Jen Plays Ukulele

 So this is Christmas... And it was pretty good, I have to say. Despite the "weird" heavy energy that a lot of us are feeling (even my kid and his cousins noticed it), we had a lovely, laid-back day with lots of food and Christmas movies.  My son was up until almost 2 a.m., and I figured he'd be sleeping in, but he was awake by 8:30 and we had potato chip omelettes  (they didn't come out quite as good as the video), and then we opened presents.  I put out a bunch of the cookies and baked goods me and my husband made (it's amazing what you can do when you're unemployed and living in Greeland) and then we had my father in law over for a meal of turkey and stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce and all the fixings.  Tucker tried to convince us all that he was having a blue Christmas and needed another peanut butter dog treat. (It worked.) After dinner, we played around with the space scene projecter my son got for Christmas, and it was spectacular.  There are s...

 Holy shit, Christmas is one week from today. We've got the tree up, I've got all my ingredients for baking ready to go in the kitchen, got some giant containers for storing all the cookies and stuff I'm gonna bake... But I haven't really been playing many Christmas tunes this year and I haven't wrapped a single present yet. Maybe it's because Mercury is in retrograde this year, but I'm having some trouble finding that Christmas spirit that Buddy the Elf talks about. Maybe I need to get out my Christmas tunes today and do a little bit of that.  Meanwhile, I have a lot of stuff to do this week. Cleaning up the dining room and getting rid of things that have been cluttering up my house and my life for the last 8 years is a good start. I also want to bake this week, all of the good things that I usually bake for Christmas and a few new things.  *************************************************************** Mercury retrograde is retrograding HARD around here si...

 Well, shit. Another week goes by, and I only wrote one blog last week. C'est la vie. To be fair, I was busy doing stuff. And we had a great weekend: we took my father in law to get a Christmas tree, and then we decorated the tree and had yummy comfort food for dinner, so it was a nice time.  Yesterday was a bit of a shitshow, with a bad winter storm that didn't hit us as hard as it hit points west and north, but still enough to fuck up the roads in the early morning. And due to general transportation fuckups (thank you, shadow of Mercury Rx), it turned into a mental health stay-home day for my son. So we made the best of things and took care of our chickens and had truffle mac and cheese for lunch and baked 5 dozen mocha Russian tea cakes for his school fund raiser next week.  BUT one of the best things that happened was my giveaway prize arrived from Sheri Kurdakul , aka The Glitter Witch, arrived in the mail!  I signed up for her email newsletter and won this fabu...

 Well, yikes. These last couple of weeks have been...interesting.  Thanksgiving was kind of a bust, as I was sick with whatever upper respiratory crud my husband and son came down with, and then I spent the day after Thanksgiving in the ER to get my heart palpitations checked after the provider at the local urgent care read my EKG wrong and told me I needed to be "evaluated immediately". So that was fun.  As my body lurches towards being officially post-menopausal (I'm a third of the way there as of yesterday), I'm suddenly feeling confronted with all manner of musings on mortality. Today is an odd day, with overcast skies and damp ground (should be covered in snow in the Adirondacks at this time of year), and still wondering what to do with my life. I've been stuck in this same place for so long, I'm starting to wonder what would be out there for me if/when I ever manage to get back outside again. The yoga studios where I taught are all gone. I don't have...