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Slowing down
I did something I haven’t done in a while… I went to work on time. I had been going into the office an hour early every day.
I stayed home. Spent time with Nala. Packed a lovely salad for lunch. Balanced my budget. Did three days worth of dishes. Even vacuumed and cleaned the bird cages.
The teenager came home from school and did laundry.
And on top of all that, work went super well. My new colleague and I approach everything as a team. She has a strong background in non-profit development and I have a strong background in communications so we approach everything from our respective strengths.
And I think the result is ten times better than either of us could do alone.
That makes me feel so good.
I even did a pretty intense little weight training workout before my nail appointment tonight. Short but left me feeling it.
As for my nails… they are so brittle and short right now it makes me sad. But I can’t be sad because my nail polish color is happi.
When the highlight of your day is a trip to the Grocery Outlet
I worked a long day today. Voluntarily got to the office at 7:30 to prepare for my 8:30 development committee meeting, followed by some grant writing, lunch at home with the teenager who had an early dismissal, then an afternoon meeting and an evening mixer at another local nonprofit.
The mixer typically goes until 7 p.m. I asked the teenager if she wanted to go get milk and more salmon salad at the grocery outlet. When we bought the salmon salad last week, it was $1.99. But the “Best Buy” date was today so it was 47 cents! The teenager bought one for lunch tomorrow and I suggested tossing one in the freezer. For 47 cents, if it doesn’t free well who cares.
They had a nice selection of essential oils for $5 a vial. I almost bought tea tree oil, but instead opted for this $12 gift set.
My little treat.
We also got various yogurts and smoothie/yogurt drinks. A snack mix of dried mango, banana chips, peanuts and spicy almonds. Very yummy. Baby bel cheese wound in a pinwheel. Organic coffee in yogurt. And some weird matcha “quark” thing that I fear is Farmer’s cheese. And a caramel apple pie yogurt.
And a layered chili lollipop with gum inside. Not even sure what the heck that is.
I spent $15 on the aromatherapy set and garbage bags and $24 on yogurt, milk, fruit, salmon salad and broccoli.
I love stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying weird stuff at the Grocery Outlet.
And did I mention this particular Grocery Outlet supports our food pantry? They do.
Pizza and a bottle of wine
Tonight’s blog entry will be short.
I’ve had a lot on my mind and on my plate for days. Weeks? Months?
I did something big for me. I reached out to a friend and asked her to have a drink with me.
We had intended to go OUT for a drink, but we’re both kind of broke so I invited her here to my home to meet Nala, share a bottle of wine from my holiday party, and order cheap pizza. Dominos.
Except I didn’t think she’d like the Beaujolais I had. I feared it would be too woody for her.
I told her so.
So she brought her own bottle. And I ordered the Dominoes. One white pizza, the garlic Parmesan sauce, with feta and pineapple. The other with robust marinara, banana peppers and black olives.
(The teenager is floating the idea of vegetarianism again.)
And we got the chocolate chip cookie brownie.
I blame that damn $5.99 mix-and-match promotion.
It felt so good to mindlessly talk, just sit and do nothing, eat pizza and share wine.
I am grateful to have a friend that will do that.
State of the menagerie
Author’s note: this post was originally posted last week but somehow got unpublished and republished in the wrong order.
Let’s start with the kitten…
Mistofelees is still on our sun porch. The teenager has her room 100% clean and ready to accept the new member of the household though she and the teen have not worked out an agreement for when she will sign her lease.
The two have been playing, footage of which can be seen here: Playing Kitten
Some of our other neighbors are feeding her braver siblings and hope to catch them because they know of a potential home.
And then there is Naughty Nala. She was mad at me from the time I got home from work yesterday until I came home today. Refusing to step up, refusing to come out of her cage, biting me if I went near.
But today she seemed to forgive me for going to work. She stepped up beautifully and snuggled like a sweetheart chattering away.
She stood on the dishwasher while I made dinner and while we ate. To reward her, we fed her sweet potato fries which she loved. Video here: Nala is a Sweet Potato Girl (that’s a pun, referring to Tori Amos’ Cornflake Girl.)
