Eve's Room, Before and After

Before: aqua and purple, painted by my dad many years ago:

During:

After: Sherwin Williams Sockeye and Nearly Peach, painted by Eve, two weeks ago:

In Which I Suddenly Realize That I Am the Problem

I've been crap at jotting down things to write about which means I have nothing to write about and also that I clearly don't know myself at all. Let's talk about how I keep thinking that Eve is five instead of seventeen and assuming she can't do stuff when she most certainly can do stuff. I mean, I'm not necessarily the type of mom that tells her kids "you can do anything you want if you just believe in yourself!" (My friend Collette (HI COLLETTE) has a funny story about this that happened at her daughter's diving competition - the mom behind her said to her daughter "I KNEW you'd come in first if you just BELIEVED" - she came in first because she was the only one in her age class). I mean, I knew my kids were smart and I tried to teach them critical thinking and I figured they could do a lot of things, but not, like, fly (or even ride a bike, in Eve's case - sorry babe, my fault you were born without balance), or do magic, or ride a unicorn - wait, that's basically flying, I'm being repetitive.

I like to keep our expectations reasonable, is all I'm saying. The year before Angus's baseball team could qualify for the Little League World Series, my sister asked when it was so she could book time off at work. "Pfagh!" I laugh-snorted unattractively "they're not going to the Little League World Series. B.C. always wins. Don't bother booking time off for that." Well, they went to the Little League World Series and my sister had to drive all night to see one game and then go to work the day after on no sleep (no problem, not like being a pharmacist at a hospital chemo center requires alertness or anything) and I was not terribly popular.

Wait, this started as me trying to illustrate that I might coddle my kids a little and has somehow morphed into me being a loser who doesn't believe in her kids. And now I'm suddenly remembering that I didn't give baby Angus pretzels because they were a choking hazard, then sort of forgot about pretzels for three years and when he finally got pretzels as a four-year-old he looked at me like I was some kind of pretzel-hiding asshole. This is terrible! Hang on, I have to go tell Angus he actually can go to med school if he wants to. And maybe bring him some pretzels.

Anyway, Eve decided to repaint her room because we weren't doing Bluesfest. I thought we would make a playlist, crank the tunes and do it together i.e. I would do most of the work. Nuh-uh. My husband helped her move some furniture, but she taped, edged, and rolled on three coats of paint per wall (and it's a big room!). I was extremely impressed. I took her to IKEA to get her a few new things to match the new colours. The main thing she wanted was a tall set of drawers to go with her desk, which only has two little ones. We got to the self-serve warehouse, I tried to lift the box and said "shit, I can't lift this by myself, we'll have to find someone to help us." She raised her eyebrows at me, went and got a trolley and grabbed one end and waited for me to grab the other. Then she told ME not to hurt myself.

When we got to the car, I opened the hatch and told her to hold the cart while I slid the box out to where we could both grab it. She said "No! YOU hold!" Then we got home and she built the frigging thing herself. Last time I tried to build something from IKEA I had to get my husband to help me open the box.

She is salty that you can't tell how much work went into assembling each drawer when it's put together like this

I will post more pictures of Eve's room when we (I mean, she) gets it all put back together. And I guess I'll go buy one of those goddamned "reach for the moon" or whatever the hell posters, since clearly I am a serious impediment to soaring or envisioning or carpe-ing the goddamned diem.

I'd Rather Have Five Minutes of Wonderful Than a Lifetime of Nothing Special

A couple of weeks ago I went over to my friend Kerry's (HI KERRY) house for a socially-distanced movie date, after we got talking about Steel Magnolias. While I was there I told her my Steel Magnolias origin story. I was in first-year university and my boyfriend broke up with me. It had been my first serious relationship and we had dated for years at home and then he went to university the year before I did. I didn't exactly go to the same place because of him - I went with my best friend, and it was a great school for the program I wanted, and I have no regrets - but I didn't exactly NOT go there because of him either. I was devastated. I didn't know what to do with myself. After dinner, I left my residence and just started wandering around. I went to the chapel and sat down and realized I really wasn't very religious anymore, and even if I was this seemed like a really embarrassing problem to go to any deity with. I wandered towards the woods trail and then realized that would be extra stupid in the dark (yes, I did briefly flirt with pulling a Bella-in-Twilight and disappearing into the forest for days without food or water, but my ex wasn't a vampire or still in love with me, I don't like bugs, and I would have gotten over my sadness-related lack of hunger within a few hours. Plus it really wasn't a very big forest). I finally walked into the little downtown and eventually passed the tiny one-screen movie theatre and Steel Magnolias was playing. I don't think I knew anything about it. I had just enough money in change in my jacket pocket to get in - it was five or six dollars. It was the perfect refuge for a couple of hours, and I had the wettest, grossest, most cathartic ugly cry ever. Then I went back to residence and my roommate and friends were panicking that I'd been gone for so long and I felt like kind of an asshole.

