Oh right, we're sitting here listening to the last Christmas songs of the season, reflecting back on the year of us humans two thousand and twenty-one. We had plans for Granny Barb and Papa to be watching our kids right now while we are out on a date to the West Side Tavern on 3rd, the package was a nice gift from them for my birthday. YET, that plan was not meant to be. It is snowing heavily out, 2 of our kids have COVID, and a few other seemingly genuine reasons are in fact keeping us in tonight. Yet another Holiday quarantining at home. As we are here and now, so were we for much of 2021. This must be the theme of the year.
Moments of literary note from our year:
Coronavirus. The pandemic is currently reaching new peaks here in the U.S. thanks to the Omicron variant (though also thankfully, it isn't nearly as severe of an illness). Still, everyday life continues to be disrupted. The kids all had COVID over Thanksgiving, and so we had quarantined for 3 weeks then (not really that much different for me since I've been WFH 100%). We just got back from visiting the cousins in Kearney with 24 hrs of complete fun: Holiday Inn pool swimming fun, Big Apple wallet-emptying fun, and general cousin craziness fun. AJ and Dempsey had cold symptoms, we tested AJ and turns out he now has COVID again, poor fella. Of the 3 kids, it has hit him the hardest on both occasions. Anyhow, now that Christmas break is coming to an end, OF COURSE we are now looking at another 10 day quarantine, if not longer.
Fellowship of the Ring. I'm talking about me and Megan here. Our
marriage. Our relationship. For some reason, we continue to get along
quite well! We support each other almost all of the time, still have a
huge affect on one another upon sight, communicate better than ever, and
genuinely love each other. We both know that we can depend on each
other no matter what the circumstances. Part of this I attribute to
hard work in earlier years forging communication and trust, and yet part
of this is unexplainable. Regardless of the causes of our success on
this front, I am so happy that we remain strong as 2 rocks.
Russ turned 40. No big party, no surprise sabbatical, no shiny new mid-life crisis corvette... though I did trade up to a newer shiny Ford truck I suppose....rather, only a small family get together... with hibachi! Honestly, this was all I wanted. Perhaps I've gotten used to a more subdued life during the pandemic. Will I ever crave the limelight again? On being 40... I've been filled with nothing but gratitude this past year, for all of the experiences which have brought me to this time in my life and afforded me so much, gratitude for all of the people who have helped me along my journey, and gratitude for my wonderful little family. As I've told people, when I try to think about how much life could be better, I tend to come up short.
Career Success. We both continue to evolve in our lives as all living things do. Meg and I seem to have each built careers on a mixture of opportunism and determination. Meg is having great success turning into an outreach educator basically, by building and hosting continuing education classes for fellow SVVSD folks, and by doing staff presentations on mindfullness, self-care, etc. Making some serious side-hustle coin all while creating the job that she wants! As for me, I seem to be doing alright in my role at AWS, with everyone telling me I should get promoted. So I finally relented, put in the documentation and essay-writing work, and readied my own promotion package. We shall see, but I am expecting this to go through with a 10-15% bump in the next 6 months.
Hawaii. Need I say more? It was awesome and we talk frequently about when we can go back. See prior blog post.
Basement Numero Dos. Done. And it rocks. In many ways, basement 1.0 was quite the prototype for basement 2.0 So proud and thankful for all of Meg's hard work in knocking this one out. Lady can throw up some WALLS!
Cheers, to an even more fun and exciting journey in 2022!
-R
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