Bagging Over Wrapping

Lew and I made the decision to put Christmas gifts in bags this year instead of wrapping anything. Today I completed the task in much less time than it has taken us in the past. (Bagging > Wrapping! Hands down!)

 A brief update on Aunt Debbie: She is receiving palliative care. Please pray she will be comfortable and have peace. Thank you. 💗

A Cat-Proof Solution

Lew and I finished decorating our "tree" today! It was a task that spanned several days.

I purchased the triangle shelf, light, and garland on Amazon. 

I strung up the garland on a peg board that we had attached to the wall several years ago. ("Strung up" = used paper clips!)

Lew installed the triangle shelf and light. He said it was a tougher project than it may appear to be.

The tree skirt is exactly that — a tree skirt that we already had. Lew suggested I cut it, but I didn't want to. I like the 3-D appearance.

I broke only two, inconsequential ornaments.

The light isn't on in the picture, but imagine a colored light fading into another color... and another... and another.

Not pictured: A bunch of ornaments hanging from the beam in our living room! 🎄

Sunday Encouragement

Our pastor has been preaching through the book of Colossians. Two more weeks to go after today!

The main topic of today's passage was prayer, which reminded of the best encouragement I've heard regarding prayer. (Can't remember where I heard it.)

Many people, myself included, struggle with staying focused while praying. Here's the encouragement:

Pray until you pray.

Have a blessed week! 

It Took Me a Mere 15 Years

What took me 15 years?

See the photo below. It is the inside of our dishwasher door, where the silverware is stored for washing.

The purple "lattice" on the right is how I ran the dishwasher for 15 years. The silverware would bunch together in the compartments. 

The other day I figured out the "lattice" can be flipped down to keep the silverware from touching each other! (That is a fork in the left-hand side.) 

It seems so obvious now, and I honestly don't know why I didn't figure this out a long time ago. Cue the eye-roll emoji.... And I'm pretty sure I can hear my sister Kim laughing all the way from Illinois!

🙄

A Puzzling Suggestion

I ordered seven puzzles for Mom from the Cobble Hill Puzzle Company.  All seven are cardboard "tray puzzles" which are really great for Mom.

Cobble Hill's tray puzzles are very clever. The puzzle picture is printed in black & white on the tray itself, so the puzzle pieces can be matched up to the picture. These puzzles have 35 pieces — usually too many pieces for Mom. But because of the picture, Mom is able to handle these puzzles. She really enjoys doing them.

I learned of Cobble Hill when I got one of their tray puzzles for free through my town's "Buy Nothing" Facebook group. Mom always picks this puzzle first when I give her a choice of what to do. As Dad mentioned a few days ago, we need some new puzzles for Mom... so I went to Cobble Hill's website and submitted my order. (I had actually done this before Dad mentioned it!)

The puzzles arrived and they are wonderful. So as not to overwhelm Mom with too many new ones at once, I brought her the first new puzzle today. After I reminded her of how the puzzle worked ("match the puzzle piece to the picture underneath"), I pretty much left her to do it on her own. I helped out a couple times, but she did a great job overall. I'm looking forward to bringing the next new puzzle to her in a couple days.

I am thankful to have learned about the Cobble Hill Puzzle Company. They do have other kinds of jigsaw puzzles — not just tray — so I encourage you to check them out if you enjoy puzzling!

🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩

Shampoo Tip

Today's post is a public service announcement:

Shampoo should go in your hair only, not in your eyes.

I believe it says something of this sort on the bottle, too, but it is important to reiterate this warning. Getting shampoo in your eye is pure torture.

Trust me on this.

P.S. Lew suggested I start using a "no more tears" shampoo.

Summary Saturday

Zack's college football team, the U.Maine Black Bears, pulled out a win today! In the final minutes of the game, they had to make a defensive stop and then get a couple first downs themselves to seal the victory. The final score: 31-26.  Congratulations, Black Bears!

Lew and I went to a couple football games this morning. First up was Adam's flag football game. That was followed by Eli's football game (full pads and helmets). Both teams came up short, but they were fun to watch. Eli even scored two touchdowns!

I've been going to visit Mom every day for an hour or two. Our visits have the same routine — Ensure, puzzles, Spot It, crossword puzzle clues, TV, etc. — but that's okay. We enjoy just being together.

