Pre-Christmas Round-Up

 I didn't feel like I had time to clean my bedroom this morning. I don't feel like I have time to blog right now. But both of those things make me feel happy and slightly accomplished, so here we are. 

I have written and sent 43 Christmas cards and have four more to deliver locally, and I believe it is time to call it done and clean the Christmas-card-carnage off the kitchen table. I did do a card and a five-page letter for Matt's aunt who I didn't get to last Christmas, and all year I told myself "just do it now" and somehow couldn't. She is Matt's Nana's younger sister and when I met her at Nana's funeral she knew everything about me being a librarian and the kids and she is smart and funny and I do really want to keep in touch with her, especially with my mother-in-law gone now (fuck cancer). I already got a reply from her, so that was lovely. 

Sarah's card is so perfect and wonderful it makes me feel like an absolute chump for only having two kids and not living in Wisconsin (I want us to meet IRL too Sarah BUT HOW I AM CANADIAN). Nicole's card was early and lovely as usual. I need to exchange more blog cards next year. My card stocking seemed to take a bit longer to fill but is nicely rounded out at this point. I keep a list of everyone I've sent cards to but I forget pretty quickly who the earliest ones went out to, so Matt had dinner with his old thesis adviser in Hamilton last night and said they said thanks for the Christmas card and I was like "I sent them one? Huh, go me." 

I haven't baked as much because of stupid work - toffee shortbread, Chai shortbread (Eve's favourites), a couple of pans of bark that I sent to work with Matt and brought to the Christmas party and fed to book club which I hosted on Monday, gingerbread cookies with lemon glaze and cream wafers (and yes, I made the same mistake I always do with the first batch and didn't roll the dough thin enough, so once the cookies are sandwiched with filling they are delicious but horrifyingly tall and hard to fit in your mouth). That's probably enough, to be honest, but somehow it feels inadequate not to bake to excess. 

The oven was briefly inoperational - flashing an error code and locked with no buttons functioning - on December 18th. Somewhat uncharacteristically, I didn't freak out, and managed to get a service visit booked the next day. Then Matt came home mid-book-club and fixed it by doing THE EXACT SAME THING I HAD. There was a fairly good joke about weighing the pleasure in the oven being fixed against the rage of a man fixing it solely by repeating my actions, but at this time of year? The good far outweighed the bad. Today I'm going to make another pan of bark and dough for lemon shortbread and maybe brown sugar cookies. 

Eve wrote her last exam this morning (Solstice Exam!) and is on her way home with Matt. She said her friends want to go to the Christmas market which we did a few years ago and it was magical, so I might just say fuck it and abandon everything I was going to do tonight and go with them. (Photo dump for Christmas market in 2019 before all the children left us for stupid growth and independence and personal fulfillment reasons)

The Christmas party was amazing as usual, but sort of unusually I was in the mood for a party even beforehand, and didn't hate everything about how I looked and was excited to go. If Cosmic Irony was being an especial dick that night, this would have meant that the party itself was a dud, but it was not. There were old people and young people and it feels kind of special to have the young people still be happy to hang out with the old people. There were enough people that the house felt full and loud and happy and fun but not so many that it felt claustrophobic (I have a memory of Collette and I standing on the back deck having a heartwarming conversation and looking in at our kids and marveling at how life is so strange and magical, but I don't know why we were outside. I mean, I assume I was too hot, but she wouldn't have been. I asked her and she doesn't remember either). 

The Epic Annual Steal-a-Gift Game was, as is traditional, Epic. We used to have the kids do a gift exchange and then send them downstairs or upstairs to watch tv or whatever while we did the steal-a-gift game, but at this point they're all old enough to participate in the ungovernable hilarious debauchery, spite and vindictiveness. Generally the booze and weed is the most hotly fought-over (no sex toys this year - yes, we are terrible), but this year it was, perplexingly (or maybe not), a hooded fuzzy blanket - it didn't quite reach the fever pitch of '22 when everyone was conspiring to deny Collette the spatula she wanted, but it was close. When it was my turn someone told me to steal the blanket and I said I didn't want it and they said no, it's strategy, everyone else wants it and it positions you to get something better. I did it, but I didn't even like touching it - so hot. The game took from 7:07 until 9:11 (I took screenshots of the time when someone said at the beginning "this is going to take three hours". It was hugely entertaining and we were all friends again afterwards. (Photo dump for Christmas party and steal-a-gift game - I take all the pictures and forget to be in any, so I took a picture of my sparkly gold dress in which the sparkle doesn't really come across but trust me - sparkly).

"Everybody throw things at Michael!"

And look who got home and showed up at the party just in time!

I keep thinking it's the 22nd and we only have one day to decorate the tree, do the Christmas photo shoot, wrap presents and get ready for Christmas Eve which we host here - I just do appetizers and it's only my parents because my sister's family is coming for New Year's this year instead, if the good lord is willing and the creek etc. etc. But it's the 21st so I....still probably don't have enough time, but I always tell other people "Do what you can and let the rest go" and even thought I am VERY BAD AT FOLLOWING MY OWN ADVICE I'm going to try. 

Well, this took a lot of the day between baking and cleaning up and wrapping (a little. A very little). 

Bark!

I wish everyone all the family wonderfulness and terrible blanket-stealing friends and flour-dusted paper-strewn mess and lights in the darkness and anything else you wish for.