So, the New Year will soon be upon us. The closer it gets to the next year, the more I want time to slow down. I wanted 2020 to continue indefinitely and the same now holds true for 2021. The analogy is this: as the year progresses, it increasingly endears itself to me. Very odd. I suspect that I have an increasingly harder time with the passage of time.

I can’t say that 2021 was a great year. My primary focus was on the Bright Lights Book Project, so I ended up spending less time than I would have with the horses. I have my regrets about this. I gave up a year of writing in order to keep the project going, but well, I am now making up for lost time. I now am in a writing group, with

Alys with three pallets of wearhouse books

one other person, and it’s going amazingly well. Bea is a serious writer with a good head on her shoulders, which makes this well worth my time. I now have an audience and am now working on writing about the project.

If there is one problem, I am not writing about the distant past – the story is continuing. Today, for instance, I went with Milena and checked out the Kid’s Kupboard facility. The owner, Lynette, supervises workers who make and get meals to kids who live in the Mat-Su Valley. She is situated on 83 acres in a former house that’s a state of the culinary art facility.

After meeting with Bea, I sorted through about 20 of the boxes that came this week from the Mat-Su School District Warehouse. I was content because I was able to take my time and take a look at the books. I also was able to separate the kids and young adult books.

And there was the pandemic, which put a crimp on any travel plans I might have had. And while I don’t like wearing a mask, I have continued to do this – Pete says that there are one of two ways of dealing with the Covid virus. You can get immunity by exposing yourself to it or by getting the vaccine. I chose the latter: the hard way and the easy way.

Thank dog that we now are both well.

And thank dog for the dog. Shadow has become an excellent canine buddy – and it has given me great joy in watching her mature and in watching her and Pete both do so well together at agility.

I will remember the last few months of this year as being very erratic weather wise. It was cold from mid-October to mid-December. We finally got snow. Then the warmer weather rolled in and melted the snow. When finally, it grew cold, the slop and glop turned to ice. Ice, this is what we are now dealing with. I’ve never seen it this bad – the driveway and the roads are glare ice. My wrist and shoulder joints hurt because I’ve been chipping horse poop out of frozen snow.

Right now, this is the year that is, rather than the year that was. I would like to keep it this way.

Next: 362. 12/31/21: Where We Are, Where We Will Be