12-31-2025 End of the year

 Another year is at its end.  So where am I compared to the beginning of this year?

Today marks two years since I told Jobe to get lost.  Unlike this time last year two years of therapy and rumination have brought me to the point I can honestly say I am totally indifferent about her, and I am glad she is no longer in my life.  I don't miss the drama that one would think follows her everywhere, but she actually creates on her own for the aesthetic so people pity her.  I clearly see her for who and what she is.

--Sometimes loving yourself means walking away.

The shop at the beginning of the year was 1/3 demolished down to being just a concrete slab.  

Forms were set, and concrete poured to raise the sill plate above the grade of the yard so the water damage would stop.

 

Walls were raised, siding installed

 

 The roof went up piece by piece and with a much greater slope to shed the weather better.

 

And now it is closed up for the season

 

The encroaching garage from the neighboring property is now gone--you could say it left in a puff of smoke 😁

 

And sadly so is my 65+ year old white pine tree due to some high wind back in March

 

I've written several more short stories as my regular readers are aware of since I tend to post them here.  The most recently completed one is in the hands of my kids and is 16 pages long so maybe a bit long for here unless I break it up over a few posts.

Lots of inner work is why at points I've been kind of absent from social media in general.  I've had to really come face to face with memories from the first abuser in my life and that is sort of a massive undertaking on its own.  Working through those memories though has explained why I was such an easy mark for Jobe--and yes mark is the right word.

I have been helping my son try to get his life back together.  He is now a year and a half out from having a brain tumor removed and the scans are all clear.  He is off chemo now so the chemo fog is lifting.  He has gone back to work, but he does a lot of gig/brand ambassador stuff so we are hitting the slow season.  We have found a house that we--his mom and I--may be helping him buy as well, it is about two miles from mine, needs some work--like a whole kitchen.  The payments will be way less than any rent in our area.  I'm not very likely to toss him out if things go wrong and as his work picks up he will be making the payments.

Obviously the shop is sort of moving, but not at the rate I was hoping for due to a reduction in funding from other priorities.  I decided with the shop taking longer than projected to get up and operational, that I would go ahead and set my office up to at least functional.  I bought a better computer desk, comfy chair, new monitors, etc and can now work at my writing with greater ease.  The office is also enough quieter that I have begun recording my short stories and eventually my novels.  The "mood lighting" is thanks to strings of holiday lights in strategic places--like around the edge of the ceiling.

 

 

 

Overall I am mentally in a better place and physically in the same place.  Personally I'm still single, but am willing to be that way for a while.  Dating won't happen until I have my kids stored items out of the house and can do a good deep cleaning.  I am much more aware now of when someone is pushing my boundaries.  I am much less inclined to tolerate being lied to or manipulated in any way.  I am far from the dark places I was still walking in at the beginning of the year, and that is a big a plus on its own.  I'm not far from my goal weight at this point and am honestly in the best shape of my life both mentally and physically which is probably weird for most people to wrap their heads around when they know I am staring at level 56 in just a few months.  I'm trying to not look at the set backs from the year even though there are many.  Occasionally I am forced to remind myself that I am not doing that bad considering I do pretty much everything around here by myself and that I am self funded.

 

So looking forward what are the goals?

Try to get back to regular posting on here--every other week with a goal of every week.

Get some money ahead before warm weather to start the next phase of the shop.

Get my son on his own again.

Try to get video up more regularly

Attempt to post more across my platforms daily on some weekly on others. 

To get out and explore about once a month.

Tie up some books, and move along on others, but try and get one or two of them into print.

Round up the dust bunnies a bit more often in here.

Record more of my stories/books and get those sales going as well. 

 

All doable, all possible, and with the darkness clearing more and more should be manageable. 

 

Happy New Year to one and all 😊 

Reduced sugar peanut butter chocolate cookies

Time for our next installment of sugar free / reduced sugar recipes for the holiday season.  Today we have a recipe that with one tweak makes two different types of cookies.  This one is reduced as shelf stable peanut butter by default has some sugar in it (4g in 2T / 30ml) which is about one cookie.  This recipe was originally in a church cookbook from where I grew up in D.C. and was called The Impossible Peanut Butter Cookie.  I have found it modifies to reduced sugar very easily and so I run with it.  If you leave the cocoa out you get the plain version, sugar substitutes exactly for the stevia if you want the regular version.

Ingredients:

1c / 237 ml of Stevia powder

1c / 237 ml of peanut butter

1 egg

⅓ c / 79ml Cocoa powder

 

Add the stevia and egg to a medium sized bowl and beat together.

Then fold and smash in the peanut butter, and cocoa powder.

I use a 1 ½ T / 23ml cookie scoop

to scoop them out onto a parchment paper covered cookie sheet–or in my case a pizza pan.  Smash them out as is tradition and pop them into the oven at 350F / 178C for 8 to 10 minutes.

Are they like eating fudge?  No, they are chocolatey but sadly far from fudge.  Warning they are a little dry and I have never found a way around that issue.

Let them cool for five or ten minutes as the flavor between hot and cooled is very different--plus hot peanut butter burns the inside of your mouth badly!

I have experimented with mix-ins like chopped up unsweetened bakers chocolate, various nuts, etc, but be careful not to overdo it or they tend to fall apart.

Bon appetite

Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.
--Charles M. Schulz

Sugar free egg nog

Here we are once again in the Holiday Season. Fairy lights everywhere, ornaments in the trees, and enough cookies, cakes, pies, and festive drinks to easily throw a diabetic's blood sugar into orbit. So from the resident diabetic I’m going to try and post a series of no sugar added recipes this month starting with the nearly mandatory holiday drink egg nog. There are a cornucopia of recipes for egg nog on the web and in many cookbooks, but if you find them a bit off compared to the ready made store bought product you may find my version to come pretty close.

You’ll need:

1 package instant sugar free vanilla pudding (1oz/28g size)

3c / 710ml almond milk

1c / 237ml heavy cream

1t / 5ml cinnamon

¼ t / 1.25ml nutmeg

2T / 30ml rum (not the spiced stuff!)

Add your almond milk to a blender

Add the cream

Add your pudding mix

Blend on the “cream” setting for a minute or so, then while it is running add you cinnamon, nutmeg, and rum, and blend for another 30 seconds or so.

That’s it. If you let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes it will slightly thicken to that consistency we expect from store bought egg nog but with the double liquid it won’t become pudding.

Put it in your storage vessel, pitcher, serving glasses, or I guess you could just drink it from the blender–who am I to judge?

So how does this stack up in a 1c / 237ml serving?

Calories

Pudding 20 

Almond milk 22.5

Cream 200

Cinnamon 1.6

Nutmeg 0.75

Rum 16.17

For a total of 261.02 per serving

Fat per serving

Pudding 0.0g

Almond milk 1.9g

Cream 20g

Cinnamon 0.1g

Nutmeg 0.19g

Rum 0.0g

Total fat 22.19g

Sugar per serving

Pudding 0.0g

Almond milk 0.0g

Cream 0.0g

Cinnamon 0.0g

Nutmeg 0.0g

Rum 0.59g

Total sugar 0.59 g

Compared to a nationally available brand per 1c serving

Calories 343

Carbohydrates 34.4

Fat 19

As you can see my version is much more friendly on calories being 82 calories lower, 34 g ;ess carbs, and about the same on fat, but for a diabetic that 34g of carbs is massive!

Bon Appetite

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien