december 29, 2000. Now that we're back in NS, it's time to talk about the Christmas vacation that just passed. In order, then. The flight to Toronto was a nightmare in almost every way a non-fatal flight can be a nightmare: 6 hours late getting off the ground, leg room that made travelling in a garment bag seem preferable, horrible stale sandwich of something nasty, and a 45 minute middle of the night wait for luggage. Charming. Usually flying is an adventure for me, but after 8 hours in the Halifax airport I was ready to go to whatever bed was closest. You know you're having a bad time of it when you're seriously considering eating two Harvey's meals in one day. My dad was there to pick us up, of course, and we spent a good hour at the house arguing. I think I may have lost my mind on the flight over; I can't think of any other motive to make me open issues that have been finished for years. In any case, it did nothing to alleviate the accumulated tension in my parents and we eventually trundled off to Nic's vacated bed. (After years of sneaking around, it's fun to be treated as a unit!) Next morning (Saturday) we braved the wilds of the local mall to finish off our shopping. You know, no matter how organized I try to be, I always end up at the mall two days before Christmas. It's like a curse - and if you believe the media these days, it's a curse of maleness. Humbug. We spent the next 4 hours eating jumbo shrimp at the house of the Duck (a.k.a. the Father of the Boy). I think our entrance could've had more finesse - after getting the car stuck on a huge mound of frozen slush outside the building, I tore off upstairs to summon the cavalry. I responded to warm greetings with semi-panicked pleas, and we soon pushed the car to parking safety (in all honesty, Q & the Duck pushed while the Boy drove. Pixie & I just looked encouraging.) Now. The Duck has...an odd sense of humour, as does his new bride. Their present to me is a perfect example: the wedding episode of Little House of the Prairie. I have no idea if they know that I vehemently hate that teevee show, if for no other reason that the fact that I have to explain over & over that I love & worship the books & the books only, damn it! Even if they did, it was a perfectly hilarious moment of gift giving. Now if I only knew what to do with the dratted thing... In the early evening, we made our way over to a surprise party for one of my cousins (which turned out to be less than surprising, since the beans had been spilled a week beforehand). This was an event billed as the only time to see this branch of the family - unfortunately it was boring and heart-wrenching in equal measure (I wanted to stay but I wanted it to be much more meaningful first). After promising an appearance on Christmas Day, the Boy & I were glad to make our escape. On to the city, where we were greeted with hurricanes and slightly sleepy good cheer from the good folks of Froghopper Nook. I got all swanked up in the Dress while the Boy made plans with Exodus to see a midnight showing of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (this secretly ticked me off; what stupid kung fu flick was more important than a grotty, half-empty industrial club?) We eventually made our way to a cab, jetting off to Tequila while the boys tried to convince me to go straight to the Garden without putting on make-up first. Hah. Tequila was closing when we arrived, but I was too pissed to be polite; I bolted for the subterranean bathroom and painted myself spooky in three minutes flat. Only then would I allow myself to stomp off to the Savage Garden. They have a lighted sign now. What do you know about that. I tripped up the dirty stairs with glee, finally living the dream that I'd held close to my heart during all those grey Nova Scotia days. I was stopped for I.D. at the top, but a squealing committee of Dirk & Stacy (and a non-squealing Jesse) caused me to lunge past the bouncer without a backwards glance. When I gave Dirk my hoarded copy of the debate between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton, I could hear his howl of delight over the pounding sound system. It was a good entrance. For the next 3 or 4 hours, I blissed out. Between songs I walked without feeling my feet touch the ground. If that sounds strange, imagine how I felt floating back to our seats. Stacy & I pounded the floor with our large boots, wound around each other like shimmering snakes and grinned in giddy abandon. Dav kept holding my hand. Dirk danced with his eyes closed & laughed to himself. Paul refused to play my songs until Stacy intervened, then rewarded us with both "Red Right Hand" and "Going Out West." He also played "This Corrosion," and this time I didn't experience phantom chest pains and didn't feel as if I was dancing at gunpoint. Every once in a while, I would sternly remind myself to pay attention. 