Merry Happy Whatever

 There is actually a Netflix Show with this title now which totally ripped off how I used to sign off on my Christmas cards because sometimes I can't bring myself to use conventional greetings or valedictions.

We didn't have snow (in fact, the boys played catch earlier in the day) and we didn't have my sister and her family, but we had settled down to that, and otherwise it was a really nice Christmas. Angus is here and my parents came on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Christmas Eve we do finger foods and we played the Boomers vs. Millennials Quiz Game and everyone actually knew some answers, which was good, and the wrong answers were even funnier, which was better (What movie did Jodie Foster win her first Academy Award for?" my dad: "S....Streetcar... you know... she was a prostitute" Me: "Do you mean Taxi Driver?" My dad: "streetcar, taxi, whatever" (It was actually The Accused). There was a question about a British graffiti artist and Angus answered 'Banksy' and I was shocked and he said "that's the only British graffiti artist I know", as if I still wouldn't be impressed that he knew even one. I guess college has made him more worldly.

Then my parents and the kids exchanged gifts because my parents wouldn't be there the next morning. They gave Eve an Oodie, which she immediately put on and then was immediately irritated that Lucy thought this just made Eve into a giant walking Lucy Blanket. We got my dad some of those tiny chocolate bottles with booze inside for old time's sake, because I remember thinking they were the height. Angus got a new golf club - my parents helped him buy his first real set of clubs when he was home in the summer and using golf as a consolation for not being in New York playing baseball for the Geneva Redwings. He was very happy with it.

Matt drove my parents home and we hung out for a bit more and then the kids pretended to go to bed so I wouldn't have to stay up late and wait to put out the presents. I remembered the year I thought it would be fun and nice to wrap all the presents on Christmas Eve with a prayer of thankfulness that I am not that much of an idiot anymore. I realized that I had bought way too many presents again and consoled myself with the thought that 1)pandemic and 2)my kids are really nice, thoughtful, grateful, unentitled people despite my best efforts to turn them into monsters so whatever, we'll go minimalist next year (ha ha like fuck we will). 

I was up before BOTH kids on Christmas Day which, for anyone who knows us is super weird. We made coffee and tea and waited until Eve came down and then woke up Angus. Their stockings are giant affairs made by my mom when they were babies, and I wrap everything, so opening the stockings is just as much fun as the big presents (and I still couldn't fit all the stocking stuff in the giant stockings, refer back to my Present-Buying Problem). There's always some things that I think are nice but the reaction I get is bigger than what I anticipated - this year it was the purple Black Panther golf balls for Angus that he thought were insanely cool. 

We facetimed my sister's family to open our gifts from each other, which was really fun. My sister got Morse code necklaces that spell out Fuck Off for Eve and me. I got her David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day because she is a chemo pharmacist in a hospital and I thought the short, hilarious essays would be good for her mental health. I got my niece this mug, which was a big hit, and my brother-in-law this shirt which we ended up getting for almost everyone because Matt almost asphyxiated himself laughing so hard when I found it. I also gave my niece a voodoo doll ornament to smite her enemies. My nephew we gave Cat's Cradle and my niece told him "oh, that's Vonnegut - if you read it in public you'll get chicks". 

The biggest hits of the things they didn't know they were getting were probably the cold-brew coffee maker for Angus (he drank the rest of Angus's coffee cold every morning when he was home during lockdown), and the photo printer for Eve - she and her five friends are making their own yearbook). 

Lucy made it her mission to sniff and lick every single present before it was opened. She opened her own present and was visibly excited by the new toy (the video is ADORABLE but apparently too big to upload, goddammit) which made Eve exclaim in exasperation that capitalism and the Thrill of the New SHOULDN'T WORK ON DOGS. She eventually wore herself out and crawled under Eve's new fuzzy hoodie and used her new socks for a pillow.

My parents came back in the afternoon and we had a really nice dinner - we did the turkey and they did the sides. We did Christmas crackers and Eve was thrilled with her tiny deck of cards and made Angus play Go Fish with her. 

My parents are awesome.

After dinner Eve insisted we play her new game Poetry for Neanderthals - you have to get your team to guess a word but your hints can only be words of one syllable. If you use more than one syllable you get beaten with an inflatable club. It's harder than it sounds - you think you've got the hang of it and then you find yourself saying 'weather' or 'money'. The funniest was probably Matt saying "my day, your day. Hat" and then stopping. We thought he might be having a stroke, but he thought that was sufficient for us to guess "birthday" (me: "um - 'day you were born?' him: 'shut up').

