many gifts need to be wrapped? none. Wow what will I do with all this free time. I am sure I will find something.

We always have Christmas Eve at my sister Sandy’s house. This is for my side of the family. For several years Mark has had to work and didn’t make it. But he got off from work in time this year and was able to join us at my sister’s house. We usually have about 25-30 people there. Brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews. It is a lot of fun but also a lot of work. Everyone brings a covered dish and we do a dirty Santa drawing and we have so much fun. All the littles still get presents from everyone so that is always fun to watch.

These are my nieces and nephews. I think children is what Christmas is all about. I enjoy spending time with them and watching them get so excited about opening presents.

So before going to my sister’s house on Christmas Eve I went in to work for a few hours. I was walking into the village area where all of the gift shops are located and I stepped onto a wooden ramp that was slick with rain. Just about the time I thought man this is slick. I fell flat on my back. Luckily the village is not open so no one else was there. I still had our maintenance department rope off the ramp just in case someone wandered over there. The padding from my butt broke a good part of the fall. This is a time when the extra padding comes in handy. I hit so hard it rattled my teeth. I just laid there for a moment trying to determine whether anything was broken. Once I was sure that I could move and bones were not sticking out I got up and limped off. My back and hips hurt the rest of the day. So needless to say I wasn’t in a very festive mood for our Christmas Eve get together. I feel very fortunate that nothing was broken and I was able to walk away.

On Christmas Day I cooked dinner for my husband’s family, there is only three of them. My sister in law brought her mother and my other sister in law came and then my sister and nephew arrived for dessert. So we had about nine people and it was awesome!!!! I love having people at my house even though it is a lot of work cooking and cleaning. I always invite anyone who wants to come so I never know exactly how many people will show up. I just make sure I cook a lot and I usually send the extra food home with people.

Scruffy loves my mother in law. Actually he loves anyone sitting in this chair. He will jump up and be snuggled by whomever happens to be in the chair. He’s an equal opportunity lap dog.

The honey baked ham. Yes it was delicious and we are still eating the leftovers.

Kitty Kitty can’t be bothered by all that is going on. She still has to have her naps.

Santa was good to the babies. As you can see Scruffy really loved that little blue Lamb Chop toy.

This is a life size Santa that Mark and I bought when we were first married. We put him in our upstairs window so when you drive up you can see him looking out the window. He is over twenty five years old, made of the hard plastic and we love him so. I will admit I almost gave him away a few years ago because he was so big and took up so much room in the basement from Christmas to Christmas. I am so glad I didn’t. Plus Mark would never have forgiven me. lol.

You know Christmas is not always easy. It often looks like a lot of fun and festivities but many times people are missing loved ones and there is sometimes disappointments from expectations at Christmas time. Christmas is sometimes a trying time especially as you get older. Have extra consideration for your friends and loved ones during the holidays. I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

Always remember

Love your day your way