Annual questionnaire 2021

1. What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before? I met the mayor of Oatman, Arizona. He was a donkey.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions? I kept it simple with “hold steady”, and I held the damn thing steady. One serious instance of temptation to flip the whole thing over, but did not. This year I’m going to go with “get closer to the mountain”.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 

My cousin, who is my age, had her first grandchild. What the fuck.

4. Did anyone die? 

My oldest and worst cat died in January. We loved Po even though she peed on everything for 14 years. It has been almost a year and I still feel minor guilt when I'm relieved that something hasn't been peed on. I'm not glad you're dead, Po, I'm just glad the towel that fell off the hook isn't wet.

One of my long-time online friends killed herself.

As of right now my grandfather has cancer and three aortic aneurysms ready to burst, and grandmother-in-law has been spending a lot of time in the hospital for degenerative stroke symptoms. The families are bracing for the worst in the coming months.

Also three library patrons died of Covid, as well as our part-time janitor’s husband.

5. What places did you visit? 

Drove from Las Vegas to Kingman, Arizona. Terrorized my mother on a curvy cliffside road up to donkey town. Ran through the Philadelphia airport, swearing. Made fun of the beer at the Genesee Brewery in Rochester, New York.

6. What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021? I’d like some time alone. During these past two years I’ve gotten used to painting and reading in 10 minute intervals while everyone is around and interrupting, but it isn’t the quiet recharging activity it used to be when I had a day off during the week with nobody else at home. I’m a latchkey kid/only child who has never quite gotten used to having no privacy. But that’s a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing, so I’m okay with painting in small bites for a while longer.

7. What moments from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory? The fear on my daughter's face while she endured a terrible diagnostic test at the hospital is going to stay with me.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Did another gallery show, did not get lead poisoning, flew with my son to his new university. Also scanned and reprinted all my grandfather’s old family photos, and did not slap his wife when she leaned over my shoulder and made a passive-aggressive remark about my grandmother.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Once again, did not become a painting sensation and sell enough artwork to allow me to quit my job. Maybe because I don’t want to sell anything or do any social media marketing or paint commissions for people with money. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I won some points, actually. Ran for 8 minutes on the cardiologist's treadmill and got a score of "Maximal Normal". Also they complained that it was hard to see my heart on the echocardiogram because I have narrow gaps between my ribs, so I am extra stab-proof.

 
11. What was the best thing you bought? The pottery wheel and kiln. I might live in a small house in a tightly packed neighborhood, but that small house has a piano and painting easels and a pottery studio and fruit trees for my kids to grow up with.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Gavin graduated and went off to a pretty fancy college on partial scholarship, so he wins the year.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled? Trying and failing to head off the fights between my mom and my grandpa’s alcoholic wife in front of the rest of our family seemed like something I shouldn't have needed to do.

14. What did you get excited about? I walked into an art store in Rochester with only 15 minutes to shop before our parking meter expired. 

15. What song will always remind you of 2021? 

 

For months, the 2007 cover of Careless Whisper kept playing whenever I was driving, to the point that I started side-eyeing the radio. One day while in Kingman, we visited a house that had been turned into an antique shop, and things started feeling weird. It’s fun to visit these places with a trash-talking friend, but my family had peeled off on the first floor and I was alone, walking from room to room through a maze of crocheted toilet cozies, rusty farm equipment, and carnival glass bowls while canned saxophone music played somewhere in the house. Finally I walked into a small room with an entire wall covered with rusty egg beaters and potato ricers, and suddenly thought, this is the end of the road. It doesn't matter where I go, some day I am going to be carted right back to Kingman to die, just like my grandfather. At that moment, George Michael broke into the chorus of Careless Whisper from a stereo hidden somewhere in the junk, and the space/time continuum dolly-zoomed around me. 