If you don’t know the song, let me take you back to my college days: Cornflake Girl
It must be January
The gym is really crowded.
The teenager asked to go to the gym and I didn’t want to go but I went. All I did was 10 minutes on the bike. But I came and that is something.
That’s enough for me right now.
As a parent, I told the teenager I would never say no if she wanted to drag me to the gym.
My yellow budgie, Peek-a-Boo (whom we nicknamed Boo-Boo), had an episode of night fright last night and woke me up at 4:30. I had gone to bed shortly after nine, so I had trouble falling back to sleep.
I ended up doing some writing for work. When the house is still and your mind is fresh, it’s amazing how easily ideas flow. Even if it is 5 a.m.
I packed my yogurt, fruit and granola parfait for lunch, substituting some chocolate Fontina brand Christmas cookies for breakfast. Lunch didn’t happen until 1:45 so that didn’t help my fatigue.
NALA
But I got some amusing text messages when my daughter got home from school. I had set Nala up with her new toys, fresh fruit and romaine and Hulu set to hours of Sesame Street.
My daughter went to check on her, which says a lot about how far their bond has come as a week ago my teenager was afraid of Nala and vice versa.
Today I got a text that the teenager planned on offering Nala tea. This photo followed:
And it looks like Nala did not pluck today. Now Nala was also glad to see me when I got home, though we had a disagreement about where Nala was going to sit while I ate dinner.
I think Nala thought my plate was her plate. So I ended up with a pretty pointed beak stab in the middle of my middle finger.
DINNER
The teenager says she’d like to lean toward vegetarianism. So we’ve reduced the amount of meat we buy.
Last night’s dinner was homemade mozzarella that my neighbor received as a Christmas gift, spinach, a Pillsbury flaky buttermilk biscuit, two poached eggs and imitation bacon bits.
Tonight’s dinner was “Greek Night.” I made that up. It’s a mess of stuff from the cupboards. But it doesn’t qualify as vegetarian, only pescatarian.
I made a green salad of chopped romaine lettuce, two kinds of olives, the mozzarella again, and avocado. I added two prepared Greek Salads from Lidl: one a giant white bean salad and the second a tomato-based lentil salad. I also served “calamari fries” from Lidl, which are basically thick chunks of potato somehow mixed with calamari.
The teenager had her salad with light ranch dressing. I had mine with a Whole 30 approved balsamic vinaigrette. I made a salad for lunch tomorrow (but didn’t include the calamari). That’s the featured photo for this entry.
Well, now for the amazing part of this entry.
BEDTIME
Last night I tried to put Nala to bed at 6:30 and sit downstairs so she could sleep. Just like a baby, she screamed for Mommy. I returned to my room, and watched TV on my iPad in the dark just load enough so she knew I was here.
Tonight I put her to bed at 6:30, left my pink night light on, covered her and went to the gym.
When I came back an hour later, she didn’t even rustle. I’m tiptoeing around my room as not to wake her.
Goodnight, Nala.
Pre-work week routine
This post will be published at 9 a.m. Monday morning. I wrote it while resting for a moment, cockatoo on my chest, cat leaning into my belly and budgies still swirling overhead.
A lot of my weekend is spent doing laundry and cleaning house. I do laundry every day because we don’t have a dryer and I have to hang my wash on my heated drying rack.
And if the mood swings, I do some meal planning and food prep. I haven’t dealt with lunches yet, but I did make some fruit and yogurt parfaits.
At some point every Sunday I put whatever clean laundry away and choose five outfits for the week and line them up on the left side of my closet.
My entire wardrobe is tucked away in that closet. The things that hang on the right and behind my outfits on the left I have some organizational cubbies and crates. One crate for various t-shirts and tank tops and thin sweatshirts. Another for pants. My cubbies… I believe I have five: underwear/bras, socks/hose, gym clothes, pajamas and other bulky things.
