Welcome to 2025

So here we are in the new year. When the calendar turned over to 2025, I was so surprised to have my phone say "January 1." Oh yuck, I thought, as if it were unexpected. January! It sounds so cold and bleak after the warmth and fun of December. And it is cold and bleak today: a light snowfall overnight and a high of 31 or so (which is probably what it is right now, at 3 pm). We had almost no snow in December, something like 6/10ths of an inch, so we need to catch up. Sigh.

But January is what it is, and so here we are. 

Our big news is that, as I feared, we do seem to have bedbugs (the photo shows what we think is bedbug poop, on our box spring). Where they came from, who knows. My best guess is a hotel Rocket Boy stayed in on his way home from Missouri. But we don't really know.

I am the only family member being bitten (or at least reacting to being bitten), but I have so so many bites. Sometimes I can't fall asleep because I keep thinking about the bedbugs crawling into our bed, crawling up my legs, biting biting biting. It's quite horrifying. We have yet to see a live bug, but we know they are there.

Last night I dreamed that I stayed up late and around 3 or 4 am, shone a flashlight on the legs of our bed. I could see bedbugs making their way up the legs. I smashed as many as I could. Then I woke up. Then I fell asleep again and had a version of the same dream. Then I woke up. Then I fell asleep again and had that dream a third time. I am not sure if this really happened. Did I really have the same dream three times? I don't know. But it wasn't a good night.

I feel as though January often starts off with something awful happening. Sometimes people get very sick. Two or three years ago the rental house had that leaking pipe that led to thousands of dollars in repairs and damage control. So for us this year apparently it's bedbugs. (Unless something else even worse is going to happen soon.)

Resolutions

As usual I started off the new year by reviewing my achievements of the previous year and making plans for the year to come.

My achievements in 2024 included the following:

• read 122 books, saw 19 movies, went to 9 concerts and 2 plays (mostly school-related) and 1 funeral, wrote this blog regularly, and did some other writing as well. 
• finally got our trees trimmed and the volunteer Siberian Elm in the front yard removed; replaced the hot water heater and the bathroom door; in the rental house Rocket Boy replaced a light fixture and a broken outlet and put in a new thermostat.
  
• We took two family trips and I went on another with my sister. 
• did stretch videos all winter, walked regularly all summer and fall, and started taking Mounjaro which helped me lose 25 pounds and get my blood sugar down. Also finally got my braces off.
  
• helped Teen A get his driver's license, continued to help Teen B make progress in that direction, and helped both kids survive in school.
  
• and encouraged Rocket Boy to finally move back to Colorado!
  

I don't have a lot of big plans for the coming year. Our income is in good shape for now. With Rocket Boy taking Social Security AND earning a salary with his new job, there's no need for me to bring in money. Mounjaro has such a strong effect on my stamina, especially on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, that I'm not sure I'm up to working a regular job now anyway. Maybe I could handle part-time, or volunteer work. I'll see.

But as always I do have resolutions (or plans, goals, whatever word you prefer). I think my overarching goal is to not spend so much time on housework. Or, rather, on avoiding housework, which takes a lot of time. I'm so focused on following FlyLady that I put housework above everything else, when it really should fade into the background. I can spend literally HOURS not cleaning the litter boxes -- but not doing anything else either, because I'm trying to get myself to clean the litter boxes.

So my idea is to schedule some of my hours, at least on school days. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I get up at 7 and the twins get up at 7:30-ish, and they leave the house around 8:10 (Wednesday it all happens an hour later). Then I feed the cats, make my breakfast, put away clean dishes from the night before, start a load of laundry, eat my breakfast, do the breakfast dishes, and either swish & swipe the bathroom OR clean the litter boxes. And put the laundry in the dryer. All that shouldn't take more than an hour or so, but I can stretch it out so that it takes three hours (and perhaps isn't even done). So my first plan is that at 10 am I will stop whatever I'm doing and do something else for an hour. I've made a tentative schedule, as follows:

• Monday: paperwork (getting ready to do our taxes, and later working on the files & piles)
  
• Tuesday: lift weights & plan our next trip
  
• Wednesday: call dentists (or whoever needs calling)
  
• Thursday: genealogy
• Friday: lift weights & pay bills
  

I may change this around -- it's just tentative, until I see how this works.

OK, so then 11-2 is free (unscheduled) time, time to do housework, plan meals, go to the grocery store or do other errands, schedule appointments, read -- whatever.

Then comes another scheduled hour: from 2-3 pm I will write. I need some writing time and with Rocket Boy teleworking in the desk room, I know I'm not going to get it unless I demand it -- from myself -- schedule it and keep to the schedule.

Then at 3 pm I'll stop writing and go for a walk. Maybe. But it would be a good time for it, and it would help me break away from the computer. And the rest of the day & evening is open: put away the laundry, start making dinner, read, do other tasks. The twins get home around 4:20 on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and around 3:50 on Wednesday and Thursday, so they often need things from me.

