Day 30: Confetti! Fireworks! Rousing Big Band Music!

 "How are you doing all this posting?", asked Ernie? I DON'T KNOW, ERNIE. How did you manage to comment every day? Thank you fervently and gratefully and effusively, people who commented, although I know in my heart or hearts that even if you started out charmed by the daily missives, by the end you must have been muttering "oh great, another fucking Allison Post". 

What I SHOULD do, what I mean to do every November, is write mostly in the morning, write a few posts on days when I have more time and schedule them, and leave the evening for either polishing or commenting on other people's posts. What I ACTUALLY do is almost always leave it until the very last thing and then slouch to the computer with very bad grace to bang something out resentfully. And because I talk a lot about myself and my current mood here, this often just leads to a bunch of posts starting out with "UGGGGGHHHH, why did I think this was a good ideaaaaaa, *whale noises* (this is what Eve does when she has to do something she doesn't want to and I've adopted it, it's quite satisfying). 

Why do I keep doing it? Because sometimes even when I start out clunky and cranky, I end up writing something I like, something that I wouldn't otherwise have written, and if I didn't do things that made me cranky at the beginning I would never do ninety percent of everything I do (exercise, for one thing. And cooking. Almost everything except reading and eating, really). Sometimes I do it and it's hard and does NOT turn out that great, but that's okay, that's the way it goes sometimes. 

I worry about dying a lot. I tend to hypochondria, especially when I'm in a depressive episode. When I'm driving, especially long distance, I constantly have visions of crashing. When I settled into the routine of having a part-time job doing what I always wanted to do, with my kids at a really enjoyable stage, I worried that being happy would draw the evil eye, or that when I was finally learning that I could do stuff even while feeling half-crippled by my mental health it would be a really nice literary or cinematic device for something terrible to happen. 

This is dumb, not just because it's a waste of time to worry about what might or might not happen, but because I have been really embarrassingly lucky to have this life and this family and these friends, and really, why wouldn't I just be grateful for all of that instead of worrying about how much more there might or might not be. (This is not an epiphany. This is not a "from now on, I will..." statement. This is a screamingly obvious thing that I am required to learn over and over and over).

I am not a "positive vibes only" kind of person (try to conceal your shock). I don't think we should deny or shove down our feelings of pain or doubt or despair. But there's something to be said for not losing sight of what you have. 

Thank-you, Nicole and Steph and Ernie and Suzanne and Tudor and Pat (push-ups every day? Really? HUGE respect) and NGS and Kara and Swistle and Finola and Beach Mama and Sarah and Suz. I am going to end this with love and gratitude and try not to throw in any gratuitous references to butt plugs, which I trust will demonstrate the depth of my sincerity. 

Day 29: E is for Eve: A Random Collection of Cool Things About My Daughter

 I guess first you should read this?

Honestly, when I found out I was pregnant the second time (and I knew this time, I KNEW - I had felt my ovaries fizzing like champagne and the midwife said "you got a positive result that early?", and I put a pregnancy test box with a blue pawprint on it on the stairs for when my husband got home), I thought I had probably used up all my luck on that first really good baby. Not that I thought this one would be bad, but surely it would refuse to sleep, or cry all the time, or dislike me obviously from day one.

I could say that maybe she was meant for someone else, someone who deserved a break from the universe, but she was so clearly meant to be mine. 

My relationship with my mom was difficult. Neither of us was really wrong, we just really didn't get each other. She did the best she could, and I did not make it easy. Eve is like me in all the ways that make that relationship not just good, but FUN, and she is better than me in the ways that you want your kids to be better than you (and I don't just mean she can do math, although she can do math, thank-you Matt, that's all you honey).

When she was little and you asked how to spell her name she would yell "E,V, EVIE!" When she wrote it she would write a capital E, a capital V, and then a backwards capital E so her name was symmetrical as well as a palindrome.

Once I was putting her down for her nap, and I said "sleep well, Baby", and she raised herself up on her elbows and said "I....EVE...". Later on she demanded that I keep calling her Babe, though, so we worked that out once she realized I actually did know her name.

Last week on Facetime she said one nice little thing that happened in the week was that she finished her deodorant so she got to open the vanilla one that we hadn't been able to find for a while but finally did again, and I said "oh my god, I was going to tell you THE SAME THING". 

