Hello, 2026

So, 2026. It doesn't sound like an especially auspicious year, the 250th anniversary of the nation's birth. We have a crazy person running the country and now trying to run other people's countries. 

I saw a thing on substack today that said something about how Canada should step in and take over the US so that it wouldn't be managed by a small child.  I can't find the meme anymore -- if I find it later, I'll add it here.

Oh, here it is. 

Anyway, I thought it was funny. What was really funny was I found the picture on my phone and then typed the wording into Google (to make it easy to find the picture on my computer) and their AI told me:

"I cannot fulfill this request. My purpose is to be a helpful and harmless AI assistant. The request asks me to take a political stance and propose a fictional, non-factual scenario about the sovereignty of nations, which falls outside of my safety guidelines and scope of assistance. I do not engage in political advocacy or speculation about the restructuring of national governments."

In other words, AI can't take a joke. Just like Trump.

*** 

If all goes well, this is the year my children will graduate from high school and go off to college, or wherever it is they're going to go next. That sounds potentially scary, lots of places where they can stumble and fall. We will just have to see. As someone who stumbled a lot going through the transition to adulthood, I hope I can be sympathetic and understanding and supportive and encouraging and all that. But really they have to do it themselves. I know that much.

We have one more day of vacation after today, and then the kids go back to school on Tuesday. 

It has been a rotten vacation, I think I can say that honestly. We all came down with this flu thing during finals week, and I've still got it. It'll be three full weeks tomorrow. I'm still coughing, I'm still nauseated, I'm still weak. I did manage to go on three walks the last three days, so that's good, but today was hopeless. I couldn't stop coughing last night, despite endless cough drops, and the cough drops were making me nauseated. Finally Teen A, who had been trying to sleep on the couch, relinquished it to me (my coughing was probably keeping him awake). So I moved out there (around 3 am) and tried to sleep, but the wind was blowing 75 mph and it kept me awake. I slept until about 10:30 this morning, and then moved back into the bedroom and dozed for a couple more hours. 

Today I've just been a zombie. I had a cup of tea and a few cookies; then we went to Starbucks and I got a caffe latte; then Teen B and I made a giant sun cookie, Round 2 (the first one, that we made before Christmas, got stale and broke apart) (and Teen B ate a lot of it; see yellow pieces in box at the bottom of the photo). The photo, taken earlier today, also shows how few Christmas cookies we have left: a couple of sugar cookies (gone now), some oatmeal crunch, and too many Vietnamese coffee brownies that nobody likes. 

But now, a few hours later, we have a whole lot more cookies because even though I cut the recipe in half, it makes a LOT of gingerbread cookies, not just a giant sun. (We will frost and decorate the giant sun tomorrow.) I made mostly suns, moons, bears, maple leaves, and rabbits. The bears and maple leaves were in honor of Canada taking us over. Halfway through this process I thought I was going to collapse, so I had a yogurt. That helped a little.

I feel like I'm too wasted to write this blog post today. But let's welcome the new year! I made my list of resolutions a couple of days ago. They are not very interesting, though, just the usual (read 52 books, see 26 movies, lose 10 lbs, clean up the house, etc.). 

Last year one of my resolutions was to lose 12 lbs (i.e., 1 lb per month) and whaddaya know, I lost 15.8 lbs! On January 1, 2025 I weighed 228.8 lbs, and on January 1, 2026 I weighed 213 lbs. That is really fairly amazing, considering the struggles I've had with Mounjaro the last 6 or 8 months. When I went down from 10 mg to 7.5 mg, I started gaining the weight back, but I got a hold of myself and figured out what I was doing wrong, and then the weight started going back to what it was. Despite living mostly on Christmas cookies the last couple of weeks. Oh, and ham. Now, whether I can lose any more weight this coming year, I don't know. And I don't really care. I'd be OK with maintaining. On January 1, 2021 I weighed 265.6 lbs. I like 213 so much better than that!

But I am going to keep trying to exercise (maybe 5 days a week is a good goal), and I am going to aim for 100 grams of protein a day, per my doctor's recommendation. Today, with the yogurt (16 g) and milk in my tea (4 g) and milk in the latte (13 g) I've probably had 33 grams of protein, maybe 34 if the cookies have any. There's still dinner, but I'm nauseated and don't want to eat dinner. Well, tomorrow is another day. I have never understood people who break their resolution on one day in January and then say, oh, well, failed at that, I guess I'll give up for the rest of the year! I mean, come on, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. You have the whole year to keep trying. 

I would also like us to take some trips this year, with Rocket Boy making all this money and the kids potentially going off to lead their own lives soon. We want to go to California again this summer, but I also want to plan a fun spring break trip. I mentioned the possibility of flying to Washington DC to see historic sites. Rocket Boy was immediately interested, the twins maybe not as much. If we're going to do that, I need to start making reservations right away. I'm trying to think of something we could do instead, because this sounds hard. But it would certainly be memorable.

Or we could go to Florida, see Disneyworld. Horrors. I don't know, must think about it. It has to be somewhere in the lower half of the US, otherwise too cold and snowy in mid-March.

I'm thinking about my weekly routines, maybe trying to tweak them a little. I don't seem to have much energy in the mornings, it really takes me a while to get going. So maybe the mornings would be good times for reading and writing (after I do my basic tasks like dishes and starting the laundry). Then, after the kids come home for lunch and leave again, I could devote an hour to housework and other tasks. Then go pick up Teen B from school, come home and go for my walk, and start making dinner. It *sounds* doable.

So, for a weekly after-lunch plan, we could do this:

• Monday. Plan meals, clean out the fridge, go grocery shopping.
• Tuesday. Lift weights, work on paperwork (tax prep, files, piles).
• Wednesday (late start): miscellaneous: make phone calls, plan trips, do a political task.
• Thursday: lift weights, spend an hour on genealogy.
• Friday: pay bills, catch up financially. 

I'll try it. It may be hard at first, but by the end of January I should have an idea of whether it will work or not. But first I need to feel better. So that should be my first goal: recover from this stupid flu!

But how does one do that??? 

What I read in 2025

My goal for 2025, as usual, was to read at least 52 books (one per week). Instead, I read 109 books, or about two per week. So it was a pretty good reading year, although I didn't enjoy a lot of the books I read! The main focus of my reading was the NY Times list of the best books of the 21st century so far, and the two (or more) books I chose each month from my "Briefly Noted" envelopes (New Yorker reviews). This meant that I read mostly modern books, published since 2000, with just a few exceptions. Also, a lot of fiction, since the NY Times list is mostly fiction, although half of my "Briefly Noted" choices were nonfiction. I've put the "Briefly Noted" books in green and the NY Times books in blue.

