Couch 234: Ready, Set, Go!

ATAT -good luck.

I have been playing with making my own nut milk again. I think I have found the formula I like. Yippee. It was getting more and more expensive to get my favorite Milkademia unsweetened drink for my coffee - and all it basically has in it is some macademia nuts, water, and a few additives so naturally I thought I could do it with fewer additives and less expense.

So, my mom recently found my beloved grandma's old fruitcake recipe, what there was of it. My grandma just had it in her head - but had sketched out some notes at some point. We would make it every year over at my grandma's house. Such fond memories!! Anyway, last weekend my mom and both sisters got together at my mom's house and did their best from memory and the notes to recreate the recipe and baked a batch. I got mine in the mail today!! It's as heavy as I remembered - it's wrapped in wine-soaked cheesecloth like I remember - I unwrapped it and smelled it and it smells right - so I'm all excited now and can't wait to taste it. 25 more days of brushing it with wine every couple days to keep it moist before it'll be ready. I'm sure I will be tasting it before then. I haven't had it in so many years!! It's SO much better than store-bought fruitcakes. Apparently the recipe actually called for soaking the cheesecloth in whisky or something but my grandparents didn't drink, so they just bought the cheapest wine (a jug of Mogan David my mom said) and used that. So my mom & sisters used wine too. It's like I found another link to my grandma (in addition to crocheting).

Art that's lovely!

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Thanks, Stressed. I'll take a pic of it later today when I unwrap to brush with wine and show y'all. It looks delicious.

Mornin' couch! Last night I was a little concerned that I might wake up this morning and go holy carp what have I done?! (re: of course saying goodbye to L yesterday.) But I didn't. I still feel really good about this ending! I'm so glad she told me yesterday that it doesn't have to be sad. I don't know why I thought it did. I guess I just thought that all endings were sad regardless, maybe. I am feeling so greatly blessed that I was able to have the ending that I wanted/needed. I know from reading here that many others are not so lucky. Losing my cat in the same week did add a level of difficulty I wasn't expecting to have, because I had to figure out how to separate out that sadness from the ending with L, but we managed to figure it out together yesterday. We really were a great team.

I made another hat this afternoon.

.... and here's the fruitcake! It smells exactly like I remember.

That is a really beautiful fruitcake.

Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to compliment yourself?

Ha you think i wont see this cuz its early in the morning!

Happy Sunday, Couchies. I got my booster yesterday, so I am resting on the couch today (literally and in cyber-world). I don't have a fever and body aches like last time, just draggy and foggy and my arm hurts.


I graduated from my master's program a week ago. Still processing that. Going to grad school was a part of the transition from being married to not married so it feels like it has been an integral art of forming my not-married self. Now I am not quite sure what to do with my time.

P.S. daisy, if you're popping in, it feels overwhelming when you're in the middle. But it is so so worth it. Keep on truckin'. You've got this.

Mornin' couch! I've been up for awhile but my son came over this morning, I cooked a big breakfast for us, and we had a wonderful talk. Got some closure for all of us with regards to Rascal, and it was just generally really great to spend time with him. He got a new job awhile back and is doing really really well at it, and is much happier work-wise than in his previous shop so it was great to hear about all of that too.

Oops, I forgot that you are omnioculate.

Or is that panophthalmic?

Okay now you are just making up words!

I do NOT have omniocronovid, and i am quite selective in my choices - no "pan" stuff for me!

Sweetie, you’ve slept with/flirted with/married/proposed to three-quarters of the Couch, plus the Gosling and Santa Claus.

That’s at least myriads, if not “pan.”

Congrats on the graduation, WFS!

Today I'm crocheting more of these little cozy thingies that I designed to fit the Oui Desserts jars, and actually finally wrote out the pattern. I'm hoping to get a couple of my local friends who crochet to test the pattern for me before I share it with anyone else, since this is the first pattern I've ever written!

People change.

They get arthritis.

And then they get their parts replaced. Well, it is what I did at any rate.

Not *all* parts are replaceable!

I assume you know where the shape of the heart comes from...?

A most definitely irreplaceable part.

The sweetbreads?

Uh, no. Think lower. And on the outside.

Gives new meaning to “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

My new obsession - synchronized ice skating. Youtube has videos. I did not even know such a thing existed

I forgot if I told you folks about my new job? It's at a covid swab test center. I'm glad I recently got my booster shot.

I'm frustrated because I've watched a video a bunch of times and still struggle to remember how to remove PPE correctly. I'm even worse with text instructions even with pictures.

And NO, I didn't get training even though I "should" - verbal instructions, observing others, tips from kind coworkers. AND the cost for my government discounted course for donning and doffing PPE is my grocery budget for the month.

And I'm VERY angry at my government after my first shift because I handled a lot of frustrated low income workers who aren't being compensated for lost wages while they're mandated to have weekly supervised swab tests. At least the test is free but it's just disgusting to see the huge income inequality between leaders, the upper class, the middle class and the working poor. I knew about it before as I've been in the lowest tax bracket range for most my entire working life thus far but yeah I'm back to being working poor.

Just like when I first entered the workforce but "at least" I lived with my abusive parents who earn many times my highest ever income...

Not naming my country but eh, folks probably already can guess.