Sts. Fusca & Maura

The problem with not blogging for a while is that when you get back, there’s just too much to talk about!  Generally when you don’t know where to start, people say to start at the beginning, continue until the end, and then stop.  However, I have found that sometimes it works much better to start with the most recent happenings, go back until you’re either tired of talking, or the other person is caught up, and then stop.  So I think we’re going to go with that plan.

The most recent news is that Saturday night we had our much-anticipated Beer Tasting Party.  The idea for this party actually came from a blog post I put up last September about a visit to Mr. & Mrs. Darwin’s manse in Columbus, and the Founder’s Breakfast Stout that I drank while I was there.  There was much beer discussion in the comments, and when I put forward the idea of a beer tasting, both Dove and Sugar Ray were enthusiastic.  The only difficulty was scheduling.  I tried at first in October, but between wedding prep and people’s schedules, it just didn’t work out, and I put it on the back burner.  Then on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when my Catholic young adult group was at South Park Tavern after going to Mass together, Sugar Ray brought up the subject again, and asked me when I was going to schedule it.  I opened up my calendar, and decided that it was going to be on January 14.  And it was.

The party itself was a good time.  We crammed in just about as many people as the house will hold, particularly since it was much too cold to spill out to a fire in the back yard like I was originally hoping.  People brought so much food that I had to open up the extra leaves on the dining room table.  This included the Vat o’Beer Cheese supplied by my sister Mariah, who borrowed my six quart crock pot to make it in (it was darn good, btw).  Sugar Ray brought some of his home brewed beer, I went to Belmont Party Supply and filled up two boxes with whatever looked good, people brought some amazing new things with them, and we had a great time.  Here (in no particular order) are all the beers we tried:

• RJ Rockers Son of a Peach Wheat Ale
• Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
• Yuengling Traditional Lager
• Celis Raspberry
• Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout
• Sierra Nevada Biggfoot Barleywine Style Ale
• Samuel Adams Irish Red
• Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA
• Samuel Adams Winter Lager
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest
• Samuel Adams Holiday Porter
• Leinenkugel Berry Weiss
• Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown
• Newcastle Brown Ale
• Abita Purple Haze
• Perre Jacques 2011 Belgian Style Ale
• Wild Blue Blueberry Lager
• Pepe Nero Belgian Style Ale
• Wernesgruner Pils
• Emelisse Imperial Russian Stout
• Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout
• Heavy Seas Gold Ale
• Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale
• Brekle’s Brown Ale
• Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout
• Point Belgian White
• North Peak Darkangel Cherry Porter
• Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat
• Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
• Ovila Dubbel
• Founder’s Breakfast Stout
• Belhaven Scottish Ale
• Framboise Lambic
• Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
• Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout
• Original Sin Hard Cider
• Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider – honey crisp

You may notice that the list is rather heavy on the stouts and porters, particularly chocolate stouts.  This is mostly because I like them, so I bought a lot.  Maybe next time I’ll have more variety, but then again, maybe not.  I do love my dark beers!  We also tried Sugar Ray’s home brews, and did a side by side tasting of the Founder’s Breakfast Stout, and his own version.  It was pretty darn good.  Over all, I think my favorite was the Ovila Dubbel, contributed by The Pessimist.  It was smooth and caramel-y and delicious.  It also won my personal Bernadette Award for Best Beer At The Party.  When I was out shopping for the party, I decided that we needed to have prizes.  (This had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that those really cool big ornaments filled with chocolate pralines were on super sale.  Nothing at all.)  I had three things to give out, so I decided that they would be for Best Beer, Best Snack, and Person Who Amuses Bernadette The Most.  So The Pessimist won for Best Beer (though he left before I could give it to him), Mariah won for Best Snack, and Pippi won for Most Amusing.