'It's happening now! I'm really here! Yeeeee!' This is what I did during my wedding ceremony as well - which draws an interesting parallel, come to think. Huh. Both Stacy & I have been dreaming about this night - literally, that is. Instead of trying to say it in messy words, we just danced our joy again & again and embraced when the song was over. Even writing about it now makes me overwhelmed with happiness. This was the core of me that I found so elusive this semester. It wasn't so hard to be a student teacher since I had to make up a new persona anyway. But it was hard to be a student without referents to the person I want to be, especially since I was busy discovering who I am as wife & perpetual roommate to the Boy. Something in me whispered, 'remember! remember!', afraid that I would lose this too when the classes closed over my head for the second time. That's one of the reasons I need to keep writing out my life; so that I can remember in my howling-wind-darkest-storm moments that there is brightness waiting for me when I make a reasonable effort to find it. Anyhoo. That's the serious side of the Garden visit. The less serious side is much more interesting to read about, I'm sure. During the course of the night, I chased a girl from Dav by insisting that she wasn't to touch his leg on the night when I was the brightest star. Although I was honest about the fact that I was married to someone else, she accepted my diva-bitch logic & fled the scene soon after. Later, Dav thanked me for extricating him from an uncomfortable social situation. Still later, after he'd left, the same girl wandered up to "subtly" quiz me on his behaviour in bed (??!!!) I'd like to think that she was either drunk or temporarily demented from the weight of her Morticia hair. And then: after indignantly sputtering that "they would never play White Zombie in a grotty industrial club" when I viewed the Matrix, I had to eat crow when Paul played White Zombie. Fortunately, I chose to dance my humiliation, which made it go down easier than a little blue pill. And then: Paul's "last song of the night, fuck off" song was the sublime "Fairytale of New York." Watching him dance with his wife was the sweetest thing I've ever seen in that club, and almost made up emotionally for years of ignoring my requests. I was too wired to go straight home at 2:30, so we caught the bus to Sneaky Dee's for food & chat. The streets were full of drunken gutterpunks, which I suppose is a reflection of the holiday and winter season. I tend to like gutterpunks - I don't ask them for favours, but I always felt a bit safer stomping down the street alone in the wee hours of the morning when I saw a knot of them huddled in a doorway with one of their big mongrely gutterpunk dogs. But when a guy on the north-bound bus with a bright pink old-skool double mohawk insulted Stacy's fantastic hat, I couldn't let it stand. "This hat will last throughout the ages!" I declaimed as we departed. It was then that he started to verbally abuse me. I tried to flip him off from the sidewalk, but I think another passenger blocked my eloquent gesture. Just as well, really - despite my big black boots, my bark is a lot worse than my bite and my bark's more like a whimper than anything else. He would've turned me into goth girl sidewalk paté...that is, if he could pick out which of the three me's to lunge at. We hung around Sneaky's until it was obvious that we had run out of buoyancy, then agreed to meet at Kalendar in the morning. Q & I trundled off to the Nook, my happy nostalgia for the good old days of Q'ing around only slightly diminished by the fact that he was massively pre-occupied and uncommunicative. A very sleepy Boy assured me that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was worth ditching a night at the Garden, something I still doubt. And then there was sleep. Five or six hours later, we arrived at an emphatically closed Kalendar. D'oh. Undeterred by waves of guilt issuing from me, we decided to go get breakfast at this new restaurant on Bloor called "Over Easy." Rich was being very casual about the whole thing, but there was a secret gleam in his eye as the waitress came over. As he ordered I realized why he had suggested this place. "You have a regular!" I squealed in delight. "That's kind of cool." Everybody looked at our wedding photos and squinted in the overly-enthusiastic sunlight. I was secretly pleased when Rich claimed that our wedding photos were better than his: I know it's not true 'coz they recommended Jason to us and his bride Isa's flawlessly gorgeous. Still. Nice thing to say. Dirk arrived late, but less