The Main Event: Eve's Grad Weekend Part 3

What was wrong with the dessert, Suzanne? I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. Well, not really, but I'm happy to talk about it because it was SO WEIRD. It was a brownie that was supposed to come with chocolate sauce, caramel sauce and ice cream and whipped cream - all three of us were going to share it. I didn't used to like brownies that much, but the malt chocolate brownie dessert at Jack Astor's sort of changed my mind a few years ago.

So it was a brownie. It pretty much came with a bit of whipped cream and a sliced up strawberry. No problem. It also just tasted... really weird. Kind of like somebody had maybe used the knife they used on the brownie and strawberries to chop up some garlic and mushrooms first? I would have said something, but we were kind of just ready to cut our losses with the restaurant. I will say that it was not outrageously priced. I really liked the salad I got, and the salmon and mashed potatoes were...fine. Matt got a steak that he said was adequate. Eve got fish and chips and it was fine. Matt had insisted on booking a dinner with our home friends for Thursday night after we got back, and I thought it was superfluous at the time, but it ended up being such a fun night where I was right in the middle of the table so got to talk to anyone and felt brilliantly witty and hilarious all night and the food was AMAZING, so I was very wrong and he was very right, and the mediocre dinner that already wouldn't have been a big deal is now even less of one.

So!

 Monday! Graduation day! It felt like we'd been in Hamilton forever by this point. It was quite cool and windy on Friday, but had been warming up a little bit every day, and Monday morning was kind of perfect - not too hot for me, not too cold for Eve to wear a dress. 

We had a late breakfast at the hotel since the ceremony was going to make lunch kind of impossible and dinner wasn't until seven. There is some sort of odd, random tradition of girls wearing white dresses for McMaster graduation. Eve would have had to buy another dress, and she didn't really want to, so she decided to buck the trend. She had found this at a vintage store in Westdale just before coming home.

We got to the venue and she followed the signs for where she had to go and we went and found seats. She texted that there were a LOT of white dresses, but sent us this picture.

We were there almost an hour and a half early, but we talked and I organized pictures on my phone and it went pretty fast. 

I have mixed feelings about the dress I wore. I really liked it when I tried it on, but I maybe should have observed it while moving around more.

The off-white colour and the lace remind me of my wedding dress, and I knew I needed something cool. But later on in pictures I was a bit worried that it looked like I was wearing a nightgown.

Anyway. Arts and Science was grouped with Humanities for this ceremony, and quite a few people felt like there was a fair amount of Arts and Science erasure. There were speeches from the Humanities Chair but not the Arts and Science Chair. Eve was nervous because she was the first person to go up for her department and she was worried she wouldn't know what to do. We didn't love the way they did it - putting the hood on beforehand rather than when the student went up, not really enough time for them to do anything but smile awkwardly and keep walking. My professor friend said they used to do the hooding as they walked up, and it didn't take that much longer. Anyway - it's never going to be perfect. 

The students had to send in the pronunciation of their names, which is completely understandable. Apparently the humanities chair had pushed for AI to read out the names, and our chair fought them on it - seems like that could have been laughably bad. Things went pretty well, except for a few understandable slips - the funniest was probably when the previous name had been something very long and complicated and the person read it perfectly, and then the next person was named Brayden and she pronounced it "Brain-Ned". 

The speeches were all good - not too long, some humour, insightful. When the department chair said the formal "I present these students as being found worthy and suitable" I actually felt kind of emotional.

Afterwards we met the girls outside the venue. Everyone was a little dazed. We hadn't met most of the other housemates' parents yet, as well as the parents of a couple of Eve's other friends, so that was all happening in a rushed and giddy fashion.

There was a reception in a building across the street so we walked over. 

We met Jean coming in - she stepped down as department head so after thirty years does not have to sit through the whole ceremony anymore.