My big discovery of the week: I have a nightgown that I don't want to remove the tag from (long story), but the tag bothers my neck a bit. For some reason, it felt fine this week. And that reason was I WAS WEARING IT INSIDE-OUT! Ha ha! I was going to fix it, but then I realized it didn't matter since I'm just wearing it to sleep in. Too bad we couldn't do this with all of our clothing.  Perhaps I could start a fashion trend. After all, I have been on the cutting edge of fashion most of my life. (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!)

Dusting Doesn't Have To Be A Chore

I've been reading a book of essays about books. One of the essays is about how to care for your books. The suggestion is to not dust books on your bookshelves. Instead carefully dust a single book only when you remove it from the shelf to read or look at.

I have always applied this same suggestion to everything. The dust is just going to come back anyway, so why even bother!

😉😏

I Hate Wearing a Mask

School started today. On my way to work, I saw children waiting for their bus. The children were all wearing masks, which made me sad for them.

I have been wearing a cloth mask, but I ditched it today. I will keep another cloth mask in my purse (just to be ready if I unexpectedly need one), but otherwise I am going to wear disposable masks. The H.R. gal at work told me there is something psychologically pleasing about throwing the mask in the garbage. I have to agree.

Yes, I am so very tired of the whole mask thing.

Remember Remedy

When I'm not sitting at my computer, I think of many great ideas for this blog. But I forget these ideas by the time I'm actually ready to type a post.

This problem is easily remedied by the following tip (an old standard): WRITE IT DOWN!

I am happy to report that I just started a new list on my phone. The list is called "Blog Post Ideas." Not a real snazzy title, but it gets the job done.

Thanks for reading Mainely Tracy!

Reading

I'm not sure how many of my blog readers pay attention to my Reading List links (see right-hand side of page). I keep updating the Reading List because it gives me a sense of how well I'm getting through my piles of books. By "piles" I mean both physical books and electronic books.

I recently read an article suggesting the best way to get through a lot of books is to be reading several different types at the same time. For example, a heavy-duty non-fiction book for when you can concentrate and a cozy mystery for late-night reading. (I certainly can't read a "heavy-duty" book at the end of the day!) This article didn't change my reading habits, because I already do this.

I am currently reading five books: a novel, a memoir, a book of essays, a theology book, and a book on the history of codes and ciphers. These books are in addition to my daily Bible reading and devotionals.

I will not finish all five of these books at the same time, of course. Novels tend to go quickly, as do memoirs. Theology books take a little longer. The book of essays is when I want to fit it in. The codes/ciphers book may take me years (not really, but it is quite long and "heavy-duty").

When I finish the novel, I'll find another one to begin reading. Same for the memoir, the theology book, and so on.

My encouragement to you for 2020: Read some books! 

📚🔖📖🔖📕🔖📘🔖📙🔖📗🔖📖🔖📚

Today's Observations

Flag football is more fun to watch than tee-ball. There is more action and it is faster moving.

 

Our cat Marilyn is an escape artist. She dashed outside again today, right under our noses. She was safely recovered by Lew.

 

Although Josh's football team lost again today, they did score a few touchdowns. We will continue rooting for them in the weeks ahead. Go Mariners!

 

Zack's team did win today. We are enjoying Black Bears football. So far we have figured out how to watch every game from the comfort of my parents' living room. (The "figuring out" part has been an adventure. Three different providers so far over the first four games.)

 

When buying reserved seats online for the movie theater, it can be confusing which row is the front of the theater and which row is the back. Fortunately you can exchange the front-row seats you inadvertently bought as long as there are other seats still available.

 

Warm chocolate chip cookies are yummy!

An Alphabet "Soup-er" Idea

My father was on the phone with Kim last night. He put her on the speaker when I went over with Marilyn to say "nite-nite." Dad, Kim, and I had a brief chat about this blog! Kim checks it every day, so I guess I really do need to make a better effort to write more often. See, Kim, you are inspiring me!

It is difficult to come up with topics every day, though. Very difficult. So tonight I will list an idea for every letter of the alphabet. I will even try to come up with things I don't usually write about. (For example, I will not write "Cats" or "Chocolate" under C!) Then if I get stumped for topics in the days ahead, I will look back to this list and write about the next thing.

It sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? Maybe I will even DO IT!

