Life of Wry

Every year I buy one bottle of eggnog. That’s enough to get us (read: me and Peter) through the holiday, but it’s not so much that we regret eggnog was ever invented. Since I’m limiting myself to one bottle per year, I buy the best that the Coop sells.. Straus (so, so good). And then I save the bottle (apparently), because who could recycle such a throwback? I have a bit of a container fetish anyway.

So.. now we have four (utterly unusable) bottles. I was probably cheaper in earlier years and bought cheapo cartons of eggnog. But now that I have this growing collection of Straus bottles, I’ll have to think on how I can put them to charming use.

Anyway.. as I was washing out 2023’s eggnog bottle, I got to thinking about Max — our Adohr milkman back in the day. I was remembering how he’d show up a couple-three times a week, carrying a metal basket loaded with bottles of milk (and eggs and butter). He’d march right up our long driveway, open the garage door (it was a manual hinged, pull-up kind), shimmy between our two cars (or maybe my dad had already gone for the day, leaving just my mom’s car to get around), knock on the utility room door (and yell “Adohr!”) to announce himself, and then proceed right into the house. He’d say hello to whoever was around and walk right over to the icebox (which.. it wasn’t really an icebox anymore, but that’s what our family always called the refrigerator) and load the goods. He’d do a mental inventory and let my mom know what he’d bring next time, and/or ask what she needed. One of us might suggest chocolate or strawberry milk, a suggestion that would probably be ignored. He’d take the empties and be on his way.

This was such a routine part of life in the suburbs, I never gave it a thought. Max was a regular in our kitchen; he knew all of our names, he even bought our family car one year when my dad was planning an upgrade.

Milkmen. Milkmen. Unlocked doors. Veritable strangers rummaging through your refrigerator.

Only a half century ago.

And then there was Wayne, our mailman. The entire neighborhood of kids absolutely loved Wayne. (My nickname for him was Waynebow.) Most days, he’d stick around shooting the shit with my mom, not for long, but long enough to be friendly. Often, kids would tag along with him on his route. And I’m not kidding at all when I say he used to give us rides in his mail truck. Like, lots of us at once, standing in the open doorway holding on for dear life, sitting on his lap or on the dash. Everyone, including all my brothers (and me), had special relationships with him. I can’t remember if we knew much about his personal life or where he lived; my mom probably did. (As I write this whole paragraph, my 2023 brain goes right to perverts and child abusers… but it was not that way back then. Don’t make me have to defend this point. I will defend Wayne and Max to the ends of the earth. Kind souls, both.)

We, of course, gave both Christmas cookies. I have a memory of my mom writing an annual holiday check for Max.. not sure if she did for Wayne (suspect the federal gov would look down on that).

It all seems a lot like Mayberry or Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood … but it was just a typical Southern California neighborhood in the 50s and 60s. Sure it’s similar to others’ experience. Seems unimaginable now.

I’m old.

Look what I found on the Interwebs…

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Also, happy new year. It’s been gloomy and grey all day. Sitting by the fire (writing this), planning a meat loaf dinner and baked potatoes with my two favorite guys tonight. How great is that?

After quite a bit of ado, I got the 2024 Peterson Family Calendar designed and ordered today. I don’t know why I don’t start these things earlier in December, I sure could, but I just don’t. This year’s was complicated by the fact Costco has now closed its photo center and moved all of its customers’ photo accounts to Shutterfly. I had to get used to that user interface and deal with some complicated payment/discount issues (significant discount: I saved over $100 because of my Costco membership). But in the end.. not a big deal.

Here are this year’s photos. It’s almost magical the way each family member’s photo adorns the month of his or her birthday — kind of amazing how that’s worked out over the years. The other rule is, I have to use a photo taken between Jan and Dec of the previous year, which works well for everyone except Jay since we don’t always see him in any given year. For him, I screen shotted a Zoom meet up.

Cover: Our family home; art by former neighbor David Charleton.

January: me, with Matt in Chicago, on the architectural boat tour (freezing, but we drank bloody Marys anyway!).

February: Magnolia (incredible photo taken by Alexis).

March: Juniper, in her apartment’s pool.

April: Jim, pictured with his siblings on his 70th birthday and with Peter and Maya on Mt. Dana in Yosemite.

May: Michael (whose birthday is really in August), pictured here at Legends with his sister, Pam. Not sure who took this picture.

June: Peter and Maya, cute (and convenient) that they have birthdays one day apart.

July: River (left photo taken by Alexis, the other by me).

August: John (both photos taken by Alexis)

September: Matt

October: Jay (whose birthday is in September). No current, in-person photo since he’s in Thailand, but the Zoom photo is at least current, and I thought it’d be nice to show a side-by-side contrast from the 1950s. Lol.

November: Chris.. I had a lot of good ones of him so I used them. Chris and me at Thanksgiving; Chris and Pam in North Carolina (photo credit Pam); Chris and Pam also at Thanksgiving; Chris and Juniper in John’s apartment.

December: the Peterson kids, River, Magnolia and Juniper (this is the page previously reserved for Alexis who has a December birthday, but, well… they’re separated.. and, well… it’s tricky.

Downtime galore. Not much to blog about, so I went foraging in my Pretty Good Stuff photo file… and found this nice picture.

Guy on the right is Albert, of course.

