At the end of my Year in Review - 2019 I wrote the following:

This past year was pretty busy. Probably the busiest it has been for the past few years, and it’s looking like things won’t slow down much in 2020. While it may seem like the only constant is change, we’re so lucky to have so many amazing people in our lives and look forward to buzzing all around the world to see them in the years to come.

Are you cry/laughing, or as Mark likes to call it craughing, right now? Because I definitely am. Given the nature of this year, I debated whether or not to do my usual recap since it seems like we have spent the last nine months doing absolutely nothing… just like the rest of the world.

And then Mark and I were on one of our daily walks (oh don’t worry, it’s a highlight further down), discussing all the stupid stuff that’s happened this year, referring to periods of time as “Early Quarantine” and “Quarantine Round Three.” As we chuckled about various events, I decided eff it, I’m doing the year in review and it will be Rona-flavored just like all of our lives have been this year.

So here it is. The good, the bad, and the incredibly boring things that filled our 2020:

JANUARY started off rather normally with a planned flight to Phoenix to run the Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon and an unplanned flight to Nebraska for my grandmother’s funeral.

Time with friends and family was abundant in FEBRUARY as we spent a glitzy James Bond themed evening with Mark’s coworkers, flew to Austin for a wedding, and then hopped over to Las Vegas for Mark’s work. This was the first time I joined Mark on one of his many trips and we had a fabulous time visiting all of our old haunts and going to two VGK games in The Fortress. When we weren’t galavanting about in a different state, we started checking things off our DC bucket list, like visiting the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The month of MARCH was factually 32343 days long. We watched as cities across the world shut down and everything, everywhere came to a grinding halt. We hit cancel on planned half marathons in New York, West Virginia, Banff, and with all of our friends and family in DC. We (okay, mostly Mark and his office) learned how to conduct meetings over Teams, and spent many afternoons (okay, mostly me) yelling at each other to “shut the damn door” during competing calls in our new shared work environment. The evenings were spent drinking way too much for a Tuesday night and saying WTF a million times while watching Tiger King. The cherry blossoms hit peak bloom throughout the district and livened up our new daily walkabouts and bike rides.

Same song, second verse was the story of APRIL as Mark eagerly built his home office, growing weary of conducting all of his business from the floor of that one awkward room we kept our winter clothes in. We spent a majority of the month battling a bird that was utterly determined to build a nest on top of the light fixture outside our front door. Our neighborhood was committed to keeping spirits high, so we enjoyed finding new fairy homes along our walk routes. At the end of the month, we earned our finisher medals for the inaugural (and hopefully final) Stay at Home half marathon.

By MAY, we had lost most of the chill we had about quarantine and took the tiniest of trips into the district to do a drive/walk tour of the most iconic murals and also hiked around Harpers Ferry. We called a truce with the bird (christened Robbie Margot) and allowed her to build a nest in our backyard on top of a speaker as long as she promised not to swoop us every time we let the dogs out. Something definitely happened to the baby after it hatched — I’m suspecting our neighbor’s outdoor cat was somehow involved. By the end of the month, Mark’s rattail was coming in real strong. We enjoyed calling him Wolverine or John Ralphio (from Parks and Rec).

Things slowly started opening back up in JUNE, and we made our first outing in months to the cidery in our neighborhood, hanging out in their newly created outdoor seating area. We broke Lil Red out of storage and spent some days surfing it up on Lake Anna with a couple of quaranfriends. Both of us took the risk that many did and got our hair done for the first time in three months.

Over Fourth of JULY weekend while some parts of the country were dead set on getting the Rona with pool parties and BBQs, we were busy driving through Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia to our new home in Montgomery, Alabama. PCSing is stressful under normal conditions, add in a pandemic, and well, now you’re just having all of the fun. We did make record time on settling in and had our whole (new) house put together within a week of arrival. We spent the rest of the month exploring the set of Big Fish (yep, it was filmed here), frolicking in sunflower fields, and tearing up a new lake with Lil Red.

By the dog days of AUGUST, we were really trying to keep boredom at bay. Mark installed a squirrel picnic table outside my office window, and I found numerous hikes for us to do on the days we weren’t on the boat. We took our commitment to staying quaranfit a step further by converting the shed in our backyard into our lifting studio aka CHURCH (watch Dom Mazzetti if you don’t know). OMG I almost forgot! We found all of the weights for freaking FREE on one of our walks back in Virginia in March. We ended the month with a quick road trip to Destin to hang out with friends on the beach.

We spent a lot of time in the truck in SEPTEMBER, heading back to Houston to spend Labor Day weekend in my parents’ pool. Since we had already done about all there is to do in Montgomery, we spent most weekends having brunch in Birmingham and sampling craft beers al fresco at their budding brewery scene.

As the weather started to cool off in OCTOBER, we began opting outside more. We went camping in Bankhead National Forest, navigating our way through the Sipsey Wilderness. By mid-month, Mark’s school was on fall break so we rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge and hiked around the Great Smoky Mountains. At the end of break, the bestie and I decided to meet in the middle for a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina.

With COVID cases rising (again), we stayed put for most of NOVEMBER. We spent a weekend around the campfire, hiking and camping in Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville. We stayed home for Thanksgiving, drinking a little too much champagne and Zooming all of our friends and family. With so many nights at home, my knitting hobby turned to a full-blown obsession, and I cranked out half a winter wardrobe throughout the month.

By DECEMBER, we were back to March ops, getting food to-go and quarantining as much as possible, only leaving the house to get groceries and for Mark to go to work. A couple of negative COVID tests meant that my family could finally visit us and see everything that Montgomery has to offer.

So there you have it — 2020 is official O V E R. I don’t know how a year can feel so long and uneventful, yet finished so quickly all in the same moment. I feel like there should be a word for this (if there is, please drop it in the comments because it’s clearly needed in my vocab repertoire). While this year has been downright awful on so many fronts between the pandemic and social injustice, it has also opened my eyes to a lot of what I took for granted.

More than anything, I’m thankful for my health and the health of those nearest to me. So far everyone has followed the guidelines and stayed safe. I love you all, please keep doing what you’re doing. It’s so close to the end now, just hang on a little longer. Keep distancing, keep masking up, keep washing your hands… and when you can, get the damn vaccine!

I’m also thankful that I wasn’t ever alone. Even if Mark wouldn’t have been here the whole time (which he was and I’ll never not appreciate that), I felt so loved and surrounded by all of my friends and family. Simple things like Zoom calls to texts checking in or sending pictures of what was going on in their day helped bridge that physical connection we couldn’t have this year. You’re awesome and give me inspiration on how I can do more in the coming year.

With the new year just days away, I’m usually filled with excitement about future plans, but this year is different. This coming year, I’m filled with hope. I hope you are healthy and continue to stay so. I hope for not a return to normal, but a safer tomorrow. And I hope for an equal world because black lives matter.