Goodbye Frida Kahlo

 

Sadness has come to our house once again. Frida Kahlo our beautiful Mexican Flame Knee  tarantula has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to the big web in the sky. She was approximately twelve years old, which is a good life. Not as long as some, but longer than others.

Normally adult tarantulas moult (shed their skin) about once a year. This act has made me anxious without the Amazing Spiderman. If someone is late, should I worry? I have no one to discuss these fears with. I don’t worry about Christina Rossetti because she hasn’t moulted since 2017 and seems to be OK with that. But Frida and Pippi used to be like clockwork, perhaps because they are so similar. Spiderman used to say they were cousins because Pippi is a Mexican Fireleg ( Brachypelma Boehmei) and Frida was a Mexican Flame Knee (Brachypelma Auratam). They used to both moult within a month of each other (usually in the summer.) After Spiderman died, they both missed their summer moult which left me in a state of panic. Had I done something wrong? But eventually they both moulted in the autumn of 2021. Pippi moulted again in October of last year, but Frida never did. I had been trying to watch her for signs, but she was not showing any.

One of the characteristics of Frida was she seemed to love to play hide and seek and scare her Mummy to pieces. Her favourite spot was crouching small in the back right corner of the tank by the heat mat, half buried in substrate behind her hidey cup. A quick glance into the tank would make you think she had some how escaped. But moving her tank out into the light caused her to leap out and flick her itchy hairs at you as if to say “Stop shaking the tank, I was fine until you bumbled in and started moving everything!” She was like Pippi in that regard. Pip has always been an irritated hair flicker.

Friday, I noticed that she had moved away from her favourite spot in the back corner and was out in the open. I was able to get a good look at her with the torch. Her skin was dull and her joints scabby. This is a very clear sign that a moult is imminent. I noticed she hadn’t eaten the crickets I had put in on Wednesday and so I carefully removed them (a necessary act because a moulting spider is incredible vulnerable—they are helpless and their new skin is soft. A cricket can easily nibble on them in their weakened state and they will bleed to death.) This job always makes me cry with frustration as I need Spiderman to help with this. Looking after the Spiderbabes is a two-person job. It really helps to have one person doing the job and the other as a lookout, so the spider doesn’t escape. But she was surprisingly chilled out. This might have been a clue that she was unwell, but I was so relieved she didn’t try to run up the side to the open lid like she did one other time, I just breathed a sigh of relief. Spiders who are about to moult are often very quiet and still and “not their usual lively selves” before a moult as they are conserving energy for the big day, so I wasn’t too worried. In hindsight, maybe I should have been.

I checked on her again Saturday and she was still out front and centre. There was no sign of laying down a soft blanket of a web to moult on, but if she was going to do it, she was in the correct place to do so as it had plenty of room. I still wasn’t worried, but I increased the moisture in the tank as higher humidity helps with a moult.

On Sunday, I looked in and realised that she was in the same position as she had been both Friday and Saturday. Not just “near the same place” but in EXACTLY the same place. Uh oh. I did the test of jostling her tank. Nothing. I poured water near her. Nothing. I poured water on her (an act previously which would have made her furious). No reaction. Normally you can tell a spider is dead because they go into the “death curl” with their legs tucked under their body. She really wasn’t curled up, no more than her favourite scrunched up position she used to do in the back of the tank.

By this time it was very late and there was nothing else I could do. I woke up early this morning and removed her from the tank and looked at her body for signs of disease, but I could see nothing. I went out to the garden before work and dug a little hole and buried her. She’s out there with Lily Rose, Blanche DuBois, Polychrome and Pirouette.

I am both saddened and relieved. Saddened because our mutual love of arachnids was one of the things that brought Spidergrrl and Spiderman together. Of the original eight of the Spiderbabes (Lily Rose, Blanche Dubois, Christina Rossetti, Pirouette, Polychrome, Tibia, Pippi Longstocking, and Frida Kahlo) only two remain. Pippi Longstocking who is approximately fourteen years old and Christina Rossetti who we have had for fifteen years and we believe was an adult when we rescued her so she might actually be eighteen or nineteen years old.  Relieved because I have struggled since I became a widow to care for them on my own. Spiderman was always the Captain and I was the lookout, now I have to be both Captain and lookout.

I have loved each and every Spiderbabe with all my heart, but I know when the last one leaves this earth, I will not seek replacements. As with everything in my life it is made more difficult having to do it all by myself, but like the rest of my life I will just continue to muddle on.

