PseudoChristmas

PseudoChristmas - Turkey dinner potluck-style with your family of friends, (somewhere between 20 and 45 people). Often accomanied by power outage or flood.

I was looking today at the history of our PseudoChristmas. It was originally started in 2002 by Kristy, Beth and Cara. The 2002 event took place at the Party House on University Ave with 22 attendees and included a secret santa gift exchange. PseudoChristmas was declared a success.

2003 - 35 of us packed into the Party House. So many things were cooking at once that they fried a fuse which took out both ovens and the furnace. This was also the year of the Hamwrap Chorus.

2004 - at Rachel's church was much more subdued. There were some hard feelings over the event and many of us were sick (expected 33 but less attended). The traditional power outage in the turkey-cooking home was right on schedule. Doug made Ham Wraps. Never again.

2005 - at Kristy's church with an even more expanded guest list. In keeping with our disaster theme, there was a flood. We topped out in the neighbourhood of 43 guests that year.

2006 - out at Amanda's parent's place for both PseudoChristmas an New Year's with a packed house (about 37 for dinner and more later on).

2007 - we ramped it back and scaled it down; there were 22 at the first PseudoChristmas and 22 tonight, although 6 more swung by later on. For the first time in several years we all crammed in at one long straight table at Kristy's place.



Paul was on turkey carving duty.



Half of the table.



Little Tara was the primary entertainment for the evening.



She had all of the boys wrapped around her little finger.







We had Snoopy Snowcones for desert. This was a bad plan and will not become a tradition.





Chris arrived as a surprise with kids in tow.





Julia grinning at her goofy sister.



I don't think Elena held still for more than 4 seconds the entire time she was there.



Jacob the over-achiever is already finger walking.



The boys spent much of the night in the kitchen, for some reason.

Shinny

This is the fourth year running that we've had a game of shinny hockey during the holidays. Each year there is progressively less of 'shinny' about it and more of organized hockey. This year we even had two goalies rather than knocked-over backwards nets.





(Ouch!)



We ended up in the unusual situation that all of our players (besides the goalies and Lisa, who had never played before), usually play defence. Sarah informed us that Jamie wasn't defence: he didn't know what he was, so I told him to play centre. Look at him go!





He shoots! He scores!



Paul and Doug go head to head.



Ira decided he was going to play laying down for a while.



Fight!



Doug's Dad brought out the Zamboni for a photo op.



The players (from left to right): Jamie, me, Bob, Paul, Ruthie, Ira (goal), Romy, Steve (goal), Doug, Gary, Debbie, Chantal, Lisa.

This was my first time back on the ice since last year's holiday game. (I wrecked my wrist two days before our first game in January and couldn't play this fall with my injured foot.) I was able to skate for almost half an hour without too much pain in my injured foot, which means that I should be able to play at least half of the first game of the season, perhaps even more if I recover more quickly. The only really painful part was squeezing my foot in and out of the skate (and watching Paul slide headfirst into the boards without a helmet. His head is pretty hard but his shoulder is going to be spectacularly bruised.) I was also pleased to find that I can still reliably raise the puck enough to hop it over sticks, a skill I'd been working on before the injuries took me out of the game. I'm definitely not skating as well as I'd like to, but at least some of the other skills are still there.

I'm not saying anything about how the rest of me feels, although I have to admit that the word 'ache' springs to mind.

How to pick up a girl

I went out dancing with the girls tonight (Melly, Cara, Chantal, Kristy, and Sarah joined us later). It was a bit of a strange crowd: less busy than usual, and a higher guy-to-girl ratio. We’d been dancing for less than half an hour when we suddenly realized that we were pretty much surrounded. I rapidly began to have distinct sympathy for deer surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves.

There were two guys (non-creepy good dancers) to one side looking like they were having a good time, but definitely interested. There were three guys in matching uniforms of striped golf shirts and ball caps dancing on another side (I use the term “dancing” loosely here. They get points for effort). To complete the circle, there were two creepy guys in open white button-up shirts over wife-beaters kind of swaying to the music, but mostly just staring at us.

