Have I mentioned that I really like Double Stuf Oreos? Because I do. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

Thing That Made My Day Today: Got home, picked up the mail, and found a thank-you card from our landlords. Just saying they hope we’re liking the condo and thanks for being such good tenants and here’s a $25 movie gift card so we can have a date night. Ha! How cool is that?? And srsly, they must have had horrible tenants before, because I don’t think we’ve been anything other than average, certainly not excellent enough to merit a $25 prize after two months. But hey, I’m not about to complain. Free date night! Whee! Have I mentioned I really like our landlords? Because I do. I really do.

Plan For The Evening: Laundry, and watching movies from the library while I eat my Double Stuf Oreos. And if catfish is on sale, Matt’s probably going to make me fried beer battered catfish. YUM. It’s a fine evening, folks. I’m going to enjoy it.

I haven’t been doing a very good job of following the news lately. No, seriously, I didn’t even know about a coal train that derailed within three miles of my house a few weeks ago.

But eventually I do hear about things, and the recent peanut butter recall was one that had me sending Matt to the pantry to dig out all his granola bars, because he always gets peanut-buttery ones. So he pulls out a CLIF bar and I read him off the dates that are supposedly contaminated, and he says oh, yeah, this is one of them.

And then he looks again in the pantry and says “That’s all we have.”

“Didn’t we buy a whole bunch a little while ago?”

“Yeah. I already ate them.”

I’m not sure if I can describe why, but this has me laughing so hard my eyes are tearing up. He ate them. No salmonella here, or at least none that affected him.

He ate them. *snorfle*

Good night to all, and may your accidental peanut butter eatings be as uneventful as Matt’s.

No, Shiloh has not taken over the household (though we have been making jokes to that effect). She would want belly rubs all the time instead of just every hour, and I have a feeling she’d require turkey for dinner every day, with bacon. We can’t afford that.

I am ashamed to say that in the last two–okay, three–months, any semblance of a normal daily routine has pretty much gone the way of the buffalo. In the frenzy of the last few weeks, especially, I’ve felt more and more drained because of strange sleep schedules and the lack of any unifying element to my days. Those of you who have spoken with me know how scattered I’ve been.

So I’ve been thinking for a while that as soon as I could (read: immediately after residency), I would make some changes. As it happens, it lines up well with a transitional point in Matt’s schedule since his spring classes start next week, so we’re both straightening up together.

Under The New Regime (henceforth, TNR), I will wake up no later than 6:10, do my 20 minutes of WiiFit exercise, eat, and do morning devotions by 7am. I will, five days of the week, write a minimum of 500 words–but I will aim for 1,000 a day. If I don’t hit the minimum, I’m not allowed to join our friends for lunch on Sundays after church. I’ll continue to read–at least one book a week. Matt and I will take the dog for a walk every evening that we’re both home, and we’ll sit down together at the dinner table and eat at least three meals together each week. I’ll be in bed, lights out (no reading!) by 10:30 if at all possible.

That’s deliberate time every week spent taking care of myself, my faith, my marriage, and my writing. Matt’s version is slightly different, except on the points that involve both of us, and we’ve agreed to hold each other accountable to our goals instead of just turning a blind eye.

The New Regime.

So far, things are looking very good. Day One of TNR is a wild success.

I feel I’ve been neglecting you. Let me make it up by showing you pictures.

This year, I think I’ve finally found the secret to the lovely kind of toffee that crunches and then melts on your tongue. The light brown stuff that’s always better than the dark, semi-transparent stuff. Not that the latter is *bad*, just that the former is completely fantastic. That’s right. I’ve made whole sheets of light brown fantasticness, and here’s the proof:

Also, Matt cooked his first turkey on Thursday. He did a fantastic job with dinner in general. . . he cooked everything, with my full moral support (I was napping on the couch). From the top of the photo, that’s stuffing, green bean casserole, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry ice (okay, I made that the night before) and, down in the corner, you can see the gravy. Matt’s gravy is to die for. Srsly.

You might be wondering how Shiloh has been doing lately. I’ve been so busy I haven’t mentioned any of her recent cuteness. She got a new beef bone for Christmas (with jerky on it!), which kept her nicely occupied while Matt and I opened our presents. She also got a candy cane-shaped squeaky toy, which she loves. Sometimes she throws it for herself and then pounces on it. I think she likes its distressed SQUEAK!! when she pounces.

We taught her right from the start not to expect to get People Food. She doesn’t get it often, pretty much just when it drops on the floor while we’re cooking, and sometimes not even then. So she doesn’t actively beg. But she is aware of the possibility of food falling, and she makes sure she’s around in case it happens. We have given her a super-dog alter-ego. Everyone watch out, because Opportunity Dog loves turkey!

Allow me to illustrate.

You see how she positions herself strategically in the place where food is most likely to fall? She wedges herself in the funniest places to ensure her availability. Also, notice her innocent expression. My appearance with the camera didn’t distract her from looking up at Matt with puppy-dog eyes. No, before I took the picture, she was just standing there looking at the drawers you see in front of her. There, just in case. That’s Opportunity Dog for you, always ready to help.

And I know I’ve been delinquent about posting pictures of the new apartment post-unpacking, and I’m afraid I’m going to continue on that front for a little while yet, but I do have two photos from right before our Christmas party last week, so you get to see the living room.

Nice, eh? We like it. Of course, before too long, the Christmas tree will be gone.

Now I have to go finishing cleaning the house and folding laundry so I can concentrate on other work tomorrow. Toodaloo!

