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The Big Dirt Nap

The Big Dirt Nap


“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a burial plot.” – Me, with apologies to Jane Austen

Once the dust had settled on the condo closing we turned our attention to other things. The priority – since our life circumstances had changed – was to update our wills to reflect the fact that we no longer owned Balconville. We also needed to update the executors and since The Eldest turns 18 in March, we wanted something that would acknowledge that she will be a legal adult. The next priority? Pre-planning our funerals.

I guess I am a pragmatic person and while I do have a lot of superstitious thoughts rolling around my head (“Great! Watch us now die in a fiery wreck on our way home!”) my more practical inclinations tend to win out. My logic here was to prevent the kids from having to scramble to make arrangements for us under duress. If we pre-planned and pre-paid, then the kids would know down to the letter what our wishes are. Our final gift to them would be removing that burden. This way, the choices were already made and they just have to show up to the celebration of life with some sandwiches.

Location, location, location!
I used to imagine that I would be buried alongside my maternal line in the east end of the city. It is an old cemetery full of history and many of my family members are buried there, including my grandmother who I was incredibly close to. But when I sat down and thought about it, since I am estranged from that side of the family it made more sense to create new traditions and let the past be the past. Also, it is a Catholic cemetery and while I was raised in that faith, Mr. Tucker was raised in the United church and while he didn’t care either way (“Why would I care! I’ll be dead!”) it felt weird to me to make him go to a place that reflected more of my history than it did our shared life together. So, Mr. Tucker and I made the decision to strike out on our own and choose our final resting place to reflect the area we spent most of our lives in. We ended up choosing a place closer to our home, in a nondenominational cemetery.

Both Mr. Tucker’s parents and my patrilineal side have plots (at what once was…) out of town, on the edge of the city. It is also nondenominational (scandalously – my father’s parents were of different faiths, so when they got married only one Catholic priest in the city would agree to marry them!) but alas, it is way too far out of town. It’s also a super inconvenient spot to get to and quite frankly, should the kids end up moving out of the city I want them to be able to come back and visit our graves close to the area they grew up in. They may not even visit our graves but I still wanted to make it as convenient as possible. Conversely, I have a friend who bought plots in the country, nearby to where her father grew up because the area is important to her. We all have a different thought process for our final resting place and there are no wrong answers.

The process
To be fair, neither of us have ever planned a funeral or purchased a plot before so when I reached out to the Remembrance service, we agreed to meet up to discuss. There is a lot that goes into planning your BIG DIRT NAP but most falls into two categories: the arrangements and the plot itself. Both can be as simple as you’d like or as complex as you’d like depending on your personal tastes and your budget.

We met up on a weekday to discuss our plans with a Funeral Director named Michelle. I have to say, she was incredible. There is this notion that somehow all funeral homes are out to squeeze as much money out of you as possible but this couldn’t be further from our experience. Most places have their pricing listed right on their website so you can comparision shop fairly easily. In fact, once we had the basics down, she gave us the simplest option as possible for a cremation: two urns, a small headstone and a Celebration of Life. We could have gone with a flat plaque or a pillow style of marker but I did want a headstone that was upright.



A pillow is on an angle, a bit off the ground


A plaque is directly on the earth

The services and the service
Mr. Tucker and I don’t want an elaborate religious service so we opted for a two hour Celebration of Life where family and friend could come pay their respects. The internment itself would be limited to family afterwards. The entire process from picking up the body, to dealing with remains to the service is $6336.63 per person and is broken down by the following choices:

The taxes excluded portion
$895 – Staff/Professional Services
$400 – Administration
$575 – Transport
$475 – Documentation
$395 – Shelter
$700 – Reception
$425 – Visitation Staff
$685 – Basic Urn
$5147.15 (4555 +592.15 taxes)

Taxes all-in portion
$52.28 – Municipal Death Registration Fee
$75 – Coroner’s Fee
$1062.20 – Cremation
1189.40
$6336.55 – Grand total for the services for both of us

Plotting our forever home



“Oooh! We get cremated in a pine box!” Nick said.
“Not even,” Michelle countered. “It’s fiberboard.”
“Works for me!” he said.

