#MicroblogMondays: Twas the week before Christmas...

• It's the first day of winter today/solstice -- the shortest/darkest day of the year -- the turning point before we start heading back into the light. Hopefully figuratively as well as literally. 
• It's 7 a.m. as I type this, and still pitch black outside. (I turned on the Christmas tree lights when I got up, and they look so pretty, glowing against the darkness outside the window.) I checked online -- the sun won't rise for almost another hour, until 7:50. And it will set again around 4:45 p.m. 
• When we were working & commuting, this meant that it was still dark when we arrived downtown in the morning, and dark again as our train pulled out of the station heading home at night. If I didn't make a conscious effort to go outside or near a window during the day, I literally would not see daylight until the weekend! 
• I should be home (i.e., at my parents' house) right now. :(  Traditionally, we've flown home on or around the weekend before Christmas. :(  So I'm feeling a little sorry for myself at the moment... 
• Apologies if I've been wallowing lately. This blog has been a great outlet!  
• I get weather app alerts for my parents' location as well as my own, and it looks like there's a big winter storm heading their way Tuesday. The weather there has been relatively mild lately, but that's about to change! 
• I can only remember one or two years when we didn't have a white Christmas, i.e., at least SOME snow covering the ground. One was in 1997, the year before my grandfather died. Parents' Neighbours' Daughter (PND)'s dad & brothers posed for a photo outside in their shorts, holding up a sign saying "Christmas 1997,"  lol.  (It wasn't THAT warm, but...!)  My mom asked my grandfather, who was then 85, if he could remember another Christmas without snow, and he couldn't. 
• Here, we've had snow on & off over the past few weeks but nothing that has really accumulated or stayed. Temperatures have mostly hovered just above or just below freezing. We're due for a few flurries on & off this week, but a white Christmas? We'll see...
• One thing that made me feel better yesterday afternoon: my sister called me & said, "I'm sending you a Zoom link to test." I opened the link and up popped my sister & her boyfriend... and PND & the Little Princesses, decorating Christmas cookies!  Then they managed to get my parents linked into the call as well. We're going to do it again on Christmas Eve. I'll also be Zooming with some of my cousins earlier in the evening. 
• Another thing that's keeping a smile on my face right now:  the East Pointers, the Prince Edward Island-based band (East Coast/folk music) that brought us "Annedemic" earlier in the pandemic (a nightly chapter-by-chapter reading of L.M. Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables," which I wrote about here) are currently in the middle of a five-night chapter-by-chapter reading of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."  This is not by any means a professional production -- but that's part of its charm. Night #2 (Saturday) had both the guys on screen and viewers (including me!) dissolving into frequent fits of laughter as they read (using different voices for the different characters -- verging into Monty Python territory for the women's voices, lol). ;) They had to stop a couple of times because the wind outside was so strong, the noise was interfering with the sound (!).  But the story of the Christmas Eve party at Fezziwig's was delivered masterfully, accompanied by live fiddle music in the background!  And each night wraps up with a few tunes too -- I dare you to listen without tapping your feet, lol. I'm enjoying it all hugely. If you missed it live, or need to catch up, you can watch the videos later on the band's Facebook page, here. 
• 
  (Do you think I could claim this as another book read on my Goodreads 2020 challenge??  lol -- Hey, it's almost like an audiobook...!)(I'm actually tempted to download a copy to my e-reader and follow along as they read!) 
• Notable recent posts from other CNBC bloggers: 
• Jess has a wonderful post about reclaiming holiday joy. "Everyone deserves some magic!" she says -- yes, even (especially!) when you don't have kids!  
• Pamela wrote a fabulous piece about Kamala Harris & the "momification" of women in politics for Atta Girl, a new publication by Medium (and expanded on her thoughts in her blog). 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Pre-Christmas odds & ends

