Easter 2018

Easter 2018 Roll Call, in order of appearance! 1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Matthew
4. Shobhit
5. Gina
6. David
7. Britni
8. Wendy
9. Rachael
10. Raiden
11. Ricky
12. Angel
13. Beth This is a decrease of 35% -- basically, a third -- from last year's twenty. Two key reasons for this difference is the two full families who came last year but were missing this year: Nikki, TJ and Cheyanna; and Jennifer and Eric with their three kids didn't come either. They had their own family Easter at home in Shelton. That alone makes eight people who came last year who did not this year -- which means, actually, at least one person came who did not last year. Who was it? Hmm. Looks like it was . . . Britni! In fact, had her fiancée David been able to come, we would have had 14 this year with the two them added. But, David works as a PI and had to work yesterday, following someone around or something. It occurs to me now, in fact, that Dad and Sherri, who hang out with Jennifer and Eric regularly, might very well have already known they were going to do their own thing for Easter this year -- and that alone would account for them not being included in the Facebook Event invite for dinner. And no one expected Nikki and TJ, who live in Spokane, would be coming every year. Any time anyone from that side of the state makes it over, it's a bit more of an isolated incident. With that in mind, I get the feeling this size of the group of attendees this year is more likely to become the norm from here on out. Then again, who knows? Brandi could come back for Easter again sometime; anything can happen. The numbers fluctuate for all these holidays through the years, as in the case for the Easter history specifically: 2007: 22 people (estimated, best I could count from photos)
2008: 13 people (in Spokane, with Christopher's family)
2009: 23 people (estimated, best I could count from photos)
2010: 10 people (in Spokane, with Christopher's family, this time without Shobhit (in New York) or Barbara (in Virginia) or Barbara's Spokane friend Becky, all who had been there in 2008)
2011: 11 people (in Spokane, with Barbara included)
2012: 21 people
2013: 9 people for Dad and Sherri, being with Christopher and Katina with their 5 kids in Spokane; just 3 people for me, taking Mom and Bill out to dinner
2014: 14 people
2015: 22 people
2016: 19 people
2017: 20 people
2018: 13 people As you can see, before Dad and Sherri started taking trips to Spokane for Easter, the Easter crowd tended to number around 20-25 people. Really, that held until the trips to Spokane stopped, and the first year after that -- 2014 -- had a then-record low number of 14 attendees. As it happens, this year is the new record low. People are growing up, packing up and moving away, or doing their own things at their own houses. I guess Eric texted Sherri yesterday afternoon to invite them over for some ham. Sherri texted back that he was too late and they had already had their own ham and it was already done and put away. In any event, it was a definitively low-key holiday this year. I was stuck when Shobhit and I arrived -- at precisely 9:50 a.m., almost the same time we arrived last year -- by the lack of Easter decorations anywhere outside the house this year. Last year I got photos of carrots hanging from trees, plastic eggs in a basket by the front door, that kind of stuff. Sherri still put out plenty of Easter stuff inside the house, though, so it's not like they weren't festive at all. There was a moment when Sherri was gazing out the front room window and she said, "I feel like it's about time to go pick up a grandparent." No one has done this since Grandpa McQuilkin was for Easter 2016. For many years -- literally all my life prior, to get specific -- we had him, and Grandma McQuilkin, and Grandma Rhoda (both Grandmas passed in 2011) and nearly every major family holiday. In fact, Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin's own house was Family Holiday Central for a great many years before that mantle kind of passed on to Dad and Sherri. There is often talk of who might take on that mantle from them, which happened again just yesterday, but honestly, I'm not sure anyone will. Shobhit keeps bringing up Brandi, but her being in Phoenix kind of precludes that. I would volunteer -- enthusiastically, in fact -- but even sixty miles away from the bulk of the family still living in Olympia, you know as well as I do that I'm not ever going to get a bunch of people to drive an hour to my place every year for multiple holidays. That's just not going to happen. This literally just occurred to me as I was writing this, though: maybe Gina and Beth! They live in Olympia and likely always will. They already host holiday dinners every year, for Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve. These tend to include a traditional group of friends, but I can see an evolution of this to include more family. I'm not going to push this idea onto them -- that might just invite resistance -- but all I'm saying is, I can see a natural shift over the years to a focus on them as holiday hosts. Their house is big enough, is always clean, and is in the right location. Gina just finished her first week at a new job as Policy and Finances Coordinator for the Olympia Police Department. She told us all the story of how her shift to this job, from a job she was very comfortable with working for the State for many years, happened quite organically, thanks to a connection with a woman who worked there, who happened to be the mother of a friend of Gaia's, the Italian exchange student they had last year, who lives in their same neighborhood. I guess the woman really wanted Gina to apply and was very persistent. And in the end, it worked out -- including an apparently "significant" (Gina's word) salary increase. Anyway, I texted Gina on Saturday to ask if there was any chance she could take me to see her new workplace, and if she was even allowed to do that. She never texted me back, but when I asked her about it after she arrived yesterday she said she had texted her boss that morning to ask, and was told she could do it! But, then Gina decided to have a beer, and after that she said it wasn't going to happen, because she would not go into work after having a beer. I think that's kind of next-level paranoia (one beer is nothing, and she was acting just like herself), but then, it was also understandable given that she'd only been working there for a week. Still, it was rather disappointing, especially after having gotten my hopes