Our tree is up! It was fun! It was also physically strenuous. The tree is very tall, and I do not have particularly impressive upper body strength (by which I mean, essentially none any at all) and my brother no longer comes home for Christmas, and my parents are not as young as they once were. However, we did it! Huzzah!

We also listened to some old Christmas records that used to belong to my grandparents, on a record player that also used to belong to them. It was very special.

Then I had to stay up late finishing work because of Poor Planning, and now I am tired and dispirited. I was hoping this time at home would be very restful, but so far it is not particularly. To be fair, the few days leading up to Christmas have historically never been restful, so I suppose I could maintain hope about the ones following it.

Meanwhile, the quest for Just One Vacation as a Couple Before Life Changes continues: our ticket voucher with Qatar airways is still valid in 2022. We would still love to go to Thailand to have one exciting adventure trip before hopefully becoming a family of three. However, you currently have to quarantine in Italy upon return from Thailand, so that’s not looking good. Scouring the list of no-quarantine countries, we had spotted Indonesia. It wouldn’t be the perfect time to go (daily rainstorms… but only an hour or two?) and also it is unclear if Zika is still a threat there, but… maybe? Nope, because though you can still re-enter Italy from Indonesia with no quarantine, Indonesia itself has just imposed a 10-day quarantine upon arrival. The probabilities of this just one exciting just-us vacation happening are looking minimal, unless we get another chance sometime in the spring… really dependent on a confluence of work factors that seems sort of unlikely, though.

In other, more frivolous (but we’ll take what we can get) news, my Mrs. Meyer’s pine-scented soap smells like I washed my hands in Christmas goodness and makes me smile every time, so that’s something.