What I Learned in January

How in THE WORLD is it the end of January???? When I did my week planning on Sunday, I flipped over to February's tab in my planner, and it was just so weird. But weird or not, the end of January has arrived, and I am prepared to carry on with my monthly tradition of sharing the things I've learned in the last 30 days. Hope you enjoy!!


Before I share my list, it is Tuesday, which of course means there's a new podcast! You'll get to hear a little more about our "A" date (see yesterday's blog for photos of that) and also Ryan's big dream fulfilled this weekend. (And I didn't even know it was a dream!)

Listen here.

Okay...NOW on to the lessons learned in the not-super-wintry month of January! 

1. The materials used on floats in the Rose Parade have to be all-natural. 

Maybe I'm the last person on earth to know this, but I sure did not have a clue until this year! Ryan isn't a big parade lover anyway, but he knows I like them, so we watched a bit of the Rose parade and I kept hearing all the talk of ground rice and coffee beans and such things being used on floats, so I had to look it up. True story! All natural items are required. Impressive to see what they came up with and how authentic it all looked!

2. I like reading old books.

Like ACTUAL old books. Old copies of old books. Not reprints of old books. Mom gave me her copy of The Secret Garden, which was given to her in 1947, and it was extra fun to read this American classic from pages that were equally classic. 

3. Writing Scripture is a helpful practice.

One of the new things I'm trying this year is writing out a few verses each day. I'm following the plan from here, and I'm learning that pausing to focus on verses long enough to write them out with my own hand is a good thing for me. It makes me ponder and retain the topics, and I'm looking forward to learning much through this practice this year!

4. We {as in the Shaffers} were not created to live on chicken alone.

Ryan's gallbladder issues this month forced us to eat a very bland, all chicken based diet for a while. Now, we love chicken as much as anyone else, but we sorely missed variety in our diet! Thankful that Ryan was able to have surgery so quickly to remove the offending gallbladder, and we have enjoyed reintroducing variety and flavor to our diet! 

5. Potty training a ten-year-old cat is definitely classified as an adventure.

If you've somehow missed the posts this month, well, I'm sorry, first of all, but the news is that Ryan has decided he's so over cleaning out litter boxes, so Braeya has been on a toilet training adventure. Because when the folks on Shark Tank say you can train a cat to use a toilet, he took them seriously. Somehow I think it has to be easier to train a tiny human than an old cat, though she has done better than I expected. I'll give her that! {And yes, in this photo, she has curled up in the litter to rest. Sigh.}

6. Ryan, coming out of surgery, is HILARIOUS.

I am just straight up sorry all of you had to miss having a front row seat to watching Ryan come out from under the anesthesia after surgery. He was absolutely hysterical. I wanted to film the whole thing, but alas, I was afraid the nurses would yell at me for it. (Even though I knew he would want me to be filming and has completely enjoyed the short clip I did get. I knew what I was doing.) So funny. I don't want him to require surgery ever again in his lifetime, but if ever he does, we know we're in for a treat on the flip side!

7. Out of eight new recipes I tried this month, six were good enough to make again.

Between getting back to a stricter version of clean eating (after a very UNCLEAN! December) and Ryan's diet needs during the gallbladder days, I tried a lot of new dishes this month. My two failures were, ironically, the first two things I made, and it made me a bit nervous for the future of the month! I tried a slow cooker spinach quiche that we ruled out because it wasn't flavorful enough, and a skinny Baja chicken taco recipe that had a clean Chipotle sauce on it, and I'm pretty sure that contributed to Ryan's worst gallbladder attack. OUT with that recipe! But you can look forward to seeing (at some point) recipes for chicken taco soup, a spinach chicken salad with oranges, cranberries and almonds, chicken nuggets, Blizzard cookies, chicken noodle soup, and chicken Parmesan strips! My goal was to try one new recipe a week, and while there were a couple of weeks when I did not, the number I tried averaged out to double the goal!

So that's what I've learned in the merry month of January! :) How about you? Any new things?  

Linking up with Tamar!

Alphabetical Dates: The Letter "A"

A few weeks ago, on the Saturday Six, I shared this post with you - from the website Canvas and Table. It was an idea for planning alphabetical dates - one date themed with each letter of the alphabet. I absolutely fell in love with the idea, which shouldn't surprise any of you who know me well. You know I love dates and themes. So I sat right down at the end of last year and planned out all 26 dates (nerd alert!!!) and we were supposed to start the project a couple of weeks ago with the date inspired by the letter A.

