Resolve

Instead of resolutions, people in our family form themes. One year it was "I AM SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR ENDEAVOR", which was a great theme for everyone except me. But it was payment for everyone else being supportive of my (terrible, terrible) decisions leading up to that year, and that is how you balance the books to avoid being hit by a falling tree or a meteor.

Another year it was redouble my efforts, which was a good one because it made me a homeowner and got another book published. It did not, however, make me into an oiled bikini-clad bodybuilder, which is sort of what I was hoping for, but that is what happens when the thing you are redoubling is "getting up for snacks occasionally". 2x nearly-zero is still only slightly more than zero. I struggled on a chin-up bar and did 10-minute yoga a few times and called it a year.

Last year I forgot to set a theme, and society collapsed and everyone died and chickens took over the wasteland. Poor planning.

THIS YEAR, there will be a theme. When my mother asked what it should be, I told her, "running away to live alone in the snowy forests of Ontario with a bunch of sheep". This was not out of some sense of preparation for any hypothetical nuclear dystopia, but because I was in the middle of a domestic quarrel over a gross misuse of socks.

squad goals

She told me I can't do that yet, so what we should do instead is 'whatever it takes'. Whatever it takes to get back into that fancy dress from 8 years ago. Whatever it takes to carve out time to make art and read good books and knit things. Whatever it takes to do what is right for the people around us without becoming bitter, angry old assholes - starting with not running away to Ontario over an argument about socks, probably.

WHATEVER IT TAKES. Mark it, folks.

the wtf gift

I wasn't given any weird gifts, because I have a small family and they either know me pretty well or just send things off my wish list, but my mother got a $70 nightgown from her step-mother. It was... well made.

The table

I'm sitting here in stretchy pants and a Led Zeppelin sweatshirt, but I pulled off a decent formal dinner and here is the proof. Add platters of rosemary-rubbed roast beef and lamb, boats of gravy, bottles and bottles of wine, Julia Child's creamed brussels sprouts, a couple of pies, and there you have it. The cherry pie had a butt-cheek imprint in it because Gavin sat on it in the car, but it had foil on it, so we ate it anyway.

GTFO, CAT, I'M A FANCY HOME BLOGGER

Christmas 2016, revised

I'll write this thing up properly later. FLAMING PUDDING HAPPENING NOW.

Boxing Day update

You've got to do the work to make the magic is another family motto, right there alongside poor eating is good eating, clean is free, and don't do anything you wouldn't tell your mother. Christmas can run a person flat with the surge of expenses, but the work costs nothing, and that's where you can focus your efforts to summon the Holiday Spirit and put it to work doing something other than running over old ladies for parking spaces outside Ross. Pull out the splotched old cookbooks and perform the rites of confection even though the clean-up is a pain in the ass. Walk out into the woods to look at the snowy trees even though the kids are all falling and coughing and making you carry wet mittens. You do the rituals and make everyone happy, and then for a bit you remember how to be happy, too. It's old magic.

This time, I had a plan. I would host the feast - and I would do it like a proper adult, not like a college student pushing card tables together and digging out mismatching cutlery. All year, I hunted thrift stores until I found a sturdy expandable dining table that could comfortably seat a dozen people, and by some amazing coincidence, it was the exact make and model of the one we had in Newfoundland in 1982, so it came with +10 Holiday Charisma. I collected vintage serving ware with little silver feet on them, bought sets of plates and cutlery, assembled a fleet of wine glasses, and in the end we had a table that was - well, not astonishingly impressive or decadent, but respectably proper and fine. And which I forgot to take a fucking picture of. But it worked! The entire family sat down to feast on Christmas Eve, and the roasts were the size of small children, and the sun will continue to rise for another year. It was wonderful.