Angus disappeared halfway through the night because I had asked him to wait to shave his beard (and leave the goofy moustache) until after Christmas pictures.

We had a poinsettia and a bottle of Oyster Bay chardonnay (that my mom and Matt drank Christmas Eve) and Nanaimo bars for remembering Nana Barb. We used Nana's Cowslip Spode china for Christmas dinner. Eve drew a poinsettia picture for Matt (Nana Barb used to fill the house with them). She drew me a picture over the music for Everything Changes from Waitress, which was the last musical we saw (and adored) before lockdown, and led to this text from her the week after:

So we still got to have family and laughing and eating and drinking and remembering. Then everyone went home and we kissed our kids goodnight and watched Her, which wasn't Christmassy but was really lovely and sad, which seemed appropriate. 

And now the province is in lockdown for 28 days, so settling in for a long winter's nap. Peace and goodwill to everyone.

Surly Thursday Yes I Know it's Friday SHUT UP

 I took a big old handful of melatonin last night because this week has been FUCKING FRESHLY-SQUEEZED HELL for sleep. I slept in way too late, which SHOULD have made me happy but I felt guilty even though this was precisely what I was shooting for. I got up and decided to go for a walk. I didn't take my phone because living in the moment, blah blah blah. These are the things I saw that would have made amazing photographs: a beautifully-shaped tree, stripped branches crisp against the sky, with a black bird perched at the very top knowing damned well he was cutting the finest of figures; a line of geese flying south, their bodies driving smoothly across the sky, their wings moving like clockwork and flashing in the sunlight like metal; a splendidly dressed outdoor Christmas tree. 

Yes yes I know, beauty in the ephemeral, I saw it with my mind and it can live in my memory, HELL NO, my memory is garbage, I am bringing my phone EVERYWHERE from now on.

My feet and back hurt. They usually hurt more at this time of year, what with the baking and hunched-over Christmas-card writing, and also inevitably some school's library tech has some kind of emergency and I have to work a bunch of extra hours on my feet, and I don't really want to do it because it will hurt, but I want to because it's fun and also money, and it always is fun and does hurt, but usually at this time of year my feet and back hurt because of EXTRA MONEY, is what I'm saying, and this year it's just regular old senescence. 

Usually I print out a bunch of wallet-sized photos on our printer to stick in Christmas cards. I forgot that I have a new computer this year because Matt bought me a Chromebook for Christmas last year (which I appreciate, it's been great for the most part) and for some reason it seems that Chromebooks don't have the capacity to print multiple pictures on one sheet - I could be wrong, but the people on the message boards don't seem to have any suggestions. So I ordered prints from Black's, not as early as I would have liked, but it should have been early enough. They said to expect shipping delays, which fair enough, but they haven't even shipped, a week and a half past when they should have. First world problems, but not impressed, especially for blaming the pandemic for poor business practices. I've always resisted printing a photo Christmas card, not because I don't love getting them, but because I like buying boxes of Christmas cards and writing a little something in each one. At least next year I'll know to order extra early, and not from Black's, hmmph.

But on the way home from my walk, I realized that, although we don't have a tree anymore, we have a giant saskatoon berry bush and a hydrangea, so I actually DID have somewhere to hang the outdoor Christmas ornaments my parents gave us. 

Then we had pizza with the kids and watched Die Hard four (Live Free or Die Hard hee hee hee) which is definitely NOT a Christmas movie, but was very fun and had Bruce Willis AND Timothy Olyphant, yum - surprisingly it had an eighty-plus Rotten Tomatoes rating. Die Hard five (A Good Day to Die Hard, HA HA) is also available but the Rotten Tomatoes rating is like six - we're still going to watch it, obviously, but we'll keep our expectations low. 

Then Eve and I turned on all the twinkly lights in the house and started gingerbread construction, because she and her friends have this gingerbread house tradition, (also here) and apparently it's going forward even if it has to be outside in December and everyone has to have their own house, and there isn't a gingerbread house kit to be found in the city - I'm a little embarrassed to admit how long it took me to think "um, I can just bake gingerbread like I do every year, but, like, wall and roof shaped". 

A little despair, a little hope. A little surliness, a little gingerbread. A house made with love that will probably collapse. Seems about right for this time of year. 

