Category Archives: Festivities

Accidental Hoarding and Two Weeks In

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I was making my list for the grocery store last week; I am going out once a week to replenish our supplies and though I’ve always been a list-maker, I find myself being more vigilant in that area. After all, if I forget something I can’t just run out and grab it. I’m finding it fairly easy to keep social distances in the grocery stores; for one thing, they are very quiet right now, and there are x’s marked on the floor to show where we need to keep our carts to keep appropriately away from other people. Probably the best thing is that other people – in my experience – are really taking social distancing seriously so we are all stepping widely to give each other two metres of berth.

Anyway, I was making my list and I looked at the shelf where I keep the following: tea, bread crumbs, the very occasional box of crackers, Oreos – which I use exclusively to make homemade cookies and cream ice cream, and if you have never made that, it is WORTHWHILE – and taco shells. Tacos are an excellent Pandemic Meal, in my opinion, as I always have black beans on hand for me and ground chicken in the freezer for the guys. My younger son is in charge of making tacos when it’s Taco Night, and so I am always prepared with shells and seasoning. However, on this shelf was an open box of shells, less than half full. How could that be? On my big Pandemic Shop, I was sure I had purchased a few boxes of shells, specifically because of the aforementioned Excellence of Tacos As A Pandemic Meal. I wrote it down on my list, figuring that with everything else going on, I had simply forgot. I picked up three boxes at the grocery store, and then while I was putting groceries away, I saw three boxes of shells in the pantry downstairs. Ah! I had run out of room and put some dry goods on a shelf downstairs after the big Pandemic Shop. I must keep that in mind when I think I’m running out of pasta – I have a few boxes on that shelf – but meanwhile, I now have six and a half boxes of taco shells.

Is this hoarding?

I guess if anyone is in desperate need of taco shells, I can share, but last time I looked there was certainly no shortage. The shelves containing flour, pasta, and canned soup continue to be empty, and I have heard that yeast is very difficult to find. I haven’t tried as I still have some, and – taco shells aside – I am trying not to panic buy anything. I am trying to Make Do With What I Have, for the most part. Still, I saw something on twitter about making yeast out of dried fruit, and I am going to do that. Science, bitches!

Speaking of science, online lessons start this week, which will be interesting. In addition to this, I am teaching my yoga classes online – both live through Zoom and via YouTube videos. My husband is, of course, working from home and we are in a small 1960s bungalow. Do not get me wrong, I love our house, I feel fortunate to have a lovely home with a family that I love, but this is the week that things will get Interesting.

Happy Things This Week

As I mentioned, it was my son’s 16th birthday last Monday, and our anniversary as well. We went for a long walk in the natural area that is only a kilometer walk from our house. It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

I also made a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting and coconut whipped cream. It was delicious.

Yesterday I baked brownies and topped them with homemade ice cream and fudge sauce.

My friend Denise (HI DENISE) suggested the Houseparty app, and on Friday we had a wine date together with some of her friends. I highly suggest this if you, like me, are missing having actual conversations with people and seeing faces.

Things That Are Disproportionately Upsetting Me This Week

I don’t think I really need to say that I’m worried about illness and death of so many people, and worried about it hitting loved ones. I don’t think I need to say that I’m worried about the massive economic fallout from all of this; about ninety percent of people I know have either lost their jobs or taken pay cuts, small businesses are going to get decimated, who knows how all of this is going to get resolved and paid for. My sister-in-law is considered an essential worker right now and she is the person who checks in on my widowed, nearly 80-year-old mother-in-law who lives in isolation on two acres, and if you don’t think that’s worrying, well.

But sometimes the little things take on larger significance in my mind. The two things that have upset me in a completely disproportionate way, are that the spring plant fundraiser I had ordered from is cancelled, and all the hair salons are closed. I mean, of course. There is no WAY to physically distance yourself while getting your hair done, unless your hair therapist has metre-long arms with Edward Scissorhands-like hands. I mean, there’s just no way. It’s obvious that they should close AND YET. Well, I have purchased a couple of boxes of hair dye and although it has been well over two decades since I coloured my own hair, I am ready. I have been wondering for months if I should start growing out my hair, and I guess the answer is YES.

I guess the thing that is bothering me is that my hair therapist, who I love and have been going to for eighteen years, owns her own tiny salon. She is going to be just another of the small businesses affected and yes, if we all work together maybe it won’t be closed relatively long. But she’s the face for yet another business that is going to be hit hard by all of this and there is nothing that can be done, not really.

Pandemic Reading

Emma is SUCH a delight of a book.

CanLit! I read this in first-year university, and as you can see, I must have written a paper about the theme of blindness, and the stone angel as a symbol for Hagar herself. Seeing my notes in the book cracked me up. Ah, the earnestness of a first-year university student.