up. She had even told David after he arrived that she'd been given the go-ahead to give a tour, but then David left much sooner than expected when his ride back to the police academy he's training at in Burien came and picked him up. Apparently he's going to be a Sheriff's Deputy in Clark County. So: oh, well. There's always my Birth Week to try again, and that's less than a month away now. Slightly related though, an interesting conversation happened yesterday, before David went home. David is the only one in the family specifically working in law enforcement (well, if you exclude Gina working at the Olympia police headquarters, I guess), and also having been in the military -- these two things have long created a scenario where, although it would perhaps be unfair to say Sherri is more proud of him than any of her other grandchildren (or any of her children, for that matter), it's not that far from the truth, and it would still be accurate to say there's no other grandchild (or child) she's more proud of than she is of him. She literally reveres him. Somehow, police shootings came up in conversation -- and specifically the recent one, of Stephon Clark in Sacramento. And immediately I'm just thinking, . . . Oh, god. This is not going to go anywhere comfortable. Not everyone was around for this conversation, but plenty were, all sitting around the table in the dining room: Sherri, Gina, Britni, David, me. Had either Beth (I'm not sure where she was at that specific moment) or Shobhit (who had been down watching TV in the family room, I think) been part of the conversation, it might well have changed significantly, but who can be sure? Britni, I really must commend, for her immediate instinct to be pragmatic and give people on all sides the benefit of the doubt. She actually said, "I fully support Black Lives Matter, and the police too . . ." This was the kind of conversation where someone could very well have piped up with an ill-advised "All lives matter!" statement, and I suppose I should give credit there: no one said that, thank God. The focus naturally turned to David's opinion, since he's training to be a cop, and the first thing he said, clearly uncomfortable, was, "I don't want to be having this conversation." And in all fairness, I really can't blame him for that. But, his next statement was to criticize Stephon Clark for pulling out his cell phone in a way that made it look like a gun, the clear implication being that the man, who was both armed and innocent, was himself to blame for his own death. And this cannot be stressed enough: details matter, and none of us at that table had enough details at the ready to have any truly informed insight on the matter. Sherri, clearly speaking first and foremost as a grandmother whose primary concern is for the safety of a beloved family member, all but commanded him, "David, if you see someone point anything at you, you shoot." I can only hope that's not how he's being trained at the academy, which is presumably not run by doting grandmothers. And I really must address something else that was said during this conversation, which bothered me so much I won't even say who said it, because I don't want to come across as unfairly shitting on one individual here. Talking about the number of police shootings of black people in the media -- of course, no one here mentions how often these black people are unarmed, and shot in the back -- this was actually said: "How often do they report when white people are shot? You never hear about that!" The clear assumption here is that the police shoot unarmed white people just as often. The media isn't biased against the black community, they're biased against whites. Never mind how often you actually do hear stories of police effectively de-escalating dangerous situations with white people, who tend to shoot instead when the suspects are black. It's less convenient to think about that, and more convenient for someone to pull non-existent statistics out of their ass, something for which there is zero evidence, and declare that police departments only seem racist because those shootings are the only ones the media reports on. I'll tell you why the media doesn't report on unarmed white people getting shot: it's because it doesn't fucking happen. If it did, those white people's surviving family members would get lawyers the people in decimated black neighborhoods can never afford, they would get tons of money out of police departments, and that would get plenty of media coverage. I can't tell you how many times I've read a story of a scenario in which a white suspect is taken into custody and I've thought, If that guy had been black, he'd be dead. Or at least shot. This is the problem that I saw around that table yesterday: a family of white people, talking exclusively to each other about the behaviors and interests of people of another race. How often do any of them actually talk to black people about what it's like for them just living in America on a day to day basis? They have no idea. I honestly believe I have a better idea than they do, and even I have no idea! Honestly, the amount of white privilege going unrecognized around that table could have blown the walls off the house. But, what can I do about it? Alienate everyone there by being combative? They pretty much all already know how I feel anyway, which made it a little weird. To tell the truth, it wasn't that different from twenty years ago and Ellen DeGeneres came up in conversation, and Aunt Raenae dismissed her out of hand as "Ellen Degenerate," as though the presence of an openly gay family member right in front of her made no difference. Granted, this is less personal to me in the case of yesterday's conversation -- I can't get too preachy about it given I'm just as white as the rest of them are. This time I'm not actually a member of the oppressed group being discussed. Hell, not even Shobhit is -- although his presence absolutely has tempered some of the racial language people in my family used to use. (No one calls a cab driver "towelhead" anymore. Sometimes you take progress where you can get it.) But for a nonwhite person, Shobhit definitely enjoys more privilege than most. Indians don't have the same specifically American history that, say, African Americans or Latinos do. So Britni attempts to be diplomatic in her conclusion by saying, "All you really need to know is, don't be a dick!" Gina readily agreed, and it was all light-hearted and seemingly something we could all agree on. This, however, I could not just let pass. "It's not that