My Christmas Vacation
Posted: December 31st, 2004, 2:05 pm
I spent only christmas morning with my husband. I did not cook him a christmas dinner, on this, our first christmas as a married couple. Instead, I left at noon, watered the plants at a friend’s apartment which I was caring for while they were out of town, and then drove into the neighbouring province of New Brunswick. Picked up my brother in the south of Sussex, he said the directions to his house were too hard to explain over the phone, so he jumped into his un-insured, over-heating truck and met me at the Tim Horton’s in the bustling hub of downtown Sussex.
I followed him back to his place, where he found an old blanket to drape over my back seat so his rotweiler, Baron, could ride back there. Baron has two infected eyes, which last year were only 1 infected eye. Nothing seems to clear it up. But he’s a friendly rotty, loving and snuggly and never barks, only whimpering when he gets excited which is all of the time. But he’s a big dog, and doesn’t listen or sit still a lot, so Joe sat in the back with him to keep him from pawing me to death at the wheel. Four hours I drove from Halifax to Sussex, and it was near 4 more before we got into Woodstock that night. Around 7:30 pm on Christmas day, we arrived at the Old Homestead, the 150-year old country house of my biological mother, Christine.
Jayne, my sister walked in the door just behind us, she’d been up visiting at her grandmother’s house and had already eaten Christmas dinner there. We whipped up a fresh batch of dressing, salad, some brussels sprouts, corn, and had turkey, baked potatoes, and cranberries to boot. For desert we had apple pie with butter pecan ice cream. And I have a big box of Tofifee on the go. I go thru about a box a day in the holiday season. We opened presents after dinner and then played some new board games which we had gotten for christmas.
Jayne left with her friend Erin who is a total slut, they went to the bar on Christmas day. As soon as Jayne left, my mother and brother and I all sparked up a bunch of joints, which we can’t do in front of Jayne because she thinks she is a cop now. Raised by hippies, her way of rebelling is by studying law and being a strict goody-goody with everyone but herself. So she went out to the bar, got pissed on red wine, and made out with her friend’s little brother until 6 in the morning. Now she’s completely regretful and embarrassed, and is dreading the day her friend finds out about her little make-out session. Hah! And we all sat at home like good stoners, not causing shit among our friends. Who’s the goody-goody now, eh Jayne??? Hah.
Christine looked great, she remortgaged her house and is living off the money so she doesn’t have to work. It’s her idea of an early retirement. She even has her own business in the house, but she is just letting that dwindle, and smoking way too much pot to even get involved in that right now. She’s mainly just focused on cleaning up the house, and trying to organize her shit. With 26 rooms, it’s no easy feat to get that place clean, and every room is packed… nay, I say, PACKED with antiques, collectibles, and heaps and heaps of junk which she thinks fits into one of the first two categories. Pack-rat.
Norman, her boyfriend, has finally shaved off ten pounds of beard and cut his hair. He looks a bit better too. Also, he has started smoking pot again, which is an improvement over last year, when he didn’t and he wanted Christine to quit because he had, and they fought constantly about it. Norman works at Sabien Cymbals, and showed me the pictures he took for their new merch catalogue. He used to be a really well-known nature photographer at one time and this was a big contract for him to shoot all those hoodies and touques.
My brother Joe recently went thru another rehab, and is apparently off of everything. Well, he had a few tiny puffs with us, but it’s Christmas, afterall. And if pot is all he’s smoking, well that’s still a major improvement. He fixed my rear defrost for nothing, and in under 5 minutes, which the Toyota company wanted $350 for.
Daisy, my favourite dog, made it thru another Christmas. Every morning I’d see her and I’d say, “Daisy, you’re still alive?! What a Christmas miracle!” She’s 15, a black and beige terrier mutt, blind as a 2x4, deaf as a concrete block, and has recently lost all control over her bowel. She’s got lumps on her head, but she still knows who I am, because I’m the only person who loves her more than the two big pretty collies. She actually skips when she sees me. Daisy’s my gal, and I don’t know if I’ll see her again.
