Author: Gary

December is here.  Another year has passed before our eyes.  The last of the turkey has been torn apart and distributed among casseroles and sandwiches, and now that the refrigerator is once again empty it’s time to start buying Christmas candy and baking cookies.  The rampant end-of-the-year weight gain marches on for another month.

That’s the bad news.

The good news, of course, is the colorful decorations, festive music, and employer-mandated good cheer of the store clerks trying to sell you the latest trendy seasonal presents.  I look forward to all the insincere smiles, forced laughs, and half-hearted greetings.  Everyone is nice to everyone else for no other reason than they don’t want to be that guy that has no Christmas spirit.  I’m not exactly sure what “Christmas spirit” is, but I also don’t want to be only person that doesn’t have it, so I will be smiling along with the rest of you.

I know that sounds cynical, but all kidding aside, I honestly do enjoy this time of year.  Maybe not the over-the-top friendliness and required exuberance (that can get exhausting), but I do love the decorations.

I enjoy the drives through the neighborhoods to check out the front-yard light displays and Animatronic reindeer.  I like the open curtains displaying brightly decorated trees in the window.  I even get a kick out of the vehicles with plastic antlers and red, ball noses attached to the grill, especially when they blow off of the car in front of me on the freeway.  That’s always good for a laugh.

I also look forward to the seasonal embellishments the city puts up along the streets.  The light poles get a makeover of great big, gold and silver ribbons, and various buildings and landmarks wind up wearing over-sized Santa hats.  Even the police and fire vehicles get season-appropriate decals or ornamental wreaths attached to them.   Although, I sometimes wonder at the wisdom of placing a flammable item like a Christmas wreath on a fire truck.  That could potentially create some unintended, highly embarrassing, consequences.

Not to be outdone by the city or my neighbors, at the beginning of every December, my wife and I go out of our way to put the seasonal touches on our own home.  We always start with the main attraction: the tree.   The tree is plastic, of course, because we are environmentally conscious and didn’t want to impact the Brazilian rain forests.  Or, it was cheaper.  Either one of those reasons; take your pick.

Each year, I drag down the artificial tree from the rafters of the garage and help my wife assemble it in our living room.  After a few hours have passed to make certain all multi-legged critters have vacated the tree and been eradicated by our diligent cats, I bring in the large plastic bins of decorations.

The actual decoration of the tree and house is my wife’s job because, according to her, I have a habit of placing decorations “in the wrong place.”  I’m not sure why a tiny wooden sled is more appropriately located two inches higher up and to the left from where I hung it, but that does seem to be the case.  So, in the interests of minimizing arguments, I stand back and nod my head approvingly as she hangs the ornaments.

Speaking of tree ornaments, I have to say that I do miss tinsel.  I grew up with those long silver strands of material draped over our trees, glittering and flowing from top to bottom.  It was gorgeous.   And I miss grabbing up huge handfuls of the stuff and throwing it at the tree, then watching my mom glare at me as she pulled the clump apart and re-laid the strands one by one along the branches.

I know tinsel is bad for animals.  I have heard the horror stories of dogs and cats that ate the stuff and had to be rushed to the vet because it was tearing up their little tummies.  But, why is it I can’t hang tinsel around my animals, but I can still put up highly toxic sprigs of mistletoe around my kids?  I guess the SPCA has a better publicity manager than Child Protective Services.

So, no tinsel.  The pets are safe.  The kids?  Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.  They’ll have to roll the dice and take their chances like everyone else.

As much as I enjoy the ornaments and festive décor around the inside of the house, I will not be putting much effort into the outside façade.  There will be some additional colored lighting added to a few trees and bushes outside, but that will be about it.  The eaves will not be getting the traditional garnish of colored lightbulbs you see on most homes in a neighborhood.

Why?  Simple.  We live in a two-story house and I am afraid of heights.  If I go up much more than three rungs on a ladder, I’m pretty much done for the day.  I get dizzy and am as likely to fall off as I am to complete any task that I originally climbed up on that torture device to accomplish.  I don’t think my girls want to risk losing their dad just for some blinking lights on the roof.

