So This Is Christmas...

Christmas Eve. Lobster time. My dad has insisted we have it not at our house, where there are things for Pumpkinpie to do and where we can put her to bed and enjoy an evening together, but at my mom's place. Fine. We were all packed up and ready to go. Kid dressed in cute red-and-green outfit, bag packed with her extra clothes, diaper and PJs, bib and sippy cup. Misterpie had the cauliflower all cut and dressed to go into the oven. I had on my favourite jeans and a cute top, with new and very lovely underthings below in hopes of some non-holiday-related activities later that night. We had confirmed with my dad - we'll get there about 5 or 5:30 so we can start cooking and aim for a 6:30 meal. No one else needed the oven. Good to go.

Arriving at my mom's house, I see her wandering around in a parka and toque. Inside. "We have no heat?" Turns out my dad had come by Thursday to make sure everything was in place and working so we could do the dinner there without worrying about this stuff, but somehow, today the furnace wasn't responding to what my mom said normally worked - banging it. I should point out here that this is not the first time we have arrived for a dinner at her place of residence to find it heatless - and not even just in this house. It's like she has Munchausen's by Proxy, but with a furnace instead of a child. Luckily, it wasn't that cold a night, so we figured with the oven on for the cauliflower and the water boiling for lobsters and all of us packed into the kitchen, it would be fine. It is a shockingly mild December, really, so it'll be okay. Carry on. Turns out, I should have trusted my first instinct to turn around and walk out as soon as I saw what was going on.

My sister wasn't there yet - she can be counted on to be about 45 minutes late, so I wasn't too worried about that. It was only a few minutes after 5:00. Lots of time. After some running around trying to solve the furnace, Misterpie finally gets to start organizing the cauliflower into pans for the oven. My mother, meanwhile has decided to try to entertain the girl. Sitting down and playing obscure carols from some antique scandinavian songbook is not cutting it with Pumpkinpie, who is bored by someone else playing the piano and refuses to sing on command. She may be a monkey, but not a trained one. So my mom unwinds a length of rope and gives it to her. She is soon trying to teach the 2.5 year old child how to jump rope. Yup, that'll work. After a few minutes, she wanders into the kitchen, leaving Pumpkinpie jumping around with her rope, now all wound up like a top. Good toy, mom. One grandchild is too many for you, you need to bump her off? You're supposed to hang lights, ornaments, mistletoe... not toddlers.

I just looked away for a minute, and as I looked back, Pumpkinpie has jumped and spun right off the edge of the carpet, and was losing traction. Her feet shot out and she went down hard on the wooden floor, face first, and began screaming the screams of a child not just scared, but hurt. I snatched her up, and saw blood on her mouth. Hugging her tight to me I sat down with her straddling my lap, pressing her close against my chest as Misterpie and my mom scrambled to my screeches of, "Get some ice! And paper towel, I need paper towel!" After pressing the ice to her lip for a moment, I saw two smallish gashes in her lip, and blood in her teeth. A drink of water to clear the blood allowed me to look inside, but I was bawling already, imagining her teeth through her lip, and an evening in emergency ahead, complete with a panicked child. I was wrong, I am so relieved to say, it was just the cuts on the outside, but that was not to be the end of that.

Pumpkinpie was so upset and probably also sensed my panic, that she let loose - and peed. On my lap. Volumes. This did nothing to make my crying go away. Apparently, warmth spreading across your body is not in and of itself comforting, heat wrap ads aside. Although Pumpkinpie did considerately miss wetting any part of her nice Christmas outfit other than her undies, I was soaked from waist to just above the knee, fancy undies and all. Never mind the cauliflower, Misterpie ran out the door to get me new pants and undies for myself - I had packed some for the kid, but hadn't thought I'd need my own set, too. He'd only be gone about 15 minutes, so I thought I'd just sit and wait it out. My mom helped me change Pumpkinpie's undies, and she sat on my (still dry) knees, nursing her wounded lip.

The door opened then, and in came my sister - and two of her friends. I cannot fucking believe this, said my brain. "Oh, good god," said my mouth. My sister is a stylist, a fashion editor, a designer. One of these boys was her design partner, the other a pastry chef-to-be. I have never met these people before. I am sitting, sobbing, soaking, with a freaked-out child on my lap. This is the first impression I am making. My sister, kind-hearted but perhaps misguided, takes me upstairs and decides she can find me something to wear. Have I mentioned she's five inches taller and some inches narrower than I? A former model and still fashionista who wore skinny jeans even when flares were big? Really tight and skinny skinny jeans? Yeah, that'll work. No, she insists, she has some things from shoots and friends that might work. I come downstairs with a tiny, stretchy men's T-shirt straining across my, er, womanly hips it was never designed for, and a towel safety-pinned around my waist. Trying to play it cool, voguing my look a little. The angry, embarrassed look on my face must have given me away, I'm sure, though it was looking better since I washed my daughters blood off of my chin and cheeks.

I was some relieved when Misterpie returned with some pants, although I had to keep the ugly Tshirt because I hadn't known the hem of mine was wet when he left. So at about 6:00, the cauliflower finally went in and my dad had returned with the lobsters. Pumpkinpie was pretty scared of the lobsters, and was clinging harder than ever, so they eventually got put into the sink, out of sight, but not until a few people had tried to bring them up closer to her, thinking that maybe if she just got a better look at them, maybe touched them, she'd be okay. Uh-huh.