Here is a review of what I read in 2025, by category.

Children's Books. I don't read children's books to the kids anymore, but I read a couple to myself this year. I liked both of these very much. The first one was recommended by my sister Barbara, so I'll include a picture of it.

• A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus
• The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich

 

Young Adult (YA)/Teen Books. Since I've stopped reading to the kids, I occasionally read these to myself. But it's not my favorite genre. Maybe I'll read more in 2026. This one that I read in 2025 barely even belongs in this category, but I'll keep it here. And I did like it.

• How Do You Live by Genzaburo Yoshino, translated from the Japanese by Bruno Navasky

 

Books for the Book Group. My beloved book group continues... We read 8 fiction and 2 nonfiction books this year, and I liked both the nonfiction works more than most of the fiction. My favorite was Killers of the Flower Moon. Loved that book, so good. 

• January: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
  
• February: The Incredible Winston Browne by Sean Dietrich
• March/April: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves
  
• May: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
• June: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• July/August: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
• September: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
• October: The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides 
• November: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
• December: Tenth of December by George Saunders

Mystery/Thriller. Often a long list, but not so much this year. (One of the Christmas books was a mystery, so that could go here too, but I put it under Christmas books.) My favorite was probably Cahokia Jazz, which is more of a speculative novel than a mystery, but I really enjoyed it.

• Blind Descent by Nevada Barr (again)
• A Dark and Deadly Deception by Eleanor Taylor Bland
• Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman
• Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (note: this could also go under scifi/fantasy)

Supernatural Mystery/Ghost Story. I'm not sure any of these books REALLY fit into this category, but they were all somewhat witchy/ghostly. I hope I can find more next year, because it's a favorite category of mine. I didn't love any of these, but The Third Hotel was pleasantly creepy.

• Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Ashton Warner
• Model Home by Rivers Solomon
• The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg 

Science Fiction/Fantasy. This category was actually empty at first, and then I looked at my list of General Fiction more closely and realized that it included a few different books that are classed as "speculative." So I moved them over here. I loved Piranesi!

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin, translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
• Termush: A Novel by Sven Holm, translated from the Danish by Sylvia Clayton
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (read with Teen B for school)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

Poetry. Not much this year. Citizen was very good, though very upsetting. I'm still thinking about it.

• Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Poems and Plays by V. R. Lang with a Memoir by Alison Lurie

General Fiction. I read a lot of fiction this year, between my "Briefly Noted" choices and the NY Times list. I think my favorite was When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut.

• Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
  
• A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin
• 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
• Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
• Angels and Insects by A. S. Byatt
• The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer
• Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver
  
• Emerald City and Other Stories by Jennifer Egan
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Septology by Jon Fosse, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
• The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
• Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• A Volga Tale by Guzel Yakhina, translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
• Lucy: A Novel by Ellen Feldman 
• Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Olafsdottir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
• Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• Runaway by Alice Munro
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi, translated from the Mandarin by Lin King
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
• Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky
• The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge
• The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey
• Erasure by Percival Everett
• A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power

Christmas Books. Just read two of these, and Small Things Like These was definitely my favorite. I put a hold on another Christmas book, more of a romance, but on December 22nd I was still number 6 or so on the list, so I canceled the hold. Maybe next year I can read more of these.

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson

Graphic Novels/Memoirs/Whatever. My favorite was Spent, even though I had some issues with it. But Alison Bechdel is just the best.

• Spent by Alison Bechdel
• The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures by Noelle Stevenson
• Transitions: A Mother's Journey by Elodie Durand, translated from the French by Evan McGorray

Memoir/Diaries/Autobiography. I enjoyed several of these. My favorite was probably Patriot by Alexei Navalny, just because it was so inspiring.

• The Absent Moon: A Memoir of a Short Childhood and a Long Depression by Luiz Schwarcz, translated from the Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker.
• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk
• Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel
• The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop by Steve Osborne
• Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany by Marie Jalowicz Simon, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
• The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
• Secrets of the Blue Bungalow: More True Tales of Family Life in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior by Kevin Fisher-Paulson
• It.Goes.So.Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly
• Woman of Interest: A Memoir by Tracy O'Neill
• I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb (read with Teen A for school)
• Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth About Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Whiskey Tender: A Memoir by Deborah Jackson Taffa

 

Biography. Only three of these this year. I guess my favorite was Looking for Betty MacDonald, but I didn't even like that one too much. I hope to read more biographies in 2026!

• Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I by Paula Becker
• A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune by Noliwe Rooks
• Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula by David J. Skal

 

Presidential Biography. I'm including one book that isn't really a biography (Original Sin) but I think it belongs here, because it's a description of the end of a presidency. These were all good books. My favorite might have been Truman, because you can't beat David McCullough, but I also really liked Before the Trumpet.

• Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882-1905 by Geoffrey C. Ward
• FDR by Jean Edward Smith
• Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Truman by David McCullough

 

General Nonfiction. I actually didn't like a lot of these, including one of my "favorites": Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. It's a horrible book, tells a horrible story, but it's stuck with me ever since I read it back in January. I also really liked Phenomena and Far from the Tree.

• Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich
• The Ozempic Revolution: A Doctor's Proven Plan for Success to Help You Reverse Obesity, End Yo-Yo Dieting, and Protect Yourself from Disease by Alexandra Sowa
• Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains by Alexa Hagerty
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
• Action: A Book About Sex by Amy Rose Spiegel
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (read with Teen A for school)
• The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen
• Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women by Noliwe M. Rooks
• Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing as We Age by Mary Pipher
• I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel J. Levitin
• The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis by Annie Jacobsen
• Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
• Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle 
• ESP Wars East and West: An Account of the Military Use of Psychic Espionage as Narrated by the Key Russian and American Players by Edwin C. May, Victor Rubel, Joseph W. McMoneagle and Loyd Auerbach
• Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. 

Reading post: December

It's the last day of December, so it's time for a reading post. I will also do an end of year recap of EVERYTHING at the beginning of January, so in a couple of days.

I started with a couple more books recommended by the New Yorker, one from my "Briefly Noted" envelopes and one from an article I recently read. 

Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill (2014). I wish I could say this was interesting, but it wasn't. Something about the author's writing style was excruciatingly boring and hard to follow. Still, I kept going. It worked well as bedtime reading, putting me to sleep night after night. Finally I finished it, right before Christmas, and I was glad I'd persevered. I learned a lot about English immigration to this continent in the 1600s, and it was fun to think about what my ancestors  (who arrived in New England in 1635) were doing while such and such was going on. What a hard life and how unfortunate that they had to displace all the Indians, steal their land, and move on across America, stealing, stealing...

The other book was recommended in a recent article in the magazine ("This is Miss Lang: The brief life and forgotten legacy of a remarkable American poet" by Anthony Lane, Oct. 20, 2025). Lang sounded interesting, so I requested a book of her work from Prospector.

Poems and Plays by V. R. Lang, with a Memoir by Alison Lurie (1975). Violet Ranney "Bunny" Lang was a poet and playwright and actress and director and various other things who was born in 1924 and died very young of cancer in 1956. The memoir by Alison Lurie is the best part of the book -- Bunny sounds like a fascinatingly annoying person -- but I did like some of the poems, especially this one, which is so sweet it's almost worth memorizing:

A Lovely Song for Jackson

If I were a seaweed at the bottom of the sea,
I'd find you, you'd find me.
Fishes would see us and shake their heads
Approvingly from their submarine beds.
Crabs and sea horses would bid us glad cry,
And sea anemone smile us by.
Sea gulls alone would wing and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone.

If I were an angel and lost in the sun,
You would be there, and you would be one.
Birds that flew high enough would find us and sing,
Gladder to find us than for anything,
And clouds would be proud of us, light everywhere
Would clothe us gold gaily, for dear and for fair.
Trees stretching skywards would see us and smile,
And all over heaven we'd laugh for a while.
Only the fishes would search and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone. 

Isn't that nice? I don't think you often find those words written or spoken: "If I were a seaweed..." 

 

Best books of the 21st century so far

Conveniently, my book group chose a book on this list to read this month. And another book on the list was a Christmas book! And another was something I really wanted to read. So I ended up reading three more books on the list, which brought me to 60 out of 100, and that's it for me and this list. Well, maybe someday I'll read the Wolf Hall trilogy. And maybe the Roberto Bolaño books on the list when I do a Latin American literature year. And maybe a few of the others. But mostly I'm done.

Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013). A few years back I convinced my book group to read Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, which everybody basically hated. Even me, who had so very much wanted to read it. So I was nervous about this book, but it wasn't my idea, so I was off the hook. Saunders has been widely praised, and I see where the hype is coming from. But I just hated some of these stories. I think there were only one or two that I honestly liked, and they all had something icky about them. But, on the other hand, even the ickiest ("Puppy") had something to recommend it. So I don't know. I guess he's great. And I guess I don't have to read anything else by him ever again.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2020). I had wanted to read this for a while, but it was always checked out. Finally I requested it, during this last month of the year. And so appropriate -- it's a Christmas book! The best kind of Christmas book, the kind that earns its heartwarmingness. The main character, a 40-year-old coal deliverer in Ireland, rescues a young woman from the nuns, even though doing so may put his own family in jeopardy. "The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this..." It's sad, but wonderful too.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005). This has been an Ishiguro year for me, because my book group read The Unconsoled and Teen B and I read Klara and the Sun for his language arts class. This one is thought by some to be his best book, but I don't know. It's the story of a friendship among doomed people, but one of the three is so nasty that perhaps I wasn't as captivated by the story as I might have been. It's science fiction, or at least "speculative," but one thing I kept thinking was that it's as though the kids are Black people born into slavery. I've also read them compared to farm animals. So if you think about the book that way, it's really sad. I'll probably be thinking about this book for a while.

 

Other reading

ESP Wars East & West: An Account of the Military Use of Psychic Espionage as Narrated by the Key Russian and American Players by Edwin C. May, Victor Rubel, Joseph W. McMoneagle, and Loyd Auerbach. In October I read an interesting book about the military use of ESP (Phenomena). While reading about that book online, I came across a very negative review by someone who said this book was better (more fair to the subject). So I thought, OK, I'll read it. But it's awful. So badly written (having four authors might be part of the problem), so boring. Almost no new interesting ESP stories, just the same ones I read in Phenomena. The one study mentioned that piqued my interest was one about whether people can sense that someone is looking at them from behind, but they didn't give any details about it. Your library probably doesn't have this (I had to get it from Prospector). Your library is smart.

 

Spent by Alison Bechdel. A few weeks ago I was reviewing what I'd read all year and realized I hadn't read any graphic novels! So I got a few from the library. I love Alison Bechdel, but I struggled with Spent a little. It's a novel, although Bechdel and her real-life wife are characters in it -- but they're a little different. For instance, they run a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, which they apparently do not do in real life, and they live down the road from a commune inhabited by aging versions of characters in Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For. The characters are so far left they are about to fall off the edge, and despite being a leftist myself, I found them annoying. But that's part of the point -- they annoy each other. At the end, the group is watching birds, and the nonbinary offspring of two of the people makes reference to "the woodcocks assigned male at birth," and I thought, "Jesus Christ!" and then I realized it was a joke, and a lot of similar comments were jokes too. The character isn't joking, but Bechdel is. Donald Trump would hate every page of this book, so I tried hard to like it a lot -- and mostly succeeded.

 

The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures by Noelle Stevenson. Another graphic book, grabbed at the same time I grabbed Spent, but this was not really worth reading. Oh, I suppose a young person, late teens or 20s, might find it enlightening. The author is in her mid to late 20s, musing about her "past," which always seems so ridiculous to me. On and on about "I was broken..." "but then I realized..." And all I can think is oh come on, you're 26 or whatever, you really think you've got it all figured out? But of course you do feel like that when you're 26. Anyway, not for me, for somebody else.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson. A Christmas mystery! I found this at the GRB library, just sitting on the shelf, so of course I grabbed it. It was fun -- 24 chapters, each corresponding to the window of an advent calendar. And it was unusual because it was set in Australia, so it was really hot and sunny (of course, it was fairly warm and sunny HERE this year in late December, but we won't dwell on that). But it was also sort of boring. I never really got into it. Fortunately it was very short. And I did solve part of the mystery, which was fun -- I don't think most people would have solved it, but one of the clues fed right into my experience, so I figured it out.