I don’t know that for certain, however.  And I’m not going to ask because I might not like their answers.  They didn’t get everything they asked for last Christmas and the little monsters can hold quite a grudge when they want to.

Damn kids.

I think this year I’m going to lay out extra mistletoe.

The summer garden has definitely seen better days.  The tomatoes are rotting on the vines, the unpicked zucchinis look like over-inflated baseball bats, and the lettuce plants have flowered and started scattering fluffy white seeds all over the yard.

It was a good run this year, mostly.  The cantaloupe were tiny and tasted like feet, and the corn would have made cattle walk the other way, but most of the other items I planted turned out well.  Watermelon, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and peppers grew with abandon and we were able to harvest all that we wanted to eat and more.  Much more.  The neighbors stopped answering their doors when we knocked, hoping that we would stop bringing over excess vegetation.

That didn’t stop me, of course.  I can always find ways to be generous, especially with the family across the street that keeps forgetting to lock their car doors at night.  Imagine their utter delight in the morning when they open the car and find the produce fairy left another pile of zucchini and cucumbers in the back seat.  I can almost hear the squeals of delight.

But, that’s all over for another year.  The weather has turned, and it is getting too cold at night for most vegetable gardens to continue to grow.  And, that’s fine with me.  After months of weeding, watering, and harvesting, I’m ready for a break.

At least, I thought I was.  But that was before my wife suggested that this year, I should plant a winter garden.

I didn’t even know that was a thing.  I thought winter was the time that you watch the garden turn into a pile of weeds and plan out what you want to plant when the weather gets warmer.  Apparently, there are things that like to grow in the cold and the rain.  Who knew?

I went online and did some research, looking for what plants would grow during the winter months.  There is quite a list.  Onions, garlic, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, asparagus, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale all thrive in colder weather.  There is just one problem.  I hate every one of those things.

With the possible exception of garlic (which is a seasoning, not a vegetable by the way) I don’t want any of those items on my plate.  I might as well be growing oleander and hemlock since I’m much more likely to put one of those in my mouth than any of the “winter garden” items.

I suppose I could grow them and just give them to the neighbors as gifts, rather than eat them myself.  But, my relationship with the people around me is already tenuous enough without adding kale into the equation.

Despite my protestations against the idea, I recently found myself crawling on my hands and knees through the remains of my summer garden, locating and removing the dripline hoses and metal brackets that held everything in place.  Usually, I do this chore in the spring, when all the old garden plants are completely dead and any remaining fruits and vegetables have decomposed back into the soil.  Crawling around in the garden in November, I discovered two very disturbing things:

First, half rotted vegetables smell absolutely horrible as they squish under your hands and knees.  They feel disgusting as they burst underneath you, and the slimy fluids that leak out of them soak through your pants very quickly.  It is not an experience I recommend.

Second, the vermin that feed on half rotted vegetables have not yet vacated the garden in November.  I displaced several mice, voles, and other small rodents as I crawled through the dying greenery of my garden.  Ordinarily, I would not say I have any great fear of mice, but when my hand punched through the gelatinous remains of a pumpkin, and a hairy little beast ran up my arm while trying to escape the assault on his edible home, I had a less than pleasant moment.  I think I handled it rather well, however my next door neighbor called a few hours later to ask if any eleven-year old girls had been murdered on my property that day.  Apparently, the screaming had caused his cat to run away.

After removing the driplines, I fired up the rototiller to break up the dirt and turn under all the remaining plant life.  As I plowed through the cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes, it smelled like someone had made an enormous green salad … and then left it out in the sun for a month.  I dry heaved for two hours as I tore up the ground and prepared the soil for a new round of planting, but I powered through the worst of it until I had a smooth bed of dirt, ready to be seeded.

I have to admit, the tilled soil looked pretty good, and the hours that I had labored gave me plenty of time to consider what I wanted to do with it.

I went into the house, threw my clothes in the garbage and spent a couple hours under a blistering hot shower.  When I was done, I sat on the couch and watched a horror movie on TV.  My wife got home a little while later.

She said the garden looked wonderful, then asked when I was going to start planting.

I told her, “In March, like a normal person.”

