I haven’t done one of these quiz-things in a while, so why not? Roger did this one, and now I’m going to appropriate it. (The quiz is from a blog called Sunday Stealing, so the fact that I’m doing this on Monday is right on brand for my “Rules? There are no rules here!” self.)
1) What is your favorite thing about winter?
Snow, I suppose…within reason! In truth, I love winter for being able to wear sweaters, and in general having more options for how to dress; dressing in summer isn’t as flexible because of the need to stay cool and the fact that minimizing layers is best.
I also love darker nights, the winter stars, and the hot drinks (coffee, tea, buttered rum, Tom&Jerry’s) hit better in winter than they do in summer.
2) What is your favorite winter sport?
To watch? Figure skating, I suppose. I also like hiking in winter, and though I haven’t done it in many years, I remember enjoying snowshoeing quite a lot.
3) What is the best winter treat?
I suppose hot chocolate, though I don’t have it very often.
4) What is the earliest time in the year it ever snowed where you live?
To the Google! Apparently in 1956 it snowed on September 20. The earliest I can remember is the October “Surprise” storm, which I believe was somewhere around the 13th or 14th in 2006.
5) What is the best way to stay warm in the winter?
Layers and warm beverages. Hats and gloves. Always hats and gloves!
6) What are your favorite things that are paper?
Books, obviously! But I also love writing on blank paper. And newspaper is great for starting charcoal aflame.
7) What are your favorite things that are cotton?
I assume all of my pairs of overalls are a cotton-based fabric.
8) What are your favorite things that are leather?
I have a pair of gloves that my mother got for me, made to measurement, from a glovemaker in Florence. They’re gorgeous.
9) What are your favorite things that are floral?
The Wife has a growing collection of orchids! She loves orchids to the point that we go to local orchid shows at the Botanical Gardens.
Also, I wish I could find a nice floral print shirt, but everything I ever find in that vein is a Hawaiian shirt, and I don’t want one of those, to be honest.
10) What are your favorite things that are wood?
I have a fountain pen made of wood! And my set of nesting dolls that I got when I was five or six. My bookshelves. And the trees that make up the forests of WNY!
11) What should you do if you think your house is haunted?
I have no earthly idea. BUT, I am acquainted with a local ghost-hunter, so I’d probably DM her and say, “Hey, wanna meet a ghost?”
12) When should you investigate a strange noise in your basement?
Immediately. Any malfunction down there that is significant enough to make a sound you can hear in the main body of the house can not be a good thing. And if it’s the sump pump, you need to get moving fast.
13) How do you know if an abandoned building is safe to visit?
You don’t! That’s the fun of it!
I’ve never actually been one to enter abandoned buildings, to be honest…but construction sites? Those, I’ve been known to explore, though not so much anymore because I’m more keenly aware of what can go badly wrong. But in college, they built a whole new music building, and I explored it in quite a few phases of the construction…including one ill-advised walk along the length of a single support beam with a drop on either side….
14) How do you decide whether to solve a problem as a team or split up and go it alone?
Well, at work I am used to working alone, but sometimes I sense the need to seek help. Now, sometimes it’s plainly obvious that I need help, because I can’t physically do the job by myself. I mean, I only have two hands, and if it’s obvious that the job needs three, then it’s time for help. Another factor, though, is the time factor: sometimes I ask for help because I can do the job myself, but if I do, it’ll take me a really long period of time. Help is necessary for efficiency sometimes. (Now, there are times when I badly underestimate the amount of time needed to get a job done, but that’s a different issue…I think….)
15) Where do you store your knives, and where would you look if one was missing?
We have a drawer where we keep most sharp objects, although we do have a set of knives in a block on the counter. If one’s missing, I look around the kitchen counters and in the sink, I suppose. (Don’t leave knives in the sink, folks. Not a great idea.)
As I keep adding to this post every year, and with cross-posting it and importing it from my old blog to this one, I suppose it gets a bit more ungainly each year. Well, that’s just the way it is. Today is The Wife’s birthday, and I’m celebrating. As always, new stuff added at the end of the list; also as always, I don’t edit what I’ve written before or revise anything that’s out of date. Think of some of that stuff as growth rings on a tree…part of the reason of this post is to preserve memories.
Happy Birthday, my love!
Today is The Wife’s birthday! Onward and upward, as always!
A brief slideshow of photos (some of which are already on this post, but I like them and it’s my blog, so there they are again!) follows. The song is “Live Forever” by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, a wonderful band.