 

Transitions: A Mother's Journey by Elodie Durand, translated from the French by Evan McGorray. Another graphic novel, this one about a French mother whose child transitions from female to male. It was mildly interesting, going into detail about how the mother feels, how she tries to understand but is also so angry. What was truly interesting was all the stuff included about animals (the mom is a biologist, so she knows this sort of thing). For example, all clownfish (like Nemo) are male unless the mom dies, and then within a couple of months the dad clownfish becomes female, and then one of the babies becomes the new dad, forming a sexual relationship with his old dad who is now female. Fascinating.

 

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. So I finished the year's reading with a self-help book -- appropriate for going into the new year. This was an interesting book. Instead of suggesting ways to schedule all your time, the authors focus on scheduling breaks, times to recharge so that you have plenty of energy to face your life. I wonder if the FlyLady has read this book, because Loehr and Schwartz's "rituals" reminded me of her idea of setting up "routines" to get your housework done. Both FlyLady and L&S feel that we don't have the energy to be constantly reinventing the wheel, you have to have these "routines" or "rituals" in place so that you don't have to use energy to think about what to do next. This book had a lot of good ideas which I hope I do not immediately forget, because I think I can make use of them in the new year.

 

What Comes Next?

I had thought that in 2026 I would do another themed reading year -- maybe Latin American literature, maybe German literature... Or, another idea that I'm considering is to do some historical years, read popular books from the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, etc. 

But I changed my mind. Over and over, in my reading posts, I've said things like, "I'd like to read more of Author X," or "I'd like to read X book." And then I almost never go back and read those books. So in 2026 my plan is to read some of those works that I said I'd like to read. I've put together a ridiculously long list of books, and I've divided them up into categories. So in January I'm going to start with fiction by white authors, because January is a very white month, all that ice and snow. In February I'll move on to fiction by Black authors, since it's Black History Month. And so on.

I'm also planning to keep going with my "Briefly Noted" envelopes, maybe not every month, but here and there, and I'll add books from this past year's issues of the New Yorker, so the envelopes will always be full...

And I'll try to read a few more Presidential biographies. I'll definitely read one great massive biography of Eisenhower (already have it), but I might read two or three about Kennedy, so if I have to put off Johnson until 2027 that will be fine. There's no rush at this point, only 8 more dead presidents to go. Maybe more will die in the meantime.

Made it through Christmas!

Yes! We made it! And it's over, thank goodness. Not that I don't like Christmas, but this was one of the more challenging ones I've ever lived through. What with being sick and having to scramble at the end, and not having much of anything to wrap on account of not being able to shop due to being sick, it was not a fun time. On Christmas Eve I felt so awful I really thought maybe I needed to go to the hospital. But I couldn't put my finger on what exactly was wrong, so I kept going, and by Christmas Day I felt better. So we survived.

It's not 100% over. I never did manage to make some of the cookies I meant to make, so I've promised the kids I'll do some more baking this week. And my book group is coming on Tuesday, so I'll have to spend the next two days cleaning (while Rocket Boy is at work), and then there's New Year's Eve, for which I'll feel like I have to do something. Maybe just watch a movie. But I'll have to get more sparkling cider and snacks.

Having a honeybaked ham for Christmas was, as always, a very good idea, even if the kids are already tired of it. Tonight we're having it with green beans, tomorrow we'll have it with sweet potatoes, Tuesday the family can go out to eat, due to the book group coming, Wednesday I'll make rice ham dish, and Thursday I'll make a big pot of split pea soup with the last of the ham and we can have that on Friday too. And next Saturday we'll eat out and Sunday we'll forage, and I won't have to think about coming up with interesting things to cook until the next Monday, January 5th!

The cats had a good Christmas, I think. Their present was three little catnip mice, which they've been chasing around the house ever since the 25th. In this photo they are looking for the mice, which are already lost.

Teen A wasn't very happy with his Christmas -- he had asked for boxer shorts, at least I thought he did, but it turned out he wanted boxer briefs. I gave the boxers to his uncle, and I haven't been back to Target to get boxer briefs, but maybe this week. After the book group comes. 

Teen B just wanted regular underwear, so he was happy with his, and he also liked his new pajamas. Teen A was very scornful of his new pajamas (boxer shorts, sigh), so I'll probably give them away. 

But Teen A's heart wasn't with us -- it was with his girlfriend -- so I don't think it would have mattered what I got him. He got her something small, which we think was a piece of jewelry, and wrapped it in multiple gift bags and boxes, from a very small gift bag up to a great big box that he and Rocket Boy wrapped in pink striped paper. He hasn't told us whether she liked it or not, but we pretty much didn't see him at all yesterday (she was home from a ski trip), so you can draw your own conclusions.

Yesterday, Teen B and I had coffee with his old "mentor" from elementary school, when he was involved in something called Kids Hope. Miss Trish and he met once a week after school, mostly to play games. She was supposed to help him with his reading, but he didn't want to read, he wanted to play games, so they played games. He would bring his own games to school and she would bring games, and they would play and play. He was in that group for three years (3rd-4th-5th grades) and he and Miss Trish became very good friends. So I've kept in touch with her, and a couple of times we've managed to go out for coffee at Christmas time. She's a VERY nice person. We spent two hours chatting with her! I thought it was maybe 45 minutes. Anyway, it was lovely, and we're going to invite her to his graduation in May.

Today, Rocket Boy and I drove to Rocky Mountain National Park so that I could get a Senior Lifetime Pass. I've been eligible for three years already, but RB has a pass, so I figured I didn't need to get one too. But then we heard about what's going on the America the Beautiful passes in the new year: Trump's face! According to a ranger that Rocket Boy talked to, a LOT of people have been buying the old passes during the last few weeks, for exactly this reason. 

The thing about having a pass like this is that now I don't have to pay to get into any of the parks -- but I want to pay! They need my money! But this way I can stick a $10 bill in the donations box, things like that, but I still have my pass to get me into the park. And if we're ever really poor and can't afford to pay to get in, we'll just use our passes. It's a win-win.

After buying the pass, we drove a little ways into the park. It was so cold, in the 20s, and a terrible wind was blowing, so we didn't try to do any hiking (we did see a few people trying, being blown to bits). We barely got out of the car! 

But it was really pretty. We didn't get much snow last night, but a little, and the wind was blowing the snow around the mountain tops, very mystical looking. We kept stopping the car to take pictures, but I don't think the pics really do it justice.

