I’m suppose to be packing, getting ready for Christmas travel to Vancouver, but I just can’t seem to get moving. In between folding socks and tucking away toothbrushes, I keep having to lie down. The night before, had been really great, truly Christmas-y in the sense that we were with friends, there was a tree in the room, and homemade eggnog (spiked liberally) was being passed around. OK, so I have always loved Christmas. (I also never call it Xmas, even in writing, because I can’t shake the whole, “Where would Christmas be without the Christ?” question posed to me in Bible Class). It was December 23rd, and we were getting ready to round off the holiday by heading home to my folks’ house via a three hour road trip down I-5. So much to look forward to! There would be Burgerville in Centralia, several hours of bad talk radio in the car, culminating in a happy reunion with my family. Instead, I tunneled down the inevitable path of the stomach flu.

OK, so I have to just write this out: December was a really hard month. I was going to write ‘bad’ but settled on ‘hard’ because the optimist in me still believes anything worth doing is usually really difficult. But, I have to tell you, the new year has never looked so good.

My son had already won the prize for Most Illnesses in the Month of December. The dreaded MMR vaccine kicked off an already tough month of erupting molars, (complete with blackened gums a la gum hematoma). Contrary to what Jenny McCarthy believes, my kid doesn’t seem to be sliding towards autism. But, when he wasn’t drooling, he was crying and sucking on his hand. Clearly, the kid was miserable but I hoped that all the sickness would happen before Christmas: coughing, hacking, snot running liberally down his nose for 10 days straight. Suddenly, I was carrying him around like he was 3 months old…only he just had his first birthday and is a healthy 23 pounds. For weeks he would rise at 3am and treat us to a bout of crying for TWO consecutive hours. Yes, that’s a 3am-5am shift…and I’m not getting paid. Look, I’m not saying his misery was unwarranted. I would LOVE for someone to carry me around every time I have gas, but I would at least have the decency to request this during daylight hours.

Because I like to compete, I started throwing down my own illnesses. I threw in colds, an occasional fever, and then I knocked my back out putting the kid in his crib. On the rare night my son didn’t wake up at 3am, my body got up anyway. One night, I laid awake until 5am, waiting for him…eventually, he called out, I dragged myself up for the night nursing he just won’t give up, and returned to bed for two hours of sleep. It was awesome.

Because I stared feeling insane, I started zoning out on the simplest, smallest things, like browsing through the William Sonoma catalog, watching steam rise off a wet fir tree, or drinking bourbon in store bought egg nog. Sleep deprivation makes it really hard to plan for the holidays, shop, write, wrap, cook, maybe handmake a beach ball or two. I’ve always scowled at the totally played out article “This Year I’m Canceling Christmas!” (Featured just recently in Better Homes and Garden.). It seems every year some bad writer tackles the unoriginal idea of being a Christmas Grinch because the holidays are sooooo hard. And yet, there I was, my head circling the drain, trying to bang out a creative Christmas card and realizing: I’m in over my head.

“We just need to make it until Christmas,” I told my son, as he hacked up a lung in the middle of the night next to the Vicks Humidifier. “Just be well in time for Christmas.” As fate would have it, my kid was fine by Christmas; I’m the one who didn’t make it. After stuffing the car with presents, making the long drive south, eating burgers with special sauce, and showing up in Vancouver at a reasonable hour: I’m down for the count. There goes the Burgerville, (literally).

Fact: I’ve thrown up 3 times as an adult. Never from drinking (even when I probably should have), never from alleged food poisoning, only from a very certain, very devastating, stomach flu. I’ve thrown up in 1995, 2002, and now, 2010. Fact: My mother has been by my side for each of those three times. My husband has watched me give birth, but for some reason I could not bring myself to throw up in front of him. Even though he was coaching me along, it took my mother to enter the bathroom, say, “Well, what’s going on here?” for me to finally go “BLLLLLAAAH” into the world’s smallest wastebasket. There’s nothing like Mom.

Christmas with the stomach flu means feeling like the world’s biggest martyr (but that’s what this post is about, right?) While my family stuffed themselves with extra sharp white cheese from Vermont, I rustled up some Top Ramen from my parent’s food storage (expired in 2006). While everyone drank champaign, I sipped sparkling cider (expired in 2008). Because I was having a hard time not being horizontal, we skipped the much anticipated Children’s Mass at St. Joseph’s. Five years ago I got lingerie from my husband for Christmas, this year I got a vacuum cleaner (which I requested! Lest you think my hubbie is THAT kind of dude).

