the traditional pre-christmas anxiety is ramping up, with all the gifts brainstorming and buying, and also tons of christmas postcards to write. i hate how rushed the season feels, with its constant background worry… but despite this, i always fail to prepare for it in advance, so it all ends up just piling in these weeks and taking its toll. i know there is a way to improve on this, which is just to start preparing earlier… and yet, half of me feels like we’d just stretch the worrying over a longer period of time. anyway, i think we’ve made good progress on the preparations. we’re almost done with what we can do from here, and the rest will have to be done from the north.

in the meantime, what else have we been doing? the town is decked in its christmas lights, and we’ve been there a few times to stock on stamps or watch movies. this week we watched the secret agent with friends and it was great, though difficult in parts. it feels like this year has been a year where brazil’s reckons with its military dictatorship years and tells those stories.

we’ve been to the gym sporadically, but my tendonitis is still lingering, made worse by all the postcard writing, and so there hasn’t been much improvement there. the sauna does help morale though!

i also haven’t been reading proper books much, seeking solace in comforting fanfiction instead. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well. i’ve been watching a lot of “bon appetit, your majesty” on netflix though, and mostly enjoying it. we even bought some gochujang! :D

and paulo ran the s. silvestre in vila real and improved his time from last year! woohoo!

one thing that made me happy this week was this little tired duck that was a bit of an impulse purchase among all the christmas gifts. the silicone body is super soft and you pat it gently to change the brightness of the lights. it’s been keeping me company and it’s just so cute!