Good Riddance to 2020

IT IS FINALLY OVER.  Annis Horribilus, the terrible plague year of 2020, is gone and so is the man who we entered the year with as our President.  Trump and everyone around him are going, thanks to God!

Good riddance to the worst year in modern memory.

It’s hard to say that I view this year ahead with joyful anticipation, more, I feel like it’s an inevitable trudge back to normal. I think the bar has moved, anything resembling the old days will be welcome.

Standards are so low that the meekest of invitations will be met with thunderous approval. YES!!  TAKE ME SOMEWHERE! Calendars remain bereft, no events for the month, one that as Paul Shoul reminded me today, back in 2020, we would be for preparing to go to New York City for IMM and the New York Times Travel Show. Nope.  Blank as an empty field.

Progress marches on in my kitchen, new walls have been put up and this weekend I’ll finish them up with a few coats of paint. The cabinets are being built and the new dishwasher is on order. Now I just have to buy a flexible hose to re-connect the stove.

The kitchen project is something I am relishing, a long-overdue project that has had too long a hiatus but now it’s full-on. I found the money to pay for a somewhat less ambitious kitchen remodel and so it’s blazing ahead, even as our contractors wear masks while doing the work.

Today we await the final sanding and drywall touch-up, and tonight I can attack the small part of the kitchen with three coats of paint. Then Bill will put the trim back on and the new walls-area will be complete, ready for granite and a new cabinet.

Outside a coating of ice and snow makes it truly feel like January. A month for new beginnings, as I’ve often written about on this blog.  My posts make me a bit whistful, contemplating a marvelous 2020 New Year’s Eve with my sisters and mom, and talking at the NY Times Travel show with my travel tribe.

I only have two irons in my travel fire, one that I’m hoping will emerge so that I can visit Saguenay Quebec, and another to go out to Tulsa Oklahoma.  Nothing else remains, but I am quick to create new reasons to travel, so I’ll keep hoping and scheming all year long.

New Years’ Eve Contemplation over the years.