On Christmas Day, there were stockings! Chocolate oranges! Toys! A fog machine! Frikkin lasers! Opera dresses from two people who felt sorry for me for completely blowing it at the last opera! It was also the Year of the Bag - kid backpacks with cat ears on them, waterproof laptop totes, leather motorcycle backpacks, cartoon book-toting-librarian bags. It was happy, it was funny, and it ended with us setting my mother's tablecloth on fire. She got a new mold for the plum pudding this year, and this one had a hole in the middle. It looked great, and we poured rum all over it and lit it with lots of cheer and singing, but then all the rum pooled in the middle and it just kept burning, shooting fire out the hole in a manner that made everyone's bottoms clench sympathetically. When it wouldn't stop, my mother decided to move the flaming pudding to a dry plate, so that the rum puddled in the hole could burn off, and when she lifted it with a knife all the booze rushed out and exploded in a fireball. She hurried to move the pudding to the dry plate and dripped burning rum all over the tablecloth like napalm. It was the most exciting pudding we've had in years - right up there with the year we bought a bottle of rum that was so high proof that the flames shot up to the ceiling and tried to set the house on fire. Top-notch magic-summoning tradition.

And now we are fat and sleepy and laying around in a pile of candy, making vague promises to go jogging or do some sit ups or never eat again. There are gifts to put away and floors to vacuum and New Years resolutions to think about, but for right now we are just enjoying the lights and the rain and the good, hard work that is all finished for another year.

I might stage the table for a decent picture, if I can get myself out of the rocking chair. I suppose I'll need to put the kettle on eventually.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Crappy phone photo dump!

I made brioche cinnamon buns for Christmas Eve breakfast like a big damn hero

Yay wine

Yay meat

Tamp it all down with hot liquids

The presents were the only thing keeping the lower branches up, 

since the cat broke them all by laying in them.

"Is the fog going to set off the fire alarms?"

"No, I disabled all the fire alarms months ago, when they kept going off."

"What."

Upgrade from the ragged canvas tote I've been carrying my library books in up until now

Bags, bags, baggy bag bags

Guess who still doesn't have shoooooes

I don't do commissions - unless they are for friends who send me boxes of Trader Joes loot in exchange for portraits of their kids

The Christmas meat pie! 

All of the leftover Christmas Eve feast goes into a pie, and it is the BEST

FOOMP. "This reminds me of the night you were born."

magical < realism

While the kids went out ice skating with their cousins, I went on a night mission to Costco to hunt the wild Christmas beef. I braced myself for a scene of chaos, with charging carts and aisle-wrapping checkout lines, but the parking lot was mostly empty. Happy shoppers tapped their chins thoughtfully over the bins of meat, trying to remember which cuts were the good ones. "We want the... back of the cow?" I can never remember, either, but that's okay because my selection method is fail-proof: look for the bin that's mostly empty, and grab the biggest thing that's left. On this occasion, there were only two hunks of meat left, and one of them was torn open. A woman was standing over the last precious roast, hemming at her phone and looking at the standing ribs in the next bin, so I slid up and nabbed the meat from under her, then sped off toward the booze before she could tackle me.

When I finally rumbled back to the truck with the entire feast in my cart, it had started raining, and mist was billowing down through the street lights like snow. It was the first moment that really felt like Christmas, and I went home to sip noggy cognac by the tree and watch a sappy holiday movie like a proper adult.

The warm feelings carried over into the morning, but only because I woke up to discover the 3 year old had wet the bed. She doesn't usually have accidents, but husbandface had filled her with hot cocoa while I had been out and then put her to bed without using the toilet. We dragged the boys out of their bunks by the ankles, ran a load of sheets, bathed the child, fed the chickens, and got everyone out the front door on time. As we were leaving, I spotted some of the parasitic carapaces trying to creep back up the vines over the gateway trellis, and I made a leap to scrape them off with my fingers. Just at that moment, Leif ducked under me, opened the gate, and left it standing ajar. Humans can crack bricks and boards with their bare hands, if they focus their muscles and energy, but a limp arm has all the velocity and force of a wet towel, and it really doesn't work as well at all in terms of resistance. So as I jumped up, reaching into the vines, my hand came swinging back down and smacked like a bag of wet bones onto the metal railing. The rest of me followed it down and crumpled on the driveway in pain. I lost some skin, and judging by the bruising seeping up between my knuckles, something miiiiight be broken, but I will just pretend I don't see that until after the holiday. I spent my ER fee on a most triumphant roast beef.