And now, my annual list of memories and things from our years together. (New items on the list are appended to Number 97, alphabetically. I do this because I’m too lazy to renumber all the stuff after that one every year.)
1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.
1a. That said, there’s a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.
2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.
2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.
3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we’ll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, “K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died.” (One of the movie’s running gags is Ken’s stuttering.)
4. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I’ve converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.
5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)
6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she’d ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.
7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter’s birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a “Volcano Cake”. Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, “Remember the Volcano Cake?”
8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp’s been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.
9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn’t even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don’t think so. A girl’s got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?
9a. She’s not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.
10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn’s case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.
11. I’ll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.
12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn’t question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn’t have happened.)
13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we’d eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey’s Anatomy.
14. “Our” first teevee show was LA Law.
15. Subsequent teevee shows of “ours” included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.
16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were “Jarod and Miss Parker”. People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren’t allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.
17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.
18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn’t home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that’s what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.
19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.
20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.
21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! – but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn’t start wearing overalls together until we’d been dating for about a year.
22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog’s launch.
23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife’s idea. I’m still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.
24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.
25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.
25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.
26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don’t think she’s funny, but that’s just not the case.
27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.
28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight — I tan, whereas The Wife burns.
29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.
30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.
31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.
32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice’s output wasn’t interesting her much anymore. Since then she’s read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I’ve plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.
33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.
34. She prefers her KFC “extra crispy”, where I’m an “Original Recipe” guy.
35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin’ in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.
36. For some reason we didn’t take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points…but lately I really wish we’d have addressed that at the time.
37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don’t laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.
38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we’d meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn’t there. Well, duh! I said “dinner”, not “lunch”. Except, remember, she’s a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I’ve converted her since then. Whew!
39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.
40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we’ve reversed that.
41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I’d look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.
42. Foods I’ve tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don’t recall.
43. She loves George Carlin.
44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.
45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn’t complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.
46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn’t see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.
47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we’d get there eventually. She just picked the “eventually”.
48. She picked The Daughter’s first name, so I got to pick her middle name.
48a. And now, this:
49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn’t go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.
50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.
51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.
52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.
53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba’s life. His kidneys were in failure.
54. Great gifts she’s bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.
55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear “Bertrand”, after philosopher Bertrand Russell.
56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.
57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she’s never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn’t bug me much at all. I’m pretty cool to baseball myself now.
58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven’t been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.
59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I’m terrified of those things.
60. Why don’t we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?
61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had “The Discussion”. Any guy who’s ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what “The Discussion” is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the “next step”. Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney’s to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn’t have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I’ll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!
62. The next day, she proposed to me.
63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn’t find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney’s spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.
64. I don’t remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person’s birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.
65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there’s one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the “single” way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, “Yeah, you’re telling all the women that you’re available.” I replied, “Yeah, and I’m beating them off with a stick.”
66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.
66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.
66b. We returned two years later.
67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.
68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.
69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.
70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt’s. It’s pronounced “la-BATS”, but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it “LAB-uhts”, which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a “LAB-uhts”.
71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they’re sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I’d bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, “Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!”)
72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.
73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.
74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.
75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.
76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn’t had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to “eating some cheesy goodness”. Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, “That wasn’t really cheesy goodness.”
77. She likes eggs over-easy. I’m not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she’s getting over being sick.
78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.
78a. I’m much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.
79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.
80. She only swears when she’s really annoyed.
81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.
82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.
83. Before that she experimented with red. I’ve tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.
84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.
85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.
86. I’m not sure there’s a variety of seafood she dislikes.
87. I love the way she looks when she’s just come home from work and changed into her PJ’s.
88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.
89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don’t know why.
90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don’t see it, myself, but you can’t argue these things.
91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.
92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.
93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I’ve messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.
94. “You want me to hit you in the face with a pie?” “Sure, it’ll be fun!” “Kinda weird, isn’t it?” “Well, yeah, but still fun, right?” “I dunno, let’s find out.”
It did take her a couple of attempts to nail down her technique, but she quickly realized she didn’t need to be super gentle with the pie. And really, folks, if you haven’t taken a pie in the face from the person you love, well…I’m not sure what you’re waiting for!
This is one of my favorite “pie in the face aftermath” photos…perhaps because this particular pieing was one of our very first. Ahhh, the memories!
95. I know I’ve found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: “We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people.”
96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.
96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown’s delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.
97. One time when we were working out at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn’t recognize me at first.
97a. She loves lilacs.
