December City Life 2020: Look Around, How Lucky We Are To Be Alive Right Now: Winter Christmas Tree Decor + Gluten Free Home Cooked Meals + Hauls & Fitness

I don't want to do a recap of 2020, we all lived it. I am grateful to be alive, and have my family alive, and that is enough. I know monthly I have many new followers and I know I have a sometimes dim out-view on life because I have always been sick like since I was born.

This year tested me, but in life, I cherish the little things and I am grateful always. I have pretty much lived this year isolated with my husband and I am grateful for that and for that we are relatively healthy.

Once upon a time, being "quarantined" together was all we had in college because we herein fact broke college students. This time this year gave him a respite from his job which is really demanding and gave us a chance to remember what it was like to be in each others presence 24 hours of the day{again}. We -I guess- kind of went through this also last New Years also when we vacationed.

I am almost a year out from going to the beach or seeing family, but I seem to feel the same as I did at the end of a decade 2020 was supposed to be different and a lot of us felt that way, but we see were we are. I am going to be honest, I am not the person to go to for happy feelings in the New Year. I am an Empath and I usually pick up on everything that is not positive lot of times (maybe because that is what people try to hide a lot) and I have always hated New Years, but there is this thing called hope and I always have that; we should always have that. So, every New Year my husband takes me wherever I want to go and he lets me just live, he hugs me, he kisses me, and he makes me feel ok.

*My family on my mom's side also heavily relies on New Years superstitions, but I don't get much into it, I think deep down it's there.

This entire year only 1 person held me down and it was him. We are spending a new year in a new home and creating new memories and hopefully that continues because other people just seem to think that I don't deserve that in my family. I thought I started the year shedding all the ill will, all of the people that wanted to hurt me, but it just made them hate me harder and I didn't know what to do with that, I still don't know what to do.

As cliche as it is I am just like "Thank You Next". People ruin relationships and don't even give a pause to realize you cut off the one person who "stanned" for you their entire life. I go hard for the ones that I love, but for years they have been hurting me to the point that I have been sick. I thought starting out a new year I could change things, but you can't change people who are set in their ways.

As much as I am over cliche New Years resolutions everyone deserves that second and third chance to make their life right, but right now I am wondering if you keep changing what you are doing and get the same results why are you trying anymore.

So the photos... I haven't been anywhere all year, we came here to take some photos and my husband was like its safe, lets go there (meaning across the street). I come to Hyde Park Village every year for the tree lighting; there wasn't 'tone this year (that I know of). This was my only tree sighting when last year I think I was near 100. I am not sad or lamenting it, I was actually glad for a moment to not be afraid and think about Christmas because it was less than one week until Christmas that I realized it.

FITNESS: Everything is kind of crazy right now as I am trying to regain a space in which I feel well enough to do day to day tasks. Some things definitely went down this Winter which I haven't spoken much about because I still have more doctors appointments. The last 10+ years my fitness week is always the same:

2 10-20 minute work outs per week (one yoga and one calisthenics and lifting my kettle bells). I get a lot of excursive doing the week cleaning and gardening etc and my metabolism is extremely high.

Diet: for years I have been a Flexitarian which is mostly plant/grain based with eggs, cheese, a small amount of dairy. We usually have Almond milk and coconut milk and water on hand. In general, I consume less then 10 ounces of meat per week, but I like meat broth and so that is why I do not claim to be a vegetarian.

As of right now, the last five years I was on a birth control that it seems I was also allergic to and I stopped taking it and lost 8 pounds (water weight) in 1 week. So, I am feeling a lot better, but still healing and needing to lay off of any hard workouts that would cause strain for me. So, for right now the workouts are really light- like no more than five minutes and no heavy lifting.

FALL CAME AND WENT... I always plan out my wardrobes for the seasons so I know what I want to wear and where I want to wear it to with Covid-19 I can fully expect to be ready to wear a look for photos and then get discouraged or scared out of going out even if it is "safe". I have a lot of hope in the Spring I will get more looks done because there will be more hours in the day. I will be ushering in the Winter looks now and looking forward to Spring.

This a mixture of Fall/Winter and Spring looks I am planning

And here is my lonely Vacation section where a lot of my planned looks are now over a year old, but hopefully will be re-stocked so I will have links when I can finally go on vacation again.