While I was trying to wrestle my son down for a nap, my neighbor called my parent’s house: Turns out in my hurry to get on the road I left the baby gate to the mud room closed…which meant my cat was totally denied access to her food, water, and litter box. Luckily, my neighbor checked up on her less than 24 hours later and freed her from depravity. So, in addition to having the stomach flu I was the Worst Pet Owner in the World.

The day after Christmas, my husband went snowboarding for a full day. I went to Old Navy looking for pants in a size 12mo-18mo and felt depressed. It was so bad that I actually cheered myself up by visiting the graveside of a friend who passed away when we were in high school. Well, ‘cheered up’ isn’t the right term…rather, ‘put things in perspective,’ or ’signed up for a reality check.’ At any rate, I snapped out of it enough to realize that I was actually pretty lucky, all things considered.

The night we came back into town, back in our own beds, back in our own home…my son slept through the night. It was like Christmas.

A Huge Thing meaning we ended up with the wedding cake in the trunk. We barely got the wedding cake, since the owners of the small mom and pop bakery barely made it to the slushy, snow covered, Hawthorne street their store is located on. Cake was suppose to be picked up by 8am…we didn’t get it until 10:30am. Then the three of us (Josh, his sister, and I) all turned into morons and could not manage to get out of Portland and onto the appropriate coast bound highway. Wedding was at 2, we needed to be there by 1:30. After going round and round in circles we finally left the city by 11am. We had grand notions of stopping at Burgerville in Tigard but that never happened. Going to the bathroom was also not an option. On Highway 6 we hit snow and semis chaining up outside of the pass. The car jostled all over the place with Josh’s sister freaking out about the state of the cake. At 1:30 on the nose we rolled into Pacific City. Then the bride made us wait for 2 and a half hours…with 7 children all dressed up and no where to go in a small room off of a restaurant. I almost cried. Here’s a pic of me trying to hold it together with my (much calmer) sister-in-law:

The important thing is that the wedding finally happened, only one serving tray of pizza was knocked over by a small child, and we finally got to eat. The cake made it barely unscathed–only a slight crack in the frosting on one side. I helped stick a whole bunch of roses around the cake, sprinkled petals around the base, and then carefully faced the uncracked part toward the front of the cake table. Here’s a much happier pic of me with my hubby:

Stay tuned for details and pics from the scandalous after-party at a local Lincoln City dive bar.

When we arrived at my parent’s house the day before Christmas Eve they didn’t have a tree. The weather had prevented them from their usual trek out to the Christmas tree farm so everything was delayed. I found this so distressing that my dad called up the tree farm out in rural Vancouver to confirm that they were indeed open. The kindly old couple confirmed they were open but…good luck trying to get to them in the weather. Snow had been falling all morning but my dad had put chains on his suburu station wagon and was feeling confident. Gina, Josh, Dad, and I all bundled up and prepared to trek out to the country to chop down a tree (sort of like a touchy-feely after school Christmas special).

We didn’t make it very far before I started noticing abandoned cars, their snouts buried in the blackberry bushes along the side of Fruit Valley road. Some of the cars were at frightening angles, almost upside down, and many of them were blanketed in snow. Then the row of cars we had been following stopped. Someone ahead of us had been sucked into the wall of snow at the side of the road. Folks started turning around, tires spinning in the snow, we followed suit and hauled the suburu around. The car in front of us slid and soon we were slipping parallel to the road next to them. AAAAAAH! Several slips and twists later my dad maneuvered around several cars and we were on our way. After some discussion (my Dad insisted he could find an alternate route to the tree farm–my sister and I loudly protested), Josh suggested those who felt nervous could be dropped off at home and then find a pre-cut tree. This idea was met with hesitation (my dad REALLY wanted to cut down a tree) but Gina and I had thrown in the towel. When we got home my Mom backed us up and my Dad settled for a tree found at Home Depot. (This was after visiting multiple places that were sold out of trees).

Incidentally, on the off chance we couldn’t find a tree, my Mom cut a large branch from the fir tree out back and stuck it in a bucket of a water.

