Companionship Inventory

When Skylar and I got married my mother—the woman who birthed me into this world—the being from whom my body emerged through a process she has since called "a bloody massacre"—the person is supposed to live her life in absolutely loyalty to me—that mother committed an absolute hate crime against her only son.

She didn't mean to hurt me, I think, when she told my husband—the man who swore to worship me in front of all the angels in heaven at an extremely expensive party where I had to pay for napkins that must have been made of pure gold considering how much they cost—my mother gave that man advice that has resulted in a scheduled and weekly torture session for me ever since.

"Good marriages require you to be on the same page," she told him. "So I'd suggest you pick one night a week to have a planning session where you can talk about what you have going on over the next seven days, schedule quality time, and discuss any areas where your relationship might need work."

Well, Skylar what's his name frickin loved this idea. And the next thing I knew, a recurring event was added to our shared calendar on Sunday nights. "Companionship Inventory."

Skylar had just learned this phrase from some absolute monster of a person who decided to start teaching him Mormon lingo so Skylar could slip it into conversations with me at random. Within just the few weeks before this, he had told me "the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight" and to "return with honor" when I left the house. But none of his new phrases caused me as much immediate emotional pain as "companionship inventory."

My Mother's Pickle Canning Recipe None Of You Asked For, Which Was Rude

I'm basically Martha Stewart now, except I've been to less prison and I look better in skirts. I thought I might as well fully lean in and turn Stranger into a quasi recipe site. My recipes are better than most because you don't have to scroll past a 5,000-word essay about some woman's husband. Instead, I INCLUDE THE ESSAY WITHIN THE RECIPES! (Also, for past recipes, I've started a Recipe tab at the top of this very stupid website. I don't even know what Stranger is anymore.)

The below is one I've been meaning to write up since before the war. It's my momma's famous (D-list celebrities, but that's big for vine plants) pickle canning recipe. I grew up on these and they have forever ruined all other pickles for me. Once you have a Cathie pickle, you'll never go back-thy . . . shnickle. That rhyme didn't really work out but I'm too lazy to delete.

Enjoy!

Out of Gas

We drove to a little farm yesterday morning to buy crap to put in jars and leave on our shelves to rot. Canning truly is one of my favorite annual traditions; I wish eating what we can was a close second.

Neverthenotwithstanding, we gathered supplies for dill pickles (don't worry--recipe full of irrelevant information about my marriage to come). The farm we visited is across the valley from where we live, nestled in a bustling Salt Lake City suburb. Traffic was heavy for a Saturday morning during a pandemic, which we especially noticed on one four-lane road that had been narrowed to two lanes because of an incredible amount of road construction.

There we sat, nearly at a crawl, in a long line of cars stretching nearly a mile. We had been stopped for a while--unknown reasons--when finally we saw that the cars up ahead started moving. Well, the cars ahead, besides the one directly in front of us.

I'm not a honker. It's not a natural reaction for me. I don't really understand people who seem to do it almost subconsciously. On the rare occasion in which I do honk my horn, it's always woefully delayed because it takes me so long to realize this is a thing I can do, this is a thing I should do, and then try to remember the mechanics of horn honking. Then I don't press it hard enough the first time to actually make a noise because I don't have enough recent muscle memory to know the needed strength. By the time the sound comes out probably nobody has any idea what I might be honking about because the offense has long-since passed.

My Mother's Spaghetti Canning Recipe No One Asked For, Which Was Rude

My most vivid memory from my entire childhood is stuffing my face into a giant green pillow in the basement during canning season as the house would fill with overpowering scents of dill and tomatoes and MSG. I hated it. For a long time, I hated it. Then something happened to me that I don't think has ever happened to anyone else: I became my mother.

Now, each summer and fall I can eleventy thousand jars of shit in an ongoing game of "What Won't Skylar Eat." I currently have enough untouched applesauce on my basement shelves to reverse climate change. The pickle situation is even more dire. After canning SEVENTEEN quarts of pickles last autumn I learned that 50% of my household hates pickles.