The one thing that disappointed me about this party was that I had carefully, and with mischievous intent, hung a sprig of mistletoe in the greenery still decorating my house.  (What?  Christmas isn’t over until Candlemas!)  You would think that if you fill a house with mostly single young adults, supply them with lots and lots of beer, and then hang a sprig of mistletoe, that there would be at least a few kisses by the end of the night.  But no.  Not a single one.  It made me sad.  Though I do know of one girl who got asked out at the party, so that’s good.  But still… sigh.  We’re going to have to work on this.

Before rejoicing sometimes comes sorrow.  On Thursday we marked three years since my brother Jacob died.  This is always a hard day.  I had been thinking that I was doing very well with things this year, but as soon as I got off work Wednesday night the reality of what the next day was hit me like a brick.  That night and the next day were very hard, especially since I wasn’t able to take the day off this year like I did last year.  One thing I am grateful for is that in the afternoon, while I was alone in the office and feeling rather melancholy, three of the A/V tech guys (the closest thing I’ve seen to computer geeks since I’ve been on the new job) came in to get new badges made.  I hadn’t realized how much I had been used to being surrounded with geeks & nerds until they came in, and were so lovely and familiar that they felt like old friends even though I’d never met them before.  They were being utterly ridiculous, making funny faces into the camera, and teasing each other like geeks do, and it was all so great.  I laughed until tears came – the good kind.  It was an unexpected blessing.

I never told you guys what the results were of the poll you took a while back on what kinds of blog posts you would like to see.  The results surprised me.  Not a single person voted for the video posts, which, combined with the fact that my new work apparently Does Not Approve of youtube, means that you won’t be seeing any of those again for a while!  Most of you seem to really like the newsy posts about my life, followed by posts about my family.  To be honest, I had started doing links posts and picture posts and video posts because, well, sometimes my life just isn’t that interesting.  I swear.  Plus it starts to feel a little weird, talking about myself all the time.  But you guys seem to like it, so I’ll keep on.   I haven’t figured out a new blog schedule yet.  There’s no way I can post long, newsy posts about myself five times a week (it’s that not really that interesting thing again), so this does mean I’ll be posting a little less frequently.  But hopefully as I settle down into my new schedule I’ll figure something out.

And that’s as much time as I have to write today.  Tonight will be (God willing) my second ever visit to the Dayton Knitting Guild.  Good times ahead, my friends!

Bl. John Alcober – the 5th day of Christmas

The past few days have been full of Festivity.  First there was my parents’ Anniversary (they’ve been married now for 41 years).  It was a laid back sort of affair – hanging out at the Family Homestead and watching movies all together.  Mariah brought over most of her truly impressive alcohol collection, and we mixed Gin & Tonics with St. Germaine, and concoctions of ginger liquer mixed with Creme de Cacao or orange juice, plus many, many Shirley Temples for Fleur.  We watched A Muppet’s Christmas Carol together (I cried at the “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I am sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us. “ part, and so did Mariah), and then we watched Raising Arizona, which was much more cheerful.

On Wednesday we had our Family Gift Day, which was mostly lovely, the first part, anyway.  This year AnniPotts and Boy-O collaborated on their presents, which included cleaning out the used book store.  Apparently they found a whole series of really ridiculous romance novels with nerdy heroes (The Nerd Who Loved Me, Nerds Like It Hot, Talk Nerdy To Me, My Nerdy Valentine, etc.), and gave one to each of the girls in the family.  Except Fleur.  She’s not old enough for even the most ridiculous romance novel.  Mariah had already given me my Christmas present (two very nice cardigan sweaters when I was freaking out about not having an office-y enough wardrobe), but she threw in a license plate cover from Fiber Works that says “I’d Rather Be Knitting.” I thought that was pretty cool.  I gave up on trying to finish Mr. T’s cabled socks, and instead gave him a gift card to Olive Garden.  I figure the socks will have to be a birthday present after all.