grumpy than we had any right to expect. He was armed with wedding presents, Christmas presents & photos of his November trip to Australia (my favourite of the last is Dirk on his hands & knees among an installation of shattered stonework - it's his Planet of the Apes moment and he does it well.) He also had the best postcard I've ever seen: a little plastic bride & groom Smirnoff ad, where the vodka bottle has transformed the bride into a black-catsuit-and-fishnet-clad whip-wielding dominatrix. It is so beyond perfect that I can't even speak. If I had a scanner, it would adorn every webpage I have to offer. The Boy & I were supposed to go to another family gathering, but we blew it off to lounge around Froghopper Nook with Stacy, Dirk, Scout, Q & Pixie. I could imagine a keyed-up, barrel of monkeys afternoon that would've been more obviously fun, but our quiet lounging & chatter was even more dramatic in a way. Every once in awhile, Stacy would snuggle up to me, which was wonderful & unexpected - she's not casually demonstrative, in fact one of the first things she ever wrote about us was the difference in our personal space limits. Speaking from recent experience, I can say that it makes it all the more special when she is all snuggle-some. It was during this afternoon that Pixie & Q presented us with what they called the first rocketbride/silverthumb heirloom: a fantastic clock. I've never been gifted with something so big & meaningful before. Feels nice, but a bit awe-inspiring as well. After tearful goodbyes in the parking lot, the Boy & I headed off to have dinner with his mom; not originally part of the schedule, but very necessary none the less. She & I talked shop incessantly until we realized that it was long past time to get to the early church service in Brampton. Yet it wasn't until we were in the car that we realized that we were far, far too tired to go anywhere else that night. We dropped by a local church party to let my parents know and sluffed off to bed after the obligatory round of happy greetings & goodbyes from the community. Christmas Day was a bit patchy in places: Mom & I were fighting at my grandmother's house in that barked snarly way in which one fights in front of relatives. My uncle & cousins ignored us completely and I was more than happy to return the favour (I hadn't realized it until then, but I still hold a grudge for the whole "I give them 2 years" thing that issued from my cousin's boyfriend at the wedding.) But overall it was nice to sit back, eat cheese & produce the occasional bon mot. In the evening we drove by my aunt's house to make good on our promise of Saturday night. I wish we hadn't bothered: for all the sentimentality about seeing us one more time before our return, we were treated normally by all. This means that we were largely ignored by four roomfuls of people. Now, it's not like I'm surprised by this, but I do wish we hadn't wasted our time. False sentimentality pisses me off. On Boxing Day we trundled over to the Boy's aunt house for a full day of visiting. I love spending time with his relatives - they're mostly nice, but the ones that aren't nice are interesting in their remoteness. Plus, I've spent enough time with his sisters to truly get their giggly silliness, and I can join in the hyena-like laughter. (Best example: the Boy found a largish garden frog ornament that plays back a recorded message when passed by - so he spent much of the day recording "hilarious" messages. One of these was, "Ribbit. Merry Christmas. Scout smells." When Scout heard this, she wasted no time in wrestling him to the ground, using the karate moves taught to her by her boyfriend. Somewhere in all of this, he managed to record a strangled, "Stop hurting your brother!" which kept repeating indefinitely as she took him down. Pixie & I were in hysterics.) Everybody cooed over our wedding photos. The kids ran around, throwing wads of wrapping paper & smashing Lego constructions. Q discussed American politics. I kept saying stupid things to the Boy's grandfather. Our second Christmas dinner was thoroughly enjoyable. Pretty typical, but in a good way. Our final day in the city was pretty unremarkable as well - we went into a packing frenzy in the morning & hung around with my family for most of the day. There's still some barely concealed tension in my mother's dealings with me, but until she decides to let me in on the source of her conflict, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. This is one of the rules I made for myself back in the pre-wedding months: don't take responsibility for someone else's head game. Still, I cried when the Boy & I stepped through the metal detector, putting an end to any more last minute hugging. I read Bust all the way home.