Friday Favs – January is Cold
Happy Friday, friends! I missed posting last Friday because to be perfectly honest, winter weather sends my anxiety and depression into a tailspin. We got our first snow of the season on Saturday, which is nuts because it was like 55 degrees on Friday! I’m so thankful that it waited until Saturday morning, though, since I worked until 11 p.m. on Friday and it’s a half hour drive home. A quick story before we start this week’s favorites…
I actually thought the snow was going to miss us for a brief, beautiful moment. I woke up around 4 a.m. on Saturday (anxiety = I don’t sleep in the winter.) and glanced at the weather on my phone, and all of the little snow icons had turned to clouds. Yassssssss! But then I looked again around 5 and the snow forecast was back. We only got about 2 inches, but I live in the Ozarks and ice does not mix well with our hilly, twisty roads.
I was supposed to work on Sunday, but my road still didn’t look very good, I’d heard all kinds of reports of accidents nearby, and my driveway was still ice, so I had to call in. Ever since I totaled my Mustang convertible on ice a few years ago, I don’t chance it when the roads are iffy.
Thankfully, I was able to get out on Monday for coffee and cat food- two non-negotiables in this house. My driveway was still somewhat icy and I have front wheel drive, so I had to do my best to watch the road and then back out quickly because if I stopped half way I wasn’t going to be able to get traction to keep going. But I made it! WOOT!
Fast forward to Tuesday when a coworker texts me to ask if I quit. I was supposed to work Thursday, but I was crossed off the schedule. I let her know that I’d been unable to get to work on Sunday (and that I had given the manager a heads up on Saturday that the roads were pretty bad here and there was a chance I wouldn’t make it Sunday so they could have a back-up plan), but that I had no idea why I’d be crossed off of Thursday.
I got a call on Wednesday that I was being laid off until the busier season due to absences. I’ve been wanting to quit for a whole lot of reasons (I’m not going to publicly say anything bad, so let’s leave it as “multiple factors make that job 10x more stressful than it needs to be.” I’ve had anxiety symptoms pop up since I started working there that I haven’t had to deal with in ages.), but I know how much trouble they have finding good help and I really needed to at least hang on to the job until my trail ride job comes back in March, so I kept showing up and doing my best to help guests have a great vacation. That said, getting laid off felt like such a huge relief. I should be able to pick up enough freelance writing work to get by until March – it will be tight financially, but do-able. It also gives me the opportunity to apply for a part time job with a company I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time, so we’ll see how that goes!
Still – how crazy is it that two months ago I had four jobs, and right now I’m down to ONE?
I went to the library to get some writing done yesterday. I used to go almost everyday when I was writing full-ish time, but it’s probably been almost 6 months since I last worked from there! I was instantly reminded of a) how many odd looks I get for having a “Warren 2020” sticker on my laptop in this particularly red corner of a red state and b) how freaking loud the library gets. The librarians are usually the loudest ones there, ironically, but yesterday someone had also brought in a couple of toddlers (which would usually be a great thing!) and then apparently ignored them while they banged toys on things and yelled to each other. Thank goodness for earbuds and Spotify.
Man, that whole tangent went on way longer than planned – probably should have been its own post! But oh well, maybe you just scrolled past that big block of text in hopes there were cat pictures below it, because this is the internet and there should always be cat pictures.
That said, here are this week’s favorites!
1. First things first, my boys are perfect:
2. I can’t remember if I have posted this before or not, but I just stumbled across it in my files while searching for something else and it feels worth sharing again:
3. I discovered that these exist about two weeks ago and I think I’m on my 3rd package. I regret nothing.
(Seriously, Oreo, please keep these around. The current limited edition flavors are Sweet Tarts and Apple Pie. How are either of those dunkable?? YOU HAVE ONE JOB, OREO.)
4. You can’t tell all that much from this photo, but I realized a few weeks ago that Captain Kitten is getting pretty… “rotund”, to put it politely:
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He’s only 2, only gets fed twice a day, and is super active, so I’m not really sure where his big ol’ belly came from! I was so happy that one of the products that Chewy offered to send me to review for the Chewy Influencer Program this month was Purina Pro Plan Focus Adult Weight Management cat food.
Bear, Remy, and Captain Kitten all eat together and they could all stand to lose a little weight, so they got most of this food, but I ran out of my regular cat food on a snowy day so I ended up letting the other cats try some, too, and everyone liked it! The 24-pack wasn’t really enough to make a noticeable difference in anyone’s appearance (I usually split 2 of the 3-oz cans between the three cats, so it only lasted about a week) so I can’t comment on how effective it is for weight loss. I can say that I didn’t expect my cats to be so enthusiastic about a low calorie food, though!
5. Target has actually created a Valentine’s Day decor item that I want to buy:
Finally, valentines decor I can relate to! 😍 pic.twitter.com/m6cMzN6W5f
— Crystal Ward (@Crystal11) January 22, 2019
I’m on a tight budget right now (see above note about going from 4 jobs to 1) but I also really want these socks:
I hope they’re still around in a month or s when I g back to having disposable income!
That’s it for this Friday! I’m finishing this post up at the library, which closes at 4 today because I live in the middle of nowhere. Still, I’ve learned from experience that when I’m just freelancing, even getting out of the house for an hour or two goes a long way towards keeping me sane!
It’s supposed to be almost 50 this weekend, so I’m hoping to get a little time outside and a lot done around the house! (My central heat & air don’t work, so I just have a couple of space heaters keeping me from freezing in the huge house. It got down to 13 last night, and when I checked my kitchen at about 5 a.m. it was 39 in there! I can’t wait to be able to afford to move!)
We’ve almost survived January, fellow haters of winter. We’re almost there.
Have a great weekend!