Alas, something inspired by the letter G kept us from eating normally, so all dates had to be postponed. And so it was that this past Saturday, we went on our "A" date, and it was so. much. fun!

It actually worked out that we had to delay this date, because we got to do something extra and fun that we wouldn't have if we'd done it "on time."

Our friends Bill and Kristin (my friends from my pre-Ryan days) had the incredible privilege to adopt their foster daughter, and the official adoption date fell on Friday. Saturday, they had a big party at their house to celebrate their forever family. An adoption party? Sounds like the perfect way to kick off an A date, doesn't it?

We had a great time catching up with old friends (friends from yore, not elderly friends) and watching the new family interact together. Really glad we could be part of this day!

ALSO...got to see my friend Cherri AND have my picture taken with her! Had a picture with Kristin too, but didn't ask if I could use it here, so I won't. Cherri said it was okay. ;)

After we left the party, we went to the next part of the date, which was an APPETIZER DINNER. Ryan and I never order an appetizer when we go out to eat, because we're too cheap and we don't want the extra calories on top of our dinner calories. So we've never enjoyed the goodness of the appetizer menus anyplace we go. Originally, when I thought we were going to stay in Kokomo for this date, I was going to have us go to Applebees for appetizers, because double alliteration makes me incredibly happy. But when I knew we would be in Indianapolis, it seemed the perfect time to use some gift cards we had for the Cheesecake Factory.

Our plan was to arrive at the Cheesecake Factory early, eat before the dinner crowd hit, and then walk off our meal by perusing the attached Fashion mall. That was the plan. And you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

We arrived at 4:30 and by the time we inched our way to the front of the line and got our name put in, we were told it would be a one hour wait to get in. And that was only because we were a party of 2. Larger parties had to wait 2 or 2.5 hours to get a seat. And it wasn't even dinner time yet!

They told us the pager wouldn't work if we went out into the mall, so we didn't. We stayed all crammed at the front of the restaurant, watching the 50+ person line stay steady as time went by. I was about to ask some parents of kids if they would sell me stale cheerios from their diaper bags. I was so hungry! {Hadn't eaten much at the party because I knew the appetizers were coming. Or I thought they would be, anyway.}

My favorite part of the wait was this lady who came in with two little boys in tow (probably about five years old) and they formed a human train and pushed past the whole line of people waiting to put their names in and arrived at the counter before turning around and leaving. I heard the lady say as she walked out, "This place must have really good food." I'm not sure why she thought it was okay to cut past all the waiting people, but she did!

Finally, about 15 minutes before our hour was up (and after I had admittedly made this a matter of actual prayer), our buzzer buzzed.

I literally jumped up and down and did not even care what the people next to me thought. (They were probably just jealous anyway.) We got our table and the nice man brought us water and coffee and BREAD. Carbs had never been so welcomed. I was so hungry, I was shaking.

When we ordered, our waiter asked if we were going to want cheesecake, and we said yes, so he told us we should put in our order then because cheesecake alone had another 40 minute wait. (This stuff is all very baffling to folks who normally eat at Wendys.)

The whole process of choosing our appetizers had been taken care of before we even arrived. I'd printed out the menu and we made our process of elimination choices on the drive down. So we were READY to order. We picked totally not clean-eating choices of fried macaroni and cheese and a buffalo chicken dish. They were HUGE and delicious! We shared both and still brought half the dishes home!

It was fun to order things we'd never had, and when we finished up, our cheesecakes were ready! White chocolate raspberry truffle for Ryan and salted caramel for me:

He powered through and put the whole thing away, but I could only eat half (the little half!) of mine. Plenty of leftovers!

We tried not to dilly-dally at our table because lining the walls of the restaurant were all the people waiting like we had been, and I could feel them watching us linger over our coffee and wishing we would just GET OUT. (I would have felt the same way.)

And our final part of the date? Wandering through the fashion mall looking for stores that start with the letter A.

We went in other stores too, including this one, where I found no apothecary table or anything from colonial times. LOL!!!

All in all, the evening was SO much fun. Just something different, and almost free, since we had gift cards! I'm looking forward to the rest of the letters, and since someone asked me on Facebook, no the B date is not a trip to Barbados! Too bad!!!!!

