The daily grind is wearing me down today. Maybe it’s the special kind of stupid people I’ve been dealing with today or perhaps a lack of sleep, but I’m tired of the grind. At this point, I’d like a nice vacation to an island or national park far from civilization. Most days the people I talk to at work are amazing. I’ve made at least three new best friends already this week. Today they’re just demanding and rude, they’re not nice people.
I work out during my lunch break, which is always a good way to reset my energy. Today’s workout was an ass-kicking treadmill workout from Sherica on Apple Fitness +. Since I just got back to running Sunday after a few weeks off, the runs have been tough this week. Thankfully, I saw a huge improvement today versus the runs on Sunday and Monday. Hopefully, the upward trend will continue when I run again on Friday.
Now I have both puppies chilling with me as I finish my work day. I’m hoping my afternoon goes better than my morning. To be more specific, I hope I’m down for the day with the token transfers. Fortunately, my dogs are here to help me survive the afternoon. I’ve also been looking through my Utah trip pictures, which always makes me happy. One of the words of the day is staghorn, so I thought I’d probably write about Zion. This was, of course, until I realized that stag horn is a type of fern, not a sheep. Doh!
Bighorn sheep with not a staghorn in sight
Do you need a break? From what?
Yes, from people. I don’t know what is in the water today or if the moon is full, but people have been exceptionally special today. And they’re not special in a good way. They’re special in the worst way.
In today’s edition of First World Problems, I present to you my Roomba I3+ EVO and Braava wet jet combo. I upgraded my Roomba after Lord Vader died an unceremonious death after driving through a large puddle the Piggie had left on the floor. This combo represented a big upgrade from my original duo: the Roomba 960 vacuum and the Braava jet 200 mop. Well, at least it was supposed to be an upgrade.
Lord Vader was not a self-emptying Roomba, but he was reliable. You put him on the charger, he charged and at the appointed time he vacuumed. With my new combo Pinky and The Brain, it’s not so simple—neither of the new combo charges with any reliability. I have to double-check that they’re on the charger properly and charging. Sometimes Pinky goes to the dock and its brushes keep spinning making a mess of the docking station.
Perhaps they should ponder cleaning my floors
Now poor Brain can’t seem to find its way off the docking station. Recently, whenever I’ve gone to start the Brain, it says it’s stuck on a cliff and can’t move. If only Pinky was a little more fearless, he would overcome that cliff. This defeats the purpose of having a vacuum and mop that can run daily simultaneously. I could go on and on about this subject, but I won’t bore you with my First World Problems.
The most important invention in your lifetime is…
Oh boy, this is not an easy one. There have been so many things invented in my life that it is hard to nail down. I think I’d have to go with the internet. For better or worse, it has put information at our fingertips and let us become connected to people around the globe.
I was a busy bee baking up a storm this weekend. Saturday I baked some sourdough French bread, while yesterday I baked sourdough loaves, croutons, and blueberry muffins. Now my house is full of baked delights. At this point, I think it’s probably time to add a bread box to my countertop, so I can properly store the loaves. Currently, gallon-sized zip lock bags store them individually. I did, however, order some special wax paper to wrap them in.
While the bread was proofing, I began reorganizing my pantries. I still have a ton to do, but at least I have consolidated all my baking tools. That’s the nice thing about baking breads, you’re not an attendant to it all day. The inactive time outweighs the active part when it comes to baking bread. We still have way too much clutter in the house that we need to work through. I’m not working next weekend, so the junk drawer and the cabinets above it are on my radar.
Special shoutout to my middle boy Goalielocks for winning another beach volleyball tournament with his partner Izaiah. They’ve done well for themselves this season. I’m excited to see where they take it. Jake also started a new job, which is exciting for us. It’s also much more relaxing than worrying about a kid down range. I have a lot to be grateful for in my life that is for sure.
Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.
