What does money matter?

What does money matter?

I love the BBC Archive channel and I have posted videos from there before. There is always a fascinating array of videos from the past and while not all of them are of interest to me, there are always a few here and there that pique my interest. I loved this one comparing the lives of two Glasweigian women in 1974 and the stark differences between what it means to have money and to not have money.

I absolutely love that the top comment is from Ina’s son:

For all the comments asking about Ina and what happened to her…

At the time of filming in early 1974, she was living with her parents in Barlanark, Glasgow. She married her boyfriend Jim in 1975 and the had 2 children – a son born in 1977 and a daughter born in 1980.

In 1983, she got her dream home, a new build semi-detached with front, back and side gardens. She said that moving into that house was a dream and it was like being on a caravan holiday as the children could go out to play and the garden was only a few steps away – she had spent her entire life living in flats until then. She was always waiting for the “caravan owner” to come back for his keys! That never happened, as Ina lived there for the rest of her life and Jim still lives there to this day.

Along with the house, those gardens were her pride and joy (after her children) and she spent a lot of her free time planting flowers and cutting the grass. The side garden was on a corner and she loved speaking to neighbours who walked by admiring her (and Jim’s) hard work.

She left the factory job and found her calling in elderly care, she had such a big heart and loved to look after people. Ina & Jim went on to have a good life together, they worked hard, had a lovely home and enjoyed going on holidays.

Friends and family tried to get hold of this footage around Ina’s 40th birthday but were told it had been destroyed.

As you see in the programme, she loved knitting and enjoyed it throughout her life. In her later years she spent a lot of her time knitting hats, mittens and bootees for new born babies that she donated to Princess Royal Maternity in Glasgow.

In later life, Ina had 3 grandchildren who she adored…..and she loved nothing better than playing with them in her back garden.

Ina passed away in May 2020 during the first COVID lockdown, and all the restrictions that came with that meant only 20 people could be at her funeral – there would have been hundreds there in “normal” times. Her ashes are buried in her beloved back garden.

How do I know all of this? I’m her son, Paul – my sister Dawn and I have watched this video on repeat in the last few days since we became aware of it. We visited my dad and watched it together, including the grandchildren…..not a dry eye in the house (Ina’s house!) and my dad let us into a few secrets around the filming of the programmes.

We are all so proud of my mum, where she came from, the life she carved out for herself and the start she gave us all in life.

Someone else did some digging and found this on Valerie:

“Valli” was the nom de course of Valerie Stack, a 1970s saloon racer, and Biba model, who managed to claim some good race finishes and a string of lap records too. She raced between 1975 and 1977, driving an MG Midget, Lotus Europa and Triumph TR7 with Biba sponsorship.

Her name first became known in motorsport circles in 1975, for reasons not related to her on-track performance. She was photographed sunbathing topless at Mallory Park, and the pictures were published in the British motoring press. Valli was already working as a model, and at that time, was in a relationship with racer and track owner, Chris Meek. He encouraged her to drive one of his racing cars, and her first track appearance was more of a modelling assignment than a race, just doing some demonstration laps in an MG Midget. Meek saw that she took to the car quite well, and offered her some actual racing, in the Midget. Despite having few ambitions in that direction, she decided to give it a go, and entered the BRSCC Production Sports Car Championship. Her early races were hard work, and some ended in spins, but she was soon picking up class awards, including two at Croft. Biba, the fashion label for which she had modelled, was the main sponsor of her MG Midget, which carried a striking black and gold livery.

Away from motorsport, Valli’s professional life took a different direction in 1976. She moved away from modelling and into music production, working alongside her future husband, Emile Ford, and producing one of his albums. Her relationship with Chris Meek must have been over by then, but he continued to support her in her racing activities. She was active in Production Sports Cars again in 1976, and was one of the leading drivers in her class. She set lap records for production sports cars worth £2000 and under at Brands Hatch, Aintree, Castle Combe, Rufforth and Ingliston.

The BWRDC gave her their award for the most successful woman driver in 1976, as well as its Best Newcomer title.

In 1977, she raced a Triumph TR7 in Production Sports, also owned by Meek and sponsored by Biba. She came second in at least one race, at her favoured circuit of Croft. At some point, she raced a Lotus Europa, again owned by Meek, part of a two-car team with him, but no results are forthcoming.

