trying to banish sad thoughts

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Sunday Randomosity: Mainly About TV But Also a Little Christmassy with a Soupçon of Melancholy Edition

I seem to have a bit of a NaBloPoMo hangover, and I MISS EVERYONE.

It is early and I am awake, so here’s some Randomosity for you this Sunday morning:

  • I have yet to put up a single Christmas decoration.
  • However, Carla and I have begun reading Christmas stories. She rejected the Christmas countdown reading calendar, which makes me sad. Her reasoning was that she doesn’t like being “forced” to read things, which… girl. It’s a paper calendar. We can have the calendar and color it and ignore every single word on it and no one will know or care. But she hasn’t really figured out the line between Follow The Rules and Some Rules Can Be Bent yet, and I suppose for now it’s better that she leans to the left on this one. 
  • I’ve collected a few books from the library but for now I am reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson to her. She seems to enjoy it so far – it is quite humorous. I had forgotten that there’s quite a long section about making fun of fat kids, which is so gross. I feigned a coughing attack while I quickly skimmed the text until I got to a less objectionable passage. “Wow, you should win a world record for that,” Carla remarked. I’m not sure she meant I should win a world record for the subterfuge or for the coughing attack, although I hope she meant the latter.
  • It’s not typical that I censor my kid’s books. Sometimes I read her things that were once, unbelievably, acceptable and use them as Instructive Moments. But sometimes I just want to read a book to my kid. 
  • We’ve had a nicely Christmassy weekend so far. Yesterday, we delivered the letter she wrote to Santa; there’s a special mailbox in a nearby town and we go there every year. Sometimes, an elf will send her a letter in return which I think is so magical. Then we bought a gift for a friend and a couple of gifts for her cousin. Afterward, we came home and watched two Christmas movies, back to back. 
Images from amazon.com
  • The first movie was Spirited, starring Octavia Spencer and Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. I was not looking forward to it, I’ll be honest. First of all, it’s a new take on A Christmas Carol. Secondly, it’s a musical which is not usually my favorite genre. But it was so cute. I ended up loving it. It was a fresher version of the story than I’ve seen before, plus the songs were really cute and catchy. And there was a nice wholesome Christmassy message. Also: Octavia Spencer. She was a secondary character, which is a misuse of her considerable talent, but she kicked butt in the role and is just so adorable. It wasn’t quite appropriate for Carla, but it worked out okay. 
  • After that, Carla watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and I played games on my phone and then made us all cheese and cracker plates for dinner. An ideal Saturday. 
  • Once Carla went to bed, I watched Game Night. I think I read about this on a list of “Best Family Movies to Watch at Thanksgiving,” but then realized quickly that it wasn’t appropriate for a) children or b) watching with one’s parents. (This was an accurate assessment.) But as soon as I read about it, I needed to see it. How did I miss it when it came out in 2018? Jason Bateman! Kyle Chandler! Sharon Horgan! Chelsea Peretti! Jeffrey Wright! Other people! It’s about a game night gone horribly wrong and it was thoroughly entertaining. (My husband had no interest in watching it. His loss.) Kirsten Dunst’s husband (Jesse Plemons) was in it as well, playing a wonderfully creepy neighbor. It was not the best movie I’ve ever watched, but it was amusing and entertaining. There was a very uncomfortable scene with a gun, where the characters thought it was fake but it was real, and there was a scene where people seemed like they might vomit, and since those are things that I would want to know before I watch a movie I am sharing them with you now.
  • Maybe it’s clear that I’ve been trying to distract myself. I think I’m in the middle of losing one of my oldest and dearest friends. I’ve tried to write about it a few times, because it’s been at the forefront of my mind for a couple of months now. But it always comes out so maudlin. Plus, it makes it seem like I don’t realize that a) relationships of all sorts end for a variety of reasons, or b) both parties rarely get a say in the dissolution of a relationship. Plus plus, you only get my side, and of course I think that I should be forgiven, that my friend is misreading the situation or overreacting or not giving me the benefit of the doubt, that my friend is placing too much weight on third party interpretation of the inciting event, that I should be given another chance… which isn’t fair. (And doesn’t everyone feel that way, when they are the cause of a breach?) The thing is, I don’t think I can do anything about it. I’ve done what I can: I apologized, I tried to listen and improve, I’ve tried to show that I still value and want our friendship while trying not to put too much pressure on my friend to forgive and forget. I can’t do anything else. If my friend decides our relationship is unsalvageable, well. I can’t salvage it. I know all this, and yet it’s agonizing and deeply, horribly sad. So. Distraction. 
  • What is everyone watching, TV-wise, these days? My husband and I are between shows. We just finished Dahmer, which was okay – I was appalled to learn how he targeted gay men and men of color, because that was one aspect of the horror he perpetrated that has somehow eluded me. I appreciated that the series tried to devote time to telling the stories of some of the victims, and found their stories very moving. Niecy Nash was amazing in her role. But it also felt like a) there was too much effort to make a serial killer seem sympathetic or blameless for his actions and b) the show was aware how exploitative it was and yet barreled ahead anyway. I am more than ready for something new.
