Author: Jaclyn

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Christmas Book Haul 2020

As y’all know, I’m not big on gift-bragging type of blog posts, but I can’t resist sharing my Christmas book haul each year. My family members always deliver; I am fortunate. They came through this year, and since I still haven’t gotten a library card in my new town (not so new anymore; how have we been living here for six months already, just about?) I anticipate that I’ll be getting to the books in this stack sooner than I have been accustomed to do. In fact, I’ve already blitzed through one of them!

Here are the details.

From Steve:

  • At Large and At Small and Rereadings, both by Anne Fadiman. I read Fadiman’s collection of essays about the reading life, Ex Libris, last spring and loved it. Can’t wait to get to these – and how nice they’ll look in my growing “books about books” section!
  • Crossed Skis, by Carol Carnac. A new addition to my British Library Crime Classics shelf! Evil lurks at a ski resort. I can’t wait.
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure, both by Thomas Hardy. I’ve had my eye on these two Penguin Clothbound Classics for ages now. They’re so pretty.
  • Sanditon, by Jane Austen. How did I not know that Penguin Clothbound Classics published an edition of Austen’s final, unfinished work (bundled together as it often is with The Watsons and Lady Susan)? I already own Sanditon, but I am so excited to have completed my Clothbound Classics collection of Jane’s works. The only problem: fitting them on my Austen shelf. I’ll figure it out, though.
  • The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards. Edwards is the voice in golden age crime these days. In addition to being a crime writer in his own right and President of the current iteration of the Detection Club, Edwards is the series consultant to the British Library Crime Classics. I am so excited to read his history of the genre.
  • Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie, by Anne Martinetti and Guillame Lebeau. I’ve been eyeing this graphic novel-style biography of Agatha Christie forever, it seems. Christie’s life was even more fascinating than her novels – I can’t wait to read this.
  • The Moment of Tenderness, by Madeleine L’Engle. I’m not a short-story aficionado in general, but a trove of newly discovered stories from the span of L’Engle’s career is certainly a treasure, and I look forward to digging in.

From others:

  • Death on the Nile and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, both by Agatha Christie, from my parents. I dearly love to curl up with a golden age mystery, especially on a frigid winter’s night, and of all the queens of crime, my heart belongs to Christie. My mom fed my addiction this year and I’ve already finished Death on the Nile. (Once again, I figured out the whodunit, but not the how.)
  • The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, from my parents. I think I’m going to save this one for Inauguration Week.
  • Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds, by Bernd Brunner, from my brother and sister-in-law. After the many, many lengthy phone conversations and text exchanges that I’ve had with both Dan and Danielle, comparing feeder notes and birding expeditions, I should have guessed that I’d unwrap a bird-themed book on Christmas morning. I flipped through this a little and it looks so good!

I also received Pocket RBG Wisdom and The RBG Workout, which my dad insisted on giving me – unpictured here because they were packed in a different bag after our visit to my parents’ house for New Year’s. Both look like a lot of fun and I will be flipping through each very soon.

And that does for me! I’m a lucky bookworm indeed. At this rate, it will probably be another year before I find the time to register for a new library card. I’ve got no shortage of reading material right here, thanks to my generous family.

Did you unwrap any books on Christmas morning?

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 11, 2021)

Well. Another week. I’ll be honest, after last week I’m mostly just happy to still live in a democracy. (I know, it’s actually a republic. Don’t @ me.) If you’re a DC friend, I hope that you and yours are all safe and well. Last week was… not a good week. Remember how I mentioned I was staring down a gauntlet of two very challenging, long and stressful workweeks? Although I’ve mostly been working remotely since the beginning of the pandemic, I have certain tasks that are so difficult to do at home that it is really not practicable to attempt them outside of the office – and that was all of last week. So I was in my office in downtown DC, about six blocks from the White House, when everything went to hell and a mob of insurrectionists stormed into the Capitol. I ended up suspending the deposition I was taking, rushing to my car, and getting the H*E*L*L out of the city as quickly as I could. My regular route home goes past the Lincoln Memorial, but I had a feeling I didn’t want to drive in that direction, so I rerouted myself through Georgetown and breathed a big sigh of relief when I crossed the Key Bridge and got back to Virginia. When I moved here in 2003, I sort of assumed that at some point I’d find myself uncomfortably close to some frightening situation – that’s the price you pay to live in the DC area, and I love it here – that day was Wednesday. Needless to say, I’m working from home until well after the Inauguration, which isn’t great – I have more work that is hard to do from home this week, and I’m not very happy about losing access to my office. I know that in the grand scheme of things there are others with much bigger problems, but it makes me angry that I have to keep rearranging my life to accommodate a bunch of sociopaths who have completely disassociated themselves from reality. Some of us are just trying to live our lives here.