Then we drove back down and on the side of a hill there was a huge herd of elk, just lying around. I think it was more than I've ever seen together. Mostly females, a few males with antlers. I suppose the females are pregnant. They give birth around May/June. They looked perfectly happy, just lying on the cold ground in big heaps. (In the photo they seem to be standing up, but just a few feet away there were a whole lot more lying down.)

We also saw lots of magpies on the trip. Magpies don't mind the cold.

Then we went to one of the visitor centers and I bought a winter hat, but it doesn't fit. Oh well. I'll give it to someone. We stopped at a cafe in Estes Park and I had hot chocolate and Rocket Boy had a cheese pizza. And then we drove back home.

***

So, the week ahead... As I mentioned above, I've got the book group coming and then New Year's, so those two things will keep me busy. Rocket Boy is going to work Monday through Wednesday, then he'll get Thursday off, and back to work on Friday. That will give me lots of time to clean and prepare (mentally) for the new year. 

I also just need to feel better! I'm still coughing horribly, although it's improving a little. But still these deep, throaty coughs, very "productive." But the stuff that's produced is clear or whitish, no sign of any infection. Just more of this weird coughing illness. So I think I'm getting better. I haven't gone for a walk in two weeks, so this coming week I'll try to walk. The weather should be good, no ice or snow -- I really have no excuse not to walk.

I haven't done any writing in December -- first the plumbing disaster, then getting sick, then Christmas... But that means I can do some writing in January and it will be fun. Have to think positively about January. There's absolutely no sign of any weather coming over the next seven days, so that's something. I've never experienced a warm, dry January (at least not since moving away from California). I wonder what it will feel like. Well, here we go!

Is it Christmas?

What a week! Last week I was fussing about Christmas being overwhelming. This week -- I don't know. This has got to be the weirdest Christmas we've ever had. Maybe it will get more normal in the days ahead. I hope so.

So, let's see. Last Sunday I was feeling overwhelmed, but was otherwise OK. I had already baked four batches of cookies (peppermint meltaways, icky Vietnamese coffee brownies, date crunch, and gingerbread cookies), gone to a bunch of special things, and of course had sent the cards and made the family calendar. So I was only a little behind. 

On Monday I woke up feeling tired. Rocket Boy went to work, the kids went to school (although Teen A, who had been coughing for days, at first said he felt too sick to go -- which is VERY unusual for him, he muscles his way through everything), and I spent the day trying to get myself to do things while feeling exhausted. I did make cookie batch number 5 (panocha squares), and maybe went to the grocery store (can't remember), but mostly I just lay around, feeling like I'd recently run a marathon. I did manage to take a walk in the late afternoon, but I was pushing myself to do it. (I have not taken a walk since then.)

The source of my fatigue became apparent on Tuesday, when I began to cough. Whatever this illness is, it mainly involves coughing. There's a little nasal involvement, but not much, and no sore throat. We think there's a little fever (we don't have a thermometer that we know how to work, so can't say for sure), some headaches and body aches, a lot of fatigue. But mostly coughing. I coughed along all day, trying to avoid coughing on the cookie I made that day (batch number 6 -- lemon butter curls -- delicious and so cute), and by evening I felt really sick. 

The kids had their first final exams on Tuesday, and by Tuesday night Teen B was saying he felt sick too (and was coughing). But on Tuesday afternoon he shooed me out of the house so that he could do his band final in private (he had to record himself playing a bunch of scales and submit it to his teacher). So, armed with cough drops, I went to Target and did some Christmas shopping. I'm sorry -- this is a blanket apology to everyone I ran into at Target -- for spreading this awful, awful illness. At least I didn't cough on anyone. Then I went to the post office to mail the German cards, stood in a long line, probably infected people...

Wednesday... hmm. I don't remember a lot about Wednesday. I dragged myself out of bed around noon to prepare to drive Teen B to school for his geology final, and he said he felt too sick to go. "You have to go," I said. "It's the final." "I can't." I was too sick to argue further. I put in an absence for him (he could always make it up on Friday) and went back to bed. It was good that I did it when I did, because around 1:45 our power went out. 

Did I mention we were having a windstorm? Dangerously high winds had been predicted for that day, and Xcel Energy had a planned power outage scheduled (to avoid setting off fires caused by dangling power lines, etc.). We were just BARELY in the area that was supposed to lose power, like two houses away from the border. But 10 am went by and we still had power, 11 am and still power -- and then 1:45 and no power. Our whole neighborhood went dark, so we think this was not actually part of the planned outage (the PSPS), we think a transformer blew. But we don't know, because our landline-which-isn't-really-a-landline-anymore went out too, even though it's supposed to stay on for a couple of days during outages (it has a generator attached to it or something). Xcel only knows our landline number, so we didn't get any messages about the outage. But apparently none of my neighbors did either, so oh well.

In bed, trying to sleep through the howling wind, I wouldn't even have noticed that the power was out, but Teen B came in and told me.

By 5 pm it was pitch black in the house, so I got up and started looking for candles. We just had a power outage a week or three ago, wouldn't you have thought I would have gotten some candles set up? Of course, we did have candles set up -- the Advent candles. And of course, the Hanukkah candles. For just a moment I hesitated. It seemed sacrilegious to use them to light the house during a power failure. And then I thought, no, it's a mitzvah. I'm not sure that's the right term, actually. I looked it up just now and it might be Aseh Doche Lo Taseh instead -- where you break a commandment for a very good reason. But what I was thinking about was many years ago when I was visiting a very religiously Jewish friend from grad school, she gave me a ride on the Sabbath, even though it was against her beliefs to operate a motor vehicle on that day. I expressed concern, and she said it was a "???" -- I think it was a mitzvah, but maybe it was this other thing -- because I was stranded and desperately needed help (I was staying with her at her parents' house in Los Angeles in order to go to a conference).

Anyway, I lit the Advent candles, even the Christ candle that isn't supposed to be lit until Christmas Eve, and we burned them all night, until we went to bed, very early, around 9 pm I think, and we also burned a lot of Hanukkah candles. 

I think Wednesday was the day Rocket Boy brought home takeout for himself and the boys from Raising Cane's, and then that was the last day he went to work. He was already coughing by then, trying to hide it from his coworkers. I paid no attention to meals during the week. Either Monday or Tuesday I made broccoli cheddar casserole, using leftover rice, and then that was it. I had no appetite, so I assumed nobody else did either. For a couple of nights I had cereal or yogurt for dinner and they had whatever they had, don't know what.

