Hi, friends!
How are folks doing? Did your weekend go well?
Seriously, though, are folks doing okay with the holidays? The stress, the cost, dealing with some family that we don’t enjoy, dealing with not seeing loved ones we wish we could?
I realized yesterday that I’m not having that good of a holiday season. It’s fine, I’m not morose or anything bad. I’m just really missing my friend who died back in the spring. I’ve got a lot of blank time, for lack of a better description, that I don’t normally have this time of year. I’m missing out on the phone calls like “hey want to run errands with me and help me Christmas shop? We can grab lunch while we’re out, too.” or “we’re taking the kids to go see Six Flags on Saturday for the Christmas stuff, you want to come with?” Or being in a group text on Christmas day saying every to meet at her house the day after to hang out and eat leftovers. Her husband is not the social one, so it’s just like welp those the good old days.
I got nothing, to be honest. I can’t really fix this. So I went to the art museum today and saw the travelling exhibition that I’ve been really wanting to see. Holy fuck was it good! I was there a good 2 hours really just taking it in.
Anyways, love all y’all’s and hoping you’re doing well and if not, feel free to chat about it. Or anything else, as per usual for a NOT!
Yesterday was fun, hit a few breweries with an old friend & hooked up with my best friend in Hawaii so who was here for the Seahawk game. Today I brewed beer & realized I would be a bad bachelor. Without my wife here to cook for, I have had hot Cheetos & macadamia nuts to eat all day.
Hot like spicy, or as in microwaved?
Or both?
https://www.cheetos.com/recipes/cheetos-flamin-hot-microwave-ramen-noodles
You belong on the FYCE team, my friend. I thought I was pushing the envelope with two celebrity hot dishes and a recipe for the Watergate salad. And the strawberry Jell-O™ mold that I could recommend sincerely and with a straight face.
Flamin hot!
As someone who has lived alone for about 15 years, often a meal is cheese and crackers or some scrambled eggs because ehhhh sometimes cooking just doesn’t happen!
Made lots of cookies, pecan tassies yesterday, and shortbread and brown sugar cookie dough both in the freezer to bake closer to Christmas. Today I made pizzelles, lots and lots of pizzelles.
We put our tree up today, a little belatedly. We were supposed to do it last weekend but I spent that with Giggles and the gang and breaking out of the medical equivalent of Sing Sing. Since, once again, we’re not having the Holiday Open House, we only put up the one in the living room, which has southern and western exposures, and our Tannenbaum can be seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows a good distance away in various directions. When we have/had the Open Houses we put up a second, smaller one in the den with kid-friendly (non-breakable and non-edible, which is not to say non-chewable) ornaments.
The weekend of Thanksgiving we put up a wreath on our front door, which always sets off a mad stampede on our hallway to keep up. I love this because our frenemies next door–one is a designer who used to do retail window and interior displays and his wreaths are always over the top. This gives me a chance to casually mention to unsuspecting neighbors in the elevators, “Oh you should check out Apartment X’s door. They’ve got this wreath–I’m not really sure they’re Christian and know what Christmas is.” In reality, the guy’s an Irish Catholic from Long Island, which is its own thing, and he brings a very flamboyant touch to this aspect of the Yuletide. He’s also so unpleasant to deal with that if you can find a printed Merriam-Webster’s and look up the term “bitter aging queen” his stippled 3/4 portrait is used for illustration and therefore almost no one knows who he is. So I’m having a fine, if curtailed, holiday season.
I’m always surprised that people even do open houses? Feels like a great way to let your home get scoped out for nefarious purposes.
It’s a Christmas party by a different name. Rather than having an afternoon one or an evening one with some kind of set time, we open the doors at 2 PM and people show up, come and go, and then when the last person leaves, usually around 11 PM, party’s over. It has a lot of advantages. In the “first shift” it’s parents with kids and people who have other obligations, then as the day wears on it becomes more adult and ring-a-ding-ding and I turn off the godawful instrumental Christmas music and lure people to the dance floor. It’s fun; it’s like many parties at once. I’ve matchmade, I’ve hooked people up with jobs or at least leads, I’ve introduced countless people to the joys of a good, boozy holiday punch, all kinds of good stuff.
