Life: It Goes On - January 13

One of the things I dislike about winter is how brown it can be. Dirt were gardens belong, bare branches, sand and gravel all over streets and sidewalks, the remains of efforts to make sure things are passable. For the past couple of weeks, it's been warm and often sunny. Light jackets, no hats or scarves. And it's been brown. Friday night into Saturday it snowed. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. But, as it turns out, this year, I'm ready to get back to the brown already. It's hard to look out into your yard and imagine the lawn green, leaves on the trees, and flowers and vegetables flourishing in the gardens when there is snow every where.


I should probably stop whining about the snow. In Missouri, where my brother lives they got just under 17" of snow. Even here, where we are much better prepared for snow fall, that's a lot of snow, the kind that actually does mean you needed to stock up on bread and milk. The kind that gives even this recluse cabin fever. My brother misses big snows; he's pretty damn excited to have the snow. Which makes me even happier that he got it and we didn't!

Last Week I:

Listened To: I finished Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic and I'm back to Elaine Weiss' The Woman Hour. I'm bound and determined to get through that one this checkout period! Next up, I'm back to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World and Me.

Watched: More Marie Kondo (see below for what this show has inspired me to do), Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, football, and we are finally getting started on season 2 of Westworld.

Read: Today I'll finish my first Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light, and then I'll start Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure.

Made: I finally worked up the courage to try my bread machine again, after several failures consigned it to the pantry for several months now. I made a recipe I found on the King Arthur website but substituted some whole wheat graham flour for some of the all-purpose flour and it made a lovely dense loaf that toasts beautifully.

Enjoyed: Working on that project inspired by Marie Kondo - I moved all of our CD's out of their jewel cases and into a binder. Well, I moved A-R of the rock CD's into a binder. I had to order a second binder and pages for the rest of the rock, the jazz, folk and classical CD's. Those will come tomorrow. When it's all done, I'll have freed up half a cupboard in the entertainment center and an entire shelf on my bookshelves. Organizing gurus will tell you to get rid of the CDs entirely, but there's no way that's getting past my hubby so this will have to do!

This Week I’m: 

Planning: Finishing up that project and moving on to going through all of my clothes. Hoping I can convince The Big Guy or Miss H to do the same. Then I'm moving on to books. Marie Kondo says you need to move all of the like things into one place before you sort them. That means I'll have to bring books up from the basement, and down from all the rooms they are in upstairs. We don't have nearly as many books as some of you; but we've got quite a lot and I anticipate this taking quite a while.

Thinking About: 40 Bags In 40 Days, which will start March 6. Because I'll have done quite a lot heading into that, I'm really hoping to have the time to dig into some areas that I've managed to put off in previously years.

Feeling: Anxious. No particular reason why. This is just how I roll sometimes. The decluttering actually does help with this which is one of the reasons I'm doing it.

Looking forward to: Book club this week.

Question of the week: Are you also someone who starts off the new year in a purge and organize mood?