Less Hustle More Coffee

Since going to Slim and Huskies a few weeks ago I suggested we try and make tortilla pizzas ourselves. Well it worked beautifully. You brush olive oil on the tortilla and then the sauce and cheese and decorate however you want it with your favorite toppings. Mine had pepperoni, chicken (from frozen grilled chicken tender slices), green bell pepper, and chives, and mozzarella cheese and I sprinkled parmesan on top. Last night we had them for a 2nd time as we still had the fixings to use up. George had a few other ingredients on his like jalapeño and banana peppers.

This makes the pizza seem a little less fattening. And there are all kinds of tortillas out there – some even healthy – so I guess you could try using various kinds. I wish we’d thought of this years ago. Our brains our funneled to think of tortillas as a Mexican dish and only for use in tacos and burritos. So dinner was fabulous the last two nights. Quick and easy fixes too. Quick and easy eats for those new puppy parents with their hands full.

Dexter, aka beagle/golden retriever mix, definitely has his spastic moments. We have to be on our toes to be able to redirect his energy with walks, tennis ball throws, and so forth. I need a little time to reorganize some things in the house but won’t get that time til tomorrow.

George and I have decided to “divide and conquer” life til this little guy is a little older, more trained, and more self contained. We have to work with him and spend time with him. But on the other hand we still have to work and take Mom places and the weekends are just as busy as the work week with little time at home. So we are going to take turns with Mom and store and put a lot of life on hold right now as we very importantly take care of the little guy and train him. He’s a project. So today I’m taking Mom to get her Fancy dog trimmed and groomed, out to eat, to Lowe’s and to Belk, to get Fancy and then take her back home again. George offered to take Mom to church tomorrow to give me a day at home so I can get our laundry done, get the house puppy proofed and organized more, and get sheets changed on both our beds, floors mopped, coffee ground up, meds and supplements in their daily dispenser, and reboot life! Perhaps some where in there I can put in some fun? Life is definitely not balanced but I’m taking him up on his offer and I will do my devo at home while I take care of things here tomorrow. Life is just too much right now. But I’m so glad we have Dexter (it’s like having a new born or a toddler all over again) in which we both take sigh of relief when he is “sleeping”.

Only he is ready to get up about 3:30 in the morning. Usually I can convince him to go back to sleep but the dang deliver guy delivered something at 3:50 as he had just about settled back down. So there is car lights and then soon after a flash light outside my window. The dog begins barking (hadn’t heard much of that until now), and I open my Nest app to see what it is. I easily see it is a delivery guy. Now that would have scared the bejeebies out of me if I had been taking the dog out this morning at that time and a car had pulled up and gotten out. Might have scared him too! lol So George got up to see what the barking was about. So I just fixed a pot of coffee as we were all up at this point. No sleeping late today. The coffee is good. My guess is that I will end up having to go to bed early to be able to get in enough sleep. I have been very sleepy this week on the drive home from work. Short by an hour or more every night and about 6 to 7 hours short for the week. So it’s another adjustment we will figure out.

A friend told me to grab one of these and try it. In the freezer at work. I thought it was yogurt but it’s frozen berries dipped in chocolate. It was so good. It did have about 12 or 13g of sugar. Added sugar mostly, so something to consider and not do very often. It was refreshing for a 90 degree day.

So, someone in the family was redoing some cabinets and in the feed someone talked about painting their countertops. I have known that you could do this on your own to give a granite look. But I wasn’t confident in my skills to pick the right colors and patiently mark off our kitchen for days while we did it, but I didn’t know they had kits! That takes the guess work and the color mix decisions out. And gives a more guided kit to work with – less chance of things to go wrong. I’ve never talked with anyone that has done this so there is research to be done, but this is an option I’m willing to go with when we redo our kitchen. When I say “redo” I’m not planning a huge redo but we will have to upgrade the stove top and plan to install a double oven. We may have to redo some of the cabinets but I am hoping we can find something that fits already. We will do new nobs for the cabinet doors and drawers (36 of them).

There’s really not much to tell ya’ll. Just working all week! Dealing with doggie in the evenings. I took Mom out to eat Wed night to Outback and we spent about $40 on steak each splurging and buying our own meal. It has really gone up. I won’t do that again for a while. We went to the store after. The next night while George went home to dog dog, I went and did more of our own grocery shopping so I had a few things for work and then things to fix the pizza with.

Also I’m starting to boycott grocery prices. It’s really the only way I can make a difference. I normally just go and buy the brands that I want not looking at the price. But with prices going up and gas going up and all, I’m starting to be picky. The one with the lowest price gets my vote and I’ll buy it – unless I’m wary of it being something that won’t taste good. But for most things I’m going with the cheaper option. This will force the other brands to consider lowering their price – if everyone begins doing the same. It’s just the only way I can make a difference as an individual. So I will be trying to do more things like make my own tea. (I like to have tea at work sometimes to sip on and have been buying the individual bottles of unsweet tea.) I’d like to try making our own bread but then there is a time problem with that. I do want to experiment though with a recipe I have had. Bread hasn’t been that expensive but that was just already on my list of things I wanted to do at home.

What are you doing to offset grocery costs, fuel costs, and the pinching of pennies? I’m a little concerned about having to spend so much money just to get to work each week. At some point is it going to be worth even working? lol. We may all have to get remote jobs we can do from home. Here’s a six second clip of me at the gas tank yesterday.

We have also face timed with our Little Roo. It is pandemonium at our house when we get home – feeding spastic dog, walking spastic dog, feeding cat, and trying to coordinate talks with River Roo at same time but we wouldn’t want to miss out on a thing! I feel like I’m not effective though at doing it all at once. My mind is on overdrive and I can’t seem to do a very good job of splitting my attention. Finally after dog walked and fed I could sit and enjoy talking to River Roo! He is walking and talking! And growing! And they are going to the beach. I’m so jealous! I guess it’ll be a living forever before I get to see a beach again with all we have going on here, but one day I will.

Ok so I have started the laundry for the weekend, but need to get in the shower and get ready to go get Mom and Fancy. I’ll be back Sun afternoon or Monday morning.

I have already cleaned the debris of the last video and have set in motion the clips and photos for the next video. The next one is our anniversary day out in Nashville and also of us going through our freezer to see what all is in it. So I’m looking forward to getting a few moments every other day to edit this. Hopefully it won’t take as long and I hope our internet speeds are better for the uploads. Taking 2 to 3 days to upload to YouTube is almost enough to deter my doing the videos, lol!

Ok over and out, but the goal of this weekend is to clean, organize, puppy proof, and get more efficient since we have Dexter Dog. There is stuff everywhere as we have piled things from the floor onto any horizontal space we could find. You might even find shoes on the kitchen counter at this point, lol. So we are out of our comfort zones right now with the house and having to redo it a bit. I don’t even know where to put his food! But we have to put things where we use them. We had dogs before but we have filled up the spaces and bins. So I will need to get a few more baskets I suppose.

Well need to go. Dog dog is getting into everything – currently chewing on my curtains. So gotta gooooooooo! I need to shower and get ready to go any way.

“No No Dexter………”