Had the folks over yesterday.

The opportunity presented me with something I rarely do – cook.

Cue in The Most Interesting Man in the World meme:

I don’t always cook; but when I do, a three-year-old could do better.

My two meat-eaters, husband and son, were out of town ice fishing so I was able to make a light but filling lunch without having my husband toil over a grill with 2-inch steaks, only to have my senior parents nibble one-third of it.

After considering options, i.e., Chinese take-out or Arby’s (America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir! –remember that??), I realized I had better put some kind of effort into preparing something for my parents.

So I resorted to the same way I do things I really don’t want to do – half-assed.

What I basically mean is I take food already made and add my own touch to it. I do it all the time for dishes I bring to parties. I’ll buy a pasta salad at the deli counter and add bacon and avocados to it back at home.

Thus, after a short trip to the grocery store, I purchased a rotisserie chicken, large red grapes, a can of cashews (halved), a bag of Caesar salad, potato chips and dip (Top the Tater, a.ka. Liquid Gold), and a plastic carton of butter croissants from the bakery section. I already had my requisite green olives and mini dill pickles on hand at home.

A girlfriend made it for a party once, and man, my family couldn’t get enough of it.

In a nutshell, you mix the following in a bowl. Nothing is exact:

• About 1 cup each of mayonnaise and sour cream
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper
• 3 lbs cooked and shredded chicken breasts
• 3 cups halved red seedless grapes
• 1 cup halved pecans

And voila! I served it on the croissants and laid out the other stuff.

It was the perfect light lunch.

We shouldn’t want things to go back to “normal.”

That’s what my pastor says.

As this so-called pandemic rages on, or at least the lock downs in the state of Minnesota do, people, including me, often wish life would snap back to January 2020, when the bars were full and our lives were plugging along as usual.

Normal, of course, is relative. It means something different to each person. I believe what normal really encapsulates is the essence of being comfortable. Of being free. Sure, we, including me with my cancer, had a difficult 2020. But in America, at least, we don’t take too kindly to being told what to do – particularly if it infringes on our right to, well, basically what we’ve always been able to do. Go to work. Go out for a nice dinner and beverage. Take our kids to the zoo or a movie.

Sitting down, slowing down, has never been our forte.

But stepping back for a minute, I have to admit it’s been kind of nice.

Sure, the large wedding of a cousin and his fiancé I was excited to attend in June was pared down to members of the immediate family only, which didn’t include mine. My family of four spent Thanksgiving without grandparents or siblings. Indeed, I missed my annual lunch and shopping date with my mom and daughter in early December as well as my yearly girlfriend Christmas meal at our favorite fancy restaurant.

Yes, I’ve been starving for live theater and school being taught on-site and meat raffles being conducted in my local VFW (hey, I’m from Minnesota, after all).

However…

My family and I learned a new board game together. We started having weekly meals with our neighbors across the street. With a pared-down baseball season and our beloved hockey being pushed back for months, my husband and I watched more new TV shows and movies together.  

As a bonus, I’ve never read as many books as I did last year.

And our two pups – well, they’ve never had quite this much couch time.

Me, my husband, and kids are social people. We’re all looking forward to gathering at venues outside of the house as soon as possible.

But I will not go back to what I thought of as normal. I will hold close to my heart and never give up the newfound intimacy I’ve discovered with my family.

Is there anything so comforting as a range light left on when you head to the kitchen in a dark house?

Last week I had the most quintessential Minnesota family gathering ever.

My husband and two kids went to his parents’ house. It’s small, quiet, way too hot, and incredibly boring.

To be sure, this year wasn’t any different than the last hundred years.

Each family sat by themselves and ate and talked.

To each other.

Mind you, my kids haven’t spoken this much to each other since ‘Nam.

It’s not until, after I’ve bored holes through my husband’s eyes, trying to compel him into leaving, that actual conversation sparks up.

I will him to brave the cold and start the truck.

Me and the kids slink off to the den and put on our coats.

