christmas tale

 christmas eve night i only slept 4 hours.  not because of visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but because--i don't know.  i woke up at 3:30 and could not sleep more.  perhaps it was my cold making it difficult to breathe, perhaps it was my pillow configuration.  or perhaps there's no answer except to say these things happen when you are middle aged.  the result was i was not the livliest companion for heather on christmas day.  sorry heather.

heather gave up her soft comfy bed for me and slept on an air mattress in her kitchen.  sometimes, in the long hours of the early morning i could hear her squeaking on the mattress as she manuevered herself up for one of her nightly pilgrimages to the toilet.  other times i heard her arguing with sam, her cat. "no!" she'd whisper emphatically.  cats have a way of being very persistant.

i arrived at heather's house around 4pm already in my pjs.  in fact i instituted pajama day at work but only dave and i wore our jammies.  i had a stack of frozen turkey dinners in my back seat.  they were donations from a church in richmond who hired some local chefs to make them.  after delivering them out to our people, we had some leftovers and we were encouraged to take some home. i grabbed 2 each.  anyways, when i opened the back door, 2 of the dinners toppled out and a frozen turkey, stuffing puck skidded out onto the road.  i had no time for such rash and rude behavior and stuffed everything back in their containers.  luckily because they were frozen solid, i don't think they picked up anything off the road.  heather was sure there would be gravel in our meals.

after lugging in all my things and meals, heather and i had some chats and ordered an indian feast for dinner.  i thought we would get 2 or 3 sauces, some naan and rice for heather and be done.  but heather had some christmas money and in the mood to splurge on our meal, treating us both to an all out feast.  we ended up getting butter chicken, eggplant bartha, 2 samosas, 3 garlic naan for me, 1 regular naan for heather, chicken biriyani, and 2 different kinds of stuffed naan. one with aloo \(potato) and one with saag and paneer (spinach and cheese).

all the bread...groan.  i felt compelled to try both stuffed naans, and plus my garlic naan for the sauces.  i ate my samosa too.  all washed down with a blood orange peligrino. i was sooooo full.  heather mentioned that she had some light as air chocolate mouse cakes for dessert but i could not even think about another morsel of food entering my body.   

i told heather about klaus and we watched it.  i was so exhausted with burning eyes even after getting a good amount of sleep.  i think it was because of my cold. it was hard to stay awake, but i did do it.  at first heather was like, is this about christmas at all??  but she soon caught on.  it was fun to watch it with her.  

after that heather made my bed and pumped up her mattress in the kitchen. i got a second wind as she was winding down.  this is typical.  i went into the kitchen a couple of times to bug her, bounce the bed a little just to hear her groan and tell me to get lost for old times sake.  around 11:40 i fell asleep.

4 hours later i was awake.

heather got up around 7:30.  we took turns opening our presents from each other and from other people.  i had a stocking from mom and 2 presents from her and one from katie and brent and family.  heather gave me a turquoise super plushy soft molestable blanket that sends one to heaven when one caresses it.  she also gave me some gourmet treats like blackberry pepper jelly which i am very eager to try, and a roasted veg spread/sauce called ajvar.  she also gave me a pomegranate.  she remembered how much i love my poms.

i gave heather a squishmallow skunk stuffed in a pasta box with a plastic window.  i found the box in my recycling while wrapping.  his face smooshed against the plastic window gave me many a chortle while wrapping.  i made a speech bubble for him and taped it on.  it said |"hi fwend".  i also gave her a cute little phone ring/stand that is a cute cactus.  but my big gift was the thing i was working on for the last couple of weeks.  it is nothing fancy.  it is just ambitious in scope.  i made her a stack of 369 cards, one for each day, +4 because i miss counted, of the year,  the cards are all different.  there are many quotes, challenges, themes, memories, etc.  each card is 2 sided.  so it might have a quote on one side and a drawing, or comment about that quote on the other side.  they were fun and meaningful to make.  my gratitude for a friend like heather grew as i worked on the cards.  i hope they will be meaningful to her too and maybe just a little ray of light every day.  i first got the idea in the beginning of december.  i wanted to make them for everyone but i soon  realized how ambitious my project was.  i started by making some for colin, my secret santa gift for work.  but i only had 4 days to do it and pared the number down to 202 cards which turned out to be 6.149 months worth, or something like that, haha.  after doing colin's i had more of an idea of what it would take for heather's so i took the number of days left until the 23rd, which i chose as my finish day and calculated how many cards i would have to do each day to reach that goal.  i had to do 73 per day.  but i had 2 days off and 2 weekend days and on those days i did little else.  so i accomplished 100 or more on those days and finished the whole task by the morning of 21st, which made me feel very accomplished.  it was a good project to get lost in. and i watched all the star wars movies from the beginning to end while i did it. haha

mom gave me a pan of perogies.  i jokingly asked for some and she called my bluff!  heather and i had them for christmas morning breakfast.  i thought we would have to cook them but they were all ready with bacon and onions and everything.  what a mudsy.

i tried to have a nap but mostly dozed in and out of conciousness while heather was on the phone to her various peoples.  

later we watched the new grinch and had our turkey dinners for lunch.  have you seen it|? i think it's my favourite grinch!  i left before 3 because i was so sleepy and wanted to get home before i crashed.  so it was not a long visit.  but it was nice.  and i'm so grateful i had a friend to spend christmas with this year of the covid isolation.  

i had some weird pics texts from evan and his kids, some texts from andrea, bethany, sarah, and katie, and jawn and doug.  it was a merry christmas.

i slept until after 9. unheard of.  i had energy and a surge of determination unheard of in previous weeks.  i did the dishes, put out the recycling, picked up various slippers and fuzzy socks littered across the floor of the kitchen and living room.  then i started working on the kitchen table.  the kitchen table is a strata of my life. each layer of piles and stuff tells a story of the years.  i managed to greatly reduce the clutter on the table although not completely yet.  i started on the desk in the living room and also greatly reduced that pile.  in doing so i found a pile of papers i kept from some of our telephone pictionary games. and i came across the notorious 'nut butter' series.  going through that i once again lost it and dissolved into hysterics. i took me a long time to even be able to see the last page of the series because my eyes were squeezed shut in laughter. oh my goodness.  such good memories and such good laughs.

well.  mom gave me a glass owl candle holder for tea lights and i'm sitting here with that candle going and the grapefruit ginger "L" one from yesteryear.  that one has a wise man face sunk into the wax.  i'm going to have a swig of water, brush my teeth and curl up in my bed.

but first i have to say that on the 22nd katie and brent and family, me and douglas and tatiana and arabella met at mom and dad's.  to exchange gifts outside and sing a few carols.  katie and brent forgot their gifts.  i was late and forgetting that there would be snow and ice in the valley was clad in bare feet in my old keens.  the road was so slippery that i skidded past princess ave on old yale road and had to do a kind of uturn to get onto the right road.  we lined the path to mom and dad's door, bemasked and shivering.  mom and dad were bundled up.  dad sat on his walker.  katie walked gingerly on her healing foot.  natalie stomped an area flat in the snow of the yard to stand on.  i told her to make it into a heart shape and she did.  malachi typically wanted to destroy it but he didn't.  we exchanged gifts.  mom also gave a bundle of baking.  we sang far far away, and angels.  we sang the mary mary round, and away in a manger.  we sang silent night.  as i belted out those old favourites into the cold air my mask sucked into my mouth at each breath.  it was my favourite christmas moment.  i can't say what it is.  singing with my family is the balm of gilead to my heart.