It isn’t Christmas break until we hit up the Go Kart race track for a mini Grand Prix. 5 minutes of time trials to warm up on the track, which determines our position in the race itself. I won Pol position with the tightest lap, and then I proceeded to maintain the lead, and lap just about everyone during the 20 minutes of our race. I took the training I had with Karbon during our race day at the outdoor track ten years ago, and applied those skills here to do some serious damage. Though I did not ultimately wind up with THE best lap time, I was consistently fast and never gave up my #1 position. A holiday tradition we’ve had for nearly a decade now. Mind you the Covid shut down kept us away in 2020 & 2021, and a timing schedule conflict interrupted 2022, it’s been a great family outing. I think my being heavier helped with traction. Also racing smarter, and judicious use of the breaks on the hair pins and maintaining a decent line through the track helped me out this time. I am by no means an expert, nor much of a racer, but I pulled out the WIN this time around. Yeah – buddy!
Pre race photo op.Immediately after taking the win!Proof of my win.One brother & one nephew.
News is out saying the theme for Christmas 2023 is… “Cutting Back“. Corporate Greedflation pumped up the price on everything so folks just decided to not treat yo-self. I get it. I mean I didn’t exactly cut back. I took greater stock of what I was buying and how much I spent, but I didn’t deny my kids anything. Also – did you look at a lot of toys they put out this year? Big, bulky plastic items with little to no articulation, over sized pricing to match the ridiculously over sized toys. I don’t blame people for not buying massive chonky toys that don’t do much by way of transformations, or gimmicks or anything really. Do I need a three to four foot tall Batman robot that stands rigidly? No. No I don’t. Even as a toy obsessed adult it doesn’t ring any bells in my head. Also, I am not going to spend more than $15 on any one action figure, so those Star Wars Black items, or DC legends figures on the rack that start at $35 are an instant flop in my book. Know your worth.
I could go on and moan about things I see in the store price wise, or playability wise and bore you all for an hour. But rest assured, the general state of the toy aisle is kind of stagnant. Action figures of all shapes and sizes were a sizable part of my youthful Christmas experience. Selection seems to have diminished as well, over the years. But that could just be the youthful glow of nostalgia and lack of self awareness as a child in a toy store clouding my judgement/memories. I see copious amounts of the same seven to ten toys, but not a huge selection across the entire store between IP’s, brands, or category of toy. It could potentially be that what is currently offered doesn’t register with me as I don’t follow things like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, or Five Nights at Freddy’s, or things of that ilk. So perhaps I have blinders on when walking the toy aisles of various stores. That’s a definite bias to watch out for.
In other news I did manage to find time to wrap some gifts. So that has taken some of the stress off of my shoulders. I also have some of the girls laundry in the wash, and the dish washer has run and been emptied. All great news for me. I have some clothes left to wrap and then I’ll put the Crocs in gift bags as I don’t feel like wrapping shoes. I had a great time wrapping gifts last night. Loud music, a cold bevy, a nice big rigid work surface I can cut on without worry. Lots of paper to choose from, lots of scotch tape, and all the self stick tags you could ever need in a single year. I might wrap some of the wine bottles I bought for my inlaws. Otherwise I’m just about done. I have one last item due in from Amazon at some point today, and that will conclude my holiday shopping.
One big local tradition that we have avoided like the plague was the Elf on the Shelf. I can go to bed at night and rest easy knowing I don’t need to set up an interesting tableau for my kids to find. I could add some glib note towards surveillance and the panopticism, but I’m not that guy. I just didn’t want to be bothered to set up 24 different scenarios for my kids to find or wonder at. Just doesn’t sound like any fun.
Have a great Tuesday December 12th of 2023. I’m down to just a few days left before I reach two years on my writing every day writing streak. My how time flies. Ciao Bella!
Some acts should just stay in the studio with the sound boards, and the mixers, and the editors whom can chop up useable chunks of caterwauling and turn it into a top 40 hit. Enrique, Axel, that fat dude from Motley Crue, those folks should all sit down and give their heads a shake. I know that drug habits and alimony are expensive, but sweet cheese bud, pull yourselves together. The leopard seal squeals are making those over inflated ticket prices a real cross to bear. Hard to enjoy yourself when the lead act sounds worse than the average karaoke lounge act in Korea Town. And that’s with folks singing across a language barrier, not old fat dudes forgetting half of the songs they wrote that got them there in the first place. Dreadful. I can not for the life of me impress upon you how disrespectful it is to charge these obscene ticket prices for near has-been musical acts of yesteryear, and they sound like these shrieked, half forgotten mumbled parody accounts on TikTok and IG.