That year, her name was linked to a Land Speed Record project, Blue Star, led by Dave Gossling. Valli was said to be considering an attempt on Lee Breedlove’s women’s record, by no less than Motor Sport magazine. Drag racer Tony Densham and Formula One driver, David Purley, were linked to the project too, but it never came to fruition, as Dave Gossling was killed in an accident before the car was even built.

Valli retired from motorsport after 1977, following her marriage to Emile Ford and subsequent pregnancy. She is rather an obscure figure now, although she is remembered fondly by some motor racing fans who saw her in action.

She died in 2018, aged 65.

Material World vs. Statistical World

Material World vs. Statistical World

And now a word from our fav Gen Z economist…

This creates two very different worlds – a material world and a statistical world.

For people in the material world: time is real because bills are due Friday and kids need pickup at 3pm. Space is real with a 45-minute commute and you can’t afford to move. Bodies are real with exhaustion and aging. Other humans are necessary – coworkers cover your shifts, friends lend you money.

For people in the statistical world: time is arbitrary. Space is irrelevant. Bodies are optional through bio-hacking and outsourced physical labor. Other humans are signals understood through sentiment and labor market data.

Claude and a hedge fund manager are similar. They find patterns and maximize outcomes. The human understands the machine because of the work they do. And because this hedge fund manager exists statistically, they’re naturally drawn to AI – which also exists statistically. The eagerness we see in some of these breathless takes is finding something that shares your ontology.

That’s why people who exist statistically think AI is evolution.

The people who exist materially think this is apocalypse.

And rightly so, as the material world continues to suffer.

– Kyla Scanlon, Buying Futures, Renting the Past: How Speculation and Nostalgia Became the Economy

Emergencies are easier with money

Emergencies are easier with money


If you haven’t watched Big Mouth, do yourself a solid and get on it STAT!

We knew that our car needed a new battery. Mr. Tucker was told this in the fall when we had the winter tires put on. He had planned to do it at the end of January when we were due to get the oil changed (this is what they call “foreshadowing”). So neither of us were shocked when it hit -35c this past weekend and the battery died on the car. Of course, we figured this out when Mr. Tucker headed out to warm up the car before taking The Youngest to roller derby but at least it gave him enough time to call a cab and get her there.

As he sat in the gym with a lukewarm coffee and his kindle, I suggested that since he was in the south end anyway that he should just rent a car from the airport (pro tip: in general, airports always have the cheapest prices on rentals). So he did just that and then ran the errands he wanted to while he waited for derby to be finished.

Renting the car meant that we could get The Youngest to her snowboarding job the next morning as well as get The Eldest and I to our skiing (her volunteering and me participating) commitment on Sunday. Without even blinking, I just thought, “throw money at the problem.”

You know what’s nice? Being able to throw money at the problem. I remember that there was a time in my life where a dead battery would have been devastating for me. Not only could I not afford to rent a car but I also probably would have not had the money to spend on fixing the battery. I would have just thrown it on credit and paid a premium to do so. Instead, we dropped The Eldest and her friend off on Monday morning at school (it’s exams this week), jumped the car with our rechargeable car battery jumper (everyone should have one of these), brought the car in, and then Mr. Tucker and I hit a diner for a hot breakfast date. As luck would have it, the car was done within the hour and so we nabbed it and dropped the rental off, swinging by on our way back to The Eldest’s school as she was finished writing her exam. It was all serendipitous timing and we were home by noon.

I am just so grateful that we are in a place in our lives where we don’t even have to think twice about spending money to make our lives easier. It’s so freeing to not have to live on the edge and worry about how you are going to get everyone to the places they need to be. I just wanted to take a hot minute and be thankful for this and I never want to not be grateful that we’re in this place in our lives.

Th…th…that’s all folks!

Th…th…that’s all folks!

Well today I made the *very last* contribution to The Youngest’s RESP![1] The goal was to a> maximize the government grants; b> be able for the kids to do a 4-year university degree IF they lived at home and chose a school in the city. As of today, that is a fait accompli.

I am so proud of Mr. Tucker and I for managing this. We wanted our children to be able to get an education debt free and (theoretically) we have achieved that. It feels like an incredible milestone for us and probably one of the best gifts we could ever give our children. I hope they appreciate it and use this opportunity to jump-start their lives.

