Less Hustle More Coffee

So we are “back in business”! Now that things are getting back to normal – whatever normal was, we are getting our plans on and bucket listing again. Our bucket list looks quite a bit different than someone in their 30’s or 40’s but these are 1)Things we want to do by end of summer. 2) Ideas for places we would really like to eat 3) Places we would like to go if given the chance. 3) Meals out with a few friends. 4) Need to do items (not very many) 5) Dishes we really want to cook 6) Sometimes personal to do items are on there. 7) Sometimes cleaning/chores get put on there esp if they are big ones.

We have a lot of restaurants we want to take Mom to and Mom’s wishes were put on the list. There are a lot of new restaurants since COVID that we want to try.

I have been wanting to get this bucket list done since early May but two months later, here we are. It’s just been difficult to find the time as really – the bucket list is a non-essential item. It’s a fun thing. We have been nose the grindstone for two months with not much time for planning or even thinking about non-essential items. It took forever just to find time to do this list, so you know we’ve not had much time to even think about doing any of these things other than in conversation (“one day”).

Ahhhh, so this simple bucket list means the world to me. It’s an icon – a picture of normal, a picture of happy times, a picture of doing fun things together, or meeting goals, or getting things accomplished.

It’ll be fun to see what we get done. It’s not a list to make you hurry, unless you look at it like “let’s hurry up and have fun”. The list helps us remember when we are planning our weekends, of all the options we have. Or in spare time – what our goals are. It keeps it in the forefront of our minds.

There are so many restaurants we would like to go to we actually have a separate restaurant list, lol. In the pic above you can see the little short list. I think we made that back when we planned our anniversary.

Make Your Own Bucket List

It’s fun to sit back with a pen and a cup of coffee and write down all the things you would like to do, places you would like to go, books you wanna read, hikes you wanna do, places you wanna shop….whatever your hype is.

Then while sitting with the family – at a table or restaurant – have a pen and paper handy – or write on a napkin as we have, and ask what the family members would like to do, goals they have, things they want to do. Some things may surprise you!

Then just buy some poster board (the half cut ones work great). I created a little bucket list posting area of our kitchen. And I use a black sharpie.

It’s good to do them by season. I usually do about three per year as it seems to work out better than doing four.

Winter into Spring, Summer, Fall/Christmas. Mainly I’m too busy in the fall to do the winter one as we have more to do and are busier that time of year so I have to clump part of winter in the fall one and the last part of winter into the spring one, lol. It works.

BUCKET LIST FOR MEAL PLANNING

We also have a chalkboard that we use for meal planning. If you have followed my blog for long, you have seen it. We have a fairly large black board and we list all the meals we want to fix on one side (we also look in our freezer and see what we have already) and then we plan meals off of that board on the other side.

I went to the store last night after a VERY long 11 hour day at work yesterday. Always funny to see extra things on your menu. Was it something we told Alexa she didn’t understand? Or was it George playing tricks? I think it was the latter. But you never know! lol. One thing’s for sure – we don’t need any extra fat butts around here in these parts! lol I’m scared to think about what a camel pump is. :-O

Chicken in a Reynolds Oven Bag

Ok, so….buy those Reynold’s Oven bags, and then plan some chicken or steak dinners- or pork chops – I’m sure you could use just about any meat. The box had a chicken recipe on the back for an example. I followed it, sort of. Mom was fixing the vegetables as we’d been to the farmers market so I only added onion and green pepper.

I wanted my chicken to marinate first so I just used storage bags to let them marinate in the fridge for a while in Italian dressing.

Here’s what I used.

We keep a pretty full fridge going! And you can see our July 4 – other half – of the watermelon!

I just think the dinner in the bag thing is a great option for “what’s for dinner”. It really made the chicken tender cooked in an hour’s time. I had a lot of chicken in one bag. Very tender. For chicken – I had two types – bone in with the skin and no bone, skinless- the chicken with no bone/skinless turned out much better with better flavor. But they were both good.

I really like cooking the chicken with skin/bone in – in the air fryer with a little bit of Nashville hot seasonings. Oh it is so crispy and good. The key is adding olive oil rub on top of and under the skin, and putting your seasonings on and under the skin pocket. So flavorful! I am glad I learned to put rubs UNDER the skin pockets!

Well that is about all I know other than…..

We picked up my car from the shop after work yesterday too (yes we were really late eating dinner, but Mom was patient with us). I know it’s hard for her to eat so late and her eating schedule has changed a bit. It was hard for me too, to eat so late, but I learned to snack a little if I needed to because b/w 11 a.m. when I eat lunch and 7 or 8 p.m. is a long time. Anyway, oil was leaking so they had to fix a seal and do an oil change as well and that was $700 ish at Firestone. I think that is high, but we get our cars back very quickly when we leave them there. They have been very customer oriented. So there is that. Very friendly here.

I guess I better get to work. Busy week cramming five days into four, but most of that was yesterday. I’ve about caught up with the normal schedule, but it is quarter end and very busy. The real success of “how payroll went” will be determined on Friday when we see how many did/didn’t get paid properly. We’ll see how many calls I get. Just a lot going on that would make it easy for mistakes to be made. Someone added time on a termed employee yesterday that plugged up our payroll processing/balancing and then someone made a mistake while data entering something that messed up the banking deposits again, but those were easily found/fixed. Also someone entered a punch with a date of 2002! lol. All of these probably caused about an hour and half delay total. But I got through it. Now to get the “after payroll” stuff done and tomorrow and Friday will focus on quarter end and working on payroll errors where PTO’s were not turned in, time not turned in etc. Should be a fun Friday for that. Also have to work on HOL pay some this week. So it’ll be a busy one. OH did I mention it was quarter end? I won’t have a lot of time this week to work on it but I should get some. It’ll be dependent upon how many of the plants forgot to pay things as to how much time I have to work on it. I may be busy fixing errors and doing back pay, creating emergency checks and funding through pay cards. lol. Might as well expect it. That way if it doesn’t happen I will be pleasantly surprised. Yea haw!

So….what is on YOUR BUCKET LIST THIS SUMMER? I hope you do one, even if it’s just for yourself!

Meanwhile back in TEXAS! Little Roo in his Jammies!