This was my favourite book as a teen; I read it many, many times. It’s a good Pandemic Book because it’s over 800 pages. I have shelves full of books, but having a longer read is a good idea, since who knows when the libraries will reopen. I have not yet finished it; it feels like a Project.

Stepping Out, Pandemic Style

After Steph (HI STEPH) mentioned that I had walked almost a marathon, I decided to make that my goal each week. I live in a neighbourhood in which it is very easy to Social Distance: wide sidewalks, space along boulevards, pathways. I am reluctantly Not Running right now, due to the time of year and the freeze-melt cycle which results in very icy sidewalks and pathways. But Saturday morning I speed walked – feeling like a 1990s speed walker or that Prancercize lady – and managed 8.5 km in 1:17, which I thought was pretty good.

Oooh, that 29.8 bothers me in a David Sedaris-like way. SO CLOSE TO THIRTY. Okay, no. Let’s not get Weird and Obsessive, or at least not any more than normal.

That’s it for me this week; how are you all doing? xo

I’m just a prisoner of love

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We are just finishing up what has been, for the boys, a five-day long weekend, for my husband, a four-day long weekend, and for me, a three-day long weekend. For my high school son in particular, it’s great that he was back at school for one whole week before having a three-day and subsequent four-day week. We would not want undue stress.

To be honest, though, it’s been quite lovely, having a relaxed few days. We had very good friends over for dinner and, in honour of Valentine’s Day, I made a heart-shaped cake. I have discussed this before but it bears repeating now:

So easy, and so cute. I also made a whole lot of heart-shaped cookies; what is a semi-holiday without commemorative cookies? It is nothing, that’s what.

My husband and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day in any kind of traditional fashion – except maybe, afternoon delight, which is really a regular occurrence, so it doesn’t count. However, he did give me this running top a week or so ago, purporting it to be an “early Valentine’s gift” so I’ll take it.

Every year I – jokingly, obviously – ask my husband if he bought me a Prisoner of Love teddy bear, and this year he told me that he really, really has no idea what I am referring to. I was amazed that he had never seen those teddy bears that are for sale in drugstores and the like every Valentine’s Day, I suppose for men who forgot the holiday and want to have something tangible to give to their lady. Prisoner of Love teddy bears strike me as one of the funniest things that could possibly be gifted to someone on Valentine’s Day, with the minor exception of gas station roses. In any case, he had never heard of or seen them, and I couldn’t believe it. I appealed to my Friday lunch yoga class, and after class several people told me that they had never heard of them either. Am I imagining things? Was it all just a dream?

So now I appeal to you, my dear readers. Have you ever heard of, seen, or – omg, please – ever received a Prisoner of Love teddy bear? A quick google search shows me that there are some modern-looking Winnie the Pooh versions, but that is not at all what I’m thinking. I’m thinking of cheap looking, white teddy bears with black-and-white striped prison gear.

Have You Seen This Bear?

That is, clearly, one of those enormous bears that can be won at the Stampede or similar fairgrounds, by a weirdly talented sharp-shooter or ring-thrower.

Last night we took advantage of the long weekend to watch Bohemian Rhapsody with the boys, and while it wasn’t as fun to watch as Rocketman, it was a very interesting movie. It was quite fascinating to see the collaboration for all of Queen’s songs, but it was also fascinating to point out familiar faces. Hey, that’s Tom from Downton Abbey! Hey, that’s Littlefinger! I saw in the opening credits that Mike Myers was in the film and, about 3/4 of the way through, I wondered when he was going to make an appearance. His character had already come and gone by that point, my husband said. I have to say that was some good hair and costuming.

It’s important to do things as a family, and so I took my older son with me to Costco yesterday. I have never in my life been to Costco on a Sunday afternoon and, as god is my witness, I never will again. How bad could it be? I had thought to myself and the answer is Really very bad. If my son hadn’t been with me, cheerful and encouraging, I probably would have just turned around and went home when I reached the parking lot, which was much more of a disaster than usual. But we pressed on, finally finding a parking spot behind the building. Subsequently someone would park directly behind me, so that I had to make a 20-point turn to back out of my spot, but I would not discover this for another 45 minutes.

The shopping expedition did not take as long as I thought it would, although the jumble of carts lined up for free samples of miniature chocolate chip cookies was almost enough to push me over the edge. As one might expect, the lineup was the worst part.