So I'm feeling less Christmassy today, having karate-chopped a steel fence, but I felt it, folks. Christmas, I mean, not the fence. For a few hours there, I felt it, and that means I can do it again. It might take a lot more cognac, though.

Action rhyme for babies with strong stomachs

I've decided to draw my Library Toddler Time Greatest Hits. This one is a favorite. Slam that baby all over the place. 

IMMEASURABLY MORE SATISFYING

My kind-hearted child turned fourteen this week, and LO, THERE WAS A MOTHERFUCKING YULE LOG.

He had to work into the night at robotics for an upcoming competition, and we ended up eating a birthday dinner of cold hamburgers, but I managed to turn out a big hunk of chocolate wood, put a layer of bark on it with Julia Child's fudge frosting, and dusted the whole thing with a layer of cocoa powder. Just like a real branch. 

Fourteen. Fourteen. I am less shocked by how old he is than by how few years we have left until he's off to college and starting his own life. Fourteen is still very young. But "four years left" is so, so short.

congratulations, here's a burning log for dessert

Happy birthday, kid. Next year: yule log with mf meringue mushrooms.

The annual questionnaire - now with anthropomorphic uterus content

It's that time again. And I'm early again, just to tempt the fates. 

1. What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before? I... made a custard pie? Wait, CHICKEN HUSBANDRY. I learned how to raise chickens. Except I had a mishap with some rotisserie chicken that I was eating on the patio, and they got hold of it and horked it down, so now they are abominations with a taste for flesh. The other day my son went out to feed them and discovered the rooster strutting around with a severed dove's head dangling from his beak. Related: I have stopped trying to teach the chickens to give kisses.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I resolved to publish another book, and I did that thing! It is a toddler board book about poo. I nice book, a book I am proud of because it is the first one I wrote as well as illustrated, but still. Poop. So I'm working on another one, with the goal of getting another publication between me and the poop book, for legacy's sake. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? I think so? There is another baby in the immediate friends circle, but I can't remember how old the little guy is now, and whether he was maybe born right at the end of last year. Or even what his name is, holy shit. I am a terrible, terrible friend. 

4. Did anyone close to you die? Our feistiest young cat died of a blood clot, and it was horrible. She's buried in the corner of the yard, which I am now scared of. 

5. What places did you visit? Completely failed at travel this year. Failed at even wanting to travel this year. Adventure no longer beckons. Romance does not await. The wilderness stopped returning my calls. But I did finally walk down to the botanical gardens near my house and was really charmed by the rusty bridge over the gulch.

6. What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016? Formal shoes. I go through slumps of "ugh I am a withered husk and will never be attractive again" and dump all my formalwear in the donation pit, forgetting that I might still have to look as if I've at least got my shit together a couple times a year. 

7. What dates from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? I know 2016 was a dumpster fire, and everybody famous died, but I'm going to shove all that aside and just look at home life. I'll remember the day the cat died. The day my author copies of the new book came in the mail. The day we got the horde of chickens. The opera, the piano, the first shower in the new... uh, shower. Going to the ER with my three-year-old for another seizure. The emotions bounced around in the middle of the scale, hitting no unmanageable notes, and that is how you want it, generally speaking.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? The poop book. Also, I made Christmas photo cards and actually mailed them on time, which has NEVER happened. Even so, I only managed to get them out to immediate family, so if you didn't get one, it isn't because I don't love you. Unless it actually is because of that. Oh, and also, Christopher Moore retweeted a picture of me wearing snack boxes on my feet, so I am pretty much famous now.

9. What was your biggest failure? I failed to bag an agent for the other book I wrote, probably because I gave up almost immediately and got distracted by a new project. And maybe also because it wasn't quite good enough and needs revision/better pitching. I WILL DO THIS. After I'm done with the comic. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I did not! One year I got an infection after cutting myself on a flake of oatmeal, but this year the worst thing I did was try to carry a piano up a set of stairs and almost crush myself to death. I failed, obviously. Although come to think of it, I did end up in the ER once this year, but we won't talk about that.

EDIT: I broke my fucking hand karate-chopping a fence two days before Christmas. That is what happens when you post these things too soon, people.

