Generation Exhausted

Another year over...

And a new one's just begun. How odd that it should begin with hubby and I comfortably ensconced in front of the TV, while two of the children are out. Is this a precursor to middle age?

The appropriate thing to do would be to compose a nice, long post about goals met and unmet, memories of the year gone by and hopes for the year to come. But after much thought and consideration, I realize: I just don't have it in me.

I crossed some things off the to-do list this year, others, not. But it was a good year, and I'm happy with it. On to the next!

And I'm going to begin the year by remembering what my great grandmother always said: it's bad luck to do laundry on New Year's Day. So there.

Canadian Food 101

Kim wants to know:

What do you guys eat in the States?

Indeed, a better question might be: what the heck are we eating in Canada? Kira in particular seems curious, as she's now encountered at least two foods in my blog that she's never heard of. Gosh, if this keeps up, Canada's going to start looking like a foreign country or something. And y'all thought we were just like you. (except for that inferiority complex we work so hard at)

So for the purposes of international goodwill and broadening culinary horizons, allow me to elaborate on such foreign things as Timbits and Nanaimo Bars.

What we have here is a large coffee, double-cream-no-sugar and a Snack Pack of Timbits. As you can see, they're pretty much as my friend Jenn PB described, or at least are meant to be: doughnut* holes. Lumps of deep-fried dough, really, in assorted flavours, like honey-glaze, old-fashioned, and jelly-filled. They actually didn't start out as the centers of doughnuts*, they're made all on their own. I think. Timbits retail for 12 cents apiece, but are more commonly sold in Snack Packs (20) or Party Packs (65). *Note: it's doughnut, not donut. And yes, Chris, I eat them too, although I much prefer a nice fresh cherry-cheese danish.

Moving on to Nanaimo Bars. I actually had to do a bit of research on this one, as I found it difficult to form a description. My earliest recollection of the appearance of Nanaimo Bars at bake sales and baby showers came when I was around 8 or 9, and I wouldn't touch the things as a child. They were squares, for heaven's sake, and what child likes squares when there are cookies to be had? But eventually I had one, and it was good. And a Google search led me to this fascinating background on Nanaimo Bars:

According to local legend about 35 years ago, a Nanaimo housewife entered her recipe for chocolate squares in a magazine contest. In a burst of civic pride, she chose to dub the entry not "Daphne's Delights" or "Mary's Munchies", but "Nanaimo Bars".

Continue reading here. There's even a recipe.

I have no idea if this story is true, but it's apparently true enough to be posted on the Web site of the City of Nanaimo, British Columbia. Nanaimo Bars are typically available in the frozen food section of your grocery store, and are also available in peanut butter or coffee flavour. Robin Hood makes a kit you can buy and make your own.

Other Canadian foods? Well, Will Ferguson's theory is that if it can be rolled in batter and flung in a deep fryer, Canadians will eat it. Possibly. We're certainly not a health conscious bunch, tending towards such calorie-laden treats as poutine and butter tarts. There are, of course, the more stereotypical Canadian foods, such as tourtiere and beaver tails, neither of which I've ever had.

And it's becoming more and more obvious to me that I'm either procrastinating mightily, or have way too much time on my hands, one of the two.

So, if you're able, hop across the border for a Tim's and a Nanaimo Bar, or check out the Tim's in Maine that Alan mentioned. And if you're ever in this neck of the woods, I'll be sure to treat you to coffee and Timbits. There's always time for Tim Horton's.

You've always got time...

...for Tim Horton's. Unless you're one of my American readers, in which case you may have to drive many miles, which could take many days, and really, who's got that kind of time for coffee?

But if you're a Canuck, you get it. Small, medium, large, double-double, regular, black-no-sugar, milk-instead-of-cream; regardless how you take your Tim's, I'm betting you take it - frequently. And for those people who continue to insist you don't drink coffee, Tim's invented the Ice Cap, just so you could get the jolt of caffeine without the pedestrian pursuit of plain old java in a paper cup.

Tim's has become the tea of the new world - rarely does anything happen anywhere in Canada without a quick stop at Tim's before or after. Or during. Visitors arrive at the office, the Little League game, the PTA meeting, bearing a cardboard tray or two with four large coffee and a bag of cream and sugar on the side, knowing that someone is going to drink them, and if not, well, I'll drink them all myself, eventually.

And Timbits. Though I don't know anyone over the age of ten who actually eats them, they're a Canadian public school bake sale staple now, as well as a regular at class parties and conference meetings.