Honestly, it was pretty awkward - just small enough so you felt like you should know everyone but you didn't, quite. We were all ravenous, though, so we lined up for a cracker and a piece of cheese and six grapes and some ice water (no shade, it was perfect). And then took pictures out in the hallway.

The mother-daughter alumni and graduate photo.

The housemates! They look like a garden! 

The picture of Eve and her housemates was the first pic featured in the social media post about the Arts and Science graduation. 

About a week before we left, Eve and her housemates had been talking and someone suggested having dinner with all the house girls and their parents. I'd been kind of thinking this would be fun but I didn't want to be the first one to ask. Naturally, this turned into a flurry of stress and indecision about where we would go, where would be big enough, where would be nice but not too nice, was this actually a good idea. Eve hates talking on the phone and dealing with logistics like this, but she also hates watching people dithering when there is a solution to be had (the way she laid out who should take what room in their house was masterful). So she went up to her room, closed the door and then came out saying she had called Nanaa's, the Persian restaurant near their house, and secured a reservation at seven o'clock for twenty-four people and a baby. 

So that was that.

We had eaten there and knew the food was incredible, it was nice but not fancy, and the service was incredible. I regret that we didn't get a picture of all the parents at our long table, but I got a pic of all the girls and Zoe's boyfriend Sam smushed happily in their booth.

Eve made them all little clay houses, with the house number and a magnet on the back.

We all hung around talking outside on the sidewalk for a while, and had to tear ourselves away. Basically, it all turned out pretty much as well as we could have hoped. 

In Search of Truth and a Decent Non-Murdery Place to Live: Eve's Grad Weekend Part 2

I feel I should hasten to add that I did not have a fever in Hamilton. I got meds on board for the UTI quickly, and I did manage to sit through two plays and only pee at intermission, so I was thankful for that. The fever thing started after we got back. I have stupid tiny airways, which makes everything worse and longer-lasting. 

On Saturday Matt and Eve went to the first of three apartment-viewing appointments she had booked, while I got some antibiotics for my UTI. We had a chill afternoon after our busy day Friday, and then we went to hang out with Matt's brother and his wife and our niece (Lydia) and nephew (Mitchell), which is always a good time.

The kids were very into the hockey playoffs. Jeremy said every morning they would ask 1) did the Oilers win 2) did Connor McDavid score and 3) did a Jewish player score (my SIL is Jewish). Lydia supplied that the two Jewish players on the Edmonton Oilers are Jake Walman and Zach Hyman, but Zach Hyman now had a broken wrist, so he was out. 

Mitchie likes to ride around on people.

With or without a corn cob.

Lydia told us about her sleepover summer camp. Laura said it was nice that none of the girls were Mean Girls. Lydia said sagely "well. Some feelings were hurt."

They made an amazing summer dinner with hamburgers and hot dogs and grilled vegetables and salad and corn and it was amazing. Throughout the evening a few times Mitchie would start talking about something and Lydia would hiss at him to stop, until she finally yelled "YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING", and he asked with genuine curiosity "AM I?" With exceptional obliviousness, I did not catch on until the very last second that the secret was a surprise birthday cake. I am not a child, and I was totally okay - overjoyed, really - spending my birthday weekend hanging with Matt and Eve in Hamilton, but not gonna lie, this was kind of awesome. 

Lydia also did the card.

We also revisited Lydia's iconic Broccoli picture. I love it so much, I'm so happy it's still up, I want to buy it from her and have it framed.

And then the game was on and it was hard to get the kids to do or pay attention to anything else. If we tried to wait for a commercial Mitchell would say rapturously "I LOVE the commercials". Eve and I headed back to the hotel after the first period, which is usually when Mitchell goes to bed. Matt said he begged and begged to stay up for the second period, and Jeremy relented, whereupon Mitchie fell fast asleep sprawled in front of the tv. 

Sunday was my birthday AND father's day. 

Eve gave me some tiny adorable presents.