[1]The Eldest’s was fully funded last year

No resolutions in January. Theme of 2026? Scholarship

No resolutions in January. Theme of 2026? Scholarship


Ganked from Austin Kleon

One of the creators whose content I adore is by the writer/artist Austin Kleon[1]. He posted the gem above last week and it blew my mind. It just is an absolutely sensical way to go gently into the new year. It also gives people (especially parents who need to start school/activities again and get back on schedule!) a wee break and time to consider what they want to focus on in the new year after the chaos of the holidays. Also, if I remember correctly, there is often a steep drop-off in interest after the first month for the more popular resolutions, which may make it easier to stick to if you aren’t elbow-to-elbow with people at the gym or if you can get into the classes you’d like to take.

Also, check out how February lines up into four perfect weeks:


Starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Perfection!

You say there’s gonna be a resolution, weh-hell, you know…

I don’t really have a resolution set for 2026. I do have a theme though, and that is the theme of scholarship. Basically, I want to do a deep dive into a variety of topics that I have always meant to learn more about.

After a year of re-calibrating the brain meats by staying off most social media (or social media, mostly – as it were) I realize that most of my problems stemmed from the fact that I’d find myself in a comment spiral. I was addicted to the conversations on social media which gave me a hollowed out version of two things I love: being social and debating. I would get dopamine hits from having rousing debates with friends online – especially during the years when my kids were young and I couldn’t get out as much. But I also came to terms with the fact that it also brought too many negatives: arguments between friends-of-friends, the nonstop highlight reel of negativity, the hours I spent glued to a platform that was serving up less content that I wanted to see and more slop and ads.

I read a lot in 2025 and now in 2026 I want to hone in and learn more about *specific* topics. Delving into Celtic history is high on that list. I also want to continue to work on my drawing and watercolour skills, which I think is just me doing more practice. Part of this is also setting up a well-lit workspace to be able to work in which is separate from my computer space in the shared office. I want to reduce the friction of working on my analog projects and increase the friction of just flopping down and reading/watching internet content all day.

Of course, I really ramped up the social events in 2025 and I plan to absolutely continue that into 2026.

Budgety

It feels weird to just…coast? To not have any financial goals or to have to think about money?

Mr. Tucker and I sat down and discussed how weird it was to have achieved everything we set out to achieve: our house & our car are paid, the kids have enough in their RESPs to each do a 4 year undergraduate degree, we have savings and investments, we’ve pre-planned our funerals, we gave my stepson some money to help him get his financial house in order as he turns 30 this month, and we basically are content with what we have. So what next?

We decided to use the money from Mr. Tucker’s work to save up for a cruise around the world. Of course, it wouldn’t happen until The Youngest is 18 and off to post-secondary, which gives us two years to save and figure out a game plan. We also would probably only want to leave for 4 months or less because that’s as much time as I can see me being away from home. We’ve only done a couple of 1 month trips so it would be a big leap for us. So essentially, the plan is to see the world over a few years – in 4 month increments at a time.

Milestones

It is a big year for our entire family:
My Stepson turns 30
The Eldest turns 18
The Youngest turns 16
Mr. Tucker and I will celebrate our 20 year wedding anniversary

I suspect we will spend a lot of our time celebrating our children and not celebrating our anniversary but that’s ok. We celebrate our marriage every day, really. But our kids will only get these big milestones once. My Stepson will be moving in with his girlfriend and opening a new restaurant, The Eldest is graduating high school and off to university in the fall, and The Youngest will be celebrating her Sweet 16 and getting her driver’s license in the spring. So it will be a busy year full of life events. I am excited.

I guess that is part of the reason why I am not really leaning into a lot of personal change right now: because life will be full of changes this year anyway. To be honest, I am so proud of all of our children and what amazing people they are that even though I am a bit sad and nostalgic, I am glad they are growing up and starting to live their own lives, seperate from us. This is, after all, the goal of successful parenting.

[1] I won’t ever spend money on Substack because a> they platform nazis, b> their payment tiers are ridiculous, c> no social media company is gonna save us – and have we not learned this lesson? But if you don’t have the same reservations, then I highly recommend his content! Also, you can just do what I did and buy his books. Here is a handy dandy link to his stuff on Bookshop.org.

Reflections on 2025

Reflections on 2025


Happy Thule rack season to all who celebrate!

Last year I did do some goal setting so I supposed I should follow up on those before I speak about what is in store for 2026.

The condo and work: we said goodbye to our tenant in August (he paid up until the end of his lease) and then sold the condo 9 days after his lease expired. We then bought some new real estate which we will pay for (interest-free!) until November of this year.