This is the year the whole family is coming to our house to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We do it every other year, and our home is typically the epicenter of the event.  While Thanksgiving happens at our house every year, during “off” years, family members spend the holiday with their spouses’ extended family, which often involves some travelling, so the gathering at my home is quite small.  Usually me, my wife, the kids, and my wife’s parents are the only attendees.

During “on” years, we just leave the door unlocked and a constant flow of people wander in and out throughout the entire week.  Most of them belong here, however we have discovered a few strays on occasion.  The guestlist includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, spouses, and the periodic boyfriend or girlfriend.  It’s quite the spectacle.

The festivities began on Tuesday when the girls got home from college and we began food preparation, and they will continue until sometime on Sunday when I finally convince the remaining stragglers to get the hell out of my house and return to their own lives.

I look forward to these get togethers very much, and it’s always a great deal of fun … until people actually get here.

Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my family.  But, to be perfectly clear, most of my family is already dead, so it’s my wife’s family that comes to the house over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  I still enjoy spending time with all of them, but I must admit that there are times that I don’t think they like me very much.

Why do I think this?  It’s mostly just subtle looks and comments that I catch from time to time.  Well, that and the fact that they all keep telling my wife that she settled when she got married, and that she could have done way better than end up with me.  The general statement wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep coming up with brand new reasons to support their argument.  The discussions can get quite lengthy.

The least they could do is wait until I’ve left the room to start talking about me.

Still, I try to be friendly and get along with everybody.  I help with preparing dinner, keep plenty of alcohol flowing, and absolutely refuse to discuss politics even though my wife’s entire family seems to have no freaking clue about … nope.  Not going to do it.  I promised my wife I would behave.

So, I smile and try to be a good host.  Two years ago, I even hand baked several pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving dinner.  I grew sugar pumpkins in my garden during the summer, harvested them, prepped them and baked them.  I took the baked pumpkins and pulped them into homemade pumpkin puree which I then placed into the freezer until Thanksgiving.  I made pie crust from scratch and used the puree to create a pumpkin pie filling from an old family recipe.

When I served the pies after an enormous meal that my wife and mother-in-law cooked, everyone happily took some.  I was then subjected to comments like, “Can I get some more whipped cream on this?  I can still taste the pie.”

Honestly, it doesn’t really hurt my feelings that much anymore.  For the most part, I’ve gotten used to it.  The quiet sobbing in a dark closet is mostly unrelated to their treatment of me.  My deep-rooted psychological problems go much further back than their dismissive treatment, but we can talk about my childhood on some other day.

I think my brother-in-law is the only one in my wife’s family that likes me.  He lives on the opposite end of the country, so can’t make it to our house this year.  With 2,500 miles of cornfields, mountains and deserts between us, he has demonstrated that he really knows how to respect a person’s personal space.   You have to love a guy who understands boundaries.

And, on the topic of boundaries, what do twenty people do when they’re all crammed into the same house together for an entire week?  I confess, I’m not really sure.  I think there are some video games, puzzles, movies, board games, and other activities, but I can’t be completely certain.  You see, the one thing I do recall is that there is a great deal of eating and drinking, and between those two activities there is a lot of fuzzy gray memories where I’m not totally conscious of what’s happening around me.

I’m not complaining, mind you.  I think the absolute best part of Thanksgiving weekend is the fact that I can remember so little of it.  If I remembered more, I might not be willing to stick around for the next one.  I have heard women say that the only reason they have more than one child is because they tend to forget about the pain of childbirth after the child is born.  I guess Thanksgiving is like that for me.

Except pregnant women have access to really good drugs, and I have to content myself with the gin in the liquor cabinet.

That’s okay, though.  I’ll make it work.

I don’t do very well on boats.  I know this for a fact because I have been on boats and I didn’t do very well.  It’s a simple scientific equation:

On a boat? = Not gonna do well.

Yet, despite this incontrovertible law of nature, I still recently found myself on a boat.  I’m not sure if it’s stupidity, denial, or some combination of the two, but I willingly left dry land and walked onto a craft designed to upset my sense of equilibrium worse than any badly-cobbled, carnival ride ever conceived.