Our house is, slowly but surely, turning into the Land of Yummy Yum Yum-yums. Just yesterday I used four sticks of butter, and today I intend to use at least another four. That’s just the way we roll, yo. Tonight’s goodies: sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

I dreamt last night about going to Goodwill to find huge Tupperware containers so I could store all these yummy cookies and candies in dry, airtight places. Because I’ve gotta say, despite all the kitchen stuff we have, we’re sadly lacking in the large-scale airtight storage category. You know another screw has knocked loose when you’re dreaming of finding ratty Tupperware at Goodwill.

Our car turned over 100,000 miles today. Yay! He’s a Toyota, so he’s just hit his stride. I got him almost five years and over 60,000 miles ago, and with any luck we’ll have him for another ten years or so. Kind of fun to hit this milestone, though.

I worked on the menu for our Christmas party this afternoon and now, having come back to it to make a shopping list, I think every recipe has either 8 oz. of cream cheese or at least 2 cups of sugar in it. Clearly, the food will be fantastic.

And now it’s time to make some more toffee.

For those of you who were becoming concerned about the recent toffee crisis, I am happy to report that last night’s batch looks like it will be acceptable for passing out to our friends and family. Maybe not the best I’ve ever made, but I doubt many people other than Matt and I will realize it.

And for the record, I do think the old thermometer was wonky. I picked up a new one on the way home from work yesterday and used that for the successful batch. So all is once again right with the world.

We’ll finish decorating the tree in a little bit here, but we have a Christmas party tonight at our friends’ house, so photos might not appear until tomorrow.

Matt and I got our Christmas tree last night. It’s perfect. No, not just perfect for us or for our house or anything like that. It’s perfect perfect. Okay, there are like two wonky branches that we’ve put facing the wall, but seriously. I think we might have found the Platonic ideal of “Christmas Tree” in material form. The Christmas Tree that all other Christmas trees suggest and echo in all their variety. I wish I had a picture to post, but you’ll all have to wait until after it’s fully decorated for that.

I feel the need to mention that I’m relatively new to this whole real pine tree in my house thing. I grew up in an artificial tree family – we used the same tree every year, for as long as I can remember. That’s twenty years of the same tree. Toward the end it was looking pretty sad, and I think my parents finally had to get rid of it a few years ago. I hope they got rid of it and didn’t just put it back in the attic For All Time. It was a lovely tree, and I have nothing against it or my parents for depriving me of a pine-scented Christmas childhood. That’s just the way it was.

But I have to say, I like walking into the house and inhaling that lovely smell.

Shiloh seems to think it’s entirely normal for us to bring a tree into the house for a while and stand it in the corner. All in all, she’s much more interested in the string of popcorn we started wrapping around it last night. She seems rather baffled about why the snacks aren’t being eaten, but so far she hasn’t tried to use it as her personal buffet.

And now I’ve run out of anything interesting to say, so I’ll sign off. I hope you find a tree as tree-y as ours.

I’ve hardly even thought about anything internet-related for two days, and I have to say it’s pretty darn nice in a lot of ways.

We had a lovely turkey dinner with all the fixins this afternoon, complete with entertainment by my nephew and my grandfather’s new dog Molly, who is almost as cute as Shiloh. Yum yum. (The turkey is yum, not the dogs.)

But I’m also pretty tired, because we’ve been helping my brother and sister-in-law settle into their new house, which needs both unpacking and repair/remodeling work rightnow. It’s a lot of fun, but also involves more brainpower and physical effort than, say, lying on the couch all weekend.

I’ve also made very good progress on the second quilt project, but I had a minor disaster earlier tonight when I, through sheer carelessness, cut myself with the rotary blade. Imagine a pizza slicer with a precision razor-blade for an edge and you’ll get the picture of the weapon I was wielding. Luckily, it was a glancing blow and only lifted open about 1/2-inch of flesh (1/4-inch deep) on my left thumb. It’s even on a section of thumb that is both easily bandaged AND not very bendy, which means there’s a decent chance it will heal quickly. But blood has been shed. And then, being the go-get-’em gal that I am, I continued working on the quilt and executed three (count ‘em) three rather major mistakes. Luckily, they all have to do with the binding, which I wasn’t terribly happy with anyway. I have plenty of extra fabric for binding, and this gives me a very valid reason to pull it all off and start over on it. So it’s sort of good, except that I feel very silly.

And now, since it’s past my bedtime in Colorado and I’m currently in the land that lives two hours ahead of Colorado, I think it’s time I turned in for the night.

We’re aiming to move next Sunday, despite the fact that we’re flying east tomorrow and won’t be back until Saturday evening. Needless to say, we’re busy here in the Whitt house.

My new suitcase arrived just a few minutes ago, and it’s lovely. Now I get to pack it for its first trip right away! Perfect timing. Aside from packing for the trip, I’m doing laundry today (so that I can pack) and I’ve paid this month’s bills. Also need to catch up on the at-home portion of work for my Bible study tonight. . . . will drop the dog off with our friends, go to Bible study, come home to sleep, and get up early to ride to the airport with friends whose flight schedules line up with ours remarkably well.

Have to remember to pack as many Christmas gifts as possible for the Ohio family – might as well take it now and not need to mail it in a few weeks. And if I can fit it in, I’m also going to take along some quilting so I can make progress on something tangible while I’m away.

Things are good. We’re excited about the move and the upcoming holidays and pretty much everything else.

And now I have to get moving or Matt will frown at me.