  • We also recently started watching Station Eleven, after I loved the book so much. The first two episodes have me actively disliking the show, though. They are just too different from the book. I should have waited a bit longer before watching the show, I guess – until the plot isn’t quite so fresh in my mind. Right now, I keep getting very huffy and impatient and “that’s not what happened!” I am sure it is a joy to watch it with me. Everything I’ve heard about it is that the show is really good, though, so I want to give it a chance. 
  • My husband sent me an article that made a compelling argument for watching 1899. It’s about a mysterious ship, people. Enough said. At least, that’s enough for me to want to watch it. 
  • To deviate from TV talk, I bought myself a pair of leggings from Loft on Black Friday. They are SO soft and I love them. So much that I wore them two days in a row. But by the end of the second day, the inner thighs were all pilly and gross. So disappointing. I get that my thighs are generous, but a pair of pants should last more than two days, I think.
  • I have to go to a holiday party. It’s for my husband’s work, and I get that it’s important for his staff etcetera, but I don’t wanna. Aside from the fact that I don’t like people, I don’t really know any of his colleagues or staff. Plus, I don’t know what to wear. My husband thinks I can just wear any old thing, although my instinct is, of course, to shop my way out my anxiety. Probably what I will do is wear black dress pants and a black blouse or maybe a burgundy sweater I bought more than a year ago for the only other dressy public event I’ve attended since 2019. 
  • But what I WANT to do, aside from exchanging my body and face for someone else’s, is to buy clothes that will transform me into a stylish woman who is at-ease around other humans. Something sparkly would be nice. 
Image from anntaylor.com
Image from amazon.com
Image from nordstrom.com
  • In other Things I Am Shopping For news, I am on the hunt for a pair of comfortable boots I can wear while walking in the snow. Note that I did not say “snow boots,” although I wouldn’t be opposed to snow boots. But maybe what I am looking for is a pair of hiking boots? I have a pair of snow boots, and they are warm and comfortable enough, but if I walk around in them for any amount of time they chafe at my heels. A friend and I have pledged to walk every Monday, and another friend and I have pledged to walk on a less regular basis but still outside. So I need good, quality footwear that won’t hurt my feet and will keep them warm and dry.
  • This is where I say quietly that my feet have been feeling a teeny bit better. I have been babying them for a long time, and then I went for a walk with Friend 2 from the previous paragraph and we ended up walking for nearly five miles. My feet were in agony when I got home, but I stretched them as I do daily, and the next day they felt better than they have in months. So I have made an effort to go for some long walks this week – once for about an hour outside and another time for 90 minutes on my treadmill. I’m not saying I’m cured or anything, but I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe what my feet have been telling me all along is to get off my rear and WALK already. 
  • The other thing I have been doing is wearing shoes in the house. They are brand new shoes that have never seen the light of day, but it still feels very strange to wear shoes IN the house. My dad (who noted matter-of-factly that the only real solution for plantar fasciitis is time, and that no single solution works for everyone) (I was already gloomily getting that sense from everyone’s comments) recommended that I start wearing them. Also, NGS mentioned that she never goes barefoot. I really LIKE going barefoot, but I also like walking around without pain so…
  • We have been enjoying our Christmas countdown calendars. My husband got the three of us a No Exit calendar, because we like the mystery games. We have to solve little puzzles every day to figure out which door to open up next. Carla got a Jurassic World calendar, and each day she gets a new little figurine. She has two dinosaurs so far and a little person; she isn’t awake yet so I don’t know what she’ll get today. 
  • It’s rare that I’m awake before Carla on a weekend. She can sleep straight through her alarm during the week, but on the weekend when we have nothing to do, she’ll wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 sharp when some internal mechanism reminds her that she can watch TV. But I have been having trouble sleeping lately; I keep waking up too early and not being able to fall back to sleep. Sometimes I just go through phases, but this morning I blame the wind and sadness. 
  • Carla and I are trying to come up with some fun things to do over winter break. So far I have “make zimtsterne and sufganiyot.” I also want to make cranberry crumble bars. Carla and I have tossed around the idea of making chocolates, which was my tradition with my dad when I was a kid and has been something I’ve done inconsistently with Carla. But… there should be other items on the agenda besides baking, probably? What kinds of fun plans do you have for the winter holidays? Are there any traditions you like to do each year? 
These photos are all from prior years, to remind me of how delicious these items are.
  • My mother-in-law arrives this afternoon. The house is clean, but could use a quick tidy. We are going out to dinner tonight, so I don’t have to worry about making anything. But I should probably go give Carla’s bathroom a quick once-over and set out the guest towels so it feels fresh. Then perhaps I will address holiday cards and listen to Christmas music.