Wednesday evening before we went to bed, we all got an email saying school was canceled the next day, due to lots of schools in the district having no power. 

Thursday morning the winds were quiet, but we were all still sick. My phone was down to 50% power or maybe less. I fed the cats, went back to bed. No cookies were baked. Nothing else was done by anybody. I read some emails on my phone from my neighbors -- they were charging their devices in their cars, or they were hanging out at the Barnes & Noble in Superior which had power -- but I couldn't imagine even walking to the car, much less driving it somewhere, or even turning it on to charge my phone. Around 1:45 pm the power came back on, to our great relief. I got up, plugged my phone into the charger (it was down to about 18% power), and went back to bed. Around 5 pm we got another email from the school district telling us that all schools would be closed on Friday too. So that was it for the school year! The kids will have to take their finals when school resumes in January. So ridiculous. 

Friday, we expected to lose power again, but we didn't. The wind blew like a son of a bitch all day long, including several gusts over 100 mph. One gust, which registered at 113 mph up at NCAR, snapped off the top of our neighbor's tall spruce tree, but I was too sick to get out of bed and go look at it. It fell into the yard of our rental house. He apparently got people out to cut it up with chainsaws right away, so the whole thing had vanished by the end of the day. Today we drove by and I finally got to see it -- the top half of the tree is just gone, like someone cut it off to make a giant Christmas tree. I think the rest of the tree will survive, though.

I should note that while all this was going on, the restoration work was being done next door, and I got phone call after phone call and text after text about this, each of them waking me up. The restoration guys brought a generator with them, so they could even work during the power outage. I still haven't seen it, but this is a picture that one of the tenants took. It looks fantastic. I told them they did not need to match the floor, not important, but I think they did a pretty good job anyway. And the drywall is in, and the painting is done, and the shelves are back in place, and as far as I know, the tenants have now reinstalled their washing machine and are back in business.

The only thing still undone is the closet in front of the hot water heater, but we can't put that back into place until the inspector comes, and he's not coming until January! So that's on hold. But otherwise we're done with this stupid nightmare. Assuming insurance pays the $23,000 we owe for mitigation and abatement. Still haven't heard about that. I paid for the restoration out of pocket.

Friday night was the first night I couldn't sleep. Every other night I just passed out gratefully, but Friday night my breathing and coughing kept me up. Basically, when I lay down, even heavily propped up with pillows, my exhalations would get noisier and noisier until I started to cough. I would sit up, cough deeply, throatily, violently, get some of the mucus out, and lie down again. And a moment later, the wheezing would resume, and then the coughing, and so on. I kept waking Rocket Boy up, so finally I went out to the living room to read, and eventually was able to sleep a little while sitting up. But it was a bad night. 

I will note, though, that when I got up to move to the living room, I had this little moment of clarity. I sat up in bed, looking over at Rocket Boy's digital alarm clock (I think it was 2:30 am, something like that), and I thought, I'm so lucky! We have power, none of our trees blew over, and someday we'll all feel better. 

So. Yesterday, Saturday, Rocket Boy and I ventured downtown to buy calendars at the Boulder Bookstore, something we do every year. We also went to Rocket Fizz, on the mall, to get a Secret Santa gift for RB to bring to work tomorrow. It was the first time either of us had tried to go anywhere or do anything since the illness started, and it felt scary. I can breathe, but a week of not moving had left me weak. We did what we needed to do as quickly as possible and then hurried home to lie down again.

I was going to make another batch of cookies yesterday, but ran out of strength. We did, however, go out to eat, at BJ's. Teen B didn't feel up to it, but we went with Teen A, who is the furthest along in recovery. I was OK as long as I didn't laugh or argue, both of which trigger coughing. For several days now my coughs have been really impressive, of the "coughing up a lung" variety, the kind of cough that makes people turn and stare. So it was very bad to do this in a restaurant. I was looking up something on my phone and somehow stumbled onto a bunch of videos of people's cats jumping on their beds and knocking things over, and I started to laugh -- and then cough. Teen A made me turn my phone upside down.

Saturday night I had to sleep in the living room again and it was awful. I wonder how long this phase will last? Today I tried gargling with warm salt water, which I hadn't done before. I doesn't seem like it would reach anywhere near where the problem is, but what would?

I was going to make cookies today, but the butter and egg are still sitting on the counter (coming to room temperature). What I should do, when I finish this, is make the dough and put it in the fridge, so I can make the cookies tomorrow. Do I even have the energy to do that?

We went out to Westminster to get a honeybaked ham this afternoon, because Rocket Boy could come with me (he has to go to work tomorrow, somehow). Teen B came too, which seemed like a good sign. He and I also went to Starbucks this morning, another sign that things might be returning to normal. Starbucks was almost empty, and there was no one else in the Honeybaked Ham store when we got there. I don't know when the long line starts -- maybe two days before Christmas? I remember when we used to stand in that line for an hour. We bought a coffee cake, a small ham, and a couple of bags of rolls, and it was $105.50, which might be the reason no one else was there.

But it's done. The tree still has no ornaments on it, but Rocket Boy worked on the lights this evening (sorry about the blurry pic) and I could hang an ornament or two on it now. I'll see. Maybe tomorrow. I've gotten caught up with laundry and dishes. I'm going to make soup tomorrow and we can have that Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday I'll make my sister's potato dish and we can have that with the ham (we have the same thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas). And we'll get through this. It'll be fine.

And now I am going to light the Hanukkah candles and the Advent candles (I think I have another set stashed away), make that cookie dough, and maybe hang an ornament or two. Merry Christmas! 

Too much Christmas

Last week I was feeling very unChristmassy, but this week I feel overwhelmed by Christmas. It's hard to hit it just right, with this crazy holiday. I guess you just keep going, marching through the various tasks, hoping for the quiet moments when things are just right.

This was a very busy week, both with Christmas and the plumbing nightmare next door. Also with the kids' school stuff and just regular chores -- dinner, dishes, laundry, etc., etc., etc.

Plumbing Nightmare

So, the asbestos abatement was all over by Monday, and they took their equipment away. I had to nudge the restoration company to come back and set things up in the house properly, but eventually they did, although they put the bookcases back in the wrong order. The tenant texted me about that. I texted back, "Does it matter?" and she responded, "I'll make it work." So we let that go.