Originally when Michelle priced it out, she did the cheapest area with a headstone which was my requirement as Mr. Tucker had no opinion (“Why would I care! I’ll be dead!”) in a place called the Urn Garden. It sounded good to me and was placed up some lovely rock steps under a giant tree. It looked lovely in photos so it seemed like that was what we’d go with. Michelle encouraged us to go have a look when we were leaving to give us an idea of how the layout was. The plot itself had space for two urns and was approximately $11000 bringing the total to a little over $23000 for both of us.

When the meeting ended, we left the main building we headed up to the Urn Garden to have a look at the space. It was a gorgeous area even in dark and dreary November. But there were two issues from my point of view that made it less than an ideal choice: the plots were so close together that you couldn’t even turn a wheelchair around, or even go and pay your respects without being right up against someone else’s gravestone. Finally – and this probably seems like a weird one to most people – the only headstone colour choices that were allowed here were pink and grey.

When I saw that, I balked. Mr. Tucker of course didn’t really care either way (“Why would I care! I’ll be dead!”) but I was unhappy. I wanted the option for a black headstone and to have a more traditional spacing for the plot. Also, I wanted to be as close to the end of a row as possible. I have memories of traversing the cemetery my family is buried in every year on Mother’s Day for years as we always forgot the locations of my grandmother and great-grandmother’s graves. I wanted it to be as easy to find as possible.


We went home and emailed Michelle and asked her for other options. She got back to us with pricing for three traditional plot options we could look at and we made an appointment for the following week to go drive around the cemetery to look at them.

I want to be clear – there are MUCH cheaper options available from a Remembrance Wall to just taking the ashes home with you and spreading them somewhere. But I did want something a little more traditional which is why we started at the Urn Garden. You could bring this far under the prices I am quoting here.

The next step up were traditional plots which had the option for two caskets/four urns or six urns. You could get whatever 30×30 monument in whatever colour you wanted but the options started here at $21651 for the new section, $25493 for a middle section and $28092 for a plot in the older section of the cemetery.

As we drove around I noticed that all of the sections had decent options. Michelle would get out of the car with her giant laminated map and stand outside where the headstones on various plots would be and then she’d indicate the size of the space. She was an absolute trooper doing this over-and-over again in the rain.



Michelle’s map of plots

Alas, channelling Goldilocks, I was dissatisfied with the first two options. The new section was right next to a parking lot and they were looking to expand the crematorium so we didn’t know what the future held for that section (too cold!). The middle section you’d have to hike around to the back and there weren’t many trees around so in the summer there would be no place to really get any shade (too hot!). Naturally, of course, the older section was juuuuuust right. There was a lovely plot right up on the top of the hill, at the end of a row, about 10 feet from the cemetery’s ring road and banked by trees at the foot of the plot (“The perfect place,” I thought to myself, “to put a bench up against the trees.”[1]). Mr. Tucker also weighed in at this point and said he didn’t want to be right next to a parking lot or a place devoid of trees. So as it turns out, he did care – at least a tiny bit – about his final resting place! He, too, preferred the older, treed section.

Here is the breakdown of the Goldilocks plot

Plot, burial and accessories
$10,080 – 2 grave lot side by side
$6,720 – Care and Maintenance (one-time fee)
$1,100 – Burial Fee for Urns $550 each
$6,000 – 30X30 Monument with base (Black)
$960 – Concrete Foundation for Monument
$28,091.80 Grand Total ($24,860 + $3,231.80 taxes) for the plot



So many options – and fabric options, too! You could really get cozy in there!

We went back to the office where she asked us what we wanted the headstone to say and what type of design and etching we wanted. It will come as no surprise that there are a plethora of options including etching photos with a laser right onto the stone. It’s a wee bit too uncanny valley/bad family tattoo for my tastes so we chose a more traditional option with some flowers down the sides and a plain font. She actually took a picture of the stone to attach to our file and then drew out how we wanted the writing to go, what we wanted it to say, and in what order and what style. I suppose it makes sense to plan the entire thing out, after all the point of pre-planning a funeral is to alleviate all of the decision-making from your loved ones while they are grieving.

