2020 Hindsight: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2020: A Year in Review

Happy New Year all, so glad that 2020 is finally hindsight. Although there were some good things happening, it was greatly overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic. While bearing witness to some of the bad and ugly things, I also feel gratitude for the good things.

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OurCarpeDiem 2020 Year in Review

Looking back, I realize it was very much a mixed bag. Sometimes it is easy to reflect on all the negativity, so I decided to shout out to a bunch of positive things also. Here is to the year that started normal, but quickly turned into a quagmire of unknowns, social distancing and human suffering.

January 2020 : when we swam in the Caribbean and hiked through the snow, blissfully unaware of the developing crisis;
February: growing awareness of the virus, but still able to enjoy birds in Mexico:
March: my brother died just when the world came to a grinding halt;
April: social distancing by eagle watching;
May: “big travel” to Maine;
June: gardening and push ups;
July: more “big travel” to Vermont;
Augustus: counting people and socially distanced summer;
September: back to school and local trips;
October: looking for whales;
November: a toned down Thanksgiving and squirrel shenanigans;
December: The End, hopefully leading into a new, better and healthier 2021.

January 2020: Atlantis Bliss

The Good: In January 2020, the year started out awesome, when we traveled to Atlantis, Bahamas thanks to some advanced travel hacking.

Not only could we still travel, but we also could go to the gym. Working on my fitness, I happened upon a free hooping class. Since it was free, I attended, discovered I still love to hula hoop and have been addicted since!

Back then I didn’t realize that this did set me up with a perfect social distancing tool…

The Bad: We came home to snow, a lot of it… But some good came from that also: I reluctantly embraced Winter Hiking even with my MS.

The Ugly: Covid-19 had already escaped from China and was rapidly spreading around our world.

February 2020 in Hindsight: Last Pre-Pandemic Travel

The Good: We managed one last trip thanks to some time share presentations. During this trip to Cancun, we visited Isla Contoy for the first time.

The Bad: Did I mention the snow? When we returned from our trip, it was still there!

Of course there was good too: whimsical Winter Carnival art at Dartmouth College. Reviewing my pictures from early 2020, I still pause for a moment every time I realize that no one was wearing masks! How quickly social norms have changed.

The Ugly: Although there was no mask-wearing around town, on our flights back from Cancun (to Dallas), more than half of the passengers were wearing them. We thought they were overreacting. Then our flight from Dallas to New York, about a quarter were wearing masks.

On the last segment, flying from New York to Boston, almost no one was wearing masks. Neither were we, because well, COVID-19 was on our minds, but also far from our bed. Nothing to worry about…

March 2020 Hindsight: The S*** Hit the Fan

The Good: The first robin arrived and we did TONS of birding. Also the weather was getting better and we could walk around town.

The Bad: Covid-19 arrived in our town and around the globe, shutting down the whole world. Schools closed, travel was impossible and we had to stay home. As a result, we now had four kids living at home.

The good thing that came out of it was nightly dinner planning and cooking which we shared. And I started making Pandemic Popovers with my Corona Sourdough.

The Ugly: When my brother unexpectedly and suddenly passed away in early March, we would normally have attended his funeral service. But when I asked my neurologist about travel while on immune suppressing medication for my MS, he basically said “Don’t.” Even knowing it was the right decision, it still hurts.

At that point we expected to be able to travel to The Netherlands in July, you know, when the pandemic would be over. Hindsight is so 2020!

April: Birding For The Win

The Good: because we live in the middle of nowhere, there is lot of nature to socially distance. We hiked and birded a lot and spent tons of time watching eagles.

The Bad: COVID-19 was still spreading, but the good thing was that science showed that wearing a mask would help to flatten the curve.

The Ugly: The United States overtook Italy to have the highest death toll from coronavirus in the world, more than 20,000 people had died.

May: Quarantining in Maine

The Good: Even quarantining at our vacation home, not interacting with anyone, it was nice to be able to spend some time in Kennebunkport , Maine. And yeah, there were birds. And nature walks.

Late May, New Hampshire was doing a lot of Covid-19 antibodies testing. Thanksfully, both Tom and I tested negative for active Covid-19 infection and did not have antibodies.

The Bad and The Ugly: everything else. This pandemic was getting old. Looking back to the summer of 2020, actually things were getting better since at least we could somewhat socialize outdoors.

June: Gardening and Push Ups

The Good: I participated in the 100,000 Push Ups Challenge for our MS Fitness Gym. Go watch my awesome videos with birds, squirrels and push-ups. So another good thing was that I finally started to learn how to edit my videos and had fun doing so.

We gardened a lot, including finally building a deer fence.

Finally the numbers were going down, we felt happy that evidently we were flattening the curve in New Hampshire. We even were able to eat out (outdoors!) with the six of us at Salt Hill Pub!

The Bad: Deer are rats on stilts. In hindsight, I bet the fence would have worked, if only deer wouldn’t be able to lean over the fence so easily…

The Ugly: Sadly the hoped-for travel to see my Dutch family did not work out. I had been looking forward to connect with them after my brother’s passing, but at this point sure when it will happen. Even 2021 although promising, still feels iffy for travel.