Alphabet
Bread
Cords
Dragon
Elastic
Flag
Garage
Helicopter
Industry
Joke
Kilometer
Limousine
Memory
No
Omit
Parade
Quietness
Royalty
Sunglasses
Tortoise
Umbrella
Voting
Wiggle
Xerox
Young
Zoom

How to Watch Television

Our cable TV provider (Spectrum) went 100% digital on November 27. Any TV without a cable box will no longer work.

Farewell, kitchen TV!  Farewell, exercise room TV!  Farewell, guest room TV!  We do not wish to pay the cable company more money to watch TV on you.

But we didn't want to give up that easy.... A google search led us to a wonderful, inexpensive solution: the Roku Express.

Roku has a Spectrum app, and this app allows us to watch even more channels on our non-cable-box TV sets than we were able to watch before. Go figure.

Welcome back, kitchen TV!  Welcome back, exercise room TV!  Welcome back, guest room TV! You will continue to serve us well.

On the Job

Today's tip: Have fun at work!

Ba-na-na-NAAA!

I love bags of all kinds, so imagine how excited I was when my father gave us a banana bag!

Once the bananas are secure in the bag, the bag gets stored in the refrigerator.

The bananas stay ripe longer — plus, a cold banana is delicious!

YES! We have some bananas!

A Complication

When I woke up yesterday (Sunday) morning I felt like I had forgotten something. It didn't take long for it to occur to me: Saturday's blog post! Lew and I had talked about him writing one, and then we both completely forgot all about it.

In our defense, we have had quite a lot going on recently. We don't lead complicated lives; but when complications arise for us, they all come at once.

Do you want to hear about one of our complications? Then read on....

When I came down to breakfast this morning, Lew ushered me into the kitchen and asked, "Breakfast for one?"

And why couldn't I eat at our dining room table? It's because our dining room looked like this (and still does at the moment):

And why does our dining room currently look like this? It's because our living room currently looks like this:

And why does our living room look like this? It's because new vinyl flooring got installed today (that long piece of cardboard is protecting a seam while the glue dries).

But, you may ask, didn't we just get a new floor put down about three months ago?

Why, yes. Yes, we did.

We really liked our three-month old floor (in fact, the new vinyl is the same product), but when we started having trouble with it lifting and bulging and tearing... well, we knew something was wrong.

For all of you aspiring floor contractors out there: When installing a product you've never installed before, please make sure you know exactly how you're supposed to install it. For example, if the product is supposed to be glued to the sub-floor, then don't just merely set it on top of the sub-floor and call it good. If you neglect to glue it, then it will lift and bulge and tear.

Tracy's Tax Tip

I believe I saw that the IRS is now processing 2016 income tax returns.

Once I have all of our information, I will be filing our return. I have already purchased my tax preparation software.

I am not counting on receiving refunds. Although we usually do receive federal and state refunds, these are never part of my mental budgeting process.

Over the past few weeks, I have talked with several people who said they are going to pay off certain obligations when they get their taxes back.

Huh?

What if they end up having to pay in? Sometimes there are surprises, unless someone is a tax planning guru.

My advice is to file early in case you have to come up with some cash by April 15th.  And if you end up with refunds, then you'll get your money back that much sooner.

Best wishes.

OHIO

I love to stay organized. When I get something I need to act on (like a bill), I try to take care of it right away.

But — alas — it's not always possible to stay caught up.

My desk at home has been covered with paperwork for the past two or three weeks. But over the weekend I made a great dent in the piles. And last night I finished clearing the desk off!

So I am now going to stay caught up as I go. A friend told me this is the "OHIO" method.

Only Handle It Once.

Smile!

Cookies, Cocoa, and Cats

Tonight was our 5th Annual Christmas Cookie & Cocoa Night with Pastor Dave and his family. Pastor Dave's parents, sister, and niece are here from Indianapolis, so they came over, too — a bonus!

The secret to a successful Christmas Cookie & Cocoa Night is to keep it simple:

The other secret is to be sensitive to how your guests feel about your pets. If your guests enjoy watching your cat play with a plastic frog on the dining room table, then let your cat play with a plastic frog on the dining room table.

Jerry was the life of the party. (Marilyn got a lot of attention, too.)

The evening was a success!  I think we'll do it again next year.  :)