What I learned
To be honest, I found the entire process to be fascinating and to be an absolute relief. It was the last nail in the coffin (har har) for us to move from this stage of our lives into the next one. Is it an eye-wateringly expensive endeavour to pre-plan it like this? Possibly. But I would rather do it now and get it over and done with. I just have to leave the kids one thing you cannot pre-plan: the catering for the Celebration of Life. It’s the one thing they don’t handle because it’s unpredictable.

Michelle did mention that they manage almost all of the administration for notifying the government about your death. She said that the industry started doing that when it was discovered that many widows were missing the deadlines for claiming the $2500 death benefit from CPP. You only have 6 months to claim it after a death and since historically many women didn’t touch finances or administration for their families, they were missing out on this money they absolutely could have used. So funeral homes took it over. Now they notify everyone: Service Canada (CPP/OAS/GIS), cancel your driver’s license, cancel your health card, as well as register the death, get the coroner’s release etc. Although this can vary, they provide surviving heirs 15 copies of the death certificate (with access to more as needed) for banking, insurance etc.

They also offer a 12-month, interest-free payment plan for both the Funeral Services and the Plot. We put a deposit down on the plot and took them up on this offer for the balance. When we pass, all the surviving spouse or relatives have to do is call the funeral home’s 24-hour line and they will set in motion all of the things we planned. There will be no difficult choices made out of guilt or assumptions about what like or don’t like – it’s all on file and it is all paid for (except the catering).

The money we pay today is held and invested by a third party company. So on one hand, we lock in at 2025 prices. On the other hand, could I probably have chosen to just invest it all and made more money and then just leave the kids detailed instructions? Possibly. People who try and optimize for every dollar will probably go this route. But with my luck I will die in a market downturn and the kids will struggle with getting the documentation they need to release the funds in order to pay for things. This is a classic example of my mantra: THROW MONEY AT THE PROBLEM. I think the lack of stress & worry will be worth any gains I could have made on this money. So for the next year we will replace the paying we typically have to pay for the mortgage/condo fees/insurance/taxes and transition that into a new piece of property: THE BIG DIRT NAP.


[1]Of course I priced it out. $3800.

Day talk/night talk

Day talk/night talk

Significance

Control of fire and the capacity for cooking led to major anatomical and residential changes for early humans, starting more than a million years ago. However, little is known about what transpired when the day was extended by firelight. Data from the Ju/’hoan hunter-gatherers of southern Africa show major differences between day and night talk. Day talk centered on practicalities and sanctioning gossip; firelit activities centered on conversations that evoked the imagination, helped people remember and understand others in their external networks, healed rifts of the day, and conveyed information about cultural institutions that generate regularity of behavior and corresponding trust. Appetites for firelit settings for intimate conversations and for evening stories remain with us today. (emphasis mine)

– Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen

Goodbye, Balconville

Goodbye, Balconville

If you have been here for awhile, you already know that I renovated a condo I own(ed) twice in the last 7 years, both times due to a relative absolutely mistreating the space. After the final renovation, we rented it out to a lovely couple who gave notice and moved on for work after a year of renting from us. Like I said, I never wanted to be a landlord and I lucked out with having great tenants (and I made a whopping $20 a month, so I wasn’t exactly a slumlord). After our tenants left though, we tried our hands at selling it again. We had the older floors ripped up and decided to go with polished concrete this time so keep with the loft look. I figured that the wood floors were harder to maintain as a rental so if we had to rent it again, it would be easier to go with a more durable floor choice.

We priced it low and surprisingly it sold a week after being on the market with a closing date at the end of that same month. What was interesting about the entire process of selling it was that it sucked out almost all of the nostalgia and goodwill I had towards Balconville. Despite having made some of the greatest memories from Mr. Tucker & I starting out our lives together in that space, it was apparent that it had become a burden. I wanted to close the door on that chapter of my life. Someone else can now make amazing memories in that space and enjoy what I believe is one of the better floorplans for a 1-bedroom condo in this city.

I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of how stressful it was but it is done now and we are finally able to move on from that part of our lives. I am so glad that the process wasn’t drawn out – I don’t think I could have managed a prolonged closing. In the end, our tenant’s lease was up on September 30th, and the condo closed on October 31st.


The floors turned out beautifully. What a different a refresh makes!