11. What was the best thing you bought? A ceiling for the bathroom. Last year it was cracked and stained with big holes in it so you could imagine a feral squatter might be up in the attic watching you bathe, and this year it has nice art deco tiles that are really reassuringly solid and hobo-proof.

Anything would have been an improvement, really.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My middle child - always the loudest, breaking-est, most aggressively affectionate of the three - has discovered Dav Pilkey and has been pouring all his rude humor and slapstick into writing stories and comics. He reads constantly, writes on every scrap of paper he finds, laughs at his own terrible, gruesome jokes, keeps up with the big kids playing D&D and he's turning out to be a really cool person. This is the payoff for all those years of cleaning lipstick off the cupboards, unclogging the toys he stuffed down the toilet, discovering mid-brush that he dipped my toothbrush in fragrance oil, wiping up artwork painted on the floor in peanut butter, and catching him as he crawled out the cat door. 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? My cousins on facebook. I finally deleted the app so I'd stop going in and looking around and walking straight out again.

14. Where did most of your money go?  What is money? Childcare expenses, folks. Always childcare expenses. But I really like my kids, so it's ok. It's okaaaaaay. 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? I was terrified when Zenny slipped on the patio and had another seizure, and that is sort of like being excited.

16. What song will always remind you of 2016? 

I've seen more places than I can name
And over time they all start to look the same
But it ain't that truth we chase
No, it's the promise of a better place

But all this time, I been chasin' down a lie
And I know it for what it is
But it beats the alternatives
So I'll take the lie

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? I am more okay.
b) thinner or fatter?  exactly the same. Again. 
c) richer or poorer? Very slightly richer. Like, I could buy a ham.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? laying on a beach.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? reading the comments.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? We had our very first Christmas in our very own home, and discovered that the neighbors set up tents and have a billionty screaming happy drunk relatives over. So we are not doing that again, and instead are going to run away to my mother or aunt's house. Food tastes better when someone else makes it anyway.

21. Did you fall in love? Those days are so long gone, folks. EDIT: I'm changing this question to What is the general state of your heart this year? This was a landmark year, in a way, and I expected 10 years to make a big difference, but I'm sorry to say it doesn't. You get used to it, though, and maybe 10 more years makes it a junk pile in the corner you've looked at so much you no longer see it. 

22. What was your favorite TV program? Luke Cage! The Get Down! Outlander! Black Mirror! Good Girls Revolt! The Wizard of Aus! Still not Poldark. Damn it, Aiden, I try so hard. 

GOOD

23. What did you do for your birthday? The whole family overran the burn-your-own-children Japanese bbq place and then saw Fantastic Beasts. It was pretty great.

24. What was the best book you read? I read the first half of SO MANY BOOKS. Of the ones I actually managed to finish, the best were Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,  March by John Lewis, Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling by Tony Cliff, and Habibi by Craig Thompson. I read all of uncle-in-law Steven King's new books, too, but I just wasn't in the mood this year. Sorry, Steve.

25. What did you want and get? A shower! I mean, as a physical installation, not a one-time event.

26. What did you want and not get?  effortless piano prodigy skills. 

26 b. I have added this one myself: What did you NOT want and get? CHICKENS. SO MANY CHICKENS.

27. What was your favorite film of this year? You know, I was holding out for Fantastic Beasts, which was quite enjoyable, but Moana really surprised me. It was funny, the music was good, it made all of us cry, and it nailed so many aspects of Polynesian culture. I want a really big tattoo now. Go see Moana. Edit: also, Ghostbusters! Shoot, I always forget about movies I watched earlier in the year. Moana, Fantastic Beasts, Ghostbusters. There. Coincidentally, those are the only movies I saw in the theater.

The best movie we watched at home was Attack the Block.

Swords! Aliens! That adorable storm trooper before he was famous!

28. Did you make some new friends this year? Only the kind that live in the computer.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Try answering this question, reader. It's either SUPER personal, like "word from my long lost love, who went off and maybe became a successful motorcycle-riding triathlete who still thinks of me when he spits out something gross from a care package*," or an ungrateful complaint, like, "a preschooler who doesn't hold onto door frames screaming NOOOO when I need to wash the Nutella out of her hair." You've got to be really specific with these kinds of wishes, otherwise you'll get word from your long lost love in an obituary column and your preschooler will be kidnapped by goblins. So I'm going to go with "yule log" again.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016? Woman Who Wore Old Lady Loafers to the Opera.

