It’s been a long and crazy month, but as the dust clears, it’s time to get back to my routines.
I’d forgotten quite how intense NaNoWriMo can be, but add in a week long visit with my daughter and grand puppy for Thanksgiving, and my typically quiet lifestyle bore a strong resemblance to the chaotic one I left behind a year ago. Needless to say, things like regular gym visits and blog posts were the ones who paid the price, but well-established tasks get back on track quickly.
My annual turkey soup making is stretching out longer than expected, so the gym visits will wait another day or two, but blogging is easy. It just requires sitting down in front of the computer and letting the mind run amok.
What happened to the soup, you ask? Well!
Last Christmas, my daughter decided that the pot I’d been using to make the turkey stock and subsequent stew-like soup was woefully inadequate, so she set out to find me something more suitable. She proudly presented me with an enormous pot which was actually designed for making tamales. Sans the rack, it did very nicely for an all night turkey carcass cooking…except for one thing. I decided to leave the lid on the pot, so even though I didn’t fill it anywhere close to the top, the result was a massive amount of stock, far more than necessary for my mega pot of soup this year.
But it gets better. In an effort to get the soup cooled so I could skim the fat, I put the four containers of broth into my freezer. By the time I went to bed last night, the fat had not yet risen to the top, so I left it there over night. This morning, I removed four frozen solid containers of stock from the freezer and put them on my kitchen counter to defrost. They are still sitting there, nearly twelve hours later, and are still half frozen! Needless to say, the rest of the ingredients were not added to the soup today, but I have great hope for tomorrow!
In all fairness, I owe myself a quiet day after spending several hours completing the last 5000 words of the challenge yesterday. (I was smarter this year and spread it out over the day, while also having 3000 fewer words to complete as well). I managed to finish and still be in bed by about 1:30, which is a good thing as the cats were rather excited by my being up an hour earlier than normal due to Thanksgiving night exhaustion, so they decided I needed a repeat performance. If there was ever any question about who trains who, I think the question has been answered.
In the interest of keeping this short and sweet, let me just say that you can once again look forward to daily posts, though there’s no guarantee as to the content. As always, I’ll do my best to be entertaining.
My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for a peaceful, enjoyable Thanksgiving with both my blood and adopted kids.
2. I am grateful for the silence after a week with a house guest, however quiet and respectful she was.
3. I am grateful to be able to get back to my routine.
4. I am grateful for the excess of turkey stock as it will make some delicious dishes over the course of the next few months.
5. I am grateful that I completed another 50,000 word challenge, though the real work has just begun!
6. I am grateful for abundance: drive, commitment, imagination, motivation, routines, work, play, love, joy, peace, happiness, harmony, health and prosperity.
Namaste
And now for some shameless self-promotion:
I’d love it if you’d visit my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SheriLevensteinConawayAuthor?ref=aymt_homepage_panel. I’ve created this page as a means of positive affirmation and would be very grateful if you’d “like” it or leave a comment! Thank you!