97b. She loves sushi, so for a while our Saturday night dinner tradition was I’d buy her sushi at The Store, and she’d eat that while I had a “charcuterie” plate of my own. (I think we can all agree that “charcuterie” is the fancy-schmancy word for “cheese and crackers,” yes? Kind of like how “grits” turned into “polenta” at some point and started commanding $15 a plate?) But she’d eye my cheese and ask for a bite or two. Over time this morphed into her and I both having the cheese plate.
But she still loves the sushi, and I still have to buy it for her! It just becomes her lunch at work on Mondays. No escape!
97c. While driving once:
ME: Huh. HER: What? ME: I know I’ve heard this piece but I don’t know what it is. HER: [into phone] What is this song? [holds phone to speaker, then looks at phone] It’s the fourth movement of Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik. ME: Wow, I didn’t know your phone could do that. HER: I’m pretty sure it’s standard now! Your phone can do it too! ME: Whoa….
See? She teaches me things.
97d. For years she worked in the restaurant biz, which meant working just about all of the major holidays and struggling just to use her allotted vacation time. Now, she’s in banking, so not only does she get the holidays off, she gets off all of them, including the ones I don’t! (I have to work MLK Day, Presidents Day, and the other “lesser” holidays that are still “No mail and no banks” days. She gets ’em off now.) She is not shy about gloating about this.
97e. She continues to make fun of my previous claims that I “am not a dog person”. To my recollection I never made any claims along those lines, just that I was unfamiliar with dogs, not that I disliked dogs. She just shakes her head and keeps on being amused at how much Cane and Carla like me. What can I say!
97f. Her, a few years ago: “Hey, there’s this event where people who own greyhounds all meet up in the Finger Lakes and then we all tour around to wineries and taste wine and have fun with our dogs! Wanna go?” We just got back from our fourth time on that trip the day before yesterday.
97g. This last year has been different, I’ll say that. We’re eating out a lot and staying home and watching movies in bed and so on. Aside from our not being able to go out to eat or to see movies, and the cancellation of several of our favorite festival events, this crisis really hasn’t impacted our lifestyles much at all. I’m glad she’s the one I’m enduring the pandemic with!
97h. Exploring Oahu with her at my side was wonderful. We both kept getting amazed by the same things!
97i. Sometimes it’s hard to find a teevee show that she likes, but when I do find one, it’s a blast as references from those shows will creep into our vernacular.
97j. We tend to get mutually weepy over the more emotional reveals on The Repair Shop.
97k. This last year has had some difficulties of its own, over and above the COVID struggles, but we’ve weathered all of it and continue to weather it all.
97l. Our opinions differed wildly on No Time To Die. Hey, it happens! Kinda like her distaste for coconut. (Which is weird, let’s be honest.)
New for 2023! 97m. She’s had a couple of surgeries in recent years that led to some recovery time and bed-rest, which meant she watched a lot of streaming shows. I didn’t realize what kind of stuff she was streaming until one night we were watching Saturday Night Live and she started laughing knowingly at this sketch. I asked, “Are you watching a lot of murder shows these days?”
97n. On weekends I usually get up before she does, so I’ll come downstairs and make my coffee and get hers set up to go. My signal that she is getting up for good is when she actually opens the blinds in the bedroom; when I hear that, I’m to get up and turn on the coffee. (Sometimes I’m listening to music on my earbuds and I don’t hear the blinds and then she comes downstairs and gives me the “No coffee?!” look. Fellas, try to avoid the “No coffee?!” look.)
97o. No, it doesn’t bother me at all that Carla prefers to sit with her on the love seat when we’re watching teevee at night as opposed to sitting with me on the couch. Harumph.
97p. If I could go back in time and make exactly one change to our wedding day? Yup. We’re all doing the “Rock the Boat” dance made famous by Derry Girls.
97q: Related to 97n above, I’ve been up for 45 minutes while she was trying to doze a bit more. This was thwarted by our cats, who decided to have rompies all over the upstairs, including the bed with her in it. As I write this she has just come downstairs, called the cats assholes, and is now making her coffee.
97r: Stay tuned, but she has started the ball rolling for adopting another greyhound. Yes, I’m on board, but this one’s going to have some pretty big pawprints to fill. (This weekend is a little bittersweet because this is when we’d be on our annual greyhound-meetup excursion to the Finger Lakes wine country.)
97s. Maybe I mentioned this above someplace, I don’t know, but I love how she has chosen to approach her dietary restrictions with a sense of adventure and discovery. We have found more great places to eat and discovered more terrific foods to cook in the years since her celiac diagnosis than we did before, and it’s not like we were dull sticks-in-the-mud in the food department to begin with! She’s always loved trying new foods and spicing things up, which is a real blessing if you’re at all familiar with the Monument to Blandness that is the usual Iowa spice rack.
