Ahhh, youth. About the only thing that sounds appealing to me in that scenario is the Northern Lights.

Good Morning!!! COFFEE!!~D Tuesday!! It’s another cold one this morning. Wind machines are on in the orange groves. School and work!!

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Monday!!😩😩😩 I slept horribly last night. Temperature regulation problems, too, although I am well into menopause. Threw off big comforter, slept with the fan on and a couple light blankets. My one arm was out of the blankets and was freezing cold, but the rest of my body was ablaze. I don’t know. Work today. Girls go back to school.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Sunday!! I need the grumpy pants this morning. Combine a lack of consideration from DS by inviting people over for lunch without even asking me, though expecting that there will be lunch provided ( DS does struggle with many things, so I am not considering his lack of consideration rudeness, but rather just cluelessness) with major menopause difficulties in sleeping and I am not really happy this morning.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Saturday!!! I slept till 8:00 this morning!! it felt so good. I don’t know what I’m going to do today. Look for Prometheus, I guess. It wasn’t my turn to watch him, either, but I’ll go look for him.

Park day went well. It was pretty dreary when we started, but then the sun came out. Went to the AFSA this evening. They completely redid the whole thing. Now I hate it even worse than before. Right now I am finally in jammies with my fuzzy Christmas throw. I have no idea what happened to Prometheus.

Good Morning!!! COFFEE!!~D Friday!!! Work for me and DS. The girls don’t go back until Monday and DH is off on Fridays. Park day today.

Car is back from the mechanic. Dinner has been consumed. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and corn. Now, I'm making broth for chicken noodles soup for tomorrow. I am in my Jammie with a cup of peppermint tea and the second book of the two-part Elisabeth Elliot biography by Ellen Vaughn.

Car is still at the mechanic. Finished teaching my class. It's cold and gray out. I am working on enjoying this because all too soon it will be 100 degrees out.

That shoe-shi is really something there, Slashie. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Friday Eve!! My car is still at the mechanic. My mom is going to pick up the girls for soccer practice.

Their coach picked them up. Humph.

I loved "Wild". I will need to pick that one up, next after I finish the Elisabet Elliot one I am reading.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Humph Day!! Work for me, DH and DS, girls are still on vacation till the end of the week. My car is still at the mechanic, so it’s good that the girls don’t have school. I also don’t have a way to get them to soccer practice, and they are pretty happy about that.

Good Morning!!! COFFEE!!~D Tuesday!! The Holidays are officially over. Today is my last day of vacation. Gotta take the car to the shop, make some phone calls (svengo) and work on curriculum for our Wednesday night program at church. Not exactly the way I want to spend my day, but it’s gotta be done.

This is what it looks like. It's not actually daring or different to look at it, but it's different from what it was.

Not daring because it was a seascape but daring because it's a little big for the space. But I took it out of the frame and it's not hanging in the wall, but sitting in the mantle. I think it works.

Oh wow, I really like it. It actually came out of the frame. My Grandma had it in a huge, heavy frame. And i was thinking it would be too big for the space. But i picked it up and the canvas came out of the frame, so i just left it that way. I have it sitting frameless on the mantle and really like it this way. It a seascape with greens, grays and browns.

I unChristmased, too. And iNapped. Now I am contemplating. I have several of my late Grandma's paintings. I have always had one over my fireplace. It's nice. I'm thinking about changing it out for one of her larger ones. It'll be a little...how do I put it....decoratingly daring.

That’s really good. I think we do have a budding Billy Graham on our hands.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Happy New Year, everyone!! Slashie, how did John do?? Do we have a budding Billy Graham on our hands?? We had a nice evening. I did something entirely out of character and invited some friends over for dinner. Spontaneously. We had tacos. It was a nice time. They left around 9:30. Then we watched tv until the ball dropped. Had lots of junk food and sparkling cider. Did these dumb confetti poppers. I actually had to be carded at the AFSA to buy them and they didn’t even have gunpowder. They supposedly worked off air pressure (like that’s going to hurt anyone) and they really didn’t even work. Eventually they made the tv room a gold and silver mess, but…. seriously? They carded me for that?? What is the world coming to? Today….I don’t know. Take down Christmas decorations. Get my Reading Challenge organized and maybe start my first book. I have the second Elisabeth Elliot biography that was recently written. It’s foggy out.

((Slashie)). That woman is creepy.

Good Morning!! COFFEE!!~D Sunday!! Happy New Year’s Eve. I saw on the news yesterday that all these people are getting married today because the date is 12-31-23 and that is cool. Church today. We don’t have any traditions. Some years we are invited to parties, other years we (thankfully) aren’t. When the kids were little we stayed home. watched the ball drop in NYC in real time and put them to bed at 9:00. Then we went to bed at 10:00. Woke up at midnight when neighbor shot off his fireworks and then went back to sleep. Tonight, we haven’t been invited to anything, I got some appetizers and sparkling cider, so I suppose we’ve have some kind of movie marathon and eat junk food.

Go to church, D. It's all right. We've all been there.

I made a new recipe. It was pork and mushroom stew. It was good. You serve it over mashed potatoes, but the potatoes have a Granny Smith apple mashed with it. I thought it was all very good, but oldest DD was acting like I was trying to kill her by putting an apple in with the potatoes. I was just following the recipe.