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?

Thanksgiving is behind us & Christmas is straight ahead, although it feels somber this year. Even with the neighborhood decorated in lights, the feeling is more serious. Sad really that a pandemic can grip us this much, with hold the meter rule ads on TV. One can tell it’s not a normal year.

It makes me sad, that we are so wrapped up in the meter rule & mask wearing. Over the weekend we went shopping & the store we went to was soo crowded-I was glad I had a mask on. The mall we went to was packed, I know people where out in droves because the R# had dropped significantly. Something I am really grateful for, but this year feels much different.

I doubt we’ll have a white Christmas-since it’s been pouring & the day time high is in the low 30’s or 5C. The ground is soggy & you sink in when you take the dog out. The dog doesn’t even like the weather outside, yesterday we had to put on his super cape with his harness when we went for a walk around the lake.

I wanted to mention the transition blog that’s over 12 years old, I have been cleaning up the entries I didn’t publish. But I really liked that one because it caught me off guard with how I described the terrible transitional program I was in. How a majority of the women that entered the program never completed the program & how the program didn’t offer you housing after that ONE year in their program.

2007-2008 was a hard year but it gave me a family I can count on namely my husband & his dog Sniffy. Sniffy is long gone but my husband & our new dog Flekk are not. That year taught who I could really count on & who I couldn’t. In a way I am glad because of the family I have a today began the Summer of 2007. When I was on the precipice of life someone pulled me back & took my hand.

It’s ironic how much I hated & dreaded Christmas as a child but now look forward to the holidays with my husband & our dog. Maybe it’s because he has never taken me for granted, even when things got rough in 2012-2013. That is the best Christmas present of all, to spend it with someone who truly cares is the best gift.