97t. I’ve come to really like coming home from work, looking up as I pull into the driveway, and seeing her in her home office. Sometimes there will be a dog looking back down at me, which is also cool.
97u. Apparently she takes some of the chocolate from the home supply that I maintain to her desk at work, and some of her coworkers know she has a chocolate stash, so sometimes that gets shared around. I do the “I’m not feeding all the kids in the neighborhood!” thing, you know, the one where your kid wants to grab a dozen freezy-pops from the freezer for all the friends on a hot summer day and despite your protest you let it happen. Because hey, it’s chocolate and that increases the net happiness in the world.
97v. Our last cinematic disagreement came after watching Top Gun: Maverick, which I really liked (despite my general lack of enthusiasm for the original movie). She was distracted by the impossibility of Tom Cruise having perfectly brown hair at this point in his life. I’m hoping this doesn’t hurt our enjoyment of the upcoming Mission: Impossible flicks….
97w. We have developed a way of simultaneously groaning wistfully whenever an unexpected reference to Hawaii shows up on teevee, like the Netflix show we’ve been watching about American street food, and at the end of one episode the preview for the next said, “Next time: Oahu!”, with a big shot of Waikiki.
NEW FOR 2024!!! 97y. This last year was a struggle…my mom’s last months of struggles which played out amidst The Wife’s own struggles. Are things getting better? Who knows…but I hope so.
97aa. I’m just now realizing that I took zero photos of The Wife this past year. This is a big sign of what a rough year it was. It’s time to start turning that shit around!
97ab. No, wait! I did get a lovely shot of her just last weekend! Amazing that I own this great new camera and I haven’t taken enough photos of her yet. But anyway:
98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can’t bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I’m trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, “Not all tears are an evil.”
99. I wish we were living lives that didn’t include so many tears.
100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.
101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.
102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.
103. She…oh, I guess that’s where I need to stop. I love you, honey!
There’s a bright thing in the sky! Has anybody contact NORAD about this?!
I kid, obviously…and complaining about the lack of sunshine this time of year is just a thing we WNYers do, along with bemoaning the latest Bills playoff loss, noting how crappy the Sabres are, or speculating on what our favorite MLB team’s Opening Day roster might look like, since pitchers and catchers report soon. But really, this particular “Long Gray Slog” has certainly felt, well, longer and grayer and sloggier than usual. This is likely not really the case and it only feels so because of the way Real Life Stuff has been mirroring the weather of late. (Some of this is stuff I haven’t written about yet.)
Today, though, the sun is back in the sky, and that’s a good thing. Maybe I can even get out my camera for once…January was bad for photography. Just Godawful. Sigh….
If you’re at all familiar with what’s been going on in the Buffalo Niagara region lately, you probably already know why I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging this week: Lake Erie decided this was a good time to remind people in this area of its presence.
Cue…the lake-effect snowstorm.
And then…the next lake-effect snowstorm.
As storms go, this one was not as bad as some of the more famous ones we’ve suffered lately…but that’s like saying “I dropped a brick on two of my toes, which isn’t as bad as when I dropped one on my entire foot.”
Plus, for several days I was literally home completely alone, except for Carla and the two cats (Remy and Rosa). This is because The Wife and The Daughter had to take Hobbes (the greyhound) to a specialty vet in Pittsburgh. (No, I haven’t written about this yet, I don’t think. I’ll get to it. He’s OK, but it’s a process.)
So there was lots of shoveling at home, and then I’d get to work, where, as The Store’s resident facilities coordinator, I…got to shovel more. I don’t write much about my day job here, but this photo is representative of the day I had on Thursday (after missing Wednesday completely due to a driving ban and The Store being closed):
And that was just one of the many shoveling tasks I had to do. This is not a complaint: it’s the job I signed up for, and this was an unusual event, even if the rest of the world thinks that this is just what Buffalo Niagara is like every year from October 15 to June 1. For all my complaining, whining, and shouting at the clouds that I did this week, I would still take this over worrying about earthquakes and annual wildfires. I would still take this over having to plywood up my house’s doors and windows in advance of the approaching hurricane. I would still take this over enduring rolling blackouts in very cold months and in very hot ones because my state’s electrical grid is basically a bunch of extension cords patched together and nobody is fixing it because my state keeps electing governors who want to punish brown people, trans people, and women before doing anything productive like modernizing the state’s infrastructure. (Yes, I am calling out Texas.)