This is what I don’t understand, though. I had a full cart, as usual. I would have never gone had it not been a weird combination of a holiday Monday, several appointments in my usual grocery shopping time, and a desperate need for my household staples. All through the lineup, though, were people with less than five items in the cart, and those items were often things like muffins or a pack of drinkable yogurt. There would be no WAY I would set foot in Costco and go through all the nightmare that is the parking lot and lineup, just for muffins and drinkable yogurt, or for anything that you could get at a much less mentally taxing grocery store. Oh well, it takes all kinds to make a world, as everyone’s grandma, including mine, used to say.

Well, I am going to finish off this long weekend with a lot of reading, a little yoga, and a nice little dog walk. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday Monday! xo

Boyhouse Year In Review 2019

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The cold and dark at this time of year practically demands cozyness during the winter holidays. We’ve all been sleeping late and letting the days unspool slowly, with no real big goals or activities. The first couple of days of winter break, I did nothing except read and watch movies, slowly increasing my activity levels as I felt myself become restored.

Self-reflection and striving for improvement is always a good thing, I think. It’s good to look back on the year and look forward to the new one dawning. This year, Christmas has felt different; for one thing – and this will surprise many of you – I have not yet taken down my tree or decorations. Usually I pounce on it shortly after Christmas, but it still stands there merrily, and I have made no move to change things. Christmas cards are on every surface in the living room, and I have no urge to pack them away and dust those surfaces. Maybe I’m subconsciously trying to slow down time in a Landslide-type way? I don’t know. All I know is I have the strong urge not to rush anything and to be present, which is my goal for this and every year.

My husband booked tickets to see the new Little Women movie Saturday night, and so last week I set aside my library pile to re-read the books. I say “books” because I include Good Wives as a separate book, which I’m sure could be the cause of many really boring arguments. Anyway, I’m glad I re-read them because the new movie is so true to the books; as well it is very cleverly shot and the characters are shown as being far more complex than they are in the usual heart-warming adaptations. It’s a little dark in places, which is quite true to Louisa May Alcott’s life; she had quite a dreadful, impoverished, and difficult life.

Has anyone seen the movie yet? I need to talk about it. Specifically, I need to talk about the juxtaposition of the scene of Meg at Sallie Moffat’s ball and the scene where she and John are discussing finances and her purchase of $50 worth of silk. And every other little thing about the movie.

Near the end of the movie, Amy has a line in which she says that writing about things – specifically, domestic, everyday things – is what makes them important. Is there anything better description for a blog? Here are the things that were important to me this year:

January

I talked about life’s little luxuries, someone told me that I reminded him of Charlene Prickett, and in an eerie bid of foreshadowing, I rescheduled my son’s appointment to get his braces on, which turned out to be very serendipitous. My older son also went winter camping and I wrote about cozy things.

February

I discovered that Johnny Rotten’s name came from his gross dental health and scheduled myself a dental cleaning (also, he’s still alive – who knew?), I started my Eating a Rainbow series in which I discuss my completely rigid meal plan, and my son’s orthodontist turned out to be an actual criminal. It was also the coldest February on record, so I had to search for my inner sunshine.

March

I had more than usual time-change-related-exhaustion, I cleaned my oven, and while traveling to and from Puerto Vallarta, I was seated beside the World’s Worst Airplane Seatmates. Literally. I also made a Seinfeld-themed birthday cake for my Seinfeld-obsessed son.

April

I went into full-on spring cleaning mode, including, weirdly, booking a Pap test, I got a Garmin watch and went into full-on David Sedaris mode, and I celebrated my birthday! I also talked about my trip to Puerto Vallarta and how I finally realized my dream of ziplining.

May

I bought a scrunchie, I took my son to his drum lessons and met his unintentionally-hilarious drum teacher, and I badly injured myself only two days before my first road race. Also, Barkley turned 11!

June

I applied to renew my sons’ passports, and met David, the employee with the most zest for his job and pride in his work that I have ever seen, government or not, I replaced the battery on my Daylight Magnifying Mirror, and my sons decided to give me even more grey hair by racing around in abandoned shopping carts. I also, weirdly enough, volunteered to make mini-cupcakes for the teachers.

July

I had an empty nest for a week, I hiked with the kids and listened to them talk about Li’l Pump, and we got two days of nice weather so I carped the diem. I also went to a concert and got dressed up in my Stampede Wear.

August

We discovered the term “girl’s blouse,”the kids watched The Shining and thought it was a comedy, and I found a moth in my water glass. My husband took the kids to Alaska and I was home alone for TEN DAYS so I hiked a lot with my friend.

September

The kids went back to school – my older one started high school! – I spent far too long wondering if I should grow my hair long, and I wondered what it would be like to be followed by the paparazzi. Also my younger son turned 14 and we hosted many, many teen boys at our house for a barbeque.

October

I re-read The Handmaid’s Tale and realized I am less a Handmaid and more a Wife or Martha, I became low-level outraged about crappy fundraisers (POINSETTIAS, I AM LOOKING AT YOU), and it was Halloween! I also got reading glasses.