Mr. Tucker lost another coworker to restructuring last month, which is infuriating but the writing is on the wall for this company, it seems. He continues to stick it out until the bitter end. With the condo gone, and our savings/emergency/retirement accounts at a good amount, we are less concerned about what the future holds.

Personal Renaissance (formerly known as the mid-life crisis): My medication is still helping me exponentially but I can see myself switching it up, maybe later this year. I still have continued to spend more on personal care than I ever have in my entire life but you know what? It’s nice! My skin and nails feel so much nicer and I like how much I have changed in the last year.

In July I had this reoccurring stomach pain that I just couldn’t shake. One day at the beginning of August I got up and showered and it made me so tired and weak that I found myself in the emergency room. As it turns out, I had kidney stones blocking my ureter and my kidney was mondo inflamed. I got there at noon (I had a fever of 107F!), saw a doctor by 1:30pm, had a CT scan at 2pm, saw the Urologist by 2:30pm and was in surgery for a stent at 3:30pm. The Urologist told me that had the stones actually managed to lodge themselves in my ureter and scrape the sides, I probably would have had full body sepsis. So they put in a stent and kept me in the hospital for FIVE days as they tried to get the fever down. Once they cultured and figured out what bacteria I had, they could target it with specific antibiotics. Meanwhile, I lay in bed covered in ice packs and the only thing that would even touch my fever was 1000mg of Tylenol (why they don’t just say 1g, I will never know). It was a weird time as I was never truly awake or asleep. I think it was also scary to think that it took so long to fight the infection. It was a real wake-up call for me as I came to terms with the fact that as a person turning 50 that year, my body would take a lot longer to heal. I am still reckoning with that knowledge. At any rate, all is well that ends well and once the infection cleared, I had another procedure to break up and remove the stones and I go back this month for another CT scan to make sure all is clear.

Just as a side note, I have often heard of folks saying kidney stones were the worst pain they’ve ever had. But honestly, pre-hysterectomy (warning: graphic descriptions of a medical procedure) I lived through hellacious pain every month for 2-3 days where sometimes I barely could get out of bed. Compared to menstrual cramps, kidney stones were a walk in the park. I think this is also why I didn’t think they were kidney stones? Because the pain was at a level I had considered manageable comparatively, it just didn’t track in my head as a possibility.

This year I also turned 50 and threw myself a banger of a party!

Budgety 2025: What no one really talks about is how just out of sorts you feel when you’ve achieved all of your goals. I have spent most of my life setting goals, vacillating in and out of the spend/save cycle and managing finances that when we finally “made it,” all I could think of was, “well what now?” I still look in our accounts periodically as a metaphorical way of pinching myself to make sure that yes, we really do have savings and investments and I didn’t just dream it. Even if we didn’t save another penny we could just coast to 65 and have enough to support our simple little life.

I will pay the last instalment on The Youngest’s RESP this month to get the maximum grant from the government, so that is a line item off of our budget.

We also paid for The Youngest to get her CASI Level 1 training to become a snowboard instructor, which she passed! She has also been hired by a local company to teach snowboarding one day a week.

The Eldest passed her driving test and can now drive on her own – a fact that she is taking full advantage of! Her insurance as third driver is more than the insurance for both Mr. Tucker *and* I! I only make her pay $30 a month though, mostly to get her used to paying a bill. She also pays her own gas.

The Eldest also got into university and will be heading off to a co-op program in the fall – and she will be staying in residence. Mr. Tucker and I are shocked at how hard this has hit us even though we were the ones who encouraged her to go to residence for the first year! I feel like the kids who lived through Covid probably use the boost of living on campus and managing their lives. So even though she could live at home, I think she will benefit hugely from having the full university experience.

You have to kick at the darkness… Man, what a year politically, eh? I have to say: giving up facebook[1] and instagram is the gift that keeps on giving. I have no regrets about leaving social media at all. I am as informed and as outraged as I want to be, thanks – and in fact, being less informed and less outraged would be even better but WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY, I guess.

I managed to do more trivia nights and more craft nights with friends. We played cards more as a family after dinner and I read more books than I have in a long time. I took an art class and liked it a lot and we did a bunch of one-off, learn-a-new-craft evenings various art businesses in the area. We saw friends for dinner – some friends we hadn’t even seen in years (& it is definitely something I want to do more of!). Also, since 3 people in my friend’s group turned 50 there were also more parties this year – and I am not mad about it! I just did more *social* stuff in general this year and plan to continue this trend into 2026.

