Every year, Jana of That Artsy Reader Girl, generously keeps up the tradition of Secret Santa started at the now defunct The Broke and the Bookish, where she sends your info to someone and sends you an entirely different person’s info. There are different levels for participation and I’m sure it takes a lot of energy to get everyone squared away, and that’s all before people start having challenges (such as anyone sending to or from Canada this holiday season). So, every year she runs it, I and the hundreds of other people who look forward to this annual tradition are terribly grateful to her.

This year, my package arrived early (mine snuck out at the deadline and arrived, like the real Santa, on Christmas Eve). I always admire the folks who wait. And sometimes I let the box sit a couple days to get closer to Christmas, but I never make it all the way to the holiday. I’m too excited and impatient!

Kathleen, my Santa, hails from Delaware and put together a fanciful package full of books and other delights. First is a list of places I might want to visit in her home state (and nearby Pennsylvania), and since we’re just a couple hours away and since Delaware is home to my favorite beaches in the area, we will be checking them off. She also tucked in a couple rolls of pretty washi tape and a pen from her work, which, coincidentally and unbeknownst to her, is also the name of the neighborhood where I live in D.C.

Because she knew we’d recently acquired kittens, she included this delightful ornament, which I put well out of reach of the felines (although, to be fair, Coal has challenged my understanding of what that means).

Kathleen made this ornament for me. It includes quotes from The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies and a terrific book. It is also out of reach of the cats, because I think they would love to find their way inside to take all those quotation scrolls and squirrel them away under furniture.

There is tea and a single person teapot with a cherry blossom motif (it’s required with D.C. citizenship to love cherry blossoms), perfect for putting on a tray within reach as you read on the couch. Kathleen included some delicious spicy holiday jam, a local product filled with berries and jalapeño, and which has been giving my morning toast that extra something something to help start winter mornings.

And finally, the books. She gave me the first of the manga adaptations of Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, which I’m very excited to see how they put that together. She also gave me Evie Woods’ The Lost Bookshop, which looks so good. And finally, she gave me Elin Hildebrand’s Winter in Paradise. I’ve read the first two books in Hildebrand’s Winter Street series, and this is the first in a newer wintry series set in the Caribbean instead of Nantucket. I love a beach read when it’s cold outside!

Kathleen, thank you so much. I love everything and am looking forward to hours of reading and drinking tea this winter! Happy #TBTBSanta!

Once upon a time, I used to share the things I planned to accomplish, hoped to do, or might be interested in tackling over the weekend. That was, of course, back when I had a job and weekends were vastly different from weekdays and mostly before COVID (and before my warm-weather weekends often just became an opportunity to play volleyball). But I thought I’d bring this back at least for the winter as a way to encourage myself to get out of the apartment during daylight hours and to cross off some necessary chores with a minimal amount of accountability. (Really, there’s no accountability; once I put it down here, I may never get to it and may never feel guilty about that. But still, one must start somewhere. Name the problem…) Plus, who can argue with more blog content? I mean you could, but I’m not sure that anyone besides my mom and my BFF reads this regularly anymore, so why would you?

Right. Back to the potential to-do list for this weekend, assuming that whatever this cough is doesn’t turn into a full-blown cold:

• Go to the two libraries where I have holds waiting for me.
• Finish reading at least one book.
• Hand over this week’s compost at the farmers market.
• Tidy the living room.
• Bake some cookies.
• Set up my 2025 journal for the start of this year. (Yes, I was late in getting it.)
• Write a fave books of 2024 post.
• Watch the UConn-Georgetown game on tv. (It wasn’t on my radar this year and tickets are now $50+ to watch in person.)
• Send the rest of my new year’s cards. (Ahem. They started out as Christmas cards, but I got stuck.)
• Do another load of laundry.
• Get take out or take myself out to eat. (I’ve been so responsible this week while Rudi’s been away!)
• Start either the pair of socks I wound yarn for on Jan. 1 or the baby sweater for my friend’s daughter, who arrives in less than a month (that yarn is in the stash and I have an old swatch for the pattern; I just have to figure out where both are currently).
• Refill the tea tins.
• Replace the batteries on the fairy lights.
• Snuggle the kittens.
• Paint my nails.
• Sort out the veg drawer (hopefully before going to the farmers market with the compost), since it looks like something maybe died in there.
• Find the wall calendar and my new atm card, both of which arrived in the mail in December.

Okay, yes, that’s definitely an ambitious list. And I probably won’t get to all of it. But even a fraction would probably make me fell pretty good about things.

What are you hoping to do this weekend? Curl up and read under your warmest blanket? Watch a movie? (I recommend Flow and Emilia Pérez if you’re considering the theater) Get Christmas put away?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. D.C. gets about half a foot of snow. Rudi does the first pass at the sidewalks, after his flight is delayed until the afternoon, which means I only get stuck with about half the shoveling, rather than all of it.

2. Rudi’s delayed flight does mean he gets to accompany me to the snowball fight at Malcolm X Park:

3. Winter weather means winter foods — grilled cheese and tomato soup and paninis and cookies. Yum!

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the ten books coming out in the first six months of the year that we’re looking forward to most. Here are mine:

1. Back After This by Linda Holmes
2. Deanna Raybourn’s Kills Well with Others
3. Vanya and the Wild Hunt by Sangu Mandanna
4. Sonali Dev’s There’s Something about Mira
5. Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E. Smith
6. Grace Lin’s The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon
7. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
8. The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict
9. Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
10. José Andrés’ Change the Recipe

How about you? Are there books coming out between now and July that you’re particularly excited to get your hands on?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The kittens were so excited to have me return home after nearly a week away.

2. My folks and I make plenty of Christmas cookies, enough to keep them settled for a few weeks.

3. With Sarah unavailable this New Year’s Eve, Rudi and I wing our movie marathon. We expect to see both represented at the Oscars. Emilia Pérez is an oddball Spanish-language musical drama about a young Mexican lawyer who helps a drug baron transition to a woman and stars, among others, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez. But even better was Flow, a wordless Latvian animated film about a cat who must work with other animals to escape a catastrophe. It’s about cooperation and found family and climate disaster — and if you can find it, you should definitely watch it.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Jasen sent a Christmas card saying how much he values everything I do for the team and a gift for the kittens.

2. Sunday afternoon, I run across town in a desperate bid to finish my Christmas list. I am delighted to discover that Sarah, who’d been ill, is up and doing one final shift at her old job to help them out with the rush. She helps me with my shopping, and since she won’t be back in time to join us for our New Year’s Eve tradition this year, it feels particularly good to see her one last time in 2024.

3. Christmas was lovely, with a slow start to the day after Mum & I were up late wrapping. I think everyone liked their presents, the dinner was delicious, and we finished the night with The Bishop’s Wife, most of which Mum & I dozed through.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?