My ideal day would start with my large cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. I’d sip my coffee while watching the Great British Bake Off with my puppies. After coffee and a little GBBO action, we’d head for a hike or walk. My ideal day takes place out west or in Norway where there are beautiful mountain hikes that I’d love to explore with my family and dogs. After a day of hiking, we’d eat dinner outside on the deck enjoying the crisp mountain air and the clear skies. My ideal day would end with me in bed reading before falling asleep.
For some time now, hiking the Mighty Five has been on my bucket list. It was always going to be a matter of finding the time between the hockey trips, work, and visiting Jake. Last fall the stars aligned, I had taken time off and bought tickets on Delta to visit Jake in Utah already anticipating him going down range again. Fortunately, things changed and he wasn’t going abroad again. Consequently, I decided we should take the time to hike the Mighty Five. After all, it would have been criminal for him to live in Utah for four years and never take advantage of the National Parks in his backyard.
My trip was eight days, which gave us six days to traverse southern Utah and all five of the parks. To plan the trip, I used the Wanderlog app, so I could share our itinerary with our family. This way if something happened on a hike and they didn’t hear from us, they’d have an approximation of where we were going to be that day. This was an important tip I came across when researching the trip. Several trails in these parks must be respected as they can quickly turn dangerous. Also, the parks are in remote areas and cell service isn’t a given.
Looking down the Virgin River at Zion National Park
To fine-tune the itinerary, I leveraged All Trails, the park services app, and several blogs to figure out the best trails to hike. This proved quite helpful although there was some disagreement between the park services and All Trails as to the difficulty of some of the hikes. Before you reach the park, it’s imperative to download the trail maps to your phone. While the trails at Zion and Arches were very well marked, it was not the case at the other parks. Each park has its guide to the park and trails denoting the difficulty of each trail.
Beautiful Bryce Canyon
There is a little extra planning that needs to go into both Arches National Park and Zion. If you want to hike Angels Landing, apply to the lottery. You can no longer hike this trail without a reservation. Similarly, you’ll need to be extra prepared to hike the Narrows depending on water temperature, depth of the virgin river, and weather conditions. As for Arches, you’ll need to reserve a timed entry window for admittance into the park during the high season. Like Angels Landing, the Fiery Furnace hike requires a reservation.
Even with a lot of planning, go into the trip knowing that you may need to be flexible on your expectations. There could be changes in the weather or rock falls that impact your ability to complete certain hikes. Moreover depending on what season you’re in, there could be road closures up in the mountains. The best time to plan a trip is spring and early fall. This will give you decent weather without all the crowds of high season. We were there in early October and the parks were still super busy. And of course, bring plenty of water both with and without bubbles. Jake and I would enjoy cold, crisp sparkling water at the top of every hike.
Hickman Bridge at Capitol Reef National Park
We started our trip at Zion staying in Cedar City, which is about 45-55 minutes north of the park. We have two full days at Zion. However, I would have gladly spent more time there. The next park we hit was Bryce Canyon, which was under two hours from Cedar City. We stayed in Cannoville, Utah, which is a tiny town that doesn’t have a post office or cell service right off Utah’s Scenic Byway 12. This was our base for both Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef Park. Our last stay was in Moab, which is near both Canyonlands and Arches National Park.
Canyonlands National Park
I planned for a full day at Bryce, Capitol Reef, and Canyonlands with 2-2.5 days at both Arches and Zion. Additionally, I planned 2-4 hikes a day or about 10-13 miles. Jake and I both trained for the trip, so we’d be able to tackle the more challenging hikes. I’d recommend that anyone looking to hike these parks do the same. We could have spent several more days at each park. Moreover, we could have spent another month exploring the incredible landscape around these parks. Interspersed between the national parks are several incredible national monuments, national forests, and state parks. There is something incredible to see at every turn.