Anyway, it holds up. It is sweet and funny and heartbreaking and in my Top Ten of All Time (I say, not really knowing what the other nine are because any time I try to think of it I can't remember any movies I've ever seen. Can I name nine other movies I love without googling? A Room With a View. Gattaca. Cinema Paradiso. Ummmmmm. Three? THREE? That's the best I can do? For fuck's sake. Oh, what's that South African one about the aliens? Station Nine? Plan Nine? Geez, life is hard without Google, especially in perimenopause.)

I'm going to try to move on and see if any other movies come to me, It's still really freaking hot, even at night. My stand fan in my room stopped working, so I ordered another one, but I couldn't get the same one, and the one I replaced it with isn't great. I have a bad habit of getting rid of things and forgetting to note the name of them so I can get the same one. A couple of years ago we got a ceiling fan and Matt installed it and then it didn't work, so he took it down and we've had a hole in the ceiling ever since. We finally decided to order another one, and I carefully researched which ones were highly rated. It came and he installed it way more quickly than I expected. I walked in and said "oh, looks great, is it on low?" and he said "no, that's as high as it goes". I blinked and he said "I think it's rated highly because it's so quiet". Like, excuse me? It's a FUCKING FAN, should it not be rated on it's, ya know, FAN-NESS? My old fan sounded like a jet engine and I LOVED IT. Anyway, my loving husband saved the day by then ordering vent covers with little fans in them. So I still need two fans going PLUS the AC, but now I'm not suffocatingly hot every night.

Terminator two! I freaking love Sarah Connor.

Die Hard. Toy Story.

DISTRICT, it's DISTRICT Nine. Right? Maybe?

I invited my parents over for dinner partly because I thought they'd like to go somewhere that wasn't their house or the grocery store during seniors' hours (or, full disclosure, the liquor store), and partly to force me to clean. I was somewhat less than impressed with my brilliant plan the day before when I was trying to do a months' worth of organizing and cleaning in a day, and it wasn't perfect because Eve is redoing her room and we're still sort of moving things around from when we got the new couches, but having my parents over was really nice and I can now walk through the living room/dining room area without experiencing extreme clutter-related stress and self-loathing.

Moonstruck!

I've taken my disposable cloth bags grocery shopping a couple of times, understanding that I would pack my own groceries which I was before the pandemic anyway. Now it feels a little more panicky though, because grocery shopping is so much more fraught and I really hate to hold up the line - and panicking in a mask is super not fun. Not sure what the answer is, because I also hate bringing home another whack of plastic bags every time I go.

Up. The first ten minutes of Up constitutes one of the best movie love stories of all time, fight me.

How many is that? That's nine. Am I a fake fan? Clearly I don't have a well-established Top Ten Favourite Movies. What I do have is an embarrassingly rambly blog post and a sneaking suspicion that I just said Cinema Paradiso to sound sophisticated. Oh well.

Twelve Monkeys!

Ground Covered

I am not thriving - not lamenting, or asking for sympathy, just stating the facts. I am almost dreading going to bed because trying to sleep has been a torturous exercise. I'm in pain. I am not loving my weight and I have zero inclination to exercise. I'm too hot everywhere all the time, even with AC and multiple fans. I am in that meme where you're riding a bike and the bike is on fire and everything is on fire because you're in hell. I am in the centre of a fiery triangle of grief, perimenopause and pandemic - feel more like a pentagram. I'm not a lover of summer weather at the best of times - right now it's making me feel even more claustrophobic. I want out of the heat and out of my skin and out of my life for a few seconds.

Oh well.