Rest in Peace my little eight-legger.

 

What I Ate Wednesday--Tapenade Pasta with Kale and White Beans

 Hello lovelies. It has been two years since I blogged about food, mostly because when Spiderman died my eating habits changed. It is harder to cook for one person when what you want to be doing is cooking for two people. It has taken me two years to be able to write What I Ate Wednesday instead of What WE Ate Wednesday.  

After he died I was exhausted mentally and physically. I struggled with meal planning. Do I make something BIG and eat it all week? No, I have discovered that two nights in a row is about my limit. Unless it's nachos, then that can go three nights in a row because nachos. More on them in a few weeks.  But the act of cooking something fresh from scratch for one exhausted and sad person night after night was often too much. But these days I have things figured out.

These days I do a lot of small preps so that cooking from scratch goes easier. I plan to talk about these tips in the future. Today was one of those small prep days. 

I haven't eaten Black Olive and Walnut Tapenade since Spiderman died. It was always one that I made in HUGE amounts and filled our freezer with jars for an easy Saturday night dinner. A friend mentioned it to me that she loved my recipe and made it all the time and I suddenly thought, "Why I am I not making it all the time either?" 

And so I did. But instead of making insane amounts because my freezer is full up and being one person it will take me twice as long to get through the jars, I made a regular sort of amount. I saved up smaller jars that would have enough for one person servings, but of course if you are feeding more people you can freeze in larger portions like I used to. Also I changed up the way I used to do it. We always served it with roasted cherry tomatoes, but these are a bit pricy and I just can't be arsed to heat up my oven for 15 minutes just for one person so I just bunged in some oil packed sun dried tomatoes. I always keep these on hand in the fridge as they add a pop of flavour with little effort. Plus a jar costs about the same as a punnet of cherry tomatoes and I can get several meals out of one jar. 

We used to always serve it with kale and I still do. This time I added half a tin of cannellini beans just to make it more filling. I will use the other half of the tin of beans in another, slightly different pasta recipe tomorrow.

Tapenade Pasta with Kale and White Beans

First make your tapenade. You need:

1.5 cups black olives (this was a 330g /163g drained weight jar)

1/2 cup walnuts

4-5 cloves chopped garlic

2TB olive oil

Throw everything but the oil in a food processor and pulse until crumbly, then add the oil and pulse again a few times and divide into jars.

You need half a cup of the tapenade per serving. This made enough for me to have three pastas and one pizza (it made 1.5 cups plus 1/3 cup so I plan to use the jar with less on a pizza.) I labelled three of the jars and popped them in the freezer.

To make the rest of it:

This is obviously just for one person so feel free to double it. 

50g or thereabouts  of curly kale (3-4 massive handfuls)

half a tin white beans, drained

juice of half a lemon

more garlic

3 TB nutritional yeast flakes for a cheesy flavour

3-4 oil packed sun dried tomatoes, snipped into bits

half a cup tapenade

No need for salt because of the olives, but lots of black pepper

3/4-1 cup (GF) pasta of choice

Boil a pot of water for the pasta. I like to use water from a boiled kettle to speed things along. You can add a bit of salt or a stock cube to the pasta water if you like. When it is boiling, add the pasta and boil for however long the package says. 

Meanwhile, throw all the other ingredients into a Hugh Jass pot and cook with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water until the kale turns bright green and softens. 

Add the cooked and drained pasta to the veg mix. Eat.

If you have the tapenade already done this comes together in 20 minutes or less. 

Plus you have extras for future meals. Which is a life saver for when you are tired and need something healthy, cheap and fast. 

Be Less, Do Less

 Hello lovelies! I am still looking at ways I want to be better in the new year. But as the title suggests I am still rather busy and struggling with time and energy management. 

The problem is that I LOVE to DIY. If I see something in a shop that can be made, then I  make it. I pride myself on making it myself for less. It is one of my superpowers. But I am also TIRED. 

And so part of my resolution this year is that I do not have to do it all, especially if I am doing other creative things. 

1. IT'S OK TO OUTSOURCE

Since the Amazing Spiderman died I have struggled with energy management since it falls to me to do EVERYTHING. I try to do a lot of pre-portioning foods like kale or broccoli so I can just grab-a-green-and-go. I had been using plastic ziplock type bags with a slide lock, but they were wearing out and I didn't want to just keep using and throwing away bags with such frequency (see number 2 on my resolutions today) and so I thought I could make some cloth reusable bags.

