Merry Christmas 2022

Everything seemed like such a rush this year. I worked until Thursday and Ian was in school until the same, and Tammy worked until Friday. Then Saturday was Christmas Eve and today’s Christmas. But it all came together, and we’ve had a good day together. The weather has snapped and the temperature got above zero today after being in the -27 to -34 range for a week.

We made time for our traditional reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas before hanging stockings. We refer to it as reading “Binky Saves Christmas” from the Garfield Christmas Special. Miranda’s almost nineteen and Ian’s fifteen, but we read it anyways.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Claus did their work, and everything was ready for Christmas.

Call it momentum from all the baking that Tammy did on Christmas Eve (mince pie, butter tarts, cranberry/orange tarts, buns, monkey bread) but Tammy got up early to make a special pancake breakfast. Each person had a stack of three pancakes with strawberries, blueberries, bananas and whipped cream.

That meant that opening stockings was after breakfast, and then presents. Murphy liked the catnip that Santa left in his stocking. Miranda made homemade chocolates as gifts this year, along with some biological/anatomical stuffies. Ian got a “Famous Night Out” coupon for Tammy and I to have a movie date night at some point.

We got a chance to Skype with Baba and Grandpa in Mexico and with Grandpa in Langford. Everyone was glad they weren’t travelling after the weather systems that have destroyed the air schedules out of Vancouver, Toronto and everywhere east.

Supper was mid-afternoon, after a quieter day. Everybody helped get dinner ready. Many hands make light work.

After dinner we watched Glass Onion, which wasn’t exactly a Christmas movie, but it was good. 😄 When everything was cleaned up, we took advantage of the warm (-5) weather and went for a walk. It felt good to be outside without worrying about frostbite.

Merry Christmas to all!

The Portrait of Mr. Doos

Tammy didn’t make much of a Christmas list this year. I kept procrastinating on doing Christmas shopping because I didn’t know what to get her. In the past few years, I’d gotten her some big-ticket items like jewellery or electronics (TV, Apple Watch) but there were no obvious ideas.

However, two of the items on her list were “cat art” that she’d found. It wasn’t exactly practical to get them (shipping, timing, and one was a dead link by the time Christmas arrived) but it did prompt me to pull out the pastels. I thought maybe I could make up for the lack of exciting gifts with a homemade one. I found a picture of Mr. Doos in our collection and put aside some time on Friday. I didn’t say what I was doing, just in case it ended up garbage and not worthy of giving.

I worked on it for many hours and as time went on, it got better and better. It got to the point where it started to become painful to work on: I was remembering Mr. Doos and missing him, even though he’s been gone for 15 years. He was our first “child”. As I got to the end, and I am forcing myself to step back and judge it and put finishing touches on, I actually broke down.

I took it down and put it away in the closet, but then realized (crying) that I would not be able to hand-wave away what was wrong when Tammy asked. I texted her.

I decided to show Tammy the picture. To my surprise, she immediately burst into tears, too. I guess it wasn’t just me. I’ve never been more proud of something I’ve made, and yet it was painful. We’ll get it framed soon.