Home during the Holidays

This week was so nice.  Every night, we came home to the dark outdoors at 5 PM or later (because this close to the solstice, it's sunset at 4:47 or something along those lines with all of the clouds) to our recently remodeled house and enjoyed the holiday lights on our across-the-street neighbor's house. The Effort!  Well done (for them).  (Also, yay.  Holidays!)

Many Neighbors embrace the holiday spirit through light shows!  It's endearing.

I recovered from the rolled ankle earned at last week's trail half-marathon-come-10K disaster (which meant I cut myself all sorts of slack on the workout side of things), and I did laundry, chores, shopping, and even splurged to make a mid-week meal of gnocchi for guests (a meal that has tons of history for me, but that I hadn't made in at least 5 years).

Gnocchi is labor intensive.  I spent a few years putting in my time to learn how to make it (granted -- I was doing other things, it probably only takes 6 days, total, but it took me years {grin}).  But, regardless, it is a magical dish.  And using garden squash makes it that much better.

Roasted Acorn Squash Gnocchi -- one of the first real home-cooked meals in  the new kitchen.

So that was great.

In other news, all my Jewish(ish) friends (most of whom have kids) all reminded me that it was Hanukkah (primarily through their stories about gifts for their kids).  So Yay!  Winter presents!

And, a few conversations with close friends about holiday stresses reminded me that E & I have awesome families.  While many of our friends complained about the holidays and gift anxiety, we were calmly free.  In my family, the adults don't get each other presents unless they are seeing each other in person, and even then, it's low stress (pick a game or puzzle, we'll play it in the time we're planning to spend together).  Kids, of course, always get gifts, even if you aren't in town -- Duh!   E's family is a bit more high maintenance than mine, in general, but with in-person holidays, they've decided to manage by opting into secret santa assigned one-gift-per-adult awesomeness, which is amazing and wonderful and we've used it to explain to people on multiple occasions about just how cool E's family is...

Workout effort was minimal including Monday's gym visit, which was 30 min recumbant bike; 3X13 pushups; crunches; reverse crunches; ankle arch; lunge stretching; straddle; back twist; pike stretching.   Tue rest. Wed super easy, 2 miles jogging with some walking.  Th: 3.58 @ 12:28  plus 0.23 walking recovery.  Friday: REST (told you I was lazy this week!).  Sat:  2 @ 10:26 w/E -- I do love running with my man.  Then another 3 on my own, run-walking, averaging 16 min/mile...  Sunday was my own Jingle Bell Hell: 8.01 miles at 11:53 avg pace (my personal hell was promising myself no walk breaks - I could stop to use restrooms or sip water at fountains, but otherwise, I had to be jogging at a minimum).  This is an improvement, pace-wise, over last year.  So I call success!  Total mileage for the week -- 19.46, but much less of it walking than last week, so progress.

Happy Holidays!