Five On Friday: The Fussypants Edition

 Enough of this Christmas Cheer already. I woke up feeling a little crabby and fussy today, and despite our mild weather and a good, brisk walk, I'm not getting any better. Let's see if I can Write It Out of my system.

1.  Food:  I have a New York Times subscription. It includes access to NYT Cooking and all their recipes. "Oh boy!" one would think. "That sounds like a great resource." Well, it can be, but for the past 18 months, all the food editors can think/write about is gochujang and chili crisp. Before that, everything was about chickpeas. Salmon is featured constantly, and I detest salmon in any form. (That made our Alaska vacation awkward, let me tell you.) Do not get me started on their fixation with kale, which I think tastes like dirt.

2.  Hair:  Once again, I waited too long (no pun intended!) to book a haircut, and now I am in Ugly Mode. Absolutely nothing is working with my hair. The ends are dry and terrible. The layers are too long. It is flat. I have completely butchered my bangs so many times that--what? what can I even say? I am in such Desperation that I dragged out my old hot rollers and tried those with predictably clownish and frightful results. Susie booked me for 11:30 on 3 January thank heavens and she will get a sizeable tip.

3.  Amazon:  I'm happy to say that Rick and I did the vast majority of our Christmas shopping In Real Life and I only used Amazon for a handful of gifts. However, those gifts, although they were ordered on 11 December, did not come until TODAY, 27 December. Sam, whose Christmas shopping is almost done exclusively online and at the very last minute, had all his gifts arrive on time. I struggle to understand WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.

4.  Old:  There is no getting around it; I am Not Young Anymore. I thought I was Perfectly Fine with this fact, but apparently I am NOT. Did you know that, as you age, your body starts aching and bitching when you do stuff you always used to do? Right now, my neck and shoulder hurt a lot. And they have for days and days. So do my feet. Did I do anything different to cause this? No I did not.

5.  Over It:  I want my house back. All this Christmas stuff has got to go. Tomorrow, the tree comes down. Trust me, I don't decorate the house even a tiny fraction of what I used to, but I need the serenity of Things Back To Normal. Things would have been put away today, but Rick is now a Social Butterfly in retirement and had lunch plans and dinner plans today with friends. While he is gone tonight, I am going to take a muscle relaxer, put on my jammies, finish my book, and watch something not at all cerebral on television, and I will take recommendations. 

Are you feeling a little crabby, too? If not, make me feel better in Comments.

Merry Christmas From The Dept. Of Nance

 I hope this holiday, whether it is Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, finds you happy, warm, and able to--at some point--do exactly what this Christmas Cat is doing.  Do find some time for yourself to cozy up in a chair with a glass of wine and a good book, and enjoy the lights and the lull that always seems to follow all the excitement. Well done, Holiday Bringers. We did it again.

As always, thank you so much for being here. You are a Gift to me the year round.

Sincerely,

Nance

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The Nature Of Change

 When we decided to buy our house, Jared was just a few months old. We were on a very bare-bones budget, so our plan was to look for the worst house in the best neighbourhood. We found one that fit nicely into our plans for everything:

1.  It was in our budget at $32,500. 

2.  It was mere blocks away from the same schools Rick attended, all of them excellent.

3.  The work it needed could be done by Rick and me.

4.  It was an older home, a sort of Craftsman/Cape Cod built in 1940, that had plenty of charming features, especially all natural woodwork and hardwood floors.

We even lived right across the street from Rick's kindergarten teacher. The boys walked to and from school every day to the very same schools their dad did from elementary school through junior high school.  And they rode to school with me for high school. 

Rick and I live in it still, and we still love it. That hasn't changed. But a great deal else has.

Probably you still haven't closed your jaw since reading that we paid only $32,500 for our house. Even back in 1985, that was a hell of a deal. Our house then was a story and a half, two bedrooms, one bath, and a semi-finished attic room, dining room, living room, kitchen. There was a garage, but there was a huge tree in front of half of it, and it was in pretty bad shape (the garage, not the tree). Full basement, too, unfinished, but dry (at that time).

Houses certainly don't go for that now. We're constantly astonished when we read what homes in our neighbourhood sell for. 

Rick's kindergarten teacher, who you met in 2009 in this post, and learned more about in this one, this one, this one, and finally this one, has been gone for almost ten years now. Her home was a rental for a bit, but soon it went on the market. Its new owners are a young family; they have two little boys. I often watch my new friend Charlotte managing Ollie and Archie and think back to my early days in this house. Astonishingly and poignantly, Charlotte planted rows of marigolds along her front walk. I felt the Universe come full circle.