One of the uniform guys, the really tall one, seemed distinctly interested but also fairly shy. The dance floor was pretty packed at that point so such a big guy had very little room to move. He danced just like one of my favorite friends, kind of goofy but with the beat, not really bad. He likely would have done okay on his own if his friend was either less drunk or less dumb. The friend came up and “warned us” about the two good dancing, non-creepy guys across the way. He said to “look out for them” and also that “they’re gay.” Okay buddy, push off. Eventually he got the picture and took the rest of his pack with him.

As for the wife-beater jackals, just imagine them there all night, only as a succession of yucky, creepy guys who would occasionally grind up against us or stare blankly at our chests while swaying to something completely other than the music. Seriously gross.

The two good-dancing non-creepy guys just kept on dancing and having a good time. Sometimes they wandered off for a bit, but they eventually danced back over. Sometimes one would go off and the other would stay and dance with us, never intruding on the group but staying nearby and obviously enjoying the music. We left the dance floor to grab drinks and found them pleased with our return.

Eventually, after about two solid hours of dancing, they began to integrate themselves into the group a bit. All along they’d been somewhat mirroring how one or another of us was dancing, maybe making a bit of eye contact, but still no body contact. Now there was more direct interaction: dancing with one of us, more eye contact, or some casual conversation. It soon became fairly obvious that the younger of the two was interested in one girl in particular and she seemed to return the interest.

I struck up a bit of a conversation with the older of the two. He was beginning to look a bit worn out and was sitting out a song every now and then. He sighed that we were hard to keep up with. Every so often he was kind of signaling his friend to see if he was ready to leave (which the friend definitely wasn’t). I teased him that he shouldn’t have worn a sweater for dancing at the bar and that he was giving up just as we were saying that we admired their persistence. He said that it wasn’t exactly a test of their friendship since the younger guy really just lived in his basement. I replied that it was funny because we’d been warned about the pair of them earlier. He laughed at that and replied that they were definitely not a threat, that they’d been in there once before dancing to Wham and Boy George. Not that they didn’t like girls, but if they were the kind of guys that we needed to be warned about, they would have been humping our legs by now. I pointed out that the other guys must have just felt threatened because they could dance and that we were perfectly happy to hang out with non-creepy boys that can dance. He said we didn’t need to worry about them, that they were willing to put in the time. I mentioned that we appreciated that they were helping us fend off the creepy guys. He followed it up with an uncanny imitation of one of the creepier jackals. “If only finding a girl were so easy”, he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t have to use my brain at all!”

Eventually the dancing started to wind down and he convinced his friend that it was time to go. The friend was too shy to ask for a phone number, so Sarah made sure that arrangements were made and everyone left happy.

It turns out that there are still nice guys out there, not just wolves and jackals. They’re just a rare breed (Noncreepius gooddancius).

(As for me, I enjoyed the dancing, but I am definitely too old for more than 3 hours non-stop. My knees are angry with me, my hips aren’t speaking to me, my back is giving alarming twinges, and my feet checked out hours ago. I’m going to die at hockey tomorrow.)

Unexpected Perspective

This is the landing from two levels down. I'm laying on my back on the stairs with a view to the ceiling on the top level, like peering into the most shadowed layers of my mind through a secret back entrance. The lighting doesn't do quite what it's expected to and the straight lines lead to unanticipated places: revelation, excitement, complication and regret.

The red dress, the focus of the image, has a spectrum of mixed emotions woven into it. I wore it to the NaNo Thank God It’s Over party which I was wildly unprepepared for, so there was a baseline of panic with public speaking anxiety mixed in. I was relieved that the month was over, successfully completed, and that there was end to the enormous pressure it involved, but I was also heartbroken that it had ended, since I'd allowed a greater emotional investment on many levels than ever before. One of the great joys of NaNo is the chance to let my inner geek out to play, and I had far greater opportunity for that than ever before. I was exposed to ideas and concepts and events, even flavors, that opened up the dusty corners of my mind to new light. Some complex relationships developed this year, at once thrilling and painful, and I'm reminded of that interaction: how much I enjoyed the connection, and how much I miss these people the rest of the year. That night I gave small gifts, tokens really, to three individuals who had given me much greater but less tangible gifts this year, and their reactions are an integral part of my recollection of that night.