So gardening. How do you feel about gardening? I have a similar love/hate relationship dynamic going on with gardening to the one I have with air conditioning. Basically when we started lockdown I threw open our bedroom windows and left them open for two months. Sometimes I woke up with snowflakes on my reading chair. Matt slept in a hoodie. It was amazing. I absolutely hate when I have to start closing the windows because of air conditioning, I resist it as long as possible because I hate feeling sealed inside and not being able to get any fresh air.

And then gardening. I always start with such optimism. I will shovel, and weed, and be one with the earthy earth, and plunge my hands into the living dirt, and lovingly tend the flowers and herbs and vegetables!

Well fuck, you guys, I don't know WHAT THE FUCK I'm doing! I could read some books or watch some Youtube stuff, but I never think of that in time, and then it's the goddamned May 2-4 weekend and my mother is frowning disapprovingly at my empty front flower bed and I'm panic-buying shit without reading the information tags again. Full sun? Part sun? Annual? Perennial? Even worse, this year I was ordering stuff online, like THAT was ever going to go well. I keep fucking buying stuff that I think is just a pretty flower and Matt says uh, that's a shrub. And reading is supposed to be my thing, you guys, this is not really defensible.

Get a load of this action before I kill them, or myself trying to keep them alive

I bring it all home and plant everything taking the blind faith approach - here I will thrust you and here you will thrive, or not, whatever, I'm not invested, you can be replaced. How do you know how deep a hole to dig? I start digging and then trying to stick the root ball in and it's not deep enough, and then suddenly it's too deep, like obviously the roots have to be buried but the stems aren't supposed to be buried and WHAT ARE THE RULES?

I have gardening gloves because we have those giant evil goddamned nettle things that grow six feet while your back is turned and look like they could eat you and have four-inch long sharp spikes, but I hate the feel of gardening gloves, so I put them on and then take them off and do stuff and then put my dirty hands back in the gloves and then everything is black. Same with my sandals - dirt flies into them, or I take them off and put them back on, or I wander out with no shoes to do one thing and stay out. Also, I say I'm going out for half an hour to pull a few weeds and water and then I get in the groove and Matt has to come out and push me, bug-bitten and wild-haired and covered in mud and blood back into the house.

But that thing, where flowers look totally dead and you water them and fifteen minutes later they are standing up and all dewy and perfect-looking? That will never not be magical to me. I am a sucker for the stupid zombie flowers.

Matt planted seeds before he left for Thunder Bay - SEEDS. Cucumbers and pepper and lettuce. That was foolishly optimistic enough, considering our growing season. Then I realized that he was gone and I really needed to get the garden in, and with one practically useless arm I was going to have to ask for help, which I don't do that often and am bad at. I explained the situation to Eve and what an idiot I was not to have asked before, because she is a mini-OCD-me and when she weeds, she WEEDS. She did the front bed, and I planted it. She did part of the back bed, and I finished it and then planted. I said I might ask for some help for the herb bed the next day. She did it before I got up and, um, didn't realize that there were seeds planted and a couple of the centimetre-high green things weren't, strictly speaking weeds. Oops.

Can you see the Gerbera Daisies? This is the first year they lasted for more than two days without something eating them AND a couple of NEW flowers grew - usually I buy them thinking of them as cut flowers, once they're gone they're not coming back. On the other hand, I think that thing in the front on the right might be a begonia that is frying to a crisp in the son. Oops again.

I feel like I should have some inspirational message to end on - the earth putting forth new growth, nurturing new life, rebirth, blah blah. I got nothing. I wish I had some weed.

For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast

My mother-in-law died, early in the morning on Saturday. Warmest spring on record in Thunder Bay. Her husband had sat through the night with her because he felt that the time was coming. My husband was nearby.

This is what I wrote on Facebook:

Matt's mom - my kids' Nana Barb - left us this morning and we are bereft. She didn't have a good mother-in-law, so she was determined to be a good mother-in-law and honestly, she probably overshot a little, because I would have settled for one that didn't take her son's side in everything (she didn't, she busted his balls even more than I did). She came and helped me look after the kids while Matt was away - we'd get up early and sit around in our pajamas and messy hair, we'd stay up late and watch weird movies and generally have a splendid time. She bought me my first immersion blender (life-changing) when she couldn't bear to see me pouring soup from pot to blender and back again. She bought me a leopard-print winter hat that I hated, but Eve wore it naked all winter around the house and it gave us great joy. She once mixed me a gin and tonic that made me drunk for three days.

