Visiting

Last week-end Eve and I and my parents drove down to London to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her family (the boys stayed home because Angus was writing SATs Saturday here in town). This week-end I drove down to Waterloo with some friends to go to an Oktoberfest event with friends that had moved there in the summer (Matt went to Watertown with Angus for baseball - Eve had music camp at school and found it inexpressibly amusing that Matt and I were both going to places that had Water in the name. She's weird).

Both week-ends were great, except I'm getting worse and worse at staying at other people's houses. It's never been my favourite thing. I'm a weird guest. I use a lot of ice. I need a lot of showers. I hate getting up in the morning in a strange place. And I'm used to keeping my house a few degrees above a walk-in refrigerator's temperature and this fall has been unseasonably warm, so I was melting for close to the entire time. I don't know if the perimenopause thing has fully kicked in that way, but unless I was right out of a cold shower and standing in front of a fan I was uncomfortable - and other people were wearing sweaters. It makes me afraid that I'm going to turn into a weird(er) recluse who never goes anywhere. Is it just me? Everyone I was traveling with seemed to just take it all in stride.

Besides that, it was all great. Eve joined school band for the first time last year and had an amazing teacher who really encouraged her and it was a great experience. He invited her to volunteer at a band camp he runs at the school in the summer, which she did, and finished all her volunteer hours before she even started high school. But all my friends were kind of dicks about how she kept saying "band camp", so my sister and I told her to watch American Pie with my niece. She watched it. She said "screw all of you, I'm still calling it band camp". And this is why I love her. They also watched the first episode of This Is Us, and I got to be there when the penny dropped near the end of the episode and they were very satisfyingly open-mouthed and shocked and impressed and teary and it was an epic moment.

I haven't been to an Oktoberfest event since university when I went to a Waterloo bar that just put an '-ausen' on the end of its name and got drunk, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Since we're older with more disposable income now, we bought tickets to a more authentic venue and it was really cool (Dracula jokes aside). There was a band that was a polka band and a cover band, and traditional dancing that was really cool, and traditional food that was delicious, and people in lederhosen and dirndls, and a mechanical bull that I didn't ride because I was wearing a dress (I have some regrets).

And now I'm home, and a comfortable temperature, and had a good sleep in my own bed, and I miss my sister and my friends. But Eve just came home and said "I have an egg test tomorrow so you're all getting poached eggs for dinner". And Angus made the honour roll again last year even though he went to Oklahoma for the Junior Sunbelt Classic one week before second-term exams. So there's that.

Some Things That Happened This Summer

I applied to Indigo and got an invitation to submit a video interview the next day. I keep trying to feel anxious about going back to work, but I keep realizing that I'm really looking forward to getting out of the house a few times a week, hanging out around books and contributing a little to the family finances. I think I'm really ready. One might argue that it's way past time for me to be ready, but one could then be cordially invited to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I refuse to get nervous about an interview, because I think they'd be daft not to hire me, so I'm willing to let things unfold as they may.

My reading mood was weird over the summer. I couldn't read anything dense or challenging, and I read overall much less than usual. A few weeks ago I did what I always say I never do and put a bunch of holds on at the library that all came in at once. Then I read eleven books in eight days, so I'm feeling better about that whole end of things. It's like the reset button has been hit on a few things, which gives me hope that last year wasn't actually the start of a giant downward slide ending in death.

The summer was good. Really good. One thing that happened was that we got one of those picnic blankets that's soft on the top and waterproof and slippery on the bottom and folds up neatly with built-in carrying straps. It comes in a perfect bundled-up package, and you bring it somewhere and unfold it and experience its lovely soft waterproofness:



Then you spend the rest of your life trying to get it back into that state of pristine perfection, (which is not helped by the fact that one side is insanely slippery),











....with very occasional success.

The Giving of the Thanks

It's hard not to be thankful when your sister (who poses for pictures so much more gracefully than her daughter)

Turns her kick-ass attic into a Hogwarts dormitory

for this motley crew;

and a visit to the shoe outlet results in this kind of entertainment; 

I mean, seriously?

Yep, seriously. (My sister is tall. My niece has really good balance).

AND it's warm enough for Eve to handily beat Angus at 21 (several times) in short sleeves;

and there's a schoolyard next door where she can practice being a badass (a touch more practice might be in order);

and when I say 'oh wait, we need a turkey-carving picture', my ever-gracious brother-in-law gives me this:

and, well, in the spirit of full disclosure....

and, of course,

So full. On so many levels. 

Christmas Part Two

At one point in late November or early December, I was wandering around Bed Bath & Beyond looking for something. I was mildly depressed and not feeling holiday-ish at all, and I was thinking about when we gave Angus an Xbox for his birthday a few years ago and got that classic reaction - surprise and joy and loud exclamations - and feeling a little sad because he's always grateful and happy with whatever we get him, but the days of that reaction are gone.

Still, there are flashes of that little-boy enthusiasm. Matt took him out to get some bloodwork done just before we left for Thunder Bay, and then they went to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. Angus badgered Matt until he bought me a juicer, because he said I really wanted one (I did), and then when they got home and wrapped it, he insisted they give it to me right away.