31. What kept you sane? Drowned myself in comics this year.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I really enjoyed hating Daniel Radcliffe's character in A Young Doctor's Notebook.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?  Stirred? Horrified? Chastened? Inspired? There has been a lot going on this year. I guess the issue that has been touching lives around me most personally has been the drug war in the Philippines. The Philippines are one easy plane ride away from Hawaii, and a lot of our local families have relatives back there. Three of my co-workers are Filipino. My kids' classmates are losing neighbors and loved ones as the drug war expands into a vigilante free-for-all, where masked gunmen are murdering people in the streets, folks with personal vendettas are reporting each other in a "get them before they get you" scenario, and bodies are left out with cardboard signs taped around their necks that say "addict". Smoking and speeding have just been added to the bans. It's a really bad scene.

34. Who did you miss? Nobody. I'm okay.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016. Chickens are terrible kissers and they will swallow your earrings. 


*I like to put at least one inedible regional treat in care packages. This year it's chocolate shrimp chips. If I were sending any packages out, that is. Which I'm not. 

Progress and another playlist

We just put the advent calendar up, and six doors have whipped open already. I think it's broken. They should make those things harder to open. My best Canadian, sarahapple, has a story advent unfolding on her blog, which is way less stressful. Go read that thing.

It's been cold out, by tropical weenie standards, so the socks and sweaters have been dug out of the bottom drawers. Not finding any matching socks, I put on one that had llamas on it and one that looked like a banana, and I immediately slipped on the banana sock and fell over the ottoman. This would be a clever marketing gimmick on the part of the banana sock manufacturers if it weren't so risky; if they kill all their customers with slippery fiber blends then they won't get any repeat purchases. Points for murderous intent, though, banana sock.

The kids have really gotten into Munchkins, a role-playing card game, and in the evenings they wage battle with ducks of doom and plutonium dragons while I lay out mugs of cocoa and work on my comics. Part 1 is drawn, and the color is sloooow going. 29 pages to go (out of 50). I have just discovered that I can live stream my drawing sessions. People with insomnia who want to stare at someone coloring will have something to look forward to as I figure that thing out. I'll post a link on twitter if it ever comes to pass.

In this excerpt, the girls are discovering how truly crap their superpowers are, as Pupu turns money into meatballs with a typo, and Png realizes that partial invisibility actually lowers your inconspicuousness.

And where there is work, there is music.

1. Don't let the light go out. Okay, this isn't about Christmas, but I'm an atheist so it doesn't matter. I celebrate folklore and history and the idea that the sun won't rise without a blood sacrifice. My favorite holiday songs are about falling to your knees in awe/fear and going from door to door begging for booze.

Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suffering
Pain we learned so long ago
Light one candle for all we believe in
That anger not tear us apart
And light one candle to find us together
With peace as the song in our hearts

Isn't that lovely? That is lovely.

2. Just go ahead and play the whole album. But skip the Night Before Christmas at the end. I think they made that one up as they were recording.

3. John Denver and the muppets, just for Miss Piggy scream-singing BADUMBUM at the end.

4... That's it? I really thought this would be a proper playlist, but it just skews off into Simon's Cat videos and episodes of the Twilight Zone (season 2, episode 11, Night of the Meek) after that. Pandora keeps trying to get me to listen to Blackmore's Night Christmas songs, but I'm NOT HAVING IT. Mostly I am just glad my kids have forgotten that the Chipmunks have a holiday album.

Recommendations welcome!

other people know how to sleuth properly evidently

Officer Snacks came to the library to drop off a bag of dried hibiscus treats and chat with the staff on his break. He walked up to my desk, loading a picture on his phone. Never let a police officer surprise you with a picture on his phone. Cops only take pictures of things that are surprising even to people who see road accidents every day. Last time it was a guy with half his leg bitten off by a shark. The time before that it was the decayed corpse of a shut-in. Usually I'm morbidly interested and take a peek, but on this day I had just read something that made me unhappy online and I was only in the market for cat gifs.

