HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE

I had a very quiet New Year's Eve. I worked. I needed to invoice my clients. That's my big exciting day. 

Until tomorrow...

THE HOLIDAY IS ALMOST OVER

I had to work today. I procrastinated all week and now I have to work. I have a habit of doing this when it is a holiday. 

The gardener came back today and finished cleaning up the backyard. It always looks so nice when he is finished. We took out all the dead vegetable plants. I was thinking of planting some winter vegetables but I don't know. I probably would have had to start seedlings already because this is the rainy season and seeds would get washed away. In the Spring I just plant the seeds outside. 

I watched a really good movie on Netflix. Leave the world behind. Wow was it good. I can't tell you anything because it would ruin it. 

Until tomorrow...

SEND GOOD THOUGHTS TO MY CAR

I found out today that my car might be able to be fixed. I had heart sent over last week and this week when the garage got it, it was missing a part. So the guy at the garage ordered the part and they're supposed to be sending it. I'm hoping I will get my car back next week and it will be able to be fixed.

I finally got down to doing some real work today. While I was working the gardener showed up to finish cleaning up what I had done on Christmas weekend. Unfortunately the slight rain turned into a downpour and he had to abandon ship. Tomorrow I'm supposed to have the contractor and the gardener here but we'll see with this rain.

Yesterday when going to take my friend to lunch I dropped off some returns to Amazon. Unfortunately I also took a package that I wanted to keep and handed it to the guy at UPS. This morning I woke up and called UPS and got a very nice guy who dug through my returns (that were still there) and found my shirt. I'm going to go pick it up tomorrow if it's not raining. 

One of my neighbors stopped by to get his cookie/candy plate that I made for him and he brought me a super cool gift. It is a very old antique brass or cover candy mold. There are actually two of them of different molds. Now I'm super excited to make chocolates in them. I watched a guy on YouTube who made chocolates in an old silver metal mold. His chocolates came out great. 

Until tomorrow...

CONTRACTOR NEW DOOR

This morning my contractor has returned to finish the final little parts of my renovation after the water leak. He talked to me this week about replacing the door and making it a metal door. I am not a fan of metal doors because they can look very cheap. And the door that he's replacing is only about a year old.

Once he got here and took the door frame off I was glad he did. There was water damage around the door frame but it turns out it was not as bad as we originally thought. The door he bought looks wonderful. I would have never known it was metal and not wood. He found one that matched the door that was originally there.

I left the contractor to figure out what to do about the door and I went to lunch with a friend. We sat in a semi outdoor part of the restaurant. It was good to catch up.

Until tomorrow...

LUCKY TO THE VET AGAIN, I KNOW

We got up early this morning to take Lucky to the vet. I was a little concerned yesterday when lucky took a poo and out came a milky white/florescent blue liquid.

When I showed the doctor the photo, he said he doesn't feel it's anything to be concerned about. That shocked me. Instead he was more concerned with other things. We agreed it was a good idea to take an x-ray of her abdomen. Her abdomen looks good. We were worried about tumors. Then he ran a bunch of other tests to make sure she's okay. We'll find out the results in the day or two.

I'm supposed to be concentrating on work and getting very little done.

Until tomorrow...

DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

This week I am supposed to catch up on some work but I have been slow moving. I am anxious about getting my car back or if I will get my car back.  I started looking at small EVs. I really didn't want to buy a car before my trip but things happened. 

I got all my thank you notes in the mail. Do you write thank you notes? 

Until tomorrow...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I decided to make a Vegan Wellington for Christmas. It has mushrooms and pecans ground up into a ball inside the puff pastry. I made two of them and I'm going to freeze the second one. 

You have never seen someone so excited getting a fire extinguisher, power strips, a folding shovel and car emergency kit. I am planning a trip in the spring and I was thrilled to get items to take on my trip. 

My Christmas dinner was excellent. 

Merry Christmas!! 

Until tomorrow...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE

The highlight of my day was getting my turntable to play music. Over 15 years ago when I moved the needle on my turntable was destroyed from the movers. Because my turntable is so old, it was very very difficult to find a needle replacement. 10 years ago I went from place to place trying to find a replacement needle with no luck. But a month ago I found a place and they had my needle. I wasn't completely sure that this was going to work but I bought it and sure enough it works. Once I got the needle I then could not get the turntable to play. So tonight on a whim I pulled everything out and found the problem. Right before I went to bed I got it to play the first few chords of the album that was on there, the theme to All in the Family. I am so excited to play my albums again.

I spent most of the day cooking. Surprise! I made a spinach leek quiche. Then I made the potatoes for tomorrow. And depending on how I feel tomorrow I'm going to make a vegan Wellington.

Besides taking Lucky on two walks, that was pretty much my Christmas Eve.

I hope you have a very happy and safe Christmas Day. 🎄🎅🏻 That is if you celebrate Christmas. 

Until tomorrow...

MERRY EVE OF CHRISTMAS EVE

I woke up this morning and I felt better. Last night I had a heating pad on my chest for a few hours. I think that and the medicine made my esophagus and chest feel better. It lasted a good portion of the day. 

I iced the rest of the cookies and made plates for my neighbors. There are chocolate cookies with peppermint icing, coffee chocolate candies, and chocolate cups with peanut butter/white chocolate, almonds and craisins. Someone already told me the chocolate/peanut butter ones are the best. How can you beat the combination of chocolate and peanut butter? 

Lucky and I delivered the plates to the neighbors. Lucky got dolled up for the occasion. 

Then I worked on my advent puzzle. An advent puzzle comes in a big box with 24 little boxes holding puzzle pieces for a section of the puzzle. It makes staring at a 1,000 piece puzzle a little easier. I have one little box left tomorrow, #24. Then the puzzle will be complete. 

Until tomorrow...

TORTILLA CHIP

Last week I accidentally swallowed a chunk of tortilla chip. Now you may ask how that could happen. I was eating tortilla chips and chewed a bunch in my mouth, swallowed it and then realized I hadn't chewed one piece. The tortilla chip was in my esophagus and as the day went on I could feel the tortilla chip going down my esophagus. I of course googled it, and found out that drinking a can of soda can help move the impediment along. I could still eat and drink but I could feel the tortilla chip.

Before you say how could you possibly do that, it is more common than you think. In fact I met someone today who had done the same thing.

The pain in my esophagus was where's the next day and then the third day it started to feel better. I ate some actual food and not just soft food. On Tuesday it started to feel worse. Much worse. So I called the doctor and I got an appointment for today to have an endoscopy.

So this morning I went and had an endoscopy done. The endoscopy showed everything was fine and my esophagus and just to be on the safe side my doctor took some biopsies. So either the chip made a little tear and it healed already or something else is going on. I suspect that the chip has triggered my costochondritis. That is inflammation that goes into your chest rib cage from different reasons including trauma.

Anyway, that was the majority of my day. I was lucky that a friend could pick me up from the endoscopy and drive me home. We sat and talked for about 2 hours when I got home because I hadn't seen him in person since 2020.

Moral of the story make sure you chew your tortilla chips.

Until tomorrow...