The one exception to our wasted canning so far is my momma's spaghetti sauce. This was a staple in our house growing up and truly, Cathie McCann should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for perfecting the recipe. Each year I can exponentially more of this stuff. We go through about a quart a week, using it for spaghetti, lasagna, homemade pizza, chicken marinade, acid reflux disease, neighbor gifts, etc.

And now you can make it, too! Ingredient list and semi-profane step-by-step instructions below.

Ingredients (This will make about 10 pints or 5 quarts of sauce)

20 cups of pureed, peeled tomatoes (about 10 pounds of roma tomatoes)
1 green pepper
1 onion
2 tablespoons of white vinegar
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1 tablespoon of garlic salt
2 tablespoons of salt
1 tablespoon of dry mustard
2 tablespoons of taco hot sauce (optional)
1 teaspoon of parsley flakes
1 teaspoon of basil
2 teaspoons of oregano
3 cloves of garlic
3 tablespoons of flour

Eternal Vine

My parents have this Jumanji vine consuming a whole side of their house. They planted it back before the war when they were young and dumb and so full of hope and purpose. Now they reserve all three of their annual swearwords for the phone call I receive this time of year in which they put me on speakerphone and scream about how much they hate the vine while begging me to come climb a ladder to chop it back.

I always go because I'm the official Son Of The Year, every year. (And I'm always so gracious when I receive the award and I'm like "I don't deserve this. This really should have gone to Beyoncé." But then I keep it.)

The vine has now grown so high up onto the house that Bob & Cathie have had to buy ladders from NASA previously only used for engineers to climb up to the International Space Station for repairs. We plop the ladder onto the side of the house, I climb up through the clouds, and Bob & Cathie stand below as I chop and drop long pieces of vine onto their heads with reckless abandon. This always feels really disrespectful but I was a pretty well-behaved teenager so I think the karma evens out.

Last week they called me said they had had it with the vine and they were ready to take more drastic measures. Typically we just chop back the new growth. Now they wanted to pull half of it off of the house and then not let it grow above where they can reach "so we don't have to keep calling you" which now that I'm thinking about it, are my parents disowning me?

Anyway, Duncan and I showed up at their house yesterday evening ready for our farm chores. I climbed the ladder and started yanking and pulling and eventually I discovered that the upper part of the vine wasn't really attached very well to the house because suddenly a wall of matted English Ivy started folding off of the house in one solid piece.

Photos of People Having an Authentic Time at my Wedding

I'm going to give you a bunch of details about the wedding with some actual wedding photos, etc. in the coming days. But for now, I want to leave you with this gem.

In the chaos of the morning and the photos with family and friends, someone took my phone. I think it was in my pocket and it was suggested I remove it for the pictures. I don't remember, really. It was all a whirlwind.

At the end of the wedding, my friend Caitlin handed my phone to me, saying she had it for a few hours and "don't worry. I took lots of pictures of people having a very authentic time."

I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and took the phone. On the drive back to the house I started looking through the photos she captured and discovered, well . . .

In 1968

This time in Strangerville, Salt Lake City will give you a giant flag to help you cross the street. And then a story about fixing up an old bicycle (written version below).

Story

In 1968, by Eli McCann

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

*****

In 1968

by Eli McCann

Skylar just walked into the house. His face is red right now because he just climbed off of a bike. The bike was my dad’s a long time ago. He said he purchased it when he was younger than I am now, but that’s impossible because he has always been over 60.

My dad bought the bike as he was graduating high school in 1968. It cost him $400. I know those details, because he has made sure I’m clear about them the dozen times I’ve mentioned the bike to him in the last three years. He smiles when he says it, raising his eyebrows a little, and nodding. “$400,” he repeats, somehow emphasizing every syllable in perfect equality, “in 1968.”

Cable

For a while I've been the last person in America paying for cable. This is fitting, since I was the last person in America to start paying for cable as well.

My parents were holdouts for nearly the entirety of the 90s. On occasion my dad would have to drive to southern Utah on business trips and if I wasn't in school I was allowed to go with him, which I did. 100% of the reason I went with him was to watch the Game Show channel on the tv at the Ramada in St. George.

My siblings and I were desperate for a fix. We had our cousin Cami stay at our house on a nearly monthly basis, primarily because she would record Nickelodeon onto a VHS tape and bring it over for us to watch. These weren't targeted Nickelodeon recordings, but something more general. She just hit the record button and let the tape roll until it ran out.