(By the way, I did have help in getting all of this done! This was not a case of “Wow, we got several feet of snow, off you go, dude! Let us know when you’re done!” And yes, liberal use of a snowblower was involved.)
So, things were hectic and demanding this week, and in a way that left me with very little mental energy for posting here. Or edditing. Or writing at all. Or doing photography, beyond the occasional cellphone pic of “Holy shit, look at all the snow.”
Because seriously…Holy shit, look at all the snow!
Taken this morning as we were driving about doing errands.
“I cannot help but be touched. I, of course, remember you.” –Khan Noonian Singh, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
I’m thinking of that quote because after several weeks of a very mild start to our winter, this week winter decided to show up. It began with a big storm that barreled by us the other day, in such a way as to give us very strong winds from the southeast, which is extremely unusual here. That storm, on Wednesday, knocked out our power at home for eight hours.
And now, as I write this (about 5:40pm on Saturday), another storm system is blasting past us, with more traditional 716 winter effects: high winds again (because we always seem to have high winds nowadays) and lake effect snow that may result in three feet of snow “in the most persistent snow areas”. Will Casa Jaquandor be in the most persistent snow areas? As always, there’s really no predicting specifically what the snow bands will do…but also as always, I like our chances to get a poundin’. This storm is already shutting things down all over the region. The County Executive has instituted a full driving ban starting at 9pm, the Governor pre-declared the State of Emergency yesterday, and the grocery stores all got rocked yesterday.
Oh, and the NFL actually postponed the Bills-Steelers playoff game scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, to Monday at 4:30pm. Most people are applauding this decision, but as always, a small chorus of very strange people think the game should somehow still go on. I’m trying not to see this as another data point in our society’s long descent into irrational selfishness, but make of that what you will.
This makes me wonder: If God gave me a choice, would I take three feet or more of snow but the power stays on the whole time, or would I take a ten hour power outage, but only one foot of snow? In honesty, I have to say that I’d take the snow and the power. Snow doesn’t bother me nearly as much as powerlessness does.
Yesterday saw a big storm push through…well, lots of places. I have to be honest, I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to this one, beyond what its forecast effects in Western New York were going to be. In this case, the storm did something very strange: it hit WNY with very strong winds from the southeast. When we get high winds around here, it’s almost always west or northwest winds that pound us…or even southwest winds that come up the lake. This was different. I’m used to how things sound at work when there are high winds outside, but yesterday the place sounded very different. There were moans and creaks from parts of the building that I didn’t know could make those sounds.
And there were, of course, power outages galore, including one that affected Casa Jaquandor for about eight hours. I got home to a dark house and proceeded to light up more candles and settle in for a dark evening. This meant…holing up on the couch and reading. I actually got through two shorter books and started a third, and it was actually a peaceful night in a time that hasn’t had a lot of peaceful nights lately. Even the back-up sump pump kept up with what was feeding it.
The power went out at home around 1:30pm yesterday, and finally came back on about 9:30pm. Hardly disastrous, and honestly, not much of an inconvenience. We got lucky, though; some folks are still waiting for power to come back. A friend of mine just got power restored a few hours ago, after being without power for more than 22 hours. At one point, one of our local power companies announced a distribution of free packs of water and dry ice for keeping food cold.
And I noted, yet again, that despite what the movies show you, candles put out a lot less light than you expect.
NOTE: I’ve had this post in drafts since last Tuesday, when 2024 was still going OK. Then, things started going awry very quickly, hence the lack of posting much since then. I’m not going to write just yet about what’s going on now, but my immediate family and I are just fine. This country, however, is a mess, and yet another way is how hard we make elder care.
Anyway, here’s the rest of the post, which I’m finishing on Saturday morning.
—
But first, a joke that I heard years ago at Summer Music Camp, when a counselor needed to cheer up a girl who had had a very bad day:
Two little boys, Timmy and Joey, twins about five years old, are going to bed, when Timmy comes up with a plan: “Hey Joey, tomorrow we’re gonna talk to Mom like we’re grown-ups. That means we’re gonna use some of those words Daddy uses. When she asks us what we want for breakfast, I’m gonna say, ‘I want some damn Cheerios!’ and when she asks if you want Cheerios too, you say, ‘You bet your ass I do!'”
And Joey agrees to this plan, and they go to bed.
Next morning, Mom gets them up and brings them to the table. Mom asks Timmy, “What do you want for breakfast?”
And Timmy replies, “I want some damn Cheerios!”
