ETC: What I Didn't Do Over My Winter Holidays

Well, I had big plans this weekend to write a post about recommended holiday reads, but wouldn't you know it? The goldanged holidays got in the way. So instead of blogging my little heart out whilst reclining in the game-show-esque strobe-lit glare that is this year's Christmas tree lighting scheme (thanks, Rusty!), I spent Saturday busily writing, addressing and stamping our Christmas cards and packaging up boxes of goodies for our families.

So that's done. Yee-haw!

And then on Saturday night, a bunch of our closest friends dropped by for an impromptu holiday fete that at some indeterminate point degenerated into an impromptu holiday piss-up, over the course of which I learned two things:

1. Young Master Sam can sleep through anything, including thumping house music so loud it actually makes the bed vibrate and drunken friends who peep in on him to admire his slumbering preciousness.
2. There is such a thing as a "contact hangover." I myself did not drink, unless you count half a shot of orange Stoli mixed with mango juice (aka "the wuss-tini"), but as Rusty put it, "I got to toasting their health, and they got to toasting my health," and next thing you know it's 5:30 am and the cabs are lining up down the block as you scrape the last of the revellers off the porch. A mere four hours later, we were awoken by the dovelike cooing with which Sam signals that he's up and ready to commence his morning ablutions. I looked over at Rusty, who looked like -- how shall I say this gently? -- death served up on a platter with an apple in its mouth. Given the festive spirit(s) that had overtaken him the night before, that made sense, and I'll be honest, I felt the virtuous glee of the abstainer in witnessing the suffering of the overindulger. Then I realized that my own head was throbbing, that my mouth was dry, and that tiny elves had inserted themselves beneath my eyelids while I slept and scrubbed my corneas with equally tiny Brillo pads.

Where's the justice, I ask you.

And then I cleverly (or so I thought) got out of participating in the Sunday-morning coffee run by offering to stay home and change Sam's good-morning diaper. Unbeknownst to me, his morning poo delivery had arrived two hours earlier than scheduled. And that experience was so emotionally exhausting and psychically draining that Sam and I retreated back to the bed and waited for the universe to become a kinder place or for the coffee to arrive, whichever came first.

We bailed on taking showers, despite being covered with party mank. (That's always a strangely liberating feeling, isn't it? That moment you consider showering and then say, "Fuck it! Today I macerate in my own feculence!") Instead, we donned a fresh layer of deodorant, rammed hats on our greasy melons, strapped Sam into the stroller using the patented five-point harness system (we might be bad parents, but we're crafty enough to hide it from the outside world), and hit the streets and the neighbourhood shops to play a few rounds of Hit the Slumming Weekend Yuppie Crowds (Who Take Up All the Residents-Only Parking) with the Stroller While Pretending to Be Sorry.

Good times.

After we got home and scraped the blood off the front of the stroller, Sam napped while Rusty and I ate KFC (don't worry, I'm told by reliable sources that it's vegetarian-friendly) and I proceeded to gorge myself on half a pound of chocolate-covered almonds. Apparently, the (vegetarian-friendly) chicken and the nuts were too much protein for my anemic post-party state, so now I'm lying here nursing a bellyache and not writing about books.

So how was your weekend?