We consumed these tapes. We didn't even fast forward through commercials. Why would we? The cable commercials were different than the garbage peddled at us poor folks on regular tv. We soaked up the advertisements, the rolling credits, the previews for other shows referenced but not recorded because of the space limitations of the VHS tape. And when the tape reached the end, we rewound and started it over. We let it just play in the background while we did other things so we could imagine what it felt like to be cable people. Cable people who had MTV on in the background and took for granted how special that was.

Then, sometime around 1998, Bob and Cathie McCann caved.

To Be Seen

I kept myself busy throughout my life as a coping mechanism. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to be afraid. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to suffocate from my cognitive dissonance. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to have to grapple with being gay.

So I absorbed myself in dozens of hobbies and I signed up for everything. In high school I ran cross country and track & field, I sang (badly) in the school choir, I went to every school activity, and I packed my life with social events--as many as I could find.

In college I took a full class load and worked sometimes as many as three jobs at once. "I like being busy," I would tell people when they asked me how I had the energy to do everything I was doing.

The truth was I didn't like being that busy. I didn't like having a plate so full of tasks, many I didn't really enjoy doing, that I constantly felt overwhelmed. I didn't like not sleeping. It was stressful. But I was terrified of the alternative.

I would watch my friends guard their free time and I would feel jealous of them. Then I'd watch them get married and slip away. So I would make myself even busier, busy enough that I wouldn't have time to think about what my future looked like.

REAMS.

There's a grocery store chain in Utah called REAMS, and this place is a trip.

First of all, this is what it looks like on the outside:

No, that picture is not from the early 80s. That is what REAMS and the cars currently parked in front of it look like today.

At REAMS, it is always Utah in 1983.

There was a REAMS down the street from my house when I was growing up. It was our go-to store. Why wouldn't it be? In one single stop you could buy cantaloupe, one of those giant rainbow jawbreakers, and jeans.

It's Raining Men

I say that I’m not a cruise person. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time last week with all 6,000 members of my family on a boat in Alaska. But the good time was had in spite of the boat, not because of it.

It’s probably because I’m a snob that I say this. Not generally. I don’t think I’m a general snob. I think I’m a travel snob.

I’ve got a friend who has a theory that everyone is a snob in at least one way. Even the most laid back person has at least one thing they are a snob about. Maybe you’re a food snob or a movie snob or something really specific, like a toothpaste snob or a Dr. Who snob. We all have at least one thing about which we are particular to the point that we almost subconsciously look down on others for having different (read, worse) taste.

Well, I’m a travel snob.

That doesn’t mean I stay in the Ritz and fly first class. Being a travel snob for me means seeing the world without being a “tourist,” whatever that means. It’s about going to places lazy people won’t deign to suffer. Places where you probably won’t get giardia from a hut in a town not found on maps.

I think the first time I ever even saw a cruise ship was in 2016. My friend Adam and I were in Helsinki and we needed to get to Estonia. We found out you could purchase one-way tickets across the water on a cruise ship that was making stops in both places. It was a three-hour or so ride. We, the temporary-ticket holders, were ushered to the buffet dining area of the ship to find a seat at some table. We sat with the cruisers, our noses slightly upturned, as they avoided us because we hadn't showered in a few days. 

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

You guys--people are mad right now and I can't hold them off any longer. All of a sudden in the last couple of weeks I've had multiple Strangers out of the blue write concerned and angry messages about where the hell the Traveling Snuggie™ ended up. I was hoping y'all would forget about it if enough time passed because I was too scared to tell you that THE TRAVELING SNUGGIE GOT STOLEN BY TERRORISTS. I think. Or it just got lost. All we know after extensive investigation is that it is missing due to the fault of no one except for the terrorists somewhere near Iowa or Ohio or one of those states that decides all our elections.

I've been thinking for a while that we should just start a new Strangerhood of the Traveling Snuggie quest but I haven't done it yet because lazy and tv and eating. So, you need to tell me if I should make this happen again.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

With tons of help from our friend Emily, we finally fixed up my dad's 1968 bike.

