All posts tagged: Christmas

Lemme me see the other side.

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I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks. Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched. “Yeah.” Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am. Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice …

1,500 miles of family, Or, Caviar tastes like chicken pox.

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Stop 1: Scottsville, Esmont, Charlottesville Virginia WideEyedFunks: I was spooning caviar onto a smear of cream cheese at the pre-Christmas dinner snackie spread. Sister-in-law L. and Older Brother set us up with fine cheeses, Dracula’s Dilemma pickled garlic, some kind of awesome aged herbed salami.  And caviar. Our WideEyedParents were across the room and from around the Christmas tree we could hear dad shouting at mom: “Do you want some cold cuts?” “A cool one?” she said, “no, I don’t want a beer.” Heh. Might be time for hearing tests. Sister-in-law N. pushed through Sister-in-law L. and me to get to the snackies, “Quit snack blocking,” she told us. I inched my counter stool over an inch or so, but not really too far. I hadn’t tried all the cheeses yet. I lifted my caviar cracker to take a bite. “You eat that stuff?” Older Brother asked, clearly doubtful. I shrugged and ate the cracker. Older Brother watched me chew. “I don’t eat it,” he said. “Good,” Sister-in-law L. said, “more for the rest of …

Peanuts, Beer, and Minor League Baseball on a Spring Evening

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The Buffalo Bisons beat the Columbus Clippers in a dramatic bottom of the 10th inning run from third as the Clipper’s catcher scrambled for a mis-pitched ball. The 1000 or so Buffalonians in the stadium hooted and whooped as they filed out of Coca-Cola Field into the gloaming twilight. We were at the game last night because the Spouse won the department lottery for the company’s baseball tickets. We fed the poochies, locked down the household, and set off to the Metro station. We walked past permanent Santa who watched us from above, and we descended level after level into the bowels of the creepily uncrowded Metro tunnel. I emptied my pockets for the $8 round trip ride for the both of us. Parking downtown was $5. But then, where’s the adventure in parking a car?  I do that every day one place or another. The Buffalo Bisons mascot Buster and his son Chip wandered the stands – the Spouse high fived Chip. The Boy Robin tromped up and down the stadium stairs yelling “Snow …

Santa Lives in Buffalo, Strapped to a Railing

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Last March Santa looked forlorn strapped to the fifth floor balcony of an apartment building near the Canisius College Metro station. His cherry red suit was faded to a soft tea rose pink. His pink cheeks had bleached to vampire whiteness. Traffic soot embedded into his beard, hair, and the rim of fluffy white on his hat gave them an ultra-real dimensionality that shouldn’t be possible on his round plastic body.  Now a year later, Santa still rigidly dangles that hundred or more feet off  the ground. But between last March and today he had his weeks of glory, and the true brilliance of the apartment owner shined into the December nights.  We assumed that Balcony Santa was collateral damage in someone’s busy life. You know what I mean – wreaths that were perky in December but flap forlornly in February’s gusts, the spindly Christmas tree carcass that appears on the curb in April, and one of my favorites – Rudolph standing in an unkempt front garden with late summer purple coneflowers bobbing around him. …