The Weekly Ramble – January 9, 2026

The new year has brought lots of rain and green grass but also some peeks at the sky. The fall was inundated with fog, so it’s so nice to see some sunrises!

It’s been a fast week. I don’t know how, but I’m not able to get as much done these days as I did when I had six little kids running around. My guess is that I slept a lot less!

That said, I do have a few things to put on my ta-da list:

• I took down the tree, organized (sorta) all the decor and got it put away.
• I figured out how to get the Roomba (a Xmas gift from the SacFishers) to work on regular basis.
• I finished my first book of the year as well as read two more (more on that below).
• I started decluttering the kitchen, but need to put more time in.
• I spent several hours with Quicken and our bank statements, inputting data. (I find that doing it manually is a better auditing system on our spending.)
• I got over 7500 steps every day this week.
• I resurrected the joy of Sunday prep. (Wow! Why did I stop doing that for six months? It made such a difference this past week!)
• I spent 4 hours reviewing the 1138 posts I have on Good Cheap Eats.
• I enjoyed restarting a new semester of CBS.
• I went walking with a friend. And met another NEW friend for coffee.
• I worked with Bryan to fix my 1991 White Jeans Machine sewing machine. (Yay!)
• I made good progress on my embroidery project.

My original plan for the year was to jump into quilting and I’m all set to do that now that Bryan fixed the sewing machine. However, I have the felt and the thread already so I don’t have to spend money on a project. Since embroidery is transportable and I’m enjoying this, I’m keeping with this for now.

I’m not an accomplished seamstress but I figure this is good, cheap practice. I figured out what the center panels will look like and am even envisioning some napkin rings to go with.

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

What I’ve Been Doing

I’m missing my daily ritual of sitting in front of the tree, so I’m looking for a replacement. This morning I lit candles and ate my breakfast by candlelight. That was pretty sweet.

One can’t rely on the sunrise so this is a nice alternative. Plus it’s warmer than sitting on the balcony.

I’ve worked on getting a rhythm to the days. FishChick17 and I have gone walking in the mornings and I’ve tried to get a few hours in the business work each day.

This week didn’t go as planned, so I’ll end it with about 15 hours clocked, but I’m realizing that planning for extra time to get back up and running after the Christmas break is just as important as planning that time to take a break.

What I’ve Been Eating

I had the best of intentions of getting back to counting macros, but that hasn’t happened. I was pretty “gazelle intense” during November. Need to get that mindset back!

If you’re curious about our meals this month, you can read the play-by-play on my Pantry Challenge daily logs.

What I’ve Been Listening/Watching

Most of my listening this week has been audio books but I’m going to leave that in the reading section below. Instead, I’ll tell you about this new series we started, called Maigret.

It’s on PBS which we have until the end of the month, so I guess we better whip through the things we want to watch! Weirdly, it’s set in Paris and all the characters are French but the actors are predominantly British.

Personally, I’m happy to read subtitles and would prefer they just not pretend quite so much. We suffered through another series produced like this, Murder in Provence, which was really bad.

That said, the first two episodes of Maigret were pretty good. The side plot with his wife feels forced, but overall the mystery was good.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’m in the midst of Exodus right now in my Chronological Bible reading. I don’t get to it every day now that CBS is in session, but I’m enjoying it.

I’m particularly jazzed about noticing more and more Jesus’ presence in the Old Testament. It’s pretty exciting that the Bible has so much more to discover year and year.

I finished 100 Years of Solitude and wow was that a surprising, depressing, sometimes-disgusting trip. Picture Don Quixote fathers a tribe of sex maniacs.

My kindle library checkout disappeared on Saturday night so I switched to audio which was actually better. I sped it up 2.3x because I just wanted it to end.

I know, there’s deeper meaning and symbolism — FisherMan25 and I have discussed it — and I do feel like I accomplished something in reading a hard book outside my comfort zone. As my friend Lynn put it, “You don’t like reading tragedies, so it’s no surprise that you didn’t like it.”

True. I just didn’t know what I was getting into since I love magical realism. I guess the stories that I’ve read in that genre have always had happy endings.

Which is why I very quickly grabbed a Clean Romance Novel from Kindle Unlimited as a palate-cleanser and read it in 4 hours the same day I finished Solitude.

I’ve enjoyed other books by Kate Watson and Since We’ve No Place to Go did not disappoint. It’s light-hearted, well-written, and digs into deeper character issues and experiences in ways that I can relate to.

Since it was a sequel to a previous book, Single All the Way, I went ahead and read that novella as well. My main critique of Watson’s series books is that there are often inconsistencies from book to book. The same is true with this series, so if you can overlook it, they’re good!

I’ve currently got three books going:

• Kitchen Organization – an old school book by Deniece Schofield
• The Hobbit – started it last year and never finished
• An Enemy in the Village – the latest Bruno book, listening on audio while I sew

What I’ve Been Writing

I wish I could say that I’ve written reams but I have not. I got one blog post written besides all the Pantry Challenge updates.

Here’s to better time management next week!

I hope you’ll check out this post if you’ve got time!