1.the farquad of christmas

i had the flu.  not the kind of flew where you spill your guts, but the kind where you have a fever and headache and occasional sneezing.  i stayed home from work a couple of days but i thought i was feeling better, so i came back to work.  you know, when you are sick at home and part of you is thinking, maybe i'm just hypochondriacing this?  but then you get back to work and once you are not constantly in bed you notice--hey i don't feel great.  it's not just in my head.  and then you have a low grade fever and your cheeks are flushed and the rest of you is pale?  yeah--that.  but i was all whatevs--i'm on vacation in a couple of days!  so i worked the 3 days, and on thursday night i got home from work after we had a gas leak scare...and i landed in bed almost right away and i began to feel worse and worse and basically i got a cold.

friday night i was in a bad way. weak, sniffly sneezy, conjested.  i stayed in bed basically until i had to pick heather up.  heather spent the night before flying home to the heartland for christmas.  i forced heather to look at all the treasures i had collected for christmas.  then i talked to her when we should have been sleeping.  finally shut ma trap, and we went to sleep some time after 12.  at a rude time of 4:50 am my alarm went off.  i braved the bitter cold and drove heather to the airport.  then i went home and got back in bed for a while.

sarah arrived on the 8:30 ferry.  she came to resurrect the let's shop til we drop and then take the ferry together christmas tradition.  we had some time so we had a white spot breakfast.  our server, carmelita, was a little odd.  she kept talking to herself but pretending it was us she was talking to.  "it's going to be busy today!  all these people are probably shopping" she'd muse to herself while standing in front of us.  i got a chorizo goat cheese omelette. how could i not.  carmelita asked if i wanted the shredded hashbrowns or the smashed hashbrowns.  i didn't know which were better, so i asked her and she said "you're getting the grated hashbrowns" with such authority that i did not argue.  sarah got a benny because bennys are her thing.  she was not swayed by carmelita's grated hashbrown offensive.

outside was arctic and one hightails it to ones car in the arctic. in all the comings and goings of the morning, and all the ins and outs of bed, i forgot to put on make-up.  "oh i have my make-up right here." says sarah with the cheer of a woman never far from her make-ups.  and so it was that in the parking lot of tsawwassen mills mall sarah applied cranberry foil eye shadow with a dusting of purple on my lids.  ...followed by a race with cold to the doors.  i started at a sprint, lagged to a jog, dwindled to a trot, and ended off with a fine heavy breathing walk, but sarah high tailed it the whole way and spent her time doing gyrations for me in the warmth of the doorway.

the new mall is impressive.  we were suitably awed by all the gorgeous art work and whatnots.  it's also huge.  we were there 7-7.5 hours and we barely finished it's circumference. carmelita's words echoed in our minds frequently "too many sports stores and too many clothing stores"  "what does she want in a mall?!" we asked each other earnestly.  so we shopped and we shopped and slowly the mall sucked our souls dry, a figurative lizard tongue to the navel, if you will.  we were in this zombie like state in the line up for marshalls when sarah inadvertently said something that accidentally sounded rude.  which we laughed about but then it evolved into something that had us completely losing it in front of a bored cashier who completely ignored our hysteria. it was the kind of laugh that weakens your whole body making you want to slump into a weak heap of tears and high pitched laughter.  and your face is so permanently scrunched up with laughter that you can't see out of your watery eyes and your knees barely hold you up.  so that happened.

at some point we fed our shopping weary bodies.  at that point the food court seemed to wide and cavernous to even cross.  but we found chachis.  they make yummy grilled sandwiches.  sarah got pulled pork and mac n cheese  and i got a ban mi.  we also indulged in a vanila bourbon lemonade.  and with that sustenance in our bodies we moved on looking for our next brain to eat.

we found saks 5th avenue which is kind of like a nordstrom rack.  sue and dave the husband were there.  we may have found some treasures there and i may have won 15.00 off my purchase there.