Delicate Arch at Arches National Park
What I didn’t expect was the incredible drives between the parks. The drive from Cedar City to Bryce Canyon was breathtaking. Scenic Byway 12 was one of the most harrowing, yet beautiful drives I have ever taken. From the steep drop-offs and beautiful views of the canyons in Grand Staircase Escalante to the beautiful high mountain road with free-range cattle and changing foliage, southern Utah is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The drive alone between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef is worth the flight to Utah. I’ve written about our time at Zion and will be writing about our experiences at the other parks. If you’re on the fence about a trip to the Mighty Five, get off the fence and do it.
Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.
The one thing that never gets checked off the “to-do list” is dropping off the donations at Goodwill. They seem to sit and sit in the garage for months or even years on end. I’m not even sure why that’s the case as it’s not difficult to drop the stuff off. Yet here we are with stacks of bags to be donated.
After the holidays, I decided I wanted to keep refining my baking skills by adding sourdough to the mix. Consequently, I loaded up my Amazon cart with all the goodies and accouterments one would need to start their sourdough journey. Amazon has millions of options to help you here which can be overwhelming. I’ll walk you through the items I bought later in the post.
Baking with sourdough is a labor of love and patience. It can take a couple of weeks for your starter to get going and be strong enough to use for bread. Once I received all my goodies from Amazon, I got to work on my starters. I started with two starters in case I messed up one of them. The first one I started, I used a culture I had bought from Amazon. The second one I started, I used the recipe that came with the sourdough starter kit. As for the recipe, it couldn’t have been more simple as it was just flour and water.
Patience is a virtue I don’t have, so you can imagine how anxious I was to get baking. Once the starter had been established for a little over a week, I decided it was time to rumble. Consequently, I found a sourdough recipe in my Better Homes & Garden cookbook that was fairly straightforward. The first loaves turned out a bit stodgy but tasted good. I have now made the recipe three times with each attempt looking and tasty progressively better. They say that sourdough practice makes perfect and honestly my family loves all the fresh bread.
I did try Paul Hollywood’s sourdough baguette recipe a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I got desperately ill between the first rise and the second rise. My hubby had to finish shaping the loaves and getting them set for their overnight rise. The following morning I did manage to get them in the oven looking semi-respectable.
If you’re looking to get started on a sourdough journey of your own, here are my must-haves:
Sourdough Starter Jar Kit that includes two starter jars, recipes, jar labels, a starter guide, and a marker
Banneton Bread Proofing Basket Kit which comes with: an oval proofing basket, bread-making tool supplies including scoring lame, metal and plastic scrapers, basket liner, and cleaning brush
Airtight container to hold flour for a starter. I created a 50/50 mix of white and wheat flour.
Write about your first computer.
My first computer was a Dell desktop that I custom-built and bought for myself as a college freshman. I was so proud of my purchase. At the time, it was a cutting-edge computer. Now it would be an absolute dinosaur. At the moment, I’m rocking with a MacBook Pro having left my PC days just for my nine to five days.
The patient’s finger is healing nicely. These simple words spoken by his orthopedic PA were music to our ears. They took some X-rays, removed the stitches, and cast. For the first time since he broke the finger, I saw him wince with pain as they removed the bandages. Unfortunately, he still has the pins in for the foreseeable future. We’re hopeful that they’ll be able to remove the pins at his next follow-up appointment two weeks from today. Crossing my fingers that it’s still healing nicely at our next follow-up!
In the meantime, he’s in a smaller bandaged splint. He’s supposed to remove the splint and work the lower joint on the finer several times a day. This will prevent the joint from getting stiff. Additionally, he still has to keep the cast and his claw, I mean pins, dry. Not that he is one to spend a lot of time in the pool or ocean. He also has to be careful not to knock the pins as they extend beyond the tip of his finger.
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
I would love to scuba dive but I’m terrified of the water and can’t swim. It’s hard to reconcile my abject fear of water with the desire to Scuba, but life underwater looks so peaceful and beautiful. I’m not sure there’s anything that could convince me to get into the deep.
