Words On Wednesday

To celebrate Thursday Thursday Eve falling on Christmas Day, I wanted to feature a drink that really felt like Christmas in a cup. After some digging, I found the Coquito . A lot of times, when people think of Christmas, they picture that Hallmark movie set with snow everywhere and people bundled up. Problem is, this is South Carolina. Most years, Christmas is sunny with a high of 65. It ain’t cold. It ain’t even really cool. I usually end up wearing shorts and a t-shirt and it’s comfortable. If we lived somewhere cold, spiced buttered rum would be perfect. Instead, I wanted something cold, ideally something I could share with my cousins while we fry the turkey out back. That normally looks like a bottle of some whiskey that we stick in the back of my truck and mix with whatever soda is available. Surely I could find something a little more celebratory. I skimmed through a few lists of Christmas cocktail ideas, but none of them really seemed to fit what I wanted. Either they had a lau...

I really wanted to write up some big post about Christmas, but… I’ll be honest. It’s not going to happen. This whole “Year of the Dates” initiative I took with Words On Wednesday was almost geared specifically toward Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday, and obviously the one that I would speak the most about. Unfortunately, I am just so spent, I can’t even be bothered to write up a discussion of why I like Christmas so much, or talk about our family traditions. So far, this term of school has been just the worst. I realize that it’s only my second term at SNHU, but the stark contrast between my first class and this one is just baffling. At this point, I’m just hanging on until the end of the term. As the adage goes, “C’s get degrees.” If I can pass, whatever. I’ll get my reimbursement check from work and continue onto the next class. Shopping is awful anyway, but the fact that we’ve had to do every bit of shopping for basically entire family for our kids is so frustrating. I don’...

The baby face that I have sported for the past few months is about to be engulfed by a big, burly beard of manliness. While I normally keep my facial hair to just a goatee, or occasionally shave it clean, November (and possibly into December or even January) comes the time when I grow it all out in support of testicular cancer awareness (or something like that). In all honesty, my beard isn’t really all that impressive. I grow facial hair ridiculously slow, so it takes a few weeks before anybody can even notice a difference. Day to day, that’s great because I can shave once or twice a week and never look all that scruffy. In November, though… Everybody else has a forest of beard while I still have what some would consider a five o’clock shadow. Last year, I kept growing it out until soon after Christmas. My intent was to get picture proof of my 2-ish month old beard with all the Christmas photos. No Shave November because Don’t Shave December, but fell short of Just Don’t Shave J...

I do not care about Halloween. There, I said it. Everybody I know seems to love Halloween. Tons of people consider it their favorite holiday of the year (as if something could dethrone Christmas). They go to spook trails and haunted houses nearly every weekend during October. They decorate their houses with elaborate graveyard scenes and the like. These people go all out for Halloween, and I just don’t get it. That isn’t to say that I *dislike* Halloween. Before I had kids, we used to go to a spook trail or two each year. If we could get reliable child care now, we probably still would. We take the kids trick or treating, but I feel like that’s a big fuss about nothing when we usually end up throwing away half or more of the candy anyway. Lots of adults I know throw parties for Halloween, but how does that differ from any other weekend during the year besides donning a costume? You want to have some friends over and get trashed, that’s called a normal Friday night for a lot of peo...

In case you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a solar eclipse next week. Considering how rarely they happen, it is a bit of a big deal. Solar eclipses are far from frequent, and being within a few miles of the path of totality is obviously even more rare. It’s something I want to take advantage of, since it won’t happen again for a long time, and next time would require actual travel plans. Glasses Eclipse glasses have been selling like hotcakes everywhere, and most places seem to be completely sold out. Optometrist offices are giving them out to patients only. Any stores with free displays have been out for at least a week at this point. People are going mad on social media trying to figure out other options. My mother asked me 2 weeks ago to grab her a pair from a local apparel store that was advertising free glasses. We were tied up for a few days, so I put it off until some time last week. We went by the store, but the sign on the front door indicated that they were out ...

‘Murica. If I had to describe Independence Day in one word, it would simply be “‘Murica.” I’ve always had a weird relationship with Independence Day, or “the fourth of July” as I tend to hear more often. As a kid, we did Independence Day big. And I don’t mean we went somewhere to see professional fireworks shows. We shot fireworks at home. And not small, gas station fireworks. We had hookups with people who shot professional fireworks, and somehow managed to acquire some of these for our own purposes. As such, I’ve always been intimately familiar with fireworks. That includes the mishaps that can go along with amateur firework shows. We’ve had a dog run by and snatch up an actively firing cake of Saturn Missiles, shooting off as we chased her around the yard. A larger cake of balls with report tipped over once, pointing directly at where the entire audience was seated. Another time, a rocket shot up into a tree and caught the top of the tree on fire. Someone had to climb up an adj...

Father’s Day, as a complement to Mother’s Day, has always been a vastly different holiday. For one, and I’ve mentioned it plenty of times before, my own father has been gone for a decade. I have other male relatives in similar positions, uncles, a grandfather, even other men who have acted as almost surrogate fathers to me, but my own biological father hasn’t been in the picture for years. That sort of absence puts a different sort of spin on the holiday. I don’t want to downplay the roles that any other guys have had in my life, I appreciate them tremendously. Still, it just isn’t quite the same. Beyond that, I myself have been a father for now 4 years. I could never be a mother (obviously), so Father’s Day is more personal to me. Not that I’d want to latch onto it as celebrating me, I feel like that’s entirely too narcissistic. But I feel like it serves to make me evaluate myself, and whether I’m being the best father that I can be for my kids. I’m not perfect, no parent is, but...

Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, and it is a holiday that I have come to appreciate more and more as I’ve gotten older. Growing up, I didn’t really care that much about Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Not that I didn’t love and appreciate my parents, but it was more or less just another day. As a child, each parent got the other a gift. Once I got to the age where I would buy them a gift myself, it was mildly stressful. I’m not good at buying people gifts, so I have a hard time getting something sentimental even for people I’m close to. The first thing that gave me a better appreciation for Mother’s Day was the death of my father. I’ve mentioned it before , but it deserves to be mentioned here. Suddenly going from having both parents to only one really makes you appreciate the remaining parent. I may discuss my father’s absence more, but his death gave me much more gratitude for my own mother, and all she continues to do for me. Into adulthood, I gained even awareness for Moth...