Sometimes my walk takes me through the parking lot of the elementary school that Rick, Jared, and Sam once attended. It's five blocks from my house. The oldest part of the building is older than my home. It has beautiful brickwork and scrollwork. So many memories are there, but there are no longer any children. Our city built all new schools with levy funding and grant money. They're State Of The Art and safer. They're far more able to handle the demands of new technology and security. They have air conditioning and smart boards and beautiful libraries. 

This school is now owned by the hospital next door, who is leasing it to police, fire, and rescue for school shooter drills and other training. During the pandemic its parking lot held refrigerated trucks for makeshift morgues. I once peeked through its front windows and saw that it looked the same as it did the very day the last kids left it on its final day of school in 2021. I don't do that anymore; it made me sad and uneasy. But I'm so grateful for the time my sons spent there and the memories they made.

Once in a while, people take their dogs to play in the field where the playground equipment used to be. I love to see that. And neighbourhood kids sometimes run and skateboard and bike down the big hill that I walk up briskly to strengthen my knees.

I think about the Nature of Change and how easy it is to mourn for the Past. We miss and grieve for things we can no longer have. It is our nature. Loss feels final to us. We are conditioned to rail against it.

But in so many cases, Loss is not final or fatal. It's merely Change, Metamorphosis; Matter, as we were always taught, can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another.

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Life Goes On, So Let's Ketchup: Good News, Good Music, Good Dog

 So! November. I put a lot of miles on my walking shoes last month. It's amazing how therapeutic it is. Walking was my way to cope with The Results. I'm not going any farther than that--no need to bring everyone back to that mindset. Let's just say that it's way worse than I felt after Gore, Kerry, and Hillary combined, and as a political activist of many years, I'm cocooning now. Please don't judge. (But do read this; it's enlightening.)

Back to Walking:  I used to walk in silence, appreciating the ambient noises of my neighbourhood. For some reason, however, I began to get bored and frustrated. I didn't feel energized. I began using my earbuds and chose music for my sojourns, varying my playlists among the music I grew up with and loved in my earlier life. Now I feel so much more spry, briskly striding to The Beatles, Genesis (whose catalog is excellent for walking), and an eclectic mix of artists from Aretha Franklin to Bruce Springsteen. I still carry dog biscuits in my pocket, just in case, and even in this cold weather, I'm out there (thank you, Rick, for my heated coat).

Good News:  Sam and Emily vacationed in Hawaii and got engaged. Emily has been part of our family for years already, so we couldn't be happier. Theo had his first birthday. He celebrated with Jared and Jordan in Pittsburgh, where he visited the Children's Museum. On Thanksgiving Day, J&J hosted. Some of her family came into town from out West, so we all got to celebrate Theo's birthday together as well as have a terrific feast. Jared made his first turkey ever (he brined it), and it was tremendous. So much to be Thankful for!

More Good News:  Rick semi-retired in November, going part-time, but at his full salary. His boss is so kind and generous. As of January 1st, he will officially be retired. Rick has been working since the age of 15 and mostly in construction, so I'm very happy for him. The boys are, too. Sam's first reaction was, "Dad. Mom lives a very quiet life. And she really likes it. Just saying." That boy knows his mother! And it is true that it'll be a big transition for Rick and me both--it already has been. His part-time schedule is Mondays and Fridays off, so we are already navigating what shared space and shared time* look like. (Sam has also lamented that he will be the only one in the family who has to get up and go to work, a singularity that he feels keenly.)  *I will always walk and go grocery shopping alone. 

Random Splotches:  Here's where I use up what could be short blogpost topics, mainly because I might forget them later.

*I think Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is going to be a DNF for me. I find myself annoyed and disconnected when I read it. I'm over you, James McBride, once and for all. Nothing personal.

*There's a new Beatles doc out, but it's on Disney+. I don't have that. I guess I'm going to have to pay 10 bucks for a month just to watch that one thing. There's no free or cheap trial because I already have Hulu. I'm going to have to swallow my disdain for Disney and pay it. Sigh. (But I still love Winnie the Pooh. Oh bother.)

*Speaking of Hulu--if any of you have watched the last season of Only Murders in the Building, were you as disappointed in it/its quality as I was? I thought it was terrible and jumped the proverbial shark.

*I'm having a terrible, TERRIBLE time finding Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. As in, nowhere around me carries it and I had to order it off Amazon. The box I got was clearly marked "Not packaged for retail. For Food Service Use." I feel like a criminal. 

*Finally, another Dog Show has come and gone, and still the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever has not made it into the final round, let alone won Best In Show. The fix is in, and why Canadians aren't doing something about it is beyond me.

Thanks to those of you who kept writing in November. I appreciate you.