The hard part was that after we’d done all the fun present giving, Mariah brought out the last of the boxes of Jacob’s stuff, the ones that have been sitting in her living room for months, ever since we moved them out of Sae’s basement.  It seems like no matter how much of Jacob’s stuff we go through and distribute, there’s always more.  Or there was.  I have it on reliable authority that this was the last.  And it better be.  It took us five and a half hours.  It felt like infinitely longer.  At one point I thought we were never going to get out of there.  But we did.  I now have custody of what was Jacob’s stuffed R2D2, his George R.R. Martin books, the letters I wrote him while I was on NET, his The Tick figurine that used to balance on a bit of plastic wall until somehow we lost the wall, and his Baptismal candle, among other things.  And now we’re done.  I think.  I hope.  Please, God, let us be done!

Thursday was better, though I felt like I had a hangover most of the day from the emotional overload the day before.  I kinda just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and not come out again until the next day, but CO2 was in town for Christmas, and had volunteered to lead our Catholic young adult group in a Posada.  This is a Mexican (and other Spanish speaking countries) tradition in which you act out the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Afterwards you have a party, complete with a pinata.  I love pinatas!  So I packed up the vat of Buffalo Chicken Dip I made in my slow cooker, crackers, napkins, rope, and a whiffle ball bat to hit the pinata with.  And I was glad I did.  There’s nothing like whaling on a pinata to chase the holiday blues away.  And our pinata, a very jaunty blue pony, put up a fight!  Everyone got a turn blindfolded, and then we started whacking on it without the blindfold.  It was pretty sweet.  Once it was finally eviscerated we cheerfully adjourned to our meeting room for food & hanging out.  And it was good.

Tonight, in a few minutes I’m heading out to the Welcome Back Dinner for PM (my long lost Minion).  After dinner people are heading over to Tank’s, but I don’t think I’m going to.  I’m just tired.  I want to stay in and, I dunno, paint my nails.  Or something.  Tomorrow is Mariah’s Big New Year’s Eve Party, and then New Years Day is another family day.  We’re not having our Huge Family Party this year.  (We’ve thrown three weddings this year.  That’s enough parties for a while.)  But we’re still going to get together and hang out, and probably go watch Tin Tin.  And somewhere in there I swear I’m going to get some sleep.  Really.

St. Cecilia

I think I might have joined a band.  No, really.  It’s the oddest thing.  There I was standing in the dining room at some ridiculously late (early) hour last night, sewing shears in hand, Johnnycakes’ friend Mozart beaming at me from the living room, and somehow it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.  I even told them that in general, I’m almost as busy as God, and they still persisted in wanting me to join.  And somehow, without really knowing how or why, I found myself saying yes.

This is how it started.  A few months ago, Mozart came over one night to practice some songs.  Johnnycakes is a talented drummer who performs at the Dublin Pub open mic knight on Tuesdays with a bunch of other Celtic/folk musicians, and Mozart was planning to join.  Mozart is a dedicated musician, who plays the guitar, and has a book full of his own compositions, many of them quite good.  At the time, I was not intending to join in, but I was doing something on the computer, and at the time, the one place in the house where the wireless signal was any good was in the living room.  So I stayed, and since no one in my family can resist improvisational harmonizing, after a while I started singing along.  We sang more songs, and then there was pizza, and more music, and it was a lot of fun.  And as far as I knew, that was all there was.

Last night I came home from teaching swing dancing, and curled up on the couch to play a little Farmville before going to finish cutting out my bridesmaid dress.  (See? Progress!).  After a few minutes, Johnnycakes came downstairs, and announced that Mozart was on his way over so that he and Johnnycakes could practice.  Apparently they’ve been playing together at the open mic night, and wanted to refine some of their songs a little.  I remembered how nice it was to have Mozart over before, and said that was just fine with me, as long as they didn’t mind me cutting out a dress in the other room.  In a bit Mozart arrived with his girlfriend Aloysia, and the music commenced.

