Tomatoes on the sill before they went into the yard.

I’m always reading these tips and thinking: that’s a tip? I do that all the time. I didn’t know it was a tip.

Here’s a tip: if you need to freshen up your bathroom but you’re too lazy to clean it. Spray a little Mrs. Meyers on a paper towel and run it over your surfaces real quick. Technically, it counts as cleaning, and it makes everything smell fresh. (At least to me. I once used Mrs. M to clean a counter in the break room at the office. Colleague said: “What smells in here?”)

I wish I had a dollar for every “this cleaning tip will never fail” that totally failed. My bathtub is enamel and has mineral build up from the water. I have tried one “will not fail” tip after the other. I’m afraid to get too crazy because I don’t want to wreck the finish. Some of the tips emphasize that you need some elbow grease, as if my failure is not scrubbing hard enough. I can do elbow grease.

I read one tip that said to keep your tub in good shape you should rinse it out and dry it after each use.

I’m all for taking good care of my things but on the weekdays I’m lucky to perform basic hygiene and get out the door on time. I can’t worry about my shower getting special treatment.

I love this one red bloom right in the middle of the rhodie. This is the moment when our yard looks the best. Everything is green and colorful.

I’m in the midst of a busy couple of weeks, which together with some mild insomnia issues, is making me feel a little frazzled.

I keep making lists of things I need to get done and once I’ve done all the easy things, I set it aside and make a new list.

I’m taking off for a long weekend to visit family. Hope to do a little refreshing while I’m there.

I have a Macarena earworm. I have no idea how this happened. I haven’t heard that song recently. I haven’t thought about that song. It’s not like I even had a connection to that song when it was a hit. I heard about it and had to have someone explain to me what it was. Yesterday I was in the kitchen putting away dishes and I found myself singing, “Hey! Macarena!”

Hopefully I heard it unknowingly in the background and it’s not some weird portal that opened in my brain.

Yesterday I had about an hour so I decided to make a button for the sidebar for Abbie’s latest cool promotional project: Little Book Nook (no longer exists RIP). I’m not very good at Photoshop so it took forever and then the first one didn’t look right so I tried to fiddle with it.

WordPress (I refer to it as turdpress) and I aren’t very good friends. For my other website I upload the photos myself using FTP. For this site I use the WordPress media uploader and I guess it has some sort of dummy-proofing but it didn’t want me to replace the old file with the new file but it didn’t tell me that. I kept clicking and checking my URLs and refreshing and then pulling my hair out.

It took forever for me to figure out the problem was and by that time it was dinner and I was hungry and impatient. And I still don’t love the button but I don’t want to get distracted. I have time to work on the inbox so that’s what I’m doing this morning.

Also, I’m starting the next book. Details coming soon.

A friend brought me a Year of the Monkey box of chocolates and I was so excited to see the cute monkey-shaped candies when I opened the box. They are super yummy, too.

I haven’t planted any bulbs in a couple of years and I need to plant more daffodils. I think the tulips are okay although they need to be dug up and spread around more. They look like they are growing on top of each other. (not pictured)

There is a virtual book fair going on right now on Facebook. Tons of indie authors in all genres. What a great idea and easy way to try new authors.

There is a free copy of Season of Us up for giveaway so if you’re a Facebook person — now is the time to put your name in. Contest ends March 3rd.

I was looking through my ancient scanned photos last night for a particular photo and instead found some slides from a 1972 trip to the Grand Canyon. I thought I could clean it up a little better but ran out of time and patience. Photo credit: Dad

I’ve read those articles that say no one knows what “sell by” or “use by” dates mean. (example)

But there still has to be some vague rhyme or reason, right? I am a big worrier about bad dairy. My Aunt told me I have “intense fear of sour milk” a condition that runs in the family. I don’t drink a lot of milk, especially in the summer. But in winter I like hot chocolate on the weekends.

I usually buy milk in half-gallon cartons which go off on me fairly regularly seeing how little milk I drink. But the date on the carton is always far in the future. I recently picked up a quart of milk because I was at a different market and that carton is dated last week and the milk is still perfectly fine. It’s a mystery.

We have a bag of lemons that some family brought from California. I have company coming this weekend and I wanted to bake something. I found a lemon buttermilk bundt cake that looked good. I did my usual quick skim of the recipe and saw it called for 3 lemons.

When I started making it and looked more closely it said:

3 TB of zest and 3 TB lemon juice (3 lemons)

What kind of lemons are they talking about? I only used 1 lemon for the zest and half of that for the juice. The cake just came out of the oven and smells amazing.

This was taken in Frankfurt, Germany in September 2014.

Last fall I lost my mind a little bit with the ebook buying. I subscribed to both BookBub and BookPerk and couldn’t resist anything that looked remotely interesting even though I knew I had more than enough books to read.

I swore off new purchases for awhile and I’m down to about 5 books on the ereader. I just finished Kristan Higgins The Best Man which I mostly loved. I thought it got a wee bit too silly at times and there was one scene that was unforgivably mean spirited but overall I recommend.

I still have bookshelves collapsing under the weight of unread paper books so I’m intending to continue the trend of reading before I buy anything new. We’ll see how long I last.

Over New Years weekend I thought I broke a crown.

It didn’t hurt even a tiny bit. Cold food. Hot food. Crunchy food.

I finally got in to see the dentist and it wasn’t a crown, it was a tooth. And it was a nasty fracture. And it did not want to get numb for the dentist.

I was a little shaky by the time I got out of there but my dentist is wonderful and I am prepped for my new crown which is on the way.

I’m still eating very carefully. No pita chips for me right now.