This Christmas
is turning out much better than the last three. The first one, three months
after I lost my husband, was fairly sucky as you can imagine. This year, here
it is Christmas Day and I haven’t felt sad at all or even cried.
The major reason for this I imagine would be the new friends I’ve made - the majority of who are Canadian – and lots of opportunities to go out and socialize. I’ve also kept busy rowing and am lucky enough to be rowing every single Sunday before and after Christmas and New Years.
So onto this
year’s dysfunctional family Christmas:
My divorced
parents - neither has remarried - are both coming to Christmas at my house. The
bizarreness of this is only apparent when you realize that for several years
they didn’t even speak to each other and we celebrated two Christmases, one
with each parent.
When I say “we”
I mean my sister and I. She’s not married and I’m now widowed. She’s currently
– well, actually for a long time now – a drug addict who still abuses dope, she
has done everything other drug over the years too. This hasn’t done her brain
any favours and she now has mental issues.
As a consequence
she’s moved out into the country and doesn’t want to see my father. She did
text me this year to wish me Merry Christmas but last year I didn’t hear from
her at all. (It is very hard to have any sort of sane relationship with an addict.
Has been for years.)
So much for the
heavy stuff, now for the planning stuff. You’d think that with a mere THREE
people the planning would go smoothly. Not so much.
There are three
of us, and one of us (not me) is on a diet, despite this we have three
desserts. Everyone brought a dessert. Not that any of us actually cooked
dessert but we’ve all turned up with dessert.
My father and I
had decided a roast pork would be the go, that’s our favourite. When I invited
my mother she hinted at her preference for turkey because it’s “slimming”- Dad
and I both laughed at that and over ruled her, we’re having pork.
So Dad turns up
this morning with some turkey to roast for my mum. Unfortunately it is still
frozen and needs to cook longer and at a different temperature to the pork, and
in water. This means we can’t roast vegetables in the dish. Nevertheless I
persevered and threw everything in the oven.
Except everything didn’t fit in the oven. There wasn’t enough room for all the vegetables. So Dad has taken the turkey home, he lives 4.5 minutes from my place, and will roast the turkey in his oven.
Assuming this
all works and everything eventually cooks, which I ‘spose will happen, we will
end up with:
- Roast pork
- Roast turkey
- Minced pies
- Christmas pudding
- AND a chocolate pudding.
For three of us, and one of us is on a
diet.
Oh well. Happy dysfunctional Christmas!!!
