Life Update
Happy New Year!
2025! Is January 8th too late to wish someone a Happy New Year? I say no. Happy New Year!
The holidays were lovely. Both kids were in town for Christmas and there’s always a lot of laughter when they are around. We watched some good movies (The Holdovers and Klaus stand out most) and some not so good movies (Red One, eek!). We also watched the series Nobody Wants This which I turned on looking for something non-serious to watch while stitching and it turned out to be so good, I restarted it and watched it all the way through more than once. Apparently my son had told us to watch it before, but I hadn’t. I’d rewatch it again today if I could, honestly.
To get out of the house, we went downtown to see the big Christmas tree in Pioneer Square and to see the Gingerbread House display at the Benson hotel. I’m planning to do this again next year, it was a good way to get into the spirit of the season.
As has become tradition, we rang in the New Year with the neighbors. I highly recommend becoming friends with the people that live all around you.
We’re in the part of the year that reminds me that I live in THE NORTH. (Relative to my own past.) While the sun is out it’s generally flooding all rooms with southern facing windows, regardless of time of day. And yet, the nightlight I finally put in the upstairs hallway hasn’t turned off once!
We purchased an older, low-mileage Subaru for the daughter. She’s graduating this year and will likely move out of the small walkable town she’s living in so it was time. She drove it up to Whidbey Island for New Years and then drove it down to her place in time for school. It should be a great car for her. The son borrowed my vehicle to head back to school early (he wanted some time without the roommates in his apartment) so I’m getting to experience life with only one vehicle between my husband and I. It turns out that it is really easy if you work from home, eat leftovers for lunch every day and the neighbors are the people you spend most of your time with. On the other hand, after 5 years of working almost exclusively from home I’m usually anxious to get out of here. Perhaps having the need to have 2 vehicles is more aspirational than current reality.
January 1, 2025 marked 3 years that I have been sewing or stitching something daily. Most days I spend just 20 minutes or so, but I’ve learned a lot and it’s often a nice way to work through any of life’s frustrations. I have fabric picked out for a few bags I’m really exciting to get started on.
I’m continuing to volunteer for the woodworking guild this year. Figuring out how to organize several classes each month with instructors and assistants through some mechanism other than email is a goal for 2025. If you have suggestions, please send them my way.
Finally, I started learning Svelte and SvelteKit over the break. Matt and I have a couple projects we’d like to collaborate on this year and I don’t know the tools he’d like to use! I’m impressed so far with Svelte and I’m really looking forward to building something with Matt.