I wanted them to have that food grade wipe clean PUL liner but that stuff is EXPENSIVE. I found a half metre of the fabric on sale for £15 (Ker-ching!) and then I would need to factor in outer fabric, velcro if I chose to add that, plus time and energy. I looked at my life and just thought I can't pull blood from a stone. I am currently making storytelling props for the shop's Youtube Channel and rehearsing my lines, getting ready to film and then edit and there just is nothing left in the creative tank. So i decided to OUTSOURCE. I bought some on Etsy from EMMA MARY BAGS N BOBS. It kind of hurt my heart to let someone else make these, but it would have cost me that much to make them myself and now I don't have to.

They are adorable with cute fabric and are perfect for dividing greens into portions in the fridge. And they are wipe clean as well as washable. 

So what have I been making instead? An apple tree, a baker's oven (complete with felt loaf of bread on a wooden paddle) converted from a Troll Bridge leftover from a previous storytelling  and a piece of cloth that looks both like feather bedding and snowflakes when you shake it. Can you see why I didn't have time to make those bags myself? And that's OK.

These leads me into resolution 2:

2. LESS SINGLE USE PLASTIC AND WASTE

I am already doing that with the lovely reusable bags. However, starting this month there are changes to our waste/recycling collection and I want to improve. 

Previously our collection alternated--one week recycling pickup and the next week black bag non recycled waste pickup. But starting at the end of January, recycling is picked up every week and black bag only every three weeks (basically once a month). Normally, it takes me 3-4 weeks to fill up a black bag. But now I really want to concentrate on stretching myself to see how long I can go before I have to put out a black bag. Can I go six weeks (two pickup cycles?) Can I stretch to nine weeks (three pickup cycles?) 

Our recycling is even better than it used to be. Many more things are accepted locally to fill the blue recycling bags and now large supermarkets like Tesco have collections for things like crisp packets and certain plastic food bags that can't be recycled kerbside. 

I would love to be able to buy more naked fruit and veg, but it is not always available or affordable. Broccoli I can get plastic free, but kale I cannot. Kale comes in a crinkly plastic bag that can't be recycled so I try to use them as a bin liner in the bathroom before it goes into the black bag. 

Also when you try to throw away crinkly plastic bags they will not scrunch. Or rather they won't stay scrunched. This means that they take up a lot of space (very light air-filled space) but space none the less in your black bag filling it up quicker. The trick is take one minute to cut it into strips so it takes up less space. Another trick is to designate one crinkly bag as the "fill bag" and put all your strips into it before you put it in the black bag. 

And the last resolution for the day is:

3. ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES

Let's be honest--the Amazing Spiderman was my EVERYTHING. We had lots of fun experiences over the years, but now I need to do them differently. Now I do them on my own (which is not as bad as i thought it might be. I was afraid I would look like Billy-No-Mates, but truthfully--nobody cares) and some I do with my FRAMILY. 

I got some birthday and Christmas money and so I have bought myself tickets to have a variety of experiences throughout the year. I will see three NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE at the cinema by myself (The Crucible, Othello and a play called Good starring David Tennant) and two comedians at the LYRIC THEATRE (Rich Hall and Mark Steel) with my Stand Up Comedian Friend (and Spiderman's former supervisor) Bettina. I also have tickets to see the Peatbog Faeries in concert. I have tickets to Swansea Comic Con with my Geek Friends the FT Gang and have already started going out with my Cinema Friend Pearl--we went out on Monday night to film club at the Lyric to see The Muppets Take Manhattan. 

That's all I have time for today as I need to finish making props so i can go and do a dress rehearsal for the storytelling. 

I hope you have lots of fun this year and don't feel like you have to do it all by yourself. 

Insom-nom-nom-nom-nom nia

 Hello Lovelies!

If you didn't see yesterday's post and the start of this series about my new year's motto of "Everything is Figureoutable" then click HERE

Looking at more ways I want my life to be better in 2023 has to start with EATING and SLEEPING. 

I am someone who really needs eight hours of sleep to function. Spiderman could get by with less and never seemed to show any signs of being cranky, but I sure do. 