November

I got excited about Christmas and continued to be low-level outraged about poinsettias, I got more excited about Christmas, and I – un-Christmaslike – read Helter Skelter. Shudder. The decorations were put up, and are STILL NOT TAKEN DOWN WHO AM I.

December

More outdoor decorations were purchased and displayed, including a Christmas walrus, I broke out the decorative tins, and my son broke my cutting board by crushing candy canes with a rubber mallet.

2019 – that’s a wrap! Happy New Year to all of you. xo

He just doesn’t know his own strength

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The past few days have seen me unusually irritated and agitated about things that would not normally irritate or agitate me. I’ve been having feelings of being completely overwhelmed, and no amount of list-making has assuaged those feelings. Is it this time of year? Have I over-extended myself? Am I having a breakdown? All of those questions and more were answered when my phone buzzed with a notification that it is Almost That Time Of The Month Again! Oh! Well. I’m glad my phone knows what’s what.

Honestly, I feel like everything would be at a normal level of busyness, but for all the little things that keep popping up. Call vet to refill Barkley’s eye drops. Figure out when I can get the boys in for their dental checkups at the new, non-pediatric-but-still-convenient dentist. Take Barkley to the groomer. Reschedule last week’s wax appointment. Make an appointment with our (very hot, I’m serious, this guy is a looker) plumber to come and look at our thermostat, since the furnace is coming on but not always to the right temperature.

This last one almost broke me. Who wants to find a free afternoon to wait at home for someone to come and look at the thermostat? Well, as I said, at least he’s nice to look at, and besides, I can get a start on my gingerbread men.

My email just popped up with an article entitled Why You’re Eating The Wrong Cinnamon and I am NOT clicking on that.

Even without the furnace/ dog/ dental scheduling, the last week has been a whirlwind of activity and treat-making and teaching and just generally scurrying around. I’ve been packaging up treats for my students and playing tetris with my downstairs fridge:

Me: it will be fine once I roast the cauliflower, there will be room in the fridge.

Oops.

I spent much of Sunday making gingersnaps:

More decorative tins!

I had left the candy canes for my younger son to crush, in order for me to make peppermint bark. I wanted to have the candy cane crushing completed by Monday, so I could package them up in little bags for a different group of students. My son got out the rubber mallet and the cutting board, and asked me just how crushed I wanted them to be. Chunks? Little pieces? Decimate them! I said to him in my Fun Mom voice.

One thing you should know about my younger son is that he Follows Directions. Remember in Game of Thrones when Sam cures Jorah of greyscale, and when asked about it he said that he read the instructions in some ancient manuscript and then followed those instructions? If only more people could be like that. It is my regret that Sam was not Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, because with that attitude, he should have been. Anyway, that is my son to a tee. He is the king of step-by-step directions, and you never have to tell him something twice. I probably should have kept this in mind when I told him I wanted the candy canes decimated.

He presented me with three bags of candy cane POWDER. Quite honestly that works really well in bark, as there are fewer tooth-chipping hunks of peppermint candy. There are a few small chunks in there too, as I had also said “a few small pieces would be nice.” As you can see:

But mostly, it’s powder.

In addition to decimating the candy canes, he also decimated my cutting board. It cracked into thirds. I can’t be mad about it, though, because he was just following directions. He is much less remorseful about the loss of my cutting board than he is impressed with his own sheer brute strength. Well, he does work out a lot, and YET I feel that perhaps a little less vigor would have yielded similar, but non-cutting-board-destroying results. I agreed with him that, Hulk-like, he just doesn’t know his own strength, while duct-taping together the cutting board for use next year. No sense breaking another cutting board next Christmas.

I went to Canadian Tire to buy a new one, and for those of you who are not Canadian, CT is one of our big national brands. Not only does it sell tires and other automobile-related things, but it also has a garden centre, household items, paint, kitchenware, and sporting goods, as well as all things Christmas-related. It is one of those stores that I love – because it frequently has incredibly good sales – and also hate, because the store itself is often a disorganized jumble. I ended up with a cutting board that was on sale for half-price, which I didn’t know until I went to pay, and if I HAD known, I probably would have bought two. Not that I’m complaining.

Before my CT trip, I put gas in the car and, due to my inability to see out the back window, washed it. There was no snow in the forecast, I swear, I checked my weather app twice, but not 30 minutes after washing the car, the snow started to fall and continued for the entire day. Did I curse the city? Possibly. The entire day, I kept looking at my weather app, which said “cloudy” but at no time did it call for snow, even when the snow was coming down. My Monday afternoon students, after I related this story, thought that perhaps the rest of the city was completely dry and that a snow cloud was just following me around, like a character in Winnie the Pooh. The long and short of it is that I had a clean car for about 30 minutes, and now I can’t see out the back window again.