• Jody Day has a(nother) brilliant, bang-on new post at Gateway Women about being childless at Christmas.  Jody is always worth reading, but this one is definitely a classic! 
• It was Older Nephew's 32nd (!) birthday this week. We hadn't seen him -- or any of the family -- since Little Great-Nephew's birthday a month ago -- and we have never missed one of his birthdays (although we've sometimes been away for Younger Nephew's birthday, in August). We took over his birthday card/present & bags filled with Christmas baking for the entire family (with plenty still leftover for dh & me in the freezer, lol). 
• Under the current lockdown restrictions, indoor social gatherings with others from outside your household are not allowed... but it was -7C outside (about 20F). Brrrrr. We only intended to stay a few minutes, but we wound up staying about 40. (Oops.) We did wear our masks and tried to maintain our distance, as did Younger Nephew & his wife, who came by for a few minutes as well. 
• Little Great-Nephew made strange at first and wouldn't come near us, clinging to his mom or grandpa (whoever was closest) :(  -- but he started warming up to us -- just as we were leaving (of course!).  He doesn't get to see or interact with many people outside of his immediate household (maybe his other grandmother...) -- and I'm sure the masks didn't help... 
• The dog, at least, was ecstatic to see us, lol.  ;)  
• It sucks SO much that it has to be this way, but I'm glad we went, even just for a while (and even if we did kind of break a few rules just by being there). 
• Older Nephew's talented artist wife presented us with a set of homemade rustic tree ornaments, including stars lettered with "Great Aunt" and "Great Uncle." They were supposed to be favours from Little Great-Nephew's first birthday last month, but they weren't ready in time. See photo below! 
• We will be back, with their Christmas presents, for another brief visit on Christmas Eve. 
• In my home province of Manitoba, the COVID lockdown restrictions that were introduced on Nov. 12th have been extended into January -- including a ban on visitors from outside the immediate household -- i.e., no visitors for Christmas. :( 
• This means my aging parents (almost 80 & 81) will be alone for Christmas, without either of their daughters there -- which makes me incredibly sad. I've known for months that the likelihood of me making it home for Christmas was dim to non-existent, but it didn't occur to me until just a few weeks ago that my sister might not make it there either (even though she lives a whole lot closer!). 
• My mother insisted that there had to be an exception made in their case -- until my sister patiently explained that if she spent Christmas with them, not only might they be liable to a hefty fine if a neighbour ratted them out, but she'd be obligated to quarantine for 14 days before she could go back to work, at a time when her office is swamped with work and juggling others' holiday absences too. I think it finally sank in...
• Under the current rules, they're not even allowed to have a yard visit. :(  My sister figures that -- weather permitting -- she'll drive out there on Christmas Eve day or Christmas Day (about an hour, one-way), and Mom & Dad can stay on the driveway and she can stand in the street and they can at least have a bit of a socially distanced visit.  It's kind of ridiculous, but we do what we can...! 
• We're also going to try to do a Zoom call, or rig up a multi-party Skype call on Christmas Eve. My parents are more experienced with Skype than Zoom (albeit "experienced" is a relative term, lol...!). This is when it pays to have a techie (sister's longtime boyfriend/partner) in the family...!
• Dh & I will be taking presents over to BIL's on Christmas Eve... and some of my cousins are also organizing a Zoom call for 8 p.m. Christmas Eve my time. So it looks like we will have things to do, even if we're by ourselves... 
• Since the turkey breast roll turned out so well at Thanksgiving, we decided to do it again for Christmas Day dinner. Dh already bought one at the supermarket this week -- it's in the freezer compartment. We're trying one with stuffing inside this time. (He also started stocking up on some wine, lol.) 
• Now to figure out what to have for Christmas Eve dinner...!  Normally at Mom & Dad's we'd have pan-fried pickerel (walleye pike), but that is harder to come by here. Our other Christmas Eve go-to is ham, but to have ham one night and turkey the next would be a LOT of leftovers for two people to eat up!  
• I have been blogging up a storm lately -- but not doing so well on the reading & commenting front.  My apologies. :(  I hope to do better in the new year (if not before)...! 

Ornaments from Little Great-Nephew (via his mom),
hanging on our Christmas tree. :)  

Yes, we can!

The first year we were married (1985 -- 35 years ago now...!), I told dh I wanted to go to the Santa Claus Parade. 