We went to another apartment viewing.

On the way to the apartment, we saw a billboard that said dial 844 FIND TRUTH. Eve was perturbed because it didn't add up to a regular (xxx -xxx-xxxx) phone number format. We debated about this until I decided to try calling it. It actually worked. When they said "dial 1 if you have questions about your spiritual journey" Matt said "please don't". 

The apartment was okay. Slightly less nice than the one they'd seen the day before. As we were following the agent down the hallway, Matt whispered to me that it was important to be aware that no matter how nice the apartment is, the hallways are all murdery. Eve confirmed this. She said it's a thing online for people to video themselves walking to their apartments: "the hallway - DEATH, DOOM, HORROR; my apartment - Twinkle Twinkle, Peace, Loveliness". 

Then we drove into Westdale, the pretty little town around campus where Eve lived until May. We had breakfast at her favourite place, which has the most amazing sourdough bagels, and outdoor tables in the sun.

We went to the adorable bookstore (it has a LADDER). We looked at the Father's Day box.

Eve nearly bought the rusty tractor book for Matt.

Then Matt asked if we wanted to get frozen yogurt. Eve and I were ambivalent, but then Matt said he really wanted some chocolate frozen yogurt, and it was father's day, so obviously that was cool. Then we realized he was marching in a determined fashion towards where TCBY was thirty years ago, when it has actually moved up a street and across. I worked there for a summer when I lived in Hamilton, and every time we go into the new one Eve tells them I'm kind of a big deal there. They do not seem impressed. 

The place was busy. The radio station was seventies groove, but it kept phasing out, which was half annoying, half amusing. By the time The Devil Went Down to Georgia came on, we were snorting with laughter.

We drove around the neighbourhood downtown where Eve will likely be living next year, went back to the hotel for a bit, then went to the Burlington waterfront for dinner. There was a music festival on and it was a nice evening. The restaurant was nice but the food was a little disappointing. The dessert was so weird we bailed on it and got gelato walking back to the car. Still a fun evening, and the gelato was amazing.

Time Keeps on Slippin' Slippin' Slippin': Grad Weekend Part 1

I feel like I've lived many lifetimes since my last blog post. First, my dad is doing much better. His knee is a little sore still, but he's getting around as well as he was before (which is not great, but we'll take it). He came over this morning for his every-six-months nephrology appointment which was over Zoom today, thank fuck. He has idiopathic kidney disease, and has seen this doctor every six months for the last five years. Every year the doctor says much the same thing - kidney function is low but not dialysis-low, your kidneys will probably continue to be okay unless you get hit by a bus, in which case they will not do okay but many other things also would not. His last bloodwork actually showed a slight improvement in kidney function, so he doesn't have to see the doctor for a year. I like the nephrologist - he is genial and funny and watched Cougar Town. I especially like that there is no dialysis in our near future.

Last Thursday we headed to Hamilton for a string of events leading up to Eve's graduation. I had a doctor's appointment at 11:30 which had been for a couple of other issues, but the week before we had gotten some wildfire smoke blowing in from Saskatchewan, and it did a number on my airways. I was fairly apprehensive about the fact that I was supposed to see two productions in Stratford and sleep in a hotel room with Eve and Matt for five nights with a horrible hacking cough. Fortunately my wonderful doctor addressed the other issues AND gave me another vat of hydrocodone syrup, which is the only thing that stops the cycle. I picked it up as we were driving out of town, took a healthy slug and didn't cough for the whole drive, which was a massive relief. And then I developed a UTI and now I have a 102 degree fever while it's A Hundred And Are You Fucking Kidding Me degrees outside which is why it's taken me so long to blog this BUT ANYWAY.

