Storm

I am a Minnesotan. I lived most of my life in a suburb of Minneapolis and snow doesn't scare me. I don't like driving in it, but I can.

Or maybe I should say I could. I've been living in Atlanta long enough now that I might have lost my skills.

What I'm not used to are ice storms. I only remember having one in Minnesota while I lived there. It was the only two snow days I ever got while I was in school. I remember coverage of city buses sliding sideways down slight inclines because they had no traction. I remember the trees were covered in ice and took pictures of it because it was so amazing.

So of course, Georgia has an ice storm prediction up for the weekend and I'm semi-freaking out. I'm not worried about going anywhere. It's not supposed to get bad until Friday night and I'll just stay home all weekend. Not a big deal.

Why am I freaking out then?

Losing power.

When I still lived in Minnesota, we had a thunderstorm go through at the end of May and it knocked out power to the house. For six days. SIX DAYS! When I say that I am not a pioneer, this is how I know. It was literally the most miserable six days in existence.

I can live without television. I can live without music. But there honestly is nothing you can do once the sunsets if you don't have power. Want to read? Yeah, can't see the page. EBooks? How are you going to recharge the reader? Phone? Laptop? Same problem.

I do have a couple of power banks and I'll have all my electronic equipment charged to full when the storm hits, but who knows how long the power will be down? I never thought I'd be without power in Minneapolis for six days, but there you go.

There's also food in the fridge and the freezer to consider, too.

I went grocery shopping and spent a ridiculous amount of money on nonperishable items. I also bought powdered milk and gallons of bottled water. If worse comes to worse, I can make milk and eat cereal.

But I hate losing power. Hate it.

And I hate thinking about how dangerous the ice is for people to be out in, either in a vehicle or on foot.

Nope, I'm definitely not pioneer material.

I scheduled some blog posts ahead of time so that it the worst happens, y'all will still have content. Hopefully, I can post an extra one saying the storm missed me. Or at least the storm didn't take down the power. 

Facebook Strangeness

Weirdness on Facebook for me.

First, let me mention that Facebook almost never shows me posts from people on my friends list. About 99% of what I see is stuff from pages.

Which is where the second thing comes in. Suddenly, without any warning, I started getting posts from recipe/cooking pages in my feed. I'm like WTF? I'm pretty sure no one hates cooking more than I do. Why is the algorithm suddenly showing me these posts?

I tried hiding the posts for thirty days, but it didn't help. More and more cooking/recipe posts from a variety of pages kept appearing.

I'm growling, "I can't see posts from my friends, but random cooking pages? That I get all the time."

Most of what appears in my feed isn't even from pages that I follow. Most of them have little suggestions about following these randos.

Which is a clue to what happened the other day. I had another post (ANOTHER!) from some page called Grandma's Recipes or something like that and I suddenly noticed there's no follow suggestion button. Curious, I click the dots and discover I'm already following this page.

What?

No, I am not. Unless I accidentally touched something while scrolling my phone.

I immediately unfollowed the page and will check any other cooking posts that pop up in my feed to see if I somehow am following that one, too.

But the question remains: Why did something cooking related turn up in my feed to begin with?

There's still a mystery to be solved.

ETA: I found another cooking page I was following! Once could have been an accident, but twice? I don't think so! 

Fine Tuning the System or Let's Try Another Weekly Planning Idea

2025 was all about testing out planners and seeing what worked (and what didn't work) for me. I always had a daily system in place, but after my dad died, I needed a weekly and monthly system. I have ADHD and have a hard time staying on track. My dad used to remind me to take care of things. Now I need to remember on my own.

My daily system is easy. I just list everything I need to get done that day on the daily page. I prefer this to a general To Do list because I feel as if I don't have a deadline then and just don't do anything. If it's written on the daily page of my planner, it must be done that day.

I discovered stickers to create a monthly dashboard for my planner. I didn't realize there were planner companies doing this, but I use a Tomoe River Paper planner, and while there was a blank page to create a dashboard each month, there wasn't an actual dashboard. The stickers solved this problem.

I tried this early in 2025 and it worked so well that I kept it for 2026.

My problem is the weekly tasks. If you've been following this blog, you know I've tried a large number of ideas and none of them panned out for 2025.

Then one of my favorite planner companies released a new planner and there was a blank page in front of each weekly spread. This is what I'm test driving this year. Can I create a weekly dashboard similar to the monthly dashboard that will work for me? Will I be able to actually do these tasks and not ignore them?

I'm laying out the weekly dashboards one by one, not setting them up ahead of time, so that if a layout isn't working for me, I can try something else. If this works, it will be incredible! This planner is almost exactly what I would create if I was making a planner. Almost, but short of making my own planner, I don't think I'll ever find one closer to the way my brain works.

