Christmas is in…how many days?!

Is it time to panic? I think it’s time to panic. To be fair, my family’s been hit pretty hard with some challenges this year. My husband just tested positive for COVID, despite all efforts toward being safe. Three years he dodged it. Only to be hit with it five days before Christmas. What terrible luck! The good news is that it seems to be a mild case, and he’s already feeling a bit better, so we may have a chance of having our holiday celebration on Sunday. However — and here’s the tough part — we’re worried about anyone else coming down with it in between. We are quarantining, distancing, masking, and doing everything we can to avoid catching it, but you know how that works — sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw. If anyone does get it, then it’s game over. We are already having a second celebration the Wednesday afterward to accomodate my sister, who can’t be with us for Christmas due to having to work, so we could, theoretically, have the whole thing that day — if everyone’s okay. But prep-wise, which my mom and I are doing (as usual, and in some considerable pain as we both have a genetic hip/back issue that’s acting up), we don’t know what to do yet. Do we make the food as if we’re having it Sunday? Or do we wait a bit? I already cleaned the bathroom (my usual job) because regardless, that needed doing. But…having…

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Bad Habits are Hard to Break. Good Habits? Not So Much.

They say it takes twenty-eight days to make something a habit. I think that must be for normal people. I wear sunglasses. Not cute little fashionable sunglasses, but big, cover everything, I want to preserve my eyes sunglasses. I rarely go outside without them, and I never drive without them. At home they hang safely on my closet door. On the go, they hang from my neck or sit on my head. When I get to work, I take them off, wrap the cord around them, and put them carefully in the back pocket of my purse, which holds nothing else so I don’t accidentally scratch my sunglasses. Except sometimes, very rarely, I take them off, carefully wrap the cord, and set them on top of my computer tower instead. Pretty much every time I do that, I forget them and have to go back—sometimes unlocking the gate I just locked, unlocking the front door, turning off the alarm I just set… Three times I’ve had over a hundred days in a row on 750words.com and then blown it. Just didn’t write anything one day. Two other times, I was over two hundred days when I blew it! Yet if I drive up a certain street in Tucson while thinking of other things, I may well drive to my old house that I haven’t lived in for two years and not notice until I’m turning into the driveway. In short, I need to find a way to break the habits I don’t…

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