Overall it feels like our kids are old enough and mature enough now that we can bring back some more social events into our lives, it’s a giant sigh of relief as we feel like we have more breathing room and more space to pay attention to our friends – and even work on building new friendships. Also, one of my oldest and dearest friends is moving here from the US and the start of 2026 is going to focus a lot on getting her set up and feeling loved and supported in her new home.

I guess the next post will be more about what my goals are for 2026!

[1] I still have an account as I do like having access to community groups, Buy Nothing groups and Marketplace but I legit check it for 5 minutes and my main feed is all slop so nothing encourages me to be there.

The consumption ritual

The consumption ritual


Where those hauls end up

“You’re scrolling. Your thumb stops on a woman with forty-two Stanley cups arranged by color on custom shelving like a shrine. A $45 tumbler, designed to be reusable, purchased forty-two times because hydration became an aesthetic. You keep scrolling.

A cooking creator wraps a five-pound block of cheese in bacon, deep-fries it, takes one bite. The rest goes in the trash. Everyone knows. He knows we know. You keep scrolling.

The phone in your hand like a rosary. The altar of the algorithm. An ad every third video like a tithe.

The Labubu dolls. The Temu hauls. The Shein hauls. Twenty-five items of clothing for $57. Clothes so cheap they’re not meant to survive a washing machine.

Your ring camera blinks. A package on the porch. There’s a smudge on the lens, or maybe it’s raining. You don’t remember ordering anything.

Something is wrong. We can feel it.”

Jermaine Fowler for The Humanity Archive

Yuletide & Gregorian new year

Yuletide & Gregorian new year

Yet another Yule has come and gone. In November, I generally wrap up all of the gift-buying I need to do, head to a local greenhouse for evergreens to decorate our home and so I start December being able to focus on friends and family events. Besides, it is our family’s favourite time of year: Advent calendar season! My kids prefer microdosing Christmas with Advent calendars rather than getting big gifts on Christmas morning, so we put a lot of energy into that.

After a lacklustre experience with expensive store-bought calendars, Mr. Tucker and I started making our own last year and the kids LOVE them. The days are mixed up with more expensive treats (ie: a locally made jewellery tray) interspersed with less expensive things (bulk purchased face masks) and every day is a surprise – often to me, too, as I always forget what I’ve put in there! We also do the used book calendars for all four of us – keeping what looks interesting and then returning the rest to the used book store. This year I also nabbed a chocolate calendar from Ikea which was fun but I think next year I may opt for one from an actual chocolatier so that there is less marzipan (we all loathe marzipan).

The first weekend of December found me heading up to Almonte for their Light Up the Night event. My friend’s husband said it best, “It’s a family event that is cheesy in all the right ways!” We headed up to my friend Katherine’s place and nabbed a Swiss Chalet Festive Feast for dinner (a Canadian classic!) before heading downtown. It was actually a pretty lovely evening hosted by Wayne Rostad (I didn’t even know he was still alive) who opened with his song, “Christmas in the Valley” (which I had also somehow erased from my memory!). Almonte is a lovely little town that is famous for being Christmastown, USA in many Hallmark films.

The weekend was also slam-packed because I ended up taking two lovely craft classes with my friend, Kri. On the Saturday we made our own wreaths as a fundraiser for a local charity. On the Sunday, we headed to a local pottery studio with our daughters to create our own gingerbread house votive holders out of clay. Both were amazing days with friends and a great way to kick off the holiday season.

The second weekend of December found The Youngest kickstarting the snowboard season with a trip to Mont Blanc for some training. It was also the weekend to bake cupcakes for The Mission for their Christmas dinner on Sunday night. Locals sign up to bake approximately 3000 cupcakes every year and we’ve contributed for many years now. During the week was The Eldest’s winter band concert featuring such timeless winter classics as “Sharp Dressed Man” by ZZ Top and Camila Cabello’s “Havana”(WHAT?). The next day was my actual birthday so we went to AYCE Sushi with the kids as it’s their favourite (and I had already had my party the month before).