 

 

So of course I took a picture.

my unremarkable moment of surreal and profound loneliness

 

16. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? WHOA sadder. My first baby left home for college, my job is numbingly boring while also getting me death threats, my grandpa is dying, my youngest child needs surgery to prevent kidney failure, and I'm having dreams about just being hugged tightly.
b) thinner or fatter? Got sad, gained 5 pounds, got annoyed, lost 5 pounds.
c) richer or poorer? Just a little bit richer, which is the main thing that has me holding steady over here. Got to raise these kids with love and security and get them off to college before getting real weird. 

17. What do you wish you’d done more of? Pursuing side quests, walking through trees. Between work and home and chores, I spend a lot of time indoors.

18. What was your favorite TV program? 

Good Lord Bird. Only Murders in the Building. The new seasons of Dexter and the Witcher have been good.

19. What was the best book you read? 

 

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, which I loved so much I immediately bought my own copy. Spent the next month being mad that Ryan Gosling has been cast for the movie.

Also Unspeakable Things, by Jess Lourey, really got to me. I’m working my way through all her other books right now.

 

My favorite children's book of the year was The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo. It's the story of a little girl who survives the massacre of her family and befriends a very mean goat named Answelica and a monk with a wandering eye. It's a really nice book to read out loud at bedtime, and even months later, Zenny remembers lines from the story.  

 

What is this world, and how shall I live in it? 

20. What did you want and get?  

Spent more time with my aunt and uncle and grandpa than I had in years, and it was like a vitamin shot.

21. What did you want and NOT get? Oh hey, there is still a MASSIVE WOOD PILE where the back yard should be. Now decorated with a wood chipper. I am going to just learn to do this thing myself, and I am a person who is afraid of garbage disposals and lawn mowers, so there is going to be a lot of screaming. If the sound of a wood chipper and screaming does not prompt a call to police, that will tell you everything you need to know about my neighbors.

22. "So! How's your love life?" 

GO HOME, RYAN.

23. What was your favorite film of this year? Dune was pretty, but the one the kids and I liked was Thunderforce.

24. Did you make some new friends this year? My favorite library mom moved to Portland, so I am minus one friend. I am now down to the 8 year olds who come around after school to talk comics with me.

25. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? A career change. I could be a court room artist, or draw suspects for the police department, if those were still things people got paid to do. In my best world, I’d be a figure drawing teacher at a small college, listening to the scratch of charcoal in a big dusty room with tall windows. When this pandemic ends I’m going to get together with the disbanded art groups and see if we can start a class up here on the North side of the island.

26. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021? I bought Birkenstock boots to fix my arches, then accidentally kicked the IT guy’s toolbox and broke it apart because these things are built like tanks and shaped like hooves. My look is “hippie Clydesdale”.

 

27. What kept you sane? Inertia, art, and weekend baking. I was in charge of Sunday dinner desserts, and the homemade cakes got increasingly fancy as work got more stressful.

28. Which celebrity/public figure were you into?  
 

Absolutely not.

29. What political/news issue stirred you the most?

When a 6 year old girl went missing in Waimanalo, my co-worker went down to help with the search because she knows the girl’s biological family, and we followed developments pretty closely. After a few months, the adoptive parents were arrested for murder, but Ariel’s body still hasn’t been found. My jury duty was deferred, so I’m grimly wondering if I might get called when it’s time for them to face a judge.

30. Who did you miss?

Actual image of my social/emotional life:

I missed everybody. Started listening to music from the 90s to see if it jogged any loose memories, and it crushed me flat.

31. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021.  My life is short and meaningless and will be immediately forgotten. I mean, everyone knows this in a peripheral way (while suspecting they might be special and maybe immortal), but this year I really got it between the eyes.

More practically, I learned how important it is not to hold your pee. Holding it in creates spasms in the muscles that are supposed to relax and allow your pee to flow as your bladder contracts, and these spasms force urine back up to the ureter valves, and may result in backwashed puddles of urine in the bladder which can breed infections. Also, stopping and starting as you pee does not strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, it makes them worse (this was the bad advice my grandmother was given as a youth, which made her kidney problems worse). Holding in farts does strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, though. 