This image reminds me of how I felt, wearing that dress in that place: the anxiety and trepidation, the confidence and warmth, the pure enjoyment of shared humor and experience, and most of all the need to be understood and appreciated by those who I respect and admire. This gathering of articulate and intelligent people meant that thoughts were expressed more clearly, communication flowed more easily, and experiences were more deeply shared. At the end of the night, we sang and danced and relaxed, and the things that went wrong didn’t matter so much anymore.

Back at home, this confidence dissolved away, leaving complicated shadows and angles, and a red dress.

This is a view of the place I live; an unexpected perspective.

Who Needs Sleep?

My sleep patterns have gone all to hell again, following a brief recovery after the chaos of November. Why is it that my brain will only function in the middle of the night when deprived of rest? I'm approaching the point where lines get fuzzy and life gets complicated. You'd think a well-rested mind would deal with these issues more effectively, but I'm not sure I'd let my guard down without sleep deprivation playing into the situation.

Lids down, I count sheep
I count heartbeats
The only thing that counts is
that I won't sleep
I count down, I look around
- Barenaked Ladies

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning looked like this:



My stocking was stuffed (by Paul) with Santa's Emergency Anti-stress Kit.



(I am a psycho when my feet are wet and/or cold.)



The mini-aquarium plugs into a USB port.



This one is coming to work with me.

We made farm waffles with bacon cooked in



and ate them while we watched "A Christmas Story", which is the best Christmas movie of all time.

We went to my mom's place for dinner, which was a much smaller affair than usual. My cousin Amy



made me 'skullholders' for Christmas.



It was good to see my Grandpa. He had triple bypass surgery recently and was convinced he was going to die. He pulled through like a champion, although he is occasionally confused. He's also quite hard of hearing so this sometimes makes for interesting conversation.



Grandpa got tired of waiting for Mom to take the photo and just gave up and ate his brussel sprouts.



My sister and cousins Amy, Heather and Becky.



Robyn and I (Mom actually said that I was the "smart one" tonight. Granted this was right after I slammed my finger in a cupboard. Robyn is clearly the pretty one.)



Our attempt at a family photo. The chicken is standing in for Mom (of course). My fingers represent Jay and Ivy since they are far away and are therefore wee.

Merry Christmas

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Every year at Christmas we’re always rushing around like crazy people to satisfy all of the family and friend obligations and responsibilities (not that we don’t necessarily enjoy this, it’s just often very stressful to fit things in). There’s my family and his family and gifts to get and my extended family (which is a stressor on a level all its own) and church and travel and general chaos.

The season starts off when the out-of-town folk start arriving: Doug, Melly, Amanda, Keith, Jo, G, Beth, Dave and now Cara. Doug always stays with us so our first goal is usually to clean up a place for him to stay. The 23rd is spent in a whirlwind of last minute gifts, wrapping and packing. After work on the 24th we rush out to the Park to church, generally arriving just in time to find parking and Paul’s family before the carols start. Afterward we head out to the farm to hang out with Mama, Papa, Trish and Kaley, playing board games, eating snacks and having a good time. We trundle off to bed and normally wake up at some late hour as Jo and G sneak in the door after their time with G’s family.

Morning arrives in the form of Kaley jumping on us yelling “Merry Christmas! It’s time to get up for Jesus’ Birthday!” We crawl out of bed and gather in the living room, in various stages of consciousness. Eventually the coffee is brewing, the candles are lit and everyone has gathered in a circle. Paul’s Dad reads from the bible and then we all join hands and go around the circle talking about what we are thankful for that year. We sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out our candles.

