Double Digits

It’s a pretty good day in the Timehop app today.

The Absolute Indignity

The indignities of aging are many, and they cluster primarily around our body’s failures. Lately, visiting the chiropractor to help crunch my back into submission after the car accident, this all becomes painfully clear.

My doctor does mainly sports chiropractics — I started seeing him for a running-related recurring hip flexor problem about 12 years ago — and has helped me through all manner of sports injuries. Plantar fasciitis, bicep tendinitis, a strained something-or-other in my knee. The usual. He even worked out my round ligament pain when I was pregnant with the twins, and popped me back into place after a minor bike accident a couple of years ago.

They do the usual adjustments, physical therapy exercises, massage, and e-stim at the office. With my lower back issue right now, they’re doing a lot of percussion massage (you know, the kind with the massage gun) on my lower back and…glutes. My glutes. I’m getting, like, ten minutes of percussion massage done on my glutes.

I can’t see what’s going on back there from my position face down on the table, but I can only assume it’s something akin to the poetic jiggling of Santa’s belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

And the person doing it is inevitably one of the fresh-faced assistants who look like they just graduated high school. Not the doctor, who is my age and would understand, no. A twenty-year-old baby who must be absolutely appalled to see the horrors that powerful, high-amplitude percussion can wreak on the glutes of a middle-aged lady.

I’m not sure how many more visits it’s going to take before my back is functional again, but let’s all hope it goes by quickly.

Some Advice

Here’s a bit of advice I have for you: don’t get into a car accident.

My husband and I were on our way out for a rare dinner date a little over a week ago when some ding-dong sideswiped us and ran us off the road. The first thing he did was get out of his car and run off into the trees. We absolutely assumed he was going to flee the scene.

When he eventually came back, and the police showed up, they didn’t even breathalyze him, even though he was absolutely acting odd. It also turned out he was driving his girlfriend’s car and it seems to be another man’s name (her dad?) on the insurance. How mad is that girlfriend’s dad, you think?! She lets her bozo boyfriend drive her car without her in it and he causes a three-car accident (he actually hit another car, too) and totals her vehicle.

Anyway, the whole thing has led to a number of inconveniences, not least of which is that we are down to only one car in the household while we wait to see if my husband’s car is repairable or if we will need to shop for a new one. That car was almost paid off, too, of course. The insurance is taking their time on it, so we wait.

And my back is effed up. It’s been slowly getting worse since the day or so after the accident. Who needs a car when you can ride the struggle bus, eh? I’ve got my chiropractor on the case, but I’ll be honest, this sucks. I can’t get into a good sleeping position, my lumbar area is so tight that my abs won’t turn on and it’s hard to sit up or stand up or bend down. I am currently sitting in my car at soccer practice because the driver’s seat of my car happens to have the best back support of any seat available to me — thank you, Subaru.

Also thankful of course that the kids were not with us and that we were not more seriously hurt. And that we do have another car we can share for now. None of that gratitude cancels out the rest of this, though; it merely coexists with it.

So. Don’t get into a car accident. You’re welcome.

Pies, Let Me Show You Them

Clockwise from the top center, we had:

Mini apple pies with the cutest little lattice crusts, can you EVEN?

Smitten Kitchen’s butternut squash galette, but double the caramelized onions and substitute goat cheese for the fontina. Make the crust exactly as written because it is flaky perfection. (I made this one.)

Sausage hand pies, which also have mashed potatoes in them. YES.

Chocolate peanut-butter pie that is the actual richest thing I have ever eaten, but no regrets. (I made this one.)

Spanakopita two ways because the grocery store only had one package of phyllo dough, so half of them were made with puff pastry instead. (My husband made them and he reports the phyllo was a bit fussy to work with and he would do all puff again next time.)

Key lime pie, which my neighbor reports is ridiculously easy to make and I report is ridiculously delicious to eat.

Deep dish pizza that is half pepperoni half just cheese because there are six children at this party.

You’ll also see, if you look closely, a mini galette with no onions for a friend who can’t eat them and a couple of vegetarian hand pies.

And now, to consider: what pie(s) should I make for Thanksgiving?

Pie Season

One fun convergence when I participate in NaBloPoMo is that November is also a time of lots of baking, so I have an excuse to post about all the pies. Thanksgiving, comes, of course, but also there’s our annual neighborhood Friendsgiving, which is an all-pie party, which is even better.