Any way, all that’s to say: I’m exhausted. Despite being completely freaked out by Wednesday’s events, I had to push them out of mind and focus on work for the rest of the week, and I will have to do the same thing this week (and without access to my office). I was so drained by Friday night that I spent all of Saturday just bumming around the house and vegging, which is very unlike me – especially on a beautiful day. Sunday was a little better. The weather was still gorgeous, and we went on a family hike in the morning, then in the afternoon I spent almost three hours in the garden: weeding, collecting branches that have blown down in some of our recent storms, and burning yard waste in my fire pit. It was a pretty simple weekend and I could use another couple of days – but two was better than none. Five days to go until a three-day weekend.

Reading. Didn’t I say that an 850-page nonfiction book was an odd choice for two weeks of work craziness? I suppose it is. Obviously, I’m still working my way through The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. I’m up to the 1970s now and utterly fascinated – and enjoying myself immensely, despite Unity and Diana’s reprehensible politics. Debo is still my favorite; I just wish she would write more about Chatsworth. I expect I’ll finish up early this week and then I’ll have to decide what’s next; at the moment I have nothing in particular on deck, but plenty of good material to choose from on my shelves.

Watching. I’d been suggesting we buy the first season of Big Crazy Family Adventure on Prime Video – it was less than $5.00 – and we finally did, and it’s great! A Travel Channel docuseries following a family (two parents, a seven-year-old and a three-year-old) that spends six months traveling from their hometown in British Columbia to a remote monastery in India, without getting on a plane once, it’s such a good show. So far we have watched the Kirkby family all the way to Beijing – three-year-old Taj is the family favorite. I love how the family throws themselves into new experiences, and it’s good for Peanut and Nugget to see two kids even younger than they are (respectively) taking on new experiences.

Listening. Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. The usuals. Some Mom Hour, some Shedunnit. Nothing out of the ordinary, but all enjoyable.

Making. Other than a roast dinner last night and a pile of work product, nothing. I’m still in survival mode for another week.

Moving. Again, other than the hike and gardening yesterday, nothing – see above re: survival mode. I just need to get through this week and then I can get a bit of balance back. It will not come as a surprise to anyone to know that I do not thrive when all of my margins are taken away from me. I need more of a balance, or things go really awry.

Blogging. Another bookish week – that’s good, at least. Belatedly, I’m sharing my Christmas book haul with you on Wednesday (it’s good!) and then Part II of my 2020 reading retrospective on Friday. Check in with me then!

Loving. I thought about dispensing with this category this week, since there’s precious little to love right now. My house is trashed, my country is falling apart, and I’m staring down another hellish workweek. But I always write something here, so: ice water. I drink several glasses every day, and it’s one of the best things ever. What can I say, I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. But in the middle of everything else falling apart, it does feel nice to do something good for me.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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2020 in Books, Part I: By the Numbers

2020 was an odd and terrible year in so many respects; we all know this already. With respect to reading, I thought early on that it was going to be a bust. Between a busy start to the year (preparing for a federal jury trial that ended up indefinitely postponed) and then the upending of everything that we all thought we knew, starting in March, it was weird and stressful and I spent a lot of the year staring at the wall or doomscrolling through my phone – not reading. Yet somehow in there I still managed to pile up the pages. There were weeks when I barely touched a book and weeks when I ripped through six books. And really no telling what the short-term reading future held – let alone the long-term. Here’s how it all shook out – get ready for a monster post:

Totals. According to Goodreads, I read 124 books in 2020, for a total of 31,363 pages. Actually pretty consistent with recent years. I always set a reading goal of 104 books – a pace of two per week – and in the past couple of years I’ve been exceeding that goal by about twenty books. So: right on the money.

Again according to Goodreads, the shortest book I read was Wonders and Absurdities 2019, Philip Rhys Evans’ commonplace selections for last year (I loaded it to Goodreads, so you’ll have to take my word for it that’s the title), which clocked in at a slim 24 pages. The longest book I read was The Pickwick Papers (which I reviewed for The Classics Club), a doorstopper at a whopping 944 pages.

Let’s break it down. I love this nerdy navel-gazing tradition of looking back over a year’s worth of reading. Here we go.

Pretty standard breakdown between fiction, non-fiction and poetry. A lot of bookish friends have reported reading more non-fiction than usual in 2020 – to the extent we’ve all been reading at all – but that doesn’t seem to hold true for me. This breakdown – majority fiction, but a healthy dose of non-fiction and a handful of poetry titles – is pretty much run-of-the-mill for me in any year.

Fiction genres this year contained some of the expected and some of the unexpected. Expected: I favored classics, which I always do, even more heavily than usual. Makes sense that in a year containing so much uncertainty, I was drawn to old favorites and new discoveries that have nonetheless stood the test of time. (Contributing to this was the fact that I moved mid-year and still have not gotten a library card in my new system – partly avoiding public places unless necessary, and partly because I’ve been enjoying reading from my own shelves, which are almost all classics.) Mysteries played a big role in my 2020 reading as well, which also makes sense in a stressful year; that neat resolution at the end of a cozy mystery sure is enticing. Unexpected: 20 sci-fi and fantasy titles! Whoa – that’s highly unusual for me. But I can explain that one too: it’s almost all Lumberjanes. Remember that binge over the summer? I knew that would skew my totals at the end of the year, and it did.