we bought things.  my lower right shin on my left leg went suddenly bum and unbum multiple times.  we burned our tongues off at a hot sauce store.  while at the store i put together a gift pack option of disturbing hot sauce names like 'anus angst' and 'keister killer' (that one had a picture of a bum with fire coming out of it)  there is only one demographic that that advertising would actually appeal to.  eat this because it will cause your bum extreme pain when it leaves your body is more of a deterrent for me....but an intriguing enticement for others.

so to recap, i had very little sleep, i had a cold, and i spent the day getting my soul sucked from my body.  5:30 we were leaving the mall and i still had to go home and get all my stuff and try for the 7pm ferry but all i wanted was to prostrate myself on any level surface and pass into oblivion.  nonetheless we went to my house.  sarah stayed the car because of her cat allergies.  i went in and  started gathering all my stuff and leaving them on the porch and then sarah ran up the stairs and lugged them to the car and stuffed them in.  it was just before 6:30 and we had a good feeling that we were going to make it.  before i had even gone farther than a block i realized i left my washed garments in the laundry room.  we circled back and i ran in got them and back to the car.  "was that the death knoll to catching the ferry?" i asked sarah. "only time will tell", she weirdly sing songed in a pinched old british lady voice.  i didn't question it because, well we were souless.  just as we were backing out again i was sayign something about my old car and then i slammed the breaks.  the mini foosball table i got for the boys was in the back of it!  i ran out and tried to open the hatch back but it was frozen solid, so of course i began kicking it in a frenzy of desperation.  somehow the voice of reason managed to seep into my conciousness.  try the back door it whispered, so with one more savage kick, i opened the back door and got out the foosball and rushed to the car.  "that one was probably the death knoll" intoned sarah in a flat lifeless voice.  "only time will tell!" i sing songed in a pinched old ladie's voice.

we arrived at the ferry gates exactly at 7, so yeah we missed it.  and there is no 8pm to victoria on saturday.  so we had some time to kill at the quay market "is it kway or kee?" asked sarah, "no one knows!"  "yes we do know.  it's kee".  first thing we did was get some ali babba pizza. we were eating it when the dread knowledge washed over me.  i forgot my cpap.  and there was nothing that could be done.  dread.

we stopped to look in the news shop.  it had these really cute stuffed owls that were so soft.  sarah was ogling them when the great water disaster of 2016 occurred.  one started to topple, causing the others to topple, causing the remnants of water from her cup, to spill on the floor and over the chocolate bars.  the lady behind the counter came over to help and sarah told her about the water.  that's when her friendliness turned ugly.  "that's why certain things aren't allowed in the store" she said.  "i'm really sorry, it was an accident" said sarah.  (there was no sign about water in the store), the lady continued  wiping everything up with a kleenex and tut tutting.  "can you bring the water out of the store!?" she said angrily.  sarah and i both said "it's empty!" but she kept tut tutting and sarah said "wow, you are being very rude." and left the store.  i left a few seconds later and we continued on to this jewelry store where we took our time looking at the different beauties and talking and laughing that we should go back and just huck some more water in the store as we passed.  the lady of the store was really nice and i told her what had happened.  she laughed about the no water in the store thing.  and she said she will tell the manager how we were treated.  then we went down the row and looked at scarves.  oh i forgot to say we bought kyle a caramel apple and ourselves some peanut brittle and a tigerbutter cup.

eventually it was time to get on the ferry and we did.  i was trying to plug in my phone and a guy behind me was trying to help me and so sarah said he liked me because he kept smiling at us with a benevolent beam from wherever we were.  we shopped in the gift shop and found some awesome socks.

driving to langford, i was so tired i had to resort to slapping my own face. then we sang songs to keep me awake.  kyle was already in bed and we went to bed too.  i had a loooooong night of waking up every few minutes without the cpap.  i didn't really get any sleep at all.

Comments

mudsy said…
That was hilarious. You really must NOT stop blogging. How else are you going to be able to write all that infectious humour that we all love? And one day we will put it all in a book...and it will become a best seller...and will be read as bed time stories to all my great grand kids.