It’s Family Day!
If you live in Ontario.
If you live in another province, it might be something else. Or it might be nothing. Choose wisely, graduates.
My kids aren’t with me today, so I have some time to reflect on Family Day and how we can all get the most out of it.
Good news is that these are ideas that don’t need a special day – you can do these pretty much any time before summer.
Better news is that most don’t require going outside (unless you want to bake on your BBQ, in which case more power to you, weird neighbour).
BEST news is that you don’t even need a family to do them.
1. Take down your Christmas tree. Listen. Mine was up until after Groundhog Day, and it was a real tree. And it would have stayed up longer if we didn’t also have a Bernese Mountain Tailswatter in the house.
2. Alternatively, put your Christmas tree back up. You’ve paid good money for a quality artificial tree, just so you can stick it in a box 11 months of the year? Nonsense. Put that shit back up and get working on a pastel egg garland already.
3. Bake a cake with whatever ingredients you have on hand. Think of it as Just Like Mom meets a glucose tolerance test. This seems like a really stupid idea, I know. But my 8yo regularly makes a freakishly delicious cake that consists entirely of three cans of fruitstuffs, a box of cake mix, and a quarter pound of butter AND NOTHING ELSE. You gonna be out-baked by an 8yo?!
4. Play a board game. This is a bit trickier if you’re all alone, but not impossible. Get creative!
And finally, my best and favourite idea, which probably plays best in the Land of Polymer Cash …
5. Pretend you’re a squirrel and go bury $20 somewhere in whatever snow is left. Maybe you’ll find it later, maybe you won’t. Either way, you’ll make someone’s day. Eventually.
Jeni Armstrong 