Well, it’s that time of year again, when we—hopefully—get to put some of the strain and stress of the year behind us and have some good food and drink and time with the family. Although looking back on 2022, man, not sure just how much food any of us can afford this go ’round. Inflation at the grocery store absolutely tore through the wallets of families living in Victoria and the region, as has inflation at the pumps, and, if you’re renting and have had to move this year, those monthly rental cheques.
I just don’t know how sustainable it is for a family to live in Victoria right now. I silently scream when I go to buy coffee at the store; I mix tears with gasoline in hopes of saving a few pennies at the pump. I constantly think that there are mistakes when I’m purchasing toilet paper. How can toilet paper possibly cost so much?
But I refuse to let despair sink in, as I cackle to myself when I drop my oldest off at school—high school, now!—trying not to calculate the ludicrous amount that drive cost me in gas, trying to just make it through a morning without feeling the existential economic strangle that every single one of you reading this probably felt this year as I throw my younger on a bus to get to his school—middle school now!—because he still gets on that thing for free for another glorious year or so. I mutter to myself, half-convincingly but somehow simultaneously like three-quarters, totally unconvincingly that it’s worth it to take out a second mortgage for a Christmas tree because, hey, it is, afterall, Christmas.
“Might as well!” I scream at the clerk at the tree lot, through a totally unconvincing smile as I throw my credit card in the air and wander off, stumbling like an elf in a snowstorm, kids chasing after me, other moms and dads walking into walls, muttering about money, making jokes that just make no sense, crying, laughing, crying, crying.
Yeah, it’s been one of those years. I got a hernia a while back and our medical system is about as mangled as everything else is, so when I laugh it kinda, well, moves around, making me involuntarily grab it, an endless source of humiliation for all my family members. It’s okay, I scream into the air, the specialist will call me at some point! But they’re not calling! They’re too overwhelmed! And I gotta stop screaming because it’s just more pressure on the ol’ hernia!
So, merry Christmas, as grocery stores tease us with slaps to the face disguised as price freezes, and as we are thankful gas has gone down a teeny bit so it’s only, like, ten thousand times more than it was a year ago, and, let’s face it, we are approaching the finish line here totally dazed and battered.
But never defeated.
Honestly, you can’t defeat parents. We get woken up at unholy hours. We get screamed at. We literally get excrement on our hands, like, kinda regularly. But we just keep going.
And despite our corporate overlords chasing dollar signs to such a degree that they’re now destroying society as we know it, hey, we’ll just keep going, because we’re parents, that’s what we do, and, honestly, those corporate overlords, they have no idea what we’re capable of.
So, it’s been a tough year, an ugly year, a brutal year for many families in Victoria. Let’s see if we can turn that around. Let me rephrase that: I know we can turn it around. This year got a bit tough, a bit dark. But we’ll make it through to brighter days.
In all seriousness: Merry Christmas. Happy new year. 2023: We’ve got this.