This week I found myself getting started again on my workout routine. Illness knocked me out of my routine over the holidays. I had resumed it, but a trip and then another stomach bug interrupted my progress. Unfortunately, last week’s bug knocked me out, so I took a week off to recover. Yesterday I started again with an amazing cycling routine with Emily on Apple Fitness+. Today’s workout was a Rihanna-themed treadmill workout by Sherica. As always, the workout was fire.
Taking a week off every few weeks is a nightmare scenario for me. It’s challenging after making so much progress over the late summer, fall, and early winter. Now I feel like I’ve lost some of those gains and am back at square one. Thankfully, the difficult part, which is getting started, is over. The trick is to be consistent and disciplined like I was throughout the fall. Hopefully, it warms up just a tad, so Arrow and I can return to running outside again. I’d run with Anakin, but honestly taking him outside to walk is akin to a CrossFit class. He wears me out.
What do you complain about the most?
At the risk of alienating myself or sounding too cliche, I complain the most about the quality of consumer goods. Not only does this make me feel old and that I’ve turned into my mother, nay my grandmother, but it grinds my gears. For example, we are on our 4th washer and 4th dryer. We’ve lived in our house for 17 years. These appliances should have a shelf life greater than four years. When they sold my great aunt’s house a few years ago, it had a washer and dryer from the 1960s that worked better than my current duo work.
One could argue that three hockey-playing boys take a greater toll on a washer and dryer than aging adults. However, I don’t expect my washer/dryer to last fifty years. I do expect them to last at least ten years. Honestly, I don’t think this is an unreasonable ask. I know I’m not alone in this as family and friends have experienced this with several different appliances, so there’s some truth in the cliche “They don’t make things like they used to.”
We had a great weekend around these parts. Our patient continues to heal nicely even if he is a bit cranky and annoying. Fortunately, he is not experiencing a lot of pain. Unfortunately, the lack of pain makes it harder to keep him compliant with his activity restrictions, icing the finger, and taking his medications. It’s been a constant battle for the hubby and me to get him to ice and elevate the injury. No matter how many times we tell him these things are designed to facilitate his recovery, he ignores them.
Thankfully, both Friday and Saturday nights provided a respite for me. Friday night I had the house to myself as the Mayor was at his girlfriend’s house and the hubby had a hockey game. I cooked a nice dinner, courtesy of HelloFresh, watched TV, and cuddled with the dogs. By the time, the Hubby got home dinner was waiting for him, but I had already fallen asleep. I was still exhausted from being ill earlier in the week.
I worked Saturday, but it was completely dead. It was an absolute waste of time. I would have been equally productive as an outfitter. Nevertheless, I spent the day counting down the hours to dinner and a show. After work, we headed to HardRock to have dinner and see Seinfeld with our besties. Dinner at Cipresso was outstanding. I had the best veal parmigiana I have ever tasted and our appetizers were equally as tasty. Afterward, we hit the slots before heading to see Jerry. The slots were kind to us, which was a bonus.
The comedy show started late as people came in to find their seats. Honestly, it probably got off to a late start because the concessions (aka alcohol) were closing once the show started. I didn’t mind the late start as it would have been disruptive to start while people were still finding their way to their seats. The opener was Mario Joyner, who was fantastic. He had us laughing throughout his entire set.
And then came Jerry. I’m a huge Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fan, so seeing him live was a big deal. He lived up to, nay surpassed my expectations. His set and material were so relatable. We can all relate to going on a family vacation just to “fight at a hotel” instead of at home. His take on marriage, cell phones, and water features in Florida neighborhoods was hysterical. We didn’t stop laughing the entire time he was on stage. He is so incredibly talented. I’m glad we had the opportunity to experience it in person.
