Happy Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year!

I hope you had a good one if you celebrate, or if you’re still celebrating. It’s as good a time as any to get some Chinese food, or perhaps try to wrangle some money out of your elders.

I was a little behind the game, which comes as no surprise to anyone. Though, if you’d like to feign surprise, I would gladly take it.  A day late and a dollar short, I finally wrangled the kids into dressing up into some vaguely new year-ish outfits and then took a few photos of them.

There’s lots going on, shipments floating around the universe, the imminent future swimming in murky uncertainties. A missing TWSBI box originally destined for us has been located in Memphis, and we’re once again grateful for Philip at TWSBI who handles many things at once. Sailor inks have come in, and here I am, at night, listening to my audiobook, making ink samples, debating which inks I should fill up a pen with now that I have a bottle out and open. I finally worked it up to go into the library to pick up my holds, some of them on their final day: I have some overdue books that I’m still working on, and now that the library, only open for curbside pick up, has a librarian checking you out, and possibly investigating your overdue books and fines that pop up on the screen, I’ve been a bit dodgy. Outrageous UPS brokerage charges continue to plague my internal sense of justice, although I am mostly mollified by how friendly our UPS driver is.

Caleb is returning back to the throng of the classroom next week, and I feel a bit like I’m sending him out into the wilderness.

But we are grateful for our health and an ever-expanding definition of family, and the year ahead. We have big plans for both Valentine’s Day and Family Day: heading into the shop, futzing around, watering the plants, chastising the children for crashing into things, clearing out some of the junk in Jon’s office. All the loves of my life.

In celebration of Lunar New Year, we’ve made a $500 donation to the Canadian Council for Refugees.