The morning after the August blackout, the longest lines weren't at the grocery store or gas station, they were at the Tim Horton's drive-thru.

Which is why I'm not at all surprised, and more than a little tickled at the latest billboard campaign. Tim Horton's brown background, top half of a steaming cuppa joe in the lower right quadrant. A single line of text in the middle left: True Patriot Love.

There's an irony here. A country that can't agree on its language, its culture, its national sport (hockey or lacrosse?) or its politics, is perfectly capable of gathering 'round a serving of caffeine in a paper cup.

Sharp contrast to our Southern neighbours affection for apple pie. While the Americans embrace a food that speaks of home, comfort, kitchen-table goodness, Canadians want something that hypes you up, and that you have to go out to get. From a chain named for a drunken hockey player, no less.

They have Tim's in Michigan now, and perhaps elsewhere in the USA. I don't know. The one time I had Tim's in the States, it was horrible, though Linda assures me that's not the case with all American Tim's. It's more expensive there too.

As of Christmas morning, there are now two cans of Tim's coffee, a can of Tim's hot chocolate, and one of English Toffee cappucino in this house. And yet at 4 p.m. on Christmas Day, phone calls and conversations were flying, trying to determine where the nearest open Tim's might be. Because it's not quite the same if you make it yourself.

Oh baby!

When I arrived home two weeks ago with Midge, hubby had only one condition before Santa placed her under the tree: I bought it, so I'd better be prepared to answer the questions about it.

Yep, Midge is pregnant. Guess we know what she and Alan have been up to after hours, inside that darkened storage case.

Isn't she pretty?

Midge, you may remember, has caused the biggest Barbie controversy since the "I hate Math" debacle. WalMart USA yanked the mother-with-child from its store shelves in mid-December. WalMart Canada, luckily, had no such issue, and truth be told, I chose it because I needed another under-$20 present, and also because it wouldn't be a seven-year-old girl's Christmas without a Barbie.

The daughter has just given me some instruction in reproduction. First, you put the tiny baby in the belly, being sure to remove its miniscule diaper and undershirt first, because, "Babies are born naked, Mom."

Then you attach the belly to Midge by way of the handily placed magnets. When its time to have the baby, just pop the belly back off again, and voila!

Adding to the unrealistic aspect of this whole thing are Midge's shoes. Midge wears purple platform heeled sandals. Now, you tell me - are high heels really a wardrobe staple for any woman lugging an extra twenty or thirty pounds in the abdominal region? Pregnancy does strange things to your centre of gravity to begin with - do we really need to make it worse? Also, Midge's hair is shiny and well-kempt, not impossible to do anything with.

Daughter's chief observation is that the microscopic pretend baby monitor only has a receiver component, not a transmitter to place next to the cute little plastic crib.

She and Morgan-down-the-street are playing with their matching Midges now. So far, the only question they've asked is how old women are when they have babies. When I suggested 25, they promptly switched to their "25-year-old" voices so that the two dolls could converse.

Movie Star Theresa is also visiting. One wonders if Theresa is going to develop a case of baby lust, or if she's happy she decided to pursue a glamorous career instead. If only she were equipped with a magnetized stomach, she could borrow the baby and belly and have her own brood.

Thumbs up for geeky stuff

I'm quickly becoming a bona fide geek, aren't I? I realized this when it became clear that neither Kim, nor Linda - both of whom I rely on for tech support from time to time - didn't know what a thumb drive was.

This is a thumb drive:

Also known as a pen drive, jump drive or bus drive, these little thingamajigs are the latest in external storage. And for someone like me who, from time to time, must move files from one computer to another, they are very handy, indeed. Since my ISP tends to get cranky when I try to email large files, (in other words, it refuses to let me) and I also have some cross-platform issues that interfere with my networking abilities (insert obligatory "I hate Mac" statement here) this doohickey is going to solve some problems for me.

No more spending umpty zillion hours building a Quark document, only to have to tear it apart in order to email it, piece by piece, a process which is tedious at best, excruciatingly time-consuming at worst. (and, occassionally, impossible) No more spending precious minutes emailing photos a total distance of a million cyber miles from the the PC to the Mac - a distance, which, as the crow flies, is only eight inches. Except photos don't fly like crows.

Nope, now I can just plug in the little whatchacallit and store the files on it, take the whatchacallit to the destination computer, plug in again, and download.

