That Hobbit Lady

January is not my favorite month of the year.  January is really just about staying warm, staying well, and getting enough sleep. 

I’ve started trying to eat right, so let’s see how that goes.  Also taking vitamins.  Just bought some "sublingual" Vitamin B12, which you dissolve under the tongue.  It’s supposed to get abosrbed better/faster.  I’ll let you know if it works.

Also, been spending some time decorating the bedroom, may post a picture of it here, when it’s done.  What do you do with a giant blank wall?  Russ is so flexible.  He doesn’t really mind what we do with it, but he is not really fond of the idea of hanging a giant quilt.  He feels, and probably rightly so, that it will look too much like we’ve just hung a blanket on the wall.  Fair enough.  But I’ve got some other ideas that are just starting to come together.

We had some snow a couple of weeks back and I got a day off work for it.  No snow in the forecast at the moment, at least not for me, but Joey should be expecting some in Oklahoma City over the next few days.

Joey’s cat is named Batman.   How cool is that?

Today we took our monthly drive into Birmingham.  Mary came with us, and we visited an Asian Supermarket.  This place was HUGE and had every kind of crazy food, most of which I had never heard of before, and many things I could not even identify, because the labels were written in symbols rather than letters. 

Some of the foods I could identify were bottles of soy sauce.  But a quick question:  do we really need "extra salty" soy sauce?

There were several tanks of live fish, crabs, eels, etc., which apparently you could buy to take home to eat.  Do you buy them dead or alive?  I don’t know.  And maybe I don’t want to know.

There was a smaller room in the back of the store where they had lots of cookingware, plates, chopsticks, kitchenware, etc.  I really loved the colors on some of the plates, but we have more than enough plates, so I settled for buying a little set of small containers for sauces.

This worked perfectly for us tonight, when the dinner was chicken fingers and tater tots.  I’m thinking I might like to use these to try the old diet trick of "dipping" forkfuls of salad in dressing, rather than pouring the dressing over the salad.  I don’t know how well this is likely to work, but at least I’ll look good doing it.

I know I haven’t been keeping up here as well as I would like, and it’s pretty late now, so I’m not going to write a lot, but I have to share this little bit about Maru, the most amazing cat in the world.  He never fails to make me laugh.  And he’s so pretty, too!  There are a bunch of really funny clips of him doing all kinds of crazy things on You Tube, and here’s one of them.  Enjoy.

During this new year I’m going to be looking for new ways of eating healthy, either discovering new tricks, re-discovering things I already know, or inventing something altogether new.  I’m not sure which category this comes under, but yesterday I added the first thing into my new "bag of tricks."  Muschup.

Muschup is when you mix ketchup and mustard together to make a new condiment, that is both sweet and spicy.  It’s sort of orange, and I’ve christened it "Muschup."  I’m sure lots and lots of people have done this before me, but now I’ve mindfully added this to my "bag of tricks" as a new condiment which is, though incredibly high in sodium, at least competely fat-free.  And oh so tasty.

I’m wondering if it’s something you might want to use on a sandwich.  At the very least, it is a dip.

We had a nice Christmas, with Russ’ family, and Mary and Ken, and we got tons of gifts, and then also bought ourselves some things.  Now I’ve got a week off work, and today I spent the whole day working around the house.  Tomorrow Mary and I are going to go around town a bit.  We are almost done with the "holiday food" so soon I can start getting serious about cleaning up my diet, eating better, and I even hope to begin exercising again.

December is always the busiest month for me at work, and at home it’s pretty busy as well, getting ready for the holidays.  It’s busy, but of course it is also fun.  Well, it’s fun at home.  And at work, the days just fly by.

But now there is just one more day of work, and then a week off.  Woo hoo!  Looking forward to that.  Looking forward to some Christmas celebrations, some cooking and baking, some opening of presents.

Russ and I got ourselves some presents that are NOT a surpise—we went to the store together and bought them already— but we haven’t "opened" them yet.  For instance, we bought a new TV for the bedroom, a widescreen/flat screen.  Looking forward to setting that up in the next few days.

Also, I am getting a new little laptop, one of those tiny "travel" laptops.  Now that Mary is in town, we frequently go to the bookstore to work on our computers, and my old laptop is such a DINOSAUR!  I can’t wait to start operating on my "newfangled" mini-laptop.

All the shopping is done (well, I have one more little thing to get for Russ) and we have a bit more wrapping of presents to do.  But now at last I’m having the impression that we’re going to be able to get everything done.

And I am SOOOOO looking forward to my week off.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I have to make a personal business phone call and end up “talking” to an automated attendant, my business can almost NEVER can be addressed by any of the options they offer. I don’t want to hear my balance, track a package, upgrade, stop or start my service. I’m always pressing 5 for “other,” or saying “Representative,” because the simple choices they offer just don’t do me any good.

I can go through layers upon layers of options and never get anywhere near what I want to know. In fact, I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I simply press “0” at the first possible opportunity, to avoid wasting tons of time going round and round in circles.

I wonder if it’s this way for everyone, or do I just have really, really weird issues.

My Mom had surgery today, and from the report I got from Terry, it went very well. I love that feeling you get when a difficult task is behind you. Now she can take on the task of recovery. But recovery seems a lot more pleasant than the thought of having surgery. Just glad that is over! Love you, Mom! Hope you’re feeling better soon, and can truly be having a very Merry Christmas!

As it is Christmastime, I’ve been putting more things in the mail recently. And Mary has been with me a couple of times when I’ve been visiting the mailbox, so I’ve had to explain “The Mailbox Prayer” to her.

This is something I learned from my Mom, and it’s always stuck with me, and every time I put something in the mailbox, I say this, usually outloud:

DIVINE LOVE

THROUGH ME

BLESSES AND MULTIPLIES

ALL THAT I GIVE

AND ALL THAT I RECEIVE

It’s mainly meant for sending money through the mail, but I always say it, because I always want Divine Love to work through me, blessing and multiplying every kind of good wish.