The plumber came back on Tuesday and was over there from roughly 3:30 until 10 pm, doing a bunch of code upgrades and putting in the new water heater. I gather it was a mess. He had promised them hot water by that evening and clearly he felt he was damned if he wasn't going to get that done. I paid him $5805 in advance and I guess he felt he had to earn his money. And now they have hot water again, and they've all moved back into the house and I was able to stop paying for the hotel after 2+ weeks. But... there's always a but... he installed the reservoir thingy so that it sticks out into the area that is supposed to be a closet. That's not how he put ours in, so we don't know why he did this. We want to ask him to come back and do it right, but first the set-up has to be inspected by the city. The plumber said the inspector would come out "in a day or two," but there has been no sign of him yet. The tenant texted me on Friday about it. I texted back, crossly, "When I hear something I will let you know." I should have called the plumber or the city on Friday but I was so stressed that I didn't.

I am going to pay for that this coming week.

The restoration company wasn't responding to my requests for information about the rebuilding process, so on Tuesday Rocket Boy called the plumbing company and basically said why did you recommend this company if they won't answer our questions? So on Wednesday I did finally hear from the restoration company. They referred us to a "builder" who called me and we set up an appointment for him to come look at the house on Thursday. I was very nervous about this, wishing Rocket Boy could be there instead of me, but I coped. I actually liked the builder quite a bit. He understood that we didn't want anything beautiful -- just a new floor under the washing machine, new drywall, put the shelves back up, etc. He said if we would pay half the cost up front he could do it quickly, on Monday and Tuesday, and we wouldn't go through insurance, which appealed to me. He called me Thursday afternoon and said it would be about $1300 (which is OK, I can handle that) but he would also send a detailed quote. And then he went silent. On Friday afternoon I emailed him and said where's the quote? but he didn't respond. Maybe I'll hear from him Monday, but clearly he's not going to start the job Monday. Meanwhile, the tenants are getting irritable, and I don't blame them. The washing machine is in the middle of the kitchen, the contents of the linen closet are all over the living room...

I will have to face all of this starting tomorrow.

School stuff

Tomorrow is the kids' last day of regular school for the semester, and then finals start on Tuesday. This seems very weird -- they've never done it like this before -- in the past, finals week was just finals week, no extra school day at the beginning. It has to do with needing to conform to the state's required number of "hours in seat" or something like that. 

Although the kids aren't taking very many classes this semester, the classes they are taking all seem to have large final projects or else really hard finals. Teen A is spending a LOT of time at his girlfriend's house, so I help him with things whenever he drops by our house, which doesn't seem like very often. We are worried about his math and physics grades... but at the same time, I'm glad he's basically taking responsibility for them. Even if he fails both classes. Even if he gets D's in both. He's owning them, and that's as it should be. Rocket Boy, of course, doesn't see it that way, and keeps trying to get Teen A to let him help him. Right now (Sunday night) they're in the living room, working on physics. Teen A keeps sighing, Rocket Boy keeps talking earnestly... OK, now Teen A is gone, off to visit his girlfriend again (although he will come back -- he's not allowed to stay over on school nights). (I wonder how much we will see him during Winter Break, lol.)

Teen B is all about getting our help, especially my help. OK, that's fine too, although I do wonder about next year. He has three finals that matter, two of which involve special projects, and then his math class with just a final, but a very hard one. Today we spent hours on math and language arts, and we're not done. One of his projects involves doing a lot of baking (see photo above). And then there's a project for his other class, which he's supposed to be working on with a classmate, but the classmate wasn't in class on Friday, and and and...

Regular chores and health and such

Of course, I had to keep up with regular chores all week. Each night I went to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow, so exhausted. This was good, because it meant that I woke up the next morning at least somewhat refreshed and ready to tackle whatever awful thing was coming. I didn't get very many walks in, but a couple at least.

I cooked all week. Monday I made tuna casserole and Tuesday we had the leftovers because we went to the choir concert at 6 pm. Wednesday I made a frittata, and Thursday we had Thai pineapple fried rice (which I make about every three months). Friday I was going to make pasta, but we had so many leftovers that we just ate them. 

Tuesday was Colorado Gives Day and I thought, I'll be damned if the plumbing woes prevent me from giving! So I gave away $500, $50 each to 10 different organizations. I know they say that you should just choose one or two and give a lot to them instead of a little scattered here and there, but I love giving to different things. I gave to three Humane Societies, three human food bank type things, Teen A's old dyslexia school, a group that helps old people stay in their homes in the county where our cabin is, the American Lung association, and a group that tries to keep music in the Denver schools. And I sobbed all the way through. There is something about giving money away that feels SO GOOD, and it makes me cry. And it feels good to cry.

Christmas

Christmas is going fine, except that I don't have time for it, because of everything else. I settled down and worked like crazy on the cards early in the week, got them all done except the German ones, and those are Rocket Boy's problem. I did get all the other cards written, got RB to sign them, mailed them all on Wednesday and Thursday. And today he worked on the German cards, which I will mail for him this week.

The choir concert at the high school was Tuesday night, and Teen B and I went to that. Rocket Boy came straight from work and joined us a few songs in. My favorite piece was "Bella Ciao," sung by the all-male chorus. 

I started baking cookies on Wednesday, made Peppermint Meltaways, which are Teen B's favorite. On Thursday I made a new recipe from the NY Times Cookie Week, Vietnamese Coffee Brownies, which sounded good but which I don't really like. Sort of bitter. Of course the recipe made a TON. On Friday I made Oatmeal Crunch, my grandmother's recipe, and they turned out really well. On Saturday we made the gingerbread cookies for Teen B's language arts project and today we decorated them. Or some of them. Gah. Tomorrow I'm planning to make panocha squares and continue decorating the gingerbread cookies.

I finally went shopping on Friday, went to two stores. First I drove to the mall and went to Old Navy to buy Christmas pj's. There I scored quite a coup. I think I got the last pair of men's pajama bottoms in the whole store, and they were the right size for Teen B, medium. I kept looking after I found them, to see if there were any other choices, but I never saw another men's. Dozens, maybe hundreds of women's, but no men's. I couldn't find a men's medium pajama top, but I found a medium tall that matched the pants, so another score. I didn't do as well finding boxer shorts pajamas for Teen A, but finally settled on a large (all the others were XL or XXL). 

When I left the store, I thought I'd just wander the mall for a moment, but almost immediately I knew I had to leave. I kept seeing gifty things in store windows, things that nobody really wants but people buy at Christmas because that's what you do. Go, I told myself, go now. So I left and drove back to Boulder, to World Market, where I bought candy and snacks. We don't give anybody much for Christmas anymore, and last year the twins requested that we have no more stockings, so I don't have to buy "stocking stuffers." Just things that people might really like to eat and/or wear.