"NOPE, just tell me."

"You don't want to see? Old lady got her nose bitten off." He reenacted the scene with pantomime, and then I told him about the screaming pig incident. He frowned at me.

"They're not supposed to be shooting down there. Usually they just stick 'em and there's a lot of squealing." 

"Yeah, I've heard that before, and this really sounded like a woman, so it freaked me out."

"Where was this? What time? How close was it?" 

I did my own reenactment with pantomime. He said, "I'm going to tell my sergeant. If anybody's missing, you're my witness."

"Oh, ok. And there's my 911 call*." 

He nodded and walked out, pocketing his phone. "Try the hibiscus! It's good."

The dried hibiscus really is good, and it also feels like you're chewing giant spiders, which drives it right up to the top of my list of terrifying foods to put in care packages.

*And this blog, making me murder victim #2 if the neighborhood killer is any good at googling. HI DON'T KILL ME, I DIDN'T SEE A THING. (I'm not actually scared of the internet because I work with the public and any of those weirdos can murder me in real life any time they want. Although it has already been established that I am too naive to survive in the wild, so someone tell me to take this post down if I'm recklessly endangering everyone.)

super heroic rescue action

Leif and I were walking to school, chatting.

"Oh, look at the goldfinches, they had babies again," I said, pointing to the yellow birds in the grass.

"Granny would love them. She should move up here near us."

"Yeah, I'd like that, but she'll never move, who would watch the birds down there? Those wild cardinals have been bringing their family to her for 10 years. Her rescued dove still comes every day to visit and then flies back to her babies. Granny is like the witch who cares for a steading - people come to rely on their witch. They're the person you bring injured animals to, the person you call for help when there's something stuck in your eye or your foot. Like when the rattlesnake was in the school, and they ran and got Granny. Or when our friend shot herself in the leg, and they brought her to Granny."

"Now she's the witch of birds."

"Yep, seems that way."

When I got to work, our library janitor dropped the garden hose and ran up to me. "There's a bird in the bushes!" 

Oh no, I spoke the words. I'm the bird witch now. "Alright, show me."

There in the bushes was a big seabird with webbed feet and salt filters on its beak. 

"I think it's a duck," she said.

"No, it's a shearwater, I have to call the refuge." In the winter, fledgling seabirds take off at night and follow the moon, but if they get confused by urban lights and make landfall, they can't launch again. They're made to fly and float, not walk, and they starve to death on land. Or, you know, get eaten by dogs or stomped to death by school kids. It's not a good situation for a young bird.

"I'll tell boss you found a duck."

"No - augh." I got my phone out and started looking for the seabird rescue number. 

An old man came around the corner and jabbed his cane at my cardigan. "EH. Why you wearing a coat? You never see men wearing coats. Men don't get cold."

"Mmm hmm." I scrolled through the 'what to do if you've found a seabird' checklist.

"It's pretty cold today though. It was snowing last night. Snowed in Manoa, Waikiki, Kapolei. You believe that?"

"Nope." I opened up the contact page.

"Men never lie. That's why men are the boss of women. You believe that?"

"Nope." I dialed the number.

"Your husband is the boss of you."

"NYOOOPE." I listened to it ring.

"You ladies think you the boss of men."

"We are the boss of ourselves." Someone picked up, and I turned away to talk to them. The old guy wandered off toward the gas station. "I going tell those gas station ladies who the boss is."

The voice on the phone knew what kind of bird I had before I described it. "You found a seabird? Black and grey with a long black beak and webbed feet? Yeah, it's a shearwater, they're landing all over the place right now. You'll have to bring it in so we can weigh it and launch it. Put it in a box and drive with the radio off. Use a towel so it doesn't bite you."

Oh boy. Luckily, I have all kinds of crap in my truck that I specifically told the kids not to leave in there, and a towel was among the detritus. I wrapped the bird up like a burrito, stuck it in a box, and drove ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ISLAND to deliver the little guy to the rehab station at Sea Life Park, an hour and a half away. It poked its head out of the box to look at me. It probably wanted the radio on.  

