Bibliomama

I'm going to have to commence with the rusty, awkward, been-away-too-long re-entry at some point, right? So: We wore pajamas. For days and days we wore pajamas. We were suitably grateful for our gifts thusly: also thusly: We demonstrated to others the proper use of their gifts (that's Eve showing me how I should look while sitting in my new sun-shaded chair watching her or Angus play baseball) We made Eve set the giant square table because she can sit on it and is thus the only one who can reach the middle: We took brief reading breaks when and wherever we could find them: We invited beloved old people into our home and tortured them by making them wear funny hats: There was comfort, joy, laughter, and enough wine to create some serious purple teeth (only my husband was smart enough for the end-of-evening closed-mouth smile): There. I feel so much better. Now back to my long winter's nap.

He comes home from the grocery store seven days before Christmas, when all the decorations are deeply discounted, Unloads the groceries, then wanders around the house with an enormous plastic tube, saying WHERE CAN I HANG MY GIANT BALLS?

We got back to the hotel with about an hour before Adonis was due to show up. Anne Marie asked me to read her some of The Sentimentalists to see if she found it less impenetrable when read aloud. What I read was nicely written, but I did see her point. We were having a lovely quiet reading time while she was lying down on the bed, and then Bonnie came in from the other room with some ice and tried to move around quietly and failed utterly, so we gave up on the quiet reading time and started mixing drinks again and getting prettified for our close-ups. Getting photographed was....odd. Adonis was great, and like I said there appeared to be no other guests in residence, so we sprawled ourselves and various camera equipment all over the lobby without disturbing anyone else. Bonnie said she got this idea from a friend of hers who had been surprised on her birthday with a bunch of old friends and a professional photographer, and she said she'd never had any pictures of herself whe...

The previous one, not the most recent one because I've been lazy and disorganized. Also, I'm too lazy to get up and get my camera so the pictures will have to wait. So five of us, who went to high school together, who all turned 40 this year (I guess we didn't allow any of those tiresome grade-skipper overachievers into our little group back then). At the Hotel Indigo downtown, with which I was unfamiliar and where I'm reasonably confident we were the only guests, but it was nice, and it is my favourite colour. Friday night four of us got to the hotel and had some drinks before going out for dinner. I still haven't figured out if I didn't drink quite as much as everyone else or if I'm just still a whiny self-conscious killjoy, because I did spend a lot of the evening once we left the hotel worrying that we were being too loud and obnoxious. We walked from the hotel to the Green Papaya and were served by a waitress who initially appeared very sweet an...

On Sunday I woke up in the Hotel Indigo. No, this isn't the story of how I downed a bottle of quaaludes and a fifth of Jack Daniels and had a little desperate fifties housewife interlude (what the hell are quaaludes when they're in my medicine cabinet?). I was at the tail end of a smashing girls' week-end with four of my amazing friends from high school (should have been five but Sheila was having pregnancy complications and couldn't travel, which SUCKS beyond belief, not least because she is the driest of dry wits and she would have complimented the sweet lychee liqueur beautifully). The forecast had been dire, but my friend Anne Marie assured me that outside was just a little cloudy and threatening rain. Then Patti came back from her run and after we chipped the ice off of her she said 'it's freezing rain'. Fuck. So then we had breakfast because if you're going to subsequently risk your life and your academic future you might as well be full of th...

So Monday night we went to a Christmas party. I was really freakin' tired from the week-end (more on that later. Yes, we're going to work backwards because then maybe I will get back to the first part of the week-end, which was magical), but the party was fun. My friend Collette usually hosts now, since we all had so many damned kids and they all got so damned big, and she has the biggest house so we don't have to be reminded of how many damnably large children we've all produced the whole time we're there. We all had a great time at the party and then we came home. Then the kids got their pajamas on and they were reading in my room for a few minutes before going to bed. I went into my room and Angus was lying on my bed with no socks on so I decided to take a look at this wart he's had on the bottom of his foot for a while because Matt had mentioned that he thought it was starting to bother him. So I lifted up his foot and looked at the bottom of it. The...

Eve's been having nightmares and coming into bed with me at five a.m.-ish the past few nights. Yesterday I couldn't fall back asleep, partly because she was snoring in my ear and partly because something was really bugging me. The fact that I haven't started my Christmas cards yet? Nope. The fact that I have to write an exam on Sunday for which I've barely studied and it will be following two days and nights of partying with some of my high school friends? Uh-uh. That I haven't bought Angus's video game that he wants for Christmas and forgot to double check the name of it before he sealed his letter to Santa? Nah. It was that I couldn't remember what we had for dinner on Saturday night. It was driving me bonkers. I knew we had ribs on Friday and chicken on Sunday, so I was thinking it was probably meatless, but I couldn't see myself making it when I tried to picture it, or putting stuff on plates and handing it to the kids, and we definitely ha...

A not-great photo from my not-great camera. It gets the job done, and it's right where the stairs are so I can't go up to bed without remembering to fill it. And the kids are quite impressed. Every day gets a chocolate and a cartoon or a suggestion for a Christmas activity or a little Christmas thing. Today they got pencils with toy soldier toppers and wrote their Christmas lists with them. I've read a couple of posts by people who are having trouble catching the spirit of the season. That's often me, but I'm feeling pretty good at the moment. I'm boxing up Christmas presents to ship to Edmonton, London and Thunder Bay, and it's only December sixth! Do you know what this means? This means we could possibly not have to pay the 'equivalent to your firstborn child AND your favourite limb and we MIGHT be able to get it there for Christmas' fee at the post office! I went to the library on Saturday (after my husband tried to vacuum my dress off m...

So today in the kids' advent calendar hat/stocking thingies I put chocolates and two of these cookie cutters, so we could make ornament cookies tonight: I can't for the life of me decide if I should let them use this one or not. What would you do?

Look at me, posting because I want to not because I have to. Angus got his Scholastic book order today. I recently read Nan's rant about Scholastic books and had yet another 'wow, sometimes I am wholly uncritical and sheep-like in my ability to just do stuff without examining its underlying potential for evil' moment. Gee whiz, man, it seems so innocent! They bring home flyers with wonderful beautiful precious BOOKS in them and I wrote a check which, come on, that's not like real money, that's like play money, and then I forget about it and wonderful beautiful precious BOOKS appear. Clearly I will have to spend some time examining the Scholastic ideology because I'm coming off a rough month and I've been migrainey that past couple of days and I'm still unclear on the exact nature of the evilness, but I'm willing to learn. But this is not about that. This is about the books I ordered before the evil was revealed in all its leering drooling evi...

My husband: "You cooked. I'll clean up." (cleaning up noises) "This used to hold a grasshopper. Can I put food in it?"