The smile for his new catcher's mitt was pretty good too.

Then there's the new fun stuff that comes with teen-agery smartassness. Such as when he decided to wear everything he got as a gift all at once.


Like, everything.


I'm sparing you the part where he put on his UnderArmour underwear. You're welcome.


Naturally, Eve was getting in on this action.


We still get the classic reactions from her, though.






My strategy of buying ninety percent of my gifts from Indigo and Redbubble was mostly successful.

"Aleph-Bet Soup"

Although I broke Bill by giving him The Martian. "I'll never forgive you", my mother-in-law said. "He didn't say a single word to me for all of Boxing Day. (It's not true. I heard him say "Seventy pages left" at one point.)


We went straight from the airport to my mom and dad's house on the 27th so the kids could see their cousins...


...and partake in classic Christmas activities such as crokinole


and hand-sock fighting.


There was also the Christmas miracle of Angus sharing his Big League Chew with Eve on the way home. 


My son. So handsome.


Also, on that day in Bed Bath & Beyond, when I had no idea what I was going to get Angus for Christmas? I happened upon this Boston Red Sox Tervis cup. I bought it as a stocking stuffer with this "crap, I shouldn't be buying something just to buy it, he probably won't even use it, Christmas SUCKS" feeling.

Guess what hasn't been out of his big silly mitt ever since?

No, No I Don't - Christmas, Part One

Someone in my Writing Goals group asked if we blogged over Christmastime, and like a completely self-deluded moron I said "hmm, I dunno, I just finished posting every day in November and it felt pretty good, I might see how long I can keep the momentum going."

Chump.

A couple of weeks later, I gestured feebly from beneath a mountain of butter, flour, Christmas card glitter and wrapping paper - a gesture that was meant to denote "um, no, on second thought I'm pretty sure I WON'T be blogging at Christmastime." I managed to get one Christmas-themed book reviewed but didn't finish the one in which the title character's name is Billy Freaking CHRISTMAS (sorry Chicago Review Press, I'll get to it as soon as I can).

We had a great Christmas. I always think travelling at Christmas is a pain in the ass, and I'm a bad guest - I'm always surreptitiously turning down the thermostat, I can't wash my face without getting water everywhere (I maintain that this is largely due to poor sink design), I hate being surrounded by people with no means of escape and if it's Christmas I'm usually sporting a loud tubercular cough. But my husband hadn't been home to Thunder Bay for almost twenty years, our kids aren't small anymore, and last Christmas I actually remember thinking that everything was almost a little TOO quiet and easy, and maybe it was time to bugger it all up and make things interesting.

It wasn't even that interesting, as Christmas trips go. I mean, just watch a December episode of Good Luck Charlie or any Christmas movie ever - travelling at Christmas should involve getting snowed in/held up/robbed/ and/or separated from the rest of your family, with an option on unplanned pregnancies or at least a good knock-down-drag-out family fight.

Our planes were mostly on-time, no one fed their son an elephant-sized dose of Valium and then sat in front of us, our baggage all made it the same time we did (this was my biggest fear), my mother-in-law readily agreed to bump the temperature down a degree, we had our own room in the basement for when I needed a breather (and to muffle the coughing), and the sink was poorly designed but I just mopped up after face-washing and it was fine. There was one 'naked-in-the-snow-except-for-a-Fentanyl patch' incident, but it was someone's patient, not a family member, so beyond some marked interest in the actual size of a patch of Fentanyl, it wasn't a big deal.

Being in a house full of doctors at Christmas does carry its own particular vagaries. You hear phrases like "please stop saying anuresis at the dinner table" and many of the gift tags were barely legible: Eve kept picking up presents and saying "who's Sack Pill?" (it was Santa Bill) and "This says To Lapa" (it said to Laura).

Our house has three levels. Sometimes it's too easy for us all to retreat to our introverted corners and only meet for meals. Some enforced togetherness isn't the worst thing.

Neither is Maple Leaf lounge hot chocolate

And just look at this heartwarming sibling love and closeness

This lovely woman is my mother-in-law. I guess this is why she never wants to look directly at the camera. Sorry, Barb. 

Chestnuts! Roasted on an open....Weber grill. They were really good.

 This is my brother-in-law and his wonderful girlfriend, who we adore even though we found out over the holiday that she's not only an MD PhD who makes children feel better and is trying to cure malaria - she's also really freaking good at Scrabble.

 I have never had Christmas dinner with this particular collection of people before.

Fruitcake. With a pig on it, because if you had a pig and a fruitcake, wouldn't you want them to be together?

There were three hundred percent more bow ties in this Christmas than there were in all the ones that came before. 

And finally, there was a flaming pudding (it didn't actually have my son's head in it, I'm just a really bad photographer).

Then we came home. And aside from the fact that I kept forgetting not to pack hairspray in my carry-on (if you noticed some Air Canada Security Agents with particularly full and bouncy hair this holiday season, that's all on me), everything went pretty smoothly. It was all quite merry and bright, if not terribly white. Hope yours was too.