Are we really only eight weeks into the year? It feels like I’ve had enough going on for far more weeks.

I would be done crafting Macrame Fox, but I can’t find her nose. I’ve hung her up anyway and will add it later. The red part of her nose is a different red than the rest of the project because they didn’t include enough of it in the kit. Why kits sometimes suck.

I have a box ready for donation and I thrifted some new clothing items this week because it was long overdue.

I didn’t get anywhere near where I hoped to on my DIY Kitchen Reno because my body felt entirely depleted. I needed rest and some key nutrients to get back to normal. I think it was largely all the stress I’ve been under, but also the work is hard at this stage of the reno. I got mud on the walls and felt pretty good about that. I was also happy to be done with items that had fiberglass in them. So were my hands. I had to dispose of my older pair of work gloves because they were all shredding apart. I got that pair several years before ever moving to Ottawa, so they lasted a long time.

There’s a lot of work to do, but I’m looking forward to the vision I have for my kitchen. I plan to have cups hanging over my sink and seasonal cross-stitch. I plan to make a shelf in the gap between my wall and the cabinet on the other side of the kitchen. I’ll have an actual space for my garbage can, which has always been a problem. I really want to be on the other side just making my cross-stitches for it! I made a long list of all the projects…

In family, my brother would went into surgery on Friday around noontime. This began a waiting period to hear how it went. The surgery was projected to take somewhere between 6 and 8 hours barring complications. I worked through most of it and got out of the house for a bit during the last couple of hours. He was done by around 5 and resting. It went really well.

The trip there, however, was messy. One of my windshield washer fluid jets got plugged up and was pretty useless. It’s the time of the year I prefer not to travel because there is so much road salt/sand in the off-spray coming from the vehicles in front that it’s hard to see. It’s also not great for keeping a car from rusting.

In gaming this week, I’ve been building a castle-like market area in my creative Minecraft world. My one server is down for now and I wanted to play around and experiment without having to forage for items.

One of the bonus fun things about watching PWHL games sometimes is the complete bastardization of player names from the auto-captioning:

• Sir Daphne/CERN Daffy = Serdachny
• Rap Train/Rat Trade/Ratchtree = Rattray
• Nashoba/Venice of a = Vanišová
• Bottom Sex = ?
• Editorilova/Tara Lova/Darilova = Tejralová
• Lexia/Let’s see a Gia = Lexie Adzija
• Quick Tapping/Japanese = Tapani
• I’m a Graco = Emma Greco
• Not grass = Snodgrass
• Mike’s the = Meixner
• On the Line = Savolainen
• Match My Urge = Maschmeyer

I’m in a reading funk. It has been hard to focus on anything with everything else that’s going on. I brought a lesbian softball romance with me and some other light reading options for my visit with family.

Goal Setting & Tracking

What are goals? I feel like I haven’t been able to move forward on much this week.

• Arts and Crafts: Macrame Fox (99%), Knit Vest ✅
• Decluttering and Minimalism: Boxed up some items for donation ✅.
• DIY and Projects: Mudding ✅and Sanding.
• Friends and Family: Travel
• Gaming and Videos: Minecraft castle ✅
• Health and Fitness: Lol it’s year end so I’m pretty much chained to my desk.
• Reading and Writing: No goals this week.