Christmas plans abruptly canceled, but some lovely, beautiful friends jumped to my rescue to invite me to share Christmas with them. Wonderful and touching – I probably will stay home anyway because I like spending holidays alone. But I don’t like being jerked around or having the rug pulled out from under me last minute. It’s all for the best.

I can hang out in bed drinking tea and watching movies (documentary Blackfish right now – always super disturbed by documentaries involving humans acting cruelly and stupidly toward animals. I am totally sickened by this). It reminds me though how gorgeous the Pacific Northwest is. I write about cruelty to whales – just as I hear the snap of a mousetrap going off in my bathroom. Brilliant. I’m a killer. Sure, of vermin. But a killer all the same. Where, oh, where is my gallant, mice-clean-up househusband now?

The weather is the strangest, least wintry, least Christmassy I have ever experienced since moving to Sweden/Norway. I don’t mind – it’s warm, very windy, rainy. It just feels unusual for this time of year.