On to the frenzy: coffee is handed out, for those who drink it. Our secret stocking exchange comes next, with at least one or two prank gifts every year. Gifts are torn open, except by me and G: we open carefully and fold the wrapping for re-use, partly because we were raised that way and partly because it drives everyone else insane. It’s a hubbub of excitement, laughter and tears of joy. We’re goofy and silly and exchange long-distance finger wiggling hugs across the room. Soon all the packages are opened, thank yous are exchanged and we troop into the kitchen for waffles with bacon cooked into them (yummy!) After waffles, more games until Paul and I have to head out to my parent’s place.

Robyn, Jay and Ivy usually arrive about the same time we do and we rush through the family gift opening so that we can finish getting ready for the extended family to arrive. My mom’s family is enormous; she has 4 brothers and 5 sisters, they have kids and their kids have kids and their kids have started having kids. Since my grandparents are both still alive that makes for 5 living generations. Many of them are extroverts who tell it like it is, which makes for a lot of laughing and yelling and some fighting. (Last year my cousin, my mom and my grandma got in a fight before we had even arrived.) I’m not entirely sure how we survive Christmas every year.

We still have a “grown up” table and “kids” tables, except some of the ones at the “kids” table are now over 40. We have a great time laughing and joking at the little table. The adult table is more sedate and many of the comments are more barbed. As the night goes on more and more relatives arrive with kids and pets in tow, until you can barely move in the house.

Eventually people start to trickle away. Mom and Dad drive Auntie Buff home while Paul and Jay and I clean up and Robyn sleeps on the couch. We drive home well after midnight with a big bag of leftovers and snuggle in to sleep.

This year will look quite different; it's a year of transition. Jo and G decided not to come back at Christmas and Paul’s family all went out to spend Christmas with them. My brother and Ivy are off on a holiday in Mexico, and aren’t back until the 27th. Instead of going to Paul’s family Catholic Church for 5:00 mass, we’re going to Sarah and Jamie’s Anglican Church for an 11:00 service. Tomorrow morning we will wake up in our new house, just the two of us, and have our own candlelit ceremony. We don’t have gifts or stockings to open, but we’re still going to have waffles with maple bacon cooked in. We’ll watch “A Christmas Story” and relax before going to my parent’s place for 4. The nutters will arrive and it will be all crazy all the time as usual until they trickle away again.

This year we have the time and the space to create our own traditions. I am stressing less about gifts and thinking more about the value of the time spent with friends and family. It’s kind of hard to be so adrift at a time of year that's steeped in tradition. I find I’m singing carols every chance I get, we’ve got the Christmas radio station on and we’re watching all of the classic Christmas movies. Admidst the change, that continued tradition is important and ties us together. There’s a wreath on our door, icicle lights on the patio, and tinsel on the water wall. We’re at home for Christmas, a real home that’s our own for building tradition and memories.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Dancing Chemistry

My birthday every year is typically a bit of a bust: December birthdays are a pain. My mom actually tried to pin the inconvenience on me this year, but I’d say that she’s far more to blame for it than I am. It’s hard to control anything when you’re a made up of two cells, with half of your DNA in one body and half in another. The separation makes it a bit hard to get your thoughts together.

As a kid, December birthdays sucked because you always got the cop out “Christmas/Birthday” gift. As a teenager it was awesome because you had much more buying power. In University the timing was bad because it always came right around the last day of classes and everyone was in the middle of lab exams, or the campus bars and restaurants were packed with students celebrating the end of classes, and then everyone went home for Christmas. I typically cancelled my birthday and rescheduled for the first weekend after classes restarted in January, so that all the out-of-towners were back in. I've actually done that so often that most of my University friends think my birthday is in January. Now we’re all so busy that it usually gets lost in the shuffle of work, family obligations and more complicated travel for even more out-of-towners. I’ve more or less reached the point where I couldn’t care less about my birthday and whether or not it gets celebrated. I wasn’t even going to plan anything but was receiving pressure from various people to at least do something small this year.

Last night I went out for Greek with Paul, Cara, Gary, Tara and Steve, which was nice and involved cheese set on fire, which is always good. We got a prelude to old-school bar dancing with the pounding music (which was very dance-club like for belly dancing), the dim lighting (we were in an incredibly dark corner), the flashing, squealing and penis-themed headgear (there was a stagette at the next table) and the smoke (many skewers of meat on the grill filled the place with a smoky haze).

