guy around town

The beginning of last week felt like a holding on to the prior Thanksgiving week, then I hung around town so much the holiday already feels long gone. Last Monday I cleaned house, finally catching up after cooking and eating so much, then cooked and ate some more. I had stocked up at the market that Saturday and after a long afternoon walk on Monday finally made a more colorful plate than my typical monochromatic meal.

I still felt sluggish and transitory Tuesday morning so decided on an afternoon park walk with a friend to shake off the blues. Somebody had dumped pumpkins on the trail, one of which we tossed to Dany, who shook off her blues chewing on it. I spent the later part of the day at the library catching up on messages and updating donations for Giving Tuesday.

It rained most of the day Wednesday while I ran errands. I got my hair cut, thrifted a pair of pants, and picked up some groceries. The rain cleared as I was finishing, yielding to a moody, colorful sunset.

The pants were a little baggy in the legs but otherwise fit well so I convinced myself in the thrift shop I'd have the time, motivation, and courage to bring them in before a party the next day. It took a few hours to find the motivation and courage and a few hours more to do the work, but the result was passable and for $5 I couldn't argue with it.

Thursday morning I helped clean and decorate a house for an event Saturday morning then squeezed in a walk with the dogs before heading out to the party Thursday evening. That was a fundraiser formal hosted by and for a neighboring town's mayor held at a distillery I haven't visited since early 2020. My brother and his partner flew in from Atlanta and met us at the bar. We chatted up the neighbors then moved over to a tavern run by the family who hooked us up with puppy smoothies Thanksgiving morning for the after party. We made it home late then I spent most of Friday eating bagels and recovering. A friend came over in the morning to visit with my brother and another came over after everybody left to visit with the dogs.

It rained again Saturday morning, which the historical society I'm volunteering for was concerned would impact attendance at the open house they were hosting that day. There were slow periods but 64 guests total. The event was themed around A Christmas Carol, and I played Jacob Marley haunting the parlor burdened by those chains I forged in life. Those of us working downstairs had so much fun singing together and entertaining each other I think we mostly forgot our concerns about the turnout or the rain, which had cleared by the end yielding to a warm, sunny afternoon.

I used that time to walk with the dogs and rest before heading to an ugly sweater house party hosted by a friend of a friend I met at a happy hour event the weekend before Thanksgiving. I arrived in time to watch a few rounds of beer pong in the garage before following the crowd out to the fire pit where I wound up with most of a joint to myself. I felt like Michael Cera in a Michael Cera movie staring into the fire and watching the crowd of roughly ten new faces ebb and flow around me. I wrapped myself in a blanket and used the time to get to know them all better.

I made it home around midnight, which left enough time to sleep before church Sunday morning. As the service was starting my brother texted that he'd be driving through on his way back to the airport so could stop by for brunch. He picked up rolls and pastries from the bakery across the street and made it to the house not long after I did. We ate then walked the dogs around the neighborhood before he left to fly home. I packed the dogs in the car to join a group walk, then walked over to a tree lighting in town. The mayor and council president gave speeches and read to the kids, Santa arrived on a fire truck, and after three miscounts the lights finally came on.

I spent the rest of the night watching The Santa Clause and Jingle All The Way, both about absent fathers, the first with substance abuse issues and the second with anger issues. Having killed a man, Scott Calvin offers his son money to lie to his mother about the murder before convincing himself that he is the divinely chosen Santa Claus. The more he drinks the more his body tells on him as his face grows red, his hair white, and his stomach large. He takes his son to a backwoods trailer full of adult children nicknamed the North Pole. In the back is a lab questionably respectfully named The Toy Shop for the short chemist who runs the operation. The mother is aware throughout but reacts only by crying in front of the child, and her new partner, a psychiatrist, calls out the father's behavior as paranoid and delusional. Scott is detained after being caught running deliveries, and a scene in the police station highlights a poster for ending substance abuse hinting at what's happening between the lines. Still the mother burns her court ordered custody in front of the child, presumably because she believes that the absent father appearing only once a year in his Santa aspect will hurt the child enough to drive the two apart and prove her to be the better parent. From their perspective the child isn't a pawn nor is he prone to generational trauma, instead he's grateful for the rare, emotionally turbulent moments when the family comes together, even if that happens with a police barricade around the house and all the neighbors crowded around watching. Two hundred years ago the children enlisted Moralizing Marley to plead for an alternative to the annual Christmas Calamity, and in the decades since these movies were made industry has responded not with an alternative but with layers of abstraction to temper the pain like skin that wraps raw nerves without having to assert one side or the other is wrong or should change. And that's what Zoom Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.