The high of my week was having a four-day weekend! I scheduled Friday off to give myself a long(er) weekend, which was much-needed because I spent last week in tons of meetings and I was worn out by the end of it. I didn’t do much this weekend; it was just nice to be able to relax, sleep in, and get some stuff done.
The low of my week was completely flubbing dinner one day this week. I tried to make this BBQ chicken recipe from Budget Bytes, but the chicken I used was way too large and took forever to cook through. I was cooking the chicken on medium-high heat and I finally bumped up the heat to high, which caused my entire kitchen to get smoky. I had to turn on the vents and open my patio door to air things out. When my chicken was finally cooked through, I realized I had messed up the seasonings and the chicken was way too salty as a result. Live and learn, I guess!
One nagging task I marked off my to-do list this week was cleaning out the litter boxes. Did you know that you’re supposed to clean out the litter boxes weekly if you have multiple cats? That’s not happening around here. I scoop the litter regularly and add fresh litter when needed, but doing a full cleaning (dumping out old litter, wiping down the box with soap and water, and adding new litter) does not happen as frequently as it should. But I did it this week and I’m going to try to get into a habit of doing it monthly.
I’m currently reading The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain (audio; our January book club book, which I am enjoying), Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson (print; it’s okay, nothing too exciting), and Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian (e-book; enjoyable so far).
A podcast episode I enjoyed was my own! The Friendship Paradox kicked off its third season this week with a long (for us) episode on dating. We try to keep our episodes under 50 minutes, but this one is over an hour because we were chatty-chatty! This episode would have been even longer, too, because we were still working through our outline when we realized we had already been recording for an hour. We had to cut out some questions to make sure we didn’t make a 2-hour episode, ha.
The best money I spent this week was $16 on new bowls and a placemat for the girls! I needed to order more litter and wanted to hit that “free shipping” threshold on Chewy, so I decided it was time to replace their food supplies. I know I will be much more excited about these supplies than the girls.
My plans this weekend include nothing too exciting! It’s another weekend of the NFL playoffs so I will be spending the majority of my weekend at my mom’s to watch the games (and rooting against Buffalo, muahaha). I also plan on watching Glass Onion tonight and I have a writing date with Mikaela planned for Saturday morning.
What was the high of your week?
Ugh, chicken breasts can be so tricky to cook as they can be super thick in parts. I have learned to flatten them out before cooking so they cook evenly. I have a meat mallet but you can just use a small saute pan or something. I put it in a plastic bag or between 2 pieces of saran wrap and then whack at it until it’s it’s more evenly thick. It works so so well! I learned to do this when grilling – it cuts down the cook time and then it’s evenly cooked!
The high of my week was a really fun happy hour to belatedly celebrate the 50th bday of a cowork. She turned 50 when I was in Mexico, so shortly before Christmas, so we planned to celebrate her in January but ended up having to reschedule 3 times because of snow storms! And we still got snow yesterday but it was “only” 4″ so we could still carry on with our plans. We had a small group and included a guy that we used to work with that I hadn’t seen since I was pregnant with Will. It was really fun to celebrate our colleague!
Such a smart tip! And the recipe recommended doing that, but I skipped the step because it just seemed like extra work I didn’t need to do. Now I know!
I’m glad you all were finally able to celebrate your coworker, even after 3 reschedulings! <3
Oh, it is so disappointing when a recipe doesn’t work out as it should. We had a smoke-filled kitchen last night, too — not fun, and the resulting food was not great either. Whomp whomp.
A smoke-filled kitchen always feels so demoralizing! Argh. Sorry you experienced it, too!
I loved your dating episode! It was really fun to listen to!
Hmmm…high of my week. I taught two really nice yoga classes, I started a puzzle, I read some good books and, what else. It’s been mild here, so that’s nice too!
I’m so glad you loved that episode, Nicole! <3
That sounds like SUCH a good week – so many simple, lovely pleasures!
Our litter box has not been clean cleaned since October because it’s too cold to do it. I usually clean it outside with our garden hose and lots of dishsoap, but once we turn off the outside spigot, I don’t know how to clean it. I don’t want to clean it in our shower or bathtub because that is repulsive and lots of debris would get in our drain. So our poor kitty will have a repulsive litterbox until spring. Please don’t report me to the ASPCA, okay? I do scoop it every night!
This makes me feel so much better! I promise to not report you. 😉 It would be so much easier to clean out the litter boxes if I could do it outside with a garden hose! Being in an apartment makes it so much more difficult.
I’ll be so curious what you think of Glass Onion. I loved Knives Out, but felt rather meh about Glass Onion but I know SO MANY PEOPLE who raved about it…!
I thought Glass Onion was just okay! It definitely did not live up to the expectations I had, since I loved Knives Out so much. The ending was a little unsatisfying and meh to me.
Those cat bowls are so cute! Yes, I think you’ll be appreciating them much more than the girls. On the subject of litter boxes- I’m TERRIBLE about doing a thorough cleaning. Unlike Engie, I have no excuse because it’s not cold here. I scoop them our regularly, and then sometimes pour out all the old litter and put new in- but I can’t remember the last time I took them outside to wash them. Maybe your post will motivate me to do it this weekend.
Yes, football! I’m excited about the games. Go Bengals!
This makes me feel so much better, haha! It’s a little more complicated living in an apartment since I can’t just take the litter boxes outside and wash them out with a garden hose, so I put it off so much longer than I should. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who puts this chore off!
That Bengals/Bills game was SO DAMN SATISFYING!
Yeah for long. weekends. Glad you got to enjoy one.
I have read a couple of times now about your writing dates and I am wondering what exactly it is. Do you just meet up with a friend and you both sit there and type aways, sip coffee and then get up and go?
I love that you asked this question, and I am actually going to write a whole post about my writing dates with Mikaela. Stay tuned!
Yes!!! I am looking forward to reading more.
Cooking chicken breast takes a bit of practice, but I wanna echo what Lisa suggested… either pound down the chicken breast of cut it up in same-sized pieces. That cuts down the cooking time a lot too (plus, you get more of the “seared” outside parts (which are the tastiest :)).
The high of my week was … sweating my heart out. I know it sounds cliché but exercise helped me so much last week.
Such a smart tip, thank you! I usually do the cut-up method because I think that’s the tastiest method, too, so I’m not sure why I didn’t do it that way this time. Live and learn!
Your 4 day weekend sounds amazing! Yay for that extra day off!
I am with you re: the litter. We do a full change once every 3-4 weeks. And scoop it every day. Litter is expensive, yo!
The high of my week was talking to the Program Director at Thresholds about the rock painting class!
Doing a full change every 3-4 weeks is awesome! It always feels so wasteful to get rid of perfectly fine litter (though I guess the point is that it’s not perfectly fine…?) but I must get better about doing a full change!