YouTube has these videos about the weirdness of the week between Christmas and New Year’s—that time when it gets particularly hard to remember what day of the week it is and you find yourself subsisting mostly on decadent leftovers. For example:
Hmm, I guess YouTube Shorts display really big in WordPress…?
Being retired also brings with a certain amount of having to work to remember what day of the week it is anyway, and I can confirm that this is only gets worse the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when whatever usual weekly activities you have set up are often cancelled or moved. So that the week did feel a bit “off” wasn’t too surprising.
What I hadn’t expected was the way that Christmas Day itself really snuck up on me. In my working times, I’d typically have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, and usually a few days before Christmas, too. And I would plan ahead for that. What am I going to cook when. What events will I attend. What back burner projects will I move onto that front burner.
But now… Well… That’s closer to what my life is generally like so I didn’t need all these “special” plans. But, I did still want to do a Christmas dinner and maybe a few other event? And I didn’t want to be grocery shopping on Christmas Eve, and events weren’t going to plan themselves. I had to get on it.
Two days before we were supposed to head north, Jean’s work car was struck by a flying tire on the 401, a major Ontario highway. This was both unlucky and lucky.
Unlucky: Getting struck by a flying tire
Lucky: Sustaining no personal injuries
Unlucky: Having to wait hours for a tow because of the location of the incident
Lucky: Was not a car we own, so ultimately not our expense nor responsibility
Handing off this responsibility did consume much of Jean’s next day after he was finally towed back home… Getting the police report in, getting the car towed the car elsewhere, etc.
But, we were able to leave as planned in our car the day after that. Automobile was chosen as the method of transportation this year because Air Canada’s fares have basically doubled, so even the “lower fare” period of early December wasn’t all that low.
It’s a long drive. We broke it up by stopping in to visit with Jean’s sister who lives in Sudbury, which was very nice. We also briefly saw one of Jean’s nieces, who is currently residing there while she plays for the local hockey team (and goes to school!).
Not Jean’s niece. She’s somewhat older than these girls. But we didn’t take a lot of photos on this trip. This photo is by Oleksandr P on Pexels.com
The roads were mostly good, though we did get some blowy, slightly slippery snow near the end. We made it to Dad’s all right. Dad has just turned 89 and is still living on his own. He had a nice dinner prepared for us.
We then had two full days there, during which we managed to pack in a good amount of visiting:
We went over to see Jean’s other sister, catching up on family news over tea.
Jean met up with his brothers and most of their wives at a local restaurant.
A visit with old friends was a bit uncertain, as she was navigating her father through the hospital system. But he was discharged to his nursing home in time for us to be able to meet, which was great.
My brother, his girlfriend, and my nephew came over for a birthday dinner (both my brother and father celebrate around this time), which was jolly good fun.
We also got out cross-country skiing for the first time in years. We have some photographic evidence of that!
The trails here are amazing. We did 5 km.The trees looked beautiful all along. Winter wonderland.No, it’s not named after me. But it is named after my parents, who have put in hours and hours of volunteer work here over the years.
The drive back went reasonably well also. Some slightly slick roads at the start, then a few somewhat intense flurries at the end, but we made it home without a bang.
Jean said that he felt as though he’d already had Christmas.
Earlier this week, I realized I’d written Garbage on the date of December 25 on our paper calendar (yes, we still have a paper calendar).
Now, that wasn’t a reflection of my feelings about Christmas—at least not consciously! It’s just that Monday is our usual garbage pick-up day, and since they only accept trash bi-weekly (recycling and compost weekly), I put on the calendar which Mondays are the actual garbage pick-up days.
Only December 25 won’t be one of them. I’ll have to look up when they’ve moved that to. [Edit: That would be Tuesday, December 26.]
But December 25 is just a date, and you can choose to celebrate on other ones. Pre-2020, we almost always went to Timmins for actual Christmas, but also had our own Christmas celebration for two the weekend before that, complete with gifts and roast beast.
Post-2020, Jean can’t take extra vacation days right before or between Christmas and New Year’s, which makes it a bit tight to go north then. Last year I went to Timmins in earlier December with my sister; this year I did the same with Jean.
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