"You want to go to the Santa Claus Parade??" was not only his reaction but his brother's & cousins' too. "Damn right," I said. I spent my entire childhood watching the Eatons Santa Claus Parade from faraway Toronto -- and now that I was living IN Toronto, I wanted to see it in person. Nevermind that I was now 24 years old and we didn't have any kids to haul along as an excuse. ;) 

We went. We (well, I, lol) had a blast. We went again several years later, along with BIL, SIL, the nephews, and a couple of dh's cousins & their kids. We were the only couple in the group without kids (and still thought we'd have our own someday at that point), but we had a blast then too. In the years after we lost our daughter, just thinking about the parade could sometimes reduce me to tears -- but gradually, the joy returned. There was no parade this year, because of COVID-19, but I keep thinking that I'd love to go again someday. :) (Preferably during a year when the weather is balmy versus subzero, lol.)  

This memory popped into mind after the usual Christmas season debate about photo cards erupted in one of the childless-not-by-choice communities where I hang out. People outside of North America apparently find the whole idea of photo cards generally bewildering, and (understandably) the annual onslaught of photos of happy families and adorable children is like rubbing salt in the wound of childlessness, particularly for people who are newly grieving the realization that the dream is over and this is permanent. A few made the comments along the lines of "nobody wants to see a photo of ME" and "people would think I'm crazy if I sent out a card with a photo of just myself/us, or of me/us & the dog." (You might be surprised... I've been getting more & more photo cards in recent years from my childless friends, both coupled & single. I love them!)

Anyway, that got me thinking about all the things we hesitate to do, or deny ourselves, or resent families doing, just because we're childless. When we're still planning our families or ttc, we think "oh, we'll do that when we have kids" (never imagining, in our innocence, that day might never come). And then, when we realize that we're not going to have those much-wanted kids, we find ourselves thinking, "I can't do that, I don't have kids," or "They'd think I'm nuts if I did that."  

I had another flashback to when I was first married. Everyone around us was getting video cameras & taking videos -- mostly of their kids, yes, but other things too. (This was 20 years before video & photo cameras started being combined, and then being included in your cellphones!)  I itched to get one for myself. There were so many times I wished I had one... but I kept putting it off. "We'll get one when we have kids," I'd tell myself.  

I mentioned this to a girlfriend once. "GET THE CAMERA," she told me (like, "Why are you waiting, if you want it that much?"). I still didn't, until I finally got a digital camera, about 15 years ago, that took video as well as photos. 

I think about the kiddie movies dh & I have gone to see -- "The Incredibles," the Minions movies. Yes, we were often the only adults there without at least one kid in tow, and the first few times we did it, we felt extremely self-conscious. But you know what? When the lights went down and the movie started, nobody could see that... and I daresay we enjoyed the movie just as much (if not more) than the parents who had to worry about taking kids to the bathroom and for popcorn refills. (Most of the best jokes in those movies go right over the kids' heads anyway!)  

I think about the poor neglected spare bedroom at our house in the suburbs... the one that was intended as the nursery. The entire time we lived there, it was a repository for dh's cheap, castoff student apartment furniture, piles of Christmas presents waiting to be wrapped, a storage spot for the vacuum cleaner & caddy full of cleaning supplies, etc. Even after I realized it was never going to be a nursery, I kept thinking we should buy some nice(r) furniture and linens/curtains and fix it up properly as a spare bedroom. I did buy a new bedspread/comforter for the bed, but that was about it  We haven't lived there for almost five years now, but I still regret that we didn't do something better/nicer with that room while we lived there. It was almost like I was kind of subconsciously punishing myself -- I didn't deserve to have nice things, because I had failed in my original mission of filling that room with babies and baby things. 

I think about the wedding china that sits in the cupboard waiting for a "special occasion" and never gets used. Or the bath salts that a friend gives you that remain unopened because they're just too nice to use for everyday. 

Life is short -- if this past year has taught us anything, I think that would be it. The years go by way too quickly. 

So go to the Santa Claus parade. (Go get your photo taken with him! -- when that's allowed again...!) Send photo cards. Go to the kiddie movie you're secretly dying to see. Go to Disney World, or your local amusement park, and ride the roller coaster. Do something nice with that "nursery."  Use that china, use those bath salts.

Don't think that you have to wait "until we have kids" -- or that you can't or shouldn't do something, just because you're childless. Don't let parents & families monopolize all the fun. (I firmly believe that Christmas is for everyone -- not just for kids, or for people with kids.)  "What will people think?"  Who cares?

