Faith, Joy and Hope

It was another busy day at work – that makes me very happy!  Nothing worse than keep looking at the clock to see how long you have until it’s quitting time.  Usually I’ll just glance up and realize – wow, it’s already 11:45!  My breakfast turned out kinda gross – whatever flour tortillas I had literally fell to pieces right when I cut it, and got worse after I tried to take a bite.  I ended up throwing it all away, which saved me 4 smart points and I just ate the filling of leftover stea, egg whites and cheese with sliced grapefruit on the side.

I didn’t even ask my peeps if they minded I went to lunch, just sent an email that said “back in an hour” and left it at that.  The benefits of being at a big firm is that there is always someone to fill in if there is an emergency.

Check out my new gym!

It’s really nice.  Lots of equipment, free weights, weight machines, spin bikes, full showers, locker room, towel service, and it costs me zero dollars.  Yesterday was the second day that I went but each time there have only been a couple people there the same time as me.  It’s open from 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. so even worse case scenario I have to work through lunch, I can always hit it up after work and just catch a later train home.

I did a treadmill climb for 2 miles in 30 minutes while I watched Damaris on Food Network.  I actually liked her show a lot – she’s now so thick with the southern charm schtick like when she was on Food Network Star.

Lunch was back at my desk, leftover vegetarian chili (which I promise to post the recipe soon!) with chips and water – I am so much better about drinking my water when I am at a desk. 1.5 cups of my chili is only 6 smart points and a serving of those chips is 4.  I got busy and only ate about 2/3 of the chili ( but all the chips!) so I am calling lunch 8 points.

We forgot to run the dishwasher the night before last, and we had a sink full of dishes.  Hannah told me not to worry about it because she’d clean the kitchen yesterday before I got home from work AND she said she’d make dinner – sweet!

Huh.  Oh, that must mean that the kadults are napping – at 6:45 p.m.  The only light on in the whole house.  So I changed my clothes, turned on some lights and figured out what to make for dinner.  Jacob ended up having leftover sausage with rice.  Hannah made vegetarian nachos with cilantro rice and well, as soon as I found some leftover pizza dough that had to be used up, pretty much decision made that I would be having Party Pizza Monday.

I have no portion control if I make a big pizza, so I made this 9 inch individual pizza.  Three ounces dough (8) 1/4 cup 2% Kraft shredded cheese (2), no sugar added tomato sauce with herbs (0) 1/2 ounce Cabot’s cranberry goat cheese (2), then once it came out of the oven, I topped with chopped romaine and a drizzle of balsamic glaze.  12 smart points for the whole thing and so filling.

Loved all the contrasting flavors – salty from the cheese, sour from the goat cheese, sweet from the cranberry and balsamic glaze – pizza perfection.

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I’ve been slowly brining out my snowmen to decorate the house.  It’s weird because Tony never let me decorate before December 15 and wanted everything put away on January 1.  Bah humbug!

Extreme close up!  Ha – I’ve been wearing these snowman earrings pretty much every day since Thanksgiving.  Not exactly sure what I am looking at?!

While this is my favorite snowman of all time, these are a close second.   These were sent to me by my blog friend Janine of Skippy Mom.   She was such a dear blog friend to me.  When she sent me these snowman the first Christmas after Tony died when I talked to her to tell her thank you, she asked if they all made it there in one piece.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that one of them broke, but it didn’t matter to me – it was the thoughtfulness that counted.  She loved snowmen just as much as me, and she was such a nice life support after Tony died.  She was sick too, and sleep was evasive, and I could call her up at 2 a.m. if I was having a bad night or couldn’t fall asleep and she always answered.  Who knew that the first Christmas without Tony would also be her last.  I tried to see her the summer before she died, but her husband said she didn’t want to see me, because she was so frail.  I was in Virginia and it was only an hours drive to where she lived, but she promised me we’d meet someday.

When I was having all the construction done on the living room that summer and into fall, my answering machine was unplugged.  I didn’t really care because no one ever calls my land line anyway, and if they did it was usually a telemarketer.  I’d been trying to convince Janine to let me do a Go Fund Me for her and her family to take a vacation that summer, but she was too proud to take the help.  I remember her telling me that summer that all she wanted to do was put her feet in the sand and feel the sun on her face. 

I finally plugged in the answering machine in on November 3, 2015.  It made all sorts of beeping noises and while it didn’t save any messages, I saw that I had missed seven messages from Janine from August through September.  I am not sure if she was so weak that she couldn’t figure out which was my land line or my cell phone.  I had called her the day Tony died from my house phone so maybe that’s why she had it.  I jumped on Facebook to see if I could reach her only to find out that she had passed that very day.  Her husband had called me about a month before she died because she had all the same symptoms that Tony had – they both had congestive heart failure but for different reasons. 

I am kind of rambling here, but when I pulled these snowmen out of the box, I just instantly thought of her and again, am realizing at how short life is.  So that’s my mantra for this holiday season:  FAITH, JOY AND HOPE!  I couldn’t think of another way to honor her memory, and of course, our love of snowmen.