Deck the Halls

Marty recently returned from a quick trip to Calgary. He flew out to retrieve some paintings to display at a local gallery in Victoria, and we used the opportunity to bring back some more essential items from our storage in Calgary. We knew that he would be driving back in our tiny Honda Civic—already weighed down by 16 or so paintings (on wood, no less)—so we only included some extreme essentials on the List of Things to Bring Back.

I really wanted to put yarn on the list—so badly, in fact—but I felt I should focus more on what we really needed right away, and yarn (sadly) didn’t make the cut (that’s what ebay and my favourite non-local yarn store are for!). What did make the cut were:

- the TV and DVD player (to take advantage of the free movies at the local library—not just crappy National Geographic ones, either- real movies that we would ordinarily want to rent from the video store!)

- our phone and answering machine. Our crappy Wal-Mart substitute just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

- My gym shoes

- Coat hangers (‘cuz, you know, actually hanging up your clothes instead of keeping them in a pile on the floor is always a good thing… especially if you have spiders in your house!)

We figured (correctly) that the Honda would be more than full with these items, so we left The List at that. What we didn’t take into consideration, though, was Marty’s family. Specifically, we neglected to take into account the (otherwise blatantly obvious) facts that Marty’s mom loves Christmas and Marty’s dad loves the Honda.

Marty came back with all of the above-mentioned items, plus two tires and an alternator for the Honda (from his dad, just in case he needed to switch the new winter tires with old summer ones on the drive home...?), a Christmas tree, a vat of homemade shortbread cookies, other festive foods (like oh, about 5 pounds of chocolate!), and a ton of Christmas presents, because we "wouldn't have a real Christmas" if he didn't bring them back to Victoria. Marty also somehow managed to squeeze in two desks, a couple of fold-up chairs, some YARN!, and a large Rubbermaid container filled with miscellaneous items. I don't know how he did it (or frankly, how the Honda made the drive home without bottoming out). I do know, though, that now we need to find creative ways to deal with our overstock of impeccable shortbread cookies (i.e. not to just pack them all back ourselves, right onto our asses!)... potluck, anyone?