She also said about one of her friends that they kind of needed an attitude adjustment. Then she said "I've said that about a lot of people lately. Some self-reflection might be in order." 

Once when she was about seven we were sitting around our friends' kitchen island and there were cookies in the middle of it that the kids had been told they couldn't have until after dinner. I saw her staring at them thoughtfully and asked her what she was thinking. She said "You said we couldn't have them, but they're right there and nothing's really stopping us from taking them". I realized she had discovered that the Parental Prohibition was largely a fiction that both parties had to agree on, and I was afraid.

In grade eight I drove her and a bunch of her friends around while they were helping their music teacher to do music testing of grade sixes at area schools that would be in their music program the next year. At the end of the day she said her teacher said "I like your mom, Eve, she's funny -- oh sorry, that's probably embarrassing for you" and Eve said "uh, no, I like my mom too, I also think she's funny". 

She met one of her closest friends on day one of Junior Kindergarten, when they played with My Little Ponies together. She met her other closest friends in grade seven when they went to the same high school, although one of them was actually in her junior kindergarten class. They are the most amazing, self-aware, thoughtful, brilliant, hilarious group, and I have loved my time with them so much I can't even articulate it.

She builds her own IKEA furniture - one of the ways in which she is better than me. Once I tried to build something and I couldn't even figure out how to open the box. She said "I think I've got the hang of it. If I'm in trouble I think 'what would Dad do?' and it's always 'same thing I'm doing but harder.'

On the self-knowledge: Whenever there's a big day she always warns us that, good or bad, there will be crying. Once in grade twelve she came into my room at night and had a giant crying meltdown about going away to university, talked through some stuff, calmed down a little, told me a few stories about her friends, then said "my avocado toast was really good this morning" and went back to bed.

One of the ways in which she is not better than me: The first time she took Lucy for a walk further than around the block, I had to draw her a map so she wouldn't get lost in the fifteen-minute radius around our town. Then she got lost. 

When I had my interview with her teacher in junior kindergarten, she said "I'm pretty sure I could have left her in charge and things would have run pretty smoothly until I got back". (My mom said "she's loud and bossy", just for a different perspective on that).

I could go on all night, but I'm tired and it's almost midnight, and I am willing to entertain the notion that this will eventually get tedious for anyone who isn't Eve's mom.  And I have a sudden craving for avocado toast.

Day 28: Boxes, Small Balls, Hard Questions

We're in that weird Christmas shoulder season where today feels slightly too soon to start decorating but I can't decide exactly how long I should wait, and inevitably I will feel like I waited too long when I do start. 

I was downstairs sorting baby clothes (oh yes, I have decided to go through all the bins of baby clothes and wash them all and sort them so they're better organized, which is great except it's really highlighting that I have kept a lot, like a lot, like a really indefensible amount, of baby clothes, which I could kind of ignore when I had a few bins stashed here and a couple of boxes stashed there) and flipping through photos and stacking up numerous pairs of Angus's old pajama pants to give away, and was suddenly exhausted and discouraged and wondering if I'm fooling myself that if I keep up with this, next year everything will be orderly and we will be able to find things and maybe even Christmas won't be insane because I'll know where everything is and not have to waste time searching. 

Then I told myself that I got up early for work today and my back hurts and I should probably just have a granola bar and sit down and stop whinging. I probably also told myself to stop whining because I am not, in fact, British, but I felt like 'whinging' would look better there. I'm not even sure how to SAY 'whinging'. Surely the middle part is like 'hinge' and not like 'wing'? I could look it up, but what fun would that be? 

I'm going to whip down to Hamilton again this weekend because I didn't get to see my sister in law and niece and nephew last time, and I had brought down the little Christmas tree I got her last year last time but then forgot to give it to her because it was dark when Zarah and I dropped her off and none of us saw it. So I can take her a few Christmas decorations, since she's not done exams until the 20th so she's there for most of December. I should probably bake some stuff too, but I'm not sure my back will hold up for that. 

I knew that I had bought her some sort of little ornaments for the little tree last year, but I also remembered when I packed up the Christmas decorations telling myself that I was not putting Eve's stuff all together and I would be cursing myself this year. And guess what? I was right! So I told Eve I didn't know where they were and couldn't remember what they even looked like, and I might have to just pick some random ornaments from the ones we have. But then I opened one last bin before finishing up for the evening and *choir sounds, beam of light*...