My children are so lucky that they have had full, lifelong relationships with four grandparents and two grandparents. I am so happy that Barb had the adventures she did, that she went places and saw things and had a giant family that she adored. That should be what we all strive for, right? A life that you love so much you can't bear to leave it. A person that we love so much we can't bear to lose them. It's not enough, because it's never enough when we love someone. So I guess I have to be grateful for that, even. Fuck.

This is the obituary, written by my brother-in-law Eric, her middle son of three. 

I've typed a lot of things and erased them, here and on social media, out of some misplaced desire not to sound like a cliché. I have not realized that this is asinine - like people who decide that they're going to be "cool" parents, and their kids will wear tiny motorcycle jackets and only listen to Bob Dylan and Velvet Underground, and the whole family ends up embarrassing and douchey. 

We found out about a year ago that Barb had lung cancer and that it was probably terminal. This gave us some time to plan visits and tell her we loved her. Matt took Eve up for her birthday in November. I texted her pictures of the kids and the dog almost daily. The disease and treatment turned her into a night owl, so she would be awake on her ipad and we would have conversations at one a.m. We made bad cancer jokes. When Angus shaved his beard into mutton-chop whiskers and I sent her the picture and said he looked like he was about to foreclose on the family farm she said "I know! I thought he was going to make me change the will!" She was brave and magnificent. 

So in a way, we're grateful that we had this year to treasure our time with her. But if she had dropped dead of a heart attack on Saturday instead of drifting away on palliative sedation, she would have been able to be at our family Thanksgiving last October with all her sons and their wives and children. She wouldn't have been in terrible pain for the last week or in the hospital without her husband because of Covid last month.

We buried her mother two fucking years ago, at 95. Do you see what I'm doing here? Remember when I talked about doing Covid Math? Now I'm doing Death Math, and it's not helpful in the least, but it's almost impossible to stop doing it entirely.

Matt and I went for a week-end at the end of January. She was doing quite well at that point - she was up out of bed, we had dinners at the table, we had a glass of wine at night, we had great conversations. When I was leaving she said "If I don't see you again..." and I said "You'll see me again". I wish I hadn't. I try really hard not to deal in platitudes. The last time we saw Nana she said "no one lives forever, and I don't feel sorry for myself". Matt said "oh, don't talk like that" and I was like "shut up, dude, the woman is ninety-five". This time I really was confident we would see Barb again because we planned to go up once a month until the end. The only reason we couldn't is fucking Covid, so technically it's not my fault that I was wrong, but I still feel like an asshole. 

She was fairly circumspect about who she wanted to have knowledge of her situation, which is why I haven't talked about it here before now. But when we were leaving she also said "take care of Matt. Don't let him cry", and, well, fuck that, Barb, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I might even rend a garment or two. 

So there it is. Someone we loved died, and we are sad. If you are so inclined, go for a walk and pet all the dogs you can (sometime in the future after Covid, I guess). Raise a gin and tonic - just a tonic if you don't drink, just a gin if that's what floats your boat. Love your people hard. That's all I've got. 

Recipes and Answers

This is the recipe we used for the grilled naan: https://thestayathomechef.com/grilled-naan/#jump-to-recipe. We followed it exactly, but putting it on the grill butter-side down and then buttering the other side was a bit cumbersome and interfered with closing the lid and getting the temperature hot enough, and when I thought about it afterwards, there's really no reason not to butter both sides before bringing it out to the grill, which would make the whole process more efficient.

This is the recipe for the soft pretzel bites: https://www.thegunnysack.com/two-ingredient-dough-pretzel-bites/. Unfortunately it doesn't help Nicole because it's not vegan - is there vegan Greek yogurt? Hey, it looks like there is!

Tudor's comment is funny because I thought "oh, right, this time I knew to google "Weight Watchers dough pretzel recipe" but the first time I found it I didn't, so how did I find it? Also, the same thing happened to me a few years ago with a brownie recipe, where it wanted me to use six exotic ingredients and do a dance under the midnight sky or something, and when I complained about it online everyone was like "oh honey, brownies are supposed to be easy". Clearly the internet just fucks with us sometimes.

I'm trying to remember what we were doing while baking the pretzels (and listening to Hamilton) when Eve said "oh, I shouldn't do that. That's a recipe for disaster". And then she fell over laughing at her own brilliance because we were following an ACTUAL recipe.