Well, it’s only two weeks until Christmas, but my dear, dear, dear friend and neighbour (HI TARYN) surprised me with this beautiful gift:

Isn’t it gorgeous? I love it so much.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week; it can be stressful this time of year (THE FURNACE) but hopefully you are experiencing some joys and beauty of the season. xo

It’s Decorative Tin Season!

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On Thursday I came home to THREE messages on my old-school landline answering machine. I have an actual, physical answering machine, you guys. Anyway. This is not a story about how I am barreling into the next decade with not only a landline and answering machine, but also an iPhone 5s that does not hold a charge and cannot be physically powered off because the power button is broken, but I don’t want to start over again with all the apps and passwords and so I hold onto it like a security blanket. This is a story about suddenly having a free afternoon.

Usually when I get messages on my answering machine it’s an automated call saying that this is the credit card company calling and I’m heading straight to jail, or similar. But on Thursday, one of the messages was from the new day spa down the street, where I had an appointment for a wax. “Had” being the operative word, since the panicked voice on the machine was telling me that the wax had to be rescheduled, and that this was the only number that they had for me, and please call them back. All of which I found strange, as I never give out my home number, only my cell, and I know for SURE that when I filled out the strange waiver you get with a new esthetician that I put my cell down for my contact. I mean, how DID they get my home number? Well, it doesn’t matter. I called and it was indeed, mysteriously, the spa, and not some scam in which people call and leave messages saying that their appointments had been cancelled. Can you imagine if that WAS a scam? It would be the strangest scam ever.

Anyway, apparently my esthetician “put her back out” and so was unable to wax my bikini line. Let’s not think too much about how that happened or the strain my bikini line might give a person. The point is, I had a free afternoon.

That never happens! I literally stood there for a solid minute, staring at my old-school landline answering machine, thinking about the hours that stretched ahead of me. What to do first? I tackled my least-liked Christmas job, which is gift wrapping. I hate gift wrapping. I am terrible at gift wrapping. I somehow lack the spatial skills that are required to cut an appropriate amount of paper for the size of the gift and then I also lack the coordination to fold and wrap without it looking like a jumble. My hair seems to fall out from the stress of it all, as there is almost always strands of my hair stuck in the tape. But in any case, it is mostly done now. After that, I tackled some of my Christmas goody jobs and took a very long dog walk.

As well as being the Season of Light, it is also the Season for Decorative Tins. Over the years, I have amassed many, many festive tins and I feel the need to fill them, always. What is sadder than an empty decorative tin, I ask you? Well, you might answer, many things. Moving on! Let’s fill those tins up!

Back in the day when I worked in natural gas options trading, we would sometimes get a really big market position that we would want to eventually reverse. My boss was famous for saying “Let’s chip away at it” because a giant options position? It’s not always possible to reverse it all at once. Small steps. And so it is with life, when faced with a big task, the best thing to do is chip away at it, a little at a time. This is my philosophy when it comes to Christmas treats. If I think about all the things I want to do, it’s overwhelming. So, chipping away.

How To Make The Maximum Amount Of Delicious Treats In Minimal Time

Sugar Cookies and Gingerbread

I have talked about this before, how the key to Holiday Happiness is making cookie dough ahead of time, and then rolling and baking when the mood strikes. Who knows, maybe you’re a person who likes being in the kitchen for fourteen straight hours? But I am not. My recipe for sugar cookies is here, and my recipe for gingerbread is here. Each dough takes ten minutes to make, maybe 15 if you find your flour canister is empty and you have to bring up a bag from the pantry. Make the dough. Freeze the dough. A couple days before you need the dough stick it in the fridge to thaw. I timed myself and it took less than thirty minutes to roll, cut out, and bake five dozen cookies. If you’re a pipe-and-flood person, then you might want to factor that into your time, but I am of the “spread some buttercream on the cookie and then put sprinkles on it” team. Or, in the case of gingerbread, I just stick some M&Ms on with those little tubes you can buy at the grocery, AND I get my kids to decorate, which is only for the people who can really let it go. I mean:

Those were from last year. Stay tuned for this year’s creation!

When in doubt, add more sprinkles.

Truffles

I have been making these truffles for YEARS, and I always kind of dread making them, as it’s super hard to dig out the hardened chocolate and make it into balls. But this year I had an epiphany, probably from seeing one of those candy making videos on Facebook. So here’s what you do: melt chopped chocolate together with coconut milk (the full-fat, canned kind) in a 4-to-1 ratio. Add some vanilla extract, or some peppermint extract, or some orange or almond extract. Whatever floats your festive boat, people! Put it in the fridge for 45 minutes or so, just to cool it slightly. It will be like thick pudding. THEN use an ice cream scoop to put little blobs on wax-paper-lined cookie sheets.