I was doing my best to stay out of things, but you know how it is.  You start humming along, and the next thing you know someone is sharing a song book with you and insisting that you do that harmony again.  I tried not to get pulled in too deeply, but even when I’d closed my computer and headed out into the dining room to start laying out my pattern pieces, I couldn’t resist singing along.  I have to admit it was pretty.  Mozart seemed to like my voice a great deal, and I had to break the news to him that almost everyone in my family can sing like this.  In fact, I’m not even noted for my voice.  The singer in the family is The Duchess.  I know I’m not bad, but you should hear her.  Mozart and Aloysia both tried very hard to convince me to come out to the open mic night tonight, and I had to tell them very firmly no, and no, and no again.  There’s no way I’m adding anything else into my schedule this week.  Not in a million years.  Another week, sure, but this week is completely out.

And that’s about when Mozart and Johnncakes started talking about future plans, and how they felt they might be just about ready to start going after regular gigs.  And Mozart said, “You know, I’m thinking of this as a quartet…” and grinned at me so hopefully.  And there I was in the dining room, sewing shears in one hand, spool of thread in the other, thinking, “You know, it would be a lot of fun…”  So I joined the band.

Now, I have no idea what this will actually entail.  I don’t even know the name of the band yet.  (Do we have a name?)  And of all the bands I could be part of, I never would have thought that I would be part of a folk/Celtic music quartet.  Blues or jazz, sure, but folk music?  Even if I was raised on Peter, Paul, and Mary, I wouldn’t have thought it.  But it’s been a while since I did something new just because I could, just because I wanted an adventure.  I like adventures.  This is going to be fun.

Also fun?  I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow!  Wheeeee!

Not fun?  Yesterday my brother Jacob would have been 33, and I miss him.  A lot.

But still fun?  Baby sweaters.  There are so many ridiculously cute baby sweaters.  In fact, I think I’m going to start posting my Ridiculously Cute Baby Sweater Of The Day.  Accordingly (especially since it shares a name with today’s patron saint), I give you Cecilia.  The pretty colors, the flower petals framing the face – it’s adorable.  Did I mention that I’ve already been on Knitpicks pricing out the yarn for this one?  Yeah… I’m gonna have to be careful about that.

St. John the Baptist

This weekend Sae is officially moving into her husband’s home.  The two of them have been switching off between her apartment and his house since they got back from their honeymoon a few weeks ago, but now it’s time to clear her stuff out of the little townhouse she’s lived in for the last several years and officially change her address to his.  The two of them have already started the process of merging their households.  Lately Sae and Mr. T have been going around looking for homes for various excess items.  Rosie, Johnnycakes and I are getting Mr. T’s old washer and dryer (which is awesome, since ours have been on their last legs for, um, a while now), and a carpet for the dining room.  Sae tried to talk me into taking her old couch, but Rosie wasn’t interested in changing our living room furniture, particularly since we just got rid of our old, delapidated loveseat in favor of a lovely, new futon from Ikea (this also means that I can have friends come stay with me again – hint, The Young Queen, hint).

And then there’s all of Jacob’s stuff in the basement.  You see, Jacob and Sae had been roommates before he died.  Afterwards, everything got boxed up and put in Sae’s basement.  A few items were distributed (for example, I got his car), but for the most part people just didn’t want to deal with it.  Mom, Dad, and Mariah went down and did an inventory, which then got distributed to the family so that people could indicate which things they were interested in.  And then no one did anything about if for months.  It was just too hard.  I know that every time I tried to go through it, I’d get about a page and a half in before I started crying and had to close it again. 

