This morning, I opened the front curtains to see the minivan next door parked on an odd angle in the driveway. So odd, in fact, that upon closer examination we saw that the back end of the van had slipped sideways on the ice, coming to rest against the back bumper of our car.

HRH inched our car forward and cranked the wheel, easing it back and out past the crooked van bit by bit, manoeuvring past the upstairs neighbour’s car on the other side. He parked it across the street for me and left to catch the bus to work.

When the next-door neighbour came out he stared at his van and walked all around it, as if he suspected someone of hitting it. Then he looked across the street at our car. I wish he’d looked out his own window half an hour earlier and seen his vehicle leaning on our back bumper; things would have been a lot clearer.

Anywhats, the boy had a lovely outing this morning with his caregiver (during which, I am told, he happily sighed ‘Oh…kissmas!’ while gazing at a Budweiser advert), the car now has the winter tires on (take that, winter!… except it’s a balmy five degrees above zero now), I have (useful) stocking stuffers for Sparky, as well as the new ornament for my annual ornament exchange with HRH, and one for the boy, too. I also treated myself to a Happy Meal on the way home, one of the approximately two McDonald’s meals I have in a year. (Did you know that one cheeseburger — a plain cheesburger, not a Quarter Pounder or anything larger — constitutes one-third of your daily recommended sodium intake? Yeah. Bleargh. Why I wanted it, I do not know.)

While we’re on the topic of (quasi) food, last night I made a huge pork roast that was juicy and tender. It was so successful, in fact, that the boy actually picked pieces of pork out of his bowl and ate them, along with a lot of gravy and corn (kernel by kernel, of course). This is huge, because he doesn’t like meat very much. And I did what Nigella suggests in one of her books: I cut the fat off before I pulled the roast out, put it in a separate pan and roasted it alone while the pork was resting in order to make crackling. I have been craving crackling for about seven years now. And after eating a piece the size of a pink school eraser, I’m done for the next seven years again. Instead of warming the corn on the stovetop or in the microwave I tossed it in a Corningware dish and slipped it in the oven while I roasted the crackling. If I’d been thinking I would have done the same with the mashed potatoes to make the top crisp.

We did an elevation ritual last night that was a lot of fun and felt really good. I’m realising that shouldering a lot of ritual work over the past few years has really burned me out. I enjoy ritual with others, but being the one to come up with and/or lead a disproportionate number of them takes away from that enjoyment because I’m busy facilitating everyone else’s experience. It’s always nice to participate in someone else’s ritual for a change.