Boxing day, Sunday, I had to drive Joe back to Sussex because he had to work Monday morning. But by the time we got there, I was too tired to make it back and decided to crash on his couch overnight. Woke up in the morning to discover that it had been blizzarding all night and I was snowed-the-fuck in. Thought it might be clearer up on the highway, and set out anyway. Yeah, right! I got 3 clicks out of town and was in a total white out. Got stuck in a snowdrift behind another little blue car. 5 seconds later, got buried there by a big snow plow. I phoned my brother with my sister’s cell phone, which I had borrowed from her on a last minute whim, I had intuited I would need it in the car on this trip. A tow-truck pulled out the blue car in front of me, and no sooner did it roll free, than a big black pickup came flying out of the whiteness and smucked right into it! Window smashed out and passenger side smashed all in, I was on the phone to my brother going “Yeah, I’m not making it to Woodstock in this weather. Can you come find me out here?” Tow-truck yanked me out, and Joe showed up that very second to lead me home in the blizzard. Stayed another night on his couch with his eye-infected dog.
Next morning the sun is shining, the streets are plowed, and I am ready to go! I load up the car, stick my key in the ignition and man, there is nothing. Not a sound, not a click, not a crank, nothing. Turns out I left my lights on the day before in my hurry to get out of the blizzard. So the upstairs neighbour comes out with a charger, gonna jump my car. I wait inside cuz the fellow has beat someone to death with a baseball bat and done his time, now he’s got 9 boys to raise and I have no coat on in the –15 morning, so I wait inside. But they got the clamps down on the sleeve of the terminals, so the charger depleted and the engine never turned. They plugged in the charger, and I played jailhouse dice with my brother and smoked home-rolled cigarettes while we waited. After an hour, the charger still wouldn’t go, so Joe took the battery out of his car and jumped it like that. My gearshift was frozen in park or we would have just pushed it out of the driveway so it could be jumped the normal way. However, the battery finally turned and I was off.
Back to Woodstock, where I spent the next evening playing pool at Dooley’s with two kids from my program at school. Which is so weird because there is maybe 5 students a year in our program, and here’s three of us, all spending christmas up in Woodstock. I Split the gas with one of them home to Hali last night, we stopped in to visit Joe’s daughter and drop off all her Christmas presents, because Joe is not currently allowed to visit with her so she couldn’t come up for the holidays.
Got in last night and my parking space is all full of snow, so I had to park on the street. Went back over to water my friend’s plants but they’re already back from California. In spite of the blanket, the backseat of my car is still COVERED in dog hair. I put well over 2,000 kms on the car, which needs new wiper blades.
And now I’m back home, with my husband, and have no idea how he spent his christmas. My friend Jenn will fly in today from Christmas with her family in Sudbury, Ontario, where I have had her searching for Absinthe, which is what we want to do tonight, for New Year's Eve.
Christmas with my family has shades of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, especially where the cousins show up in the camper with the dog, etc…. but, ah, family. See, that’s what Christmas is all about.
I followed him back to his place, where he found an old blanket to drape over my back seat so his rotweiler, Baron, could ride back there. Baron has two infected eyes, which last year were only 1 infected eye. Nothing seems to clear it up. But he’s a friendly rotty, loving and snuggly and never barks, only whimpering when he gets excited which is all of the time. But he’s a big dog, and doesn’t listen or sit still a lot, so Joe sat in the back with him to keep him from pawing me to death at the wheel. Four hours I drove from Halifax to Sussex, and it was near 4 more before we got into Woodstock that night. Around 7:30 pm on Christmas day, we arrived at the Old Homestead, the 150-year old country house of my biological mother, Christine.
Jayne, my sister walked in the door just behind us, she’d been up visiting at her grandmother’s house and had already eaten Christmas dinner there. We whipped up a fresh batch of dressing, salad, some brussels sprouts, corn, and had turkey, baked potatoes, and cranberries to boot. For desert we had apple pie with butter pecan ice cream. And I have a big box of Tofifee on the go. I go thru about a box a day in the holiday season. We opened presents after dinner and then played some new board games which we had gotten for christmas.
Jayne left with her friend Erin who is a total slut, they went to the bar on Christmas day. As soon as Jayne left, my mother and brother and I all sparked up a bunch of joints, which we can’t do in front of Jayne because she thinks she is a cop now. Raised by hippies, her way of rebelling is by studying law and being a strict goody-goody with everyone but herself. So she went out to the bar, got pissed on red wine, and made out with her friend’s little brother until 6 in the morning. Now she’s completely regretful and embarrassed, and is dreading the day her friend finds out about her little make-out session. Hah! And we all sat at home like good stoners, not causing shit among our friends. Who’s the goody-goody now, eh Jayne??? Hah.
