Santa brought me a pony after 25 years of asking for one. He brought 3 of them actually. I got a 3-pack of re-released original My Little Ponies, which are now safely set up on the bookshelf where the ferret can’t steal them. Chaucer got me a copy of Die Hard 2 to go with the original that Eddie had bought a couple of weeks ago, and I got The Pillars of the Earth from Pickle. Eddie got me some toys, the King’s Quest Collection, and a copy of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (terrifically funny from what I’ve read so far), some Hello Kitty notepaper, and I got a bunch of clothes from other folks.

Everyone liked the snowflakes and angels that I’d crocheted, and breakfast at Dad’s was painless. The animals enjoyed their toys; Pickle has already hidden one of the jingly balls Eddie got her, and Chaucer spent about 5 minutes licking the catnip mouse he was given.

I woke up about an hour ago after a 3 hour nap, and I’ve got no idea if I want to go back to bed or stay up for a little while. Eddie, who got around 3 hours of sleep last night and will be going into work tomorrow morning at about 4:30am, is currently sound asleep in the bedroom.

Dinner went off without a hitch. We had to stagger the cooking a bit because the oven only has one rack in it, so once the turkey was done we set it on top of the stove and started cooking the other things, like the extra stuffing. Eddie did the green bean casserole in the crock pot and the yams in the microwave, so that freed up some cooking space. I did the potatoes in the only big pot we had, and once they were done he did his noodles in that same pot while I browned the butter in a smaller one. They tell me that the cranberry relish turned out great, and I sent a bag of it to Dad’s. We didn’t have any basket to put the dinner rolls in except this giant one that Ed’s mom gave me, so we had 2 dozen little dinner rolls rolling around like marbles inside this giant basket. There was only one casualty when the gravy boat broke in the sink while Danielle was helping with the dishes, but that was only because the handle broke off of it and it broke into smaller pieces when it hit the sink.

Chaucer hid in the bedroom for a little while because he was overwhelmed that there were more than 3 people in the house. Pickle, on the other hand, enjoyed getting some attention from strangers and foraging in Mom’s purse, where she attempted to steal a checkbook a few times. Dessert was great, of course. There was pie, cake, and tiramisu. Naturally, we all ate more than we probably should have.

And of course, there was Alice’s Restaurant.

It’s been a busy week. Last week, being the beginning of the month, was insane at work. This week seems to be slower, which is good because one of our pharmacists is on vacation and we’ve got 4 days this week where we’re working with moron floaters. I’m going into work early today to cover for the new guy who needed the day off for something. I’ve got tomorrow off, which rocks my socks, especially since I had the entire weekend off and got to enjoy two days off in a row with my lovely husband.

We’re using Nanny’s car and saving our money for the time being. We’re fairly certain that we’ve got some money coming towards us, but we’re not entirely sure when or how much we might be getting, so we’re not making any plans for its use yet. So we’ll save what money we do have, and hopefully when/if we get this other windfall we’ll be able to afford to move out and find a new vehicle. Tomorrow I’m going down to Mom’s house to take Nanny out to wherever she wants/needs to go to, and then picking up Tuffy at the groomer’s in the afternoon.

Easter went well. Eddie and I cooked the majority of the food because of Mom’s sprained wrist. I had to cook a bunch of things that I don’t eat, such as rice pie and green bean cassarole. However, I did get to lick the beaters when Eddie was done making the cake batter, so that was nice.

The trip was an event and a half. We’re back and quite happy to not be either in an airplane or an airport.

Dec. 23, 2006: The day started off with a morning trip to Home Depot because, as nicalycab predicted, Pickle was able to shimmy her way through the new cage bars. Just barely, but enough to freak us out and force Eddie to buy some chicken wire to put around everything. Once we got her settled we said goodbye to Nanny and headed to the bank and Walmart so Mom could bring us to the airport. We had about an hour and a half before we could board the plane, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat and hung around our gate to kill time before we could leave. And thus began our journey.

Flying from TF Greene to Cleveland was ok; while it was raining in Warwick, it was beautiful above the cloud cover, and our plane landed about 10 minutes ahead of time. Eddie was seated directly behind me, we were comfortable. We hit up one of the gate-side bars and got served by one of the worst waitresses ever before heading out to Denver, where we landed about 20 minutes early, only to find out we had a 2 hour delay. We were not pleased, because after holding 4000 people for the past 3-4 days because of the snow, Denver smelled like ass. Eddie got us some McDonalds and we ate some quick dinner and settled in for a wait. We finally were able to get on the plane and landed in Calgary 2 hours or so later and found Eddie’s parents there waiting for us.