So pee freely, and fart slowly. You're welcome.

Christmas 2021

I came home from work on Christmas Eve and a glass of boozy eggnog was put in my hand before my purse was even down. My mother was in the kitchen, peeling carrots in a way that said she had just heard my car pull up and had run into the kitchen to look busy. Her phone rang, so I got her a drink refill and sent her to the couch while I took over. The pies were done, the roast was in the oven, and I just had to finish the sides while everyone came through the kitchen to grab snitches and talk. This was much better than carding people at the library.

Everything was pretty good until Mike sent the kids downstairs to find the stockings, and Leif came back up with a strange look on his face. The boxes that were waiting for Santa had accidentally been put in the basement instead of the studio, and I worried he might have gotten into one of them. Maybe it was time to have the talk with him about the nature of magic and how it's made. I watched him for signs of a conversational opening, but instead of seeming disappointed, he started coming around and giving me very tight and happy hugs. I think he knows, and maybe it feels like love to him, because it is.

Christmas morning came at 5:00 am on the dot, because the kids wake up at 1:00 am and stare at the clock until then. People talk about kids who sleep until the sun comes up on Christmas Day, but I have never met those things. My kids jump on my chest and shake me if I don't get up by 5:00:30, if the cats don't do it first.

For Zenny, this was the year of the cat-proof dollhouse. Her old dollhouse was a thrift store find, made from cheap craft wood and half destroyed by the cats sitting on top of it. The new one is solid wood and weighs as much as a table. There was no way to hide it, so I taped together a giant box to put over it and wrapped it in three layers of paper to keep it from being torn open before Christmas. If the cats want to ruin this one, they are going to have to learn how to swing an ax. 

Which is looking like a possibility, because Gavin got an ax.

Leif found a pair of knife-proof food prep gloves in his stocking, and laughed a lot at the "don't try cutting your arms off, the gloves only cover your hands" instructions in the booklet they came with.

In the afternoon, we packed up all the food and went to my mother's house for the Christmas meat pie and flaming plum pudding. This year we brought the toxic rum, and the pudding exploded and took off my mother's knuckle hair. A+ holiday entertainment.

While putting on a fireplace video, I dropped the tv remote behind the couch and then crushed my toe flat like Wile E Coyote while trying to find it. Ended up stuck in an armchair with an ice pack wrapped around my foot. My aunt's semi-estranged husband was visiting from the mainland. He is not allowed in my house because I'm still mad at him for unplugging my internet after I drank a cup of his ginger ale in 2001*, but my mother's house is neutral ground, and he was on his best behavior. Such good behavior that Zenny, who hadn't met him before, mistook his smiles and Santa-like belly for trustworthiness and climbed on his lap for tickles and knee-bounces. I was smiling politely and about to kick my ice pack into his face when Mike figured out what was going on and diverted Zenny upstairs with a video game. 

Overall, good Christmas, zero manslaughter.

 

Gavin and his best girl

the tiny portraits of Noodle the Pug that I painted for Zenny's dollhouse

Zenny in her elf pajamas 

peonies, hard to find here

Droopy, not eating my peonies

 

gifts from the chickens

brie and panettone was a winning combination

fire in the hole

I didn't make it to the pie in time to get a good picture

foods and family

damn it

Merry Christmas, everyone.

* and for refusing to help her move furniture because I called him a hamster while they were dating, and for punching a hole in the wall over my baby cousin because he wouldn't stay still for a diaper change, and for mortgaging her house for a failed business so that she has to live in a shitty apartment now, and for getting weird about guns and scaring them so much the kids hid in the closet, etc. The ginger ale thing was just the dumbest. It wasn't even his; someone at his church gave him a leftover bottle of generic soda, which he put in the fridge next to my bottle of generic soda, and I opened his before realizing it was the wrong one, and he came out in full outrage because he heard the psssshh of the bottle opening. gtfo.

