I had heard here and elsewhere of the idea of starting a fresh (ideally clearance-purchased) Advent calendar two or three days after Christmas (depending on whether it’s the kind with 24 doors to open or 25, and depending on whether you want to open the last door the day BEFORE or the day OF), so that it could be a new countdown to the presidential inauguration. While I didn’t see any clearanced Advent calendars THIS year, I did have one I’d purchased LAST year for $3 and then never used. It had bath salts and bath…spheres (not bombs, really, but a little round ball to put into the tub), which I don’t use, but it also had hand lotions and hand scrubs, so it seemed worth the $3-down-from-$30. Why was I telling you this story? OH yes, because I used that as my Inauguration Advent Calendar, and it was a nice idea, and I’ve set aside the bath salts and so forth for a giveaway later because I am sure someone else would enjoy those.

I don’t feel as desperate these days for Something To Encourage Me To Get Out of Bed, thank goodness. We’re less than a week into the new presidency and I wake up every morning, feel the familiar dread of the last four+ years, and then remember that Tr*mp is just some guy now, and he doesn’t have any power over us anymore, and that the new president is already more than three days into an actual plan to combat Covid-19 so maybe someday I can go back to work and the kids can go back to school and people can stop dying of this.

Still. That was 50ish days of opening up a little giftie each morning before my shower. A person could get into the habit. Which is why it was VERY HAPPY to discover/remember that last year I ALSO bought the Target 12 Days of Christmas calendar on clearance. And so I opened Door 1 on the day after Inauguration Day, and I am doing The Twelve Days of Inauguration. I realize that I should have opened Door 1 ON Inauguration Day, as one would open Door 1 on Christmas Day—but I didn’t discover/remember I had the calendar until the day after, and also I feel like Inauguration Day, like Christmas Day, already had enough stuff going on and didn’t need a little bonus giftie; and also, when I woke up on Inauguration Day things weren’t celebratory yet: the day after Inauguration Day was the First Morning Someone Else Woke Up in the White House. So I am just barely able to get over the feeling that I should have opened Door 1 at, say, lunchtime, and proceed from there. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE EXACTLY RIGHT IN EVERY WAY, SWISTLE.