Stick it back in the fridge for another 45 minutes or so and THEN you can squish them and roll them into little balls.

THEN put them in the freezer and forget about them for a while. Days, even. I used to just roll them in cocoa powder, but NOT ANYMORE. I have stepped up the game for something that takes barely any time. When you have 15 minutes, melt say one cup of chocolate chips with a tablespoon of (REFINED) coconut oil. Then grab your frozen truffles, drop them one by one in the melted chocolate, put them back on the same messy wax-paper-lined cookie sheet, and stick it back in the freezer. It takes very little time to set, at which point you can package them up for gifties or put them IN A DECORATIVE TIN.

Don’t you wish you were in my seniors’ class? And YOU get a box of truffles, and YOU get a box of truffles…

The rest go into my tins in the freezer.

My giant container of tins that are patiently waiting to be filled.

I also made peanut butter truffles this year, which was super easy. Melt together 2 cups of peanut butter and 1/4 cup (REFINED) coconut oil. Stir in a teaspoon or two of vanilla (just pour, it will be fine) and 2 cups icing sugar. Follow the same procedure as above with making them into balls, and rolling them in chocolate coating. EASY PEASY PEANUT BUTTER SQUEEZY.

Peppermint Bark

Literally anyone – ANYONE – can make chocolate bark, and it makes the best gift. You need almost no kitchen skills and certainly no fancy fine motor skills. The only person who I could think of who couldn’t make this is my dad, who has ZERO kitchen skills (sorry, Dad, but it’s true. Don’t make this. I’ll make it for you.) Peppermint is my favourite for this time of year, but you people who dislike mint, well, you can put dried fruit and nuts in instead. I have an actual recipe for this, but honestly, you don’t need it. I mean, click on it if you like, but I don’t get paid anymore for that so who cares? Basically, take chopped chocolate or chocolate chips, any quantity. One cup? Six cups? Who cares! Just put it in a saucepan, put it on low heat, and stir until it’s melted. Or microwave it. Whatever. Melt the chocolate, then stir crushed candy canes – or fruit and nuts, whatever – into it. Spread it on a parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet, stick it in the freezer, after about 30 minutes take it out and break it into pieces. THAT IS IT END OF STORY.

The thing that is the most tedious part of this “recipe,” as it were, is to unwrap all the candy canes. That is a bitch of a job and, circling back to my original point, is one that I did last Thursday afternoon. It took a solid half-hour to unwrap all the candy canes, what with all the little pieces of plastic getting stuck to my hands and sweater. I put them in ziploc bags (I know, I hate the plastic too, but it’s only at this time of year) and then I assign my younger son the job to crush the candy canes. Believe me when I say he takes this SERIOUSLY. He uses a rubber mallet and pulverizes those minty sons of bitches.

Festively awaiting annihilation.

Gingersnaps

I saved the best for last! My grandma’s gingersnap recipe is here, and I can tell you that you will not be disappointed! Unless you don’t like ginger, in which case, why would you make these? You wouldn’t. But they are the best cookies, easy to make, and the dough should be chilled so you could theoretically freeze it and thaw when needed. Usually I make it early in the day and refrigerate, then roll into balls. I don’t find these that labour intensive, though, since there’s no rolling or decorating.

Before this gets any longer, I will close. After all, it’s time for my spin class! Which MIGHT be a good idea, given all these treats! Here’s to singing and spinning, my friends. Happy treat-making. xo

And why WOULDN’T we have a Christmas walrus?

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I was having a bit of a Monday-ish Monday; my older son needed to be at school for his sports med volunteering at 6:30 in the morning, so I had an abbreviated yoga practice and rushed home. We zipped over to the school, and half an hour later I got a text from him saying that it had been cancelled. This is the second time sports med volunteering had been cancelled with zero notice; the time it was cancelled after school was one thing, but this felt especially offensive. Then, my younger son realized with some dismay that his magazine rack that he had built for Industrial Arts and had brought home to stain on the weekend was still slightly damp; transporting a large, slightly-damp magazine rack to school without getting wood stain on everything was a bit of a feat. All of this before 7:30 on a Monday morning.

These two occurrences unsettled me more than they should have; I was already feeling a bit out of sorts with the discovery, late Sunday afternoon, that there was a mouse in my kitchen. If there is anything more insidiously disturbing than finding mouse droppings under the kitchen sink, I do not know what it is. What is with the mice problem lately? Longtime readers will remember the time I basically had a nervous breakdown from the previous kitchen mouse experience. How are all these mice getting in here? Why is this happening? I asked my husband, as if our house is constantly overrun by mice, instead of having one other such incident, back in 2013.