Farm House

I know this is the last thing I need in my life right now, but you guys.

On Sunday Bob and Cathie drove me and Skylar and my sister Krishelle to the great northern tundra that is southern Idaho to pay respects to deceased family members. My mom's parents both grew up around that area. I had never before been because we don't really have family up there anymore. At least none that we know.

My grandparents got married and moved out of the area, eventually settling down in a Southern California desert that is so hot you can see it from space. My grandma still has some cousins or nephews or friends she met at girls camp or what have you in the area, but my family is so huge that it's not really possible to keep track of anything beyond immediate family. I know I've told you people this before and you didn't believe me, but I have over 70 first cousins. FIRST cousins.

So, no. I don't know my second cousins or what they're up to or what Hogwarts house they belong to (Hufflepuff, all of them, I'm sure).

Nonetheneverthelesswithstanding, I've got ancestral homies buried all over that place and since I had never been my mom decided we ought to take a drive to lay flowers on their graves because we're respectful like that.

What I discovered as we entered what I am told was a town called "Mink Creek" is that this area--the area from which my grandparents availed and which they have kept from me for 35 years--is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

It's been raining in Salt Lake for eleventy days and #We'reThankfulForTheMoisture but the problem is I now have a mushroom garden in my entire lawn and it's stressing me out because I'm no farmer. So the other day I was out in the front yard scooping them up to throw them away and Skylar saw me doing it so he shouted at me "DON'T EAT THOSE THEY ARE POISON."

It was one of those moments where I suddenly got some unexpected insight on how little he thinks of my judgment and general knowledge.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

My momma made me a quilt for my birthday.

Half Ironman, 2019

The worst part of doing a half or full Ironman, besides the swimming, biking, and running, is the whole week leading up to the race. You're supposed to go to bed early and eat boring food, but not overeat, and say your prayers and stuff, and exercising that much self control for several consecutive days is torture.

By the time the race comes, I just want it to be over. I just want it to be over so I can go back to my usual lard-face slothful life.

I got to St. George for the half Ironman powered by your podcast recommendations, which you gave me on the Facebooks. Skylar couldn't ride down with me because he apparently loves his school and his future more than making me happy by keeping me company in the car for four hours.

He rode down with Bob and Cathie later that night. I'm told they sang 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, but they started with 12,000 because the trip was so long. They even stopped on the way and got matching tattoos of Celine Dion. Bob and Cathie now plan to sit on Skylar's side of the aisle at our wedding.

Joke's on them though: my side will have Celine Dion.

Then Saturday morning arrived. I got up at the ungodly hour of eleventy o' clock because for some reason they make everyone get to the lake TWO HOURS before the event starts.

Half Ironmans are a Mistake

The St. George half Ironman is somehow only one month away, which means that you people are about to commit your annual felony of failing to stop me from doing this stupid thing.

The only reason I can think of for why I sign up for this every year is that I'm a creature of habit with debilitating FOMO so I refuse to give up on something that causes me a massive amount of pain on an annual basis. So I sign up for the half Ironman and keep watching Fuller House and repeatedly befriend people who use essential oils.

I convince myself in the midst of a post-Christmas sugar coma every December 26 that doing that May race in the harsh desert climate for the better part of a full Saturday is an exceptionally good idea that will give me not insignificant opportunities for humble bragging for months to come.

Then January hits and I'm like "OH HEY-O NO" because getting into a swimming pool is voluntary self-waterboarding and no one should do it. But I always seem to forget that. For real. I forget that no one has ever enjoyed swimming in any kind of liquid since the beginning of life in the universe.

I took science in high school. I know our history. First we were water snakes. Then we turned into dinosaur alligators. Then we climbed out of the water to be swamp people. Then there were tons of wars and diseases. And now we follow Chloe Kardashian on Instagram so she can be a billionaire.

The point is, we spent millions of years in a lake trying to figure out how to evolve so we wouldn't have to be in a lake anymore. It's basically a hate crime against our lizard ancestors when we disrespect them by voluntarily spending our time in swimming pools when we could instead be wearing cashmere and sipping wine in a penthouse.

#genealogy

We have Photoshop so now we're ALL going to college.