Cara, Sarah, Chantal, Kristy and I went out dancing afterward at our usual location and I have to admit that I was feeling a bit old when we got there. While picking up guys at the bar was never ever my deal, it’s hard not to fall back into the usual habits of feeling like an unattractive wallflower. I didn’t end up feeling that way for long since a lot of the music was very familiar. In fact some of it came out when I was in Junior High, which is kind of hilarious. They played a song that came out when I first started going to bars and a herd of girls cheered, which cracked me up. We ended up doing our usual dance away from the overly friendly guy who was trying to touch one (or more) of us inappropriately. (What is with that, by the way? When is it okay to grind up against a girl when you don’t even know her name and likely haven’t seen her face? If you’ve had that much to drink, we’re really not interested.) I even got my butt grabbed on my way back to our table and that hasn’t happened since Whyte after the last Oilers Stanley Cup run (and that may have been someone just trying to pull their way back up to the surface of the crowd).

There’s something about moving to a beat in a crowded room, packed cheek to cheek (usually not the facial ones) with strangers. It’s like chemistry: increased heat + increased concentration = increased rate of reaction. Music and dancing, while they can be refined and cultured in some forums, are primitive and tribal at the bar and tap into some deep ancestral social imprint in the brain. All I know is that dancing makes me feel good and I will keep on doing it as long as there is music to dance to.

Grumpy Christmas!

Today is tree decorating day. This year we’re much more on my timeline than on Paul’s. He’s a “decorate the tree on December first, but no sooner” type and I’m a “decorate the tree whenever I happen to have time prior to 11pm on December 24th”.

I was typing away at the computer this morning (and by morning I mean afternoon because I went out for my birthday last night, more on that later) when Paul brought up the Christmas decorations from the basement. He started unpacking items as I continued to type. You should know that as Paul putters around the house he is almost always talking/singing/laughing at himself, which is kind of endearing but also very annoying while you’re trying to concentrate. I kept telling him that yes we could decorate the tree today but first I need to write, then we need to figure out what gifts we still have to buy/make, and then we're going shopping. Sometimes being married is like having a 4-year-old.

I have a pair of Santa pants that my mom gave me for Christmas one year, for reasons unknown since I already have a stocking. Paul brought them out from the living room and asked where they should go. Since I don’t particularly find them a priority I told him that we could wait and decide later what area needed to look more festive. He thought about this for about two seconds and put them on my head and strapped them on with a pair of antlers. (One of the reason I married Paul is that he knows exactly how to deal with me when I'm grouchy.)



I looked so grumpy that he decided I needed another set of antlers to bring me up to festive par.



Grumpy Christmas. Bah humbug!

Old Man

I applaud IKEA for their efforts at positive reinforcement. Drive a hybrid: less of a walk to the store for your purchases. Doesn't quite work, does it? I appreciate the thought none the less.

---------------------------

We're approaching Stanley's 28th Birthday. He went to see Dr. Volvo yesterday for an oil change, new front struts, fixing the left ball-joint, and replacing a torn boot. He also got a bath and is all shiny. Taking him in makes me sad; it always leads to debate over how financially feasable it is to keep fixing a 28 year-old car. I am just too emotionally invested in this vehicle to make that kind of decision, so we just keep fixing him and driving him less and less, extending his life span. If he makes it to 30, we're having a party for him.



Stanley is much like an old beloved family pet. He has a name and a personality (crotchety old man). We feed him, and take him out, and occasionally have a hefty vet bill to pay. People ask how he's doing. One year he even got a Christmas card.

I love him and will miss him when he's gone.

