2020: The BEST List

About a year ago, I wrote:

Ugh, what a year. 2019, get thee behind me.
Bring on 2020. Please!

Little did I know what 2020 would have in store for us – for all of us.

My energy for writing an update this year is low. For one, I’m not sure what to say. I feel like there’s been so much already said, already written, already taking up space in our heads about this past year. I feel like anything I could say that attempts to capture what this year felt like would be incomplete.

So let’s not! Let me just give you the personal good news and bad news as it relates to our little family, and then we’ll give out some awards.

OK, bad news first:

• At the start of 2020, our cat Princess had a lump on her hind thigh. It grew before bursting in the spring, creating a wound that we’ve been tending all year, along with other various accompanying health ailments.
• Starting in March, we all started working and schooling from home. We thought this would last a few weeks, maybe a few months at most. It continues today and it is clear that there is a certain mental exhaustion that has built up over the course of the past 9 months due to this upending of our daily lives.
• In August, Katie was furloughed.

Here’s the good news:

• Our family remains healthy and generally happy. We are lucky to find ourselves on solid financial ground.
• For all the difficulties they went through in 2020, our children continue to grow into the humans we strive for them to be. They are often kinder and cleverer and funnier than we could possibly expect.
• In our first official annual post collab, Katie created the 20 awards below!

Wait, what’s this about 20 awards? What is this BEST list anyway? Enjoy this slideshow of the 20 awards we’re giving out as we wrap up 2020.

1. Best mask we bought years ago in Ashland for taking neighborhood walks:

This was from the first week of shelter-in-place orders, back when we still had a sense of humor. (Don't worry, we wear proper face masks now.)

2. Best Halloween costume-turned everyday look:

In 2019 Scott dressed up as a student from University of Britechester, a fictional school from the then-unreleased Sims 4 University expansion pack. Little did he know that within a few months, these bespoke sweatpants would become an essential component of his work-from-home wardrobe.

3. Best special occasion “grazing box” to make the fact that you have to celebate Mother’s Day, your anniversary, and your birthday at home more bearable:

Thanks, Top Hatters Kitchen, for helping us mark those special occasions.

4. Best online reunion of an original cast:

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

5. Best creative adaptation of a birthday tradition:

Cecily rides a carousel every year on her birthday. We weren't going to let a little thing like a global pandemic break that tradition.

6. Best response to a getting-to-know-you assignment on Seesaw:

Dogs, the smell of sharpies, and racism. In that order.

7. Best signature cocktail from an online wedding that we continued making because we liked it and already had the ingredients in the house:

The New York Sour. Congratulations, Catherine and Daniel!

8. Best recommendation from a librarian running a pop-up library in front of the elementary school:

Around Halloween, Simon asked the librarian at his school for a mystery recommendation. He did not disappoint. Simon's now working his way through this somewhat obscure detective series, published between the 1960s-80s. Many of the titles are not in the library's collection, so Mr. Fletcher has been lending Simon his own personal copies.

9. Best investigation:

My children are masters of observation.

10. Best birthday gift from 20 years ago that just needed a little elbow grease to get working again:

Like all sensible parents, mine gifted me an espresso machine for my 18th birthday. I hadn't used it in years, but when I realized my 38th birthday marked a full two decades since that last birthday at home I dusted it off, determined to get it back in working order. There really are very few things you can't fix if you watch the right youtube videos.

11. Best spirit week hairstyle crowdsourced by an audience on twitch:

When an 8-year-old girl asks the internet for "crazy hair day" ideas, the internet responds.

12. Best purchase that came in 21 boxes and had to be assembled over the course of two weeks:

The kids' quality of life skyrocketed when this custom CedarWorks playset finally arrived in November. After a solid eight months without access to any kind of playground, now they spend all their free daylight hours in the backyard playing.

13. Best movies to watch when you're waiting for the chicken wings you ordered, but the doordash guy gets a flat tire and shows up like three hours late, after his grandma comes to rescue him:

There's infrequent mild coarse language, guys.

14. Best 2009 video game to keep ten-year-old boys connected while under stay at home orders:

Thanks, Mayhew!

15. Best $0 costume thrown together the morning of a zoom movie script reading:

Scott as Governor Weatherby Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. More evidence that Katie's true calling is extremely low-budget costume design.

16. Best book randomly grabbed from a Little Free Library while out picking up a bag of leggings and pajama pants from someone in your Buy Nothing group:

Thoroughly enjoyed this one, and didn't even realize until I googled the author it that this was #12 in a series. Now I'll have to go back and read the others.

17. Best targeted marketing campaign that appears after ordering your brother in law something called a "butt fender" for Christmas:

I honestly have no idea what this company sells, but I wasn't willing to risk clicking the ad to find out.

18. Best surprise guest appearance by a marine mammal on a Christmas Eve hike:

This guy gave us the perfect excuse to show the kids Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

19. Best use of the gift cards you got for Christmas:

Took a walk the Sunday after Christmas, and came home with this Almond Cardamom Babka from As Kneaded Bakery, and my usual decaf Borgia from Zocalo Coffeehouse. Thanks to my mom and my sister, for supporting my neighborhood businesses!

20. Best collection of answers given in a game of Drawful 2:

Even now I can hardly read them without crying a little.

 
So that’s 2020. I hope you agree that these awards went to deserving winners and that you were able to win your 2020 Dai Family BEST List Awards Pool. May your 2021 be full of renewal and joy. I’ll see you in a few days with my recommendations from 2020.