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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.

Goodbye spendy summer, hello frugal fall

Goodbye spendy summer, hello frugal fall


Morning of the last dragon boat festival of the year

We’re heading into Autumn and we kissed the summer goodbye at an End of Summer bonfire & BBQ party on the Mississippi River (no, not that one) this past weekend. It was a classic Canadian fall day where you leave the house bundled up in a sweater because of the chill and then by 2pm you’re boiling hot and the sun is beating down on you. Then as soon as dinnertime hits, it’s cold and dewy again. A friend from dragon boat hosted a lovely afternoon at her house and it was nice to be outside on what will probably be one of the last warm days of the season.


Em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye

Dragon boat ended the last week of August, another season under my belt. It’s just as well: the kids were back in school the following Monday so over the long weekend we tried to get as many lingering “big” chores done as we could. Like many folks, this included cleaning out the garage and selling or giving away a few things that we no longer use. Since many people use this weekend to clean out their garages, enough folks were driving around scouring the neighbourhood for free stuff that we didn’t have to haul a lot to the dump. WIN/WIN.

Summers tend to be lackadaisical here at The Mullet. We don’t tend to eat together, we all have different activities, different schedules and different sleep patterns. The week before school starts we tend to tighten it back up slowly by meal prepping, organizing school supplies (and buying only what is needed), doing more baking for lunches, and getting to bed before midnight. The summer is also for random visits to the ice cream parlour, hot dates on patios, overspending at events, hitting the local microbreweries & food trucks, and hosting parties. It tends to be a very spendy time of year but I don’t think about it much. But the end of summer also marks the tightening of the budget.


These Ground Cherries went into into an amazing spice cake

This year we’ve been hit by a bunch of random expenses (which honestly, aren’t random at all). I have to pay quarterly taxes this year because it makes more sense for Mr. Tucker to claim most of the tax credits. The pool heater died 3 months after the warranty was up. We redid the floors in the condo, the car needed some work, we had to buy a new dishwasher (and pay a plumber to install it, we tried but the pipe needed to be cut down), and of course our car insurance doubled because The Eldest is now driving. When I say random, what I really mean is that I always have money tucked away for emergencies or for planned spending but a lot came at us at once so the accounts are on the low side. It happens.

But I also know I will feel better if I watch my spending for a bit. The kids have their own budgets to manage and I just will be a bit tighter with my discretionary spending for awhile. I have a trip planned with some girlfriends in November *and* I am throwing myself a 50th birthday bash a week later, so a lot of my discretionary spending over the next two months will go towards those two things. I find our spending ebbs and flows during the course of the year and I get more or less spendy depending on the weather.


A friend’s 50th birthday! There are a few of us this year

Now that fall has ushered itself in, so has my desire to stay close to home. It’s just as well, our garden is overflowing with peppers, tomatoes and herbs and it’s about to get busy with the processing for winter. Tonight I fire roasted some tomatoes, made a salsa and then I crushed & froze 2 litres of tomatoes for future meals. More tomatoes are ripening and I’d like to get some sun dried tomatoes done before the frost comes. We usually get bulk apples (does anything represent September more than the humble apple?) from a friend but it looks like her family is retiring from the apple biz, so I will have to hit the farm stand up the road to get some fresh apples. I like to chop a bunch up & dehydrate some for winter…and of course we eat a pile of them because they’re so good this time of year.


I am probably one of the few people who know their family eats 10lbs of fresh garlic in a year

Other than that, it’s helping the kids get organized for school & activities. The Youngest is doing her snowboard instructor training this year as well as volunteering at the library. She recently discovered that she can read books and write reviews on them in exchange for volunteer hours and so she’s over the moon! She came home from the last volunteer meeting with a giant pile so it looks like she will tackle that. The Eldest and I are still hammering out what courses she needs for university. It’s been a stressful and chaotic beginning to the school year because it feels so *dire* to be choosing what classes to take for her last year of high school in order to get into the programs/schools she wants. I’ve told the kids that nothing is set in stone and that life has many do-overs but it’s still stressful for a 17-year-old to try and figure out a path for a career she wants to spend 3-5 years in school for! She can always switch majors but I get it – it’s a lot.