In other news we will be in December by Friday of this week, how wild is that. Oh, and we did put up our Christmas tree on Sunday afternoon as I thought we would. My little minions came home from their overnight Zoo trip with the Girl Guides around noon and the first words out of their mouths wasn’t “hello” , or ” I missed you”, it was “can we put up the tree now?”. Good thing I had brought up all the tree lights and decorations that morning, and brought the tree in from the shed to warm up before assembly. I still had my hands and forearms shredded by the faux tree, as happens every year, long sleeves or not. It extracts a drop or two of blood to feed the holiday spirits. Thirteen years without fail this tree has drawn a blood sacrifice. Every. Damn. Year!
We loaded this bitch up with almost every bulb & ball we own. It’s a very full tree this year. I also added 400 new light bulbs to the tree this go around. In addition to the four hundred from last year. I might even go so far as to buy even more to add next year too. I still see far too many dead spots on the tree. I’m sad that all the blood taken over the years hasn’t resulted in the pre-lit tree remaining functional. Nothing another 1,600 bulbs of white or multicoloured lights couldn’t fix. I want this thing to light up the street! A Griswold Family Christmas Tree!
My minions posing with the newly decorated faux tree.As much as I like it, I still see dead spots. My oldest blue bulbs are still the most vibrant on the tree, to this day!
Here we are, Tuesday. Snow squall warnings and all that jazz. Glad I don’t have to commute on days like today. Take it easy out there. Ciao Bella!
I don’t mind wrapping one or two items on any given day, but I detest spending hours on end wrapping everything under the sun. I think I drew the line at stocking stuffers last year, and straight up refused to gift wrap shampoo bottles, tooth paste and hair brushes and the like. Way too much work. Sounds curmudgeonly, I get that, but by the week before Christmas my kids have my nerves frazzled. So this year, I am formulating a new game plan to alleviate much of what I don’t like. Smaller doses of wrapping, spread out over a whole month. 30 days until the big man makes his early morning debut.
We are using more and more gift bags as I get older and more ornery. Rather than leaving the whole lot for one night, I think I’m going to schedule just a few minutes every day to wrap one or two things. I also detest the asymmetrical, non standard box shapes for all of these toys nowadays. Give me flat surfaces, 90° corners, and fewer compound curves. Not that I want my wrapped gifts to look rigid and over tailored, but crinkled edges, and bunching isn’t my bag man. Not that the kids care. Like, at all. So, I don’t really know why I concern myself with it so much.
I’m trying to get into the holiday mood, and it’s increasingly becoming more difficult to do so. The tree is up, decorated and lit. The exterior lights are up and illuminated nightly. There is a new light up wreath & bow on the door. That’s about the most of it until the kids get older, and we start to lose more of the toys that clutter the house. We sat down to watch Elf as a family, and later on I sat down to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Still not feeling it. Maybe I need a movie marathon with Scrooged, NL Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, Die Hard, Gremlins & Home Alone to really drive it home. The presence of snow really does help it feel like Christmas. That and music. I miss the yellow LP my folks used to play on endless repeat. I have a photo of it somewhere. Ah yes, here it is:
One of the few Holiday albums that we played over and over again. There was a cassette tape that my brother Steve had too, with Kenny Rogers on it, which is forever burned into my psyche aswell.
Hard to over state exactly how much of my memories of Christmas is entwined with this old vinyl LP. I did scour iTunes to locate some of the songs individually, but it isn’t the same recordings, or we had our record player set differently… either way, it’s close, but not the same.