simple, though. There are types of institutionalized racism that people don't even realize is happening." This was met mostly with silence -- perhaps partially as a matter of granting me the same courtesy as I had been meeting everything said with silence up to that point. And then Britni, God love her, said, "I agree completely!" And I felt she was truly sincere, not just telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. I have to say, I've been more impressed with Britni than I have been with many, just in terms of comparing her current self to the attention-starved hellion she'd been as a kid. If anyone deserves an award for "Most Improved," it's her. She's about to go back to school, to study for teaching special education. That makes me particularly proud of her. If I had any major character flaws through much of my life -- okay, I've had many -- a big one has been a tendency to assume a lack of education means a lack of intelligence. Before Danielle went to college to become a nurse, I made this mistake with her: she'd demonstrate an understanding of a concept that impressed me to a degree that it was kind of insulting. Why should that be surprising? The same applies to Britni, who never finished high school. I spent way too much of my life feeling -- and therefore acting -- superior, just because I thought I was the smartest one in the room. And who knows? Maybe I am! Probably not, though. I don't think anyone in my immediate family, or any of their descendants, is likely any less intelligent than I am, really. Plenty of them are more accomplished: Gina just got her second degree, which is far more than can be said of myself -- I may have been the first in even the extended family to graduate from college, but that was twenty years ago this year. Who gives a shit about that anymore? All I've got is a measly Bachelor's Degree -- in English, no less! In real-world application, that’s about as worthless as degrees get. And I have zero desire to go back to school, which is how I have felt for all of the past twenty years. Hell, I would absolutely concede that even David is more accomplished than I am at this point, and he's only 28! What he's done is certainly more impressive, by a pretty wide margin. And to be clear, I still feel valued, and I still feel like my parents are all proud of me, and are just as proud as they have ever been. There's just also plenty of room for pride in other people; I'm not better than any of them. And this is not a specific comment on anyone in my family, but on a culture of white supremacy in a broader sense: I will still say that this is the difference between myself and those who resent minorities who fight to make gains in a society literally designed to keep them down, as though those people are infringing on their own rights. I can actually make room for other people to be valued, instead of insisting that those people are reaching for something unearned. I wasn't as skilled at that in the past, I'll admit. Anyway, that's enough of that. The conversation passed, it wasn't that unpleasant, and the day was quite nice in spite of the low turnout. I even mentioned to Dad how low key Easter had been this year, and he readily agreed with me. "Still pleasant, though!" I said. As usual, Shobhit and I were there at the house by far the longest -- about eight and a half hours. We arrived just before 10 a.m. and left shortly after 6 p.m. Everyone else, with the exception of Angel, was gone by 4:00. Many of them had other dinners to hit, including Wendy (Sherri's sister), who I believe left first; and even Ricky and Rachael. David left shortly after Wendy did because his ride was there -- he didn't even stay for Easter dinner. Gina and Beth might have stayed later, except Gina was feeling exhausted after a week of fighting a terrible cold -- probably another reason the tour of the police headquarters didn't happen. Beth, for her part, was not there long either, as she had a meeting to host in Seattle which apparently only two people showed up for. It sounded like between the time Gina arrived and the time Beth arrived, Beth was mostly just driving, to and from Seattle. In any case, by 4:00, the only guests left were Angel, Shobhit and me. By then I had only gotten 14 photos so far during the day, the most recent four just taken to fill out the full Easter photo set on Flickr. I took several pictures of holiday decorations around the house, which, although they were technically filler, turned out for the most part to be very good photos. I then took the shot you see at the bottom of this entry, which included Shobhit, Sherri and Angel, and was the one photo I posted to social media while I was in Olympia. Dad and Sherri got a new carpet. They also got a new coffee table and end table. Those couches are at minimum 33 years old -- Dad and Sherri say they got them when Brandi was a baby, and Brandi was born in 1985 -- and they are in astonishingly good shape for being that old. Our cats would shred them in a week. They've lasted that long mostly because of how little they get used -- mostly sat on only during the three family holidays that happen per year; the entire time they have had a family room with other furniture that got used far more regularly, even at the old house they lived in before 1993 on 12th Avenue. Angel joked that with three holidays a year for thirty years, that makes ninety: "They've only had ninety butts on them!" That's clearly fuzzy math but whatever. Sherri said at one point, "This is definitely an old people's house now." She's kind of right -- but it's also very well put together, I think. I quite like the photo below in particular, as it shows how nice their house really is, especially with that new, very nice carpet. I did get one thing accomplished that I wanted to get accomplished yesterday: I scheduled my Birth Week Bike Ride with Dad, which is to happen in Puyallup on the Sunday afternoon after I stay overnight with Jennifer in Shelton on Saturday, April 28th. Assuming that works out -- we tried it once and it didn’t work because when we were going to go there last August, we wound up doing a path in Olympia instead because the traffic had been so awful -- then it's convenient for me, actually, as Puyallup is maybe about half the way back home from Shelton already. I guess Gina and Beth have both expressed interest in riding this path as well, and it would be very cool if they could manage to join us. Anyway, that's how my Birth Week will begin. I still plan a theme of botanical gardens, but the gardens will have to go full swing