As for non-fiction genres, I think this was pretty predictable. Memoirs and books about books make up the lion’s share of my non-fiction reads this year, which is about standard for me. One parenting book: also standard, I tend to avoid those. There was less social science (which includes history) than usual, which also makes sense, in a year that was stressful enough as it is. The other thing that surprises me on this graph is: only four books about gardens and nature. I love nature writing as it is, and I moved to the exurbs this year, and it was a year for comfort reading – all of which should have meant a higher total. Wonder how 2021 will shake out in that respect.

Nothing too unusual in the format of the books I read. As always, it was almost all physical books. There was that comics binge over the summer, accounting for the larger total there, and the usual smattering of journals, ebooks, and a couple of audiobooks.

Here’s one that’s flipped on its head! Source of books was very unusual this year. I’m a self-proclaimed library junkie, and usually my yearly totals are overwhelmingly sourced from the library – this even though I have a carefully curated collection of books on my own shelves that I am really keen on reading. But this year, other than a handful that were borrowed from friends and sourced from the library, I read almost entirely from my own shelves. The reason for this was largely the pandemic. When everything shut down in mid-March, I had a short stack from the Alexandria library. I read my way through that, returned them, and that was pretty much it. I didn’t utilize the curbside pickup option – just felt like one more thing to figure out and I didn’t have the wherewithal. Then in June we moved houses – just one county over, but that meant a new library system, and again, figuring out the logistics of going and getting a library card in my new county, during a pandemic, just felt like too much. Plus by that point I was really enjoying my own shelves; it turns out I really like my own taste in books. Who knew?

Here’s one I’ve never tracked before – first-time reads versus re-reads. Given my past predilections for using the library, I think I probably read more first-time reads in past years, but I can’t confirm that since I don’t have the data. It will be interesting to track this in future years and see how it changes (or doesn’t).

Getting a little more into the weeds, when it came to authors’ sex or gender, I was weighted in favor of women as usual. There was a respectable minority of men and a handful of “various” – journals and short-story collections with both male and female contributors. Finally, five of the Lumberjanes trade paperbacks I read over the summer had an author who uses all gender pronouns; I have noted this as non-binary on my pie chart, although the author has noted that they are not using a particular gender label at this time. Hopefully I’ll read more gender non-binary authors in 2021.

One last graph. Setting was pretty standard for me this year – majority Great Britain (of those, two books set in Scotland and the rest in England) and USA. A handful of books set in continental Europe, one each in Asia and Canada – none entirely in Africa, I must do better in 2021, although one of the “various” category was set in a few locations between Africa, the Middle East, and continental Europe – and a bunch in either fictional worlds or in multiple settings (none of which were really dominant). I’m giving myself a pass on diversity of settings in 2020. It was a stressful year; I just wanted to close my eyes and think of England, apparently.

Whew! This one is always a behemoth, but fun to write. It was a terrible year in many respects, but actually rather a good one for reading – at least for me. Next year, I predict more of the same, on the book front at least. More reading from my own shelves (I’ll probably hold off on that library card until COVID numbers in my area go down substantially and I feel more comfortable going out to public places). More comfort reading – more classics, more mysteries, more nature, more re-reads. More England, certainly.

How was your 2020 in books?

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Reading Round-Up: December 2020

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby. I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book. Here are my reads for December, 2020.

The Folio Book of Christmas Crime Stories, by Various Authors – This was a fun way to kick off the Christmas season! As with any short story collection, there were hits and misses for me, but overall it was a delight. Highlights included Agatha Christie’s “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding” and Ellis Peters’ “The Price of Light.”

Village Christmas: And Other Notes on the English Year, by Laurie Lee – Contrary to what the title and cover might lead you to believe, this book is mostly not about Christmas. The caroling and winter scenes from Cider with Rosie appear at the beginning, but then Lee pivots to other topics, which are loosely organized by season (although not always related to the season in which he places them). Although mostly not Christmassy, this collection of essays and short pieces was enjoyable. I particularly liked the beautifully written portrait of the Lake District; the fascinating history of the Lords of Berkeley Castle; and all of the essays about Lee’s childhood village of Slad.

Slightly Foxed No. 68: Ring Out, Wild Bells!, ed. Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood – An issue of Slightly Foxed is always a winner. The editors’ letter at the beginning is a treat, and the essays always leave me with a bursting TBR list. I particularly enjoyed a piece about pipe-smoking (who knew?) and the final essay, on writers’ superstitions.

Christmas at Thompson Hall & Other Christmas Stories, by Anthony Trollope – Just a little treat to scratch the Trollope itch between Victorian doorstoppers. This pretty little volume is part of the Penguin Christmas Classics collection, and it is vintage Trollope. The titular story – “Christmas at Thompson Hall” is a hoot, involving a case of mistaken identity and a mustard poultice. But the other stories are cracking good reads, too.