Christine looked great, she remortgaged her house and is living off the money so she doesn’t have to work. It’s her idea of an early retirement. She even has her own business in the house, but she is just letting that dwindle, and smoking way too much pot to even get involved in that right now. She’s mainly just focused on cleaning up the house, and trying to organize her shit. With 26 rooms, it’s no easy feat to get that place clean, and every room is packed… nay, I say, PACKED with antiques, collectibles, and heaps and heaps of junk which she thinks fits into one of the first two categories. Pack-rat.
Norman, her boyfriend, has finally shaved off ten pounds of beard and cut his hair. He looks a bit better too. Also, he has started smoking pot again, which is an improvement over last year, when he didn’t and he wanted Christine to quit because he had, and they fought constantly about it. Norman works at Sabien Cymbals, and showed me the pictures he took for their new merch catalogue. He used to be a really well-known nature photographer at one time and this was a big contract for him to shoot all those hoodies and touques.
My brother Joe recently went thru another rehab, and is apparently off of everything. Well, he had a few tiny puffs with us, but it’s Christmas, afterall. And if pot is all he’s smoking, well that’s still a major improvement. He fixed my rear defrost for nothing, and in under 5 minutes, which the Toyota company wanted $350 for.
Daisy, my favourite dog, made it thru another Christmas. Every morning I’d see her and I’d say, “Daisy, you’re still alive?! What a Christmas miracle!” She’s 15, a black and beige terrier mutt, blind as a 2x4, deaf as a concrete block, and has recently lost all control over her bowel. She’s got lumps on her head, but she still knows who I am, because I’m the only person who loves her more than the two big pretty collies. She actually skips when she sees me. Daisy’s my gal, and I don’t know if I’ll see her again.
Boxing day, Sunday, I had to drive Joe back to Sussex because he had to work Monday morning. But by the time we got there, I was too tired to make it back and decided to crash on his couch overnight. Woke up in the morning to discover that it had been blizzarding all night and I was snowed-the-fuck in. Thought it might be clearer up on the highway, and set out anyway. Yeah, right! I got 3 clicks out of town and was in a total white out. Got stuck in a snowdrift behind another little blue car. 5 seconds later, got buried there by a big snow plow. I phoned my brother with my sister’s cell phone, which I had borrowed from her on a last minute whim, I had intuited I would need it in the car on this trip. A tow-truck pulled out the blue car in front of me, and no sooner did it roll free, than a big black pickup came flying out of the whiteness and smucked right into it! Window smashed out and passenger side smashed all in, I was on the phone to my brother going “Yeah, I’m not making it to Woodstock in this weather. Can you come find me out here?” Tow-truck yanked me out, and Joe showed up that very second to lead me home in the blizzard. Stayed another night on his couch with his eye-infected dog.
Next morning the sun is shining, the streets are plowed, and I am ready to go! I load up the car, stick my key in the ignition and man, there is nothing. Not a sound, not a click, not a crank, nothing. Turns out I left my lights on the day before in my hurry to get out of the blizzard. So the upstairs neighbour comes out with a charger, gonna jump my car. I wait inside cuz the fellow has beat someone to death with a baseball bat and done his time, now he’s got 9 boys to raise and I have no coat on in the –15 morning, so I wait inside. But they got the clamps down on the sleeve of the terminals, so the charger depleted and the engine never turned. They plugged in the charger, and I played jailhouse dice with my brother and smoked home-rolled cigarettes while we waited. After an hour, the charger still wouldn’t go, so Joe took the battery out of his car and jumped it like that. My gearshift was frozen in park or we would have just pushed it out of the driveway so it could be jumped the normal way. However, the battery finally turned and I was off.
Back to Woodstock, where I spent the next evening playing pool at Dooley’s with two kids from my program at school. Which is so weird because there is maybe 5 students a year in our program, and here’s three of us, all spending christmas up in Woodstock. I Split the gas with one of them home to Hali last night, we stopped in to visit Joe’s daughter and drop off all her Christmas presents, because Joe is not currently allowed to visit with her so she couldn’t come up for the holidays.
Got in last night and my parking space is all full of snow, so I had to park on the street. Went back over to water my friend’s plants but they’re already back from California. In spite of the blanket, the backseat of my car is still COVERED in dog hair. I put well over 2,000 kms on the car, which needs new wiper blades.
And now I’m back home, with my husband, and have no idea how he spent his christmas. My friend Jenn will fly in today from Christmas with her family in Sudbury, Ontario, where I have had her searching for Absinthe, which is what we want to do tonight, for New Year's Eve.
Christmas with my family has shades of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, especially where the cousins show up in the camper with the dog, etc…. but, ah, family. See, that’s what Christmas is all about.