Daily Archives: December 21, 2009

So Close

I finally finished Gran’s photo scrapbook this afternoon between research for the cello book layout, a long phone call (unexpected but important), and a visit from Jan to show me the scarf she’s just about finished knitting with the homespun I did for her (expected). The photo scrap book took a billion times longer than I’d planned for it to take, thanks to delays and delays along the line for various reasons (couldn’t find a scrapbook the right size for ages, the original and backup plans for printing the photos fell through, missing photo paper, me not wanting to nag people, and so forth). We got Gran’s gift out in tonight’s mail via Xpresspost, which was pricey but worth it. The day felt like I was racing from one thing on my list to another, unable to give anything the attention I wanted to give it, and I’m feeling even more overwhelmed looking at tomorrow’s list.

I have one more day in which to finish up gift-related things and wrapping for tomorrow night and the Toronto Christmas, do last-minute laundry for favourite clothes people want to bring with them that got worn between last week’s wash and now, pack as much of the stuff for the trip to Toronto as possible for both myself and the boy and gift/hobby stuff, do some work on the layout of the cello book (oh, right, my job with which I make money), try to at least look at the music for the evening of carols tomorrow night (once I know what music we’re doing, and I haven’t even touched the cello since the recital because of December madness), and chivvy corral the family for the carol visit. And then once we’re back from the musical evening, the boy needs to be put to bed (ha, after the excitement of visiting, and with the excitement of knowing we’re leaving early the next morning?), and then HRH and I have to take down the tree before we can get to bed ourselves. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. And I was looking forward to the actual drive until tonight, when the past three days caught up with me.

The Yule log made from HRH’s family’s birch tree that was killed in the ice storm of ’98 was damaged in this year’s Solstice candle vigil. One side of the top is all charred. Over ten years of use, and this year, bang. I’m so upset about this.

Weekend Roundup: Sunday, Solstice Edition

Sunday morning we had the upstairs neighbours over for our now-annual Yule waffle brunch and small gift exchange. Blade and I were still in fine form from the party the night before and snarked all morning, amusing ourselves terribly. The boy got a Lego tow truck kit from them and decided that I should be the one to assemble it. I don’t work with Lego very often because I simply don’t think in three-dimensional block form very well, but give me a kit with instructions and I’m fine. They gave me a lovely Celtic knot print in my favourite autumnal earthy colours, and a sampling of Saxon chocolates, including my favourite sea salt caramels!

The local grandparents arrived just past ten-thirty for our early Christmas celebration. The boy was very patient for all of ten minutes, so we settled down and started opening presents. He’s at the age where he can actually appreciate each gift he opens again, instead of just enthusiastically opening things left, right, and centre. There weren’t as many gifts as there usually are, for which was very thankful. Part of this is due to the fact that we didn’t have both sets of our parents here, so the floor around the tree wasn’t as crowded as usual, but part of it was that we were all pretty restrained this year. We gave HRH’s dad a movie, and his mom a hand-knitted scarf, and Liam got a camera of his very own, which he began using right away, taking some very respectable pictures of his favourite ornaments on the tree.

The big hit, though, and the present we saved for last, was the early gift that Santa brought him: the racetrack he’d asked for when he saw Santa at the mall. (I knew HRH’s parents had bought him something from the Cars line of toys, so I pinged his mom to see if that’s what they’d gotten, and it was, so we were all covered. Bless them.) A very close second was Anakin’s Clone Wars starfighter, which went to bed with him for both nap and overnight.

HRH and I both got wallets (with money inside, hurrah!) and socks (it amuses me that when you get socks as a kid you’re let down, but as an adult you’re thrilled because it’s one less necessity you have to buy). I got a lovely plum-coloured knitted wrap that’s just gorgeous and so very soft.

My best gift, hands-down, though, was this:

It’s HRH’s newest painting in his Celtic Totems series. My office smells like oil paint, as it was still a wee bit tacky when HRH brought it up for me. (Kudos to Blade, who improvised a nice cover the other day when I was downstairs in the basement office and said, “Hey, it smells like varnish or something down here.” “Oh, I accidentally hit the button on one of my spray paints,” he said. Apparently when I’d left HRH looked at him and said, “Smooth. Thanks.”)

While everyone else played with the toys and nibbled on the various seafood and other hors d’ouevres that HRH’s parents had brought, I started getting food going. I’d brined the turkey the night before, and had realised while falling asleep that I didn’t have enough bread with which to make stuffing. I made a batch in the breadmaker as soon as I got up, a whole wheat/herb quick bread that I shredded and toasted in the oven when it was ready. In retrospect I shouldn’t have toasted it into croutons, because the whole wheat bread was already drier than white. I mixed up the stuffing and put half in the bird, and half in a baking dish, then put the turkey in the oven. Then I mixed up pie dough, because I was short a pie shell thanks to the previous day’s disaster, and had the worst time trying to get it to stick together. I kept adding ice water and it just wouldn’t cling. Eventually I squeezed it together and put it in the freezer to cool off a bit before rolling it out and mixing up the pecan pie filling. And then I discovered that unlike the little aluminium plates that prepared pie shells come in, my metal pie tin doesn’t fit in the oven next to the roasting tray, so I had to take the turkey out to blind-bake the shell for twenty minutes. I couldn’t afford the next half-hour it would take to bake the pie entirely, though, so a quick phone call confirmed that the neighbours were fine with us borrowing their oven, and HRH went upstairs with it. I set our timer to remind us to go get it when it was ready. The bird went back in the oven, was ready around quarter past four, and HRH carved it for me while I made the gravy. I heated up my mother in law’s excellent special mashed potatoes in the oven as well as baking the other half of the stuffing (which turned out to be unneeded on the table), and parboiled carrots before frying them in butter and doing a quick maple syrup glaze. And then we all feasted, feasted, feasted! The pecan pie was lovely, even though some of the filling managed to work its way through the shell and caramelize on the bottom. A soft dollop of whipped cream balanced it nicely.