Linking up with Tamar!

The Shafferland Shuffle

How in THE WORLD is it the last Sunday in January already?!!?!? On the flip side, after last weekend's unseasonably warm weather, I'll take it being the last Sunday in January, because it means we are that much closer to SPRING! Yes, please! :)

* Though we dearly love our Sunday naps, we had abbreviated versions of them last week, because we met up with Ryan's family for dinner and the celebration of his sister's 30th birthday! Dinner was at Half Moon, which is a local restaurant, and Ryan LOVES their food but hadn't eaten there in a very long time. It was his first really big meal post-surgery, and he ate every single bite and loved it! AND he didn't get sick. BONUS!

* Ryan had to return to work on Monday, and it was so busy, he didn't even get to come home for lunch. Sadness!! But I baked snickerdoodle brownies to take to his work friends, along with a thank you note for how they filled in for him while he was off work on gallcation. (Ryan fed a piece to Brutus. Ha!) We didn't schedule anything for that evening, because I feared he might be tired from his first day back, so we just hung out and I started reading my novel for the week, which I loved.

* Tuesday was a very busy day, including a podcast interview and some other work I had to get done quickly, and I had to do my workout early in the day. I know some people enjoy working out early in the day, but I'm not one of them. I MUCH prefer to do it later at night. So it was kind of a struggle, but I got through it. We had Bible study that night, and Miss Pheebs was there and snuggled up between Ryan and me for the whole thing. No arguments from me!

* Wednesday morning, I saw the most BEAUTIFUL sight! A tree full of fat robins! I know it's not spring and we have more winter to come, but I called it my tree full of hope! That night, Ryan and I enjoyed another night in and we actually cooked dinner together. We love to do that, but normally I have it ready when he gets home from work, so we don't have the chance. It was fun to work side by side! And then - the workout. Back in its regularly scheduled slot. And not as much fun as eating. LOL!

* Thursday, Braeya and I hung out together for a reading party, and then while Ryan worked overtime, I headed out to get my hairs done. (Not a fair gig for him, is it? But he got pizza for dinner, so I think that made it worth it for him.) It had been MONTHS since I had a highlight, and the hair was, well, white. Sigh. After marinating for a while under some foil and saran wrap, I came home a new woman!

* Friday night, our church had a chili supper and bake sale to raise money, and I wanted to take a dessert for the bake sale. I made buckeye brownies, and they're not hard to make at all, but they do have multiple layers and require cooling time, so I was up at 6:30 in the morning baking the brownie layer! We went to the chili supper when Ryan got off work, and it was delicious! We rounded out the night with some grocery shopping and coffee and (of course) DATELINE! lol! We're so old.

* Yesterday we started a new thing, which I can't wait to tell you more about! Alphabetical dates! Throughout the year, we'll go on a date themed by each letter of the alphabet. {I found the idea on Pinterest. Don't think I'm more creative than I actually am.} We were supposed to go on the "A" date a couple of weeks ago but had to postpone it until Ryan could eat real food again. So yesterday was our day! I'll tell you all about it next week, but we had a great time and I think this is going to be a fun adventure.

The Saturday Six

One.

Listen here.

This week, I had the privilege of interviewing Jackie Drew, who is a small-business owner, along with her husband, Rick. They own Rad-Joy, where they make Surrender crosses: wooden crosses that provide a way for you to write down your burdens and concerns and nail them to cross in an act of surrender to the Lord. I went into the interview eager to learn more about their business, and I did learn that, but I walked away encouraged tremendously in my faith after hearing Rick and Jackie's personal faith journey. This particular Conversation Cafe is a bit longer than the rest, but Jackie is a great communicator, and I think you'll find her story well worth your time! (And then check out the crosses because they are unique and beautiful!)

Two.

 Back when I was single, I shopped at Aldi regularly, because it helped the old budget. After Ryan and I got married, we gave up shopping at Aldi because our double-commuter schedule put grocery shopping in a very late-night slot, and Aldi was always closed when we went. This year, we've returned to shopping at Aldi and are enjoying getting good deals {and some really good food!} there. Mandi at Life Your Way did a post this week on how shopping for her growing family was putting a strain on the budget and she details what she can get at Aldi for under $300 for 2 weeks {for eight people}! If you've never shopped at Aldi and want to see what the fuss is about, check out her post! The picture of her purchases is impressive!