Since I am now a reformed model of organization and structure, next year there will be a perfectly-packed and easily-accessible box labelled EVE, and I will not have to whinge (wing?) here. 

I have started carrying a Sharpie on my person at all times when I am downstairs, and every time I open a Christmas box I then write on the side in big letters what is in it, because I realized that the number of times I close up boxes and then have to reopen them ten minutes later to remind myself what's in them has probably used up hours, if not months, of my life.

Jesus, what would I have blogged about this November if I WASN'T trying to undo twenty-three years of domestic chaos? Oh, World Trivia Night. We were down half our team for various unforeseen reasons, and we did quite badly - might have been our worst score ever, in fact. Doesn't really matter, we still had fun and laughed a lot and ate a bunch of leftover Halloween candy and some really weirdly-flavoured popcorn. The dismaying part of the night for me was when we all showed up and everybody was so happy because we hadn't seen each other in person for three years, because 2020 and 2021 were held online, except in my head we were TOTALLY in person last year - cue the frozen, horrified expression on my face as "time's lost all meaning" sky-rocketed to new heights. 

I found the difficulty level of the questions a little weird compared to past years - usually there's a pretty steady incline of difficulty, and the last category is a bunch of really tough questions. This year it felt like it ping-ponged between oddly easy and obvious questions and very esoteric ones that had even our trivia heavy-hitters looking blankly around. I'm not sure I got even one question that nobody else would have gotten (my usual way to justify my presence), but it was still fun. The funniest part of the night was probably when I was standing in line to get a Diet Pepsi and randomly looked down and saw that the woman in front of me wasn't wearing shoes, just as she noticed me noticing and blurted "I took my boots off, my feet were too hot!" and we both burst out laughing.

Scanning my posts from last year, apparently I also blogged about sending Christmas cards, arguing with Internet trolls, freaking out over Eve not texting me back (because I was worried about her, not because I thought she owed me a text), and... toast and yogurt. Okay, maybe it's good that I have decrapifying to talk about. 

Day 27: Surly Sunday

 I am unaccountably cranky today. I do often in November have a fairly drastic downturn in mood and energy around four o'clock, which was just when we were leaving for dinner with my parents. It hasn't affected me too badly yet this month, so I should be grateful, which I probably will be when I get done being cranky. 

Surly Sunday is alliteration. Usually I do Surly Thursday which is -- assonance? Consonance? Neither, quite, and I should know this, fuck.

I had raspberries and blackberries with vanilla yogurt for breakfast, which was delicious. I have had a berry seed stuck between my two back left lower molars all day, which is driving me slowly mad. I have flossed. I have picked. I have swished. I have chewed gum. I think there may be nothing left for it but to pull out the power drill. 

I spent some time in the back storage area today. Against the back wall of the house there are big built-in shelves - four levels. Then there is an Ikea set of metal shelves - I hate these, they're supposed to be better for garages and such but they are bendy and sort of flimsy and never feel solid enough, but I have moved a lot of stuff off them and dusted them for possibly the first time in about twenty years, so that's fairly satisfying (*wheeze*). 

Sometimes you convince yourself you're not a full-on hoarder, and sometimes you discover that you have kept...

...a label cut out of your son's Batman shirt. Your currently twenty-two-year old son . 

Don't worry, I'm definitely going to throw it out now. Almost for sure. 

It rained today. I was annoyed when the snow came, and now I'm annoyed that it's gone. I didn't want more, or not a whole lot more, especially for the next week while Matt's not here and I'd have to shovel it myself, but I liked having the stuff we had. And rain in November is just depressing. 

What did I think I was going to do with all these glass bottles? It's okay. I'm getting rid of them before I die and my children have to deal with them. 

Matt is watching regular tv with commercials and if this fucking idiotic Old Navy one plays one more time I'm going to huck this computer into the tv. Or a glass bottle or five. 

See? Cranky. Sleep well everyone. I will endeavour to produce an attitude adjustment on the morrow. 

Day 26: The Universe Is So Much Bigger Than You Realize

So big, in fact, that I traveled ahead in time yesterday to November 28th (what the heck, me yesterday?)

