Life in the Confused Lane

 

The ‘template’ I open in Word to write posts gives me the Calibri font at 11 points. I do not like it. And so I usually type two letters, wipe them and change to Times New Roman at 12 points, a look that I like, at a guess, because it is so familiar. I think of it as easier to read, but, in fact, I am not sure that is accurate. I just like it. (Having just typed and formatted this, I am now wondering how Blogger will display it.) Edited to add that Blogger did not display it at all, and I have reformatted inside the posting page as well as I can. Blogger does not offer Calibri, I find, and I defaulted to Arial to show the difference. It did not work well, sadly.

 The way this blog looks is important to me, to an extent. I will change my header away from a Christmas theme over the next few days, providing I find time to do it. I did get the laundry mostly under control today, and so there may be time. But I need to get the English tutors up and running too, and that means a lot of time on the phone. Next week is my crazy week, the first of the month, because I have a discussion group that meets on the first Monday and a Book Club that meets on the first Thursday. Add the lessons I am teaching and at least one other meeting, and I am going to be going from home to Perth and back like a yoyo next week.

Meanwhile I am plotting to force one of my students out of charming and lazy mode and into real learning, move another one up a level whether it is a priority or not (time is ticking) and catch up on the two that I am confident have good tutors and are doing okay. But I need to check. And the time thing is real. Our group is committed to supporting these families for a year and we are already a third of the way through it. I do so want, while it is available for them to learn without cost, good English fluency. It may not be entirely possible, but I want to give it my best try. They are lovely young people and deserve our help.

 Also meanwhile, the YD is back in Brussels and as of today, so is her stuff. Or, most of it at least. We have been receiving an hilarious series of Whatsapp comments as the shipment arrived at her house and was unpacked. There is one big item that did not make it, and her North American small appliances did arrive, all useless without a translator of the power supply (I can’t remember what that is called). The last post she made was from a hardware store where she described herself as trying to explain in French what gismo she needed to put her table together, without knowing the name of said gismo, and then realized she had brought one with her to show. I trust she is now asleep in her own bed and bedding, cats purring and a weekend of organizing it all in store.

 When I think that all I have to organize is the laundry, my blog header and my English tutors, I realize that I am blessed. Plus, it is above freezing here and the laneway ice is melting. Um, having said that, I realize that I have all the Christmas stuff in the house to take down, pack up and store. Never mind the Christmas header for the blog. It will have to line up behind figuring out how to make my student stop telling me that we will meet ‘on the library’, getting the tree needles out of the stairwell and deciding what of my Christmas décor to keep and what to give away. I promise myself every year that I will do this last chore, and last year I actually did reduce the storage boxes by one. Maybe this is the year I can reduce by a second one. Stay tuned for the next exiting episode of Life with Me.

The Aftermath

 After my complaining, Santa ought to have brought me coal instead of gorgeous jewellery and two books, one of which I have been wanting for a long while and the other looking really interesting. I had a serene and leisurely Christmas while the YD cooked, sliced, poked, diced and cleaned, most of the day, and the ED and family picked up, helped to clean up, stripped the turkey carcass, packed up and did all of the running around associated with Hosting the Feast. All I did was set the table, as pictured, and make the gravy (and I got help with that!). It was a real treat. 

This is, of course, pre food, when the table cloth disappears under a multiple dish layer.

Note that the counters below are not only empty but clean! The bag contains the last of the detritus, on its way to storage in the basement freezer. The refrigerator contains enough leftovers to see us through a major weather event. There is also enough chocolate, from Belgium and locally sourced, to ruin any diet. 

Thank you, wonderful daughters. 

And to all a Good Grief!

 

Tis the day before the day before the night before Christmas, and all through the house, each table and flat surface is piled with stuff. At present the master of the house and the visiting daughter are both roaming through the grocery stores of our community, garnering foodstuffs. Foodstuffs that they will bring home and add to the already bulging refrigerator and pile onto the already laden counters in the kitchen. Later they will cook, and I am expecting more cookie tins to join the four (or more, I am too lazy to go and count) tins already there. I expect new and fresher bagels. I expect fruit, vegetables and treats to appear. It has occurred to me that it is a very good thing that we do not have a chimney, down which a droll little fellow could appear with his sack. By the time I get son-in-law’s massive box wrapped and under the tree, there is not going to be room for anything more.

 It’s Christmas time in the household. The tree needs water (waiting for the agile daughter to crawl underneath and fill the reservoir), needles from the tree already decorate the stairs, I still have presents to find as well as wrap, and I have a return to make since one of the online retailers I patronised has sent me the wrong parcel. The bag for the return is presently cluttering up my office, since I have to phone and arrange a pickup and this, given where we live, is not going to be a fast job. Other jobs involve me baking pies, and the finished products will have to be kept somewhere until the Festive Meal is finished. Oh, and someone has to drive half an hour in to town and pick up the turkey on Christmas Eve. And it will not be in a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer either.