after that first weekend. I really want to get portraits of myself with each Birth Week participant with flowers blowing behind us, though, so hopefully we'll find some flowers on that bike path. Shobhit asked me to drive both directions yesterday, and on the way down, a minor miracle occurred: I only had to take the car off cruise control for about five minutes through central Tacoma -- otherwise, I was on cruise control the entire distance on I-5, both between Seattle and Tacoma, and between Tacoma and Olympia. I had never managed that before, and I bet a big part of it was our decision to leave as early as possible. We didn't really rush, either -- we just got up to get ready to go as soon as we woke up, and we were still ready to head out by about 8:45. Given that we were the Easter attendees who came from by far the longest distance away (60 miles; Wendy, who lives in Centralia, came in second, at 26 miles), and had no other place to be, it made sense for us to be there by far the longest as well -- I get down there so seldom, mostly just for holidays anymore. We hadn't been to Olympia since Christmas. Shobhit asked me to drive back as well, and the drive went pretty quickly in both cases. By the time we got to Seattle, we suddenly found ourselves under a deluge of hail -- rarely have I seen so much come down. Once we parked in the garage, the car looked like it had just come in from a snowstorm. It all stopped just as quickly as it began, though, and melted almost instantly. We took all the stuff upstairs -- even more leftovers than the amount of food we took down, including leftover macaroni and cheese Sherri gave us that I just ate for lunch -- and then I spent the rest of the evening editing, uploading, and captioning photos, both on Facebook and on Flickr. [posted 12:17 pm]

I'll Be Baked for Christmas

Under normal circumstances the big news of the weekend would be that we had our first White Christmas since 2008 -- according to the National Weather Service, only the seventh time in recorded history that Seattle had measurable snowfall on Christmas Eve (third-highest amount of inches fallen among those instances); and we tied the 1965 record of 1" of now snow fallen on Christmas Day itself. I never saw any of the snow falling in Seattle itself, though, because it only started falling while we were in Renton visiting Danielle, and any other time we were in Olympia. A little bit of it was still on the ground when we returned to Seattle last night, and still some this morning as well. But I guess I'm kind of burying the lede here, because for my purposes, the much more significant thing that happened was that I got extremely stoned at my parents' house for a couple of hours during a holiday family gathering on Christmas Day. This was not at all deliberate, but in retrospect I think it could have been avoided. I still gave to take responsibility for it, though; I'm the one who took the hit of weed, and I can't blame anyone else for that. Sherri happened to have a vape pen on the back patio. She offered a bit to both Shobhit and me. I simply assumed she had it for herself for some reason, and thus knew where it came from -- as in, knew the source. Bear in mind that I have only ever had the most minor effect of taking hits off of joints, because I can never take more than two at most, often only one -- as it always puts me into a coughing fit that immediately puts me off of it. This is why I have generally stuck with edibles, even though effects have varied widely, and more than once have resulted in a reaction that was far too intense for my taste. As a result, though, I associate overwhelming intensity with edibles, and not anything I might inhale. This would be the first valuable lesson I learned from this experience. People have told me many times that vaping is far easier on the throat than smoking joints. I assumed this meant it would be relatively pleasant. Sherri showed me how to use the thing: press this button until it turns blue, then inhale. I did this, kept it inhaled for a couple of seconds, exhaled -- and then proceeded to have a worse coughing fit than I've ever experienced even with a joint. Seriously it was at least five minutes before I could breathe normally again, and a couple of times I almost felt like I might throw up. I've been told that coughing can enhance a high on weed, so maybe that was part of this, I don't know. But, unlike edibles, which take an hour or more to take any kind of effect, I was feeling this, quite significantly, within ten minutes, maybe less. And it was not until after both Shobhit and I had taken a hit off this vape pen that she told me she'd simply found it discarded by a customer in a booth at the restaurant, "and I took it!" What the shit? It had a liquid tincture in it and I don't know if that made any difference either. There must be a whole host of possible factors. All I can say is that, at first, I was commenting on how much I was very much feeling it -- the sensation was washing over my body. It was almost pleasant for a second, and at that point I was still assuming it would not be a big deal. But then the intensity did not wane -- and it didn't wane for probably two hours. Before long I lay back on the living room couch, and that's when Sherri came and took my picture, in which I look stoned to the hilt -- that's the picture above. So no, I'm not in a coffin. I would have been a lot less anxious about it all had it happened on a different day that was not a big family holiday. Many people were scheduled to come over and I had no idea how long this was going to last or how it was going to affect my behavior, and that knowledge made me doubly anxious. For the first hour or so I just needed to be still and unstimulated. After Sherri took the picture, Shobhit came to sit next to me, squatting on the floor next to me on the couch. I don't remember what he did -- talked to me, touched me, both maybe -- but I do remember telling him I really needed not to be stimulated in any way for the time being. After a little while I finally got up and went back to the guest room to lay down on the bed for a while with my eyes closed, knowing at this point that my only choice was to ride it out. Sherri did come back at one point to let me know my sister (Gina) had arrived. She stood in the bedroom door and asked if she needed to call a doctor. I don’t think she was actually that worried about it -- the way I remember it, she was smiling -- but I think there was at least an undercurrent of concern. I told her no. What could a doctor do, anyway? There's