Milquetoast Monday

milquetoast ~ very timid; unassertive person

As per usual this time of year, we’ve been having some seriously grey weather that’s put me in a serious case of the doldrums. There have been a couple of attempts by the sun to make an appearance, but for the most part it’s been grey and above zero, grey and below zero, grey and windy, or grey and wet. Sometimes we get a combination, but you can always count on the grey.

The temperature has been like a rollercoaster, all up and down and you never know what's around the corner. Buses were cancelled last week on the assumption we were going to be hit with a major ice storm, only it never got quite cold enough for it. And it's been warm and wet enough that our snow is pretty much all gone.

Not only does this weather make me tired and head-achey, it also makes me snack more. And none of that low-fat, no-calorie crap either, for food to be real comfort food it has to be loaded with fat and carbs and maybe even salt and sugar. And warm - it’s even better if it’s cold out and the snack is fresh out of the oven. Like banana/nut bread, or the chocolate chip cookies I made for the hubby last week.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of comfort food is cinnamon buns. Not those biscuits that you can get in the grocery store, but real cinnamon buns made with the raised dough, the ooey, gooey kind my mother would on rare occasion make. The only store bought ones that were as good came from a long gone bakery called The Cake Box. Cinnabon does a fair imitation, but theirs are way too sweet.

Soup is a good comfort food, but again, keep your low fat/no salt crap to yourself. My current favorite is Campbell’s Chunky Loaded Potato With Bacon soup - mmm mmm good! My freezer is full of soup, but it’s just not the same. Campbell's knows their stuff when it comes to comfort.

Chili is another good comfort food, as well as cheese melted on bread. The cheese should be a sharp cheddar and the bread should be French bread, or even a baguette. Now there's a great comfort food - bread, fresh from the oven and slathered with butter. Excuse me while I drool just thinking about it.

You know who really has it good this time of year? Bears.

Think about it. They get to stuff themselves silly over the summer and fall, then they sleep all winter. Not only do they NOT have to deal with the holiday madness and the weather related chaos, they sleep away the extra pounds over the winter and wake up in the spring nice and refreshed and slimmed down again.

In my next life, I wanna be a bear!

Menisciform Monday

menisciform ~ shaped like a crescent

As I started typing this post I was thinking, “Wow, it doesn’t seem like it’s just been a week” and then I realized, that’s because it’s been two weeks. I missed last Monday’s post both here and on My Writing Journal blog.

A week ago Sunday I got hit by the nasty flu bug that’s been going around. And when I say hit, I mean sucker punched. One minute I was watching Star Trek: Discovery, wondering if I’d had a little too much birthday cake after supper, the next minute I was hugging the big white porcelain telephone (or in my case the beige one to match my tub), where I was pretty much camped out for the next several hours.

Monday I was too busy feeling miserable to worry about writing blog posts. I vaguely remember we had a beautiful snow fall going on that day but I didn’t have much appreciation for it. Which is a shame, because by Wednesday, when I was feeling like I might possible live again, the weather turned warm and the next couple of days were mild and wet and washed most of my beautiful snow away again.

Wednesday was also the day I’d planned to take the grandbaby to MacDonald’s for lunch to celebrate my birthday. Seeing as I was just starting to re-introduce solid food to my stomach that sure didn’t happen. Maybe we’ll wait until February and invite Grappy along to celebrate his birthday as well. It can be a triple celebration since the grandbaby’s birthday is this coming weekend.

So last week was pretty much lost in a haze of being sick, then recovering from being sick. Not exactly the way I’d envisioned spending my birthday week, but sometimes these things are beyond our control. After the worst of it was over I was able to get a lot of reading in, and even catch up on a couple of movies I’d been wanting to watch. So it wasn’t a total loss.

But I can't help thinking that maybe I was a little too hasty in embracing 2018. The Chinese New Year starts on February 16 - hopefully the Year of the Dog will be kinder than the Year of the Rooster was.

Malacophonous Monday

malacophonous ~ soft-voiced

2017 was nothing if not a busy year.

I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a good year, let’s just say I’m not all that sad to see it go. In fact, normally I go by the Chinese calendar to mark my New Year (this year it doesn’t occur until February) but this year I’m more than willing to go by the western calendar. So Happy New Year!

There have been a lot of changes over the past year, and none are more apparent than the grandbaby.

She’s turning from a toddler into a little lady.... Okay, not really. She’s still hell on wheels but at least now you can get her to pretend to be a little lady for pictures. LOL

As much as I’d like to keep her little forever, she keeps growing and changing and amazes us more every day. She’s funny, and quirky, and I love her view of the world - that it’s filled with nothing but friends. I hope she never loses her innate friendliness.

There have been a lot of changes around here, too. Some were good changes, like the bookcase swap, the office swap, general decluttering, and the bathroom renovation (despite the drywall dust that I’m still dealing with):

And then there were the not so good changes. Our sweet Julius (aka Sunny Bunny) crossed over the Rainbow Bridge to be with his mommy Panda. And let’s not forget the flood waters that almost cancelled summer:

There are more changes coming, to be sure, but that’s a post for another day.