taking notes: december 2025
Welcome back to Claire From Online by me, Claire, from online. Let me get a LOUD heck yeah in the comments for a new year!!! I can’t wait. I do typically subscribe to the idea that you can start anything you want at any time, but there’s no denying how great I feel with a clean slate, As Told by the Calendar.
This month felt pretty long, but also flew by, and I can’t tell you everything that happened, because I didn’t do an awesome job at documenting The Little Things, which are, of course, Everything.
(December is, weirdly, my least-journal-y month overall, even though I do love a little wrap-up reflection time during any downtime during the week between Christmas and the new year. As of publishing, I have not yet done anything of the sort. I have big plans for this evening including my journaling desk and a crisp ginger ale. Once I get out of the bath I’m about to draw. We’re getting COZY tonight on this NYE in! My fav.)
I spent the first half of December working, puttering, and resting; damn near the last half was spent in Illinois. We got home two nights ago, and I’ve spent the entire time since then sleeping, doing laundry and freshening up the space sans Christmas decorations.
I don’t know where to start, really, but I’m thinking I’ll just yap about one thing and see where my train of thought takes me. This could be fun.
Speaking of Christmas decorations
We canceled our extended family Christmas gathering on my mom’s side due to a case of the flu/strep in the host family. LET ME BE CLEAR, I am very glad we did not gather, but it’s a bummer all the same, because I love my family!!! My mom had shingles during the first half of December (“AARP members, get your shingles vaccination” - Melissa1). She brought her boxes of ornaments and garland and woodland animals up to her condo from her storage unit on a different floor in case we wanted to decorate when we were all together, but we decided against it (‘because we’ll just have to take it all down again in three days’ - fair). When we didn’t have anywhere to go on Christmas morning, we decided to complete THE GREAT CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT AUDIT OF 2025 before putting everything back downstairs. We’re an eclectic/memento ornament family: everything has a story. My mom wanted to sort the ornaments and label them by era or style, attaching an anecdote if indicated. Some of her categories included:
birds (lots of cardinals present)
80s miscellany
large balls (mom wouldn’t let me label it ‘big balls’)
shiny orbs
It was honestly a lot of fun, and of course we cried.
Other times I cried on this trip:
looking at the Macy’s windows (which were dressed up like Marshall Field’s windows, iykyk)
finding an owl ornament three seconds after I said I would buy an owl ornament if I found an owl ornament (first Christmas without my aunt)
putting on some Christmas hymns for my grandma at the hospital (more on that later)
during the last fifteen minutes of a certain movie that I can’t get through without breaking down
HEAVING SOBS
December favorites
Book: Heart the Lover by Lily King. Writers & Lovers was my 2020 fav. HtL was an easy five-star read for me.
Little Treats: The rosemary apple oat cap from Field Notes at The Compton in Bentonville. My favorite chip dip. Afternoon tea bun from Lost Larson in Andersonville. Eric and his dang hyperfixation with the Nutella biscuit cookies. I guess this was November, but Eric unknowingly broke into the golden Oreos that were reserved for a cookie jar for my postpartum bestie, so I stole a few of his Nutella biscuits on reserve and accidentally recruited a new member of Nutella biscuit hive:
Movie: Marty Supreme. I loved the ending. So did Hunter Harris. PLEASE DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS. I got to take Eric to my old stomping grounds, AMC River East 21, and he was gagged that you go up like three escalators to get into the dang place. So many memories there. I also rewatched The Holiday for the first time in YEARS. What a score. Of course, other holiday rewatches included Christmas with the Kranks, The Holdovers, and Love, Actually. Muppet Family Christmas / Muppet Christmas Carol were revisited several times, and I sobbed my little heart out to It’s a Wonderful Life.
Simple Joys: Christmas cards peppering the fridge!! My jelly bean aunt!!2 Sending and receiving ‘podcast voice notes’ with my Hannah Moerman and my Nutella biscuit-loving bestie Naomi while driving up and down good ol’ Route 66.
A luxury or two: My mom taking us out to Bavette’s and scoring us a last-minute table after we decided we’d just try our luck at the bar. I could have rolled home! We got sourdough, Lyonnaise salad, steak of course (AVEC FRITES thank u), truffle mac, creamed spinach, and a few super yummy drinks (NA for mom & me). Also: going to a Blackhawks game. They lost 7-3, but eating a dessert plate at the club level??? Pretty nice. I had two really syrupy fountain Sprites from the bar. Felt like I was a tween living it up at Maggiano’s with the fam.
