These last few weeks have been hellish at work, mostly because of my own tendency to leave tasks until right before the deadlines, and all my deadlines were in the last three weeks.
But I took off the whole week for Thanksgiving, and it has been lovely and full of lounging around in leggings and huge sweaters, doing no work whatsoever.
Esquire and I didn’t go anywhere and didn’t have anyone over, so it was a low-key, low-stress Thanksgiving (except that my best friend failed to make me her promised pecan pie and didn’t tell me until about 11am on Thanksgiving--but luckily, I had pecans, and, except for accidentally making my crust with bread flour, I was able to make my own pie without incident). I royally messed up my roll dough, though, and had to throw it out, but we had so much food that we didn’t miss the rolls anyway.
After we ate way too much, we watched Bill and Ted Face the Music (not good, but exactly the right movie for after dinner on Thanksgiving), ate seconds in bed, and stayed up reading together until 2am. My job starts early, so staying up past 10:30 is a luxury. Today, we got up late and had pie for breakfast before tackling the mountain of dishes. It was perfect.
My family is scattered around the globe, and we’ve never been particularly obsessive about getting together for Thanksgiving. I don’t think I’ve been home for Thanksgiving once in the last ten years? In recent years, we’ve packed up the cats and driven 10 hours to Esquire’s hometown, but that was out this year. I’ll miss Thanksgiving with Esquire’s mom, Esquire’s cuddly childhood bed, and having Esquire go out to get me coffee every morning, but I can’t say I’m sad about skipping the road trip.
I hope everyone else had a fabulous holiday (if you live in the US) and didn’t get together with other households! Honestly, small or solo holidays can be a lot of fun without all the stress of traveling or navigating family dynamics--take advantage of that this year and stay home for Christmas. Do exactly what you want for the whole day. It’s wonderful. Oh, and if you're making turkey for Christmas, use Thomas Keller's "My Favorite Roast Turkey" recipe. You can't go wrong.
One thing that’s infuriating me right now is my mom’s Christmas plans. She’s already had COVID, so I guess it’s okay that she’s traveling? She’s going to go stay in my grandma’s house in Palm Springs for a month. My grandma won’t be there, at least. But she’s talked one of her friends who hasn’t had COVID into flying there with her for a week before my dad joins her. Her friend even tried to back out, but my mom convinced her it would be okay. What??? Is?? She??? Doing??? And since she found out I’ve been switched back to working from home, she’s tried to convince me to come, too. Ugh, I just can’t with her sometimes. Between that and all the friends on my Facebook/Instagram feeds who are going out to restaurants and bars, it makes me feel like the crazy one. One of my coworkers told me she’d been on a plane three times since the lockdown in March!
Just stay home. It’ll be great, I promise.
The inventor's guide I read highlighted the importance of long-term strategy over short-term gains when investing. It’s easy to get caught up in market fluctuations, but patience usually pays off. Are you focused on growth investments, or do you prefer something more stable?