Then, as if by slow motion, I watch my husband saunter over to an empty chair by his mother. The chair, mind you, that has been left vacant these past 3 hours and 20 minutes..

God no, I say to myself.

The “long goodbye” has begun.

Mind you, it was 7 p.m., when the truck was started.

Anyone south of Iowa may not understand this, but warming up a vehicle is essential if one wants to feel their toes on the way home (and later, in bed).

By 7:14 p.m., my husband finally gets up to put on his jacket.

But conversation continues, or at least, what passes as conversation. It consists primarily of yes-no answers to banal, repetitive, and uninteresting questions.

At 7:55 p.m., after I have finally chewed both my eyelids off, we are on our way home.

Sigh.

Another holiday has passed.

Ever see or hear of something so incredibly gross you can’t eat for days?

And I don’t mean figuratively, but literally – days.

To set the scene, my friend and I were in our boss’s office.

As an aside, she was a great boss. One of those women who was hands-off yet expected the best. And I was willing to give her my all because of that.

She was recovering from cancer (breast) herself and told us about a friend of hers who recently discovered she had a tumor in her stomach. She said it had been in her friend so long, without knowing about it, mind you, that when it was discovered it was so big it had, and get this –

Grown hair and teeth.

I heard this story a decade and a half ago. I can still taste the bile that rose and stuck in my throat as I pictured a softball-sized mass, covered in hair, with two big buck-toothed teeth protruding out of it.

And I’m not even exaggerating when I say this – I seriously couldn’t eat for two days.

Every time I picked up a fork of food I pictured a hairy ball of God-knows-what sitting inside some unknown woman’s stomach. How big was it actually? I don’t know. But my imagination convinced me, as it usually does, of the worst.

Though I still remember the story, it no longer holds the same gross-out factor it once had. At times I wish it would, however, as I could stand to not eat for a couple of days…

I can think something is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life and not let out a sound.

There are an incredible amount of scenes and lines in movies that crack me up of which I don’t actually roll on the floor laughing.

Gen pop, let alone friends, don’t always understand that. Especially when it comes to communicating over the phone or text, where facial expressions can’t be visually conveyed. I’ll be laughing on the inside but make no indication I’m dying except through a lame laughing/crying face emoji.

To tell you the truth, the things I find funniest most often elicit the equally lame “hilarious” response. If you get that, you’re a bona fide comic in my book. 

In person is a different thing. There’s something about seeing someone else’s face and being fully present in the moment that evokes good old-fashioned laughter. In that case, humor will usually elicit a slap-on-the-knee-cackling kind of reaction from me. If I do that, you know it’s funny.  

This whole thing coincides with me having what has come to be known as RBF – Resting Bitch Face.

My eyes aren’t bright or blue or clear. They’re a dark chocolatey brown. That, combined with my naturally downturned mouth makes me look like I just smelled a skunk.

As a result, I’ve been told my whole life, overwhelmingly by men, to smile. Fellow RBFs, you know what I’m talking about. I mean, has that comment ever actually made anyone smile?

So the next time you don’t feel – or see – the reaction you want to your uproarious one liner, just remember, your audience may indeed be laughing on the inside.

Or, at least, believe that’s the case.

I get anxious when I don’t have my alone time. Others can be at home, not making a sound, yet I am aware of their presence.

I become cranky, irritable, and in an all-around bad mood.

Whenever I’m in a funk and can’t figure out why, I most often come to the realization that I need to spend some time with my favorite person in the world.

Me.

Sad to say, but it’s true. I like me. And I like hanging out by myself for a few hours every day. It’s not that my family is particularly loud. On the contrary, my daughter often says her friends can’t believe how quiet it is here. And other than the dogs going apeshit at the FedEx guy, they’re right.

However, I relish the time I spend with myself. The house is quiet. I play an audiobook, a podcast, or music over the Bose. Sure I could use my AirPods, which I otherwise use, but there’s something about being fully surrounded by sound of my own choosing that energizes me.

On the contrary, I’m not a complete hermit. I love seeing friends over the weekend or for an afternoon happy hour. At home, I look forward to the time after dinner when the four of us hang out on the couch and talk about the latest political events or watch a movie.

