Thanksgiving 2021

RIT charters tour buses to shuttle students home all over New York, so we bought Gavin a round-trip ticket to spend the holiday with the in-laws and freeze his biscuits off at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Thanksgiving with the New York family involves three separate meals in Hillburn, Nanuet, and Sloatsburg to visit all the cousins, great-aunts, and great-grandparents, and then Black Friday shopping at the Palisades Mall. He's been exhausted, well fed, and very happy. Feeling better about him being so far away, with so many people who love him close by.

Over in our part of the Pacific, we ditched the traditional pies for grasshopper pie and chocolate haupia pie. Mostly because I forgot to buy apples or pumpkin and was not about to walk into a grocery store without body armor on the day before Thanksgiving. The turkey was baked under a pound of smashed butter, the potatoes were purple, and the booze was a local mead we picked up in a scary alleyway behind the police station. Everything went off without a hitch, and I even had a full conversation with my 19 year-old cousin without it ending in swearing and middle fingers. Partly because of the bottle of mead that was parked next to my glass, partly because he's working as a lifeguard and swimming pool disasters are one of my conversational strong points. Right under library horror stories and local murderers.

Gavin comes home in 2 weeks! I am ready to deck all the halls and get this season going. Luckily, we are ahead of the game because Mike forgot to take down the outdoor Christmas lights for 11 months. Related: we are now the proud owners of an industrial strength wood chipper, because the tree branches he cut two months ago are STILL THERE, dried to a 4-foot-deep pile of kindling across the entire yard, and I finally realized I needed to beaver up a solution before the house burned down. Next up: figuring out how to fix the 2x4 that he has holding up the garage roof.

Chocolate Haupia Pie

pre-baked pie crust

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup corn starch

1 can of coconut milk

1 cup whole milk

Pinch of salt

4 oz. chopped semisweet chocolate, or 1 cup of chocolate chips

1 cup whipped cream (make your own or buy it)

Put the chocolate in a bowl and set aside.

Combine sugar and corn starch in a saucepan, whisk in coconut milk, whole milk, and salt. Heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until thick and gluey and large bubbles start to rise up. Remove from heat, pour 1 cup of mixture into chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted. Pour chocolate into cooked pie shell. With a clean spatula, pour the rest of the custard on top of the chocolate. Let cool completely in the fridge, top with whipped cream.

42

Survival streak continues.

My echocardiogram and stress test came back as “maximal normal”. I am as fit as any other middle-aged mom you can throw onto a treadmill. Now I’ve got a monitor taped to my chest to figure out if it’s an electrical problem that’s causing me to occasionally short out and faint, but the bits themselves are in good shape, so I have no excuse not to get back to daily jogging. Goddamn it.

Gravity is gaining on me. My eyes hurt when I read. I bought orthopedic shoes. Quit caffeine. Invested in the stock market. It’s happening.

The traditional toilet selfie, this year at Gyu Kaku 

That’s okay. Better than the alternative.

Outtakes

It’s time to make virtual storytimes again. After months of standing at a door, it’s good to remember why I don’t normally hate my job.

Now I need to go get a haircut and a festive outfit, because the next one is a holiday story and I’m ready to go full Mrs. Claus.

Update

Jojo the stray cat has ditched me for the guy who throws bread at chickens behind the laundromat. He has not yet learned that chickens will kick his ass.

So I have been dumped by a cat.

And then I dropped a cup of boiling cocoa on my lap.

But hey, it’s the weekend.

Chocolate covered cherry

For the second year in a row, I can not find Cella’s cherries anywhere. Queen Anne has a strangle hold on the island’s supply of cheap chocolate cherries.

Fine. 

If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

I’m going to love you exactly until the moment Cella shows up again, Queen Anne

Using a tube of gel medium instead of gamsol for the first time, and I love it. Go get that stuff, painters.

out of my depth

The gallery turned out to be more of a high-end art boutique, with white carpets and sculptures of seashells and an espresso bar. I was wearing a librarian blouse, but still looked like a bum walking in there with jeans and ratty sandals and my artwork packed in an old Target bag. The young woman in charge of the inventory lists came out in a short business skirt and very high heels, turning over my paintings like she had a doggie poop bag on her hand. 

"They're signed, but not labeled," she said.

"Right." 

"Yeah, labels on artwork is important."

"No shit, that is why organizers use the inventory lists to print consistent labels for the show," I did not say.

What I said was, "Sorry, you want me to come back?"

"No, ugh, I'll be out of state later. Here, I have a sharpie."

So I wrote the titles for each painting on the back in my terrible handwriting, feeling more and more embarrassed about the untidy edges and varnished cat hairs and my stupid signature painted in block letters. Was I wrong? Was I supposed to make labels? Did I not read the group emails carefully enough? If one of us was a rank amateur, who was it more likely to be - the woman who works in the Honolulu art boutique, or me, the human personification of a pigeon eating a hot dog off the Costco food court floor? Me, that is who.

Well, it’s done. I gave it a shot, they’ll sell or they won’t. Tick it off the yearly goals list: did an art thing.