The last BAC show of the season. Next year is MEH so we will be skipping

Labour day also marked one of the happiest changes of the season: it’s video game time again! I quit playing games from May to September because I like to be outside more. It’s just a good way to prevent myself from staying inside and being a mushroom with thumbs. I know that I am late to the party but I am still working on The Witcher 3. Will I finish before The Witcher 4 comes out? Stay tuned! I’d also like to play Cyberpunk this winter, it’s just sitting there on my Steam account taunting me. I don’t tend to watch a lot of tv & movies generally but in the summer it drops to zero. Still, I have a few shows to watch – like the last season of Taskmaster – which will keep me company now that sitting outside is less of an option.

I guess that’s what makes it a frugal fall: video games, tv and food preservation. But mainly, it’s staying close to home & having fewer social events as the cold weather hits. By next month Canadians realize that life doesn’t stop for weather and the transition back into social events will begin in time for spooky season.

Books in the Big Yellow Taxi

Books in the Big Yellow Taxi

There is a short story I read once about how Canada didn’t have a lot of famous authors because it was a cold country. I don’t remember much else except that I a> read it as part of my coursework either in university OR high school; b> it was in an anthology of short stories; c> for years I thought it was by Stephen Leacock. I have poured through Leacock’s collections, quizzed my librarian friends and have even begged on social media for someone to help me remember what this story was from. So far, nothing.

But in that process, I realized how fickle the world can be. Stephen Leacock was a HUGELY famous in his time, widely regarded as the world’s best humourist who went on to inspire other famous people such as Groucho Marx. Today though, probably the only reason we know of him is because of the required reading of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in high school. While I wouldn’t say he’s completely disappeared from literary scene, I feel that Leacock is only known to a contemporary audience because of the requirement to take Canadian Literature classes in high school & university. It’s the same CanCon phenomenon that makes the CBC turn out fantastic shows like Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience. I’m not mad about it.

I was disappointed – but not surprised – by the ruling against The Internet Archive recently. I suppose eventually it may end up like Napster – too visionary for its time and replaced by the bottom-feeding capitalism of Spotify who is lauded for what Napster was condemned for doing. In fact, the new partnership with google probably signals that very thing, exactly as now google will have its finger in yet another piece of our collective pie.

Still, bright lights exist. Today, I loved reading Vanishing Culture: on the impact of forgotten books by Brad Bigalow. It turned me onto his Recovered Books project. I love that people are out there preserving history and culture by bringing old works to the surface again.

My friend Sara argues with me about modern books, preferring to read works that stand the test of time. Her perspective is that, “Time is a sieve, and it weeds out irrelevant works.” But not all art and culture needs to be relevant 100 years from now. They can be perfect for helping people navigate the here & now and still be worth engaging with! Conversely, I also agree with AJ Jacobs in his book Breaking Bread With the Dead that we shouldn’t throw out all historical works just because they don’t align with our modern sensibilities, instead we should engage with them, be challenged by them. No need to give up the modern invention of the shower NOR throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the internet asks, “Why not both?”

I was surprised to see the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in the Recovered Bookstore. I had this book as a child growing up in the 80s and it never occurred to me that it hadn’t really been a part of the modern bibliography, until now. But I guess it is the way of a lot of art and media: you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

PS: Incidentally, my friend Angela has been looking for a copy of Pump Up the Volume forever. She mentioned it was one of her fav movies of the 90s and wanted to rewatch it to see if it still held up. She mentioned that she couldn’t find it anywhere. I also tried to find it and noticed that it wasn’t anywhere: not on video websites, not on streaming services, not even on torrent sites! But low and behold – The Internet Archive has copy of it. HASHTAG BLESS.


Well in my day, sonny boy, we had this thing called RADIO…