When I run out of room, I purge. That can be hard but it’s also a good exercise in not hanging on to things you don’t wear.
My stepmom got me three new dresses for Christmas. My favorite one ripped in the washer. I was very upset as she usually buys clothes from stores like Macy’s or Dunkelberger’s. I was hoping she hadn’t spent too much money.
Turns out those dresses were from JC Penney as were some blouses that didn’t hold up well.
It reminds me of a recent interview I heard with the author of Second Hand. He was talking about how their is no real second hand trade left in the United States anymore because we buy such poorly made, cheap crap.
Nala shenanigans and meal planning
For those who enjoy Nala’s shenanigans… She insisted on trying to steal my coffee. See her here: Coffee thief.
And we do still have the cats. Including big, dumb Oz.
Periodically I put her back in my room, but she kept calling me due to her fear of the budgies. So Nala watched me unload & reload the dishwasher, have breakfast and make extra parfaits, do two loads of wash, hang wash, let the roomba vacuum the kitchen and then I washed the kitchen floor.
As for meals this week, the menu includes:
- A nice chunk of ham I got at the grocery outlet for $1. Probably with boxed Mac and cheese.
- Veggie burgers or regular burgers
- Spaghetti, either that black bean spaghetti I got at Marshall’s or Green Giant lentil rotini I got on sale at Target
- A prepared salmon and vegetable salad I also got cheap at Grocery Outlet
- And “Greek night” with a lentil salad and a white bean salad from Lidl and some mighty fine looking mixed olives I got at Grocery Outlet for 77 cents.
And this little naughty cockatoo refuses to vacate the drying rack, probably because it’s heated.
Now my daughter and I are off to bake cookies.
Sunday morning babbling
Nala is chattering away on my chest as I recline in bed with a cup of coffee at 7:30 a.m. The wind howls and rain patters sporadically. It’s freakishly warm for an East Coast winter morning. The budgies fly and play freely as Saturday and Sunday are free bird days.
We got up at 6:30. Nala once again plucked a feather and squealed when I didn’t come get her as soon as I woke. I don’t know if it’s out of fear, hearing a rustle in the dark and not knowing if it is me, a cat or an unknown predator or if she’s a brat and wants my immediate attention.
Life with birds. Speaking of life with birds, I notice that people with larger birds often have a bird room and bedtime rituals so the birds can sleep undisturbed. I wonder if I will eventually move Nala so she can get her rest undisturbed. I need to start putting her to bed around 6:30 since I’m an early riser. My evening routines need to change.
This morning, I had planned on opening Nala’s cage and going down to make coffee and feed the cats. Nala jumped on my hand and decided to come for the ride. I didn’t even offer.
But she’s a moody little Goffin and refused to do anything but sit on my shoulder and bite at me if I tried to move her. (I was offering her her morning tea which she wanted, but she wanted to drink it from my shoulder. I tried to ignore her, and leave her on my shoulder but then she would fly off my shoulder and stand in front of the cat. Luckily, she did this with Oz who has no idea what she is and merely sees her as something over which he displays jealousy versus Opie who clearly sees her as dinner.)
I was trying to be patient but then she starting picking apart the shoulder seam of one of my favorite work-appropriate dresses so I put her back in her cage. She didn’t like that. I have tiny bloody beak nips on my fingers now, but once she saw I was putting her in her cage she settled.
Five minutes later I came back to my room with my coffee and fresh romaine and fruit for everyone. I opened Nala’s cage door, put her fruit in, and let her hang out on her cage while I gave the budgies their romaine.
Then she rejoined me. Much less moody now. And she said two more phrases this morning. One almost sounded like a greeting and another that seemed like “hi, Nala.” She said it when I slipped out of the room to use the bathroom. If my attempt at reading the context is correct, it seemed like she was requesting to come with me.
Nala met some new people yesterday. She met my neighbor, mother of the Maltese/Yorky mix who visits here and spends her vacations with me. Nala didn’t know what to make of such a strange dog but she did like my neighbor’s very pretty nails and jewelry. I hope Nala learns to trust my neighbor as she is one potential caretaker should Nala need a sitter.
