Shimmering and Simmering

I conquered the vacuum today. It needed some maintenance before use. The lights in the front were flashing rather worryingly. Emptied the dust cup. Still flashing. Turns out the rollers (both of them) were gunky. Lotta hair. Between me and the cats… lots of shedding, of human and animal varieties.

My first instinct was panic. Maybe this doesn’t sound like a situation that calls for raising the alarm, but anxiety decided otherwise. I called my mom for a pep talk then Googled my vacuum model to figure out what I could take apart and how to do so.

After several breaks and some hyperventilating (totally not joking), I got it cleaned and put back together. HOORAY!!! So very proud of myself. I then vacuumed the front areas of the apartment.

Meanwhile, I also thought back to the simmer pot idea that KC Davis mentioned maybe on Instagram. I Googled Simmer Pot and found some ideas for what to put in one. You simmer citrus and cinnamon and other nice-smelling things to fragrance your living space.

KC Davis SWEARS by it as a way of getting a nice pick-me-up to help fuel cleaning when everything seems dreadful. Citrus smells certainly can be enlivening.

I couldn’t find cranberries at the store where I usually shop (out of season, perhaps?), so I subbed cherries. No rosemary sprigs available either, but I found dried rosemary leaves.

It just seemed like a fun and relatively easy way to cozy up my home.

I used most of one lemon, one grapefruit (lucky last grapefruit in produce!), and one navel orange, all thinly sliced, and the sweet cherries. To that, I added what seemed like a reasonable amount of star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and rosemary.

I ate the rest of the grapefruit, and I plan to slice through the remaining lemon and orange for flavoring ice water.

I also picked up some cake mix and frosting. I didn’t have the right size pan, I don’t think, unless I just didn’t see it. I do have cupcake tins! And I got some adorable Valentine’s Day themed cupcake liners.

And a high-end frozen pizza, because it felt like a day to go easy on dinner. I’ve been craving delivery pizza. This is just as good, if not better, and less expensive.

Last night, I printed off a Supernatural BINGO card I found online and watched 3 episodes. I scored BINGO before the end of the second one. LOL.

You can find various themed BINGO cards for the show pretty readily by searching the internet (but I opted not to use it as a drinking game).

I had left off at the finale to Season 9, so I started Season 10 yesterday. I have some vague ambition to finish the series. We’ll see. I may make my own BINGO to keep it lively. The one I found seems better suited to earlier episodes, in some senses. Plus, I feel like they’re missing things like “Pie” and “Driver Picks the Music” etc.

Still, the whole series must have a fair amount of recurring motifs, if I got BINGO at all. That’s part of its charm, I would say.

Oh also… I really struggled with getting motivation to go to the store today. My mom suggested putting on some music, taking my time, having some Chai. I skipped the Chai, but the rest was helpful (I’d already had some caffeine).

Decided to dress up just a little, and I put on my shimmering Unicorn Kisses tinted lip balm. The effort didn’t go unnoticed, either. Two separate shoppers stopped to compliment me– the first on my coat (leopard print), and the second on my whole animal print vibe (jeans were also leopard print).

I felt pretty good about that.

Hopefully video chatting with an old friend from my youth, in just a little bit here. Very jazzed about that. Might pop the pizza in pretty soon. Either way, I will find something to keep myself occupied this evening.

Have a great night y’all!