Things I didn’t expect from 2020 and yet here we are:
- Wearing contacts almost every day
- Painting my fingernails on the regular
- Not painting my toenails on the regular
- Doing more yoga asana
- Doing less meditation
- Setting a deadline for getting a dog
- No Halloween decorations
- But still getting and eating Halloween candy
- Avoiding state parks for 7 months
- Finding unexpected joy in that one drive I make per week
- My mom dying
- Reading 32 books by November
- Cycling in my basement
- 3 trips to Oregon
- Keeping a basket of masks by the door
- A bumper crop of hops, tomatoes and pumpkins
- Driving across the country and back in 8 days
- Not even trying to plan any vacation before fall 2021
- No camping until October
- Spending more time with my brother and sister-in-law (Yay!)
- Also spending more time with 2 cats. (Yay! Time with animals is time well spent.)
- Opting in to the free Disney+ subscription because: Mandalorian
- Starting a kitchen remodel
- Sending more money to arts and BIPOC organizations in town, and also to ACLU
- Checking on friends via phone more often
- And all of this seeming to precipitate from: pandemic, murderous police officers & the related, necessary protests, a stressful election, and all of the related collective emotional and biological impact of all of this
We can do this.




Above, from left to right: the “before” kitchen, the “during” temporary kitchen, the in-progress new kitchen, and the kitchen flooring, 2-3 layers down.