The third weekend had The Youngest take her three-day course to become a snowboarding instructor – she passed the teaching, but failed the riding. She will do a retest day soon. The Eldest had to also take a tethering training course as she is volunteering this year with Canadian Adaptive Snowsports (CADS) as a ski instructor. I also made a bunch of cookies for the kids to give away to friends. I made: chocolate chai, peppermint, London fog with white chocolate, pistachio, chocolate espresso swirl, and Skor chip.

We also hosted our yearly Winter Solstice party where we did collage bookmarks as a craft and tossed our wishes for the upcoming year into the fire. Winter Solstice is one of my favourite days of the year that I get to spend with some of my favourite people. It was an absolutely wonderful night full of food, friends, warmth…and a nice sprinkling of sparkling wine with a shot of summer fruit-infused brandy. I love that my children and my friend’s children all lean into how special Solstice is.

Of course, heading into the forth weekend, we hit Christmas proper en passant. For Réveillion we have my Dad and his partner over along with my cousin and his partner. We keep it simple, usually ordering Chinese food and laughing over drinks. Unfortunately, people are onto us and are also ordering Chinese food on Christmas Eve so it was a two hour wait. Next year I think I will just do a bucket of chicken or maybe just go with the more traditional Tourtière. In our efforts to uncomplicate family hangouts we have inadvertently made the food portion take too long. It was fine, we exchanged gifts, told stories and laughed but the lack of food had us in our cups way too early (lesson learned!).

Christmas morning saw Mr. Tucker and I get up early, make a fire, light the tree and enjoy a quiet morning with our mugs of coffee while our teenagers slept. We finally got them up around 10:30am and they got to open their gifts. Now, The Youngest only wanted ONE thing for Christmas and OF COURSE they don’t ship to Canada (they used to but with the tariffs everything became so complicated that they stopped). BUT one of my oldest friends, ShanBoo was coming up from Connecticut for Christmas to visit her parents. So on the 23rd, her, her husband, their tween and two dogs drove north in a snowstorm for 12 hours delivering Santa’s good cheer. So on Christmas Eve we drove to her parent’s place (bearing gifts of scones because they deserve it!) to pick it up. The Youngest was so sure that we couldn’t make it happen that she was over-the-moon (the Crooked Moon, in fact) to discover that Santa had pulled a miracle out of his butt and delivered the RPG she coveted. We spent the rest of the day eating leftover Chinese food and reading books. Since we made the decision to not do a huge family Christmas anymore and instead just hang out just the four of us it has really brought back my love of the day.

On Boxing day, the Stepson and his girlfriend came over for our little Christmas get-together. Every year Mr. Tucker and the Stepson cook a special meal together on Boxing Day and we drink way too much wine and catch up. I had bought them some liquor and wine from my trip to Prince Edward County in November (which I haven’t written about but I should!), including a lovely strawberry vodka and a red sparkling wine. While the men cooked, the kids, his girlfriend Kim and I all played Euchre. They also brought caviar but it was a HARD PASS for me as it’s not my cup of tea.

The forth weekend saw us heading out to a hockey game and starting to settle in to the Twixmas season of nothing days. I, personally, needed a recovery from all of the heavy food and wine as I had been mostly eating chocolate, meat and cheese. So I have been spending a lot of time by the fire, drinking tea and reading books (I have many library books out – as usual!).

Of course, everything came to a head on New Year’s Eve. Mr. Tucker and I headed out to the produce store to load up with fresh fruit and veggies so that we’d start the new year off right. Then I took a nap (I am 50! I can’t stay up until midnight without a nap!) before we headed out to our friends – The Shelidans – place for a trivia-themed party! It was an incredible night and I had a wonderful time. I met some new people and joined their team (which gave us +25 stranger points!). The team was so well rounded with everyone knowing almost all of the questions. In the end – WE WON! Even without the stranger bonus we won by 4.5 points so I am not mad about it! I think it helped that I was sober because some of the rounds went super quick. It was so well organized, everyone was lovely and it was the perfect way to ring in the new year.

New Year’s Day and we were just lazy. Today I booked Mr. Tucker and I in for massages (to start the new year off right!) and tonight will be – you guessed it – fire, tea and books. I am, afterall, predictable. I will at some point do a review of the past year and discuss the year ahead but for now I am just going to chill out, eat some vegetables and catch up on some reading.