Well, that’s all I have for you on this blustery first Sunday in December. How is your weekend going so far?

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Pandemic Update; Memorial Day Weekend Meals

I am sad and my foot hurts and I have too many things to do but instead I keep bouncing back and forth between reading awful news articles and researching gun control legislation, so I am going to distract myself by blogging for a few minutes. 

Today as I was putting away the groceries (this is the THIRD trip to the grocery store I have made this week, which is a testament to how important it is to MEAL PLAN in advance because I did not do that this week and now here we are), I came across a giant five-pound bag of sugar that I bought in 2020 during the height of the sugar/flour shortage. I remember spotting it at Costco, alongside enormous industrial sized bags of flour and snapping it up with glee and relief. It has remained in my basement lo these many years. 

Well, my sugar container is looking a bit wan, so I will use the five-pound bag to refill it. My sugar container does not hold five pounds of sugar, though, so… I’m not really sure what to do with the remainder. That’s what gallon-size Ziploc storage bags are for, I suppose.

(The reason I need to refill the sugar container is because I am making cupcakes. They were supposed to do double duty: 1. They were to be dessert for an evening with friends, who were scheduled to come for dinner this weekend. 2. They were to be a special birthday surprise for our neighbor, who has become one of Carla’s favorite people on the planet; when Carla found out it was the neighbor’s birthday, she insisted that we make cupcakes. Anyway, the friends are no longer coming but the neighbor is still having a birthday, so I am still making cupcakes.) 

Pulling out the five-pound bag of sugar did jolt me back, a bit, into those dark days of the early pandemic. Not that the days have gotten a whole lot brighter, in many senses, pandemic and otherwise. But things are different. We no longer buy two jars of pickles a week, for one thing. I still note that we are getting low on paper towels or toilet paper, but I don’t fret. I raised my eyebrows when I saw that cream cheese was in very low supply (and zero of the Philadelphia brand was available), but I didn’t grab more boxes than I need for the cupcake recipe. The peanut butter shelves were near-empty, but that’s because of the Jif recall, not because peanut butter is no longer available. (Our giant two-pack of Jif was in the affected batch; we’d already eaten one entire jar but the other was unopened.) I have been gradually and purposefully whittling down our supply of frozen meat, rather than rushing out to refill it. 

I know things are still far from pre-pandemic “normal.” The note about “only four packages of baby formula per person” at my Target is a glaring example of that fact. But I do worry less. 

On the illness front: I have given Carla a Covid test before school every day this week. She keeps waking up with a sore throat or sniffles (that do seem to magically disappear by the time we leave for school), and I just don’t want to take a chance. Plus, Covid is rampant in her grade, with four and five cases per class as of last week (except in Carla’s class, so far). We are five days out from the end of the school year, and it would be amazing if she could make it the whole way… but that seems increasingly unlikely. 