Mom gasps, and then she shouts, “We do NOT use language like that in this house!” And she slaps Timmy and sends him crying back to his room. Then she turns to Joey and asks him, “Joey, what do you want for breakfast?”
And Joey thinks for a moment and replies, “You bet your ass it’s not Cheerios!”
Why am I remembering that joke so randomly? Because lately I’ve been eating Cheerios for breakfast. I was never a big fan of them before, but we have a big box on hand after I needed some for a recipe and there are a ton of them left over (turns out I greatly overestimated what size of a box I needed to get three cups out of it). Is this part of some larger attempt to eat more healthy-like? Who knows…I have no problem with it, if that’s the case. (I do, though, need to sprinkle them with a bit of sugar, which isn’t ideal, but so be it!)
So, anyway, let’s talk ideas about 2024.
Writing: I’ve been plugging away, slowly and steadily, at the first round of edits on Forgotten Stars V: Wow, Is This Still A Thing?, and now I’m starting on applying the edits to the manuscript to generate the second draft, which will go out to betas and friends who are also bright editors. I’d like to be able to get the book out this fall. Other hopes: editing two other books that I’ve had in draft for several years, with an eye to getting them out soon-ish, and resuming drafting on The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy and then starting Forgotten Stars VI: Another Undiscovered Country.
Photography: More of that to come, much, much more! My decision to really start learning photography last year is turning into quite a passion, and I’m looking forward to featuring more and more of my work here and elsewhere. One particular goal is to shift to shooting in RAW format and editing in Lightroom, which is what the pros do, after all. Another is setting up a photo gallery, hopefully on this site, but I first need to investigate whatever might be the best way of doing that.
All of this photography is likely to lead into….
Vlogging/video content creation: Yup, I think it’s time for that as well. I’m not sure what frequency of video work I plan to follow at this point. I’ve already shot one video but I haven’t edited any of it together yet. My video content will probably be as all-over-the-map as my content here, obviously; that’s hard-wired into me and I can’t see doing any different just because it’s video. I’m going to progress slowly on that front at first, because I know that video content can be very time-consuming to produce, and I’m not terribly experienced on that front.
What other goals do I have in 2024? Well, mostly it’s about finding the way through the current set of problems and then, hopefully, figuring out whatever the new “normal” is going to be. As of right now, it does not appear that the upheaval of 2023 is stopping…but eventually it will. It always does. (Again, sorry to be a bit cryptic, but I’m not entirely comfortable writing about some of this yet. I reiterate that I, The Wife, and The Daughter are fine.) But on a less…aspirational? Vague?…note, I want to keep learning how to cook things. One of my Christmas gifts was a wonderful My Neighbor Totoro-themed ramen bowl, and I think it’s time to learn how to cook ramen that’s a step up from the $2-a-pack ramen kits that have enough sodium in them to stop a clock. (I should also figure out gluten-free ramen soon!) That’s just one cooking adventure I have in mind.
I had hoped to start getting some more travel on the docket, but I’m not sure right now if that’s a viable short-term goal. Maybe, maybe not.
Finally, I’m trying to use a planner again. Or rather, I’m once again on one of my attempts to use a planner consistently. This has been a struggle of mine for, well, all of life! But the last bunch of years have a usual cadence: I buy a planner, I start using it on January 1, I eventually fade away from the planner and neglect it, I remember the planner, I again miss a few days that turn into weeks, lather rinse repeat. But, I do get better at planner use each year, so maybe this is the year I turn the corner? It does seem to me that organized planning of my time, at least way better organized planning of my time than I’ve ever had before, is key to my achieving all of the various goals I keep setting for myself. So…here we go, planning away.
Again, I’m sure I’ll write about the current difficulties that we are experiencing at some point. For now, I’m going to try to not do that. We’ll see how that goes.
In terms of content creation, I have motored right along on this site, after migrating from BlogSpot almost a year-and-a-half ago. What follows is a selection of posts from this year I particularly like (hey, writers! It’s OK to like your own writing!):
Two sentences each on some movies we watched (I think I may adopt this format for writing about movies in general next year, as not every movie we watch really warrants an entire post. Also, reading that post, I described one movie as “a rom-com you won’t remember the next day, and damn that was accurate, because I just looked it up and I have zero recollection of watching that one!) Why write bad reviews? A metamorphosis begins… …and ends! (These last two go together, and what a joy that was!)
I wrote a lot about my explorations of photography this year; those posts can be found all tagged together, here.
