Shelly's Spiels

I recently received an email from my former roommate at the rehab center telling me about some problems she's been having to deal with and feeling guilty about not working on her goals and thus being a bad accountability partner.  I haven't answered her yet, but when I do, I'm not only going to have to 'fess up to my own stagnation, but also tell her to embrace what she perceives as her shortcomings and use them to motivate her to take steps forward.  I have to remember that advice as well. I have no concrete reasons for not following through with what I've laid out to do, but I can't deny that I'm feeling really down lately.  There has been zero progress by Chris around the house, other than putting all of my Philosophy products on a bathroom rack, thus I'm still looking around at a mess.  He hasn't touched my office, so I still have just this spot in the house; even if I were compelled to work at the dining room table I couldn't because it'...

...but I'm not going to beat myself up about it.  (Yet another 2026 affirmation!)  It's been a little bit of a challenging week, but not for any specific reason.  I know a big part of it is laziness, and more is a result of frustration, and of course having busy and full days of work each day doesn't help.   I'm frustrated because pretty much nothing has gotten done around the house, and the issue is that I'm waiting on Chris for most, if not all of it.  I've asked a couple of times what I can do to move things along, and he's put me off every time because he's made the messes and needs to do organization to take care of it.  This is leading to a lot of disappointment on my end, and I'm fucking tired of nagging him but he makes promises every single day and then defaults on them.  I tried to circumvent this by sitting him down early afternoon Friday to make a plan for the weekend, and explained to him how depressing it is for me to sit here and lo...

When I'm too tired to think of anything creative for my blog post titles it's just going to be the date...lol It's been a couple of days... work has swelled again, especially today but I'm consoling myself by taking tomorrow off.  Everyone else took time off during the holidays but me, this is my time.  Never mind that in order to do that, I had to pull a 13 hour day today to get everything done I needed to get done, and when I was finally done at 9pm, THAT is when Chris decided to be productive and come out here dragging boxes of games and asking which should stay up here and which go in the basement... oy.  I love that he had a split second flare up when I answered him tiredly; had he not flipped his script I would have woken up REAL quickly and let him have it. Cooking wise, I still am on my home-cooked meal streak.  Yesterday I baked off what turned out to be a huge package of chicken breasts and cut them up, then divided the meat into two bowls.  I even had...

Everyone was back at work today and the stress levels raised in response.  But all is good. We got groceries today and took time to put everything away properly, which felt good.  I also cooked dinner tonight - homemade sloppy joes served open faced on Texas toast.  I also used the extra ground beef and made myself some lunch for the next day or two.  We also had salads and good conversation.  Chris was super helpful shlepping stuff to and from the kitchen to the dining room (it sucks not having a kitchen table) so that was great too.  I haven't decided if I'm going to make hamburgers tomorrow or something with the chicken; probably the latter but not sure what. Nothing super exciting to report, I just wanted to document a little.  I just remembered I have to update my pantry inventory with today's groceries and then I think I may read for a while. xoxo Shelly

No, not a terrible New Kids on the Block song, but what I'm experiencing right now trying to get things accomplished and move forward.   I cooked the other day for the first time in a couple of weeks, but then Saturday we did so much work in the kitchen that I was done and we got takeout which, granted, we ate from for a couple of meals.  I didn't make the optional brownies, I didn't cook hamburgers, and other than a couple of chapters, I haven't read a lot more of my book or watched another movie.  But this year is about positivity and embracing what I DO accomplish, so here's what I HAVE done. I inventoried and labeled the tops of all of my spices.  This was one of the reasons (honestly!) why I didn't cook Saturday night, because I have about 50 spices and had nowhere to put them because Chris wasn't fixing the wheels on the wheely thing he messed up so I had to stack them up on the big cutting board on my stove and on the counter for the time being and th...

I'm so happy to report that I had another good day today.  I mean, there are always going to be some annoyances, but as long as they're minor I'm totally fine with that.  Yesterday I set some minor goals for myself that would probably seem routine to most other people, but as I get back to the land of the living, it's baby steps for me and I'm not going to be afraid to celebrate every small win - even if it's just within myself.  And that's why I'm so happy to report that not only did I meet my three goals but also did a little extra.  I worked all day today but it was slow (starting Monday it's going to be insane because everyone is going to be coming back and suddenly panicking that they didn't do XYZ) and I spent a little time reading after work ended.  I started Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell back in May when I was in rehab, but it was pretty hard to concentrate on anything in the hospital and rehab because there are near-constant int...

Just a quick catch up post before going to bed since it's late and I have to work tomorrow, though I expect it will be slow, and it's just me and a colleague in the office. Yesterday was a day of work, but I took a nice nap in the afternoon for about two hours while Chris was out running errands.  Then later in the evening I put together some snacks of chips and salsa, cheese and crackers and salami and we played Yahtzee and Triominos for a couple of hours, which was fun.  Listening to a fun music mix and chatting felt good, even though I was in a ton of pain thanks to an abrasion blister that made it hard to sit on the dining room chair.  I managed to last for a good amount of time considering I've pretty much existed in my recliner for most of my time here since I got out of rehab.  Then we gave treats and catnip to Hank and the girls, which was fun.  I was asleep by about 12:15 at the latest, which actually kind of surprised me - I thought I would have faded ...