Then Nala met my dad and stepmom. Nala jumped right on my dad’s shoulder. Immediate connection. She refused to come down. My stepmom reached out and asked Nala to step up but Nala wasn’t interested. My stepmom had a cockatoo thirty years ago so I wondered how she would react to them. I have never seen an animal or a person not take to my dad.
I also bought Nala a new toy and treats. She liked neither.
On a personal level, I did a five-minute workout yesterday three sets of 10, shoulder press, with a 15-pound dumbbell on each arm. I’m still lazy but at least I did something.
My weight though is up three pounds but I know that is because my only meal was at Applebee’s. I invited my dad and his wife to join the teenager and I at Applebee’s because I received this email:
I love food. I love real food. I love fancy food. I love plain food. But I also love junk food. And for some reason I kept dreaming of boneless wings all week. And the teenager loves shrimp.
And while Applebee’s is not fine dining… I wanted company and I hadn’t seen my dad since Christmas. We all got the all-you-can-eat. Here’s the part I didn’t know; it’s mix-and-match. So you can get either boneless wings OR double crunch shrimp OR riblets AND get a different one every time.
I ate two plates of wings. So there’s soooooooooooo much sodium in my body right now.
I’ve spent an hour drafting this. I need to sort out laundry, wash the floors and hopefully get to the gym today. I did some grocery shopping last night. Spent $40 at the Grocery Outlet and hope to do my meal plan for this week.
It’s going to be another stressful one.
Stream of consciousness: real talk
It’s almost 8:30 on a Saturday morning. This post will probably be babble, but I have a feeling it might resonate in a “real life” way. Like let’s not talk about Facebook perfect lives or fun on YouTube.
This is life with a teenager, a stressful job, three cats, three budgies and a Goffins cockatoo.
This is life. I have had the divorce papers in my possession for months but I just don’t want to sit down, fill them out, and file them. Not because I want to save my marriage but because it’s one more thing to do. It sometimes feels like my choices boil down to “file for divorce” or “do the dishes.” Neither situation will resolve without me taking the lead.
I can’t even articulate the chaos swirling around my head right now, let alone the chaos in it.
I have two parakeets flying around my head. One still timidly standing in his cage singing, not ready to come out. Wink, the blue budgie, has decided to eat the molding above my bedroom door (luckily not the visible side but the top) and fling chunks to the floor.
The big dumb cat raced into my room to sleep on my bed, and he looks just as perplexed as Nala does that critters are flying over head.
I did learn parrots can be potty trained. If you’re interested in that: Parront Tip: Potty Training. I also learned parrots need a lot of sleep. I should probably move my supper time to 6:30 or 7 so I can spend time with her and then put her to bed before I eat.
Today, I crawled out of bed at 6:30ish. In part, because Nala already knows when I get up for work and plucked a feather and screeched. The night before I had a bout of insomnia, not sure if it was hormones, work-stress or home stress but I only got five hours sleep. So getting seven hours last night felt magnificent.
Nala pooped on me right away, and all I had on was a t-shirt and underpants. We went to make coffee, feed the cats, and I made her tea. She pooped on me again. Time for a clean t-shirt.
I stepped on the scale and saw that I am almost back to my pre-holiday weight. I’m happy with that. I’m in a comfortable range. Now I just need to get back into routine with my weights.
I read one page of Zazi in the Metro (which I bought more than a month ago). The book club meeting is Friday. So much for that new social activity.
Booboo keeps investigating Nala. Speaking of Nala, between her and the kitten (whom the teenager now firmly believes is a boy) I think I have to cancel the trip to DC I was planning next weekend. I’m really disappointed. I know the teen can stay home and care for the pets. But it’s too soon for me to leave Nala. And I can’t take her to be boarded because that’s where I got her and she’ll think she’s been abandoned.
And I also noticed she’s not banded. Most birds are registered and have a band on their ankle. Nala does not.
Angel Ackerman 