You know how you get all comfortable with a routine, you even manage to work your busted sleep schedule around that routine, then it all just kind of comes undone and before you know it you’re going 80 million different directions in the same 30-minute timespan? Yeah that. It was how I spent a few weeks here in December, after keeping things relatively quiet–periodic posts up in here notwithstanding–for the couple months before that. And somewhere in between there I still managed to remember to breathe. Actually that’s kind of how parts of 2013 in general went, but that’s a post for later. As for right now, life in a nutshell–or a somewhat rambling essay. Whichever.
Just hear those sleigh bells jingling…
The folks over here at Accora Village, also known as the neighbourhood we live in, threw together an attempt at a sleigh ride earlier in the month. Pretty sure it was maybe the second weekend of the month–late enough, anyway, that things like wind chills in the vicinity of -30 C were a definite thing. What we didn’t have quite yet–it would definitely come shortly afterwards, though–was the actual snow. So instead, it was a horse-drawn wagon. Was still fun, though, if a little chilly. It was also May’s first, ever, sleigh ride in spite of the fact she’d been in Canada for a decade. Clearly we need to get the girl out more. I’d been on quite a few of them, both here and in BC, but it was nice to actually see it from the perspective of someone who hadn’t–she posted that perspective on her own site if you’ve got a few minutes. Definitely something I’ll do again if I’m here for it. Hopefully next time on an actual sleigh.
Somebody call for global cooling?
I mentioned the -30 degrees C wind chill already. That made a couple more reappearances after, sandwitched in around some pretty significant snow events–winter definitely showed up all at once in Ottawa. It wasn’t even the official first day of winter yet, and already we’d had to have the walkway/sidewalk in front of our place cleared a few times. Walking to class was quite on the fun side. Not to mention damn cold. I actually need to get used to such evils again, it would appear–it’s been a while since I’ve actually not had much choice but to stick my nose out the door and pray it didn’t fall off before I made it to the freaking bus. And I was getting paid to do such monumentally stupid things last time. I stayed my ass home on the coldest of the wicked cold days, though, which… Actually turned out to be probably the smartest brainstorm I had all year. Because…
I did not authorize death bug 2013, thanks.
I only grow a major, major health issue maybe once a year, if that. When I do, though, it’s quite the impressive one. This year’s episode came with everything but the kitchen sink–and the major inability to keep food down. Dizzyness, fever, wicked nifty cool cough, and a perfect combination of all of the above to pretty much guarantee my ass stayed itself at home, if not in bed, for the better part of 24 hours. And because I can never seem to develop these things any other way, it came perfectly timed to keep me off my feet a day before a test I was hell bent I was taking before I left for Christmas vacation, because like hell I was leaving that out there to be delt with in the new year. New year, new chapter. Besides–what the hell else was I gonna do on my last day there other than drag my feet? So instead, I stayed as close to comfortable as I could manage with a temperature, and just bounced what I needed to off my instructor from the comfort of the home office and college email–I do love that about this college, if we’re being honest (more on that in yet another entry). And the next day, not quite at a hundred percent yet but definitely better than I was, I went in and tossed off that test in about 15 minutes. Might have been 10, but like I said not quite at a hundred percent yet.
Death bug 2013, the sequel? Well crap.
I was getting over it just in time for May to be catching pretty much that same thing herself. So after dealing with college things on Friday, and then dealing with unplanned, unexpected and uninvited financial things after that, it was off to do 4 different flavours of running around in preparation for getting her well enough to travel and tying up the few loose ends that were left before we did so, which ended up being pushed back a couple days on account of a combination of she was nowhere near well enough (she caught it worse than me), and round 45 of let’s throw as much winter as we can at pretty much all of Ontario–at least this one waited until the first official day of the season before it nailed us but good. She was off her feet for pretty much the weekend, and part of last week while she kicked what was left of it. Though we did actually manage to leave the city for Christmas, I don’t imagine doing so was overly comfortable for her. We tried, though…
All your travel plans are belong to winter.
In a way it ended up being a good thing we weren’t ready to travel on the weekend before Christmas. Because right around the time we were thinking maybe it might be smart-ish to stay ourselves right at home for a day or two longer, weather was fixing to make sure we did exactly that. Major snow storm Friday and into Saturday, then apparently a wicked major ice storm in parts of Ontario (I’m looking at you, toronto) on about Sunday. Ottawa didn’t see a whole lot of the actual ice storm, but we did catch enough of it that roads got interesting for a majority of the day from what I’ve been hearing. We’d pushed our travel back to the 23rd of the month for health reasons, and that turned out to be the second smartest decision I was involved in of pretty much the entire year–look above for the smartest. By the time we got moving, things had cleared up at least enough that I wasn’t seeing news of delays, accidents and general traffic crappery every 5 or 6 minutes. So now all we had to do was beat our schedule into submission–not an easy thing to do when your schedule’s primarily out of whack because you’re out of whack, and you still haven’t quite corrected that malfunction just yet. But, hey, when you’ve been brought up in my family, you tend to develop the ability to take a messed up tangled up mangled up routine and turn it into getting where you need to be ahead of when you need to be–either that, or you get run over and left behind by the folks who know what they’re doing. That first thing sounds better, so we somehow went with that.