It started about a month ago with a phone call from my buddy, Bob.  He called me up to tell me that it was almost November.  While I appreciated the calendar update, I’m pretty sure I could have figured it out on my own with enough careful study and the proper safety equipment.  I told him, “Yeah?  So?”

“Well, you know what that means,” he told me.

“Thanksgiving?” I guessed.

“No.  Um, actually, yes.  But, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Do I owe you money?” I asked him.  “Is this a threat?  Are you going to have my legs broken in November if I don’t pay you back?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.  Then Bob asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

Before I could get too far into my list – and it’s a lengthy list – he explained that he was calling about our annual fishing and crabbing trip out of Bodega Bay.  About the third or fourth time that Bob called me back, I explained that there was nothing wrong with my phone and that I was hanging up on him on purpose.  I had no interest in putting myself through the same nightmare I had endured the year before.

(For anyone who doesn’t know about or does not remember last year’s trip, you can read about it, Here.)

Bob, unfortunately, can be persuasive.  After a few days of badgering, and a small amount of blackmail, I agreed to go along.  A month later, with fishing license in hand, I showed up at Bodega Bay.

This year, I came better prepared than on prior trips.  A quick call to my doctor got me a prescription for a small, circular seasickness patch.  Placing the patch behind one ear is supposed to keep a person from becoming motion sick for up to three days.  How well did it work?  I refer you to the very first sentence of this blog for reference.

I admit I did slightly better this year, but that isn’t saying much.  I lasted about three hours without feeling any ill effects from the up and down, side to side, jostling on the ocean, which is a bit of a record for me.  I was even having a good time, catching some decent-sized rock cod and anticipating the Dungeness crab that we would be gathering later.

While reeling in a particularly feisty cod, I was bent over the railing of the boat preparing to pull the struggling fish out of the water when everything around me began to spin.  I suddenly felt as if the boat had flipped upside down.  I managed to get the fish onto the deck and, before I could fall overboard, I decided to sit down next to it.  Despite its own plight, I think the fish felt sorry for me.

It stared at me for a moment, its mouth working open and closed as if it had something very important to tell me.  Then, it spoke!  It said, “Are you alright?  You don’t look so good.”  In complete shock, I realized that I had just caught a talking fish.  I was going to be rich!

I felt Bob put a hand on my shoulder.  I glared up at him, prepared to tell him to go catch his own magic fish, because he couldn’t have mine.  He said, “Hey, buddy.  I asked if you were feeling alright?”

Okay.  Maybe the fish hadn’t been doing the talking.

I told Bob that I thought I might be done fishing for the day, and if he would kindly step out of the way, I was going to attempt to expel my internal organs into the water.

I discovered that day that the seasickness patch is surprisingly effective.  Although I desperately wanted to, I did not throw up while I was on the boat.  I felt absolutely terrible and my stomach hovered somewhere in the area of my throat for most of the ride, but as horrible as I felt, I could not throw up.

I imagine it is somewhat like being stabbed in the chest with a knife, but not being able to bleed.  No blood is a good thing, I guess, but it still hurts like hell.  What good is not being able to empty your stomach when all you can think about is how much you really want to vomit?

I curled into the fetal position on the deck with all the other dead fish and waited out the rest of the trip.  As my thoughts wandered in and out of delirium, I plotted all the ways that I was going torture Bob when we got back home.  Vengeance is a great way to keep your mind occupied when you’re trying not to focus on being sick.

Our ship finally returned to land, and that’s where I discovered one actually useful benefit to the patch: recovery time.  Less than five minutes after I stumbled off the boat and onto shore, the deep-seated desire to run in front of a bus went away.  I felt completely normal, again.

At least, as normal as I ever get.

In fact, I was feeling pretty good on our drive back to our campsite.  That night, I felt well enough to eat a greasy, bacon cheeseburger, smoke a celebratory cigar, and drink a couple bottles of wine.

So, when I finally did throw up, it had absolutely nothing to do with being seasick.