My days back at LC were a blur of sugar highs and lows (Sugarpuff  Cereal Sandwiches, anyone?) and chronic exhaustion from rehearsals until midnight and then studying until the wee hours of the morning. I felt really ratty for five whole years because of too much crappy eating and not enough sleep. At times I was awful to be around, but Spiderman somehow saw through my RATTITUDE (another portmanteau word I love) and married me anyway.

Unfortunately,  my go-to activities when I am stressed are COMFORT EATING and DOOMSCROLLING. Though (to make myself sound like an old codger) they didn't have phones back in my day to waste time on. Now they do. The more depressed or anxious I am they more I eat sugary crap and stay up past my bedtime. Even when my body is screaming "For Frith's sake, just go to bed!" I am still lying on the sofa  in a state of panic shovelling food into my yawning gob scrolling through my phone without actually looking at anything while my bleary red eyes widen to hold themselves open from the fear that if I let them close I will fall asleep or a Weeping Angel will come and get me. 

Why has it been like this? When Spiderman died I found it very hard to be in bed by myself. It felt very empty and there was no comfort. Because sleeping with another warm body is comfort. We always slept touching. I was the little spoon and if he rolled over in the night our backs instinctively sought the other's warmth and so to sleep alone was cold in every sense of the word. In the early months after his death I avoided going to bed like a frenzied toddler who desperately needs a nap but instead runs around in a circle for three hours. I got a body pillow which did help a bit--it gave the sensation of someone else in our King Sized bed. But it wasn't him.

The other issue was I was buying and eating lots of junk food. Vegans have junk food too and I tried it all. And the problem with the junk food and getting overtired is that by the time I was so shattered I could not stay awake a moment longer then I felt I was too tired to wash my face or brush my teeth for fear of waking myself back up. I paid for that when my skin became dull and spotty and I got a cavity. 

I am lucky that on most days I don't have to be at work until mid-day. But this meant after dragging myself to bed at around 2 a.m. and then taking ages to actually fall asleep (thank you sugar) while having a mild panic attack that I was still awake at 3 a.m. that when my alarm went off I could not get up. I reached for my phone and would snooze in 15-30 minute intervals until I was in danger of being late for work. Then I would come home like a zombie and the house got out of control and there was never any time or energy to tidy (see yesterday's problem) This just couldn't go on.

So what did I do? I made myself get a sleep routine. I thought about what I needed--some calming voice to help direct me to relaxation and some soothing background noises. I tried various sounds and lots didn't work for me. White Noise was like nails on a chalkboard but the lower toned Brown Noise was just right. I found everything I needed on Spotify and made a playlist. 

Here is what I do every night:

10:00pm, no more phone or tablet. I go wash my face and brush my teeth. I wash the dishes so the kitchen will be clean when I wake up.

10:30pm, get into pyjamas and turn the overhead light off and only use the lamp to make me gradually get used to less light.

10:30pm to 11:30pm, read for pleasure. (This will bring me to the second thing on my list today--see below). 

11:30pm, rub a few drops of lavender oil into the soles of my feet--especially up between the big toe and adjacent toe) and put my socks back on 

11:35pm, set the alarm for 7:30am, plug in my phone, turn on the Sleep Playlist, turn off the light and go to sleep. 

I have done this now every night for one week and I cannot believe the difference in my energy. I wake up easily with the alarm and have time to do so many things before I go to work so that when I come home at the end of the day all of the "need to be dones" are complete and so I can concentrate on the "want to be dones."

2. READ

This seems crazy because I am such a bookworm, but the more depressed or anxious I am the less I read. I can't seem to focus, the words swim before my eyes, I can't remember what I read on the last paragraph and what should be lovely becomes horrible. The phone calls to me like a Siren calls to the sailor luring me into mindlessly scrolling because it means I don't have to engage my brain. I spent most of 2020 furious because I had all that time at home when I didn't have to go to work and I couldn't read anything without crying from frustration.

It has been AMAZING to read again. So far in one week I have read two and half books. And it is just making it part of my routine. Booking it in, if you'll excuse the pun. 