We'll see how it goes.

In addition to my schedule plans, of course I have all my usual resolutions about reading and exercise and whatnot. I won't write them all down here -- they're quite similar to previous years. Read 52 books, see 26 movies, walk every day, etc., etc. It all seems totally doable and reasonable. Actually doing it is something else. But we'll see. 

***

This was a really lazy week. We had thought we would do a lot of fun things over the break, but we did almost nothing. That trip to the Art Museum last weekend was it. Teen A mainly hung out with his friends and Teen B didn't want to do anything with us. No movies, no trips. I feel bad about it, but I also know that when you're 16 going on 17 you want to do your own thing, not your parents' thing. Even if you have no friends, you don't want your parents to be your friends. I respect that.

 

New Year's Eve was pretty quiet. Teen A wanted to do something with friends but I made him take the bus -- I didn't want him driving on drunk driving night. Teen B stayed home with us and we made a puzzle and watched some TV. Just after midnight I texted Teen A to ask if he wanted me to pick him up and he texted back that he was waiting for the bus. But a little while later he texted that no bus was coming and could he stay overnight (his friend's parents were OK with it). So I said fine, we'll see you in the morning. We all slept late and he woke us up when he came in the front door at 11 am. A funny start to the new year.

 

One exciting thing that happened was we lost Sillers. It was the day we worked on the bedding -- Thursday? Or Friday? I've forgotten. Anyway, we stripped the bed, put the mattress in the hall, draped the gigantic mattress pad over the clothesline, and vacuumed the bedroom to a fare-thee-well. We don't have any anti-bedbug chemicals yet (supposed to arrive this Friday), but we did what we could.

While we were going in and out of the back door, Sillers somehow slipped out. She doesn't usually do that -- it's a Baby Kitty thing -- but that day she did. Maybe an hour later I heard a meow that sounded like it was outside and I realized she was nowhere in the house. By then it was dark, but I went out and used my phone flashlight to search. Teen B helped me. No sign of her, no rustling sounds. I went to the front yard and continued to search. It was cold, probably in the low 20s. Nothing. Then all of a sudden, a very loud meow came from under Rocket Boy's car! "Sillers!" I cried, but I didn't want to scare her. "What a good girl," I said, in a softer, calmer voice. Little by little she came out from under the car and let me pick her up. Once back inside, she ran all around the house, her tail very big and puffy. Funny cat.

Still, other than that it was a boring week. We did go to Starbucks a lot, because Teen B enjoys that. I realized today, on our third trip this week, that I really didn't want Starbucks. I was tired of coffee with whipped cream on top (I'm not normally a coffee drinker, but coffee is a big help with constipation issues). I wanted to go to the bagel shop next door and get a yummy bagel sandwich. But Teen B wanted to go to Starbucks, so we went to Starbucks yet again. And I've already told him we can go tomorrow too -- the last day of vacation.

Time for the Mounjaro report, I guess.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 229.2
• Weight this morning (after 28+ weeks on Mounjaro): 229
  

So, fifth week in a row with a tiny weight loss. I must confess that this may not be accurate. When I first got on the scale this morning it said 230. Oh, come on, I said, and got off. "Error," said the scale. I waited for it to reset and then got on again. 230. Really? I said. I got on one more time and it said 229. At that point I should have gotten off and gotten on one more time, because the scale has to say the same thing twice (with no "Error" message) before I believe it. But instead I thought to myself -- 229 sounds good, I'll go with that. So we'll see next week if this was real.

If in fact I did lose 2/10ths of a pound, it was probably due to exercise. I took four good walks this week. I decided to set a weight loss goal/resolution/whatever for the coming year of 1 pound a month. Even though my weight loss has slowed considerably, I think one pound a month is doable. It sounds like so little, but at the end of the year I could be down 12 more pounds! Last year on January 1st I weighed 251.6. And this year on January 1st I weighed 228.8. That's a loss of 22.8 pounds! Last year I intentionally did not make any weight loss plans because I thought it was hopeless. And sure enough I spent the first six months of the year gaining weight. But then came Mounjaro. So anyway, maybe good things will continue to happen there.

I guess that's about all I have to say today. I was looking at the Christmas cards and thinking about who we heard from this year and who we didn't hear from. We send cards to a lot of people who don't send them to us -- which is fine, no one has to send cards. But sometimes I wonder whether I'm annoying people with our letter and all that. Then today Rocket Boy decided to call an old friend who we haven't heard from in several years. They're talking now, as I write. Since we last heard from this friend he's gone through (successful) cancer treatment, his older son was hospitalized for mental health issues, and he and his wife Natalie separated and are now going through a divorce, although apparently they're on good terms. "We always enjoy your Christmas letter," I heard him say. "Natalie came over and read it too. We always like to read it." OK, I thought. I guess I'll go on sending it out. It's just one way of trying to maintain connection. Which is really the only thing that matters.