Although I would generally frown upon going anywhere near a shopping centre, grocery store, etc. on Christmas Eve, we had a few last things to pick up for Carol, Lisa and Dale and had to get the rest of the ingredients to make the Chocolate Dream Pie I wanted to bring out to Marie’s for Christmas dinner. So, we went to iHOP for breakfast and then stopped by the liquor store at Highgate to pick up some wine for Carol, beer for Dale and some beer for ourselves. Next stop was London Drugs at Byrne Road to pick up the photo album I wanted to get Lisa and Dale as a Christmas gift – thought it would be a good one since they just got back from a cruise to Mexico and would surely (and they did) have lots of photos from the trip. Then, we went by PriceSmart to pick up the other stuff I needed to make the pie and headed back to my house.
I finished wrapping the remaining presents and piled them up under the little silver tinsel tree – it looked funny with so many presents piled all around it because it’s so tiny itself – only about 2 feet tall. It did the job and looked very festive.
We watched some TV for a while and Tracey had to go to work at 6pm at the studio. She asked me to come down there and hang out with her and I didn’t have anything else to occupy my time, so I went down shortly after she got to work. I tried to call my mom on the way down and she didn’t answer the phone – surprise, surprise.
We brought some chips and dip to the studio and Tracey made us panini-like turkey/ham sandwiches with cheese from some stuff that was in the fridge in the production office. We went into the office they use as a screening room and ate and started watching It’s a Wonderful Life. We paused it a little way through and went back into the “Work Bench” stage to water all the plants they had in the garden section of the store set. Then, we cuddled back up on the couch and continued watching the movie. Tracey asked me if I wanted to stay there with her until she had to get up at 4:45am, so I said sure. She had a bad headache and wasn’t feeling well and ended up throwing up. Then, we tried our best to sleep on the leather couch with the coffee table pulled up close to the couch to use as a footrest.
I slept OK for a couple of hours and then woke up severely uncomfortable with the back of my leg hurting from the edge of the table cutting into it and my lower back sore from having my legs in the position they were. We switched ends of the couch and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and went to lie on the other couch by the door to the office. Tracey woke me up about an hour and a half later and I had to drive home, which made me feel totally spaced out, having just gotten up from sleeping. I went back to bed at home and she came in when she got off work.
On Christmas morning, we slept in until about 9:30am. My dad had called at 9:00am, so I phoned him back a few minutes later and talked to him for a while. First thing he said was, “What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you in a while…” I said, “Oh, brother, you sound like mom!” and then he said that he’d tried to send me a couple of emails and hadn’t heard back from me. I told him I hadn’t gotten anything and maybe my SPAM filter was being overly aggressive and I’d take a look at it.
After I was off the phone, we got up and went for a walk at the park and fed the ducks a bit. Then, we came back and Tracey made us waffle and turkey sausage for breakfast. That waffle maker is really good – waffles are SOOO yummy! Tracey told me that my Shaw cable box had a karaoke feature built into it that she saw a commercial for and I tried singing a few Christmas songs, which was hilarious!
Then, at long last, it was time to open our presents. We made video clips of us opening our presents with Tracey’s camera. I made her go first and gave her the Casino Royale DVD first, since it was the most obvious from the shape of the package. Then, I opened one and it turned out to be one of those cuddly chenille bathrobes that I’ve been swooning over lately. It’s white and is soft like a teddy bear! Then, I gave Tracey her Pillsbury Dough Boy tin sign and she liked it, too. My next present was a pair of really nice, small Bushnell binoculars – another thing I’ve been looking at and wanting to get so I can see the birdies from farther away! Next, I gave Tracey the cookbook I bought her and, of course, she liked that, too, since she’s the one who said she would like to have that particular one. Three for three so far! Then, my last presents was the waist pack that I had looked at at the Roots store the same day that Tracey and I went in and she saw the bag that I ended up getting her. Too funny, we both ended up buying the bags for each other that we saw when we were together at the store. lol So, her last presents was the Roots bag that I got her and she was so excited about it – good on me – I did good this year!
I made the pie and then made a couple of calls to Manon and her parents’ house and then we headed over to Tracey’s house to pick up her snowshoes and a few other things she wanted to bring to Whistler with us. Then, we got back to my house and had to get dressed and gather the presents to bring to Marie’s. We met Carol and her mom at McDonald’s and Tracey drove us out to Bill’s house so we could drop the kids’ presents off to them. That place is like a little dungeon with barely any room to move and the kids were all acting weird. Kaitlyn wouldn’t even give us a hug before we left – whatever, those kids are fucking weird anyway.
Then, we headed out to Marie’s with the help of Carol’s new GPS unit – a really nice Magellan model with a big screen and that says the directions out loud while you’re driving so you know where to turn without looking at it. We hung out and munched on some snacks and had some beer and then opened presents while we were waiting on the turkey to be ready. Carol gave us a free night’s stay in a cottage at the Harrison Hot Springs Resort, which is super cool! Lisa and Dale gave us a $100 gift certificate to the Boathouse restaurant and Marie gave us a gift card to go to the movies. I guess they all think we need to get out more? lol
We sang some karaoke on Marie’s cable box and everyone was heckling us, but it was still fun. FINALLY, around 9:00pm, the turkey was finally done and we sat down for dinner. It was an obscenely extravagant spread of food – turkey, prime rib roast, oyster stuffing (and some without oysters which is what I had), scalloped potatoes, perogies, brussels sprouts, carrots, homemade rolls, sausages that Marie and Dale had made themselves (didn’t have any of that), cranberry sauce…my God. The table was stacked full! So, we ate dinner and then helped clear the table and package everything up to put in the fridge. All this time, the pie that I made had been sitting outside in the snow to keep it cool since it had snowed just enough earlier in the day to give us a white Christmas – a nice touch!
Susan, being the total idiot that she is, finally showed up at like 10:30pm, even though Lisa had called her days in advance and had talked with her around 5:00pm to invite her over. We were packing up to leave when she got there – thank God, I couldn’t stand hanging around and listening to her ramble for hours on end. I didn’t even get a bite of the pie that I made and I just left it there for them to have the next day – hope they liked it!
We dropped Carol and her mom off and got back to my house and went to bed shortly thereafter.