For those of you who remember, this was the last thing on our list in order for Mr. Tucker to retire early. Not having the mortgage, condo fees, property taxes and insurance has been monumentally freeing for both of us. I think we both felt the weight lift from us as soon as we went in to sign the papers with the lawyer. We left the lawyer’s office feeling lighter and more free than we had felt in 7 years. It was the final thing we needed to do to move onto the last phase of our lives. We kept the memories but left the people who caused us so much pain behind. It was time to move on.

Of course, Mr. Tucker didn’t just waltz home and quit his job! He will work for as long as he can but his company has been circling the drain for a long time now and as they squeeze more out of employees layoff after layoff, it’s clear that the writing is on the wall. It’s nice to be in a position where we have options so he doesn’t have to take the first job that comes along because we are over-leveraged. So he will wait it out. He was one of the first people hired at that company and he says he wants to see it to the bitter conclusion.

In the end, we didn’t make bank on the sale of the condo. Essentially, I after all of the renovations we had to do, the closing costs, covering my butt for capital gains, putting some money away to top off our emergency fund, we had a wee bit left to put away for the children. But I’m not mad about it. The greatest thing about selling the condo was being able to take those expenses out of our budget and have the piece of mind that we don’t have to carry those costs should everything fall apart for us financially.

So au revoir Balconville! I will miss you but I don’t regret selling you.

I also imagine what my ancestors would think

I also imagine what my ancestors would think

“That the Wi-Fi stopped working the first night felt like a cosmic joke. You said you wanted to disconnect, I chided myself, panic rising in my throat as I uselessly refreshed a Chrome tab that stubbornly bore the same “No internet” message below a pixelated dinosaur. But wasn’t that the entire point? To avoid, as Jia Tolentino characterized it earlier this year, the ‘device that makes me feel like I am strapped flat to the board of an unreal present: the past has vanished, the future is inconceivable, and my eyes are clamped open to view the endlessly resupplied now?’

Burnout’s spin cycle in an age when one could theoretically be sustained by a nonstop parade of front-door deliveries of (truly) any conceivable desire is—how do I put this? — humiliating. I imagine some ancestor freshly arrived at Ellis Island, knee-deep in a slurry of animal remains inside a rancid meatpacking plant for 18 hours each day, being confronted with a discomfiting vision: It’s their distant progeny (me!) pacing around a climate-controlled apartment in sweatpants, mumbling about something called a podcast and bemoaning an endless barrage of electronic mail and voter registration and parking tickets and doctors who don’t know why you sporadically wake in the middle of the night to vomit, but it sounds like chronic stress. Would they get back on the boat, assessing that it wasn’t worth it after all to guarantee the future of such a weak-willed dilettante?”

– Katie Gatti Tassin, Babygirl, Girlbosses, and Economic Nostalgia

La plus ça change…

La plus ça change…

…plus c’est la même chose:

This video is 41 years old and we still have the same worries and fears today as when it was recorded. If you haven’t read Morgan Housel’s Same as Ever, I highly recommend it. It’s easy to think we are in unprecedented times but more likely we are in precedented times, just repeating themselves.

Mom freezer dinner

Mom freezer dinner

Like “girl dinner,” “mom freezer dinner” is when you eat the stuff that has languished in small amounts in large bags in the freezer. What did I eat?

3 pork and leek dumplings
2 chicken & vegetable potstickers
1 all-beef hot dog
2 chicken nuggets

Please bow your head in silence & pray for my digestive tract.

Trivia nights & the importance of in-person togetherness

Trivia nights & the importance of in-person togetherness

No one tells you how amazing it is to have a child who can be a designated driver for you. So allow me: it’s AMAZING! Hilariously, she was texting me at 11pm and asking if everything was ok. Oh honey, mommy and daddy are at The Legion with friends to do a Trivia Night, of all of the unsafe situations I have found myself in, Trivia Night At The Legion doesn’t even make the top 100000.

But I digress!

When our book club disbanded we split into three groups: one group was for folks who enjoyed the trips we used to take as a book club, one for people who liked to go to a local park in the warmer months for dinner & drinks, and one group who enjoyed hitting up local pubs for trivia nights. Clearly, as someone who played Trivial Pursuit weekly during the pandemic with The Americans [1], I was ALL-IN for in-person quiz events.

