Being Even More Lazy Than Usual

Actually, my morning yesterday didn't start out being extra lazy but the day did end up that way. Keith had gone out on an overnight dogcatch, meaning they had to go relieve a crew stuck on a siding somewhere. He said that the first 5 hours of the shift were spent still stuck on that same siding. Anyway, he was due home sometime in the morning, so I wanted to get the noisy vacuuming type cleaning out of the way before he got into bed for the afternoon. I also did numerous loads of laundry.

I've been having this annoying leg pain for weeks now, just a dull ache in my right leg, not enough to get really concerned about or rush to the doctor (which I will do if this keeps up much longer) but enough to where it makes me irritable and makes it hard to get to sleep sometimes. I've tried the usual pain meds, plain old aspirin seeming to work the best, but if I sit too long, it hurts, if I stand too long, it hurts, and running a few errands on the bike the other day seemed to make it hurt even more. I've been looking online for possible causes or remedies but nothing I've found seems to fit this specific ache. I did read yesterday to try putting your leg up as much as possible, so that's what I did. I reclined the couch and put a throw pillow under the achy leg and it did seem to help quite a bit. But, what to do while resting with your leg up on the couch? I didn't want to watch a movie, Keith being asleep all afternoon and evening and me not wanting to disturb him, so I read. I had just gotten a couple of books in the mail from one of those used booksellers on Amazon, where the book is only a penny but the shipping is $3.99, so the books are basically four bucks each, and ended up reading both of those books. And then starting on another one. I don't normally spend $4.00 on a used book but had been searching for these particular books at my favorite used bookstores and not finding them for quite some time now. Easier to just pay a little more and have them delivered when it's something specific.

So, lots of couch time yesterday but the house was cleaned first and I even did some cooking. We wanted to go to lunch last week, something that Keith's higher paying job makes possible now, and we wanted to go someplace a little different so we chose California Pizza Kitchen, someplace that I had actually never been to before. It's a really nice restaurant but most of the menu is a little too 'fancy' for picky eater me, and also way too carb laden. I chose the bbq chicken salad and Keith had some sort of pasta with shrimp. The salad was good, but the prices seemed rather, well, pricey, so I don't think we'll be going there again. Forty bucks for lunch seems about twenty bucks too high as far as I'm concerned. If I want carb laden pizza for lunch I think I will just stick with Cubbies where you can get a huge, and I mean HUGE slice of pizza and a drink for $4.00 on weekdays. Anyway, I decided to try and recreate the salad at home. Not too difficult, you just need some lettuce, corn, black beans, jicama, chicken, dressing, and bbq sauce. I used ranch dressing which didn't taste quite like the dressing at Pizza Kitchen and I don't really like ranch all that much, so I was a little disappointed in my homemade salad, but with further research I may be able to find their dressing recipe and try it again. This was my version.

I've found the best bottled bbq sauce ever, even though it is really expensive, it is well worth the price. It's called Noh Hawaiian and it is DELICIOUS! I use it a lot, sometimes just microwaving a chicken breast for lunch and warming up some sauce to put on it.

I've never tried the spicy version because I prefer sweet to spicy. Like I said, it's expensive, but well worth it.

Bear was lazy yesterday, too, I found her half in and half out of one of the cat tower hideaways.

She does have quite the rotund little body, doesn't she?

Mimi in the Dropcloth and Another Rather Dull Week

It's been a rather boring week around here. In between looking at YouTube videos, Keith has been slowly, oh so slowly, working on the kitchen. I was trying to remember how many years ago he started on the kitchen, moving the island and building the shelves, then putting in the floor, and it has to be at least 5 or 6 years since the beginning. Why didn't the other half ever get finished in all this time? Not enough nagging at him?

I don't know but I sure hope it's finished by the end of this weekend, I'd really like to have some doors back on my laundry closet so I don't have to look at the washer and dryer all the time anymore. You get used to no doors on the laundry closet, but it's kind of embarrassing to keep explaining to people who come in the house, year after year, that it's a work in progress. Year after year after year.

So, this morning Mimi found that the dropcloth Keith has been using while painting was perfectly arranged to make a little bed for her. Mimi, the queen of laying on anything that is laying anywhere. Clothes, vacuum cleaner cords, towels on the counter, papers on the counter. Anything laying anywhere demands to be sat upon in her world.

It's been a boring week as I might have already said. We've watched a couple of movies from the Red Box, catching up on all the movies we said we'd go see at the theater and then never did. We saw Hugo last weekend, and while it was an enjoyable movie, I kept wondering why people who lived in Paris kept talking with English accents.

I've read 5 or 6 books this week along with catching up on movies. I had gotten a book at the cheap Goodwill bookstore before the holidays and loved the author, so after Christmas I spent my gift money on Amazon finding all the other books by the same woman, got them in the past few weeks, and have read every single one of them. I love when I find a good book and then find that every single other book by that person is just as good. But it's kind of disappointing when I've finished reading them all and there are no more.

I've got stacks and stacks of Goodwill books in the bedroom, waiting to be read, and one of the best things about buying cheap books is that if you don't like the book all that much and it's not really luring you in and you don't really care what happens to the characters, you don't feel guilty about spending a bunch of money on a book that you don't really want to read. It's less than a cup of coffee, so you just toss the unfinished book into a bag and then give it back to Goodwill for another recycle.

Business is excruciatingly slow right now, so I don't feel like working on anything new. I did my books for the year and really didn't make any money at all, so it looks like my little business will be relegated to hobby status.

Anyway, not much going on around here but if the kitchen does get finished, pictures of that to come.