As I sit here 48 hours before Christmas makes me think back on this odd & strange year we’ve had. I remember thinking last NY Eve that 2020 was going to be a good year, I even made dream collage for what I want to happen in the next 5 years. Then March hit & everything was flipped on its head.

March-May where a blur of days, some dark, some light, I remember when I started going out again with the dog for walks. How weird everyone greeted each other & how empty the buses where around town when I would run errands for us. I remember when we began driving into town to do errands & the parking garage was empty, a ghost town practically.

Then the Summer came & people became less concerned about COVID 19-shops & stores & cafe’s went back to nearly normal business hours. Then Fall came with a vengance as did the surge of cases & in a new lockdown we went. Although this time since it was obligated to wear masks on the bus & in shops people seemed a little less freaked out.

Now, we’re dealing with yet another strain of COVID that’s more infectious and contagious. Makes for a weird year, I think now that they’re preventing flights from Britain to Norway.

This year has made me grateful though for my sweet, dear husband & our silly & rambuctious four legged creature. It’s made me grateful for being able to focus on the Present no matter how hard it may be & most of all to be Grateful. I have never been impressed with flashy, sparkly & expensive things; if I was I would probably be desperate housewife in Connecticut now. But I am Grateful for my stable marriage; we celebrated 10 years this year.

For my close friends who keep me in line when I need it. Who know that I adore my husband & our sweet dog. Even though we may not have the biggest or flashiest of homes, it’s our home & I feel safe in it & that’s what counts. Every night before I go to sleep I think about how grateful I am that no one I know has COVID. That makes me the most grateful, that & learning to be happy in the Present moment, no matter what it may be.

I wasn’t sure what to write in this entry but something has really bugged me recently & I didn’t know what to do with the frustration. Till I remembered that when I get to this point with something I write. So, I am writing about what’s bugging me. Finally.

Have you ever been on-time for something & you have that one friend that thinks that running late is okay. Everytime. But if you’re late meeting them they get annoyed. I am in that situation at the moment & with the COVID restrictions being what they are, it’s hard to gauge where you can sit for x amount of time before you have to move along.

I have always been on-time or early for whatever or whomever I am meeting, what was so frustrating is that I wasn’t in the mood to write that day, so instead I watched families & kids come & go from the cafe. There’s a study in the US that recently came out that if you are late to something it costs the other person twenty bucks an hour. That’s a substantial amount of money with a recession globally.

I am not into lecturing on what other people should do, but I live in Norway now, where being late is a sign of many things not being okay with the other person, including that, that person doesn’t respect who they are meeting. I remember I really wanted this job in Seattle one year & I ran late to the interview because the bus was late. I didn’t even get the interview.

Hence, if you late it reflects poorly on you not on the person that’s waiting. It’s one of those conundrums; do I still meet with them or do I just let them go? I just feel that they don’t value the friendship or my time. I was hanging clothes to dry at almost 8pm that night because that 30 minutes cost me 4 hours of the chores I had to do.

So, hmmmm. Wishing you a stress free holiday season. Till next time, be punctual, it’ll give you brownie points you otherwise won’t get.

Since, the channel has axed my favorite show Castle I found a substitute, the mother & daughter team in Good Bones. Not only do they have mad skills with houses but their interior skills are great. They employ their family in each build & it’s inspiring to watch.

It’s like drinking a warm cup of hot chocolate, watching them transform neighborhoods in Indianpolis. My favorite episode recently was when they where asked to preserve an older house & showed it to the man that grew up in it what they had done. Instead of tearing the old house down they preserved these amazing hardwood floors & even managed to save some of the old wallpaper from the house.

Makes me miss the days I did Habitat for Humanity in Kentucky & all the people we where able to help. It’s an inspiring show with real gutsy women front & center & that I really like. They find local, cool vendors in the city & out of it to accent what they have built. In each house they find something to salvage & use in the new build.

If you ever need that comfort show to watch, I highly recommend watching the show. It’ll brighten your day no matter what kind of COVID lockdown you may be in. Merry Christmas, God Jul! Till next year, may 2021 be a little less lockdowny than 2020 was….I hope?