#2817 Happy New Year

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote here. I’ve been kind of depressed, and I found that getting out of my head a little by staring at the TV helped a lot. MT and I watched season three of Jack Ryan on Prime, then I also watched some Christmas movies, which included Hallmark-type rom coms that were on Netflix. 

Our Christmas was nice. It was the three of us, plus T’s girlfriend, so it was quiet and good. T worked Christmas afternoon, so we had dinner a little late. It was easy, though, because we had a Honeybaked ham. I did make cheesy potatoes and the sweet potato casserole we like to go with it. We still have a bit of the ham left. I think a ham and cheese omelette might be just the thing for breakfast tomorrow.

We added to our family a couple of days ago. We took in another dog, Stella.

I know that she is part Australian shepherd. She’s a petite little thing, compared to Mac and Harley. We adopted her from our friend Brandon. Stella is smart and funny and is settling in with us pretty well. She came to live with us on Thursday night, so we are all still in the “getting to know you” phase of the relationship. She plays a little with Harley, but she and Mac aren’t close pals yet. Stella is a barker, something we haven’t had for awhile, so it’s a little noisier in our house than it was. She is cute and fun and seems to be happy here.

Today it has been snowing All. Day. Long. I haven’t left the house except to take the dogs out for a quick walk this afternoon. Mostly I have been laying on the couch under my weighted blanket, and for awhile, Stella.

There are several inches on snow on the ground, as you can imagine. I’m so glad I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. I do plan to leave the house because I have to go to the grocery store, but I have plenty of time to do that.

Check out the snow on the fence! My eyes are closed in this pic, but I’m not asleep (yet). I did take a delightful nap under my blanket. The weighted blanket is the perfect nap blanket for me!

For the past couple of months, I have been using writing prompts in my journal, and a little bit here. I think the prompts can be fun, so I’ll add one here now and again, I think.

Today’s prompt is, “What was your first meal of the year?”

Technically, my first meal was a fried egg and a piece of toast with a glass of orange juice, but I ate that alone this morning while MT was still sleeping. For dinner tonight, I seared pork chops in my cast iron skillet, then put maple cranberry orange spread from Trader Joe’s on the chops and popped them in the oven, still in the cast iron skillet.  

When I bought the spread, I wasn’t sure how I would use it, and I’m delighted to tell you that it tasted very nice on the pork chops. We also had the last of the sweet potatoes and some mac and cheese, also from Trader Joe’s. It was a pretty good meal, considering I was making it up as I went along since I haven’t been to the grocery store for awhile. 

Yikes! I just looked at the weather app and the snow is expected to continue for the next 24 hours! The app takes me to 9pm tomorrow night, and there is a snowflake every hour between now and then. We can use the water, right?  Maybe I’ll order the groceries online and just go pick them up to minimize the time I am away from home. So thankful I have a great little all-wheel drive Subaru! Also, the trees look so beautiful all covered in snow. I liked watching the birds fly around today, landing in the tops of the snowy trees. It made me want to draw.

That’s it for today. I plan to write on odd-number days this month, so I’ll be back on Tuesday.