Friday was a long day - Eve and I left the hotel at 11 a.m. and got back at 11:30 p.m for a day in Stratford with a group of arts and science students and profs. We saw Forgiveness, based on a book that was a Canada Reads contender a few years ago. As far as the book goes, the story was fascinating but the writer is a lawyer, not a writer, if you know what I mean. The play, on the other hand, was amazing. The full title is Forgiveness: A Gift from my Grandparents. Mark Sakamoto's grandparents are a Caucasian grandfather from the Magdalen Islands in Quebec, who is captured at the fall of Hong Kong and is a years-long war prisoner, and a Japanese-Canadian grandmother who spends the war in an internment camp (an extremely shitty chapter in Canadian history). The play was almost three hours long but didn't feel like it at all. 

After the play we had an hour or so of discussion with the actor who had adapted the book into a play as well as acting in it, and a woman who was also the composer. Jean Wilson, my tiny former professor who was also the department head until a couple of years ago, expressed her appreciation for the play and then said "I was thinking of the Iliad..." and the entire room burst out laughing because basically, Jean is nearly always thinking of the Iliad. I had thought that the actor looked like a tv actor I had seen many times, and when I saw him up close I realized that that was because he literally was that actor, and I had just watched him in season two of The Last of Us. Then we walked as a group to an insanely busy hotel restaurant and managed to eat and converse through the din. Eve talked to a girl who is starting the arts and science program in the fall and was considering combining with biology as well (this is not a common combination).

Then we walked back to the theatre but the next thing was in a much smaller room with just chairs. Cushiony chairs, but still. Just chairs. And the production was a sort of lecture/dramatic reading of nine cantos of Dante's Inferno. In Italian. With music and dramatic arm movements. Okay, I'm saying this to be goofy, but like Eve said at the beginning "this is cool, I feel cultured". And if it was the first thing we'd seen that day I would have been all in. But it was now eight o'clock, and we'd been on the go since ten a.m., and the chairs were not that comfortable and I had a UTI (but Eve was also counting down cantos with me by the end: "three more", "two more"). There were subtitles and the Italian recitation was cool. The arm movements were a little repetitive. The passion the professor and the actor had for the project was moving. They did happen to choose nine cantos that the kids had studied with Jean in her lit class. The music guy had long hair and kept dramatically flinging it around and moving weirdly and the spotlight wasn't even on him, and by the end of the whole thing I hated him.

My contacts had been in for way too long by this time, so Eve offered to drive at least half way back. On the way there, we had gone from pretty basic highway driving to lovely chill farm country, so this should have worked well. But you know how sometimes GPSs just dig sending you back a whole different way? And I was not smart enough or on the ball enough to actually check the route. So we ended up on the quite busy 401, which was a bit reminiscent of when I accidentally scarred Eve for life by making her drive onto a six-lane  highway while practicing for her driving test (also the GPS's fault). She handled it well, but we found an exit where she could pull over and I could take over driving.

It was good to have Stratford back on my radar. I hadn't been there in years (last time with Zarah for The Music Man, maybe?) and it's a really nice place. 

We got back to the hotel just before midnight where Matt was dozing but waiting for us to get home, gave a garbled account of the day, and collapsed. Matt had found out that the coach who took Angus's team to the Little League World Series was coaching his own son's team nearby, so had showed up to surprise him and watch the game. He got the ballpark hot dog he's been chasing all spring, so he had a good day too.

 

Accidental Friday Randoms

I sat down to blog yesterday and did multiple other things and didn't end up blogging. 

I wrote this three days ago. It happened two more times. Now it is Friday.

Things are a bit weird. My dad fell last week trying to carry some rhubarb into the house - managed the steps up to the deck fine but stumbled getting in the sliding door. He banged up his shins and twisted one knee pretty badly and the next morning couldn't get out of bed. It was my long day at work, but thank living god Matt is in the country, so he went over and spent the day and helped my dad get upright and then went and got a two-wheel walker and some bathroom accessories. So then he could get up and get to the bathroom, but was stuck upstairs, which is less than ideal. Sunday we went over for dinner (Matt was going to barbecue), and we were unsure if we should take dinner upstairs or if Matt should try to help him down the stairs. While we were still debating this, my dad scared the crap out of us by jokingly yelling "what the hell is all this noise about", having Ninja-ed himself down the stairs independently. This episode has probably kicked into higher gear getting them moved into a retirement residence, which is good in many ways but also sucks in many ways - senescence, mortality: not a fan. 

