a nice warm pool....

 ...after staying up way too late last night, I got up way too early.  Orange Guy woke me at five, meowing desperately to go outside.  rrrr, little monster.  I had only been in bed since one, which is my fault of course, but we had popcorn and a movie last night, then I stayed up in the quiet afterwards.  

So back to my warm bed I went, noticing all the fluffy white stuff that had fallen during the night and assuring myself that I was probably not going out the door by 7:40...

I did fall back to sleep, miraculously, then woke up and looked out to see Paul shoveling out my car, and brushing the snow off it.  Well, I couldn't skip the pool after that kindness!  So I hauled my lazy rear up and got ready.  I drove through the snow, and I was rewarded:  the pool water was warm.  I was SO glad I had gone.  

Home, ahh home.  A hot cup of coffee in my sweatpants, and oh I'm happy.  What should I organize?  I chose the pantry.  I emptied it, vacuumed and wiped the shelves, and threw some things away.  It always makes me sad to do that.  We had a snack bin with granola bars that expired last year, we had stocked up when Charlotte was in high school, and bringing snacks every day.  There were opened crackers that got stale, and some things that survived like five pantry purges and still didn't get eaten.  There were two bags of Heath bar chips for baking, expired in 2022, I opened a bag just to make sure they weren't fresh, and yuck, awful.  In the chocolate basket, (wait, you don't have a chocolate basket?!), one bar had melted on the bottom, and gotten moldy, causing all the standing bars to have mold on their ends, and I just threw them away.  Good chocolate too, very sad.  

Now the bins are cleaned up and organized, and it makes more sense.  It was a good day's work, and it feels nice to have it done.  

My next job was going to be one of the hall closets, but I opened each of them up and said, nah.  Not today.  Instead, I made keto-ish molasses cookies.  I say ish because the recipe calls for one teaspoon of molasses, I put in a heaping tablespoon.  

Oh Sweet Mercy is where I got the recipe:

Sift the dry ingredients together, then stir the egg and molasses together, add to dry mixture and stir up, then add melted butter.  The gingerbread spice mix I used was 1 tablespoon ginger, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, and 1/2 tablespoon nutmeg.  I added a splash of vanilla too.  They bake at 350 for ten minutes, but I don't know.  Nut flours burn easily, and I flipped mine over as soon as they came out, and left them on the hot pan so the tops got more done, but the bottoms were already a bit too done.  I wonder if a lower oven, for less time?  They taste pretty good though.  (I used a mixture of brown sugar stevia zero calorie, and monkfruit with erithritol.  

Anyway.  Camille is making chicken couscous soup for dinner, it's bubbling away on the stove, but the house smells like molasses cookies and the brownies she also made.  It's been a fantastic winter day, and I have no complaints.  I did some laundry, did some vacuuming, and did some prime relaxing in my chair.  

Paul is getting home from a trip to the dump, and we will be eating that soup...have a good evening!