It’s the end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Tomorrow it’s back to work for many people (back to part-time work for me), and time to eat something other than Thanksgiving leftovers. Then we have a short three “normal” weeks until the beginning of the Christmas holiday week. I’ve always loved that cadence of a few weeks of work, then a week or two of rest and celebration. Call me lazy.

Though this year has been anything but normal. This past week we worried about family members who recently tested positive for COVID (so far, so good – no descents into serious symptoms). My recovery from knee replacement surgery continues – getting used to all the strange little nuances of having an artificial knee. The existential drama of the 2020 election is playing out with a whimper from Trumpville, a good thing. The addition of a grandson in the midst of the pandemic was an amazing thing about 2020, the best thing that happened all year. Yay for Jessie!

The year began with what I believed at the time would be the biggest event of the year (so much for that), with my brothers and I moving my dad and stepmom out of their house and into assisted living. That was traumatic for everyone, but that experience is now lost in the chaos of the rest of 2020. And I’ve spent considerable time this week thinking about what the economy is going to be like in 2021 after 20-25% of all small businesses are gone.

Another 2020 thing – we have close friends who are leaving the state post-retirement, and that hurts extra because, well, making close friends after the age of 60 isn’t easy. Each person’s world shrinks a little every year we age, and their leaving shrinks both our worlds a bit. But I wish them the best of luck.

Thinking forward just a bit, I have a few short-term goals for the remainder of 2020.

• Make some better progress on the novel.
• Change my daily routine; bake some exercise into every day.
• Get my slice(s) of pumpkin pie.

That’s a pretty ambition-free list (odd…it turns out that the only solid antonym for ambition is “lazy”, and that isn’t the right word here). So I think I can get ‘er done, as they day back home.