Today is my last day before vacation (for two weeks, mostly…one gig)!! I’m thrilled.

Christmas has snuck up on me this year. I think this year has been a tough one, as I’ve said, and honestly, I won’t be sorry to see it gone. Not that years matter because a calendar year is an artificial construct. But I’m ready to get away for a few days and hopefully get to relax a bit and then to come home and start up again fresh.

It’s never really fresh—the house needs a lot of work and is constantly a mess and it really starts to bother me. I can’t do enough about it though to get to where I want it to be. Sometimes I feel very helpless in life!

This time last year we were struggling with a large variety of pet health issues. Now we are single pet owners and while the medicine schedule is crazy sometimes, Mackenzie’s illness is well under control and it’s a wonderful thing. Her fur is thick and she has been shedding her normal, fairly obscene, amounts all over the house.

I haven’t done any baking this year. Really I haven’t baked much in awhile. Part of it is my current kitchen situation: it isn’t as conducive to wanting to bake! Another part is how busy I’ve been, and when I’m not working I’ve wanted to just read or sleep, or lie very very still. But yeah, the kitchen is in the basement, and it’s not my favorite place. I got ingredients for pumpkin bread and jam-filled butter cookies but never made them! The ingredients will keep though (maybe not the eggs, but otherwise) and maybe when I get back I’ll make a few things. I am planning a sour cream apple pie for Christmas dinner though

I feel like I’ve been posting when I’m overwhelmed and stressed and not enough other times. I’ve been thinking about goals for the new year and one is to write more. It helps me think through everything and helps me keep track of where I am.

So, did I tell you? We are going to California: to San Francisco, Berkeley, and the Sierra Nevadas (near Bear Valley). The good thing about Bear Valley is that it is winter so there shouldn’t be any bears. Though I remember learning from an old computer game that bears don’t hibernate, they actually just sleep, so they COULD get up and walk around in the winter.  (I tried to find what the name of the computer game was and couldn’t but then fell down the hole and am reminiscing about the game “Lemonade Stand” that we used to play a ton until we figured out how to beat it and then it wasn’t quite as fun. Does anybody know this trivia game? I recall we played until we memorized all the answers…)

I hope you have a great rest of the year. I’d say Happy Holidays but I hear that now we are required to wish everybody a Merry Christmas because it’s in the Bible and there is a War on Christmas (very evident as when I go to stores there is not sign of the holiday!).

Happy New Year too. Am I allowed to say that?