Thanks! (And A Quick General Update)

 Happy (slightly belated) Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

We had a nice, simple family celebration this year... noticeably smaller than previous years, but at least we were all able to get together.  We had a nice, long Zoom session with the Long Island branch of the family (who, for obvious reasons, were unable to visit us in July as they have for the past 20+ years), and a nice FaceTime session with the Virginia branch (with whom we've spent the last 15-16 Thanksgivings), so it wasn't quite as isolating as it may have been for other families.

The Pipsqueak made sure we all knew that she had made the "bread thing" (a sweet, layered dish she learned the recipe for in the online Weekend Cooking Club she's joined, courtesy one of her teachers at school) and made pumpkin pie and did a lot of the work on the pecan pie and helped out a lot with the from-scratch mashed potatoes... So we were all thankful for her steadily growing prowess in the kitchen.  (She also did agree to try both light & dark meat turkey -- both pronounced '"meh" at best -- and the green bean casserole, which she thought was good enough to finish off a large dollop of.  She's still a picky eater...)

We've never made a big deal about November being National Adoption Month, and this year was no exception.  The issues surrounding adoption in general, and Miri's specific issues & questions, are something we openly talk about whenever it seems the appropriate time, no special commemorative declarations needed.  The Pipsqueak definitely has questions (we'd be worried if she didn't) and sometimes things pop up in unexpected ways due to her background, but aside from the occasional "did you hear about..." we let her determine the right time & place for discussions and so far she's more than OK with that (I've asked).  In fact, a couple of weeks ago, she was shoulder-surfing while I had my newsfeed onscreen and was surprised to see it was National Adoption Month -- and then responded with a characteristic "Meh! Okay." when I concurred. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic numbers (as I'm sure you know) are all going in the wrong direction, so the county's slowly been backing off from their plan to switch from virtual-only schooling to "hybrid" or in-person schooling in January... and an increasingly common answer to the question, "How's school?" is a thoroughly annoyed "BORING."  Despite that -- and despite some odd glitches in grading thanks to the intervention of the county's c computer systems -- Miri is again maintaining a straight-A report card and is feeling pretty good about it.  She can get upset if she drops below a certain percentage on quizzes & tests, but we keep telling her she's in school to learn, and as long as she's really trying to do her best than a B (or even a C in certain circumstances) is just as good as an A; what's important is that she's really applying herself and really learning, not what letter shows up on her report card.

Luckily, the dance studio has been able to keep operating even with the county's more stringent COVID rules, so Miri is still dancing more hours per week than I can count.  She says, "It's my therapy!" and enjoys the escape from worries about school and everything else -- plus she just plain ol' loves to dance.  She has no plans to make it her profession (for over a year she's been saying she wants to be a vet) but takes it seriously and has adjusted to dancing within carefully-marked areas on the floor while wearing a surgical mask.

Miri and I have a lot of serious conversations about how to deal with the stresses of virtual online school (e.g., the phone call a few minutes ago about trying to recover an assignment where she'd completed 9 of the 10 questions only to have the county system fail to save any of her work) and some family medical issues that weigh heavily on her -- and even if I step back from my role of loving uncle I have to say I really am impressed by her maturity.  She's a silly, occasionally clumsy, goofy, fun-loving 11-½ year old (with a wicked sense of humor) who sometimes gets caught up in all the politics of pre-teen cliques and such -- but she is also capable of amazingly deep insight into the causes of behavior, differences in points of view, the workings of the world, and much more.

In any case, I just wanted to put out a quick update as we move into what looks like an increasingly complicated holiday season.  I hope this finds all of you healthy and able to deal with the increasing volume of rocks and "stuff" that life is throwing at us all during this dumpster fire of a year.  I have an assortment of posts in draft form, both Pipsqueak-specific and not, which I hope to be able to bring out into the light of day in the next few months, so stay tuned...

Until then, stay healthy, keep your spirits up, wear your damn masks like you're supposed to, and I'll see y'all again soon...! 

An Unusual but Fun Halloween

 Ours is one of those families where Halloween can be A Big Deal.  Some of my fondest memories  are of being escorted around the old neighborhood trick-or-treating with my legs, arms, and head sticking out of a cardboard box decorated to make me look like (or think I looked like) Astro Boy.

As one might expect from a child surrounded by adults who insist on reliving their childhoods every October 31st (and no, I never again wore a box as a costume), the Pipsqueak also enjoys the holiday -- although to her credit, as she's gotten older she gains at least as much enjoyment from giving out candy to the younger kids in her neighborhood as she does from making the costumed rounds to collect some herself.  She has also always enjoyed the family jack o'lantern carving sessions, which are usually creative and chaotic and noisy and messy, somehow resulting in at least 2 or 3 carved pumpkins and a nice supply of oven-roasted, salted pumpkin seeds.

