Not the best photo. I’m sure I’ll take better ones tomorrow. But we finally put up the FINISHED advent calendar tonight! Christina did the honors of placing the first ornament. I am so proud of this thing, all the years of planning and cutting and measuring and hand sewing and machine sewing and plain old learning how to sew at all. I need a better way to hang it, and need to take down the stuff behind it, but I’m very proud of it. I hope it brings us as much joy after making it as I had while making it. And the countdown to Christmas begins…
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November 30
Today was Billy’s birthday. I had bigger plans for the celebration, but exhaustion took over and I spent most of the day trying to stay awake. Robin did make a giant chocolate chip cookie, which is sort of like a cake, but it had no candles and no song to go with it. I did manage to make lasagna, which was pretty tasty if I say so myself. Also went food shopping and am 90% done with my laundry (it’s drying) and the kitchen is clean. Now to bed so I can get up before dawn to go running. I feel too tired to be excited about it.
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November 29
We made it home from Orlando despite some traffic. I believe I have bought the very last Christmas present for the year. I wish I didn’t enjoy shopping so much. Otherwise all I did today was make octopuses. I have completed 99 of them. Chances are very good I will hit 100 before Tuesday. I’ve got some extra keyrings, so maybe I’ll do a few extra. And then I don’t want to see another octopus keychain ever again.
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November 28
We were all so looking forward to Universal and it was really a letdown. We were there more than 12 hours and only went on four rides. The lines were SO LONG. And there were so few of them. Almost the entire park is filled with shops. Like I really want to spend $100+ (per person) for the opportunity to go shopping. I don’t know if it’s always like this or if it was just especially crowded because of the holiday, but even though we thoroughly enjoyed the rides we went on, it wasn’t worth the 8-10 hours of standing around to ride them. We are all exhausted. Not a total waste. We did have fun. It’s just that 90% of our day was wasted standing in line. Could have been worse.
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November 27
We had a pretty good Thanksgiving. It started off on the right foot… I finally completed a 5k without walking for the first time since 2018! I am so proud of myself and literally cried when I crossed the finish line, I was so happy. It wasn’t my best finishing time, but still so proud. Dinner was great and then we headed to Orlando for our day at Universal. The hotel is really nice… kind of amazing how cheap it was! Looking forward to our big day tomorrow.
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November 26
I spent six hours making an apple pie salted caramel cheesecake for dinner tomorrow. Each of the components tastes good on its own, so hopefully when it all comes together tomorrow it’ll be awesome. I had fun making it, but now I’m tired. I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning for my 5k and I am not looking forward to it. Even birds don’t wake up at 5:30am. It’s for a good cause, though. I know I’ll come home pumped up and ready for some apple pie salted caramel cheesecake.
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November 25
I am not sure where today went. There was a run, then the gym, then picked up my race materials for Thursday, stopped by the school for a car tag, came home and showered, had breakfast, made a couple octopuses, went to pick up the kids from school (and two of Christina’s friends), updated my running journal, ate dinner, and now here I am, doing my best not to fall asleep on the couch. Tomorrow will likely be just as busy. I am going to attempt to make an apple caramel crumble cheesecake for Thanksgiving. Yeah. We’ll see how it goes.
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November 24
I spent the whole day making octopuses. My goal is 100 by Tuesday. I’m up to 91. Gotta tell ya, though… I am so tired of making octopuses. They’re not even that cute. We also went food shopping for the week and got $150+ in savings on buy one get ones, which by necessity means we also spent $150+, but our weekly total was still less than usual, even with Thanksgiving dinner. I’m impressed. AND today I took Pinot to the vet because he has been relentlessly itchy for days. We had tried children’s Benadryl and an oatmeal bath to no avail. Turns out he’s allergic to something in the grass, so the vet gave him an allergy shot and he is MUCH happier. Not bad for a Monday.
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November 23
Finished this morning’s run at Canopy Road Cafe and met Billy for a breakfast date. Nice way to finish a run! We made an amazing dinner tonight, which took us most of the day to make. Robin and I made tiramisu and Billy and Christina made pasta carbonara from scratch. So yummy! When dinner was over, we played Ticket to Ride. I was sure I was going to win with all the routes I completed, but I was two cars short and Billy won. Again.
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November 22
The day just seemed to fly by. Went out for a run, then to the gym, then to Panera for coffee, took a shower, and all of a sudden it was 1pm. Made a bunch of octopuses and took Christina to dance. We had hot dogs for dinner and watched Penn State pull out a great win. Maybe not the most exciting Saturday, but the day did feel full.
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November 21
The drama today has been the discontinuation of access to Character.AI for kids under 18. Robin has been devastated. In looking for alternatives, I’ve learned just how bad AI chat bots are for kids. Billy and I reluctantly allowed her to try another one – until this one blocks kids too – as long as we have access to her chats. It reminds me of when AOL invented the internet (ok I know I know but still) and all the 13-year-olds (myself included) went into the chat rooms and we learned how easy they’d made it for pedophiles to find victims. Now there aren’t chat rooms for kids anymore, but look what it has blossomed into! I have to imagine that AI chat bots will eventually develop into something both safer and more fulfilling than how it has started. I tried to explain that to Robin, but how do you explain AOL chat rooms to teenagers who have no possible way to conceptualize a life without internet? She’s not a fan of the new app we allowed her to have, but oh well. It’s better than the little kid ones I was originally going to give her. And so goes the growth of parents and teens and AI everywhere.
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November 20
Robin cheered at her first basketball game today. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time. I’m so glad she found something she loves. The games themselves weren’t that awesome. The girls lost by a score of something like 38-2, and the boys lost by something like 52-13. It’s bad enough that they lost so badly, but the sportsmanship of the visiting team was very unimpressive, from the students to the parents to the players to the coaches. They were rude and disrespectful to our teams all night. The girls basketball team chanted over our cheer team every time they started a cheer and taunted the boys to miss their foul shots. When our cheerleaders did tumble passes, the other team’s girls players did their own. The parents were no better, cheering insanely with every score, even when their team was up by 40 points. It was disappointing to see, and I’m so proud of our kids who took it in stride and still left smiling. It takes a good heart to find the wins in a loss, and our kids definitely did.
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November 19
Today was a day for assertiveness. I was feeling good about it in the moment, but now it’s quiet and I’m alone and I’m second-guessing myself. Also today: I made a Christmas music playlist because Christina only wants to listen to Christmas music and every Christmas music playlist on Spotify is horrible. I 95% finalized our Thanksgiving plans. I made two octopuses and chicken parmesan. I angered Robin when I told her there was no way she could earn extra time on her phone at 8:45pm. So a typical day.
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November 18
Today was nothing really out of the ordinary, but little things marked it. There was a fairly sad rewards and recognition presentation at work that followed an ominous and incomplete announcement of org changes coming soon, but we’re excited about it, yay! Robin was in a fury when I picked her up from cheer practice and threw her bag at Christina’s head when she got in the car. Still no idea what that was about. Robin also refused to eat anything other than tortilla chips for dinner, so there was a power play over her phone after which she finally ate three slices of a frozen pizza at 10:45pm. And that pretty much brings us up to date.
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November 17
I had a pretty good day today. Nice run this morning, some good meetings at work, fun conversation at the dinner table, made an octopus, did a crossword puzzle, listened to some podcasts. Now I am ready for bed.
Year in Photos 