Unfortunately, our luggage was still in Cleveland.

Dec. 24th: We all get up bright and early and put on our Denver-esque clothes and headed to the Calgary Walmart for some much needed things like underwear and toothbrushes. Then we went back to Eddie’s aunt’s house, had some lunch, and went to both the mall (where I tried on the most gorgeous red coat) and downtown Calgary to check things out. We went up ito the Calgary Tower and took pictures of everything from waaaaay up there, and checked out the gift shop in the lower level. Eddie found a hat he wanted, but didn’t buy. We both took pictures with the giant beaver, a proud and majestic animal if there ever was one. Then we went back to Walmart because we realized we hadn’t bought jammies, and without having any idea of when (or even if) the luggage would be back, we wanted something else to wear to bed.

After a few phone calls it was determined that our luggage had possibly arrived in Calgary and that we should probably call back in a few hours after things had been checked. A few hours after that Eddie managed to get the info that the airline thought that they had our bags, but they wanted more info on their contents. At around 7:30pm we got a call from someone who wanted to confirm our address because the bags were found, and told us we’d get them either that night or Christmas day. We bitched and moaned like true Americans and made the guy come out and deliver the luggage ASAP, and so at about 1:30am on Christmas morning, a miracle occurred and the bags were dropped off at the house. Eddie and I then proceeded to tear open everything to get presents wrapped and under the tree.

Dec. 25: Christmas morning dawned clear and bright and not quite so cold as one would expect. We openned up presents and had breakfast and got dressed. In the afternoon we did something I’d never done on any Christmas morning before, and probably won’t ever do again: took a motercycle ride through downtown. This wasn’t my first time on the back of a bike, but it was definitely my first time wearing a full leather outfit of gloves, boots, jacket, and chaps. It was a bit cold if I turned my head the wrong way and the lower half of my asscheeks went numb, but it rocked.

Dec. 26th: We (Eddie, me, and his parents) headed out of Calgary at around 10am to make the scenic drive up to Rocky Mountain House where they live. The drive went through a lot of farmland. We’re talking about roads that go straight as far as the eye can see, with nothing but hayfields on either side. We spotted cows and horses and the occasional llamma by the highway fences, but for the most part there was nothing aside from 1-street towns and billboards advertising the next bull and heffer auction.

Eddie and Neal unhooked the camper from the truck and Gloria and I looked through crochet patterns and watched a marathon of Miami Ink. I attempted to make friends with Boots the cat, but she was none too pleased to see me there and gave me two decent scratches next to my wedding rings. Then we went to dinner at Boston Pizza (nowhere near Boston, oddly enough), where we got the biggest appetizer I’d ever seen. When we got back to the trailer, Eddie and Neal pulled bozes of photo albums and more crochet patterns out of storage and we all got a good laugh about Eddie’s baby pictures before we pulled out the sleeper couch to get some rest before driving back to Calgary in the morning for our flight.

Dec. 27th: We awoke to snow. It was a light dusting and flurries, so we figured things would be just fine for us. After another 2 hour drive we got to the airport and found our ticket counter and got our boarding passes, making sure we’d be seated together for the return trip. Going through US customs was painless, and finding our gates was easy enough once the airline reps managed to fix the sign that said “San Francisco” instead of “Chicago”. We we’re supposed to leave at about 1pm, but due to delays in the plane’s arrival we didn’t board until about 2pm, and finally off the ground at around 4pm. The entire time we’re on the plane waiting for the de-icing and baggage crews to get things going, the pilot is on the speaker appologizing endlessly for the delays. By the time we got into Chicago we, along with 90% of the plane, had missed our connecting flight, so our first stop when we got off the plane was to the gate with the next departure to Providence, which was a about 90 minutes later. We got ourselves some McDonalds and called Eddie’s folks, asking that they call Nanny and have her call my mother’s cell phone, since by that time she was already waiting for us at Greene. Eventually, Eddie and I were able to get onto the plane, had fantastic seats with an assload of legroom, and landed in Rhode Island at around midnight. We found my mother and hung around the baggage carousel for another 45 minutes with all the other people on the flight.

It was around 1am by the time we’d determined that one of our bags was still in Chicago.

All in all it was a great trip - the parts that didn’t involve airports that is.