First, a confession: My #tbtbsanta box arrived a month ago. I held off on opening it, first as a reward and later as a talisman, warding off bad seasonal events.

It should be noted that I looked at the box every day. I considered opening it. And so I left it unopened — and my poor Santa probably wondering what in the world was the matter with me.

But today, today I woke up and it was sunny. I realized I’d made it through both Thanksgiving and Christmas without breaking and I felt a little more like myself than I have since early October. And I knew it was time to open my box.

My Santa, Jordan, didn’t know when she sent me the box that I was going to hold onto it like a life raft. But the box was filled with good, buoyant things that make me even gladder now that I’ve opened it.

Already, we’re off to a great start: I drink a ton of cocoa, so am super excited to have new varieties to try. I didn’t have a new ornament for this year, because I hadn’t gone anywhere to get one. And the card made me guffaw!

I love purple. I love sparkles. I love nail polish. Put them all together and we have a winner!

Okay, on to the packages! (For the record, I also have Peanuts Christmas wrapping paper….)

First up, there is a fun tiny planter shaped like a Jane Austen bust so I can bring my gardening inside for the season.

Second, there are two books I’ve been wanting to read, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ well-received The Water Dancer and Ten Blind Dates by Ashley Elston, a Christmas-themed romance.

Finally, there was a gift for Corey — a catnip-filled croissant:

Thank you, Jordan, from both Corey and me. We absolutely love our gifts!

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

I hope you had a nice Christmas! Things here went fine. We ate cinnamon buns for breakfast, had a walk around the neighborhood, and talked with our parents. We cooked a modest feast together, opened presents, and watched White Christmas and the next episode of Dash and Lily.

And now we will rest and relax for another week before I need to think about adulting again. There will be more cooking (apparently I can only handle three-four dishes a day, so our Christmas dishes are being spread out through at least one more day, if not two), baking, reading, and knitting. I will listen to Christmas music and new music and watch Christmas movies (which I just couldn’t do for the most part before the holiday). I am definitely sleeping in. There may be some video chats and phone calls with friends, and we are trying to set up a socially distanced movie night with a couple local friends in our bubble. There will be time outside during daylight hours, even on the chilly days. And there will be lots of time with Rudi, after so much time apart. I’m looking forward to all of it.

Merry Christmas, everyone! However you’re celebrating, I hope you’re able to find the moments of joy.

If you’re looking for some ways to fill today, let me give you a few suggestions, each about an hour:

The String Queens are a D.C. trio and are amazing. They released a holiday EP this year, Our Favorite Things, and have left their album launch on YouTube for your enjoyment.

Ford’s Theatre here in D.C. has converted its annual performance of A Christmas Carol into a radio play (scroll down to the bottom) for the stream, through Jan. 1.

A film version of A Child’s Christmas in Wales was made a few years ago. If you’d like to hear Dylan Thomas read his nostalgic holiday poem, that will only take you 20 minutes.

Wishing you and yours a relaxing, peaceful day.

Happy Christmas Eve! I hope you’re nearly done with the running around and are ready to begin celebrating, however that looks for you this year. Things here in D.C. aren’t quite done, but they’re rapidly approaching good enough. And that’s maybe all I can hope for in 2020.

Some of us believe there was a real baby two-plus thousand years ago who was the Light. Others believe the darkness of the season and the soul is combatted by physical and metaphysical light and love. Whatever your school of thought, I hope you can find the reason we’ve spent the past 24 days marking the season within yourself. I wish that for each of us, because there’s a lot of darkness out there in the world right now and it can be so easy to be swept away by it.

Our final Virtual Advent Tour post comes from Bridget at The Ravell’d Sleave, as it often does. She’s got a Christmas message for you. Read it again tomorrow, too, if you’re struggling.

That’s all, folks! Thanks once again to raidergirl3, Kat, kathy b, Rudi Constance, Deb Nance, Marg, Chick, Jo Kay, and Bridget for such wonderful posts and for sharing themselves with us and to you for reading along. Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! May the peace and the force and even the joy be with you.

Good morning, my friends! How are you ho-ho-holding up so far? I hope that your packages have all reached their destinations, that your socially distanced in-person shopping is done, and that you’ve successfully scaled back your expectations for this year to fit a Christmas that’s going to be different no matter what.

First, let me give you a song to listen to while you read the rest of this post:

It’s off If The Fates Allow: A Hadestown Holiday Album, from the cast of the Tony-winning musical and was my surprise favorite for Christmas albums this year. You can buy and/or stream the album at the link above.

Now, here at the Burrow, while we are in a bit of an isolated holding pattern as we await the hopefully negative results of Rudi’s COVID test, I have closed my work laptop for what I believe is the final time this year. (Tomorrow it will get put into the laptop bag for the first time since I brought it home in March.)

I have several pounds of butter, sugar, and flour that I plan to start converting to cookies on a daily basis; a literal pile of books to read, projects to knit, and music to listen to; and video calls to schedule with loved ones celebrating in their own little boxes around the world. I will turn off all my alarms before I head to bed and instead will rely on the instincts of a 20-pound cat who is convinced he is starving to get me up for the next ten days.

Today, on our penultimate day of the Virtual Advent Tour, we have two stops for you. When I zonked on the sofa after an epic workday, Rudi sweetly wrote me an extra blog post in case I needed it. I am not one to look askance at such a generous Christmas present nor I am so selfish as to keep it for myself. So first, I will send you off to Random Duck for some COVID Christmas carols. Go start up one of his songs in one tab and then come back here for our second stop. We’ll wait….

Then, we also have our fourth and final post from Deb Nance at Readerbuzz. She shares with us her Christmas village, which looks like a jolly place to spend this year’s holidays!

And we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning with one final stop on our Virtual Advent Tour!

Welcome back to Day 22 of the Virtual Advent Tour.

Because Rudi has traveled recently, we are supposed to quarantine until he receives the results of the COVID test he took today, which means minimizing our human contact. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we live in a relatively small apartment and that getting outside of it is imperative to our mental health. So tonight, we revived a tradition that my parents had when we were kids — driving around to look at Christmas lights.

We headed across the bridge to Arlington and found an older neighborhood where there were plenty of houses lit up in one way or another — lasers, inflatables, lights. We oohed and we ahhed, each pointing out the houses we liked best or found inadvertently funniest (there was one house with one of those car dealership wiggly air things shaped like Santa that seemed to be assaulting a Grinch who’d fallen over beneath it).

And then we hit 1713 North Quebec Street, which just demanded we get out of the car to get a better look: (more…)