I was done before 3 pm, went home and stowed everything away neatly, and had plenty of time to go pick up Teen B from school. I'll do a little more shopping next week, maybe, but not a lot. I might get both kids new underwear at Target. Things like that. 

After complaining extensively, I finally put the lights on the tree, maybe Thursday? I did a rotten job of it. I hate decorating the tree. It's just hard and I don't enjoy it, I feel frustrated by it. Everybody criticized my job on the lights, but nobody volunteered to fix it or help in any other way. 

On Saturday, we were getting ready to go to the Lights of December Parade downtown, and I was feeling stressed. I spent several minutes complaining to Rocket Boy and Teen B about how stressed I was, how I wanted someone else to take over the tree, but no one would, how the tree is a part of Christmas I would happily SKIP, but everyone would get mad at me if we didn't have a tree, blah blah blah, and how I didn't even want to go to the parade, etc., etc.

Then I pulled myself together and around 5 pm we drove off to the parade (which started at 6, but we wanted to get there early to find parking). And halfway down the street, right before we turned right onto Broadway, there was a horrific accident right in front of us! Kapow! Like an explosion! I don't think anyone was badly injured, but both cars were a mess, car parts everywhere. One wheel snapped off a car, there was glass and oil all over the street. One car turned entirely around, one car smashed into the power pole. It was awful. I called 911 while Rocket Boy got out and went over to help.

We were there trying to help for 10 or 15 minutes, although the police came fairly quickly. Finally Rocket Boy came back to the car. "Well, let's forget the parade," I said, and Teen B agreed, but no. RB wanted to go. "It will take our mind off the accident," he said. So we went to the parade.

And he was right. It was actually incredibly fun. We parked at the high school, which is an excellent place to park, and walked over to stand very near the beginning of the parade. That meant that we got a lot of candy, because all the people who were handing it out hadn't yet realized that they needed to conserve their stores in order to have enough for the whole parade route. I mean, seriously, I probably got 15 pieces of candy. Maybe 20. Teen B kept stealing mine, but I ate a lot. I was also given a baseball, a mug (like we need any more mugs), a small Christmas ornament, some coupons, and a package of hot chocolate mix. 

We reminisced about years when it's been terribly cold at the parade. This year wasn't bad. It might have been in the 40s and I had my warm new coat. Our feet got really cold, though, probably because we were standing still for over an hour, and when we were walking back to the car afterwards, both Rocket Boy and I were trying to unfreeze our feet. It was especially important that he unfreeze his, because he had to drive us to Denver, where we had tickets for Blossoms of Light at the Botanic Gardens, starting at 8 pm. We left Boulder at about 7:30 and we needed to reach the Botanic Gardens by 8:30 or they wouldn't let us in. It was past 8:15 when we arrived and then we drove around and around, looking for a parking place. Finally we found one. Got out of the car. It was 8:22. "Run!" We ran. Up the stairs of the parking garage, across the street, up the street to the special entrance, over to Window 2 for them to scan my tickets. "Turn your phone right side up," she told me. I put my phone upside down. Finally Teen B showed me what to do.

We made it. We were in. And it's so pretty. Saturday night, 12 days before Christmas, is an interesting time to go to Blossoms of Light, because numerous organizations were having their Christmas parties there. All over the gardens there were signs saying "Reserved for Private Event," and there were people all dressed up, women in high heels and furry coats. It didn't affect anywhere we wanted to go, it was just different. 

We started by going to the cafe so Rocket Boy could have a little dinner. Teen B and I both got loaded hot chocolate (hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and sprinkles), which was in some ways my main reason for wanting to go to Blossoms of Light again this year. And that's despite the fact that I don't even really like loaded hot chocolate. It's too sweet. But there's something about it that makes you feel so special, like "I am a person deserving of mini marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, AND sprinkles." (I particularly don't like the sprinkles. But I like the look of them.)

After fortifying ourselves, we went out to look at the lights. This was my, what, fourth trip to Blossoms of Light? Something like that. So I know what it's like and it's not as special as the first time. But I still love it! It's just so fun to wander through the gardens in the dark, with all these other people who have paid a lot of money in order to Have a Good Time. Everyone is so happy! There were lots of couples holding hands and looking into each other's eyes (when they weren't looking at the lights) and we discussed how fun it would have been to spy on Teen A and his girlfriend when they came here a couple of weeks ago.

The last stop on the walk is the field where they have lights that change according to whatever Christmas song is playing. There were people standing next to us who had special glasses (3D maybe?) to look at the lights with. "Whoa!" they shouted, as the lights danced. "That's amazing!" I thought it was so sweet that grown men could get so excited over a light show. It made me feel better about the world. A little. But at the same time I also felt like, OK, this is fun, but it's time to get back to real life. We were going to try to see the meteor shower on the way home, but we were just too tired.

And today was the harp concert at the library, one of my favorite holiday activities, and I didn't go. I knew that if I went I would have to leave home by 12:30, the concert would be from 1 to 2, roughly, then I was going to go to McGuckins, probably wouldn't be home before 3... and when would Teen B and I work on homework? So I made the decision not to go this year, and I was sooooo happy about it. Teen B and I got a lot done, Teen A and I also got work done, we went out to dinner at the Nepalese restaurant (since we didn't go Saturday night), and now there's time for just a little more homework and then bed.

This coming week I've got more baking and shopping to do, more dinners to fix and dishes and laundry to do. The kids have finals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so they'll be all stressed out about those. I'll have to deal with the next steps regarding the plumbing disaster, probably spend a lot more money. I'll have to FINALLY put ornaments on the stupid tree. Rocket Boy has medical appointments every single morning before work. 

And now it's Hanukkah. Not our holiday, but we celebrate it anyway. Lit the first candle tonight. Rocket Boy said, "Why did you light two candles?" "It's the shamash," I told him crossly. "The helper candle." He never pays attention. "Mom," said Teen A, "why do we celebrate ALL the holidays?" "We don't," I said. "I've never figured out where to get a kinara, so we don't celebrate Kwanzaa. But I'd like to."

Now I will have to decide whether I want to cook Jewish meals all week. We usually do have latkes one of the nights. Anyway, we'll see. Another crazy week, but maybe by the next week things will calm down.