We’ve pretty much played all over town at this point, but last week we invited partners as well and ended up with two separate teams. It was a fundraiser for a local charity and between dinner, drinks, and the entrance fee, Mr. Tucker and I spent $125 for an evening out (total – not each!). On top of that, we both won door prizes in a draw: I won a $50 gift certificate to a local steakhouse and he won a pint glass and a $10 gift card to Tim Horton’s. I am way more extroverted than Mr. Tucker but even he had to admit that it was a ridiculously fun time with our friends – and a great way to get out more.

I know I’ve harped on about putting yourself out there a lot this year but I think it’s a direct reaction to the insular, anti-social social media I have seen ramping up post-pandemic[2]. I have seen content about people not being polite to retail and restaurant workers, I have seen memes about how excited people are to have cancelled plans (NGL, I also have been excited to stay home in jammies), and I have heard stories from folks not wanting people to come over…and like, I get it? As someone whose disability forces them to manage energy in a completely different way now, I get not wanting to do things. We were joking at a party recently that someone asked their partner to do two things in one week and we all laughed at the audacity: two social events in one week?! How perfectly INSANE it is to ask that! I suppose it is because at midlife, we are just too old to be doing things more often. But as Mr. Tucker and I often remind ourselves: we always force ourselves to go to events and we always have a good time.


Mr. Tucker and I are big fans of the IKEA breakfast date

One of my friend groups is about 25 years old now. We used to go out almost every night in our 20s. We’d go to clubs, we’d go to pubs, or we would have impromptu gatherings at our old condo in The Market, aptly nicknamed Balconville[3]. Honestly, we were out almost 5 nights a week because in the early 2000s there was so much more going on. We were young, we had shitty jobs, and we eked out as much of an existence that we could carve with limited resources. We had a weekly Sunday night dinner with friends, we hit 80s (and then 90s! *sob*) nights on Sundays when the beers were cheaper and there was no cover charge, and generally we just made do.

Previously – in the 90s – I lived in a neighbourhood with my closest friends where it was normal to pop in to drink a coffee or play board games all night. In the late 90s I lived in a 14-bedroom Goth commune during university where I would constantly have some baked goods ready and a pot of coffee on the go because you never knew who would just pop in for a chat. After, I moved on top of a local pub where we would hang out, drink pints and play cards some nights. When we were poorer we always made do: nothing beats a $7 bottle of wine or a pot of tea on the stoop of your apartment. No one cared that our living quarters were all chaos and dirt: we mostly worked and went to school so no one had time to clean and so no one held each other up to an unachievable standard of cleanliness. It was a crazy social time and while I was an early adopter of the internet and had made a bunch of friends online, it wasn’t possible to carry your friends around in your pocket all day. At the time, it was completely normal to leave your house and to just drop in on folks. If they were busy, you just left. No harm, no foul. I often wonder if my kids would watch sitcoms from previous generations and find it absolutely wild that neighbours and friends would just pop in, unannounced? I have seen some older Gen-Z’s ask if it was normal and let me say: it absolutely was normal and it was absolutely amazing!

But now we have a social life right in our pockets. We don’t have to leave the house to have friends and our friends can be thousands of kilometres away. No shade to that – I 100% am grateful that I can do the Wordle with the Americans[1] every morning and maintain a connection with them that wasn’t as easy 25 years ago (but like, shoutout to livejournal!). But I have also written here that a lot is lost if we only have online friendships, and I stand by that. I think it is important to bring back the casual get-together. Even my kids do it: they are masters of the sleepover! Either they have friends over here or they go to someone else’s house every weekend. I have also noticed that a lot more parties are happening this year than in any other year they’ve been in high school and all I have to say is: GOOD.

* * *

While I have no skin in the game, I am really excited to read Chelsea Fagan’s new book Having People Over. She is the founder of The Financial diet and while a lot of the content is not geared towards my demographic, it’s still a great resource. I have been following her 30 day series on Having People Over and it’s been full of great info.

I did make the mistake of attending the livestream where people could ask questions though, and OF COURSE someone woman co-opted the conversation with her particular situation because she felt “attacked by Chelsea” because she dared suggest people take personal responsibility for their relationships and grow up. What horrible thing did Chelsea suggest? That it is your responsibility to tell the host/ess if you have any challenges with the event, notably, food issues. HOW MONSTROUS!