Do I dread one day of being alone in a nursing home with no one around, kicking myself in my Depends-covered butt regretting the times I wished for alone time? Sure. But once every 24 hours, in an empty house and an open bottle of wine, surrounded by my books and Bose stereo with my best friend – me – sounds pretty good.

How come?

The question I am loathe to hear from my husband.

How come?

How come the bed wasn’t made? How come there isn’t any cleaner in a spray bottle? (WTF???)

“How come” basically means my husband is saying “I never would have thought or done anything about it myself but I’d like to blame someone (meaning my wife) on whatever wasn’t thought of or done (disregarding, of course, all the tens of things that have been done around the house).”

Never mind that the bed has been made 99.9% of the time but on this day wasn’t for whatever reason…

And each time it’s said, I bore holes through his eyes (whether he’s looking directly at me or not).

The most annoying thing is that “How come” is always said with an air of dominance.

I used to confront my husband regarding these transgressions of mine. But that only made him feel even more superior.

What the question really is – is a trap.

If I answer that the bed wasn’t made because I had to leave early for an appointment, he would come back with – “What do you mean by early?” As he gets up for work at 4:15 a.m. So anything later than that, in essence, is clearly not “early.”

Likewise, if I said there isn’t any spray cleaner because I recently purchased several different cleaners – one in a bottle, let’s say, and one to be put on the end of a wand (those toilet scrubbers that I discovered are useful for EVERYTHING), I’d still me met with why isn’t there a certain cleaner that needs to meet his exact needs at that exact moment.

How come? How come?

Really, he’s not looking for an actual answer. Because, really, none would actually suffice. Any excuse or reason would be immediately brushed away, as nothing would be good enough to satisfy his question.

How come? How come?

I want to ask – How come you’re so skinny? How come you never decide on something until the last minute? How come you have the TV up so incredibly loud?

How come???

I sometimes think this whole big Christmas holiday is one big pain in the ass.

The pressure of making memories with parents and kids has put a lot of stress on me over the years.

Rather, it’s the regular days I enjoy most.

It’s the lunches at the restaurant by the outlet mall where my mom and I get the chicken and grape salad sandwich served on cranberry bread after shopping. It’s my dad coming out to bring treats for our pups and the big smile on his face as our dog Toby tackles him at the door.

It’s the text messages asking each other how our week is going and the visits to the arboretum for a brisk 1K. It’s reminiscing about our old pets and the girls on the softball teams I used to play with.

Same goes for my immediate family.

Even though my kids are older I never tire of watching them open their presents on Christmas Day.

But the shopping trips with Eva before the new school year starts? Priceless. Not to mention the pizza and movie nights at home with all four of us on the couch (plus two dogs, of course). It’s also the half-hour drives to Costco alone with my husband where we hold hands in the truck while discussing politics or listening to a true crime podcast.

Memories seem to happen in the ordinariness of life.

I say it’s OK to…be just OK with Christmas.

It sounds cliché, but this Thanksgiving I was truly thankful for my family.

And by that I mean my immediate family. Mostly for my husband, who has instilled logical thinking not only in our children but in me. I’m convinced that if I was married to almost anyone else I wouldn’t have been able to get through this “pandemic” as sanely as I have.

I’m thankful that the four of us are living under the same roof during this time. I’m thankful that we all get along (well-enough) to have enjoyed being around each other’s company Thanksgiving Day.

I have a lot to be grateful for, especially concerning my cancer diagnosis and recovery earlier this year. And part of that was due to everyone here, including me, staying calm and logical throughout my treatment.

So this Thanksgiving, I was thankful for logical and my stalwart husband.

This Christmas may end up being the same, with the four of us staying home alone, if our parents want to stay hidden. And that’s fine – it will be their choice.

But whether we get to celebrate with them or not, I’m going to continue to embrace this holiday season with my immediate family. Play more games and watch more movies together.

We may even sit around and discuss our latest favorite topic – how ridiculous this whole lockdown really is.