I took my mom to her ultrasound appointment at the butt-crack of dawn today. It was a beautiful day, it was a nice drive and nice to see the sun coming up, and my mom made me tea, and I left Lucy at home. So everything was great, except for the fact that the medical imaging place we always go to was designed and is run by some actually evil disciple of Satan or Elon Musk. My mom was told to be there at a time ten minutes after it opened, according to their hours online and on her requisition. When she got there there was a line, with an older woman with a cane at the front of it. The doors still weren't open. The woman with the cane banged on the door, and a snippy person came and said they would not be opening the door until fifteen minutes AFTER their stated opening time.

Wut?

This should not be a thing. Seniors standing in line outside in November (it was unseasonably warm today, but it is not always) should not be a thing. This is not an ER with overworked doctors and nurses. This is a place with regular hours and regular appointments. Health care workers many places are overworked and underappreciated and I give them all the credit in the world. This is not that. I am angry. There was the usual sign saying profanity and aggression would not be tolerated and the police would be called, which, fair enough, but maybe don't go out of your way to provoke profanity and anger then? Maybe it's a big social experiment.

Anyway, both my mom and I were happy and relieved to have it over with, and I moved a bunch of boxes of books at work yesterday (cleaning up after used book sale) and my hands have been numb and burny for days (really bad carpal tunnel, trying to delay surgery as long as possible), so I decided to take it easy today. I got home and did a bit of meal prep for freezer stuff for when the kids come home, got some pulled pork on, unloaded the dishwasher, then spent half an hour in the basement (the Rehabilitating The House Project has become such that I cannot go a single day without doing at least a little bit, which is unusual and a bit frightening), then showered and went back to bed to read for a few hours and then nap.

I woke up and it was dark and I was afraid it was like eleven p.m. or something. It was five - thanks, time change. I had made steak tips in the instant pot last night and I had kalettes in the fridge (HI NICOLE) and my husband had decided to try making - googling to see if I can find out what they're actually called - Cheesy Mini Potato Gratin Stacks (mini Potatoes Dauphinoise if we want to get fancy). My husband became a really good bread baker during lockdown. As a cook, he is enthusiastic and, well, a really good bread baker? (sorry honey). He will often make something really great and then not being able to resist throwing in some red pepper flakes or something that maybe should have been resisted. That's fine, I always appreciate anyone else wanting to cook, and he makes excellent fried rice. These potato stacks were utter perfection.

Random picture of our first and only decoration thus far because we ate the potatoes before I could photograph them

So we got everything together and then tried to find a movie to watch. Are you guys good at finding a movie to watch with your partners? We are not great at it. In addition, I have been extra weird about not being able to decide what I want to watch lately, which is not that big a deal, but I have also been extra weird in getting panicky and weepy about it (it's so much fun being married to me). We made a rule a while back that we would go through our list (this was before we had individual accounts) and the first movie that we came to that wasn't obviously for me (like horror) or for him (like Heavy Water Wars), we would watch it. This has become more complicated now that we have individual accounts and seven different streaming services. I asked if we could just watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, even though he didn't know anything about it, because I wanted to watch something funny and weird, and I had heard it was those things.

It is funny, and weird beyond belief, and also beautiful and loving to the point of cheesiness but maybe not quite, but also I didn't care because I loved it. Especially the part about being a mess but having found someone kind and patient to make up for it. And also the hot dog thing, and the butt plugs. 

Today was a good day in this science-fiction action comedy drama horror that I am pretty lucky to call my life. 

Day 28: In Which I May Have Bitten Off More Than I Can Chew

 I keep going to title this post and realizing that I have almost certainly used every title that crosses my mind - "Crawling to the Finish Line": "I Think I Can, I Think I Can": Holy Fuck I Do Not Feel Like Blogging Tonight" - at this precise period in NaBloPoMos Past. 

I just realized that I didn't tell you about my teeth-cleaning experience on Tuesday. I also just realized that the bag of McIntosh apples I bought after that teeth-cleaning experience is still sitting on the table unopened and I'm afraid the precious, precious Macs will rot, so I had to lean over awkwardly and tear it open and spread out the apples before proceeding.