It's like something out of Star Trek. Or James Bond. Imagine how easy it would be to smuggle state secrets with this thing. This is what all those sci-fi writers imagined way back when, when computers were but a gleam in the eyes of geeks, and no one knew what the future of technology would hold.

Small enough to fit in a pocket. Wear it on a chain around your neck, or attach it to your keychain. But, as the guy at Staples told me, you can't take it through airport xray, and I'm betting it also would be bad if the thing accidentally went through the wash machine.

They say that the CD burner will likely be obsolete by the end of 2004. My thumb drive is just a tiny one, but they've already, in a few short months, gone from 32mb all the way up past a Gig.

I'm such a geek. After all, I can use terms like thingamajig, doohickey and whatchamacallit with ease.

Merry Christmas!

Well, The Day is done, and all that's left to do is the rest of the dishes. Thought I'd drop in and say "Hi" to those few readers who haven't gone away for the holly-days.

Santa was kind to us this year (he always is). I got new pjs, new sheets, new towels, a new robe, and TWO boxes of Turtles, which are mine - everyone knows this, and no one asks me to share. They'll be gone by the weekend.

Best Christmas surprise? The new thumb drive from my little brother, who just happens to work at Media Play and remembered me calling and asking about thumb drives a few weeks ago. I'm thrilled with my new toy, and can't wait to try it out.

We'll be throwing out wrapping paper and packaging for days, but it was a good holiday. Tomorrow and the next day hold more visits with family, and more food.

Back to the dishes. Hope your holiday was grand, and your stockings chock full of wonderful surprises!

Done. Really.

Welp, I did it! By 10:30 this morning, I had finished things off, and was not going to budge from my humble abode for one. more. thing. I even remembered to put gas in the car and buy cigarettes.

At noon, the man tells me we have no eggs, and how can he make pumpkin pie with no eggs? So I sent my dad to the store for eggs. Hubby raised an eyebrow at my willingness to pay corner store prices for eggs, but I pointed out that the extra dollar more than compensated for the thirty extra dollars I was likely to spend on things we could live without if I went to the grocery store.

I even, for the first time in my history, have all of Santa's wrapping done. Unlike other years, we will not be wrapping like crazy until 3 a.m. thereby guaranteeing us at least four hours of sleep before the children wake us up at 5-ish.

I did realize, while wrapping, that I did not buy a single battery. Oh well. The children will just have to play with the boxes until the stores open again on the 26th.

The camera batteries are charging, the man is tearing bread for the stuffing, and the oven is clean. Christmas can now come to my house - we're ready!

The night before the night before

Would you believe the shopping's not done yet? No, really.

However...

The deco is done, and we even managed to put out a plate of goodies when friends came a-calling this afternoon. And may I just say - god bless the frozen food section at the grocery store. I mean, really - has anyone, anywhere, ever actually made a Nanaimo bar? From scratch? If you have, good for you. For the rest of us, pre-packaged is a lifesaver.

I'm trying hard to put the anxiety I've been feeling on the shelf for the holidays. Mostly, I'm anxious about finances, and the fact that they just aren't where I'd like them to be. My credit card statement is expected any day now, and hopefully I'll have the shopping finished before it arrives, as I don't think I could bring myself to enter a store after I see that bill. It's not just Christmas, it's the Basement Project that's put me out of whack.

Mind you, our needs are met. They always are, somehow, but I find that the less I have to worry about needs, the more time I have to worry about wants, and that's really kind of silly, don't you think? I should know better.

In reality, life is pretty darn freakin' good. And the new year is coming, and I always have a creative burst in January/February, so I should generate some extra writing income early in the year to pay the holiday bills.

Speaking of creative bursts - Lileks is back, and yesterday, he summed up this writing life pretty well. Here's the part I liked the best:

To sum it up: vacations should be for people who actually work. I am frequently busy, but that’s not the same as work. My dad worked. My dad hauled barrels and drove trucks and went out at 2 AM to keep the fire engines fueled when they fought a blaze. That’s work.

Which is why you'll find me online through much of the season, doing a bit here and a bit there. Because I'm lucky enough that my "work" doesn't involve hauling barrels or driving trucks.

Interesting conversation about Santa with the little daughter tonight. She was talking about her letter to Santa, and I was reminding her that Santa doesn't always bring exactly what we ask for, but he does the best he can.

Daughter: Some people get greedy in their letters.

Me: Oh, really?