not really some detox procedure for a marijuana high. I never quite fell asleep, but, much like that day back in 2015 when Shobhit and I accidentally got way too stoned on a medical marijuana chocolate piece Angel had given us, I very much lost my usual sense of time. I'd close my eyes and open them again and have no idea how much time had actually passed. This happened when I was still laying on the couch, while I was on the guest bed, and even for about an hour after I finally got up and began interacting with people again. This was one of the many weird elements of my reaction: the intensity seemed to strengthen, somewhat ironically, as long as I was sitting still or lying down. Getting up and walking somewhere, or even talking to someone, something that specifically engaged my brain, would give me fleeting moments of feeling almost sober. But even then, many times I'd have a conversation, and I'm pretty sure I seemed as functional as usual to whoever I was talking to, but five minutes later it would feel like the conversation I'd just had happened an hour ago. After Gina and Beth arrived, and I got off the bed to go re-join the group, I felt slightly better, but not by a huge amount. I was able to engage in normal conversations, at least. I wasn't literally hungry but I did enjoy starting to snack on tortilla chips with an incredibly delicious spinach parmesan cheese dip that I could not stop eating. Sherri said, "Having the munchies is good." Uh, okay then! For some time, though, it still felt like I was experiencing reality through some kind of hazy filter. By all indications, everyone around me was experiencing Matthew as the same person as usual, but that was still not at all how I was experiencing it internally. As I explained to Scott and Noah at work this morning, it was like those old TV shows that would have a cloudy haze around the edges of the screen for a flashback scene. It was like I knew everything was otherwise normal, but my eyes were seeing it from a spot slightly further removed from normal, almost like my brain had somehow been taken back several feet from my eye holes, and I was seeing everything from a bit further away than usual. I don't know how else to explain it. The thing I knew, through it all, was that eventually the effects would go away, and all I could do was bide my time until it happened. Until then, I was still able to hold conversations, eat snacks (too many snacks; I weighed in above 150 lbs this morning, always a troublesome development), even play a few games of Shut the Box. Again, while in the moment, I was able to behave normally, so far as I can remember anyway -- but still as soon as anything that happened was over, it felt like I could barely remember it happening. All this time I thought vaping might be the answer to my difficulty finding the right dosage to give me a fraction of the intensity -- even what I went through yesterday, if it had been, say, 15% of the intensity, I would have been fine and perhaps quite enjoyed it. What I don't know is if what happened yesterday had to do with the fact that it was a vape pen, or that it was filled with a liquid tincture, or if it was just the grade of weed that was in it (which clearly no one had any way of knowing), or what. All I know is, I won't be trying a vape pen again. It's edibles for me, and even then in super small doses: I even noted yesterday, whatever the recommended dose is, I'll take a quarter of it at most. And I'm going to have access to a lot of it for a while, because I did some Christmas shopping at Uncle Ike's and Shobhit (and Ivan too) got several pot-infused chocolates in his Christmas stocking. I suppose that makes this a good time to transition into that part for a minute: my Christmas weed shopping, which I guess is technically illegal. I really wasn't sure what to get Ivan in particular for Christmas. This is a guy with very few possessions, currently planning to leave in February, who clearly doesn't need any more stuff of any kind. Last year I had a perfect gift idea for him in the Amazon gift card so he could buy a copy of his favorite movie of the year, The Love Witch -- which thrilled him so much that he actually wrote "WOW!!" when he texted me to thank me. I knew nothing I could get him this year would excite him the same way, and I didn't want to feel like I was retreading what I got him last year either. I got him a book both in 2014 when he lived with me the first time and again last year, but this time it was the same kind of thing: no need to repeat, and giving him more stuff to pack around wasn't going to do him any good. I knew it would be best to give him something I knew he'd use and/or consume. And he regularly takes sleep aids he gets at Uncle Ike's, so what I really wanted was to get him a gift card for that store. Turns out, you can't legally do that. When I got to the front of the line and got a young black woman as the employee to assist me, I said, "I have very little experience with this so my expertise is limited and I'm liable to have lots of questions. I'm here to do a bit of Christmas shopping --" "For yourself," she said, interrupting me. "Huh?" I said. "Oh -- oh. Okay." "For yourself," she repeated, with slightly more emphasis. "Under Washington State law, you can't give pot as a gift. Legally you can't even pass a joint to a friend." Uh? Okay, that's weird. Whatever. All right, then! "For me." I did later say one question I was going to ask was if they sold gift cards, but obviously they did not. "No, but that would be so fun," she said. So, first I asked about snacks, like cookies or chocolates. And I got several single dose cookies or brownies, ranging in price from $7 to $8 each. I earmarked two of those for Ivan and four of them for Shobhit -- two of those kind of earmarked for myself, because I told her that in my experience edibles have either made me weirdly anxious or put me to sleep. That was when she showed me these brownies that have "CBD" in them, and according to Wikipedia, that has "a downregulating impact on disordered thinking and anxiety." Well that does sound perfect for me, then! I wanted something more substantial than these single dose packets, though, and saw cardboard packets of apparently six chocolates each hanging behind her, and asked how much those were. As I recall they were about twenty bucks; I decided to get two -- one for Shobhit and one for Ivan. The one other thing I got was what I planned to wrap as a separate gift for Ivan, and asked her about sleep aids, which I know Ivan uses for his insomnia. She