Wonders and Absurdities 2019, by Philip Rhys Evans – Having enjoyed the selections from Evans’ annual commonplace book, A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, I was excited when he started publishing his annual volumes through Slightly Foxed. This was a classic: it only took about 20 minutes to read, but I was giggling madly the whole time, and after a few snippets I had to run out of the room to read them aloud to Steve. That is a mark of a good commonplace book.

Portrait of a Murderer, by Anne Meredith – A bit of a darker one for Christmas – probably as dark as a Christmas mystery gets, in fact. Adrian Gray meets a violent death on Christmas Eve (or very early on Christmas morning) at the hands of one of his children. The problem is, quite a few of his children have a motive, and several had the opportunity. This isn’t a traditional whodunit; the reader learns early on the identity of the murderer, and then the book shifts to a fascinating, if unsettling, psychological portrait of the killer’s thoughts in the aftermath of the crime. I found it really engaging, but not sure I’ll be ready to re-read it very soon.

Christmas Crackers: Being Ten Commonplace Selections, 1970-79, by John Julius Norwich – Norwich is famed as a father of the practice of keeping commonplace books and publishing them (while it’s a longstanding tradition, I think he was one of the first to make his selections commercially available. This compilation of his selections from the 1970s was mostly evergreen, but there was a little bit of timely material that made reading it like opening a fun time capsule.

Round the Christmas Fire: Stories, by various authors – How could I resist a selection of stories from Nancy Mitford, P.G. Wodehouse, Stella Gibbons and more? Mitford’s offering was the Christmas Day chapter from Christmas Pudding, a book I read a few Christmases ago (or was it just last Christmas? 2020 has been a decade) and loved; and Wodehouse’s selection, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, was my favorite of the book.

Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards – I decided on this one because Caroline Crampton noted on Instagram that it’s one of her favorites, as it features Dorothy L. Sayers’ short story The Necklace of Pearls. That was my favorite story of the bunch, as well, although there were a few other gems in there.

The Twelve Birds of Christmas, by Stephen Moss – I’d waited patiently for this one for nearly a month and when it finally arrived, I inhaled it. Moss reimagines the classic Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas as actually being ALL about birds, and he presents a compelling case for each of the “days” referring to a different bird (i.e. “twelve drummers drumming” is about woodpeckers). Being a bird nerd, I loved every word of this.

The Twelve Days of Christmas: Correspondence, by John Julius Norwich – I am making a tradition out of reading this on Christmas Eve, by the light of the Christmas tree! It’s a very short read – only takes about ten minutes – but hilarious, and Quentin Blake’s illustrations are the perfect accompaniment.

An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, by Roger Hudson – Another one I read straight through on Christmas Eve; this is Slightly Foxed‘s new commonplace offering for 2020. I found it a good read, although not funny. Since one of the things I liked best about Philip Rhys Evans’ A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book is the humor, I didn’t like this one quite as much. Still good, though!

A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, by Philip Rhys Evans – Perhaps it was coming off of An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, but this was even funnier than I remembered from last year. Every page had something on it that tickled me. A nice way to wind down a crummy year: laughter.

Winter Solstice, by Rosamunde Pilcher – One final Christmas read to wrap up the year. I enjoyed this, although not as much as September, which I read earlier in the year. There was plenty of detail about scenery, house decoration, and food – which is why I read Pilcher, let’s be honest. But not quite as much as in September, and I found the premise a little off-putting (in particular, the relationship between the two main characters, Oscar and Elfrida, just rang a little jarring to me). My other Pilcher pet peeve was in full display: thirty is not over the hill, and sixty is not elderly, Rosamunde. For Pete’s sake. But I don’t want to create the impression that I didn’t like Winter Solstice – I did, especially the descriptions of the sparkling cold Scottish landscape.

What a month to end a year of reading! Fourteen books, and you’d never know from this that I struggled with a pandemic-induced reading slump, on and off, throughout the year. I made a point of reading Christmas books this month – clearly – and ended up wallowing in twinkle lights for the entirety of December. There were some definite highlights, though. I think my favorite book of the month – probably not a surprise – was The Twelve Birds of Christmas. Revisiting A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book is a highlight of every Christmas season, too, and it’s always a treat to read a new issue of The Slightly Foxed Quarterly. Good stuff all around! And now on to 2021 reading, and hopefully a better year in all respects.

How was your final month of 2020 reading?

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 4, 2021)

Morning, all. How were your New Year’s celebrations? Anyone else stay up until midnight? I did – couldn’t believe it. We actually snuck out of town for a New Year’s visit to my parents in upstate New York; we had been turning the idea of making the trip over and over in our minds for weeks, balancing the general recommendation to stay put against the considerations that we wouldn’t have to fly, the kids missed their grandparents, and my parents have been cautious throughout the pandemic. It was a low-key visit; both Steve and I had a lot of work to do to wrap up the year so we mostly sat at the dining room table, plugging away, while the kids raced cars and did art projects with my parents. We did escape for a socially distanced driveway hang with one family member, and a couple of short hikes – including the above ramble through the Pine Bush. Neither of the kids felt like coming along, so my parents ended up babysitting and Steve and I made it a day date – fun! We discussed needing to do more of those in 2021.

