100 Days of Hygge - Day 11

The weather was screen porch perfect yesterday.  I sat out and prepared for the history class I'll be teaching at Aquinas Learning.

Sorry I don't have a photo of the ham and cheese sub I ate for lunch!  It was zero waste in that I bought the pretzel sub rolls in bulk using my own cloth bag instead of any plastic bag (or paper bag even).  And both the ham and sliced cheddar were bought over the counter from the deli department with me bringing my own containers for them. Lately, I feel like I'm getting sloppier about my zero waste efforts.  Mostly because my family really isn't 100% on board with it, so they are careless and bring in a lot of extra packaging and plastic.  But this lunch was a definite win!

Anyway, I love history and I am excited about teaching it to the Schola Alta I kids (7th and 8th graders).  I think we are going to have great fun!

100 Days of Hygge - Day 10

Yesterday morning I got up early and made granola for breakfast.

Yummy!

100 Days of Hygge - Day 9

Yesterday was a gorgeous day weather-wise.  Today it is dreary and rainy.  It actually is making me think more about Houston's disaster.  Praying for those people fighting the flooding.

I wound up having to watch our little 22 month old guest for many hours yesterday.  He didn't want to take his afternoon nap without mama around, so I took him for a long walk.  And snapped photos of all the wildflowers blooming abundantly on the sides of the path through the woods behind our neighborhood.

Little Dylan falling asleep.

Wildflowers by the path.

Wonder what kind these are?

Pretty view.

It was a very peaceful walk.  I enjoyed the weather and the beauty around me.  Little Dylan got a little nap, which he very much needed, and I got some exercise which I very much needed!

100 Days of Hygge - Day 8

Sunday was a busy day and some stuff happened that was not happy.

However, in the evening my 25 year old son came over with his girlfriend and two other friends who are all doing a little tour together of original music.  Most of them live in Boston.  They just came back from Georgia and Tennessee.  After dinner (it was one of the friends' 24th birthday)  they all started playing music and singing.  It was really fun.  Sean on harmonica or drum, Nik on piano and the others singing.  I love that I have kids who fill the house with music.  I was too lazy to run and get my phone to record but it really warms my heart to listen to them play and jam together.

The Toll-Gate - Book 25 (Day 7 of 100 Days of Hygge)

This cover seems to have very little to do with the actual story.

With all the heavy stuff going down in the news, I felt the need to find comfort in a Georgette Heyer novel.  Good thing she wrote so many!  I still haven't read them all.  The Toll-Gate was new to me.  It did just the trick.  Captain Staple is back from fighting Napoleon.  And frankly, life's a little boring.  He's a soldier through and through, a hugely built man, who doesn't conform well to society's rules and likes a bit of danger.

Georgette Heyer Hygge.  My bookshelf

Fleeing a boring engagement party of his cousin's, he gets lost on the moors one night in the pouring rain and winds up stumbling on a road with a toll-gate.  When he calls for the gate to be opened a little boy emerges, frightened to death.  The boy's father has disappeared.  Captain Staple has a kind heart and anyway, it is night and he is sopping wet, so he stays with the boy thinking the father will return in the morning.  But he never does.  The next day, enjoying his role as gate keeper, he meets Nell, the daughter of the local squire and falls for her instantly.  She is a great-hearted and independent woman, and tall too.  She feels the chemistry also.   But whatever happened to the boy  Ben's father?  And why is Nell's odious cousin and his horrible, lascivious friend overstaying their welcome while grandfather squire is rapidly coming to the end of his days?

Lots of fun characters and adventure.  Captain Staple to the rescue; he solves the mystery.

While I enjoyed the story once it got going I have to agree with the TOR reviewer on one point.*  The book starts out going in one direction but suddenly switches gears and we never hear about any of the characters that were introduced at the beginning.  That's odd.  And I have to say the end left me rather repulsed.  I never am good at accepting the excuse of preserving one's 'honor' for taking the law into one's own hands.  It made me shudder a bit, it seemed so cold hearted.

So maybe not Heyer's absolute best, but a fun read.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.


* I enjoy the TOR reviews of Georgette Heyer's books in spite of their rather strained post-modern critiques that seem so typical of current English/gender studies thinking.  The reviewer is so steeped this particular mindset and she writes in such a glib, overtly witty way, it's a tiny bit nauseating.  But she does make some interesting observations  and she obviously appreciates Heyer, so I forgive her her cookie-cutter, straight out of the politically correct classroom approach.  She does make me think a bit more about what's going on in the plot and with the characters.  It is gratifying to read intelligent takes on Heyer's works.

100 Days of Hygge - Day 6

Today we drove to Baltimore (actually Owings Mills) to celebrate Grandad's 86th birthday (which was actually 2 weeks ago).  We took him and his lady friend out to lunch at Red Robin and then back to his apartment for cake and ice cream.  It was a nice visit.  We drove home the scenic route through very pretty countryside.

A nice Saturday.

Oops!  Got my finger in there.  Sorry, not much of a photo.

100 Days of Hygge - Day 5

Don't feel like wrestling with photos today as I am pressed for time.  And I am still looking for hygge in the little daily things that already exist. 

Like my Day 1, which involved setting up a new housekeeping system, it might not seem like hygge at first, but it creates a harmony in the home atmosphere that allows for hygge.

Friday morning is compost morning.  I have a compost service that picks up my compostable items on Fridays.  I have to thank my friend at The More, The Messier, for telling me about this service maybe 2 years ago?  For I don't know how long, every time I'd go into my fridge, I"d experience guilt and anxiety because of the food I regularly wasted.  I am not a good food manager.  I would always think to myself, if I go to Hell, it'll be because I wasted so much food!  This was just a regular vicious cycle of negative thinking that went on in my head for decades, every. single. day.   I'd beat myself up, feel like a failure, get overwhelmed and never change.

I know some intrepid people compost in their backyards.  I am not one of them.  So this service is so worth it to me!  This morning I got up, cleaned out a couple of the veggie drawers, threw the rotting lettuce and wrinkly moldy cucumbers into the already almost overflowing bin (had to press everything down to fit it all) and then put the bin on the front porch for pick up.  A hygge moment!

The funny thing is now that I can compost my food scraps (and things like recyclable paper towel, finished steel wool soap pads, and numerous other things!  I can compost more than many who have a backyard compost pile because the service is actually a commercial level one, so it can take pretty much anything that was once living, except drippy things like yogurt and liquids).  Anyway, the funny thing, as I was saying, is that now I have begun to even save things that I never thought of saving.  It's like once the burden got lifted from my shoulders of dealing with rotting food, I started becoming more conscientious.  So now I am better at using up leftovers, saving vegetable scraps to put in the chicken broth I make weekly.  In fact, remembering to make chicken broth weekly is an improvement.  The other day I made some salmon cucumber salad for dinner and instead of throwing out the icky stuff (the skin and bones - I know you can eat these but the skin is too oily for me and my kids don't like the crunchy bones, even if they are soft), I saved them and fed them to my cats.  Oh my gosh, my cats loved it.  I never would have thought of doing something like that before.

So no photos today, but definite contentment about a little household issue.