Progress
Drywall in the basement is up, taped, mudded, and primed; it just needs to be painted. The kitchen floor has been replaced. It's beautiful! It was a bit of a project to clear the CONTENTS of the kitchen out so that the floor COULD be replaced, but with the invaluable help of pfc_rat we reorganized, culled, and condensed until (wonder of wonders) only things that BELONGED in the kitchen needed to be moved BACK into the kitchen once the work was done!
The sheer Awesome of the new kitchen floor seems to have inspired My Sweetie. He has apparently tired of the "delightful" irony of a health inspector with a disastrous kitchen, and we're actually keeping up with things like dishes and even wiping down counters and the stovetop occasionally. This is progress.
In other news, I got my annual nasty cold just in time for Christmas. On Christmas Eve at my parents' place, I wasn't allowed anywhere near my 3-month-old niece, because 3 months old is NOT a good time for a little girl to get her very first throat infection. Then, last night (which was our third Christmas Dinner in a row!) with My Sweetie's Aunt, Uncle and Gramma, as well as The Mother-in-Law and The Brother-Creature, I was supposed to sing after dinner, and I really couldn't. I managed one verse of Silent Night in a very low key, and discovered that while my lower and mid ranges are both fairly usable, the gap between them has expanded. OMG frustration!
In spite of everything else that was going on, I did get some Christmas baking done during the week. I tried three brand-new recipes, none of which required a rolling pin and cookie cutters, because counter space is still sadly restricted in my kitchen, and also my rolling pin sucked (I got a new one from Mom for Christmas, but that's another story...) so I made butter tart squares, chocolate overdose cookies (which are chocolate cookies with chunks of dark, milk and white chocolate in them) and chocolate chunk craisin cookies (the recipe originally used sour cherries, but craisins were what I had on hand, so I used them instead.) All of the recipes are ones I would make again, and there are still three others that I want to try and already have most of the ingredients for.
So, all in all, and sickness aside, it was a pretty good Christmas.
The sheer Awesome of the new kitchen floor seems to have inspired My Sweetie. He has apparently tired of the "delightful" irony of a health inspector with a disastrous kitchen, and we're actually keeping up with things like dishes and even wiping down counters and the stovetop occasionally. This is progress.
In other news, I got my annual nasty cold just in time for Christmas. On Christmas Eve at my parents' place, I wasn't allowed anywhere near my 3-month-old niece, because 3 months old is NOT a good time for a little girl to get her very first throat infection. Then, last night (which was our third Christmas Dinner in a row!) with My Sweetie's Aunt, Uncle and Gramma, as well as The Mother-in-Law and The Brother-Creature, I was supposed to sing after dinner, and I really couldn't. I managed one verse of Silent Night in a very low key, and discovered that while my lower and mid ranges are both fairly usable, the gap between them has expanded. OMG frustration!
In spite of everything else that was going on, I did get some Christmas baking done during the week. I tried three brand-new recipes, none of which required a rolling pin and cookie cutters, because counter space is still sadly restricted in my kitchen, and also my rolling pin sucked (I got a new one from Mom for Christmas, but that's another story...) so I made butter tart squares, chocolate overdose cookies (which are chocolate cookies with chunks of dark, milk and white chocolate in them) and chocolate chunk craisin cookies (the recipe originally used sour cherries, but craisins were what I had on hand, so I used them instead.) All of the recipes are ones I would make again, and there are still three others that I want to try and already have most of the ingredients for.
So, all in all, and sickness aside, it was a pretty good Christmas.