Oh that makes sense.
The Open Houses where I grew up were like the Mother’s Club in the school district trying to show off who had the fanciest houses and it was like *donate $5 to the PTA and get a list of houses you can go tour the Christmas decorations in!!!* while the homeowners were there. Or maybe the staff, who knows.
NYC Xmas display stories always remind me of David Rakoff’s story about playing Sigmund Freud in the window of Barneys one year.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/47/christmas-and-commerce/act-three-21
David Rakoff, RIP. I knew him slightly, through a friend of mine who was a good friend of his.
When I was a kid, Eaton’s (the Canada City answer to Macys) in Toronto always had a toy display set up for Xmas (their Space Lego diorama was amazing and it looked a bit like the above.) My parents would let me stand there and drool at visions of Star Wars Figures and Space Lego (which I would sometimes get, but mostly not as my parents wanted me to stop being a kid at 10 and become a miniature adult like them… sigh) for hours while they shopped. Anyway, they always knew where they could find me.
This is just the fucking worst, and I am super-sorry you had to grow up with that expectation, @ManchuCandidate.
It did. I would have grown out of that stuff (kind of) as I aged into high school (as would most males my age did) but they tried to force things. I suspect it helped arrest my personal development a bit as I know I rebelled against my parents by remaining a childish idiot (which is fine at 13, but a problem at 19.)
One of the drawbacks of having Tiger Parents. Shockingly they didn’t do that to my sisters.
As for my weekend, I just lazed on the couch watching Netflix because I was tired. Tired of organizing the shift Xmas Party, tired of work and tired in general.
My husband and kids are making British mince pies as I contemplate drinking a castor oil concoction to trigger labor (both are not appealing to me). Coincidentally, a neighbor friend just dropped off some Iranian mince pies which is new to me and delicious.
Yiiiiikes I didn’t know it was supposed to help induce labor. I’ve seen it used as a laxative. I guess the logic might be similar? Take a dose and then hope abdominal-region muscles start contracting?
Exactly…which is why I’m hesitating. I still have another week before I’m at the point where medical intervention is necessary.
Ugh yeah.
Can I just throw out a “no” vote for the castor oil? All its really going to do is upset your stomach and send you running for the bathroom a dozen times. Go for a walk, drink some raspberry leaf tea, and order some egg rolls. Lol. That worked for me… twice! (Also, sex can get contractions started, but I know that’s not for everyone at this stage!)
Yeah I was tempted to say break out the vibrator and take some time to see if that helps, but also I’ve never been pregnant so unsure if that would be as useful as having sex. Guess it depends on the sex.
If I were to venture a guess, an orgasm is what matters most because it stimulates muscle contractions. Luckily there are many gentle ways to achieve that which don’t require penetration or a partner 😜…I’m definitely at don’t fucking touch me stage of pregnancy.
Thank you both for your input! I’ve decided to forgo the castor oil. Did a non stress test today and baby is healthy. Next up is an ultrasound on Wednesday to check amniotic fluid levels. I’m still hoping to deliver at the birth center with my Dr and midwives and not at a hospital.
I’m sorry that you’re missing your friend so much now, Brighter. The first holiday without a loved one can be pretty rough. *hugs*
This year is going to be weird because we won’t have to rush through our morning stuff to get to my in-laws by 2pm. 20+ years of that nonsense and now that the kids are all old enough that it isn’t such a hassle to get everyone out the door… NOW they move 800 miles away!
Will definitely miss Dad this year. Stuff just hits me out of the blue every now and then and kinda shuts me down for several minutes, or an hour. So not a glorious holiday season, but honestly it never really is. The stress, the commercialization, the GOP, etc., seem to suck a lot of the joy out of it for me in a normal year.
I felt that pain/emptiness when I lost my friend last year. Not having him this Xmas still stings but not as bad emotionally. I still miss him though.