My family continues to wear masks in public, indoor spaces. I am accustomed to wearing one that I don’t really notice anymore how many people are or aren’t wearing masks. I haven’t been hassled. My husband thinks that our road trip later this summer will take us through a lot of areas where masking will be non-existent, and I wonder if we’ll be hassled then; we’ll see. Carla’s school went mask-optional a long time ago, and we allowed Carla to make her own choice about whether to wear one or not. She enthusiastically chose NOT. We have been urging her, as cases at school and in her grade have crept up, to reconsider, and I think she IS wearing a mask at least some of the time. But it’s hard to know. When you are eight, it is extremely difficult to understand abstract non-immediate consequences. 

We are in the very, very privileged position of not having any underlying health issues ourselves, and not having any immunocompromised people in our household or classroom/work situation to worry about so we are more relaxed than some. I don’t know much about Long Covid, so that does worry me a little. We are of course willing and happy to take stronger measures if necessary – like I am always happy to throw on a mask if a friend is wearing one, and I don’t insist on going out for coffee when it is perfectly acceptable to have coffee at my house. But I feel like we have reached a level of comfort and regularity with how we protect ourselves. More than ever, it feels like contracting Covid is inevitable. We have been so lucky not to have it (or to have had such mild cases it went through us undetected); that luck is bound to run out.  

We are looking at a nice long weekend ahead of us. I finally got some flowers into the flowerpots in my front and back yard, and that makes me feel much better about things. They were looking so dejected and depressed; now they have little bright spots of color. (Except for the pot that has been designated as Carla’s. She went with me to pick out the flowers, and she fell in love with some black petunias. She would have had all our pots full of black flowers if it were up to her. Instead, I bought her a black petunia and gave her her own pot. And then filled up the other flower pots with purple and yellow and pink.)

I am very disappointed that our friends are no longer coming. We haven’t seen them since February, and they are the kind of people whose social calendars fill up months in advance so the next time they can work us in is August. (In fact, we’d originally been scheduled to have them over for dinner in April, but they accidentally double-booked us and had to back out of that; late May was the first available option way back in March when they realized the issue.) So I am disappointed and cranky about that. Especially because I already bought – literally – ten Roma tomatoes so I can make salsa and five avocados so I can make guacamole. I guess my little family will be feasting on salsa and guacamole all weekend. Perhaps I can coax our neighbor to come over for a little birthday fiesta? 

In my planning for the dinner party, I totally forgot about the long weekend. So this morning I planned out our meals on the fly, mid-produce section. In addition to chips, salsa, guacamole, and strawberry cupcakes, here’s what we will be eating:

  • Ground Beef Tacos: Carla squealed with delight when I told her we will be having tacos. Same, Carla. Same.
  • Spinach Salad with Strawberries, Chicken, and Goat Cheese: I will be using regular strawberries this time, not pineberries. Also, I like to use a mix of spinach and arugula because I dislike spinach. Also also, I am going to make my favorite balsamic dressing instead of the raspberry vinaigrette. 
  • Steak Kebabs: This may end up being steaks and veggies instead because my husband has a very interesting aversion to cooking shish kebabs. Even if I am the one who threads the food onto the skewers AND grills the skewers, he is very… hesitant about it. I am choosing to see this quirk as cute.
  • Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas: This is what I planned to make for our friends. It’s fairly keto-friendly and always delicious.
  • Greek Chicken Chopped Salad: Unfortunately, I could not find any fresh oregano so I will need to go to the grocery store YET AGAIN. I will use that opportunity to buy more berries; I cannot get enough strawberries right now.

Salads and tacos. Sounds pretty great to me.

What are you up to this weekend? If you live in the U.S., are you doing anything special for Memorial Day?

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2021 Round Up-a-Rama

Here is where I am at the end of 2021: down, down, down.

After a year of prolific reading, I find myself unable to lose myself in a book. My comforting morning ritual of drinking tea has deserted me. Carla is about to embark on another round of remote learning – this time, with unknown duration (could be five days! could be more!). Christmas, instead of being a cheery time of fun gifts and family togetherness, was utterly draining. I have been summoned for jury duty; I was able to postpone it, due to remote learning, which is good, but now I have MONTHS to fret about the logistical nightmare of the whole thing, not to mention the idea of being in the giant jury room with dozens of other humans who may or may not be masked or vaccinated. And I am sunk deeper into a pit of self-doubt and -castigation than I ever have been before.

