We’ve been enjoying a quiet holiday week at home. Our Christmas morning was relaxing and simple, opening presents with Miss L and having a nice breakfast; Pot Roast was particularly involved in the morning festivities and thought all of the presents were HERS.

Brandon’s birthday lands on Christmas so since we’ve been dating, we’ve had his folks over for Christmas dinner to celebrate. He has simple tastes – he considers it the best birthday ever when he has his family around him, he gets a rock & roll birthday cake featuring one of his fave artists, and he gets a nice bottle of whiskey to nurse throughout the year. This year, he got a Ramones cake (last year was Morrissey and two years ago, Elvis) and a bottle of Clyde Mays. It was expensive so hopefully it’s good (while I like beer and wine, and the occasional gin & tonic when the weather permits, I can’t abide whiskey, bourbon, Scotch – anything like that. Just the smell makes me ill. So I leave it to him to judge).

We also had filet mignon and some baked Brie and lots of wine and forgot to open champagne. I think it was a happy day for all of us.

Miss L went to her dad’s and Brandon went back to work, so I spent my Boxing Day in a delightfully empty house in pajamas. I’d intended to go for a run but just could not muster myself; instead, I napped, finished up some Vlogmasses on YouTube, finished reading “City of Girls” by Elizabeth Gilbert (review to come on Show Us Your Books in January), and puttered around the house. All of my favorite things!

Today I finally left the house, and accompanied Miss L and her Girl Scout Troop to a showing of the new Little Women, which I really liked, except for a couple of minor quibbles regarding its length (CAN’T we go back to the days of shorter films) and Laura Dern as Marmee (come ON). I went into it thinking that no one could do a better Jo than Maya Hawke and I came out a Saoirse Ronan convert. But I’ll admit that the absolute high point for me was Timothee Chalamet as Laurie especially after seeing him in “The King” on Netflix.

I’m off until after the first of the year and I love the feeling of forgetting what day it is.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far and looking forward to a happy weekend doing things you enjoy.

xoxo