This must be a more hopeful week, a milder and gentler week, a less eventful week, while still a week to get things done. We need a better year, and we’ll have it too… eventually. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives. Whether we deserve it or not, we’ve got it coming. Ya’ think?

I completed a draft of our taxes yesterday. That wasn’t too bad, even though I didn’t have all the stuff I need. But since I can’t submit till the middle of next month (the IRS is running behind), I will complete the forms all over again in a couple of weeks to check for errors. Just in case. (Because, seriously, the forms have been changing each year which means I actually have to read all the instructions every year.)

I’ve only woven twenty-some inches on the new warp. It’s getting done as I figure out the colors a half inch at a time.

We got out for a walk this morning between pouring rain and snow on the coast range. We managed more than a half mile onshore without getting run over by a wave. Sometimes it was close.

Our friend’s medical appointment went well this morning—no major intervention and everything is functioning again.

Some politicians are already blaming others for not working across the aisle even though that first group has never made any effort to even talk to the others in the past years.

And we shouldn’t prosecute criminals, according to that party that has been whining about law-and-order for . . . ever. Because why exactly?

The new Cabinet is being confirmed, we’re insisting people from infectious areas prove they are not sick, the feds are going into war-mode to ensure supplies necessary to inoculate an entire country are available, and Harriet Tubman is going on the $20 bill.

The little dog that came to the ER every day, all day, for days was finally rewarded when her elderly person was released from the hospital. That happy story was in Turkey.

Right here in the front yard, a flock of birds landed and pecked at the ground. They are finding something to eat. Seeds or crumbs or new tiny seedlings. The jay came by and was underwhelmed.

I am reading a good book with an abomination for a cover design—the designer drew in a cartoon fishtail with a completely fake wave pattern on a painting by a famous, deceased painter. This should result in serious demerits.

And I am watching Season 2 of The Magicians in order to calm down.

It must be a Monday.

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Don’t most Americans feel that violent thugs do not represent the best of what our country has to offer? Don’t we believe that reason and fairness should rule over tyranny and violence?

Again, may 2021 lead us all to rediscover the virtues of hope, charity, faith, compassion, justice, temperance, and courage.

Simple courtesy and ordinary civility would be welcome. Truth, justice, and the American way? Surely. we remember all of that?

Our country is better than this.

For days the rain has been heavy and steady. Air slides into the edge of the sea without making a line. White sea foam piles up at the rocky edge of our walk and even at low tide the sand is swept by high waves every few minutes. A bluff slid away up the beach because run-off has been so heavy. We try to go out for a daily walk anyway. A wave caught up with us once, wetting our running feet and splashing up the backs of our legs. We laugh about that. Even though we are careful and keep a close eye on the surf, the ocean is tricksy. We have come home rain-soaked almost every day for a couple of weeks. One day it took me two hours to get my hands warmed back up.

I keep trying to make resolutions for the coming year. What do I want to accomplish in 2021? What are reasonable promises might I make to myself?

I believe in keeping my word.

Last year about this time we decided to try giving up all seafood. It was not quite a promise, but we thought we might try for a month. We hadn’t eaten seafood more than once or twice a week, but we considered that might be too much. What was happening in the oceans prompted us to give eating fully vegetarian a try, just to see how much we’d miss the flesh.

Instead of having dinner at Ove’s (not that that would ever be on the program this time of year) we decided to spend the money on Oregon blue cheese. Seriously, our dinner tonight is all snack foods, but tasty good ones. Our cocktail napkins have beautiful roosters. Cock-Tails—get it?

On our final walk of 2020, we worked up and down the rocks to get there and found sea glass, agates, rounded pumice, and two of the little stones Jan calls “pinkies,” turned back south at the metal stairs, came home on the road, met a neighbor, and it rained most of the time. We were both wet from our walk, but that was hours ago. We have showered and washed our hair, and dressed in nice clothing we nearly forgot we owned in order to celebrate the end of this terrible, no-good, rotten, lousy, inept, appalling, no-holds-barred-we’re-glad-it’s-nearly-over stinking year. Can we say putrid?

And it’s not even over.

Gary and I defied expectations and began losing weight in the last weeks. We did not gain even over Thanksgiving, but I do not dare weigh myself to find out what damage the mince hand pies might have done.

As of today, I am three kokeshi dolls and four books richer, and our son Alan and Gary gave one another the exact same bottle of whiskey.