An attempt was made

You guys, I am trying. I wore the most sparkly, least flattering Christmas sweater ever to be gifted, and it has not turned the library bathroom into a space of wonder and magic for me. Working on Christmas Eve is balls.

OMG SPERKLES

There are classic movies to be watching, beefs to be roasting, pies to be baking, rums to be buttering, and here my sour grinchy ass is stuck on a chair by the library door. When I am not taking my break in the toilet.

"sassy tree skirt"

I haven't felt anything yet. Usually there is at least one cozy moment leading up to Christmas where I remember how it feels to be excited and believe in magic, but this whole year has been like treading water and the only thing I feel right now is sorrow that I'm not able to at least see my children enjoy it. This week they decorated slightly scorched gingerbread cookies with their dad, shopped with their grandma, facetimed with the mainland family, and today they're in charge of the pies while my mother makes the big meal. Christmas Eve is usually my day, I love cooking for my family and listening to warbly old music and drinking something too sweet. Just going to have to shove it all over and get really weird about Boxing Day, instead.

Wishing you all fleece couch blankets and overfrosted cookies and children in cute pajamas on this day.

All together

I got my boy back, and he turned 19. He was immediately put to work fixing all the broken computers the guys have been saving for him.

The weather is cool and blustery, the baking is in full swing. I’ve been into milk bread lately, because I am too lazy to drive to the bakery but not too lazy to spend 3 hours making hot dog flowers.

It feels good to have all the kids back together, and I’ve been sleeping through the night again, instead of waking up at 2am feeling like I misplaced something important.

It doesn’t quite feel like Christmas yet, but we’re trying, through corny movies and crackle-top cookies and strings of lights. The guys at the mango stand have made a truly horrifying attempt at holiday cheer; they gave their scarecrow a white doll’s face, a Santa hat, and a red toy sack that is only large enough to carry someone’s head.

Expect this guy to show up at midnight to explain Christmas Past to you.

They were probably inspired by the honey guy, who put a happy face in the zombie bee suit.

At night they fold the bee suit over forwards and cover it with garbage bags, with just the legs sticking out the bottom like a badly disposed dead body. The happy face cutout just hides the human skull that is no doubt inside that thing.

Merry Christmas!

Blizzard

The rain has been coming down hard on big gusts of wind, knocking over power lines, snapping trees, and flooding the roads. Emergency alerts are lighting up everyone’s phones, and the hurricane sirens started going off intermittently at 5am. I put a hand warmer in a folded towel for Pickle Chips, the scabby stray tom cat who visits our back porch, and he stayed warm and dry all night. We’re all hoping for a snow day. Our snow is melted and fast-moving, but it still smells like winter and it’s just as bad to drive in, so we deserve a cozy day at home.

For the first time in weeks, I had time on my day off to stay home and work on paintings. I’ve been doing an online glazing course, and finally bought a tube of lead white. It’s expensive and toxic, but lead paint is wonderful to work with, and so far I haven’t stuck it in my eye or put any in my mouth. It’s a slow process, since you’ve got to let it dry a couple days between layers, so I’m painting some snail buddies. 

These guys are life-sized. Snails have to at least be as big as the cockroaches to get by.

In the evening I drove through the flood waters to the nearby pharmacy and got a Moderna booster to go with my Pfizers, with a flu shot thrown in because it’s free. I’m making a patchwork quilt of immunity in my body. Took the requisite selfie in the corner where they had set up a single chair for 15-minute observations. 

Waiting for that door to swing open and hit me in the face.

Gavin comes home in a week. I'm having happy feelings. The tree is up, and the cats have been running at full speed to leap directly into the branches with all their legs spread out like they're trying to leave cartoon cat-shaped holes in it, then they sprint away before we can grab the spray bottle. Billy has started hiding the spray bottle at night. He's an inciter.

The tree has an infestation of muppets. They're not even ornaments, but Gavin decided they lived in the tree when he was two, and they've been Christmas muppets ever since. The kids move them around from day to day.

Stay cozy, folks.