We drove back to Virginia on Saturday after breakfast and gained ourselves a day to regroup and get organized before the new week. I have a gauntlet of two extremely busy workweeks ahead – I’m dreading them – and it was good to have some time to grocery shop, meal prep, and get ahead on some work. I honestly don’t know how I am going to find enough hours in the day to get it all done, but the advance prep will help.

Reading. With all of the work and family time last week, I didn’t get all that much reading done – at least, not all that much novel-reading. I spent most of the week working my way through a stack of back issues of Adirondack Life, which I wanted to leave for my parents. But I did make a little time for reading one of my Christmas books – Death on the Nile, thanks Mom! – and finished it in the car on the way home on Saturday. After that I turned to The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, which I had downloaded to my kindle before the trip. An 850-ish page non-fiction book seems like a strange choice for what will probably be a 65-hour workweek, but I swear there’s a method to my madness. I figure I’ll dip in and out, reading a letter here and a letter there whenever I have time to escape into the Mitfords’ madcap world. The collection starts in the 1920s; so far, I’m around the late 1930s and reaffirming what I already knew: Debo is definitely my favorite.

Watching. Whenever we’re at my parents’ house, we always watch Jeopardy – my dad and I competing for most answers shouted out before the contestants on the screen ring their buzzer. It was bittersweet this time, as the show approaches Alex Trebek’s final episodes. (Seriously, 2020. You were the worst.) On Saturday and Sunday nights, once we were home, we squeezed in a few episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe and grumbled about not being able to travel.

Listening. Not much – a couple of podcasts here and there while packing my clothes and the kids’ clothes and trundling to the garden center and the grocery store curbside pickup line on Sunday. The highlight: Lia Leendertz (author of The Almanac series) has a new podcast about the seasons; the first episode (“January”) is live and to say that I’m excited would be an understatement.

Moving. Erp. Busy week last week, busy two weeks ahead – movement fell by the wayside and I can feel it in my sore back and neck. A couple of hikes, that’s it. I’d say that I will make a point of doing better this week ahead, but to be honest, I’m going to be in survival mode until January 15. Any movement I manage to get in will be gravy.

Making. A lot of work product, a partially-unpacked suitcase, and a big pot of stew and bags of sliced veggies and romaine lettuce for the week ahead (because failing to plan is planning to fail, right?).

Blogging. I might be dreading the work week ahead, but I do have a good week of blogging – and by good, I mean bookish. December reading recap coming atcha on Wednesday, and Part I of my traditional three-part reading retrospective on the year just ended, on deck for Friday. Check in with me then!

Loving. Would it be a cop-out to say my leggings again? Yes? Then let me think. Well – I really loved the new Lia Leendertz podcast I mentioned up above. I already said it was a highlight, so won’t say too much. I listened to it while driving to the grocery store to pick up my curbside order, and it was like sixteen minutes of The Almanac, read by Leendertz in her gentle voice. Although I was driving on a heavily traveled road outside of D.C., I felt like I was wandering the fields and hedgerows of rural England. It was bliss.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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Hello, 2021!

Good morning, world! Good morning, 2021. To be perfectly frank, I wasn’t sure you were actually going to get here.

What do you have in store for us? A COVID-19 vaccine? A peaceful transition of power? A hug from my grandmother? A return to in-person school? Travel?

Friends, I hope that you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve, celebrating with your bubble. If you’re a drinker, I hope it included some really excellent champagne or cocktails or champagne cocktails or whatever your preferred concoction. I hope you are able to take some time this weekend to rest and recharge for what lies ahead. And I hope that whatever it is, 2021 is filled with joy, prosperity, and health for us all.

Cheers to hoping, cheers to all of you!

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2020: A Look Back (Braces Self)

I almost didn’t write this post. Because do I really want to look back on this year that has felt like a decade, and not in a good way? To be honest, I’m not totally sure I do. But I always do this post, and while this year didn’t go to plan for anybody, I do want to pause to reflect on the unexpected sources of joy and growth that we drew upon to get through this year.

January. We rang in the new year on a hopeful note. Spent New Year’s Day hiking in Old Chatham, New York, then warming up at my high school BFF’s house. Home in Virginia, we also squeezed in a hike at Great Falls – one of our favorite parks. The falls were roaring that day! Later in the month, I spent a week in New Orleans at a litigation training conference. Didn’t get much time to explore – the conference kept us busy – but I did make it out to the French Quarter with a new friend, and had beignets twice. Unbeknownst to me, this was basically the only travel I’d do in 2020.

February. Work kept me super busy in February. I was preparing for a federal jury trial that was scheduled for mid-March, and was logging 14+ hour days, staying in the office until 11:00 p.m. most nights, and working through the weekends, to get through all of the pretrial work. Not many highlights that month – no hikes, no weekend fun at all – but I did get to celebrate with friends at my work wife Connie’s baby shower.