Inconvenient Bodies and Unsettled Minds

 I meant to post earlier in the week. The endoscopy drugs sent me loopy for a couple of days and then we were a little stressed about Angus. Dude has been THROUGH it the past couple weeks - he went to his girlfriend's place which is sort-of between his college and here to spend Thanksgiving and then write finals remotely and hang out a bit before coming home for semester break: first he got a weird rash on his torso and face, which should not be a big deal, both my kids are rashy and I think Eve had one at the same time, but of course we're all on high alert for some weird Covid resurgence and he's across a whole-ass border, and it was niggling at us. Then he figured it was probably from a hot tub, and it went away. Then he hurt his back doing squats and I was unaccountably livid - fucking seriously? You HAD to go and squat while lifting the weight of a medium farm animal over your head NOW? AGGGGHHHHHH! THEN a couple days later he woke up sick to his stomach with body aches and a pounding head, so Matt and I waved a white flag in the air for a bit and stared into space for a little and made some whale noises (Eve does this when things suck and she swears it helps). He had been planning to come home on the tenth so he would be done his quarantine by Christmas and could see my parents, and this was now probably not going to fly, which was frankly the least of our worries at this point.

Somewhat miraculously, he felt better quite quickly (food poisoning? Mild stomach virus? Squats poisoning?) and got home on Friday, which sent us all into an exultant frenzy for a few hours and then we all went to bed and slept almost around the clock. 

So the endoscopy. If you'll recall, the last time I tried to do it without sedation, somehow believing that I would be able to use deep breathing to master my autonomic nervous system (I'm eighty percent sure I didn't use that term correctly but idgaf) which is a laugh, I can't even master myself a decent night's sleep at the moment. 

So this time I was going to be all smart and take all the drugs, which should have meant the procedure would be a piece of cake. It was not so much a piece of cake, unless we're talking Cake Wrecks (I would link to it, but the first half-dozen cakes are perfect and beautiful and you have to scroll so far down to see the fat snowman cake and I just don't understand anything anymore). First of all it was much later in the day and not eating was fine but not being able to drink any water really bothered me this time. By all accounts they gave me the drugs right from the start, which my dad had done the week before and said meant he didn't remember anything). I remember everything, and it seemed pretty much as bad as last time. They squirted the vile throat-numbing stuff in my throat, then put in the bite guard, then started feeding the tube down my esophagus. I kept seeing this giant blinking neon sign that said WRONG WRONG WRONG. 

"Stop it" I told my autonomic nervous system (or whatever) "Remember the doctor said our job was to remember that we can breathe through our nose"

ANS: "THE DOCTOR IS A LYING WHORE"

Me: "Don't call her that, she's a lovely woman with a killer white bob and it's a crime that she has to keep it under a face shield GAHHHHH IT'S STILL COMING."

Turns out it's really frikkin hard to breathe through your nose with your mouth open. And I have tiny airways, which is why I have sleep apnea, and she was really jacking the camera around to make sure she saw everything. I felt like the drugs kicked in at about the same point they did last time, and I felt really wonky and out of sorts for a good day and a half afterwards, so I might just do what I did the first time if I have to do it again. 

I usually work on Mondays, and since we're not seeing classes right now and our work isn't time sensitive I went in on Wednesday to make up my hours. One of the secretaries came back to the office while I was having lunch and looked really confused and said "it's not Monday, is it?" And, still wonky, I very nearly said "of course it is, otherwise I wouldn't be here" - caught myself just in time. I also booked an appointment online with my chiropractor and when I got there the receptionist told me I was actually booked for NEXT week. They were able to fit me in anyway, and the other woman in the office was eager to commiserate with me about never knowing what day or date it is. 

So here I am, a bit untethered in time but reasonably certain that I am at my kitchen table with all my chicks in the nest for the time being, and my back hurts a little less and honestly, things could be worse. 

Had the Biscuit? Taking a Powder? In a Jam?

 I just baked biscuits in my new oven for the first time. I decided to try the convection feature, and couldn't figure out why they weren't baking and then I realized that DUH, the oven is not the problem, the problem is that after ten years of using the same very simple recipe I suddenly forgot the correct temperature and was baking them in an oven that was a hundred degrees too cool. Miraculously, baking them at 350 for eight minutes and then heating up the oven to 450 and leaving them in for another, I dunno, six or seven minutes, seems to have resulted in biscuits that are at least edible, if not flawless. 

The powder room is almost put back together - the organizer shelf doesn't match now so we're probably going to spray paint it, and we need a toilet paper holder and a towel hanger, but the toilet and sink are put back (nice features in a bathroom) and Matt is now in recovery - that was an intense bout of work for a tiny-ass little space. Eve is still slightly disappointed that we didn't paint the linoleum floor.

Friday night I got stuck watching this series and eating Squish candy. It was a little bit funny and a little bit sad and hard not to be judgy about these girls making consistently awful life choices, even though bad life choices seem infinitely more glamorous when Irish accents are involved. As the night and the show wore on, I realized that given their upbringing and role models it wasn't terribly surprising that it was difficult for them to advance in life, and maybe the only real loser here was the one staying up way too late binge-watching judgily and eating a positively stupid amount of frog gummies. 