Look, as someone who has mobility issues, I would love to live in an ideal world where everything is 100% accessible and that folks could read minds about what food allergies everyone has, but we don’t. I have no problems asking questions – and my closer friends know how to accommodate me. If I have any concerns, I ask ahead of time. And don’t get me wrong: I absolutely hate having to call a restaurant in advance or email someone to ask about how many stairs there are or if there are railings. But I also understand that we don’t live in a perfect world, and so it is going to take extra legwork for me to figure out if I can go to an event. The alternative is that I don’t go out and do things and that I slowly let my friendships rot on the vine. But here is the secret sauce: people are generally happy to accommodate if they can. They will try their best to make sure that their event goes off without a hitch, so if you tell them your needs in advance, they will probably do their best to make sure you have what you need.

I really take umbrage at people who feel that they can just scream, “I have a disability!” and that it somehow absolves them of any responsibility to advocate for themselves. Like the chronically online white knights of the world, they are basically using it as a shield to not have to take any action – and not take any blame, either. But to those folks like the person above, I ask: ok, so what is the end result you want here? Do you actually want people to include you or do you want to be a perpetual victim to circumstance? Because sure, you can blame everyone else for being ablest til the cows come home, and maybe that is your kink: the warm fuzzies of self-righteousness. But long-term, I don’t think that really serves you. This person can scream and shout all she wants about victim blaming but she doesn’t have to be a victim: she could have nipped this situation in the bud by communicating like an adult. Can’t eat the food? Ask if you can bring your own. 9/10 times the host/ess would be accommodating.

Fundamentally, the world is becoming a colder and more isolated place and I feel like this is because people are giving up their agency in exchange for tropes. Short-form video is informing how we see the world and as we all know, algorithms favour the negative. Videos with a ton of views ask you to blame anyone who cannot mind read what your needs are. We’ve become people who cannot deal with any friction or any negativity without becoming hysterical about it. But all of the best things in life that are worth doing are difficult! Getting ready and leaving the house is difficult, making reservations and driving across town on a Friday is difficult, helping your friend navigate a divorce is difficult, signing up for a yoga class is difficult, making a healthy meal at home is difficult…but all of these things reward you in return a million-fold in good relationships, a healthy body and a healthy mind.

Like I said to Mr. Tucker when we got home from trivia, “We always balk when it is time to get ready to leave the house and go to an event but we never come home regretting that we went. We always say, ‘Damn, that was a good night! I am so glad we went out!’”

[1]These are my Americans, get your own.

[2]Yes, yes, if there even is such a thing.

[3] Balconville is an old francophone joke. It goes something like this, “Where are you guys headed on your vacation this year?” “Oh, we have a trip planned to Balconville!” It reflects the fact that most people just stayed home and bought a case of beer and sat on their porches because they were too poor to do anything else. There is a play of the same name. a G&M article about it

An autumn diary

An autumn diary


As the kids would say, “always repost”

Things have picked up a little here at The Mullet and October is generally when things kick into high gear for our family. Now that we’ve settled into a school/activity routine it is time to think of more important things: HALLOWEEN. But first, Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day in Canada is the second Monday in October. So you get a lot of mileage out of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, at least from October 1st until November 10th [1].

We spent Thanksgiving with some of our closest friends and as usual, it was wonderful. We have rented cottages in the past and gone away with the our families over Thanksgiving weekend, but they’ve hosted it two years in a row and both times it’s been great. They did the turkey and pies and we brought some side dishes. After dinner we played games & chatted over drinks and it ended up being a very chill, very fun evening.

Bonus: they had so many leftovers from Thanksgiving this year that we ended up making a turkey pot pie the next day (and freezing it – we ate leftovers for like 3 days and that was quite enough turkey for one week!).

We gave up hosting ALL holidays during the pandemic and thankfully have never gone back to it, at least for family. Every year it was one drama after another and it had occurred to me during the downtime of covid that people only complained and judged us (“Oh, are these…paper…plates? What an interesting…choice!” Yeah, unless you’re offering to do dishes, we’re gonna go ahead and feed the 20 people stacked in our living room this year on paper plates. COPE.). Mr. Tucker and I were running ourselves ragged for people who didn’t appreciate the work we put into hosting *every* family gathering for years, even when we had two small children. The pièce de résistance was the troll who brought their own gravy one year because they didn’t like ours and who – while we were scrambling to get dinner on the table for 14 people – demanded we warm it up for them. As soon as covid hit, I realized how insane it was to keep trying and my instinct couldn’t have been more on point: no one invited us to their place for holidays post-covid. So it was clear they weren’t interested, either. Sometimes you have to stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.