Three.

 I told you in my "Day in the Life" post last week that a friend of mine had called to interview me for a class project. She finished her article and shared it with me, so I'm going to share it with you! I offer it not because it's about me, but just because I am so proud of Amy for her journalism skills and for being bold enough to share her work (she doesn't do that often) and I wanted to pass along the love!

Four.

 Is bravery as hard for you as it is for me? {Spoiler alert: I'm pretty terrible at it.} My friend Hether wrote this beautiful post on being brave. Maybe you need to hear it like I did.

Five.

Ahhhh, children of the 90's. Here's a trip down memory lane for you. Own any of these shoes? A special shout-out from me to number seventeen!!

Six.

Every now and then, I read an author's debut novel, and I never know what to expect going in. They're often good, but this week, I have to say my experience with a debut novel was exceptional. Ann Marie Stewart's novel Stars in the Grass was so well-written that I consistently forgot I was not reading a memoir. She was that in tune with her main character. Fantastic work.  

The story is told in first person from the perspective of nine-year-old Abby McAndrews, the middle child of a preacher and his wife. They're living a common life in 1970 in Ohio, shepherding a common Presbyterian church, and taking a break for a common vacation to visit family. And that's when the unthinkable happens: Abby's little brother Joel, just three years old, dies in an uncommon, freak accident.

And that's where the common ends and the uncommon, confusing, unpredictable trail of grief begins for the McAndrews family. Four remaining members and four very different ways of processing the deepest kind of loss. Not only that, but grief was handled very differently in the 70's than it is today. Emotions weren't spoken out loud quite as freely. Counseling wasn't as heartily recommended. So the days go by, where Abby works to process her own feelings, guilt, curiosity, and confusion, while watching her family do the same. She's wise and intuitive beyond her years, and yet her little-girl heart is so innocent and tender.

I would easily say that the characters in this book were the most well-developed of probably any book I have ever read. I knew them better than I know some of my own real-life friends and family, by the time I closed the book. The book itself is both captivating and heart-wrenching. It's not a light read by a long shot. The suffocating grief is hard to read, and yet you can't stop, because you're cheering for this family and you want to see them make it to a new normal.

Ann's description of the 70's is well-written. Enough detail to remind you how different things are today, but blended enough that it doesn't scream of another era and distract from the story line.

The only disappointment I had in the book was that it did contain one swear word. (I'm a stickler about clean language in books I read and won't read books that don't meet that standard. It's just a personal preference.) Having said that, I will add that the word was understandably placed, as part of a grief-stricken rant, and I do realize that even in choosing that word, she was making the point of  debilitating grief . It just caught me off guard because I wasn't expecting it from a Christian-marketed book.

But that does not keep me from loving this book and being astounded at the craftsmanship of Ann's writing. This was one of those books that made me want to be a better writer and story-teller. I appreciated it and will add it to my permanent library.

And as a side note, I will add that if you have experienced a deep loss that still marks you, even if it was years ago, this book might be a perfect pick for you. It will be hard to read and will stir up much emotion, I have a feeling, but I think you'll find a camaraderie, even in the friendship of a nine-year-old girl from the 70's.

*  This book officially releases on February 1, so you still have a couple more days before it hits shelves, but when it does, check it out! I received a complimentary copy from Barbour Publishing and was not required to give a favorable review. All opinions are my own! *

An Update on Miss Braeya's "Adventure"

Several of you asked to hear updates on Miss Braeya Jo's toilet training adventures so you could go and do likewise, and while I am the last person on this earth who ever imagined blogging about the potty, here I am! {And if you're new and confused, Braeya's a cat. A ten year old cat. And my husband has decided she can learn to use the potty like the people of the house.}

So when I last officially reported in, she was in phase two of this process. Let me catch you up real fast.

PHASE ONE, per the kit we purchased, involved putting the litter box in the bathroom so she would be used to coming to that room to have her potty party. Well, we were already ahead of the game, because that's where ours has been since we learned the closet was a bad idea. So we moved right ahead to...

PHASE TWO! This phase was to take the existing litter box and place it on top of the toilet so she would get used to using the potty in that exact location. So we removed it from the little aesthetically pleasing box where it had been, blocked that box off entirely with a trash can to prevent accidents/rebellion, and put the box on top of the toilet, thus taking us down to a one bathroom house for human purposes.

