Good morning, friends! Merry Christmas week to those of you who are celebrating, Yule blessings to my goddessy types, and happy new week to everyone else. I can’t believe that Christmas is just days away now – I’m nowhere near ready; there are still gifts to wrap (and to be perfectly honest, gifts to buy – nothing like leaving it to the last minute, right?). I’m working today and tomorrow and then taking the rest of the year off, as I discovered that I had six days of use-it-or-lose-it personal time scheduled to drop off my account unless I burned it all in one go. (Don’t laugh. I’m used to the law firm world, where “unlimited vacation” means that no one actually takes any, ever.)

This weekend was another busy one, and yet I barely made any progress at all toward holiday preparations. On Saturday morning, I took the kids to Alexandria to get Nugget a haircut with our old favorite stylist – we started going to a new place nearer our current house, but they had no availability and he was desperately in need of getting his mop trimmed, and we thought: you know what? We miss Lety, let’s just go back to her and who cares if it’s a bit of a drive. Steve was off getting his own haircut and exchanging his scuba mask at a dive shop in D.C., so it was just me and the anklebiters until we all reunited back at home and then shoved right off again, this time to Mount Vernon. The holiday season isn’t complete unless we visit Aladdin the Christmas Camel. After a long ramble around Mount Vernon, we drove up to our old neighborhood, Old Town, and wandered the side streets looking at all of the Christmas decorations – gorgeous. We met up with my law school BFF, Carly, and her family for part of the walk, which is always fun. And then we drove home, slammed dinner, and fell into bed. Sunday was pretty much a repeat of last weekend – I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to get stuff done around the house in the morning, Nugget had a swim lesson (Peanut was supposed to go, too, but she threw a fit and we had to leave without her), and then Steve and I pushed off for our second weekend of pool dives for our scuba certification. A whirlwind few hours in the pool later, we’re done with the confined water dive portion of our training, and ready for our open water certification dives in Costa Rica (pandemic permitting, of course – I hope it happens). And I’m EXHAUSTED.

Reading. I may not have made much progress toward my miles-long Christmas to-do list, but I had a good reading week – that’s for sure. Early on in the week, I finished up Tied Up in Tinsel then read Carol Ann Duffy’s lovely Frost Fair in one sitting. Most of the rest of the week was given over to The King and the Christmas Tree, a nonfiction book (written for middle grades, but enjoyable for all) about the World War II story behind Norway’s annual gift of a Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square. I followed that with Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles – read his poetic writing about Christmas and winter, but skipped the step-by-step recipe instructions. Finally, on Sunday evening, after finishing with Nigel, I turned to Alison Uttley’s The Country Child. It’s too early on to say how I’m liking it, but I loved A Traveller in Time, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy this too.

Watching. We finished up Will Smith’s new nature/adventure show, Welcome to Earth, this week – and WOW, was it wonderful. We all loved it; only complaint was that it was only six episodes and we could have watched sixty more. To mix things up, we threw in a little bit of Monty Don and a little bit of Miss Marple, and I got all caught up on Christmas content on Miranda Mills’ YouTube channel, which is just lovely.

Listening. Lots of Christmas carols – from the Amazon Music free channel, via Alexa; Laurie Berkner’s Christmas (who are these grinches giving that album two stars on the iTunes store?!) and Noel, because the people demand Josh Groban, and by the people, I mean me – obviously.

Making. Some progress toward my Christmas tasks, but not enough. Some progress toward Peanut’s Christmas scarf, but again, not enough. Several cobbled-together dinners, whoops. The very tiniest of dents in my work email backlog. The usual.

Moving. It was a very non-moving sort of week, for the worst of reasons. Y’all. I threw my back out on Tuesday – or strained a muscle or something along those lines. I think it happened when I picked Nugget up from school early to take him to the dentist, and he jumped in my arms. I didn’t notice anything amiss at first, but it got gradually more uncomfortable over the evening until it was excruciating on Tuesday night; I couldn’t even fall asleep until 3:00 a.m. because it hurt so badly. Knowing I had to dive again on Sunday – including wearing a gigantic (and heavy!) air cylinder on my back, I spent the rest of the week babying it. Walking felt good, so I did that; the rest of the time, I was communing with my heating pad. (Steve bought me a TENS unit, but I couldn’t figure out how to use it.) It got gradually better over the course of the week and was back to 100% by the weekend, so that was a relief. Next week, I hope to be running again.

Blogging. It’s all holiday cheer, all the time, around here – even if I’m feeling a bit grumpy about it all. On Wednesday, I’m showing you a handful of new ornaments I picked up on 2021 travels, and on Friday, a lovely long recap of our Mount Vernon and Old Town Christmas walks. Check in with me then, and a very festive week to all of you.

Loving. Would it be a cop-out to say I loved my heating pad this week? It was literally the only thing that got me through. I cranked it up to the highest heat and sat in bed with it and my book. (Of course: please don’t forget to turn it off before bed, and don’t fall asleep with it on you. It’s a fire hazard and a burn risk. Heating pads are for use while conscious only, okay, friends? Okay.) I have this one and it’s wonderful. I might use it even when I’m not injured, because cozy.

Asking. What are you reading this week?