Those of you who live in the great white north understand that once Christmas is over there is very little to look forward to until the weather turns, which is typically sometime in June.  So, how does one survive the next four to five months?  If you play your cards right you schedule at least one or two vacations to warm weather destinations in an attempt to preserve ones sanity until the temperature permanently rises above 50 degrees.

While I have at least one trip scheduled to a warm weather destination, and may add at least one or two more depending on how the winter unfolds, there have to be other things to look forward to, right?  Wait, there is, every winter for the past four or five winters Shirley and I go on an adults only ski weekend with a couple of Shirley’s co-workers and their husbands.   The only problem is that last winter one of the couples bailed so they could fully commit to the cult that is kids travel hockey, leaving us to do the annual ski weekend with our kids and the other couple and their kids.  It was fun, just not exactly the same dynamic as previous years.  I can’t wait to get the band back together and put the adult ski weekend back on track this year.

While the ski weekend is typically the high point of the winter, there are other recent life altering changes that will greatly assist in making winter go by much faster than normal.  A few weeks before Christmas the Jansma’s were finally able to connect to legitimate high speed internet.  Prior to that point we had satellite internet (which is even worse than dial up) and Dish Network.  While Dish Network is watchable, they were in a contract dispute with HBO right up until the final season of Game Of Thrones aired (wish they would have done me a favor and not caved in to HBO’s demands) and they are currently in a dispute with Fox Sports Detroit.  Normally, I would be upset about the lack of Detroit sports options but there is currently no team from Detroit worth watching.  We are now able to stream any movie out there, the kids can play video games online, and most importantly, Shirley can now work from home.   We watched all of the Iron Man movies this past week thanks to our free year of Disney plus as Verizon customers.

While I have finally healed from the wounds inflicted at the hands of Parker’s long board, another Christmas gift has caused unmitigated damage in our home.  Shirley picked up a pair of Alexa’s, one of which was placed on the main level and the other in the kids room.  There is now a never ending battle between Shirley and I and the kids as to what Alexa plays.  Cleaning the kitchen is actually not a bad experience if Maroon 5 is playing in the background, however it is intolerable if it is done while listening to the poop song.  Yes, those of you who don’t have boys are probably unaware of the poop song.  There is actually a poop song along with a myriad of other songs written to appeal to boys ranging from 5 to 12 years of age containing lyrics primarily focused on the hilarity of bodily functions.

Somehow the kids were turned on to the comedian Jim Gaffigan.  While Parker typically chooses to listen to Henry Huggins as he falls asleep, he gave in to Aiden’s demand that Alexa play Jim Gaffigan.  Shirley was in bed with Parker and I was in bed with Aiden (we still cuddle with them for a few minutes every night) as Jim Gaffigan (who is mostly family friendly) was playing in the background.  He was going into a riff on people and their birthdays complaining about people who make a bid deal about their birthday.  This led to him mentioning the fact that society puts a lot of pressure on people to have a great time on their birthday.  “I shouldn’t have to pay for sex on my birthday” Immediately Parker (who is six years old) asked what sex is.  When we didn’t answer he kept asking.  Eventually we told him that it is something he would learn about later on from some kid at school or on the internet, Aiden added sex is for adults.  What I wanted to say is that one of your parents thinks it doesn’t happen enough and the other thinks it happens too much.

Jim Gaffigan focuses a lot of his humor on food, primarily how amazing meat is.  Foolishly, I thought I could make it through the darkest time of the year foregoing meat.  What led me to make such a terrible choice?  Well, on the last Sunday of the year we went over to Shirley’s vegetarian sister’s house.  Beginning on Christmas Day it was 24/7 Shirley’s family for me in some way, shape, or form.  On the 25th her mom and dad and 90 year old grandmother came to our house.  Shirley told me they were coming around 5, they showed up at 2.  The next day was the party for her mom’s entire side of the family hosted at our house.  (Her sister and brother in law, who I think are great(not the vegetarians), started staying at our house on the Christmas with their two boys ages 5 and 7) Shirley’s mom stayed at our house overnight on Christmas night as well as the 26th and possibly the 27th (its all a blur so I can’t be certain).

The event at the vegetarians house was a wine and cheese game night.  The trifecta of fun, right?  Well, things got off to a good start and we were all having a pretty good time. It was me, Shirley, both brother and sister in-laws as well as my in laws.  Somehow we decided to figure out where all the adults except my in laws were going to go to dinner the next night.  Every idea I came up with was shot down by my vegetarian sister in law. It was like trying to come up with a sexual position that works for a eunuch.  Doggie style? No, I can’t do that.  Missionary?  That doesn’t work either.  Reverse Cow Girl?  Of course not.  Not only was I battling the fact that I was dealing with a vegetarian, I was also dealing with a vegetarian who objected to one particular restaurant (that was very vegetarian friendly) because their barstools were too uncomfortable.  Ultimately I lost my shit, dropped a bunch of F bombs and walked out slamming the door behind me (by accident) stating “this is exasperating!”  On the way home in the Uber Shirley came at me fast and hard, while I was likely 90% in the wrong, there was no way I was admitting that in my half drunken state.

The next day I got a call from my vegetarian sister in law.  We ironed things out and I apologized.  I also explained why I acted like I did, I didn’t give her excuses for my behavior, merely explanations.  She thought I should probably apologize to her husband as well.  I called him and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer even though he spends more time with his phone than a millennial.  He eventually texted asking if I wanted to meet him at Madcap at 8 am the next morning. Fuck no.  We determined that we would hook up at the Starbucks at Forest Hills Food Saturday morning.  I texted him as I was leaving Crahen MVP to see if he was available and his reply was “let me check with L___, and see what we have going on”.  It’s a five to ten minute meeting tops, in my mind he was making this much more difficult than it needed to be.  Eventually I made it home and then was at Costco when I received a text indicating that the Starbucks at Target would work between 10 and noon.  I called him, he didn’t answer and eventually texted back that we kept missing one another.  I never responded to that text.

Do I just drop it?  I see him maybe four to five times a year.  No way he lets this go, but will the awkwardness at family events be less awkward than the inevitable awkwardness of our face to face meeting?  Regardless, this incident, along with many unhealthy choices during the holidays made me think I needed to give up meat for January.  January 1 wasn’t too bad, January 2 was ok, January 3 was decent and what kept me going was the moral superiority I felt over people who eat meat.  January 4 was a Saturday.  I made it through most of the day meat free until we had to decide on dinner.  I threw out a vegetarian suggestion and the kids asked why they were being forced punished.  We decided on Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner, it’s one of my specialties and my plan was to just keep the chicken out of mine.  However, I’m not going to lie, meat is great, even chicken, especially when you have gone almost four days without it.  Ultimately I ate the masala with chicken in it and it was fantastic.  What I realized during my almost four day vegetarian journey was one, eating is nothing special when you are vegetarian, without meat meals are kind of boring.  Fat vegetarians make complete sense to me now, your diet consists primarily of cheese and bread, even working out six hours a day isn’t going to keep someone who primarily exist on cheese and bread, skinny.  On top of that, you need to eat a lot of sugary junk food and unhealthy snack food to make up of the fact you are depriving yourself of meat.  Fortunately, going back on meat has taken me off suicide watch and given me something to live for.  I have to get rolling so I can pick the kids up and put a meatloaf in the oven.