I just thought those red onions looked cool. They were used in a dish in our [new] slow cooker that I made tonight: b/s chicken thighs, the above onions, celery, garlic, red pepper flakes, s/p, lemon, broth, wine, dill, cream cheese, spinach, artichoke hearts. Yummy.

The word oniones is a long time family joke, one that originated in Costa Rica nearly two decades ago when Jim wanted extra onions with his entree and asked for extra oniones. The thing is, the word for onion in Spanish is cebolla (and its plural cebollas).

Started my second bout of Efudex (first one in 2014 at about this time of year). This will make most of the next month weird. I’m a bit creeped out by smearing such heavy duty chemicals all over my face, especially knowing it’s going to penetrate the skin and attack cancer cells. Killing would be cancer cells is a good thing, of course, but it’s just weird. Hard to feel relaxed. I know it will be uncomfortable.. like a super bad sunburn when it ramps up (in about a week), maybe worse than that, if my experience last time is any indication.

Anyway, started it yesterday and tonight completed my fourth application. Four down, 38 to go. (Twice a day for 21 days.)

These took my mind off of my impending misery! They arrived in the mail anonymously and it took a couple hours of sleuthing to arrive at just who was responsible (Maya!). Sweetest gift ever.

She’d found this picture deep in my Facebook photo archive and ordered photo socks from a company called divvyupsocks dot com.

I could not love them more, or her for making them. Heart.

Luxuriating in the calm of the day after. Sitting around talking… eating leftovers… not much else. Peter’s showing Jim a program he wrote that reduces a famous painting by Georges Seurat (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) to its pixelian parts and reconstructs it again.

This may be what he’s showing to Maya, as well…

Eventually, Peter and Maya hang out with Ray and Jim and I go to see a fantasy black comedy at the Varsity, Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos). Quite a movie.. magnificent visuals and kind of a coming of age awakening slash sexual romp fantasy thing. I liked it. Though I wasn’t sure of that until the end. Nicely tied up.

Here’s a nice shot taken at E Street Plaza on the way home ..

From stockings and pastries in the morning to a robust conversation about AI on the car ride home (which I slept through).. ’twas another nice day.

[Speaking of stockings… I just had a brilliant idea about future stocking stuffing.. we draw names. I am planning to implement THAT next year.] This year, as in the past: I fill everyone’s and Jim fills mine.

Speaking of pastries, we relied on Upper Crust, mostly, for morning treats to go with our coffee… a German stolen (Peter’s favorite), a Swedish cardamom roll (exceptional, and nostalgic for me), a Jewish/Eastern European babka (somewhat of a tradition for us, at least since Seinfeld re-run days), and my fave gingerbread muffins. Oh, and some smoked salmon.

Peter and Maya at the tail end of present opening…

We gathered our items for the Christmas feast (cheese crackers, broc/cran/almond salad, See’s, vino) then took off at about 3:30 to meet up with the Bay Area Frames. The John Frames — for the first time in my Frame family tenure — forwent the gathering and went to Seattle, so we were four down! Remaining to gather were Alan, Marie, Monica, Dror, Nina, Ben and the four of us. All adults, no little kids.. it’s been that way for awhile now. It is quiet, I’ll say that. Not too much to take pictures of.. I mean, adults sitting around talking. Lol.

Peter and Maya petting the Matalon/Frame cat Reddy, who is so old, so docile, so big, and so amenable to anything affectionate. I do like taking pics of these adults.

Today was about prepping Christmas Eve dinner and delivering baked goods. It was mostly about hanging with these cutesters, listening to them sing and trade off playing guitar.

We decided we needed a bigger, less-cracked Crockpot, so I made a Christmas Eve trip to Target — yes, the last place I’d ever want to be on Christmas Eve but it was surprisingly not too chaotic — to get one. Yay.. no more stress about all the food fitting in the thing. We had a 4 quart, and now have a 7 quart. Yips! Here’s our giant 3 lb chuck roast getting slow-cooked in our new Crockpot to the tender state of falling apart (well, not quite, but it was good!). Room to spare!

The table’s been more or less Christmas-set for a few weeks now, but it looked particularly pretty for Christmas Eve dinner (I thought):

I have a couple of guest shots…. Janet with Jim…

And here’re Bill and Sabrina, who came over for dessert only…

It’s 9:30 on this Saturday night… Jim and I have another three hours before we go to the airport to fetch Peter and Maya. I’m all atwitter. Finished a boat load of baking — 17 dozen cookies and a pie. Glad I’d made all the doughs yesterday. Shopped a bunch, reorganized the fridge a bit… things like that. Now doing puzzles. All ready for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve dinner.. mostly.. just need to assemble in the croc pot (making a roast w/ potatoes and carrots, which will slow cook all day). Easy and tasty.

Um… that’s about it.

Butterballs, almont chocolate cookies, pecan pie.

This is what I did this afternoon: made a batch of gingerbread muffins (had some issues, but since I’m the only one who likes them, that’s okay.. they’re quite edible). Then I made the dough for these amazing flourless chocolate cookies (made with ground almonds). Then I made the dough for my favorite Christmas cookies — Russian Tea Cakes (aka Mexican Wedding Cookies or Butterballs or Pecan Sandies). Then I made the pie crust for a pecan pie. Then I made the dough for a batch of cheese crackers. And now, all I have to do is shape and bake tomorrow.. and make a pie. And some other things.

It was fun.