No-Shave, November started last week.  No-Shave is a program to help create cancer awareness among men by asking them to forgo shaving for an entire month.  As many cancer patients lose their hair during cancer treatments, No-Shave is a visible reminder to others of just a small part of what those battling cancer are facing.

I will not be participating.

It isn’t because I think No-Shave, November is a bad idea – I think it’s a wonderful idea – it is simply because I think it is a bad idea for me.

You see, a couple of years ago, I decided to grow a beard.

To put this statement into some context, I should explain that because of my job I have, for the past 25 years been required to keep my hair cut short and my face clean shaven.  My daily routine for years was to wake up at 4:15 AM, shower, shave, brush my teeth, grab my uniform and head out the door.  The only exceptions were weekends and vacations.

When I retired two years ago, I decided that would be the perfect time to stop shaving and see what happened.  I had never had more than a couple weeks of vacation at one time to try to grow a beard and now, suddenly I had all the time in the world.  The first thing I did was turn off the alarm clock.  I decided to sleep late and skip my morning routine completely.  After a few days, my wife and the kids begged me to start showering and brushing my teeth again and I graciously relented.

I also promised them I would start putting on clothes before going outside.  After 25 years of wearing uniforms, the only things I had in my closet were underwear and black socks, and apparently that is insufficient covering while picking up the newspaper and saying hello to the neighbors.

But, the shaving?  Nope.  All done.

My first week went just about as I had expected.  I looked like an adolescent boy who had refused to shave off the peach fuzz from his upper lip because he thought it made him look old enough to buy beer without getting carded.  Although I actually had no difficulty buying alcohol that week, I don’t think it was due to the facial hair.

The second week was not much better.  I still looked like I had fallen down and gotten dirt smudged on my chin and upper lip.  On a couple of occasions, I caught my wife looking at me out of the corner of her eye and shaking her head in disappointment.  I considered this to be an improvement.  Usually when she is shaking her head at me it is due to something I have done, rather than simply the way I look.

It was during the third week that I began to see real progress.  I had managed to sprout patches of blond and gray hair on my chin, on the sides of my face, and on one side of my upper lip.  I was starting to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t going to be a good look for me.  I looked like a stray dog with a serious case of mange.  And like that stray dog, I noticed that I was beginning to frighten children and make grown adults cross the street to avoid walking too close to me.

Friends and family also started to realize that something was different about me.  They would say things like, “Oh, I see what you’re doing, here.” And, “It’s not really working, is it?”  True, they weren’t being very encouraging, but at least they were noticing.

My wife was clearly embarrassed by me.  She denied it whenever I asked her about it, but I could tell.  It was little things like when we would go shopping she would find excuses to stay at least two aisles ahead of me.  Or, if we were out on a walk, she would duck behind trees whenever a car drove by.

I lasted another week out of sheer stubbornness.  I kept telling myself that if I could just go for one month, all the bare spots would miraculously fill in and I would end up with a glorious cloud of facial hair.  However, when the month was over, I continued to look like I had recently endured an unhealthy dose of radiation around the face and neck.

One night, I woke up and found my wife standing in the bathroom holding one of my disposable razors.  I asked her what she was doing, and she dropped the razor, looked around and said, “Where am I?  Oh, dear, I must have been sleep walking.”  Then she looked at me with an expression of great sadness and went back to bed.

That was the final straw.  I decided one month of looking like I belonged in a television commercial with Sarah McLachlan singing sad songs in the background was enough.  It was time to admit the experiment was an utter failure.  The next morning, I shaved it all off.

It took about eight seconds.

Although, the whole beard ordeal was generally an unpleasant experience, and something I would just as soon forget had ever happened, there was one unexpected, positive outcome for me.  Ever since that fiasco, I have discovered if I want to do something stupid or embarrassing that I know my wife will not like, I have a get-out-of-jail free card.

It goes something like this:

“Honey, I think I’m going to jog around the neighborhood in my underwear.”

“Don’t be an idiot.  Put some clothes on.  We don’t need the police coming over to the house again this week.”

“Ok.  I guess I can just stay home and try to grow a beard.”

(Quiet pause)  “Say hello to the Johnsons while you’re out running.”