gave me this box labeled Green Revolution Finest Cannabis Tincture - Beauty Sleep. I had just taken $200 in cash out of my checking account a couple of days before, and all told I spent a little over a hundred bucks at this store. So, for Ivan, I taped the two single serve cookies to the packet of six chocolates and wrapped that as one gift; wrapped the beauty sleep tincture as another gift, and put the several other chocolates and confections I've scrounged from work samples for the past few weeks into his stocking. Given that his were all basically "treats" of one kind or another, I differentiated by putting all the weed stuff in gift wrap and all the other chocolate just by itself. He responded much more enthusiastically than I expected, actually. He messaged me while we were driving to Renton on Sunday -- Christmas Eve -- and wrote, So I just saw that my stocking was packed full and I am delighted by your gifts! He even then sent a photo of the box of beauty sleep tincture and added, Especially this one! So that made me happy, especially since this is the last Christmas he'll be around. Shobhit got essentially the same stuff from Uncle Ike's in his stocking, minus the beauty sleep tincture -- I didn't wrap his weed chocolates and cookies and brownies, though. His was one packet of six chocolates (coffee flavored for him, which I figured would keep me from eating too much of it), two cookies and two of the CBD brownies that I'll try at some point. He got a couple things more than that, though: the white cat with angel wings tree ornament -- which cost a bit more than I would have preferred at the pet accessories store I went to at Pike Place Market last week, but I found it to be too perfect and just decided to get it -- and, my favorite of the stocking stuffers which also turned out to be the cheapest: a pad of Yahtzee score cards that I got at Bartell Drugs. We needed those for our Yahtzee box for ages, and he was indeed pretty happy to get them. Oh, and of course he also got the same amount of chocolate bars and confections I scrounged from work. For his stocking I wrapped the ornament and the score cards. Shobhit and I exchanged our gifts on Christmas Eve morning as usual. We also opened the gift from Ivan, quite predictable but which I always like, as he's done the same thing all three Christmases he's been around for now: a bunch of Lush bath products. Unlike in years past, we could have actually exchanged gifts with him in person, but when he got up to use the bathroom, even though he saw us in the middle of exchanging gifts, he just went back to bed. He was up again before we finally left for Renton and did not look into his own stocking, as I said, until we were actually on the road. Shobhit didn't do half bad with his own stocking stuffers either -- he likes to scoff at the practice of gift exchanges and say "I don't like surprises," but then when it comes down to the wire he actually does pretty well. Some of the items were kind of odd and almost jokey: a packet of crackers, a packet of falafel mix. He got several of these things, including two Divine Chocolate bars -- more chocolate! -- at Cost Plus World Market, a store he has long really liked. The bottle of raspberry wine was kind of funny, though, because I already knew I would be getting it: when we met downtown to see Call Me By Your Name on Friday evening (solid A movie and probably my best of the year), I found him earlier than expected and went into the Pike Place wine store with him. He asked me to choose which berry wine I wanted, and said he was going to put that in my stocking even though I already knew I'd be getting it. I did the same with a bottle of hot sauce I brought home as a sample from work weeks ago, in his stocking. The most notable gift he got me, as seen in the photo of me with all my gifts from him, was the "Perfect Pushup" rotating pushup handles -- exercise equipment! Can you believe that shit? But, there are actually two things about it that make it a sensible gift: first, he got an employee discount. Second, I've been doing three sets of pushups that total 100 for the day, every other day, for probably five years now. I can't remember for sure when I started, but I want to say 2012. And I'm fine with just maintaining -- as I told Shobhit, I have no goal for getting ripped, I just want to be healthy and maintain some level of strength. But, I'm still open to using these, which make the pushups more challenging. I still haven't been able to get to 33 pushups without having to rest my knees on the floor in the middle while using them. But, I will. I've only used them twice so far (once Sunday morning and once this morning; I didn't take them with me to Olympia) and even as I write this, my pecs are weirdly sore. We otherwise spent the rest of Christmas Eve morning finishing up the deep frying of the red and green food-colored samosas. Once those were done, we packed everything up and were finally on our way. First stop: Danielle's place in Renton. It was just her by herself this year -- Morgan and Rylee spent Christmas Eve with their dad. I guess Rylee in particular was bummed she wouldn't get to see us, which was sweet. They were with Danielle for Christmas Day; next year they've planned to have it the other way around. Ah, divorce with children. I dealt with that as a kid, and am honestly grateful I never became a parent and thus run no risk of ever dealing with it as an adult. Danielle was having a pretty rough time, actually, and I think Shobhit and I actually helped cheer her up at least a little bit, just by stopping by. She even admitted to having been crying that morning. Nothing to do with Patrick and the kids, though, somewhat to our surprise -- it had everything to do with her mother, who bailed on the plans Danielle had to bake a big dinner for them all on Christmas Eve; and even more with her younger sister, Shannon, who was visiting at the same time as her two kids she doesn't actually have custody of and who live with their dad but were spending Christmas with their grandmother. Shannon, I guess, is quite the challenge as an ex-addict mother who doesn't have custody, and blames others (like Danielle) for not dropping everything to give her rides everywhere when she spends her own money at the pot shop instead of, say, looking into public transit to get herself to her kids. Mind you, all this is filtered through Danielle; I'm not getting Shannon's side of the story -- but, I was able to glean enough as to what was believably the situation. Danielle hasn't even spoken to Alisha, her older