I wonder if I’ve written about it before? I have. You can read about the first year here.

My family and our two close neighbor-friend families started doing it in November 2019, after a conversation where we all decided that the best part of Thanksgiving was surely the pies, and we decided we ought to create a Thanksgiving meal out of entirely pie. Each family brings one savory dinner pie and one sweet dessert pie, and usually someone will feel inspired to bring a third pie of some sort, so we often have anywhere from 6-8 different pies to share. It’s honestly the best.

We used to do it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but as our kids have all gotten older and are participating in more various sports and activities, we’ve had to slot it into the month a little earlier when everyone is free. This year, today is the day!

Yesterday, E. and I made an all-butter crust for the butternut squash galette I’ll bake today.

Then, I made a peanut-butter-chocolate no-bake pie that is currently chilling in the fridge.

I think my husband is going to make spanakopitas today, too.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll report back with photos and descriptions of all the pies, so get excited.

Unmentionables

There are a couple of truly unhinged stories I’d love to unload on here, but because they’re both work related, I’m not going to. One of the stories has been ongoing for months; the other just bubbled up in the form of a single truly ridiculous email today. Man oh man. But, again, I won’t get into it.

I’d also love to complain about a personal situation that also happens to be, you guessed it, unmentionable here in the wilds of the internet. Let’s just say that one’s failure to remember and plan for one’s own commitments need not become an emergency for moi.

How about I just tell you instead that I have turned off my email for the evening and am hiding under a heated blanket with a handful of fun-sized candies. Good evening.

Holiday Limbo

Halloween has come and gone, but it isn’t quite time to start decorating for Christmas yet. At least it isn’t in my house. We usually wait to put up our Christmas tree and outdoor decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. Other indoor decorations, like bottlebrush trees and little glowy white ceramic houses, tend to start sneaking in a little earlier. They have a more generically hygge winter vibe and aren’t specifically Christmas related, I think*, so they can happily commingle with the decorative gourds until Thanksgiving is over.

I can’t start sneaking any of that stuff in yet, though, because Spooky Town is still up. My husband collects the Spooky Town decorative houses and whatnot and sets up a really impressive Halloween display that stays up all throughout October. It’s pretty involved to set up and take down, so I don’t imagine he’ll get that put away for a little while. Once all the little houses, trick-or-treater figurines, and cute fall trees are put away for the season, I can get to work. For now, they’re just sitting there unplugged, exuding a distinctively less festive energy than they had a month ago.

Walking down my street this morning, I see we’re all in the same boat. An abandoned lollipop was sitting in the grass by the sidewalk. Pumpkins are still out and starting to get that not-so-fresh feeling; Halloween inflatables are empty and forgotten on people’s lawns, the parachute-like fabric in a sad, wet pile. There they will probably stay until at least Saturday, when I assume the neighborhood dads will all get out there and start winding the extension cords around their forearms and shaking the dead leaves off of Jack Skellington and the Oogie Boogie before relegating them to attics and garages for the next eleven months.

I feel pretty much the same. A bit deflated. Less festive. May have some dead leaves stuck to me somewhere. Ready to shift over to twinkling lights and warming spices, please.

*This is also why I leave them up until the end of January.

The Group Chat

You know how every now and then there’s a dust-up online and you need to 1) participate in the dust-up while 2) simultaneously shit-talking about the dust-up in a second forum? It’s one of those nights.

First, my husband starts complaining about this post in our neighborhood Facebook group over dinner. Without even looking at my phone I’m already about ninety percent sure I know who wrote it. Please tell me you have that person in your neighborhood group.

This gal is notorious for her cranky posts. Tonight, she’s busy planning a second, separate Halloween event that would be only open to residents of our neighborhood. Why do we need a second, private Halloween, you might wonder? Why do we need to build that wall? Could it be about “rude” teenagers who “don’t even live here” and get “bussed in” to trick-or-treat and then start “acting wild”? You got it! Your garden variety racist old white lady bullshit.

On the topic of teenagers trick-or-treating, I thought we as a society were collectively in favor of it now? Everywhere I go, I’m encountering versions of the meme where we don’t care how old they are, we’ll give them candy because they’re choosing to participate in a wholesome cultural tradition instead of getting into trouble. Right? Apparently this lady hasn’t seen all the memes.