So today there is one more adorable young seabird up in the skies over the islands, and I feel like a big damn hero. 

And if I see that old guy again, I am going to thump him with his own cane. I am the boss of thumping old men with canes, SO THERE.

Thirty seven

(Teenager not pictured because he went to the farmer's market with his grandma.)

This was a good year, all told. It was heavy on illustration, yardwork, chickens, home improvement projects, and family get-togethers. We lost a much-loved cat. We gained a badly-behaved kitten. Everyone is alive and well.

This was also the year my neck began to lose structural integrity. My insides began to have territory disputes and a surgeon has been threatening them with eviction. My knees are disgraceful, and I'm not talking to them. I can't run anymore without them wadding up into immobile knots of pain, but I don't care too much, because I really hate running. Stand up straight and don't get too fat, says Claire Fraser on the subject of good aging, and I'm doing okay with that. I think.

I'll finish my graphic novel. I'll start another one. I'll finish the sweater I'm knitting, finish the quilt in my sewing trunk. I'll get on a plane, which I've been avoiding for years. I'll try to stop wishing for emails from people long gone and send more emails to the people I have and love. I'll learn to play the piano, even if it's just one song by rote. I'll make the holidays and birthdays bigger and better, even though I am shy about parties. I'll figure out how to get the chickens to lay eggs, instead of just lounging like Grecian beauties. Or learn to paint Grecian chickens, if that doesn't work out.

Aging is fine if you accept it and outpace it with good living. I've never understood people who say, "I'm not old! I feel exactly the same as I did at 15!" What a thought. I want to get OLD. Really, properly, interestingly old.

 Working on it.

Eggnog cherry meringue pie - recipe

This is the best pie. The surprisingest pie. The pie that you can still make room for after filling your guts with meat and booze. The meringue tricks you into thinking it is light and dreamy, even though it has enough cream in it to kill you. If you're lucky. Because what a way to go.

It is also maybe not a pie to bring to a staff party, because some people are really weird about eggnog. We are weird about it, but in the "who the hell drank half a gallon of eggnog since yesterday?" kind of way.

My cat licked a hole in this one. And I don't know how that perfect hole in the middle got there. WATCH YOUR PIES.

Eggnog Cherry Meringue Pie

(based loosely on the Taste of Home raisin custard pie recipe - which is the perfect raisin pie for people who don't like raisin pies but raisins are all they have to work with)

Custard

1/2 cup sugar

3 tablespoons corn starch

1 cup eggnog

1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup heavy cream (or just more whole milk, if you like your arteries. Mine are a bunch of bastards.)

3 egg yolks - reserve the whites

1/2 cup dried cherries, chopped

2 tablespoons spiced rum (or a small glug, if you're a quaffer instead of a tippler)

1 pastry shell (I buy the Pillsbury pre-rolled ones, because pastry is my natural enemy)

Meringue

3 egg whites

1/4 cup sugar

Heat oven to 350 and bake your empty shell. Take it out when it's golden, about 10-15 min. While that's baking, chop your cherries and put them in a little bowl with the glug of rum to soak. Put the pie shell on a rack to cool, leave oven on.

In a large saucepan, whisk together sugar and cornstarch. Whisk in the eggnog, milk, and cream, and bring to a gentle boil, stirring until thickened. Remove from heat, spoon a few big blobs of hot cream into your egg yolks and mix them up, then pour the yolks into the pan of filling and whisk it smooth. Return to heat, stir for 2 minutes until bubbly and thick. Remove from heat, dump in the cherries & rum, give it a stir, then pour the hot filling into your half-baked pie shell.

Beat the egg whites on med-high for a few minutes, until soft peaks form. Sprinkle in the sugar as it mixes, and beat until it forms stiff peaks. Spoon it onto the custard pie, smoothing it out to seal the edges. Take the back of the spoon and flick the meringue up into cute little peaks all over the pie. Put the pie in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, until light golden brown. Cool on a rack for an hour or two, and enjoy the little amber beads of sugar that rise to the top. If some of them are red, that is because of the cherries, not because someone was bleeding on it while you were in the other room. Also, keep the cat away. 

If you don't smash the meringue, this refrigerates beautifully for the next day.