Doing odd jobs and picking up things for the house. For instance, I always cheap out and get plastic snow shovels which usually break on me part way into the season. So today I laid out some cash for a proper metal one. We needed more matches for candles and such, so picked those up from the store. I bought eye hooks for hanging toy hammocks in the kids rooms to get all those stuffies off the bed/floor. I bought more baby wipes, as they come in handy for more than cleaning dirty baby bums. I grabbed a proper light up wreath for the front door, which the kids will flip their shit for. And for myself I grabbed an extra 300 lights for our Christmas tree, because the white and blue motif we’ve used for going on 13 years is a bit cold and drab. These kids are vibrant, and deserve a little colour. Let me tell you, if our house wasn’t so cluttered with kids stuff, I’d have light up garlands every where, and I’d hang streamers, and put up a whole lot more festive stuff. But that’s too much while all of the kids things are still everywhere. I imagine that once they get into double digit ages, we can pass much of the toy clutter on to younger families, and we’ll still have enough clothes to dress a football team four times over. Once the kid stuff begins to recede I will reclaim the dining room table, and build a nice candle centric display in a glass bowl with left over holiday ornaments and such. A fancy table runner. Oh… it will be very nice in here! Ho ho ho…
So I added the new decorations in to our current line-up, and then powered up the trusty old stud finder to assemble the toy hammocks, and then I will need to fill out the flu shot forms for the three of us going after school today for even more jabs. Such fun! Better than a raggedy ass hospital visit at this point.
I was also paying my bills, as a few invoices have come in, and I can get flush with the mechanic, and the medical stuff I bought for my youngest. A new humidifier and a large Hepa filter set me back nearly $400.00 bucks, but the kid is on the mend (fingers crossed) for more than just a week or two before the next illness comes around. There were some Kickstarter items I backed, and promptly forgot about, so that was a couple more bucks to make up for. I had bought a lot of airbrush paint, thinners, washes, and cleaners last month, so the Amazon bill came home to roost. Plus our Great Wolf Lodge trip had some bills attached to it with Falls Parking, dinner on the town, the Sky wheel ride, and a stop at the arcade & on site store at GWL. It all adds up. Plus gas for both vehicles, and groceries, & oil changes. Bad month. Not a good look. But I don’t have to buy that stuff again, so investments in the house are a good thing. Investments in general health & well being is great too. We don’t vacation much at all (Covid times or otherwise). So I splurged, and now I had to come to terms with that. Bought and now paid for. Next!
It also seems like a lot, on the old Visa bill, because I stopped using my debit card, and now I track ALL purchases on the one card, and pay it off every single month. More secure too. That new tap feature can make you pretty reckless though, holy shit. Tap, tap, tap. I suppose they designed it that way to get you to be more free with the wave of a hand.
It’s funny, I was going to do a couple of movie reviews today for Top Gun Maverick, and Jurassic World Dominion. But I’ll save that for another say. I just had something else to say today. Mainly because I was excited about the new lights for the tree and a proper wreath for the door! I’m positively giddy. That’s all she wrote today though. Ciao Bella!
Oh my god, these kids are driving me nuts! All they want to do is follow each other around and start shit – constantly. Shouting & fighting for what appears to be no reason. Ugh! I’m sick of this, so very, very sick of this. The name calling, the breaking stuff, the little puppy dog following routine just to start throwing punches, scratches, or a bite. No wonder people way back when used to beat the shit out of their kids. Time outs, and being sent to their rooms has only worked for so long. In the words of the Simpsons, I have a “hanker’in for a spanker’in“. But that doesn’t really work either. Just makes everyone hate each other. Can’t lock’em in a closet to keep them apart either. Truly very frustrating.
I have high hopes still, that the two will like each other as they grow up into their teen years and beyond. A man can dream can’t he? Maybe it’s just a multi year long phase? Are they just bored? Upset by all of the impending cold weather? Out of sorts because Christmas looms so ominously large on the horizon. I wonder if the youngest is upset due to all of the birthday talk for the eldest’s birthday party that is coming up before Christmas. Could be a multitude of things given how complicated children are. Sometimes I have to just shake my head and walk away. Take a minute to decompress while they work in tandem to press all of my buttons at once like only your family can.
Now look, we’re all cuddled up on the couch watching Mike the Knight as they share a snack. So who knows what the hell is going on. Doesn’t make those tense moments any better. But I far prefer the quiet times over the tumultuous ones.
Gah! Kids. So much hard work. A real labour of love to keep all of our heads on straight. Kudos to all of you out there raising little ones. It’s a daily struggle.
