I had chatgpt write a very vanilla Christmas Letter for 2023 from a low-effort prompt. I got what I deserved – an average quality middle school paper. Contemplate this for a moment: two years ago everyone except for a literal handful of people in the whole world would have been astounded that a computer would write a middle school quality paper from a short prompt. Now we are miffed that it can’t do better.
But the bottom line is that I need to go back and fill in voids in the blog now. Manually. Hrmmphh.
Which takes me back to chronicling our December 2023 for the blog. We started the month with house guests. Jo’s friend visited from upstate NY, and Ousier’s cousins visited and they brought their mom too. When I was a newly minted home-owner is the hazy past I had a house mate and when she moved out, another. They were both old friends and it was easy. I assumed that I’d always have a housemate. That was before the idea of being married and having our own rug rats be our semi-permanent house mates had permeated my thick skull. Which is all to say that I like house guests in general and we enjoyed these in particular.
Sometime in the middle of all that it suddenly became cool enough to go camping in Texas. If the night temperatures are above 60 I’m staying home with my air conditioner on. But by the start of December we were predicted to get a few cool nights and Vivian called her friend and the three of us went to Colorado Bend. It turned out to be cooler that night than her friend’s sleeping bag was rated for (I think we went down to the mid-20s) and they had to sleep in a pile to stay warm. The next morning we went for a walk and tramped around for about 10 miles. They loved it. First question on the drive back: when can we do it again?
After a couple more weekends of double headers in San Antonio, one day in mid-December I took a photo of Evan and his Legends team mates. May be it was a really bad photo because on the drive back to Austin after that game Evan said he’d like to take a break from club soccer. That was that and suddenly both of our weekends and three of his weekday evenings opened up. I hear of his friends who are in gymnastics or swimming who practice five mornings or evenings a week and go to a tournament during weekends. God bless them and their parents. We are not them.
Speaking on Evan’s friends I got to see them all a few days later. Months ago Jo forgot to put a “not” after “do” when she was asked what school activities she would volunteer for (I’m serious). So she ended up organizing the middle school Winter Dance. Evan and his student government friends helped her set up. And I was volunteered by Jo to be the photographer. I patiently stood at my camera in front of the photo backdrop while 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in singles and groups of up to 20-30 showed up and posed for the camera. The insta generation loves a camera.
Before we knew it, Christmas Eve was here. Staying with tradition, Carol and Sadie came over. Vivian helped Carol make her famous chicken dumpling soup and Jo and I didn’t argue if a chicken in a young hen or any hen. On Christmas morning we opened our gifts and had a good time. Here are the memorable gifts: Vivian gave me a caving trip and three days later I got to spend three hours deep underground, squirming through tight holes and sloshing into cold dark subterranean pools. Evan gave Jo a “30 Day no complain pass” and then didn’t complain (at least not very much) for the next 30 days and we all enjoyed that very much. And Jo gave Carol an electric trike. She took it for a spin down the street right away and loved it. The bike had arrived in boxes and Jo had assumed that it would be semi-assembled. It wasn’t. We didn’t have to mold the tires from rubber granules but we pretty much assembled everything else. There were screws that were fastened with screws. My guess is that the company that makes the tricycle is really a screw company and to increase their sales of screws they created a bike made up wholly of screws. Anyway, that’s how I ended up spending Christmas Eve in the garage with Vivian joining me for hours at a time (the day before that I took a 15 hour trip to California for my friend FT’s birthday).
Then we loaded up the trike and the kids and dogs and Grandma and headed down to Nicolle’s where we were joined by more kids and dogs. We ended the day as we usually do by celebrating Carol’s birthday. Vivian had made set of fake flowers for Carol and it was well received. Carol’s hand-made “head towels” for everyone was her gift and I wish I had a picture of all of us in the head towels.
Back in ATX we finally had a backyard and a swimming pool after months and months of construction. We inaugurated the hot tub on cold night and had friends over for a quiet NYE party. Vivian and her friends braved the cold and took a polar plunge into the pool as the clock struck midnight. And quite suddenly it was a different month and a new year and perhaps a future blog post.
Notes from Dad 