I have been doing quite a bit of experimentation with baking over the past couple of years.  Since retiring from the glamorous life of writing tickets, running after people I have no hope of catching, and cleaning vomit out of the back of my patrol car, I have had to find something new to do with all of my free time.  And, fortunately, immolating pastries beyond the ability of normal people to eat them has filled the need nicely.

Before your eyes glaze over and you start browsing for something else to read, I want to assure you that I am not going to start posting my favorite recipes every week.  This isn’t that kind of blog.  If you don’t know how to bake cookies or cobble together an apple pie, you sure as hell aren’t going to gain those skills from anything I have to say.  Besides, most of my recipes you can find just as easily by typing “pie” into your favorite search engine and browsing the results.  I’m not claiming to have any magic rolodex full of secret baking delicacies handed down for generations through my family.

Well, there is that pineapple upside-down cake recipe my mom used to make, but dear lord that thing was awful.  If you want the recipe so you can torture someone who has deeply wronged you in some way, write me an e-mail and I’ll send you a copy.

Years ago, I started teaching myself to bake by making simple things like cookies from premade cookie dough.  I followed such difficult directions as: “Cut, place on baking sheet, put in oven.”  Somehow, I still managed to make most of the stuff I cooked inedible.  Usually, unplanned fires were involved.

I kept at it, graduating from ruining cookies to utterly destroying cakes, pies and other more advanced goodies.

Then one day, quite by accident, I actually baked something good.  For my youngest daughter’s birthday, I made a rainbow checkerboard cake.  The cake was a mix from a box, and the checkerboard pattern was about as difficult to assemble as a 6-piece jigsaw puzzle, but I’m still calling this one a win.  My daughter loved the cake.

More recently, I decided to attempt some stupidly difficult recipes.  Mostly because I was bored and the voices in my head had started making suggestions about crawling through the attic of the house and rewiring the lights.  I know less about electricity than I do about baking, and I’m relatively certain there haven’t been a lot of people killed or maimed in terrible baking accidents.

I tried to make macarons a few weeks ago.  They were lumpy, an odd color, and the filling looked like paste, but what they lacked in looks they more than made up for by tasting absolutely terrible.  I ran a couple more batches, and each round was a slight improvement over the last.  I figure within the next three hundred years I should get pretty good at it.

It hasn’t all been disasters.  Most of them, certainly, but not all.  Along with my baking hobby, I have also gotten into gardening.   The past few summers, I have grown sugar pumpkins in the garden and used them to bake up an assortment of cookies, cupcakes, and pies.  I grow the pumpkins, bake them and puree the pulp, then freeze the puree to use during the rest of the year.  As I bake, I thaw out what I need and use it in various recipes.  And, to everyone’s shock, they have been downright tasty.

Just in the last week, my youngest daughter told me one of her college classes was doing a potluck.  She asked if I would be willing to bake three or four dozen pumpkin cookies and bring them to her.  Because I’m such a good dad (and because what the hell else do I have to do all day) I agreed.  I spent half a day on Monday baking cookies, then another half day driving to her dorm room to drop them off.

My oldest, during the same week, asked if I would teach her how to make a pumpkin pie.  She wants to bake one for her roommates at school and wanted me to show her how.  She said she wants to do it from scratch, which means she wants me to bake, puree and freeze several pumpkins for her, teach her to make a pie crust, then show her how to make a filling.  She told me she really likes the pies I make, and she wants hers to be exactly the same.

While this is flattering, especially after so many years of baking things that lasted just long enough to sit on the counter and cool down before being thrown in the trash, it is also a lot of work I hadn’t planned on.  I started baking as a hobby to entertain myself and to occasionally create something to snack on while watching horror movies on television.  I didn’t think I would ever get good enough that people would want me to start baking treats on demand.  That wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal.

I think my only option is to start burning things again.  I need the word to get out that nothing that comes out of my oven is worth putting in your mouth.  Maybe then my kids will remember why they never used to ask me for anything and I can get back to spending time on the couch munching on homemade charcoal chip cookies.

Or, maybe I should just dig out my mom’s old pineapple upside-down cake recipe.  No.  Even for me, that’s going too far.