Naturally, we stayed up a bit later Saturday night than we are accustomed to doing. Consequently, we slept on Sunday. I had grandiose plans of baking cookies, and bread, planting herbs/tomatoes in terracotta pots for the patio, and trimming the hibiscus. Regrettably, fatigue prevented me from making my way outside to engage in any gardening activities. On the other hand, I found plenty of time to bake cookies and bread. It was my third attempt at a sourdough loaf and it turned out pretty good. They say practice makes perfect, so I’ll keep working on it.
What are your favorite sports to watch and play?
This may surprise all of you, given the name of my blog, but my favorite sport to watch and play is hockey. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get back on the ice someday. I had to retire after tearing a tendon in my ankle and the whole thyroid thing. Nevertheless, I enjoy watching hockey whether it’s youth, high school (MN,) college, or the NHL. Each level of hockey brings something to the experience of being a hockey fan. It’s the greatest sport and community in the world. Our hockey journey has blessed us with the opportunity to meet some incredible people.
We’re home from the Mayor’s surgery. Everything went well. The eighty or so minutes he was in surgery were not super fun. I really didn’t like the helpless feeling that comes with waiting for a loved one to get out of surgery. His finger was quite a mess since it had already started healing. For the next week or so, he’ll have two pins in the bone to facilitate the healing. We’ll see his surgeon in about a week. She said he was dancing and giggling on his way out of the operating room to the post-op area. Needless to say, the nurses appreciated the levity he brought and a happy patient in recovery is better than a cranky one.
She estimates he’s facing a four to six-week recovery. We’re all hoping for a quick recovery, so he can play in the state tournament. Of course, his recovery is predicated on him being a compliant patient. This, of course, is where things will get complicated. He doesn’t want to wear the sling or sit down. At this point, he should be sitting down and relaxing, but he’s fighting us at every turn. Lastly, he’s insistent on having Chic Fil-A tonight for dinner, which may be a bit difficult on his tummy.
The funniest thing I noticed was he wrote himself a reminder on his leg, so he wouldn’t forget he wanted Chic Fil-A. As if, he’d ever forget he wanted food. In the post-op room, he was saying all sorts of funny things. He opted to wear sticky socks at home instead of his shoes. Halfway home he forgot he had worn the socks and was wondering where he left his shoes. At any rate, we’re glad to be home with our funny yet challenging patient.
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
I’d love to visit Stiltsville, a collection of silted houses located off the coast of Miami. Builders started constructing these houses in Biscayne Bay in the 1930s. There were a lot more of them, but hurricanes and fires have left only seven remaining.
I’m a bundle of nerves over here as we’re now twenty-four hours out from the Mayor’s surgery. Of course, some of the shakiness may be low blood sugar due to a lack of food since Saturday. Fortunately, I am starting to feel somewhat human again. My stomach isn’t fantastic, but I no longer feel like I’m going to throw up every time I stand up. Which is a win, so I’ll take it. Thankfully, my neck, shoulder, and back muscles no longer feel like they’re in a vice grip. Nevertheless, I’m staying away from the Mayor so he doesn’t get whatever this is. I took two Covid tests and both were negative.
The urgent care doctor gave me a note excusing me from work today and tomorrow. Knowing that I’m already scheduled for surgery tomorrow, I didn’t want to miss today. Plus, now that I’m not constantly throwing up, there’s no reason I can’t work. I work from home, so I won’t expose anyone else by going to work. The alternative was to lay in bed all day and get sucked into the black hole that is streaming.
Yesterday, I finished Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on Masterpiece Theater. First of all, I love Mantle’s work and am so sad we lost her last year. Secondly, the show is well done. I can’t wait for them to finish the remainder of the trilogy. Thankfully, I also felt well enough to read last night, so I was transported to yesteryear via Alison Weir’s work on Medieval Queens. Her first book in the Queen series takes on the Queens of Conquest starting with William the Conquerer’s Queen Matilda and ending with the ascent of the Playangenets. So far it’s a good read. She does a good job telling the story with some brio.
