Routine Hodgepodge

 

Joyce asks the questions, and we provide the answers. See how others answered at From This Side of the Pond.

1. What are three words you would use to describe your 2025? 

Back to self. Well, actually, I wanted to say that I feel like I'm getting back to my old self, but that's more than 3 words. 😉

2. I ask this question every January, and I always get comments about how we shouldn't be banning words. This is fun and games so just play along : ) 

Every January 1st since 1976 Lake Superior University has published a list of words they'd like to see banished from the Queen's English. Words may be banished due to misuse, overuse, or just general uselessness (go here to read about how the words are chosen). Here's the list for 2026- 

67 • demure • cooked • massive • incentivize • full stop • perfect • gift/gifted  • my bad • reach out 

Which one (if any) do you use most often? Which one of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word you think should have made the list? 

I use "perfect" quite a bit; I've also found myself using "gift" quite a bit, as in, "That's definitely not my gift" when talking to a certain sister about her hospitality gift! 

67: What does that even mean? I've never heard anyone say it, although I hear it's popular among the high school crowd. Anyway, it's not a word; it's a number.

3. What are your nightly rituals? Is that different from your 'ideal' nightly ritual? If so what's your ideal? 

Remove contacts, take off eye makeup with makeup remover, take off foundation with micellar water, wash face, apply moisturizer and gel for rosacea, take medicine, brush my teeth, use the toilet (TMI?), and then I'm ready to get in bed. When I'm in bed, I'll read, set the timer on the tv to go off after an hour (although this usually wakes me up), or I'll listen to an app that has the Liturgy of the Hours (prayers that all religious-priests, brothers, monks, nuns-pray several times each day) on it.

Ideally, I'd love to not have to put the gel on my face, but...! Maybe Joyce didn't want such detailed ritual? 

4. January 6th is/was National Bean Day. Do you like beans? Which one is your favorite? Last thing you ate made with beans? 

I'm not a big cooked vegetable person. I'll eat them if they're in something else, like kidney beans or navy beans in chili. I do like red beans & rice; I made them last Monday. I'd say lima beans are my least favorite.

5. Are you easily embarrassed? Elaborate. 

When I was younger, I was very easily embarrassed. That didn't stop me from doing/saying stupid things, though. Sometimes, something would just slip out, and I couldn't stop it. As I've aged, I'm not easily embarrassed. So what if I say what I'm thinking? I just don't care! 

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Speaking of not caring, have you seen this woman on SM? She is a scream, and she is dead-on!

I wrote a post (on my travel blog) on part of my first solo road trip that I took last March. You can find it here.

{Friday Foto Friends} Winds, Sky, and a Recipe

Deb at Breathing in Grace hosts this linky most Fridays. I take it as an opportunity to let y'all know what's going on during the week in the Small Town.
Last Friday, I received a phone call from a tree service that I hired a month and a half ago. I almost called him on Thursday to ask if he was going to be able to trim our trees, because if he wasn't, we were going to have to pay someone else just a little more to get it done. We had a branch from the hickory tree outside of our living room window that was pushing against the window. The guy called on Friday and said that they were about 45 minutes from being finished with a job not far from me, so if I was going to be home, they would come by and clean the trees. I wasn't about to tell him 'no', so they came and conquered.

Trees being cleaned up in our yard.

It turned out to be an extremely good thing, because we had a horrendous storm on Saturday night. Big oak trees fell, and many fell on power lines and houses. I drove by my parents' house before Mass on Sunday, not expecting to see anything. I was in for a surprise:

Oak tree and landscaping fallen;
It reminded me of Wonder Works.

It was heartbreaking to see this tree on the ground. Daddy landscaped the area below it; he even won a beautification award for it & had an article in the newspaper. And, my brother spent a lot of time cleaning and weeding that area out the day before (I think it was). Luckily, it just missed the house. That is no exaggeration, either. 
None of us expected to spend our Memorial Day weekend cleaning up. A guy drove by on Sunday and asked if he could have the wood. He was told that if he sawed it, he could have it. He spent most of the day Sunday and Monday sawing and loading up the wood. As it turned out, he was the son of 1 (or more) of my sibling's classmates.  (Small town, remember?)

The great clean-up

Just to give an example of how close the tree came to the house:

The tree fell too close to the house for comfort.

And just how old the tree was:

The many rings on the tree

So, how did the landscaping and trunk get turned over?  Funny you should ask! CH got to play with his winch. It actually came in pretty handy to have a redneck for a husband! 😉

Our house was fine; we were only without power until Sunday around 2:00. I wasn't going to complain about not having internet knowing people were without power! The good thing was that it wasn't humid, or very hot over the weekend. 

The top of a tree fell on a power line just behind us & took out the power box.

CH had another chance to use his winch to pull down our next-door-neighbor's top of a tree that was stuck.

I shot these pictures one evening as I sat on the couch. These pictures all have the same settings. Every time I sat down and looked out, the colors changed.

It was amazing to see how the sky changed. The settings were not changed for each picture.

I tried a new recipe: Steak Burrito Bowl from Six Sisters' Stuff. This is definitely a keeper! This is one of the few times CH and YS have had no suggestions of add-ins or changes to make a dish taste better. YS did the staging for me.

Steak Burrito Bowl from Six Sisters' Stuff
A bottled Sangria paired very well with it!

After 5 years, the radio in my car was having issues. First it was the bluetooth. Kia said that there was an update that messed it up with Androids. Great. It wasn't under warranty any longer, and it was suggested that another radio (not a stock radio) would be less expensive than if the dealership put one in. Lately, my radio was just resetting by itself. Yeah, it was pretty aggravating! At CH's suggestion, I went to the place that he's used a couple of times and he hooked me up with a new radio.

New radio!

You don't realize how much you appreciate bluetooth until you don't have it. Not having a hands-free radio was not fun. AND, I got 3 free months of SiriusXM, which I had canceled a couple of months ago.
And...that's it. Finally! It's been a busy week, and next week is going to be just as busy, if not busier. I'm going to try to rest up this weekend and hopefully get a 2nd wind!

Fave Fives of the Week

I'm going to grace you with my Fave Fives of the Week, but I've decided not to link up with Susanne.

1.  Sisters' Weekend.  What a great weekend!  If you missed the post, you can read it here.  Here's a picture from a couple of years ago of all of us, minus one sister:

2.  Cool weather...finally.

3.  Taking a walk in the park with my sweetie.  It was really good to just take an impromptu short walk after dinner.  He didn't want to take the girls, but I knew if we didn't we'd still hear them in the park.  They were pretty well behaved!

4.  Dinner with MS & my oldest sister.  My sister was leaving Monday morning to get on the big bird to go home, and MS came home to do laundry and get his car checked out.  I wanted to her to see how big YS had gotten over the past year or so...he's quite a giant!  


5.  A new youtube video to laugh at.  I saw it while I was reading Random Dozens.  If you haven't ever visited The Hays Crew, take a few minutes to visit...she is a hoot!

Okay,  I lied!  I have a couple more:

I couldn't leave out the last day of school before Fall Break!  WOO-HOO!

AND, I have the best bloggie friends EVER.  Thanks to all of y'all that left a comment yesterday to let me know that it's okay not to follow people who are following me, and that my family and house should come first!  Y'all are the BEST!