Broke down after years of holding the line, and let the kids put up our Christmas tree before Remeberance Day. I figure with the looming CUPE strike, and then the possible teacher strike this holiday season could go sideways pretty quickly, so why not let them have it just this once. It took us a while to do it, and we listened to Michael Buble croon some holiday songs in the back ground, and a few of us have settled in to watch “Elf” with the tree lit up. I generally feel pretty strongly that we should give the Vets their due by waiting to observe Nov 11th prior to starting in on the holiday season. But we’ve had such unseasonably warm weather these last few weeks, so I put up the lights in warm sunshine, instead of freezing rain & high winds. And given that the kids are off school 2 days minimum (Friday & Monday) with the CUPE strike action, the thought of them being home 24/7 whining and asking me constantly to put up the tree was going to get on my nerves, so I nipped that in the bud, and we have it up for two months, instead of six weeks. Ha. The big red Christmas bow is on the front door, and there are a few other items still left to go, but that can wait. The tree was the big ticket item. And with the time change the kids were up ‘early’ jumping in place to get started.
Funnily enough we went to a big indoor park yesterday, full of trampolines, foam fits, dodgeball court and climbing equipment. And within 30bseconds of getting out into the park my eldest hurt her foot by landing half on a trampoline, and half on a line green padded surface. The very first thing the safety video tells you precisely not to do. So today she is limping a bit. No bruise, no swelling, no numb toes, but a limp and some tenderness. I could have called that happening to one or both of my kids. I just knew it. Glad it doesn’t seem to be permanent damage. Could have been much, much worse. Glad it wasn’t a neck, head or spinal injury. Not with how hospitals are as of late. The birthday party we attended was otherwise a good deal of fun. Both kids tried the leap of faith onto an air bag, and tried the trapeze over a foam pit. So I think they had fun regardless of the initial foot injury.
So a lovely four day weekend, unexpected, but nice nonetheless. I have one more bout with the leaves left to go, and then we can think about putting up the second half of the Christmas lights, ornaments and displays on the lawn, trees. Who knows how long any of this will last. So best to take advantage of the dryness and warmth to get those pesky chores out of the way before the weather eventually turns, and we get that icy rain and snow. Ciao Bella!
And I feel hung over without having had anything booze or beer related to drink. It was a long and somewhat unconventional Christmas day, you know, with the isolation and the quarantine and the pandemic still running amok in the general population. I know for a fact that at least a couple of the kids gifts were a slam dunk, home run, field goal, Uno! And a few were near misses due to the aforementioned grand slams. While none were entire failures, so I’m happy with that. It’s a long day, preceeded by a terrible nights sleep, ensconced in over stimulation, sweets and hyper activity so that there were a multitude of melt downs, hard feelings and squabbles among the children. Par for the course at this age bracket. Otherwise getting them back into bed by 8:00pm and then watching ‘Don’t look up’ until around 11:00pm in relative peace and quiet was a great cap to a long and challenging day. If the weather could either warm up or snow a bunch we could figure out how to entertain our isolated family over the rest of the school break and through the last five days of our isolation that would be greatly appreciated.
Which means pulling out all the stops to create something written every day until the new year begins in order to fulfill some weird kind of anxiety about not doing enough creative writing during the year. For all those days when I followed the white rabbit down the hole on YouTube regarding wood working or welding or sculpting or entertainment news about movie spoilers. For those lull days when I didn’t do jack shit. For those weeks in September and October where my singular focus was on home DIY projects and not being creative in any way, shape or form. For those days when I really wanted to watch a movie instead, or bury my face in a good book. Now it is a race against time to prepare some short, fun ‘content’ for my blog. On the plus side, by skipping writing in September I was also able to buy our Christmas presents and avoid busy stores, malls, parking lots and any possible supply issues. The big show starts tomorrow, with some champagne and orange juice at days first light. Stay sane, stay safe, and be merry (where possible).
Whether or not Covid looms over it like a bloody great black storm cloud threatening to drown us all at the slightest whim. Regardless of hand washing, masking, social distancing and drastically limited contacts to anyone beyond our immediate family. Even with that horrific tangible threat just looming on the horizon, my childrens bottomless zeal for Christmas, Santa, family fun and presents is keeping us on the cheerful side of what could potentially be a drab and dreary worry filled occasion. God bless the blissful ignorance of children and their singular fixation on Christmas time! While the inexhaustible energy levels can be bothersome, some might say, the optimism is hard to beat at a time like this.
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