Sandwich: And I’m so serious about this — The Alamo from Buc-ee’s. It has turkey, pepperjack, tomato, and jalapeños on ciabatta. It’s soooo good cold, and it usually means I’m into hour seven of a nine-hour road trip, which makes it taste that much better. I just recreated it tonight, minus tomato plus mayo, toasted for a little, and that hit, too.
Being a Chicagoan???: So I’m at a high school friend’s Bears watch party on year nine of living out of state. We stayed in touch after we graduated, which was easy, but the next challenge was staying in touch after we broke up with the guys we dated post-college who were in the same friend group. We reconnected after a year or two & on this trip, I got to meet her boyfriend and of COURSE he played baseball with this kid in my youth group (never mind we both grew up in different suburbs & went to church in the city), ran into ANOTHER guy from a different suburb who ALSO went to the same church (at one point I’m just looking over at him and go [FULL GOVERNMENT NAME???] — the last time we saw each other was 2010). Then — and who doesn’t love an inter-generational work bestie? — I ran into my mom’s emotional support millennial from a few years back, just recognizing her from pics (we do follow each other on IG, lol). Biggest small town in the world, so they say.
Purchase: Probably my new pen storage (a 20-pen case from Galen Leather Co.). A Soolla Studio bag! And a sizable haul from The Gap to replace and instate some much-needed basics. I guess that’s a decent segue into…
My Low-Buy Year (there will at least be An Attempt)
Don’t laugh at me, I’m still hormonal. I can’t BELIEVE it’s been three full years since my ~little series~. I know that’s how a lot of you found me, and whether or not you stuck around because you like my vibe or because you’re secretly holding out hope that I transition back into getting harassed online for not going to the library and getting an Onyx salt mocha once every few weeks is none of my business (I do enjoy the gall of people who straight up comment on my TikTok saying “when are you going to stop buying stuff? I followed you for a reason”). Alas, this may be good news to some of you, and I’m happy to share it: I’m sick of my current habits & patterns, and I’m ready to rein it in a little bit! Let’s talk about it here and not tell the other apps.
“But Claire! I just started following you! What are you talking about?” further reading:
In order to prep for another shot at this, I had to get a few things sorted, which included being idiotic in certain ways:
buying hella stationery during my trip to Chicago (WHICH WAS ALWAYS PART OF THE PLAN, MIND YOU)
using my Christmas money to get Bombas socks and a dang silk pillowcase because both have been on my wishlist for years
doing a little stock-up trip for dish/hand soap, laundry detergent, multi-purpose cleaner because it feels better doing it on 12/30 than 1/2. Clean slate!! The ledger is wiped clean! My 2026 Hobonichi Weeks doesn’t have to hear about it (jk, we all know I started mine in December, but I won’t start tracking until 1/1)
aforementioned The Gap haul
taking off my gel polish because paying for manicures = da old me
Ahhhh, NOW I’m ready.
My motivations are still to pay off consumer debt (I came SO CLOSE a couple summers ago and got lazy, but I Know I Can Do It) & honestly — more than last time — I want to have less stuff. Why do I have seven open shampoos? A pal just texted me a pic of a cutesy girlie loveshack fancy/matilda djerf - lookin’ jacket with bows on it from Walmart. “This would look soooo cute on you”. I don’t have the heart to tell her “I’m actually NOT DOING ALL OF THAT right now. I’m UNSUBSCRIBING!!!” because she was sweet to think of me and it IS cute, so I just say ‘ahhhh omg!! cute!!!’ and it WOULD look cute on me!!!! But you don’t have to buy everything you like, etc. and so forth. And then I will continue to sort my sticker sheets, which doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.
With that: what are my rules? Bro, I don’t know, tell me YOURS FIRST. Again, I don’t really know if I’m doing the original “laying it all out” x dancing around like a monkey w/ cymbals via short form video content because that distracts from the plot. Did you know just the act of setting goals triggers a release of dopamine? It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it at length, it’s that I’ve decided I actually can’t (not at least in the way that I did initially). You understand. You don’t understand? Would you like a Chicago dog in a blanket for coming all this way?
In Case You Missed It
I got my mom to spill about her 2026 planner stack.
I tried to do vlogmas but it all fell apart — I’m just having fun. Would be cool to just clock 40ish days in 2026
Driving Around Like an Asshole: Hitting 149,000 miles on my Subaru
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