Well, my group chat is snarking about her post privately while also engaging with it publicly, as is the way, until lo and behold she closes the comments.

Can’t take the heat, neighbor lady? What, was it my scathing critique of your use of the term “busing in” that made you uncomfortable? Or was it my friend’s gentle question as to how, exactly, you can be sure you would be able to recognize every neighborhood child, in the dark, when they are costumed?

Close the comments if you want. The group chat never dies.

Car Conversations

“If you don’t get to go to the behavior celebration at school, you just have to do WORK all day.”

“That would be awesome!”

“Yeah, I want to get to do more work!”

“I thought you guys liked going to the behavior celebrations?”

“Well, yeah, OF COURSE we do but we also like doin’ WORK, man.”

“Yeah. We’re kind of like Hermoine. You know when they cancel the homework and she gets so mad?”

“Yeah, that’s me!”

“That’s me! I get so mad when we don’t have problem solving to do. Everybody else is glad we don’t have it but I LOVE PROBLEM SOLVING!”

“And I love writing weekend journals. Every time I get to write a narrative I’m like ‘let me get in there! I want my beginning, middle, and ending!’”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

—-

[after asking about whether being taller makes you a fast runner or better soccer player]

“Well, one thing that I heard someone say, that I really like, is that there is something your body is built for. Something you can do and love. You just have to find out what it is.”

“Oh yeah, well my body is built for soccer. And playing piano. Like that’s what I can do.”

“My body is built for making art and soccer!”

“And sometimes there is something your brain is built for, right? My brain is also built for soccer and piano. Like I am going to become a professional soccer player and a professional piano player. Thats what I am made for.”

Happy Hour Reimagined

I am here to make a case for what I believe to be the hardest hour of the day. 

I have a few contenders: There’s the morning commute to campus through multiple school zones, quickly followed by the fight for parking. How about the busy office hour after class on the day I return essay grades and people come to complain? The morning rush to get everyone to the bus stop on time? Or the minutes just before and just after bedtime, when the kids’ needs (bathroom, snack, water, random math questions) seem to hit their apex. 

But the hardest hour isn’t any of these. It’s the time from the moment my car pulls into the driveway until the moment my entire family of four is seated at the dinner table. 

My children are beautiful and precious at school pickup. They are angels the entire drive home. They tell me about their days. They sing songs. They help me spot fun Halloween decorations in the neighborhoods we pass through (we are all obsessed with this one house that has two 12’ skeletons). But the moment — the very SECOND — the garage door starts to lift up, they turn into screaming, feral maniacs. It’s as if when I hit that button on the remote opener, it activates a setting somewhere in their brains that signals the moment for complete and utter restraint collapse. 

Fighting over who has to go to the bathroom more urgently and who gets to use their bathroom first. Shutting the doors in each others faces. Coming into the house and stopping right in the middle of a doorway or hallway so that no one else can get by. Refusal to get their things from the car. Refusal to empty their things out of their backpacks. Then, finally, papers, binders, lunchboxes, water bottles, and shoes exploding just…everywhere. All over the floor. Accompanies by the dulcet tones of someone playing “Frère Jacques” on the electric keyboard with the volume dialed up to eleven. 

In a moment, I’ll walk into the room to spot one of them climbing up the other one’s back and screaming. While my husband is cooking dinner, I’ll be advising the children of better choices they could be making (choices that don’t involve physical fighting or destruction of property); herding them through their minimal chores (feeding the dog and cat); cleaning up spilled water from the dog’s bowl; getting at least one of them to change into their soccer uniform and load their cleats & ball into the car. 

And then comes the begging. The endless begging. Please tell me you know the begging? Or do your children actually come to the table when it’s time to eat? 

Why is this part the hardest part? Please just come to the table, people. You’ll feel better if you eat. 

Woof. 

And then there we are. 

Dinner. Piling back into the car for a game. Sitting in the crisp evening air and cheering for whichever child’s team is playing. We’re cool again. We’ve got cold Gatorade and a hot shower and maybe, if we’re lucky, a chapter from a book before bed. We’ve got hugs. We’ve got to do it all again tomorrow.