Hoo boy. Well it's been a while. I started some other posts but I got to rambling and never finished and posted them. Now I'm so behind I'm just going to start over.

So I finished painting the cabinets (the cabinet bodies, anyway - the doors are still stacked in the garage, haha). The color came out really nice and I do like it. But I will never paint cabinets again. What a pain.

Then spouse's brother visited for about a week and stayed with us in our guestroom. We spent a lot of time with the family in moose pass and kenai and it was exhausting. Just a lot of mental illness on parade. If I start describing I'll run out of energy and never post. I met the oldest brother's girlfriend he met online (she lives in North Carolina) and actually she's really nice and competent and smart and cooperative and we get along pretty well. I wasn't sure about her at first, but she visited the parents in moose pass with us and survived and she seems pretty savvy about their situation. And she doesn't have kids of her own. I don't mind the mommy vibe, I get kids are a big deal, but dang is it nice to have someone to talk to who doesn't want to just tell parenting stories! She is a professional and has a lot of linkedin followers (visiting BIL looked her up and was impressed because visiting BIL cares about linkedin), and she comes off a little bit corpo-basic, but I am so excited to have some competent, smart, sane female energy in the local family, I really don't care. So excited. I'm trying really hard to make her feel welcome out of a selfish desire to have someone to flock with when we do family stuff. We exchanged numbers and I floated the idea of putting together a real family christmas gathering (last year was so depressing!!) since she'll be visiting over the holidays. She was all for it and we've been collaborating on the plans and it's going really well.

Everyone who shows up to the party ought to have a good time. But the younger sister in Kenai has already bowed out (kinda frustrating - she was complaining she doesn't see the family because she's allergic to chickens and they now raise chickens so she can only see them when they visit her, which isn't often ... so I felt sympathetic and took pains to plan a party that would accommodate her health conditions ... and she's choosing not to come, womp womp). I'm getting the vibe that the moose pass crowd may not make it either. I knew going into this it's probably 50/50 odds that they bail at the last minute, no matter how excited they claim to be, because ultimately a christmas party they don't plan is vaguely threatening to their own perception of themselves as Grand High Matriarch/Patriarch Who Controls All. L, the girlfriend, is aware of this too. She's no dummy.

Ultimately actions speak louder than words and the people who come will be the ones that want to be there. Perhaps next year I will not have to make so much effort to accommodate the moose pass/kenai family - if it causes a big stink I can say, look, last year we made all this effort and you didn't show up. I think they don't want to change this tradition where we trundle 2 hours to moose pass out of guilt and sit there, captive, while they yammer crazy things at us for 3-4 hours in their dark little rathole of a house. Why would they want to mess with that sweet setup, where they don't lift a finger to travel or make food or offer any shred of hospitality? Also they get to complain about the ones that don't visit. So easy for them. Ugh.

Ya, so, I found an inexpensive space to rent in Girdwood (so the moose pass/kenai folks do not have to drive all the way to anchorage, hated city of commie liberals) and we're doing a potluck. L and BIL are handling the main entree(s) since they live just around the corner from the rental space. I've been putting together table decor. We've got a fun craft activity planned, and some puzzles. We made a christmas playlist. Nothing super fancy, but enough effort to look nice and have the ingredients of a good time.

October went really fast and I don't even remember what went on. I made ghost windsocks. We got fewer trick or treaters than last year. Then I got sick early November with a respiratory bug that is making the rounds. I got rice crispy lungs - I have never had rice crispy lungs. Not fun. Then it progressed into a lingering cough and I'd feel better and think I was getting over it, and it would boomerang right back and I'd spend the next day in bed sleeping off the nyquil. Didn't help that we got two big snowstorms within 3-4 days of each other, and I had to go out in the cold air to shovel. Yes, we got the snowblower, but it snowed about a foot and a half the first storm and it was too deep and wet for the snowblower to get on the first pass. We had to shovel the top of the snow so the blower could get the rest. Bought a snowblower, still gotta shovel. Bad luck Brian.

So I was mostly sick for november. There were dental appointments (got some metal fillings removed and replaced with composite, nothing major), there was thanksgiving. Now it's December.

Oh yeah. I got obsessed with stuffing flavored bread around thanksgiving. Like normally you take bread and make stuffing, but what if the bread was a loaf of stuffing? Because then you make turkey sandwiches with the stuffing bread (and possibly have grilled stuffing bread turkey cheese sandwiches with tomato soup). I found a recipe and tried it, and I'm not much of a breadmaker, but it came out pretty great. BUT one of our gamer friends said he saw a video where people put stuffing in a waffle maker and made STUFFING WAFFLES. This blew my mind. Alas, I could not get the waffle maker plates for our electric griddle in time for this thanksgiving. But I have them now, and eventually there will be stuffing waffles. Stuffing waffle turkey sandwiches. Doesn't that sound amazing? I think so. I'm very excited to try.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/thanksgiving-stuffing-loaf-recipe

I'd leave the cornmeal out or sub it with whole wheat flour. Someone in the comments says it makes the bread "gritty" and they are right.

