Bibliomama

 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 an...

 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 u...

 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 ache...

 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 dis...

 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 place...