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Welcome to our online Christmas letter! Not a ton to report this year, as Loch’s demanding job keeps him crazy busy (on average, 5½ 12-hour workdays a week) and Eileen’s litany of aches and pains keeps her wanting to stay close to home. We did capitalize on that by finally undertaking a huge home improvement project, unfortunately the annoying kind that costs a lot of money and leaves you nothing very exciting to show for it: we endured a lot of noise and disruption to replace the badly damaged wood siding on the south and east sides of the house with a new composite material that promises to long outlive us. Eileen, who has made it her life’s work to create gallery walls in every room of the house, was chagrined to learn she had to dismantle them so the carpenters wouldn’t knock things off the walls while prying off the old siding and hammering the new stuff in place. One thing to look forward to: we closed up an unused door in our family room, and this is going to turn into a built-in bookcase which is basically Eileen’s favorite thing (empty shelves to put things on!), so there is that to look forward to early next year.

Liam sought jobs all year, learning in the process that there is a whole group of con artists that target jobseekers. He was remarkably good at identifying the fakers, but not as effective in identifying potential employers, no doubt because he is still seeking a fully remote job, which rules out 98% of the opportunities. After many months of unsuccess, he has been hired once again as a temporary contractor at Spencer’s company, which we must view positively since they sought him out. Liam’s current career plan is to pray for a full-time job to open at the company and simply see where things go after that. We are certainly rooting for this plan because Liam is currently paying for his own health insurance, which adds up in a hurry. Outside of work, when not socializing with his college friends (mostly online – Loch and Eileen are fascinated by Gen Z’s concept of socializing), he loses sleep, appetite, and probably blood, sweat and tears thanks to obsessing about the perennial ill fortune of the Chicago Bears, with modest encouragement from Loch.

Maisie’s year has largely focused on stability. She continues to live in her own apartment on the near North Side of Chicago with her beloved cat, Finley. She’s still working at a large agricultural organization, where she’s been for 2 ½ years. She designs a web and iOS-based app for farmers to manage their farms, including tracking costs and revenue from harvested crops. She received a promotion in July, which has allowed her to do the same work but at a higher pay rate (truly a best-case scenario). A departure on her team this year also means she has more leadership responsibilities, which lends itself well to her naturally strong opinions and bossy tendencies. Dating continues to prove itself difficult, as she feels being on dating apps is like screaming into a void. She had some success this year but aims to start fresh in the new year. She traveled less than the previous year, only visiting Disney World in March and NYC in September to see bestie Myrna. Next year will pick up again, with trips to Florida and multiple NYC visits, as well as a summer adventure in Canada. Her theatre involvement this year was light, performing for cabarets and auditions. She feels lucky to have such constant plans with friends that she cherishes the rare night in.

Spencer’s big news  is that his formerly long-distance girlfriend Steph made the big move from LA to the Chicago area, and the two of them now have their own apartment in Highland Park. They both work remotely, Spencer as a broker operations auditor in the health insurance industry (working with companies, not denying claims for deserving individuals!) and Steph for her alma mater USC as a business analyst. The nest continues to empty! We feel lucky to see a lot of the two of them. Spencer is now on a fully gluten-free diet (joining Loch and Liam as diagnosed celiacs), and he and Steph have introduced us to more gluten-free dining options, including sushi and pho (Vietnamese) and when Steph has time to cook, birria and tamales. In late October/early November, Spencer and Steph spent 11 days on a trip to Tokyo with a bullet train visit to Kyoto thrown in for cultural enrichment—most of the rest of the trip was spent indulging in pop-cultural enrichment at The World of Harry Potter, Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Disney Sea, and a cat and rabbit/hedgehog cafe. Fun fact: Steph and Maisie share a birthday (as in, they were born on the same day of the same month in the same year). We are hoping that Steph’s first full experience of a Chicago winter won’t send her fleeing back to sunny Southern California, so with that in mind we are crossing our fingers that the recent trend in mild winters – by Chicago standards – continues (though it is not encouraging that she considers weather in the 50’s “freezing”).

Eileen continues to source vintage goodies to stock her two antique mall booths, but has slowed down quite a bit due to wear and tear on her knees. She is still sporadically active on Instagram; you can follow her vintage pursuits there (@stuffandnonsense503). There has also been the distraction of having the house worked on for several months, and then her dad Jim has experienced some health challenges this year. In August he was hospitalized for GI issues, and after being forced to endure the installation of an NG tube for many days, plus having lots of annoying tests administered, it was determined that he has a “gastric volvulus”. In his case, this means his stomach is folded and, thanks to a severe hiatal hernia, is positioned in the wrong place in his body. This has affected his ability to eat, which is heartbreaking because he was always a man who loved a good meal, definitely a member of the “live to eat” club. There was a period in the hospital where they were telling us he wouldn’t survive without an invasive and risky surgery (not doing that to a 97-year-old!) but somehow things seemed to stabilize, and after a stint in rehab, he returned home in October. He has good days and bad days, has experienced some cognitive decline but can still laugh at a bad joke and recognizes his family members; unfortunately, he has lost a ton of weight, so to get him extra help and support we put him in hospice in November. This will allow him to continue to live in his memory care apartment, rather than having to move to a nursing home. He still has his wonderful private caregiver, Martha, who is now his favorite person, which doesn’t bother Eileen at all, in  fact she is now also Eileen’s favorite person, thanks to the constant and nurturing care she provides for Jim. It is hard to predict his prognosis, we’re taking it week by week, but for now he is hanging in there.

Loch has been dealing with a still larger team at work amidst a challenging year for his company, to which the company has needed to adjust. As a member of the leadership team, he finds himself traveling more often but fortunately still relatively infrequently. Managing through video call is becoming a necessary skill, with so many teams dispersed across the country (Chicago, L.A., New York, Boston, Denver) and across the world (U.S., U.K., Argentina, France, India, Australia). He did figure out a viable commute to downtown Chicago based on taking the train plus a fair amount of walking, and is in the office at least two days per week. At home, the garden has improved with a special new fence excluding the deer (except when people leave the gate open – grrr!), which has enabled him to learn by process of elimination which plants are eaten by rabbits.