In fact. she has apparently enjoyed this latter activity more than we realized, since we've missed it a couple of times in recent years without too much in the way of obvious comments... but after looking through a bunch of photos from her 3rd birthday onward to more recent times, she INSISTED that we should try to recreate one of the oldest Halloween-related family photos that she'd come across.  (There are other factors at play here, things I've not included in the blog -- but which I may begin writing about because it's all very much part of the family story. No promises... but stay tuned... I think.)

In any case, we had all pretty much spoken about this year's Halloween being pretty much a wash-out due to everyone's fave virus, especially since the national and local numbers have once again been trending strongly in the wrong direction.  I was therefore surprised when, about a week ago, AJ turned up at my house to pick up the Pipsqueak (one of those all-too-rare occasions when she could get off work early enough to get Miri to one of her late dance classes instead of my having to take her) and lugged in a not-huge-but-still-big pumpkin for me and announced that she'd bought one for each household and we were all going to get together the upcoming Saturday to carve our pumpkins.

This being 2020 (and things being the way they are with all our schedules anyway), that didn't work out -- so we ended up waiting another week and made plans to get together for a family carving session early in the afternoon on Halloween itself, since Miri was abostively posilutely not gonna let us not.

As tired and stressed and pressed for time as we all were, all immediate family members (and all immediate family member pumpkins) were at Mom & Dad's within about 45 minutes of the planned meeting time (Dude, that's pretty good timing for this family!) and after a late lunch -- and a visit from a young buck we recognized from the previous year by his lopsided antlers -- we cleared a kitchen counter, laid out a bunch of paper, and the design phase began.

Despite my commenting on how difficult some of the shapes that Miri drew might be to actually carve into the side of a pumpkin, it wasn't long before everyone was (sometimes literally) elbow-deep into their usual jobs... Mom & Dad working on their pumpkin near the stove (for various reasons, they were using stick-on shapes & Sharpie pens instead of carving), AJ at the sink to separate pumpkin seeds from pumpkin guts & prepare them for roasting, and Yours Truly at the other kitchen counter happily stabbing, jabbing, sawing, slicing, and scraping with an assortment of knives and spoons.  Miri had been planning to do some carving herself, but it took all of about 15 seconds of watching her attempt to take a knife to her pumpkin for us to decide she could hollow it out but that Uncle Brian would be wielding any and all sharp and/or pointy implements that day, so (with an occasional Tween iPhone break) she was delegated to scooping out the pumpkin goop as work progressed.

Those gloves aren't for the virus; Miri just doesn't like what pumpking goop feels like!

Despite my beginning to move progressively more slowly as time passed (I woke up this morning and immediately took two Aleve... and then again just before typing this at 11:00pm!), we all powered through the usual variety of unplanned oopses, hidden rotten spots, dropped pumpkin goop, extra-hard or extra-soft spots, and shapes that proved waaaay harder to carve than expected and soon had some pretty decent jack o'lanterns, if I say so myself!  (The "S nose" was entirely Miri's design, the jagged grin was what I came up with.)

Then came the photo... or should I say, "THE PHOTO!"...?  Despite some pessimistic comments along the lines of, "...but you take up a lot more space than you did back then, " and "...you're a lot bigger now," and "...I'm not sure you're actually gonna fit there, kiddo," we found a way to make it work.  (It truly did not help that I had forgotten to bring my camera & tripod as planned, and thus had to build a wobbly pyramid of assorted things upon which I could raise & prop up my iPhone to take the photo... Believe me, there are plenty more versions of the pic than what you see here!)

We were all a little concerned about leaving our various abodes unsupervised on Halloween evening -- especially with all the joyous events brought to us by the year 2020CE thus far! -- so AJ & Miri headed to their house and I returned to mine sometime around 6:00pm, the former to "probably" sit out front as usual with candy just in case any trick-or-treaters showed up, the latter to simply leave all the lights out to discourage any crowds at the front door (I've been averaging well over 150 kids at the door on Halloween every year since before Miri came home).  This morning's reports were pretty much what I'd worried would happen -- zero kids at Mom & Dad's, zero kids at AJ & Miri's, and zero kids at my place. (Some of Mom & Dad's neighbors reported a scattering of costumed kids, but the totals were only around a dozen.)  It was a kind of sad and odd Halloween, but the five of us had fun both with the creative process and with our being able to recreate one of the Pipsqueak's favorite family photographs.

Thus, in closing, I present for your viewing pleasure both the 2020 Family Pumpkin Carving Photo, followed by its inspiring predecessor from 2011.  I dunno... a few things have changed, but all in all I think we done good with the recreation!

So there you have it, an old family tradition interrupted & almost forgotten over the years, brought back to life at the insistence of the Pipsqueak (who is very obviously quite a bit less pipsqueakish since that older photo was taken almost a decade ago).  

I hope youse guys all had a safe & fun & healthy holiday, and that none of the viral numbers are affecting you directly... I'll post again soon (strangely enough, Miri's virtual schooling is a good story generator) but until then stay healthy and make sure you vote on November 3rd if you haven't already!