However, after more than a year had gone by, The Duchess got impatient, and decided that we were going to finish this, like it or not.  Last year at family vacation she brought down lists, paper, her computer, and a printer, got the people who hadn’t finished going through the list to do so, and finally distributed the lists of who got what, and which items needed to be negotiated.  We spent a couple of days walking around with our individual sheafs of paper making deals with each other (“I’ll renounce my claim to the food processor if you let me have Jacob’s annotated Cicero.”)  And then we all went home and… did nothing.  Well, not all of us.  AP went down and fetched his stuff, but the rest of us just… didn’t.  There were lots of excuses.  Life was busy, gas was expensive, my car was having issues, and then I lost my copy of the inventory, and, well, yeah.  Mostly I just didn’t want to do it.  Even the prospect of increasing my Latin library by a factor of two or three wasn’t enough to lure me.  The fact that these were Jacob’s books that I was inheriting made it too hard.

And now it needs to be done.  On Saturday Sae moves, and that basement has to be emptied one way or another.  So tonight I’m biting the bullet.  Mariah, Rosie and I are driving down to Cincinnati together, where we’ll spend the evening trying to reconstruct our lists from the various notes people managed to save, and hopefully divvy up the stuff.  And then tomorrow we’ll move Sae into her new home.  And it will be good.

Also on the moving theme, on Sunday Rosie, Johnnycakes and I are having our Roommate Whole House Ultimate Cleaning Day, when we all work together to scrub down the entire house until it sparkles.  Rosie has proposed that as part of this cleaning day we move all our stuff out of the living room into the dining room so that she can get started on her summer renovation project.  Room by room, we’re redoing the house.  Last summer we got the dining room done (and it’s so pretty!), and now it’s the living room’s turn.  The room really needs a lot of work – plastering, painting, various other repairs.  Plus Rosie’s just a leetle bit of a perfectionist when it comes to plaster work.  So we’re looking forward to a summer of plaster dust and, hopefully, having a new, gorgeous living room come Fall.  I’ve gotten Rosie to agree that we’ll try to keep my sewing/work room as sealed off and accessible as possible, so hopefully I’ll be able to continue with my own work while she’s working on the living room.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy weekend, with lots of changes!  I’ll tell you how it went on Monday!

St. Hilary of Poitiers

I was preparing a long post with all the details of how we marked the 2nd Anniversary of my brother’s death, but right about when I started getting into the details of exactly what kind of pancakes we all had at The Golden Nugget I realized that it was a bit ridiculous.  So here’s the short version.  Attempt at morning Mass (14 cleaned off my car for me – what a great guy!), apparently Wednesday is the only weekday that Holy Angels doesn’t have 8:30 Mass, breakfast at Golden Nugget with Dad, Mariah, Indy, The Duchess, Boy-O and 14, then home for a short nap and attempt at headache remediation.  Noon Mass at St. Joseph’s (only one handkerchief’s worth of tears – not bad), then over to the Family Homestead where I and Indy ended up crafting while 14 fell asleep on the couch (I am now almost done with the first of the Winter Wonder Mittens – just half a thumb to go).  Then watching youtube videos while people slowly arrived for dinner, and then dinner all together.  We had Mom, Dad, Indy, The Duchess, 007 (thankfully recovering from the evil rotgut stomach flu that took him down for a few days), Rosie, Boy-O, Mariah, Sae, Mr. T, and Big Brother on speakerphone (14 had headed off for Men’s Group, so he wasn’t there).

It is good to be together at times like this.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.  When I am grieving, most often my first instinct is to go off alone someplace, and get my crying done before I have to come out and be among people again.  But it’s good to be with my family, to know that we are all going through the same thing, even if we express it in different ways.  It is good to know that with this group of people, I do not have to pretend to be ok.

After dinner, we distributed Aunt C’s Christmas Grab Bags, then helped finish cleaning up, and little by little headed off to our separate homes.  This is good-bye for a while for us.  The Duchess heads back to Philadelphia today, along with 007.  The Absent-Minded Professor is already back at school, and AnniPotts is down in Texas being comforted by her sweet kindergartners.  The next time we will be all together will probably be Sae’s wedding at the end of May, or maybe Easter.  Those seem very far away right now.

And now we go on.  This year was not as bad as last year.  Hopefully next year will be better.