It’s wishful thinking to imagine that a year that held a lot of great things would end on a high note. And it’s naïve to think that a simple shift of the calendar will resolve any of these things. So here is where I am.

There are good things, too, of course. It was lovely to see my parents over Christmas. My husband’s call schedule was light toward the end, so our Christmas festivities were hardly disrupted. He is on vacation this week, so he and Carla and I have been having a quiet, pleasant time doing quiet, homey things like cleaning the basement, playing video games, and eating junk. We got a TON of holiday cards. (I think our card wall looks much fuller than in previous years, but my husband says he thinks we get this many cards every year.) (We received about 45 cards this year, so maybe next year I will remember to count.) While it seems as though everyone in the world currently has Covid, we have still, somehow, by pure luck, managed to avoid it. (SO FAR.) I am aware of my many blessings, I am. But that does not dispel the disconsolate fog that’s clouding everything at the moment.

Be assured that the remainder of this post will (likely) be less dismal. And, as always, I love to read your year-end recaps, so please let me know if you posted one as well.

(If you’re so inclined, you can read past versions of my responses: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. This yearly recap originated with Linda of All & Sundry.)

As usual, I reserve the right to delete ignore or scoff at any of the questions below.

  • What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before?
    • Sent my manuscript out for beta reading.
    • Went on a paleontological dig.
    • Rejoiced as each new member of my family received a vaccine against Covid-19.
  • Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

As is my new tradition, I made some very loose aspirations for the year. Out of 19, I accomplished 10, which seems pretty decent, considering some of them were real reaches in terms of potential success.

  • Where did you travel this year? (This is my own recasting of a question I could never answer which was How many countries did you visit this year?)

This year, the only time I left the state was to visit my parents. My husband, daughter, and I also took a trip to a city on the opposite end of our state, which was nice but very hot and sticky. We have some travel planned for 2022, but who knows how that will turn out.

  • What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021?

I mean, last year’s wish still holds true: A return to some sort of pre-pandemic normalcy, for myself and my country, and across the globe. More time alone with my husband. Dinner in a restaurant. The ability to travel without worrying about infection/infecting.

As long as we’re putting out our wishes, I would also like to have an agent in 2022. I know this is… a big ask. And will require a lot of work on my part. And will still probably not happen. And putting it out here makes me feel stupid and exposed. But it is what I want, more than anything unrelated to the pandemic, and I’m going to TRY.

  • What dates from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Moreso than even in 2020, I think, the days and weeks sort of ran together in 2021. Outside of January 6, I can’t remember a single specific date. A few key moments do stand out – like when I got my vaccinations and when Carla got hers – but I couldn’t tell you the dates.

  • What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting my manuscript out to beta readers.

  • What was your biggest failure?

I am not up to answering this one this year.

  • Did you suffer illness or injury?

No, thank goodness. My family and I have been so remarkably lucky during this pandemic.

  • What was the best thing you bought?

I’d say it’s a three-way tie between my new towels, our bicycles, and the artificial Christmas tree.

  • Whose behavior merited celebration?
  • Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
  • Where did most of your money go?
  • What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I was really excited about going to visit my parents with Carla (and really anxious). I was really excited that Carla got to attend summer camp and that she started third grade on time and made it until January without requiring remote schooling.

  • *Compared to this time last year, are you:
    • a) happier or sadder? 
    • b) thinner or fatter? 
    • c) richer or poorer? 
  • What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing (evergreen item). Exercising. Reading. Eating vegetables.

  • What do you wish you’d done less of?

Feeling sad. Eating my feelings. Wallowing in regret. Doomscrolling. 

  • How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas included the three of us, plus my parents and it was everything a Christmas should be. We have such thoughtful and generous friends and family members, and there were SO many gifts under the tree. We ate bacon and baked French toast and berries for breakfast and then my husband went into the hospital, but he was able to come home around two which wasn’t terrible. For dinner, my dad made his traditional spice roast, my mom made her traditional blueberry pie, I made goat cheese garlic mashed potatoes, and we all chipped in to make Caesar salad. Carla flitted from new toy to new toy and the adults watched football and cooked and ate and really, what more could you ask for?