Somehow, I completely forgot to make rolls to go with dinner. Didn’t even think about them in the overall meal plan.

After his grandparents left, there was a bath for the boy, the second chapter of Prince Caspian, and then bed. He woke up for no particular reason around ten while I was in the bath, although I didn’t find out till I checked on him between bath and bed. I cuddled him back to sleep, and fell asleep myself. A very full day, and forgetting to eat properly in the middle of it was not a good thing. Apart from that, though, it was wonderful. We are so blessed to have close friends and family with whom to celebrate the season. And the celebrating has only just begun!

Weekend Review: Saturday, Pre-Solstice Edition

On Saturday HRH and I had a treat: we got to drop the boy off with his local grandparents early on, and go out all day by ourselves!

It was a shopping day, mainly. We hit the big Chapters on the West Island and found gifts for seven or eight people in one place, which shortened our day impressively. We were thwarted in our attempts to obtain the new TMBG kids’s album yet again and told them to correct the damn inventory already so we’d stop asking them to find it for us, and to prevent other people from going through the same exasperating exercise. (Seriously, people: stock’s been at three since September. Are they actually in the store? No. No one’s been able to find them any time we’ve asked for it.) Thsi time they gave us a coupon that gave us 15% off a book as an apology, which impressed us. And when we got to the cash I discovered that I had a 25% off coupon in my wallet, so the camera we bought for the boy was less than we thought it would be, and we had the swipe-twice card as well. It was a good experience; always nice to be told at the cash that you’re paying substantially less that you expected to pay.

We picked up what we needed at Omer de Serre and Best Buy with little to no pain and stress, and would have gone to the dollar store for the usual socks, mittens, pencils, and Christmas cups for the boy’s stocking except the lines were positively ugly, so we picked up our groceries instead and went home. I wrapped what presents I could, having discovered that somehow all our tags, ribbons, and bows had been thrown out in on of the several garage clean-ups this past year. Fortunately, we still had a bunch of gift bags and some usable tissue paper, and I cut up some of last year’s Christmas cards for tags.

At home I made lemon meringue pie for the co-coven Yule gathering later that afternoon. We will never again buy the No Name pie shells (in the interest of full disclosure, I do have to say that I usually buy the Tenderflake shells if I buy shells at all HRH picked these ones up). I baked the first one and it came out of the oven in pieces, although it had gone in as one unit. I rescued the second shell before it did the same. Homemade lemon pie filling is delicious, especially when one uses brown sugar instead of white; it has a lovely butterscotchy undertone. Piles of meringue, thanks to the stand mixer. In fact, the recipe made so much filling and merigue that I layered the pieces of the first shell in a baking dish, poured the remaining filling over it, and covered it with the rest of the meringue. Of course, this means we have a lemon pie here, and I have no idea when we’ll eat it.

We packed the upstairs neighbours into the car and got to the hosts’ home for the co-coven party, and it was just lovely. Good company, good food (sushi! Chinese fondue with the best broth I’ve ever tasted! duck and bison meat! an absolutely fabulous hot spinach and cheese dip om nom nom!), lots of laughing, very social cats, a great simple but important ritual, and an all-round wonderful time. Our gift exchange was reduced from the usual baked item and a gift for our Secret Santa exchange to a single “make or bake” item (money’s tight all around), and as luck would have it I drew HRH’s name. On Friday I knit him a striped cup cosy for his take-out coffee (he always forgets his reusable travel mug at school) from the leftover yarn I used to make his Gryffindor scarf last winter, then I hand-felted it so it could be washed without a problem, and it was a hit! (I was told later that it also fit beer bottles, which amused me.) I was the only person who made my gift instead of baking it! I got a tin of very excellent Rice Krispie squares (no cat feet were involved in the making of them, I am assured). We had to scurry away to collect the boy so that his bedtime wouldn’t be too insanely late, but it would have been wonderful to sit and laugh some more.

The boy was sitting quietly in his grandparents’ living room looking at a book when we arrived, all bathed and in his pyjamas. They’d had a wonderful day together, decorating the tree, baking cookies, and playing. We also collected the turkey for the next day’s festivities, and a lovely evergreen swag that my mother-in-law made for our front door. Back home we curled up in bed and read the first chapter of Prince Caspian together, and then it was bedtime. Everyone needed sleep, because Sunday was to be our local family Christmas celebration!