Because I STILL cannot stop reading and talking about the college admissions scam stuff, I tweeted the other day 

Could someone out there help photoshop my face onto a water aerobics athlete? I’m trying to get accepted into my mother’s elite sewing group.

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) March 13, 2019

That's only partly a joke. I really do want in on Cathie's sewing group. So do several of my friends. A few years ago I told Cathie that Brianne and Matt had both asked how they can get in and she just laughed dismissively and said something about how they couldn't even get into her C group. Then I found out from my sister Krishelle that there really are several sewing groups and Krishelle has tried to infiltrate the top one but you basically have to be part of the Illuminati to get in at this point.

Anyway, only 21 minutes later someone named Shane responded:

I got you. pic.twitter.com/8pIdxuFobH

— Shane (@_robotshane) March 13, 2019

which is EXACTLY why I'm on Twitter.

A Good Year for the Reservoirs

When I was a kid my grandpa lived in southern California and he was obsessed with the Weather Channel. He always seem to be acutely aware of the likelihood of a storm on any given day in Salt Lake City, even though he lived a 12-hour drive away.

Grandpa was also the most paranoid human being I have ever encountered in my life. I have somewhat crippling anxiety, and I 100% inherited this through my mother's father. Grandpa was convinced that the life of every single person he knew was hanging by a thread at all times, and he regularly issued all of us both comically specific and ominously general warnings every time we saw him.

It became a family game to keep a list of these warnings and reference them from time to time.

One time my mom and I had lunch with grandpa while he was visiting Utah. I think I was about 15. As we each walked to our separate cars, grandpa to his and mom and I to ours, he called over to us, "it's a sunny day and you'll be driving into the sun, so you need to be careful."

It was so earnest and intense, the way he said it, that it took us a few minutes to realize how funny the request was. He literally warned us that the sun was out, and he did it in a tone like we were swimming in a pool with sharks and didn't know it. We laughed for the entire drive home and to this day, now twenty years later, my mother and I regularly remind each other to be careful about driving when it's sunny.

Confessions

(Woot. Strangerville Live is next week. Get your tickets if you haven't already. Support Jolyn. She supports you.)

When I was 14, my older sister Krisanda offered to drive me and my best friend Sam to our local movie theater. I don't recall what movie we were seeing. This would have been around 1998. I want to say it was Titanic, but I know that Cathie McCann would never have allowed me to go see that film without her and her hand over my eyes so I wouldn't be tempted by boobs. Sam had been issued a similar embargo.

I don't remember why, exactly, but neither of us ever seemed tempted to break the rule and sneak in to see Titanic without our parents.

In any event, Krisanda offered to drive us to see a movie that was definitely not Titanic and certainly contained zero to negative zero boobs.

We were on summer break and it was a rainy day. Krisanda was in high school and had regular access to the white family Astro van, which was something of a sexmobile in the 90s.

We were free, independent, and cruising the streets of South Jordan Utah, nary a parent or guardian in sight, when suddenly, for reasons I still don't know to this day, the van swerved off of the road and into the front yard of a little house.

I made cookies to prove to you that I'm not incompetent.

Look, I know you people think I'm incompetent. In the kitchen. Shame on all of you who started nodding your heads after the first sentence and before I could qualify it.

That reminds me--last night Skylar and I were talking about one of our past Strangerville Live shows and I said "oh that show was great. So-and-so's story was my favorite that night" and Skylar said, "totally. But yours was pretty good, too." And I was like "OBVIOUSLY I WASN'T INCLUDING MYSELF IN THE COMPETITION BUT I'M GLAD TO KNOW YOU WERE."

Skylar is up against some, frankly, very reasonable expectations that I have for him and he doesn't always do that well. These expectations are that he considers me the best at everything all the time no matter what and he puts his life on the line for this belief if required.

The expectations were formed from years and years of Bob and Cathie telling me after every single performance of any kind whatsoever that I was the "best one." This included a time when I was 14 and I ran a cross country race and took dead last, after all the boys and the girls. They had already taken down the finish line by the time I got to it and most people lingering in the area assumed I was just coming back around for a cool down run after the race because I was so far behind that nobody could have possibly fathomed that I was still competing.