another christmas in old glengarry

Rain the whole way driving back to the farm yesterday, Kate & I another day or so on the family farm. I just hope the whole damn business doesn’t freeze (it didn’t, fortunately). Apparently my sister pregnant again, due in July (that would be 3, including Emma, 4 + Rory, 17 mo). I suspect she & husband Corey are working to create some sort of sporting team or family musical group, although I don’t see her as the "Mother Maybelle" type (she claims too, that one loves to sing & the other is sporty; maybe a Spice Girls knockoff?). Apparently my mother getting a hip replacement in mid-January, a week or so after my father goes in for (finally) that back surgery for the sake of a pinched nerve in his leg (they think he’s actually going to spend a month on his back after this). Geez, what else?

Kate going on a school trip to Italy during the March Break, so even if I come back to Ontario for such I wouldn’t get to see her; still, if she’d rather have hung out with me than (in her words) "hot, young Italian men," I think I’d actually be worried about her; imagine, she’s going to be seventeen in less than two weeks...

Big dinner at mid-day at my sister's house, with everyone around. Part of the afternoon listening to music (driving back to Ottawa for various things, including the return of the child), including the cd Kate made for me, after the other she made for me during the fall (but only handed over a week or so ago, just in time for my cd player at home to stop working). She always makes the most interesting mixes (Jennifer & I think she could dj pretty easily), including new, old and odd songs by David Bowie (my favourite Bowie), Bowling for Soup, Veruca Salt, etcetera. What I particularly liked was that she included Depeche Mode’s "Photographic"on the newest one, a song her mother even included on the second mixed cassette she made me back in the late 1980s (the days of The Lost Boys soundtrack, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Gruesomes, Stand GT and The Smiths, etcetera); who says nothing ever connects?

The Peter F. Yacht Club reading was a blast the other night; Pearl & Roland & Charles took a bunch of photos (where are they all, but for the facebook ones?). We had only a few readers--Amanda Earl [see her mention of such here], Nicholas Lea, Roland Prevost, myself and Sandra Ridley (even the bartender read!), but we made Pearl Pirie read as well, from the 80 page manuscript she’s been working on lately (it was apparently only 45 pages long a couple of days earlier). Anita Dolman, extremely pregnant, decided not to read (even though we prodded her; if pregnant, when might we ever hear her read again?).

In Ottawa again until January 2nd, when I fly back to Edmonton, where all of my files are; Ottawa an enforced vacation of sorts, since most of what I need to do is still out west.

It’s Christmas Eve; Kate is already back in Ottawa.

What will I do when I get back to my little apartment tomorrow?