The Hiatus Report

Not these candles - I still have these. And the birds.

 I am painfully typing this by propping the heel of my hand on the keyboard as I have banged up something called a rotator cuff (maybe?) and my right arm will not lift. Luckily I am left-handed. Even more luckily I have two wonderful daughters and a wonderful added son (I am calling him the son outlaw, or SOL) who dealt with the Christmas feast. This included cooking (thank you YD), planning and plating (thank you ED) and stripping the bird (thank you SOL).  And my gratitude to all of them for taking home most of the leftovers. As well, the YD made a splendid Christmas Eve dinner. Grandkid’s older brother is vegetarian and I am shellfish allergic so we got a special dish. The rest of them had a marvellous concoction of mussels, oysters, shrimp and whitefish and we all had chocolate fondue for dessert. I do not want to see or think about food until maybe February. Talking to the ED about this, she says that she is about turkeyed out. Yes, indeed.

SOL and grandkid’s Bouche de Noel was spectacular. Both visually and to eat. And, arm or not, I got a sort of Christmas theme onto the festive table. I even, with some pain, sacrificed three of my beautiful wax Christmas tree candles for table decorations. I LIT them and they flamed beautifully all through the Christmas feast. There are still more beauties in the box for later years, though. It had to be a nice table as that was all there was. No wacky Lanark tree. See arm will not work, above.  I hear that the ED’s tree is large and the wacky bit is being supplied by the grandkid’s cat who is removing the tinsel strips from the bottom branches (by whacking them, of course). At least he is not crawling into the gift bags as the last cat loved to do. It is difficult to spot the candles in this shot, but if you look carefully, their brave little flames can be seen.

We endured a wet, gray gruesome day today, Sunday, but I guess the weather and post turkey somnolence held the crowd at the supermarket right down to reasonable and JG was able to get the shopping shopped. He even found parsnips, with some puzzlement, and I sliced some into the stew I made for supper. JG looked at his plate with even more puzzlement and allowed as how he did not see any of that vegetable I had asked for in his serving. So, I speared a fine white round from my plate and gave it to him. Please understand that we have had parsnips before in our sixty-one and counting years of married life. But I guess I have never asked him to buy them. He visited three stores to get his whole list, and the parsnips were in the last one. What was not anywhere were balls of suet for our birds. The bird count is on the 30^th, and we speculate that all the local birders have stripped the suet out of the store to use as bait for their count. I hope the weather improves for them.

YD is having fine weather hiking up and down, wait, down and then up again in the Grand Canyon. Her gift to herself for a successful retirement. She flew off last week and will be back for New Years Day. Or I think she will. My keyboard has just turned to Canadian and is giving me a È when I want a possessive apostrophe. I think I had better quit this, heave my right hand off the keyboard see if I remember how to switch back to the normal keyboard.

Yeah, and …  wishing you a fine and prosperous new year. Even with the idiots in charge in both our countries, may many good things come to you.

It's Beginning to ...

 I am looking out at a grey afternoon with low cloud and fine, fine snow showering down. More of a November feel to it than pre–Christmas December. Both my daughters have their trees, and the YD is supposed to be putting hers up this afternoon. We will see what happens with the cats in both households. The granddaughter has her terrible brat of a cat home for the holiday and the YD’s younger cat has never been exposed to a Christmas tree, having started life in Pakistan.

Edited to add the first encounter of Gilgit and the tree. So far, so good.

I have my present wrapping stuff out of storage, but only one set of gifts so far. I would be shopping except. Except. Covid. We went to a dinner party a week Wednesday and I came home with a case of it that developed over the weekend. And JG has caught it from me. Both of us are still showing two lines on the tests and so no shopping is being done. The YD stocked us up with food on the weekend and both daughters are on standby if we have needs, but you cannot send someone to buy their own Christmas present. Unless you are my father, that is. He did that.

I remember with some glee the year he handed my teenaged self a large sum of money and told me to go to a lingerie shop and buy my mother a beautiful nightdress. And I did that. And wrapped it. The look on my mother’s face when she opened it and stared at my dad was, um, priceless. I think his only foray, ever, into Ladies’ Intimate Garments was a trip with me just before I was married when he insisted I buy a pair of lovely silk pajamas and went with me to get them. For my wedding night. He also tried his formal and inhibited best to tell me not to expect too much from my groom on this occasion. And was much relieved, although red-faced, when I told him it would not be a problem since I ‘had my period’. (What my mother had trained me to say. SHE called it ‘the Curse”.)

I started writing this in a very dark mood, but telling that story has cheered me up no end. I did love my father a lot, even when I wanted to dot him one with a heavy object. After my mother died, he moved himself into an apartment in a seniors’ building, divested himself of my mother’s ‘stuff’ (the grandkids got it) and enjoyed a new lifestyle, even setting up a lovely girlfriend. But his lifestyle did encompass my participation. 

The most egregious trick he played on me was what happened when the building supervisor asked him to join the management board of the building. He declined but told her that I would be delighted to take part. I was elected in a flash, and ended up secretary, of course. I also had to be on call to drive him to appointments and events. And was not, ever, allowed to make him the slightest bit late. When he was planning an excursion, he would line up everything he would need on the hall floor in his apartment, including hat, library books, cushion for the car seat in cold weather, etc. I learned to open the door just a bit, cautiously when I called for him. The grandkids were adult by this time, and they thought the whole thing was very funny. I am sure my grandkid is chuckling over her mother and aunt complaining about me, indeed, perhaps at this very moment. 

On the other hand, they are probably too busy disentangling cats from Christmas trees.