Daughter: Yes, they don't ask any questions or anything, they just say what they want.

Me: You mean they don't say "How are you?" or "Say hi to Rudolph"?

Daughter: Yes, and that's greedy.

So there you have it - rules for living, which salespeople everywhere know well: The small talk is important. Admit it - as annoying as telemarketers can be, wouldn't you rather have them say "How are you?" before launching their pitch? Or would you rather they just cut to the chase without all the social niceties? I'll take the former, if I must take anything at all, thankyouverymuch.

Speaking of rules, Buzz has posted some blogging rules over at his place, and I must admit, I like them a lot more than I did the "For god's sake your blog is not a place to be mundane and boring" rules that I'd seen previously elsewhere. I had to laugh at this one:

Don’t be surprised when you make a 35 minute post about your deepest darkest secrets and get no comments and then make a 2 minute post about how you had a huge crush on Heather Locklear when you were fourteen and get 22 comments. You can never tell what will get people in the mood to comment. You can fish for comments but it’s a tough business. Get used to it.

I'll remember that every time it strikes me that I managed to spark more discussion over the shopping cart/buggy thing than anything else I've ever posted here.

Well, off to check my list for the third time, because tomorrow morning's shopping trip is The. Last. One. Anything we don't have by noon tomorrow, we'll just have to live without until Boxing Day.

And just for the record, all I really want for Christmas is for Linda to get back into cyberspace and into the virtual office where she belongs. I miss my friend!

Almost done!

Finally. FINALLY!

The walls are painted. The furniture is back where it belongs. And while the stockings may not yet be hung with care, we're well on our way.

The best part of the day was getting my pictures back on the wall. I'm funny about pictures - I like to see pics of my kids on the walls. Not "art". Pics of my babies. And it just doesn't feel like home when the walls are bare.

The second best part of the day was getting the tree and getting it decorated. We spent a whole five minutes picking the tree, and I swear, it's the best one we've had yet. Hubby calls it "winning the tree lottery." All we did was cruise down the aisle at White Rose, turned up our nose at a few skimpy looking trees, and then came upon a couple who had just had the Tree Kid stand one up and give it a shake.

It was gorgeous. And the woman said, "Um...I don't think I like it." And I said, "Are you sure? Because we'll take it!" And we did.

When I think of all those hours in the last two years spent trekking through the fields at the Christmas tree farm, and here we were done in five minutes. Amazing. Do you agree?

This is the first year I've tried the ribbon garland, and I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. But I'm pleased with it.

Almost every single ornament has a story behind it. Nothing matches, but the decorations say a lot about us. We have ornaments the kids made, and ornaments that were gifts, and ornaments that we just took a liking to in the store one year. My favourite are my S'mores guys. I got the first one at a Momwriter gathering two years ago, and then found some more in Niagara-on-the-Lake this summer. I hope to keep adding to the collection - there's one with three S'mores guys on a toboggan that I just loved. The only problem is that they're a bit heavy for the tree, so I may display them some other way. Here's the trio:

And I've got the village up too. It's another thing I add to every year, and it's outgrown the top of the piano where it started. It now spreads to a nearby bookshelf - I call it the residential subdivision. I promised Teri I'd post a pic, but I couldn't seem to take a straight picture, so here's one of the houses:

Looks peaceful, doesn't it? And that's how I hope to be now that the work is done, and the shopping almost finished. I have radio time in the morning, and then more shopping, and then I'm going to park my butt in the new recliner (thanks Dad!) and enjoy the holiday.

But don't worry - I'll still be blogging every day!

I just realized...

Christmas is next THURSDAY!!!

Not Friday. Thursday.

I've been humming merrily along, mentally keeping track of how many days I have to get my s**t together, get a tree, get the decorations up (and let's not forget - get the painting done first). get the shoppping finished, wrap presents, buy a turkey....

And my mental calendar was telling me Christmas was Friday.

It's not.

It's Thursday.

Pardon me while I have an impromptu (read - unscheduled) nervous breakdown.

The good news is that today, I received a totally unexpected Christmas bonus from my boss. That's never happened before. It was small, token really, but still. I'm prepared to retract all the uncharitable things I may have thought about the guy for the last few months. I am grateful.

The cards are finally trickling in, but I have no where to put them because, well...see above about the painting.

So now, having blinked my eyes and lost an entire day, I have to get my butt in gear. Tomorrow, I'm off to the...shudder...mall. And it will all get done, in time.

Really.