sister (by less than a year), in over a year, so between that and Shannon and her mom this year, she hasn't been having the most thrilling experience with her family over the holiday this year. Shobhit and I were there to let her bounce off how she was feeling, though, and to see if we thought she was justified in feeling the way she did. It seemed to us, pretty much, that she did. I am so lucky that my family has been mostly drama free for years now. I mean, there was that little bit of drama involving texts from Katina when Shobhit and I were visiting Mom, Bill and Christopher in Idaho, but that was pretty easy to stay out of for the most part. And the family in Wallace, Idaho versus the family in Olympia? It's night and day, like two wholly unrelated families. I guess I could have turned that whole vape pen fiasco into more drama than I did -- I kind of thought about it while I was in the middle of being knocked on my ass -- but I chose not to. That's the key word, I suppose: choice. You make a choice of how you deal with people. We were with Danielle for a few hours, and then we were on our way again. It started snowing lightly the moment we were getting back into the car, and by the time we were in Olympia, there must have been a couple of inches on the ground. So! Now it's time for the roll call, and to compare that of both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to last year -- this year, we had seven for Christmas Eve dinner compared to 11 last year; and we had 15 for Christmas Dinner compared to 9 last year. Christmas Eve Dinner attendees: 1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Me
4. Shobhit
5. Jennifer
6. Eric
7. Ian Not even Hope and Chase were there this year because they were with Sherman; Gina and Beth were busy with their traditional Christmas Eve dinner with friends -- in fact, that makes me wonder how they were even able to join us last year. Did they not do their Christmas Eve dinner with friends at their place last year? In any case, those are the four missing this year compared to last: Hope, Chase, Gina, Beth. Christmas Day dinner attendees:
1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Angel
4. Ricky
5. Rachael
6. Raiden
7. Britni
8. David [Britni's fiancée]
9. Pam [David's dad]
10. Alex
11. Gina
12. Beth
13. David [Gina's son]
14. Me
15. Shobhit Last year Alex was the only two of Dad and Sherri's grandkids who made it -- several did plan on coming for dinner the next day, which apparently had to be canceled because Dad and Sherri got sick -- but this year Ricky, Britni, Alex and David all made it, two of them with partners, one with a child, and another with her future mother-in-law. That makes up the six that were here this year but not last year. So here's the history since I started keeping lists of attendees: 2011: 11
2012: 28
2013: 16
2014: 20
2015: 33
2016: 9
2017: 15 This year is still quite low compared to 2012, 2014 and 2015, but still up significantly from last year. Honestly 15 people there at once is more than plenty. There would have been more, but some people -- like Sherri's sister, Wendy -- did not travel because of the snow. What a bunch of pansies! Getting back to dinner on Christmas Eve, we were planning to go to Emperor's Palace, the Chinese place we've gone to for Christmas Eve in 2012, 2015 and 2016 (I can't find record of going in 2013 or 2014), but this year we found out as soon as Jennifer and Eric arrived that they had closed early due to the snow. Eric apparently got a little irate about it, talking about how they had driven over 20 miles and no one called to tell them they had to cancel the reservation -- but, Sherri discovered quite a while later, someone did leave a voice mail on her phone that they were closing. We wound up at a nearby Applebee's instead. Shobhit and I both would have preferred the Olive Garden next door to it, as an Italian place will always have more vegetarian options, but this turned out better than expected anyway. I mean, their "$1 Long Islands" -- pictured, above -- were predictably weak but that's still a price so ridiculous they practically might as well be free; and they offered a veggie burger patty on any of the burgers they had on the menu. We ordered a "Caprese Burger" that way, and it was one of the best veggie burgers I've ever had at a restaurant, particularly outside of a major urban area -- at a national chain restaurant, no less. I was very impressed. We also shared an artichoke dip and tortilla chip starter that was itself quite tasty. So, dinner was a success anyway. We still saw Gina and Beth on Christmas Eve, as they invited us all to stop by after dinner since they live just down the street from that restaurant -- although Shobhit and I were the only ones who took them up on the offer; Dad and Sherri, Jennifer and Eric all went their separate ways and went home. That was not before Jennifer gave me a second present, though. She explained that she bought four of these things before she realized they were all knockoffs of the popular Christmas toy she was actually looking for, so she just gave those four away. The thing I got, a "Happy Unicorn," still turned out to be pretty entertaining. Anyway, Gina and Beth were just winding down a card game with the four guy friends they had over -- two of them a couple; two of them brothers (not the same two); one of them straight -- but we all hung out for a bit. I had a couple cups of tea. Beth and Shobhit and I all played a few games of Shut the Box in the homemade box her super-crafty brother actually made for her at her request. Shobhit and I headed back to Dad and Sherri's again at around 9:30, I suppose it was. I zonked out and was asleep on Christmas Eve at 10:45. I guess I could mention this at some point: the full photo set for Christmas can be viewed on Flickr here. 69 photos and 6 short videos. The only ones captioned, so far, as the ones I also already uploaded to Facebook. They are all tagged, though, and those captions alone should provide all the additional detail needed -- most of that has already been provided here in this blog post anyway. In any case, I already detailed getting baked to the hilt, and thankfully I was at least in the midst of recovering from that, rather than completely in the thick of it, once the most people were there. I did take several of my photos while I was definitely still stoned, but they turned out well anyway. I was actually surprised to see it snow a bit more on Christmas morning, and it was very, very pretty. It only lasted a few minutes but it was worth appreciating and