3. VEGAN/COOK ONCE EAT TWICE/FREEZE

Having more energy because I am sleeping better means I will make better food choices. Already I am craving less unhealthy stuff. As my old fridge/freezer died right before Christmas, I was forced to buy a new one. This involved a lot of "Everything is figureoutable" mantras because I had to choose a new appliance, order it online, schedule a delivery, move and clean out the old one so the new one could take its place. Now that I have a bigger, better, more beautiful (OK, this last one is less important but I love the fact that I chose a black appliance and all my photos of FAMILY and FRAMILY really pop) I am working hard to do meal prep in both the fridge and freezer to make my life a bit easier (see tomorrow's post) 

Are you struggling with unhealthy eating or poor sleep? If you are, then I hope this will help you. 

Everything is Figureoutable

 Hello Lovelies! 

Every year on New Year's Day I like to do a little cutting and pasting to set intentions for the upcoming year. I obsessively hoard any free magazines I can pick up throughout the year and then use them to cut out letters, words and quotations that speak to me. Spiderman used to say that I would have been excellent at kidnapping because I had enough magazines to write dozens of ransom notes.

I saw a book at work with the title EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE and I thought "That is what I want my motto to be this year." There are several things that are just really difficult and I don't know how to do them or who to ask to get help and they involve paperwork and filling out forms (UGH) and so the motto "I may not know, but I can figure it out" has already stopped my heart racing 

I thought it might be interesting to have a look over the course of a few blog posts at what I am hoping to achieve this year. Perhaps these are things you want to do as well. Perhaps we can help one another and be accountable to each other to help us live happier, healthier, less anxious lives in 2023.

Here is my Vision Board for the year.  I will pick a few things to talk about each time in no particular order. 

1. STOP AVOIDING ADMIN

As I said I have some outstanding (in the not done sense not the terrific sense) paperwork that must be completed. It took me ages to figure out how to fill out the forms to apply for my mother's Life Insurance claim and while I filled out the papers once and sent them in, something went wrong but I can't know for sure what went wrong without another phone call which I refuse to do because the last call cost be £85. They won't tell me exactly what was left out of the envelope, they just sent a reminder of everything that should have been included leaving me to play Sherlock Holmes and deduce where the problem was.  I have an idea what went wrong/what should have been sent but was not and so I am trying again. 

Admin is not my strong suit. Too many words on a page, being forced to write in ALL CAPS inside tiny prison cell boxes makes my heart race and stomach churn. Spiderman was much more calm than me when it came to filling out forms, but as he is no longer here on this earth, it falls to me to figure it out. By repeating the mantra YOU CAN DO THIS over and over I think I have figured out what to do.  But I have had the forms printed for a week and I just kept ignoring them on the table because I couldn't face filling them out again. Today is my day off and so I plan to devote several hours to reading every form aloud just to be sure I haven't forgotten anything.

Also, when I was trying to figure out how to deal with my mother's Life Insurance I discovered to my horror that I was meant to be filing US income tax for the last NINETEEN YEARS. I don't think I have to pay anything as I make below the threshold but I should have been filing. However, the IRS must know that lots of Expats don't know this because they have a whole page dedicated to Whoops! I didn't know, but now I do, what do I do now? But again, though I know about the website, I have been too afraid to look at what I have to do. American taxes aren't due until April 15th, so the plan is get the Life Insurance done this month and hopefully by next month I should have a cheque which can cover any potential slap-on-the-wrist late fees I may have incurred. Then by March I can look at filing my back US taxes. 

2. QUICK TIDY

   Peeps, I am drowning in clutter. I have always been a bit of a Messy Bessy, but since Spiderman shuffled off this mortal coil I find it harder to put things away. I am TIRED and often just drop things on the first available surface and collapse when I get home. However, this is what happens--it becomes like a terrifying game of The Floor Is Lava or a crazy obstacle course where I might break my neck if I fell down the stairs. This photo was taken on January 2nd and is the worst that it has ever been. Something needs to change.

One of my problems is procrastinating on things that seem insurmountable. The bigger they grow, the more I avoid dealing with them and the more I avoid dealing with them the bigger they grow. And I get looped in anxiety and I can't do anything but feel stressed about not dealing with it. (See above) I read about the "Pomodoro Method" which is basically set a timer and work your butt off until it goes ding. They suggest you buy one of those kitchen timers shaped like a tomato  that go TICK TICK TICK like a deathwatch beetle but I find that ticking like the axe swinging lower and lower in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum so I just use my phone. I set the timer for 15 minutes, put on a Spotify playlist and work like the dickens until my friendly alarm sound calls out (my alarm is King George's song from Hamilton "Da da dat da, dat da da da da ya da") 

And you know what? It works. Even a 15 minute blitz helps to tackle clutter and if I start getting up early (I will be dealing with sleep and waking in my next post) then I can do 15 minutes in the morning and maybe 15 minutes in the evening. At night when I have been on my feet all day and am exhausted it is harder to do, but I discovered that I can do things like unload the clean dishes from the dish drain or sweep and mop the kitchen floor in the exact amount of time it takes to reheat a bowl of soup on the hob. 

