That room sounds lovely, Dorothy! I have two rooms here that I reworked during the first year of the pandemic (three actually - I swapped contents between the sun room and the front room, and the sewing studio was organized.) Every time I walk into the sewing studio it's just so inviting and is very bright in the afternoon.

This afternoon I made the holiday batch of arroz con gandules for my ex (if you look it up you'll see this listed as the "national dish of Puerto Rico"). It came out pretty good; this time I used smoked chicken because he didn't want ham or bacon (though fat back or bacon are traditional sources of oil and flavor). I smoked the chicken breasts last month and froze several to use for seasoning like this. The rice was made today because before now he had too much stuff in his fridge and freezer. Consumable gifts don't need to be decluttered later.

It is sounding more like I'm going to have to take the entire month of January away from my volunteer work; Omicron is pushing the numbers so high that the graphs have an almost straight line up. Today I went into the house at my ex's because both of us have been away from people for several days and both recently tested with negative results. There are so few instances like that. I was wearing a mask when I handed a gift over to my next door neighbor this afternoon (on her porch)—she's the one who had COVID last month, and the reason I was recently tested. She looked like she's feeling much better. That's good. Now I hope she gets the vaccine when enough time from the illness has passed. I will encourage her to do so.