A couple of notes on this phase for any of you planning to try this:

* We put a folding chair beside the toilet so she could jump up on the chair and into the box. That seemed to be a good move because I'm not sure she would have leapt up into the box from the floor of her own accord. Depending on the layout of your bathroom, the edge of the tub or something else could make this step unnecessary.

*  This is MESSY. When she jumped out of the box when she was done, she sort of cascaded litter everywhere. So there was a lot of cleaning involved every day. {Ryan did it all, just to give credit where credit is definitely due.}

* Keep an eye on that box. Sometimes her leaping enthusiasm shifted the box a bit, and one day I found it sort of precariously leaning toward one side of the toilet seat. NOT eager to have an entire used box of litter dumped on the bathroom floor, I fixed it in a hurry, but that's something to watch for.

Having been successful for a week with phase two, Ryan moved on to...

PHASE THREE!

This phase began to use the actual kit we purchased. It's called the CitiKitty, and it was featured on Shark Tank. It comes with a couple of toilet bowl shaped pans that are an inch and a half deep (I measured) and fit down over the actual toilet bowl.

You can see from this picture that they have sort of a target with a bullseye design, and the intent is that you start with the whole pan and slowly punch out the middle rings until the pan is fully open like a toilet. This part takes a while, and we are not remotely through it yet.

We had to buy flushable litter, and please make a note that the brand we got (from Arm and Hammer) SAYS it's not to be flushed, but the guy at the pet store and Google both assured us that if you are on a city sewer system, it's okay. But if you're on a septic system, DO NOT USE THIS. I think Ryan found another brand on Amazon that was flushing friendly across the board, but just keep that in mind as you make your selection.

The kit said to fill the pan with the litter, sprinkle some catnip on top, and see what happens. (Loose translation.) Well, Braeya can get drunk on catnip pretty quick and rolling in it is her favorite pastime, so when we introduced it, she curled up and got busy enjoying. THE TOILET. Okay, so not the outcome we hoped for.

We sensed pretty quickly that she was just confused by the whole thing, so we made our own Phase Three A, which was to mix the new, flushable litter with her old, familiar litter. (At this point there were NO rings punched out on the pan, so nothing was actually getting flushed.) Literally the minute we did that, she got it and hopped in to do her thing. Maybe if she were young and being trained on this from the start, that wouldn't have been necessary, but it was what we had to do to get her to understand.

A couple of notes: 

* Because the pan is so shallow, again - MESSY. Litter sort of flies everywhere. And sometimes I'd catch HER in the litter, but her little hiney was hanging over onto the edge of the pan (which is the equivalent of the toilet seat, so I knew we had some work ahead of us).

* This definitely has to be cleaned out frequently for two reasons. One: smell. Since it's natural litter, there's nothing to mask the odor, and it's right out there in the room, so there's no structure to cover it, either. Two: Appearance. Because the amount of litter in the pan is minimal, she quickly ran out of places to stand while she went, and no one likes looking at this. That's just the truth. We were in the middle of Ryan's gallcation during this phase, so I did the cleaning, and I cleaned it out twice a day.

PHASE FOUR: We started this phase just this week, and I did take a picture, but I am not even lying: it is such a foul look that I absolutely cannot post it on the world wide web. The shape of the hole is not entirely family friendly. LOL! But in phase four, you cut out the middle hole of the "target." It's very small, so there's not a lot of change from the previous phase. The goal is to get her used to positioning herself so her rear end is over the hole.

A couple of notes:

* You definitely want to make sure you have the flushable litter ONLY at this point, as it will end up in the toilet, even if just from the cat moving around on top of the pan.

* At least in our experience, she's not necessarily hitting the hole as much as she's still using the litter. But it's a start. And we did have another accident where it went on the floor. We think this has only happened twice since the very beginning, so it's already probably a better ratio than kids and puppies!

* You'll want to leave each phase active for approximately one week before moving on. We waited to start this one until after we dog-sat for Phoebe. We figured that would freak her out and there was no need to add to the stress by changing phases in the middle of that. She seems to be fairly well adjusted with each phase after a week, so it's working fo rus.

* At this point, you may be really tired of having a bathroom out of commission. I definitely miss having an active second bathroom! But we're hanging onto the hope that it will be worth it!

So there you go! Updates from the world of toilet training cats! Or at the very least, THIS cat.