Here’s hoping art groups are allowed to meet again soon. Nothing beats a dirty classroom, a live model, and a group of trash-talking artists drinking cheap tea from styrofoam cups.

ideal art scene

Some day.

Meanwhile, the girl has finally been cleared for surgery. Consultation is in two weeks, surgery probably sometime in January. Making headway.

I want a rebate

A little black cat has been coming around the library to say hello and sleep on the rubber mat, and this week he was winding himself around my ankles so persistently that I ended up sticking him in the car and driving with him to pick up the kids so I wouldn't back over him.

should not have let him drive, though

He's a sweetheart, but I am not allowed to bring him home, and I am not allowed to have a library cat. The only thing I am allowed to do is carry kibble in my purse to dole out in the bushes while nobody is looking, and let me tell you, this was not the "nobody can tell me what to do" adulthood I imagined as a kid. Where is my horse and hunting falcon? Where is my hyper-intelligent Labrador retriever who understands me almost telepathically? I am a middle aged woman in the bushes with a sandwich baggie full of cat food. This is bullshit.

But the paintings are finished and the gallery show starts this week, so I am putting myself out there for fun or embarrassment.

 

At this point, I’ll take either.

Halloween 2021

Three days before Halloween, the mayor gave trick-or-treating the green light, and everyone on the island swarmed the candy and costume sales. The kids were amped. We arrived at granny's house with a jack o'lantern, a vampire, and a witch who was so excited she had forgotten to wear shoes. We found a single tiny slipper and she hopped on one foot up to the grocery store with me to buy footwear, then ran home in shiny blue rubber boots. 

We dressed up as the vampiric council, and my head melted. I will never learn about costumes and 80 degree nights. 

The neighborhood was crowded with princesses and superheroes and drunk people barbecuing under tents in their driveways. A number of houses made 6-foot-long candy slides and extendable arms for safe treat delivery. The teenage cousins came out with us, and it was really nice to feel like everything was normal for a little bit, after a week that included a call to 911 and a lot of paperwork because a meth addict got in my face and threatened to kill me over a vaccination card. "THAT'S IT, I'M GOING TO BLOW YOU UP." I didn't think she had a bomb in her rusty old murder van, but she might have had a gun or a machete or a big stick, so I locked the door and noped out when she ran back to her vehicle like she was getting something. 

And here I am, not killed, so I win that round.

Pictures:

Hot cocoa and pumpkin carving

Zenny the serious witch

Leif the fancy vampire getting clocked by a witch

The cousins were late, so they don't get to be in any pictures

spoopy neighbor

An effort was made

witch storage

Happy Halloween, folks.

Drink & draw is back

The time is approaching for me to ramp up my exercise so that my heart can malfunction properly at my cardiology appointment in November. My doctor said that if I pass the treadmill test and the 2-week heart monitor, she's going to strap me to a swiveling table and roll me upside down until I pass out. And if I don't pass out, she'll drug me with something to make me pass out, and maybe also vomit. Pretty sure that if I pass all these tests, I qualify to be an astronaut. Or an illustration in a medieval medicine textbook.

But I don't have to start jogging until next week, so this week I learned to make the perfect White Russian, laid around reading Project Hail Mary, and ordered a bag of vampire teeth and wigs.

“I’m going to do some yard work,” the man said on Saturday. I thought this meant a bit of raking or weed whacking, but I came home to find the yard completely buried in tree branches.

“I’ll put it in the green bin,” he said. 

At least it wasn’t rocks this time.

(Btw that swinging rope isn’t anything sinister, it’s for hanging up stalks of bananas so the rats don’t eat them. I should take it down before the chickens start using it as a trapeze.)

Drink & draw has been reinstated. I put out a bunch of seasonal objects and Zenny drew her drink, instead.

Leif got mad at the gouache and threw his picture of a bleeding pumpkin away. I painted a skull in black and white for an hour. I’ve been ruining a couple of lucky cats and feeling like a garbage artist and a fraud, so it was nice to just smash some paint around and not worry about it being any good.

The new I Know What You Did Last Summer is out on Amazon Prime, if anyone wants to see my library dressed up as a police station and picture me standing 10 feet inside looking really annoyed.

never-ending detention

Recent selfies.

This is a waste of my life. 

The past few months have been tough. I've been trying to deal with that by focusing on the upcoming gallery show and pulling off one last lucky cat, so I moved all my painting stuff into the bedroom (the basement studio has been taken over by pottery, which it's more suited for), but so far it hasn't resulted in any more time in the day to paint. Huh.

 

underpainting

We're still doing rounds of diagnostics to prepare for Zenny's surgery plans. It's a slow process, nothing major has been scheduled yet.

My grandfather has improved a lot with the hospice care and hot meal delivery my aunt arranged, but he still has two tangerine-sized aneurysms waiting to burst, if the cancer doesn't get him first. He's his old self again until then, now that he's not being slowly starved by an alcoholic. Food! Amazing, who knew we needed nutrition for brain function? Not Drunk Wife.

One of the chickens had 4 more babies yesterday. I am 100 percent certain there have been zero roosters in the neighborhood for the past 2 months. How long can they store DNA? They are witches.