I finished a book this morning. It was a cute, holiday-themed romance that was perfectly adequate — too many characters left underdeveloped, but generally a feeling of coziness and caring even among the ones who should have been edited out.

But its ending annoyed me, because there was a proposal, and it involved all the secondary characters knowing before the main character, as well as the casual comment about the love interest having asked the father for his permission or blessing or whatever.

I recognize that both those things happen in real life. Proposals, like so many other events, have become an opportunity for grandiose public gestures. There is intense pressure on the person being queried for an affirmative response, and unless that person has already confided that a) they’d like to marry you and b) they’ve always hoped to be proposed to in front of a million strangers, I’d suggest you keep your important questions to a more intimate setting.

But the part that more sets my teeth on edge is the asking of parents (particularly fathers) for permission to marry their daughter. It smacks of old-fashioned patriarchy and transactional relationships (“I will marry your daughter, as long as you include three cows and a hectare of land”), and I find it a wholly offensive gesture, rather than a romantic one. If you’ve already spent any significant amount of time with your love’s family, you know whether they like you or not. And, at the heart of it, it’s really not about them. It’s about the person you actually want to spend the rest of your life with, and their opinion should matter most of all. For the record, I told Rudi early on in our relationship that should he ever feel the need to propose, if he asked anyone else about it before me, my answer would automatically be no.

I recognize that not everyone feels this way, including some of my close friends. And in the end, marriage — and how you get there — is one of personal preference. So, you do you. But every novelist that includes that scene as something they feel is to be admired is getting knocked down a star in my rating book.

Like everything else this holiday season, New Year’s Eve & Day were a little off, but otherwise fine. Usually, we spend the afternoon and evening of the last day of the year with our friend Sarah running between cinemas for a movie marathon and squeezing in a pizza dinner downtown.

Time with friends, dinners out, and movie theaters all being disallowed this year, we stayed in. We ate Christmas Eve leftovers (crepes and the last of the baked brie), watched a couple films (Die Hard and The Last Dragonslayer), and counted down the New Year by toasting with bubbly drinks and special French desserts I picked up on my way back from the eye doctor earlier in the day.

The traditional way to spend the first day of the year normally involves watching the Rose Parade and getting outside (Rudi usually rides with friends) before whipping up a traditional Southern New Year’s Day supper of greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread.

The parade was canceled, so I slept in, but we did eat the rest of the Christmas morning cinnamon rolls once I got up. It was raining heavily all day, so neither of us felt especially motivated to get outside, and I never got out of my pajamas. And then, although I’d bought the ingredients for the usual supper, I forgot about it until we’d decided on something else and had it reheating in the microwave. We decided it would be no less lucky to have it this weekend, instead.

So, there we have it. I’m glad to see the year switch over, but apparently not so much that I was willing to make a fuss over it. A low-key greeting seemed best; I’d hate for 2021 to think it needed to outdo last year in terms of memorability.

Happy New Year! May 2021 bring a return of the things we miss the most.

Here are three beautiful things that I was lucky enough not miss this past week:

1. A most breathtaking sunset, full of oranges and purples.

2. Eating lunch in the park on a warm afternoon with a book, a thermos of tea, and an ever-diminishing pile of correspondence.

3. My brother texts to say he and his partner been diagnosed with COVID-19, but were already out of quarantine and on the mend.

How about you? What’s was beautiful in your world as you rounded out 2020?

My dear acquaintances, I wish you laughter and music in 2021. I wish you time in the company of friends and loved ones. And I wish you confidence that the coming year will be better than the departing one.

Thank you for your companionship on our journey around the sun. You helped make a challenging year easier and I’m grateful for your company.

The year is rapidly running out of hours, which is great, to be honest. Very few people won’t be thrilled to see 2020 disappearing in their rearview mirror later this week.

However, there are still a few things that I want to take care of before I close out the year:

• Make some year-end donations. I’m lucky enough to be able to make charitable donations throughout the year, but I know a lot of nonprofits are really hurting this year. I want to do what I can, particularly for my local aid organizations directly helping those stressed by the pandemic (particularly since our government apparently remains unconcerned about everyone’s welfare).
• Spend down my transit and flex spending accounts. Again, I was lucky in that my h.r. person was able to get us the ability to stop putting money into our transit accounts we stopped commuting, but because I did so much work travel at the start of the year, I built up a little buffer I need to distribute.
• Write the last handful of holiday letters. We sent out most of our holiday cards on Christmas day, but I saved a few that I wanted to write actual letters in. I did a few yesterday and should write the last three tomorrow.
• Clean the kitchen and bathroom floors. Let’s be honest: While starting the year with a neat apartment would be great, it’s just not going to happen. But I absolutely can (and should) wash the floors in my two smallest spaces.
• Eat lunch outside tomorrow. I’ll admit eating my midday meal al fresco has been more enjoyable on some days than others this week, but I definitely think it’s been good for me to spend time outside. My time off is going to end on a rainy note (precipitation is predicted for at least three of the next five days), so I definitely need to be outside tomorrow, regardless of the temperature.
• Bake cookies. I haven’t done it for the first week of my vacation and I’d hate to spend the last five days without homemade treats.
• Finish one more book. For the first time in years, I’m not going to average a book a week for the year. I intended to really work on getting to 52 books during my time off, but at some point it stopped being a stretch goal and just became ridiculous. However, if I can wrap up one more book, that will put me at 40 for the year.

What are you hoping to wrap up before 2020 hits the road?

Postmodern Jukebox songs are always fun, and adding Olivia Kuper Harris and Rayvon Owen on vocals for “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” does justice to the Frank Loesser tune.

Rudi and I are still trying to figure out how to ring in New Year’s Eve this year. Like everything else in 2020, our decade-plus-long-tradition of a movie marathon at the cinema and dinner out with friends is obviously off the table. Cases are on the rise here, as well as everywhere else, so I put a hold on our plan to watch Wonder Woman 1984 with friends sometime this week until the numbers start going down again. We can most certainly watch movies online, which would make the last night of 2020 … just like every other night. I guess what I really want — a bonfire or a physical dumpster fire to go along with the metaphoric one we’ve had this year — isn’t really possible. But I want one anyway. I wonder if the neighboring businesses would mind if I borrowed their trash facilities for the night…?