  • Did you fall in love in 2021?
  • What was your favorite (new) TV program?

Instead of watching TV this year, I mostly chose to read. But that doesn’t mean I was completely cut off from television! My husband and I finally started watching Succession (and have just started Season 3) – we are OBSESSED with it, as everyone predicted. How can so many people be so completely and thoroughly awful? We also started watching Superstore, which is a very fun, 30-minute humorous diversion type of show. I also loved:

  • The Queen’s Gambit – Neither my husband nor I can remember if we watched this in 2020 or 2021. As he says, it was a long year. While I know nothing of chess, I did love this series about an orphan chess prodigy whose addictions threaten to keep her from achieving her ambition. It was a show where I kept expecting terrible things to happen to the protagonist… but the people who surrounded her were almost universally good, caring humans who wanted to lift her up and help her succeed.
  • Mare of Easttown – This is the show that inspired us to finally get HBO, and it was SO worth it. (Also, Succession.) Such a dark, gritty look at a detective who does everything to solve a case. Kate Winslet was stunning. And the heavy-handedness of the accents was quite amusing.
  • Only Murders in the Building – What a heartwarming little mystery series this was. Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin solving a murder in their luxury apartment building was every bit as goofy and fun as you would expect.
  • Maniac – A science-fiction series about grief and brokenness that took some very weird but always interesting turns. It reminded me a little bit of Palm Springs, so if you liked that movie I bet you would like this series. (I enjoyed the movie very much.)
  • Bodyguard – This was a heart-pounding thriller that stressed me out the way early seasons of 24 used to. It was really good, if you can stand that edge-of-your-seat, something-is-definitely-going-to-explode feeling. Also, it has nothing at all to do with the Whitney Houston film masterpiece of the early ’90s, in case you thought it was a serialized version of the movie as I did.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events – Carla has been listening to the audiobooks of this novel series, so we started watching the TV show as a family. It’s darling and fun, and I adore Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf.
  • *Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
  • What was the best book you read?

While I haven’t been able to read for most of this past month, which really, really stinks (it’s like being estranged from a dear friend), I had a very good reading year otherwise. In fact, I read 74 books this past year, which is a record for me. And so many of them were so good!!!!! 

  • A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne gets my top marks for this year. It was a beautifully crafted, incredibly chilling depiction of a would-be writer who will do absolutely anything to be successful. I loved the way the structure helped funnel the reader toward an ever-deeper, ever-more-sinister understanding of the main character.
  • The Great Alone was my first (and, so far, only) Kristin Hannah novel, and I loved it so much. The landscape, the isolation of small-town Alaska, the in-depth exploration of the dysfunction in one family were all so well done. I listened to this while out walking, often with tears streaming down my face.
  • Megha Majumdar’s debut A Burning was captivating and horrifying and gave a keen view of the inner-workings of life in Bombay and the lengths people go to achieve their ambitions.
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi was absolutely gorgeous – a series of linked short stories about two strands of a family separated by circumstance and slavery.
  • I finally read the second book in the romance duology by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, and The Heir Affair didn’t disappoint. It’s witty and charming, and the relationship and even the faux-royal setting feel real and relatable.
  • I loved Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir so much that I ended up listening to the audiobook a second time with my daughter. It was fun and exciting and at turns triumphant and devastating.
  • Anxious People by Fredrik Backman started a little slow for me, but turned out to be one of my favorites. The writing style, the juxtaposition of heartbreaking situations and the warmth of strangers, and the humor added up to a deeply satisfying novel.
  • Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro was at once so richly imagined and so startlingly spare in details that it stands out as unique among my reads this year. Themes of ambition and companionship, and the role material “things” have in our lives were explored with the fresh, simplistic-but-insightful eyes of the titular AI. It was gorgeous and left me wanting more.
  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman is a book that I found emotionally wracking, but also very hopeful and so well-written/well-characterized that I continue to think of it long after the fact.
  • Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes was such a satisfying and well-written romance. As a person who typically eschews romance novels, I was surprised by how much I loved this story about a relationship that grows between two people who are broken in very different ways.