In any case, the problem has been resolved. My husband set a trap and not ten minutes later, as I was chopping up vegetables for Buddha Bowls, I heard it go off. Hellllllllppppppp! I screamed, until the boys came running and, shall we say, disposed of things. Another trap sat there untouched for 48 hours, so I was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted me when I reached in to get dishwasher detergent on Tuesday evening.

I started wordlessly screaming in a loud and high-pitched voice, not unlike someone getting ax-murdered in a horror movie. The kids had no idea what was wrong, but seemed to assume that I was having some kind of medical emergency as my older son grabbed my arm and started to escort me to my room, to force me to lie down. The door of the cupboard was still open, the dog was wandering around, and I had to tell them what was wrong but I found I could not form words at all. Language, what is that? All I could do was scream. “Mom, Mom, it’s okay, why don’t you lie down,” my older son said as I responded with a long AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Finally I managed to say disconnected things like “MOUSE” and “HELP” and “KEEP BARKLEY AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.”

This is a long and roundabout way of saying that I was feeling a bit Fragile and Out Of Sorts, when I had a message from my friend Lyn (HI LYN), to go look on my doorstep. YOU GUYS. Look!

Math AND Christmas? Two of my favourite things! This makes up for everything! Festive Nicole has been reinstated! At least until the next mouse incident, which hopefully will be several years away, if ever.

Things have been pretty festive around here, dead mice and optional classes notwithstanding. People have been walking by and photographing our front yard, which looks like this:

I would like to point out the Christmas walrus, which my older son and husband picked up on a trip to Home Depot. The two of them really cannot be trusted to go shopping by themselves, and although a month ago I might have thought Why would anyone need a Christmas walrus? I now see their point. It’s really cute!

Have you guys heard about Whamageddon? It’s a game played on social media in which you actively avoid hearing the song Last Christmas; if you hear it – say, if you are out shopping – then you are OUT. Sudden death. By Last Christmas. This is a phenomenon I do not understand; why would anyone AVOID hearing Last Christmas? If anything, I actively seek it out. I have even downloaded a playlist curated by my friend Peggy (HI PEGGY) that is solely made up of different versions of Last Christmas. Clearly, this game is not for me.

As a matter of fact, I believe that Last Christmas – not the “OG,” as the kids say, but one of the newer versions – was the first Christmas song I heard this season, when I was at Superstore. I found myself singing along as I pushed my giant cart through the Health and Beauty section, wondering why they moved the cotton balls. I am a person who often finds myself singing audibly in public, and not just in a “The Best Way To Spread Christmas Cheer Is By Singing Loud For All To Hear” kind of way. I do this year-round. It’s my contribution to the world, I guess. I have to stop myself from singing out loud when I am at the gym, though, because I feel like loud singing with headphones on is not actually appreciated by the general public. I do this when I’m on my elliptical at home, but when I’m on the treadmill at the gym I have to content myself with merely lip-synching.

I take a Saturday morning spin class, and I feel I must tell you that it is not like other spin classes you may have attended. I guarantee it. The instructor is probably in his sixties, and the average age of the students in that class exceeds my own by at least two decades. It’s inspiring to see older people sweating along to the very eclectic musical selections by the instructor, but what I am really trying to convey is that this is not a youthful group. I have been to spin where the instructor was about nineteen years old, and there were black lights and strobe lights and the “retro old music” was the descriptor for such dance songs that would have been played in the bar, when I myself was nineteen. THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF CLASS. Anyway, I was in spin and lip-synching/ singing softly under my breath to Holding Out For A Hero, when an older lady in a Tom Baker Cancer Survivor t-shirt, two bikes down, noticed me. She started singing very loudly along, gesturing to me in the universal sign of “pump up the volume.” It honestly made my whole day, the two of us, singing loudly in spin class, as the rest of the group smiled indulgently. The moral of this story is: don’t be afraid to sing out loud. Shine on, you crazy diamond. xo

Joy, Pain, Sunshine, Rain (actually snow)

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We had an enormous snowfall last week; look how pretty our outdoor Christmas ornaments were!

We are in full-on winter mode now, with snow and cold and traffic snarls. Despite the enormous inconvenience and physical exertion that come with such snowfalls – traffic! shovelling! taking ten minutes to put on outdoor clothing for a twenty-minute walk! – I managed to spend some time reveling in the beauty of nature. “It’s so pretty, it looks like a Christmas card!” I said over and over, as I drove the kids to school. Maybe I am going to become one of those people who Find Joy In The Snow and annoy everyone who happen to have a normal, non-joyful reaction to a crazy weather event. Well, probably not. But it has been very pretty.