At this point, someone decided to let my sister's manic little dog out of his crate, despite a previous episode of his running at Pumkinpie's stomach. And yes, he went right for her, jumping and barking at her midsection. She backed right up into a corner, and my mom - who had shown a rare glimmer of good sense in being the only one to agree it wasn't worth the risk of letting him out - snatched that animal right back into its crate. Thank goodness no one tried to argue because I was so not up for it. Fortunately, I had been explaining to Pumpkinpie that he was in the box because he was kind of crazy and liked to run around and bark, so she shook it off with a little hugging and cuddling, commenting to me that he "was crazy!" She's a trouper, alright, just sucking on her split lip and looking around with big eyes after that. It was chaos in the kitchen though, with the friends whipping up little canapes, my mom doing I'm-not-sure-what, water boiling for the lobster, music pumping, and not much progress really seeming to be made.

Misterpie at some point in there started a fire, but the wood was, it turned out, not quite ready, and another great toddler environment was born in the living room moments later, as sparks started popping all over the room. Misterpie was so grumpy at this point that he was just sitting in the living room, trying to calm down a bit before it was time to sit down and be civil over dinner. Which was coming on an hour late.

Just as I was starting to think we'd hit Pumpkinpie's bedtime without eating and have to leave without a taste of lobster, dinner was ready. And not really worth the wait. My mother had pureed the potatoes with something else to create a massive bowl filled with quivering, green-tinged baby food. I think maybe if she had added a bunch of milk and run it through the blender again and called it soup, it might have worked, but not like this. It looked like glue. Pumpkinpie wouldn't even try it, and she's usually pretty good about at least trying things. That didn't stop my mother from trying to make her eat some - no dice. I finally told her to leave her alone.

What she did like was the lobster. In some attempt to help me out so I'd have my hands free for Pumpkinpie, all I got handed was one claw and one tail, and she ate the tail. So of my favourite, most-anticipated meal of the year, I got - one claw and two small nibbles made up of the outside membrane and flangy bits of the tail. Hoo-fucking-ray. Making the best of things, I heaped a mass of couscous salad on my plate and ate that. A bit dry, a bit clumpy, but I wasn't complaining because a) my sister made it and b) I was damn hungry and clearly not getting any lobster.

Halfway through dinner, I noticed that the cauliflower was missing, and asked about it. I love Misterpie's roasted cauliflower (seriously, take some, cut it up small, toss it in oil, salt, and pepper, apread it out on a cookie sheet, and roast until it's quite brown. Delish.). My mom's head comes up. "Oh, we don't really need it, we've got lots of food! Why don't you take it to the kids at school for a hot lunch, Misterpie?" He replied, "Um, school is out for two weeks. And I don't think they'd be into cold cauliflower, anyhow." Inside, I'm screaming, WTF?! I want cauliflower! You fucked up the potatoes, you can't even manage to heat your own damn house, the couscous is clumpy, there's a crazy animal in a cage over there, my child has a split lip and peed on me, then ate my fucking lobster, and now you're trying to take away my cauliflower?! You can pry it from my cold, dead hands, woman! Calmly, though, I told her I would like some, and I heaped it onto my plate and made my meal primarily of cauliflower. Thank goodness for yummy, yummy, roasted cauliflower.

Throughout dinner, my sister's friend kept offering me some wine, and though I do love wine with dinner, I declined time after time. You know when you just know that it might not be a good idea to try to relax? This was just one of those times. It was time to clamp down and get through this horror show, not a time to try to enjoy anything about the night. Wisely, I think, since there was no telling what irretrievable thing would tumble from my lips should they be loosened.

Once dinner had finally, mercifully been eaten, I announced we had to go. It was 8:30, well past Pumpkinpie's bedtime, and now that we had some sustenance in her tiny belly, she really had to get some sleep. Did I mention that she had decided not to nap that afternoon? My mom insisted Pumpkinpie could sleep in her room - the mattress was on the floor, she wouldn't even fall out and hurt herself! Um, no. Pumpkinpie would not stay on a mattress in a strange room, she would get up, and my mother's house is quite likely to be among the least child-friendly places in the Western Hemisphere, right after, say, a Level 4 hot lab at the CDC or the Henckels knife factory.

"At least have dessert! It looks amazing! Delicious! Baked by the upcoming pastry chef!" they cried. Not even some fantastical leaning tower of whipped cream and cake could keep me from hightailing it out of that hell as fast as I could go. "But what about presents? We have to do presents!" We took them with us and agreed we'd open them next week at brunch instead so they could watch Pumpkinpie open them. We didn't need more for the next day anyhow, and my mom's presents are notoriously bizarre and unuseable. And so we retreated home in bad grace and bad moods.

I reviewed the night, sitting on the couch, Pumpkinpie tucked into bed, glass of liquor in my hand. "How could one night suck in so many different ways?" I asked. Misterpie laughed. "I was driving home as fast as I felt I could get away with to get your pants, and I was just dying for a cop to stop me and ask, 'What's the rush?' so I could tell him the whole story about the rope and the split lip and the peeing! And then I realized that I had forgotten to add in the lack of heat in my recap! It's just too many things to keep track of!""Yeah," I replied, "And that was before the friends arrived, and the fire was sparking, and the dog came out swinging, and Pumpkinpie ate all my damn lobster! Fuck!"

To his vast credit, Misterpie tried hard to retrieve the night for me. Not only did he run home immediately for my pants, but he's promised we'll have our own lobsters some time this week to make up for my missed meal, then poured me a stiff drink, and filled the stockings for me, following every letter of my instructions. He even guessed that having my pretty new lingerie peed on had sort of spoiled the mood for me. Poor man. He had no idea what he was getting into when he found himself in love with me.