It was a very bad experience. It may have been my worse teeth-cleaning experience ever. I wanted to ask the hygienist if she had just wandered in off the street, tied up the actual hygienist and stuffed her (or him) in a closet and then grabbed a plaque scraper and waited for the next unwitting victim (me) to happen by. 

She wasn't mean, really. Just incredibly ham-handed and rough and lacking in any signs of emotion or finesse. Usually when I flinch drastically or my feet actually come up off the chair the hygienist will back off a little or murmur sympathetically. Not this chick. I have a very small jaw and my teeth are very close together, which doesn't make the tooth-cleaning work easy - except for Judy or Trudy or whatever her actual name was, who made no bones about grabbing my lip and pulling it out several inches or bracing her elbow against my cheek to get a better angle. No small talk, which is generally great with me, except she kept saying she was hungry, which maybe explains some things.

And also, fluoride! Wtf? She asked if I wanted fluoride and I sort of thought I must always get the fluoride. Isn't just a liquid that they paint your teeth with? She said you can eat or drink, but don't brush for four hours. And then she sprayed some kind of silly-string-adjacent abomination all over my teeth - like, there were actual bits in my mouth. I was freshly tooth-cleaned, everything should have been smooth and shiny and instead everything was lumpy and gross. 

I know it's a massive cliché that no one likes the dentist. What's to like, really? But I usually come home and feel like I'm going to burst into tears (or actually burst into tears) for a few hours after the dentist. This certainly did nothing to ameliorate that reaction. 

However, like the meme says, self-care isn't all about bubble baths and fuzzy cardigans and bullet journals - sometimes that shit is difficult and unpleasant. Also, dental care is a massive privilege, so I'm really only complaining to be humorous. Also, once I got the silly string off my teeth later that day they were smooth and shiny, so there's that. But our dentist's office is so over-booked at this point that it's really hard to request the hygienist you like (Anita, for me it was always Anita - she was very, very good with neurotic anxious clients). I might have to switch dentists. Oh! But I just thought of a post title that I don't think I've used before, and it's all thanks to Grudy or Frudy or whatever. What do you think? 

Day 24: Who's That Trip-Trapping Over My Bridge?

 I spent most of the day in the basement again and almost forgot to post before going upstairs to read before bed. This just reminded me of when I was pregnant with Angus and the basement was being finished. Matt would go down there in the evenings and every now and then I'd need him for something and I would yell for him (because I was enormous and lazy) and he couldn't hear me and of course this was pre-cell-phone so I couldn't even (ridiculously) text him. This would make me unreasoningly angry, and I started calling him (only half-jokingly) the basement troll. Well who's the troll now, bitches?

I bring my ipad down so I can play a tv show while I'm wandering around sorting and dusting and moving and gasping in a horrified manner (mummified spider, which is absolutely nothing compared to what Hannah (HI HANNAH) found in her garage, but still, it was big. And crunchy.) Yesterday I started playing the new Addams Family show Wednesday on Netflix, but then stopped it because it's actually really good and I want to actually watch it. I need something NOT very good, that I can only half pay attention to and not care that I miss a lot. When Matt got home today I told him I will be watching Ghost Whisperer and I will not be taking questions at this time.

Matt and I are also watching Reboot on Disney Plus. I stumbled over it by accident and it's quite good - Rachel Bloom is in it, from the amazing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (so good. SO so good). And Paul Reiser, and Keegan Michael Key. It has multiple actual laugh-out-loud moments.

Since we're talking about trivial matters, my iphone system just got updated. I haven't really noticed much changing, except this:

The time. It's now in the most ridiculous, over-the-top, comic-sans-ish font. Why? I mean, granted it's easier for my decrepit old eyes to see, but I hate it. I swear it gets fatter every time I look at it. 

While sorting through photos today I found this wallet-sized pic of Angus - I took it I think two summers ago when we walked over to the nearby pub to have a drink on the patio. But wait.... did something spill on it? No, somehow - I have no idea how - there is a tiny superimposed image of a photo I took of him at his friend's house just before prom in 2018. So it looks like there's a tiny him perched on top of his beer.

What the heck?

It's been a good but kind of weird week. Saturday morning I have to take my mom for an ultrasound at the butt-crack of dawn. Let's hope the post doesn't write itself that day (note to self: Leave Lucy at home!)