 

So obviously this could have been much worse, but I've had a tough winter mentally and was just sort of starting to feel more stable again, and this was tough. Looking for a good retirement residence for them and looking for a place for Eve in the fall has my head spinning with square footage measurements, amenities lists, transit scores and bedbug concerns. Worrying about crappy landlords for student houses suddenly seems much preferable to worrying about faceless corporations 'managing' giant apartment buildings. I lived in a little apartment near Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto while she was in undergrad and I was in grad school, and we had a bug problem at one point, and it was WRETCHED. I don't even know how you guard against something like that when you're sharing the building with hundreds of other people. 

ANYWAY, I need to stop obsessing about this. My parents are okay for now, and Eve is home, and I'm nearly done work for the year, and it is good. 

SO GOOD

So to bounce off a couple of recent blog posts by other people, Julie posted about the movie Sinners, which I wanted to see in the theatre but just missed. Julie said that with the size of most televisions it will still be a good watching experience at home. This reminded me of the hilarity of the day our new tv arrived, back when Eve was about one and a half. We had a tiny tv set, and when Matt talked about getting something better, I thought he meant like, going from ten inches to twenty-four. He did not.

When the man carried in the tv, I must have looked shocked. He said 'how big was your other tv?' I pointed and said 'it's right there!'. He looked and laughed and said "your picture in picture is bigger than that now." Eve crawled over and laid tummy down gazing at whatever screen saver thing was playing and I was like oh god, it's so wrong that she's going to grow up thinking tvs are that big. 

On the subject of horror movies, my friend Collette and I have dates every month or so to watch scary movies. Recent favourites include Cuckoo and Late Night With the Devil. When Eve is here she joins us - there was one memorable moment during Hereditary (very very good) when a new scene started and there was a horrifying thing that was not immediately apparent because the scene was dark: Collette saw it first and gasped, followed by Eve saying 'what? OH MY GOD' and then me going "what? JESUS CHRIST." 

Wednesday night Collette came over and the three of us watched Oddity, an Irish folk horror movie. We thought it was very good, and Collette and I screamed a couple of times which is not usual (for that we usually need our friend Janet). It was clever, which is probably my most important metric. The setting also played a huge part (Eve: "I'm sorry, why is their house a creepy dungeon?" Me: "Because Ireland, I think.")

My FINAL item on this tangent is that Eve and I were going to go see Bring Her Back last night.

 We've liked a lot of movies put out by A24 films (although not Beau is Afraid, still angry about that one). But by the next day Eve was feeling anxious about the movie and asked if we could pivot and like, OF COURSE, I just thought it would be fun to see a movie with her and there isn't a great selection right now. Her friend Jackson suggested the latest Final Destination which made me roll my eyes internally, but then I looked and it had a surprisingly high rating, and we were just going for fun anyway. And it worked out well, there were only six people in the entire theatre and we could talk a little and clutch each other and whimper, and it was not terrible - a few surprises, some humour, one little twist that Eve predicted that was fun. 

Eve and Jody and I went to Ikea last week to get some bins for the dishes Eve is taking for her apartment in the fall.

Jody wore a mushroom toy on her head, which sort of made up for her talking too much to let me tell my hilarious spoon story to Eve (HI JODY I'M REALLY NOT LETTING THIS GO AM I).

Also I was grocery shopping and I thought this said Boobs.

 

Finally, someone posted this on the neighbourhood buy and sell group and I sat there staring at it for a full minute. 

 

What? Why? READ THE ROOM NICOLE.