Blessed Drudgery

 Today was a great day. I have started on my new goals and I accomplished a lot! That always makes me feel great. 

One of my goals this year is to NOT scroll on my phone when I'm in bed. It doesn't mean I can't scroll during certain hours. If I want to, I just have to get out of bed to do it. To remind myself, I put a sticky note that I had written my morning routine on my phone. The idea is that I have to move the sticky note to use my phone. It was a good reminder! I got up right away and got my exercise clothes on. 

I'm reading a great book called Atomic Habits and he talks about habit stacking - which is similar to what Gretchen Rubin calls the strategy of pairing - where you do something when you're doing something else. For example, I used to always read scriptures when I was on the treadmill. Reading every day was no challenge at all. Then I started walking to school and I didn't have my pairing. I decided that each morning I am going to do some time on the treadmill for two reasons: One is because I want to become a runner. This month I'm committing to running for one minute every day (pathetic, I know....but it's something I know for sure that I can do!) Today I did it and I stayed on the treadmill for an hour because I also was reading at the same time. It was terrific! 

I also did quite a lot of housework. I did my usual Saturday House Blessing (vacuum and mop and generally tidy up) but I also got a bucket with some good soapy water and bleach and cleaned some floor spots that just don't get clean with a mop. What a difference that made! I also cleaned the oven. I sprayed it with oven cleaner and left it for two hours, but that wasn't quite enough. It required some scrubbing. Actually, it required a lot of scrubbing....and it was brutal! I did get the glass clean though! I promise myself I will never let it get that bad again!

Ain't that something! I posted the before and after and my cousin asked me how I got it so clean. After I told her, she said she figured she'd just buy a new oven. Honestly, I don't think that's a bad idea. It was exhausting work!! I'm eager to get back to school so that I don't have time for things like this anymore. LOL

More drudgery: I got groceries and made my lunches and snacks for next week. These are the things that make life so much better! It's a breeze if I don't have to think about lunches all week. 

Okay. That was a lot of drudgery - but it sure feels great to get it all done! Life is good. I'm grateful to have time for such drudgery.

 

2021!! Thank Goodness!

 Well, the whole world sure seems to be ready to be finished with 2020. It was a hard year and hopefully things will start to get better. 

Last night we had a ton of snacky food and watched a couple movies. Well, I watched one then the rest of them watched another. I'm really not one for staying up until midnight....even on New Year's Eve. Ah well! 

We watched Death to 2020, which seemed appropriate! It was hilarious!! I can't believe all that has happened this year.

We had WAY too many snacks left over. I quickly cleaned everything up this morning and took it down to the food storage room. I don't mind having snacks in the house but I DON'T want them being front and center so that we snack on them all day long. It seemed to work. And now we'll have some snacks for, er, next Friday?

This sunrise this morning was BEAUTIFUL!! I plan to enjoy a lot of them this year. I guess you could say I'm pretty set on my early to bed and early to rise gig.

Today we started off the year with some great food! Allen decided to try making pancakes for the first time ever! They were amazing. He used mango kefir and coconut. Of course, there was bacon and hash brown. Yum! 

It was great to have Jill over again. She and Peirce tried making a tiktok. It made for some good laughs anyway!

I didn't really expect that Allen would make another meal, but he did! We had an amazing cajun chicken based on the dish Cactus Club serves. Yum!!

I spent way too much time scrolling through twitter to get angry over people with political positions in Alberta who took trips to Hawaii and not enough time on my bullet journal. Tonight though I made some good headway. I'm excited for 2021 and have some good goals to work on! I also got to spend a bunch of time reading today while Jill and Peirce were out hanging out with Zoe and Daniel. They had a great time together!

I'm wondering if Chico set a goal to get along with Bentley this year. THIS has never happened! They're both on my lap.