171/365 Secret Santa

It's altoids. A bird ornament. Chocolate. Happy.

Kids are too. But who cares about them? :^)

170/365 So So Long Ago

Taken the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

It was 75 degrees.

169/365 Woolly Bear

The cat is back. It's cold--very cold--and he's come back to sit on my porch and drive my cats crazy. Patiently sit until he sees me. Then he meows. I approach with cat food. He hisses, his breath a puff of smoke. I fill his bowl. Growl. Hiss. I back away. He eats.

Whatever.

168/365 Mah jongg update

I didn't write about our last mah jongg event. Deer season. Jake was gone and I needed some distraction. I got it, in the form of White Russians and pumpkin pie. And then I returned it at about 2 that morning. But that was later.

White Russians. But Jackie and Tara were calling them "chocolate martinis." Bullshit. They were kahlua, vodka, and half and half. And they were really good. And I will never ever have another as long as I live.

Seriously.

Anyway, back in September we played mah jongg and, as Zelda put it, it was the least satisfying mah jongg night ever. We played 3 hands. Only 3 of us were on the list of what I'd call serious players--and that's kind of a stretch for Jackie, but she likes to play and always does. Zelda, Jackie, and me. Cicely obliged us and was the fourth on the hands, as we sat there listening to several new gals from our block say that they weren't smart enough to learn this game.

And I'm too tired to teach you, I thought to myself. I love teaching mah jongg (or anything, really) but that night, I just wanted to play. Ah well.

So my invite list was short: only the serious players because I wanted to play. Chat, sure, eat pumpkin pie and drink things no one should drink, of course, but really play. So Zelda, Tara, Valerie, Gretchen, and Jackie came over. Joy couldn't make it.

And we played. I won on a closed hand. So did Gretchen. We drank. We celebrated good news on the health front for one of us who was facing some uncertain scary diagnoses (or lack thereof). We talked religion. Gretchen said she was going to win me for Jesus. No, actually, I said that to Zelda about Gretchen. We were all perfect and hilarious and didn't have a care in the world. And we played until Gretchen, Tara, and I were too drunk to name the tiles. Then they went home.

We have to do this more often so I (and others) don't feel like we have to go, well, quite so overboard when we do get together. This was like a thunderstorm, a waterfall, a deluge. What we need is some spring rain. Some every 3rd Friday kind of set up just for those of us who want to play. Those of us who know each other best and we'll be nice some other time.

167/365 Lady Santas

The women on the block also do a secret santa exchange, with a slightly higher dollar amount (5/5/5/25). These are always trickier to monitor than the master list of kids, of course. In the past, Jake has run it just to be sure--if someone is absent for the draw, for instance.

This year, though, Gretchen was passing, as was Joy. So they picked for Christy and Cicely and got information out to them.

I drew Nikki's name. Of all the women in the draw, the one I know the least--both for the shortest amount of time and least amount of contact. Not a mah jongg player, for instance. Newest on the block. But her suggestions on the slip of paper (just in case) were easy enough. I'll do fine.

166/365 Secret Santa

(I'm going back to fill in, but only every other day--it'll take me longer than a year but it will still work out).

We do secret santas on the block. Moms stand out on the sidewalk and sit on Gretchen's steps. I write a list of all the participating kids (a few families don't, and babies don't):

Fiona
Daisy
Bree
Noah
Eliza
Sebastian
Auggie
Kendall
Iris
Naomi
Anton
Micah
Lark
Reggie
Mitch
Bonnie Dee
Rickie

And then Valerie picks out one name at a time. Except for a few requests from moms: Zelda really wanted Bree to have a girl this year (she'd had several years of boys); and nobody can give to siblings, it is randomized. I make the list, and send it out via email. We let each other know about preferences (Anton likes white chocolate, Mitch only likes Nestle Crunch), and we try to limit it to $1 a week for three weeks. At the end, a $5 gift exchange.

It makes my kids' December. Totally. More than Advent calendars and wreaths or holiday baking or carols or specials on TV. Secret Santas are the best.

165/365 Eyesore

I like to say I live in the worst house on the best block. And in many respects this is true (in all respects, in my opinion, the second part is true--it's the first part that is debatable). Yes, I do have the worst porch. Most everyone has a roof, except for Gretchen, and she at least has a porch made of concrete and stone. Mine is a deck. It would be cute on the back of somebody else's house. It is not cute anywhere attached to mine. I almost didn't buy the house because of the porch.

And the interior of my house aspires to be considered wabi-sabi. It is semi-baby-proofed live-with-it-for-now. Most of our furniture has been passed to us or came to us used; some of that is really good stuff and others? Eh. For now. Our floors are pine and we still don't have baseboards in the all the rooms, etc., etc., etc.

But this house really is the worst.

On the corner. It stands empty and has for at least 12 years. Hill House had stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more...the owner bought it for a song, which makes sense considering it was falling apart. When my parents moved to town he tried to sell it to my dad, but my dad saw that it was the proverbial Money Pit and declined the offer. Our alderman has leaned on the owner, Dwayne Farthing, and threatens him with blighting and seizure of property every so often so that Dwayne does the minimum amount of work to keep it looking like it's under construction instead of abandoned.

He's been working on it for years. Like a decade. Through a nasty divorce, his kid growing up, his father's death--the house is the constant. And all the time and money he's sunk into it--I can't see him ever recovering what he's lost.

I don't care much, though, because he's shifty and made me feel unsafe on my own street more than once. But that's a story for another time.

This is simply a demonstration of the kind of "work" he does. Everybody on our street, hell, on the south side, has a porch that leads to a short sidewalk that leads to at least one step (we have four) down to the sidewalk. Different kinds of houses, different sizes of front yards, but there's a thin strip of concrete leading away from the house. Some folks have busted up the concrete and put in brick or something else that feels more English country home-esque, perhaps, but the majority of us (we're sort of a no-nonsense crowd in south city) look at that walk and think "that's a solid chunk of concrete, why bother it?"

Dwayne didn't like the concrete. And he's the type who always tries to gussy up something that should be allowed to be honest and plain. But he's also a classic short-cut man. So he didn't bust up the concrete. He just paved it with flagstone.

Loose flagstone. He didn't mortar it together or grout or even really attach it to the sidewalk itself. So now, instead of a utilitarian simple unobtrusive path, he has a safety violation. On our walk a few weeks back when I took these photos, Billy climbed up onto this path and immediately stooped down to pick up one of the rocks, which were really too heavy for him but he managed for a moment until he got bored. You can see him there, rearranging:

It's like a dress that's had too many alterations. What a shame.