3.FRAMILY

I do love a portmanteau word. Framily is made up of FRIENDS who are FAMILY. I am so blessed that I have such a good support network on this side of the pond. So many US friends were worried about me over these last few years lamenting that I had no FAMILY in the UK. But that is OK because I have FRAMILY. The Amazing Spiderman was my everything--my person that I did everything with. These days, I have different friends who do different things with me. I have friends who like the cinema or going to art classes or mooching around charity shops or going to plays or comic book conventions or museums. I used to do all of those things with Spiderman, but now I get to do them with lots of different people. Is it the same? No, not without him. But I still get to do them and it is very good. So this year I want to spend more time with my FRAMILY.

That's all for today. But in a day or two I will look at some other ways that I hope to be better in the new year. Maybe these are things you struggle with too. I hope it helps. 

Hello Lovelies, I'm Back!

 As the title says: Hello Lovelies, I'm back.

It has been two years since I wrote anything on this blog. My whole world came crashing down in March of 2021 when the Amazing Spiderman went to hospital, was diagnosed with cancer and then died six weeks later. Then last year, just as I was beginning to get my sense of self back, my dear old Mum and my sweet baby granddaughter were killed in a car accident in Arkansas. It has been a rough couple of years.

I spent the last two years trying to get out of survival mode--trying to move forward, find out how to manage on my own because I have never been on my own. I lived with my parents, then in a dorm at LC and then with Spiderman. I was part of a team for thirty-two wonderful years and married for nearly twenty-nine of them so it has taken a lot of work to stop drowning and pull myself to shore. Which is a crazy metaphor for me to use as my complete terror of sharks will not let me even set foot in the sea. But maybe that is why the metaphor works--I feel like I have been in high stress/anxiety/fight or flight since my Spiderman's demise. 

Everything about my life changed when he died. The way I eat (there seemed no point in food blogging when i was struggling to feed myself and when I did cook, I ate a lot more processed food and the same meals over and over (and over) again). I had to learn to travel on my own but I am still not brave enough to go to London so i have had less to write about. All of my energy was taken up with surviving, but this year I really want to move from SURVIVING to THRIVING again. Spiderman would want that for me. He would want me to go on and have a rich and happy life. So, I am trying.

Today, the Carmarthenshire Hunt had their annual parade and showing off in front of crowds of people lining the streets before they go off trail hunting and Oops! might accidentally kill a fox but it was just by accident and they can't be held accountable if their dogs stumble upon a live terrified animal when they are just out riding and tear it apart. 🙄So many people come out for this--some are supporters of fox hunting and other blood sports, but many are just people with their kids who like to see a parade with horses and fancy dress. I wish they could see that by supporting this, they are encouraging cruelty and pain. 

There hasn't been a parade since 2019. I had hoped that the pandemic had put this to bed, but here we are in 2023 fighting against cruelty. There was a lot of shouting and name calling, mainly from people on our side I am sorry to say. I refuse to call names, no matter what I think of them. There was so much anger, and it is understandable because these people actively take pleasure in causing fear and pain. But I am just exhausted by anger. I have been furious for two years at being widowed and I am tired of anger. I am tired of looking only at myself and my own survival rather than looking at how I can make the world a better place. Where is Spidergrrl the JOYFUL VEGAN? I used to work so hard to spread the message of compassion and love for all God's creatures. I used to blog about food to show people that being vegan was easy, healthy and cheap. I have been lost in a sea of despair for two years, but today was a lifeboat.

I suddenly realised that getting back to helping others could pull me out of the mire that has been these last two years. So, here I am. I may not blog as much as I used to--even when I am eating healthily, I eat A LOT of leftovers because I am tired and cooking for one is a very different ballgame. But I will show you what I am eating and if you want help with recipes, then I will gladly be there for you to help. If you live in town I can take you shopping and show you were all the good stuff is. I will try to show you what goals I am working on because maybe they are goals you want to have to. 

May 2023 be the year that we thrive.