March. Forever known as “the month the world shut down.” Or, our world, anyway. My trial was indefinitely postponed, Nugget’s birthday party (scheduled for the end of the month) was cancelled, and we all headed home to sit and wait out the uncertainty. (Which we are still waiting out.) The kids got an “extended spring break” while their school figured out what to do (basically nothing – one Zoom session a week and a bag of worksheets; tuition dollars vey well spent). We all wondered what this new life boded for the summer and beyond.

April. As our time at home stretched on, new routines started to take shape. The kids and I began each morning with a long walk, often to a middle school soccer field where they could run around, then muddled through my amateur efforts at homeschooling them until lunchtime. Steve took over in the afternoons and I hopped on my work computer and fielded client questions about how to manage their workforces in these weird times. I grasped a bit of sanity via my running shoes and signed up for a training and virtual racing program from Another Mother Runner.

May. More of the same. Still home, still basically locked down. We walked the neighborhood. We homeschooled. We hiked on the weekends – when we could. It seemed like everyone and their mom had suddenly discovered our favorite hobby, and the trails were alarmingly crowded, but we found a few hidden gems. We also started gradually moving things over to our new house, one county over, in preparation for a June move.

June. This month was all about packing and moving. Our truck rolled out of Alexandria mid-month and we prepared to start a new chapter out in the exurbs. The move was bittersweet – away from so many of our favorite places and people. No more walking to the library and the farmers’ market; no more back patio hangout sessions with the best neighbors ever. But a lot of good things in our new town, and we looked forward to learning them all.

July. Steve and I got a long break this month, because the kids went up to New York to spend a month with my parents. We missed them, but it was also really needed – on all sides. We needed a break from the kids and they needed a break from us, and my parents really missed them. Steve and I spent our time “off” from parenting pretty much the way we always do – hiking and kayaking – but without breaking up fights or doling out snacks. Refreshing! And we also did a massive purge of a bunch of stuff we’d been moving from house to house and never using – Steve rented a dumpster and we filled it to the brim. The kind of project we could never do with the kids around.

August. As the calendar turned to August, Steve and I drove up to my parents’ house to pick up the kids. From there, we were supposed to go on to Cape Cod for a summer vacation, but had to cancel last-minute because of COVID-19 travel advisories. So instead, we quarantined in my parents’ house for a week, then drove back home to Virginia, disappointed and disheartened, but glad to be reunited with the kiddos. We tried to make a staycation work, but the weather was crummy and I ended up just working the whole time – and with that, our vacation hopes for 2020 evaporated. I tried to look on the bright side – we were (and remain) healthy, our families are healthy, and we kept our jobs despite the imploding economy – but I wasn’t in the best place. Just very frustrated that irresponsible government and willful blindness and intransigence by half the population had stolen half the year from us, with no end in sight. We were responsible and careful and rearranged our lives to stay home and keep our communities safe, and we felt like we were being punished; it felt very unfair.

September. The year from hell continued into September, as we stared down the barrel of a very different school year. The kids headed “back” to school – to second grade and kindergarten, respectively – but not in the usual sense. We elected virtual schooling for them as the best of all the bad options, and the whole family transitioned, again, into a new routine for our days – Nugget on his computer next to me, Peanut working side-by-side with Steve. Running kept me sane, and I banged out a few virtual 5K races and a trail 10K.

October. Feeling more and more frustrated with having put our lives on hold for so many months and given up so much to subsidize others’ bad behavior, I decided that I was not going to have my favorite month taken away from me. I finally booked that hot air balloon ride – a Valentine’s Day gift from Steve, right before the world went to hell – and we hit the pumpkin patch and took a walk around Old Town to check out the Halloween decorations. It wasn’t much, but it was something. The kids had fun contactless trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, dressed as Batgirl and the Mandalorian, respectively.

November. It was a low-key month; I swallowed my disappointment at not traveling for Thanksgiving and we threw ourselves into local fun. Met up with friends for a hike in Rock Creek Park; ran several virtual races – including Nugget’s first kids’ mile – and celebrated Thanksgiving with a prepared foods feast at home after our dishwasher spontaneously combusted. Good times.

December. The end of an absurd year, but I can’t bring myself to join the voices shouting “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2020!” To be honest, I’m too afraid of what 2021 might have in store. We finished out the year the same as we’ve been living since March. Another month of muddling through distance learning, tramping along the trails at Riverbend Park, watching the birds from the kitchen and sunroom windows, and collapsing on the couch at the end of the days. There was one snow, which was fun; the rugrats pulled out the sled and went screaming down the backyard hill with the neighbor kid. I continued to drive the struggle bus. We celebrated a quiet Christmas at home with our little bubble, and looked ahead to hopefully better things down the road.

And so ends the WORST YEAR EVER. I do hope 2021 holds better things in store, although at this rate I’m not especially optimistic. But here we go: New Year’s is just around the corner. Bring on the cocktails.