In October, before I got sick, I was doing a pretty good job starting a half-assed bullet journal to kickstart some good habits. I found an app for a shared to-do list between spouse and I, so we can have a shared grocery list and chore list. We're using ticktick, which I like because 1) you can get it off aurora store and 2) the free version lets you share lists and 3) it has a nice calendar view and you can schedule reminders and such. I'd like to upgrade to the paid version. It seems to work well. I wish I could say that spouse is doing some chores without my needing to prompt him, but it's just an app, not wizard magic.

We got the big snowstorms and then last week it warmed up above freezing for several days, so the snow was sliding off our metal roof and all over the back porch. I kept telling spouse, we need to shovel that snow before it gets cold again. He was on vacation last week, so he was home and mostly in the office playing computer games and working on his RPG stuff. I wasn't up his butt about it because it seemed like the temps were still warm. I just mentioned it every day. Then the last day of the warm weather was colder than expected, and I knew it was our last chance. Hey, we really need to shovel that snow today. I had to harass him and really put my foot down. Why don't I shovel the snow? Because I'm already doing the cooking and the dishwashing and trying to get stuff cleaned up. I'm doing chores all fucking day. I don't get to sit there playing computer games with someone making my meals and bringing me drinks. Finally he goes out there to shovel and it was too cold, the snow had set up. "I don't think I can shovel the porch," he says. I must have looked pissed. I asked him to at least clear a path in front of the patio door. He ended up getting the pickaxe and using that to break up the snow and clear the whole porch.

"Why do I have to get angry to make you pay attention?" I asked him. "I don't want to be angry. But if I'm nice, you ignore me. You are training me to be angry."

I thought the ticktick app would help because it's a list of things that need doing, right in his pocket. Easy peasy, no "nagging". Just pick one at his leisure, do it, mark it off, feel accomplished for the day, go play video games. But he won't look at it without me harassing him to look at it, so I may as well be back to handing him scribbled to-do lists. Why is this so hard.

Oh yeah, and then the night before his squad holiday party, he tells me it's a potluck and we need to bring a dish. So fuck whatever I wanted to do on saturday, I get to spend 3 hours cooking something nice enough that his coworkers will be impressed. While he sits in the office playing computer games. I think he felt guilty, tho, when I was running late trying to do my hair and makeup and he knew darn well I'd been busy all day.

I adore spouse, I really do. But I am going to have to put the screws to him to get him to do better. I cannot do all the cooking and cleaning and house chore stuff and have the extra vim to prepare myself to hunt for a tattoo apprenticeship. Nevermind what happens when I get the apprenticeship and it eats my life.

Anyway, I'm irritated about that. November completely derailed me, what with being sick and the snowstorms, and I feel so very behind. The limited winter daylight is not helping.

On the upside, I'm doing good with abstaining from caffeine and I do feel better, health wise. My wonky shoulder is healed. I'm taking my vitamins.

I'm clearing the worktables in the project area and the workspace in the garage so I can start on christmas party craft stuff. I got the bright idea to make table runners out of brown paper grocery bags, stenciled with a green leafy mistletoe-ish branch design. So I need to cut the stencil and open up the bags and glue them together to make the runners. They won't give you plastic bags in the grocery store anymore (RIP my free kitty poop bags), and they charge you 10 cents for the brown paper bags, so I've kept a stack of them out of some obsessive poverty hoarding need to get my money's worth. I keep trying to think of crafty ways to use the brown paper. My other genius idea is to use all the glass jars and bottles I've been saving as drink glasses and table centerpieces. I have over a year and half's worth of glass jars sitting in the garage (well over a hundred, probably) and I have that glass bottle cutter. Have I actually used the glass bottle cutter yet? NO. So I'd better get busy with that because I've no idea how difficult it is to cut the glass and then sand down the rim. I've accepted we might be buying plastic cups at the last minute, lolololol.

There's 10 tables and I'm trying to keep decorating costs to $5-7 or so per table. I've been collecting sheets from the thrift stores for tablecloths ($2-4 each) - they're assorted shades of cream and tan, but it's fine. The brown paper table runners are super cheap, I'm cutting the stencil myself so I only have to buy the stenciling paint. The centerpieces are just a recycled jar with a $1 battery operated string light inside, some green silk chiffon fabric ribbon in a bow and some candy in the jar to hide the battery pack. Plus perhaps some fresh spruce sprigs pruned from the park and wired in a little wreath shape, if I have time. Like $2-3 in costs per centerpiece. I've got the disposable plastic plates (the nice ones from costco) & compostable utensils and green paper napkins (I sprang for the fabric-like ones). I've got the glass jars for cups, just have to cut them.

It should look presentable enough, on a budget. Once again, I have made a lot of work for myself. Ain't it just the way.