I’ll be home for Christmas…
On the Monday, we did actually manage to leave the city. As said it took some scrambling, because we were both running a little slow still what with neither of us being entirely over what ran us over the week before yet, but we managed to hit the bus station with more than enough time to get things situated so we could actually leave relatively on time–not bad for leaving the house a few minutes behind schedule. Which worked out just fine for us after all, since we gave the bus the room it needed to not actually pull out of the station until a bit after we were supposed to, and we still got to the other end about an hour after we were supposed to–a thing we, surprisingly, were both somewhat okay with and not a bit responsible for (Go us!). Pretty sure it was a combination of we were still in recovery and generally dealing with being tired from the trip, but travel day at the other end was pretty much spent barely conscious once we got situated, fed and made the people who needed to know aware that we were in approximately 1.5 pieces, but we made it. I… Don’t actually remember much more about that day aside from we made it. Which I suppose is really all that counts. Well, that and I was warned to expect a nephew ambush. Good thing one of us was mostly mobile…
… Please bring caffeine, and medication, and food, and…
The warning of a nephew ambush was not unjustified. As in at all. As in adoreable overload–again. The oldest was more than a little testy, but when he wasn’t pushing just about every limit his dad didn’t actually set down, he was pretty freaking adoreable. His brother, on the other hand, pretty much didn’t know how to be anything else but. Which worked out sort of well in our favour, given they stuck close to May and I every chance they got. When we weren’t having a nephew afternoon, or morning, or evening, or everything, there was plenty of good things to be had. My mother knows me and May both too well, so the caffeine was stocked. And because it’s Christmas and she can never resist doing it on Christmas, there was more food of more varieties than you can shake a cat at. Baked goods, healthy goods, grab some to munch on the way by goods, you name it it was out there. If you went hungry in that house, there was seriously something wrong with you. And just in case death bug 2013 followed us from Ottawa, or the kids left you with a migraine, she stocked up on medication. Because it’s not a Christmas vacation without someone needing at the very least to pop a tylenol or two. Of course it could also just be that she worries too much, but whichever. We came ready for christmas, and probably ate enough to see us through to, well, newyears.
It’s beginning to look a lot like giftmas.
Christmas morning came and went, and when it was all done and over with, the kids came out well ahead of the rest of us. Santa was at mom’s place this year, so for the first time since probably we were growing up, the tree was quite a bit on the full side. It didn’t last long, though, once the kids actually got up–maybe an hour or two, and all the evidence of a productive Christmas morning was all over the living room floor. The adults all pretty much got things they needed, or things that we figured would go right along with what they already had. I got to scratch a few things off my 2014 shopping list, which is never a bad thing if you’re a guy what can’t actually stand shopping. From a concert May got to go see in November (I’m still mad at you about that, by the way), mom got a CD from the two of us–she’d mentioned being a fan of the group, so that worked out quite nicely. No one went over the top this year, really. Well, except for things for the kids, but you can’t really not spoil the kids–it’s really their day, after all. But I think we all had a hole or two in our personal inventory filled. Or if nothing else, a little something extra that might could come in handy later.
One food coma, please.
As always, Christmas dinner was a stuffed afair. Turkey, potatoes, two kinds of stuffing, a couple different vegetables and of course a wicked selection of desserts. I think I may have gained a few pounds just in that one evening. One of my sets of aunts and uncles dropped in for a bit, which also meant we didn’t have to coordinate trying to find them while we were doing our visiting later. Which also had the advantage of meaning May and I didn’t need to go visiting later, as we’d already seen my grandparents the day before–so when it came time for food coma, all we had to do was waddle down to where we were sleeping and pass out. Which we had no problem doing. There’s something to be said for just shutting down for the evening while you try and find more room for that second piece of pie you couldn’t quite fit in earlier–which, I have no shame in admitting, I so very much did. Oh, and there may or may not have been a Big Bang Theory marathon tossed in there as well. Not entirely sure how much of that I actually saw after supper–see also: food coma, victim of. But it was there, and it was seen, so it counts. Mostly.
I need a vacation from my vacation…
As fun as christmas was, I think we were both pretty ready to come home, Or at least ready to be free of tiny things under the age of 10 for a little while. So after we took boxing day to pretty much recover from Christmas, we packed our crap up and my brother drove us back to Ottawa this past Friday. I took the weekend to relax, catch up on things I fell behind on while I was gone, and generally enjoy the piece and quiet. And at the same time I tried to pretend that us coming back home didn’t mean it was nearly time to get back into the same old usual routine. That part didn’t work so well. As I almost always do, I really enjoyed the Christmas vacation with the parents. I think I enjoyed it more this year because we weren’t piecing together a plan for how to handle things over the vacation about 5 minutes before they needed to be handled for a change. My only actual complaint is I freaking missed hockey in my absense. But in 2014, I will correct that. And hey, since I don’t have anything planned for tonight… I think I may just start right about now. Okay, so maybe getting back to the usual routine won’t suck entirely too horribly after all.