The Weekly Ramble – December 19, 2025

Happy Friday! Let’s chat holiday drinks, weekly schedules and lack thereof, and planner doings.

I told you this was my Christmas break. In years past we’ve actually gone on vacation during this week, to Mammoth, Arizona, or even Hawaii. This isn’t that kind of break.

The kids still have work or school; Bryan still has work. And while I’ve been keeping the blog fires burning, I’ve allowed myself to switch gears and keep it to a minimum, instead allowing myself the time to let go of some of the rules over life and work I had set in place the last few weeks and months.

• I splurged on a Starbucks holiday drink, something I’ve bypassed all season due to calories, macros, and cost. I got a protein-boosted Chestnut Praline latte and it was delish! Unfortunately, it appears to have sold out all over town so I wasn’t able to get it on my TWO return trips. I know, I rarely go, but this week I went three times! Once by myself, once with FishChick17, and once with a friend.
• I allowed myself to stay in bed longer each morning. This felt a little bit like that part in Little Women when they give up their chores and schedules. By Wednesday, I realized that I don’t like the feeling of letting things go undone, particularly when there’s things that needed done.
• I took the Be Present app controls off Instagram and allowed myself to binge. Spoiler: I realized I haven’t been missing much and that past the ten minute-mark I was getting sucked into nonsense. By Wednesday, I had the app back in action.
• I strolled through Target with zero agenda, just looking for holiday inspiration. I didn’t find much, but it was fun anyway.
• I made Curried Chicken Divan and ate as much as I wanted even though the macros are off the charts.

At the same time, I also puttered around doing the home and family things that need doing, like the Costco Business grocery run, cleaning up all the clutter that accumulated while I did my final work push over the previous two weeks, Christmas shopping and planning, and a little Christmas baking.

I had hoped for a quiet, lovely week, not going by a set schedule, just being what my friend Allison calls “relaxingly productive”, but I think that I need to be a little more productive than I’ve been because it isn’t as relaxing otherwise.

Here’s what else I’ve been doing, eating, listening/watching, reading, and/or writing this past week:

What I’ve Been Doing

One of the things that I’ve most thoroughly enjoyed this week has been tinkering with my planner, both past and present. You know this is my brain on paper.

I have a new What I Want page set up for 2026 with some really great ideas for learning and adventure, but I also made a Year-End Recap page in my 2025 planner. I used to create a year’s accomplishments page all the time in scrapbooking; I don’t know why I never integrated that into the planner before.

(There’s now a designated page for this in the Print & Go Planner.)

It’s really fun to see my vision page and my accomplishments page for 2025 side by side.

Since it’s a picture collage, it does necessitate some interpretation.

• Planned: family trip to Japan – accomplished
• Planned: read the Bible – accomplished
• Planned: read more instead of scrolling – I’ve read 114 books to date this year
• Planned: Disneyland x3 – we went to the OG Disneyland in January and then visited both Japanese parks in May and June
• Planned: save money, enjoy time with family – accomplished
• Planned: focus on nutrition and exercise – not quite accomplished, but losing almost 10 pounds feels like one
• Unplanned: get frozen shoulder – but thankfully, it’s already starting to thaw. PT and stretches as well as pain management count as an accomplishment.
• Unplanned: my wedding ring debacle – I consider it a huge win that I got it resized and repaired for much less than anticipated.
• Planned: grow in my faithfulness and delight in the Lord – accomplished, though still a work in progress

Looking at the wins of the past year definitely gives me confidence to dream big as we head into 2026.

I also ran out of refills on my BHRT and the prescribing doctor declined to refill unless I saw the midwife. It wasn’t on my list for the week, but burning tongue wasn’t on my list for the year, either.

So, I spontaneously agreed to a 3 pm appointment on a Thursday afternoon. The midwife tends to get a little scolding sometimes so I was a little apprehensive.

Bryan talked me off the ledge and I went. Turns out she was very kind and accommodating. However, whereas my male doctors were like “no, you don’t need hormones,” she’s more likely to fall in the ditch on the other side.

You get some hormones. You get all the hormones!

Maybe I’m naive, but I feel like this should be a little more nuanced. Regardless, I got my refill with the option to revisit in three months’ time at which point I can decide if I want to pursue a local “concierge” specialist or go back.

We agreed that I’ll dial up to 4 clicks on the estradiol and see if that helps my tongue and other symptoms.

What I’ve Been Eating

For better or worse I put a break on tracking macros. I ate a lot of sandwiches this week because it was easy and I didn’t seem to find as much time in the kitchen for puttering as I would have liked.

• I love Jewish rye bread and there was a loaf I bought on a whim that needed eating.
• Bryan and I went on a date night and found that our regular burger joint went out of business four months ago (that’s how infrequently we’re doing date nights) so we ended up at Mendocino Farms – good sandwiches.
• And one day I found burgers on clearance at Ralphs, and I count those as sandwiches.

So, lots of sandwiches.

What I’ve Been Listening/Watching

My friend Allison put together a number of playlists for Advent and they have been really good. There are a lot of new-to-us songs on there.

Funnily, I didn’t realize how new or how much I’d learned the lyrics until one day in church when Bryan looked at me shocked. He hadn’t ever heard the song and wondered how I was able to “belt it out like that.” Since he’s the musician of the two of us, I consider that a small win.

Bryan has been wanting to see the F1 movie since it was in theaters. We finally got to watch it on a free Apple TV trial last weekend and it was really good! A little bit of a nail biter at times, but a mostly clean and generally feel-good movie.

I’m convinced Brad Pitt had work done, but who knows?

I also set up a holiday movie schedule for the week since there were films I’d been wanting to watch that some kids wanted to see and others didn’t. It’s interesting which of the menfolk will sit down and join us.

The Shop Around the Corner was a winner as was It’s a Wonderful Life and You’ve Got Mail. Bryan watched most of them with us. A Mr Potter of Pottersville reference came up in the media later in the week which was gratifying to understand. (No, folks, it’s not Harry.)

Another family fav is The Family Man with Nicholas Cage, I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen it.

What I’ve Been Reading

Last weekend I started my Kindle Unlimited subscription, just for a month since they offer no deals. I was waiting for my Christmas break to start, but I started it a day early as part of research for the Big ReDo.

I was curious what kitchen cleaning books were available. Surprisingly, someone wrote an entire book on dishwashing.

I’m intrigued by one on NOT cleaning the kitchen. However, so far, I don’t like the author’s attitude. It seems a little too much “work-is-bad-let’s-avoid-it” whereas I’d like to be more of a “learn to love what must be done” kind of person.

As you know I spent several months in the winter/spring doing a deep dive into Clean Romance Novels. I read The Wild Card this week, the 4th in the Sheet Cake series from Emma St Clair and I was a little let down.

The book itself was fine and I know the author had intended to write all five books in one streak but was interrupted by other projects, so there’s a caveat there. But, I think that within this genre there’s so much content being churned out that it tends toward quantity over quality.

I got a free book this week, Broken Bread by Tilly Dillehay, and added a used, old favorite Kitchen Organization by Deniece Schofield to add to the library as well.

What I’ve Been Writing

Don’t miss these newer posts to help you gear up for the new year. It will be here quicker than you think!

Alrighty, that’s it for me. Now your turn!