Bibliomama

 My mood over the holiday has been generally good, especially compared to past years. I overdid it a bit on baking and cooking (no surprise) and bought too many presents, but not AS MANY too many as usual. I managed to stop before I crippled myself. I've slept pretty well except Saturday night, naturally, because Eve wanted me to take her to the mall on Sunday. We still had fun, but getting ready to go I felt like death, and it's a good thing she's cute and funny. I will probably do a couple of Christmas wrap-up posts, but it was pretty nearly perfect. Family, friends, no life-threatening weather to prevent travel, kids are great. I had one bad day where I felt like I should be doing more, but I sat down with a book and the feeling went away. Today I woke up and, as usual, suddenly realized what the fact that it is New Year's Eve actually means, even though I knew it was coming and we're having people over and I haven't known what day it was since before Christm...

 "Oh yes, I would LOVE to do that!" I chirped like an idiot when Suzanne suggested a blog cookie swap thing. Did I then remember to take some artful staged pictures of cookie prep and baking and display? Hahahahah no the fuck I of course did not.  I did haphazardly shoot a pic of this measuring cup with some chocolate chips in it, beside a weird counter shadow. We had people over Friday night and it was great fun and I made my first ever Christmas tree charcuterie thingy... AND there were TWO cookie plates on the dining room table in the very next room, but did I photograph those? No I did not. I have done quite a bit less baking than usual, partly because Matt was away and I was doing all the other Christmas stuff, partly because I'm just slightly less willing to break my body and mind in order to achieve some mystical pinnacle of Christmas perfection this year. Have baked for five years or more: Toffee shortbreads /shortbread meltaways: I found this recipe in a little ...

So. Matt's long lost sister.   This isn't a terribly uncommon thing for our generation - I was once at a Christmas party in a conversation group of four people, and three had discovered hitherto-unknown siblings existed, or their spouses had. We found this out when one woman said "I got my parents the Ancestry DNA kit for Christmas and I got a new brother!" The less-common aspect is that this is a full sibling - Matt's mom and dad had a baby before they got married, the baby (girl) was adopted and they subsequently had three boys.   We'd known about her for a long time but had kind of given up on hearing from her. Then we heard from her. We were shook. There were emails. There was conferring. She could not have been more sensitive and kind about not wanting to cause any trauma or open up any wounds, meanwhile we were all like hell yeah, bring on the sister stuff. The three brothers did a zoom call with her from here (Ottawa), Edmonton, and Toronto, which is ve...

  Suzanne 's cookie post, along with Nicole's comment about her boys decorating gingerbread cookies, happily reminded me of Eve's cookie-decorating sessions in years past - she might actually be home early enough to do another one this year! When she gets home on the 22nd it doesn't leave a lot of time. She's writing her last exam... huh, right now maybe, and she's been a little punchy in the last couple of  Facetimes. "I just want to sit on my bed in my room decorated with little lights and do a CRAFT, I want to do a CRAFT, I don't care about viruses anymore!" "The Arts and Science department asked Dr. Clark to post an encouraging message for us before exams, and do you know what he said? 'Study hard, good luck'? No. 'It's about the learning, not the marks?' No. He said 'you are marvellous, the gods are waiting to delight in you.' What the heck. Isn't that pervy? I don't want to be delighted in. They're...

 Remember how I was all anxious about a five-hour drive in uncertain northern-ish Ontario weather?  Part of my hesitation was that I had had BIG FEELINGS about people who had heedlessly traveled during an extreme weather warning a few days earlier and been stuck in their cars for up to 48 hours, while people STILL kept asking for updates on weather conditions for following days when they intended to travel on the Ontario Storm Facebook group - not people who were first responders or people who needed to get to work, just people who didn't want to change their plans. I really really did not want to put myself in the position of acting like people like them and being judged by people like me.  Well, I very conscientiously stocked the car with water and snacks and candles and matches and blankets and coats and tall boats and mittens. And then naturally the drive was completely uneventful weather-wise. The visibility was slightly less-than-ideal for the last hour on Thursday ...

 Is anyone still surprised by the news that my husband is away for the first two weeks of December and I am grumpy about it? I feel like I've told everyone I know multiple times, so probably not.  We got the tree, and we got the tree up! On November 29th! Earliest ever! I love the lights and the remote and it's beautiful. I started putting a few ornaments on it, thinking I would just leave the kids' and family's special ornaments for when both kids are home and we put on Die Hard and decorate the tree and do the family photo shoot.  It's a little bit different decorating a tree with so many lights. I feel like the ornaments have to be balanced quite well or it looks weird. Are there too many lights? Do I need to buy three dozen uniformly shaped and sized ornaments? No, I am NOT going to complain about my beautiful new tree, I will figure it out! (You see what I mean though, right?) Then yesterday on my day off, I realized I didn't really have anything else yet, ...

  It's that time in the party where everyone has had a wonderful time, but now the hour is late, the wood cabin incense is almost empty people are wearing chip clips on their nipples  and Dungeons and Dragons underwear on their heads or using the ottoman trays as cod pieces Or sitting on top of other people (okay, as it turns out, by 'people' I mostly mean 'Dave') and the remaining revelers straggle homeward at 2:38 a.m. Our friends' annual Christmas party was early this year for various reasons, and at first it seemed too early and felt weird and awkward. But of course it was a wonderful time, and a good way to get the Christmas season started, and kind of perfect that it was on the last day of NaBloPoMo. We've been incredibly fortunate in our real-life friends, and I've been equally grateful to walk with all of you here this month. We walked every day in October with Elisabeth! We posted every day in November with San! Maybe for December we should haha...