I am just feeling joyful in general lately; I have made some changes to my schedule that have left me feeling light and happy. “It’s like you’re an entirely different person!” my husband said, I THINK in a good way. I’m practically radiating cheer and love from every pore, and I hope this feeling lasts, because the sheer happiness I had from wearing a sweater I like was over the top. I love this sweater! I thought to myself, I love my life! I’m probably annoying everyone around me as I channel Cheer Bear, my spirit animal.

I was loving life slightly less last week, when I came into the backyard with my younger son, after we finished shovelling. Barkley was chewing on something; often magpies will drop garbage in our yards like the rats with wings that they are, and I figured it was something like that. Reader, how wrong I was. How unprepared I was for reality, as I forced Barkley’s mouth open and started to remove the object. It was a dead and very chewed up mouse. Now, Barkley is an old dog with a digestive system to match and so leaving him to it was not an option; instead, I kept pulling it out, all the while screaming my son’s name. He ran over and looked. “Oh, MOM. Oh Mom, I’m so sorry this happened.” Yeah, me too, buddy. Me too.

Have you ever had something happen in your life that you know you will just never emotionally recover from? I have been completely traumatized, and have wondered if it’s possible to get a new hand. Is a hand transplant a thing? CAN I JUST GET A NEW HAND, LIKE LUKE SKYWALKER. Or, at the very least, a skin transplant?

This weekend my husband finished the outdoor light display and we put up the tree and indoor decorations. Friday was a PD day, and it really is incredible how much I can accomplish without the regular morning rush. I decided I was going to bring out all the boxes of decorations out of the storage room, no small feat because everything is packed in there like it’s a life-size game of Tetris. I started pulling out the boxes, and then it turned into one of those If You Give A Mouse A Cookie situations, in which I was suddenly purging and cleaning and rearranging the entire storage area. My husband came downstairs in his robe and looked at me, surrounded by dozens of boxes, silently for a few minutes. “What are you DOING?” he asked. “Do you know it’s only 7:30?” Well, yes. By 7:30 I’d already had a yoga practice, breakfast, and several cups of coffee, and so “tearing apart the storage room” did not seem at all inappropriate. My answer to his question was why do we have so many duffel bags and do you need them.

Why DO we have so many duffel bags?

In any case, the decorations are up and the storage room is clean, so all is well.

I love all Christmas trees; I love the themed ones and the single-colour ones and the eclectic ones and the tacky ones. I have many friends who have beautiful, magazine-worthy trees with all coordinated decorations and bows and what have you. I also have a friend who has a tree covered in every tacky, weird ornament he’s ever come across. The “theme” of our tree is “throw on every decoration we have ever owned” and honestly, I think it’s the best. I have some decorations from when I was a swinging single girl, and some from when my husband and I were first together. The boys have been the recipients of many ornaments from my mother, and those ornaments were things that interested them at the time. It’s fun to see the little tractors and Cars characters from when the kids were little, graduating to superheroes and Scooby Doo, alongside ones we picked up on our trips or lovely classic ornaments. We add new ornaments to our tree every year; this year the boys had brought me a moose from their Alaska trip, and I had bought them a dog ornament that looks like Barkley and a Bob Ross one.

So I’m feeling very festive, writing up my Christmas cards and playing Christmas music non-stop. I haven’t started my baking and treat-making yet, but soon.

The boys were telling me that all of their friends’ houses have “signature scents” and sometimes – particularly in the more athletic households – those scents aren’t as, shall we say, flattering as one might hope. According to their friends, OUR house always smells like baking, and I can tell you that hearing that warmed my heart. Finally I’m getting the accolades I deserve from baking something every other day! Fridays are early dismissal days and more often than not, the boys have friends over for the afternoon, and much more often than not – as I mentioned last week – I make them a “special lunch” which is almost always cinnamon waffles.

This probably biases their opinion of the “signature scent” of our house, in a good way, because these waffles smell heavenly. They taste good too. This isn’t some exciting secret recipe, it simply came in the recipe book that came with my waffle maker. I like to make them because it’s a huge recipe and can feed up to eight teen boys, including a competitive gymnast who trains many hours a week and has an appetite to match.

Cinnamon Waffles

3 cups flour

3 tablespoons cornmeal

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

2 1/2 cups buttermilk (I use 2 1/2 tablespoons vinegar and then fill the rest with milk, to sour)

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla (original recipe calls for 1, but you know me, I always double the vanilla)

2/3 cup grapeseed oil (you could use any mild-tasting oil, really)

Mix it all together, let it rest 5 minutes before pouring into the waffle maker. Enjoy!

Now YOUR house can have a signature scent of baking! xo