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It’s the LAST Week of 2020! What Are You Reading? (December 28, 2020)

Morning, friends, happy last-Tuesday(whoops!)-in-2020 morning to you all! Sorry about no post yesterday. I had a particularly crazy workday yesterday – booked solid with conference calls all day, plus two filings, yipes – and this little corner of the internet completely slipped my mind. Apologies! Here’s a Tuesday-Monday-reading-post for you instead.

If you celebrated Christmas, how was it? I hope you had a wonderful day, whether that looked like time with your bubble, or a restful and rejuvenating day. Our Christmas was oddly quiet, but nice. The kids were up at the crack of dawn, as expected. Steve did the family a solid and woke up by shortly after 6:00 so the munchkins could start their Christmas celebrations (I am an early riser, but he’s not). After the gift-a-palooza, we attempted to hike but were stymied by all the nearby parks being closed for the holiday – whoops. Came home and spent the day on phone calls and FaceTime with far-flung family members, day drinking, cooking, and eating a delicious, if non-traditional, Christmas dinner.

I think we all had a good Christmas. Steve had gotten a new TV for his birthday, and he’d ordered a new XBox, so those were his gifts sorted – but I did make sure he had some things to open; his favorite Smartwool socks, some beer treats, a few books. The munchkins got a mix of toys, books and clothes. Peanut’s gifts were overwhelmingly horse-themed; she is obsessed currently. She was delighted. Nugget got the two things on his wish list – a few new “Who Would Win?” books and “a stuffed mouse named Joe.” As for me, I was wildly spoiled – the usual books and new hiking clothes, but Steve also surprised me with an inflatable NRS stand-up paddleboard! And a Werner paddle to go with it. I’m a lucky paddlesports geek! Can’t wait to get my new treasures out on the water. Is it summer yet?

Reading. Still going strong on the book front, heading into the last week of the year. I spent most of last week over Winter Solstice. Typical of Rosamunde Pilcher, it got off to a bit of a slow start and took me a minute to work my way into it, and I kept breaking off to get to my final books of the Christmas season. On Christmas Eve, I read An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, followed by my Christmas Eve tradition – The Twelve Days of Christmas: Correspondence. On Christmas Day, I made time for another tradition: A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book (which is hilarious). Finally turned back to Winter Solstice and finished it up on Sunday, then turned my attention to reading one of my Christmas presents – Death on the Nile, thanks Mom!

Watching. Actually did quite a bit of watching this week. A few episodes of The Great Festive Bake-Off, and after the final episode we’re now jonesing to watch Derry Girls, which is luckily on Netflix – so look for that to appear in this space in 2021. Another attempt at getting all the way through Rick Steves’ European Christmas (kids fell asleep again) and a few of the “regular” episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe. Finished up nearly all of the holiday content on Miranda Mills’ YouTube channel. And on Christmas night, Steve and I watched a recorded concert of his dad’s chamber choir, Vocalis, singing Christmas carols a few years ago – a recent discovery by Steve. Steve’s dad passed away in 2018, and I could tell he really treasured the chance to see his dad sing again.

Listening. A few podcasts, but I’ve been on more of a music kick lately – The New Pornographers specifically. Not being especially in the holiday spirit this year, I eschewed Christmas carols in favor of belting out songs from The Electric Version and Twin Cinema (oldies but goodies) as I ran my last-minute holiday errands last week.

Making. I spent a decent amount of time in the kitchen last week, celebrating having a dishwasher again. (Yes, I have a dishwasher again! We got the call on Monday and it was delivered on Tuesday. A Solstice miracle!) Made my holiday tradition – artichoke dip – for Christmas Eve (served it alongside smoked salmon). Nugget liked it, but Peanut turned up her nose. Break my heart! (Also, how?) On Christmas Day, we were a little non-traditional and sat down to a slow-simmered bolognese sauce (made with Impossible burger ground) served over organic spaghetti – yum. And for dessert, I whipped up an apple custard cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi. Easy and festive!

Moving. Meh. Not much of a movement week, unless you count running around doing last minute stuff to make the holiday festive for the family. We hiked on “Christmas Eve Eve” after wrapping up work for the day, and on Saturday after Christmas. (We attempted to take an actual Christmas Day hike – it was raining cats and dogs on Christmas Eve, so no go – but all of the parks nearby were closed. Understandable, but a bit of a bummer. The kids were pretty unenthusiastic too; even Nugget, who is usually down for trail time, wanted to go home and commune with his new toys.) And we made to a new-to-us trail at Riverbend Park – our local fave – on Boxing Day. I’m hoping to squeeze in a few hikes this week ahead, and more running. I’ll have to fit it around work, though.

Blogging. I’m starting New Year’s content this week! No time like the present, right? And while I might be a little concerned about what fresh horrors lay in store in 2021, I’m not going to be sorry to see 2020 out, either. Posting my traditional look back at the preceding year on Wednesday. Since Friday is New Year’s Day, I’ll just pop in quickly for a brief hello; I’m planning to spend most of the day enjoying family time with my bubble.