We are worth it. 

*** *** *** 

I've written about Christmas photo cards here and here, and Pamela had a great post about them some years back too (with a lively discussion in the comments section!). 

#MicroblogMondays: Pass the popcorn (and the kleenex)

I am generally a sentimental sap when it comes to Christmas.  COVID-19 has only exacerbated this tendency. 

We caught the last two minutes of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on TV yesterday afternoon while dh was channel-surfing ("Christmas day is in our grasp/So long as we have hands to clasp") -- and that got me bawling my eyes out. 

Then we turned to... "A Christmas Story" -- which happens to be my mother's favourite Christmas movie, because it reminds her so much of her own childhood in 1940s/50s Minnesota. (We love it too!)  I held it together until near the very end, when (spoiler alert! lol) Ralphie finally unwraps his much longed-for BB-gun. I looked at the old-fashioned Christmas tree, with the softly glowing big coloured lights, and I thought about how my mother always wants our Christmas tree at home to look JUST LIKE THAT, and I had to bring out out the Kleenex again. Then, just before the credits rolled, they showed Ralphie & his brother Randy asleep in their side-by-side twin beds, Randy clutching his toy Zeppelin and Ralphie with his beloved gun. I thought about how I'll never look in on my sleeping children like that -- and I lost it again.  

Dh looked at me quizzically and said, "Do we dare watch 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' next??"  (We didn't. At least, not this particular viewing... we may still catch it later elsewhere!) 

I expect to be losing it again (and again, and again) over the next few weeks, as I spend my first-ever Christmas away from my family, once again under lockdown.  

Curse you, COVID-19. :( 

How are you holding it together during this strange Christmas season? (ARE you holding it together??)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.

State of the uterus: All is well (part 2) :)

Well, I got the results of my recent hysteroscopy/d&c via the hospital app this afternoon. And all is well!  It's all written in medical terminology, of course -- but everything said, "benign, benign, negative." YAY. 

Needless to say I am VERY relieved! I saw this notification pop up and I thought, "Oh sure, it's bad news, and I can't call the doctor until Monday!" Seriously -- it's nice to have all this technology and of course we are entitled to our medical information -- but it's not written in any way that you can understand easily without a medical degree, and why would they send this to you BEFORE you've had a chance to discuss it with the doctor and have him/her explain it all to you??  What if the news had NOT been good? Would they still have sent it on the app, or would the dr have called me himself? 

Oh well. Rant over. I do have a phone appointment to discuss the results with the doctor -- on Dec. 23rd, just before Christmas (of course...!). I was told he would not call earlier than that unless the results were not normal.

Anyway, it's a relief not to have this hanging over my head any longer than necessary. Thank you all for putting up with my rambling posts while I've dealt with this. :)  

"The Young Clementina" by D.E. Stevenson

My first book finished in December is the latest selection under discussion by my D.E. Stevenson fan group. "The Young Clementina" was first published in 1935 as "Divorced From Reality," and has also been published as  "Miss Dean's Dilemma." 

From the title, I expected the main character's name to be Clementina... but our heroine is Charlotte Dean, who grows up in the small rural community of Hinkleton, where her father is the pastor and her best friend is Garth Wisdon, heir to Hinkleton Manor. Predictably, they fall in love. But then the First World War intervenes. Garth returns a changed person and winds up marrying Char's spoiled younger sister, Kitty.  After the death of her beloved father, heartbroken Char retreats to London where she works in a library for 12 years -- until (now in her mid-30s) she becomes involved in a scandalous divorce case. Hinkleton once again becomes a refuge for Char, when she returns to care for her niece & goddaughter/Garth & Kitty's daughter (the Clementina of the title) in the absence of her parents.  

This is one of Stevenson's early novels (first published in 1935), and it's noticeably different (darker) in tone and style from some of her other, later works. Group members have suggested she was still trying to find her authorly "voice."  It's a rather melodramatic tale, with some slightly predictable/cliched plot developments (or at least we'd find them predictable & cliched today), and the first-person narration and slightly formal language reminded me just a bit of "Jane Eyre."  Modern readers will also find some of the casual colonialism/racism/sexism (emphasis on wives bearing sons & heirs) jarring (not to mention the suggestion of a May/December romance with an underaged girl...!). 

