A new year has come, and I’m as tired now as I was before the holiday rush.
Plans got muddled because of all the weather and health issues. I caught a cold just before the holidays and the beastie caught it off of me just a week before Christmas. He was snottyliscious up until a day or so before the big day but it cleared up and wasn’t an issue. We were supposed to go to Costco to buy some of the last-minute stuff but with the roads in the state they were in and with the beastie under the weather, we went to Tesco instead. I cooked a ham and a ribeye beef roast. I made a very decadent chocolate cheesecake and a brussel sprout and bacon tart. We decorated the Christmas cake. Katy’s parents and uncle arrived on the 24th and stayed until the 27th.
There was food. Much food. The table was groaning under the weight of all the meat, cheese, condiments, pickles and sweet stuff. The pantry is still full of biscuits, booze and yet more condiments and chutneys. I’d made this crazy plan for the big Christmas meal, and yet dinner was still one hour late. The food went down a treat though. The turkey was lovely and the sausages we bought from the market stall were really, really nice. I’m amazed that 5 people managed to eat 3 kilos of turkey, 1 kilo of beef, 2 kilos of ham, 18 sausages and a pound of bacon in just a few days, not even counting the sausage rolls, scotch eggs and pork pies… Like I said, too much food!
Katy’s Christmas cake, at last reckoning, cost about £50 of raw materials. It is made with about 2 pounds of various dried fruit, half a dozen eggs, a pound of sugar and 3/4 of a bottle of Cointreau. Then you add the royal icing and various decorations and you get a cake that will stun a small moose with the sugar/fat/booze trifecta. Katy already has several orders for such cakes next year. Might be an interesting sideline :) I have to say that I’m rather proud of that cake because, even though Katy supervised and directed, I’m the one that made it because the beastie, generous creature that he is, had incubated and amplified the cold bug into something that really hit Katy hard.
She got this nasty chest cold that turned into a worse ear infection. The chest cold part kept her awake for days on end because she was coughing so much during the night. It was so bad that I ended up sleeping on the couch a couple of nights. I’d been sleeping on the guest bed until her parents came but we found that she was tossing and turning and couching so much that it would have been useless for me to stay in bed if I wanted to get any sort of sleep. She was scheduled to work over the holidays but her employers, charming people that they are, called her unreliable because she called in sick one day and cancelled her overtime. Have I mentioned just how much I like her employers? They’re really nice people. I hope they DIAF, but that’s just wishful thinking. Anyway, the coughing went away, but when blood-tinged stuff started leaking out of her ears, it was time to call the emergency docs on boxing day to get some antibiotics. She’s back at work today but she’s still not fully recovered. Her hearing is still partially gone and her sinuses are still giving her massive headaches :(
Still, the holiday spirit made an appearance. In between bouts of eating and drinking, we opened lots of presents, wore silly hats and played with the beastie. We’d decided to make the holidays a TV-free zone as much as possible so we plugged in the ipod and listened to oldies and carols.
Santa was generous, given the times. I got salt and pepper mills, some Robert Welch signature knives and a knife sharpener, a Le Creuset cast-iron casserole, some chocolate, a new cologne and a book. I also got lots of DVDs, and a shiny-shiny new DVD player that can read divX files off a USB stick :D Katy and I bought ourselves Bud ducks. She got the bestest present ever though. She got a tin!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!eleventyone! She also got lots of l’Occitane stuff, some chocolate DVDs, more ducks, two terrapin garden statues and a really funky japanese-themed statue. But the tin really was the most commented-on gift :)
Beastie, again, was spoiled with presents though, this year, he actually preferred to play with them than with the box they came in. Most of them make noise, but that’s ok cause it’s not too aggressively cheerful. Mel and Stu actually spent more time playing with some of his toys than Ben did :)
We had a few quiet days between the end of Christmas and going to to Leicester for new years. I had a doctor’s appointment and the beastie had his immunization jabs. We took down the Christmas decorations because, without the mountain of gifts to keep him away from the tree, the beastie discovered that he had direct access to it and was always trying to eat parts of it. The drive up to Leics was uneventful, even though the weather was starting to turn ugly a bit.
Things in Leicester were pretty much of the same. We managed to sneak some adult time and went to see Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. Both were very good and I’m surprised that I enjoyed the Holmes movie. I was expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I didn’t. MORE FOOD! Jeminie and Stu came over for new year’s day. Katy’s uncle Michael and auntie Minal came to pick Jeminie up later in the evening and they said hello to the beastie.
We brought in the new year playing Carcassonne and then went to bed. We watched some of the fireworks from Katy’s bedroom window. The mood turned a bit weird just after new years day. There was a strained vibe in the air and it never really went away. The oldies were alternatively sniping or sulky. I think people were overdone. Katy’s been stressing about her back to work meetings and the beastie has been a handful since we’ve been back. He’s gotten used to constant attention and always being picked up and always having food thrown at him by the oldies to keep him quiet. It’s back to the normal grind now and he’s less than thrilled.
Speaking of the beastie, he now has almost a full set of teeth and is almost at the point of standing up by himself and taking a few steps. He can cruise along furniture and can stand up if he’s holding on to something. He can also climb stairs like nobody’s business and seems to derive much glee from doing so.
All in all, we had a good time. A much better time than I expected to have, and a much better time than we had this time last year. I still remember having a mental breakdown and crying in the front room with Pam asking us when we’d be ready for dinner. So yeah. Less tears, more laughts.
Still too much food. I can say that I am truly processed-pork-product’ed out.
Pictures and videos online: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/xmas_2009/