Loving. I almost never have a product in here, but what is making my life the most awesome right now is – my new leggings, a Christmas present from Steve. I have been wanting soft wear-around-town leggings for ages, but couldn’t seem to find the right pair. I finally hit on the Spark 2.0 leggings from Title Nine as a likely bet, and Steve delivered for Christmas. You guys. I’m calling them my Goldilocks leggings, because they are perfect. Soft, comfy, flattering, with that sticky stuff around the waist so they don’t slip down. I’ve worn them on neighborhood walks, hiking, and around the house, and they’re everything I ever dreamed leggings could be. I never want to wear anything else.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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Christmas Reading 2020 – Final Tally

First things first: Merry Christmas, to my friends who are celebrating today! To those who are not, I hope that you’re enjoying a day off work if you get it, and that you have a restful end of 2020 ahead.

It has been some season of reading! 2020 reading has been something of a roller-coaster; between trial prep, pandemic-induced reading slumps, and long periods of churning through books, I feel like I have whiplash. December was an upswing in terms of reading, and I planned a bookish Advent (to replace all of the running-around fun that we usually do). I powered through most of the list that I shared earlier this month, and all told, made it to the following seasonal reads:

  • The Folio Book of Christmas Crime Stories, by various authors
  • Village Christmas: and Other Notes on the English Year, by Laurie Lee
  • Wonders and Absurdities 2019, by Philip Rhys Evans
  • Christmas at Thompson Hall, and Other Christmas Stories, by Anthony Trollope
  • Portrait of a Murderer, by Anne Meredith
  • Christmas Crackers: Being Ten Commonplace Selections, 1970-79, by John Julius Norwich
  • Round the Christmas Fire: Festive Stories, by various authors
  • Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, by various authors
  • The Twelve Birds of Christmas, by Stephen Moss
  • An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, by Roger Hudson
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas, by John Julius Norwich

That’s not counting A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, which I’ll be reading today (as per my tradition of the last few years), or Winter Solstice, of which I am still in the middle. So! Some Advent in books. I’ve enjoyed myself, although I’m also looking forward to branching out and getting back to my usual variety. And I suspect I’ll have a few more to add to the list before the month wraps up, as per my usual.

How did your holiday reading shake out?

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2020 Wasn’t ALL Bad

It’s such a 2020 trope that this year was a dumpster fire, that it’s almost trite to say it, but let’s all just acknowledge one more time: WORST. YEAR. EVER. Seriously, from pretty much off the block, things have just sucked. It would have been a rotten year no matter what, but malicious ineptitude in the place of leadership made everything worse.

That said, there were some good things that happened this year. Not many, I’ll grant you. But some! On a personal level, I moved to the exurbs and got a promotion at work, we did a ton of kayaking and hiking, and my dear friends Connie and Vanessa each welcomed a sweet baby boy to their respective families (I’m contenting myself with photos until I can hug them and kiss their chubby baby cheeks). Aside from my own personal joys, there were actually some “good news” stories in the world writ large. Here are a few:

Hamilton on Disney+ amirite? Felt like the most 2020 of miracles that for $7/month we could sing along to Yorktown in the Living Room Where It Happened.

Two new J-pod babies! It felt especially joyous to welcome J-57 Phoenix, after following along with mom J-35 Tahlequah’s sad journey in 2018. But then there was J-58 Crescent following right after! And the 2019 J-pod and L-pod babies are still healthy and thriving, and may they continue that way.

(Pssst – busted; those are transient orcas from Steve’s and my trip to the San Juan Islands in 2019. But, orcas!)

While we’re on the subject of baby animals, here in D.C. we also welcomed baby Xiao Chi-ji to the Panda Pavilion at the National Zoo! (That’s a pic of mom Mei Xiang that I snapped a few years ago.) His name means “little miracle,” which is exactly what he is. A baby panda feels like a miracle no matter what, but in a year in which there was precious little to celebrate, baby Xiao has brought so much joy to all of us here in the nation’s capital. It’s panda-monium. (I’m not sorry.)

Speaking of the nation’s capital – we’re a little lighter of hearts as we head toward January 20, 2021. Joe! Kamala! Melania even phoned in the Christmas decorations this year, so they were just regular style decorations, not terrifying giant handmaids or anything. It’s almost overrrrrrrr…

A world away from Washington, D.C., the Buffalo Bills are AFC East Champions! I am told this is a very big deal. Yeah! Go Buffalo! (Here’s a picture from the finish line of the Fifty Yard Finish Half Marathon in 2014, inside Ralph Wilson Stadium.)

There were not very many “good news” stories this year, but there were some. Some is more than none. And I’m cautiously holding out hope for 2021. With a vaccine on the way, and grown-ups back in the White House, maybe we’ll even get the luxury of some conventional sources of joy next year. I’d dearly like to hug my grandmother. And if there’s some travel in the offing, so much the better. More baby whales would be great, too.

What “good news” stories brought a smile to your face this year?