remembering. The food included Costco macaroni and cheese, which we got sent home later with a bunch of leftovers from; between that and the samosas Shobhit and I brought, we had a substantial enough dinner. There were also two meat dishes, including meatballs Gina and Beth brought, which of course Shobhit and I did not eat. There was also a crockpot full of a pretty damned good "processed cheese food" (as Gina put it) dip with diced tomatoes in it, and then there was the aforementioned tortilla chips and spinach parmesan dip I could not get enough of. And of course I also had several cookies, deviled eggs, crackers with cheese, and other assorted snacks. My calendars theme this year was A Bunch of Babies! -- all baby pictures, mostly of family members now grown -- and I love this picture I got of Sherri looking as Gina and Beth page through theirs. It looks like a stock photo of a happy Christmas family. I would have liked to have included baby pictures of Dad and Sherri both in this, but I had no opportunity to find any that would not have given away this year's theme. It's just as well anyway, because between the one photo used on the cover, one used on the back cover, and the 12 photos for each month, that was just enough space to use one photo each of all ten of Dad and Sherri's grandchildren (all of them now between the ages of 11 and 32 -- writing this just now literally made me realize Brandi is now the age Sherri was when Brandi was born and made Sherri a grandmother!), plus all four of their great grandchildren. So that worked out perfectly, actually. The calendars for Mom and Christopher's side of the family were a bit different. I made copies for both Mom and Bill and for Uncle David and Mary Ann, who of course won't exactly want pictures of Angel and Gina's kids -- so, on those, the 12 months consist of Christopher's five kids; Nikki's baby; one each of Mom and Uncle David as babies; one each of Christopher and me as babies; one of Christopher and me together as little kids; and one of Mom and Uncle David together as little kids. I handed their calendar, wrapped, to Nikki and TJ when we saw them at Mom and Bill's earlier this month; left Mom and Bill's and Christopher's there at the house (just on the windowsill since Mom refused to put up her Christmas Tree this year); mailed Uncle David and Mary Anne's theirs to Adelaide weeks ago -- Mary Ann emailed me several days ago that they'd received it but a "family rule" states that if a gift is wrapped then they wait to open it until Christmas Day -- and mailed Becca and Tyler's theirs last week. Characteristically, Becca has not let me know she got it, but I presume she did. Everyone seemed pretty happy with their calendars, although I could have done better at identifying all the kids. There was a lot of debate about the baby picture of Alex that I used and whether it was actually him; I kept repeating that since it was Halloween 1998, he was the only one it could be -- and Angel, his mother, later confirmed it was indeed him. The January picture is of Braeden, Christopher and Katina's youngest, and Dad and Sherri at first thought it was actually an old picture of Christopher himself. That's kind of an easy mistake to make, though, as in that photo he's crawling on top of the oval glass coffee table with rocks inside the glass, which used to be Grandma and Grandpa Minor's. God knows where that table is now. I rather wish I had it -- instead, I have the small dining room table Grandma and Grandpa Minor used to have, and it's down in the storage room, and if Shobhit had his way I'd just get rid of it. But I digress! Angel was looking through her copy of the calendar and she actually said, "I sure love these calendars." This year's theme seemed pretty well received overall. Now I need to get to work on next year's! Most people these days have multiple stops for making the Christmas rounds, and Dad and Sherri's place is just one among them. Britni and Ricky arrived at the same time, so that brought in six people all at once, and it was slightly hectic with 15 people there at the same time for a little while. Then, just as quickly as everyone showed up, everyone but Shobhit and me left within the space of maybe half an hour. Gina and Beth arrived far before anyone else did, but they also left again slightly before everyone else did, and soon it was back to just Dad and Sherri, Shobhit and me. We stayed for a bit longer and helped a little in their cleanup, and also got several bags and containers to take home. I had originally intended to leave no later than 7:00, but it was closer to 6:00, in the end, when we ultimately decided to head back home. We got back home at about 7:15. We had to bring all the stuff back upstairs in two rounds, and then I barely had enough time to process photos, and caption only the ones I posted to Facebook and put into a "Christmas in the Northwest 2017" photo album there -- along with a link to the eight separate Christmas-related photo sets I managed on Flickr this year, where people can find far more photos if they're so inclined. The cats had a long day to themselves yesterday, as Ivan volunteered as the only one interested in an available 12-hour shift that day -- he started just after 8 a.m. and didn't get back until a little after 11 p.m., perhaps partly because of the buses being on holiday and/or snow routes, although the roads themselves were pretty much clear of all snow by the end of the day yesterday. We asked Ivan to give the cats each a full can of food before he left in the morning, since we'd be getting back a few hours after their normal dinner time; their dishes were pretty well clean when we got home and so I finally let them split a fish-meat treat bag I've had on top of the refrigerator as a work sample for a few months now. In the middle of the day I checked the Kitty Kam, and actually found Shanti yowling her lonely yowl by the door -- something I thought, until now, he only did when I was gone but at least a roommate was home. I guess she does it even when there are no people there at all, though. Aw, poor, lonely Shanti. But, also, she'll live. She's a cat, for fuck's sake. At Shobhit's suggestion, I brought one of his two pumpkin pies he made to work today, leaving only the other half still at home. No one has touched it all morning, but there's only a fraction of the office actually at work today. I'll just keep it overnight and set it out again tomorrow; I'm sure someone will eat it eventually. I suppose now I could try getting some actual work done here today myself. [posted 12:34 pm]