Of course, I also bought a 2026 version of the planner I used this year because I loved this one as well. The only reason I'm not using it as the primary for 2026 is there are no blank pages I can use for weekly dashboards and none of the systems I tried inside this planner for weekly tasks worked in 2025.

However, I bought the B6 size for this planner instead of the A5. I want to test it out for space because I prefer the smaller footprint of the B6, but I'm not sure I can live without the room the A5 provides. So far, it feels a little cramped, but we'll see if I adjust.

I also bought two different sizes of monthly booklets for carry. One was the size I used this year, the other is smaller. The smaller size fits in my purse better, so I'm thinking this is the last year for the larger one. However, I also realized that I always refer to my phone's calendar when I need to make an appointment, so I might not need any monthly calendars at all for 2027. The problem is keeping my phone up to date.

The last purchase in my planner system was the standard size weekly vertical planner booklets (Set of 2 for the year). This I use for time tracking and it's worked so well that I want to continue using it. Didn't hit my word count goal? Let's check out the time tracker and see what I was doing.

With my ADHD, I have a problem with time blindness and tracking forces me to be more aware of how I'm spending my day. Like did I spend two hours crafting Saturday morning instead of writing and then crafting in the evening?

My time tracker doesn't lie.

I only record what I did every half an hour, so it's not too intrusive. If I spent 16 minutes crafting and 14 minutes cleaning, I record Crafting on the line. When I first started this system, I would take a highlighter and outline the time I spent writing, but now I don't have to do that. I'm more aware and I credit time tracking for limiting my time creep.

Last 2026 items: I still have the 18 month writing planner I created for myself and am using it, but decided that I didn't need the month layout or the dashboard layout built into the planner. I just need the weekly dashboard page to set goals and keep track of how many words I write.

I also bought a monthly planner because I had a scathingly brilliant idea, didn't write it down, and waited for the planners to go on sale. By the time they did and by the time it arrived, the scathingly brilliant idea was long gone, not so much of a trace of it remaining. So while I'll use this planner for something, I have no idea what. It's just a monthly calendar with 10 blank pages behind each one. 

I Should Have Listened

For years, I mean years I seen people recommend those velvet-style clothes hangers. Professional organizers, normal people, everyone.

And for years, I resisted even trying them. I had a collection of plastic hangers. I liked them. They're what I've always used. Why would I change what's working for me? Besides, I liked being able to give a light tug and get my shirt off the hanger.

Then I needed hangers, not many, just a couple and the velvet ones were priced better. And I did have some boat-neck shirts and some sweaters that wouldn't stay on the plastic hangers, so I thought well, maybe I'll buy a few of these for those. There's a difference between sliding off easily when I want to wear one and sliding off when I'm grabbing a different shirt.

And OMG! I should have listened years ago. Those velvet-style hangers are awesome! My boat-neck T-shirt? Not falling to the floor when I grab a shirt hanging next to it. I'm 😍.

I'll be replacing the plastic hangers on attrition. As one breaks, a velvet-style will take it's place. If I'd just listened earlier, though, I could have mostly velvet hangers. ☹️ It was during this period where I realized I hated folding clothes sooooooooooooo much and bought hangers to move most of my clothes to the closet.

Live and learn, but I'm now part of the velvet-style hanger crowd. 

Unexpected Learning Curve

My other unexpected event this month happened when I went to the dentist. I mentioned that it felt like my back teeth were trying to make one of my front teeth turn because there was so much pressure on it.

And guess who is now the proud owner of a retainer?

I never had a retainer before, so it's been a learning experience. I ended up buying tabs to clean it that I have to remember to use every day. On the plus side, it only takes three minutes per the instructions on the box.

For a week or so, I debated buying a box to soak the retainer in, but once I realized it didn't need to soak all day to clean it, I decided to just use a plastic cup.

So far (knock on wood) I'm doing pretty well with the retainer. I'm not pulling it out while I sleep and there's only been one night that it kept me from falling asleep for a while. I only need to wear it overnight, not during the day.

I'm both surprised and unsurprised to have a retainer. Surprised in the fact that I've never had one before, but I also knew that the pressure on that tooth from the back teeth was a problem and there probably was no other way to resolve it except a retainer. I'm good with it.

While I titled this post Unexpected Learning Curve, it really isn't a steep curve. I have the hang of getting it in and out now--it requires two hands. Cleaning it--three minutes of soaking in warm water with the cleaning tab. And I've remembered to put it in every night.

I feel like I'm doing pretty good here. And if it keeps my teeth where they belong, it's a win.