I’m 12 (and a 1/4)!

Another year of tweendom, another year in this pandemic. Sigh. This was my second year missing out on a real birthday party and believe you me, I am saving up all my party karma for an epic double birthday bash the second this trash pandemic is over. We’re talking an epic dance-slumber-bounce house-sundae bar-baking party.

Hey, at least I got a strawberry roll.

I still turned a year older, and you know what that means, it’s annual interview time. I indulged my mom with this interview even though it’s totally embarrassing and I hate the sound of my own voice.

I do it for posterity.

I guess I’ve grown since my first annual interview:

Here’s a snapshot of me at age 12:

I love my family: girls’ nights with my mom, making album covers (if not actual albums) with my dad, and cracking up with George (Duke). I try to do little acts of kindness for them all the time, like making my mom tea or bringing her snacks, helping my dad clean out the closet, and helping George settle down when he’s upset about something.

Speaking of family, I love my dogs and they love me. I’m in charge of feeding them dinner every night and making them pup-mobiles.

I love sports, especially soccer, tennis, hockey and snowboarding. I didn’t get much snowboarding done this year (thanks, Covid), but I played JP Youth Soccer on the Firefox team, play tennis with the Tenacity program, and got back into skills & drills this year with Brookline Hockey.

My hobbies include cooking, baking, and fashion. I integrate them into my businesses: Loop to Loop accessories and Sweet Tooth Bakery. (Prices available upon request.)

I also like hanging with my friends, drinking kid wine straight from the bottle, Maine life, activism and winning giant checks.

It was a rough school year. I didn’t go back to in-person school until pretty much my 12th birthday at the end of April, but I did crush it nonetheless, getting all A’s and A+’s the last two terms.

This year, I learned piano, got a second dog, and got to go to Maine for two awesome vacations. I ran home to get help when my dad got stung by an army of bees and took care of my mom and brother when he had to get triple bypass surgery. I made Chinese bao, my Oma’s famous strawberry roll, a classic New York cheesecake, and a really bad TNT cake for George. I spent basically an entire year hanging out with just my mom, dad and George. It was a crazy year and I’m ready to see what the next one brings.

Yours,

Hazel (Bert)

Welcome to The Show

What’s The Show, you ask? It’s a performance Duke and I put on pretty much anytime we’re in the Toy Pit for over an hour. The Show involves a lot of prep (costume design, ticket design and construction, ticket line construction, fighting over who gets to cut the tickets and who gets to give them out/collect them, announcing The Show). After our standard announcement, “Ladies & gentleman! Boys & girls of all ages!”, the actual Show usually then takes about 10 seconds, until we realize we have no actual performance prepared. But this last snow day, The Show really came together.
I think the key was having Duke run front-of-house/ticket management and also being somewhat loosy-goosy with the props. A Batman cape? Sure! A jumprope? Alright! A book? Why not? Ball? Toy dog? Pencil? Yes, yes and yes.
See for yourself:

Special thanks to our VIP guests, JD and Victoria. You were a great audience.

Also, I don’t care what Mama says, tights are totally pants.

– Bert