Pants on fire

Right now I’m very much enjoying my new smoke-free home. Since we moved into the Hill our downstairs neighbours have all been heavy smokers. The first group were three roommates, and all of them smoked heavily and their friends would come over to smoke. Okay, maybe that isn’t exactly why they came over, but it seemed like that was all they really did. This meant that if we didn’t want our house to reek of cigarettes, we couldn’t have our windows or our door open, ever. They moved out (abandoned the place, actually) and new neighbours moved in. We had high hopes when we saw that they had an infant but those hopes were soon dashed. Not only were they smokers but they were also total pot heads. They smoked up on a regular basis, and even with the door and windows closed we smelled the sweet stench of Mary Jane at least once a night. For some unknown reason they always smoked pot in the furnace room. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.

I guess I’m sounding pretty unsympathetic towards people with an actual addiction. And I understand addiction; don’t get me wrong I do. I could easily be wearing a button that says, “I have a cheese habit.” What I don’t get is what makes people start in the first place. What makes a person say, “Hey, this thing smells really bad and is on fire. I think I’ll put it in my mouth and suck on it for a while”? That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

People always point to peer pressure, but I’ve only ever experienced the reverse. My friends have always been anti-smoking. Not that none of my friends have ever smoked, or that I would not be friends with someone who did (although I wouldn't date smokers), but it happened that the few who did were the kind that hated smoking, wished they could quit and were always very conscientious about it (asking before lighting up, holding cigarette away and blowing away, going outside, etc.). One of my friends in high school started smoking and eventually stopped hanging out with us because of the pressure to quit. From 1994 to 2003, I was in a large choir and most of my friends were from the choir. Singers as a group do not tend to smoke; I think we maybe had one or two smokers a year in a group of 180. This may have further skewed my views.

My co-worker told me today that when he smoked, which was years ago, he started because he didn’t like the smell of second hand smoke. First hand smoke, or smokes in his hand, didn’t smell nearly as bad. I kid you not. That might be the craziest and most strangely logical reason to start smoking that I have ever heard.

My massage therapist has thus far given me only explanation anyone has ever had that made sense at all. She said that both of her parents smoked her entire life so she just thought that was what you were supposed to do. Why don’t adults understand the impact of modeling on their child? More likely the issue here is that their parents smoked, probably going back to before there was any information on the health impacts and addictiveness of tobacco, back when the cigarette companies could say pretty much whatever they wanted to about smoking. Of course cigarettes will make you cool, liberated, skinny and sexy. Can you say 'pants on fire'?

Mary, Joseph, the cow, and maybe Jesus

The other day Kaley (my niece-in-law) was telling us about her Chritmas concert at school. She was so excited! "And the play is about Mary! and Joseph! and the Cow!...and maybe Jesus." Guess which part she had?

Paul and I got lost on the way to her school, which is out in Cooking Lake. The google map directions said to turn on Cooking Lake Road South/TWP 513A. Where we actually needed to turn was RR222A. Not the same thing. Paul's Dad called us:

Him: "Where are you guys?"

Me: "I don't know. Lost. There is a field and a field and fog."

Him: "Oh. When you get here, don't park at the fire hall, okay?"

Me: "Okay." (Thinking: Fire hall? If we find a fire hall I will kiss it. Where the hell is this place?)

Him: "Go back to the highway and follow these directions instead...."

His directions involved going straight through a stop sign and passing a green airport sign. They led to aimless driving around the town in Cooking Lake. We never did find the airport sign.

Eventually, in spite our two sets of directions, we found the place. We came in the main doors and Paul stamped the snow off his boots and got shushed by a fourth grader. We snuck into the back of the gym and were able to instantly pick Kaley out of the crowd of Kindergarden singers. She was the one right in front of the microphone hopping up and down in excitement at the joy of doing actions. She was not a cow yet. The cow came later.

Our little cow is the one lit up on the lower right.



Here she sang a sweet little duet.



Below she is doing the actions for all she is worth. This is the part where they spin around and the only part of the song that the microphone picked up was a loud "OH!", which cracked me up. Later, Kaley got a bit behind in the song and we could hear her saying, "Wait. Wait. Wait!"



Everyone else is doing the actions. Kaley is rocking out because she likes this song.



The final note of the finale. She's singing for all she's worth.



And at the end while everyone else was milling about, Kaley took her bow.