The maze opened up, bright and sunny to a GIGANTIC festival. Covering three parks, Hempfest was long and narrow, flanked by the Puget Sound and the railroad tracks. It was 5:30pm and scorchingly hot. Everyone was there: Disabled people rallying for medical marijuana, sign language interpreters standing on the music stages translating, pregnant women looking hot and bothered, people with dreadlocks coiled on their heads and drums on their backs were followed by teenagers looking for weed behind the dumpsters. Food booths covered the lawn, packs of people were splayed out on the grass, a really fantastic Guns And Roses cover band was screaming on one of the mainstages. Teenagers walked around with freshly purchased bongs wrapped repeatedly in bubble wrap. It reminded me a little bit of what Folk Life used to be back in the 90’s–all drum circles, interesting people, and earthy food. But this festival really contained an edge, a feeling of danger that I can’t really put my finger on.

“Where is Rick Steves?” I wondered. Turns out we had missed him by an hour. Booth after booth pleaded us to take political action, sign a petition, rally for the masses. The cover band was replaced by an activist yelling about the injustice of our country, how she had taken her right to smoke medicinal marijuana all the way up to the highest court and lost. People pumped their fists feebly in the air and uttered a breathy, “Yeeeaah!” in support of the cause.

After walking around for an hour and gaping, Josh and I went to the water’s edge to cool off. I waded down the rocks to dunk my feet, and I swear, everywhere I looked people were calmly smoking out. People were discreet, no one was waving it around in anyone’s face, the naughtiness was delightful. I looked out at the Puget Sound and watched an Argosy cruise boat filled with tourists slowly putter by.

Samamish River reminds me of the lakes we used to visit growing up in Vancouver: Large, filled with people, parties, kids with floaties, the works. The place was packed but not unbearable. The water was suspiciously murky, filled with green stuff that coiled around our legs as we waded in. Instead of sand, there were rock between our toes. Boats and people on those motorized water scooter-thingies roared around the lake making a ton of annoying noise. The place was not peaceful, but it was sunny and hot, the water felt really good. We found a trail that led to another little beach with real sand, but people had somehow managed to drag their boats up to it, and every few paces you had to avoid someone banging on the stern or fixing a piece of their ship. Josh was working on a really terrific sunburn; I hooked my bra straps under my armpits to try and improve my tank top lines. Josh hiked up his sleeves–something we would have been embarrassed to do in Colorado–and his shoulders started to freckle.

Sometimes I feel down about where I live. When this happens I try and tap into a mental list of things I love: the breakfast place down the street is at the top. Cheap, fast, never crowded, 1/2 a block from the water. Josh and I headed over there for pancakes and eggs. The only downside was that their normally wonderful black coffee tasted obviously flavored. YUCK. The lesbian couple beside us confirmed that they also tasted a flavor. BLEH. We went to Safeway for cash and iced Starbucks coffee.

Then we had a few false starts: I had looked up a farm that was recommended off of our real estate agent’s fancy website. The farm turned out to be nothing but a glorified fruit stand. Josh and I are not confident enough to pull up to an empty rural parking lot and poke around. We like our farms touristy and filled with people. We past up the farm. Then we looked up a winery nearby–I love wine tastings in the morning! The ‘winery’ turned out to be in a strip mall next to Ikea. How is this possible? Again, we like our wineries bustling, rural, and with a huge wine barrel motif. We passed up the faux winery and headed out to Snoqualmie Falls.

By this time the temperatures had increased, the ice in our coffee had melted in our cups, and the sun roof was open. The Falls were predictably full of tourists, including a wedding party. We could have walked down the “warning: steep incline,” path for several miles to get to the bottom of the Falls. If it hadn’t been 90 we would have considered it–we even brought sneakers just in case. The problem was imagining walking back up, the heat becoming stifling despite the explosion of the Falls nearby. Someone had altered a sign, “No Dogs Allowed” to “10 Dogs Allowed:”

We headed over to the Railroad museum which was tiny: One room with a few placards explaining the process of shipping across the rails. Wooden crates stood bunched up in a corner, an old stove (“this is an example of something that would have been shipped to a household during the railroad era”), and a guide to swinging your lantern (‘Two swings means ’slow down’ to the engineer!’). A 70 minutes train ride was available for 10 bucks…I was into it, but Josh had visions of being stuck on a hot stuffy train without a bathroom for too long. We went to the Snoqualmie Brewery instead:

I’m not a beer drinker…however, I’m a sucker for beer samplers. I love getting multiple baby-sized glasses of beer–a pint is too intimidating. Josh and I are well matched for samplers: he loves all the ales and I go straight for the dark brews. Anything that tastes too hop-ey makes me scrunch up my face. Deciding we were finally hungry after our large breakfast (which combined with the heat has made us feel full for a long time) Josh and I ordered the jumbo nachos to accompany our beer. This was taking a page from our early years together in Colorado. Back then we used to split a plate of nachos at every happy hour in town, and, because it seemed required, I tried to drink beer. The nachos at the Snoqualmie Brewery were huge but low quality. They left us with a full, sickly feeling. The two of us stumbled to a local park and lay on the grass near a display of the region’s largest cross section of a log. The stump was huge, ancient, and much admired by tourists with mullets.

Josh observed some local teens spitting, talking, and causing trouble in the park. Their sense of fashion was really poor: a large kid was wearing an oversized dress shirt, baggy basketball shorts, white socks, and Sketcher-brand sneakers. Josh wondered what would happen if you put that Crime of Fashion into a Seattle teen scene. I noted that another Crime of Fashion would simple occur: chubby teenagers in lycra stretch jeans that tapered at the ankle with slip-on sneakers. Poor fashion is all relative. And I know we sound like the worst city slickers going out into the Snoqualmie region with our fancy pants opinions but, seriously, you would agree that the local fashion was bad.

Earlier in the day, I stated that I wanted to do nothing but drink coffee all day, eat food, and be as decadent as possible on my anniversary. So, despite being full of beer and nachos I decided I had to support the local coffee shop. It advertised a $2 mocha and I was not disappointed. The place was cute, local newspaper articles on the wall touting the shop’s support of the local Snoqualmie art scene, a place for kids to color, a nice cross breeze shining through the front and back doors. Aaah. I sucked down my iced mocha in no time, envying Josh for savoring his.

To be continued….

The inside joke of the party was by far Kimberly’s blog reference to signing their marriage license under the lines Party A and Party B (to reflect the recent gender neutral licenses distributed in CA). No Husband and Wife terms for them! (Which suits them perfectly). Their ceremony was 5 minutes, led by a mutual friend, and very touching. There were no exchanging of rings, no vows they had written, and no wedding cake (but not to worry, I had spotted large cupcakes in the kitchen!) The ceremony wrapped up with a a simple “Do you take this person?” and a “I do” from Justin and a “I totally do” from Kimberly.

The room exploded with cheers and in the following chaos Josh started casing out the lime tree in the backyard. Wanting to help out the bartender (a friend of K and J’s who was super sweet and made me a humongous martini in an equally sizable plastic cup), Josh managed to extend his long arm up into the tree and extract a lime. How cool is that! How ‘California’ to have fruit trees that produce lemons and limes–I had no idea!

The Newport Beach breezes picked up as we dined on vegetarian lasagna (reflecting Kimberly’s vegan tendencies), drank wine from the care free bottles of red and white that had been placed tactfully on each table, and met other arty/drama-y friends from the K and J community. Champaign was passed around at the end for toasts and rememberences. Josh had been happily drinking beer all night, drank his champaign, and then cheerfully added the glass of red wine I had poured for him hours ago (for dinner). This resulted in a very Sick Josh the next morning in the LAX airport (who has since then swore off champaign for the rest of his natural life). That combined with a nerve wracking 45 minute wait to get through security, no food, and a packed plane led to both of us melting down. To top it off we had an inexperienced mother sitting behind us with two screaming, screeching, complaining, whining children…one was about a year old and the other was barely three. It was so bad that the stewardess came over and said, “The seatbelt sign is off, now would be a great time to walk your baby up and down the aisle…here I’ll take your three year old.” Did the mother walk her baby? No, she sat like a lump in her seat while her child emitted a series of painful yelping noises. I couldn’t even sit back in my seat because my chair was being mercifully kicked the entire time by an impatient and pissed off toddler. Worst Flight Ever.

But all that aside, the wedding was a delightful highlight to an otherwise somber weekend. Hurray for Kimberly and Justin!