A Covid-19 Christmas

All month, we had no lasting snow, just lots of green grass...

...but then it did snow for Christmas!

This week, we delivered packages to our son and his girlfriend, meeting in their back yard, masked. Sunny and Ellie are always thrilled to see us. My brother stopped by and delivered presents. We visited, masked. He has social distanced, and his workplace monitors the 180 employees not working remotely, requiring masks and social distancing.

It's just me and my husband for Christmas Day.

My husband gifted me A Promised Land by Barack Obama and Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson.

I surprised my husband with a tea set purchased from a Twitter friend who is an author and a potter. 

My brother's gifts included a What Would RBG Do? mug.

For our last book club of the year we read The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. Next month we read The Wicked Sister by Michigan author Karen Dionne and she will Zoom with us!

Book mail included We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels, a Michigan author. I read the galley before it came out. I was glad to win a finished copy form A Novel Bee Facebook group. I just read the galley for Bartel's new book coming out next month, All That We Carried, plus I had ordered the finished copy with a signed bookplate and it came in.

Other book mail included Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson, a LibraryThing win. My review is coming next month, too.

I requested two Amazon Vine books to review. A young reader book on disabled role models, I Am Not A Label,

And Machine Embroidered Art.

My son and his girlfriend sent us lovely cookies a few weeks ago, and more this week. They are too pretty to eat! (But we did, with Simpson & Vail tea that they sent us!) We will finish the cookies off today, and use the tea set for the tea.

My husband's brother and his wife sent us lovely Michigan cherry edibles.

Two new NetGalley titles are on my shelf:

• Eleanor in the Village:  Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village by Jan Jarboe Russell 
• Poems to Night by Rainier Maria Rilke, the first translation and publication of a group of poems presented to Rilke's friend Rudolph Kassner

Here is my obligatory grand-pup pics. Sunny snuggled down, one of my quilts in the background.

And, Sunny sharing her dinner with Gus (who does not share with Sunny!) Ellie eats on the other side of the fence so Sunny doesn't steal her food, too! We don't know how Sunny stays so skinny!

With vaccines being distributed to our essential workers, perhaps this pandemic will begin to be contained. And perhaps this summer will find 'life as normal' again. 

Or at least, some semblance of normal. I have the luxury of staying in and staying safe. I have my books and my quilting. Our son and his girlfriend work safely from home. 

But for hundreds of thousands, 'normal' will never come again. Loss of loved ones, loss of income, economic hardships--some things will not go away. We donated hundreds to food banks in the last month. But it doesn't feel like doing enough.

Stay safe out there. Have a safe holiday season, however you celebrate it.