I bought a bunch of homemade jam from a choir fundraiser to help out a teacher at my school and because the jam sounded really good. The jam is really fucking good. I've decided that instead of doing that thing where we leave the jar in the fridge until it's old and questionable, I will bake biscuits daily or thrice weekly and we will eat jam until the jam is gone. So far we have tried whiskey plum and blueberry Earl Grey and they are divine. 

Oh look, I have brought this incredibly random post full circle. I have an endoscopy tomorrow and I'm a little anxious, not because it's going to be a big deal because I know it's not, just for the general pain-in-the-assness of going to a hospital and waiting around while wearing a mask. I'm going to go read something distracting. 

Where Everybody Knows Your Name But You Can't Feel Your Toes

 We have a regular Tuesday bar night with friends - three other couples and one dude whose wife likes us but not enough to see us once a week when she could be embroidering something or playing video games, and a more-recently-added divorced woman. If I recall correctly, many many years ago I said to Collette "you know how in tv shows people just, like, go out for a beer? Do people do that in real life? We should do that in real life." A few days later she called me on her way home from somewhere and told me to meet her at a nearby bar/restaurant and we had a beer and it was fun. We started roping other people in, and of such mundane beginnings are years-long traditions born. We went to that bar for years, through four or five waiters/waitresses (Bridget, Derek, Riley, Samantha...) and then it closed (rude!) and we were nine characters in search of an author for a bit (funnily enough we ended up at the Barley Mow once and were waited on by Riley's girlfriend). A few places didn't work out for one reason or another. A new place eventually opened in the old location, which is prime - some of us can actually walk to it - but it has trivia nights on Tuesday, which we did once and it was fun, but we didn't want to have such a structured thing every week.

We finally settled on one of two Broadway Bar and Grills. There's a nice big round table we can usually snag, the wings are good, and the wait staff was starting to remember us (the first time Bridget said "am I bringing you a Stella, Allison?" I nearly wept with joy. Then fucking Covid entered stage right.

In lockdown we did Zoom bar nights. The first couple of times were fun.  People wore funny hats. People put up funny backgrounds. It was nice to see other faces. 

But it got old fast. There were technical difficulties. Only one person could really talk at once. Jokes that would work in person were inaudible or fell flat in this medium. I hated having to stare at my own face - I couldn't stop fiddling with my computer trying to find a more flattering angle (Remember the movie Tootsie? "I'd like to make her look a little more attractive, how far can you pull back?" "How do you feel about Cleveland?") After a few weeks I started dreading and then avoiding Zoom bar night. It would end up making me feel bad about myself and dislike people I actually love.

So the minute we could meet outside, we did. People brought their own coolers with drinks and snacks and couples sat six feet away from each other - only two people's backyards were big enough to facilitate this, so we rotate between those two. Over the summer was great. One night we were sitting there and Collette said she could hear four different conversations going on and she was so happy.

Dave would pretend to freeze once in a while in case we got nostalgic for Zoom.

Of course, there was the inevitable reality that Winter Was Coming. What would we do?

Well, we're Canadian. We slapped on some layers and and it was business as usual.

A few days ago Collette sent a message in the What's App saying we were supposed to bake pumpkin pies this week to test whether fresh or canned pumpkin made a better pie. I had no memory of this being broached and I was briefly annoyed - it's almost December! I have Christmas baking to start! I don't bake pies! - and then I remembered that this is why I love this group - we do weird random shit all the time and it keeps life fun and interesting. But I also felt like being a rebel and not doing exactly what I was told so I decided I would bake a pumpkin cheesecake instead. Then no one could find any pie pumpkins in stores, so only Collette was going to bake a pumpkin pie, but by now I was invested in baking a pumpkin cheesecake.

So I did. 

The plate was just for a glamour shot - I divided it up into tupperware with plastic forks for each couple. Collette made an Alton Brown pumpkin pie that was really good and a weird-ass pumpkin pie from the sixteen hundreds with eggs and rosemary and thyme and apple and currants that was... still actually really good. We ate quickly and put our mittens back on. It was freaking cold tonight. I'm sort of achy this week and the cold and rain made it a bit worse, and I'm not entirely sure how much longer we can keep this up. It's sort of weird but oddly fun to have to come home and thaw out from bar night, and the more we can keep seeing our friends the better our mental health generally is.  

Does anyone know where I can get one of those Saint Bernards with a whiskey barrel around its neck?