Currently | Late December

+In My Head

Another year is just about over. I’m looking forward to 2016 and moving on from 2015. 2015 was a good year but the first half felt quite heavy. I’m not sure what’s going to happen in 2016 but I do know my parent’s 40th anniversary is in June and my dad turns 60 in September, so those are two milestones to be looking foward to.

I had planned to try to work with Forest on potty training/elimination communication harder during this Christmas break but he came down with RSV and has been extra clingy, sleeping like crap, and lost his appetite, so working with him on that has been thrown out the window. I hope to revisit it sometime in January and get daycare to work with me on it, too.

+Watching

Homeland has wrapped up for the year, with a somber end note. #SaveQuinn just didn’t happen to work…I don’t think. It’s tv, somehow they are going to either really kill him off or through miraculous and fantasmal television workings, get him to live from his sarin gas ordeal. Next on deck is Downton Abbey at the beginning of the year. I happened to see a spoiler the other day after spending all of this fall avoiding spoilers as the final season aired in the UK. Let’s just say it was a pretty big spoiler, too. But, a good one that gives me hope for this final season!

Also, watching far too much Wonder Pets while we’re off for the Christmas break. We can only wrangle a toddler so long before we need some downtime, and Wonder Pets solves that for us.

+Outside My Window

Mid-spring temperatures paired with the beginning of winter foliage/lack thereof…it’s tricked a few things into blooming early. Looks like we’re going to have a pretty strong front come through in a day or two and get back to business as usual around here. I’m not sure how long that will last, though. I really don’t mind having mild winter temperatures…after all, 8 year in Florida will do that to you.

+In The Art Studio

I haven’t done much in the way of my studio this month. I meant to but I spent time in the evenings upstairs enjoying the Christmas tree this month. I’d like to get back over there and get caught up on my scrapbook. I’ve also had a hankering to do a pastel drawing. Maybe I will make a goal for a small drawing a month for the new year? I’m hesitant to even set goals for art because I never follow through on them.

+In The Garden

Trying to get caught up on weeding here and there in the garden. We really need to tackle all of the fire ant mounds that are popping up, as they do when we aren’t vigilant. The other day we went for a walk in the neighborhood, something we haven’t done in a few months, and laughed at the amount of high mounds in a small pasture. It really looked like a scene from the zoo in the anteater exhibit! I’ve also noticed the leaf cutter ants have gotten out of control in our neighborhood, too. We don’t have any mounds in our yard but the mounds we’ve found are quite extensive.

Chris has been working on modifying the fences that protect the trees, making them a little smaller and nicer, while still being effective at preventing the der from destryoing our trees. Down at the pond, the beavers have made a dent, literally, in a few of the sweetgum trees. Chris has put mesh around the trees he wants to protect and left one for the beavers, a sickly sweetgum that needs to come down anyway.

The warm weather has bok choy trying to bolt so I think I am going to pull the majority of it and freeze it for green smoothies. I froze some two years ago and it worked really well to break off chunks of it for my smoothies. We planted onions and peas in the last week, too. A little weeding here and there is probably all I can hope to do for the next few weeks.

+Reading

In the last week I read Called Again by Jennifer Pharr Davis, about her 46 day supported thru-hike record in 2011. Scott Jurek broke that record this past summer by 3 hours. As I read her book and remembered that she only broke the previous record by a day, I really believe that it will be awhile before someone else breaks Jurek’s record. The stars really have to align for everything to go well and have that record be broken. Overall, this book was much better than her first. I saw some people criticizing this book for being very general in the description about the trail but the book wasn’t about that. It probably helps that I’ve hiked the trail so I could get a good feel in my head already for where she was at any given moment. There were times I was annoyed with her attitude but honestly, she was probably right to be feeling some of those things, re: her unorganized husband, too chipper friends, hiking mentors pushing too hard. We all have our own mental battles, and feeling how we feel and her expressing the truth, well, I can’t fault her for that, especially in her particular situation. The one thing that did stand out was her mother. I just couldn’t get over the fact how her mother did not support her at all on any of her hikes. It seemed a little selfish, frankly. Sure, her mom finally showed up when she summited Springer Mountain at the end of the 2011 hike but it wasn’t without side comments.

I picked up The Gift of Imperfection once again. I need to work my way through a bunch of books I’ve already started, however a comment that Elizabeth and I talked about on the most recent recording of our Dragonfly in Amber read-along has me wanting to pick up the Anne of Green Gables series and read through the entire series, something I haven’t done in years.

+Drinking

Angry Orchard hard cider and Ruta Maya coffee, plus some Kona blend coffee that I got for Christmas.

+Loving

Almost two weeks off of work! It wasn’t supposed to be this long but I ended up taking two sick days earlier in the week because Forest was sick, and we were also given from Christmas Even through New Years off of work. I’m also loving this mild and warm weather, though it appears it will be changing soon as a front is supposed to blow through.

What’s up in your world?