Happy Saturday, friends! Somehow it’s been two months since I last updated my blog. I should post smaller little chunks to make everything more palatable, but if you’re bored and want to procrastinate, then grab a mug of your favorite peppermint-flavored whatever and follow me into UPDATES.

Spotify Unwrapped 2022 List

Just kidding, that’s so last week.

Currently

I’m currently fighting off a cold, which, ugh. There are a couple of culprits – someone gave me a hug last week and as I pulled away from her, I realized she was sniffly.

Then there’s someone in my workout classes who frequently coughs without covering her mouth. She just randomly lets out a BLEH in class, EVEN WHEN BOTH OF HER HANDS ARE FREE AND OTHERWISE AVAILABLE TO BE GOALIES FOR HER COLD PARTICLES. Likely one of these two suspects gave me my cold. Of course, post-pandemic onset, it’s hard to get sniffles without freaking out and thinking that it’s COVID 2: Merry Christmas! But I’ve been testing negative and I don’t feel like death, so I really do think that it’s *just* a cold. Phew.

I have to work this weekend because I had training all last week, so of course am terribly behind on everything. It’s fine though. I’ll use this afternoon to catch up on work while I wait for my new DRUM KIT to come in! I’m so excited! Of course I am now going to be receiving Sweetwater calls until the end of eternity.*

We got the house put together really nicely last month for our first houseguest – my brother! He visited us the weekend before Thanksgiving. We had so much fun with him and I really hope we get more houseguests in the future. After he left, I decorated the house for Christmas. I don’t love the holidays – my love of Christmas has decayed exponentially since college and it has reached an asymptote of general dread – but I decided to lean into winter and Cozy Times™ by getting the tree decorated right after Thanksgiving (rather than two days before Christmas like I usually do). I have to admit that the house has a general cheer to it, which is cozy and fine I GUESS.

There are a couple of winter markets and festivals around town for the year, which we’ve been supporting. We have a new bookstore in town, a record store that hosts open mic nights – I’m feeling inspired for new projects and opportunities, and there’s nothing like late fall winter to keep you inside to work on these opportunities.

I have complained ad nauseum on this blog about how much I hate winter**. UGH. I STILL HATE IT. But I’m really trying to lean into the coziness and getting outside when I can to move my body around. A couple of weeks ago I went running and thought it was too warm for my jacket, and it was in the 40s. So there’s that.

I haven’t seen my little Jiji in awhile – I hope she’s safe, warm, and well-fed. One of her litter mates has been stopping by every day though. We call her Goose. She’s just as skittish as the rest of her siblings were, but she’s finally getting to a point where she doesn’t run under the deck when she sees me.

Travel

In October, I went to Argentina. This trip deserves its own post because it was incredible. But let’s be real, I still haven’t really blogged about other beautiful places I’ve been lucky enough to visit (Iceland? Portugal?) and those trips were over a year ago. I wanted to mention this trip here as a highlight because I’d been looking forward to it all year.

I traveled to Argentina with Wild Terrains (the same travel company I went to Portugal with). I first discovered them in early 2021, during the “when am I getting vaccinated?” phase of the pandemic. I started following their page and dreaming about going on their Argentina trip, even though traveling by myself seemed completely daunting and nearly impossible back then. It sounds cheesy to say that dreaming of travel and being on this trip was one of the ways I got through that last portion of the emergency phase of the pandemic, but it’s true. So when an opening came up earlier this year for their October trip, I snatched that up.

I’d never been to South America before – never even been south of Harlingen, Texas – so I was beyond excited to visit. We visited Mendoza, Buenos Aires, and Patagonia (!!!!) When I was in Mendoza and Patagonia, I could not stop staring at the Andes. They were GORGEOUS. I visited during the southern hemisphere’s spring – so I was able to see beautiful blooming flowers, even in the city.

I met incredible people, had amazing food (and Malbec!) and wonderful adventures. I also got to see one of my friends, who lives in Buenos Aires – I hadn’t seen her since before the pandemic, so it was so great seeing her. Argentina is a beautiful, welcoming country with so much culture and tasty cuisine. If you have the chance, you must visit.

FYI, I was also ready to take this estancia kitty home, but she wasn’t ready to commit.

Currently: The List

This entry is becoming very long and my pajamas are starting to fuse to the couch, so I’m going to end this blog with a list of things I’m currently into. I hope you have a great weekend, and if I don’t talk to you before the holidays, I hope you enjoy them. Or that they end very quickly. WHY NOT BOTH?

• Watching – The new Harry and Meghan documentary on Netflix. I like them both, and hope they are finding a normalish life here in the States. Having that level of fame sounds like a nightmare.
• Listening – ….to my Spotify Unwrapped 2022 playlist (sigh). But also digging into Spotify Unwrapped lists of yore…it’s an endless capsule of nostalgia. (My top song of 2022, if you were wondering, is this one.)
• Reading – Hester by Laura Lico Albanese and Americana by Don DeLillo. I finished My Antonia by Willa Cather (which I enjoyed very much) and Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson (which I kind of did? Until the ending, WHICH I HATED. Ugh, I finished that book over a month ago and am still extremely annoyed by the ending.)
• Eating – At this very minute, leftovers of this Risi e Bisi recipe, which is SOO. GOOD. And I can actually kind of taste it still. SUCK IT, COLD.
• Making – The Gold Rush Shawl by Montana Crochet and the Speckled Square blanket, which is getting quite large. If you are an OG The Cozy Bird reader****, then you’ll know I started this blanket in 2018. Once I run out of yarn, then I’m calling it good on this blanket. It uses squish DK and buying all that yarn for it was an INVESTMENT.

* IYKYK.
** I guess it’s technically late fall, if you want to be pedantic. Potato, potatoe***
*** Yes, I’m making a Dan Quayle joke 30 years after the fact.
**** This is probably like three people. And yes, I ITALICIZED MY OWN BLOG, IT’S CLEARLY TIME FOR ME TO GET UP.