Events of 2023 made it hard to keep my newsletter, Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars, updated as much as I would have liked, but I wrote some good stuff there, too, exploring specific pieces by Rachmaninoff (and I still have to write about one more work of his), a farewell to an old friend, and more. Please check it out and subscribe! (Yes, it’s on Substack, and yes, I’m aware of the current issues and controversies surrounding that platform. No, I have not made any decision yet as to whether or not I’ll migrate to a different platform.)
And now, a more general exploration of What 2023 Meant To Me:
I don’t recall off the top of my head if I’ve ever dropped an F-bomb on this site. I swore like a sailor on Twitter, and I’ve continued to do so on Threads, but for some reason, I try to stick to PG-13 here.
So it means something when I say that if ever a year was going to make me drop the Big F on this site, left and right and up and down, it was going to be 2023. This year was fecking awful. (See what I did there?)
So, here is my final summation of a year that I’m more than happy to see in the rear view mirror…but you know what? As I look back, it was astonishingly not all bad. In fact, there was some real good in 2023. If I can sustain the good from 2023 and eliminate the crap, then maybe it’ll be a good year.
Let’s see how it ended up, with this: my annual Year’s End Quiz. I’ve been answering these questions about the ending year every year for…well, a whole bunch of years now.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.”
Whew. Yes, I read a lot. Did I write a lot? I guess. I’m not thrilled with my output, but I didn’t dry up completely. Walk more? Eventually. Losing Cane in 2022 made it hard to go back to some parks, but go back, I did. And I’ve been walking a lot more since the one big development in my life this year, but we’ll get to that.
That leaves “Eat healthier”, and…no. It’s not been a great year for healthy eating, for many reasons. I was amazed that at my last doctor appointment, I had actually lost two pounds. That was a couple months ago, and I don’t think I’ve gained much back at all, but all the salty crap I’ve been eating has led to a frequent feeling of bloat, which is not pleasant. And even though I haven’t gained very much weight at all, a few times this year I found it necessary to loosen the shoulder straps on various pairs of overalls, and that’s never something I’m happy about.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but there are several co-workers who had babies, so, yay!
Mom finally died on November 11, after a year full of struggle and strife. I’ve been undecided as to how much to write about it, and if I do it will be a while, but right now all I’ll say is that dealing with the health problems that eventually turned into Mom’s final downward spiral consumed much of 2023’s mental and emotional energy.
What countries did you visit?
We actually left the country! After an unacceptably large number of years away, The Wife and I finally made it back to Toronto. I love that city deeply and I hate that I’ve been there only four times in the last fifteen years. I wrote about our visit here and here.
What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
Inner peace? A return to routine? Better literary focus? All of those, I suppose.
And not once did I receive a pie in the face in 2023. Zero pies. What gives!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I started learning seriously about photography! This was a rather surprising development to me. It started with a vague sense that I should upgrade my old point-and-shoot camera with a newer point-and-shoot camera, and it turned into me getting a very sophisticated “bridge” camera and starting to really learn about how to compose photos, how the “exposure triangle” works, and more. It was a fun hobby that suddenly morphed into a significant passion in my life, and given everything else that’s been going on, that new-found passion has been a needed place for focus.
What was your biggest failure?
I can’t really count it as a “failure”, but the way my mother’s passing ended up transpiring, there’s simply no way to look back once in a while and wonder if there’s something I might have been able to say or do to maybe stave off what eventually happened. I don’t think there is, and I am not beating myself up about it, but it was something of a failure.
A bigger failure that I didn’t catch, unfortunately, was the toll it was taking on my mental life, until one of my bosses at work felt it necessary to sit me down for a “Come to Jesus” talk. And he was right. Happily, more recently he was able to sit me down just a couple of weeks ago to praise the degree to which I’ve been able to turn all that around, but I am still annoyed with myself that I let it get to that point in the first place.
What was the best thing you bought?
It’s not really a contest:
That’s my Lumix FZ1000ii, which I first wrote about here and here. Learning to use it, and hopefully starting to use it well, has given me a place to center my brain…the old “idle hands” thing, and I’m always a believer in learning new things. See those dials and buttons? I still haven’t used half of them! I’m particularly interested in this camera’s video capabilities…but hopefully more on that in 2024.
The camera isn’t all I bought, though! Of course I picked up some new overalls, my favorites of which are a vintage pair of hickory-striped Key overalls with really neat elastic shoulder straps.
I’ll never forget getting three compliments for that outfit in one day. That made me very happy.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Oof. Not a great year for asking that question, huh. American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
They neither appall, depress, or surprise me anymore, but if you can look at the Republican Party in 2023 and not realize there’s just no bottom for them, I don’t know what to tell you.