It’s my party and I can plan it if I want to

It’s my party and I can plan it if I want to

This year marks my 50th trip around the sun. It’s a milestone birthday for most people in general but in January it will be 8 years since I got diagnosed with PLS, so it’s a little more special to me. Since PLS is a disease of exclusion, one of the things they can’t exclude is ALS. So for people like me, they are given a temporary diagnosis of PLS until a> they can confirm lower motor neuron involvement; or b> you get past the 5-7 year mark where they are more confident that it is PLS[1]. So like I said: a milestone.

So for my 50th birthday I wanted to have a BIG party and I wanted to invite all of the amazing friends & family who have supported me over the past 8 years. I wanted to rent a venue, have it catered, get the world’s most delicious donuts instead of cake, and hang out with lovely folks.

And I got my wish. I got my wish because I planned the entire goddamn thing myself!

Now, when folks learned that I was turning 50 this year, so many of them asked me, “Is Mr. Tucker planning anything for your big day?” It’s a natural thing to ask given that the expectation is that for special milestone events someone is supposed to plan it for you and if at all possible, it should be a surprise. But I have always felt that this expectation doesn’t play to people’s strengths and at best leads to disappointment and at worst, anger and resentment.

Mr. Tucker is a lot of things: a wonderful husband and father, to be sure. He cooks almost all of our meals. He will run errands. He will wash, fold and put away all of the laundry. He is a man who will not leave a kitchen dirty overnight and he always makes sure the coffee is set up for the next morning. He will see that the floors are covered with dog hair and will just vacuum them. He even gave me the loveliest (and unexpected) Eiffel Tower proposal[2]. But I will tell you what he is bad at: finances and planning. Those are my wheelhouse.

I have long believed that the road to relationship ruin is paved with unfair expectations (usually promoted by some cultural trope we should have long left in the dust). I know that Mr. Tucker is wonderful in many ways. I also know that he is absolutely shit at party planning. Had we gone along with the expectation that if he rEaLlY lOvEd Me he’d plan a banger of a birthday bash, we both would have been left miserable and disappointed. Why would I do that to both of us when I could just…plan the party I wanted, get exactly what I wanted and then if things fell apart, I’d only have myself to blame?

So that’s what I did!

My Dad booked the venue for me because he is a member of the club where we held it and he got a deal on the location.

My stepson is a chef and he catered the entire party full of new recipes he was trying.

I ordered donuts AND I booked a photobooth with the idea that I would put together a book for myself to remind me of the night. People got the photos sent to their phones in real time, which was also a fun thing for them to have.

Mr. Tucker picked up the decorations, the plates/cutlery (compostable) and did all of the tech support for the music, lights and microphone.

To get the various folks in my life out of their shells and mingling with each other, I created a HUMAN SCAVENGER HUNT. The key was that you had to answer with someone who you don’t know and that you couldn’t put down the same name twice. It was full of questions such as:
– Find the person who travelled the furthest to be here
– Find someone who has worked with me
– Find someone who works in the same field as you
– Find someone I went to high school with
– Find someone who works as a lawyer (ok, I know a lot of lawyers – sue me, I am covered!)
– I have travelled to over 25 countries. Find someone who has travelled to more.
Honestly, the game was an absolute riot! Some friends dove right in and embraced it while others were way too apprehensive but were still approached by others. I offered four prizes (done by draw) and I would 100% do this game again.

About 80 people came and it filled my heart to see all of these amazing folks in the same room together. It’s also a bit of a downside because I couldn’t speak to people as much as I wanted but I knew that would be one of the trade-offs for having a large event.

All in all, the party took me two days to recover from because it left me so exhausted (motor neurons being easily frazzled after all). But it was 100% worth it. As a bonus, one of my oldest and dearest friends flew in from Pittsburgh for the weekend and we got to spend a ton of time together. So many people travelled a distance to come to the party in general that it made me feel amazing to have such great friends.

Overall, I got exactly what I wanted, my marriage stayed intact and I look forward to not planning another large event for another 10 years!

In the esteemed words of Fleetwood Mac: you can go your own way![3]

[1] ”But…but…but I once heard of someone getting diagnosed after 20 years! You could get diagnosed at any time!” Sure, there are always going to be outliers who buck the trend. Also, of course, no one can name this person but they’ve HEARD online it so it must be true. This is why I have generally why I don’t go into online support communities: it’s rife with drama and low quality info.

[2] It was such a shocker to me that tbqh it’s probably a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rest of his life. I am difficult to surprise.

[3] OFC this was also on my playlist!