suddenlysinglewomen

January for me, in my new home state, is cold, snowy – even frigid. It’s the month I wonder . . . now why did I move here?? Oh yeah, the summers!

January is when we feel the pressure to have “resolutions”, to break bad habits, start good habits, get back to exercise, cut back on food. Heck – even some people do “Dry January”! Yup, tried that once and decided I get it – the reason, but don’t enjoy it, ha ha.

January is really really (did I say really?) cold here in Colorado, in the mountains. Many mornings can get below zero. I think Alexa smirks when I ask her the temp before I get up and decide what I have to put on to walk the dogs. 

January is a travel challenge, though these days, that could be said of all months. I recently went to San Diego to help with the littles while my daughter n’law recovered from a surgery. Was supposed to return here Monday . . . then tried again Tuesday . . . then finally made it back late Wednesday night in snowy and slippery conditions. And do the airlines really care?

January is when we start to get notices about taxes and 1099s and K-1s and all those things that you have to start gathering to make the CPAs job easier. It’s a paper nightmare. And don’t get me started how much fun it is NOT to get it all downloaded/uploaded/unloaded. As organized as I am, it still takes up so much time.

January used to be when TV shows had a brief hiatus before the “2nd” half of the season started. With all the strikes in the entertainent world, and more than just major network channels now due to streaming, etc. – do we even have a “season” anymore?  When do things start? When do they wrap up? Will Yellowstone ever come back?

January is a long month – 31 days. We start out the year trying to recover from the holidays, trying to keep track of normal trash days and bam, more government holidays to create trash and recycle backup. Where my son’s live, if you pull out your trash/recycle cans on the wrong day, you just leave them out till the trucks actually show up. Where I am in the mountains, you cannot put out the night before, you cannot leave out the next night incase you forgot the holiday. Too many critters around. Of course if you do “Dry January”, your recycle bin can probably skip a cycle anyway, right?

January is when you think you might actually start cooking again, no more Holiday parties to supply your dinner. This morning I actually did all the slicing, dicing, browning and assembly for a Crock Pot beef stew. Wait, is Crock Pot cooking actually . . . cooking?

January is when you finally have to take down all those Holiday decorations and fit all those plastic clear storage boxes back into the spaces that they took up for 11 months of the year in “storage” although somehow they don’t seem to stack back up quite as orderly as they did when first stored. Did my shelves shrink? Or did the boxes expand? And now since they didn’t quite stack up the same, I have Christmas wreaths in canvas bags stacked on top of Halloween decor. Oops. 

I hope January gets on outta here soon, temps above freezing would be welcome and I might even have the tax prep “prepped” . . . could happen.