I'm struggling with paint colour decisions again, which is kind of dumb because the amount of crap that we'd have to move in order to access the walls in question means that it's probably not happening any time soon, but it's still bugging me. When we moved in here I was of the firm conviction that I would not live surrounded by white walls, so we painted the family room blue (it was okay, would have been better if it was darker), the kitchen yellow (a perfectly nice yellow, I'm just tired of it), the short hall to the living room and the actual living room a sort of orangey terra cotta (also fine, just tired of it) and the entrance kelly green (a frigging disaster, what the entire froggy fuck was I thinking? It literally matched Angus's ugly green uniform when he played for East Nepean Little League, and I love ENLL but not enough to paint my walls in homage).

We repainted the family room a nice darkish neutral brown, and I have no clue why we didn't extend that to the kitchen, because the walls literally flow into each other and the yellow looks weird next to the brown. My plan is probably to paint the kitchen the same brown, or close, because I don't remember what exact colour the family room is, then maybe also the living room, and paint one side of the hall eggplant, which I always love when I see it on a wall. But then I don't know what to do with the entrance. And I also really like a yellowy-apply-green for the entrance (we have part of the downstairs and Angus's room painted that colour and I've never gotten tired of it, I love it), but then what do I do with the hallway wall?

I will post pictures of the wall colours tomorrow when I'm less lazy (I just moved a bunch of shit around to get ready for a couch delivery tomorrow which I'm trying not to get too excited about because I don't really believe it's going to happen, and it's a million degrees and ninety percent humidity and I am tired and sweaty even with the AC on and three fans going, thank-you perimenopause) in case anyone wants to weigh in on what colour I should theoretically paint my house if we ever manage to get that far.

Oh, and the Sex Ed I Am Spartacus with vaginas episode is Season One Episode Five.

Appetites

I'm not in the greatest headspace. We've gotten crummy news on a couple of fronts that I don't really feel like talking about right now, but I feel like blogging at least once a week (at most once a week most weeks, let's be Frank, I mean frank, not that there's anything wrong with being Frank, simmer down Franks, I'm sure you're all lovely) is helping to maintain some sort of structure to my time so I'mma just throw up some random shit.

I did make the grilled naan last week and it turned out splendidly.

Glamour shot of the naan

Also, Eve's friends have been baking stuff and then driving around a little bit of it to everyone in the friend group, which has been lovely - beautifully decorated sugar cookies and cinnamon monkey bread so far (I should have taken pictures, I forgot). We figured it was our turn, so we made some soft pretzel bites on Saturday (Sunday? Some day). Are you familiar with the miracle and wonder that is Weight Watchers two-ingredient dough? I was hitherto unfamiliar with this incredible substance. To be clear, I am not doing anything resembling Weight Watching at the moment unless you want to count Watching it Go Up (not even that so much as Watching Myself Give Zero Fucks About My Weight, if we're aiming for absolute clarity). All I did was google "soft pretzel recipe" and then sit there with my jaw hanging open reading this one. 

Eve wearing Nana's flour-sack apron

Like I said, we weren't looking for a weight-conscious recipe. But it's frakkin' delicious and really freakin' easy, so we will be holding on to it.

Glamour shot of the few pretzel bites that were left

So we delivered to a couple of houses, and then had a socially-distanced (did I already say I'm getting sick of typing that? I'm really sick of typing that) backyard visit at the last house, which was lovely.

Davis somehow managing to look like a hot housewife from the seventies

We also spatchcocked a chicken. No, that's a lie, we cooked a spatchcocked chicken, I just like the word spatchcock.

(Nice legs, honey.)

I am having issues with formatting now, so apologies if this post only occupies the right half of the screen from here on in.

Are you watching Sex Education on Netflix? I kind of think pretty much everyone should be watching Sex Education on Netflix, although I recognize that it will very much not be to some people's taste. 

These are the texts I exchanged with my friend and my daughter last night regarding the show:

So, like, this show has taught my kid about anal douching AND healthy relationships AND the meaning of the word 'discourse' (pretty much).  And yes, my daughter is the one who recommended it to me. (Oh, there's also a fabulous "I am Spartacus" type scene involving vaginas. It's brilliant).

Right. This is the point in the post where I usually look at the disparate components and try to find a title to pull them all together. I'm... not seeing anything. Oh wait, I think I've got it.