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Last Holiday, Sans Peanut, Days 12-15

Even I'm getting bored with this, so let's pick up the pace, shall we?

Day 12

Sleep in a bit (7:30) before half-heartedly getting out of bed and deciding I'm not very ambitious today. One small watercolour is accomplished before some welcome distraction with an article (again, the Amazing Mysteries book or whatever it was called) on the disappearance of the Mayans. Turns out nobody really knows what happened to them. Still, since these were the folks who believed in zero in one breath and human sacrifice in the next, how else could it end?

C sleeps in. My morning swim is very cold. Catherine drops by with laundry and to make comments about my pants. I finally force a hamburger on C for lunch (I had wanted cheeseburgers in the grocery store but she overruled me, which really meant that she had no intention of having any whatsoever, no matter what the kind) and we settle in for a nap. The end of this is punctuated, violently, but Catherine's girls (Evi and Mei Mei), who proceed to torture me with water pistols and with the idea that they can see my underwear. When they leave I try for another nap but C wants to swim; what this really means is that she wants to go in up to her ankles and be kept company. And watch me swim.

Our supper is hurried when Catherine shows up needing help rescuing a stove and fridge from her dad's (Graeme senior's) place. So we spend the evening driving around the countryside, lifting more appliances in and out of people's homes.



Day 13

Bad sleep, no blankets, being forced off the end of the bed. Chased out by a gang of French electricians, we drive into Amherst. (On the way out, halfway down the laneway is a garbage bag, and it will still be there when we get back, only this time with a little white dog mauling through it, his atrocious little face grinning and shiny with garbage juice; a few days later, this same dog will pull a similar murder on my sandals.) We run errands at various box stores. Did I mention that we're on vacation? These colliding ideas inevitably lead to a small fight, which I'll take the weight for, and it's the kind we seem to have every two or three months or so, which is pretty good considering the constant lowgrade warfare that most couples settle into. I do find a pretty stretchy-neck place for lunch, which does cheer her a bit. We come back to the cottage to find the electrical work done, and then go up the road to her sister's to find a surprise baby shower.

Day 14

Grey, just a sea of old soup, then the blue returns and the humidity settles in. C is in the middle of a manic phase, which means today is about washing curtains. Are you eating your breakfast there? Good, because I want to take down these curtains right over your head. So I help strip the place and then go for a long walk on the bars.

Lunch. Evi and Mei Mei drop by to slap me around a bit. Graeme Senior comes over in the afternoon to complain about the lack of decent Chinese restaurants in the area and to watch C fold curtains. Catherine feeds us all supper in the evening, including some delicious lobster roll.


Day 15

Uncle Michael's memorial service in Sackville. I never met Uncle Michael, but he sounds like a guy who invested heavily in being involved and yet uninvolved (working in soup kitchens but never a regular job, for example). It was a nice service and C abandoned me to all sorts of relatives I'd never met before. Psyche! Back at the shore Cousin Jane fed us spaghetti and complained about being very short.

Oh, and C bought me a nice little present, The Eclectic Abecedarium by Edward Gorey, to read to peanut and "warp her mind".

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  1. Elle1:30 pm

    In spite of being abandoned, I hear you made quite an impression on some, if not all of the relatives! What a charmer, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  2. UpStart Press1:55 pm

    One cousin, in particular, commented to me by email that this new husband of mine (like there were old ones) is certainly *nice* looking.

    He complains, but he had a nice holiday. (This is Darryl: "Oh boo hoo! I have a cottage by the seashore! Oh boo hoo!")

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown9:37 pm

    i love your holiday! i am serious! i wish i was on one just like this! i love how you got abandoned with relatives you didn't know-that is the best and it makes me laugh, especially because you are freakishly tall and i can see the whole thing going down-hehe!

    love the edward gorey book as well. the perfect gift for baby-you can never get started on edward gorey too soon. he had a fabulous house by my relatives wee house on buzzard's bay, MA. what i loved about this house is he had a whole room just for balled yarn and a sign that said his true love was cats-what a dream! oh, and love the cat watercolour too.
    take care all and especially wee peanut on the way,
    merle

    ReplyDelete

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