My lovely friend Jenn porch-dropped these flowers off last week, so kind!

Saying that we are a “Halloween family” is grossly underestimating how much we lean into Spooky Season. As a recovering goth, I have imparted my love for the macabre onto my children. During the pandemic we used to decorate and watch #13daysofHalloweenMovies but now that the kids are older, we do a lot less family stuff because they do a lot more Spooky Season stuff with their friends.

I have seen a lot of pushback from folks who think Halloween is too commercialized and I guess that has become somewhat true. But it’s true in the way that *everything* seems too commercialized these days with the tiktok shop and obsession with keeping the social media eyeballs glued to apps. It also still has nothing on Christmas, if we are honest with ourselves. But it is the one holiday – and I will die on this hill – where you don’t really need to buy much to enjoy it. You can make a clever costume out of nothing, you can give away inexpensive candies, you can host a fun horror-themed potluck. I am also a big fan of bringing nature in from the outside: acorns, leaves, berries are all great autumn decor and can be had for the low cost of a walk around your neighbourhood, at least in Canada.

But despite this, I continue to put out the same old decorations that I got at 90% off from when I worked at Michael’s during Uni in the 90s. A few things from thrift stores and craft fairs have made their way into the Halloween box, but most of it is over 25 years old. Other than that, we have a few pumpkins we grew this year, a few giant pumpkins we bought to carve the week before & they just sit outside next to the two Chrysanthemums on the porch until that day, and finally a handful of gourds to decorate the table. Most of the yearly decor I bring into our lives in the fall, I try to ensure is compostable.


Mr. Tucker and I took a broommaking class last year so I made this wonky broom with my own hands!

I also was clever last December and managed to nab passes to my children’s favourite Halloween event: Frightfest. It’s basically a haunted hayride in the dark and 5 haunted houses in one evening. The tickets were on sale for $21 each, one week before Christmas last year. Compared to the eye-watering cost if you wanted to buy them now: $63 *per person*. BIG YIKES. So I bought the kids 3 tickets each so they could take two friends with them. Basically, by planning ahead I got 3 tix for the price of 1.

This year The Eldest is re-purposing last-year’s costume & The Youngest is making her own, she has most of it but we have to seek out a few things up at the thrift store next week to fill it out a bit. Historically, we’ve always made pizza and been home base from which the kids & their friends started trick-or-treating. This year The Youngest is instead going to another friend’s neighbourhood & will sleep over there (ahh the awesomeness of a weekend Halloween!). The Eldest will probably stay in the neighbourhood and Mr. Tucker and I will stay behind & give out cans of pop to the trick-or-treaters (we have soooooo much pop & we rarely drink it). Then on Saturday night we are off to an adult Halloween party with friends, so I am still trying to figure out what I will do for a costume. We’re pretty good at scroungin’ ‘round these parts so I will come up with something this week.

(as I am writing this, a huge flock of murder chickens Canada geese are flying overheard, a harbinger of winter)

A fall recap:
September: apples and leaves month!
October: gourds and spooky things!
November: poppies (and then greenery after Nov 11!)
December: Solstice and Yule season!

To me, despite the darkness and cold, it is the best quarter of the year!

Today is my children’s most dreaded day: garden cleanup day. Each kid is assigned a garden bed to clean out & compost. Mr. Tucker brings in the kale to freeze and will pot some herbs too keep in the kitchen over winter. I already did the sundried tomatoes this week and a few more soldiers are sitting on the window ledge, ripening. This is the last of the outdoor chores for this fall. The patio cushions are away, my tricycle has been put away and now everything is prepared for living beneath the snow during the cold winter months.

[1]Yes, I am a no-decorating-for-Christmas-until-after-Remembrance-Day-girlie. Some people care, some do not, it’s just a thing I have always kinda had a rule about.