You know my favorite genre is mystery/thriller, and I read some GREAT ones this year.  

  • Sophie Hannah’s Haven’t They Grown (published as Perfect Little Children in the U.S., which doesn’t seem quite as apt a title) was a close second. She comes up with the most bizarre and fascinating premises (in this one, the protagonist sees a former friend and her two children after many years apart – but the children have not aged a day) and I just love how she unravels a mystery and makes the explanation seem both surprising and inevitable.
  • The third Cat Kinsella mystery, Shed No Tears, by Caz Frear was another favorite. I just love tough, witty, personally-ethical-yet-morally-compromised Cat Kinsella as a character.
  • The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz was really enjoyable, too, although again more for the writing and the slow realization of the main character coming to understand his situation.
  • I loved Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and, even more, its sequel, The Man Who Died Twice. The septuagenarian detectives and their relationships and struggles were lovely and charming and the books are packed with humor, puzzles, and heartbreak in equal measure. I cannot wait for the third installment.
  • What did you want and get?

Part of last year’s answer is true once again: For my family and friends to be safe and healthy this year. So far, so good. We are very, very lucky.

I am also so very glad that the vaccine was approved for kids Carla’s age, so I wanted for all my loved ones to get vaccinated and that has happened. Well. I don’t know that my niece has been vaccinated, but everyone else has.

  • What did you want and not get?

Well, last year’s answer still suffices: A refrigerator that doesn’t leak mysteriously and incessantly. New windows. Unity around a workable, scientifically-backed virus containment strategy. 

Things did NOT get back to “normal.” That was not unexpected and yet still deeply, powerfully disappointing. Disheartening. Dispiriting. Gutting.

  • What was your favorite film of this year?

Did I watch any movies this year? I can’t remember a single one, except Encanto, which we watched over the Christmas weekend, and which was very charming.

Oh, right – my husband reminded me that we watched Dune, which I was resistant to and ended up really enjoying. (Although I am annoyed that it was only PART of the story.)

  • What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
  • What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A coordinated, followed-by-everyone plan for enduring the latest stages of the pandemic. Finalizing revisions on my manuscript.

  • How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?

As in 2020, my fashion choices were all about comfort. Soft bras, soft pants, soft shorts, no makeup, no shoes. Let’s exchange our pajamas for some Daytime Leggings and then switch back in a few hours. That kind of thing. I did go out more. Not like out out, but out in the world, so I ended up buying a few pairs of new jeans. Two of those pairs are in the supposedly-once-again-fashionable straight leg/bootcut style and I kind of hate them, even though I loved that style when it was previously fashionable and resisted skinny jeans for years.

  • What kept you sane?

My husband. Exercise. My terrible, wonderful, unputdownable phone. Books and audiobooks. Carbs. Wine. Reading your blog posts. Long walks. Takeout. Writing here.

  • Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
  • Who did you miss?

My first and perpetual answer to this question will always be my friend who died. But in 2021, I don’t think I spent a lot of time missing anyone else. As an introvert, the forced isolation of the pandemic wasn’t particularly difficult on me, and I think the increased human interaction we’ve been inching toward this year was perfectly fine. Plus, we got to see both sets of parents AND my sister-in-law and niece, so I didn’t feel separated from my family. We are so very, very lucky.

  • Who was the best new person you met?

I cannot think of a single new person I met this past year.

  • Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021.

The only current “lesson” that I can come up with – the worst things you think about yourself are true, and other people think them too – is a direct reflection of my current mood, which hopefully is not a reflection of reality. So let’s go with last year’s slightly more uplifting offering:

“Despite everything, there is SO MUCH to be grateful for. Even when the big things are uncertain and scary and sad, there are plenty of tiny, wonderful joys to be counted and held up for inspection and treasured. I have made a point to consider all the blessings in my life this year – sometimes just FORCING myself to be grateful dammit – and I feel more aware of them, and of how full my life is even when it seems otherwise. I hope among all the wreckage of this year that you, too, have found some kernel of gratitude. Not because you SHOULD, but because it helps to have even a small glimmer of light to walk toward when everything seems so unbearably dark.”

  • Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“Go easy on me.” – Adele

Happy New Year, Internet. May 2022 bring us all happiness and health.