July: Branching Out to Burlington

The Good: Big travel (yeah, less then 2 hours drive)! Our first hotel stay (using Hilton Honors Points) for a weekend in Burlington, VT. Before we traveled to Vermont during this Covid-19 crisis, we did lots of research on interstate travel rules. Back then, New Hampshire residents were still welcome in Vermont.

By now, we had been having family meals ever weekday since the middle of March. It was really nice to not have to plan meals during the week, apart from our night, and the weekends were filled with leftovers 🙂

The Bad: The chipmunks hacked our squirrel proof bird feeder and greatly increased our spending on black sunflower seeds.

The Ugly: actually this month was not bad. We could be outdoors, we could see friends if we masked and socially distanced. As long as we stayed within our New England bubble, we felt pretty safe.

August: Meeting Family in Maine

The Good: During August 2020 we started working for the US Census and made some extra money by counting people. Also, we spent a week in Maine with kids and grandkids whom we hadn’t seen for almost a year, so that was awesome.

The Bad and The Ugly: In hindsight, August 2020 was pretty good. Of course there were regrets about six month of missed / online learning and socializing for our high school and college students. Naturally, we wanted to travel farther than New England. But still summer 2020 was very manageable in our local bubble.

September: Still Safe in New England

The Good: in review, September 2020 was still pretty good in regards to the pandemic in our neck of the woods. While we drove around New Hampshire for the Census we met interesting people (at a distance), ate good food and even might have seen one or two birds. Our students went back to school and college, partly in person. Again, we spent a few days in Maine.

The Bad and Ugly: on Sept 22nd 2020, U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 200,000. A week later, the global death toll reached one million. Unimaginable numbers.

October: Staying in Our State

The Good: Since we expected even local travel would be over soon (NH winter!), we took a quick trip to Portsmouth to visit with friends and watch whales. We’d rather have gone whale watching in Quebec or touch whales in Mexico, but instead we enjoyed what we have here in New England.

We spent a weekend in Littleton, NH from where we explored the White Mountains and even managed to hike The Flume.

After a long hiatus, we picked up geocaching again. Great local activity during the pandemic.

The Bad: We didn’t see any whales on our whale watch this time, but we got rain checks for next year. Couldn’t find many geocaches either, but once in a while we hit one. Oh, and we had our first snow… I was not amused.

The Ugly: All over he country, coronavirus cases were going up. Thankfully, not yet in our middle-of-nowhere location, but in hindsight, we did realize that would be just a matter of time.

November 2020: Thanksgiving

The Good: Birding and geocaching always were good, enjoying all the birds on our feeder.

Meanwhile we had fun watching Squirrel Shenanigans, since they like bird food too! 😀

At this point, we were still able to get together for Thanksgiving with some of our local family. Instead of a big sit down meal spread out over the whole day, we chose to serve a brunch just for local family members.

The Bad: Not being able to get together with more of our family and friends. Thanksgiving is such a social holiday, I really missed hosting people. On the other hand, it was less work, which is nice too.

The Ugly: even in our relatively safe bubble cases were going up. Other years, we would have made travel plans for the upcoming year, but alas. We compromised by setting up a few mini vacations like 3 days in our own state and 4 days in Maine. Doing so gave us something to look forward to even during a dreary winter.

December: Christmas and New Year’s Eve

The Good: approval of a Covid-19 vaccine in record time. Followed by the relief I felt when one of our daughters got vaccinated! (She is an RN working with Covid-19 patients, so I had been both proud and worried for her).

For Christmas, We served a non-traditional meal with lasagna, ham and other goodies and had only local family over.

The Bad: I tried to deal with an MRI and claustrophobia but it turns out that Valium wasn’t the magic answer I had been hoping for. The only good that came out of it is that I had no new MS lesions so my medication is working!

The Ugly: because we already had hosted a small Thanksgiving and Christmas, we decided to not invite anyone for New Year’s Eve. So it was just the five of us, which in review was both fitting to end 2020 and sad that we couldn’t connect with other family members and friends.

Of course, I still made the Dutch traditional oliebollen, although I fried them non-traditionally in the air fryer. In lieu of getting together we delivered some to our local kids, but it just wasn’t the same!

Finally! 2020 is Hindsight!

What a weird and uncomfortable year we all shared in 2020. Though I realize we are in a very blessed bubble in our area, and we had enough resources to weather the pandemic, it still felt like living in a slow moving horror film.

When we went out, we didn’t know where the virus would be hiding. Even if we worked super hard to flatten the curve, Covid-19 popped right back up and killed more than 300,000 people in the US. Sadly, I suspect that most people by now know somebody who has died from the virus.

On the flip side, 2020 also brought us hope, with more than one viable vaccine, with creative ways to be together while being physically apart. Still, I am not sorry to see 2020 in our rear view mirror and am looking forward to a semblance of normalcy later in 2021.

How was your 2020? What are your hopes and dreams for 2021? Please share in the comments.