the Blethering Spot

Hello my peeps! I’m going on a blogging vacation — that is, a vacation from blogging. I’m going to take some time to just chill with my family, and I have found that I’m wasting too many minutes of my life on the internet… so I’m not planning to post anything for a while. Check back in a couple weeks, would you?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish you a happy New Year!

The older I get, the more desperately I crave my childhood at Christmas. I found myself spontaneously bursting into tears today at inopportune moments — in the middle of the checkout line at a local kitchen shop, for example, and whilst looking at frozen turkeys in Save On.

And when I turned on the radio in the car and heard Bing Crosby crooning, “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams,” well…. well, we can just forget about anything getting done at all.

I’m not really sure why I experience such waves of nostalgia at Christmas. By all reasoning, we didn’t have a privileged childhood. In fact, I recall presents wanted but never received; I remember the furtive, shameful chagrin (oh, the horror) of our beater station wagon. But those little hurts, so sharply felt during childhood, have mellowed into nothing more than ruefully amused recollections. More vivid by far are the memories of licking the Stollen icing off fingers, and dark winter mornings in shabby ‘monas and mismatched pyjamas, and hanging the stockings from nails on the woodbox. If I live to be 90 years old, I think I’ll still remember sneaking downstairs with my big sister, giggling and full of awe, hearts racing, to turn on the tree lights and gaze at the gifts; and when Mark burst out of his own room, in his grey-and-blue pyjamas, I can still feel that rush of love I felt (but never expressed. As if!)
I remember my Dad’s gleeful grin as he watched us open our gifts; I recall my Mom’s quick, efficient hands expertly twisting the cookie press to leave a trail of perfect, uniform camels. I can picture my Dad’s work coat now: the towering piles of firewood he carried in were vast, awe-inspiring, incredible.

Now that I’m a parent, I realize that my mother and father were not so decisive and sure as they seemed to be back then. Maybe my Mom’s hands didn’t really move as deftly and assuredly as I thought they did; maybe my Dad stared into space, now and then, worrying about the decisions he was making. They were just a couple of regular people, doing what they had to to keep the family going. But to us, they were our security and stability.

I’ve come to the frightening realization that I am the one creating those memories now, for my own children. Now that I know the reality of parenting — the anxiety, the doubts, the fear of failure — I can’t imagine that my children will think us to be as omnipotent as we perceived our own parents to be.
It seems ludicrous to think that my own daughters will look back, from a far-off time, and crave the return to these days, these ones we’re living now.

But I hope they do.

Rum Balls
(makes 18 fab bonbons)

1 c. icing sugar
1 c. ground almonds
3 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely grated*
1/3 c. dark rum
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. chocolate sprinkles**
~ 2 Tbsp. dark rum

In a bowl, whisk together icing sugar, ground almonds and chocolate. Stir in rum and vanilla until it forms a solid mass; press together. Chill until firm enough to roll, about 15 minutes.

Roll by rounded teaspoons into balls. Place balls on wax paper lined cookie sheet.***

Pour the 2 Tbsp rum into a shallow bowl. Place the chocolate sprinkles in a separate shallow bowl. Roll balls in rum, then in chocolate. Let dry on tray 1 hour; refrigerate until firm.

* For those of you with Bosches, this is a snap with the fine grater attachment.
** For the love of Pete, don’t substitute imitation chocolate sprinkles.
*** Don’t refrigerate, or let stand, before rolling in rum and chocolate; the dough will dry out, preventing the chocolate from adhering properly.

(201st post!)

Three thoughts:

1. Imagine living next door to this guy. Drive-by viewers are instructed to tune in to an FM radio station to hear the music accompaniment…. but all those lights? yeah, I’d be up all night, and I’d be egging his mailbox within three days.
2. How big is this guy’s electric bill? And, dude… ever heard of global warming?
3. Pretty wicked, though.

My Favourite Christmas Things:

What are your favourite Christmas things?

What an entirely lovely day we had this weekend! We slept in a little bit, then packed up a big lunch, our skates, the toboggan and some firewood, and headed off into the great outdoors. I’d had great plans of taking oodles of photos, but unfortunately the camera persisted in seizing up in the cold.

It was a delightful day. The snow was fluffy and only about 30cm deep; the temperature wasn’t too cold, about -20C; the hot chocolate was steaming hot and creamy. I half expected to see Mr Tumnus slipping through the trees.

We tried to skate, but a pack of wolves had wrecked the ice by romping all over the lake. (Click on the above left photo to see their tracks covering the lake.) We found remains of their Christmas dinner: a tasty moose. Bon appetit, boys and girls!

I think these tree-getting days are just about my favourite of the year. Sometimes we go out with family friends; sometimes it’s just us. But it’s so elemental somehow, so basic. Our cheeks get red; we can see our breath lingering in the frigid air. I think of the early homesteaders that made a living here without Sorels, Thinsulate or 4WD. They didn’t even have Thermoses, for goodness’ sake.
And the First Nations people have been here for who-knows-how-long, patiently enduring every winter, spending every summer preparing for these months. It makes me ashamed to think of my soft, pampered, modern life. When we’re out in the forest on a cold wintry day, it feels like we’re a long way away from 2007, from Facebook and text messaging and global warming and MTV. It feels so simple, so earthy and intrinsically human.

I just can’t stop digging this stuff up, and watching it late at night, wrapped in a blanket and huddled over a steaming cup of hot chocolate, blubbering like an infant.

When he says, “Oh, I could eat you up,” I just can’t control myself. Waaaah!