Silly Goals

My new goal in life is to be as excited about eating my bowl of Fiber One cereal as Sylvester is waiting for me to finish – and leave her a few drops of milk in the bowl. You'll notice I threw in some Pumpkin Spice Cheerios in the bowl to add a bit of flavor to my cardboard.

It helps a bit. Healthy eating sucks sometimes.

My other new goal is to solve the Wordle puzzle each day. If you haven't heard of it yet, no worries. I apparently was living under a rock for the first few months it existed. 

Wordle is an online 5-letter word game that was invented by somebody in the U.K. It's actually only accessible by visiting the website here – it's not an app for your phone.

Each day a new word is released and you have six attempts to guess what the word of the day is. No clues, just guess a 5-letter word. If you're a Wheel of Fortune fan, you probably know the common letters to guess. After your guess, the tiles will change color to yellow if the letter is correct and green if the letter is correct AND in the right place in the word. Then you guess again and hope you get close enough you get the word in 6 tries. Word nerds like me love this.

And word nerds love getting it in 2 guesses and bragging about it! Yup. That won't happen again but it sure is fun to try! (Oh and the 230 is the puzzle number, not any type of score. You just get bragging rights.) My only advice for newbies is to pay attention to your "used letter board" so you don't waste guesses. 

Anyway, that's my random fun. Not like I'm setting Olympic goals here, people. Just normal middle-aged lady attainable ones!

Have a safe and fun weekend – whatever your version of fun is!

Sit and Spin

I didn't realize my favorite parts of the Olympics were starting tonight already BEFORE the opening ceremonies tomorrow. So this serves as your warning that blogs will be sporadic for the next 9 days – or whatever it is. 

Kitty and I are ready to virtually try the triple axles and the Salchow (which we call the Sow Cow) and the double toe and lutz thingy plus the sit and spin camel thingy, too. All without getting dizzy of course. Or heaven forbid, injured.

I did get into the spirit tonight before I got home and realized events were starting. Was at the girls hoops game against Athens. Both teams have similar records and for the first many, many minutes, our Lady Royals were down. We're talking 16-3 or something like that. I was too stressed to take pictures at that point.

But then like Olympians, they rallied for their country, er school, and worked as a team to come back and take the lead. They ended up winning by 64-38!

The lesson here and during these Olympics will be try your hardest and never give up. I mean if Sylvester can do the camel spin, anyone with two legs certainly can! 

Go team USA!

Funky Cold Groundhog

Who do you trust more to tell you the forecast – a grumpy rodent awakened from his winter slumber or an '80s rap artist? In this case, both indicate more winter. but I'll like that Tone Loc chimed in with Funky Cold winter!

Though, I'm not necessarily happy with either Tone or Punxsutawney Phil. Neither is Phil's ex...

That struck as very, very funny this morning. So I had to share. Everywhere.

After yesterday's 36 degrees, today's high of 11 was a return to the brutal winter we all know and love, er tolerate, here in Wisconsin. How did I cope? Nothing warms up the house like baking!

And banana bread? That warms up the tummy, too! 

Pretty productive evening indoors after venturing out briefly to the chiropractor. Got the raffle baskets done and out the door. Baked the banana bread. Got 3 design projects done. And my look at pictures I shot Monday that I completely forgot about.

Or may sit under a blanket and watch some steamy Hallmark movie. Hey, it's all about warmth for the next 6 weeks, thanks to Phil!

New Beginnings

It's fun when the Fed-Ex man can deliver a fresh start. This may look like an ordinary laptop box to you, but to someone in this house, it signifies the gateway (oops, wrong brand) to adulthood and a career.

Raise a cold one to Carter, who started his official first real, adult job today actually using his college degrees in business and German. Whoo-hoo!

When COVID hit the spring of 2020, he was just getting into an internship at the university study abroad office. He really enjoyed it and was bummed when it was basically canceled. Now, he's going to resume that line of work at a study abroad organization. He won't be focused just on German, but a variety of potential students going abroad or coming from abroad. I'll learn more as he gets into it.

It's a remote position – the headquarters are on Wall Street (true story) – so for now, he's working from the third home office in this house. No more nagging texts from Mom asking, "How's the job search going?"