In its favour, it does have DES's usual well-drawn characters, witty dialogue and lovely descriptions of English country life in the 1930s, including the warm friendship that develops between Char and her neighbour Paula. It also has some compelling descriptions of life in England during and after the Great War. (I must admit that a sentence about influenza ravaging the village after the war gave me pause...!) 

We're just beginning our discussion of this book, which usually adds to my appreciation of the story. I can't say this will top my list of DES favourites, but it was nevertheless a pleasant read. 

I'll count this one again as a re-read when we're finished our chapter-by-chapter group discussion, early in 2021.  

3 stars on Goodreads. 

This was Book #40 read to date in 2020 (Book #1 finished in December), bringing me to 133% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books. I have completed & now exceeded my challenge goal for the year by 10 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 12 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books." 

Odds & ends

• I've been baking up a storm this past week. :)  I made my Grandma's Swedish spritz cookies (with a cookie press) and crinkle-top molasses cookies, as well as a shortbread cookie made with Skor  (toffee) bits. I got that recipe from a friend/former blogger, and have been dying to try it. (I don't think Skor bars are available in the States, or at least not widely? -- but they're similar to Heath bars. You can also use butterscotch chips, but I don't think the effect would be the same.) I've reserved a few dozen of each for me & dh to munch on over the holidays, but I'll be taking a good portion of the results to share with BIL & SIL and the nephews. 
• I received a notification earlier this afternoon that the region where we live, just outside of Toronto, will be going (back) into lockdown on Monday. :(  It was inevitable;  I think they were going to do it when Toronto did a few weeks ago (& they probably should have then) but the local politicians begged for an exception. The numbers haven't improved since then (and everyone from Toronto & the other nearby locked-down regions have been coming here to shop & eat in restaurants, since everything there is closed...) and so back to lockdown it is. :(   I'm pretty sure all non-essential retail businesses, restaurants & gyms will be closed (including the bookstore), except for curbside pickup and takeout food. The supermarkets & drugstores will stay open. 
• Thank goodness we're pretty well set in terms of Christmas presents for Little Great-Nephew... We didn't get any toys yet, but I have a couple of little tops/onesies I ordered from Baby Gap and three books, plus we'll give him money. The nephews & nieces-in-law will get money and baking (lol) and I got cards & gift bags the last time we were at the bookstore.  Dh & I were going to go shopping on our next bookstore & drugstore visits to fill stockings for each other;  guess we'll see how that goes. I'm sure it will be nuts everywhere today, tomorrow & Sunday, now that they've announced this. :(  
• We recently learned that the husband of one of dh's cousins is recovering from a bout of COVID-19.  He's the first family member that we're aware of who's had it. :(  
• We got to the series finale of "Downton Abbey" this week on CBC television -- and then started all over again with the first episode of season 1. (Yay!)  We didn't start watching until the very end of season 1/start of season 2, so there's still almost a full season of episodes we haven't seen. 
• It's been funny to see how different some of the characters were at the start of the series, compared to the end. Cora was a lot less likeable, for one thing. Mary & Edith were both wide-eyed ingenues (albeit still not getting along...!). Carson, Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore were all much more harsh with the underlings. 
• Speaking of Mrs. Patmore, some of you saw my blog tribute to her a few posts ago. :)  But you may have missed my later comment:  "I could also write a post singing the praises of Aunt Rosamund... welcoming all of them repeatedly into her home in London (even though they have their own vast mansion sitting there empty), giving up 10 months of her life to cover for Edith and take her to Europe to have her baby in secret. We were just watching the final regular episode of the final season yesterday (where Mary & Henry finally marry -- there's still the "Christmas special" which ended the series, with Edith & Bertie's New Year's Eve wedding) -- and there's a scene where Lord Grantham, Rosamund's brother, makes a comment to the effect of how Rosamund doesn't understand because she doesn't have children -- and she says very sharply, "No I don't have my own children, thank you for reminding me of that." Go, Rosamund! ;) "
• This article from the Guardian talks about the devastating impact the pandemic has had on some women's hopes for motherhood -- single women whose dating prospects have been considerably dampened by stay-at-home orders, couples whose planned fertility treatments were delayed or cancelled, lost jobs, etc.