Holiday Greetings 2020

Our Thanksgiving was peaceful and restful just like the last year. We are lucky and unlucky to not have families living nearby during the Corona time. It must be very hard not to see your family around this time of the year. It has been an incredibly challenging year for many Americans and people who live here. The US is hit hardest by the Corona virus, death toll rising every week, and people are burnt out from the restrictions. The strange thing is we hear these sad news everyday but no one around us are really affected by Corona or none of the people we know of died from it. Our day-to-day life has not changed much except for switching completely to online deliveries and curve-side pickups for the past few weeks. We work remotely during the week, walk Uni 3 times a day, and cook most of our meals. That's our life now.

Bringing festivities in your life is very important when your activities are so limited. Every year, I look forward to the the seasonal crab, which is our special addition to the Thanksgiving meal. Just like the last year, we got 4 king crab legs from Whole Foods. They were terrific.

Normally, Nicolai would make Danish rice pudding for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this year, due to Corona, my baking skill has gone up a bit so I decided to make a strawberry short cake. This time, I mixed in cocoa powder in the cream to make it into a chocolate flavor.

A week after the Thanksgiving holiday, just before the official lock down in the Los Angeles county, we were able to get hold of a fresh Christmas tree at Low's. Since people were eager to get the best Christmas tree and making a long line, Nicolai used his best intuition to pick one from a group of wrapped trees that were set aside. We spent only a few minutes to get it to go. When we got home, we noticed that the tree was a bit skinnier than we expected but turned out to be a nice and slender Christmas tree, which my friend would call it more trendy this year.

With the tree leftovers, I made Christmas decorations on our side board. The cute corn and spherical shape candle holders are from Kähler, who is specialized in a ceramic production. Nobili (that's what they are called) is made with a traditional method but has the modern touch, which I really love.

Every Christmas, I like to buy a few new ornaments but this year, I just used what I had. Since California has relatively warm winter that makes us feel like spring is around the corner, I like mixing in some colorful items, but this year, I wanted the tree to look a little more grown-up, I limited to the colors to gold, red, and green.

Uni has already sniffed her gift and found out one of them has her favorite treats in it. She goes into this funny guarding mode and stayed around the tree for a couple of days. Eventually she got tired of it and drifted away but good that we have a guard, who makes sure our gifts are intact under the Christmas tree 24/7.

This year is coming to an end. The vaccine is in place for frontline healthcare workers now and the elderlies to follow next. Collectively, this year was a bad year, but for us individually, many things have worked out better in many different ways. I apologize for my vagueness but we are mostly hopeful what's going on in our life now. I am thrilled how this journey will take us and we are very much looking forward to the year of 2021.

By the way, the MUS pouch is still on Christmas sale. If you are planning to adopt a puppy for next year, it's not too late to get the training pouch. The sale is exclusively available on Etsy.

Greetings in Japanese

今年は本当に大変な年でしたね。アメリカでのコロナの影響は世界最大と言われていますが、私たちの周りには、ニコライを含め、コロナ陽性が出ても深刻な病気ななった人はおらず、死に至った人も誰一人いません。海外の知り合いや友達に心配されて連絡が来ますが、私たちも毎日悲しいニュースを聞くだけで、遠い場所の出来事のようにしか受け止められていません。その理由に、多くの比較的裕福なミドルクラスはほぼ影響がなく、ワーキングクラスや貧困に悩んでいるグループが最もダメージを受けているというのが悲しい現状です。

自粛生活は相変わらずですが、私たちはリモートワークを日々こなし、ウニちゃんを散歩させ、平穏な毎日を送っています。平和すぎて、世界で起きていることが嘘のような錯覚に落ちるときもあります。今年は、コロナを除けば、私たちにとって特別な年となりました。そして、来年が待ち遠しいというか2021年はとてもいい年になるんではないかと、期待の気持ちでいっぱいです。ワクチンもようやくアメリカに届き、来年の春頃にはこのパンデミックが落ち着くようにと日々願っております。

みなさん、くれぐれも体にはお気をつけてハッピーホリデー、良いお年を！