 Bah, humbug. This is the (I counted) fifty-sixth Christmas that has found me in charge of the Feast, the majority of the gift buying, wrapping, tagging (just did that. I recall a sad story told by a friend of mine who, one year, wrapped the presents as she bought them but did not tag them. On Christmas Eve she had to unwrap quite a few to figure out who got what) and keeping the house somewhat clean. Another fond festal memory of mine is of my mother, one Christmas when they visited us, vacuuming madly in the living room on Christmas morning, after the Grand Unwrapping had taken place. Mostly what she was vacuuming was, in my recollection, dust and dog hair. I have a photo of this somewhere, as I was on a mission to record the festivities, and to *** with cleanliness. Mother did not agree. But she loved me anyway.

 Mostly my parents stayed home for Christmas, as did JG’s parents. Several years found us with our feet under the paternal Gilmour table, and once JG’s sister hosted us, my parents and all of her family for, I think, Christmas dinner, when our children were small. There were at least three tables set up to manage this crowd, but the amazing woman never turned a hair as I recall. This year the visiting daughter who, she says cheerfully, likes to cook, has taken over the kitchen. Cooking and clearing up. Last night we had a lasagna for dinner that she spent most of the afternoon concocting and, as her father stated (loudly and clearly) it was far, far better than the frozen ones I seem impelled to buy. I love lasagna. I love my daughter.

 Each Christmas we leave, in the mailbox and in the holder driven into the ground for the purpose, cheques for the mailman and newspaper carrier. I just got a phone call from the latter of these to let me know that I had put the mailman’s cheque into the newspaper box. And this after I had marked the envelopes before I trudged down the lane to put them out. I may be impelled, now, to check all the gift tags to make sure I have not confused more labels. Confusion, my constant companion in this my eighty-first year, is now out of hand. And God Bless Us every one, especially me, as I surely need it.

Playing

I have just spent a somewhat fraught (because I inevitably forget, from time to time, the how-tos), but enjoyable half-hour, refreshing the look and header of my blog. Not that I write in it a lot, nor have for some years. There are people (you know who you are!) who post every day in November. There are people, in fact, whom I read with enjoyment, who post almost every dern day of the year. I don’t and can’t and never have, even when there were lots of memes and games to fill in the days when the brain went dead or there was literally (hah!) nothing to say.

 I don’t have much to say today, in fact. Except that we spent a lot of money, for us, during a trip to the city and that when we got home, the credit card that we had used to pay for it all was, somehow, borqued. It took my poor suffering JG a long time on the phone to sort things out. But he did. Sort it all out. And the ‘stuff’ we paid for will stay paid for. Stuff? Tsk. But … but, but, but  - Christmas stuff. It is all, in fact, useful stuff. One purchase was of a new mattress and, oh my, do we need that. The present one has a slight resemblance to an egg poacher. The rest was Christmas gifts. Can’t help it. Santa’s most faithful elf gets the urge every December. And what we purchased was practical stuff that is wanted (we checked) and will be used.

 We also Went Out For Lunch (Okay, so I am out to lunch most days. Will you stop that!). To a restaurant with music and a menu and a very plain waitress, according to the elf, who was drinking water, honest. I know it is not post-Covid yet, and that the flu is all around us, yeah. We ate out anyway. It was really lovely to put my feet under someone else’s table and have a menu with choices. I have spent far too much time with the can opener, frying pan and oven over the last few years. Even if JG keeps restocking the kitchen with yet more complex and modern appliances.

 I get the Air Fryer. It reduces calories, reduces power usage, keeps the kitchen cooler. I get the microwave, and have had a simple one for many years, again reducing cooking time, power usage overall, and making leftovers palatable. The all-singing, all-dancing item now reclining on my kitchen counter is not simple. I have learned to live with, cook with and even appreciate the induction burners on my cookstove. JG does the cooking with the sous vide appliance, even if it was a gift he gave me, and the Instant Pressure Cooker (Instapot?) does a fine job, fast. No, I would not go back to my grandmother’s coal stove. But at some point, the learning curve is going to become so steep that I will probably backslide and go thump.

 I have been making on line purchases for Christmas as well. Practical and, um, Very Impractical. Plus, I just bought myself, untouched and untested, a bra on line. I may or may not report on that, depending. Mostly, I buy practical underthings at Marks or Giant Tiger. This purchase is a real gamble. As are many on line purchases. And if it is really true that returned items are discarded, I am glad that I do not return. Garments that I buy on line (thanks to Covid, grrr) that do not work, I either wear anyway or pass on to our local reuse centre.

 And, speaking of reporting. I now have the English as a Second Language classes sort of sorted, hopes of new teachers to augment the process in the new year, and am working on prepositions with my own student. He blew a simple construction in an email to me, one that I had just gone through with him, and he is in for a bit of a hard time at our next lesson. (Picture me with a gleam in my eye and a ruler poised to thump.)

 That’s next week. When I will also finish my shopping, bake, decorate the house, go Out For Lunch again, and, probably, go to sleep every time I sit down, come the actual Day. JG has ordered the turkey. The YD is in for her second lesson on how to cook it. In the conventional oven, thank you.

 Have a good weekend. If you've read this far.