Where did most of your money go?
Books, booze, food, overalls, and that camera.
What did you get really excited about?
Getting that camera and using it!
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
You know, I think I’m just going to punt this question for this year. Not that it’s a slam-dunk that I’m sadder, as you might think, but because it’s so complex that I literally do not know how I’m feeling these days.
Thinner or fatter?
See above! Not really either, but it doesn’t feel thinner.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, though not by much. I’m hoping to start doing things that might lead to good things later down the road!
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Everything.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating badly, second-guessing myself, and lots of things. More relevantly, though, I wish I hadn’t had to do as many of the things I had to do in 2023. There’s no getting around some of that, though; the cards landed the way they landed.
How did you spend Christmas?
With my father. It was a low-key and bittersweet Christmas.
Did you fall in love in 2023?
I tried to.
How many one-night stands?
Even if I had any, I wouldn’t tell you.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop continues to be a balm in hard times. We also found Bridgerton delightfully trashy.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t like to do hate, but Republicans make it so hard.
What was the best book you read?
Here are a few I rated highly this year:
The 1619 Project, various The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley No Name in the Street, James Baldwin The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
What was your greatest musical discovery?
My God, this was not a good year for musical discovery. I listened to a lot of old favorites, and mostly just that.
What did you want and get?
That camera!
What did you want and not get?
My mother’s health to improve.
What were your favorite films of this year?
We didn’t see much at all that was new this year, and what we did see, we saw via streaming; we only went to the theater three times in 2023 that I remember, and those were for re-releases: Casablanca, Grease, and Return of the Jedi. I recently had a long discussion with a friend on social media about this, but for me personally, the movie theater experience in and of itself is not of sufficient value to prioritize movies at the theater over movies at home.
Also, I have always been bad at seeing (or reading) the New Thing in the time of its being the New Thing.
That said, movies that stand out that we did watch this year are: Love at First Sight, Always Be My Maybe, and Bullet Train. Oh, and Gucci. That was a very interesting movie.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?
More poofy tops with the overalls? I almost wonder if I should retire this question. I have, though, found myself increasingly able to stomach hot weather, which means I’ve been able to wear overalls through the summer. Time was when I would basically retire them completely from roughly June 15 to September 20, but the last two years, I’ve been able to wear overalls to the Sterling Renaissance Faire and to the Erie County Fair!
What kept you sane?
Writing and photography. Seriously, you can NOT underrate how helpful it is to have something new to learn when everything else is going all cattywumpus. (There’s a word I don’t normally use! And apparently I’ve misspelled it. I’m not looking it up.)
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’m honestly not sure. This was not a fantastic year for celebrities and public figures, in all honesty.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother. I really, really, really wish her last months hadn’t been what they were.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2023, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
If you’ve held on through all of this post to this point, you’re probably looking at this last question and thinking, “How on Earth is he going to boil down his 2023, which seems to have been one 365-day exercise in yin-and-yang, to one song?”
Obviously…I’m not. This year gets two songs. The first is the sad one.
Feel it,
You feel it all around you,
and I see it;
I can’t be the one
to tell you how it ends
or how it’s gonna be
but it’s gonna get
better….
I’ll hold you
when there’s too much
to face and you feel empty
and everything unravels
and you let it out
and fall apart again
but it’s gonna get
better
That’s from “Better”, a single released in 2023 by Canadian singer-songwriter Shannon Dooks. I’ve been following her and her music for several years now. She writes the kind of searingly personal songs, grounded in relatable emotions, that I find deeply appealing at this point in my life. “Better” speaks to the hope and faith that things will, in fact, not be forever as bad as they are, even in the face of one’s own powerlessness to force it in that direction. It’s a gorgeous song. She put two versions into the world, a studio version and an acoustic version, and I love both equally, so I present them both. The studio version also includes a short film surrounding the song.
It’s probably obvious what it was about 2023 that made “Better” an anthem for much of the year for me, and it’s probably also obvious what about 2023 makes this next song appeal. Learning about photography wasn’t just about getting a new camera and learning about ISO settings and aperture values and shutter speeds; it was about finding new people, a new community, to start connecting with. It was about, in part, at least in a new way…finding my people.
You gotta find your people The ones that make you feel alright The kind you want to stay up with all night You got to find your people The ones that make you feel whole That won’t leave your side when you lose control The ones that don’t let you lose your soul
Here’s “Find Your People”, by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors:
“Better” and “Find Your People”. Wow, was 2023 a trip or what.
Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s face 2024 together, shall we?
