We are starting our New Year on a spicy note, specifically with Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes that I made for dinner last night. We forget how tasty some of the recipes are on my blog and this one is a favorite. On New Year's Eve, we invited my friend to dinner who lives in the neighborhood and I made my Chinese Chicken Salad and Won Tons. Knowing my menu, she brought some Vegetable Egg Rolls with Peanut Sauce that was like a rolled up salad with the most delicious peanut sauce that was finger-licking good.
I especially had fun using my new dinner plates on New Year's Eve that Lauren gave me for Christmas from my favorite Seattle shop called Watson Kennedy. These dinner plates are their beige cabbage plates and I love them.
Setting the table brings such simple pleasure and joy when I get to use my new dinner plates. It was a lovely, quaint evening sitting by the fire talking and getting caught up, eating tasty food and wine and nibbling on Christmas cookies and almond roca after dinner while we watched the Space Needle practice it's colorful laser show from our view at the top of each hour. My friend went home around 10:00 pm but Bruce and I stayed up until midnight and then there were no fireworks because the winds were too high at 40 mph. Bummer. They just did a light show on the Space Needle but we'd been watching the practices so it wasn't that big a deal to us so we went to bed. It was a very anticlimactic New Year's Eve but at least we had good food, good company and were warm and dry on a wet and windy evening.
Now, to hunker down for a long January. Blah! January is always so boring after such a fun December. Bruce is taking the outdoor lights down today (since it briefly stopped raining) and I keep thinking I ought to start putting all the Christmas decorations away, too. But I like the way our house looks all decorated so I procrastinate. I will probably start this weekend. I already have a list of things to do this month like take the cat to the vet for her annual shots, do some Christmas returns, take the car to get serviced, etc. Nothing big. What about New Year's resolution? I've never been good at those so I was happy to hear the latest trend is New Year's Intentions instead of Resolutions. When I think back to past years, I have always had a New Year's Intention or something you intend to focus on in the coming year. Last year, it was my Year of Reconstruction. I had finally resorted to having a hip replacement and also my knee if the hip went well. At the same time, we were planning a remodeling of our deck and kitchen - all which happened last year. That was a hard year, I'm not going to lie. The remodel started on April 25th and the last item was done December 5th. I did not feel like my home was my own with all those strange workers coming and going constantly. I got use to living upstairs during my knee rehab away from the workers and did not spend any time on the main floor at all. Bruce did all the cooking and actually moved all the kitchen stuff back into the kitchen when it was finished and then did all the cooking while I continued to recover. When my sister came to visit in November she said our house looked so bare. I usually decorate for every season but could not bring myself to get out any fall decorations. She motivated me and she decorated the fireplace mantel and other things and that got me going finally. My knee rehab was going better by then, too, so things finally started getting back to normal but it took a long time. I will always remember 2019 as a very physically hard, as well as emotionally hard year to get through all that. I knew it would be a hard year so it wasn't a surprise but I would not want to go through it again. I'm just glad its over. I am suppose to get my left knee replaced, but it will be a LONG time before I decide to do it or if I even decide to do it because I may not. My body makes a lot of scar tissue so my doctor said I'd have a hard rehab. and my phyisical therapist still spends time using a tool on my scar to break scar tissue and it still hurts like heck! I had poor range of motion before my knee surgery so now my muscles are weak and I have to reteach them to bend and straighten again since my knee joint is now working correctly and moving in ways that it hasn't done in years. So, I always have muscle pain in the knee area while I work to re-train those muscles again. I go to a massage therapist once a week which really helps, as well as P.T. twice a week. It's an ongoing process that my doctor says will take a year, so you can probably guess what my Intention is for 2020. It should be obvious but it's going to be a Year of Restoration. I am looking so forward to restoring my body to top working order again and I am looking forward to start re-establishing our home to be our own now that the remodel is over. And come June, Nick and family will be relocating back to the area after living in Japan for seven years. Bruce is planning on retiring then and we plan to spend all our time reacquainting ourselves with our grandkids. We can't even imagine what it will be like having them nearby! Before that, we will make one more trip to Japan in the Spring to see them again before they move back so that is my goal for now; to get in shape for another Japan trip. Japan trips always entail a lot of walking, a lot of stairs, a lot of hills, and has always been exhausting for me. I have a lot of conditioning to do and a lot of improvement for my knee to do still but I work everyday towards this goal. I have P.T. exercises I do everyday plus I recently started going back to the YMCA where I am a member because they have a water arthritis class that I like and they also have a steam room, sauna and Jacuzzi. My P.T. has said those are good for my muscles so I'm doing those now, too. I ride the exercise bike 30 minutes each day and I can tell I'm getting stronger. I've only been off all the medications for 4 weeks and that was really hard at first and I will admit that I've had set backs but I keep plugging through it. It's baby steps for me but I've come a long way already and I have to just keep at it and to remember it's my Year of Restoration. I know I can do this. Happy New Year and Welcome 2020!
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