That's a job perk right there! Wishing him the best as we all move forward in the journey called life! It can be pretty amazing.

A Basket Case

My Sunday day of rest was a day of doing good. I'm excited that our co-op hockey team is holding a Stick it to Cancer fundraising night for our friends and their son. 

Cale played on the Pacelli-Assumption-Amherst-Etc Co-op team when he was in high school at Assumption. The fall of his freshman year of college at Madison is when he found out he had cancer. It's been an unbelievable roller coaster – physically, emotionally, spiritually – for him and his family. But the good news is that for today, he's cancer-free. 

We all know we can only count on today and hope God prepares us for tomorrow!

So as part of the fundraiser night, there'll be raffle baskets. Figured I could put some of my creative talents to work and come up with a basket or two. When I crocheted a blanket and threw in some wine and chocolate, I figured the basket needed something more. That's where hubby stepped in and suggested maybe I could make something on my Cricut. 

And that's what I did...

Got some $1.48 stemless wine glasses at Wal-Mart and made two of these to complete basket number one.

Totally adds the finishing touch, right?

Then I think I'll do a coffee-related one so I got some mugs at the Dollar Store. They were out of black ones, so I took what they had. I think they'll work.

Of course, coffee drinkers like me probably need a bigger mug! The good thing is that now that I saved my design, I can use if for other things – including large coffee mugs. And as Jim pointed out, I can replace the word HOCKEY with whatever else a person is obsessing over! I could take orders, but be aware of supply chain issues! Ha.

I also managed to re-create our team's hockey logo and put that on a skinny tumbler (since I bought those in bulk before Christmas).

Very happy with how that turned out. I'll have to see if I shove that in with the coffee treats basket or start a third. If anyone wants to donate items for a basket or create your own basket for the raffle, let me know. They need them by the end of this week and I'm hopefully delivering mine Wednesday or Thursday. 

Or mark your calendar and join us Feb. 8. Or just offer up continued prayers for Cale and his family. These are incredibly special people in our lives, so every positive thought, word, or action means the world!

Count your blessings!

Plenty of Hoopla

Somehow managed to sleep in until past 8:30 a.m. today. That's pretty good for a Saturday!

I needed the energy as there was a lot of basketball action at a Assumption today. Varsity girls and both JV and Varsity boys played Pacelli. And in between games and halves there were the Little Royals dribblers (super cute), some "big shot" free-throw club members, the 8th-grade hoops team, and let's not forget plenty of people to visit in the stands.

Since Pacelli is in Stevens Point, I saw two of my co-workers that I haven't seen in person during the pandemic. So that was nice. And weird at the same time. Almost 2 years. Whoa.

Was going to go through all my pictures tonight but since Jim is gone to Rudolph – he had church choir performance tonight – I took advantage of controlling the remote and watched a few episodes of a Netflix series. 

Now that it's almost 11 p.m., I should go to bed save my leftover "work" for tomorrow. I'll have time. Might not have ambition, but I'll have time. 

Rink Rat

Pretty sure I've been at the ice rink more times this "season" than the last 3 combined. But that's OK. I'm almost starting to understand the game. Just kidding. Not even close. Still, it's fun to watch, I'll admit.

Tonight I decided to head to my first Wisconsin Rapids RiverKings (Junior A Hockey) game ever for a couple reasons.

One, my cousin Luke messaged me this afternoon that he and some UWSP friends would be there playing in the RiverKings Pep Band. Oh yeah, it's a thing!

Two, I knew my friends from the Family Center were going to be there as a sponsor – and my friend Debi got to drop the ceremonial puck. Cool.

And three, I've wanted to catch this guy in action since I took his senior pictures a couple years back. Ethan is from Colorado but has a family connection in town here. He's one of the team's 3 goalies and wasn't in the net tonight, but I caught up with him between periods to say hello and send his mom back home a picture. 

I also ran into a few friends – of course – so it was a nice evening. But no worries on me becoming a rink rat (probably not even a real term) because I liked coming home to my warm house and bed way more than a shootout victory for our local team!

Sorry, not sorry. Nice win, though!